Chapter Text
Bogano is nothing like Cal imagined.
Oh, he’s had more than his fair share of rescue fantasies over the past few years – meandering daydreams while his mind went numb severing acceleration conduits from starship drives, stories he told himself as Imperial triumph smothered the galaxy, desperate comforting fairytales between nightmares of blaster fire and putrefaction clogging his nose and mouth – but they treaded the same familiar paths. Surviving Jedi who had disappeared underground to regroup and plan. Someone finding Cal slaving away for his meager salary (always eaten again by the Guild before he saw more than a few credits) and spiriting him away from here. Returning to Coruscant, taking back their home, setting the toppled Republic upright again. Living. Recovering. Thriving.
He never pictured wildly grasping at the Force to save Prauf only to lose him an hour later, or the Inquisitors, or practically being caught midair by an ex-Jedi and her ornery pilot who swooped in out of nowhere to save him. And rebuilding the Order… Cal had wanted to believe there still was an Order. A damaged, diminished Order, perhaps, but Knights and Masters who could take the helm and guide them away from total destruction. Instead, their only chance is a holocron of Force-sensitive children and a Padawan so broken he can’t even meditate without causing property damage.
It’s not all bad, he reminds himself. It’s not bad at all, really. Bogano is so quiet. The overgrown grasses ripple in the wind and boglings chirp and water trickles through underground springs, and Cal, so accustomed to the endless mechanical chorus of the Scrapper Guild, hasn’t heard a single thruster since Greez powered off the Stinger Mantis. He sat down earlier just to listen to the silence and bask in the sunlight for a little while and woke up to BD-1 informing him he’d been muttering in his sleep. Now, he cups his hands around his eyes, looks off towards the horizon. The planet orbits a trinary star system; the closest sun is sinking out of sight, burning the sky pink and orange and red, while the distant twins are hardly more than bright white freckles.
Night on Bogano is no darker than what other planets consider nautical twilight, BD says, and Cal glances down at him. Not too difficult to see, the droid adds, for a Human – bog rats are nocturnal, though, and splox crepuscular, so nighttime exploration is not without its risks.
Cal shakes his head. “Don’t think I’m gonna be doing any of that tonight.” In lieu of his final paycheck, Bracca took a few ribs. That’s half the reason they’re wasting time on Bogano – Cal’s held together with spit and spacetape, and Greez has been practically dismantling his ship to find out why he’s getting pushback from the weapons systems. Cere already grounded them for another day, anyway. It's not all bad. Cal has forgotten how to think like a Jedi, how to let the Force pass through him like a porous clay vessel, guide his movements, bend him to its will. At the moment, he feels bloated with it. Whatever’s wrong with Cal, it’s not been eased by escaping Bracca or finding a reason to be a Jedi again, but maybe he’ll find enlightenment among the nooks and niches of Master Cordova’s workshop. And while he’s reserving his trust until they’ve earned it, Cere and Greez are… okay. Cere seems to like him. She needs him. Once or twice Cal’s caught her looking at him with a strange, veiled expression, and he suspects he’s not what she was truly searching for. An older, less traumatized, more trained Jedi would better serve her purposes. On the other hand, they might be strong enough to refuse. Cal is seventeen years old and his pathetic excuse for a life was just smashed to dust. Cere offered something he didn’t know he wanted until she dangled it in front of him, and he crumbled like a sandcastle even in the face of her remarkably evasive explanation for why she’s no longer a Jedi. He doesn’t trust her yet, but he likes her nonetheless. The Bogano breeze toys with his hair while Cal watches the sunset alongside a little droid who’s been glued to Cal’s side since the moment he fixed BD’s damaged leg. It’s not bad at all. He could get used to this.
Unfortunately, Cal is pretty sure he’s dying.
He doesn’t have any sort of duracrete evidence for that claim – just a hollow discomfort in the pit of his stomach that swelled, sickeningly, the moment Greez shook him awake. Then, Cal had merely been exhausted and sore (bouncing off a hoverbarge ribcage-first wasn’t one of his better ideas) and put it down to nerves. He was stuck on a starship with his so-called rescuers and no escape plan. “Here,” Cere had said before sending him off to the Vault, little hyposprays cascading from her hands to Cal’s, “painkillers. Use what you need.” It was an interesting gesture – he’d not complained of discomfort and she apparently had no concern he might misuse them and swiftly render himself insensate. Cal took one, stashed the rest for later, and went about his business, only slightly bothered by his ribs and back and shoulder.
But the pain wasn’t the problem. As the day wore on, as he felt the faintest ember of hope there might yet be a future for the Jedi, he also began to feel like the unapproved trash he was. Fatigued, dizzy, shaky, nauseated. Cal wasn’t stupid enough to let it show in front of Cere or Greez, but with only BD-1 around to witness any weakness now, he’s slumped against the Mantis’s doors, trying to bully his legs into taking the rest of his weight so he can actually go inside. He feels wrong. Maybe everything’s catching up with him. Or maybe he’s getting sick, which is a terrifying prospect – if Cere and Greez start believing Cal’s too frail to handle this, he’s likely to find himself inhabiting a bogling tunnel for the rest of his days. He can’t let that happen. Cal takes a deep breath and forces his heavy-lidded eyes all the way open.
And then the world falls away and he gets a brief glimpse of the sky spinning above him before his rear hits the floor.
“Kriff!” Greez yelps. Cal blinks, woozy, and sees the Latero’s upside-down face hovering above his – well, the evidence suggests he’s flat on his back. The ship’s deck is cold beneath him. BD’s little feet tap across the metal and then he too thrusts his face into view, mismatched optics boring into Cal’s. “Sorry, kid – didn’t know you were leaning on the hatch -”
The neuron slurry functioning as Cal’s brain at the moment finally electrifies. Greez opened the Mantis’s doors and Cal landed on his ass. Fabulous. “I’m good,” Cal grunts, patting BD before gently pushing him aside so he can sit up. His stomach gives a spacesick wobble. “Little warning next time would be nice, though.”
“Yeah, of course. What were you doing leaning on my hatch, anyway….” Greez mutters, back to grumping in a heartbeat now that he’s assured he didn’t accidentally fracture his new crewmate. He thumps the control panel to close the doors again. “Food’s up. I threw a little something together. And don’t even think about ditching dinner; we could turn you sideways and fit you on a bookshelf.”
Cal looks at him. BD looks at him. Cere, joining them from the cockpit, looks at him.
“What?” Greez exclaims, tossing two hands up. “It’s just a saying! You’re skinny! Ah, fine, I guess that one doesn’t translate too well into Basic….”
“I knew what you meant,” Cal offers. “I’ve never heard anyone put it that way before, though.”
Greez sighs, shakes his head, and sulks up to the galley. Cere, utterly failing to suppress a smile, extends a hand to Cal, who only hesitates a second before taking it and heaving himself to his feet. If Cere notices she needs to lend a little strength to that endeavor, or that he can’t conceal a wince, she doesn’t seem to think anything of it. “Okay?” she says once Cal’s standing.
He nods. “Just sore. Don’t fall through the roof of a train car.”
“I’ll do my best to avoid it.” She tilts her head towards the galley. “Let’s not keep Greez waiting….”
Cal trails behind her, waiting for his ears to stop ringing. It’s been years since he had a home-cooked meal. He never had the time or money on Bracca, and he sure didn’t expect it here – the Mantis’s galley storage is flush with the typical complement of spacefarer rations, which incidentally is what Greez distributed for lunch. But the Latero actually put in the effort to throw a little something together, placing a covered pot on the table and whipping the lid off with a grand flourish. “Ta-da!” he proclaims. “Mushroom Surprise!”
Cere, already seated and reaching for her knife, pauses. “Captain, does the word ‘surprise’ have different connotations in Plains Lateron?”
The only thing surprising about this dish is how much black hole pepper Greez added, BD announces.
Greez is too busy flapping his spoon at BD to notice Cal almost falling into the last empty chair at the table. “Hey! You, with the antennae! Quit scanning my food… and relax, Cere, I’m just calling it that because I had six different kinds of mushrooms. You won’t know what you’ll get ‘til you take a bite. Gimme your bowl, kid,” he adds, and Cal slides it across the table while BD retreats. “How much do you want?”
One part of Cal wants to shove his entire face into the pot and inhale, and the rest wants to puke. “Only a little,” he says, hopes nobody finds him rude for putting his elbow on the table to hold up his head because it’s trying to tip off his shoulders. “I’m not that hungry….”
“Yeah, but you gotta eat,” Greez lectures, plopping a hearty ladleful of stew into the bowl. “You’re no good to us if you waste away.”
At least someone’s being upfront about Cal’s role here. A tool to be wielded. He nods at the pot, says, “How much of that did you make?”
“Uh, I didn’t measure, exactly. Enough for us to have leftovers for maybe two more dinners.”
“That whole pot,” Cal says, taking the bowl from Greez, “would be my breakfast, lunch, and dinner for about three weeks on Bracca.”
For a moment, that statement just… hangs there. Greez peers into the stew, fails to notice BD-1 doing the same. Cere’s eyes meet Cal’s and swiftly sweep away. Then Greez says, “Spirits, no wonder we could fit you on a bookshelf,” and starts dishing up some Mushroom Surprise for Cere, too.
The stew is, as Greez claimed, almost entirely mushrooms with some onions and greens for variety. It’s warm and doesn’t taste like it’s been rehydrated. Cal exercises a lot of self-control by not shoveling it in – his stomach’s only reluctantly accepting small, slow spoonfuls and he doesn’t want to throw up Greez’s generosity. Half the bowl disappears very quickly anyway. “It’s really good,” he says when the Latero looks at him hopefully. The words waver, and Cal hastily looks back at his food and blinks until the tears recede. His dumb traitorous body is doing all sorts of stupid crap right now. He sure didn't give it approval to cry. It’s just been so long since he’s had enough to eat.
To distract himself, he takes a drink of his water. Only a room-temperature trickle makes it into his mouth. He emptied the cup already and didn’t even notice. Greez notices, because he says, “There’s more,” through a mouthful of Mushroom Surprise and pushes the pitcher towards Cal, who takes it – and then has to brace himself through a cold flood of adrenaline and fear. He lifts the pitcher high and spins around and sees –
The pitcher slips from his hands and so too does the echo; Cal blinks a few times and realizes he’s been clutching the handle and staring off into space long enough for everyone to start regarding him with concern. “Sorry,” he says quickly, glances at Greez. “Uh… who tried to hit you over the head with this?”
“It’s creepy when you do that,” Greez says instead of answering the question.
“I can’t help it.”
Greez huffs through his nostrils, then slyly grins and says, “You should be asking her, anyway,” and points to Cere with a free hand.
Ooh, storytime, BD says brightly, settling down and focusing both optics on her.
Cal raises his eyebrows at Cere, who looks embarrassed. After a moment, however, she gives a rueful chuckle. “It’d been a difficult night, okay?” she says. “I didn’t hear him coming up behind me, and then he poked me in the back, and – well. I went for the first weapon within reach. Then I realized who he was and stopped. I did not actually try to hit him with it.”
She would’ve smashed Greez’s skull like a cheap jug if she had, Cal thinks, refilling his cup and then draining about half of it in one long draught. She’d been genuinely terrified, willing to do whatever it took to survive… he wishes she had told him why she was no longer a Jedi, but if she doesn’t want to, he’s not going to press. He knows damn well he’s got a good deal here. He fishes another mushroom out of his bowl and his stomach clenches in warning, so Cal lowers the spoon. “Sorry,” he says again, “but I don’t think I can finish this.”
“No big,” Greez says, waving him off. “I’ll pop what’s left in the conservator for tomorrow anyway.”
Cal drinks the rest of his water and stands. His knees almost buckle. He has to grab the edge of the table so he doesn’t fall and neither Cere nor Greez miss it. In fact, one of Cere’s hands shoots up even though Greez is seated between her and Cal, and he wonders if she just instinctively reached to brace him, or if some part of her was prepared to catch him with the Force. “Are you all right?” she asks.
“Stars,” Greez says, gawping, “I’ve never seen a Human go that pale before, and you were pretty kriffin’ pale to start with.”
Cal closes his eyes for a second, shakes his head hard, reopens them. His vision’s gone a bit blurred at the corners. He doesn’t need them to care; he’s here for one reason and getting attached is just going to hurt everyone in the end. “I’m fine,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Just really tired, I think. It’s been a long –” day, week, month, “five years.”
He shouldn’t have said that. It sounds too vulnerable. He runs his hand through his hair, too, and then abruptly stops and pulls it away. “Why is my hair all… stiff and clumpy?”
Oh, BD-1 says, a bogling came up while Cal was napping in the grass and started chewing on his hair. He was going to chase it off, but Cal didn’t even twitch, so….
“Oh,” Cal echoes.
“What’s he saying?” Greez asks Cere. She gives him a fast translation and Greez scoffs, stabbing his spoon into a mushroom. “Sure, when the bogling does it, it’s fine, but when I take a quick nibble just to see what it tastes – I’m joking! Stop looking at me like that!”
“I don’t think I want you waking me up anymore,” Cal says. “Uh, is it okay if I use the shower?”
Greez halts the torrent of muttering about how nobody understands his humor long enough to say, “Yeah, go ahead. You really don’t gotta ask, you know.”
Cal shrugs. He’s not about to step on anyone’s toes and jeopardize his position here. He makes it out of the galley without wobbling, and once he’s in the corridor, he can hold onto the wall to guide him to safety in the ‘fresher… where he can hold onto the counter until his legs feel solid and the hot bile licking at the back of his throat karks off. He may not be dying, specifically, but something beyond ‘really tired’ is wrong with him. Will they give him time to recover if he comes down with the flu tomorrow? He can be functional again in two or three days. On Bracca he wouldn’t have even needed (or been allowed) that long. The constant pain and the weight of the entire Jedi Order on his shoulders are weighing him down.
When he can stand up almost straight without collapsing, Cal starts undressing, pausing to contemplate the beautiful black-and-blue canvas of his torso. He’d awoken to a bruise coating his entire left side from armpit to hip; nine or ten hours later and it’s encroaching on his stomach. Prodding it feels like being punched, so he only does that once. He takes another painkiller from his belt, pumps it into his neck, and exhales as the hypo cradles his broken ribs. If he wasn’t so afraid of getting the boot, he’d welcome a bout of flu just so he would have an excuse to fall into bed for the next eighty hours.
The sonic makes the base of his skull ache. Cleans the dirt and blood and bogling spit away, though. He pauses halfway through his shower to throw up in the toilet and then just never bothers going back, hunching over the sink, running cold water into his hands and drinking straight from them. His mouth is leathery, his lips dry and cracked. Spirits, a few hours of sunlight and he’s more dehydrated than the pyub sprout Prauf put on a shelf and forgot about for two years.
Cal gets dressed and drags his sorry carcass back out to the galley. He doesn’t see Greez, at first, but then he spots movement down in the lounge and finds the Latero dabbing at his potolli-weave sofa with a rag and some kind of cleaning fluid. BD-1 is watching this procedure from the table, head tipped to one side. “See,” Greez says, wagging the bottle at BD, “this sofa is specifically spot-treat only. And this stuff works wonders, but eventually it’s gonna bleach the fabric and then I’ll have weird white spots all over the place and people will say, ‘oh, Greez, what’s on your sofa?’ and giggle like immature idiots. We wanna avoid that, okay? So you keep your grimy feet off my couch, and in return, I don’t rev the thrusters while you’re plugged in and blow every circuit in your tiny body. Deal?”
That would not blow his circuits, BD says. He isn’t some fragile entertainment ‘bot built to be gauzy and weightless while dancing. But fine, if it means that much to Greez, he’ll try not to make a mess.
“He said yes,” Cal says when Greez just looks at BD uncomprehendingly. Greez glances up towards Cal, who adds, “Do you mind if I have something else to drink before I go to bed?”
“Okay, Cal, listen,” Greez sighs. “This ain’t a classroom. You don’t gotta raise your hand every single time you need something. You can grab a drink or a snack or use the ‘fresher without asking first.”
Sure, Cal thinks, but how long until he crosses a boundary he never knew about and that permission is revoked? Better to err on the side of caution. Greez is waiting like he expects a response, though, so Cal nods and obediently says, “Okay.”
“Good.” Greez flaps his rag at the galley. “Plenty of water. We also have a ton of cachu juice – got a case of the stuff as a freebie. Bottles are under the counter if you want one….”
Cal’s never had cachu juice before. Maybe the sugar will help him quit being all gauzy and weightless, so he excavates a bottle, cracks the top open, and proceeds to chug the entire thing without pausing. It’s not awful. Little bland. Didn’t cost him two hours in the shipbreaking yard so he can drink something that doesn’t taste like it’s been sitting in a rusted pipe for sixteen decades. When he comes up for air and screws the cap back on the empty bottle, Greez is side-eyeing him. “…you can have another, if you want….”
“Cheers,” Cal says tiredly, takes a second bottle, and heads to the engine room with it. BD patters after him.
After getting BD plugged into the ship’s power supply – if he can get his hands on the materials and finds some free time, Cal ought to build him a proper charging pod so he doesn’t have to worry about Greez being vindictive – Cal splatters into bed, 10% Human and 90% cachu juice, and mushes his face against the pillow. Last time, he thought he’d never fall asleep and was out cold the second he put his head down, so he’s hoping for round two. Sleep should help. Tomorrow he’ll wake up either feeling a lot better or a lot worse; the former will make everybody happy, and the latter will make nobody happy but Cere and Greez can decide right away how much slacking they’ll tolerate.
…or Cal will wake up after three hours because the Force is hugged around him like the parents he hardly remembers, like his crechemaster, like Master Tapal when Cal had nightmares and came to him in tears. He can only cling to the feeling for an instant before it glides away, job done. He’s awake. He’s awake and panting and drenched in sweat. His stomach hurts. Everything hurts. He lifts his head and the engine room tumbles, and Cal bites off a yelp so it doesn’t escape when he tips over the edge of the cot and slams to the deck.
He lays there, flat on his back again and gasping, and time slips by, fleeting, syrupy. He really needs the ‘fresher – who wouldn’t, after so much liquid – but standing up seems an insurmountable task. Forget the flu; that dying hypothesis isn’t looking so far-fetched anymore. He gropes around until his nerveless fingers hit the edge of the cot, uses it to pull himself upright, almost passes out from the effort. “Shit,” he breathes, closing his eyes and pressing his other hand to them. If any of that juice is still in his stomach, he’ll be seeing it soon. Sick and shivering, Cal gets one knee under him, then the other, and then he’s kneeling. Halfway to his feet. Almost there.
Standing isn’t so bad once he’s finally up, he tells himself. Doesn’t even matter his vision tunnels once he gets to the corridor, since there isn’t much to see there. His parched throat drives him to the galley first. Drinking directly out of the pitcher of water is probably one of those invisible lines Cal’s afraid to cross, but he’s going to fall if he leans over to grab another juice. Nobody needs to know. He leaves the pitcher on the counter, staggers to the lounge, sprawls onto the cold sofa because his legs have had enough.
Lying back down was the best idea he’s had so far, Cal decides after some indeterminable number of minutes. Being horizontal is forcing blood into his sluggish brain. Why did he come all the way out here instead of using the ‘fresher like he’d intended? Why didn’t he knock on a door and tell somebody he thinks he’s dying for real now? Why didn’t he wake BD-1 and ask him to knock on a door and get help? Now he’s on the lounge sofa, grabbing Cere’s datapad to use as a light source while he hikes up his shirt.
The bruising has gotten worse. His stomach, something he does not recall injuring on Bracca, is dark purple and feels strangely taut when he presses on it.
Oh. He is actually, legitimately dying.
Funny how that realization snaps his mind into something resembling clarity. Given the choice, he’d wake Cere rather than Greez, but there’s no getting up – the mere act of breathing is making Cal’s head swim nauseatingly – so he improvises. He cranks the datapad’s volume to max and opens the music player to find the loudest, most obnoxious song on Cere’s playlist… and, in the process, discovers she has the worst taste in the history of the galaxy. She’s got her songs organized by the number of times played, and sitting pretty in the top five is teenage sparkle-bop sensation Dembaline’s very first screeching monstrosity. Sure, the rest of the list is classical and jatz, with the odd danceable warbat trance tune thrown in for flavor, but Cal’s still appalled. He wishes he’d known this about her before he agreed to take the job. Doesn’t get much more obnoxious than Squid Like Me, though, so he queues it up and hits play.
“Eyes like pearls on the sides of my head!” Dembaline wails into the quiet Bogano night. “Could you sink me deeper into dread?!”
Elsewhere on the Mantis, something goes thump. Greez yells a muffled string of profanity.
“I know you’ll never look at me… I know the gills are all you can see….”
Cere makes an appearance by the first chorus. She’s not stomping, exactly, but the woman is positively flooding the Force with exasperation as she turns on the light, and she does an impressive job of looming over him with an expression like a thundercloud. He pauses the song. “Cal,” she says tonelessly, “you have ten seconds to explain yourself.”
Cal squints at the datapad for a moment before his fingers lose their grip and it clatters to the deck. “Isn’t Dembaline the one who got in trouble for being really, really racist towards the Quarren?” he wonders.
“Different Dembaline. Three seconds.”
“I think I’m bleeding inside,” Cal says, and pushes up his shirt again so she can see the state of him for herself. The irritation slides off her face. Helpfully, he traces a circle around his side and adds, “Only this much was bruised when I checked at lunchtime.”
Cere wordlessly takes his wrist in one hand and her datapad with the other, watching the chrono, fingertips pressed to his pulse. Cal fights the impulse to close his eyes. “Okay,” she murmurs, and then fills her lungs and shouts, “Greez!”
“I’m coming!” he hollers. He is stomping; Cal hears him come into the galley and pound down the steps, tips his head back to catch the dirty look Greez throws him. “The hell are you two –”
“What’s the nearest population center?” Cere interrupts. “On Voor’leev?”
“Yeah – wait, no, I think Bkkthera’s closer. Why?”
“We need to find a medcenter. Now. Cal’s losing a lot of blood.”
“On my sofa?” Greez says weakly, eyes roving all over Cal’s form like he expects to see a fountain spurting from a severed artery.
“Internally,” Cere says. “Probably the entire time we’ve been here, from the look of it. Go, Captain.”
Without further comment, his untied and blindingly magenta bathrobe flapping behind him like a cape, Greez rushes to the cockpit. Cal tries to follow the takeoff sequence by sound alone, but quickly gets distracted when BD-1 shoots up onto the back of the sofa and frantically asks what’s wrong with Cal.
“Internal bleed,” Cal says, shuddering. “Cere, we – we gotta be careful. The Empire’s looking for me.”
Cere, shoving a crate onto the end of the couch and heaving Cal’s legs onto it so they’re propped up at an angle, doesn’t flinch. “We’ll have to take that risk.”
They do not have to take that risk. There’s an instant where he could refuse, tell them not to compromise their safety for him, just leave his body for the splox and good luck on the mission, but he lets it slip by and then scolds himself for being so weak. “Why Squid Like Me?” he mumbles as the Mantis lifts off.
Crouching down next to him, checking his pulse again, Cere says, “Will you believe me if I say it’s a secondhand datapad and that was already on there when I bought it?”
“Mm… no.”
She almost smiles. “Fine, it’s terrible, but I’ll admit I find it genuinely catchy.” She reaches up and pushes Cal’s sweaty hair off his forehead like she can’t help herself. “Keep your eyes open or else I’ll make you listen to it. On repeat.”
And then they’ll make him listen to the dance club remix, BD adds. It is, somehow, even worse.
“…torture.” He’s hemorrhaging. Hasn’t he suffered enough already?
Greez, rendered down to a fuzzy mess of grey and magenta that won’t sharpen no matter how hard Cal blinks, comes barreling back into the lounge, so they must be in hyperspace. “Fifteen minutes to jump two systems,” he mutters. “Hate the karkin’ labyrinth of hyperlanes in this sector… what else do you need from me?”
“The medkit,” Cere says. “And a blanket. We should keep him warm.”
A blanket sounds nice. There isn’t one on his cot. Cal stares at the ceiling and does his best to slow his breathing, unsuccessfully. He thinks he can feel it now – his heart thrashing against his busted ribs, trying to suck in enough blood to circulate and pulling up short with every beat. No wonder he’s been so thirsty. Reading his mind, Cere quietly says, “I wish you’d said something.”
“Didn’t know until a few minutes ago.”
“But you didn’t feel well. You should’ve told us.”
Suddenly, I thought you’d be mad and kick me out sounds absurd, so Cal doesn’t reply. BD jumps down (kindly landing on Cal’s thigh rather than his stomach) and pokes him with a foot. Cal forces his drooping eyelids back open. Greez makes his grand return, then, and Cere whips the blanket from his hands and tucks it around Cal. It’s striped red and sky blue and the echo that hits him is more of a feeling than a memory – for a second, he is overwhelmingly secure, like he just drank something warm on a frigid day and the heat courses down his throat and fills his stomach.
Greez sets a box on the table with a grunt. Cal blinks at it blearily. “That a medkit or a suitcase…?”
“Listen, this is a luxury vessel, but most of the stuff on it is military surplus,” Greez says. “It’s cheap on Lateron and I didn’t have a lotta money to sling around after I bought the ship.”
Cere pops the latches and starts rummaging, and Cal makes himself inventory everything she removes so he doesn’t fall asleep. Small bottle with a queasy green holotoon face printed on it. A line of tubing tied to a packet of needles. Box of bacta patches. Shiny silver scissors. “She got a good look at you,” Cal says abruptly. “That Inquisitor.” Cere’s hands go still for the briefest moment. “They’ll be looking for you, too.”
“We’ll be careful,” Cere says. “I’m not too concerned yet. They have no idea where to start looking. The Empire wants you, yes, but specifically the Second Sister wants you. I have a feeling she won’t report more to her superiors than necessary until she has you – she wants the credit for your capture. And I’m sure the intel is being passed around as we speak, but they won’t be splashing your picture up on every holoscreen in the Mid Rim. There’s always the risk the wrong person will see it… the last thing they want is for us survivors to meet up and band together.”
Cal’s eyes are shut again. He almost needs his fingers to open them this time. “You think there are more?”
“I hope so.” She flicks a faint smile at him. “I’ve been right once already.” She finds what she’s looking for, then, because her entire presence in the Force sparks with relief. “Here we go.”
“What –”
“Regenon,” Cere says.
Cal recognizes the name. “That stuff’s not legal anymore,” he murmurs. As far as he knows, only registered clinics and medcenters are permitted to purchase the stimulant – at therapeutic doses, it vastly increases the rate of red blood cell regeneration, but laypeople tend to use it for the spectacular high.
“This kit’s from before that law went into effect,” Greez says on his way back to the cockpit. He’s been bouncing back and forth like a rubber ball. “Lucky you, eh?”
“Mm.” It may be too late. His vision is fading in and out. Cere injects him anyway, and the little spurt of adrenaline he gets from the needle piercing his skin is enough for Cal to start struggling upright.
“What are you doing?” Cere says. “You have to lie still.”
“Need the ‘fresher.” He can’t ignore it any longer.
“You’re not going anywhere right now.” And that’s an accurate summary of events – despite his valiant efforts, Cal’s too lightheaded to get up – but he keeps trying regardless, because Cal’s never known when to throw in the towel. Cere puts a hand on his shoulder, pins him to the sofa like a moon moth in a shadowbox. “Stop.”
Cal pushes back, however weakly. He can kiss this mission (and quite possibly his life) goodbye if he pisses on the potolli-weave. “But I need –”
“Cal!” Cere snaps, digging her fingers into his shoulder. “You are bleeding to death! Stop. Moving.” Startled, sapped, Cal lowers his head to the cushion. “I’m sorry,” she continues, more quietly, “I know it’s uncomfortable, but you have to hold still. Greez?”
“We’re going, we’re going!” Greez calls from up front. “Just hang in there, Callie….”
Good grief, they’ve known one another a day and Greez is giving him dumb nicknames. And ‘Cal’ isn’t even short for anything, so it’s a nickname that’s longer than his real name. He’ll put up a fuss later. He’s so thirsty. BD-1 keeps bumping his head against Cal’s shoulder, urging him to stay awake.
“Cal.” Cere’s hand is very warm against his cheek. “Open your eyes. I will play Squid Like Me until it gets stuck in your head.”
“…wasn’t scared to die on Bracca.” The words dribble from his mouth in a soupy slur. “If I did… oh well. But now… don’t wanna.” He has a job to do. People relying on him. A reason to keep living.
“You’re not going to die,” Cere says, shooting for firm, but there’s a faint wobble on die and Cal knows she doesn’t believe it. How much does it even matter to her, really? She won’t mourn Cal Kestis; it’s only the Jedi she’ll miss. He feels awful about it anyway. Cere risked so much to rescue him and here he is, bleeding out on the sofa a mere day later. “Cal, open your eyes.”
It’s not so bad. Master Tapal will be waiting for him.
Consciousness returns in a jigsaw puzzle of sensations. Corners first – Cal’s freezing his butt off, lying on something a little too soft to be the sofa or his cot, and someone nearby is moaning in a way that suggests a bad time rather than a good one. There’s an echo lurking in this bed, something that stings when he reaches for it blindly, so he pulls away. Next come the edges, the clank-clank of droid footsteps, a needle beneath his skin, the milky heaviness that accompanies painkillers and anesthetic, nausea, a pounding headache, the fold of a blanket tickling his cheek. He can’t comprehend the entire picture until he finds the big piece that goes smack-dab in the middle, though – right, he was bleeding internally. Cere and Greez were taking him to a medcenter. He must’ve blacked out before they got anywhere, but clearly they did get somewhere, because Cal doesn’t recall the Mantis smelling like bodily fluids and bleach. If it did, Greez would be having conniptions.
Cal gets his eyes halfway open after a couple false starts, and once they adjust to the brightness, he discovers he’s lying on a narrow bed crammed into a corridor alongside a number of other beds, benches, and hoverchairs. The moaner is an elderly Pinurquian sitting across from him, clutching their head and an emesis bin. Clank-clank-clank goes a medical droid down the hallway, pushing a Caarite child in a wobbly hoverchair.
Well, it sure isn’t the Grand Republic Medical Facility, but there’s an intravenous bag dumping clear fluid into Cal’s veins and he isn’t dead, so it’ll do. Something warm is pressed to his hair. He cranes his neck to look, sees Cere balanced precariously at the very edge of the bed (there’s nowhere else for her to sit or stand), eyes on a datapad, her thigh touching Cal’s head.
She stayed. Not wise. Cal would’ve expected her to drop him off, perhaps with BD-1 to watch over him, and stay hidden on the Mantis until he was discharged. But maybe she felt a need to protect her interests in person. “…what are you reading?” he whispers.
Cere looks down at him, smiles faintly, sets the datapad aside. “A biography of Sumira Organa.”
One of the previous queens of Alderaan, Cal remembers from his history classes. “Did you ever meet the senator?” That guy is one of the last remaining sane voices in the Senate.
She pauses, as if she needs a moment to follow his addled thought process, then says, “Once.” She tucks the edge of his blanket – the red-and-blue-striped one, he realizes – up under his chin. “How are you feeling?”
“Like crap,” Cal says hoarsely. “But… better crap, now.” He looks at his left arm for a moment, where the off-white medcenter gown has been rolled up to accommodate the IV, and tugs it beneath the blanket. It’s a little warmer under there. He looks at the bag again and says, “No blood?”
“Just fluids, now. You already had two or three transfusions,” Cere says, “but there are few Humans on this planet and they don’t have any Human blood banked. You got Pillar instead.”
Cal’s familiar with the stuff. Hazard, Iron Battalion’s CMO, kept a couple of units of Pillar aboard the Albedo Brave for Cal. The blood substitute can be stored far longer than actual Human blood and the clone troopers couldn’t donate to him in an emergency. “Oh,” he murmurs, closing his eyes for a few moments. He’s awake (he feels awake, which is a nice change), but still exhausted.
“There isn’t much in the way of bacta around here, either. The surgical droids had to go in and patch up your spleen manually.”
Cal reopens his eyes. “Greez and BD?” he asks, real quiet, just in case the wrong ears are aimed in their direction.
“Greez is keeping the engines warm, just in case. BD’s probably still sulking because the medcenter doesn’t allow non-medical droids. You’re going to need a week or two to recover… but they do expect a full recovery. Once they let you go, we’ll head back the way we came and camp out for a bit.” Cal opens his mouth and Cere taps his forehead. “No apologies. It can’t be helped. We’re just glad you’ll be okay.”
“Listen, there’s something I need to know. Before I go anywhere else with you,” Cal says, letting his eyes slide shut again.
“What’s that?” Cere asks casually, like he can’t feel her guard going up. She’s hiding something from him – but he already knew that. He’s ignoring it. At this point Cal’s kind of just hoping it doesn’t explode in his face at the worst possible time.
“Did I pee on Greez’s couch?”
A split-second of silence, and then her amusement spikes bright and she gives a huffing little laugh, pats his shoulder. “No,” she says, “you didn’t. Now get some sleep; next time I can snag a droid I’ll find out how long they plan to keep you.”
Looks like Master Tapal will have to wait. Then again, Cal thinks, he probably isn’t waiting to welcome his failed Padawan back to the Force, so that’s as good a reason as any to sink his teeth into life and hang on until he’s shaken loose. He has work to do. Attributing the gentle touch on his cheek to a figment of his imagination, he nuzzles his face a little deeper into the striped blanket and rests.