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The second shot and the thud of Bode’s body hitting the ground rings in his ears. Cal stares at the man’s fallen form and expects it to move. Bode always gets up, just like he does. Cal waits for the moment he will, blaster still in his hand, ready.
Bode doesn’t move.
The silence starts to ring louder than the retort of his blaster and Cal takes in a sharp, quiet breath, a step that ought to be forward turning into a step back instead. He never felt Bode in the Force before this moment beyond the physicality of their fighting, but now as his prickling ears hear a breath loosed like a sigh from afar, he does.
Bright, brilliant, a star shining suddenly without a shield to hide it. For a moment Cal marvels at how Bode could have possibly hidden his presence away from him if it was this blinding all along.
And then; it’s gone.
Cal drops the blaster like it’s burned him. It clatters loudly on the stone and he stares, horrified at Bode’s corpse, knowing he’ll never move again. The adrenaline hasn’t faded, still thundering through him, but now his eyes are wide and stinging, all the fight drained out of him. All the rage, the fear, the betrayal he felt, doused in an instant.
His lips part, Bode’s name waiting on his tongue to slip right off, knowing in the cold center of his chest that if he calls for him, it’ll go unanswered. He swallows it down instead and it sits like slag in his stomach.
A noise draws his attention away from Bode— from the body —over to Merrin. Her silver eyes are wide as well, locked on him, her lips pressed together tightly. His gaze drops to her throat— the sight of bruising only settles the smallest part of his horror —and then dips lower.
Her hands are covering Kata’s eyes, Kata’s small fingers clenched around them as if to keep them there or readying to shove them away, trembling. Cal can see the tear tracks that are slipping free below them, the quivering of Kata’s lower lip between her teeth.
Cal’s eyes dart up to Merrin’s. “I didn’t—” mean to dies on his tongue, just like Bode’s name, because the child hiding behind Merrin’s hands flinches at the sound of his voice breaking the silence and her silent tears become an awful, horrid sob that echoes in the Temple chamber.
His heart shatters anew to realize she was waiting to hear her father’s voice and has realized what Cal speaking instead likely means. The same shock he felt at feeling Bode’s presence vanish in the Force ripples through her when her loud, heart-wrenching tears bring no immediate words of comfort, no reassurances.
Tanalorr is utterly silent save for Kata's hiccuping cries. They echo back at him and Cal thinks again, miserably, I didn't mean to.
Bode hadn't given him any other choice.
Cal looks up at Merrin, helplessly, as his own tears fall in silence.