The Call

Ahsoka's hands were on her lightsabers before she had even fully registered what was happening.

It was a reflex born of her years of solitude. She had been alone for far too long, and the Force was so empty these days. Movements in the Force around her very seldom indicated anything remotely close to friend.

So it was that Ahsoka, alone in the middle of a vast, vibrant forest, pivoted slowly on her heel, eyes alert for the subtlest sign of movement, montrals strained for the tiniest pinprick of noise. Within her, the Force churned, but she had long since learned to leash her hold on it. All these years later, she was still too brash, too wild. Reaching into the Force for answers would be the equivalent of throwing up a neon sign to any would be accoster. "Here I am! Come and take me!"

She chuckled lightly to herself at the mental image, but her body remained tensed. She wasn't certain as to how many Inquisitors the Emperor had, had back in the day. Neither was she certain how many of them may have survived, but she was not one to take chances. She had not lived this long by taking stupid risks. Something in the Force trilled at her – some distant sense of admonishment and exasperation trying to push its way through her defenses – and she could not stop the laugh that bubbled from her lips. All these years later, even death couldn't soften the unmistakable, voiceless bite of Obi-Wan's sass.

She regretted the moment an instant later, as whatever presence she had felt took advantage of her distraction to lash out. It was only then, when she felt the poke of annoyance against her mind, and her foot twitched as if it was about to sprout a root that she recognized who was reaching out to her.

Her body relaxed in an instant, and her lightsabers fell back against her waist as she stood fully upright to welcome the presence of her young friend.

"So he succeeded," she mused happily, smiling wider at the burst of pride she felt from the youngling. "I'll be honest, I didn't think he had it in him."

Grogu slapped at her, the feeling equivalent to a light breeze breaking against her back, and she laughed.

"Eno Dai veshah keelel, Grogu," she smiled. Grogu was already retreating from her awareness, moving on into the wider galaxy in search of those who may be willing or able to teach him. She filled her heart with every sense of pride and peace she could muster to gift to him on his journey, smiling all the while. Good luck.

It came to her in the dark of her thoughts like starlight to a barren world.

Barriss Offee lifted her head from the dust of her life's desolation. All of her senses – physical and metaphysical – strained into the void, desperate to see, to hear, to feel, to taste, to smell, to know whatever – whoever – it was that was reaching towards her. Old, unused muscles groaned at her in protest, but she ignored the pain, the weariness. She had not used the Force in so long, it felt now like a robe that didn't fit quite right – as if she had grown just an inch too much in the shoulder for it to still be hers.

For an agonizing eternity, the void returned to her only silence – as it had now for so many, many years – and she wondered if she had only desperately imagined it. She did not think so. There was too little light left in Barriss now to conjure the perfection of that presence. The purity, the innocence of it had nearly bowled her off her feet. There was nothing in Barriss now that could even hope to comprehend what such purity meant. Where was it? She had felt it. She knew she had felt it.

When it came to her again, tears leaked from the corner of her eyes, and she exhaled a breath of pure exultation. It was gentle – a matter of distance, perhaps, or the youngling's power or even, she considered, her own battered connection to the Force – but it was unmistakable. The presence of another in the Force was too distinct to fake, too defined to be imagination. Barriss raised a tingling hand to cup her own cheek, her hot breath glancing across her skin as the energy of new sprung life vibrated through her body. This child, she smiled in the dark, this child feels like growth. Pulling her hand away to stare at it in wonder, she had half expected to see some sprout of flowery life eking out of her skin, so potent was the child's presence in the Force.

Barriss Offee could not recall a more beautiful sensation in the entirety of her life.

However fleeting it may be.

Tears stained the green of her cheeks, but she was still smiling. She was showing all her teeth, the edges of her lips pulled back into as wide a smile as possible, as if her body was trying to pull from this moment all the happiness it possibly could to store for future use. Because the moment was ending, of course. It had to. "Foh heleo, paquorshee," she whispered through the dark to the distant pinprick of light, still smiling even as her chest began to convulse with silent sobs not yet shared. "Foh heleo. Your path is not with me." It can't be.

The presence of whatever distant young one had reached out to her retreated from her awareness, and Barriss was returned once more to her solitude.

Ezra Bridger lifted his head, a mask of confusion settling onto his face. He stumbled, unsure of what exactly had just happened. He had been walking, he knew. He was usually pretty good at that these days, although he'd been known to stumble here and there – it was usually the trees' fault. They moved their roots. This had been different, though. The trip had come from above, not below. He hadn't snagged anything with his feet on this dusty, dirt path. It had felt more like something had gripped tight to the back of his head and pushed with all its might.

Granted, that wasn't much might, but it had been enough to stop him in his tracks.

Huh, Ezra thought to himself. Maybe that was the point.

With a great sniff, Ezra brought every single muscle in his body to a stagnant pause, and pushed out into the Force, searching. He didn't get far. Something – someone, he realized immediately – pushed back against him, washing him in their presence. Ezra giggled against the tickling sensation of the child's presence, feeling as if his head had sprouted where he had been pushed. Like his legs had sunk themselves into the ground, and he was as rooted now as a tree.

Chuckling, Ezra pushed back, enjoying the sputter of surprise that washed through his connection as the blowing winds of his own presence battered this child's face from a thousand, thousand lightyears away. "Hey there," he smiled.

The child's presence encircled him, winding around his neck like a tiny hug that felt like the newborn leaves of spring were sprouting from his neck.

"No words, huh?"

Something akin to frustration battered the side of his cheek, and he chuckled. "So, you can speak," he chuckled. "This bond's probably too distant. How are you doing this?"

If it were possible to shake your head through the Force, this kid was doing it. The child moved past his questions, pressing inquiries of his own into the deeper parts of Ezra's awareness? Ezra's eye twitched against the foreign assault, struggling to comprehend the impressions and emotions the kid was using to get across his point. There was…yearning, deep and unabating – an impassable wall of desire for more, although Ezra could only really guess at what he wanted more of. Quick behind this desire was a sense of loneliness and isolation, as if this child had been out in the cold for his entire life, having felt the warmth of home only once. It was…

Ezra shook himself. It was remarkably like what Kanan had used to feel like.

"You want a teacher," he breathed as realization dawned, and confirmation trilled through the Force.

Ezra nodded slowly. "I'm sorry, kid, it can't be me." He looked around him, eyes trailing over the vast expanse of the world he had called home these past few years. "I'm-uh…out of town at the moment."

If Ezra had expected the child to be put out or frustrated by his refusal, he was to be disappointed. A feeling of acceptance – and some underlying positivity of…hope? – washed over him as the child's presence immediately began to recede. Ezra had a feeling that he hadn't been this kid's first stop.

Ezra smirked, his mouth twisting up into a carefree grin in the exact way that Kanan's used to do when he had done something particularly impressive. "Good luck, kid," he drawled. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

Cal didn't know exactly when he had woken. He knew only in a single moment of acute awareness that he was awake. His body was as still as it had been in sleep, rolled over onto his side with a heavy blanket rolled up to cover almost the entirety of his face. Greez kept the Mantis cold as a rule, and Cal had learned that if he didn't cover as much of himself as was possible with blankets before bed, he'd invariably wake up half-frozen in the middle of the night.

For a moment, he wondered if that was what had woken him, but a peripheral check of his surroundings proved that to be false. His blankets had not been displaced, and the sweltering, comforting heat of Merrin's Dathomirian skin was still pressed tight against the flesh of his back.

Cal rose into an upright position, head ducked to avoid the upper frame of his and Merrin's bunk. The blankets slid off him like water, exposing his naked chest to the frigid air of the Mantis' cabin. So too does Merrin's arm, haphazardly thrown across his chest in the night, fall to the bed. He shivered and, as a matter of reflex, reached behind him to adjust the blankets so that Merrin remained covered against the cold.

In the dark quiet of the Mantis' cabin, the source of his consciousness was even less apparent. All was dark and dim within the ship he'd come to call home. They were in lowlight mode, hovering in the ether of dark space far away from civilization. What starlight there was out here was distant, cold and faded. Aside from the ship's ambient background hum, and the distant but muddied roar of Greez's snoring – both of which Cal had long since gotten used to – there were no noises to be heard.

Cal reached up to scratch idly at his chest, still wondering. Was this feeling what had woken him? The simple urge to scratch away the irritation on his chest? He was remarkably wide awake, if that were the case, although…his chest did itch. Like it never had before. As if his skin were a bed of soil, and the fresh buds of new grass were trying to push their way out into the world.

Cal paused. And smiled.

"Agisti, paquorshee," he whispered to the Mantis' dark, empty cabin. His smile only grew at the warble of indignation he received in reply. He chuckled under his breath. "Not so little. Sorry about that. You know, you could have been a little less subtle."

The child – who was a child, Cal was sure, despite the sense of age he was receiving from him – gave the equivalent of a psychic shrug, apparently unbothered that he had so put Cal out. Perhaps the man ought to have been somewhat annoyed by this, but he really couldn't find it in him to care all that much.

"Do you mind?" Cal asked, reaching. The soft satin of his presence fell over the distant child, asking for permission. A subtle push of acceptance came back to him in reply, and Cal's smile widened into a grin.

Gripping tight to their connection, Cal immersed himself fully into the Force, following the trail of memories to their source. Fractured, psychometric images projected into his vision, the memories of this child reaching out to him. He could see the child itself, diminutive and magnificent in the shawled little robe he always wore. He could see the meals he most enjoyed. In far flung, distant memories, he could even see glimpses of Anohrah. He winced against the fervor of a dozen different battles waged around and for him. And – Cal's face twitched in curiosity – the ever-present glare of a Mandalorian?

"Daieno bika," Cal whispered, withdrawing from the memories. "Quite an adventure, paquorshee."

Cal shook his head, unable to believe the turn his day – night? – had taken. To think he would be awoken in the middle of his sleep by the distant, unmistakable presence of a youngling. He could sense the child's questions even without the aid of his memories well enough to know exactly what was happening and why this connection had been established. Cal did not need so much as a moment to consider the question.

His mind made up, Cal made to rise from his bed and shake a no doubt furious Greez awake to set course when something else invaded his mind to stop him. Cal froze, his entire body tensing into a defensive stance at the unknown presence that had somehow forced its away into this connection. Grogu, wherever he was, balked in alarm exactly as Cal had, and Cal felt the little one attempt to retreat, frightened by whatever was happening.

Only to be stopped as this unknown, third presence tightened its grip around Grogu, keeping him in place. Cal thought his jaw might have dropped. Who was this person? The raw power needed to reach out into the Force to find this connection was astounding alone, never mind his ability to forcibly keep the connection active. Grogu, Cal could feel, was close to panicking, and the older Jedi was not too far from doing so himself.

And then, with something akin almost to a sigh, the third, foreign presence released every defense it had and washed the both of them in the brilliance of their presence. Cal could not resist the gasp that escaped his lips as, here in the middle of dark space on a cold, inactive ship, his skin burned from the heat of this Jedi's presence. For they could only be a Jedi, so pure and bright were their movements in the Force. Cal had never felt such a white, hot bright spot in the Force in his entire life. This Jedi felt like the sun – like the suns . They burned their way into Cal and Grogu's awareness, wrapping them in a funnel of comforting, inescapable warmth that threatened to lull Cal back to sleep sitting up.

In the Force, Grogu quieted, and a conversation took place. Cal caught only the fleeting impressions of Grogu's emotions. Whoever this Jedi was, they were skilled at protecting themselves, and Cal could feel nothing of whatever was being said to the youngling that had reached out to him. Only, at last Grogu's presence receded, as calmly and contently as it had arrived, and Cal had to assume that the two of them had come to an accord.

Alone now with this mysterious Jedi, Cal felt the attention of their presence turn to him. He might have gasped against the heat of their presence, but the Jedi had already quieted themselves in the Force. Cal supposed they had already gotten their point across, and that they didn't need to wow him anymore. Silently, without words or even any real emotions, the Jedi seemed to ask him something.

"Yes," Cal replied before he had even truly registered that he was speaking. "Of course. Take care of him."

The Jedi smiled warmly at him – literally – and withdrew.

In the absence of their light, Cal felt the Mantis was that much colder. For several long moments, Cal sat, breathing heavily and wondering at what had just happened.

Beside him, Merrin shifted. Her hand – the hand which had been wrapped around him – groped blindly through the bed in search of him. Failing to find him she sat up. Her eyes resisted her efforts to open them valiantly, and at length, she was forced to reach up to forcibly open them with her fingers. Brushing a stray lock of her gray hair out the way, she blinked at him. "Cal?" she whispered confusedly. "What are you doing? What time is it?"

He shakes his head at her. "Imyth. Seka Jedi nak cosu."

There was a pregnant pause. Merrin held her half-blind gaze on him for several long moments, and though he could not see her expression through the dark of the ship's lowlight mode, he could feel a great swell of confusion from her in the Force. She hung her head, reaching towards her face with a hand to rub vigorously at her eyes and mouth, as if she could chase away the late-night exhaustion. "What?" she sighed dramatically at him. "Are you okay?"

It took Cal a moment to understand her confusion, but when it dawned on him, he wasn't entirely certain how he felt about it. He hadn't realized until now that he had slipped into the Dai Bendu of his youth. Merrin's confusion was understandable – to her, he had been speaking gibberish. He had never spoken Dai Bendu around her – indeed, he'd not had cause to speak it at all since the day his Master – his Jaieh, he thought wistfully – had died. Even with Cera, closed off from the Force as she was, it had never felt right.

He smiled down at her. "I'm fine," he assured her. Briefly he lent down to capture her sleepy lips in his own, grinning into her lips at the way she pouted. When he leaned back, he could see her suspiciously narrowed eyes even through the dark, and he laughed.

With a longwinded groan, he settled himself back into bed beside her, forcibly grabbing hold of her hand and pulling it back over his chest where it had been before he'd woken. "It's nothing, Mer. Go back to sleep."

"You sure?" she asked, probably trying for intensity. The exhaustion in her voice overrode it – she had never even been properly awake for this conversation, and the chances were she wouldn't remember it tomorrow.

He pulled her hand to his lips to press a kiss to her palm. "Very," he whispered back. "Everything's fine."

For once, he actually thought everything might be.