Today's story is for the anon who requested 'Talk to me':
Cere will never say it to Cal, but it is surreal watching him sink into an echo. Maybe plummet would be a better word. It’s not the little ones that consume him; those he can tune into the same way he listens to music while someone else is talking to him. No, it’s the big ones that temporarily erase his grasp on the present, his own existence and perceptions temporarily overwritten.
And it’s Cere’s fault. She didn’t think. He’s still recovering from Nur, unable to join her and Merrin on Dathomir. Merrin thought it would be as good a place as any to lay low for a while, and with Cal laid up and Cere reconnecting to the Force, she’d decided to explore the Zeffo tomb for herself. She’d found an old relic – a tiny depiction of the Zeffo sage Kujet – and taken it back to the ship. She’d handed it to Cal and lost him immediately. Thankfully he’d been sat in the lounge, reading from a datapad.
At least Cere caught the datapad before it hit the ground.
It's been an entire minute now, and Cal shows no signs of emerging. BD-1 looks up at Cere, whimpering with concern. If BD’s worried, maybe Cere should be too. BD’s been at Cal’s side for more of these than anyone else, so he knows best.
And then Cal cries out in a language Cere doesn’t know and returns to the present with an awful howl of pain. The artifact falls from his hand. He falls forward, sweating, shuddering and dry retching. Cere doesn’t risk touching him, not yet. Instead, she projects a sense of peace and calm she doesn’t entirely feel.
He grunts, hand coming up to protect his chest. He’s too distracted, caught between two time periods, to shield, and his pain rings out for Cere to catch and deflect.
“Hold on,” she tells him, getting to her feet. “I’ll get you something for that.”
Cere hurries to the med kit and digs out one of their better painkillers. Cal’s told her before that the stronger the echo, the worse the backlash. He’s in enough pain already; he doesn’t need to endure more.
When she turns back to the lounge, Cal is still hunched over, but he now has one hand resting on BD’s head. He’s breathing slowly and carefully, eyes closed, lips pressed together. He’s deathly pale, a sheen of sweat clinging to him.
“Cal?” Cere calls quietly.
“Mmm, here,” he murmurs.
“I’m going to give you a painkiller.” It is not optional.
He hums in agreement and allows Cere to deliver the hypo. It gets to work quickly, and Cal is soon on his feet, swaying, and determinedly aiming himself at the engine room. His shielding, while not great, is better than before, but Cere knows him well enough now to know he is overwhelmed and upset.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
“It’s fine,” he says in a tone that says it definitely isn’t. Not that he’s angry with her. No, it’s that whatever he saw left him completely horrified. He presses a hand to his head, pushing his hair back. “I’m fine.”
“You’re a fine liar,” Cere says gently. She stands, hovering nearby in case his legs give out. “Talk to me, Cal. What did you see?” She doesn’t want him to linger on something nightmarish.
“No.” His voice cracks. She watches him massage his forehead, hears the tension in his voice. “Not now.”
“Okay,” she says, keeping her voice low. “BD, go on ahead and turn off all the lights.”
BD takes off and Cal slowly ambles after him. Once he’s gone, Cere closes the door to the back half of the ship, then crouches down and plucks the offending object off the ground. She hears footsteps and sees Greez and Merrin boarding the ship. Cere hushes them before they can loudly announce whatever explorations they got up to, even though she’s curious to know how well Greez got over his fear of the entire planet.
“What’s wrong?” Greez asks.
Cere puts the tiny Zeffo statuette on the table.
Greez gets it immediately. “Oh no.”
Merrin takes slightly longer. “He had a vision,” she surmises.
“An echo, yes,” Cere says. “It was not a good one.”
They all resolve to keep quiet. Dathomir is not a loud place, not anymore, and the sun is well on its way to setting when Cere senses Cal awakening. She waits until she’s sure he’s awake and comfortable, then heads to the engine room and knocks gently on the doorframe. Cal looks over at her, as does BD, who’s sat at Cal’s side. He’s not as pale as before, and the tension and pain has faded.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Better,” he says. “Sorry. With a migraine like that I had to be in a dark room, otherwise it would’ve been messy..”
“It’s fine,” Cere says. “I’m sorry for not thinking it through before handing you the statuette.”
“Don’t worry,” Cal says. “It’s not the first or the last time that’s gonna happen.” He takes a deep breath and pulls himself into a seated position. Cere takes it as her cue to join him on his bed, placing her hand between them. He rests his over it, and squeezes back when she closes her fingers around his. “It was a memento carved by a loved one, held by someone desperately trying to resist Kujet’s will. Kujet was mad with power, consumed with paranoia, saw everyone and everything as a threat to his reign. The Zeffonian who carved it held it as they died, smothered and suffocated by Kujet. They… they were assaulted, their mind torn to shreds by nightmarish hallucinations as their lungs filled with ash.” He holds Cere’s hand tighter. “And it all felt like it happened to me.”
He doesn’t need her to tell him it didn’t, he’s safe, Kujet can’t hurt him now. BD beeps softly, planting himself on Cal’s lap. Cal smiles at his friend, then leans over, head resting on Cere’s shoulder. “I’m okay now,” he says.
“It’s alright if you aren’t,” Cere replies.
“I am,” Cal says with a certainty spoiled by a yawn. “Ow.” He presses a hand to his chest. “This is getting old,” he grumbles. “I should meditate,” he mumbles through another yawn.
Cere gives his hair a ruffle. “Alright,” she says. “Take as long as you need. And BD?”
BD beeps eagerly.
“Come and get me if Cal falls asleep again.”
Chuckling in his funny, buzzy way, BD promises to do exactly that.
“Rude.” Cal sits up and releases her hand. “Cere? It wasn’t your fault. I’m always going to sense echoes. That’s just the way I am.”
“I know,” she says, standing. “And you know you can always talk to me about any of them. You don’t need to keep it all in anymore.”
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Today's request is 'You've got one minute' for @ralndown ^_^
Every time Cal thinks he’s settling into a routine on Bracca, something awful happens. Maybe the Ibis Maw gets hungry for flesh and grabs a tentacleful of unsuspecting scrappers. Maybe a ship that’s been in the same place for two years suddenly decides to collapse under its own weight. Maybe someone breaks something aboard an old terraforming lab and suddenly there’s a bunch of people turned into trees.
Today, Cal’s crew makes it halfway through their shift before the worst, most terrifying siren goes off. Bracca doesn’t have a lot of warnings for incoming disaster, but this one? This is the one they’re all trained to react to in one way, and one way only.
Get out. Get out now or die.
Maybe that’s why the Force left Cal feeling nauseous all day. It’s so useful like that.
Dropping the wires he’d started stripping, Cal follows the others. Prauf’s leading them and he’s already on the comms, listening intently to whatever’s being said. When he stops still and holds up a hand to make everyone else do the same, Cal shivers under the weight of the collective fear around him.
It only gets worse when Prauf starts issuing orders in a sharp tone of voice Cal’s never heard before.
“It’s a chemical leak. A bad one. We’re too deep in the ship to get out in time. Get into your emergency teams, find a room, and seal yourselves in. If we’re lucky, we’ll see each other on the other side of this thing.”
People break off into their groups. There’s no time for goodbyes or good lucks. Cal sticks close to Prauf and Tabbers. He takes a breath and immediately coughs it out, a sharp bite scraping the back of his throat. Prauf grabs him, throws him into a room, and Tabbers seals the door.
It’s not enough. The room, a tiny refresher, has an air conditioning vent high on the ceiling. Even Prauf can’t reach it to close it off. Gas seeps in. Cal hears people coughing and choking from all around, senses their fear and pain.
“We gotta seal it, now!” Tabbers shouts. His eyes stream, coughing hard. “We’ve got one minute before we’re all spitting out chunks of our lungs.” He pulls a wall panel down. “Weld this over that vent!”
“Lift me up,” Cal says. He puts his filter mask on, hoping it will help. “I can do it.”
Putting his own mask on, Prauf grabs Cal, lifting him. Cal plants his feet on Prauf’s shoulders. His eyes burn, so full of tears he can hardly keep them open. Tabbers hands him a sheet of metal and Cal presses it to the vent, welding torch in hand as he covers it up. He can’t keep his eyes open, so he trusts Prauf to guide him, molten metal sealing the panel in place.
“Good job,” Prauf says, lowing Cal down. “Sit, both of you. That gas is light, so we should be safer down here.”
Cal’s feet touch the ground. He drops to the deck moments later, eyes squeezed shut, lungs still rebelling. His mask isn’t doing much to help, but it’s better than nothing.
“Is this shit what I think it is?” Tabbers’ voice is muffled by his mask.
“Yeah,” Prauf replies. Cal hears him sit beside him. “Someone messed up big time.”
“I’d threaten to beat the idiots myself, but I cannae imagine they’re alive now,” Tabbers says.
“What is it?” Cal asks when he can talk again.
“A chemical weapon designed to rot battle droids,” Prauf says.
“Aye, not that it worked,” Tabbers adds. “It’s far better at killing us organics.”
Cal never heard about anything like that. Not that he tells the others. The idea that the Republic would create something like that leaves him nauseous.
“Looks like no one thought to remove the canisters before we started pulling this thing apart,” Prauf says. “Foreman said someone cut off the wrong thing and boom – we’re all breathing in poison.”
Cal doesn’t join the conversation. He pulls his knees to his chest, keeps his eyes firmly closed, and tries not to suffocate in the feelings of so many people dying around him. He pushes the Force away, begs it to leave him alone like it usually does.
“Cal?”
Prauf’s big, warm hand lands on his back. Cal startles, eyes flying open. His vision is fractured by the tears still running, but the burn is easier to manage now.
“You okay?” Prauf asks.
“Yeah,” he says, knowing he doesn’t have to worry about how rough his voice sounds. And then, because he needs a distraction, he keeps talking. “Can’t believe we’re stuck in a ‘fresher.”
Tabbers chuckles. “Get comfy, brat. We might be here a while.”
It’s two days before the foreman gives them the all-clear. The survivors are given a half-shift break to clean up, get something to eat and drink, and then sent back to work to make up for the two days of sitting around doing nothing. Cal notes that their crew is down several people when they meet up to be assigned duties, but no one says anything.
Just a little something I thought of while replaying Survivor.
Ao3
---
Cal was no stranger to lightsaber wounds, considering the amount of times he'd gone up against them. The thing with lightsaber wounds was that they burned. They sliced through skin and tissue like a hot knife through butter, only the flesh and tissue didn't simply melt, it boiled and blistered and immediately cauterized grotesquely in a way that not even Bacta would fully stop a permanent scar from forming.
Even the slightest nick, the barest slice, could send agony through every single nerve ending and consume all other thoughts.
Cal was no stranger to lightsaber wounds, but he'd gotten lucky that most of those wounds were just skims, breaths of a magma-hot blade past skin and through clothing. Even those brushes with the weapons could leave blistered burns for weeks to come with the near constant risk of infection and the added cherry on top of knowing what your own cooked skin and hair smelled like.
He was lucky, until he wasn't.
Cal still didn't know how to feel about the scar on his left side, near his ribs, just besides his navel. Sometimes, like the scars on his face or the countless ones along his arms and back, he forgot about it. Though, the months after waking up in the Mantis, half drowned and recently skewered, he thought about it a lot. Terror had been the first emotion he felt every time he looked down at the festering wound to change the bacta patches. Terror at being stabbed in the first place, but also terror at the monster who had stabbed him. Exasperation would come next, a desperate attempt to calm himself down with a little bit of humor, by silently grumbling that Darth Vader just had to stab Cal with Cal's saber, like he didn't deserve to be stabbed with his own. Morbid resignation would settle next, Vader hadn't only stabbed Cal with his lightsaber, but he had also simply used the Force to do so.
And then Cal would put on a new patch, pull down his shirt, throw on a poncho, and force himself to not think about it, even when the lingering pain never seemed to leave him.
It probably was the worst wound he'd ever suffered, but considering Cal's path in life, he wouldn't be surprised if the Force planned harsher wounds for the future. Two Inquisitors, a rogue Jedi, and a Sith Lord all in the span of a few standard weeks didn't bode well. Honestly he felt he should feel a little prideful that it took an actual Sith to finally stab him with one of the things rather than just graze him.
A few months later, the wound had fully healed into a puckered scar that could almost be mistaken for a blaster scar. He barely thought about it.
In fact, right now, scars and Sith Lords and escaping Nur by the skin of his teeth was the last thing on his mind. Not as he was currently just managing to jump out of the way of a charging bounty hunter.
Seriously, the Mantis had just stopped for a resupply on some backwater forest moon. The local city didn't even have a landing pad, that's how backwater it was. They had to land outside the city in the first clearing they found that was large enough to fit the Mantis. But Cere insisted they had fuel and food to sell. So while Cere and Greez went off to do magic with credits, Merrin, Cal, and Bd-1 took to exploring the surrounding forest, looking at the scenery, jumping out of the way of a suddenly charging bounty hunter. The usual.
How the bounty hunter had managed to track Cal down so quickly was beyond Cal. Those pucks were annoyingly accurate, and bounty hunters were annoyingly persistent. Cal whipped out his lightsaber and Merrin called upon her green fire as the bounty hunter came to a screeching stop, their jetpack whirring with the reek of burning fuel.
Merrin, however, flinched and spun around just in time to dodge the blaster fire of a second bounty hunter, both were recognizably members of the Haxion Brood. Cal silently groaned to himself. These guys didn't know when to quit.
Naturally, Merrin went into the forest after the one with the rifle while Cal took on the one with the jetpack. The bounty hunter called a taunt at Cal, lifting her blaster to try and shoot Cal. Cal responded by raising his saber just as the blaster bolt fired, reflecting it back at her.
And the dance continued.
Fighting these guys one on one was no longer a challenge, if Merrin wasn't here he'd be more worried, but she was, and that practically sealed the deal on their victory.
After blocking a series of blaster fire, the hunter landed on her own two feet to avoid overheating her jets. Seeing the opportunity, Cal charged forward. She ducked away from his swinging strike, her hand going to her belt and pulling out a small, circular device.
Cal cursed silently, jumping out of the way as she threw the detonator. From where he used to stand, a flash erupted, and a bang, a puff of sparks and smoke that had him losing visibility on his opponent for just a moment.
The whirl of jets firing met his ears, and before the smoke could clear the bounty hunter launched herself through the black vapor directly toward him.
Cal barely had enough time to gasp, let alone jump out of the way, before she slammed into him. The force of the blow squeezed the breath from his body. He grunted, arms instinctively going to her plates of armor as her momentum didn't hault. His boots rip from the ground, and his stomach rolled as they both lifted chaotically into the air. Blinking spots from his eyes, he swung his saber down. Her hand shot up, a snarl leaving her lips from beneath her helmet, and grabbed him around the wrist.
Then, pain blossomed through his back and his skull as they crashed into a tree. He screamed through his teeth, pressure squeezing the life out of him as her jets continued to fire, continuing to press her against him and him against the unmoving tree. He struggled against her hold, finding the second switch of his saber and erupting the second blade.
It cut through her immediately, striking down through her shoulder and out her hip. Her body shuddered as life left her, her corpse losing all control over the jets and sliding off of him.
Gravity took hold immediately. Cal barely had time to suck in a breath and turn off his blades before he began to fall. He flailed, trying to reach for anything to catch him, but nothing, not even a branch, revealed itself within hand's reach.
He landed in a heap on the forest floor, his breath getting knocked out of him a second time as he landed stomach down. BD-1 chirped worriedly as Cal took too many seconds to regain his bearings. Just the thought of moving felt daunting. He forced his elbows under him anyways, gritting his teeth and desperately trying to take stock of his condition. His spine protested, as did the back of his head, both a result from slamming into the tree. However, his ribs, knees, and hands stung from the ungraceful landing, his vision swimming.
And the second he moved his torso, he felt fire.
The pain was so shocking, so unexpected, that he cried out, a hand flying to his side to clutch at the sudden pain. His stomach clenched and spasmed, and he found himself curled into himself without even realizing it, squeezing his eyes and clenching his jaw.
Had she gotten a lucky hit on him? His fingers convulsed over the pain, finding no holes in the fabric of his poncho or shirt underneath. It took him a solid minute of hissing his breaths through his teeth to get his eyes open long enough to look at the agonizing damage.
And he found nothing.
Confusion swept through him. His side pulsed like he was burning from the inside out, but there was nothing visual to show for it.
BD-1 gave a string of binary, asking if he needed a STIM, but Cal couldn't find the words to say yes or no. He could only force himself up from his curled up position on the ground so he could slump against a tree. He needed to see what's wrong before deciding if a STIM would be helpful. Before he could even think of trying to untuck his shirt, the agony intensified for a moment, forcing his head back with a groan.
The whooshing sound of Magick announced Merrin's arrival. Her opponent clearly had been dealt with, and he almost slumped in relief.
"What's the matter," She asked, worry pinching her brow as she knelt down beside Cal. BD-1 answered with a few worried boops. She looked at where Cal clutched his hand over his side, then gently got to work.
"I don't know what it is," he gasped. The pain swirled within him, sharp and bright, with every movement.
"Breathe, Cal," she said, her hands poking at his side and batting his hands away.
It took monumental effort to keep his hands away, instead bringing them to his sides to clutch at the ground.
She eventually had his shirt lifted to see... nothing. No wound, no blood... nothing.
Merrin looked up at him, eyes worried. "Where is the pain?"
Cal looked down at his bare stomach, forcing his lungs to work as the fire burned within him. His eyes caught on that small, puckered scar, and he froze.
Suddenly, the pain was recognizable. It simmered, deeply and agonizing, and if he closed his eyes he could almost imagine himself back at the Fortress Inquisitorius... laying on his side as Darth Vader plunged his lightsaber through his side.
After the recognition came clarity.
And the pain began to settle.
"I-" he gasped, bringing his hand down to run his thumb over the smarting scar. The more he breathed, the more he thought about it, the more his adrenaline settled... the more the agony began to dull, leaving behind the very real aches and pains from the recent battle. "I think it was in my head," he finished with a whisper. Or maybe it wasn't, he didn't know.
"In your head...?" Merrin asked, tone deep and an eyebrow raised.
"Just... give me a moment."
Merrin gave him a visibly baffled look, but he ignored it in favor of closing his eyes and beginning a breathing exercise he had been taught ages ago as a youngling; being psychometric during a war did things to anxiety levels.
It took a few minutes, but soon every pain on his body became grounded in reality. There was no trace of the burning, pulsing agony in his side. When he opened his eyes, there was nothing but the scar, and the terror, exasperation, morbid recognition. He thought back to his time on Bracca, for a moment. He'd met many other scrappers there, some who had seen worse times than him. He remembered, in particular, an older gentleman who had scars all along his body from some horrific accident while scraping. He was constantly grumpy, practically barked at you if you accidentally bumped into him, and on the worst of the thundering days on Bracca, you could see his hands shake.
When Cal asked what was wrong with him, Prauf had explained that wounds remembered. Even though he was healed now, the pain sometimes liked to rudely remind of their existence from time to time, particularly during harsh storms.
Cal doubted that was fully the case for himself, but he couldn't think of any other reason why this wound would hurt so badly right out of nowhere. Perhaps it was getting plowed into the stomach and lifted into the air, maybe it was the drop, or maybe it was just the adrenaline.
He took a final, deep breath, pushing the strange experience out of his mind.
"I'm good," he said, finally.
Merrin looked unimpressed. "Am I going to get an explanation?"
He brought one hand to the back of his head, laughing weakly as he slowly hefted himself to his feet. "I don't think I have one. I think... the lightsaber wound was just acting up. Or my brain thought it was. I don't know." He gave a helpless shrug.
She frowned, but joined him standing while BD-1 climbed up his leg and settled on his shoulder.
"Will this... acting up happen again?"
Cal stretched his shoulders, wincing as it pulled on his smarting spine. "Kinda hoping that was a one time thing."
It wasn't.
It happened many times more over the years. Most of the time it would be after taking some trauma to his torso, but sometimes it would flare for no reason at all. He found, at one particular outing to a constantly thunderous planet, that the pain lingered with no fading until he got out of there.
He never got used to it, just got better at recognizing it and breathing, fighting, through it. His wound remembered, always reminding him that an evil like Darth Vader, like the Empire itself, was out there and that he wasn't invincible.
He wouldn't let it stop him, though. It didn't make him weak, even if sometimes it had him finding the nearest, safest place to curl up and sob into his arm. If it wanted to remind him constantly of his own fear and mortality, then he'd let it.
Because it also reminded him that he survived.
Someday, Cal will meet Darth Vader again, he will cross blades, and next time, the monster won't get another hit like that on Cal. The scar, and the pain, may remain, but the Empire wouldn't.
Today's minific, 'Just breathe', is for @believe-in-alderaan!
“Just breathe, kid. C’mon, please. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll never complain about the mudstains your boots leave everywhere, or your ridiculous poncho collection. I won’t even complain about BD jumping all over my couch. Just breathe.”
Greez’s voice cuts through the darkness, and Cere is thrown suddenly and completely into consciousness. She snaps upright, stomach muscles wailing in protest, and finds herself on the deck of the Mantis, soaked through and bitterly cold. She looks over and sees a nightmare.
Cal, unconscious and bleeding.
Greez, performing increasingly desperate CPR.
Merrin, her magick winding itself into the wound running Cal through.
BD-1, nudging Cal and getting no response.
All of them, doing what they can to bring him back. Bring him back because he’s dead. He’s dead. Cal’s dead. He’s –
The dark side calls again, whispers of its power, promises it can defeat death if she just reaches out, uses its strength, and slams it into Cal, dragging him back, kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes. She can’t lose him, but she’s going to if she doesn’t reach out, doesn’t take hold of all the power she needs to keep hold of him for –
Cere pushes it all away. Cal gave everything for her, for her mission. She will not let it be in vain. She will not let him die, and she will not fall to the dark side to do so.
She is no Jedi Healer. It doesn’t matter. She moves to Cal, tells Merrin, Greez and BD to not give up, and reaches for him. He is so far away, the last tether keeping him out of the Force already fraying, but Cere is neither meek nor quiet. She’s not giving him a choice in the matter. He is not dying here, not for a path she put him on. He is not joining the Force, not today. She’s lost Trilla. She can’t lose him too. She grabs that tether and gives him a single command.
Just breathe.
She is thrown back into herself. The sound of someone coughing and choking fills the air. Cere moves, but Greez is ahead of her, grabbing Cal and rolling him onto his side. His body convulses as his lungs give up all the water he’d inhaled. Greez thumps Cal’s back, helping to clear his lungs faster. BD runs a scan and jabs a stim into Cal. He scans again, happier with the results this time. Merrin’s magick fades and she slumps, looking to Cere. Cere reaches over and holds her hand. She knows Merrin has done all she can. They all have. Cal is alive. He will heal.
They make quick work of patching him up, stripping layers of clothing to reach the wounds beneath. It is a vicious mark Vader inflicted on him, one intended to cause agony rather than death. Had they not escaped, Cere has no doubt in her mind what fate would have befallen Cal. It takes her breath away until the Force reminds her that is a what if, and Cal is alive and under her protection.
At last, their work is finished and quiet falls. The deck is awash with blood and seawater. Greez is the first to break, sobbing into two hands. BD-1 hurries to him, beeping comfort. Greez pets him with a spare hand, telling him it’s okay. He’ll be okay. Merrin holds out for longer, but she is not immune to the emotions crashing through the ship. Cere moves between them, tears mingling with the saltwater on her cheeks. The sounds of Cal’s ragged breaths fill the silence as they all sit and process.
“He’s alive,” Cere tells them, tells herself. Her voice cracks, breaks. “We did it.”
“We really did,” Greez says. He scrubs his eyes, reaches for Cal who remains unconscious. “Alright, kid. You get some rest. We’ve got you.”
“Yes,” Merrin says, weariness straining her voice. “We did not do all of that for you to give up now.”
BD-1 punctuates this with a particularly shrill trill. Cal does not react.
Cere reaches down, runs a hand through Cal’s hair, pulling the wet strands away from his face. He’ll be fine. He’s going to be fine. Looking up, her eyes fall on the holocron someone (Greez?) careless threw aside. Cere picks it up, puts it on the table, ready for later. She won’t open it. That’s for Cal to do.
I have thoughts about Cal's trust issues and I'm going to make it everyone's problem
(with special thanks to @cal-with-a-kesett-tape and @weadapt's problem cause they started this blubbering mess)
It hit me like a brick earlier.
Cal knew the Mantis crew loved him.
Love wasn't enough to make them stay.
Cal has never had the chance to really sit down and think about what attachments really were and how they feel. Hear me out.
This started about Cal's trust issues. I started thinking yeah, the way his Mantis crew family left all of a sudden really shook them and he kind of replaced them subconsciously with a new crew, a new family. A couple of quick notes:
- Lost his master
- Loses all his friends on Bracca (it's implied in Jedi Survivor post-game dialogue that he had other friends besides Prauf that he left behind)
- Prauf
- Crew he grew to love left him jarring his whole world
- Lost his "new" crew suddenly and all he has left of that memory is Bode so he kind of clings to Bode unknowingly
- Bode betrayal shatters him
- Clings to the idea that he and Dagan could work together - for a split second you can see in his eyes he sees it all. He and Dagan, hair flowing in the wind, swinging lightsabers, fighting the empire together, rebuilding the order together, it's romantic really. That lasts all of 2 seconds and he's so confused.
- He loses Cordova, a man he had a pseudo-connection through BD-1 with for so long
- Loses Cere, his second master
- Has to literally kill Bode and live with that
That said, I started thinking yeah he probably doesn't really realize that how deep that all goes within him or how much it actually comes down to his lack of really knowing what attachments are. This is going to cause so many trust issues and him closing himself off because he can't handle the reality of losing more people, especially after Bode shattered his inner-most circle. How's he going to let people in again?
Then it hit me like a brick.
There's a big reason why he sees so much of himself in Dagan. Dagan's attachments turned sour - it went the Vader route of being possessive. His obsession with Sentari's project and Tanalorr was a product of not being able to let his attachments go. That's pretty clear in the game, and mirrored in how Cal has allowed "The Fight" to become his attachment.
Jaro's last words are, "Hold the line" right? We know how he now has this deep engrained need to be needed. He has to fight for something. Yes, it's all he knows, but it's deeper than that, it's the last thread he has to his master. What would happen if he let that go? Cal hasn't really sat and thought about that yet.
Not only that, Cal has internalized his loyalty to this cause as like. A familial thread. The fight was his thing and the Mantis crew became his family, filling a void. The fight is their thing. And for the first time in his life Cal feels safe again. He's finally got some solidly dedicated efforts and people he can depend on. So in them leaving the Fight behind (for good reasons!!) Cal can't reconcile that leaving that isn't leaving him too, (or as @cal-with-a-kesett-tape puts it, abandoning him) it's like denouncing loyalty to him too. He just can't separate that connection and his own attachment. Maybe that's reaching and obviously there's more to it, but I dunno guys, I dunno!!
YOU CAN LOVE EVERYONE SO MUCH AND YOU HAVE TO COME TO TERMS WITH THE FACT THAT PEOPLE CAN AND WILL LEAVE OF THEIR OWN VOLITION!!
AND HE CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT BECAUSE HE DOESN'T REALLY UNDERSTAND HOW THAT LOVE GETS POURED OUT IN HIS LIFE. CAL'S LOVE LANGUAGE IS LITERALLY LOYALTY AND QUALITY TIME AND THE FIGHT.
Again, there's a part of Cal that just never got to stand beside his master like the Padawans of the Republic Era got to and ask all their questions or be scolded like the way Ahsoka did about being too attached to her Master. She had to dig deep and understand what that meant, how to acknowledge it, and how to let it go. Cal has Cere but maybe she just assumed? Who knows. Cal obviously struggled with it more than anyone realized. No discredit to Cere, I just don't think it ever really crossed her mind. Or, you know, Cal's stupid stubborn especially with Cere. Maybe he just ignored her in classic Cal fashion.
All that stemmed from this:
The romance aspect.
He knows taking a romantic step forward is a risk in general. And yes there's all that subconscious hesitation because he's a Jedi. But there's a bigger problem at play with Merrin.
I have to wonder if he did in fact know how she felt about him before she left. And if he did, it's just so much worse.
To him, all this buildup of love and trust. Down the refresher the day she left. So I wonder, maybe a lot of his hesitation isn't about him accepting his feelings. Maybe he gets it. He just struggles with letting someone in again who, in his mind, so easily let him go. He now has to come to terms that he wants to ask her to stay. He has to acknowledge in his mind that he wants her enough to be ok with letting her back in, knowing she's her own person and there's a chance she has to go do her thing someday and he might just have to let her, and that would be ok.
Romance aside, he has to go through that the whole game. Letting the Mantis crew in again. Working things out with everyone, hearing them out, seeing them in their element and finally being at peace with the split - knowing they all made the right decision even if it hurt.
So all the parallels worry me, because yes, he may be more self aware. He might've learned a few lessons, might be more at peace with a few decisions, but the way he just stands in shock at the funeral pyres is just worrisome because you know he's internalizing things. Right when he feels like he's making a step forward, he's taking steps back. The darkness is there now too, and he's going to struggle, because he has more to protect.
This whole experience in survivor was such a crucial point in it but at the same time we know, it's also simultaneously reinforcing his fear of further abandonment and more trust issues, and also his fears of the dark side so I'm kind of nervous to see. Where is all of this culminates to in the next game because he's learned for sure but I also feel like some other things maybe got reinforce that shouldn't have.
Right when he was learning to move on from his attachment to the Fight, he has a new thing, rebuilding Cere's legacy and keeping Tanalorr safe. It's almost like he's doubled up on all of it. Maybe he'll learn to be at peace and let things go but for now, sweet baby boy's trust issues are off the charts!!!!
Anyway maybe none of that made sense and you don't have to agree these are just thoughts after all! Take care!
(I’ve smoked and I still crave it when everything is too much. If you have a choice, just… don’t start. That’s my advice, take it or leave it.)
-o-
Up here, the air is still scalding hot; it’s the kind of heat that shreds the vista into thin strips, and leaves the layers trembling in a heap over the horizon.
Through the day, the sun had scorched the barren rocks without mercy; and now the fine-grained dust feels like it might sludge under his palm; thick, and exhaling even more heat against his skin.
He watches the sun of Koboh set over the ragged land, and everything it encompasses.
The plateaus; the canyons. The thornbushes; the nekko. His footprints, his boots; his dirty trousers. Himself.
Ragged and forlorn, as this land. He just can’t figure it out—if there is a secret, hidden method to wear it all on his sleeve. How to access that vast, indifferent persistence this planet holds all written over it? He wishes the wind would speak to him. Or the sand, or the tar—it’s all the same. His home, the voice in his head demands, insisting him to call it on it’s name.
He holds onto his own superstitions. It would vanish, the moment he said it out loud.
The shadows spread out from the cracks; from under the rocks; gaining ground by the seconds. He feels the stretching dusk drink up the heat of the day; turning the burning, ocher expanse brittle, and grey-purple, and rigid like a cooling body.
The embers of the cigarra inch closer to his fingers.
The trick is this: inhaling the fume doesn’t really work. Your lung should be filled with oxygen; or else, your body will try to force it empty, so there’d be space for it.
A body is just like that… strong in its conviction that it will stay alive.
And it will keep going for the 3 seconds it gains with shutting down his hearing.
And it will keep going for the single second it gains with covering him in darkness, sinking into the embrace of the indifferent sea.
He tastes cold salt as his jaws slack, and the water fills his airways more quickly than he’d ever thought possible. Deaf and blind, muscles locking up in the frigid depths—the bite of salt in his mouth, blackness; feeling the weight of his own spent body pulling him down, the world folding on him,
sinking…
sinking.
Smoke.
It’s just… smoke.
Inhaling it doesn’t work.
But holding it in, letting it slowly seep through—he feels the quiet tingle as the nicotine spreads, relaxing him from the inside. He’s not hazy, not even sleepy. It’s better than alcohol. It’s less volatile than drugs.
He just feels the perpetual strain of his jaw loosen, the muscles of his neck and shoulder going numb instead of tightly knitted together.
The smell is sharp, and there is something beautiful to be witnessed in the blue and purple twirls of his exhale in the light of the setting sun.
The sour taste sits on the back of his tongue. As above, so below—tar.
He probably won’t live long enough to develop the more gruesome side effects. He’d say he doesn’t care.
He wants to say it, drop it easily and go on.
But it will never be that easy.
He always fucking cares.
He doesn’t want to.
Just as long as this cigarra lasts; no past, no future—
nobody.
He closes his eyes, and concentrates on taking it slow. He can have that. Hold onto it.
Just one more minute.
Please.
The night falls; and the last of his cigarra turns to ash, leaving behind only the smoldering filter, trembling between his fingers.
