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Cal stepped into the Mantis already in a good mood.
He and BD-1 had been out in the sunlight for hours at this point, keeping themselves busy exploring the area while Cere and Greez made a run to a local town for food and some bits and bobs to fix uncooperative doors on the Mantis. He hadn’t loved the idea of staying behind, but Cere had insisted he take the time to himself, and the allure of getting to wander around the planet for a while had been enough to make him agree. BD had been psyched to get a chance to expand his wildlife compendium, which didn’t hurt the idea either.
It turned out that the rolling hills of Kalia II were a gold mine for new data entries, and they’d gotten about fifteen done by the time Cal spotted the Mantis doors opening again in the distance. They stayed open, probably a consideration of the excellent weather, as Cal slowly made his way back to the ship and hopped up the ramp.
“Whatever you’re making smells amazing.” He said to Greez, giving a quick wave to Cere on the couch.
Greez jumped, but his face settled quickly into a grudging smile.
“Jeez, kid,” He grumbled, “do you walk anywhere on your whole feet?”
Cal blinked and glanced down at his boots, feeling BD leaning precariously far to get a look himself. He hadn’t been walking tip-toe that he’d noticed.
Do I do that?
Cere nudged him with the side of her foot.
“He means you walk quietly,” She said, smiling. “You sneak up on me too.”
“Oh. Do I?”
“Yeah, ya do.” Greez contributed over his shoulder with a snort, “Maybe try walking like you weigh something.”
Cal took a few experimental steps, trying to listen to the sound of his own footfalls, and rapidly discovered that he couldn’t actually walk normally while paying any attention to how he was doing it.
“You don’t have to change the way you walk, Cal.” She said, almost managing to conceal the amusement in her voice.
“Honestly, I don’t know if I could.” He shrugged and bounced on his heels, trying to stop thinking about the exact mechanics of how he was moving his ankles. “My master used to say I walked like a bantha, so I guess it’s an improvement.”
“Unless you like not having someone show up behind you like a ghost all the time.” Greez fished a sautéed chunk of meat out of his pan with a fork, “Cere, come try this.”
“Coming, Greez.” Cere smiled as she got to her feet. “Cal, why don’t you go knock on Merrin’s door, see if she’s awake? She’ll want to have some of this when it’s done.”
“Yeah, put those twinkle toes to good use.”
Cal turned automatically towards the door to the cabin hallway, then paused and gave Cere a look as she stepped past him.
“Wait, she isn’t up yet?”
Their resident Nightsister usually woke up later than him, but she was on her feet within an hour of him at the latest, and she wasn’t one for spending spare time in her cabin much either.
Cere and Greez exchanged a look that Cal was sure was communicating something, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Those two were close to telepathic at times. Even months together on the Mantis hadn’t gotten him much closer to cracking their code. From context he could maybe suss out that they were both asking if the other had seen Merrin, but it was just a guess.
“Unless you saw her get up and leave before we were awake,” Cere said, shrugging. “I suppose she slept in.”
“I guess, yeah.”
He headed past them towards Merrin’s cabin, wondering how late someone could possibly sleep. Cere and Greez started up a light conversation, though most of it was muffled under the sound of hissing and popping coming from the stove. Much to Prauf’s annoyance when they shared an apartment, he’d always been a bit of an early bird, and trying to ‘sleep in’ never yielded him any results. He just woke up at the same time he did every other day, and then had to be quiet for hours until Prauf stumbled out for caf.
He was so consumed in wondering what had tired Merrin out that his knuckles were inches away from her cabin door before he remembered what they’d stopped on Kalia II for in the first place.
Food, yes, but also door parts. For Merrin’s door. Because her buttons and her lock didn’t work. So it was relying on a motion detector at the moment. A very sensitive motion detector that went off if anyone even thought about touching the door. The door that Cere made sure to tell him to knock on rather than open because Merrin was pretty possessive about her space.
He froze for a beat too long. The detector caught him and the door hissed open before he could jerk his hand out of range. Cal winced in preparation for Merrin, justifiably, snapping at him about how many times she’d asked him to kriffing knock first. She’d picked up ‘kriff’ from Greez and liked it maybe a little too much, though this definitely was an appropriate usage.
Her voice never came, though, and he opened his eyes gingerly. Her cabin was dark enough that he thought it was empty for a second, until his eyes adjusted a little and he picked up the glow from the hallway lighting up her skin somewhere on the bed. A lot of her skin.
Oh shit.
Cal slammed his eyes shut and jolted back into the hallway, already feeling his face start to heat up. The door slid back into place and he cursed the stupid thing in his head for a minute, trying to distract himself with how many unique ways there were to disassemble a broken door. Thank the Force Merrin was a heavier sleeper than he was. He’d just back away a step or two and knock on her wall like he should have remembered to do in the first place, get his stupid face to calm down, and then pretend it never happened and he saw nothing.
I saw nothing, he told himself. Nothing at all. He definitely hadn’t seen her entire silhouette, her pale skin, pearl gray and reflective and–
Wait. Her skin isn’t reflective.
Before his better judgement could say hey maybe just minding your own business is the smart move here buddy, he’d already pictured her again.
She’d been curled on her side facing her stupid malfunctioning door, blankets long since kicked onto the floor, head tucked down behind her arms and her fingers snarled up in her hair. Luckily for his sanity and also her dignity, she’d been wearing something, shorts and a top that at least covered her chest, but that still left a lot of her skin exposed. And the skin he’d seen was… weird. Variegated in a way it shouldn’t have been, with big stripes of stark white edged in dark gray instead of the consistent lighter color he expected. Those stripes had been what caught the light, reflecting it back like the skin didn’t have any texture except at the edges where it got weird again, almost like how his…
It clicked.
He felt immediately, genuinely nauseous.
They weren’t stripes. They were huge, gnarled, vicious scars. There had to be spots they were three inches wide, enormous crisscrossing gashes across her arms, her stomach, her legs, so deep they caved in her skin and distorted the outline of her body wherever they went. And, he realized a sickened moment later, they looked pissed. Merrin didn’t go red like he did when her skin was irritated or she was flushed, she more or less just got a darker shade of gray. The worst he’d seen was a mild sunburn over her nose that made it look like she had faded soot on her face for about a week, but some of those scars were angry to the point of being damn near black around the edges. The blaster marks across his face got cranky occasionally, when he got hit in the face or got a sunburn or whatever else, and they got sore enough to be annoying and kinda red around the edges, but nothing like what hers were doing. If they looked like that, what must they feel like?
Cal let his head fall and hit the bulkhead with a thump.
A mistake, it turned out, because he heard Merrin start to stir on the other side of the wall. He immediately regretted every action he’d ever taken that led him to this point.
“Yes?” She managed after a moment, voice blurry with sleep.
Cal scrambled for a second, then manually shoved everything in his brain off to the side. No time to think about it now, and he’d probably feel (and look) more normal if didn’t anyway. And plus, what he was supposed to be doing here was getting Merrin up so they could eat, before he accidentally made it so much more complicated than it had to be. He kept his forehead against the wall and spoke through it.
“Uh, Greez is making…” He leaned backwards towards the main room. “What meal is this?”
“Linner!” Greez called back. “Lunch-dinner!”
“Greez is making ‘linner’, apparently?” He relayed through the wall, “And it’s something you like. You should come have some.”
“Not hungry,” She said, and he heard blankets shuffling. A pang of concern swept through him at that. Everything… else, aside, this was really weird for her all on its own. Merrin liked Greez’s cooking, and she took meals with the crew as a serious commitment she wasn’t given to just blow off randomly.
“Merrin, c’mon.” He said, sighing. “You haven’t eaten all day. It smells great out here, you’ll like it.”
“I just want to sleep, Cal. Save some for me later.” She did sound exhausted, from what he could pick up of her tone through several inches of ship interior.
He was about to give up and go relay the news to Greez and Cere, but turned back to the wall instead when a better idea struck.
“I can bring some back for you when we’re done, if you want.” He offered, “It’ll still be hot, Greez keeps it on a warmer.”
Merrin didn’t respond for a long moment, and Cal was almost worried she’d already fallen back asleep.
“Would you?” She asked, almost too quietly for him to make out.
“Yeah.” He smiled in spite of himself. “Yeah, of course. Give me like, ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Cal.” He heard her blankets moving again, then silence.
“Don’t mention it.”
When he reappeared out of the cabin hallway, Cere gave him an odd look. For a second he thought she was about to question him on why he’d taken so long, but she apparently let it go without forcing him to come up with a believable excuse.
“No Merrin?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.
Maybe whatever Greez had in his pan had been too lively for her to hear the door actuating. That would be an unusual stroke of luck, but he’d take it.
Cal shrugged and stepped past her, glancing over Greez’s shoulder. Stir-fry of some sort, looked like. Good stuff.
“Said she wasn’t hungry.”
Cere’s brow furrowed and she paused what she was doing for a moment, staring off at where Merrin’s cabin would be through the walls.
“Hmm. That’s not like her.”
“You’re telling me. I’m gonna bring her some once we’re done though.”
“Did she sound sick?” Greez asked, sliding the stir fry pan to a deactivated burner and shutting off the first one. “Like, congested the way you people get?”
“You people?” Cere laughed. “She’s not human, Greez.”
“I know, I know, but she’s still pretty close. Got all the same respiratory bits. You look kinda bugged yourself, kid, you alright?”
“More bones, though. And yeah, I’m fine.” Cal contributed, sliding into his seat at the table and fixing his face into something more normal and less like he’d just seen… well, what he’d just seen. When Greez gave him a look of consternation at the factoid, he shrugged. “What? She has divided shoulder blades and double humerous-es, that’s four extra. It’s a Dathomiri thing, it’s how she twists up the way she does when she’s casting magick.”
Cere looked approvingly at him for a second.
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, I uh… looked it up, I think.” He said, flushing slightly, “Saw her bend in a really weird way once and got curious.”
Greez made a noise indelicate enough for Cere to actually swat him with the towel she was using to clean her cutting board.
“In a fight. Saw her bend weirdly in a fight.” Cal corrected, wincing. “Ask her to twist her arm sometime, it goes all the way around. It’s… kind of cool, honestly.”
Talking about Merrin’s skeletal structure was, oddly enough, a decent distraction from what he’d seen of the rest of her. Alien biology was interesting, and as similar as she was to him and Cere, she was definitely an alien in a lot of the ways that counted.
“I will absolutely not be doing that, thank you Cal.” Greez trundled towards the table with a warming trivet in one hand, and the other three holding the steaming pan by the handle. “That girl weirds me out enough without her arms going in a 360. Take the trivet.”
Cal did as he was told, settling the trivet on the center of the table and getting his hands out of the way.
“Closer to a 520.” He said, grinning.
“Huh, y’know what’s funny kid, I don’t remember asking.”
He settled the pan on the trivet with a clunk, then dusted off all four of his hands on his sides on his way to a chair.
“Must be the old age getting to you.” Cere smiled at him and sat in her usual spot.
“You’re all on a roll today,” He grumbled fondly, “Anyway, as I was trying to ask, did she sound sick to you?”
Cal thought about it, then shook his head.
“Not really. Just super tired.”
Greez busied himself scooping portions of the stir fry out into four bowls and passing them around the table. One he left by the trivet, piled high with extra meat. For all his grumbling and consternation over her, Greez cared deep down.
Cere chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment, the only normal nervous habit Cal knew she had.
“Well, illness isn’t always respiratory.” She decided, “When you bring her dinner, ask her if she feels alright, would you? Remember, we can always go get her medication if that’s what’s needed.”
He’d been planning on it anyway since Greez made mention of potential sickness, but he nodded.
“Yeah, of course.”
He dug into the steaming bowl Cere passed him, letting the two of them carry the conversation for a while. It was as good as he’d been expecting, rich and flavorful and almost too hot to eat, but he couldn’t find it in himself to really enjoy it. Something kept bothering him, from deep in the pile of thoughts he’d shoved aside when Merrin woke up, an idea he kept having to push away to actually keep eating.
Eventually, it started cropping up more insistently, forcing its way into whatever other thoughts he conjured up to block it. His processing had apparently been running in the background, because the thought he came up with was the answer to a question he hadn’t even consciously asked.
If the scars are that bad… what did the injuries look like?
Cal tried his absolute hardest not to picture it. They must have been horrific. He’d never seen scars that bad, not ones like that anyway. Some people with big burns, sure, but nothing like her. There the stupid image was again, a flash of Merrin on the ground, her arms cut open so deep he could see the double bones in them, drenched in what had to be too much blood to lose at once and survive. He gritted his teeth and thought of something else, anything else. He pushed his mind to boring days on Bracca, but that just brought him back to the shitty excuse for a clinic there, which brought him to when he saw that older rigger girl miss her footing and slip hard enough to gash her shin ankle to kneecap on a fresh cut edge, which brought him right back to Merrin’s legs slashed open so badly he could see the blood bubbling as it gushed off her lap.
“Cal…?”
He blinked and jerked his head up, finding Cere and Greez both looking worriedly at him.
“Are you alright?” Cere asked gently, “You’re pale as a ghost.”
“I’m good.” He shook his head to clear it out, which did nothing for him, and stood up sharply.
Before Greez could voice a protest, and before Cal’s mutinous brain could jump from I’m good over to the other times I said that and then across to serious injuries and then to Merrin bleeding out again, he scooped his bowl off the table and snagged the extra one with his free hand.
“I’m gonna go take Merrin her food. I’ll eat the rest of mine in my cabin if that’s okay.”
He figured he had to go over there anyway, and seeing her alive and breathing and not flooding her cabin with blood would maybe get his mind to calm down a little. Maybe they were self-inflicted, it suggested helpfully, maybe she still does it.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
He vanished down the hallway before anyone could decide it wasn’t okay actually and make him sit around for a second longer.
Once he got to Merrin’s door, he took a step to the side and knocked gracelessly on the bulkhead with his elbow since his hands were both occupied.
“Hey, you up?” He called, “I have your food.”
There was a second of silence that sent his brain absolutely screaming, but then Merrin spoke up from behind the door.
“I am awake. Come in.”
Cal blinked.
“Oh, uh… you sure?” He asked quickly, trying his best to make it clear he wasn’t trying to invite himself into her room. “I can just hand it to you if you want.”
“It is fine, Cal.”
“Right, okay. One sec.”
He balanced the emptier of the two bowls on a bent elbow and tapped the opener button with his free hand, then swore and just waved at the door when it didn’t respond. Because it was broken. Which was the start of this whole mess in the first place.
The door hissed open and Cal winced on pure instinct, only fixing his face when he heard a tired snort from the direction of the bed.
He glanced in and saw that the lights were on now, which made him feel better. And Merrin was, thankfully, wearing real clothes this time, which also made him feel much better. Just a loose long-sleeve and baggy pants, but still. What didn’t make him feel better was the way she grimaced when she waved him inside.
Just seeing her settled his heart rate more than he’d have ever admitted aloud, though. The door slid shut behind him, and he held out the untouched bowl to her. Her hair was down, falling around her shoulders in a way that made him feel a little bit like his brain was full of gentle comm static.
“You feeling any better?” He asked, leaning his back against the doorframe to give her some space in the tiny cabin when she took the stir-fry.
“Not particularly.” She sighed, then patted the bed beside her with her free hand. “Come sit.”
“You sure?” Cal blinked and tried his best to take how weird she was being today in stride. Merrin, as a rule, did not like other people in her space. If she wanted to be close to you, she would walk over and be close to you. If you walked further into her space than she wanted you to be, she would probably back up or make you retreat. “I’m fine standing, I promise.”
Merrin looked up at him with something between exhaustion and amusement, then looked pointedly at the bed next to her, then back up to him, then jerked her chin in that direction. He relented after a moment of fighting with himself about it, stepping across the narrow cabin and settling beside her. Well, at least on the same bed. He left her at least a foot or two of distance between them, which frankly was as much to save himself as it was to be polite to her.
“Cere and Greez are kind of worried you’re sick,” He said quietly, just to break the silence.
Merrin nodded a little, staring down at the steaming bowl and picking through it mindlessly with her fork.
“I imagined someone would ask eventually, yes.” She picked out a large set of meat and vegetables and popped them in her mouth.
“Are you?” He followed suit, and found that it was much easier to enjoy the food when he could chase away whatever stupid images his brain came up with just by looking up and seeing her there, tired and probably in pain but still very much there.
Cal only got a shrug by way of answer, which wasn’t really much of an answer at all, and didn’t really help his only-just-now-stabilizing brain pick out what she was actually feeling.
He ate more stir-fry instead of trying to figure out what to say back to that, enjoying her presence as much as the meal. He liked being around her, even when she wasn’t… at her best. Maybe they were ‘kindred spirits’ as Cere called them occasionally, but Cal could never figure out if she meant that in a you get along well what nice friends you are way or a you’re both so fucked up I guess it makes sense you can tolerate each other way. Knowing himself, probably the latter.
They’d never be accused of being inseparable, not when Merrin loved silence and space and watching from a distance so much and he spent half his time climbing random shit in the woods, but if Cal thought about it… they were probably best friends. She could make him laugh just by meeting his eyes at the wrong moment and making him think of whatever dark joke she had in her head, and they got up to enough trouble together to make Greez despair for the future of their little crew. Having someone else around more like him than like Cere and Greez had been a relief, honestly. He loved them, of course, but constantly being the odd one out had been wearing on him until Merrin showed up. She was pretty weird, if he looked at it as objectively as he could. Apparently her time alone on Dathomir had been about as good for her as Bracca had been for him, just in different ways. It was nice, having someone around who vibrated on the same frequencies he did, and who took even his weirdest habits and worst days more or less in stride. He let himself get distracted thinking about it as he worked his way through his remaining stir-fry.
Eventually, it was Merrin who broke the silence.
“Are they expecting me to come out with you?” She asked quietly, jerking him back to the current moment with the worry in her voice.
She’d made pretty quick work of the pile of meat and greens while Cal had been lost in his thoughts.
Not hungry, huh…?
“They’d probably like it.” He shrugged and shifted his position on the bed so he was facing her more. “You don’t have to, though.”
Merrin fiddled with her fork for a moment, then reached up to set the bowl on the tiny desk embedded in the cabin wall.
“I suppose. I would like…” Her words died out into a sharp inhale as her arm stretched out to set the bowl down, and Cal saw her other hand crush into a fist by her side. “I would like to.”
“You really don’t have to,” He said quickly. “It’s fine, Merrin.”
“It will be worse if I do not.” Her breathing was shallower than he’d like, pained and tight, and her expression was actually trending somewhere towards nauseous.
“How? No one is going to be mad at you.” Cal promised. “They’re not like that, trust me.”
Their eyes met for a moment when she glanced his way, and the look on her face made his chest ache. She looked miserable. He hated it. Hated how her hand was still clenched into a fist tighter than he thought was possible, hated how she flinched just the tiniest bit every time her chest expanded, hated the way she was sitting perfectly still like any movement would make it worse.
“I have to.” She said, breaking eye contact with him to make it with the floor instead. “Otherwise they will start asking questions.”
“I can just say you’re sick. I’m serious, Merrin, hey.” He leaned over, setting his food down on the floor by his feet. “Whatever is going on with you, you don’t have to tell anyone. They’ll worry and get weird about it eventually but they won’t actually make you tell them.”
He barely got a response beyond a wince, so he continued.
“Look, I barely slept for three weeks when I got here.” It wasn’t exactly a pleasant memory, but he forged on. “They got worried, they got weird, they told me that I was making a mistake, but they didn’t try to make me tell them why, and they didn’t try to make me stop, either.”
Merrin turned her head just a little.
“But you told them eventually.” She said tiredly, and the end of the sentence was obvious.
And I will have to as well.
Cal shook his head immediately.
“No, I didn’t. They still don’t know.” It was the truth. He’d never told anyone why he didn’t sleep those weeks, he hadn’t told them when it happened and he’d never brought it up since. “Cere wants me to tell her, but I hate talking about that kind of stuff, and she doesn’t push it. Greez just doesn’t like seeing it, once it’s over it’s over for him.”
“I would not ask you to lie for me.”
“Then I won’t.” He could play this game all day, and honestly, the longer they talked back and forth and the longer he kept her from trying to get up and put herself through whatever torture she was bracing herself for, the better. “I say you’re in a lot of pain and don’t want to leave your room, and then don’t let them ask any questions, it’s that simple.”
Merrin gave him a pained half-smile and let out a breath like an exhausted laugh.
“Is it that easy for you?”
“To stonewall Greez and Cere?” He smiled back at her and shrugged. “Yeah. Do it all the time. They hate it, but they expect it from me. I can do it for you too.”
She went silent for a moment, looking over at him. Her expression changed, bit by bit, until she just looked uncomfortable rather than in agonizing pain, and tired rather than exhausted beyond measure. Cal counted it as a win.
“Why have you not asked what is disturbing me?” Merrin asked, voice soft.
Dammit.
Cal winced. He knew this was coming, and had been sort of putting off figuring out exactly what he was going to say to make it any less awkward and terrible a thing to explain.
“I… kind of already know.” He said gingerly, trying to buy enough time to phrase the story in the way that would suck the least for both of them.
She looked up at him sharply, and he grimaced again.
Fuck it. May as well just make it quick.
“Be mad at me for this if you want, I deserve it.” He looked at his bowl on the floor rather than making eye contact with her, and just said it.
“Your door lock is busted, so… when I came by to wake you up earlier, I forgot and I tried to knock on it, and it just… opened before I could yank my hand back. You didn’t have your blankets on so I just sort of saw them. I didn’t get a good look, I closed my eyes really fast, I promise, I didn’t try to do it and I wish I hadn’t. No one but me saw anything and I didn’t say anything or tell anyone, even BD was over in the kitchen. You can be mad at me for it, you should be, it was really stupid and I deserve it and I’m really, really sorry, Merrin.”
It all fell out in a rush, and he tried to say it all in one go so he didn’t tangle himself up in justification or details or anything. Then he just sat there, red with embarrassment over the stupidity of it all, waiting for her to yell at him or tell him to get out of her room or say he was lying about not telling anyone or any number of other completely reasonable reactions he wouldn’t have argued about at all.
Instead, she just let out a long breath and covered her face with her hands.
It was silent for a long moment, and Cal truly wished the floor would just open under his feet and swallow him whole when he considered the very real possibility that she might be crying. He’d never seen her cry before. He never wanted to. The idea that the first time he saw her cry would be because he was such a fucking idiot was agonizing.
“Please say something,” He managed to look over at her again when the silence became completely intolerable. “Yell at me, or kick me out, or something, please.”
She shook her head slowly and slid a hand far enough down her face that they could see each other.
“I am not angry at you, Cal.” She said softly, her single visible eye meeting his. “It was… a mistake. I trust you are not lying to me.”
“I wouldn’t.” He said immediately, the hit of relief draining all the tension from his body for a second. Somehow, some way, she wasn’t mad at him for it. “I promise, it was just a really, really stupid mistake. Look…” He gathered his courage and kept talking, only wincing a little. “Now that it’s… out there. Is there anything I can do to help you? I know they’re hurting you whenever you move, I know you’re in pain. I want to help, if I can.”
Merrin’s expression softened, and softened, and softened, until she eventually, slowly, took her hands off her face and just looked at him for a long moment, almost smiling but not quite. Whatever the look in her eyes was, he couldn’t put a name to it. It was some mix of gentle and curious and appreciative and warm and quiet, and the more she looked at him like that, the more the warm comm static feeling crept back into his head.
“You are not going to ask where they came from?”
“I think you see the pattern here by now,” He said quietly, smiling a little to make sure she knew he was trying to joke. “I don’t really ask questions.”
“I see it.” Merrin confirmed softly. “You are… very kind, Cal.”
Am I? I kind of think I fucked this up every possible way, but…
“Thanks. I… I try my best.” He might have been blushing, his face felt too warm to be normal. “Seriously, though. Do you need anything, is there anything that helps you when stuff like this happens? Anything at all.”
She eyed him for a long moment.
“No questions asked?”
“No questions asked.” Cal promised immediately, spinning up a list in his head of anything she could possibly need or want and how he could get his hands on it. Water was in the galley, more food out there too, if she needed more blankets or pillows he didn’t quite know where Greez stored the spares but he had some extras she could have for as long as she needed them, if she needed bacta or pain meds he could snag some from the first aid kit without anyone noticing–
“I want to lay down.” Merrin said quietly.
“Oh. Okay, yeah, sure.” He scrambled to get to his feet, to get out of her way so she could have her space back, but she held up a hand to stop him.
“I can not…” She gritted her teeth for a moment, clearly fighting herself on saying anything at all, and he froze just to make sure he wouldn’t make her feel bad and clam up. “I can not do it comfortably here.”
Pain meds, bacta, more pillows, easy easy easy.
“What do you need me to do?” He asked, settling back onto the bed.
Merrin smiled at him again, that same smile from earlier that made his head go fuzzy.
“If you would not mind… some water would be nice. We will talk when you return.”
Cal nodded and got to his feet, snagging the two bowls as he did. She wasn’t going anywhere for at least the next couple hours he guessed, so keeping her space free of the random garbage that he spontaneously generated anywhere he spent any time was probably for the best. His own room was only neat by force of will at this point.
Something occurred to him and he turned back to face her, leaning his back against the doorframe.
“Also.” He said, a bit more cautiously, “What do you want me to tell Greez and Cere?”
Merrin grimaced, and he winced sympathetically.
“As little as possible, please.” She said pleadingly. “I…”
“I get it. I’ll just say you’re feeling bad and need rest, that’s not even really a lie. I’ll be back in a minute, promise.”
“Thank you, Cal.”
“Of course.”
He did manage to remember not to hit the broken door button on his way out, which was an improvement.
Cere and Greez were sitting on the couch chatting about something or other, but when he poked his head around the corner into the Mantis’ main space, they both fell silent and looked over at him.
“Firstly, that was not your cabin, and secondly, you eat incredibly slowly.” Greez said, and Cere rolled her eyes.
“So?” She said, raising her eyebrows. “What’s the conclusion?”
Cal went right to the galley, fishing a tall glass out of the cabinet. After a second of consideration, he put it back and found a metal bottle instead. Merrin had said she wanted to lay down, so a bottle made more sense anyway. Well aware of Cere’s eyes boring holes in the back of his head, he also dug a clean straw out of the drawer and plunked it in through the flip-open top of the bottle.
“Cal.” Cere said, exasperation clear enough to make him finally turn around.
“What?” It maybe came out a shred more snappish than he was really intending it to, but… whatever.
“Merrin. Is she sick?”
“She’s feeling bad but just needs to rest for a while.” He said, looking steadily back at her as the drinkable water fountain filled the bottle.
This was their little game. Cere and Greez could talk telepathically, but at this point he and Cere could have a whole one of these arguments just by looking at each other for a minute. Sometimes she could push him in her usual gentle way and he’d eventually tell her what was going on, some bad memory or an echo that got under his skin or an injury he hadn’t mentioned, but not always. Sometimes, whatever he was dealing with or thinking about was way too much to shove into a few shitty sentences and expect to get any results out of except just feeling worse, and by this point Cere had gotten enough of a handle on him to figure out which was which pretty quickly.
There was something in the back of his mind that did want to tell her. If Merrin didn’t seem horrified by the idea of anyone knowing about the situation, he probably would have, honestly. Cere would know what to do, how to help, and she was really good at the sort of kind reassurance that made embarrassing things feel a little less stupid. But Merrin had asked him not to, and he wasn't going to break her trust just to make himself feel better about something that happened to her.
“She’ll be fine,” He said, shrugging, “just… leave her be.”
Cere stared at him, and he wondered if she would clock what he’d said as a lie. It was definitely a lie by omission at the very least, and he’d also managed to avoid saying yes or no to the actual question.
“I’d really prefer to know if someone on my ship has a deadly disease or something,” Greez said, and it was Cal’s turn to roll his eyes.
“Greez, please just leave her alone. She’ll be fine.”
Cere looked at him again for a long second, the annoyance fading from her eyes.
“Well,” she said slowly, “if she needs anything, we’re happy to make another trip into town. Same goes for you, Cal.”
He smiled a little.
“I’ll tell her.”
He took another minute or so to gather an armful of other things before heading back to her room. He told himself it was just in case she wanted them later, but if he was entirely honest with himself… he also needed a second to think everything over.
It really didn’t go too badly.
Seeing her in pain was miserable, though. The way she’d clenched her fists was upsetting just to think about, let alone witness, and the look in her eyes when she’d stretched her arm wrong hurt. Maybe taking a minute to think about everything was a mistake. He busied himself gathering the rest of his quickly cobbled together list of just-in-cases instead, and made his way back to Merrin’s door.
She was sitting exactly where she’d been when he’d left, and apparently feeling okay enough to raise her eyebrows at his armful of stuff.
“Large water bottle,” She commented mildly, and he snorted.
“I got a few other things, just in case you need them.” He shrugged unapologetically and knelt by her feet, finding enough space under the desk to set most of his cargo. “I don’t know if bacta helps, but I grabbed the first aid kit just in case. There’s pain meds in there too, and some hot packs. You said you weren’t comfortable, so that explains the pillows and blankets, and–”
“Are those yours?” Merrin asked, managing a smile in his direction when he looked up.
“Uh, yeah. They’re clean though, don’t worry, I just did laundry yesterday. You want one?”
She reached out a hand towards him, and he passed her a messily-folded blanket, then reached around her to put his pillow up with hers. It was his only pillow, but he’d burn that bridge when he got to it tonight. Sleeping without one wasn’t a big deal, she needed it more than he did.
“This is… surprisingly soft,” He glanced up and saw Merrin running her hands over the blanket, dark tattoos sliding across the green fabric.
He laughed a little and settled back on his heels.
“Yeah, I kinda got the pick of the extra blankets when I came aboard, since I got here before you did. We can swap if you like it better, I’m fine using something else.”
She looked over at him and shook her head fondly.
“Do you just offer everything you have to any stranger you meet, Cal?” Her tone was warm enough to take all the potential mockery out of it, and also get his guard down enough that his better judgement couldn’t intervene before he’d already responded honestly.
“Nah, I actually hate giving people my stuff. It’s really just you.” He said, shrugging.
Merrin looked away for a second, and he thought he’d said something to offend her or make her feel bad. At least, he did until he saw her cheeks going dark gray, and realized she was blushing.
Instead of thinking about the implications of that, which threatened to send his head spinning off in directions it absolutely could not be allowed to go for so many reasons, he busied himself with retrieving the bacta and pain meds from the first aid kit and setting them on the desk where Merrin would be able to reach them from bed.
By the time he glanced over at her again, her face had mostly returned to normal, and he pretended as hard as he could that it wasn’t still a little darker than usual.
“I got you water, here.” He passed her the bottle and she accepted it gratefully, taking a long sip through the straw and giving him a nod by way of thanks.
Cal got to his feet and gave the bed a quick look. Merrin’s blankets were a mess, and she wasn’t exactly going to be able to get them untangled without moving her arms way too much.
“Do you mind if I…” He gestured in their direction, and she nodded again, still busy drinking.
It didn’t take too long to steal the blankets from around her and get them arranged so he could hold them corner to corner and shake the wrinkles out.
While he was busy with that, Merrin gingerly settled back to laying on her side. Instead of spreading the blanket he’d handed her over herself like he’d expected, she folded it over again and tucked it between her knees. The new pillow ended up held against her body, braced against where he knew a scar crossed her stomach. Maybe she was trying to prevent bumping it open or moving in her sleep, that made sense.
When she’d gotten settled, Cal considered his options for wrapping her in blankets, then decided to just use the Force. Was it a frivolous thing to use it on? Maybe, but seeing how relieved Merrin looked when they floated lightly down around her made it more than worth it to him. Empathy was an important part of being a Jedi, he figured, and making sure stray wrinkles didn’t dig into her scars was the priority.
“Thank you,” She said, smiling.
Cal nodded and stepped back, surveying his handiwork with some satisfaction. Merrin looked more relaxed than before, the meds and her water were in reach, her space was clean, it all looked good.
“Anything else you need? I’ll leave you be and let you rest in a minute, I promise.”
Merrin shifted her head on the pillow and eyed him for a moment.
‘Actually…” She said softly, “Would you stay? I want to talk to you, before I go back to sleep.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Cal hesitated, trying to figure out where she wanted him to be. After a moment, she took mercy on him and patted the side of the bed by her head with a hand. He settled on the floor, leaning his back against the bed, and Merrin shifted herself closer to the edge.
After a long moment, she slipped an arm out from the blankets and– to his surprise– laid it across his collarbones. She hooked her fingers into the strap on his far shoulder and let it hold her arm. It was by far the nicest restraint he’d ever been put in.
“You comfortable?” He asked, and she hummed quietly behind his head.
“Better, yes. And you?”
“Yeah.” Cal shifted himself just enough to get cross-legged without moving her arm, then nodded. “What did you want to talk about?”
Merrin hesitated for a long moment.
“When the door malfunctioned…” Cal could almost see the look on her face as she tried to phrase what she wanted to say. “You saw… enough to tell they were disturbing me, yes?”
He let out a long breath and closed his eyes.
“Yeah. It was just a quick look, I promise.”
“I know.” She tightened her arm around him for a moment in something like a hug, and he smiled in spite of himself. “What I am trying to ask is, did you figure out what the cause of them was?”
Cal shook his head immediately, but now that she’d posed the question, his mind actually started running it. They were obviously slashes of some kind, so not blasters or burns. But if they were gashes… the image that haunted him earlier cropped back up, and Merrin’s arm around his chest was reassurance enough to actually sit and consider it for a second. If they’d been normal gashes, she would have died, and they didn’t look like clean sharp cuts anyway. Even one of the injuries to her legs would have been enough to bleed out if they were, let alone in combination with all the others, so…
The answer was obvious enough, if he let himself actually follow his reasoning to the logical conclusion. Obvious enough that he knew it should have cropped up the second he saw them, because he had one on his damn hip.
“They’re lightsaber scars, aren’t they?” He said quietly.
“Yes.” Merrin sighed, and it sounded almost relieved. Maybe she’d been hoping he’d figured it out just so she wouldn’t have to say it out loud.
“And they’re… like that, because the guy who did it had four.” Cal hesitated for a second, shaking his head. “Honestly, I’m impressed you survived.”
Everyone involved in the Clone Wars in any meaningful way knew about General Grievous, and even most of the people who weren’t. Tapal had told him on several occasions when they were involved in operations in sectors were Grievous had been rumored to be, that if he ever saw anything that made him suspect the formerly-Khaleesh-now-cyborg was in the area, he was to take his clones and retreat immediately until they could get reinforcements. The general had been a serious threat on an individual level as much as he was on a galactic one, and Merrin’s scars were proof enough of that.
“They are… on the severe side, yes.” She said softly.
“Most people who get hit with lightsabers don’t really live to tell the tale, yeah.” He agreed, thinking back to his own encounter with the bad end of his saber and wincing. “I guess you were a strong kid.”
Merrin dismissed it with a small huff. Her arm moved like she was shrugging.
“It was luck. Nothing else.”
“Could be.” Luck had been a big part of it, sure, but… “Maybe it was because you were supposed to make it.”
She paused and shifted behind him, probably pulling the blankets further up around her.
“To do what?” She asked eventually, voice quiet.
“Be here.” He said, smiling a little, “Do this. Keep your magick alive, get stories to take home, fight the Empire,” He didn’t say the rest of it aloud, but maybe she understood anyway.
Be here with me, tease Cere, fly the Mantis, get into trouble together, waste time. He couldn’t imagine doing any of it without her anymore. The idea of being stuck on this path after going to Dathomir and seeing just one more dead Nightsister child on the ground and not even knowing what was missing when he moved on… it wasn’t fun to think about. Having her around made his whole life better. And ensured it kept going, she saved him all the time.
Merrin hummed softly, considering it.
“I suppose that applies to you as well, Cal.” She nudged into his shoulder with the hand tangled in his poncho strap. “You survived too.”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s fate, right?” He smiled over his shoulder at her. “The will of the Force or whatever, that we’d be sitting here now.”
“Mmm. Strange destiny, sitting on the floor of a starship cabin and putting up with me.” There was a note under her voice that he didn’t like, something self-effacing in a way Merrin almost never was.
“I’m not putting up with anything.” He said quickly, putting a hand over hers on his shoulder. “I like this. I like talking to you, you know that. And all the rest of this, it’s… not a big deal. It’s easy.”
It really was. There was nothing about any of this that he hadn’t wanted to do. Taking care of her was as instinctual as deflecting a blaster bolt or feeling an echo, and not doing it would have felt just as wrong as taking the bolt or silencing the memory.
She stayed silent for a moment, then leaned over enough to press a gentle kiss to the side of his head. His entire chest lit up like she’d dropped embers right into it, the rush of sparks making him blush to the roots of his hair. He couldn’t have hidden the smile on his face if he tried.
“It is a big deal to me.” Merrin said softly, “Thank you, Cal.”
He couldn’t figure out how to say anything coherent back quite yet, so he just squeezed her hand gently and rested his head back against the side of the bed.
The quiet stretched on and on, and it was only after someone walked down the hallway by her door and Merrin didn’t stir that he realized she must have fallen asleep right where she was, her forehead tucked against the back of his head, arm around him, hand in his.
Theoretically he could have gotten up. Untangled their hands, slipped out from under her arm, headed back to his cabin to sleep and let her be. It was probably what he should have done, for the sake of politeness and not being sore in the morning and not getting looks from the rest of the crew.
He didn’t even consider it. He shifted just a little, found a comfortable spot for his head, and settled in. It would take the Mantis crashing to make him move, and even that would be a close thing if Merrin slept through it. It was that thought that made him almost laugh, resisting the urge so she wouldn’t wake up to the sound.
I think I might be doomed.
If doom felt like Merrin’s arm around his shoulders and her breath on the back of his head, he’d meet it and die happy.
His smile still hadn’t faded by the time he drifted off himself, her hand still tangled in his.