Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eleventh Brother is hunting.

His prey is elusive. Evasive. Elegant, he dares to say. The echoes the man leaves behind give nothing away except an awareness he’s being tracked. They leave a trail like blood through the marketplace – lose-lose-lose, hide-hide-hide, how-how-how-how – and he followed that trail from Birren’s moon he found them on originally, also in a marketplace near the stalls the fruits and vegetables and candlewick blossom bouquets, to the next planet over, to the next sector, to the last waystation moon before the hyperspace route splits, to here on Halais in another marketplace filled to the brim with sapients. A fine place to lose a tail, if that tail wasn’t Eleventh Brother.

He’s no fool to think this is his prey’s last stop, not when he’s come so far to shake Eleventh, and he finds that invigorating. For someone to notice and to elude him so well he’s not even sure what the man looks like, and then drag him all the way out here – the Jedi is hiding something. No. Is protecting something, someone. And he is so curious as to what it could be.

Here, no one recognizes him as an Imperial let alone an Inquisitor, which is exactly how he likes it. It gives him the freedom to hunt without everyone’s fear-disdain-anger clogging up the air and distracting him. It lets him…wander at his leisure. Which he does now. For all that he’s step in step with this Jedi, he can’t help but be distracted by the sights and sounds and smells. Vendors hand him goods for credits without inflating the price or him threatening them with bogus sanctions. His left glove leaves his fingers bare, and they grow sticky with a purple-tinged sweet glaze on a baked bun he’s been savoring for an hour as he weaves through the crowd.

He has a cloak pulled over his head, the bulk of the fabric hiding his armor and the insignias that mark him as Imperial property, but he’s forgone his helmet in favor a mask that covers the lower half of his face when he’s not taking a small bite of a pastry he should’ve finished already. He looks like any random bounty hunter scrounging for credits by hunting on some useless planet. How the Jedi was able to sense him and run before Eleventh ever got a look, he’ll never know, but he won’t complain. This is the most fun he’s had tracking someone since that padawan gave Second and Ninth the slip years ago and he got assigned the hunt in their place.

Though, there does come a point where it becomes less fun and more annoying.

Right around when he finishes his pastry is when that happens. He sucks on his fingers for the last bit of glaze, pausing in the shadows to scan the crowd a little more closely. Emotions are high – some sort of festival starts tomorrow – and it makes his head hurt. A couple shout at each other next to a stall selling jewelry. A group of young ones giggle over something hidden among them. A little girl cries big heaving sobs as a woman tries to comfort her. That one starts a chain reaction. The little girl cries, the woman’s distress rises, and sympathy catches from one person to the next and the next and the next. Even Eleventh feels it, a twist in his chest, the knee-jerk reaction to go over and smile and ask how can I help like he’s ever been able to help at all.

(He used to. He used to a long time ago. He wants to again.)

He knows the girl would take one look at him, with the gleaming yellow eyes and the scars and the Darkness dripping off him like sewage and for all that she can’t feel it, doesn’t know, she would scream. Scream in fear, in disgust, cower away like she should. He shakes his head. Helping. Trusting. Those were the old days, the days when the Dark was just a nightmare and not something that could walk up to you in the daylight. Back when it was Jedi who would offer a helping hand, and people would trust them enough to take it.

But they were traitors it turns out, why trust them at all.

He was twelve, not a traitor.

Eleventh tears his attention away from the girl and the woman (her mother?) and those thoughts that make his heart wrench, and finds himself zeroing in on a human male standing in front of a stall. His expression is light, his stance casual, but there’s something about him that has Eleventh perking up. He straightens, steps forward slightly out of the shadows. The man is…he cocks his head – pretty, he decides, and then is immediately dissatisfied with the word. It doesn’t seem like enough. He stands with such confidence, such ease, and he –  

He is absolutely nothing in the Force.

Ah. Eleventh smirks. You give yourself away. Even Force-nulls are specks. This man is an empty patch of sensation in his sight. If he hadn’t known he was hunting a Jedi, he thinks the man would’ve gone unnoticed forever. If he weren’t so pretty, Eleventh would’ve passed right over him.

He watches as the man hands over some credits and takes a small bag of supplies. The stall sells plushies, but the clear bag the man carries now is filled with fluff and two separate patches of a blue fabric and an orange one. He tucks it in his synthleather bag carefully, smiles at the vendor, and does his best to disappear into the crowd.

A cover or a real purchase?

Eleventh follows, intrigued. And delighted to have finally gotten a good look at the Jedi. He’s older, broad, with tan skin and dark black hair that seems to swallow sunlight. There’s no way to see his face, Eleventh is stuck behind him and his broad shoulders. He wants to reach out and feel for his aura, to see what is behind that emptiness wrapped around him, but he can’t do that without giving himself away.

And then – something changes. Eleventh can’t pinpoint exactly what. The air shifts. The Force wavers.

The Jedi ducks around a corner out of sight. He swears and hurries after him, already pulling the Force close to him to let out in a burst of Slow. It fizzles away when he comes to an empty alley. Truly empty. 

He frowns as he stalks through the narrow space. His lightsaber stays hidden. He loves the hunt more than the kill, unlike some of his Siblings, but he will kill when he has to. Just – no collateral damage, no unnecessary deaths, another strange little quirk compared to the rest. There's no skill in that. He can kill whoever he wants, but it's pulling back and refraining instead of letting the violence overwhelm him, that makes him better. 

At the end of the alley is a set of crates. His eyes follow them step to step up where the rooftop is accessible by the right sort of people. Eleventh could use the Force but where's the fun in that. Ignoring the way his joints protest, he swings himself up crate by crate, using only his strength and boot soles to scale the wall. 

The rooftop is empty as well. Damn. Eleventh grins despite losing his prey. That's alright. It was fun while it lasted.

(Eleventh backtracks to the plushie stall because he’s just too curious. To be running, baiting, and yet stopping to buy plushie materials is…usually not a good idea. He smiles even though the vendor can’t see it and settles his hand on the table as he asks leading questions he only partially listens to the answers of. And there, indistinct and fuzzy like looking through a mud-covered window, but there all the same.

He pulls his hand back slowly. Oh.)

Eleventh Brother steps a foot onto Birren, and he knows that this is a punishment.

From Grand, yes. That one is obvious. But surely this must be retribution for Falling. The final act from the Force to show how lost he truly is. To have him here, with dry grass cracking under his boots, the scent of candlewick blossoms a ghost in the air smothered by the heavy, itchy smell of wheat. To have Purge Troopers at his back, a prickle on his neck because he knows – knows more than he should. Has always known more than he should – and this is it. This is what it’s come to.

This is no coincidence. Nor is it on purpose. It can’t be. This is the will of the Force and Eleventh Brother despises that.

Farmland stretches on for miles. More farmland than he’s ever seen before. There’d been no reason to consider him for the Agricorps, not with his skills. It flattens the horizon. Gives it a finality against the mild hues of late morning. Most of his missions had been in cities where they thought they could hide among the crowds. Here, the lonesome house sticks out like a beacon. A dark and quiet silhouette against the sun.

He’s here because of security footage from a probe droid that caught a jedi in a moment of weakness. Not just a jedi. The Jedi. His Jedi. The one with broad shoulders and void-dark hair and the ability to hide himself. He gave himself away, and Eleventh had been disgusted at first. To be so enamored with someone who exposed himself so easily just because he thought he was alone.

Only he hadn’t been alone. And the Empire is always there.

Eleventh had recognized him, had given something away, and the Grand Inquisitor latched onto his own weakness and sent him away. If it weren’t for that, he would’ve never known why he was here. There’s no lingering traces in the Force that says jedi. He’s still impressed, still intrigued, but now there’s a bitterness tearing it apart. He’d wanted to hunt. Not kill. Not capture. He wanted the thrill of chasing someone who could stay so far ahead of him. But it looks like the Jedi could only stay so far ahead of the Empire.

He swallows it all down, choking and thick, feels it run through his lungs to his veins, filling up the spaces in between until it’s all just Dark and dead. Eleventh signals for a few troopers to branch off and circle around the back of the house in case someone tries to run – again. With a little push and a rattle of the Force, the lock disengages, and the front door swings open easily. He wasn’t expected. No one knows what nightmare is coming for them.

Eleventh steps over the threshold, a handful of troopers at his back, and feels the Force quiver. He pauses, head cocked to the side. What now? What do you want this time? But nothing happens, it stays silent and looming, and he keeps going.

Leaving the troopers to investigate the side of the house, Eleventh steps lightly into the living room, trailing his fingers across shelves full of trinkets collected over the years. His left glove is fingerless to let him feel every hazy echo that reaches languidly for him, so soft and content they have no real urge to be relived by someone like him, but still they meet in the Force and he closes his eyes briefly. There’s laughter and joy; happiness and contentment; sleepy, lazy days filled with so much warmth it’s like swallowing a hearth whole. The echoes slip along his nerve endings and burrow deep in his chest making it difficult to breathe, the embers getting caught in his ribcage, piling up until there’s ash in his mouth and soot behind his eyes. He gets a fluttery memory of slow-dancing in the room, and he pulls his hand away slowly, reluctantly, feeling as if he’s been burned but unwilling to lose the sensation too quickly.

He’d been aware the Jedi was married – that echo on the plushie vendor’s stall, fogged over and buried deep and completely unintentional, whispered of love-devotion-love and of a woman’s laughter and a child’s hug – but he hadn’t been expecting this.

Something inside him breaks – he hadn’t even been aware there was more of him to break. It shatters. Aches so fiercely than he’s ever felt before. Even the worst echoes never made him feel this carved out, this hollowed, this empty – and with nothing to fill it with but a weeping want that wells up deep inside him.

Fingertips tingling, he wanders the room.

All clear, crackles through his commlink from the troopers outside. Their heavy armor makes them too loud. The ones inside the house with him are his…elite, for the lack of a better term. Quiet like they should be. Smart enough he doesn’t have to give many orders. Stupid enough he can slip them when he needs to, when the mission leads to a proper hunt, and they’ll just slow him down. Eleventh Brother is the best tracker in the Inquisitorius which means he has no time for loud to follow him around. Truthfully, he doesn’t need any of them at all, but they’re more of a leash than anything else. Hooked on when Grand has reached his limit for Eleventh’s disappearances, given orders to make sure he doesn’t leave their sight. Unfortunately, the Grand Inquisitor’s orders supersede Eleventh’s always.

He shoves away his annoyance at his troopers, old and new, elite and bumbling fools, to continue his tour around the house, endlessly curious much to the detriment of…himself usually.

But he can’t help himself. Someone told him a long, long time ago that it was the curse of all psychometrics. That the stitches that held them together were fragile and prone to tearing violently, falling to pieces and sinking into the lives  of other people. Part of living as oneself was learning when to stop.

(Eleventh never learned how to stop – how could he when there was no one left to teach him?)

Pictures lay scattered around of a gorgeous man and a beautiful woman in various states of happy. Then of them both with a small bundle of cloth barely discernible as a baby. Then pictures of their child. Of a little girl mid-laugh; mid-play; nose scrunched in concentration as she stands on a chair to help/watch her father bake; round face squished between two beaming faces.

Eleventh stares for a long moment at that one, yellow gaze roaming across each of their faces. He blinks rapidly, snatches his hand back from where he’d been unknowingly brushing his fingers along the edge, curling it into a fist at his side until his joints protest. He turns away from it, chest caved in, to the kitchen where dishes are stacked in the second sink. They contain recent echoes, bright and clear, of laughter. One high and giggly, the other low and warm. The Jedi took his daughter to work with him. Which means the wife is here alone.

He unclips his lightsaber but doesn’t ignite the blade as he goes back to contemplating the pictures. The story of a family built from the tragedy of Order 66. The Force here is fat and lazy with Light and Life, and he…he wonders, wonders, wants. It’s been so long since he wanted something like this it startles him. Eleventh’s grip on the hilt tightens until his gloves creak and he feels the metal edges of its brutal design etch into his skin.

How could he want something like this, when he knows it won’t last?

The proof of it is right here. Is him in their home with them unaware. But still – but still.

Their laughter fills his lungs. The contentment seeps into his muscles. Their joy rattles his bones. He wants so desperately, enough to lose himself to these echoes. Why couldn’t this have been him? something inside him wails and weeps. The Dark laps at the envy dripping off him, swallowing it whole and swelling, tightening the noose around his neck that’s been there since he was a scared, abandoned padawan picked out of Bracca’s cold muck.

This is how it’s always going to be. He grits his teeth until his jaw aches. The Dark slips under his skin and chills him to the bone, chasing away the warmth of this house, of these memories, of their affection for each other on every item, stoking the envy higher until he’s choking on the blackness of it, reminding him that this is it, this is what he is. He let it in. He Fell. He can keep chasing those warm echoes. The happy echoes. The what-ifs. The could-have-beens. And every time it’s just going to make him fall deeper and darker and he’ll come out angrier because there is nothing else.

There is no escape.

Not for him. And how dare he think otherwise.

He reaches for one of the pictures. A recent one based on the daughter’s age. He gets impressions of – fond exasperation – of rain pitter-pattering the ground outside – of soft candlelight as the power generators redirect to more important things – gentle teasing – a shoving match turned pillow fight in the middle of the living room – young girlish shrieks – breathless laughter – a quiet night, curled around each other, breaths mingling, their daughter tucked between them. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. So full. So warm.

Eleventh – turns it off, his eyes burning, not enough air in his lungs. The holoprojection goes dark but the echoes continue to play out stretching into hours and days and looping back around to torment him more. He lets out a breath and thumbs over his lightsaber switch, the red blade blazing to life.

And turns to face the wife still dressed in sleep clothes despite it being late morning – just woken up after getting home from a long shift at the hospital, let mama sleep, ‘kay? – but her eyes are clear and bright, not a single iota of drowsiness in them as she aims a steady blaster at his chest.

“I don’t remember inviting the Empire into my home,” she says in a lightly accented voice that’s as steady as her hands. “Leave. Now.”

Eleventh raises his saber, the discordant hum filing the room. The woman doesn’t flinch. That is…somewhat unnerving, he’ll admit. But he’s impressed all the same. Not many people would be willing to face a red blade head on, especially if you knew what it meant. Even the few jedi who had the power, and lack of sense, to go against him were afraid of it – and of what he represented in his blacks and reds of the Empire.

Their future.

…If it weren’t for the fact he killed them in the end.

Better to be a dead jedi than a broken Inquisitor.

“Where is the Jedi?” he asks.

“There are no Jedi here.”

He scoffs. “Clearly. Your husband – where does he work?”

What will you tell me?

She clicks the safety off in answer. The soft whines of power cells compiling and the hum of his saber are the only sounds in the entire room as they stare each other down. Eleventh Brother’s hand twitches. Her stance widens. He – doesn’t want to kill her. (Not with her humming in his head. Not with the love for her daughter hooked under his skin.) He’s not a fan of collateral damage, of unnecessary deaths. She’s not his target. As far as he can tell she’s not even Force-sensitive. And the daughter will need at least one parent alive. He won’t take them both from her.

“I don’t need you,” he tells her softly. His voice rasps through his helmet’s vocoder, takes that attempt at softness and turns it into a hiss and an echo, like a spitting fire. Troopers enter the room behind him despite him wanting them anywhere but here at the moment, a – worry, in the back of his mind. Her eyes flicker in their direction but quickly come back to him. “He’s a traitor to the Empire. Give him up and you’ll be rewarded. Enough for you and your daughter to live comfortably for the rest of your lives.”

She laughs. “The only traitor here is you.” It shouldn’t sting. It does anyway. “I won’t betray my husband.”

“You’ll die for it.”

Her chin juts out. “And I’ll take you down with me.”

His reluctant respect for her grows. Facing an Inquisitor with only a blaster for defense requires either extreme bravery or extreme stupidity – and he knows she’s a doctor, so stupidity is off the table. Her finger teases the blaster trigger. The back of his neck prickles.

He doesn’t have to look to raise his blade and redirect the blaster bolt to the wall, whirling around as he yanks on the trooper commander’s blaster, bringing it down and the trooper to their knees in one swift movement.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snarls, twisting until the trooper is writhing on the ground. “I did not give you permission to shoot.”

“But sir – ,” the one to their left tries.

Eleventh turns on them instead, leaving the first one panting on the ground, the Force lashing out like an inferno. Some of the trinkets rattle in their spots. The air superheats before cooling. The one who tried to interject stumbles back like a coward. At least stand your ground if you want to be disobedient. Trained. Elite. The new recruits get worse and worse every month. These are the men meant to report to Grand behind his back? His fingers curl and the second insubordinate trooper’s body contorts, a strange noise rasping through their helmet.

He holds them like that for several heartbeats. Until he can feel the hush that falls across the rest of them. Until he can feel them splinter under his hands as if he were touching them. Until the Force eases, wary and hungry, and that’s when he releases them. They fall to the ground in a heap of armor – and don’t move.

“Anyone else want to try?” His blade hangs loose at his side, casting a glow against the smooth curves and sharp angles of his armor. He knows it makes him look unsettling. Like he’s something straight out of Imperial propaganda this way, and he uses it to his advantage even though the idea makes him…makes him feel a little sick.

All of this makes him sick.

He turns back to the wife to find her staring at him with wide, wide eyes. Eleventh expects to finally see fear in there, to have a tremble in her hand, something, anything. But she just – breathes. She inhales slowly, exhales, and the slow ease of it, the roll of her shoulders, the shimmer of the Force in every breath…his stomach swoops, because, because against all odds, that’s meditation breathing. There are a thousand and one breathing exercises, and he knows that it should be impossible to recognize, but he knows, he knows this one. It’s the same breathing he’d been taught as a crecheling, as an Initiate. The breathing they attempted to beat out of him as a candidate, as an Inquisitor.

It's the same breathing he does still in the quiet loneliness of hyperspace, missing the connection of others that would let him float freely without getting lost.

Her husband taught her that. He must have.

She breathes, straightens her shoulders, and continues to stand defiant.

Eleventh fucking hates that.

How dare? How dare?

He opens his mouth, a snarl on his lips, when the Force screeches a warning.

A warning that comes far too late.

He’s caught off guard when his lightsaber jerks in his hand, ripping from his grip to fly into the hand of another man he swears hadn’t been there a second ago. The Jedi – Eleventh stares wide-eyed from behind his helmet at the pure rage coming off him. It’s intoxicating and terrifying and gorgeous all at once. To think he’d been hiding it so well to walk into a room full of purge troopers and an Inquisitor. It just makes it all the more impressive.

He closes his now empty hand into a fist and his broken, bled kyber wails for him. The Force surges – and fizzles, the connection growing taut and not giving either way, straining between the two of them.

Until the Jedi who’d appeared out of nowhere gathers his power and lunges at him with the grace and fluidity of a furious direcat, all power and sleek, dangerous intent.

Eleventh catches the blade on his bracer, gritting his teeth as it sinks through metal not meant to withstand lightsabers like this. He can feel the burn of super-heated metal spread across his forearm; the searing cut of the blade digging deeper until there’s the sizzle of cloth fibers burning. He growls, heaving his other hand out and pushes with all his might, but the Knight is a rock, is unmoving. He’s – He’s woefully out of his league, and he’s smart enough to admit it. Eleventh Brother might be a prodigy in both the Before and After, he might have years of experience and lived through a war, lived through these hellish years, but he’d just been a talented padawan. Should still be a padawan, albeit an older one on the cusp of Knighthood.

This man had been a Knight.

And it shows.

The sheer power behind his aura now that he’s no longer making himself invisible. Crashing waves that roar like thunder. Lightning strikes that rattle his teeth and flood his mouth with ozone. He bears down with impressive strength and Eleventh feels his bracer crack loudly, feels the blade kiss his skin, his knees buckle under the weight.

The troopers have opened fire behind him, pockmarking furniture, the shots veering off course whenever they’re aimed at the two Force users. It’s distracting, but he knows they don’t care about that. Eleventh screams as he shoves and something finally karking gives and he succeeds in sending the man back on his heels. The Knight stands across from him, dark eyes all the more darker in the light of the red blade, black hair falling across his face. His cheek twitches, a reluctant acknowledgement in his expression.

The Force sings like he’s never heard it sing before, bright and resplendent and it makes him feel breathless, weightless, unable to stop staring for a too long moment. It’s like time stretches beyond itself, extending this moment infinitely. And then –

It passes and giddiness replaces whatever that had been. The Jedi underestimated him, Eleventh realizes, a sort of pride and smugness welling up in his chest. He held up against a fully trained knight ha. He smirks from behind his heated bracer, straightening up from his hunched state as he slides a vibroblade from his back. Let’s see what else this Knight has to offer.

Eleventh blinks – and he lurches, a wild scream trapped in his chest as the Jedi runs him through with his own blade. His eyes are wide, unseeing, shocked because he moved so fast? How did he move so fast?

It’s a numb feeling. The blade pulsating in beat with his heart.

Then it’s pain.

Burning, splintering pain that spreads like wildfire from the blade outward, his blood boiling, the edges of his vision darkening instantly. Oh, but it’s been a long time since he’s been stabbed by a lightsaber. Eleventh chokes, hand rising futilely as the Jedi uses the Force to push him to the side and off the blade, so casually, so uncaringly, it’s nearly impossible to connect him to being a jedi. It gets him out of the way, tossed to the side, so the Knight can throw himself at the troopers with a subvocal growl.

Eleventh Brother’s head spins, his vision is fizzy, and he almost laughs. He doesn’t though, his hand creeping to the hole in his side that just avoids nicking his lung. Even so, it’s difficult to breathe. Every inhale is like trying to breathe around a vice. Every exhale burns. The wound is cauterized, but that doesn’t diminish how bad it is, his skin blistering and burning outward. He already feels cold.

The room has descended into chaos around him. His entire squadron is inside now. More of them dead on the ground than standing alive to fight back. He watches through half-lidded eyes the brilliant sight of his blade being wielded by someone who’d been a Jedi Knight. He can feel the subtle manipulations of the Force that eases the man’s way, turns his spins elegant, his steps into a dance. Every slash and deflection is accompanied by a blue shot from behind. They work in tandem as if they’d been through a hundred battles together already when he knows they haven’t. They’re just that in tune.

He does laugh this time, and it hurts.

Why couldn’t that have been him? Trusting someone to have his back. Trusting them enough to leave his back wide open.

Eleventh claws his way into sitting position, that envy back and tasting bitter. No one’s noticed him yet despite his aura unspooling and expanding, black and angry and disgusted with his troops but also at himself for these awful wants. He staggers to his feet, hand braced over the entry wound, and – no one cares anymore about one lone Inquisitor who was taken out so easily. He snorts then groans, swallowing back bile. That implies that anyone cared about him in the first place. He’s not stupid nor naïve.

He straightens up, gathering the Force around him to detonate into a Slow just to ruin everyone’s day a little more, when the wife takes a glancing blow she barely flinches at, but the Jedi bodily slams into the trooper who’d done it, his shout a strangled, indistinct thing, his rage like a crashing wave, and something breaks in the Force. Cracking and falling away like an ice sheet. Eleventh inhales sharply in surprise at the sudden new presence on the edge of his awareness.

Soft and flickering and scared. His eyes snap to the child in the shadows peeking around the corner, a turquoise-and-orange plushie clutched to her chest. The daughter. He hid her – just like he hid himself. She stares at her father like she doesn’t know who he is anymore, her cheeks tear-stained, on her knees as if they couldn’t hold her up anymore. She meets Eleventh’s eyes unerringly before her gaze drifts upward toward the, the trooper looming over her, blaster too steady in their hands, helmeted face peering down, down, down.

The blaster raises.

Eleventh’s heart jumps to his throat.

No unnecessary deaths.

There’s only one thing worse than leaving an orphan behind.

It’s leaving parents without their child.

Eleventh doesn’t know what comes over him when he thinks that. Why he even thinks it in the first place. He just knows he has their laughter in his lungs, their love and warmth and lazy days packed tight in his chest. He knows he couldn’t leave her, the child, the daughter, Kata, without both parents, and he’ll be damned even more to leave them without their kid.

The Slow had fallen away, scattered into the Force without him meaning to. But that doesn’t matter. He reaches out and yanks – too fast, too sharp, the trooper spins on their heel, shouting in surprise, and their finger already halfway on the trigger pulls mid-swing. Eleventh has two seconds to think, I’m a karking idiot, before the bolt slams into him and everything goes dark.

The Inquisitor goes down hard, but the trooper who shot him doesn’t get the chance to process it before both Bode and Tayala cut him down. She throws her overheating blaster to the side – it was cheap anyway – and rushes over to Kata as Bode finishes up the rest. Her daughter is sobbing, clutching Mookie then turning around and clutching Tayala as she presses frantic kisses all over her face, her heart hammering in her chest. That’d been too close. No one should’ve been able to see her.

What happened? and it’s –

Bode breathing heavily in the center of sprawled unmoving bodies, the Inquisitor’s blade deepening shadows and pulling highlights, making him look otherworldly, and she opens her mouth to call his name, to break this awful air, but a noise drags her attention to the Inquisitor shifting, an odd sound cracking through his helmet. Bode’s head snaps up and he’s stalking over, moving in a way she hasn’t seen in years, lightsaber rising, expression dark and dangerous – and for all that Tayala knows him, knows his past, knows what he’d done in the name of the Republic when the propaganda holos were at their prettiest, knows what he is still forced to do for their happiness and safety, she realizes…she doesn’t know who is in front of her right now.

She catches his hand before the blade can come down. The tip hovers mere centimeters from the Inquisitor’s chest plate, every shaky inhale pressing his chest upward and boring a small divot of burning duraplast.

He doesn’t look at her, but he also doesn’t fight her. Silence hangs heavy and thick, teetering on the edge of a collapse.

“I won’t let you kill an unarmed man in my house.”

“He followed me,” he says roughly. “If I don’t kill him, they’re just going to keep coming.” 

Tayala curls her arm around her daughter and wraps her fingers around her husband’s. She can feel the power inside the Inquisitor’s lightsaber hum under their touch and she wonders, so faintly, what it feels like for Bode.

“Not like this, Bode Akuna.”

And it’s the name that does it – her last name with his chosen first. It never fails to make him melt, make him soften. His grip loosens, the blade douses. Finally, finally, he looks up, that dark and dangerous expression splintering on fault lines to expose something raw and hurting, eyes wet and oh-so-lost.

“You told me to leave you,” his voice cracks.

Tayala leans in to rest her forehead against his, their daughter’s shaky breaths between them. “Take Kata,” she murmurs.

Bode drops the lightsaber into her hand as if it burned him. With one last lingering glance at the Inquisitor on the floor, he slides Kata from her arms and turns away, murmuring comforts into his daughter’s hair, his posture and gait easing as he walks until it looks like nothing happened at all and this is just another day. Her heart aches at the sight.

Tayala takes a deep breath, tucks the saber into her waistband, kneels next to the Inquisitor – and gets to work.

He’s wearing distressingly few armored pieces (dressed for speed not strength, she notes). His torso is protected by a chest plate, which did nothing against being skewered by a lightsaber, and he wears a cloak of all things, draped around his front, pinned to his shoulder with something stamped with the Imperial cog, and then flowing freely behind. The lack of armor just means it’s easier to strip him of it. Two arm bracers – one cracked and charred and still too warm – chest piece, elbows, knees, and she takes his knuckle guards too, if he comes up swinging then those would definitely break bones.

She hesitates on the helmet, then finally runs her fingers under the rim, hoping the blaster hadn’t melted the, ah-ha, the latch. The seal loosens with a hiss. When she pulls the helmet off, she pauses, something like horror blooming in her chest.

The Inquisitor is young. His face is pale, freckles more of a suggestion than an actual color. Shadows so deep they’re like bruises sit under his eyes, his cheeks are sunken in, making him look hollowed out. He’s littered with scars. One cuts over his nose. Another through his bottom lip. Another marks his jaw all the way to under his ear. And another, this one deeper and gnarled, hooked behind the hinge of his jaw on the opposite side that carves through the soft part of his neck across the front of his throat.

Like someone tried to violently silence him – and failed.

She brushes her fingertips over his brow, frowning at how clammy he feels. Then nearly jumps when she pulls her hand away and suddenly, she’s met with a yellow-eyed glare from under copper lashes. His gaze drifts over her shoulder seconds before she feels the warmth of her husband at her back.

“Here,” Bode says, nudging her shoulder with metal binders.

They’re heavier than they should be. She snaps them around the Inquisitor’s wrists, unnerved by how…docile he’s being, and watches him let out a full-body shudder, eyes falling shut again. Tayala reaches over slowly to press her fingers to his wrist. He doesn’t move, his head falling to the side as his body goes limp. She looks back at Bode. Kata has her face buried in his shoulder, her tiny fists gripping his shirt. He smooths a hand down her back once before gently cupping her head to keep her from looking.

That lost look is hidden, but not gone. His expression is a little too smooth as he stares at the Inquisitor’s face. “If he was with the Order when it fell, he would’ve been an Initiate at most.”

And it doesn’t take much to brainwash children. To turn them into these twisted mockeries of what she remembers Jedi are supposed to be.

This is truly what the galaxy has come to.

Tayala swallows down her anger, saves it for a later date when it’ll be useful, and works on making sure the Inquisitor that just saved her child doesn’t die in her living room.

Eleventh Brother wakes to quiet voices. He’s sinking into something softer and warmer than he’s ever sank into before. A mattress, cradling every ache. Fluffy blankets. A pleasant sort of numbness on his senses, empty and blank, nothing – his eyes snap open in surprise.

There aren’t any echoes. As if someone had come through the Force and wiped everything clean. He shifts – biting back a whimper, letting it out as a hiss when his injuries flare, and ignoring the bile climbing up his throat, it could be worse, it has been worse – and brings his wrists up to stare at the binders wrapped around them. His binders. The Force suppression binders he’s supposed to use on Force-sensitives if he ever decided it as worth bringing them under the Empire’s control (it never was. There was no worth subjecting them to anything the Empire had to offer.).

It explains the hollow ringing in his ears. The lack of weight on his shoulders. The…the – he feels like he’s alone in his skin for the first time in his entire life and it’s a karking marvel. He wonders why he never thought about trying this before. And then remembers he would have to trust someone in the first place to try something as stupid as this.

Not that he trusts the Jedi and his wife. He can hear them whispering furiously to each other, arguing over him.

“We’re taking him with us.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Look at him.”

Eleventh feels eyes on him but doesn’t look up to meet them. He imagines the Jedi is assessing him, deciding exactly what kind of a threat he is. Jokes on him, Eleventh doesn’t have it in him. He’s just – tired. Exhausted in a way he’d been feeling for years but kept ignoring because what was the point.

He just grits his teeth as he tests how stiff his legs are – very stiff. Oh, that’s going to suck soon. He clenches his hands into fists, feeling bones grind together and a soft pop that hurts and feels good at the same time. The binders are going to be a problem on his wrists and shoulders in the long run, but all those aches are minor compared to the burning sensation in his chest. His lungs fizzle with every breath and it’s only by sheer stubbornness he’s not passing out again right now.

No one speaks for a long time.

“Can you, in good conscience, let him go back to the Empire? They’ll kill him.”

They would. Only because Eleventh would give them no choice. Death is better than the alternative. Nur is…Nur is – he shudders, closing his eyes at the sudden gnawing in his stomach. Hunger or despair, he can’t tell, but suddenly he’s cold. The doctor took his armor off and cut through his uniform top to tend to his injuries, leaving too much skin exposed. At least she wrapped his cloak around him. How karking… nice of her.

“Better a dead Inquisitor than a living one around my family.”

“He could’ve killed me but didn’t. He saved Kata.” Oh, she saw that? He looks up through the doorway and he can only see the Jedi and her hand on his arm. The Jedi glances over, as if sensing his stare, and their eyes meet. The hand on his arm curves around, gripping him tight. “You know we can’t leave him.”

Eleventh bares his teeth at the Jedi, earning himself a sharp glare but also something…calculating, assessing. He doesn’t like that look. Doesn’t like that he can’t feel whatever is happening in the Force to make the man look at him like that.

“Fine,” the Jedi says louder, never looking away from Eleventh. “He comes with us. But if he makes one wrong move, I’m killing him.” That’s directed at Eleventh. A threat and a promise all rolled into one. Good, he thinks. This is a brilliantly stupid plan, but at least someone has an idea of how stupid. The Jedi pushes the door open further, stepping in. “Who are you supposed to be anyway?”

“Eleventh Brother.”

The Jedi frowns, caught somewhere between anger and something Eleventh doesn’t want to look too closely at. He wonders what the Force is like now, what threat hangs just outside of his awareness – looming waves and dark clouds threatening to come down over his head maybe? This is worse than when the man was hidden, he thinks, because he can’t feel anything at all.

“What’s your name?”

“Eleventh. Brother.” He shrugs at the expression on their faces. “We don’t get names. Call me Eleventh. Call me nothing. I don’t care.”

“I’m Tayala,” the wife says. He definitely doesn’t like the look in her eyes. “This is Bode.”

He already knew because of the echoes, but he hates that they’ve actually told him their names. It makes this too real. Makes everything hurt worse. She still has her hand on the Jedi’s arm as if to ground him, to keep the connection, to assure her he’s still there. Eleventh rips his eyes from the point of contact, averting them to the corner of the bed where there’s nothing to see, nothing to feel. The silence is awkward.

“Do you want to come with us?”

Eleventh lets out a sharp laugh, startling all three of them. “Do I actually get a choice?” He’s never gotten to choose before, why would anyone let him choose now?

Tayala hesitates, and that’s all the answer he needs. He pulls his legs to his chest despite every muscle and joint protesting vehemently, despite the pressure put on his side and how the lightsaber wound screams, threatening to steal every breath from him, and hooks his arms around his knees in the mockery of a hug.

“You’ll know where I’ll be when it’s time to leave,” he says curtly.

Bode can’t sit still.

Adrenaline still surges under his skin. Fear makes his chest rattle. He flexes his hands and curls them into fists repetitively and it’s not enough. It’s so different than how he used to be, when he could sit silent in the shadows for hours, waiting for the right moment to move. But that was before. Before he had something to lose. Something to protect.

It still feels like he’s wielding a lightsaber. That power in the palm of his hand. That song that sounded more like screaming than music; discordant, angry and mournful all at once – and there was a name there, he knows. Not Eleventh Brother, but an actual name, a real name, and Bode wants, he wants to know it. He can hear it now, faint and warbling from the hall where Tayala had shoved it deep into one of her bags, hoping to muffle the sound for him. She can’t hear it at all, or else she’d know it didn’t work. It takes everything in his power not to dig it out and sink into the kyber. It would be wrong. A line he couldn’t, wouldn’t cross.

The house is dark. Every creak and groan sounds like military boots on the floorboards. The whistle of wind on the windowpanes another lightsaber igniting. This is the last night they get to sleep here. His home since he and Tayala scraped together enough credits to settle down and maybe, hopefully, forget the past because their present is so much better.

Was.

Was better. The present now contains an Inquisitor not sleeping in their guest room, bags packed, a last night in their home because they’re never going to come back.

He sits on the floor of the master bedroom. The door is open wide, giving Bode unimpeded sight to the guest room without losing view of his wife and daughter curled up together on the master bed. His back rests against the wall, a blaster held loosely in his grip. Waiting for – the Inquisitor to leap at them. For the doors to be kicked down and more Inquisitors to take his place. For the Empire to surround his home and demand his loyalties, his heart, his family – but not his life because that would be a mercy.

Bode watches the Inquisitor shift on the bed. The soft light from the ‘fresher only letting him see a vague outline of his boots. He can hear hitching breaths. Like pain. Or a nightmare. A soft crackle in the Force, muted and hazy. He has to look away, just for a moment, blinking away sunspots, or something else he can’t tell.

Tayala hums sleepily under her breath, petting through Kata’s hair slowly, and getting slower, and Bode watches them, drinking in the sight. The blaster burn on her shoulder is barely anything, but the sight of the bacta patch makes his stomach yawn open into a dark pit. If that trooper had better aim that would’ve been her head. If Bode had listened to her warning, had actually taken Kata and ran like she’d wanted, she would be dead. He has no reason to believe in the good intentions of a dark sider.

Even if that dark sider saved his daughter.

Even if that darker sider looked up at him with wide, wide eyes and said we don’t get names.

“Bode,” Tayala murmurs. He tucks his blaster behind the door and climbs to his feet, crawling into bed on Kata’s opposite side. Everything is heavy. He feels like he’s coming out alignment of his body, his head stuffed full of cotton – of a fear he can’t quite shake. What-if haunts him. Tayala smiles, reaches for him to settle a hand on his cheek. He closes his eyes, leaning into the touch, marveling at her warmth. He presses a kiss to her wrist just to feel her pulse. She rubs her thumb over his cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but you know why I told you to.”

“I know.” He wraps a hand around her wrist to keep her touch there, leaning in to rest his forehead against hers. Listens to her and Kata breathe in sync with each other. “I know. Just – don’t ask me to do that again. I can’t lose you.”

Tayala kisses him. Sweeter and softer than he feels like he deserves right now after everything that happened today. They lay there in a comfortable silence. Tayala rests her cheek on their daughter’s hair, looking up at him. Bode lets out a slow breath, some of the pressure in his chest easing.

The Force is soft and gentle even with that man in the other room. Strangely enough, Bode thinks especially with the Inquisitor in the other room. For years now it’s been just him who can sense and use the Force, who had an aura that bloomed like his does – Kata is sensitive, is inherently gifted in reading people, but she’s young, too young and she doesn’t know the Jedi Order, doesn’t know how it used to be, and he can’t burden her with that, not yet. – and to feel another, however muted it is because of the binders, it’s…

Bode doesn’t know how to feel about it other than it’s a connection. One he doesn’t want. One he finds himself reaching for anyway, desperate for a taste of how it used to be – and it’s a soft curl of smoke, a glowing ember in the dark. He wonders what it would feel like fully ablaze. Knows that’s just asking for trouble. He’d felt it earlier, a fire in his living room, Dark and dangerous and unstable, and he knew then like he knows now that it’d been wrong. That’s not what this man was supposed to feel like.

Tayala strokes his cheek, dragging his attention back to her. She hooks her ankles around his, curling them both around Kata even more. “Can you feel him?” she murmurs. He nods silently. “What does he feel like?”

“Like a fire about to go out.”

Chapter Text

The trip from the house to the ship depot – where apparently the Jedi already had a ship paid off and refurbished under an alias, which Eleventh can appreciate the contingency plan – hadn’t been pleasant for any of them.

The Jedi had to practically drag him, his hand a hot brand on his arm, and the doctor hovered. Eleventh had just wanted to collapse right to the ground and never move again, his chest burning and everything hurting and his mind a whirlwind of confusion and panic, and this….tiny seed of fear he couldn’t shake.

There had been an awkward, awful moment when the lot attendant looked at all four of them a little too closely. The daughter with her face tucked in the crook of her mother’s neck still asleep; Eleventh with his cloak arranged to hide his bound hands and torn uniform, face horrifically pale and eyes too eerie; and the harried, disheveled parents. Eleventh held his breath, just waiting, but the Jedi grimaced, his fingers twitched, and they were finally waved through.

He’s honestly shocked they made it this far, having been pretty convinced they would drop him as soon as they realized they were in over their heads.

But they didn’t.

(There’s still time for that to happen. The Empire will never stop. It will take some time, but someone will notice Eleventh’s disappearance isn’t tied to getting caught up in a hunt and they’re going to go looking for him. No one escapes the Inquisitorius. They either bleed you dry or hunt you down.)

They’re in hyperspace for only a few hours before the doctor comes to see him. Her husband looms protectively at the door to the room they’ve turned into a makeshift hold. Eleventh sneers at him – earns a wrinkled nose in response but it’s not nearly as antagonistic as he should be, he thinks – before his attention is redirected to where the doctor has started unpacking a fairly extensive medkit.

He eyes her warily, arm pressed to his side in an attempt to brace his wound, the binders making it an awkward affair. The doctor has a calm, professional demeanor, one he can appreciate on a surface level, but he’s never liked medical staff, sapient or droid or anywhere in between, even as a youngling. The…the Temple had been mildly tolerable. But the Fortress’s medical wing was filled with countless moments of suffering he could never get away from.

She pulls on gloves and leans in – and he immediately shies away with a curled lip, pressing himself back against the wall like a frightened animal.

To his surprise, she raises her hands and steps back. Her brows furrow like she doesn’t understand his reaction and she glances over at her husband briefly before meeting Eleventh’s eyes.

“I won’t touch you if you won’t want me to,” she says (liar, a little voice whispers), “but I need to make sure none of your injuries are at risk for infection.”

Eleventh looks from her to the Jedi then back again. Do I actually get a choice? remains a heavy unsaid thing. He’s hyperaware of the bacta patches they’d had plastered to his body already while he was unconscious.

“Fine.”

She nods and shuffles closer. He’s tense the entire time as she carefully peels off the old patches and inspects each wound, frowning slightly. Her hands are gentle, far gentler than he’s used to, and he stares resolutely at the wall while she works.

The gloves are new, so even without the binders there wouldn’t be any echoes to catch. Still, he can’t help but fall into the memories of the last time he’d been in the medical wing – and the time before that, and the time before that, little accidents, purposeful ambushes, weeping, blood-slick wounds, a whimper caught in a throat spilling blood – screams and anguish lodged permanently in his head. Pain-pain-pain layered over each other until there wasn’t just one person’s memories but an entire crowd of them, following him from the medical wing to his quarters to the training halls where he’d thrown himself at his Siblings over and over again for their weakness. How dare they make him feel their agony, their hopelessness, their rage when he didn’t even want to feel his own.

“Breathe,” someone murmurs and he sucks in a sharp breath, making a low noise from the pain of it. There are still hands on him, gently resting on his shoulder, but they’re just resting. No pain. No pressure. No one forcing him back, ready to strap him down and dig into his psyche. It shouldn’t be so grounding, this simple touch. “There we go.”

Eleventh Brother blinks rapidly, shaking his head, and it takes a couple seconds to register Bode as the one touching him. His chest moves in exaggerated breaths, his fingers pressing gently into his shoulder with each inhale and exhale, and he can’t help but follow along even as it slows from exaggeration into painfully familiar meditative breathing.

Without the Force it’s just breathing, but with Bode’s hand on his shoulder, it’s something more.

He could float and not get lost.

Idiot. Eleventh’s next exhale is shuddery. He shakes loose the Jedi’s touch and shuffles away the best he can. The bed is decently sized – and too comfortable, far too comfortable – but he feels trapped with them both so close. They look at him with an unreadable expression Eleventh doesn’t like, then at each other, holding a conversation without words.

“I’m concerned about your chest wound,” the doctor says after a long while. The Jedi looks away, a muscle in his jaw twitching. She strips her gloves and adds it to the bag of used patches. “Is it okay if I come in twice a day to take a look?”

Eleventh shrugs, averting his eyes and curling his hands into fists. His joints creak painfully. He can barely feel it beyond all the other pains. He can feel the Jedi stare at him, suddenly brave now that Eleventh isn’t wanting to stare back. What is he even looking for? What does he want? He presses his mouth thin, trapping the question so as not to give them the satisfaction of breaking him into asking it.

He wants to tell them to leave. Wants Bode’s hand on his shoulder again just for a connection that doesn’t hurt. He closes his eyes instead, pulling his cloak around himself the best he can. Exhaustion and pain weigh him down, but sleep won’t come for him he knows. It’d been a fleeting thing last night. There and gone in seconds as a nightmare woke him up, jolting him from a memory into reality with neither of them better over the other.

Silence sits heavily, an expectation in the air, but the doctor just sighs gustily, and they leave, the lock clicking in place. Eleventh opens his eyes, holding his breath as he listens to see if one of them changes their mind, and when he doesn’t hear footsteps, he gets up – only to settle on the floor, tucked in a corner that partially hides him but lets him still keep an eye on the door.

It’s uncomfortable.

He doesn’t do anything to change that.

The room they put him in is…nice. Comfortable. Warm. He has his own ‘fresher which is a relief. They left the bedding which would mean something if he felt like he could sit on it, let alone sleep. He rests his forearms on his knees, staring blankly at the bed now opposite of him, stewing in his own thoughts and hurts, reaching for the Force that isn’t there.

And even if it was, what would he feel? The heavy, sickly-sweet Dark? The ocean storms of the Jedi? The clamor of echoes all vying for his attention?

Sleep should come easier with the absence of echoes. Should. If he was normal that probably would be the case. But the absence doesn’t make up for all the memories he’s experienced before this, the ones that have seeped into the marrow of his bones and made their home there. They haunt him constantly, Force access or not, and he’s been once again left scrambling to catch small moments of sleep here and there. Though it’s generous to call it sleeping. It’s more of a doze that leaves his eyes gritty and him more tired than he was before he closed his eyes.

That’s how he’s sitting when the door to the room slowly creaks open. Slower than if It’d been the doctor or the Jedi. It’s been two days and they’ve been nothing but…kind, he thinks is the right word. Any allergies? Is this uncomfortable? Do you need another blanket? – You look like shit. Get some rest. Call if you need anything. And it make him feel dizzy. So karking dizzy.

Eleventh doesn’t lift his head to look, just cracks an eye open to see…the daughter wiggle her way in. He frowns, tilting his head until his cheek rests on his shoulder. She’s not looking at him, her face scrunched in concentration as she tries to keep her poncho from catching on anything. Eleventh – likes the poncho. It looks comfortable and warm. He kind of wishes he had his own. His uniform is getting more and more uncomfortable by the hour, not quite used to sitting still in it when normally he’s distracted by the mission.

He waits until she’s squeezed through to croak out, “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

She startles like a little tooka kit. “You’re awake!”

Eleventh’s mouth twitches. “No, I’m not,” he decides to say for some reason. Maybe it’s because she only jumped out of being startled, not out of fear of him. Maybe it’s because he’s lonely without the echoes. Or maybe it’s just because he feels like shit. Who knows, but the response makes her giggle and his chest twists. “Your dad won’t be happy.”

The daughter waves it off. “Papa worries too much.” She has a plushie tucked in the crook of her arm. Familiar turquoise and orange colors. She’d been holding it back in the house, but Eleventh remembers seeing those same colors in a bag with some fluff hanging from her father’s hand. His fingers tingle, curious about what echoes he might find on it. “You won’t hurt me.”

She sounds so sure of herself it hurts him.

“I won’t?”

She nods her head so hard he’s surprised she doesn’t give herself whiplash. “You saved me, I saw it.” She steps closer, then stops when he tenses. “Why are you on the floor?”

Eleventh swallows thickly. “It’s more comfortable.”

“That’s a lie.” Stars, make her stop. “You’re hurting. Do you want me to wake up mama?”

He shakes his head. “No. No. It’s fine. I’m – I’m fine. You should be in bed.”

She hugs the plushie to her chest. “I had a nightmare,” she admits, voice all hushed and quiet.

And she came here? To him of all people? Surely her parents are better equipped for this sort of thing. He stares as she settles herself opposite of him, her little face scrunching at how uncomfortable the floor actually is. He doesn’t know what to say. Isn’t sure he wants to say anything at all.

She stares back, gaze roaming over his face first then down to his chest where the bacta patches are stark against his black uniform. He swears she lingers on the Imperial cog stamped onto the clasp that holds his cloak together because she hunches down, curling around her plushie, before her eyes lifts to meet his head on.

This is the moment it’ll be too much for her he knows. It was one thing to meet his eyes on Birren, when she was already terrified. It’s another thing to have both her parents nearby, creating a safe and cozy environment for her to be relaxed in, only to come face to face with, well, him. Someone who’s Fallen. Whose eyes have turned yellow from intense dark side use.

He doesn’t remember what color his eyes were before all of this.

Instead of asking about them, or screaming, or crying, or running, -- you’re hurting. She’s too perceptive to not be Force-sensitive. Which means she must feel it. The Dark. Which means she should be as far away from him as possible. And yet she looks at him like he’s just a normal person and smiles like they’re best friends.

“My name’s Kata,” she says finally. “This is Mookie.”

He threads his fingers together to hide the tremble. Now he’s been given all their names. It’s not just an echo anymore. He’s no longer a simple voyeur into their lives. This is real. This is – He blinks back a burn that builds up behind his eyes. They’re just names. What is wrong with him?

Kata scoots closer, sitting cross-legged. “What’s your name?”

He has to swallow back bile before he can answer. “Eleventh Brother.”

She tilts her head. “That’s not a name.”

“A name can be anything you want it to be,” he argues. She just frowns at him until he slumps, exhausted and unwilling to actually argue with a child. “It’s not my name. It’s just what I’m called.”

“Why are you called that?”

He shrugs, tucks his arms behind his knees when he pulls them up, trying to put some distance between them. She just takes that as permission to move even closer. Eleventh closes his eyes, dropping his head to his fingers to push them against his eyes. There’s an ache there, a deep-seated one that is bordering on not good, but there aren’t any auras or a weird taste in his mouth – metallic and slightly sour – so he pushes through, hoping it doesn’t get worse.

“Thank you.”

His head snaps up. Kata is even closer now, up on her knees and leaning in so she can be as close to eye-level as possible with him, her expression serious. Eleventh’s breath catches in his chest, a little “what?” wheezes out.

“Papa said it’s important to say thank you when someone does something nice for you,” she tells him, matter of fact.

– something nice. He did something nice. Eleventh doesn’t know why that makes his chest feel like it’s caving in. He saved her. It’s like a revelation. A bright spark of dawn on the horizon after a long, dark night. He cracks out a disbelieving laugh. This is what his life has come to after years of darkness? A single, impulsive moment, fueled by love and kindness that wasn’t even his. He laughs again and can’t stop. He uncurls, slumping against the wall as his injuries jar but the laughter keeps coming – a little hysterical from his countless sleepless nights and constantly being on edge, turning it pitchy and wheezing. Stars, he covers his face with both hands, pressing his laugh into the heel of his palms, his eyelashes growing wet. What if bounces around in his head. What if he’d helped that little girl and her mother on Halais, would he be like this sooner? Feeling like something is seeping out of his soul and leaving him hollow for something greater to fill it up? Could he hope for this? – does he still have the capacity for hope? That maybe he’s not so broken and lost after all.

No. No. Nothing like that. It’s a quirk of the galaxy. A trick. There’s nothing about this that cleanses the darkness from his soul.

Something soft presses against the back of his hands. His laughter peters out as he peeks between his fingers to find Mookie extra close. Kata wiggles it in his face until he takes it carefully. The turquoise body is weighted with some sort of sand or small beads, the head and the orange mane are soft with fluff. It has two little black fabric hands and two purple horns. He wonders if the Jedi picked those up too on Halais or if he had them on hand.

His fingertips tingle as he presses them into the plushie, no echoes to be found. Are there happy echoes? Or are the only echoes worth sticking around the ones of Kata’s fear in that house? Contrary to the state he found their house in, happy echoes are a rare thing. Negative emotions stick better in the Force, desperately wanting to be relived and understood and released back outward where they can fade away but never be forgotten. Happy echoes are ephemeral things. Here and gone in the next because why would the galaxy be nice enough to let them linger?

It really just proves how good this family is, that their home was filled with so much love.

Eleventh abruptly drops Mookie into Kata’s lap, his fingers burning. She gathers it with a confused frown.

“You should go back to bed,” he rasps.

She shakes her head. “What if the nightmare comes back?”

“Go to your parents.” I am a nightmare. Stay away from me.

“Can I stay?” she pleas. “Please?”

He could say no.

Eleventh doesn’t want to say no.

He understands how terrible nightmares can be. What he doesn’t understand is why she wants his company to escape them, but it could be stranger. Besides, better to have company than be alone in a strange ship, jumping at shadows, wondering if you’ve fallen asleep or not as your fears start to manifest.

How many times has he wanted someone there when he woke up from a memory-echo-nightmare, gasping for breath with tears he refused to let fall, just wanting someone to fold him into their warmth and promise him this was all going to be over soon, just hang on a little longer? If there was anyone with him, it always meant terrible things for him.

Maybe…

Maybe he could be the not-terrible thing for a scared little girl?

“An hour,” he concedes, tries to hide how dizzy it makes him feel. “Then you have to leave, okay? Your mom and dad won’t like you in here.”

Kata beams at him like he’s given her everything she’s ever asked for and then some. Slowly, like a nervous kit, she leans against the cabinet next to him. Close, but not too close. Her toes knock against the side of his heavy boot and Stars, she’s so small.

“You don’t have to talk if you don’t wanna, but can I talk?”

Eleventh closes his eyes. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Hmm. I dunno. Oh!” He can barely feel her foot tapping against his as she starts telling him a story involving Mookie and some hero that’s obviously a Jedi Knight, and it hurts – but is still so nice to be listening to someone talk about a Jedi without disgust or fear that he doesn’t stop her, just drifts off with their grand adventures filling the air.

Eleventh counts the days by visits.

Morning, noon, night, he gets meals and the wife attempting to draw him into conversation – sometimes he lets her, most of the time he doesn’t. Mid-morning and after-noon, the doctor comes in to cluck her tongue over his injuries and make a face over them.

Sometimes the Jedi visits – why, Eleventh has no idea. You would think he would be disgusted – disappointed even – by Eleventh’s weakness, horrified by how broken he is. This thing was a Jedi once? How could he let this happen? How could he Fall? Not to mention how easily he was defeated on Birren. Not a good Jedi. Not a good Inquisitor. Just, not good at all. He looks at Eleventh, and he wishes he could feel the Force, wishes he could know the man’s emotions so maybe he wouldn’t feel like he’s drowning under the weight of that stare.

(“Why are you on the floor?”

Because the bed is too soft, the comforter is too soft, everything is too soft, and Eleventh can’t stomach it.

He shrugged and the Jedi didn’t ask for more detail.)

Little Kata visits still. Usually in the dead of night, chased out of sleep by more nightmares. Eleventh understands – understands even more so when she finally tells him what they’re about. She stares at her father like she doesn’t know who he is anymore, he remembers thinking. And he can’t find the words to explain what she saw, why attachment and love were treated so differently from each other, but he does his best.

He doesn’t know if it helps because she keeps coming back anyway, but he doesn’t mind because she still tells him the adventures of Mookie and the not-Jedi Knight, can get him to laugh even though it feels like his ribs are knifing inward, can convince him to add a bit to her story – a name here, an old Jedi story there changed to match her little world – and she latches onto whatever he says so easily. It’s hard to say no to her, she never asks more of him than he can give.

All of it…It makes his skin crawl.

Especially when they give him food and the plate is piled high like they don’t have one more, unexpected mouth to feed. Why? Why give him so much? Why waste it on him? He’s an Inquisitor. Their karking enemy. He tried to kill the Jedi. And yet a tray is set in front of him and the pile is tall enough it becomes unsteady. The wife chats about this and that, a holo she watched, a book she’s reading, a story from their lives on Birren – as if that doesn’t hurt, make him flinch and his stomach churn because she sounds so wistful, and he took that away from them all because he couldn’t keep his recognition to himself.

He doesn’t know what to do with all of this.

All of this kindness. This non-aggression.

And it comes to a head a week later – after they’ve landed for supplies because they have no choice. Of course they don’t tell him anything about it. Not how far they’ve gone from Birren, not where they’re going next (Eleventh is convinced they don’t even know that themselves), or even what they picked up, except…his next meal comes with fruit.

It’s balanced on the corner of the tray.

A whole Jogan fruit. Sliced neatly and arranged in a spiral. He eats it first. Eats it slowly. Fresh fruit is hard to come by in prolonged hyperspace trips – It’s even harder to come by in the dark, rotten bowels of Nur where things go to die and wither away –yet they bought it anyway and decided he was worth giving some. He savors the burst of tartness on his tongue even as his chest aches and his stomach rolls.

He lets out a breath that hurts and curls in on himself, threading his fingers through his hair, elbows on his knees, and Stars does the position burn. His arm throbs in time with his heart. His chest is nothing but boiling pain. He could really use something better than bacta patches, even if these are better quality than he’d been expecting, and more than mild painkillers, but how could he ask that? How could he demand that? They’re already doing too much for a man who tried to kill a husband and father. Plus the thought of being drugged so heavily on an unknown ship surrounded by people he doesn’t really know let alone trust isn’t really worth the bliss it would bring. Who knows what they would do to him – they wouldn’t do anything but tend to his wounds, a little voice whispers (and it sounds a lot like a naïve little padawan), but he doesn’t know that.

He folds himself onto the ground in the corner, feeling like he’s coming out of alignment with his body. Nothing is real. Everything is too much. He wishes he could fall into an echo right now, fall away from this moment and forget who he is even if it’s only briefly.

The rest of his food smells delicious – at first. Smells like spices he hasn’t had in years, back when he’d first scrounged up enough credits to buy a skewer from a vendor stall. He hadn’t wanted the indulgence, this little act of rebellion, to show up on an expense report and saved up spare credits here and there for months like some pathetic little thing. The seller raised the prices the moment he was clocked as Imperial property, but he’d paid the extra fee and savored the single skewer like he’d savored the Jogan fruit or the sticky bun on Halais.

Now, the scent makes his stomach lurch, the Jogan fruit growing sour on his tongue, and he barely makes it to the attached ‘fresher before he loses his early meal and mid meal. It burns on its way up, making the smell even worse, and he shudders over the bowl, tears dripping off his nose – when did he start crying? It doesn’t matter. They’re silent tears, just what he needs, his ears are ringing, his skin clammy. His injuries howl and he chokes on a whimper.

He crawls back to his spot against the wall, feeling shaky, and stares at the tray of food with a bleary gaze until someone comes in to take it away – the doctor again. He blinks slowly when she kneels next to him, flinching away from her touch.

“Don’t,” he croaks out. Her hand freezes mid-air. “Don’t touch me.”

“Eleventh Brother – ,”

Her mouth clicks shut when he shudders violently and tucks himself into a corner even tighter, his heart hammering his chest. This whole time they haven’t called him anything. Not Eleventh Brother. Not even Eleventh. They won’t even call him the Inquisitor to his face though he hears it when they think they’re talking quietly in the hall. To hear her say it now, with his vision swimming and his head too heavy and his wrists bound together, and a sourness on his tongue that he can’t tell if it came from the fruit or something else, it makes him want to scream, makes a blackness crawl up his throat, threatening to spew out every dark and dangerous thing he has in his arsenal.

And he has a lot. He has their secrets. Their weaknesses. Every little echo they scattered around unknowingly, unwillingly, thought to be safe in their home – Get away. Get away. Stay away from me.

“No,” his voice quiet and hoarse. There’s a screaming in the back of his head now. It could be his, some distant memory of the early days when he thought he could stay as himself and not get twisted into something broken and seething. It could be his Siblings. It could be anyone or everyone. The edges of his vision darken. His chest gets tight.

The doctor stares, and stares, and stares, and then she sighs, says tightly, “I don’t like it.”

He flinches.

“But I respect it.” She pulls her hand back slowly to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I’ll leave you alone tonight, only because I see you’re upset. But please, I hope you let me check on you in the morning. I argued too much on your behalf to let you die now, okay?” She tries to go for something light and airy, but it falls flat.

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, feeling too raw and vulnerable. She waits a little longer for a response that will never come before her shoulders droop.

“Okay. Okay,” she mutters then stands to scoop up his tray and head to the door, muttering a Huttese swear under her breath – a violent, ridiculous one that’s meant to start barfights than anything serious, and it’s enough to make him snort without his say so. She hesitates at the sound, but then keeps going, the door whooshing open then close, the lock clicking.

…He can’t believe she actually left. Didn’t argue. Didn’t just force her treatments on him anyway. Is willing to give him space – yet still wants to take care of him? Said hope you let me as if she’s going to give him the option to refuse again and she’ll listen again.

What did he do? What has he done? This is a special kind of torture. He tucks his face against his upper arm and tries to remember how to breathe normally.

Bode jerks awake, blinking dazedly at the dark ceiling. His heart hammers in his chest, a whispery remnant of panic in the back of his mind, an undercurrent of fear in the air that tastes like bile in the back of his throat.

Tayala snores next to him undisturbed. He carefully slides out from under her, placing a pillow in her arms that she wraps around with a murmur, and pulls on a long sleeve shirt as he leaves the room. He peeks in Kata’s room, finds her soft and quiet curled up under her blanket, one foot popped out and exposed. Bode comes in to tuck it back underneath her comforter, and frowns at the furrow between her brows. He smooths a hand over her hair, kisses her temple, and the expression eases.

It must’ve been his imagination then, he thinks, until he remembers, no, there’s someone else – and he reaches out cautiously, in a way that’s somehow already become a habit, and finds a flickering flame. Like a candle in the cold winds of Ilum.

Eleventh Brother. Bode doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to calling another person by a number, by something so impersonal. By something he obviously hates. (He flinched, Tayala had said, something hard her voice, seething in a way he rarely hears. Bode, he flinched. At a name he said they could call him, that he said he didn’t care, but he does. He does.) When did his name get taken from him?

The Inquisitor gives himself away more than he probably realizes. With the binders on he can’t shield very well. The instinct is still there, the Force will never leave him but Bode can feel the hurt. The weak, flickering flames of his aura trying to shine bright but collapsing under the weight of everything Dark and cold. He hears so much despite them never holding a conversation. Tayala tells him what she sees, whispers them into the palms of her hands like she can’t understand how anyone could do this to another person.

– there had been a moment, once, when the man’s gold-gold-gold gaze stayed over Bode’s shoulder when he walked in, distant, unseeing, unaware of him standing there, waiting for the familiar curl of his lip and assessing look. He stared, and stared, his breaths picking up, and Bode remembered seeing that same look when Tayala was redoing his patches, the minute flinches that could almost be brushed off as a reaction to pain, but he knew better, could feel the sparks of discomfort. Bode had to get close. He had to bring him back from whatever he was seeing because that’s not where they were, that nightmare is over. The moment he touched him, the Inquisitor snarled and ripped himself away, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. And he wondered, as his eyes caught the scar across his throat, what kind of life you have to live to have violence be the first reaction to another person’s approach.

He’s not unfamiliar with the awful, blood-stained parts of the galaxy, the rust and dirt hidden under a veneer of shine and shimmer. Tayala has seen a lot as a doctor, is unshakeable even on her bad days. But there is something about this man, about this Jedi-who-isn’t, that Bode can’t wrap his head around. It has them both reeling.

Tayala – her anger and disgust at the depravity of the Empire, of the galaxy at large.

Bode – his rage has given way to horror, his fear traded for grief for this man who obviously has been shattered, broken into tiny little bits until all of him feels so distant how could he ever think he could ever be whole again? Bode can feel it, the cracks and those pieces of him he tries to hold close. He looks at Eleventh Brother and he wonders how he’s managed to stay so strong, to still be alive after everything. And he doesn’t even know what the man’s been through, he just feels it.

And he feels this: a nightmare that stretches on for far too long, the Force a miasma of fear and despair that makes him sick to his stomach. (He said no today too, Tayala said, sounding frustrated and lost, I don’t know what to do.) Bode unlocks the door and steps in, nose wrinkling immediately at the sickly smell in the room, and finds the Inquisitor not tucked in the corner (like he expected) or on the bed (like he hoped) but curled up…underneath it?

(Defensible.)

He kneels down with only the soft light from the hall and the sliver through the cracked ‘fresher door to see by. Eleventh Brother has his arms tucked close, his back against the wall. His breaths are too short, too fast, his forehead glistening with sweat even as he shivers. Even from here, Bode can feel the sickness radiating off him – vomit, he finally clocks the smell as and he swears quietly. Eleventh flinches at the sound but doesn’t make a single sound himself. Absolutely nothing. Bode can’t stand it anymore. Before he thinks better of it, he reaches under the bed to gently grab hold of the man’s ankle and tug on it.

Eleventh inhales sharply, eyes flying open and pinning Bode in place with a golden stare that doesn’t seem to be registering Bode at all. He freezes, his hand still stupidly wrapped around his ankle like he isn’t known for reacting violently to touch. The Force spikes too hot before it eases into something hearth-warm when Eleventh Brother finally looks at Bode. There’s a glazed quality to his eyes, like he’s still not all there.

“Let go,” he croaks out, his voice barely a sound – like he’d been screaming. Or, Bode thinks as he pulls his hand back, like someone had taken a blade to it.

“You woke me up,” Bode says quietly.

Eleventh doesn’t apologize, or even acknowledge he said anything at all, staring with fever-bright surprise like he can’t believe Bode listened. They’ve always listened. Every time he tells them to stop, to back away, to not touch him, they’ve listened, and it’s a shock every time. Shocked and confused that they just hadn’t pushed through his discomfort, which makes Bode’s heart twist all over again. How often did that happen? How often did he want to say no, but decided there was no point because no one listened? No one cared.

Do I actually get a choice?

Bode doesn’t visibly react to the memory, but it stills feel like a gut punch. He drags a hand down his face, pressing his knuckles against his brow in an attempt to ground himself. It doesn’t do much, not with the heatwave shimmering off the Inquisitor like he’s burning from the inside out. His fever feels like it’s ricocheting in the Force, gaining speed on every rebound. Even Bode is starting to feel feverish.

He peers around his hand to the Inquisitor. His hair is the color of copper – that’d been the third thing Bode noticed about him after the gold eyes and the scars. It sticks to his face now, curling along his jaw and forehead with a promise of curls. Bode doesn’t recognize him. Not that he would recognize everyone who’d been a part of the Order. But he feels like…There’s just something about him that rings a bell in his chest, that makes it feel like he’s maybe known him forever already.

What if he did – know him? All those questions he’s been wanting to ask rise up, clamoring for answers.

He should get Tayala. This is definitely the infection she was worried about.

But –

Maybe…

“Who are you?” he asks even though he’s not really expecting an answer. Sure enough, Eleventh stays silent, watching him warily as he shivers. “Who were you, before the Order fell?”

The silence stretches, then finally, “Nobody.”

Not an answer, but at least it’s a response.

“C’mon,” Bode urges. He drops his hand and leans in. “No one in the Order was nobody. That’s not how it worked, and you know it. Were you in the Temple? With the Corps?”

Eleventh’s lip curls in that familiar defensive expression and he – looks exhausted and afraid, his eyes a little rounder, his expression leaning too close to fleeing terror than abject violence. Bode abruptly realizes he’s blocked the light from both sources, turning himself into a shadowy mess, and subsequently blocked every means for Eleventh’s escape if Bode tried to pull something.

He wouldn’t.

But the Inquisitor still doesn’t believe that.

Bode sits back on his heels, then drops to the floor completely, shoving himself away from the bed, away from the heat of the other man, in both body and the Force, far enough away even if he did do something Eleventh would have time to react. But close enough he’s not so far away not to feel the minute swell of the Force rising and falling as he breathes too fast.

“I was a Shadow,” he gives as a peace offering.

Eleventh wheezes out something that could barely be called a laugh. “Obviously.”

“Oh?” He raises an eyebrow. “You know that that is?”

Hardly any Jedi knew what Shadows were – the source of their information of enemy movements never questioned, the strategic lives quietly snuffed out, the way some of the more delicate missions were easier than they should be. He’d been a good Shadow, maybe not the best Jedi, but an excellent Shadow. It feels strange telling someone this. He’s only told Tayala, could only tell Tayala because there’s been no one else – and he told it like it was an awful secret. In the dead of night, whispered achingly into her skin as if he’d been asking for absolution from an Order that didn’t exist anymore. Did I do the right thing? Am I still doing the right thing?

“Spy,” Eleventh says simply but the implications are thick. He shifts, his hands and the tip of his nose coming out of the shadows. He winces and tries to shift his head off something uncomfortable in the floor, then seemingly gives up with his neck sitting at an awkward angle, the furrow between his eyebrows deepening. “I read the reports.” The corner of his mouth twitches as he adds, “wasn’t supposed to.”

“Huh.” Bode moves slowly, then when Eleventh doesn’t react, continues until he can pull his unused pillow (and isn’t that a kick in the stomach) off the bed. He’d asked why he was constantly on the floor when it was so uncomfortable and received only a shrug, but now he wonders if maybe that discomfort was on purpose. “They just left reports laying around for Initiates to sneak a look?”

“I was a padawan, thank you.”

And he says it like he’s not fully registering what the words are, dreamy and distant. A happy memory, for as happy as a memory about reading a Shadow’s report can be, one from before the Empire and the Inquisitorius, He also doesn’t fight him when Bode risks it and very slowly, very carefully slides a hand under his head to lift it onto the pillow that follows. Just tilts his head to press his cheek into it, letting out a sigh. A clump of hair falls over his eyes. Bode resists the urge to brush it away.

“There’s no way,” Bode says just to say something, his gut squirming at the soft, hazy look Eleventh gives him through his eyelashes. The light from the hall makes his eyes shine, a dappling effect in the swirl of irises makes him swear there’s another color layered underneath to make them so bright. “You would’ve been….”

“Nine. ‘m not that young.” He turns his face into the pillow briefly, rubbing his eyes on the fabric. The Force is drooping in tune with his pain-exhaustion. He peeks open an eye at him. “I was made a padawan-commander when I was nine. Spent three years on the frontlines,” he murmurs.

“Nine,” Bode repeats weakly. He would’ve been twelve when the Order fell. Hells, were they really putting karking nine-year-olds into war? He knew the Jedi Order was desperate in the end, but to send a child – ? Another mechanism to bring them to their knees he knows, but that doesn’t make it better.

(Does that mean he was twelve when the Empire got to him? Thirteen? Fourteen? He’s at least twenty now, he’s pretty sure. That’s years. That’s – .)

“You must have been a really talented padawan.”

Eleventh hums. “You could say that. The only thing I was. Talented,” he sneers though it comes off half-hearted, lost to the smoke clouding his mind. “Wasn’t enough. Wasn’t a good padawan.” Something breaks in the Force, like glass breaking in another room. Distant and alone. “Got my, got my Master killed.” He lets out a shuddery, wet-sounding breath, and Bode is a little alarmed to see tears clumping his eyelashes. “K-killed so many people. I – I couldn’t – . ‘m sorry. I – .”

Bode reaches out, presses his knuckles on his cheek to quiet him, feels the fever under his skin. Eleventh doesn’t react beyond a sniff and leaning into the touch, copper lashes fluttering, the grief and mourning falling away at the simple action.

The violence, the fear, has settled alongside it– and it makes something deep inside Bode settles too. Some fundamental part of him that was almost whole, just needed one more thing to slot into place. The Force is dim, but there’s a promise there. A promise of something bright and resplendent, waiting to be set free.

He aches to set it free.

“Can I get Tayala?” he whispers, dragging his touch back and forth over scruff that started appearing a few days ago. “You have a fever.”

“I do?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh.” He’s quiet for a long, long moment. Long enough Bode thinks he’s fallen asleep. But eventually he sighs out a quiet, “Yeah.”

Bode lets his touch linger as he stands, the man’s aura clinging to him, cradling him in warmth, an undercurrent of desperation, of stay-stay-stay that makes Bode want to sink back to his knees and promise always-always-always even though he doesn’t have that right.

He presses his mouth together in a thin line and leaves the door open when he goes back to their room. Tayala is still curled around the pillow, but now she’s awake, eyes glimmering in the low light.

“A fever,” he confirms her unasked question.

She sighs into the pillow like she’d rather scream instead. “I karking knew it. He said you could grab me?” He nods. She pulls on her robe, ties her hair back into her casual scarf in brisk, professional motions. When she passes him, she touches his arm, grounding him a little more firmly than he realized he needed. “Go get the supplies I got. I definitely saw this coming.”

Bode takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and does as directed.

Bode runs into Kata – literally – when he comes back out of Eleventh’s room, fetching something they’d forgotten. She careens into his legs, and he has to grab her before she takes a tumble.

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down, starling.” Hands on her shoulders, he kneels so they’re closer to the same level, frowning at her distressed expression. “What’s wrong?”

She glances behind him, Mookie clutched close. “Is he okay?” she whispers.

His heart melts a little at the question. “He’s fine.”

“Are you sure? He threw up and he said he was okay, and I didn’t believe him, but I thought he told you guys. I told him to tell you guys,” Kata says in a rush, near tears and chin wobbling.

“He will be fine. Your mama – .” Bode screeches to a halt. “I’m sorry, what?”

“He didn’t say he was gonna tell you, but I told him to and sometimes he listens to me. I got him to sit on his bed once!” She suddenly looks all proud of herself, chest puffed up, but then she deflates. “He didn’t like it. He said he was more comfortable on the floor.”

That sounds like Eleventh Brother, yeah, but Bode is still trying to wrap his head around the familiarity in which his daughter talks about an Inquisitor. His knee-jerk reaction is horror, he can’t help it. Despite his lack of actual aggression towards them, Eleventh lashes out a lot. To think of his little girl alone in the room with him when he goes faraway is terrifying. And she speaks as if she’s been visiting him often – this whole time?

Maybe he’s wrong.

Please be wrong.

“Every night?” he asks weakly.

She nods her head rapidly. “He’s nice! He’s really sad too. But he’s not as sad when I tell him stories! Like the ones you tell me.”

Bode takes a breath. “Sweetheart, that was a really dangerous thing to do. He’s a stranger. He could’ve hurt you.”

“He won’t hurt me!” she insists. “He saved me! He makes me feel better when I have nightmares.”

“Nightmares? Kata, you could’ve come to us if you were having nightmares, you know this.”

She freezes, eyes big and round, like she hadn’t meant to let that slip. Bode stares at her, unease crawling down his spine. Kata hunches, looking away as she admits in a small, small voice, “…they were about you.”

Bode suddenly can’t breathe. His hands slide from his daughter’s shoulders, his chest growing numb. About him. He scared his little girl enough an Inquisitor was solace.

As much as he tries to keep the horror off his face, slip into that mask of a Shadow he hasn’t had to wear since a stubborn, beautiful woman rolled her eyes at his attempt and touched his cheek so, so gently, he utterly fails – or the Force just gives him away – because there’s tears on Kata’s cheeks as she throws herself headfirst against his stomach, dropping Mookie to wrap her arms around him the best she can.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m not scared of you. I’m not. I promise. I was just, just a little scared. But he made me feel better and he’s awake when you’re not and he’s so lonely. It’s not because of you.”

He hesitates to hug her back, but he can’t not. Bode cradles her to his chest, his own eyes burning. “It’s okay,” he murmurs into her hair, his voice cracking and cutting off her apologies. “I’m sorry I scared you. I’m sorry you had to – you had to see me like that. Stars, I’m so sorry, Kata.” A tear drips onto her hair, and he curls around her tighter, swallowing down his own sob.

Kata sniffles. “You were scared,” she mumbles.

Bode nods desperately. “I was. I was so scared for you and your mom, but that’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have done that.”

He smooths a shaky hand over her hair. He’d been so caught up in fear the moment Tayala’s message had come through, warning him away with a song he’d made to sooth his daughter to sleep when she was just a baby, he had let it consume him, turned it from fear into something useful that made everything so far away and so close at the same time. He didn’t even think about the aftermath, his only thought was protecting his family.

“He said it’s okay if you’re a little scary like that, it means you love me a lot,” she says so matter of fact through the tears still on her cheeks. “But he also said you have to be careful when you’re scared because it can make things bad.”

Hells. He pulls her back into a tight hug, squeezing his eyes shut. Make things bad. Yeah, a bit of an understatement. Nothing is worse than your own daughter being frightened of you.

“I’m not scared of you, papa,” she repeats, voice muffled from his hug. “I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. You’re my papa and I love you, how can I be scared?”

“Oh, Kata,” Bode whispers. “I love you too.”

They stay like that for a little longer, until they’re both a little more composed. He lets her go, drags his wrist under his eyes quickly. Kata picks Mookie back up, tucking him in the crook of her arm.

“Let’s get you back to bed, okay? Your mama and I are going to be busy for a bit.”

She digs her heels in. “Can I see him? He was asleep tonight, so I didn’t get to say hi.”

Bode smiles ruefully. “He’s probably asleep now too. We’ll see how he feels at mid meal, and you can say hi then if he’s up for it.”

Kata pouts but nods anyway, holding out her hand for him to take and leads him to her room so he can tuck her in. He makes sure her feet are covered and that her weighted blanket is in reach if she wants it.

“Are you mad at me?” she asks quietly.

“Never,” he says vehemently. “I could never be mad at you.”

“Are you going to change the lock?”

Bode should. He absolutely should. But – he sighs. “No, I’m not.”

“So…I can keep visiting him?”

He kisses her forehead. “We’ll see after he gets better, does that sound like a plan?”

“Hmmmm, fine.” She snuggles down, eyelids drooping. “He really is nice, papa.”

“I know.” He settles a hand on her arm, rubbing soothing circles with his thumb until she drops off into sleep. “He saved you after all. Nicest thing someone can do.”

Chapter Text

It takes three days for Eleventh’s fever to break.

It’s a miserable three days. It gets worse before it gets better, the man slides into delirium way too fast for comfort, murmuring things under his breath in languages neither of them know. Sometimes he would say the most heartbreaking things in Basic – never loud, never with the volume the sheer emotions in his voice would indicate. It’s whimpered pleads of Master and I’m sorry and no please stopstop stop please and – that’s Bode’s fault. He’s the one that brought up the past while the man was already sinking into the fever. If he hadn’t said anything at all, what would he be dreaming about instead?

…The Inquisitorius no doubt.

Which he does not much later, cutting off a sharp whine mid sound and tugging on the binders with unexpected desperation. Bode grabs onto him before he can wrench himself off the bed or, worse, tear something in his arms. He hooks a hand around the center hinge, pauses, then looks at Tayala, gauging her reaction. She looks back solemnly and nods without a single second of hesitation. He takes out the code cylinder and unlocks them, leaving the cuffs around his wrists.

The connector is a failsafe. A trick actually. The cuffs themselves contain the Force suppressing components and the connector is just to lure the Jedi trapped in them thinking all they had to do was pick that and they would be free to the use the Force – only to stumble when they’re left bereft, leaving them caught off guard long enough to take them down again. It was mean and spiteful, but very effective, Bode imagines.

Eleventh moans, breathing heavily, hand flailing. Bode grabs it gently and puts it down on the bed, murmuring useless, comforting things under his breath just loud enough that maybe it gets through. He leaves his hand over Eleventh’s as Tayala works, sweeping his thumb over the back of it. There’s scars there too. There doesn’t seem to be a portion of him not covered in scars. Injection scars – which shouldn’t scar, the technology is too advanced for that which means it was done deliberately and that makes Bode’s blood burn hot with a rage he has to stamp down before he scares his family again – and marks of electricity that branch up his side, blaster scars, lightsaber scars, vibroblades, a whole tapestry of various tortures mapped over his skin. Bode wants to wrap him up in a  blanket. He wants to burn the Inquisitorius to the ground first and then the Empire next. He wants Eleventh to stop crying silent, miserable tears and apologizing between breaths when the nightmares, only chased off for brief moments at a time, come back.

“He was twelve at the youngest,” Bode tells his wife, eyes fixated on Eleventh’s chest as Tayala applies more of the bacta gel – high quality, expensive, and loaded with hard core pain killers. There’s something else in it that he wasn’t listening to when Tayala explained it, trying to breathe through the sight of the angry red wound. He caused that. Yeah, in defense of his family, but that doesn’t seem like a good enough excuse right now. Not with Kata’s voice in the back of his head excitedly telling him every little detail about her visits with the Inquisitor over the last two weeks, how he indulges her, how he laughs, how he just seems so sad, papa, can you fix it? And Kata’s always been a good judge of character… “That’s almost a decade. A fucking decade, Tay. How is he still alive? How can he still be so, so good to Kata?”

She sighs as she wipes her hands off. He leans in at the same time she reaches out and slides a hand through his hair to tug him close so she can kiss his temple so softly and sweetly he has to close his eyes. Her lips linger, and he knows she’s just as affected as him even without the Force giving her insight. Kata is more animated than either of them could hope for after all that violence and then picking up her entire life to sequester her onto a ship. No school. No friends. No grass. No sky. Kids are so resilient, but Eleventh had a hand in helping her cope.

He saved her and keeps saving her. It sounds so dramatic but Bode doesn’t think it is. A decade of torture, of giving all the little good bits of yourself away, and he still saved her.

His hand is still on top of Eleventh’s. Bode turns it so he can clasp it, feeling the rough edge of calluses and scars.

“You fell quickly,” Tayala comments quietly. He jerks away, turning towards her with wide-eyes. She grins impishly. “You barely know him,” she teases.

“Not funny,” he says quietly. Her smile softens and she cups his face. “We don’t know him. He doesn’t talk to me. He’s…He’s still the enemy.”

Tayala hums, brings up her other hand to cradle his face with both, her thumbs sweeping over his cheeks. “What does the Force say?”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Hush. What does the Force say?”

It says there you are. It says this is it. It sings and sings and sings, getting brighter and louder every day, and Bode never believed in fate or destiny, just the Will of the Force – and the Force has failed him often, failed him badly, but it also brought him Tayala. It brought him this life he never thought about having. And maybe it’s brought him this man too.

“We don’t even know his name,” Bode says weakly.

Tayala kisses the tip of his nose. It feels so odd to be holding a feverish Inquisitor’s hand while his wife kisses him, but he finds he…doesn’t mind it at all. The fires at his back, however hazy they are, and the soft, understated aura of his wife in front of him. He could float away weightless and trust that he won’t get lost.

“It just means we have to learn it.”

The fires inside him are burning out of control. Boiling his blood. A lightsaber through his heart, bursting it open and weeping sick, painful tears he doesn’t want to shed. He’s all alone. Everything hurts. His lungs sizzle. His skin melts. He wheezes and breathes out the aftermath of a forest fire, soot and ashes, blackness spilling from his lips. Everything is dead. Everyone is dead. It’s all silent. He’s alone, alone, alone, please I

“ – don’t wanna be alone,” he whimpers. Come back. Come back. “Please. ‘m sorry. Don’t leave.”

there will be times when emotion, pain, or exhaustion trick you – A hand touches his face, gentle and soothing, and he makes a pathetic noise, leaning into it – you will feel cut off – A thumb smooths over his brow, easing the ache. – isolated – He reaches, reaches, reaches until he wraps his fingers around a wrist, a pulse under his thumb. – this is an illusion.

“Master?” he mumbles, cracking open his eyes. Everything’s blurry. Too bright. He closes them again with a groan he feels to the marrow of his bones. “’m sorry. I tried. I tried,” he sobs. He failed anyway.

And there’s an ocean current rocking him softly, sea-foam and warm waters, washing away the blackness.

“Shh. Go back to sleep.”

He obeys gratefully, sinking into deep abyssal waters.

Everything is a swirl of confusion, moments that don’t seem real and moments that seem too real. There’s a vague memory of a hand on his chest, sweeping up and down in soothing motions, careful to avoid his injuries as pain lances up his side.

Another of a low voice in his ear, murmuring a mantra that makes a deep part of him ache – no emotion, breathe in, there is peace, breathe out, no ignorance, breathe in, there is knowledge, breathe out, no passion, breathe in, there is serenity, breathe out – and for a brief second, those words aren’t in Basic, in a low tone that’s almost familiar now, but in the rumbling language he tried to learn as a young, innocent padawan, the r’s causing him trouble that just made his Master laugh and praise his attempts anyway.

He must say something because the mantra abruptly stops and he lets out a pathetic whine, blindly turning towards the once-source. He’s stopped gently, words indistinct and definitely Basic, but he’s having a hard time understanding anything concrete. Fingers card through his hair, a humming fills the air. He sighs into the touch. He should make it stop. His skin should be crawling, but it’s not, so he doesn’t. He just tilts his head for a new angle and whoever it is obliges far too easily, running their nails lightly against his scalp.

It reminds him of a simpler, happier time, and it follows him to his dreams.

He wakes up one…afternoon he thinks though he can’t say for sure, bleary-eyed and his mouth tasting like something died in it, too hot and too cold all at once, but also so, so comfortable with a strangely heavy blanket draped over the middle of his back and upper  legs. He has one hand tucked under his face, fingers curled against his cheek, a knob on a binder cuff pressing into his jaw – that catches him by surprise, a cold panic in his stomach because why did they separate them? why are they allowing him this freedom? But as quickly as it comes, it fades away under the haze of what he recognizes now as good drugs. His other hand hangs off the bed, fingertips brushing…the palm of Bode’s hand where it lays, the man himself curled up under a blanket, fast asleep on the floor. He stares for a long, long moment, thoughts sluggish, before he presses his fingers down more firmly. Bode twitches, hand curling around his, brows furrowing.

He slowly takes his hand back, fingertips tingling, tucks it under the pillow, and falls asleep again.

The doctor’s hands hover over his chest, struck still at the opening of his eyes. He frowns in confusion, vaguely wondering why she stopped mid bandage change before he remembers. He closes his eyes again, pressing his head against the pillow.

“s ‘kay,” he slurs out, too tired to care if she wanted to pull anything or not. He’s more and more convinced by the minute she won’t. She hasn’t. There’s been ample opportunity, but no one has tried, and there’s a voice in the back of his head that keeps telling him to trust only in the Force and he can’t feel the Force now but he felt it then, and…maybe this is what he’s been waiting for. He could forcibly make her stop now that his hands are free, but her touch is professional yet gentle, and he remembers why he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t hear what she says next.

In his dreams, there is Master Tapal – and it’s funny because he hasn’t thought about his Master in years. Yet for many nights now, his Master has come to him. He’s never angry just like he was never angry when he was a padawan, just stern and kind and understanding. He wonders if it would be better if he was angry. Or even disappointed.

All there is, is a deep sadness, and he looks at him like he’s worth grieving over. Like he meant something. He wants to drop to his knees and ask for forgiveness, to sob out all his hurts and pains, and hope the Lasat would cup the back of his head like he used to do, press his face to his chest to hide him from the galaxy, when it all got too much for a psychometric boy in the middle of a war.

do you need help, padawan-mine? there is no weakness in needing help.

no, because – he can do this on his own, has to do this on his own, because – he doesn’t deserve help, because – he doesn’t deserve any of this kindness.

that is not true. it has never been true. I ask, apprentice, do you want help?

am I allowed to?

is this a thing he’s allowed, to want, to have, to be given? After all these years and all this Darkness,

am I worthy of it?

oh, always, Cal, always. I told you once, trust only in the Force, and I need you to tell me: what does the Force say?

It says: what was once lost is not lost forever.

It says: you are here, and you survived, and I’m so proud of you, padawan, but there’s more to life than that, isn’t there?

Why don’t you give it a try.

“You up for a visitor?”

He feels as weak as a tooka kit left out in the rain, but that doesn’t stop him from saying yes to Bode’s question. He wraps himself up in the heavy blanket they haven’t taken back, the pressure good on the normal aches and pains he’d forgotten about with his worst injuries. He’s on hard core drugs right now, everything’s a little fuzzy and a bit harder to understand, but they’re not much help against the stiffness and deep-seated aches that plague him. He counts the seconds, then doesn’t have to anymore when he hears the pitter-patter of feet and Kata opens the door before her father can catch up.

“I told you so!” she says immediately. He grins at her, and it grows into a smirk at the face Bode makes at his daughter’s manners. She scrambles closer but doesn’t try to climb onto the bed with him. While she keeps trying to get him to sleep on it, she’s strangely reluctant to sit on it even while he’s on the floor. “I told you! I told you!”

He sighs and ghosts a hand over her hair, not quite touching her. “You did,” he confirms, and it just makes her pout. “I’ll make sure to listen to you next time.”

“No!” she says vehemently enough they’re both taken aback. She stomps her foot. “There’s not gonna be a next time because the next time you don’t feel good, I’m telling mama even if you don’t want me to!” He’s surprised to see tears in her eyes. “You really scared me,” she sniffs. She moves like she wants to hug him, but she pulls back, ever respectful of his personal space – and that won’t do. Not this time.

He pulls her into an awkward hug, cheek resting on her head as she presses her face against his shoulder. Bode watches them with a strange expression, but he doesn’t make them stop, just…goes over and sits on the floor where he normally sits and smiles faintly. He smiles back, and suddenly that strange expression brightens instead. It changes so much about him, he realizes, his heart beating faster. He’s always thought the man as pretty and, yeah, his rage is gorgeous, but there’s something so soft about him right now, his hair messy from weeks on a ship, his mouth curled into a smile that’s directed at him. He could…get used to that kind of smile.

“Your daughter is a whirlwind,” he says. Bode’s eyes widen at being directly addressed like this. He almost takes it back. Almost, but  Kata laughs wetly and pulls away, wiping her eyes, and she’s left Mookie behind, tucked into the crook of his arm.

Bode laughs too, a low chuckle that makes his ears warm. “She comes by it naturally. You should see Tayala when she gets into it. I can barely keep up.”

“Don’t let mama hear you say that.”

“Nah, she already knows.” Bode eyes him carefully. He braces himself for the questions. All of them. He only has hazy memories of the last few days. He remembers being asked questions, and he remembers answering them, but if he said anything without prompting, he’s at a complete loss. “What kind of food do you like?”

“…what?”

Bode grins. “I realized we’ve been giving you food and you’ve been eating it, but I don’t know what you actually like. If we don’t have it, we can pick some up.”

He stares at him for a moment then looks helplessly at Kata. She tilts her head and nods sharply.

“I like those little flat bread things with the berries,” she declares. He nods rapidly in agreement, stupidly grateful for her. “and that purple syrup. And the, the, whataretheycalled, the Tip-Yip dumplings.”

“Wait, I don’t remember dumplings.”

“Because you were sick, silly,” Kata reminds him. He flushes. “But I’m sure papa will make them again, right? So you can try them.”

Bode looks helplessly fond – he doesn’t know what to do with that because it’s not just directed at Kata, but somehow including him in that too. “I sure can. I’ll check our supplies in a bit and if we don’t have enough, we’ll land. We have to fuel up anyway. Any other requests?”

He feels pinned under that dark gaze, the silent appeal for him to answer without hiding behind his daughter. He swallows thickly. “The…the Jogan fruit was nice. Maybe something…like that?”

The smile he gets feels like a reward.

“Consider it done.”

“What are you doing?” is the croaked question.

“Hm?” Tayala looks up to see Eleventh staring at her from his position on the bed. “I’m reading.”

Golden eyes narrow, dissatisfied with the answer. She smothers a smirk, swaps which leg is bent to prop her datapad up and which one is stretched out. Tayala isn’t going to elaborate, she can see the question on his face, and she wants to see if he’s willing to ask it or if he will just let it go. He’s been more…receptive since his fever broke a couple days ago. Not necessarily more talkative though his responses are longer every day and he still shies away from them if they get too close when he’s not ready for it – unless it’s Kata – but there’s liveliness around him that hadn’t been there before.

He lets out a hefty sigh. “Why are you reading there?”

There being the threshold of his opened door. She has her spine pressed to one side of the frame and her foot resting on the other side, one leg stretched out – now in the hall when before her other leg had been stretched out in his room – and the other bent. It’s not the most comfortable position in the galaxy, but like this she can just see Bode and Kata curled up on the couch. His cheek smushed on the crown of her head, soft and pretty even in sleep, and Kata’s bright pink poncho tells her she’s secure in her father’s arms.

“I’m comfortable,” she says. He scoffs. “What, you don’t believe me?”

The internal debate is plainly visible. It’s fascinating what he gives away when he’s not constantly on edge or constantly terrified. Tayala likes this version more. His expressions are open and honest in a way she never expected from someone who’d been under the Empire’s control for so long.

“The floor isn’t very comfortable,” he says.

There we go. “Then why were you always on it?”

He stares wide-eyed, caught off guard – but there’s no fear, which is good – and it quickly slides into an annoyed look.

“That’s a trick.”

Tayala shakes her head quickly. “No trick. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Just thought I’d give you something to think about: if it’s too uncomfortable for me then why is it enough for you.” He stays silent to that, a little huffy. She raises her datapad, drawing his eyes to it. “It gets pretty boring on the ship and there’s only so many hands of Sabacc I can play with Bode before I get annoyed at losing all the time – he cheats – so I thought you’d make good company while I read.”

Eleventh looks away, curling up under the weighted blanket he fast grew attached to. She’s glad, and pleasantly surprised, he hasn’t attempted to give it back. “I don’t think I’ve ever been considered ‘good company,’” he mutters. “But whatever, it’s your ship.”

“I can leave if – .”

“No.” His face flushes at his outburst, then turns red completely when she raises her eyebrow. “You’re good company,” he says quietly without looking at her. “…and I’m a little bored.”

She has to keep herself from beaming. She’s good company! He admitted he was bored!

“Well, most people wouldn’t find my reading interesting, but we could read it together.”

Tayala stands and cracks her back, groaning softly. How he tolerated almost two weeks on it, she’ll never fully understand. Bode said he was probably self-punishing, which now that he’s said that she can see a lot of his actions as deliberate attempts to hurt himself or make his situation even more uncomfortable.

One step at a time.

She ambles over to his bed that she won’t let him out of until he can stand without immediately collapsing. Eleventh watches her, nose scrunched in a what do you want? way. She shrugs. It’s his decision where she sits. He sighs and moves his legs, making room for her to sit on the foot of his bed. She makes sure to not touch him, tucking her legs off to the side.

“What is it?” he asks.

Tayala tilts her ‘pad for him to peek at the screen. “A medical journal. There’s been some advancements in botanical genetics that are promising for the greater medical field.” The title is a mouthful: Hybridizing Diverse Genotypical Specimens Within Novel Macrocosmetic Environments with a whole bunch of subtitles she saves him from having to hear.

“So…growing new plants in new places,” Eleventh says, much to her surprise. “I can see how that would be useful.”

She grins at him. “Exactly.”

“So I hear you cheat at Sabacc.”

Bode smirks. “She’s just a sore loser.”

“Or you use the Force.”

“I would never,” he says with all wide-eyed innocence, hand over his heart. “Me, use the Force to win a simple card game against my wife? What would Master Yoda say?”

Somehow the Master’s name doesn’t make either of them flinch. The atmosphere is too lighthearted for the grief of the past to follow them into this miraculously happy present. He lets out a quiet laugh that Bode looks delighted to hear.

“Master Yoda would tell you to do better and go to an actual casino.”

Bode barks out a sharp laugh. “Stars, he would, just to see the horrified looks on everyone’s faces. Did you want to play?”

He scoffs. “You have an unfair advantage.” The easy-going expression on Bode’s face, falters something sad replacing it for half a second, but he doesn’t have time to feel guilty for ruining the mood before the smile comes back.

“Sounds like you’re already coming up with excuses for your future losses.”

“You wish.”

Two hours later, Bode is throwing his hand down in defeat, shaking his head. “How?”

He hums, showing his winning cards – which just makes Bode swear at how thoroughly he was about to lose if he hadn’t conceded – and smiles, crooked and charming, and Bode can’t look away. “I know how to play Sabacc.”

“Yeah, apparently you do. You’ll have to give me some tips. I don’t understand how you won without the Force.”

“So you do cheat!” He flings his cards at the man. They flutter into the air harmlessly as Bode laughs a full-bodied laugh, head thrown back, bracing himself with one hand so he doesn’t topple over. He can’t stop staring, his hand frozen mid-throw, his heart beating so fast he feels breathless.

Bode swings his head up, cheek smushed on his shoulder, eyes glittering. “Wanna see if you can do it again? Promise I won’t cheat this time.”

He shakes himself from his stupor. “Like I believe that,” he says as he gestures to the cards scattered on the floor and in Bode’s lap. “I’m not allowed to leave my bed,” he reminds him loftily. “Doctor’s orders.”

That earns him another cackle. Shorter but no less pretty, all sharp joy and happiness that makes him ache to feel the Force again, to know how those ocean waters feel infused with all these happy moments. He accepts the stack of cards handed to him and he shuffles, unable to look away.

And Bode keeps looking back.

There’s no denying that everything changes after that.

It starts out as little things. Bode and Tayala come into his room more often for longer, the door left open so casually he wonders if they even notice they’re doing it. They’re rarely in at the same time – sometimes Kata tags along, but she doesn’t give up on her late-night visits – and it’s a game of sabacc, or another article, or the holo book Bode brought with him while he was still bed-bound. Bode had already made it a couple chapters in, but he started over just for him, and he listens with closed eyes, head tilted in Bode’s direction to better hear his low, soothing voice.

But the curious thing is, they always have late meal with him.

Or, they ask if they can have late meal with him. If he says no, Kata pouts and Bode looks disappointed, but they nod and head to the galley. If he says yes, well, they sit in a circle and they have a meal together. It’s…It’s –

One of the best things he’s experienced in a long while. There’s been so many of them in the last few weeks he can’t pick which one is the best, but he thinks sitting around, listening to Tayala and Bode tease each other, watching Kata attempt to slide her vegetables onto his plate, and allowing them to pull him into the same lighthearted, easy conversations they’re having with each other, is probably one of the better ones.

Bode distracts Kata and he puts her veggies back on her plate when she’s not looking, earning an outraged look when she turns away from her father and he’s too slow to bring his hand back. He grins and eats another mouthful of rice, quirking an eyebrow until she pouts and grudgingly eats a piece of green.

If he could do this forever. Just have meals with this family tucked in his little impersonal room. He would probably give up everything to do so. Nothing can get him here in this moment. No nightmares. No Empire. No echoes. Just him, Bode, Kata, and Tayala. It’s so close to perfect.

Tayala holds out a stack of clothes.

He eyes them dubiously. “I don’t think your husband’s clothes are going to fit me.” Bode’s very broad and he’s…anything but. It doesn’t help he’s not exactly a healthy weight for his height.

“These are mine,” she admits. “We’re about the same build.” He’s a little taller, even without the boots he doesn’t remember losing. They’re propped in the corner now with his jacket, all scuffed and sad looking, and his toes get cold more often, but he hasn’t put either of them back on. He adjusts the blanket he has over his shoulders, and Tayala frowns. “Damn, I knew I was forgetting something. I can get you a cover, so you don’t have to keep dragging that around.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, then says quietly, “You don’t have to,” completely thrown by her easy willingness to offer her clothes to him.

“You’re uncomfortable, right?” She doesn’t give him a chance to answer. “I know it’s not ideal, but I’d like to make you not uncomfortable. You don’t have to sit around in discomfort every second of every day.”

“I…”

Talaya’s expression turns solemn. “Right.” She takes a deep breath. “You always get to choose. I won’t force you to change clothes. I’m going to set them here,” she places them on top of the storage cabinet, “and I’ll get you a cover either way. Change only if you want to.”

She gives him one last look then leaves, the door whooshing shut and the lock sounding like thunder as it clicks. He stares at the stack of clothes. There’s a lot of pastels, some greens, some browns, a bright vibrant blue. She gave him options. Of her own clothes. This is somehow worse than them asking him what he wants for meals. He’ll eat anything, so he hasn’t actually given a full answer like they probably want, too aware that their tastes may not be his tastes, and he doesn’t want to force them to eat something they may not like. With this – he’s been wearing the same style uniform for almost a decade, and before that he wore the standard robes of the Order. The most he’s ever gotten to pick was the cloak to pull over everything so no one could tell he was Imperial.

He doesn’t know how to choose.

He rubs the fabric of a pair of pants between his fingers. It’s so soft. The design is flowery, a silver shine in the center of each petal cluster and on the veins of the leaves. His uniform is rough, having not been made for his comfort in mind, and the only personal flair is his cloak and his knuckle guards, everything else was black and red and dark grey. He always wondered if all Inquisitors got the same treatment, if their clothes were rough or too small or too tight, but he never risked voicing the question out loud.

The thing is: no one liked Eleventh Brother.

No one really liked each other at all – they were all traitors, they were all Dark, if they gave up one set of values already, turned their backs on the people who raised and loved them then who’s to say they won’t do the same again – but…there was special sort of disdain for Eleventh and his psychometry.

He knew things.

Secrets. Memories. Nightmares. Those deep inner parts of a person that were torn out and exposed raw, left dripping through the Fortress like a trail of blood. No one knew the dark details – until Eleventh Brother came and suddenly there was even less privacy before. It was one thing for Grand and Vadar to hold their secrets, for their Siblings to sniff them out, it was another for him to know everything in excruciating detail. Not just what happened but how they felt, what they whimpered, what they screamed, what they cried and begged and wept.

What they gave up to make it all stop.

He could hold it over their heads, turn all their secrets against them, hook his nails in and never let go – and there was nothing they could do about it because what they hated about him made him too useful.

So, he was alone. More alone than anyone else in that damn Fortress – and maybe that’s why he always hunted on his own, and that’s maybe why he kept coming back anyway. The galaxy wouldn’t take him as a Jedi-traitor, then the Inquisitorius would take him as a hunting dog. Alone, but pretending he wasn’t. He kept his questions to himself, threw himself into the hunt, and made his Siblings hate him even more when he showed them up or beat them in the training rooms with skills he hadn’t known the week before but he’d picked up a thing here or there from echoes, tucked them into his head so at least he would have that.

He wonders how Bode and Tayala would react to psychometry – and he finds he fears that more than anything his Siblings could ever do to him. How does he tell them the secrets he picked up in their home? About how many of their intimate moments he experienced? Their living room and kitchen were soft, happy, joyful memories, he never picked up what could have happened in, oh say, their bedroom, and he’s never been more thankful that Tayala came out to confront him before he wandered further.

A knock comes at the door. A polite little warning. He backs away from the clothes quickly, curling his fingers into his palms. Tayala waits for him to let her in, and he almost doesn’t, his head hurting and chest aching, but he does, calling out a quiet, “Come in.”

She does, her expression hopeful – only for it to fall when she spots him still in the remnants of his now ratty uniform and the clothes barely touched. ”That’s okay,” she says. “I told you: only if you want to.”

Is she going to take the clothes away now that he’s chosen not to?

No, of course not. What an irrational thought.

Instead, she shakes out a shawl and holds it up for him. It’s a pretty mid-tone green with a shimmering gold thread woven thickly along the hem, dispersing upward towards the center until he can barely see it. It itches something in the back of his head, like he’s supposed to recognize the color, and his hand creeps up without him realizing, his fingertips brush under his eye. (Maybe?)

She turns it front and back, flips it inside out, and folds it back up again, but it takes her pulling out another bundle of cloth from under her arm for him to realize she’s giving him more options and is showing them off for him. This next one is a poncho. A deep red one with a thick blue border all the way around including on the slight split at the neckline, it gives it the illusion of V-neck collar without actually giving up the coverage, and there’s a ladder of white horizontal stripes on the shoulders. She folds that up too, places it side-by-side with the shawl.

He swallows thickly. “Thank you,” he says softly.

She smiles, a little sad, pats the cabinet top, then leaves him standing there with a choice.

“Hey, I heard Tayala gave you some clothes.”

“…yes, she did.”

Bode glances from him to the stack of clothes that haven’t budged (but the shawl and poncho have, he’s unfolded and refolded them so many times, fixated on the designs and materials and aching with want to put one on but not wanting them to get dirtied), and back to him. Then, like an asshole, he very pointedly looks him up and down. He crosses his arms, feeling both exposed and frustrated – and maybe a little vulnerable. It’s his choice. And, yes, it would be very nice to change out of these pants and his undershirt. It’s been almost a month and a half; he had a fever in these things. He probably smells and everyone’s been too polite to say anything about it. But he just… He doesn’t know why he hasn’t changed into these perfectly nice clothes offered to him.

“Are you still in pain?” Bode is suddenly way closer, dark brows pulled together in concern. He doesn’t know how to answer other than nodding wordlessly, his throat suddenly very dry. His mouth twists downward and he reaches out, hesitating until he realizes he’s not pulling away, and then his hand is resting on his forearm. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you used at least the sonic at all?”

I didn’t know I was allowed to – but that’s a silly thought, of course he was allowed to…right? That’s not something they would…punish him for, he just never thought of that before.

There’s a sonic and a full water tank – and as much as a water shower sounds downright divine, water is expensive in space, even more so than the fruit they keep feeding him and the high quality bacta they used on him and the antibiotics he only recently finished. He hadn’t inspected it fully to know if it was a shared tank or not….not that it would’ve changed his mind.

He shakes his head. Bode’s hand is warm and heavy, he’s careful as he tugs on his forearm, coaxing him into unfolding his arms. Then his hand is sliding against his side, his palm big and steadying and it makes his breath catch in his throat in a pleasant way, overcome with the sudden desire to lean into the touch.

Until Bode applies the barest hint of pressure and he’s wincing, pulling away from that warm, warm hand.

“You can’t lift your arms above your head, can you?”

He scowls. “No.”

His injuries are mostly healed, just ugly, raw looking surface wounds, but everything else aches. He stretched earlier and it was like everything locked up, pain stealing his breath and his vision for several seconds. Between being cooped up for a month, leading to stiffness in his bad hip and in all his joints, and being sick which didn’t help, and the pull of still tender muscles in his chest, he’s kind of screwed on the mobility part. He’s had no reason or opportunity to leave his room, so he’s sure no one’s noticed, and he’s more than happy to keep it that way. Let them focus on the obvious.

Bode’s hand is back, a warm balm on the ache in his side, and this time he does lean into it with a soft sigh, lashes fluttering in the temptation to close his eyes. He wonders what it would be like for him to take all the weight. Just for a little while.

“You can say no,” Bode reminds him. And now he looks nervous. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Bode nervous before. “But do you…I could help you wash your hair at least. If you wanted.”

Oh. He stares, trying to wrap his head around the offer. He thought Bode was just going to assure him he can use the sonic – no arm lifting required – or suggest ways he could use the water tank, but to wash his hair for him, that’s…intimate.

Bode is so close he can see every speck of color hidden in his eyes. Like a star-studded galaxy of browns and bronze. He can count every beauty mark on his face. Appreciate the breadth of his shoulders. The warmth radiating off him. He wants and he knows he can’t have, but he nods anyway, the tips of his ears warming at the smile that blooms across Bode’s face.

He hangs back awkwardly as Bode gathers supplies – the man even leaves the room, swearing quietly under his breath at the discovery that there’s no hygiene items in the ‘fresher, and he leaves the door not just unlocked, but opened as well. He inches away from it, feeling uneasy. It’s never been opened before without someone in the room with him. Luckily, Bode comes back quickly, a caddy of bottles in one hand and two of the fluffiest towels he’s ever seen in the other. He doesn’t know what to do as Bode starts up the shower head, just watches as he adjusts the temperature and starts to lay out each bottle. There’s more than he thought there would be.

“For when we’re done with your hair,” Bode explains when he catches his confused expression. “Body wash, face wash, a little scrubber thing if you want it. Razor too, if the,” he gestures to his own face which only has a little shadow of hair, “is too much. Or, you know, we can do the hair today and you can focus on the rest tomorrow. There’s no rush.”

He’s so lost. It must show on his face because Bode suddenly looks sad – and he wishes he knew what he kept doing to make them look at him like that. He stands slowly, holds his hands out.

“If it gets too much at any moment tell me to stop and I will, okay?”

Of course. He knows Bode would stop if he asked him to. That’s no longer something in question. He nods then starts to painfully peel off his undershirt, swearing Lasat curses under his breath, until Bode bats his hand away and helps him out the rest of the way. Instantly, his skin prickles from the chill wafting through the ‘fresher door. Bode’s eyes drift downward and he’s suddenly aware that his chest is covered in an ugly mix of scars, some faded but not enough. His expression is unreadable as he gently touches the thin, overlapping scars from multiple encounters with electricity. He shivers and takes a step back, wrapping his arms around himself protectively even though the tiny voice in the back of his head keeps telling him he has nothing to fear.

Bode takes his hand back slowly, fingers flexing like he doesn’t want to, and he takes a deep breath, obviously centering himself before gesturing to the little fold out chair next to the shower. This isn’t some trooper or transport ship. It’s a pleasure ship first and foremost, one that’s too big for the amount of people currently living on it, and it has a wide range of amenities, including various accommodations for various needs and beings.

He sits down gratefully, stretching out his left leg to ease some pressure on his hip. Ignoring the assessing look Bode is giving him, he squints at the bottles. It’s all various fruity scents. All of them look new. Neither Tayala nor Bode carry that sort of scent on them. Tayala is spicy. Bode is floral. Kata is sweet. Which means – these are new…and for him?

The atmosphere is quiet and – gooey, is the only word he can come up with. Like those desserts Bode made the other day. Dark, rich chocolate with a gooey center, moist and warm and nostalgic. He closes his eyes as Bode tilts head back and murmurs “is this too hot?” that he can only hum a negative at. And then he just…sinks into it. The confident, gentle strokes of Bode’s hands through his hair, the warm water, the pleasant smells, the delicateness in which Bode tilts his head this way and that. It’s all – it makes his nose and throat burn, a prelude to tears that he’s just so tired of blinking back. Bode trades out one bottle for the next, the cap clicking, and his fingers are scratching his scalp, sliding up to massage his temples, swooping back to press against his neck. He sighs and droops, his head cradled in the crook of Bode’s arm and probably soaking his shirt, but the other man doesn’t say anything, just wordlessly adjusts his hold and continues on with one hand free.

Eventually his hand comes to a stop buried in his hair, and he makes a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat that makes Bode chuckle. He cracks his eyes open, peering through his eyelashes to see him leaning over him, blocking the light from hitting his face directly – and yeah, his shirt is soaked, he’s half in the shower stall for the angle, but here’s no complaint, no annoyance. He’s still being so unfailingly kind and patient, and stars, what the hell is he supposed to do with that? He’s got nothing to offer, nothing worthwhile to give. Even if he had the Force, it’s sour and dark and he wouldn’t want to subject anyone else to that.

He doesn’t realize he’s lost the battle against crying until Bode cradles his face, the crown of his head pressed his chest, and he’s thumbing tears away.

“We can stop,” he offers softly.

He shakes his head, presses a trembling hand to his eyes without dislodging Bode’s touch. They stay like that for a while, steam filling the room faster than it can escape through the door. Not a single indicator of impatience or annoyance from Bode as he tries valiantly to compose himself. Breakdowns are for the short, and getting shorter, moments when he’s alone. Not for these moments that he wants to hoard away to revisit over and over again.

When the tears slow, he clears his throat and drops his hand, leans his head back to catch Bode’s eye. It’s overwhelming to be the center of his attention, pinned under his focus. It heats up his bones and makes his stomach squirm pleasantly. Bode waits a second longer, holding his gaze, before he nods, thumbing away the last of his tears, and gets back to it, rinsing out the shampoo and then carding in conditioner.

He fixes his gaze on anywhere but Bode and his stupidly pretty face. “Can we…talk about something?”

Bode hums. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything.” He curls his fingers into the fabric of his uncomfortable pants. “Kata said you made Mookie?”

“Oh,” his surprise is audible, but it evens out into easy-going as he continues, “Kata designed him, I made the pattern, but Tayala’s got a steadier hand than me for that sort of thing. She stitched him together in record time. It was a collective effort.” His fingertips drift over his forehead. “I think she’s just trying to make me look better. Tay’s got the effortless down, I need a little help.”

He quirks a lazy smile. “I dunno about that,” he mumbles. “I think you look pretty good.”

“Yeah?”

He can hear the pleased tone in Bode’s voice, can hear his smile, but he refuses to open his eyes or else lose this moment. He scowls. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“I don’t know, being told I look pretty good by the very guy Kata is trying to make me look better for? That’s definitely going to my head.”

He reaches back to swat at him, gets only a brush of soaked clothes as Bode curves out of the way as he laughs.

Chapter Text

Here’s the thing: Bode fully expected his infatuation with this man to disappear once everything settled. The Force does not a relationship make no matter how warm the hearth-fires are. But here’s the other thing: he’s too damn beautiful.

He’s got a laugh that sounds like music. A little rusty and out of practice, sure, but Bode’s sure he can coax more out of him, has coaxed more out of him. Even without Kata at his side, who seems to make him brighten like a flower seeing the sun for the first time in months, he laughs at Bode’s jokes, at his fumbling, at himself – though that’s a little more self-deprecating than he’d like. Now that fear and violence aren’t the first things he reaches for, he smiles, all small and soft and a little crooked like it’s hard to do but he still can’t help himself. He’s whip-smart, understanding Tayala’s articles and journals with minimal explanation which is just how; and mischievous with his subtle humor and snarky remarks and teaming up with his daughter; and unthinkingly kind – and that’s how they got into this position to begin with, isn’t it? – and so damn beautiful.

He’s still pale as hell, though there’s a promise of color if they could just find a sunny planet to hang out on for a couple days – and if they could just convince him to leave his room for a bit, but they’ve left the door unlocked and they have yet to see him – but his cheeks are a little more filled out, no longer looking like death warmed over; his eyes a little brighter, a little more; he moves easier though there’s a hitch that can’t seem to be attributed to any of his wounds from Birren. Bode chalks that up to the old and not-old-enough scars, having seen not just the ones on his chest, but a disturbingly straight one with jagged edges that went up his calf. Like he’d fallen through a floor, and something caught on his leg.

But, stars, when he smiles, when he laughs, when he looks at Kata as she talks excitedly, when he squints over his wife’s shoulder no longer as worried about personal space, when he teases Bode about losing another game of Sabacc even though he has all the advantage in the world with all his tells trickling into the Force. He can’t help but be distracted (and he’s really good at Sabacc, okay? Bode has no chance now and he can’t imagine what…what it’ll be like when those binders come off).

The day Bode came into the room months ago and found him dressed in his wife’s clothes should’ve been weird. Should’ve been off-putting and awkward, but he’d been asleep, hair freshly washed and the color of burnished copper, soft and silky, the red and blue poncho he knows Tayala took out of his drawers drowning him, his lashes fluttering while he dreamed, and he found himself thinking yes this is right, this is how exactly how it’s supposed to be.

(Except not quite because he’s here all alone and not in Bode’s bed or on the ship’s couch or leaning against the galley counter or in the ship’s cockpit. He’s not laughing with his wife over a soap opera or staring at the stars streaking by with his daughter or sitting side-by-side with Bode, head on his shoulder in the lounge. He’s on the fringes of their life and he wants him in it completely and fully.)

He’d carefully brushed a lock of hair from his eye – earning a nose wrinkle but he stayed asleep and isn’t that a punch in the gut show of, of trust – tucked it behind his ear, and promptly went to find his wife so he could fall into her arms and whine about not knowing this gorgeous, handsome man’s name.

One day. It’ll happen one day. He hopes it’ll be a good one.

nightmares. it’s all nightmares. he can’t sleep. he can’t eat. nowhere

is safe. nowhere is ever going to be safe again. he wants his master. he wants to leave this place. he wants. he wants. there’s blood on his hands and he’s supposed

to like it. the mission. the hunt. In The Name of The Emperor. dark and darker and even

 darker still. agony. suffering. fills his head. fills his heart. wants it to stop. stop. stop. please. stop. he doesn’t want these. anything but these. they hate him. hate-hate-hate everything. him most. this one – dripping, pooling, red, red, red, blood, screaming. the Moment. the Revelation. Betrayed. You betrayed me. You’re

weak. She gave me up. She gave us all up. How could

she do that to us? To me? Weak. Weak. please no where are you going take

me with you don’t leave me here come

back come back COME BACK YOU TRAITOR. how do you know that name? shut up. shut up. stop talking or I’ll make you stop talking. I’ll make you. I’ll fucking

make you. – dripping, pooling, red, red, blood, no scream, can’t scream, can’t breathe, hand to his throat, choking, choking, choking, bootsteps

walking away. crisp. professional. gone, gone, gone. he wheezes, clawing to – sitting, to –  standing, to – staggering down the corridor, hand on wall, hand on throat, vision

black. hate-hate-hate. despair-despair-despair. stop-stop-stop. it’s never going to stop. it’s – never – going – to – end. Please, I just want it to end. I just want –

He jerks awake unable to breathe, hand automatically going to his throat. There’s supposed to be blood there, dripping from flayed skin, drooling over his fingers, making his steps slick and unsteady. But there’s nothing but gnarled scar tissue – it’s not enough to bring him back. He chokes, wheezing out his next breath, rolling off the bed as he blindly seeks for, for, for something. Tears stain his cheeks. Sweat-soaked hair clings to his skin. He lets out a whimper before ruthlessly swallowing it back. shut up. stop talking or I’ll make you stop talking. He presses his forehead against the floor, thumb digging into the soft point of his throat where the scar is wider, where her knife caught on the curve. He was lucky she didn’t use her lightsaber.

“Hey, hey.” A warm hand on his back. He shudders but doesn’t flinch away like he should, like he used to. The hand pets down his spine, over and over again, soothing, comforting. A shadow leans over him, warm, so warm. Nur had been cold despite the exposed molten core. “You’re okay. You’re on the Starbright. We’re on the Rimmia Route, heading towards Tallaan. Kata and Tayala are sleeping peacefully. You’re safe. We’re all safe.”

He exhales shakily and turns his head to see Bode looking at him with so much concern it makes his chest twist.

“’m sorry,” he mumbles, wincing when his voice comes out sounding as raw as his throat feels. “Didn’t mean – .”

“Void, stop talking please. It hurts just listening to you.” His words are blunt, but his tone is soft. Tears well up again, stinging his nose. “Can I hug you?”

He nods miserably. Please. Bode gathers him into his arms. Warm and solid and he can’t help but tuck his face against the other man’s neck, listening to the steady beat of his heart as Bode holds him tightly, hair feathery soft on his skin. He wraps his arms around him in return around his waist, fisting his shirt until his knuckles turn white and – he can’t stop the sob that breaks free, cracking his chest open and making him bleed out as more and more come until he’s crying openly for the first time since he was a thirteen-year-old strapped to a chair and was asked what do you see with this? and the item in his hand screamed and screamed and screamed until his screams were louder, until his voice gave out and turned to blood.

Eventually his tears dry up, leaving him wrung out and hollow. Bode traces shapes on his arm, humming a familiar song quietly. It’s the lullaby for Kata – ghost star, are you very far? – and he sinks into it, tilting his head so that his nose brushes the other man’s pulse in his throat. Bode doesn’t say a word, and he’s so thankful for it. Words are hard like this, stuck in his throat, shattering on his teeth just like always, but Bode is patient, traces okay, okay, okay, safe, safe, safe on his skin.

He might just actually start believing it.

He waits until Bode settles across from him before he says, “There’s something wrong with your hyperdrive.”

Bode quirks an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“Yeah. There’s a tick. I can hear it. Won’t be a problem now but give it a couple months and it’ll cause a cascading failure, putting you in an uncontrolled emergence from hyperspace.”

Bode frowns. “I thought this ship type was known for faulty landing gear, not hyperdrive problems.”

“Landing gear and sensor suites, but they fixed the sensor suites.” He shrugs. “I think it’s an easy fix, we don’t even have to land for it.”

“Could you fix it?”

Oh. “I mean, I could. But I would need – .” He takes a deep breath. “I would need full access to your hyperdrive. I know it’s not ideal. I could tell you what needed to be done instead if you want.”

Bode frowns around the fork in his mouth, pops it out to chew thoughtfully. His heart beats faster, his own food untouched where he’s still clutching it between both hands too tightly. He’s not lying about the hyperdrive and Bode could definitely take care of it with his instructions, but that’ll leave more room for error, and he doesn’t know if he can handle Bode telling him no, you can’t help.

“We’ll take a look after late meal,” Bode finally says, and it’s like a ball of wolfram has rolled off his chest, giving him room to breathe.

“Are you sure?”

Bode’s brows furrow. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Oh.

“I could be lying,” he says without thinking then cringes back, ducking his head to stare at the untouched glowblue noodles. There’s a quiet click as Bode sets down his fork. “Get access to your hyperdrive so I can sabotage it or put a tracker on it, bring the Empire down on our heads.” He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or insulted that they’ve ran into very little Imperial trouble on their various supply runs or checkpoint passes.

Mostly relieved…maybe a little insulted. Only a little.

It’s been months they must be hunting him down. The secrets he knows about each Inquisitor can’t be underestimated. Every time they land, he’s terrified none of them are going to return and they’ll find him in his room, alone and unable to fight back because he’s pretty sure if he lost these people there would be nothing left to live for.

A toe nudges his knee. He glances up through his eyelashes to see Bode’s serious face. It’s the one when he really means what he’s about to say and not the one when he tries to be serious with Kata only to completely break under the force of her pout. “Red, you’ve given me no reason to believe any of that.”

He hasn’t? He’s Imperial. A dark sider. That’s all the reason he thinks is needed, but when he opens his mouth to argue so, the beginning of the sentence catches up to him and –

“Red?”

Bode gestures to his hair then plucks his poncho, the red and blue one. “Noticed you have a favorite. That’s mine actually.” At his continued staring, Bode smiles sheepishly. “We stopped calling you any of those other titles a long time ago, had to come up with something to call you.”

Which implies they talk about him….which he already knew, but it also says that they’re actively conscientious enough of him and his feelings to make sure they don’t refer to him in a way he doesn’t want to be referred as when he’s…not even there to hear it? They didn’t try to give him a full-on name, just a fun little nickname based off his hair that doesn’t feel mocking and a poncho that he actually loves a lot so he wouldn’t mind being teased for that. They didn’t even call him it to his face until this moment months into this whole…trip, adventure, journey, weirdest-time-of-his-life.

“Is that okay?”

He shoves a forkful of noodles in his mouth, enough that he almost chokes on it, much to Bode’s alarm, but he’s nodding rapidly, using the awkward moment to gather his thoughts.  Because it is okay. More than okay. It makes him…want to tell them his name, only to hear someone call him that for the first time since he was twelve. He won’t though. He can’t. It still doesn’t feel like his though. Doesn’t feel like he has a right to it after all that he’s done.

He takes a deep drink of the iced chav tea, studiously ignoring Bode’s laugh. “It’s fine,” he rasps out. Bode’s foot is tucked under his knee now, all casual and comfortable. “Not the most creative name in the galaxy,” he teases.

Bode groans good-naturedly. “That’s what Kata said. I’m getting ganged up on.”

“No, you’re not. It’s just me.” He smirks. “The ganging up on will come later after Kata and I come up with a plan.”

“Oh, so something to look forward to.” He says it with a put-upon sigh, but the smile hasn’t faded, just grown, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Eat your noodles then we’ll take a look at the hyperdrive.”

Bode doesn’t know what to expect when they go down to the engine room, but being immediately put on toolkit duty was not it. He watches as the other man slides into place, muttering under his breath about faulty wiring and quality assurance checks and the lack of decent mechanics.

“You should’ve gotten a discount if they weren’t going to actually maintain this while it was in the depot,” he’s told sternly and Bode can only shrug. He got a pretty good deal actually. And that was only partially because of the Force.

He passes tools as directed, very much enjoying the view. The other man picked a tank top to wear today and has stripped off his poncho so Bode can see the stretch and pull of lean muscles, admire the strength that’s still obviously there despite the months of inactivity. He must be exercising in his room. Bode wants to tell him about the equipment they have stashed away, but he bites his tongue and continues his admiration silently. With his eyes he traces a hooked scar visible on his hip where his shirt has risen up and his pants have slumped lower. Bode pinches the skin on his wrist, drags his eyes up to more appropriate places. He digs his heels to shove himself closer to where he needs to be, the swearing gets louder. Huttese mixed in with something that has rough ‘r’s he hears often, and a smattering of other languages.

“How many languages do you know?” Bode asks.

There’s a moment of hesitation, then a muttered “I don’t know” that’s barely audible. Ah, okay, touchy subject. Interesting that, of all things, language knowledge is touchy but Bode won’t push. He’s less tight-lipped about himself as the days go by, but he’s got some peculiar triggers. Some are obvious. Some take them all by surprise, including himself.

Like, he doesn’t like people touching his neck – though that’s not much of a surprise. He doesn’t like people on his left, especially if they’re talking. He’ll always twist around and make sure his right side is leading – Tayala suspects hearing loss. If he holds eye contact for too long, he gets a little shaky. And sometimes he goes quiet. Full on mute even. That one happens rarely thankfully. But when it does, it’s after particularly bad nightmares that floods the Force with the feeling of being unable to breathe and hot, sickly sensations that aren’t pleasant at all.

“I know four,” Bode says, leaning up against a panel, hip pressed against the other man’s thigh just because. He feels him stiffen in surprise then his leg slackens so they’re touching just that much more.

“Only four? Seems a little lacking for a Shadow,” comes the muffled tease. A hand pops out, slender fingers wriggling, and Bode doesn’t know how he knows the right tool, but he hands it over and there aren’t any complaints. He stares a little too long at the way his fingers curl around the handle as it disappears.

“I know four fluently,” Bode corrects. “I can start bar fights in twelve more and seduce someone in an additional six. It’s enough to get me context clues in more.”

He barks a laugh. “Now that sounds about right.” He huffs in aggravation and yanks himself out from the space where the main hyperdrive coupling is. There’s dust streaked on his forehead. “Damn Shipwrights. They don’t know how to program a hyperdrive for long term use for shit.”

“You do a lot of hyperdrive work when you were a kid?” He can’t figure out the timeline to be honest. The Inquisitorius doesn’t seem to leave much time for hobbies, and he knows for the fact the Temple teachings steered more toward wartime lessons than anything Bode had been used to even with his sessions in what would be expected of a spy. General ship maintenance was left to non-Order personnel. 

He’s quiet for a long moment, head ducked over the toolkit. Their legs are still touching, but now their shoulders brush, a resonation in the Force that has Bode feeling like he’s floating.

“I was hiding on Bracca,” he finally says, still not looking at Bode, “as part of the Scrapper Guild for about six months before the Inquisitors came. Apparently, a giant Republic ship exploding in the sky is pretty noticeable and no one ever believes ‘no survivors’ when Jedi are involved. Turns out a probe droid had been following me around that whole time. I didn’t even notice,” he tacks on bitterly, almost under his breath like Bode wasn’t supposed to hear it.

Language knowledge – no go. The traumatic time between Order 66 and being abducted by the Empire – perfectly okay. He’s missing something.

Bode doesn’t focus on that, just carefully grips his wrist, feeling him shake under his touch. “Everything was stacked against you,” he reminds him gently. “You’ve survived this long. That’s worth something, right?”

“Sure,” he says, tugging on his wrist a little too sharply. Bode lets go immediately. He’s got that curled lip again, a fizzle of self-hate and guilt in the Force. “My survival means other people died to my cowardice and my blade, seems like a decent trade off.”

“You were a kid.”

“I was a padawan.”

“A kid,” Bode repeats firmly. “Who went through something traumatic, had no support network, and was subjected to something that was designed specifically to break you. The fact you’re still even alive is nothing less than astonishing, let alone sane and still so damn good.”

He looks at Bode in surprise, eyes shimmering gold. And this close, with this light, Bode can see hints of electrum, of emerald bursting from around his pupils like a sun’s corona. They weren’t like that before. Bode grins and reaches out to very gently touch his jaw. He’s too confused by the sudden change to resist, letting him tilt his head this way and that so the new colors catch the light. They turn molten.

“Surviving means you get to live,” Bode murmurs, sweeping his thumb over his soft skin. “Don’t you want that?”

Four months ago, he’s sure the answer would’ve been no but now –

He swallows thickly and whispers hoarsely, “I do.”

And Bode smiles for him, soft and proud, swiping away the tear that escapes. He shifts and Bode can tell he’s getting overwhelmed, so he lets him go. Lets him pull back and wipe his face, running a hand through his hair to steady himself. It trembles ever-so-slightly.

“I’m gonna…” he gestures to the space where the hyperdrive coupling is and doesn’t even bother finishing the sentence before he’s shoving himself under there.

Bode settles back against the panel, his hip against his thigh, and tries not to think about how much he wanted to kiss him just now. You don’t even know his name.

Yet.

Yet.

“What’s going with the hyperdrive?” Bode asks. He latches onto the subject change gratefully, launching into a detailed if rambling explanation, and Bode lets his voice warm his chest, feels it to the very core of his being. Oh, yeah, he’s been in trouble.

Red. Red. Red – it echoes in his ears. It makes him feel warm to his toes, but it’s not quite right. He sits curled up on his bed, knuckles pressed to his mouth. He wants to hear his name, he realizes. He wants to hear how they say his name. The last time he’d heard it, it’d been sneered and sticky, traitor tacked on like his wasn’t scared and twelve with mud caked boots and a still fresh scar across his nose from his pathetic attempts at lying low. He barely remembers how Master Tapal said it – did he say it with pride? Did he make him proud?

(Does he make him proud now?)

How would Tayala say it? Kata? Bode – how would Bode say his name? Soft and sweet? Reverently? Around a laugh, a whisper, pressed to his hair? And stars, he ducks his face into his knees, trying to pull himself together. It’s just a name. They can keep calling him Red. It’s good enough. It’s better than Eleventh, right?

But what if?

It takes a couple nights for him to gather the courage. He tries not to make a big deal out of it. But one night he offers Kata…He offers Kata a name. It used to be his. Maybe it can be his again. He doesn’t tell her the origins, just suggests it as another name for a character, wanting to test it, to see if hearing it would hurt as much as he feared it would.

It does, but it also doesn’t.

It makes him dizzy every time she uses it.

Cal, the brave not-Jedi.

Cal, so bright with Light.

Cal, who sounds so normal and so kind.

…Can he be that?

“Cal’s a nice name,” Kata says obliviously. But then not, when he presses his palm to his head and she zeroes in on it, eyes narrowing then growing wide. He wonders what he gives off in the Force for her to look like that. “Wait – .”

“Please don’t,” he cuts her off. “I just – I’m not…It’s not mine.”

“What does that mean?” she asks, innocently curious. Why are you called that? “Of course it’s yours! It’s your name!” she all but shouts excitedly, looking like every holiday is happening at once.

He opens his mouth, then closes it helplessly, unable to articulate why. She pats the mattress, asking silently for permission to climb up. She always asks even though the answer has been the same for months now. He shifts over and she climbs up next to him on her knees so they’re closer to the same level.

“Hi, Cal. I’m Kata,” she says carefully.

Oh no. It’s not. He can’t – He covers his face, shaking his head. It’s not right. It can’t be right. That name belongs to a little padawan who thought he could do good. Not him, this wretched thing who barely knows how to function. She slowly tucks herself under his arm, and he hugs her tightly, trying to remember how to breathe.

“I’m not, not ready,” he says shakily. Pathetic.

Kata takes his hand, squeezing his fingers. “Papa says that’s okay, you don’t have to be ready.”

He lets out a teary chuckle. “Your papa is a smart man.”

She nods solemnly, watching his face. He can’t look at her, eyes squeezed shut. He wants. It’s so hard to want because he feels like he can never have. And it’s so different than standing in the middle of a house full of love, envious and seething, because here and now feels like an ache that’s never going away, but…he feels like everything is in reach for once.

“Can you…Can you try again next week?” he asks quietly.

Kata curls his hand around Mookie, and he squeezes the familiar plushie. “Okay,” she says so easily, so simply it makes the tears fall fresh. Stars, this family.

“Can I sit up here?”

“Yeah.”

The mattress dips as she climbs up, her legs kicking back and forth. “Wanna play a game?”

He leans his head back with his eyes closed, a ghost of a smile on his face as she leans into him. “What kind of game?”

“Ummmmm, what about ‘I spy?’”

“There’s not a lot to spy in here,” he points out without opening his eyes.

More than there’d been originally, sure. He’s got a poncho – the red and blue one though another one, white and green, popped up not that long ago after they landed for supplies and another one snuck into his drawers last night. That one is eye-searingly pink to match Kata’s. He wonders who picked that one out from him. He hasn’t worn it yet. The red and blue one is his favorite. It’ll probably take a lot for it not to be his favorite anymore.

So, he’s got ponchos, two new blankets – one of them heavier than the previous weighted blanket he never ended up giving back --, and Kata started plastering flimsi paintings she’d done all over his walls. Only about three now. There’s still not much. There’s something strangely…off about his room, and he hasn’t been able to figure it out.

He hears her make a noise, geared up to deny it before she finally agrees. He feels the mattress shift again as she hops off the bed, and then – his eyes snap open at the whoosh the door makes without its familiar lock-click proceeding it, finding Kata standing in front of the opened door, looking as proud as can be.

“Papa stopped locking it,” she reminds him, gesturing to the hall.

He scrambles to his feet. “That doesn’t mean you should open it like that!” he says, all hushed and frantic.

It’s one thing to have it open when Bode or Tayala, or all of them, are in his room, sharing meals or just passing time, it’s another to actually leave the room. He never asked if the door was left unlocked on purpose, not wanting to lose the little bit of freedom if it turned out to be an accident. There was something comforting about having the ability to leave the room in an emergency, but he really had no reason or desire to leave beyond that. (It’s a trap, a little voice whispers. It sounds like a scared padawan left in the cold.)

“Kata, please,” he all but begs.

She frowns in confusion – and concern. Great. “It’s okay,” she says solemnly, reaching for him. He doesn’t have the brain capacity to move away from her, stuck in place as she grabs his hand and squeezes tight. “I know it’s scary, but the ship’s really cool!”

He forgets, sometimes, that despite her perceptiveness, she is still just a child. She knows he’s anxious, but she can’t quite pin down why.

“Do you not wanna play anymore?” she asks, her eyes big and sad.

He hesitates before he slumps. “I still want to play.” How could he say no to that face? Like a kicked tooka.

She brightens instantly and tugs him out of the room down the hall into the lounge he passed through only once, that first day on the ship when Bode marched him through and all but threw him into his room. The hyperdrive and engine room are in the opposite direction and down a level.

It’s cozy. A table in the middle, padded couches in a circle around it. The galley is hidden behind a door and a wall that has an open window with a bar top and some stools.

This ship is meant for more than four people, but the three who have been living in it for months have made it a home. Some of Kata’s toys are scattered around, pictures drawn on flimsi are tacked onto the wall just like his room but more plentiful. They packed up some of their photos and they’re now displayed on various surfaces, framed by vibrant plants and datapads and flimsi books. A pair of Bode’s boots are shoved under the table. One of Tayala’s scarves is tucked in between two cushions. A sweater here. A scribbled note there.

He steps back, ready to run back to his room at the sight, his fingers already tingling from echoes he’ll never get to experience with these binders on, but Kata holds firm and leads him to one of the couches, practically pushing him to sit down. It’s more of a collapse than a controlled sit, but he settles onto the comfortable seat, biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood.

He’s not supposed to be here.

Kata sits next to him. “Okay, so – Wait!” She suddenly jumps up with a gasp, shoves Mookie into his arms before he can protest, and is dashing away even faster. “Snacks!” she calls over her shoulder, disappearing into the galley.

He debates following her, worried she’s going to attempt something reckless, but he barely gets a completed thought in before she’s back, arms full of packaged snacks. She dumps them on the table. Juice packs and dried fruit and nutribars – the good kind, sweet and nutty without any of the stale after taste a lot of the cheaper ones have. She puts her hands on her hips and smiles brightly at him.

The smile dims a little when he continues to sit there, cradling Mookie carefully in his hands. She pushes the pile closer. “Snacks,” she repeats firmly.

“Snacks,” he echoes, then finally grabs a quinberry juice pack. It’s cold. He tucks Mookie in the crook of his arm as he pops the cap off and takes a sip. She beams at him and scoops up her own juice pack, throwing herself on the couch next to him, snuggling close until he lifts up an arm so she can tuck herself against his side. They sit there for a moment, his heart calming. His gaze roams around the ship some more. The lights are on their night cycle, dimmed and tinted orange, there’s a pile of half familiar blankets and pillows on the couch. He pulls Kata closer, squeezing her until she giggles, trying to squirm away. He doesn’t let her for half a second then loosens his arm. “You didn’t get me out here to play ‘I spy,’ did you?”

Kata groans dramatically. “You weren’t supposed to figure it out!” She twists in his hug, not to get away but so she can look up at him. “I like hanging out with you, but there’s so much more stuff to do out here and I wanna do them with you.”

“You could’ve just asked.”

“You would’ve said no without saying no,” she argues – and, damn, she’s got a point.

He sighs, slumping in his seat. “If we’re not playing ‘I spy,’ what are we doing?”

“We’re watching a movie!” She hits a button, and the entertainment system slides out from the wall. Oh, wow, that’s impressive. Ridiculous and unnecessary, but he guesses if this ship was being used for what it was actually supposed to be used for, it would actually be too small. “You’ll love it. I watch it all the time!”

They get about fifteen minutes into it before Kata starts bugging him about why he laughs at the droids’ dialogue before it gets translated, and he does his best to explain. Luckily, he learned Binary all on his own, no psychometric help at all, so there’s no uneasy feelings attached as he works through translating and explaining the droidese as they work through the holo. It takes them an hour to get through fifteen minutes, having rewound and paused as needed, and by the time she wraps her head about a tenth of it, she’s yawning and rubbing her eyes.

“I think it’s time for bed,” he says, jiggling the arm wrapped around her shoulders. She lets out a sleepy protest and curls up tighter, tucking her face against his chest. He huffs a fond laugh. “Kata, you can’t sleep out here.”

“Says you,” she mumbles, grabbing onto his poncho and anchoring down. “Papa sleeps out here sometimes. He gets nightmares like we do.” Oh. He swallows thickly and curls his arm around her more. She sighs, one eye cracked open to watch the holo even if she’s not absorbing anything. “’m glad you’re here, Cal,” she murmurs.

Cal. Cal. Cal.

“Thank you,” he chokes out, bowing over her, his chest feeling like it’s about to burst. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

He wakes up warm and feeling, feeling safe. Kata migrated to his lap, curled up in the circle of his arms, using his chest as a pillow. There’s a blanket pulled over both of them, a pillow tucked under his head so his neck isn’t at an uncomfortable angle. He hears soft murmuring nearby, but he doesn’t feel any urgency to investigate, letting himself drift in a half-awake state.

Eventually the murmuring is broken up by the sound of dishes and the scent of food. His arms tighten around Kata, and she groans, mumbling sleepy protests as she buries her face under the blanket. Tayala laughs quietly. Bode says something indistinctly snarky. He cracks an eye open to see them already setting the table, eggs and meats and something that looks like fluffy toast. Tayala nudges her husband and shoos him over.

He opens both eyes when Bode comes over just for the chance to see that fond expression on his face – and he’s not disappointed. It’s incredibly fond. He basks in it even as Kata grumbles at them for disturbing her. Bode doesn’t even hesitate before he runs a hand through his copper hair, brushing away the strands that had gotten in his face. It makes his stomach flip.

“Good morning,” Bode says quietly, gathering Kata out of his lap. She whines and goes boneless, making him grunt and scramble to catch her weight properly. He laughs at the sight, earning a heatless glare. It melts quickly into that same fond-happy-fond expression. “It’s good to see you out here.”

He stretches as he stands, wincing at the sharp crack of his joints, sucking in a breath when his leg wobbles. Bode steadies him with a quick hand before he has to go back to juggling his daughter. “Turns out I just needed a push.”

“A big push,” Kata mutters.

“Hey.” He pokes her in the forehead. She opens her very clear, very not even a bit sleepy eyes. “Be nice to me,”

“I’m always nice to you,” she says then yelps when her father flips her over to hold her upside down by the ankles. “Papa!”

“You’re not being nice to me!” he says, shaking her gently. She squeals in laughter. “I pick you up and you go all, all Mookie on me!”

He scoops Mookie up as he passes – and it flops in his hand remarkably like the little girl currently giggling as her father swings her around. Go all Mookie indeed – and heads over to the table where Tayala is already cutting into some eggs. He pauses, unsure if he should drop Mookie off and go back to his room or if there’s something else she’d rather have him do. His debate is ended for him when she shoves a chair out with her foot and very pointedly gestures to it with her fork.

There’s already a plate set up for him. A container of syrup so he can get second dibs (after Tayala) before Bode gets his hands on it. And a bottle of hot sauce he’d off-handedly mentioned wanting to try. His throat is dry as he adds them to his food, feeling strangely grounded yet like he’s about to tip off the edge of the galaxy.

Bode tosses Kata up, both of them laughing so hard he’s surprised they’re able to breathe. Tayala has the most indulgent, loving smile on her face, cheek smushed where she has it propped up on her hand, not even paying attention to her food as she eats. When her teeth click on empty tines for a third time in a row, he can’t help but snort. He ducks his head when she swings a glare his way, just shoves an egg in his mouth, chewing as he glances up to see her point two fingers at her eyes and then point them at him. He grins, a who me? expression on his face that’s all-faux innocence she can’t help but crack a smile, shoving his arm.

“Come eat before it gets cold,” Tayala calls.

Bode gently drops his daughter right side up in her chair and then collapses to his own between him and Kata, Tayala across from him. His legs sprawl, knocking Tayala’s ankle with one foot and hooking his other around his ankle as well. It makes him freeze before relaxing with a small smile. He likes how touchy Bode is and how he always includes him. He glances at Tayala out of the corner of his eye, and she seems completely unfazed by her husband constantly wanting to be close to both of them. It’s…probably something he needs to bring up, actually discuss, but he’s – he’s afraid if he does, he’ll just lose all of them in one fell swoop, dumped on the next waystation without a look back.

Before that had been a fear because of the Empire.

But now, that fear is because he can’t lose this.

This –

A hand on his wrist, gentle and unobtrusive. Bode. Little feet kicking his knees. Kata. A container of his preferred honey – not sweet enough for Bode, not for breakfast – nudged in his direction until it hits his fingers. Tayala. Mookie shares space with his plate, propped up against two spice shakers. He’s not in his room. He’s welcomed outside of it. Celebrated even. Good to see you out here. Four places set because they want him to stay.

Stay. Stay. Stay.

He wants to stay.

(Can he stay?)

Bode tucks Kata into bed, kissing her forehead and triple checking that Mookie is where he’s supposed to be. He stalls a bit, rearranging her pillows until she sleepily bats him away, then he has no choice but to straighten up and leave, letting out a heavy breath.

He resolutely doesn’t check a certain room a certain red-head has been staying as he makes his way back to the main room, yet the hope still rises, lodges high in his chest, maybe this time, maybe he stayed, and then it blooms into something joyous when he finds both his wife and Red in the room. Tayala is sprawled on the couch, groaning with her palms pressed to her eyes as the red-head argues passionately for whatever side he’s taken.

He stayed. Every night since that first day Kata coaxed (tricked, he would mutter) out of his room, he never stayed out for long, disappearing for days before trying again. It would take a little less time for him to come back out. And then even less after that. Until he’s out with them more often than not. Sometimes a little apart as if he’s just trying to get himself used to the company of people who don’t invite pain.

Sometimes he’s tucked right up with them in front of a movie, or helping Kata with a drawing, or reading the same article as Tayala but from his own datapad that Bode had to keep leaving in obvious spots so he would finally understand that it was his to keep. He would duck heads with Bode, whisper little jokes as they work through this or that – a puzzle, a mechanical journal that’s far more interesting to him than Bode but he keeps bringing it up to watch the red-head’s face brighten as he explains whatever it is. Bode gets to sit trapped between both him and Tayala as they argue good-naturedly over their latest topic, and he’s so karking happy every time when Tayala uses his shoulder to leverage herself into a literal higher position to emphasis her point and Red would swing his legs up into Bode’s lap, slouching back in a casual, arrogant stance that just makes her more passionate.

But he never stayed up with them. Never let the lights dim and shared the space.

Until now.

Bode comes into the room and they’re both here. He didn’t sneak off. He didn’t disappear. There’s soft music playing, a swell of instruments he can feel in the Force, climbing into a crescendo. He doesn’t know what comes over him to turn it louder, interrupting their conversation, and he sways over to Tayala, offering a hand she takes with an indulgent smile.

Bode twirls her, dips her, spins her back until they’re chest to chest, hand on the small on her back, the other clasped with hers as they move just a little too fast for the beat. She giggle so prettily, eyes squinting, her headscarf falling around to her shoulders to let her beautiful brown hair cascade free. Bode can’t believe he’s so lucky. So lucky he found her amidst such darkness, like a beacon in the Force for all that she isn’t Force-sensitive. So lucky she takes him for everything that he is, all the dark parts of him, all the uncertainty and lost days. She dances on her toes, leaning up until her lips brush his ear. He shudders at the sensation, pulling her closer to press his mouth to the bare skin of her shoulder.

“Your man is getting away,” she breathes, a grin in her voice. Bode’s head snaps up to see just that – he’s slinking away like he’s not wanted, like he thinks he’s intruding, and it’s very much the opposite. Bode kisses his wife as she takes the lead, twisting them around and then shoving him forward.

Bode stumbles to a less than graceful stop right in front of him, blocking his escape just enough to make him stop but not enough to make it feel like he’s being cornered. Dappled gold eyes widen in surprise, his lips parting, and Bode doesn’t give him a chance to come up with an excuse, too overcome with this moment to lose it.

Still, he offers his hand. Gives him the choice, the chance to deny, and he beams when it’s taken, something wonder-struck in the man’s expression as Bode drags him over to the space he and Tayala just occupied.

“I don’t know how to dance,” he says quietly, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright. His hair is fluffy, combed back hastily but pieces still escape to fall into his eyes, making him look soft and sweet, especially when paired with that smile that Bode wants to press into, feel the shape of it.

Bode holds him like he held his wife, hand on the small of his back, their other hands clasped together. He laughs and admits, “Neither do I,” which earns him a soft huff and a growing smile, bright and happy. Bode makes him happy.

They dance slower than he had with Tayala, matching the tempo of the song closer. He’s hesitant at first, feet shuffling, his eyes drifting downward to watch them, but Bode nudges his gaze back up with a knuckle under his chin. Bode can feel the Force, the push and pull of sea-foam when the moon is at its highest alongside the soft crackle of a heart-fire finally blazing to full brightness. The red-head rests his cheek on Bode’s shoulder, swaying in place, all the minute tension leaking out of him music note by music note as he breathes easy. Bode presses his cheek to his hair that smells like the fruity soap they picked up months and months and months ago on their very first supply trip. He spots Tayala watching them. She winks, smiling softly, so full of love, and…pops another cheese cube in her mouth.

Bode grins and closes his eyes to fall completely into this moment, memorizing it so he can keep it for the rest of his life.

He gets a fluttery memory of slow-dancing in the room – and he sits on his bed, staring at his binders, running a thumbnail along the edge. He wonders if they left echoes behind, and if they did…are they as warm and suffused with contentment and happiness and love as the ones on Birren? Is he able to do that? Can he leave echoes in the Force as good as those he felt what feels like a lifetime ago?

He sighs and shoves his hands through his hair, elbows resting on his knees, and he wallows, just for a moment. Only for one moment because for once he has better things to do. He squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath. First early meal, then work with Bode to see where they should land next for supplies. Tayala wants a special chocolate from some mid-core planet for her birthday. He vaguely remembers some places that sell it in abundance, but he won’t know for sure until he looks at a map.

The pitter-patter of feet makes him lift his head with a smile. Okay, no more wallowing. He gets up and happily leaves his room.

Bode has his head shoved into the guts of one of the side panels, cursing quietly under his breath as he stabs himself with a wire again. He wouldn’t say he isn’t mechanically inclined but, honestly ships aren’t his thing. Give him a speeder any day and he’ll be a happy man. The elegance of a blaster, the power of a ‘cycle engine. Versus this nightmare of a complication. And nothing’s labeled. He should’ve thought about that before he put down the first payment for this ship. He should…

He should just ask Red to do it. He did wonders on the hyperdrive to the point he boosted its output by a couple fractions and smoothed the ride significantly. He also fixed up the caf machine, which for that alone Bode could kiss him senseless – if that was something he was allowed to do. A Tayala without her caf is a grumpy Tayala, and while Bode finds it adorable when her face gets all scrunched up in annoyance and how she just can’t with the day, she was positively miserable. They were just going to buy a new one, but Red took one look at it, scoffed, and made it run better than ever.

Apparently, that particular skill is from his Temple days when he’d sneak off and poke his nose where it didn’t belong, ending up in various places where people were more than happy to teach a bright, inquisitive youngling how things worked.

Bode wishes he could’ve seen that version of him. Just to know what it was like. But, well, he likes this version too much to wish that hard.

He pulls his head out of the panel to crack his back, glancing over to the nook where Red’s sitting at the galley window as he and Tayala talk about some new holo drama – and promptly abandons all plans of asking for help, because damn. He hooks a hand over the panel door, resting his chin on the back of it, and just…watches them, utterly smitten and wondering how he got this lucky.

Tayala and him are talking quietly with Kata half-asleep in her mother’s arms – until Tayala’s expression brightens with the need to prove someone wrong and she’s handing their daughter over to him so casually it looks like a move they’ve done a thousand and one times. He takes Kata’s weight easily, adjusting so she’s more comfortable, not breaking a single stride as he argues his case. It’s so casual. So domestic. Bode could watch them all day.

He absently nudges Red’s aura with his own, not even thinking about it, just checking in with okay?-okay?-okay? like he does with Kata, like he does with Tayala for all that she doesn’t notice. He waits for a reply for too long before he realizes what he just did, and he’s ducking down again, the tips of his ears warm and his chest cold. Those fucking binders.

He and Tayala need to have a talk about those. Soon.

Chapter Text

It starts out as a normal mid meal. Red and Tayala are more interested in teasing Bode than discussing the latest holo drama, which he would happily sit there and take it, but Kata lets out a big, hefty whine, and drapes over his arm, pouting.

“Can we get a droid?” she asks sweetly. “Cal’s teaching me binary but it’s boring without a droid.”

“Who’s – ?” It feels like the Force shatters, splintering and growing icy cold. Kata’s eyes widen immediately, horrified. “Wait. Cal?”

The red-head has gone dangerously pale, eyes wide and round, looking terrified. He flinches at their sudden attention, fork frozen halfway in the air and trembling as if the ship just went into a tailspin under his feet. Kata lets out a quiet “oh no,” both hands over her mouth, chin wobbling at the sheer emotion radiating off the man. Bode tries to breathe through the blizzard, shoring up his own shields that he’s let soften over the months. Tayala scoops up their daughter, pulling her away to give room for Bode to move closer. He doesn’t like the glazed quality to his eyes. He definitely doesn’t like the shimmer of tears.

Bode touches his arm gently, takes the fork out of his hand. “Cal,” he attempts quietly – finds he likes how it feels, how it sounds. Tayala, Cal, and Kata.

But it makes him flinch again. He doesn’t like that.

He shakes his head rapidly, his breaths shuddery. “No. Not – I can’t – I’m not – .” He stumbles to his feet, Bode’s hand slipping off his arm to hang there bereft. He sways in place. “Please don’t. I’m not, not – .” His breaths are picking up, ticking over to pure panic.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Bode says soothingly. He desperately wants to reach for him again, wants to cradle him in his arms and hide him from the world, but he’s giving off so many don’t fucking touch me signals Bode can’t tell if he’ll bolt, collapse, or fight if he even tried. It’s been a while since Bode has seen him like this and it’s a fucking nightmare. He holds out his hands, hoping, maybe, the red-head will fall into them anyway, seek the comfort he’s so good at denying himself. “We won’t. Not until you tell us it’s alright.”

“I’m sorry,” Kata whispers from her mother’s arms. “It slipped out. I’m really sorry.”

He – Cal shakes his head, averting his eyes in a painfully familiar way. Bode wants to shout. He wants to scream. No! Don’t pull away! Not after getting this far!

“It’s okay,” he mumbles. It’s not okay, Bode knows, and his heart breaks at the distress a name causes. He wonders how long Kata has known, how she even came to know, but he decides that doesn’t matter. “It was an accident.” His smile is more of a grimace. He crosses his arms around himself protectively, chewing on his lip. Bode feels the Force drooping, sinking low to their feet, and he has to swallow back frustration at his own helplessness.

“There’s more rice,” Tayala says, breaking the tense air as expertly as she wields a scalpel. “Why don’t you get a refill?”

Cal nods jerkily and goes to the kitchen, disappearing around the corner. Bode sees him through the galley window, watches him brace his hands on a counter, his head hanging. Then, not even a second later, he folds his arms and drops his head, his shoulders shaking hard enough he can see them move from here. He’s so grateful for Tayala’s quick thinking, directing him somewhere that’s not his room, not a place where he can become so easily isolated. He has to come back out through here to leave, and maybe things will settle by then, maybe he won’t feel like he has to run.

Kata’s crying, her breaths shuddering. “I’m sorry,” she repeats miserably. “I didn’t mean to. He lets me call him…call him that sometimes and I forgot.” She sobs sharply. Tayala gathers her into a hug, rocking her back and forth. “He doesn’t like it. He wants to really badly, and I think he’s starting to like it, but I ruined it. You guys weren’t supposed to know.”

Tayala drags a hand down her back. “No one’s mad,” she tells her softly. Bode kneels, adding his own gentle assurance. He can feel Kata reach back in the Force, clumsy but trying. “Don’t push when he comes back, okay? He knows you’re sorry and it was an accident, but you have to give him space.” Kata nods into her shoulder. “Do you want to keep having lunch with us or hang out somewhere else? I can go with you if you want.”

“Keep having lunch,” Kata mumbles. Bode smooths her hair down, smiling proudly. That smile grows when Cal comes out of the kitchen and hesitantly comes closer. His face is pale, and he looks like he’s gone from a good night’s rest to not sleeping for a week. Bode stands, hand extended, and he allows himself to be guided until he’s tucked against Bode’s side. Kata peeks out from her mother’s shoulder, eyes rimmed pink to match Cal’s. She gives him a watery smile that he mirrors easily. “Did you get more rice?”

Cal shoots Tayala a wry look. “There wasn’t more rice.”

Tayala grins unrepentantly. “Oops. My mistake.”

“His name is Cal,” Bode murmurs into her neck, halfway between giddy and devastated. He didn’t even get to tell them himself. That choice got taken away from him – and it wasn’t even on purpose. That’s the unfairness of it all. It’d been a complete and utter accident. “Cal.”

“Cal,” Tayala echoes, her fingers tracing the knobs of his spine. “It’s sweet.”

He nods eagerly. Sweet and savory, like peppers and spices and the sparks that flicker off a campfire into the night sky. She flattens her hand between his shoulder blades, pressing down, and he sprawls the rest of his body weight over her as requested – the best weighted blanket in the galaxy, she joked once. He rearranges his limbs to be more comfortable, tucking his hand under the pillow she’s using, tangling their legs together. She lets out a sigh, cheek pressed to his forehead.

The ship is dark and quiet. The Force even more so. There’d been a turbulent moment earlier in the night from down the hall and he knew Kata and Cal had their own conversation. He’d ached to go down there himself, comfort them both, but he knows they had to work it out. He drags his lips across her skin, tasting her pulse.

“We should take him somewhere. Get him off the ship for a bit,” he says. Tayala hums. “He needs new clothes anyway.”

“They wouldn’t hurt,” she agrees. “Should we find somewhere he’ll finally get some color on those cheeks other than red when he blushes around you?” Bode’s own cheeks flush at the tease and he presses his face into her neck, grumbling. Her nails skim upward, drawing a shudder, and her fingers slide into his hair. “You’re hopeless, Bode Akuna.”

His stomach squirms. “Hopelessly in love,” he half-jokes.

Her fingers curl. “Ah, so you finally admit it. You love him.” Bode jerks back so he can see her face. Tayala’s eyes hold no judgement, no accusation. Just a simple truth he can’t deny. “I’ve been waiting for you to say it out loud.”

“I don’t know if I can,” he says quietly. “He’s already got so much going on. I don’t want to add to that. Besides, I have you. I love you. Nothing can change that.”

Tayala cards her fingers through his hair, soothing and soft. “You can love more than one person,” she reminds him gently. “It’s not be all, end all. Do you love him?”

“Yes,” he breathes.

“Do you love me just as much?”

“Of course.”

“Then why not both of us? We’ll have to work on the logistics, but I think we can make it work.” Tayala brings up her other hand to cradle his jaw, her thumb tracing his bottom lip. Bode leans into the touch, his heart racing. Could he really have it all? She laughs lightly. “I think we might be having this conversation a little late.”

Bode joins in on her laughter. “Only a little,” he agrees. He tilts his head into her palm, looks at her through his eyelashes. “Can I kiss you now?”

Tayala obliges, chaste and sweet and not nearly enough, but he lets her pull away with minimal fuss. She doesn’t go far, close enough he can feel the flutter of her lashes on his cheek.

“Sunny,” she murmurs.

“Do you think Cal will burn immediately?”

She throws her head back onto the pillow to cackle loudly. “What kind of question is that? Do you see how pale he is? You’re going to have to slather him in sunblock, Bode. Slather. And he’s still going to burn.”

He winces. “Maybe sunny isn’t a good idea.”

“Nuh-huh, it’s a great idea. It’s been six months; he needs some sun.” Her nose taps his, expression a little more solemn. “Why don’t we ask him where he wants to go?”

It takes a couple weeks, but they finally find time. There’s a blockade on the hyperlane they’ve been travelling through for a few days now and they almost didn’t make the turn off to avoid it. The Empire has been a little too abundant lately and it makes them all nervous, so they find a quiet little planet to land on. One that has a bright sun and a clear sky. The ramp lowers, Kata whoops excitedly, dashes out, then comes back sheepishly when she realizes no one followed. He hangs back nervously, dragging his nail over the edge of his cuffs. Bode comes over, code key in hand.

“Are you sure?” he asks, wide eyed. Bode gestures, his mouth curved into a fond smile, and he offers his wrists up.

“Remember – .”

“One wrong move and you’ll kill me,” he says half-jokingly, not even fully registering what he’s saying because he’s not looking at Bode when he says it, eyes on the way his fingers maneuver around the locking mechanisms. The fingers stutter, only for a second, before they resume, the lock clicking open.

Feeling the Force is a rush. Overwhelming enough to bring tears to his eyes and make him sway in place. Bode catches him easily, his hand steady and sure on his shoulder – he’s warm and solid and he can feel a cool crisp ocean breeze across his senses, and he basks in the feeling, lets it seep into his soul and make its home there. He opens his eyes, wonders when he closed them in the first place, and Bode is staring at him, brows furrowed but the shape of his mouth so soft.

Bode takes his hand to press his knuckles to his cheek. Somehow, it’s more intimate than if he’d just kissed them. “Remember,” he says firmly. “Pick whatever you want. And if it gets too much, just tell us and we’ll come back.”

He tears his gaze away from those earnest brown eyes to grin down at Kata, who’s bouncing on her toes. She holds out her hand and he takes it, lets her drag him down the short hauler’s ramp into the lot. He can feel Tayala and Bode follow behind – too far away to be safe, he thinks, so he gently tugs on Kata to make her wait for them. She pouts, putting all her weight on their clasped hands, and leans against his leg. Tayala and Bode both look too soft at the sight of them waiting. His ears burn, something in his chest twists. He turns away as quickly as he can to avoid whatever it is on their faces as he and Kata dash just a little bit ahead as she chatters about this and that. Her new favorite thing are tookas and she desperately wants a real, living one.

“I don’t think a tooka would like space very much,” he tells her. “Why don’t we find out if anyone is selling plushies?”

Kata’s nose wrinkles as she thinks about his counteroffer. “Fineeee,” she whines, grabbing his hand with both of hers and leaning back on her heels.

He chuckles and scoops her up – only once she’s in her arms, does he second guess himself, shoulders hunching as a sharp spark of fear suddenly lodges in his chest. They’re in public. He has the Force now. They can’t be okay with this. Kata wraps her arms around him as he glances back at her parents, but they’re not looking at them. Tayala’s holding up a poncho that’s too big for her, saying something he decides not to try and figure out, and Bode shakes his head, gesturing to something else.

Maybe. Maybe –

“How ‘bout that one?” She points to a stall not that far away that’s selling not plushies, but shiny apples, pastries, and bottled drinks. 

“That doesn’t look like a tooka to me,” he informs her even as they head over.

Kata is a whirlwind of happiness and joy in his arms, the Force around her almost too bright like looking directly at a supernova. He relaxes in it and the flutters of echoes in her clothes. There’s a bit of sadness under it all, some tantrums because she’s a child and that’s how it works, stubborn moments, some residuals from a couple weeks ago at mid meal with his could-be-maybe-almost name – they’d talked about it after, when Bode and Tayala were cleaning up, and he forgives her of course, but he also thinks…thinks that maybe that had been a step he didn’t know he needed – but it’s mostly the kind of joy only children can have, unfettered and all-encompassing. The perfect first thing for him to experience after losing the binders.

It’s tipping over to the painful side of overwhelming, but he pushes that aside to enjoy the moment.

He leans over the tables, keeps one hand free to seek out echoes like a man starving. It lets him answer all her questions. All-Almakain apple pie, he tells her, humans can’t eat that. She groans in disappointment. Oh, those are Geldan sun-apples. That’s what’s in these drinks. They’re called fizzyglug. Down the line they go, a wide and impressive assortment of apple types that he can name without too much trouble.

“How do you know all that?” she asks, their cheeks pressed together as they watch the vendor pull out another All-Alamakian pie from the oven. There must be a lot of Leffingites here today. “I don’t think mama knows that and she knows eh-vr-ee-thing.”

“I know a lot of useless things,” he says.

Kata shakes her head, frowning briefly, then points at a flaky, layer pastry. Exactly the kind he likes. “What’s that? Can we eat it?”

“Corellian apple turnover,” the vendor says. She’s smiling with a twinkle in her eye that has him on edge only because it looks….warm, completely unhostile. “It’s absolutely safe for humans. Do you want me to pack you some?”

He smiles apologetically, his stomach churning. “Sorry,” he says to them both. “I don’t have enough credits.”

“We can ask mama and papa,” Kata insists.

“We just had early meal.” Pick whatever you want, but that was for clothes, right? They’re here to get him his own clothes so Tayala can have her full wardrobe back.  He can’t stomach the idea of them buying him something so…frivolous. It’s one thing to buy him a set or two or three of clothes that actually fit him, but this indulgence is completely different. This would be him asking for something, and he doesn’t know if he can do that yet. “Maybe later,” he says to Kata’s pouting expression. She’s looking at him like she’s looking through him, and he turns away, checking for Bode and Tayala.

They’re still in view, already a few shopping bags in hand, tucked off to the side as they talk. They stand so close to each other, existing so casually in each other’s spaces. He watches for too long, a longing in his chest that startles him. Not in the fact that it’s there, but that it’s not envy choking him, tasting so bitter in the back of his throat. It’s not Dark, it’s not even a little shadowy. It’s just a simple, admittedly profound, longing that makes him want to hide more than lash out.

“Can we go over there?” Kata asks, sounding subdued. She looks at him with wide eyes, pointing at different stall with knitted animals and scarves. “They look like they have tookas.” A peace offering, like she thinks he’s upset because of her when it’s really just him being so karking stupid. He gives her a smile, smaller than what she’s used to, but at least it’s genuine.

He’s letting the vendor answer Kata’s questions this time, feeling a bit dizzy and overwhelmed. Being without the Force for so long has wreaked havoc on his equilibrium. There’s so many echoes calling out for him, emotions flood his senses, the Force is one giant cacophony of too much that he almost regrets coming out at all. It would’ve been better to deal with the fallout back on the ship, where the only echoes would be from people he knows and, and trusts –

Trusts. Trusts. He knew…he knew he trusted them, but he didn’t realize how much until just now. With the crowds surging around him, the Force singing so brightly and loudly – all he wants to do is go back to the Starbright and be with them, tucked away in their own private world.

A hand touches the small of his back before he can spiral down that realization. He doesn’t jump, the sea-foam current brushing against him soothingly. Bode leans on his other side, humming under his breath. His hand remains on his back, a firebrand that he should step away from. He doesn’t. He stays right where he is.

“That one’s cute,” Bode says, words warm against his ear. He suppresses a shiver and looks down at the small crocheted mogu in his hand. He instantly wrinkles his nose, getting a laugh out of Bode. Wide-eyed, he looks up to catch his expression mid-laugh, the curve of his smile, the way his face scrunches. “What, you don’t like it?”

He has to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “It’s not a tooka,” he says.

“Ohhhh, so there’s a goal.” Bode puts the mogu down carefully and moves the hand from the small of his back. He bites back a pathetic sound at the loss, only to swallow something blazingly warm when he wraps an arm around his waist instead. “Are we looking for realistic or fake?”

“Ree-uh-li-stukh!” Kata sounds out happily.

He’s led around in a dazed state, hyper aware of the arm around his waist and the lack of Tayala. He glances around, finds her flipping through a flimsi book. She meets his eyes over the cover and smiles, winking as Kata and Bode chat animatedly. His cheeks flushed. This can’t be happening. This is – ridiculous. But it is happening, and he’s letting it. He’s letting Bode lead him around and Kata poke him in the cheek if she thinks his attention is drifting. He’s smiling and laughing, and Bode is buying little flowers to tuck behind their ears, an extra one for his wife later on, and he can’t stop brushing his fingers over the soft green petals, his insides too warm and bright and growing hotter still as Kata directs them back to the apple vendor and convinces Bode to buy them Corellian apple turnovers.

A whooollleee box of them, because she knows Cal really wants them.

That’s the moment it becomes too much.

It’s not even the name. He told her it was okay – only her. No. It’s the way Bode eagerly reaches for the box, credits already in hand. It’s the fizzle of happy-happy-happy (love-love-love) that ricochets around them. It’s the crowd. The emotions.

The everything.

It’s too much.

The Force trips over itself, folding inward like how he wants to do right now. He wants to hide. He wants – He mutters an apology and shifts Kata into her father’s arms, immediately regretting it because he misses her weight and her warmth, and he can feel both of them, their confusion, their worry, and it’s too fucking much.

He escapes towards a set of tables where people can eat food in peace and collapses onto one of the benches, head in his hands. He feels more than sees Tayala settle next to him, her aura worried but distant, alert but not prying. She puts a hand between his shoulders blades unobtrusively and it’s a different sort of feeling that touch brings forth. It makes his eyes burn at how much she fucking cares despite everything he’s done.

“He loves you, you know,” she says casually as can be.

He hunches over with a small sound. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“He can’t.”

Tayala hums. “I think he can. We talked about it.” His head shoots up, eyes wide, and she smiles. “I love my husband very much and I know he loves me just the same, but you, you’re something special.” She reaches up to card hand through his hair and he’s surprised to find that he’s shaking a little. “If I had to pick someone in the galaxy for him to fall in love with too, I’m glad it’s you.”

He chokes. “I killed people.”

“So has Bode.”

His eyes burn. “I killed my people. I burned down homes. I took away their safety. I didn’t have to leave you alive.”

“But you did,” she says so patiently he feels unmoored. “Did you want to do all those things?”

“No. But I, I did them anyway, isn’t that worse?”

She tsks. “There are a lot of dark things we’ve had to do to survive. Do you blame Bode for any of them?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why are you blaming yourself?”

He groans. “This is a trick.” She laughs softly, remembering the same thing he is – (the floor isn’t very comfortable.) (then why are you always on it? If it’s too uncomfortable for me then why is it enough for you?). He breathes out slowly into his palms. “It can’t be that easy.”

“Why not? Let it be that easy. Just for once.”

He laughs wetly, pressing a hand to his eyes. He can feel a tentative nudge, a salt breeze of okay?-okay?-okay? He reaches back instinctively and there’s a bright spark in the Force as they meet, Bode’s joy!-joy!-joy! a balm against the ache in his chest. A tear escapes, dripping onto his knee. When was the last time he’d been so aware of another, another Jedi in the Force? How long since he could reach out and have someone reach back? He drags a wrist over his cheeks.

Tayala sits in companionable silence for a long moment. “Do you want to go back to the ship?”

Yes please, except not really. This is the first time he’s seen the sun in half a year. His nose is already burning despite the sunblock Bode insisted on, and his eyes are too sensitive to the bright light, but he’s warm. So, so warm. So, he ignores how his head is starting to hurt, and how everything is tilting slightly off its axis, to shake his head in answer. They’ve barely been out for half a day, he can push through because he knows if he goes back to the Starbright then the others will follow and he doesn’t want to ruin their day even more.

He stands first, offering her a hand she doesn’t need but takes anyway. She passes over a few of her bags and hooks her elbow with his – and then stops, the Force quivering. The back of his neck prickles.

“Oh no.”

He looks and his chest goes cold. Stormtroopers. Oh, stars, how long has it been since he’s seen a stormtrooper patrol? They’re walking through the parting crowd, heading directly towards Bode and Kata. He’s halfway over before he even register moving, a bad feeling in his gut. Bode doesn’t seem too concerned, more annoyed than anything else as he holds Kata close. He gives them both a tight smile when they’re close enough. Kata peeks out, looking frightened but also resigned to this. After all, it’s only been six months since she’s left Birren where stormtrooper patrols would’ve been a regular occurrence. There’s no escaping the Empire’s reach.

“They just came outta nowhere,” she whispers.

“It’s okay,” he says. She gives him a wobbly smile. “They’re probably just passing through on their patrol.”

Except not, because one stops in front of them. A cold terror washes over him. They won’t recognize me; he tries to convince himself. The Inquisitorius would never allow the knowledge of a traitor to escape their ranks. If anyone is going to hunt him down, it would be an Inquisitor, not some bottom rung soldier on an outer rim planet that wasn’t supposed to have much Imperial presence in the first place.

For some reason, he can’t convince himself.

Don’t recognize me. Please.

Tayala tightens her arm wrapped around his, Bode’s hand comes up to his back, but it’s not enough to make him breathe, to stop the tremble in his hands, to keep his vision from darkening on the edges. Get it together.

The stormtrooper’s visor passes right over him.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty one,” they remark lecherously. He shudders, his next breath whooshing out of him as the stormtrooper sidesteps them completely to put all their attention on the purple skinned twi’lek who looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here. She too can’t seem to move, hands tight around the handle of her bag. “Why don’t you come with us? I heard you give a hell of a show.”

She scowls, cheeks flushing. “Fuck off.”

“Oh, I do like them feisty.”

He doesn’t know what he’s thinking when he puts himself between them. His chest is still cold with an indescribable terror, but all he can really focus on is the fear underlying that fuck you, the fear dancing in the Force that comes from everyone around him. But he – he can’t just let this happen. He’s not a Jedi anymore, but he’s also not an Inquisitor. He’s just…He’s just Cal, right?

Maybe Cal is enough.

“Hey,” he says, and it doesn’t even sound like his own voice, his ears buzzing, everything so far away. He can feel Tayala and Bode and Kata nearby, and that just gives him strength. He barely registers Bode passing Kata to his wife to come stand at his back, just knows the heat radiating off him. “She said fuck off.”

"Oh, you wanna play hero huh? Seems like you don’t know how it works around here.” The troopers raises their baton and taps it right in the center of his chest. He grits his teeth against the roar of echoes – please – stop – no – don’tdothis – I have a family! – please not my daughter – we’re nobodies! – leaveusalone – and does his best to focus on the hum of electronics located in the baton instead. “I represent the Empire, and the Empire gets what it wants. And I want her.”

They try to step around him. Unthinkingly, he shoves the trooper back at the same time he smacks the baton away with an opened palm.

This is a mistake.

His shields are flimsi, his hands are bare, and he’s been six months without the Force.

The echoes surge, latching onto him with a fervor. His awareness dims, the edges of his vision greys out as terrified sobs and haunting wails fill his ears. Their fear, their anger, their resignation (their glee, their sadism, their bloodlust) floods through him, and he bends as he covers his ears, squeezing his eyes shut, something broken clawing out of his throat. There’s too many. They’re too strong.

He’s unraveling at the seams. Drowning.

Make it stop. make it stop. Makeit –

There’s an ocean at his back.

Flowing around his feet and – rising. Ankle deep. Knee deep. Waist. Chest. And it comes up over his head first, the crushing pressure of the abyss detangling him the memories that aren’t his, and he’s floating freely, weightlessly, buoyed from the depths higher, and higher, and higher, until he breaks the surface and he’s breathing in the sun-fire of his own soul. It’s so bright and Light, and he’s wonder-struck. He follows a ray of sun, reaching for something that always felt so out of reach but is now – in his hand, and it’s him. It’s only him. Glowing and resplendent and, he curls around it, the hollowed part of his chest filled with fire.

Welcome back, Cal Kestis.

The echoes fall into a murmur, a whispering in the back of his mind that he can ignore but not forget, and he blinks rapidly, eyelashes clumped together and his throat raw, and Bode is there, a wall between Cal and his enemies, a baton in his hand with the trooper on the ground. He grabs Bode’s wrist, uses it to haul himself up on unsteady legs, and he can feel the fury under his skin, the prickle of fear-protect-love, and that’s – for him. It’s all for him.

Cal presses his cheek to Bode’s shoulder as he leans his weight on him, feeling wrung out. Bode’s knuckles are white. His fist tense around the baton as Cal curls his fingers around his hand, feeling them loosen ever-so-slightly under his touch. He’s careful  to avoid touching the wretched thing. Careful to keep his focus only Bode-Bode-Bode. Bode, whose rage is beautiful. Bode, whose love is gorgeous.

“I want to go home,” Cal murmurs, an ache pulsating behind his eyes. The baton drops to their feet but Bode doesn’t move, the Force a slow-moving tsunami, dragging water from the peaceful beaches in preparation for destruction. He slots his fingers between Bode’s. “Please, Bode.”

Bode shudders. The tsunami peaks, high in the sky, and then disperses into mist, billowing through the crowd with a twist of his hand. One of the commander troopers groans and yanks their buddy off the ground, grumbling about trip hazards. A few civilians go unfocused before they suddenly snap back to whatever they’d been doing before all this. Most of them though, including the twi’lek and the apple stall vendor, stare at them with wide eyes.

His smile to them is small and wan, but genuine – and apologetic. He doesn’t have the energy to come up with the needed words. Even less so when the apple vendor steps in front of them and shoves a box of Corellian apple turnovers into his hands. He fumbles to a stop, brain working sluggishly because she’s already walking away without credits, what about credits, and – Tayala swoops in to take it, and then she’s ushering Bode and Cal in the direction of the landing pad.

No one stops them. No one says a word. But he can feel their curiosity, their wonder, and – no fear.

There’s no fear at all.

Home is the Starbright.

And because of that he forgets to brace himself. He forgets what awaits him once they’ve climbed the ramp and Bode stalks off to the cockpit so they can get out of here before the Empire tries to ground them permanently.

The ramp retracts, the door closes, and Cal is faced with – a plethora of echoes everywhere. Scattered like sea glass, bright and eye-catching and beautiful. He takes half a step back and hits a wall. The Force pulses in time with his heart, a joyous sort of feeling he’s not used to. His knees buckle, but he holds on long enough to stumble to the couch and collapse onto it, bare fingers digging into the cushions. Echoes drip and puddle around his feet, smoke up from the table, shine and dance from every surface of the cabin.

Echoes of laughter and joy; happiness and contentment; sleepy, lazy days filled with so much warmth it’s like swallowing a hearth whole. Cal closes his eyes, reaches through the stars to find a specific one. And it leaps to meet him. Warm laughter and soft looks, a hand on the small of his back, a heartbeat under his ear – and that’s him. Him and Bode and Tayala, leaving a fluttery echo of slow-dancing in the room. It’s everything. It’s perfect.

Cal doesn’t realize he’s crying until he opens his eyes and his vision is blurry. He presses a hand to his face, keeping the other buried in the cushion to hear Kata’s shrieking laugh and a lower, raspier chuckle that is his. That’s his laugh. That’s him leaving behind a happy memory he’d thought himself incapable of.

“Cal,” Kata whispers. “Are you okay?”

He nods, and finds that it’s the truth. He opens his arms and Kata collapses into them, letting him hug her so tight he’s sure it hurts but she doesn’t protest. It’s layered. This hug, and the one from last night, and the morning before, and the time before and before and before and –

Kata feels warm – protected, safe because of his hugs.

She always has.

Cal. Cal. Cal. He sits at the table, running a mental nail along the edges of the name over and over again. Cal feels settled in his skin, in the Force, on this ship, and that’s a wonder and a half. A miracle really.

He watches Kata wrinkle her nose and duck over her drawing. Nudges his aura against hers. She brightens in the Force, reaching back immediately, and it should hurt, he thinks. It had always hurt before. But it doesn’t. It hasn’t since the moment Bode took off his binders. It soothes a wounded part of himself he thought would be left weeping and raw forever. He can feel Bode’s response to them both like a gentle ripple. Tayala comes out of the cockpit, rubbing her eyes, pausing when she sees Cal sitting there with apple turnovers dished out onto plates.

“Sorry,” he says helplessly.

“For what?” she asks even as she comes over and picks one up. Pastry flakes rain down on the first bite, making her lurch and realize exactly why he’d put them on plates in the first place.

“Didn’t mean to cut the shopping trip short.

Tayala wipes her face. “I think you’ll find the empire did that, not you. It’s fine, you were getting a little too burnt anyway.” He flushes, presses a hand to the sunburn on his cheek. She smirks and cups his face, wiping a gentle thumb over a cluster of darker freckles before she pats a non-burnt section teasingly. “We’ll find somewhere less sunny next time.”

“Only a little less,” Cal insists.

“Maybe he just need stronger sunblock,” Kata suggests, barely paying any attention and still having the awareness to make fun of him.

Cal groans and grabs his own apple turnover. There’s sweet glaze on top, still warm enough to make his fingers sticky. He savors the first bite, then the second, chewing slowly as he watches Tayala lean over Kata and ask her something about her drawing. Sea-foam presses against his back as Bode appears, his hair still damp, his shirt collar hanging loose. He leans over Cal’s shoulder and takes a turnover for himself. Cal drops his head back, his crown resting on Bode’s stomach, and meets Bode’s eyes just before he takes a bite.

“You’re not getting crumbs in my hair,” Cal says, pushing him away with his head.

Bode laughs, full and warm, and drops a hand on top of his hair, leaning to the side for his first bite. He feels the Force slide around him, Bode checking in absently – and that’s the key: absently. Like it’s second nature already. Just like it’s second nature for Cal to respond, the waters warming as they make contact with his fire.

Tonight, he’s going to have nightmares. The echoes still linger in the back of his mind, only subdued by the crushing pressure of the abyss. Tomorrow, he’s probably going to have his first migraine in six months.

But today, right now, Bode swings an arm over his chest, absolutely, getting crumbs in his hair, and Tayala reaches over his head to kiss her husband sweetly, and Kata is trading her orange for green, coloring in the eyes of the orange-haired figure that he’s pretty sure is him standing next to three other familiar shapes, and Cal finishes his apple turnover.

Bode wakes slowly to the feeling of a body settling against his, curling up in his lap and tucking their face to the crook of his neck. His arm automatically comes up to wrap around Cal, knowing him by hearth-fire first then by fruity soap next as he presses his nose to his hair. The ship is quiet. They breathe in sync, slipping slowly into something almost like meditation. Bode wonders if he’d be willing to try.

“I’m psychometric,” is said quietly against his skin. Bode doesn’t ask what that is. He doesn’t have to. Quinlan Vos was a legend among Shadows. He vaguely remembers hearing about a young, talented youngling with the same power. There had been whispers of bringing him into the fold, but the war prevented that from happening. He tightens his arm around him, letting out a hum of acknowledgement. Cal huffs. “You were supposed to shove me away and yell at me for prying into your personal life.”

“Hm, was I?” He rubs his cheek on his hair. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“…No, it doesn’t,” he admits.

Bode traces words on his skin, feeling him shiver under his touch. “Did you see anything nice?”

He lets out a wet sounding laugh. “Everything. Everything was nice. The first time I saw you, you left an echo behind – on Halais, that vendor stall where you got the supplies to make Mookie. I knew I was in trouble then. You love so much it overflows and sticks in the Force even when you try to hide.” He can feel tears soaking into his shirt collar. Bode gathers him up and scoots into the curve of the couch, tucking them closer together. “I wanted that,” he says. “I wanted that so much it was ugly.”

Bode nudges his head back so he can see his face. Even half a day in the sun has given him some color, his nose and cheeks pink from a burn, his freckles like constellations that Bode wants to trace with his lips, his skin has a healthier glow. Their mouths are so very close to each other, and it’s the worst sort of temptation, but he holds back. “The Force must work in mysterious ways, because you have it.”

“Do I?” he whispers, voice shaking. “Am I allowed to?”

He cups his jaw, feeling his pulse flutter under his fingertips. “I think so,” he says. “But what do you think?”

Dappled green eyes roam over his face. Bode wonders what he feels in the Force, if he understands the waterfall of emotions he can’t even begin to pull back. Are there echoes for him to feel? Nice ones, he said, but what? The slow-dancing in the living room, the quiet nights just existing together, the laughter and teasing, the shoving matches, the holofilms, the stories? Anything. Everything.

The Force quivers in anticipation, rising up all around them like a warm breeze.

“My name is Cal. Cal Kestis.”

Bode smiles, strokes his thumb over his cheek. “Nice to meet you, Cal,” he murmurs. “I’m Bode. Come here often?”

Cal outright giggles, his nose scrunching and eyes crinkling, hair flopping over his forehead. Bode pushes it back, lets his hand linger on the back of his head. Then, very carefully, he guides Cal closer, leaving room for him to pull away, but Cal doesn’t, he leans in and their lips touch – and it’s a spark, a firework, bright and striking, and over too soon because Cal breathes out a soft noise, tilting his head away to drop his forehead on Bode’s chest. His shoulders shake, but his aura is still warm, still smoldering brightly.

“I can have this,” he says – it’s not a question. There’s awe in his voice, muffled against Bode’s chest, his hands curled into the fabric of his shirt.

“You can,” Bode confirms. “You do.”

For the first time in a very, very long time –

Cal Kestis cries happy tears.