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The first thing Cal did on Bracca, after— after, after, after the other things he needed to do, the things with the escape pod — was tear his obi into strips and wrap his hands in them. Almost gloves, which he needed desperately, after he fell out onto the fields of scrap and caught himself on the bad memory of a burning ship.
His shields were usually better, but after the past hour they were— well. They were not.
He thought, at the time, that was the worst it was going to get. Unshielded and falling from one shipwreck into the memory of another one. Ripping the clothes off his back to give himself gloves. That must be the low point.
Cal was naive, more than anything. He stole himself real gloves, and he learned— how to be cold, how to be hungry, how to be alone— and he adapted. He did not die. They did not catch him.
And now he was going to join the Guild. Which should have made his life easier. Better pay and a stable place to live. Less hunger.
Until— needles, jabbing his skin, his own small pain magnified with the echoes of the small pains of hundreds of others, how tired the man holding the needle was, how much he wanted to leave this planet and this job. And then it would leave him, tear itself out of him, a reprieve for a fraction of a millisecond, until it dug back into him again. Over and over and over.
Cal felt echoes through touch. Right then, he heard screams.
“Don’t throw up on me, kid,” said the man holding the tattoo gun. “What, you squeamish? You scared of needles?”
Cal wasn’t. But he could see, through epileptic flashes, there and gone, there and gone, that this man dealt with people who were before. Damn-scappers-not-scared-of-heights-can’t-handle-some-pinpricks-hate-them-hate-this—
Cal tasted it on his tongue every time the needle went back into him. It felt like the needle was digging into some abstract concept of his Force Signature, rather than his skin. This was not ink into dermis, this was the pain of others into the fabric of his soul, into what was left of his heart. He had so little of his heart left. He had so little of him untouched and this was destroying it.
He should have considered this. He should have thought about it.
“Kid,” said the Company Tattooer. “Seriously, are you alright?”
Cal’s throat clicked. He blinked, though he couldn’t see properly.
“We can just stop, kid. You don’t need to—”
“No.” He couldn’t afford to not be a part of the Guild, now that he was old enough. You couldn’t survive without joining one, not really. Not unless you had some incredibly specialized skill no one else had. And Cal certainly didn’t have that— at least, not that he was able to show anybody.
And, to be part of the guild, you needed the tat. No exceptions, at least not for species with skin able to be tattooed.
The tattooer was holding his wrist and Cal wanted to beg him to let go of his skin, to hold him by the sleeve or the glove or anything, really, that meant the mental barrage of constant input let up for a moment.
“Don’t stop,” Cal said. He forced his voice into something that sounded halfway calm and lied on the spot. “I just. Have a nerve condition. This kinda pain hurts more. Don’t mind me.”
The man looked at him, and then half-scoffed. “Whatever you say, kid.” And went back to tattooing the thick, dark shape onto his forearm.
In-out-in-out-in-out. Hundreds of tiny micro-moments of pain, together in a chorus. Flashes of other people’s lives. Left-behind-wives and husbands, homes destroyed by war, murder done by their own hands, aching hunger. And then sudden moments of joy that somehow hurt more, burning and unexpected; a first-born daughter, a favorite meal, a safe and warm place to rest. They all hit him in short, violent jabs.
Before he was able to find and steal good-quality gloves, Cal walked around with his hands in his pockets. His shields still not back to where they should be, surrounded by warships and other places people died and killed in. His own trauma constantly bubbling right under the surface.
He’d rather go back to that, he thought, suddenly and irrationally, than endure any more of this.
But Cal endured it. Later, he couldn’t remember how, but he did it. And the Company Tattooer sent him away under an hour later, with a strange look and a tube of antibiotic cream.
That night, Cal lay on his side, his arm sprawled out in front of him. He could make out the dark shape of the Company logo on his flesh. Without really thinking about it, he reached out and brushed his fingers over the too-tender skin.
For a moment, he got that same awful flash — pain in feedback, higher and higher and louder and louder, embedded in where the tattooer touched his skin, where the ink had touched the gun.
Cal did not cry, anymore, as a rule. But when he tapped his own arm again and the same feeling rose, he felt very, very close to it. It was imprinted into him, now. He'd never get away from it.
The next day, a foreman droid scanned the tattoo— information on his skillset, his rate of pay, jobs he’d done in the past.
Being part of the Guild meant better wages. Access to better housing. Less hunger, less cold. Less chances someone would recognize him for what he was.
Cal pulled his sleeves down over his forearms, adjusted his gloves, and pretended it was worth it.
.
Years later, on the Mantis, Cal pulled the ties tight on a pair of bracers with his teeth. He extended his arm a few times, testing the fit.
“Do you have a tattoo?” Cere asked, and Cal nearly jumped out of his skin. He hadn’t realized she’d come in.
Her piercing eyes were fixed on the ink she could barely see, curling from under the bracer.
“Yeah,” said Cal. He turned the bracer so the tattoo was covered. No risk of him touching it by mistake. “Company tattoo. For the Scrappers Guild. It was a requirement that we have one.”
Cere just looked at him, brows raised.
Cal turned away, focused on packing his bag. “They scanned them. To keep track of us. What jobs we took, what pay we were owed, specialized skills, things like that.”
“That,” said Cere, “must have been very painful.”
Cal said nothing.
“Tattooing has been known to interact badly with psychometry. Unless performed by another Jedi, or the Kiffar.”
Cal twitched his shoulders in something that could generously be called a shrug. He stood, swung his bag onto his shoulder, turned back towards the door. His eyes were cast somewhere near her feet.
The tattoo was covered by the bracer, and his jacket sleeve. Cal paused in front of her, waiting for her to move and let him slip past.
Instead, she sighed. She reached up and slid her hands through his hair, something very old and sad in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Cere, “that I didn’t find you sooner.”
Cal opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Cere didn’t seem to expect an answer.
She patted him firmly on the shoulder, and smiled. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah.”
She turned, and Cal slipped by her as they went to join the rest of the crew.