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“Ever really hit ya that we don’t actually know anything about the kid we picked up?”
Cere raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
Greez shrugged, eyes ahead despite the fact that the autopilot was on, they were in hyperspace, and he really had no reason to be sitting in the cockpit.
“I mean we know the kid was a Jedi, crash landed on Bracca at the end of the war, worked as a Scrapper ‘til we picked him up.” He looks over at Cere. “What else do we really know?”
Cere opens her mouth to reply, to defend Cal, only to realize that Greez has a point. Cal has never shared any intimate details about himself. He keeps to the engine room unless they’re discussing their next plan or what planet they’re off on and anytime they are planet side, he stays out until he’s satisfied himself with exploration and is certain that they have everything they need.
He eats anything Greez puts in front of him and never complains or express any preferences. He wears the same thing every day and washes the items during his showers. He stays out of their way, keeps his space clean, and generally just keeps to himself.
“I suppose I hadn’t thought about it,” Cere murmured. Oh, but she was certainly thinking about it now. About how Cal doesn’t seem to really trust them, suspicion lacing every word and move he makes, even if she’s sure he doesn’t mean it to be so obvious.
He spoke softly and never made eye-contact, rarely giving his own opinions except when he was telling them which planet they should go to next, and even that was spoken with a hint of a question to the words.
“Think we should be worried about it?” Greez twisted around in his chair, peering in the direction of the engine room where Cal had vanished, upon returning from Zeffo, only taking a few moments to tell them that they should go to Dathomir next.
Cere scowled at him. Greez has been seeking a reason to trust Cal since the second they picked him up from Bracca. Her gaze moved towards the engine room. Then again, he’d been the same way about Cere too. The only difference was that she’d had credits to shove under his nose, essentially just buying his trust.
What did Cal have to give besides a blue bladed lightsaber that at least proved he was a Jedi. Beyond that, though, Cere supposed Greez’s suspicion was warranted, if a bit unfair.
“No,” she decided. “He survived a genocide, Greez, then spent years living on a less than hospitable planet in less than favorable conditions, then two strangers claiming to want to rebuild the Jedi Order picked him up from certain death.” She looks back at Greez. “I don’t think I’d want to share much about myself if I were in that situation either.”
Greez doesn’t look like he believes her, but Cere thinks he just wants a reason to not like Cal, so she doesn’t bother pressing on it. Instead she just gets up and heads back down the hall. Greez had made a good point and Cere is beginning to regret not engaging with the kid more. Reflecting back on her actions, she’s realizing that her plan of action hadn’t been great. Bring a surviving Jedi in on the plan, work together to rebuild the Order and then…don’t ever talk to him unless you’re strategizing or checking in.
Right. Sounds like a great plan.
Cere shook her head and wrapped the back of her knuckles against the doorframe. “Cal?” She asks softly, not wanting to startle him. He’s hunched over the workbench at the back of the room, fiddling with something she can’t see.
His shoulders jump at her voice and he whips around, eyes wide, like a child getting caught doing something they're not meant to.
“Yes? Sorry.” He sets down the object and turns to face her. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, of course. May I come in?” She gestures to the bed and hsi eyes snap over for a split second before returning to her. He’s skittish and on edge and she realizes she’s essentially cornering him.
“Yes.”
He seems to relax a little when she steps to the side and takes a careful seat on the side of the bed. She’s not blocking his exit anymore, but he’d still have to go past her to get out and she can’t imagine he thinks he’ll be faster than her.
He thinks I’m a threat. She realizes. And she hasn’t done much to dissuade him of that thought, has she? He probably thinks I’m using him, too. That I need him to find and access the holocron and then once we find the children, I’ll kick him to the curb.
The thought makes guilt swirl in her stomach but she shakes it out and instead sits up straight.
“I realized we don’t know each other well,” she began. “And I can’t help but feel like that’s my fault. I haven’t done much but make sure we stay on track.”
“It’s important,” Cal replied. “We have to find that holocron before the Empire does.”
But do we? Cere can’t help but ask herself. The Empire doesn’t even know it exists. Or rather, they didn’t know it existed until we started looking for it. But even if they do find it, it’s not like they can use it. It requires a Jedi in order to open and be read.
“Maybe,” she tells Cal instead. “But we’re a team. All of us, Greez and BD-1 included.” The little droid pops up behind Cal’s shoulder and beeps, happy to be included. “We have to be able to trust each other and I don’t think I’ve given you any reason to trust me .”
“You’re a Jedi.”
“I was a Jedi,” she corrected. “And I don’t use the Force anymore. I’ve cut myself off entirely and that’s why I need another Jedi. But Cal, I don’t want you to feel like I’m just using you. Because that isn’t fair and it’s not what I’m trying to do.”
Cal just shrugged. “It’s okay. We have a mission.”
He’s so self-sacrificing that it hurts and at the same time, it’s utterly terrifying because Cere cannot imagine, does not want to imagine, what he’s been through and what he’s survived and what he saw during The Purge to make him feel like everything else is more important than his life.
“We don’t have to just be the mission,” Cere insists, because she thinks they both need to hear it. “I don’t want us to just be the mission. We’re people, Cal, we have our own joys and dislikes and we shouldn't have to shove those things aside, for the sake of the job.”
Cal looks confused. He probably is. He was made a Padawan sooner than he should’ve been because of his psychometry, then thrust into a war then forced to watch clones he trusted turn their blasters on himself and his master.
He doesn’t know anything other than the mission.
“Humor me, Cal,” she says, because she doesn’t think she’s going to get through him any other way. “Tell me about yourself.”
His confusion switches quickly to discomfort. “I uh…I don’t know.” He shrugged, twisting the cuff around his wrist. “There’s…not anything to tell. I mean…I was on Bracca for five years, I was a Scrapper. There isn’t really…I mean, there’s not really anything else to tell.”
It hits Cere right then, how privileged she’s been for the last five years. She’s spent that time mourning her Padawan, hating herself, and wallowing in her guilt. But more importantly, she’s been traveling . She's been to planets, even if she’s just cantina-hopping, she’s gambled and gamed and met people and made enemies.
She’s lived while Cal has been trapped in one place, forced into paid slavery with no way out and a debt so large he’ll never pay it off. Cal has been watched every second of every day by Stormtroopers and has no doubt spent every waking moment wondering if that day was going to be the day he was caught and executed.
He watched his master die and has carried the weight of that for years. And Cere has the audacity to think he has anything he can tell her about himself that doesn’t include what she already knows.
She kicks herself mentally but doesn’t show it. Instead she just smiles and changes the subject.
“Do you have any favorite foods? Something you enjoy eating or that you haven’t had for awhile?”
Cal just shrugged. He’s uncomfortable, scared, wary. He doesn’t underastanad why she’s asking, why she’s suddenly investing interest in him and she hates herself for ignoring him for so long that he thinks he’s her tool and nothing more.
“Anything. I’m not picky.”
She doesn’t think that’s true. “You didn’t have a favorite meal from the Temple that you miss?”
“Not that I remember,” Cal replied. “Once I became a padawan, I didn’t really go back to the Temple.”
Right. The war had robbed a majority of Padawans of their normal education. And Cal had been so young , he probably doesn’t remember much of anything about the Temple at all.
“What about a favorite room?” She’s pushing it, she knows. This needs to be the last quesiton she asks and then she needs to leave him alone. “Was there anywhere in the Temple that you can remember enjoying?”
Cal drops his gaze and tugs at the cuff. She’s pushed him past his comfort zone. She needs to stop, leave, leave him alone. She shouldn't have let their relationship fail to form to begin with.
But just as she’s planning to stand and head back to the cockpit, Cal speaks so softly she has to strain to hear him. It’s clear he’s deep in memory, as he speaks, and she can tell he isn’t entirely speaking to her.
“The Room of A Thousand Fountains.” There’s a small smile on his face. Something soft yet sorrowful. “It was rarely full. I liked the sound. Of the water. It was peaceful. I always found it easiest to meditate there. I don’t like silence.”
Cere is beginning to understand why she picked the engine room, even when she offered him one of the others. It’s the loudest room on the ship. The others, being actual bedrooms, have special durasteel built in to keep out almost all sounds outside the room.
“I always liked that room,” she tells him. He gives her a strained smile and she knows she’s pushed him past his comfort level with her. Standing, she adds, “I’m going to talk to Greez about getting some dinner started. Maybe an hour or two?”
“Sure. Thank you.”
She nods and heads out of the room, taking a few deep breaths as she goes.
“Hey Greez?” She calls. “What are you planning for dinner?”
…………………
Cal is close with Merrin in a way that’s…weird. Weird because he’s been with Greez and Cere longer, yet he acts as though he and Merrin have known each other for ages. They huddle together in the engine room, both tense and keeping a careful distance from one another as they speak in hushed voices.
They stay close as they move through the ship, only separating when one is using the ‘fresher or sleeping. But even then, Cere has found Cal curled up on the floor next to the bed in the engine room and Merrin fast asleep on the mattress.
“She’s weird, right?” Greez asked, after the two had gone to bed. “I get she’s a Nightsister but she’s weird , right?”
Cere just rolls her eyes. “She watched her sisters die, Greez, then spent years trapped on that planet with no way out, all alone.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she’s traumatized .”
“And the kid is the one to help with that?”
“He’s the first one to show her any kindness in years. She talked about Malicos, right? The fallen Jedi? It doesn’t sound like he was particularly helpful towards her and he certainly wasn’t warm and inviting.”
“You’re calling Cal warm and inviting?”
“I’m calling Cal kind and willing to listen,” Cere corrected. “He understands her in a way we–”
She cuts herself off abruptly as pieces begin sliding into place and she suddenly understands. She had thought it was weird at first too, how Cal seemed to open up with Merrin. Seemed to smile more, have more confidence, and was out of his room more often.
She thought it was just because of having someone closer to his age but now…now Cere is realizing she was wrong. Because yes, Merrin is around his age, but more than that she’s spent the last five years living a life all too similar to his .
Merrin was trapped on Dathomir with no way out for five years and Cal was trapped on Bracca. Merrin watched her sisters fall before her, the only survivor, and Cal’s master died to save him. Merrin has lived on her own with no way of knowing what was coming. Cal has been a paid slave whose only hope was that today would not be the day he would be found out.
They’re alike and they know it and…and Cal is opening up to Merrin because she might not be a Jeid but she can understand what he’s been through more than Cere can. Yes, she and Cal both survived The Purge and are some of the very few—if not the only—Jedi remaining in the galaxy, but that’s about where their similarities end.
Cere traveled. Cal worked. Merrin survived. Cal existed.
Cere is never going to be able to get as close to Cal as she wishes she could. Merrin can.
“They’re the same,” Cere tells Greez. “No one understands what they went through better than them.”
Greez eyes her. “You survived too.”
“I did. But they’re the same in more than just survival , Greez. I made associates, relations, and met you . They had no one other than themselves. They were children who watched someone close to them die and that is something they will carry for the rest of their lives.” She eyes him. “I can’t ever relate to that. Not really. Not when the closest person I lost is still alive.”
Greez just grunted. “I suppose that’s true,” he muttered. “Alright then. As long as she doesn’t curse me in my sleep, I guess she can stay.”
Cere nodded and smiled, though the expression fell quickly. She’s happy Cal is opening up, relaxing, finding someone he can grow close to and confide in.
She still can’t help but wish it were her instead.