Chapter Text
A pall has fallen over the Stinger Mantis.
From the perspective of an outsider looking in, Merrin thinks that the trip to this planet her new...comrades...call Nur is surprisingly quiet. Perhaps these Jedi and their four-armed pilot are more familiar with heading into danger than she, but Merrin, for all her familiarity with solitude from her years spent alone on Dathomir, finds that this quiet is, well, disquieting. Over the coming times, she will discover that silence before battle, the calm before the storm, is not all that uncommon but for now, she is unused to it and thus finds herself looking for something, or someone, that will distract her.
The four-armed Latero pilot, Greez, has not left his cockpit, to best monitor their flight towards this enemy stronghold. Cere, the dark-skinned female Jedi, whom Merrin now knows to be the driving force behind this entire adventure, is up there with him, listening closely to her communications device to hear if their enemy is tracking their progress. From what the pilot has said, Merrin knows it will not be long before her presence is requested there as well, to cloak the ship from hostile eyes. But those are not the two people Merrin is most interested in.
Cal Kestis is the only member of this crew that she has had any significant interaction with, and he and his droid are the only ones that seem to be completely at ease in her presence. Merrin knows that he keeps his own space at the rear of the ship. She can hear him moving around, so it is there that she goes looking, hoping he will know of something useful that she can do to distract herself.
When Merrin arrives in Cal’s small...chamber, if it can be called that when it lacks doors, and the sleeping space only boasts something that might charitably be called a cot...she finds him sitting down, bent over a work table of some kind with his lightsaber partially disassembled in front of him. The little droid--BD or BD-1, as Cal calls him--is crouched beside him, chittering and chirping in that droid-speak that Merrin cannot understand. But she watches, amused, as the droid appears to be chiding Cal, emitting a long string of boops and beeps as the Jedi does something that does not meet with his approval.
“I know that, BD,” the Jedi grumbles, sounding only faintly irritated. “Just give me a second…”
There’s a snapping, sparking noise as he picks up one of the tools before him and applies it to his lightsaber, first to its exposed innards and then to its outer casing as he closes it up. The scent of super-heated metal drifts up to Merrin’s nose, tickling it briefly before fading away. Still, though, she comments on it:
“Perhaps he wishes you would not pollute the air when we do not have a way to clear it.”
Cal, to his credit, does not jump at the sound of her voice. Then again, he’d been able to sense her on Dathomir when even Malicos had struggled with that particular skill. Still, he looks up at her. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, placing his tool back on his belt. “I forget not everyone’s used to this. I’m done, though.”
Merrin comes closer, noting that Cal does start this time though he does a good job of trying to hide it, and jerks her chin at his weapon. “What are you doing?”
“Oh,” Cal attempts to pull himself back from his surprise at her sudden proximity. “I’m, uh, I’m fixing it. See here,” he points to a seam he just welded, “when I built it, I was in kind of a hurry and I didn’t do such a good job welding it completely, and some of the wires were coming out. I just fixed it.”
Merrin looks it over, noting the new seam that has already cooled. Then she notices something else, and cocks her head. “This is not the same lightsaber you had the first time you came to Dathomir.”
Cal grimaces. He has not told Merrin that particular story. It’s a private one, but they’ve been unflinchingly and startlingly honest with each other since their second meeting. “I know,” he says at last, looking up at her. Somehow, he knows she will not judge him when he tells her the rest of it. “When I first came to Dathomir, after I met you, I had a...vision. Of my Master, Jaro Tapal.”
“He was your teacher, the one who raised you?”
“Yes. I lost my lightsaber when the clones, our allies, started shooting at us. That’s how I got this,” Cal turns slightly, showing her the long, deep scar on the right side of his jaw and neck. It is so close to the major blood vessels in his neck that Merrin wonders how he survived receiving the wound. “I lost my own lightsaber. And Master Tapal, he,” Cal swallows briefly, trying not to become lost in the memories. They don’t define him, not anymore. He takes a breath, knowing again that Merrin will not judge him for his reaction to his own history, and plunges onwards. “He died defending me. And he left me his lightsaber.”
“Yet that is not the same saber you have with you now,” Merrin notes.
The young Jedi shakes his head. “No. Well, yes and no. I--blamed myself for his death for a long time. And when I had that vision, he was blaming me too. It was so... overwhelming that I crushed part of the saber and the kyber crystal inside before I knew what I was doing.”
For a moment, Merrin is silent. Dathomir can be...unforgiving when it comes to dredging up one’s fears. And when that someone is a person whose history is so close to her own… “I am...sorry,” she murmurs. There is nothing she can do about it--that is the way of the planet, after all. But still…
“It’s okay,” Cal reassures her, dredging up a small smile. “It...ended up being a good thing. We went to Ilum, the ice planet where most if not all Jedi have historically gone to get their kyber crystals. Those crystals form naturally in the ice, something about the minerals in the bedrock. They’re not like normal crystals, they’re powerful. And Jedi, we bond with them. Like your sphere,” he gestures towards her waistline, where he can see the bulge of said sphere protruding from a waist pack.
“Talisman,” Merrin corrects him automatically. “But yes, I believe I understand. I have bonded with mine as well.”
Cal nods, and continues his story. “So, I bonded with mine, but the crystal split in half. I thought that was it, that I’d never be able to build my own lightsaber again, but BD-1 here,” he flicks the droid affectionately on its head, earning an affectionate beep, “had other ideas. And Cere had given me her saber even though her crystal is gone. So I used both crystals and the parts from both sabers to build my own.”
Like a replay of their second (or was it third?) meeting on Dathomir, Cal offers her his lightsaber. And just like a replay of said meeting, Merrin holds out her hand and takes it. It’s certainly a unique weapon, she has to admit--it appears quite long but she can see the seam in the middle, where a simple twist will cause it to separate into two lightsabers. Malicos had called such a manner of wielding two blades ‘jar’kai’, but Cal is nothing like that Fallen, deceitful, power-seeking mongrel. Neither are his sabers. And speaking of...Merrin remembers a question that’s been sitting at the back of her mind ever since leaving her home planet.
“Why are your sabers different colors?”
Cal’s brow furrows. “What do you mean, mine are the same--oh!” It only takes him a moment to figure out what she means. “You mean mine and Malicos’?”
“Yes. Why were his red while yours are purple?”
The young redhead leans back, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t...fully understand it myself,” he finally admits, then shakes his head. “Or rather, I don’t know the actual process behind it. But I do know that for Force-users who Fall to the Dark Side, who use the Force for their own gain and to do harm to others, their sabers turn red. I don’t know how. I know that the color of a lightsaber reflects the person who wields it. Like mine.” Cal holds out his hand, and Merrin somewhat reluctantly returns his lightsaber to him. It truly is a fascinating weapon, made more so by the person who wields it.
Cal flicks a switch, and the blade comes to life with a now-familiar snap-hiss. Its hum seems to fill the small space they occupy, and the wall it lights up glows a soft purple. “Most Jedi lightsabers were green or blue. Blue was my Master’s color,” Cal says softly, seeming to become momentarily lost in times long past. Then he shakes himself out of it. “It meant he was a guardian, more suited to action. Green meant thoughtful, some people said scholarly. And the Temple Guards, they had yellow, which meant they were Sentinels, and they were both guardians and scholars. Master Windu was the only Jedi I ever saw with a purple lightsaber.”
“And what does purple mean?”
“It means…” Cal takes a deep breath, almost as if he is wrestling with himself. After a long moment, he comes to a decision, and looks up to meet Merrin’s gaze straight on. “It means that the Jedi is...a little closer to the Dark Side sometimes than most other Jedi ever would be, but they don’t let it control them. They don’t let it define them. They’re balanced. I have to stay balanced, especially if I’m wielding two blades. Going to Dathomir, facing my vision again, it helped with that.”
Merrin nods, although his words about the Dark Side, were something that would bear closer examination at a later time. “Malicos’ sabers were red. Yours are more like...a combination between blue and red. He was unbalanced, Dathomir unmade him.” And, sensing where the truth of Cal’s uncertainties lies, she adds, “It did not unmake you. You are far more balanced than he ever could have been.”
At that, Cal snorts in derision. He corrects her, “Just about any Jedi would be more balanced than Malicos.”
And...that brings them straight back to the topic Merrin has just decided to address at a later time. Apparently, that time is now. She considers for a moment, then tosses aside any attempt at tact--sugarcoating words does not come naturally to her, and she and Cal have been unflinchingly honest with each other so far. Now is not the time to change that. So she takes a stab at it.
“Given what you have said about the Dark Side, and what I have heard you and Cere talk about, when you talk about your Order, I wonder if the Jedi really understood balance.”
At that, Cal tenses and flicks off the saber. His brows draw together and there’s a definite edge to his voice when he queries, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Well, Merrin has never been one to flinch at an exchange of words that has the potential to be harsh, and she’s not about to start now. “Dathomir is steeped in darkness,” she says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the galaxy. “But it is really just passion borne of desperation from long ago--do your Jedi understand the difference between the two?”
Cal’s response is immediate. “Passion was forbidden because it led to the Dark Side.”
His answer is predictable, but Merrin nevertheless finds it alarming, considering just what they might be heading into, and what might come after. She thinks, fleetingly, of the unknown children listed in that holocron. Their lives, their futures, truly are at stake here, in more ways than one. Merrin knows what that is like, to be on the wrong end of a cruel fate, and she cannot take the risk that these children might suffer one too, even while being protected by the young man in front of her. Cal and Cere have the potential to be the architects of such a fate even when their intentions are pure, so Merrin knows that she has to try.
“Look at me,” she commands him, and Cal frowns in confusion because he is looking at her. Still, he meets her gaze. It feels as if she is looking into his very soul. Merrin continues, “I have anger within me, and I feel it passionately. My magick,” and here she conjures a small, glowing green mist, allowing it to dance above her fingertips. She keeps herself relaxed, though, because she does not mean to threaten him with it. Cal, at least, goes along with it, understanding she means him no harm. “My magick is tied to my every emotion. By the thinking of your old Jedi Order, I use the Dark Side--do you think I am evil?”
“No.” That, at least, is an easy answer. Merrin has been hurt, yes, and Cal has surely seen her angry, but despite only knowing her for a few days, he knows with every fiber of his being that she does not cause harm purely for her own amusement. She only does what is necessary, even when her anger feeds her the strength to do it. And he knows, he knows , what she is getting at. After all, it’s the exact same thing that’s been hovering in the back of his mind for a long time now. “I,” he swallows, and has to start again. Quietly, so quietly that Merrin might have missed it if she weren’t listening for it, Cal admits, “I’ve been starting to...question...the teachings of the Jedi Order. I think I’ve been questioning it...as far back as Bracca.”
That is a little unexpected, Merrin has to admit as she leans back, slightly startled. She has known from the beginning of their acquaintance--their real acquaintance, after he reached out to her on Dathomir--that Cal is not an ordinary Jedi. He is young, and survived to adulthood years after the collapse of his Order, the only way of life he knew. By his own admission, he is not a typical Jedi, using his abilities in a way that might have alarmed his peers. And, Merrin notes with a hint of warmth, he is completely unapologetic for doing so. Cal may be uncertain at times, and possibly certain at the wrong ones, but Merrin knows, without ever having met another true Jedi, that he is certainly the most balanced of the lot. She keeps her features blank, but on the inside, the thought makes her smile.
Cal, for his part, also leans back, somewhat shaken after the verbal admission of uncertainty that, up until this point, he has been reluctant to admit even to himself, let alone another person. But now that can has been opened, and he can’t put anything back inside. So he continues, “Maybe even before Bracca. During the war, I remember seeing other Padawans, who had just lost their Masters, have to run off to their quarters just so they could grieve.” Because grieving, everyone knew, was not the way of the Jedi. “Those Padawans were just told to let go of their attachments, even though they’d just lost the person closest to them.”
At the time, he had just assumed it was a lesson they had to learn. And then Order 66 happened, his Master died defending him and Prauf, still so new to him and so ignorant of Cal’s true origins, had told him many times that it was okay to grieve for his dead family, that it was okay to cry. And Cal found he had a whole new level of compassion for those now-dead Padawans. And even throughout all his struggles, both on Bracca and then out in the galaxy, he has never once been inclined to shake it.
“That sounds very much like what you have said in the past about the Jedi Order,” Merrin muses. Unknowingly echoing his thoughts, she asks, “You have said that the Jedi were protectors, but how could they have compassion for the galaxy, if they were not allowed passion themselves?”
And that’s the crux of it. Cal is reminded of Malicos, and the Inquisitors, the Fallen Jedi-turned-Sith. Perhaps, deep down, the Jedi did have love, but they were only allowed to love one thing: the Republic, and all that it once stood for. But when that Republic turned on them, without anything or anyone else to love, to balance them out, is it any wonder that so many of them Fell?
Merrin, meanwhile, is still speaking, and Cal quickly refocuses on her. “The Force, as you call it, has both Light and Dark aspects to it, but to the Nightsisters, it simply is, ” she continues, gesturing as if to indicate...everything, the entire galaxy at large? “Too much darkness leads to suffering,” and she would know, “but too much Light leads to too much growth. Which then leads to suffering. It becomes a cycle.”
At that, Cal is unwittingly reminded of the thousands-strong Order before the war...and the sheer size of the Republic, and how it was buckling under its own weight for years before it finally fell. Merrin’s words, sounding so much like an alternate version of an old Jedi mantra, are hitting uncomfortably close to home. Still, he finishes her thought, murmuring, “And you can’t have one without the other...and both the Light and the Dark need each other for balance.”
Cal wonders then, exactly how balanced were the Jedi?
“And?” Merrin prompts him softly.
Cal exhales, and looks up to meet her gaze once more. “You need passion in order to have compassion . Eschewing emotions...doesn’t help. And it didn’t save the Jedi Order.”
And Merrin’s point is made.
Still, though, Merrin pushes forward. There is a reason she started this discussion, after all, and they don’t have much time left. And so she asks him:
“What will you do with the holocron?”
Cal looks down, fiddling with his lightsaber. In truth, he doesn’t have a full answer to that, not yet. “I don’t know,” he finally admits, finally giving voice to the doubt that’s been hovering at the back of his mind ever since the Nightsister before him had first raised her concerns for the children on it, before they even returned to Bogano. But he knows what he has to do, at least for now.
Squaring his shoulders, Cal looks up again, making eye contact and staring deep into her dark brown eyes. “But the first step is getting that holocron away from the Empire.” And there isn’t a trace of uncertainty, only determination in his tone when he declares, “ They are evil. If we don’t get the holocron back, every single child on it is doomed.”
That, at least, is the absolute truth. Cal, Cere, Greez--they have all told her about those who lead the Empire, and those who commanded the forces that led the attack on her world. If there was any doubt in Merrin’s mind, it was banished when she sensed the presence of that Sith, the Inquisitor as Cal called her, and how utterly warped by darkness she was. Regardless of what comes after, getting the holocron back is the first priority.
And Cal, as balanced as he is and as honest as he has once again proven himself to be, is just the person to do it. He doubts himself, though, uncertain as to whether or not he has the strength to accomplish his task. So Merrin, as honest and blunt as she is, simply tells him.
“I am not sure about your Jedi Order, but I have faith in you, Jedi Knight Cal Kestis.”
And at that, Cal smiles. It’s a full smile, too, one Merrin looks forward to seeing often in the future.
“Thank you...Nightsister Merrin.”