Chapter Text
He doesn’t have a policy not to take orders from witches, because he’s never needed one before now.
A witch stands with him in the cockpit of the Mantis, and she’s bent over the comms with the same tension in her posture as exists in his grip on the helm, and her order snaps clear through the open air between them, as she demands, “Bring us low over the water, open the hatch. Something has gone wrong.”
The urge to snap back with some sarcastic rejoinder dies a bitter death on Greez’s tongue, because the last thing Cal had asked of him was to be ready at the surface—but Greez expected that to mean one of the exposed towers of the underwater base that dot the choppy surface, and there’s been no sound nor sight of him since. Cere is gone. Cal had sounded desperate and frightened. Merrin sounds certain and assured, and before he knows what he’s doing, Greez is dropping his ship down to the water, as close as he dares.
He can’t leave the controls, not hovering mere meters over the surface of the ocean’s swells, but he risks a glance over his shoulder as Merrin strides out of the cockpit and towards the hatch, sickly green energy already crackling around her. “I must drop the veil that hides the ship,” she cautions, her voice rising over the rumble of the Mantis’ protesting engines and the roar of the ocean below. “You will be exposed, but not for long. I feel them—both of them—beneath the waves and rising, but it is too far to swim, and a terrible power waits to pull them back. I go to help. Be ready.”
Before Greez can ask what she plans to do, the Mantis’ controls buck and twist beneath his hands as a particularly tall swell ghosts the bottom of her rudder, and he has to fight to keep her level. Glancing back again, he can see Merrin has stumbled with the sudden movement of the ship, and as she struggles to her feet, both of her hands stretch out behind her, as the sickly green energy starts to radiate from her spine. A long, skeletal tether of manifest light stretches out at her back, invisibly locked to a central point almost too bright to look at—-and with a running leap towards the hatch, she vanishes through it and disappears from his sight.
Greez swears, his heart hammering out of his chest and his hands sweating where they clutch at the controls. He wrestles internally with the decision, before giving in and starting to flick switches and adjust dials, setting the auto pilot, muttering under his breath to his ship as he does so, “You hold steady, baby, you hear? You and me, we gotta get our crew through this, and we’re worth nothing to nobody if we don’t. We got this, right? We got this. We’re gonna get ‘em.”
He releases the helm and his hands hold poised over it for a breathless moment, before it starts to twitch and adjust of its own accord, stabilizing. No one’s firing on them (yet), but it’s only a matter of time. Greez pats the forward console, once, almost prayerful, and then heaves himself out of his seat, to stagger through the cockpit and catch two hands on the edge of the hatch, as he leans to peer down the gangplank into the depths of the sea below.
He sees no sign of his crew, only the point at which the line of green light pierces the water, straight and taut and unaffected by the rise and fall of the waves. He’s standing close to it now, and if he stares too long, he starts to see shapes twisting and writhing within it, bony hands and ropy sinew, flesh woven and knotted into a spectral rope. If this is the Force, it’s an expression of it that he hates and can’t even begin to fathom, something dark and twisted and wrong. Greez shakes himself and forces his gaze away, leaning forward, desperately trying to see something moving beneath the surface of the water.
There’s nothing. The ocean is deep, the sort of depth that scares him in a way the infinite expanse of space could never. Greez can see the distant structures of the Imperial base, can see lights flashing red through the windows of exposed corridors, but the sea keeps the secrets the Empire most wishes to hide. Somehow he doesn’t know how long Merrin’s been gone—only moments, surely, but the time stretches out between every thundering beat of his heart, and for the first time he wonders how long it’ll be before he knows he has to fly back alone.
An alarm begins to blare in the cockpit, the scanners warning of tie fighters scrambling from the base on the distant shore. Greez looks up to the sky with dread writhing through him, as familiar black shapes start to erupt from the towering structure. His fingers clench on the side of the doorway, biting deep against the alloyed metal as his teeth draw blood from a bitten lip. “C’mon, witch,” he breathes, almost growling. “We did our bit, now pull this off and I won’t say a wrong word about you being on my ship ever, ever again.”
As if in response, the glowing tether behind him suddenly jerks so tight that the Mantis itself is pulled towards the waves, and he yells and nearly slips onto the salt slicked gangplank. Beside him, the spectral chain of energy starts to roll slowly backward, winding back into some invisible source, as ghostly voices chant with a myriad voice that sounds like Merrin’s, drawing the line back in. It draws faster and faster and Greez watches in horrified fascination, until there’s a rising burst of green light at the surface and the Nightsister herself reappears, glowing like a beacon as though lit from within, with one hand on each of Greez’s crewmates, only a few meters away. He can’t see her eyes, only the green glow that blazes from them, but she looks straight at him and for a moment her expression seems almost triumphant.
“Come!” she shouts over the sound of the waves and the wind and the engine, but Greez is already moving, slamming a hand into a control panel near the door to extend the gangplank further, until its forward edge plunges into the water, dipping up and down with the waves. He slips and scrambles down the gangplank, some idle, disconnected corner of his brain wondering how the hell Cal manages to keep his feet beneath him when running up and along walls, or across narrow beams and bars between chasms that drop down into apparent nothingness. Adrenaline must be a factor, because as he reaches the end of the gangplank, he manages to catch a foothold on the ridges of its surface and reach out towards his crew with as many hands as he can spare.
“Take him!” Merrin yells, spitting and spluttering through a mouth of seawater. She has an arm looped around Cere’s chest, and a tight hold keeps the older woman pressed against her—but only a hand on Cal, and he floats limply, facedown on the surface, with BD-1 clinging to him and shrilling frantically in the incomprehensible beeps and trills of panicked binary. Overhead, the line of greenish light is beginning to flicker and fade, and Greez realizes Merrin’s starting to slip herself, and her voice cracks slightly as she calls again, “I have Cere, get Cal!”
“Right! Right, got him!” Greez yells back, and strains, stretching forward to get a hand on the back of Cal’s jacket. The kid’s overall sense of “style” tends towards the ruggedly utilitarian, all buckles and belts and assorted straps, at least half of his daily wardrobe is actually usable tools and hardware—but Greez swears never to tease him for it again, when he manages to snag his fingers beneath a thick band of leather that crosses between Cal’s shoulders and catches solidly beneath his arms, strong enough to take the whole dead weight of him.
“C’mon, kid.” With a grunt of effort, Greez seizes hold with both his left hands, and drags the Jedi bodily through the icy swell of the water, meeting resistance as soon as Cal’s shoulders hit the surface of the ramp.
Several things happen at once. Red blaster fire begins to rain from the sky, peppering the surface of the ocean and glancing off the Mantis’ meager, cursory shielding. Greez struggles at the end of the gangplank. There’s another surge of green light and Merrin rises from the water, carrying Cere. It’s half-leap, half-flight as she clears the length of the narrow platform, hauling the older woman inside and to safety. Cal does nothing, completely unresponsive as Greez summons some hidden reserve of desperate strength, and drags him the rest of the way up the ramp at a waddling run. He has no choice but to drop him, as gently as he can, just inside the tightly closed and sealed hatch, beside a slowly stirring and groaning Cere and a panting, gasping Merrin—as he bolts for the cockpit to get them the hell outta dodge.
All four hands come into play, skittering and bouncing between switches and dials and controls, and the Mantis rises into the air, rolling away from barrages of fighter fire as she does so, her engines straining as he pushes her as fast as he can out of the planet’s atmosphere. He can feel the Mantis shuddering beneath his hands, and mutters praise and apologies and promises to make it up to her beneath his breath in approximately equal measure.
The internal stabilizers shriek another alarm in indignant protest, joining a whole chorus of other wailing sirens and shrieking alarms and squalling klaxons, informing him of incoming fire, of approaching vessels, of the fact that they have no hyperspace clearance as he configures an emergency jump. He ignores all of it, somehow possessed of a stalwart, internal calm as he’s asked to do the only thing he’s ever truly been good at—piloting his ship for life or death stakes, threading a needle through to the other side of the galaxy, on to dubious hope and safety.
“Hold on!” he yells over his shoulder, grim in the awareness that over half of the people receiving the instruction are in no state to follow it, and hoping no harm comes to them as a result. His hand finds the hyperdrive throttle, his palm squeezing briefly, affectionately against it—and then punches forward, as the entire universe blurs past into a wash of blue-shifted light.
Everything stills.
The alarms continue to blare, but Greez disengages them one by one, and then slides shakily out of his seat and back towards the cabin, slow and stumbling on weak and watery knees at first, but with his step quickening as he passes the holotable and sees the little tableau that waits beyond.
Green energy still sizzles and crackles around Merrin, but it’s fading, and she kneels on the floor, dripping ocean water from her deep red robes to spark and steam as it falls through the grating onto the machinery and shipworks beneath her. She breathes heavily, staring into nothing with her gaze unfocused, dazed from the exertion. Cere is up, but has only risen as far as her knees to crawl towards Cal, with his rebreather clenched in one hand and the other clutching his shoulder, so tight that her fingertips bite through the fabric of his jumpsuit, probably bruising the flesh beneath.
And Cal…
The kid still lies where Greez had to leave him, crumpled on his side, only just within the hatch, where the floor slopes down to connect with the gangplank. BD-1 perches protectively on his shoulder, plaintively beeping a tiny, helpless refrain. Greez doesn’t know much binary, but he recognizes this much, a soft litany desperately repeating over and over—help. help. help. It’s plain to see why.
Cal’s soaked through. The perpetual grease stains on his hands fail to mask the fact that his fingertips have gone blueish-gray, the same shade that tints his lips and shadows his eyes, standing out in stark relief against his skin, usually flushed and freckled from the wind or the sun or exertion, now gone ashen pale. A growing patch of damp pools beneath him, and in the minutiae of horror as the moment creeps past, Greez can see water draining slowly from his nose, the corner of slightly parted lips where his jaw hangs slack, but Cal doesn’t cough or choke trying to breathe past it. He just lies there, empty and still, somehow almost peaceful—but at the same time, entirely too young to die like this.
It’s a long, awful moment and Greez feels himself go ice cold from the inside out, frozen by the realization.
“Cal.” Cere’s voice is hoarse as she breaks the silence to say his name, halfway between a whisper and a sob, and her hand shakes his shoulder roughly. Her fingers clench tighter when he doesn’t react, twisting up a handful of fabric. Her eyes have gone wide and wild with something Greez has never seen from her before, some new, strange ferocity that he finds terrifying and powerfully tragic all at once. Her voice runs away from her, splinters of emotion breaking through her words as she pleads with the boy she knighted. “No, Cal, don’t do this. Not for me. Not for me, Cal, don’t. I don’t deserve it; I don’t want it. I’ve already paid this price once. Not both of you in the same hour, not like this. I was never your master, you never owed me this. Cal, please, stop.”
Standing at his full height, Greez is only a few inches taller than Cere is, kneeling, and he feels smaller still when he drops to his knees, the pair of them on opposite sides of the boy they spent so long searching for, and were so unbelievably lucky to discover. Cere still grasps his shoulder, her breathing ragged and harsh, and Greez reaches over to gently shove Cal from his side onto his back, to lean in close and search for some sign of life he doesn’t truly expect to find. He doesn’t dare hope they could get lucky again.
They don’t.
When Cal slumps onto his back, BD-1 leaps from his shoulder with an alarmed little trill, and Greez discovers the wound in his side, an awful, circular burn the size of his fist that could’ve only come from one weapon.
The blade’s burned clear through the armored rigger’s chest plate he wears, seared through the fabric of his coverall beneath, and pierced the flesh of his side. The place where the light saber hit him has carved a deep channel along the length of his ribcage, and the flesh glistens a wet, glossy red—at least, where it hasn’t been blistered and cauterized into a crusty, scorched black. Water seeps from here, too, dripping down his bare skin beneath his sodden clothes, mingling with dark, sluggishly coagulating blood. Greez feels sick to see the yellowish-white flash of bone, the curve of a rib clearly visible beneath exposed muscle, and he turns his face away.
He has to steel himself to turn back, and when he does, his hand comes up to gently catch Cal’s jaw, feeling the coldness in him, beyond just the damp still clinging to his skin. His own breathing hitches, grief already choking in his throat, and he shakes his head to himself. At Cal’s side, Cere lets out a low, moaning sob, and bows her forehead to rest against the fist that clutches his shoulder, weeping softly. The other hand clenches around the rebreather until it cracks with the force of her grip.
It’s hard to believe it ends here, like this. When Greez has seen the young Jedi carve his way through platoons of Stormtroopers, square off against AT-STs, and charge into the dark heart of one of the Empire’s most heinous prisons and then back out again, with the fates of every Force-sensitive child in the galaxy in his hands—it’s not fair to see what it’s cost him. He deserved better than this.
“He’s not gone.”
Merrin gasps this statement from where she still sits, half-collapsed on the cabin floor, bedraggled and soaked, but recovering. Her voice strengthens, rings louder as she insists. “Not gone. Feel for him, Jedi, there’s no fading echo of him yet. Falling, not fallen. He bleeds, does he not? The dead don’t bleed. Believe me, I know. Call him back. He’ll come. But you must call, or he won’t know the way. Help him.”
Cere jerks upright, almost mechanically. Her hand loosens where it clutches at Cal’s shoulder, she tosses the rebreather aside to clatter on the deck. She shuffles on her knees, adjusts her position. Her hands come together, one atop the other, her fingers interlacing over his heart. Over her shoulder, Greez watches Merrin halfway begin to rise, as the green light behind her eyes starts to shine again, resonating with whatever Cere’s doing. Fumbling, his gaze transfixed on the two women, his two right hands search for and find Cal’s left, gathering it up and squeezing his fingers, rather uselessly trying to rub some warmth back into them. He deludes himself that he feels a feeble twitch between his palms, and squeezes tighter.
Cere closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, holding it within her lungs. She draws herself up, her spine straightening like a steel rod, and then exhales slowly, at the same time she leans her weight forward, putting steady pressure on Cal’s chest.
More water pours from his nose and mouth, his jaw drops slightly with something that sounds almost like a sigh. Emboldened, Cere shifts her weight again and this time seizes two straps on Cal’s shirtfront, and with a grunt of effort heaves him limply upright, halfway into a sitting position. Automatically, with a synchronicity they’ve gained over their months of flying together, Greez moves to catch the kid’s weight against his shoulder, as Cere lets him fall gently back, and lays her hands over his chest again.
“Come on, Cal. Come back,” she murmurs, and this time she keeps her eyes open as she draws another breath, her hands glowing faintly white as they gently pull Cal’s chest outward along with them.
“Mind you don’t yank his ribcage out,” Merrin warns, unnecessarily. Greez had not realized that was a possibility in this operation. “That would not help him. Carefully.”
It’s a delicate, subtle use of the Force, and this close to it, Greez almost swears he can feel it too. As Cere presses her hands carefully against Cal’s chest again, this time Greez hears it, a shuddering exhale of breath, and then the stale air of the Mantis finally catches in his lungs and the kid gasps of his own accord, and starts to cough, choking feebly, but struggling his way back to breathing on his own.
“Ha!” Greez crows in triumph, at the same time that BD-1 starts to jump and bounce on his actuators, beeping out absolute euphoric nonsense, his jets firing little pneumatic bursts of joy, as he scampers closer and butts his head insistently against Cal’s elbow, clumsily trying to help.
“Easy!” Cere cautions sternly, still helping Cal to breathe. He isn’t anywhere near conscious, and it’s a weak, laboured process, and Greez can feel the effort it costs him, feels Cal’s whole body start to shiver as the chill of near death cedes to the chill of hypothermia. Cere’s tone softens slightly, but she still scolds the droid, “Gentle with him, BD, he’s very, very hurt.”
BD-1 gives a horrified little chirp of mortified apology at the reprimand and shrinks away, skittering over to cower next to Greez, while his camera lens moves nervously in and out of focus. There’s a little click and the empty hiss of his total lack of stim cartridges, supply already spent in getting Cal through the Imperial Base, and then a forlorn whistle of helplessness. Greez feels a pang of sympathy he doesn’t usually waste on non-organics, with the exception of his ship. It’s only then he notices the cracks and dents that mar the droid’s body, some indication that he’s been through a small hell of his own. Greez spares a moment to reach for Cal’s wrist, picking his hand up and bringing it over to rest atop BD-1’s casing. The droid beeps a soft thank you and settles beneath the weight of his master’s palm.
“The bleeding will only worsen as he warms up,” Merrin observes, standing behind Cere now, peering over to watch. “On Dathomir I would have herbs and powders to help stop it, but I do not know what means the wider galaxy has to offer. If there is anything to fetch, tell me where and I will fetch it.”
“Medkit in the galley,” Greez answers, distracted. True to Merrin’s prediction, blood is already starting to ooze from the wound again in earnest, and he chews his lower lip in concern. “Doesn’t have much that’ll patch this up, though, it’s meant for cantina scraps and light scuffling, not being perforated by the Sith. And I’ve been too old and wise to need it for a good long while.”
“Better than nothing.” Cere slowly regains mastery of herself, and her tone steadies, even as she cautiously takes her hands from Cal’s chest, watches it slowly rise and then softly fall for a few critical seconds before she’s satisfied. The gesture is idle, but infinitely tender, when she reaches out to absently brush Cal’s hair from his forehead, brush a thumb over his closed eyes to wipe the water from his eyelashes. “It’ll at least make him more comfortable ‘til we can find him some real help. If there’s anywhere safe enough for us to try and find help.” At this she glances to Greez with a raised eyebrow, and gets a crooked grin in response.
“I know some places. Few of ‘em are even halfway decent. But seems to me he’s tired and cold just as much as he’s hurt right now, and that much we can help with. Poor kid.”
Cere nods, and a shadow of deep sadness crosses her face, somber and sorrowful. She sounds wearied to the bone herself, as she says, “I don’t know if he even realizes what he’s just faced. He might’ve felt it, but I don’t know if he could understand it. I hope he doesn’t. I’m afraid one day he will.”
This is one of those big, existential Jedi-type fears, and Greez doesn’t bother trying to get his head around it. In a strictly practical sense, Cal outweighs him at least threefold, and the weight of his torso leaning against Greez’s shoulder is starting to be a bit much. “Can we get him to bed?” he asks, glancing between Cere and Merrin, who’s returned with a dusty white box in hand, wrinkling her nose at the ship’s rarely-used—before now rarely needed—medkit. “You ladies think you can shift him? I’ve gotta go dig out some blankets, see if any of the heat packs I’ve got are still good.”
“We have him, Greez. Thank you.”
Greez nods, clears his throat gruffly, and helps Cere get one of Cal’s arms around her shoulders, while Merrin steps in to assist, handing off the medkit as she does so. He takes it and turns away, shakiness returning to his limbs as he crosses the cabin, heading for his own quarters.
Inside he finds blankets, roots through a footlocker for a package of chemical heat packs he won gambling with a trader from Hoth years and years ago, but when he breaks one open, nothing happens, the chemical reaction long since spent. He tosses it aside, irritated, and gathers his blankets and the med kit back up.
He rejoins the rest of his crew in the shadowed little bunk back near the engine, where Cere and Merrin have gotten Cal settled. BD-1 has placed himself as near as he can get without interfering. Cere sits at the foot of the bunk with a hand resting idly on Cal’s ankle, a point of contact that she seems to maintain for her own reassurance, as much as his. Merrin kneels at the bedside, gingerly evaluating the wound in his side. Greez makes a mental note to do better for the kid, to find some way to make him a better place aboard the Mantis, somewhere safer and quieter. At least it’s warm back here, and he hands Cere the blankets, opens the medkit and starts to rifle through it for bandages, pain killers, anything else that might help.
“Your light sabers are barbaric,” Merrin announces, wincing as a breath hisses through her teeth at the sight of the gouge carved in Cal’s side. She shoots an irritated glance at Cere, as though it’s her fault. She only shrugs in response.
“War makes monsters of us all,” she answers, and then huffs a softly affectionate laugh, patting Cal’s ankle. “Except him.”
“So far,” Merrin responds darkly, and holds out a hand to Greez. “What do you have that will clean this?”
The answer is a regrettable “not much”, and Greez paws through the contents of the medkit, coming up with supplies few and meager. An expired tube of bacta with something purple and sticky growing out of its applicator. Stims that glow a strange orange colour instead of their usual reassuring green. Yellowed bandages. A note that says buy new medkit. “Uhh…well, see, the thing is, it eventually came to be the time in my life when flight made a lot more sense than fight, and so this thing hasn’t seen a lotta action over the past few rotations. Look, I’ll get us somewhere where we can get him some help.” He pauses, and adds, “And buy a new medkit.”
Merrin sighs and plucks the yellowed bandages from the kit, wadding them into a more appropriate shape and packing them tight into the open wound, ignoring the way Cal gasps and feebly stirs. Green sparks of her strange Force magic glitter around her fingers, and in response the material forms and seals to the edges of the gash in his side—and immediately begins to tint red as it soaks up his blood. “This won’t hold long,” she cautions. “But hopefully long enough to find better.”
Greez nods. “I think we wanna stay in hyperspace a while longer, make sure we’re in the clear—but then we’ll go somewhere with real medics. Somewhere safe.”
“If there is such a place. Move now.”
“Right.” Greez steps aside, abashed, as Merrin rises to her feet and addresses Cere.
“Now your turn. Come out of here, let me see you. You are not dragged halfway-drowned out of such a nightmare without causing concern.”
“I’m fine,” Cere responds and automatically shifts to sit a little closer to Cal, protective. “I’ll stay here.”
Merrin gains further points in Greez’s books when she doesn’t take that for an answer, and instead folds her arms and cocks her hip slightly, challenging. “No. Greez will stay. I will rephrase. Cal does not nearly kill himself to haul you up from the bottom of the ocean for me not to be sure you are well. For his sake.”
There’s a long moment of silent conflict between the pair of them, and Greez braces himself for Cere’s resistance, but instead she surprises him, sighing softly and nodding her acquiescence. “Fine.”
“Thank you.” And then, more gently, as she holds out a hand to help the older woman to her feet, “Captain Greez will stay with him. He is safe. Come.”
Greez and Cere share a wry, brief look and he gives her a nod he hopes is reassuring. Cere accepts Merrin’s offered hand and comes to her feet with a faint groan, wincing as she presses a hand against her lower back. “Haven’t done any of that in ages,” she grumbles, and manages not to glance back at Cal as she permits Merrin to help her down the hallway.
Instead, it’s the Nightsister who looks back—but not at Cal. Greez meets her gaze for a fraction of a moment, long enough for a nod of mutual respect to pass between them. Inwardly, he swears never to call her a witch again.
And then he’s left alone in the engine room, with only Cal and BD-1 for company.
A deep, bone-aching weariness washes over him, all the energy and anxiety spent over the past hour starting to add up and seep into him. Greez heaves a sigh and brings himself to the foot of the bunk, boosting himself up to sit at the edge.
Like Cere, he finds himself automatically resting a hand on Cal’s knee, just because it seems necessary to make the gesture. Small, comforting, just so he knows—hopefully senses somehow—that he’s not alone, that he’s safe and cared for. Greez takes a deep, steadying breath and closes his eyes, leaning against the narrow wall of the alcove in which the bunk, and allowing himself to rest.
He drifts, drowsing, for maybe longer than he intends to, until a booted foot twitches and kicks him in the small of his back. Greez grunts, annoyed at being woken, before he remembers where he is and jolts awake with a start, sliding off the edge of the bunk and turning to hover anxiously beside Cal, whose breathing has quickened slightly as he stirs, still flat on his back, but moving again. There’s a thud of weight on his shoulder as BD-1 scrambles up for a better view, chirruping anxiously as Greez leans over, puts a hand on Cal’s shoulder to shake him awake.
“Hey.”
Cal’s eyelids flicker slightly in response, but don’t open. His voice catches along with his breath in a soft, effortful groan, and Greez seizes his shoulder, trying to be gentle, even as excitement wells up inside him.
“Hey! Hey, kid. Cal. Cal!”
A pair of unfocused green eyes finally open, and Greez knows there are better faces than his to be seen. But he doesn’t care.
It’s the end of his charter, the fulfillment of his contract. He’s been paid in full already, and what happens now is just a bonus he wants for himself—to be the one who gets to tell the kid that he did it.