the last thing she remembers before this moment is-
the blinding, flashing pain-
[you have failed me, inquisitor.]
avenge us-
burning across her entire back, one final critical strike of pure unadulterated energy spiking up into her brain before the nerves are obliterated-
a microsecond of flame as the lightsaber cuts through her uniform before the wound itself becomes the flame becomes the flame becomes the flame becomes-
cal, grab her! run! cere yells, rushing the sith. before she can do a thing, cere is slung carelessly into the pit in the middle of the chamber, never landing a single blow on him. cal is powerless to stop it.
no! cere!
instead he reaches out with the force and pulls trilla's body towards the door, reignites his saber and stands there, unmoving as the sith approaches him.
[you would be wise to surrender.]
yeah... probably, cal says, before turning to run.
he doesn't get very far.
urk-! cal's hands grab uselessly at his throat, as if that would do anything against the sith's force strangulation. he feels his feet leave the ground, watches the sith's fist clench - starts to lose the edges of his vision as he runs out of air - sees the giant loose cylinder - reaches out with the force and yanks - it careens towards the sith, doesn't hit him, but it's just enough to distract him from strangling the life out of cal. he's dropped, loose-limbed, to the floor - he can't see cere anywhere - he's got to get out, get away, run run run run run but then bd beeps, reminds him he has to get trilla and so as he stands up he grabs her with the force and pulls her as gently as he can toward himself, slings her over his shoulder - she seems like she's going into shock or something - the sith throws something else at him, he deflects it in the force before he consciously registers what it was - and suddenly the floor he's on is no longer neatly under him but is rising up as the sith flings the pieces at him. so he runs and leaps as best he can, trying desperately not to lose his grip on trilla's unconscious form as he goes, trying not to let her get hit by the blaster bolts firing from the stormtroopers still standing on the intact parts of the bridge - dimly he thinks of how callous the sith is, to treat his own forces as disposable - cal makes a final jump and lands, precariously, on the platform right outside the turbolift.
trilla is still slung over his shoulder, and by the force, carrying her is exhausting what little strength he has left. that's okay. he'll endure. he lays her down gently on the floor of the turbolift, then goes to hit the controls when cal sees him.
the sith must have just alighted on the platform, his red lightsaber still illuminating the dark grey of imperial architecture with a demonic glow.
frantically, cal mashes the panel, hoping that the sith doesn't decide to lunge into the lift. his eyes track every torturously slow step the sith makes. like he knows something cal doesn't. like it doesn't matter how far they run, he will find them, and rip up everything in cal's wake.
cal's breath comes only in short gasps as the doors slam shut and the turbolift begins to rise. mere seconds feel like a lifetime - there's an awful hiss of lightsaber-blade-on-metal as he stabs the seam of the doors, begins to cut into them, and to cal it seems that the blade just goes straight down - bd informs him that that's just because the lift is going up - and cal slumps down against the wall, allowing himself a brief moment of reprieve.
from his shoulder, bd shrieks, terrified, telling him that was darth vader, that was darth vader, and cal is too tired to do anything but breathe sharply. it feels all too short before the lift stops and the doors slide open.
cal picks trilla up from where she lies on the floor (she's still breathing, barely, somehow), tapping into the force to help him as he carries her in his arms.
he doesn't want to be too optimistic, but he says aloud anyways, i think we lost him.
bd-1 trills, full of concern for cal's wellbeing.
he knows he's not okay, but. i'll make it.
cere... i won't fail you, he promises to himself as he turns a corner. he's headed for the hangar, moving as fast as he can considering there's an entire other person he's having to hold up.
his commlink beeps, and bd flicks it on for him.
hey - hey! kid, you read me?
cal's still breathless, and he apparently takes too long to respond, because greez starts freaking out on the other end of the line.
they're not responding! panic tinges his voice, audible even over the terrible comm connection.
they will. merrin's voice is steady, measured. i am sure of it.
cal pauses for a moment, leans against the wall; drinks up oxygen like a man dying of thirst, then speaks hurriedly into the comm: greez! i'm here! heading towards the surface, be ready!
trilla coughs weakly in his arms.
i have the holocron, but cere... he trails off. doesn't want to finish the sentence. instead, he says, simply, get the medkit, puts trilla down for a moment, and goes to open the door at the end of the hall.
cere? greez asks, tinny and small over the line, and before cal has a chance to respond or even open the door itself, vader appears from the other side and he's swinging wildly and cal just barely blocks the first swing before there's another and then another and then somehow he's holding his saber to vader's, clashed against each other, the sound horrible in his ears, and bd is - bd is-
in the blink of an eye, bd has climbed onto vader's shoulder and is shocking him - vader breaks, stunned momentarily; cal slips out from under the saber, takes the opportunity to drive a killing blow directly into his chest - but he misses, vader's body moving to the side imperceptibly fast and suddenly cal is on the ground, his lightsaber on the floor several meters away. he reaches for it in the force and it answers, pulling itself towards his hand, but it never makes it.
vader holds it in the air, mere centimeters out of cal's reach.
[surrender the holocron.]
i'll never give it to you. there's as much defiance in his voice as he can manage.
[we shall see] darth vader says, and then cal's lightsaber begins to turn over midair.
for a millisecond, cal doesn't quite understand what's about to happen. then his lightsaber (inexplicably, to his pain-addled brain) turns on, and the worst agony he's ever felt in the whole universe pierces him through the chest.
he doesn't actually know what's happening anymore, his cognition overruled by the blindingsearingfierypain permeating his entire existence (and it isn't even the lightsaber anymore, because all nerve endings that used to be there were immediately cauterized into oblivion, it's the surrounding flesh and tissues screaming out around the wrongness of the hole in his torso, about the void where muscles and ligaments and bone used to be, he thinks there might be air leaking out from a scraped or punctured lung) but somehow he still has a grip on the force, and cere - cere! he could jump for joy if not for - he feels her there, feels her approach him too fast (bd will tell him later that she tried to take vader on again and he threw her across the floor), feels her presence fall by degrees as the seeping, writhing hatred of vader closes in.
he processes audio just well enough to hear vader say something about cere's imminent fall.
she's stronger than that, he grunts out, eyes squeezed closed as if that would block out any of the things he's seeing through the force.
then he feels cere actually fall, fall and fall and fall into the darkness swirling up around and inside her, and he screams out in the force, no, no! no! and struggles to get up.
bd injects a stim directly into his neck, which helps him make it up off the floor and stumble to his feet.
cere, cere! he says, voice raspy, vision blurry and incomprehensible.
she doesn't look at him.
hey! listen to me! you still - you still have a choice, he says, echoing what she'd said to trilla not twenty minutes ago.
(cere will tell him, later, that that was when she saw trilla's form collapsed against the wall, and knew what she was doing was wrong.)
the darkness surrounding cere in the force drops, dissipates, and a split second later is replaced by blinding light as cere projects an unbreakable wall around the three jedi and bd. cal takes the opportunity to pull trilla towards them, then sees their way out: the glass of the hall is weak, cracks across its whole surface, and all it takes is a little concentration to bring it crashing down and the water gushing in.
he doesn't remember much after that.
after merrin teleports two nearly-dead jedi and one slightly-more-alive jedi out of the water, greez asks her desperately if she knows any healing magick, because the medkit is not gonna cut it for lightsaber wounds, and while his own knowledge of human anatomy is surely terrible, a hole in the torso and a deep wound across the spine cannot be good.
merrin shakes her head no.
i can remove the water from their lungs, she says instead, and does so.
now, there's saltwater all over greez's potolli-weave couches, and if greez's first kid and cere's old kid weren't karking dying on the floor, then greez might have it in him to be mad.
as soon as the water is out of cere's respiratory system, she rolls over and retches, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and croaks out, get us to lessis, captain.
lessis, got it, he says automatically. only after he's punched in the coordinates and pulled the lever that launches the stinger mantis into hyperspace does he ask what, exactly, they're going to lessis for.
medcenter... friendly to jedi, she answers, eyelids drifting shut as she sinks into the least-damp part of the couch. need to get cal and trilla there.
okay, okay. now what do we do in the meantime? it's five and a half hours 'til we get there, how do i stabilise humans with lightsaber wounds, i don't know what i'm doing. he's babbling. it makes him feel... well, not better, but not worse.
with cere directing from the couch (fit the oxygen mask like that, not the way you were doing it; yes, merrin, that's a normal human pulse), merrin and greez manage to prep cal and trilla for arrival at lessis.
using some more of her dathomirian magick, merrin helps greez lift cal into his room and trilla into cere's. cere insists that they keep them separate, so that they each get their own bed to lie on for the next few hours, and also so that they don't infect each other's wounds, as cere coughs out in between sips of tea. (greez made her tea, because what is he supposed to do when stressed, if not start cooking?)
except, he doesn't actually get to start cooking. the tea is just a small diversion from the grueling task ahead of him: assessing the damage done to cal. (he hates that he's doing this alone, but he knows merrin is busy across the hall doing the exact same thing by herself for trilla, so he doesn't let himself dwell on his own suffering for too long.)
first thing's first; he has to get cal out of the ruins of his vest. it smells like burnt hair and overcooked flesh, and the edges of the lightsaber hole have been seared into the charred bits of skin on cal's abdomen. he's afraid to make the wound worse by pulling too hard, so he settles for cutting the fabric away in a small perimeter around it. he cuts as close as he dares. (greez is so gonna throw up after this.) greez is also very, very careful not to disturb the oxygen mask or cal's form too much. the vest gets thrown into a corner somewhere when it's finally off.
cal's breath fogs up the oxygen mask and he's still got a pulse, at least, so there's some small comfort here.
the shirt is next; it doesn't open naturally anywhere that greez can find, so he has to cut it open to get to the charred hole left behind by the saber. hopefully the kid will forgive him. any other wounds cal may have - definitely has - aren't as threatening, and greez chooses to ignore the myriad of bruises he unearths as he peels the shirt away from cal's chest.
behind greez, the door hisses open, and he hears cere's telltale footsteps as she walks over to him.
you're doing good, captain, she wheezes. on his great-grandmother's heart, she does not sound good. if cere can tell what he's thinking with her freaky jedi senses, she doesn't let on.
she peers over his shoulder.
bd, light? asks cere, and bd, who has been hovering on greez's bedside table this whole time, carefully navigates over.
that doesn't look good, greez says quietly. the contents of his stomach threaten to burble up directly onto the floor.
the hole goes straight through the kid's chest on his left side. it's hard to tell beneath the layer of burnt, blackened tissue, but there's charred bone and what looks like a grazed important organ. cere mutters something about lungs as she looks closer, shifts in slightly to get a better view, then makes a comment along the lines of shouldn't there be a spleen here?
greez takes his opportunity to run to the 'fresher.
merrin has never met this trilla before, but cere told her enough for her to be surprised that she's now aboard the mantis. she would consider the matter further were it not for the deep strike across trilla's spine that makes merrin shudder with the horrible memories of her sisters' deaths.
it's easy, in a way it shouldn't be, to strip trilla's armor off. to cut away the fabric, to cleanse the wound. to pile the shredded cloth away for burning. she thinks trilla's spine has been severed where the slash crosses the middle of her back, but she doesn't actually know until cere comes in and hands her a holovid about human anatomy. her basic isn't that good, not after years of only ever using it to speak with malicos, but she understands the vid well enough. cere leaves the room, comes back a moment later with bacta patches and bandages, says i'm sorry to someone (merrin knows not who) and leaves again to go check on greez.
a moment passes, then she hears someone rush into the 'fresher and make the most horrible sounds. that must be greez. back to the task at hand, though.
merrin, though she is tired to the very core, reaches out to the whispers of her sisters as she has done so many times before, and asks them to assist her in removing the fabric from trilla's wounds. green magick - her sisters' lifeforce - flows through her fingers, cascading down into the cauterized gouge stretching diagonally across trilla's spine, where it flits through and erases every scrap of thread remaining in the wound. once she is sure that trilla is free of cloth residue, she liberally applies bacta and wraps trilla's whole torso in sterile bandages, ignoring desperately how much it feels like she's wrapping trilla for burial.
trilla's still breathing, however slightly. merrin can't figure out how to keep her on her side, or whether she should be on her back or her stomach once she's bandaged. she doesn't spend too much time deliberating, though, before cere comes back in the room and tells merrin to go watch cal.
as she heads out of cere's room, greez, who has apparently recovered from his bout of nausea enough to leave the 'fresher, calls out.
want any tea? he hollers so loud he could wake the dead. merrin would know.
not now, she says back, projecting her voice down the hall. she may not have known greez for long, but she does know that he makes food when he is anxious, so she isn't surprised when the smell of something delicious begins wafting down the hall.
cal is laid out on greez's bed. he looks like a corpse.
merrin swallows thickly. it's still another hour to lessis, she knows that, and cal's not actually dead on the bed, but it's still very hard to look at him. and yet she draws ever closer. she is a moon, adrift in orbit to the black hole of death as it nears on swallowing cal and trilla. she doesn't dare touch cal, doesn't know jedi burial rituals; at least with trilla the shadows danced around her in a way that seemed familiar enough. trilla is not a nightsister, but she is far closer than cal. the way her sisters move around one is not the way they move around the other. her sisters whisper to her of the pain and the horror they felt as they died, and the shadows writhe around merrin in ways that the ones around cal do not. it's too much.
she sits on the floor and waits for them to leave hyperspace.
cere comes in again and tells merrin to go eat something, because they arrive in ten minutes and she'll need merrin's help to get cal and trilla onto stretchers. merrin soon finds herself in the kitchen, mindlessly putting something in her mouth. it is some sort of stew. she is dimly aware of the tears sliding down her cheek. she does not remember crying.
when they exit hyperspace, cere junda has had three cups of chamomile honey tea. her throat feels much better, though she's still sore and bruised from fighting through the fortress. she called the medcenter on the way here, and her contact gave them a code to use and told them to be at landing platform dorn-17 by 1715 local time. it's 1651 local time now, if her chrono is right. there's only a handful of habitable outposts on the surface of lessis, and the one the medcenter is at is 7.5 hours ahead of galactic standard. she gets on the comms and hails the customs station.
approaching vessel, state your business, a man's voice lazes through the comm.
this is the trading vessel moya, stopping for a refuel off the corellian run, cere lies smoothly.
clearance codes, says the customs officer.
transmitting now. she trusts the codes to be good.
you are clear to land, moya. enjoy your stay.
she flicks the comms off and breathes a sigh of relief.
hey cere.
yes, greez?
how'd you know about this place? i mean, lessis? who'd even set up a medcenter on this backwater ice moon?
it's a secret medcenter, and i know some people, is all she says, and gives greez a look.
greez knows her well enough by now to stop asking questions. secret medcenter, yep, got it. o-kay. and you said...?
landing pad dorn-17, she confirms, checking the encrypted message on her datapad.
the mantis lands at approximately 1704 local time. there's a team waiting for them as the boarding ramp opens, stretchers at the ready. a woman in a dark hood and nondescript robes that obscure her appearance steps forward to greet cere. no robes could hide her presence in the force, though, and cere, even closed off as she is, knows who the woman is immediately.
thalia, cere says, simply. three other humanoids, all dressed similarly to thalia, flood up the ramp around the two of them as they embrace, cere crying into thalia's shoulder.
they separate as the medical team comes back down the boarding ramp, making room for the stretchers as they're pushed gently into an unassuming door on the edge of the walled landing pad.
you'll have to stay out of the operating room, thalia tells her softly.
i know.
cere waves merrin and greez out of the mantis, and they both cautiously step out to join cere in the shielded station. bd, having been forcibly removed from cal's side, sits in merrin's hands and worries cere's ear off.
welcome to thrynaci station, everyone, cere says as the crew files out of the landing pad after thalia's team. she knows they're all too anxious to take in the station right now, but she hopes they'll get to explore it later. for now, they follow the team through one dark alley after another. it takes a couple minutes before they finally end up in what seems to be an abandoned warehouse. they wait for a moment as thalia punches in a keycode, then the wall slides apart to reveal a cargo lift.
prep for immediate surgery, thalia says into a comm panel. the medics load cal and trilla onto the lift, push some buttons, then point cere to a small door on the adjacent wall.
the wall closes, hiding the lift from view as it descends towards the actual interior of the medcenter, where cere knows thalia will rush trilla and cal into an operating room.
the matter out of their hands for now, the crew of the mantis open the small door on the left and take the stairs down to the waiting area.
naasade has been tired for the past forty hours straight. technically, he's been off shift for the past ten hours, but his hands are still steady, and his eyes just will not close. ergo, the current situation.
when head surgeon thalia rushed out of the operating room, he didn't particularly mind. when she called for all hands on deck, he didn't particularly mind. when she activated protocol, he slipped his cap further over his head, and didn't particularly mind.
when the jedi came in, obviously malnourished, obviously dying, obviously a child, he started to mind.
and then, a second one! and then, head surgeon thalia was hugging another jedi!
his hands may have been shaking at that point. not that he minded.
dank farrik, he absolutely minds. they're in the operating room now, thalia and tr-5 and t'rudi and hoss and him, split between the child jedi and the other one.
thalia, he says, too cool, too controlled, too collected, especially with him hands deep in a child. hands deep.
thalia, he says, and she turns to look at him with a lone, cold eye.
alright. okay. his head surgeon hugged someone. nevermind he's never seen her even initiate contact outside of with a scalpel, nevermind that the most physical contact she's ever had with him was a hand on his shoulder, nevermind everything he's accepted as truth about her-
well. that is a bit unfair of him, isn't it? he's seen many people do odd things under stress. many things that seemed untrue to their characters, many things that showed either true colors or simply hidden ones.
so, his head surgeon has a person she hugs. sure. fine. the kid's lung is perforated, his spleen is missing, his liver is actively dying in front of him, and his head surgeon hugged a possible patient on the way to the o-r.
that's fine, that's good. his hands are not shaking as he sews sutures.
his other patient is a different story. it's hard to focus, what with the absolutely negative aura exuding throughout the entire operating room.
he'll touch on that later. on her, later. right now, the little crew they have is crowded around her, busy applying bacta and bandages and fussing over the medical droid. how they do it without collapsing from her strength evades him. to be fair, a lot of things evade him.
the shadows twist under his feet as he finishes up. he'll let tr-5 hook the kid up, and he turns to regard his other patient.
female. young - not as young as the child (and dimly in the back of his mind, it echoes, the child) but certainly still young. young enough his head hurts. young enough that the rot pervading her aura puts pity, not fear, into his mind.
it is hard to be scared of a patient. it is hard to be scared of such a dark presence when a saber has cut it nearly in two.
behind him the light radiates, almost blinding him in its clarity. in front, a maelstrom - an ocean of twisting hurt and volatile darkness. he breathes. washes his hands. steps in.
when trilla suduri opens her eyes, she is not dead. surprisingly.
quietly, trilla takes stock of her surroundings.
she's staring up at a low, unfamiliar ceiling, she can't feel most of anything below her shoulders, moving anything hurts like hell. shifting her awareness around the parts of her body, she feels an iv drip in the crook of her left arm. several bacta patches wrapped securely with bandages protect her various wounds, presumably across her whole body. she's in a flimsiplast gown, which would imply she's undergone some kind of medical treatment somewhere.
she breathes in deep through her nose, which hurts less than she expected it to. smells like cheap disinfectant and not much else.
she would grunt and turn over if she could, but that would require both functioning lower back muscles and disturbing the iv; the former of which she has no control over and the latter of which would be bad for her.
instead, she chooses to simply pass out again.
the next time she opens her eyes, she is still in the medbay, and a woman she has never met before is standing over her. the woman's dress reminds her of the healers at the temple. odd, that she should think of that right now.
can you feel your legs? she asks, voice kind. trilla isn't used to that.
as the question leaves her mouth, trilla becomes aware of a sudden cramp in her right foot. try as she might she cannot make it go away.
yes, she bites out. the cramp is making it hard to focus. something feels off about this whole thing, but she isn't sure what.
you're waking up from a very high dose of morphine, the woman says. oh. she didn't realise she'd been talking out loud.
you've spent the last twenty hours in and out of surgery, as has your compatriot. we stabilised you first, then operated on your spine.
why did her spine need operation? (she vaguely recollects something terrible, some horror lurking in the corners of her consciousness, but everything is too foggy to make out.)
it was severed.
there's a calm dispassion to the woman's voice. now trilla really feels like she's back in the temple. she frowns. she's not supposed to think about the temple, is she? there's... there's a rot, on the edge of her mind, seeping in.
the woman's checking something on a datapad.
i'll tell cere you're awake, she says as she leaves.
greez's stomachs have been doing flips since they arrived in the lobby. well, okay. his stomachs have been doing flips since merrin pulled everyone back onto the mantis. he's fallen asleep no more than once, and even then, that was only for an hour at most. he'll crash, hard, when his kids are safe, and not a moment before. even if that means staying up for twenty hours in a row.
thalia comes in around noon local time. merrin, having lost the battle with exhaustion hours ago, is curled up on a couch; cere snuck back to the mantis to get her a blanket not long after she fell asleep. bd, for his part, has nested atop merrin, guarding her warily from the various other people who've passed through the waiting area. as for himself, well. cere and greez both have had way too much caf, which makes greez all the more jittery when thalia suddenly appears in his field of view.
it doesn't help that she is also, seemingly, a nightsister. he lets cere do the talking.
cere and thalia speak in hushed tones about something for several minutes while greez sits, terrified, on the other side of the room. he's trying his best not to listen in, but it doesn't seem good, judging by the face cere's pulling. then thalia leaves again and cere sits back down. she grabs her caf, cradles it in her hands.
hit me, greez says.
cere sighs. trilla's waking up, which is good.
there's a but in there, i can smell it.
she takes a sip and sets the caf back down before looking greez dead in the eyes.
cal hasn't woken up yet.
kriffing hells.
they're going to observe him for another day, and then they're going to release him into our care.
...and if he still hasn't woken up? please tell me they aren't gonna hand him to us anyway.
they can't keep us here forever, cere rebukes him gently, taking on that particularly jedi tone of hers. we're a liability to their operation and need to move soon before we attract unwanted attention.
yeah, yeah. i know. i'm just worried, y'know? his mouth folds into a frown as he waves his lower hands around, pointing an upper one towards merrin and the other towards the door thalia had come through.
as he points, one of the other medics, the mirialan-twi'lek woman, enters the waiting area through those very doors.
she guides a hoverchair carrying one very weak-looking ex-inquisitor. greez isn't sure, but he doesn't think she's meant to be so pale, her hair wet and clumped together oddly.
thank you, t'rudi, cere says, bowing to the nurse.
of course, master junda. the nurse bows back.
she leaves trilla next to their cluster of seats and exits the lobby, presumably off to help some other patient or some such. it's been a long time since greez was in an actual medcenter - he's just guessing at how their practice operates, trying to distract himself from the awkwardness he knows is coming.
it doesn't work.
trilla, cere starts. uncertainty waivers her voice in a way that greez hasn't heard in months.
cere, she responds, a sharp edge to her words. i don't feel like doing this right now.
cere has the tact to just nod, but the silence that follows is just horrible.
greez stands it for about 15 minutes before he decides enough is enough.
i'm going shopping, he announces, clearing his throat. you, he points at trilla, need new clothes. and i need groceries.
merrin stirs at the noise and raises her head groggily.
i shall come with you, she says as she disentangles herself from the blanket. bd clambers onto her shoulder as she rises, beeping up a storm that greez simply cannot understand.
neither cere nor trilla say anything for a moment. cere picks her caf back up and sips at it, a move greez recognises as letting trilla speak should she so choose.
...i suppose i will come along, too, trilla says, eventually.
greez coughs. he can feel his eyes bug out of his head and does his best to stifle his immediate reaction.
i agree with trilla. she should pick her own clothes. cere takes another sip of the caf.
okay, okay, but she can't go out in a flimsi-gown and nothing else!
in response, merrin grabs the blanket she's left on the couch and proffers it to trilla, who tucks it around herself such that it sits neatly on her lap.
better? trilla glares.
it's cold, too, greez gulps. he's not fond of inquisitors staring him down, ex-ones or not, but he'll be damned if he lets cere's former padawan die of hypothermia after all this effort to save her life.
she huffs as he turns away, looking to find that nurse who came in earlier. he spots a different humanoid, also wearing a medic's clothes, exiting a door on the other side of the room, and rushes over.
hi, could you help me? he asks. the medic - an iridonian zabrak who is twice his height - pauses and looks expectantly.
their name tag reads hoss.
yes? hoss answers, face inscrutable.
uh, y'see, i got this kid over there who needs a jacket so we can go outside?
hoss hums, then holds up a finger. wait there, they rumble.
they go through another pair of doors and return a short while later holding a variety of jackets, which they shove into greez's arms.
these should be sufficient. and with that, hoss leaves again.
thank you! greez calls out after them a moment too late.
he putters back over to trilla, burdened down as he is by the five or six jackets he now carries.
here ya go, kid. (he can't help himself. even the space witch is kid in his head now, and he's known her for two standard weeks. of course he calls trilla kid, what else would he call her?)
wordlessly she picks out the plain black one and tries to shrug it on.
uh. she's struggling a lot - she's clearly expecting her range of motion to be wider, and greez is overcome with a vision of cal after he pulled his shoulder climbing around on zeffo. he'd refused to acknowledge the injury until cere caught him screaming in pain as he tried to take his shirt off in the 'fresher, and when they'd finally gotten the door open, cal had looked like a wild animal being kept in a too-small cage. trilla has that same look in her eyes now, as if not being able to do it alone is a worse fate than death.
he decides it would be wiser to keep his hands to himself.
in his dreams, cal is walking through a market he's never seen before in his life.
it's an open-air bazaar, filled with colors and smells he hasn't experienced since... since... his memory blanks. well, that's to be expected. he's dreaming, he knows; the colors blend together on the edges of his vision as he walks, the smells are faint and half-remembered, the sounds garbled and strange. he does not feel the ground beneath his feet as he moves.
he follows a half-step behind merrin and greez, who, for some reason, are with trilla. he's had weirder dreams, so he lets it slide. they trace a maddening spiral around the market, orbiting ever closer to the fountain that stands proud at the center. the fountain is singing to him, a lullaby from when he was small and still needed the crechemaster's help in falling asleep. merrin and trilla are talking, but the words don't quite reach cal's ears. they are looking at something. greez has disappeared somewhere into the mist enveloping anywhere cal isn't looking. the fountain calls.
the fountain calls, and cal must answer. he loses himself in its gravity, pulled in at terminal velocity; the flow of the water, the sound as it rushes past his ears, the way his soul leaks out of the hole in his chest and begs to join the movement of the fountain.
he draws closer.
he finds greez haggling with a merchant selling vegetables, the sight of which would make his mouth water if he were awake. isn't he awake?
he draws closer.
suddenly, something pulls him very far away, away from the fountain, away from greez, away from trilla and merrin and the market. cere is sipping tea at the dinner table and staring into his eyes. he shies away from her stern gaze - she knows he can't do eye contact - she tells him to stay here, with her. what does she mean? she says he cannot go into the fountain. he can visit the market but he cannot fall in the fountain for he will surely drown. but it sings so sweetly, and it would be so refreshing for a change. she forbids him.
he is back in the market. trilla holds up something that looks like a dress, but its edges blur and blend into the vegetables greez is buying across the way. it's so loud. the murmur of the crowd roars and crashes in waves against his skull. it crushes him - he can't breathe quite right, not enough oxygen in his body - he convulses and spasms against something he can't see.
his eyes open (they had not been closed) and a clone's face is mere centimeters away from his, so cal does the natural thing and screams. then headbutts the clone as hard as he can.
his forehead hurts a lot when he does so.
ouch, he mutters, which is apparently the wrong move.
the clone blinks back at him. sighs. picks up a syringe from beside him, empties it into the iv in cal's arm. at least, that's what cal thinks is happening. there are more colors swirling in his vision now than there were in the market, so for all he knows he's still asleep. this is just a bad nightmare.
the clone turns and says something to someone out of cal's line of sight. cal's eyes, rather against his will, flutter shut, and unconsciousness sweeps him away.
cal doesn't wake up in that room again.
no, the next time he is awake and knows he's awake, he's in his bunk on the mantis. his chest hurts. he blinks.
hey, greez's voice drifts in from far away.
it comes again, a little louder: hey!
he tilts his head to the side, blinks some more. greez looms over him, bd on greez's shoulder.
hey, kid, greez says, softer this time. he looks... worried.
cal sits up.
well, he tries to.
cal - cal! greez catches him before he crumples to the floor.
cere... trilla, he says, hoping his tone adequately conveys his question.
she's alright. they're both alright, greez comforts him as bd runs down greez's arm and onto cal.
bd whirs and trills in excitement that cal's finally awake.
you too, he says, voice raspy from days of disuse.
bd nuzzles his arm as he shifts, trying to get up.
you did it, greez tells him, moving to keep cal from falling over. cal can hardly believe his ears.
we - we did it?
greez smiles.
ha! we did - urk! his body alights with pain as he leans too hard on his bruised arm. ouch.
oh, be careful, greez says, full of worry.
pain be damned, though. cal can tell he's been asleep for too long; he's got to get up, got to see cere and trilla and merrin-
where are they? he asks, struggling to escape greez's hold as he stumbles to his feet.
they're out there - whoa, hold on! wait a minute!
but cal slips past all four of greez's arms and staggers down the hall. he somehow makes it down the stairs into the lounge without falling flat on his face, where merrin greets him with a hug. as much as he wants to enjoy the contact, he can't help but wince from the pain.
sorry, she says, bashful.
he doesn't know what to say to that.
that was you in the water, wasn't it? he says, changing the subject.
she nods. i'm glad you're okay. this one, merrin points at greez, who has caught up to cal now, wouldn't leave your side.
except when the medics made me, greez mutters under his breath, which makes cal chuckle a bit.
thank you, he says.
he tenderly makes his way to the couch. merrin sits down beside him.
hey.
hey, cere responds. her gaze flicks over to cal, then to trilla.
...hey, says trilla, refusing to meet cere's gaze.
she doesn't turn to cal as she says, i suppose i should thank you for saving my life.
it was the right thing to do, cal tells her.
trilla rolls her eyes, prompting greez to break the tension.
so, what now? he sidles up to cere on the couch.
well, captain. this is the end of my charter. your contract has been fulfilled. she nods, once, before continuing. thank you, greez.
well, if it's all the same to you, i was thinking that maybe i would stick around here and... he scoots closer. take you wherever you gotta go.
because, uh, he lowers his voice, kid here kinda looks up to me.
cal snickers, just a little.
what about that? merrin points at the holocron sitting on the table.
we use it to rebui-
the empire will come looking for it again, trilla interrupts. you cannot rebuild the jedi order.
he can see cere frowning out of the corner of his eye.
out of curiosity, cal raises his hand and opens the holocron.
the next generation of jedi... merrin's voice is full of awe and trepidation.
trilla's right, greez adds. the empire will be after 'em.
just like they're after you, trilla finishes.
the lives of every child on that list will be forever changed, cere says, quietly.
and just like that, cal's mind is made.
not by us.
he looks at everyone in turn as he unclips his lightsaber from his belt.
their destiny should be entrusted to the force.
the holocron clatters to the table as his blade bisects it.
so. where to now?
