Work Text:
Bracca had always been little more than a concept to twelve year old Cal Kestis, stationed high above it in a safe, warm Venator as he had been the entire time the Iron Battalion had been stationed here. A series of blue-tinged images on a holoprojector, key points of interest lit up in red letters for him to inspect.
In reality, Bracca was wet, and cold, and dark, and frightening, even more so with the feeling of being profoundly alone. Everything ached - his neck, his throat, his limbs, his back. The silence inside the escape pod, however, had been worse than the sounds outside. The thunder and rain hammered down around him as he crawled though the mud for a sixth trip back to the crashed pod with whatever rocks he could find to build a mound with.
Master Tapal was already buried - the mud had done most of the work for Cal, though it had cost him his boots and most of his sanity. He slipped and fell again - he'd lost count of how many times he'd gone face first into the sodden ground, and he felt his arm slice open on one of the rocks. He let out a hoarse cry, his throat raw from screaming, and knelt, choking back more tears that were lost to the rain that already poured down his face. It wasn't easy to rip the soggy fabric of his sleeve to wrap the nasty cut, but he managed it, slow and steady. The darkness stretched - Cal had no real idea what time it was, however the day-night cycle worked here, or if anyone had seen the escape pod come down.
He hadn't seen a soul since he'd crashed, so...either no-one had seen...or no-one cared enough to investigate. His breath hitched and he swiped his wet sleeve across his eyes, achieving nothing but a momentary flicker of self-comfort. What was he supposed to do now?
He gathered his fallen rocks, limping over to his makeshift grave and stacking them up in front of the big one he'd broken most of his fingernails trying to carve his master's name into with a sharp bit of flint. It was rough, and scratchy and terrible, but it was all Cal could give him. If he hadn't been so slow and stupid, his master would be here with him, protecting him and caring for him. They'd have found shelter, shared a ration bar and Master Tapal would have wrapped him in his warmth and the Force and held him close, promising to find them help in the morning.
Instead, Cal was here by himself, scratching around in the mud and filth trying to bury an eight foot tall Lasat in as much honour as he could manage. He let out another sob, stacking the rocks and kneeling in front of the little pile, rain driving down his face. His neck stung so badly, the blaster wound fresh and sore, but hopefully the rain would keep it clean - otherwise Cal's sojourn to this dismal planet would be short lived.
Maybe that would be for the best. No-one would want such a terrible Padawan after this. He missed Master Tapal already, so very fiercely, the tattered remnants of his training bond dark and silent in his mind. He tried not to think about what had happened on the Brave, how the Clones had turned their blasters on them with utter apathy and lack of remorse, treating them like the mindless battle droids they had shot so many of.
Cal fiddled with his Padawan braid. He had no words to say that seemed good enough, and even if he did, his voice was wrecked anyway. He glanced at Jaro Tapal's saber where it lay on a pile of blue fabric - the remnants of Tapal's Jedi robe. He stared at it for a few seconds, then shivered, looking away and picking up his bloody flint rock instead, pulling his braid taut and hacking at it hard enough to make his eyes water from the amount of hair he was yanking out.
Once the braid was as severed as the shattered training bond lying dark and forlorn in his soul, he laid it on the ground in front of his mound of rocks, a little shock of red against the mud and filth. Still no words came, Cal was just...numb.
Numb, exhausted, aching.
Alone.