Chapter Text
Cal thinks that he must be floating. Wisps of memory drift through the air, simple-minded as they are with their laments of hunger, and coldness, and general dissatisfaction. The world is quiet except for the gentle trickling of water, much like the ponds of the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and the soft creaking of wood that he has only ever heard from his crechemaster's rickety old chair.
It would not be the first time that he has woken up floating in a pool of water; to Crechemaster Surra's dismay, his psychometry has caused several such instances during trips to the Room. To the point that he has- had, now that he is a padawan- a rotating buddy system to prevent it.
He is not floating. He is drifting, on a little seafaring vessel, and the wood of it is oddly warm to the touch. Alive, in a way he has never felt from objects before, organic or otherwise. It feels like... a cradle, almost. The ones he has seen in the Creche have always had echoes of love and hope and protection radiating from them, purposefully done to help ease the minds of all Force-sensitive infants that pass through.
Cal has never seen a water vessel before, and certainly never one that is wooden. It feels like home, though, and among all the intricate carvings of gears and pistons and other miniature mechanical things, he can see the symbol of the Jedi emblazoned. Or something that looks like the Order's symbol, if the wings were folded downwards and oddly realistic, and the saber was made like clockwork.
"You are young," a voice murmurs then, and Cal realizes that there has been another ship drifting alongside his this entire time, moored together.
He stares at the other- being? They are masked, and not a single part of their body is visible under their dark clothes and their hooded cape. The mask itself is old and chipped, and it looks somewhat familiar- the eyes are a single shadowed slit bordered by red trim, sort of like if the clones' visors were not forked.
"What is your name, youngling?" The being asks him.
"Cal," he responds without thinking, and immediately wishes he had not. Cal is a common name, at least, in comparison to Kestis. He knows at least three other Cal's in the Order, even if two of them are spelled differently. Names are dangerous to share, though, especially now. He does not know where this place is, but it all feels... distant. Like he is not quite here yet. "Who are you?"
"Your predecessor. The Spiritfarer. Once, a very long time ago, I was known as Revan."
Oh. He knows that name from his history classes, and one of the plays the Creche sometimes performs. He never took part in it, because his clan went with Luminous Hearts for being, well, heartbreaking. Anooba Clan is the one that used Returning Starlight, and the person who acted as Revan kept stumbling over all their lines.
"The Jedi-turned-Sith-turned-Jedi?" Cal asks them, just to be sure. He does not really remember the story, but he knows it was during one of those other times the Jedi were at war. It is usually treated as a warning for why a Jedi should not treat life callously, because doing so twists you up until you're all wrong in the Force and then it takes really drastic efforts to fix things. He is not really sure how accurate it really is, since the play was made from, like, fifth-hand sources at best.
Maybe he should try looking it up? Even the really old sources that he should not have access to but could probably sneak in to read would maybe be helpful in figuring out how he is supposed to be a commander. None of the older padawans seem to have any idea, and he has stumbled across a lot of strong Echoes of panic in the last few months.
Revan snorts. "Quite so, Initiate."
"Padawan."
The Darth-Jedi pauses, looking for a braid that does not yet exist. "You are too young for that."
He knows that. He listened to Crechemaster Surra scream himself hoarse, yelling at the Council for assigning Cal. It was too late to take it back without the Senate asking questions, though, and all the Crechemasters banded together to try and make sure no one under thirteen could be chosen. They were crying when they returned that night.
Becoming a padawan is supposed to be a happy thing, but his crechemaster made sure everyone in the clan knew the statistics, and Cal is one of the few that has been to every funeral held so far.
Nine years is a long time to collect memories, and with his psychometry he usually has a lot of little moments to share on memorial days. He knows a lot of Jedi that he's never met.
"I'm nine," Cal tells them quietly.
Revan is silent, for a moment too long. Thinking, maybe. Or remembering. "The Jedi laud themselves as peacekeepers, but war will always, always, haunt their footsteps. It will twist you, and you will suffer for being chosen by the Jedi, but we Spiritfarers are woven from light and to light we shall always inevitably return."
Cal does not know what that means. Maybe that, someday, he will suddenly be overcome with the desire to become a Sith, despite the fact that those do not really exist anymore. That feels unlikely, because Revan's war is completely different from his, because the Separatists are obsessed with droids.
"What," Cal starts, and has to pause. The war is not the point, and asking about it feels like it would be rude. And Revan- is it Knight or Master Revan?- is here for a reason. "What are Spiritfarers?"
He cannot see Revan's expression. Not with the mask in place there. But- something about how the air changes makes him think that the elder must be smiling at him.
“We are light. Pure energy. The galaxy is… tumultuous, as is the Force. It is rare for anyone to rejoin it immediately, even Jedi- they resist, in their last moments, regardless of their peace with it. It is our duty to the Everlight- to the Force- to help them pass the threshold and return to where they need to be.”
Cal barely understands any of it. It cannot, should not, make any sense logically, except- it is in the name, is it not? Spiritfarer. Becoming part of the Force- Revan did not say it directly, but Cal has heard too many cheap condolences about the dead finding peace within the Force not to notice the implication.
Somehow, Cal does not think that ‘light’ is meant to indicate the Light side of the Force. Not in the normal sense, at least. It reminds him of one of those phrases that Master Yoda is fond of saying, and- and Master Revan must be at least twice as old as Master Yoda, now that he is thinking about it. “Luminous beings, we are- not this crude matter,” Cal echoes the old lesson, his voice oddly faint.
Revan’s head tilts, like some confused tooka, and the image feels dissonant compared to everything he knows about the Darth-Jedi. “Accurate enough, for those like us. Nonetheless… it will be time for me to depart, soon.”
“Where?” Cal asks before he can think better of it and stop himself.
“Home,” Revan says, and raises one arm to gesture a broad sweep around them, at the red water and the arch and the pure white trees. “We are part of this realm in unfathomable ways. It is our soul and home, and when we pass our essence will never move on from here. We will never pass the threshold, for there is nothing to pass. We are the Everlight. Eternal.”
The elder pauses for a moment, before adding, “That may be for the best. Candy would torment me endlessly if there was even the smallest chance he could discover how young you are.”
Cal does not know where to even begin with unpacking that piece of information. It will have to wait, for either a long time or never. Instead, he latches onto the oddest thing he has heard all day, and manages to croak out, “Candy?”
“Canderous,” Revan clarifies, like that name is supposed to mean anything to Cal. “I think he became Mand’alor, eventually. Horrible brute, that one. Almost as fun as HK-47.”
Last Cal checked, Revan was supposed to be, like, Mandalore’s ultimate enemy and obstacle, during both his Jedi and his Sith days. Since when was he acquainted with an actual leading Mandalore? He certainly does not remember anything other than vague references to Mandalorians being in the play he saw, never appearing as actual characters. Maybe it was just part of the Spiritfarer business?
He does not want to think about any of this anymore. There is a dull droning in the background, headache-inducing and steadily rising.
“You are young, younger than you were ever meant to arrive. You have time to learn. Remember, Spiritfarer Cal, that no matter how others will twist you, to light we will always return,” Revan says, bumping his fist against his chestplate in what must be a salute of some kind, head tilted forwards in the barest of bows, and then he is gone in a blinding flash. His vessel is gone, too, not a barest hint of the sleek ebony-colored wood remaining. As if he was never there, as if he never existed at all.
There is a shrill, ear-ringing beeping, incessantly going on and on beside Cal’s head when he finally opens his eyes. It is absolutely awful, and he knows from experience that the device will not turn the sound off until a full hour has passed. That is, of course, why it is his wake-up alarm. The easiest way to wake up in the morning is to have his crechemates trying to smother him for murdering their ears.
Well, not really- he technically has his own room in the creche because of his psychometry, and that room is partially soundproofed because it was repurposed from a Quiet Room. He only has to worry about the smothering if he fell asleep in a Creche Pile with his comm. A lot of his engineering and repair classes are really early in the morning. Were early in the morning.
He should… probably turn that alarm off, since he does not have to worry about his classes anymore. All he has now are the online lesson modules, and those don’t really have any due dates or practicals, since things are so hectic with the War. Well, Cal is okay with that, because that means he can learn and do more important things than learning about moss growth and how to make Alder’ flame-lilies grow from seeds to flowers in a week.
Like meeting Master Tapal’s battalion. Master Tapal told Cal that the transport ship should only reach the Albedo Brave around noon on Galactic Standard, but knowing his own luck it will probably be a lot sooner. Cal has no idea what the meeting will be like, because he is pretty sure that even Master Tapal only found out about Cal’s assignment three days ago at the same time he did, and he would hate to accidentally barge into someone’s social group without any warning.
Well, it might be different since this is supposed to be an Army. Which is awful and terrifying, because even if they don’t react badly, Cal is supposed to be a Commander because he is a Padawan, and he does not know a single thing about what that means. Except for the fact that he’s supposed to be in charge, but he’s nine and he’s already been to thirteen mass funerals in the last four months and most of those were in the first.
That does remind him, though. Cal was planning to look up some of the old wars the Jedi were part of. The big ones, not the small-scale planetary ones crossed by a mission, like civil wars or, more broadly, the Invasion of Naboo. The ones that stretched across the galaxy, back when the Jedi were the Army of Light. There has to be records of that at least, because that was only like, a thousand years ago after the Sith War finally fizzled out. And Cal has had to look at texts way older than that for his Galactic History and Force Theories classes.
Cal does want to look up at least a bit about the Mandalorian Wars, though, even if that one is even older than the Sith Wars and there probably is not much information. Everyone in the Order knows that all the troopers are supposed to be clones of Jango Fett, and anyone older than three knows that he is- was?- the Jedi Killer. The reason why he is called that isn’t really known, but all the older kids in the creche would treat him as a story to scare the littler ones into behaving so they didn’t wander off on outings.
And Crechemaster Surra likes the phrase, “Learn from your enemy,” a lot, and it’s always felt like common sense. Sometimes they would go on tangents about how all their favorite Jedi have mixed styles that don’t just rely on the normal saber katas, and who send in their reports with actual details if they’ve come across a problem they haven’t experienced before. Most of those reports get archived, unless you’re someone like Master Vos, so that they can be used in Initiate and Padawan classes for analysis.
Then again, those assignments use the absolute worst reports, because there is barely any information in them and then the class has to go on a researching spree about the planet and news articles and whoever was involved, just to have even the faintest clue on what actually happened on the mission. Everyone hates having to do them, because nobody Cal knows has ever gotten a decent grade on their analysis. And nobody ever gets the same report to research at the same time, so they can’t even help each other.
He hopes that Madam Nu has reports from the Army of Light in the Archives, and that they aren’t awful like the ones he is used to seeing. Cal wants to actually learn something from them so that he knows what to do here, not just spend hours crying over another barely-readable document that just talks about how the writer got into a brawl in some fancy Rylothian restaurant when they were supposed to be looking for information on a possible assassin.