AN: Part 5 will begin posting on Thursday February 3rd.
.***.***.***.***.
The muffled shouts from Cal's arguing neighbors were silent as he staggered down the hall.
The bottom floor had nearly emptied, the bulk of the workers on the train by now. But the few that remained made every effort to keep their eyes locked on the ground as Cal passed.
Whenever they look at me, they only see the Empire, he admitted, The stormtroopers do it too. The officers. The people of Bracca. Rebels, government officials, all of them look at me but only see the emperor's hand.
Not a friend. Not an ally. Not even a stranger.
Just a threat.
Cal breathed in, catching the heavy scent of oil slicked into sludge by the pouring rain as he stepped outside. It was terrifying, being seen as an imperial enforcer, especially by those who he had thought of in the same terms.
This was terrifying.
It was empowering, in its own twisted way.
By whatever bureaucratic machinations that were the Empire's beating heart, Cal was listened to when he spoke. There was no running around, no proving himself to whatever small-time leader was hiding in the jungle. No spiritual journeys required to earn his follower's trust. He simply had to utter a word to someone, and they did everything in their power to do as he said.
The authority was terrifying.
And the illusion of control -of safety- it granted was so fundamentally addicting.
"Contact the governor's office," Cal spoke to the stormtroopers, emerging from the old apartment block and refusing to breathe a word of what he'd found inside, "tell them to take the building down."
"Sir?" The closest trooper, Mikel, replied.
"It needs to be destroyed. Call them."
Understanding the comment to be an order, Mikel didn't blink as he replied, "Yes, sir." before drifting to the back of the group to call his former post.
As Cal watched Mikel drift away, he caught sight of Zarxic, hands cuffed behind his back and held in place by Perin.
"Told you he was fine," the criminal all but spat at the troopers.
Cal didn't mean to pay the man any attention, though he felt Perin looking to him for some guidance on what to do with their unwilling guide.
Though his head still swirled from the destruction of his old home, Cal wasn't half-hearted as he told the trooper, "Colonel Aldo can do what he wants with him, I got what I needed."
"Whoa, whoa! Hey," Zarxic immediately tried to shuffle out of Perin's grasp, "I did everything yo- "
"Shut it." Perin roughly yanked the man back to prove her point.
Ignoring the criminal's continued grumblings, Cal took a few more steps away from the building. Looking out over the now completely empty road, he carefully considered the desolate place.
Exactly the way I left it.
A train rumbled in the distance.
Wonder if they'll talk about me when I leave again.
Scabbers' even more worried than usual features stuck out in Cal's mind. Mozin's automatically fearful voice felt like an echo in the rain.
I'd talk about me. If I didn't know better, Cal admitted to himself. Hell, even if I did…
The pure betrayal on the faces of the rebels he'd captured on Kashyyyk surfaced and blended with the guilt-laden medley that was the fear from the Bracca workers. That rebel camp had stood in between Cal and his goals, so he'd cut his way through it without a second thought.
Mari, cradling a dying friend and pleading, stood out in Cal's memory.
She watched me kill that man at point-blank. He recalled.
And I don't even know his name.
He'd torn through Kashyyyk, telling himself that Trilla was forcing his hand all along the way.
Well, she's not here now. Cal looked up, watching the storm clouds roil overhead, It's just me.
Just me.
He'd been sent to kill a Jedi. He'd been ready to do it too. One death being so much like the others, what did it matter who met the end of his blade?
But it was just me.
Just me.
Old rumors, and old footage. The only thing he'd succeeded in killing was his past. The few friends that he had on this soggy rock all but forgot the boy he had been, instead seeing whatever creature the Empire had turned him into.
Whatever creature you've always been, Cal corrected himself. The Empire didn't make you kill those people. They didn't make you threaten anyone either.
Having enough of the twisting sky, Cal looked back to the road.
Three years of war. Five years of hiding. One year of running. And not a second of any of it mattered, Cal didn't try to fight that grim realization.
"Sir!" Mikel suddenly called out, having finished his call, "A demolition team is en route."
Cal didn't want to watch, "Good. We're done here."
A tremor of confusion rippled across the troopers.
Cal didn't turn to look at them as he began to walk away, "Go back to the colonel. I'm done here."
.***.***.***.***.
The flight from Bracca felt years longer than Cal's journey there.
Days on some no-name resupply ship, Cal didn't bother speaking to the skittish crew. Instead, having voluntarily exiled himself into yet another temporary guest quarters, he tried and somehow succeeded in not mourning the life he'd had.
For as much as he knew he should be grieving, or desperately trying to convince himself that all was not lost, he knew that he couldn't go back to the way things were.
Not after terrorizing his adopted home planet.
Not after attacking his former allies.
Not after his friends had long ago abandoned him.
Though the flight and the self-imposed isolation seemed to drag on forever, Cal was equally unenthused about his return to the fortress.
Leaving the supply ship with a load of foodstuffs bound for the watery planet below, no one dared question what he was doing as he lingered in a smaller transport's cockpit. As the supply drop left from the larger freighter, long moments passed with Cal doing nothing beyond feeling a mounting apprehension from the crew.
Touching down on one of the dozens of platforms that dotted the ocean's surface, Cal left the workers to their task as he left the shuttle and made for an open turbolift.
As Cal descended below the waves, the familiar weight of the Dark Side that lingered in the fortress pressed down around him. Stubborn, cold. Little pinpricks of wrath in a thick fog of misery, he wondered why he had found it so daunting in the first place.
Stepping out of the lift left him in what must have been one of thousands of identical circular control rooms in the fortress.
Cal was sure that he could wander the halls, searching for that dangerous bent in the Force that would guide him to the leader of the Inquisitorius. Or, he could just make one of the troopers show him the way.
Taking the quicker and easier route, Cal called to a stormtrooper that had just stepped into the control room, "Hey, yeah you."
A lone stormtrooper stalled, not recognizing Cal but aware enough to know an Inquisitor when he saw one, "Yes, sir?"
"How do I get to the Grand Inquisitor's room?"
The trooper had never been there himself, most of the troopers went out of their way to avoid the ominous place. For that reason, the trooper knew exactly where it was, though he wasn't sure how an Inquisitor wouldn't.
Deciding it would be wiser not to question the lightsaber-armed young man, the trooper answered, "This way, sir," before turning on his heel and walking towards the infamous place.
Cal said nothing, despite expecting directions rather than a guide. Falling in beside the armor-clad man, he felt like a ghost of himself, moving through the fortress like a shadow.
The trooper didn't spare another word as he led Cal through the twisting halls of the Fortress. Though most of them were unfamiliar, Cal began to think that there might be some pattern to the place's layout.
Following his guide through long walkways and cramped office blocks, Cal somehow managed to keep him mind mercifully empty until they approached the Grand Inquisitors ominous den.
Sunlight, cold and filtered through a quarter mile of ocean water, moved in uneasy waves through the hall. The thermal vents just outside the thick transparasteel walls sent up plumes of lava stone, occasionally casting shivering shadows onto the floor
"I got it from here." Cal told the trooper
"Yes, sir." He acknowledged the dismissal before thankfully scurrying away.
Cal didn't mind the quickly retreating man, instead stilling himself.
What are you even doing here? He tried asking himself, looking at the heavy doors that lead into the dome as he did.
Before he had the chance to search for an answer, they drifted open. Revealing a dark chasm of a room, Cal couldn't see into the thing from his place in the already dim hall.
Not completely sure what to expect, but knowing that he wouldn't like it regardless, Cal wordlessly entered the room.
Eyes quickly adjusting to the gloom, Cal found the Grand Inquisitor standing in the same place he had been when he left. Poised as always, the pau'an looked Cal up and down. Though he didn't know the details of Cal's journey to Bracca, the Grand Inquisitor knew for a fact that the mission had accomplished its goal perfectly.
The defeated slump to Cal's shoulders said as much. The tired air about the younger man, the obvious anger that clung to him like a stubborn shadow. The dread, the sorrow.
The look in his eyes.
The Grand Inquisitor waited until Cal came to a stop some ten feet away to ask, "Your mission?"
The corner of Cal's mouth twitched with annoyance, the tone of the other man's voice and the arrogant look on his face making it obvious that he already knew how Cal's fateful visit to Bracca had ended. Tired of the games, defeated but not admitting it, especially no to himself, Cal simply answered, "it's done."
Broken, beaten. Though neither of them would say it aloud, they both knew what state Cal was in. The Grand Inquisitor didn't try to hide a sinister smirk, recognizing a vulnerable and shambling mound of a man, ready to be shaped and molded into whatever form he saw fit.
"And the Bracca Jedi?" he asked.
Cal tensed, What about him?
What about that mission do you not know? He studied the Grand Inquisitor, Did you know you sent me after myself? Did you know that I was going to spend days terrorizing the place, dragging troopers around, and basically harassing people?
Did you know?
The gloomy half dome grew darker with each passing thought. The silence between the two men loomed heavy, growing thicker as Cal's questions grew to accusations.
You did, didn't you?
You knew what you were doing. Sending me back there. Back there to see everyone I left behind, so show them -to show me- that I'm not the same.
You planned everything, right down to making me walk into that old apartment building and looking at -and destroying- everything I left behind.
Though distracted with his own thoughts, Cal felt the silence between the two of them grow heavy, oppressive.
Even more troubling still, the accusations turned into a creeping realization.
…No.
No, you didn't plan any of that. Didn't force me to do anything. You just threw me out there to see what I would do.
A weight sat heavy in Cal's gut, And I did exactly what you wanted.
Having let the silence go on long enough, the Grand Inquisitor repeated, "The Jedi?"
Releasing the tension that had held him together for the last few days, Cal slowly exhaled.
And then he answered:
"He's dead."
