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Cal's reeling.
Every heartbeat in his chest hurts like the grenade Bode threw down managed to carve out part of his chest even with Cere holding back the blast, shrapnel sinking deeper and deeper.
It’s not the first time he’s been betrayed by someone he thought of as a brother, he thinks miserably as he holds his lightsaber out towards Bode’s throat, but somehow, it doesn’t hurt any less than when the clones turned on him. No, it’s worse.
Bode shifting backwards from his blade is a horrible sight, arms loose at his sides. He’s calm in the face of Cal’s hurt, his expression the same reasonable, rational cool his friend always displays under pressure after his earlier outburst, but when he speaks there’s an undercurrent of urgency.
“Cal, you don’t have time for this fight.”
He knows that. He saw the walkers, the TIEs. He can feel the Empire closing in on the archive like a distant siren in the back of his mind, walled off behind transparisteel but still flashing bright red flares of alarm that tell him to move, to go. He was supposed to stay and fend them off until the Anchorites could escape.
He’d hoped Bode might stand with him against them. Like he had so many times before without Cal asking, stepping up behind his back with his blasters primed and ready, in perfect sync.
“Something terrible is coming for that archive, listen to your instincts,” Bode urges, and that bit of impossible shrapnel slips a little bit further into the ventricles of his heart. “You know I’m right.”
He does. That warning in the back of his mind is a klaxon now, flaring brighter and more urgent than before. If he tears his eyes away from Bode to look at the sky, how many ships would he see encroaching on the dawn and covering the dunes with shadow now?
Cal blinks and realizes the dimming light isn’t entirely physical. A shard of horror stalls the next beat of his heart as he recognizes the shadow he senses is in the Force. Familiar, cold, all-encompassing. The scar tissue in his abdomen aches at the familiar presence like he’s five years younger and being cut through with his own blade once more, a phantom flare of pain. “What have you done?” The words fall from his mouth before he can even think to turn them into something harsh and angry, struck too dumb with disbelief.
Because Bode wouldn’t. He couldn’t have. The Imperial Navy is one thing, but this—
Bode’s gaze is steady and dark. “If you wanna keep your family safe, you get them out of there,” he tells him. There’s a bitter twist to his mouth, deadly serious, “Right now.”
Anger crystalizes inside of him, sudden and sharp with outrage. He steps forward, expecting Bode to retreat again from his blade, intent on holding it right up against his throat and demanding to know— “What have you do—”
He’s suddenly flung away, tumbling through the air. Sand rakes up from the rocky ground as he catches himself before he lands hard, battle-worn instincts making up for the unexpected blow that… never landed. His skin is prickled with goosebumps, untouched, and his anger is abruptly washed away with another awful wave of disbelief and hurt.
Cal forces his suddenly wooden limbs to cooperate and help him rise up. All the fight goes out of him at once as he gets his feet back under him, uncomprehending.
The warning in the Force is distant again. Not because the danger has moved any further away, but because of the sudden onslaught of emotion in front of him instead that has him stepping towards the source like he’s caught in the well of its gravity.
Guilt, sour and concentrated heavy enough Cal can practically taste it on his tongue, slams into him out of nowhere. Something awful and self-loathing and bitter enough to make him lightheaded with the strength of it. Foreign emotions, not his own, like the aftershocks he carries from echoes but all the more potent and present in the here and now.
The guilt turns acrid with shock, then redoubles.
Cal meets Bode’s pained expression with his own. The heavy guilt is a hook in his chest, bleeding just as heavily as his own hurt, but the end of that hook is tethered to another person entirely. Right now that tether is pulled taut, every emotion between them weaving it stronger as they stare at each other from a distance.
Cal hasn’t had a Force bond since Master Tapal died, but he knows this is much stronger than that. And entirely unintentional, if he’s reading the waves of guilt and shock coming from Bode. But there’s a firm resolve there too, one that has the breath stalling in his lungs.
“You can’t,” Cal begs.
There’s a flicker of something desperate and longing amidst the guilt. For half a breath, Cal thinks Bode might listen. That the fledgling bond that’s snapped into place will be enough, that Cal’s hurt and hope might convince him not to do what Cal already knows he’s about to.
But Cal can see the flex of the muscles in Bode’s jaw and he can already taste his regret in the back of his throat as Bode draws out a lightsaber— Dagan’s, he distantly acknowledges —and ignites it, readying his blaster as well.
Cal barely feels his lightsaber in his palm as he shifts into a defensive stance automatically, his body prepared even if his heart and mind are all screaming in protest. “You don’t have to do this,” Cal pleads. The we don’t have to do this all but claws its way down the bond.
The words have about as much effect as they did when Cordova said them. “I have a daughter to get back to,” Bode tells him, grim with apology and regret, and fires his blaster at Cal despite the way the Force and Cal are both crying out for him not to.