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The worst part about surviving is that it often feels like a mistake.
Most sentient beings were instinctively hard-wired to survive. The instinct that drove the base desire to flee, to freeze, to fight doesn’t take any effort, and given the opportunity, will save a life. Survival is as natural as death.
The aftermath is not as natural. The aftermath goes beyond the instinctive.
The aftermath is regret. Guilt. Shame. Anger. Fear. A cycle that repeats, again and again, and if left unaddressed, never truly leaves. It surges under the skin periodically, and when it does, it doesn’t leave until its victim is brought right back to that same spot, right back on their knees, right back in the moments that come after.
Survival is the easy part. Living in the after is the real hell.
+ + + + +
Cal doesn’t really remember the weeks following the death of his master.
Any memory of that time is a blur, a memory that belongs to someone else, someone who died in the supernova of burning metal in the atmosphere over Bracca. It’s like watching someone else control his limbs. Someone else drags themselves off their knees onto shaking legs. Someone else stumbles their way mindlessly, eventually into arms that he can’t feel and concerned words that he can’t hear, not really.
The numbness was easier really.
The Abednedo who guides him to shelter probably tells Cal his name during this time. He doesn’t recall that initially – any words were just a numb ringing in his ears. Perhaps that realised, because the rest of that night is spent in silence. There’s a flash of concern in genuinely kind eyes for this child, who doesn’t flinch when antiseptics are applied to raw grazes and pieces of debris are pulled from flesh that is simply too young. Cal simply doesn’t see it.
He doesn’t see a lot for quite a while.
When he first sleeps, it’s from pure exhaustion. It’s only when the rush of adrenaline and fear in his veins finally betray him that he finds his eyes unwillingly close and sleep drag him away. It isn’t a kind night. Nothing in his vibrant dreams makes sense, apart from the pounding of his heart in his chest and the sense that something is wrong, wrong, wrong and a scream that tears itself from his lips as his eyes snap open.
This is the pattern for months to come, sleep only when his body forces him to. Constant nightmares. Waking up with panicked cries in his throat, and eyes wide, and hands instinctively reaching for a weapon, ready for the inevitable fight.
Prauf never says a word. He simply turns on the light and asks if he’d like some water. Cal will never be as grateful for anything as he is for those moments.
+ + + + +
Those moments of numbness never quite go away.
It’s easy to slip into them. In the scrap yards, when he feels the familiar deadness in his limbs, it’s a relief from strain or exhaustion. The first time he cuts himself on stray durasteel, he doesn’t even notice until Prauf brings it up, now well-practiced in delicate words and silent comfort.
When he should be asleep, it’s easy to sit up, back against a wall and let it take over completely. Time passes so quickly in these moments, something he can’t help but feel grateful. He doesn’t have to acknowledge everything brewing beneath the surface, nor his sore muscles, or hunger, or the cold. It’s the closest thing he comes to peace these days and he’s grateful for it.
Meditation is no longer easy, and sleep (much like the rest of the galaxy) has declared him an enemy. He’ll take any reprieve he can at this point.
Prauf has a gift for drawing him out of these moments during day hours. The Abednedo knows how to subtly grab his attention, to ground him back into his physical body. He’s good at grabbing attention, and then working with that. Cal finds himself answering inane questions, sharing what he can see around him, what he can feel, what he can hear.
He’s not exactly grateful at times to be brought back to reality, back he knows a kindness when he sees it. They’re so rare these days.
+ + + + +
He’s pretty sure he’s a terrible Jedi.
He’s a lot surer during the times where he finds himself overwhelmed with the emotions that lunge for his throat when he least expects it. He knows how to handle these, that they are a risk, that they should be dispelled. Easier said than done.
The other workers sometimes talk in hushed voices, about the changes that are sweeping across the galaxy. The general consensus seems to be that the Jedi Order were smug, holier-than-thou bastards who got what they deserved.
It’s always amazing that he manages not to laugh when he catches these snippets. Or cry.
Some days the grief is a rock that sits in his chest. There’s no closure, and there never will be. Part of him almost wishes that he had joined his people, because joining the force had to be so much simpler and more peaceful than being confined to this galaxy full of people who would never mourn them. The violently severed training bond in his mind only drives that theory. Sometimes he reaches for it, for familiar comfort, and is slapped in the face with the raw aching remains of the connection.
Other days there is anger. It’s driven by a keen sense of betrayal: he had been so willing to fight, to face death for the galaxy, for the perceived innocents. Now they stood back from the burning funeral pyre of his home, his family, and spat vitriol at people who had only wanted the best. He knows that this feeling is dangerous, and that he should be above it, and yet it remains, fed by everything else.
Meditation is no longer there for him, instead a frozen reminder of everything that had occurred on that awful day. Reaching for the force is risky, but it’s also painful. Where there had once been the steady and constant glow of the Jedi Order, there was now only a cold, dark maw that threatened to consume him if he focussed it on him too long. In a way, it was like the Force itself had died alongside the Jedi.
As he gets older, he learns to contain his feelings, at least externally. One day, he cries his last tear. The sadness persists, but it won’t be visible for others again. Everything is so much safer locked away in his chest.
+ + + + +
There is sometimes a moment when he forgets that it’s all over now.
He doesn’t particularly enjoy being touched, especially by those who are unfamiliar. A hand on his arm will have his spin on his heel, eyes wide, half-expecting to see a trooper in armor with a blaster drawn. Fear of being discovered is the only thing that keeps him from reaching in to lash out in these moments.
Other times, machinery or accidents will remind him of his days spent in space, eager and ready for fight by his master’s side. It often takes a minute to come back from these moments. Sometimes he doesn’t particularly want to.
The worst one comes the first time an inevitable accident happens and a fellow scrapper dies. The way that the body falls limp, that eyes stare off unseeing, that he feels their light in the Force snap off, he isn’t seeing the scrapper anymore. Jaro Tapal stares back at him with blank eyes and he cannot feel the way that Prauf pulls him back with firm hands or the way that he trembles as though on the verge of collapse.
The feeling of a being at risk of taking a blaster bolt to the back at any given time never particularly fades. Considering history, he can’t always consider that a bad thing.
+ + + + +
Psychometry has always been a double-edged blade.
Cal knows that he should be grateful. He has been given a rare gift from the Force, one that has provided him multiple opportunities and saved him in many situations.
It’s hard to remember that every time he gets an echo, especially the less pleasant ones.
If it wasn’t for his training, he thinks he may have dropped to the ground the first time a piece of wreckage shows him a flash of history, of the men that had previously served on it. As it is, he has to press his tongue to the roof of his mouth to stem the overwhelming nausea that rises in him.
It’s not just war stories that he unwittingly picks up on Bracca. There’s a certain type of crowd that’s attracted in the Scrapper’s Guild, and he soon learns that life outside of the Jedi Temple is harsh and desperate, even more so than he had previously believed.
Part of him aches to reach out and help every time he gains a sad piece of someone’s story, of desperation, of pain. He knows that he can’t, however. It is safer to keep his head down, even if a piece of him that refuses to die desperately wants to solve every problem in the galaxy.
+ + + + +
Cal does not think that he is allowed to have anything resembling a happy ending.
There is an irony in not being allowed to mourn for Prauf, he just can’t decide what it is. He can’t help but wonder how many more times he will have to lose a mentor in front of his eyes while he scrabbles off to once again survive. The first time broke him, the second time feels mocking; he’s not sure he’ll survive a third.
Superficially, the Inquisitors are terrifying, every detail designed to be intimidating to the populace. What actually drives a spike of fear through Cal is the way that they feel. It is like every emotion that he has felt has been amplified and forged into a weapon designed to strike at anyone who gets to close. He looks at them, and he sees what he could be.
He can only hope that the Force would for once show mercy and let him die.
Fleeing is instinctive, a subset of survival. A fight would be risky, and the drive to not let himself be twisted in their hands is all he needs to find the strength to evade them. The choice to leap to the strange women, offering help that was simply too good to be true wasn’t one that he consciously made. Anything would have been easier to face at that point than what lay behind him.
He wants to trust Cere. He wants to relate to her, because he sees the same demons lurking behind her calm mask that haunt him.
It’s the same reason he can’t fully commit to it.
+ + + + +
Trilla Suduri both terrifies and mortifies him.
He does his best to hide it. He thinks she might see it anyway. It’s hard not to feel like an injured animal beneath her gaze, waiting with still breath for the predator circling it to finally strike. Unfortunately, he’s also found that she is the type to play with her prey.
He’s tried to imagine once, what she was like before the Empire decided to hunt her down like an animal and hold her down and rip every single good thing left out of her. He can’t imagine walking past the woman he now faces in a hallway in the Temple. He desperately wishes he could. If he could, there might be some hope for himself in this cell, in this fresh level of hell.
Cal can’t help but nurse a small part of hope that there is a way out of this. He’s spent too long living despite everything against him to have everything that matters ripped forcefully out of his very being by these people. A sardonic part of him lets him know that perhaps that is only because he has had others die to allow him to do so.
Nothing in the past years has made him feel that surviving was a mistake as much as the look in her eyes when she looks at him.
The faux smile on her face that is all teeth confirms his fears.