Parental Duties
By Rey

Chapter summary: Cal just wants certainty. Certainty of good things, if he can get it.

Warnings for: brief reference to Order-66 (Jedi purge), glimpses of bad things and situations happening to children

3. Cal: The Echoes

Cal isn't certain of many, many, many things. It's not a new thing in his life. Being able to experience echoes is more often not fun than otherwise, so sometimes he even wonders which is real and which is an echo. His ability is both less sharp and more encompassing than Master Vos', at that, so not even the famed Psychometric could help him much. Master Vos can be drawn into visions by a slightest touch, sometimes even not just through the hands, and Cal thankfully can't do that, but Cal can be ambushed by echoes through the air.

After the horrible moment in which all the trooper brothers got suddenly blank and hostile, though, preceded by such an overwhelming echo of surprise-confusion-terror…. Well, suffice to say, Cal would rather return to his previous uncertainties, which now look and feel paltry. He would do everything all over again, with the notion that the future could be so much worse, and he could perhaps even help make the future obsolete, somehow.

Life alone and always in the run after that moment is… well, something he doesn't even have the word to describe. It just is, and he fights to survive for every moment of it. Against his pursuers who are sometimes previously familiar souls twisted into near-irrecognisability, against would-be slavers too interested in his age and his damned hair and sometimes his Force-Sensitivity when he isn't careful and discreet enough, against the more-often-than-tnot quite hostile environments he has to navigate through or hide in or both, against the echoes that keep ambushing him in inopportune moments, usually when he is too tired or trying to concentrate….

Past Cal, even War-Padawan Cal, wouldn't have ever imagined living in a brothel and working as a scrapper. But it's the current, all-too-real reality, and it's beginning to be a certainty in a sea of uncertainties.

Well, it was, until, just before he left "work," a very young, very weary somebody suddenly reached out to him through the Force, alone and lonely and fearful and desperate for so many things and loving – all too loving – and hopeful and trying so hard to be helpful.

Someone this young, this powerful, this in need…. Cal didn't hesitate, when the little child – not even of Initiate age, if they're still in the temple! – asked him to go to them, to be with them. Not even when the way is only through the Force and it's so eerie and echoes of various jumbled images unwantedly keep him company all throughout the long-but-short trip.

There are many, many, many uncertainties in his life, but not this one.

He can't say he really doesn't regret his decision, though, once his feet reach solid land at last.

This place is soaked in the Force and old, and he means old, older than even the Coruscant temple, the only home he knows, and it hums heavily like the oldest sections of the Archives, which he hated to venture into, when he was temple-bound, partly because the echoes it dredged up and partly because it felt like he's under the close, constant scrutiny of a powerful, disapproving, prickly master.

And the headache – oh, the headache!

The just-as-varied, just-as-confusing, just-as-potant echoes he's greeted with at the same time really don't help. His surroundings are a… Sith temple?… one time, then a war-torn street with children taking potshots at… their elders?… then a blisteringly hot afternoon amidst a ragged crowd of people of various ages scavanging for parts in a downed, abandoned ship, then a small, dark place with no one else inside and the sounds and feels of explosions and blasterfire so near to the confined space, then two crowds of non-human species battling against each other through a village in a… mountainside? Valley?… then a trooper in full armour shooting Master Billaba down, then dead, swampy ruins with a tinge of gloomsome red light layering over everything like some sinister dust, then a small-city street used more by troopers in all-white armour than civilians, then Kamino's sterile-white halls with groups of cadets in red hurrying by, passing each other with fertive acknowledgement, then a huddle of fearful, exhausted children in dinged, dirty, all-white armour out in a forest, each desperately but uncertainly clutching a blaster.

And then three starfighters – of unknown make, of unknown hostility level, of unknown allegiance – suddenly zoom overhead, literally out of nowhere, and all Cal can think is, `Hide hide hide hide hide!`

He can't see where he is going. The environment changes from step to step, and he can't rely on the Force to find him a good place to hide – it's the one hassling him with all the echoes! But he's not the only one running, searching desperately for a hidy-hole like rats hunted by hawks, judging by the brushes of souls against his and gusts of air passing him, so he follows whoever nearest him, hopefully to safety.

It means that he follows them when they run again, too, this time down a slope that changes from a ship's ramp to a mountain path to a scree hill to a sand dune, once the rumble-whine of the starfighters' engines have died down. It's dangerous, quite dangerous, but it's even more dangerous to be alone – alone and undefended, even by just sheer number.

It's just unfortunate that, when the echoes relent some, he can see that he is running beside Caleb Dume.

`So it's why I got the echo of Master Billaba's last moments.`

He can't say that he's not relieved to find another padawan tempered by war here, even running along with him down a sloping path of broken cobblestones and dirt and gravel and weeds and small bushes. But… this padawan….

`Force, why must it be Dume?`

Both padawans – well, former padawans, now – were from two creche clans infamous for turning out unique, headstrong, or unique and headstrong Jedi: the Krayt-Dragon clan and the Shriek-Hawk clan. These two clans met in a joint expedition to the Museum of Coruscant History once – and it's the only time the Council ever paired them together, with how disastrous that outing turned out to be – and the two boys met each other there as younglings.

And they decided not to like each other after exchanging names. Because their names were too similar to each other, and Caleb claimed "Cal" as his nickname because he's older and his name is longer, and Cal claimed that "Cal" is his entire name so Caleb better find another nickname, and… well… they were actually where the disaster began that day, come to think of it again.

That stupid fight was only the beginning of an uneasy, rocky acquaintanceship, though, even when they're both padawans and sent to the frontlines.

But now, here, they're running side by side, and Dume even steadies Cal once, when his foot slips just as they're hitting the end of the slope, too distracted with the onslaught of more echoes – a sea of variously armoured people battling each other below as seen from the cockpit of an unfamiliar starfighter, a field of fog surreally glowing with diffused sunlight, a burning neti grove, some organic darkness that stifles and eats everything, a bone-dry vista of sand dunes shining hot under the light of binary suns, and armour pieces discarded on the corner of a deserted room.

Well, now they don't just share a name, Cal thinks bitterly. They're both masterless padawans who have so far survived the Jedi purge.

And they're both – oh, and others, too, judging by the many feet running behind them! It's a proper stampeed! – currently running headlong towards danger, he can see when the echoes relent again, since the three starfighters are suddenly so near, grounded and idling, and there are three armoured beings standing on the path of the youngster running before them.

Cal musters himself the best that he can, ignores and shoos away the returning echoes the best that he can, because those three newcomers look Mandalorian, and two of the three people jogging towards their gathering, too, and it means he – they? – must be ready – to fight? To flee? Both?

And, for once, he is grateful that Dume is here, is beside him, when the other boy grasps his non-pole -bearing hand and anchors him in the Force. It's far easier to shoo away the echoes, like this, whether Dume means it to be so – whether Dume knows it – or not.

He is less grateful, though, when the youngster standing in front of him bargains for passage off-world for them all with the only Mando clad in silver, and one of the three Mandos from the starfighters joins in, and the three of them decide just so. But, well, now that his attention isn't grabbed and torn and tossed about by the echoes, he can feel the urgency to just leave, himself, and he indeed can't think of a better, speedier plan than this.

Still, `He can't be older than I am! And I was embroiled in a war for two years! Why didn't I manage to come to this plan before him?`

He jogs grumpily and tiredly after the self-claimed leader with Dume beside him, still anchoring him. And, behind them, other young feet hurry along, before they're all drowned by the returning rumble-whine of three starfighters taking off.

A somehow old, rather battered Razor Crest soon comes into view, with its ramp already lowered. Cal frowns, noting how many feet are behind him and how small he knows the ship's hold is.

And then he scowls when the self-claimed leader stands to the side and motions Dume and him aboard.

"Others first," he mutters to Dume and shakes off the other boy's hand. "I need to check the outside."

It's an excuse, really. He needs to beat his pride up into silence for his resentment to the unknown boy, first, or at least bury it down for later examination, before interacting further with the said boy in this unknown, delicate, volatile situation.

It's no longer just an excuse, though, or a chance to meditate a little, when his quick, gloveless hand-sweep along the outer hull of the ship nets him an echo of a tracking beacon magneted to a rather hidden nook.

And it's the source of the feeling of anticipation clouding the Force that he's just felt, that he's just been aware of, growing ever thicker in every step he and his fellow youngsters take.

`Hunters. Somebody's hunting the Mandos.`

It's an alien concept. Mandalorians are powerful, tightknit, resourceful, hunters. Who'd hunt them?

He gives the beacon to the silver Mando, still, when the latter – with a little one looking like a mini Master Yoda snuggled in one armoured arm – gets back out of the ship to usher the stragglers inside.

And, on the sight of the tracking beacon, fear explodes from the Mando while resignation bleeds from the little one, before the beacon is tossed as far as the Mando can throw it, Cal and the other stragglers are bodily shoved into the ship's hold, and the ramp drones close just as the Mando speedily climbs up to the cockpit.

And all that Cal can think, numbly, even as he stares blankly at the now-sealed-close hatch is, `Oh. So it's why the kid's so fearful, then?`