Archive of Our Own

The old temple’s foundations are solid duracrete and stone, still steady after centuries despite the hairline cracks spidering across their surface from the trauma of the bridge shattering. It’s- a stupid thing to be focusing on right now, Cal thinks, hand shaking where it’s wrapped around his blaster, Bode’s blaster. It’ll get him killed.

Will it? He’s already pulled the trigger once, all his anger propelling him forward into the space where everything is crystalline and he doesn’t have to think, just feel. Merrin’s spearhead is embedded in Bode’s shoulder. He’s taken a blaster shot to the gut at close range. And he’s on his knees on the duracrete, his last blaster misfired, nothing left but the Force (the Force, the kriffing Force, which he’s had this whole time and never said anything about it, not even when Cal reached out and touched him like a lover would without ever asking, not even when Cal laid out on a ridge beneath the Koboh Abyss’s strange gold-purple light and told him about how much he misses his people and his family and his home and how he so desperately wants to get them back and that’s why it hurts so much that Cere didn’t tell him about the Path, not even when Cal gave him everything and promised him a home and thought maybe Greez is right, maybe I can do this, maybe settling down sometimes wouldn’t be so bad), so Cal- really isn’t in any danger anymore. Bode is already dying.

His finger hovers over the blaster’s trigger, the barrel aimed directly at Bode’s heart - it would be so easy to pull it one more time and end this, end this, avenge Cordova and avenge Cere and avenge himself - and the anger swirls around him like a bonfire stoked to its highest point, fed on pain and horror and grief and hurt and betrayal, all the emotions he can’t let himself feel because if he does he’ll break right down the middle. He can almost feel the heat of his own aura against his skin, like it’s burning him up alongside Bode too, scorching the temple stones and turning everything to ash. (Maybe he’s making his own pyre. Maybe he’s been burning up all along. Maybe he lit the flames of it the moment he destroyed the holocron five years ago and has been slowly crumbling ever since.)

Bode’s face- softens, somehow, impossibly, his dark eyes going from wide and broken to warm in the way they were every time they teased each other, every time he gently cajoled Cal into eating and sleeping and getting his injuries looked at, even if there’s a thin thread of resignation running through them now that is- new. He smiles a little, and it’s sad and tired, and Cal’s finger twitches- and at his side, Bode’s hand moves, ever so slightly. Cal’s attention snaps to it, and he watches Bode’s fingers trace out letters in the air, a sickening feeling crunching his chest. He remembers-

(Hey, c’mere, scrapper, Bode calls, and Cal glances away from Monk, over his shoulder. Bode’s sitting in his usual booth, though sprawling is probably the better term, with the way his knees are spread and he’s leaned back against the couch, one arm propped up on its back. Cal’s eyes wander down the line of Bode’s neck, the curve of his shoulder, the expanse of his torso, settling briefly on the thin flash of tanned skin visible where his shirt has pulled up away from the waistband of his pants. He wants to put his mouth on it. Behind the bar, Monk chuckles, a tinny, electric sound, and Cal swallows and drags his gaze back up from Bode’s crotch, which he definitely wasn’t thinking about at all. Definitely not.

Sure, he agrees, swiping his drink from the countertop and nodding to Greez before leaving the bar behind to head over. BD is on the far side of the room engaged in some riveting conversation with DD-EC as Ashe sets up for their evening set, so his back is empty as he drops down onto the couch next to Bode, knocking their shoulders briefly together. What’s up?

I know you know old Republic Military sign, but not all of us had the…distinct pleasure of serving on the front lines, Bode says, dropping a hand to squeeze his shoulder. Figured I better teach you Galactic Standard Sign, just in case. Besides, it’s always good to know, never know when you might need it outside combat scenarios.

Cal blinks, surprised. You know I could just teach you the important military signs, right? he offers. Gets the same thing done, and probably easier too. Not that he minds the idea of spending a few afternoons - or more than a few - learning from Bode, the opposite in fact, but he’s supposed to be searching the old retreat up in the fissure for signs of what Dagan Gera is up to, and he probably shouldn’t put that off just to spend time with Bode.

Yeah, and what happens when you need to communicate with someone who only signs? Bode asks him, a little grin playing around the corners of his mouth, and Cal watches it for definitely too long, more than a little bit distracted. So maybe he’s been thinking about the fact that his “no sleeping with work partners” rule isn’t in effect anymore now that Bode’s joined their family. Possibly a little too much. Bode’s smile widens like he knows what Cal is thinking, but he doesn’t point it out, just nudges Cal’s shoulder with his fingers, good-natured. And honestly, Cal, you ever considered I might like the idea of having something to teach you?

Well- Cal huffs, feeling his cheeks heat despite himself. Bode always manages to draw that kind of reaction from him, even when he isn’t actually flirting, the asshole. Sure, fine, why not. I mean, we’ve got time, right?

Great. Bode grins at him, fully, cheeks stretching and eyes wrinkling, and Cal’s whole body warms. Right, let’s start with the alphabet…)

-he remembers. Bode looks at him like that and his fingers shape the signs for OK and Cal-

All at once, the heavy fog of not-clarity and rage he’s been clinging to since he found Cere’s body in the monastery ruin breaks like a parting cloud, and Cal sees himself - standing poised to end the life of the first person he’s ever fallen in love with, killing Bode with his own gifted blaster, in front of his daughter, standing like vengeance personified with the Force heavy and dark around him (and it is dark, he can’t deny that, the fury running through his veins tainted with cold selfishness that burns, and there is a hell of a lot of blood on his hands and he’s having a hard time caring). He sees himself unhesitating and uncaring. He sees Bode, breaking to pieces under the weight of a smile, always asking about the future, about the past, about the new home they could build here. I’m a father running out of options. Was that part of the lie or did Cal really take all his options away? He could’ve told Cal what was going on, could’ve explained everything instead of selling them all out, could’ve done- something, anything that wasn’t this, wasn’t forcing Cal’s hand, wasn’t lying, lying, lying like it didn’t matter that Cal loved him.

This is my best friend, Cal.

When the Empire comes for you, will you be able to protect my little girl?

Bode repeats the sign, and Cal- breaks.

The blaster falls from suddenly-numb fingers and he lets it, runs forward and hits his knees as Bode slumps sideways - catches the man against his shoulder, teeth gritted against the pain. Fumbles a hand for Bode’s neck to feel his pulse, shaking with a sudden burning desperation, ignoring the way Merrin calls his name. He feels- wild and unmoored, like his heart is about to beat out of his chest and leave him an empty husk behind, and when he reaches out with the Force to chase after the shreds of Bode’s aura all he can feel is his own bloody pain. “No, it’s not okay, you kriffing idiot-” he spits out, panting, and- there, a heartbeat. Faint and thready from shock but still there, still alive, if only barely. “BD, give me a stim.”

“It’s okay,” Bode murmurs, head lolling onto Cal’s shoulder. “Wanted you to do it.”

“Bode!” Cal is aware, distantly, that he sounds panicked, as he catches the stim BD ejects and jams it into the man’s neck, but he doesn’t, can’t care. He can’t- he can’t lose more, he can’t do this, can’t be the one to kill Bode, what’s the point of Tanalorr if he doesn’t have his family with him, what’s the point of it all- and he takes in a shuddering breath and tosses the empty injector away, fiddling with the pouch at his belt. He keeps a few bacta patches in there in case of emergencies, Greez has drummed the habit into his head until he no longer leaves the Mantis without it, and he fumbles a couple of them out, then stops, frozen. He needs- to get Bode back to the Mantis and the bacta tank inside, needs to put something on the worst of his wounds to keep him stable until they get there (what do his own injuries matter? Less than nothing, in the end; that’s all they’ve ever been), but to do it he’ll need to lay Bode down, and- for a moment, the idea of doing that is terrifying, like if he lets go, pulls his arm back from around the man’s broad shoulders, the consequences of his own actions will eat them both alive.

Cal sucks a shaking breath in and adjusts so he can carefully lay Bode - unconscious now, or at least nearly there despite the stim, judging by his closed eyes and lax muscles - down on one of the less-shattered chunks of duracrete, his hands trembling. Without his jetpack, Bode is- smaller, looks almost fragile, curled in on himself and skin sallow, blood smeared across his gloves. No matter that he’s still twice as broad as Cal is, his breathing is shallow and blood stains his shirt dark and he said wanted you to do it. What did he mean by that? Did he just- want Cal to be the one to kill him, if he had to die, rather than the Empire? Or- or did he-

No. No. Cal can’t think about that. He won’t. He can’t- be used like that, not by Bode.

He shakes his head, hard, as if that’d be enough to clear the static from it, and tugs up the hem of Bode’s shirt with one hand, trying not to look too closely at the wicked burn, the blackened and raw skin around it. Instead he tears open the cover and presses the patch over the worst of the burn, seals it down as best as he can. He doesn’t have his medkit with him, but he doesn’t think bandages would help right now - he wishes he had them for the knife wound, though, because there’s dark blood oozing out of it still around the edges of the spear head and he- he doesn’t think you’re supposed to pull out a knife from a knife wound, but he can’t put a bacta patch on it without doing it and he doesn’t have anything to stem the bleeding and- And he needs to breathe before he passes out.

The static in his head resolves into black spots in the corners of his vision and Cal sucks in a ragged breath and forces himself into something like steadiness, biting down hard on his lower lip until he tastes blood. “Come on,” he mutters under his breath, and slowly, carefully eases Merrin’s spear out of Bode’s shoulder.

There’s a spurt of blood that splatters against his face - he’s leaning too close - and hands, and Cal opens the second bacta patch and shoves it under Bode’s shirt, doing his best to cover the stab wound without seeing it properly. It’s not- any kind of medically correct, he knows. Stemming the bleeding is the first step, bacta patches won’t really do that, they don’t provide the kind of pressure needed. But he can worry about that once he gets Bode back to the Mantis, probably.

Another breath in and out, and then Cal swipes at his eyes, checks Bode’s pulse again - still there - and lifts his head, looking around. Merrin is back on top of the bridge, a hand wrapped tightly around Kata’s shoulder, the little girl pressed into her side and staring at her father with wide, terrified eyes. She doesn’t really look like she wants to be near Merrin, entirely, or like she wants to be near him, flinching back slightly when he looks at her, but she doesn’t try to run. He can feel her fear like a stormcloud, dark and too present to ignore.

Merrin watches him, a furrow in her brow, and he swallows hard. He feels like shit, actually, bruises peppering his face and ringed around his throat and down his torso, the still-healing blaster wound in his shoulder and broken ribs from Jedha mixing with the blaster burns from Nova Garon and the new saber wounds from today, but he can’t admit to that; he wets his lips and props Bode’s unconscious body back up against his chest instead. “Merrin,” he says, and his voice is a hoarse croak. “Can you-”

He makes a gesture with one hand in the direction of the bridge, and she nods, disappearing in a whorl of green fire and reappearing directly next to him. She’s angry, he can tell by the slant to her mouth and the hardness in her dark eyes, but she doesn’t say anything, just picks up her spear, stashes it in the holster on her belt, and helps him to his feet, dragging him and Bode through the by-now familiar veil of her magick to the upper layer of the wide anteroom. She looks- exhausted, actually, as tired as he feels. Even together they’d barely managed to defeat Bode, and Cal has a sinking suspicion now that Bode wasn’t even trying all that hard.

“You are a fool, Cal Kestis,” Merrin says quietly, the use of his full name a pointed thing, and he lets out a breath and swipes a hand over his face, calling on what strength in the Force he still has left to bolster himself enough to heave Bode up over his shoulder. The man is heavy, especially gone limp like this.

“Don’t,” he says in response, too tired and afraid and cold to sound like anything but clipped exhaustion, and turns away, tromping slowly back in the direction of the Mantis. He just…can’t. He can’t do this anymore.

“Please don’t hurt Papa anymore,” Kata whispers as he passes her. “He was just scared and trying to keep me safe. He didn’t really want to hurt you.”

Cal doesn’t know if he believes her or not. But he doesn’t say anything, because that seems better than accidentally making things worse, and he doesn’t- he hadn’t wanted it to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He and Bode had talked about Kata so many times, stolen moments in between fights or when they were recovering, and Cal had only seen a couple pictures of her, but the concept of her - a bright young girl with a love for history and science and a wide smile, a stubborn dislike of math, an eager sense of humor and so much kindness - has been working its way into his quiet dreams of Tanalorr for months. Ever since Bode first started talking about farming, he’s found himself trying to picture that - the two of them working land like Greez’s rooftop garden or the fields outside Rambler’s Reach, maybe living together in a hand-built house that’s a little bit wonky but still theirs, Kata covered in dirt and laughing. He’d done research about it in the Archives, found the few volumes Cere had recording AgriCorps farming techniques and copied notes down to a special datastick; he’d gathered seeds with help from Pili and Greez and recorded himself discussing their optimal growing times and care and other instructions.

He’d thought- they would find the way to Tanalorr, get the Path off Jedha, and then Bode would take him to meet Kata for the first time and he’d get to introduce himself to her properly, get to see what she really looks like when she smiles, to hear her laugh and find out if he could make her like him- and it’d been a guilty little secret fantasy of his, but part of him had almost begun to believe that they could build- the kind of family Bode had had back on Birren together, the three of them and Greez and Merrin and Cere. Greez could build a new cantina, and Cere and Cordova could restore the old temple with Merrin’s help, and Cal would give Bode the gift box now tucked away on the Mantis and be in charge of- defending the planet, retrieving families and children and bringing them here, dealing with the Empire as necessary. Fighting back and saving people and rebuilding and having a home, all at once.

He’d wanted it so badly. He still wants it so badly, even knowing it’s impossible, even remembering the bodies stored in the hold. That’s the worst part of it, isn’t it?

Looking back- Bode had been so quiet, after they killed Dagan. He hadn’t started going against Cal’s plans for Tanalorr until Cal mentioned wanting to train people to fight from here - and he still does, he still thinks it’s the best way forward, but…it’s also what got Cere killed, what got Cordova killed, what destroyed the Path on Jedha. He has no doubt that if he continues to pursue that plan, Bode will- act against it when he’s awake and capable of doing so, and…and seeing Kata now, remembering Bode’s face just before he passed out, Cal- can’t. He just can’t. So that plan is in tatters now, and he doesn’t know yet what he’s going to replace it with.

He wishes Cere was here. He wishes she could tell him what to do, give him her advice that he’d so often ignored or hated to hear but was almost always exactly what he needed. But she’s not, she’s gone, just like Master Tapal, and while he’d sent out a ping on the comm frequency she’d given BD, he’s not optimistic about receiving an answer. He hopes he will, but- he wouldn’t blame whoever is on the other end if they shut down the frequency when they heard of the attack on Jedha. He would, if it was him; the Empire finding them would be too big a risk.

And Cal- well. He’s never really been a part of the Path, has he? So why would they make an exception for him?

By the time he trudges back into the clearing the Mantis is parked in, he’s shaking and drenched in sweat, his injuries screaming at him. Greez is outside the ship, adjusting something inside one of her outer panels; he spins around the moment he hears Cal approaching, his eyes going wide. Takes a few hurried steps forward, hands fussing with his jumpsuit and the air, then pauses, clearly not knowing what to do.

“Is he…?”

“Alive,” Cal mumbles, finding the energy somewhere to haul himself and Bode up the ramp. “But…he’s hurt, Greez, we hurt him. I don’t know how to fix it. Please-”

His voice breaks and cuts off, turning the word into something pleading, and Greez climbs the ramp behind him, footsteps light and fast. “Of course, Cal, hey, he was family, right, we do what we can for family. We got enough bacta to run a couple cycles, just get him to the medbay and ol’ Greezy will take a look.”

Cal wants to cry. He chokes back the lump in his throat with a few desperate breaths and carries Bode carefully into the medbay instead, setting him down on the small cot opposite the tank. He takes a second to work the bloody shoulder holsters off Bode’s body, tossing them aside, and then strips off the man’s shirt. The whole time, Bode stays silent and unconscious, limp, and Cal tears off his own gloves to press his bare hands to warm skin he never got to touch when they were almost something and probably never will get to touch again, feeling the thud-thud of Bode’s heartbeat and the gentle rise and fall of his lungs beneath his palms. He hurts all over, and not just physically; his head throbs with the effort of staying steady. The lines of Bode’s face are soft; he looks peaceful in a way Cal can’t ever remember seeing him before, except maybe when they were laughing together in the saloon.

A small sob chokes its way out of his throat before he can fight it back, and he leans forward, squeezing his eyes closed and pressing his forehead to Bode’s. He can’t- lose anyone else. Cere and Cordova may have met other Jedi, Merrin may have escorted other ones through the Path, but he didn’t know them - he wasn’t trustworthy enough to know them. Bode is- Bode might be the only Jedi left in the galaxy that Cal will ever get to meet, and with the anger faded (at least, enough to admit that what was really beneath it was hurt), all he wants to do is crumble and beg for answers.

Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve done anything for you and Kata already - if I’d known the truth, the Emperor himself couldn’t have stopped me from doing whatever you asked of me. We could’ve found another way. You didn’t have to call Vader. I don’t understand.

Why?

But Bode can’t hear him, and pouring his pleas into the Force won’t get an answer.

“Cal,” Greez says softly. “Why don’t you start the tank on a pre-cycle for me?”

Cal sniffs and wipes at the back of his eyes, straightening up - and then stumbling briefly as a wave of dizziness crashes over him. He hangs onto the edge of the cot, and after a moment it dissipates, thankfully. “Yeah,” he says thickly, and stumbles the few steps across the medbay to fiddle with the bacta tank, starting up the pre-fill sanitation cycles. They go by pretty quickly, but Greez - trained in basic battlefield medicine and experienced at a lot of things he shouldn’t be now, after their years together, not that Cal’s ever asked where the original training came from - will have enough time to hopefully get Bode ready for the tank first.

Greez works in silence. Cal hovers by the end of the cot, at Bode’s head, watching as Greez cleans the spear wound and stitches it closed, doing the same for several other minor injuries, many of which Cal hadn’t realized Bode had. He’s methodical but quick, and by the time the tank is ready he’s almost done; he directs Cal to get Bode the rest of the way undressed, and they get him into the harness and breather mask together. Then it’s Cal’s job to lift Bode and put him in the tank itself before starting the actual bacta cycle.

Eventually, though, Bode is suspended in the cool green liquid, the tank monitoring his vitals and the mask taking care of oxygen, fluids, and nutrition, and Cal is left alone in the medbay with BD on the counter ducking back and forth anxiously and Greez in the doorway watching him. “Right,” the latero says, and Cal stiffens at his tone, “now it’s your turn.”

“I’m fine,” Cal says dismissively, but the medbay is spinning a little around him and it’s hard to keep his balance. Maybe he needs another stim. His right ankle throbs, molten pain all the way up into his hip - clearly he tweaked it again during the fighting and him lugging Bode around hadn’t helped - he’s covered in bruises and the dried blood on his face itches. Breathing is hard, his shoulder is really, really upset at the carrying heavy people around, his head aches - all things that’d be fixed by a stim, he thinks. Or at least made more bearable.

Greez says something, but Cal misses whatever it is beneath a sudden onslaught of vertigo; he doesn’t even realize he’s stumbling sideways until he feels the hard edge of the cot bump into his hip, and then he turns and sits down on it, heavily, an instinct to keep his legs from giving out. He grabs onto the frame, steadies himself even though he’s not moving anymore, digs his teeth into his lower lip, and after a handful of seconds he feels like he can open his eyes again without the world turning into a kaleidoscope, so he does.

“Cal?” Greez asks, very worried, and Cal shoots him a mulish look.

“I sat down for you, didn’t I?” he grumbles, even if that’s not exactly what happened. Close enough. “Do what you want.”

Greez narrows his eyes briefly, but he doesn’t push - knows better than to, probably, Cal doesn’t let anyone else help with his injuries very often - instead just getting his medkit back out and getting to work. Cal knows he’s- not in great shape. He’s only slept a couple times since Jedha, passing out after the events on Nova Garon and crashing for a couple hours just before they hit the Abyss at Greez’s insistence (he’d refused to take off if Cal didn’t), and he hasn’t exactly wanted to let anyone take a look at his injuries - hasn’t wanted to look at them himself, even, because all he could think of was how Bode would gently argue him into sitting down, then softly smooth bacta and bandages over his skin with long, lingering touches, even if the injury wasn’t that bad at all. After the fight on the Lucrehulk, Bode had half-carried him back to Rambler’s Reach, and he’d fallen asleep during the actual wound care - and he remembers being disappointed by that, when he’d woken up, because it meant he hadn’t been awake to feel the touch. 

The last thing he’d wanted to do during their desperate flights through hyperspace after Bode was think about the lies.

He’s paying for it now, though. Stims and the Force can only keep him upright for so long without sleep, he knows that, and he’s more than pushed past his limits, especially with all the fighting and the unhealed hurts; there are spots in his vision now even sitting still, and he feels weighed down, exhaustion so heavy in his lungs he can barely breathe. The loss of the adrenaline that’s kept him moving - the loss of some of the bright, brutal fear at the idea of losing Bode too - leaves him foggy and unresponsive, feeling like he’s moving through deep water just to turn his head or acknowledge Greez.

He should take another stim. He has- pyres to build, right? For Cere and Cordova, it’s his responsibility as a Jedi knight, they’ve already been waiting a couple weeks (and the thought that it’s been time measurable in weeks since Cere died hurts, it hurts so much), he should- he should get up and do that. Send them off to the Force the way tradition demands. So few Jedi get the honor and dignity of pyres anymore; he needs to make sure Cere isn’t among those forgotten dead. He needs to.

But by the time Greez is finished with him he doesn’t have the energy to do anything more than let himself lay down when his old friend pushes him back onto the cot, and he’s losing his hold on consciousness before Greez even finishes tugging a blanket up to his chin.

When Cal opens his eyes, the first thing he’s aware of is pain.

His whole body hurts, all the way down to the bone. All his healing injuries throb out of sync with each other, his head hurts and his mouth is dry, and his joints are full of a distant low-grade ache that sharpens into a spike when he moves. He lets out a groan, squinting up at the blurry medbay ceiling, and from somewhere behind his head BD chirps a question he only half-hears.

“Need a stim, buddy,” he mumbles blearily, and a moment later he hears one land on the cot next to him, the sound of rockets pre-empting BD’s weight settling on his thigh. He fumbles with the injector, stabs it into his neck, and a moment later the bitter flood of adrenaline brings a tremor to his hands and relief to…most of the worst of it.

He sits up slowly, rubbing at his eyes and willing them to focus, and glances across the room - the bacta tank hums quietly, Bode’s body still floating inside it, held in place by the harness and mask. Cal watches him for a minute, stretching out Force senses still tattered from overuse, brushing against the faint edges of Bode’s aura. Dim as it is, between the sedation and the injury, Cal can’t get much of a hold on it, but he can sense soft ripples on the surface of deep water, an ocean hidden behind fog that feels much calmer than the roiling waves of turmoil that’d battered him during their fights on Jedha and in the temple. It feels…he finds himself imagining what it would’ve been like, if Bode had ever reached back out and reciprocated the too-intimate touches Cal gave him so freely, pouring himself over Cal’s shoulders the way Cal wrapped around him, knowing and being known; it sends a shiver down his spine and a bitter taste wells up in his mouth, because he could’ve had, could’ve had, why didn’t he get to have-

He takes a ragged breath in, lets it out, drags his gaze over to BD. “What time is it?”

BD tilts his head to one side, photoreceptors zooming in and out. <Galactic Standard Time = 1242. Local time = unknown.>

Well, isn’t that just nice. “What about shiptime?” he asks, rubbing at the back of his neck with his less-achy hand, shaking out his other wrist. He’s going to need all the hand strength he can get for- for the task he’s actually supposed to be doing, instead of staring at Bode. The Mantis’s internal clocks have been synced to Rambler’s Reach local time since Cal first heard about Tanalorr, though he used to keep them to GST; in absence of a consistent local time, especially if there’s no proper day-night cycle, shiptime is probably what Merrin and Greez are running off.

<0712,> BD chirps, and Cal makes a face. <Cal = asleep ten hours.>

“Ten? Did Greez stick me after I passed out?” Cal asks, then shakes his head when BD spins in a small circle of confusion. “No, never mind, it’s not important. We need…to build Cere and Cordova’s pyres. You want to help me?”

He can’t- accept help for this task, not really. He’s the only Jedi left, which means that building the pyres to exact standard is his job, his responsibility, his duty - but BD is a Jedi droid, and was Cordova’s friend for a long time before the Purge, so his presence wouldn’t be an intrusion, wouldn’t be Cal shirking his responsibilities. And BD’s relieved beeping makes him smile, faintly, so the offer is worth it for that alone.

Cal drags himself upright, getting dressed in his new jacket, the red and black a comfortable mirror of the ache in his soul, fiddling the hooks and clasps together. His belt is on the counter at the end of the small room, and he buckles it on, clipping his lightsaber to his hip, then bends over to jam his feet into his boots. Even with the stim, his right ankle throbs at him, the joint clicking and snapping, and he makes a face at it, sighing and rolling some of the tension out of it. He didn’t expect it to ever get better after that first brutal injury on Bracca, but lately it’s been getting worse - he tries to ignore it, suppressing what he feels, and it mostly works. Not always. He’s just lucky he hasn’t had any days he physically can’t walk yet.

He’ll hold his body together until the Empire kills him, and it won’t matter after that.

(He’d thought- but it doesn’t matter what he’d thought now.)

BD hops onto his shoulder, trilling questions, and Cal doesn’t answer, just runs his fingers through his hair to get out the tangles - the ends of it are ragged and torn from where he’d sliced his bun off with Merrin’s spear head on the way to Nova Garon. In the aftermath he’s not entirely sure why he did it, just- he’d shoved his old clothing into the incinerator on board and still felt like he was expanding out of his own skin, angry and broken and screaming, and he kept remembering the soft touch of Bode’s fingers through his hair, helping him put it up in a bun when his ribs and back hurt too badly to lift his arms that high after the Lucrehulk, soothing him - and he’d cut years of growth in a few seconds. Now his hair is uneven, falling around his chin and a bit past it, and only barely long enough to pull back into a tail, so he leaves it down without bothering. It isn’t- nice, anymore. Maybe that’s why he’d done it - because Bode had always acted, at least, like he liked Cal’s hair, and chopping it off made him more physically undesirable the same way he’d apparently been-

But he’s not thinking about Bode right now, right?

Fuck.

With gritted teeth, Cal slips through the main living area - empty right now, thankfully, Greez and Merrin must both be still asleep - pausing briefly in the kitchen. There’s a covered bowl in the warmer, almost definitely leftovers from their dinner that Greez set out for him whenever he got up, but he’s not hungry; even the thought of eating makes him feel sick to his stomach, and he turns away from the kitchen, shaking his head. Maybe he’ll- after. Once the vigil is done. Maybe then food will be more than ash in his mouth and lead in his gut.

He hits the button to lower the ramp and open the doors, ignoring BD’s quiet protest in his ear, and steps out into the fresh air. Tanalorr is beautiful, hauntingly so, despite the lack of wildlife: motes of glittering dust drift through the air, violet and silver grass crunches beneath his feet, trees stretch up into the sky, and the stream running through the far side of the plateau they’ve landed on is a clear blue. Seeing it in visions isn’t the same thing as setting foot on its ground, and now more than ever he understands why Dagan was so desperate to get back, why Rayvis’s last words were dedicated to missing it, why Santari dreamed of it for so long. Tanalorr could be a haven, if they could just make it one, if they could figure out how to keep it safe and defensible and mostly self-sufficient. He hadn’t- really thought through all those logistics, when he was bringing the compass to Jedha and telling Cere to start the packing. He hadn’t thought through much of anything, except how excited he was, how hopeful he was, how happy he was - the Archive would be safe, his family would have new homes where he could see them all regularly and build his own place with them, and he’d still be able to fight the Empire and protect people.

Now, he looks around for trees to cut to build a pyre and finds himself thinking about building houses, about farms, about exploring the temple’s internal areas to see if its systems are still functional. If anyone is going to live here- Cere would’ve known better how to do all this. Why didn’t he take the time to ask her what to do once they got to Tanalorr itself? Why didn’t he think about anything past the getting here at all? And now- now he has no guidance and so very little hope.

He cuts the trees methodically, using his lightsaber to do it. Fells them, cuts the branches away, turns the trunks into boards, one stroke at a time, until he’s dripping sweat in the strange half-light of the nebula all around them. The sky hasn’t changed at all since they landed half a day ago, and he’s not entirely sure it ever will - the planet seems to get most of its warmth and light from the ambient energy of new stars being born and breaking apart around it. It makes it impossible to tell how long he spends piling up boards singed black by his lightsaber’s bled-crimson blade with no interruption but the occasional quiet beep from BD to direct him where to cut, trying not to think about anything at all and…failing, mostly.

Cal learned how to build a Jedi funeral pyre when he was nine years old.

He wasn’t supposed to, he knows. He wasn’t even a padawan then, still a senior initiate, too young to send to Ilum for a Gathering. But the first battle on Geonosis ended with two hundred Jedi dead, give or take, and there were so many bodies that had to be burned, so many pyres that had to be built. Cal had snuck out of the creche one night, drawn by the quiet grief and resignation the Temple was full of, so unlike its usual warmth and Light and heavy steadiness, and found himself following Master Windu through the halls, ducking behind pillars and corners whenever the man looked around, as quiet as he could. They’d gone into an unfamiliar part of the Temple, a wide room with neat rectangles set into the duracrete floor and a couple doors leading off in other directions. Cal hadn’t followed him all the way into the room, but Master Windu had known he was there anyway, had called for him to come out and asked what he was doing, and Cal had admitted he couldn’t sleep for all the pain.

Master Windu had asked him if he wanted to know the truth, and Cal had agreed, because anything was better than listening to the crechemaster whisper quietly to older knights coming in and out of the creche, anything was better than the rumors of war no one could keep hidden even from the younglings. Master Windu…he’d been serious and sad and told Cal he could ask him to stop at any time, but Cal hadn’t, had just listened as the Master of the Order explained the war, and the deaths, and the reasons they couldn’t refuse to fight - people were already arguing the clones weren’t sapiens, the Senate had a conscription order in place, their duty and the very nature of compassion meant they had to do what they could to protect the innocent, no matter the cost to themselves.

And then Cal had helped him build pyres.

It’d been late at night, the wrong time of day to build and light them. But two hundred Jedi had to be burned, had to have the vigil kept for them, even if it wasn’t proper, and not all of them had people left to mourn them. And with the war soon to start in earnest, they hadn’t had time to wait and do it all properly. So Master Windu had spent his time building enough pyres to fully fill the room, ten all down the line, and had shown Cal how to stack them properly, how to select the right boards for the right part, how to keep them from collapsing in on each other or outwards away, where to set the tinder so that the whole thing would light. The older Jedi had tried to keep him away from seeing the bodies, too, but Cal had been determined. They’d burned nine bodies, that night, and one set of formal robes, and Cal had learned the Jedi funeral rites, the words said to send their souls to the Force, the vigil. He’d knelt carefully on a meditation mat next to Master Windu and watched the bonfires burn silently, heat on his face and hands folded on his lap, the Force an aching sorrow around him that he could feel ever so slowly draining by simply being allowed to mourn, and then at some point before the pyres became ash and the vigil ended, he’d fallen asleep, tilted into Master Windu’s shoulder.

He’d woken up curled up in his own bed in the creche at midday, long after he should’ve been woken for morning meditation and daily training, with a beaded bracelet lying on his nightstand. A note had been left alongside it: we gather some of the ashes and store them, in memorial urns or wearable jewelry, as a way to remember. You’ve accepted that weight far younger than you should have to, Initiate. But I thank you for the company, and the kindness. - Master Windu

(The bracelet had broken during the Purge, shattered by the force of the escape pod landing on Bracca. And Master Tapal had never gotten a pyre, because keeping his body was too much of a risk, and so was building a bonfire. No one had sent any of the thousands of Jedi who died off to the Force.

There were no more memories.)

He remembers those lessons now as he uses the Force to float his cut boards back to the plateau, depositing them all in a neat pile near the far edge that overlooks a deep valley. It should be a beautiful view - there are mountains in the distance, thrusting up to meet the gold-purple sky, and thin white clouds drift among the peaks. The valley itself looks perfect for farming, a wide sprawl of land with a river running through the center, dotted with the occasional copse of trees and rolling gently up into foothills. The rocky crags and cliffs and tunnels of this highland area must fade, or Santari and Dagan wouldn’t have built the temple here, he thinks, a bit distantly. There’s probably even an old path down to the plains, established back during their time.

It should be beautiful. It isn’t, because he has a pile of wood and two pyres to build, and nothing can be beautiful right now.

Building the pyres is hard work too. He does it by hand, instead of using the Force to assist, wrangling the heavy boards into place with strength alone, and BD alternates between riding on his back and hopping around the boards, scanning them and making sure they’re sturdy. He hasn’t built a pyre since Master Tapal took him from the Temple to the front - Malicos hadn’t deserved one, and when Cere had burned one for Trilla she’d done it and kept the vigil alone - so he appreciates having the extra eye on his structural work, because that’s- been almost eleven years and these need to be done right. Cere and Cordova deserve that much.

And he could do it faster with the Force - it takes him hours to build even one by hand, his fingers torn and full of splinters by the time he’s done - but it feels disrespectful, somehow, to cheat his way through this. Master Windu hadn’t used the Force to do it, though he’d let Cal float boards too heavy for him to lift when he wanted to help move them around. Doesn’t Cere deserve his full focus and attention? (Aren’t they owed this, these people he cares so much about, two of the last of the Jedi, who died because of his own mistakes? He was so kriffing stupid, so kriffing oblivious, and because of it- everything has fallen to pieces. This is the least he can do to atone.)

At some point, Greez and Merrin must wake up and start their day, because he senses dim movement inside the Mantis, little puffs of Force he knows to associate with Merrin’s magick, and eventually the door hisses open and Greez comes over to him, stopping a short distance away. Cal pauses - he’s laying the base for the second pyre now, and his whole body hurts again, he’s probably going to want to pause to take a stim soon, just to fade the edges of the pain - and straightens up, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and glancing over at his friend. He’s breathing hard, muscles aching, and his hair sticks uncomfortably to his face and the back of his neck.

Greez has a tray in two of his hands, a tall cup - one of the ones set aside just for Cal - and a covered plate on it. “Hey, kid,” he says, and his voice is small and quiet and a bit strangled. “Saw you didn’t eat anything this morning, thought you might want to take a little break. I’ve got lunch.”

Cal takes the glass from the tray, draining half of it in a long gulp - he hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until the prospect of water was in front of him - and setting it back down, letting out a breath. “I’m not hungry,” he says, and Greez’s face falls. “I need to finish this anyway, they’ve waited too long for their pyres.”

“Fifteen minutes won’t make that much of a difference, Cal.” Greez sounds so tired, as tired as Cal feels, deep in his bones. They’ve all been hurt by Bode’s betrayal and Jedha’s loss. “You know, Cere wouldn’t want you to starve yourself just to get this done a little faster.”

<Greez = correct,> BD beeps, subdued, from where he’s sitting on the stack of wood, and Cal deflates. He’s still not hungry, but he feels a little less like he’ll throw up if he eats, and the worry and resignation and defeat on Greez’s face hurts. Like he’s given up on Cal listening to him at all. Cal…he doesn’t want to hurt his family, he never has. It’s why he’s never told Merrin he still feels hurt that she left him, now that they’ve reconciled. It’s why he never mentioned how lost and alone he was, those years when he couldn’t reach out to Cere because of their argument (that stupid argument, and he wasted so much time, and now it’s all gone) and Merrin was wandering the galaxy and didn’t need him and Greez was perfectly happy and settled and couldn’t understand why Cal couldn’t do the same.

Fuck this. Cal swallows and reaches out, taking the tray from Greez, and the latero’s eyes widen and brighten with clear relief. “Fine,” Cal says, lowering himself to sit on the woodpile next to BD, balancing the tray across his knees. “I’ll…try.”

“That’s all anyone can ask,” Greez says quietly. “Do…you want me to keep you company?”

“Sure, Greez.” It hurts to say, for some reason. But Greez is grieving too, isn’t he? And Cal hasn’t done a damn thing for anyone else in his family, even though Greez has known Cere for longer than the rest of them, just sat around and wallowed in his pain and killed his way through a whole Imperial base and nearly killed Bode in front of his daughter- “Is Kata okay?”

He hasn’t even seen her. Hasn’t even thought about her, hardly, and isn’t that just typical of him? He lifts the cover off the plate and there’s a heaping bowl of his favorite stew, rich and hearty. Cal wishes he could appreciate it. Wishes he could do anything but pick up the spoon and sip at the broth like he can taste it.

…or maybe he can, actually. It’s still little more than dirt in his mouth, but his stomach growls ferociously the moment he sets the first spoonful in his mouth and swallows, and it is- very hard, suddenly, to keep himself from inhaling the entire thing way too quickly. It- maybe it’s been a couple days since he’s eaten, actually, now that he thinks about it. He certainly didn’t want to take the time when they stopped on Koboh to align the arrays.

Greez watches him eat without comment, sitting down next to him. “As okay as expected,” he sighs. “She’s perceptive, the little bogling, knows everyone’s hurting. Went in to see her papa once, looked at him for a minute, then shivered and walked back out and hasn’t been back. Merrin’s keeping her busy, but you should talk to her, when…when you have time.”

“I will,” Cal agrees around a mouthful of soup, swallowing and taking another drink of water. “I- I think I scared her.” He hadn’t wanted to. But he also- hadn’t thought much about it, hadn’t done anything to not scare her, had just focused on Bode.

He almost- almost had to build three pyres instead.

Greez sighs. “Yeah, kid,” he says quietly, “I think you did too. But you can fix that, just takes a little time and effort - and you did save Bode, so that’s gotta count for something. She’s a sweetheart, she won’t hold it against you forever.”

“Maybe she should,” Cal mutters, then shakes himself, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment before he returns to eating. “I just- Cordova’s dead, Cere’s dead, and I almost killed him, Greez. I shot him, I was going to shoot him again. I would’ve if he hadn’t-”

He chokes, curls forward, and Greez sets a hand against his back, rubbing it in a circle. “Easy, it’s okay, just let it out. Talk to me, kid.”

Cal sniffs and jams the heels of his palms into his eyes, swallowing down the lump in his throat. He can’t- cry, not again, not right now. He has to finish the pyres. “Everything’s just- gone all wrong,” he whispers, picks up his spoon again, holding it so tight his knuckles go white. “I don’t know if I can keep losing things. People. Hope.”

“We’ll find a way to get back in touch with the rest of the Path,” Greez promises. “There was a whole wave of evacuations that went off right, while you were out in the desert - Merrin’s got the rendezvous, she’ll be able to meet them. It ain’t the same, but we’ve got a chance to recover some of Cere’s work and restore it here. I know…I know it’s hard, her and the old man being gone. I’m still not used to it myself.” He sniffles, rubs at his own eyes with another hand. “I’ve known that woman for eight years, she was family. It’ll be hard moving on. But we can still make this place a home for the family we’ve got left, Cal, as long as we do it together. You can’t fix nothing by hiding away from the people who love you.”

Cal knows, on some level, that Greez is right. Of course he knows it. It’s just- it’s hard to be vulnerable around them, to show them his weaknesses when he’s supposed to be the one taking care of them, hard to think of himself as anything other than the lightsaber he’s become. He’d started to relax into it with Bode and look how that turned out.

“I just don’t know if I can keep believing,” he finally says, staring into his mostly-empty soup bowl, stirring the broth around and around. “I know I brought everyone together before, gave you all reasons to hope and fight, but- I can’t keep doing that anymore. I don’t have anyone doing it for me.”

“Oh, Cal,” Greez says, soft and sad, and Cal flinches despite himself. He- he shouldn’t have said that, probably. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

He swallows hard, takes a bite of soup and forces himself to swallow it. “Because I- you all just wanted me to settle down and stop fighting, stop caring, stop- doing what I’ve been doing, you didn’t- understand that the moment I gave all that up- it was all I had left, Greez. Learning about the Path, about Tanalorr, it gave me- something for the first time in years. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Greez doesn’t answer for a moment, and Cal thinks, a little bit tired, a little bit bitter, that he probably doesn’t know how to - he’s the person who brought their family together, and then he wasn’t enough for them anymore, and they all drifted apart, and they grew up and moved forward and found themselves and all he found was dust, and now he can’t be what they’re used to him being. “We can figure it out,” Greez says finally, and Cal wishes he didn’t feel like his friend is just trying to make him feel better. “We’ve got a whole new world ahead of us now - you’ve got time to learn. Right?”

Cal swallows again, swipes at his eyes, forces a smile. “Right,” he agrees, the word more than a little hollow. He knows it’s unconvincing without even looking at Greez, but- what is there to figure out? Cere is dead. Bode is- he has no idea if Bode is going to even speak with him when he’s out of bacta, no idea if he’ll be willing to even discuss future plans. Obviously whatever they do with Tanalorr now has to include Bode and Kata, but- well.

He finishes the rest of his lunch - or whatever meal this really is - in silence, drains the water, and hands Greez the tray back wordlessly, and to Greez’s credit, he doesn’t argue or try to restart the conversation, just takes the tray and heads back to the Mantis. Cal lets out a long sigh, running a hand over his hair, and turns back to his task with a grim determination. There may be no sunset on this planet, but he’s determined to finish the pyres by the equivalent Koboh time. If he can’t light the pyres and send Cere and Cordova off with a real sun, he can at least- think it, in his head.

It’s late by the time the second pyre is finished, the two of them standing tall and imposing at the edge of the plateau, haloed in starlight. Cal is unsteady on his feet, pain flaring across all the lines of his body, his ankle and shoulder screaming at him, and he gets another stim from BD to dull the aches and the tremble in his muscles, trying to calm his breathing. He needs- to get the bodies now. 

He just hopes Kata isn’t around to see them.

When he steps back into the Mantis, BD on his shoulder, only a slight wobble in his step, Merrin is sitting on the couch with Kata, quietly showing her something on a datapad, and Greez is puttering around, back and forth, between the kitchen and the medbay and the cockpit, picking things up and cleaning them off with a rag and setting them back down. They all look over when he steps inside; he has no idea what his face looks like, but it must be enough of an indicator of what’s going on, because Merrin turns to Kata. “Come, child, there is a lovely little pool nearby - we can go visit it, and Greez will have supper ready by the time we return.”

Kata looks between him, Greez, and Merrin for a moment, then nods slowly, sliding off the couch and getting to her feet. “Okay,” she agrees, wrapping her arms around herself, quiet and serious. Bode had always described her as bright and warm - but in the Force she feels like a clouded sun, the threat of rain and a grey sky, and she looks so much smaller than she really is as she follows Merrin through the living area and out the door. At least this time she doesn’t flinch away from Cal, which is- an improvement, probably. He hopes.

Once they’re gone, he turns to Greez, swallows. “Can you get the torch?” he asks, and Greez nods. “Thanks, Greez.”

Cere’s and Cordova’s bodies are in the cold storage at the back of the Mantis. Cal digs Cordova out first, wrapped in a sheet he stripped off Gabs’s bunk, adjusts the body over his shoulder with some difficulty and carries him through the ship’s living area and out onto the plateau, carefully lowering him down onto the first of the pyres. Bodies are- this isn’t the first time he’s carried one, or even that he’s carried these particular ones, but there’s still something about it that sends a shiver crawling down his spine. There’s nothing living in them, he can feel the gaping emptiness in the Force, and it’s…

Cordova had been so vibrant when he was alive. His aura had felt like the Zeffo tombs had, like the life wind they called the Force itself - fresh air and the life-giving scent of rain and the promise of green growing things, the storm that cleanses, that invigorates, that breathes like its own living thing. Especially in the middle of the Jedhan desert, he’d been a literal breath of fresh air among the cold and dust and dryness, and while they hadn’t been close, Cal had enjoyed listening to the  man talk about his studies, history both recent and ancient, and of course the precursor species he’d spent so much of his life learning about. There had been so much living in him - Cal had always known he was older, more suited to the Archives than to the fight, but once he’d known Cordova was alive he hadn’t thought- hadn’t expected him to die. He’d just felt too robust and brilliant for that.

Still- Cal only knew him for a few months, really, more familiar with him through the messages he left embedded in BD’s memory and the impact he had on Cal’s journey on Ilum. The loss claws at him, because there are so few Jedi left, but he isn’t shaking any more than his body forces him to be as he settles the man’s body down and runs his hands carefully over the sheet, making sure it’s neat and secure. He breathes, in and out, in and out, swallows hard, and turns and heads back into the Mantis again.

And then he’s procrastinated it as much as he can, and he has to lift out Cere.

He cradles his master in his arms, tucked against his chest, even though her body is stiff and cold and he’s almost too tired and sore for that. She’s wrapped in a sheet too, all her limbs held against her body so he could move her more easily, and the feel of the fabric beneath his fingers, the memories in it - it belonged to her, once, and then it belonged to Bravo, and now he’s going to consign it to ash wrapped around her again, and the poetry in that makes him want to scream - it hurts, actually. If he lets himself, he could fall into the faint traces of emotion, years of tired mornings and mediocre-to-bad-to-sometimes-good nights, late night or early morning conversations in shared bunks; he can almost hear her voice, Bravo’s voice, mixing together. Some part of him is tempted to sink down, down, down and never surface, because if he did that maybe he wouldn’t have to feel this void eating him whole. Maybe he’d remember how to breathe. Maybe he wouldn’t have to breathe again.

Laying her down on the pyre he built for her feels so wrong. He can’t help, now, remembering the way Master Windu’s hands had shaken as he arranged every Jedi they burned that one night, so many years ago now - can’t help it because he sees again an echo of that long night in his own hands, the way they’re trembling as he arranges her body on the boards. He pulls the cover back from her face, as much as he can, stares at it for a long moment; she looks peaceful in death the way she had in life, serene and relaxed, like she’s just asleep. Like she’s meditating, almost, and he could nearly delude himself into believing that if not for the way he can’t feel her at all, the sand-and-stone steadiness of her aura long gone. She was always a pillar for him to lean on, to cling to, and even when she was gone and they were fighting (and it seems so stupid now) he still spent so much time remembering her teachings and holding onto them, letting them guide him as much as he could. She led him through his life, even when she wasn’t in it.

And now she’s dead, and it was his fault, and he wasted so much of their time and squandered everything they could’ve had and he doesn’t know what to do anymore but she’s not here to tell him. There’s no one left to tell him who to be.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, blinking away the dampness in his eyes. He feels like sobbing, but he can’t yet, he needs to finish the rites first. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Nothing was supposed to be like this.

He leans over, presses his forehead to hers, holds on for just a moment - and then he lets out a shuddering breath and steps back, covering her face again. Backs away, turns, and Greez is hovering nearby with the lighter - he offers it out to Cal as soon as Cal gets close enough, and he takes it, sending Greez away again with a gesture. This is- the pyres will burn until they’re ashes, Greez and Merrin will have plenty of time to come watch them and grieve. But he has to do this alone. Always alone, because there’s no one left to do it with him.

He wishes, with a ferocity that borders on desperation, that Bode was awake. He’s not sure it’d matter if Bode was. Who would want to sit vigil for the people they killed?

Cal lights Cordova’s pyre first, with a shaking hand that makes it hard to keep the lighter steady enough to catch the flame, then steps over to Cere’s and does the same thing. Once the fire leaps up, properly grabbing onto the wood and crackling merrily, sparks spitting across the dusky-purple sky, he takes a step back and says the words of ritual. “May you find peace in the Force’s embrace,” because there is no death, there is the Force. His voice catches on the words. “Master Eno Cordova. Master Cere Junda. The Jedi will remember your names, and you will never be forgotten.”

Jedi funerals are simple, solemn things. A wish, the names themselves, the promise that comes with them. And grief, there is always grief. But there’s supposed to be- the vigil might usually be held alone, but never after it, no one is supposed to be alone after. He remembers the customs that’d fallen to the wayside during the war, of the people closest to the dead Jedi being given a week to sit and mourn and remember, while the rest of the Temple gathered together to bring them food and care for them. It was supposed to be a reminder that no one was alone, that the Jedi were a community, that grief was meant to be felt and that when one Jedi mourned, the whole Order mourned with them. During the Clone Wars, Cal remembers- there never being time for that, anymore. He hadn’t had the chance to sit the grieving period after Master Tapal died either, too busy trying to hide.

And now- there’s no one left to sit with him.

Cal wraps his arms around himself and drops to his knees, stares into the fires as they climb slowly up the silver-grey wood, and finally, finally lets himself cry, a sob breaking out of his chest. He’s alone now. He’s alone. He might be the last Jedi in the whole galaxy, for all that he knows - Greez says they’ll get back in touch with the Path and Bode is in bacta and Kata is brilliant in the Force, but none of that matters anymore, how is it supposed to matter? How is he supposed to believe in it? He’s been alone since the Purge went out, in one way or another. He’d had Cere for so little time and it’d still somehow been longer than he’d had Master Tapal. No one on the Path trusts him to be a part of their network, and it was supposed to be Cere who smoothed that over, who finally brought him into it properly.

But Cere is gone now. Everything is gone now. And Cal has burned himself to ashes on the pyre of his own darkness.

What does he have left anymore?

The pyres burn themselves out eventually, a long time later, around mid-morning shiptime, he thinks. He knows that at some point, Merrin and Greez came out to say their own goodbyes, that Kata has been hovering around, that people slept and woke again, but he hasn’t moved, still kneeling on the grass-covered rock. He stays there even after the embers grow cold, watching the faint breeze disturb the ashes. Greez knows Jedi mourning traditions; he’ll help Cal gather a bit from each pyre, probably, to keep on the Mantis alongside the shattered holocron. He thinks Cordova would probably like that, his urn having a place of honor next to a part of his life’s work. It’s the least he can do.

He wishes Cere was here.

Eventually, Cal pats BD on the head, takes a stim from him, and shoves himself upright, swaying and wincing. He hurts. His knees feel like shards of glass grinding against his nerves with every step he takes, and both his ankles, instead of just his bad one, throb dully, with sharp stabbing pains shooting up from them when he moves. His head aches and the shoulder Bode shot him in pulses with a reminder that he’s more than due to change the bacta patches on it. His eyes feel like they’re full of sand. Part of him wants to stumble into the Mantis, collapse on his bunk, and never emerge again; part of him wants to run and run and never come back, like he can escape the numbness in his chest by fleeing from it.

He knows he can’t. He remembers this feeling, this emptiness, from after the Purge - he’d sunken so far down back then, fallen into a haze he almost didn’t make it out of. He’d promised never to let that happen again.

Now, he’s not so sure.

He slips into the main living bay quietly and drops down to sit on the couch, tilting his head back against the cushions and closing his eyes. BD hops off his shoulder and scuttles off, probably to go recharge - the droid had stayed pressed into his leg all night, keeping his own vigil, and Cal had appreciated his presence greatly, but he doesn’t want BD’s battery to get too low - and there’s no one else in the hold, so for a long few minutes Cal just drifts, aimless and choking.

Then there’s the sound of quiet, hesitant footsteps against the metal floor, and a clouded, dim sun nudges against his senses, barely there and then gone again, like dapples of sunlight on a forest floor. Cal drags his eyes open, even though he knows who this has to be, leaning his head sideways to look instead of lifting it up, and Kata is standing a few feet away, her Mookie doll held close to her chest, watching him. She looks wary, unsure, but her dark eyes are also wide with concern, and he doesn’t think she feels exactly afraid anymore. “Hey,” he says dully, and his voice is hoarse, his mouth dry as a desert.

This is- only their second or third real conversation.

“Are…are you okay?” Kata asks him, tentative, and creeps closer, sitting down on the edge of the couch. “I know- Greez says the reason you’re sad and hurting is because your friend died, and I can feel that, but you don’t look very good.” She shifts back and forth, unsure. “You feel- wrong. Like Papa does sometimes. He always says it’s better to be sad and pretend you’re not, because it’s important to feel it, but he’s not very good at actually doing that. He lies to me a lot.”

Cal swallows hard and swipes a hand across his eyes, hard, digging his knuckles in. He doesn’t need to cry again, he doesn’t. “No,” he admits, very quiet. “I’m…I’m not okay, Kata. Your papa- he lied to me, too, and I couldn’t tell he was doing it until it was too late, and because of it my friends died. My master died.” For a moment neither of them speak, and then Cal lets out a heavy breath, his hand falling back into his lap. He’s not- it isn’t a child’s responsibility to comfort him. “Are you okay? I know it’s been a lot, the past few days.”

Kata doesn’t answer him right away, scooting herself back onto the couch and hugging Mookie closer. “I don’t think I’m okay either,” she says, finally, shaking her head. “I’m scared for Papa - I don’t want him to die like Mama did. And I’m scared for you, too, because Papa told me lots of stories about you, and how much he wanted me to meet you, and nothing’s been like the stories said and he hurt you and it hurt him too and I thought you were going to kill him. And mostly I think I’m sad, because- Papa wanted things to be better. He said they were going to be better. And he wasn’t- he didn’t think he was lying, when he told me that. But nothing’s happened like he wanted it to and I think we’re going to have to run away again.”

Cal sucks a small breath in, forces himself to let it out slowly, gaze falling from her face to stare at the potolli weave. He’s so kriffing tired. “Yeah,” he agrees, barely above a whisper. “Nothing happened like we wanted it to. I…was really excited to meet you, Kata. Bode told me a lot about you.”

“Maybe-” she starts, then stops. “Cal, does it- does it have to all be bad now? I don’t want to go back to running, I don’t want Papa to feel like he used to. I don’t want anyone to be sad and everyone is hurting and it’s awful.”

She sniffles, her high voice cracking, and Cal straightens up a bit with some difficulty, opening an arm to her. “Hey, shh, come here,” he offers, as soothing as she can manage, and despite everything she crawls across the couch to curl into his side, letting him wrap her up in a hug and rock her back and forth as she starts to cry. After a moment she plants herself on his lap so she can bury her face in his shoulder, and Cal- he doesn’t push her away. Doesn’t want to, really. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells her, and tries to at least pretend he believes it. “You don’t have to leave unless you want to, okay? It’s up to you and your papa what happens now. We’re not- I’m not going to make you leave.”

He doesn’t think Bode will choose to leave, if only because Tanalorr was- the only chance of true safety he had, but there’s always the chance he’ll wake up from the bacta and decide he really can’t stand being around the man who almost killed him and orphaned his daughter, and then Cal really will be alone again. He’d said- he’d said it was okay, that Cal almost killed him. That he’d wanted Cal to. But that doesn’t make sense, doesn’t fit, doesn’t- if Bode was okay with betraying him, even if he felt pushed into it, then why wouldn’t he have been okay with killing him?

He’ll probably leave. It’s easier to think that way.

“Stop that,” Kata whines, pressing her face into his neck. “Just- stop it, stop making yourself hurt more on purpose, it’s not fair to anybody! Papa wanted you to be here with us!”

Cal almost, almost flinches from the words. Not just because of the statement about Bode, although that hurts - they’d had so many dreams and he still doesn’t know how many of those were a lie - but because Kata is- pulling things right from his head, like she has access to his thoughts, like his shields are nothing but paper. They’re not good, he knows that, he’s never been great at shielding - even in the creche he’d struggled with the basics, and Cere had done her best when she finally got him but he’d had years of bad habits to unlearn and her specialty was cracking open young sensitives to fully awaken them, not building the shields up in the first place - but he has them, and an untrained child like Kata shouldn’t be able to get through them. It could be his exhaustion, but he doesn’t think so, not with the way she’s been talking, about how Bode feels, how everyone feels.

Maybe she just- has a gift. The way Cal does, with his psychometry.

“I’m sorry,” Cal says, his voice breaking, and leans his cheek against the side of her head. “I know it’s not fair. Nothing is fair anymore.” Despite his best efforts, he feels tears cold against his skin, and he sucks in a shaking breath and returns to rocking them both back and forth, stroking his fingers through her hair. “I’m not going to hurt him anymore, okay? I want us to be done hurting each other.”

Kata cries, pressed against him, and Cal cries a little bit too, even though he’d thought the tears were all drained away from him, and eventually Merrin comes out into the main hold and sits silently down on the couch next to him, her face so worn. Cal leans into her shoulder, flickering the edges of his aura against hers, suddenly desperate for the comfort, and Merrin shudders softly and wraps an arm around him.

She doesn’t speak, but she does hold him, and eventually Cal falls asleep in that hold, too exhausted to keep going any further.

He wakes up hours later in time for dinner, helps Greez with it as much as he’s allowed, and then ducks out of the Mantis to collect ashes from where the pyres had been. He doesn’t cry during the process, although he wants to, just goes through the motions with a steady methodical mechanism and then avoids the other three people around after he’s done. The Mantis looks pretty rough, after that difficult flight through the Abyss, and Cal spends the next few days, while Bode is left floating silent and still in bacta, working on repairs, getting the compass from the Z-95 and wiring it into the Mantis’s navicomputer. It’s- mostly mindless work, leaving him too much space to think, and he hates that, because he can’t stop himself from thinking about Cere’s pyre, about her last moments with Vader bearing down on her, about how he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there. His fault in so many more ways than one.

If she’d just had help- he knows they could’ve defeated Vader together, if he’d been there. Or at least they could’ve escaped - they’d done it before, and Cere had come so close to winning, if Cal had been there-

If Cal hadn’t trusted Bode so immediately and brought him right to the Path-

But at the same time, it’s hard to feel like he was wrong to trust Bode, not when he still has months of memories of how things had almost been so good, not when Kata talks about what things were supposed to be like and that Bode had been- happy about it, maybe, happy about the future they almost had. But then why- why didn’t he say anything? Why did he lie? Why did he decide the best choice was to call Vader and use Cal and destroy everything, as if Cal wouldn’t have helped him, as if Cal wouldn’t have forgiven so many things if he’d known Bode was a Jedi. Looking back on their last friendly conversation, on Jedha the night before everything went wrong, when Cal had almost kissed him and had truly believed he was so close to finally getting a home, he can see now that Bode was trying to ask him to choose between him and his cause. But how was Cal supposed to know that? And what right did Bode have to ask that of him, especially with no explanation, when the cause is all he’s had for so long the idea of letting go of it means letting go of himself? Of his last link to his first master, who asked him to hold the line?

And yet, despite it all - despite it all. Cal still stands outside the bacta tank, watching Bode recover, his hand pressed against the glass, leaning just enough into the Force to feel the very edges of Bode’s ocean aura as its strength starts to return, reassuring himself that Bode is alive, at least, if nothing else. That Cal didn’t kill him in a moment of Dark-induced rage - a flame he thinks would be too easy to stoke back into life, even if he still feels like he’s burned out entirely, with the pyres gone and done.

He knows he needs to figure himself out. That he needs to meditate until he’s found clarity again, because his anger and his pain have left him bleeding - he knows his saber had been red when he drew it to fight Bode, that his rampage through the listening post at Nova Garon had torn something in him that he’s going to have to work to come back from. But he doesn’t entirely know how to when he’s so alone like this, and some part of him doesn’t want to let go of it. Does he have anything else left, beyond the howling dark?

Cal doesn’t sleep much. He doesn’t leave the ship to scout out the temple, either, though he should; it’s why they’re here, after all. It’ll be hard to meet up with the Path, assuming Merrin even can find them again, and tell them about Tanalorr if they don’t know anything about it. But in between helping with repairs and wandering, he finds himself consistently drawn back to the medbay, especially once they pull Bode out of bacta after a few days, hooking him up to an IV and a monitor and waiting for him to wake up. His injuries are better, though not healed, and Cal hovers by the cot, checking them over and over again, like that will actually do anything.

He knows he should, in theory, spend the time on his own injuries. They’ve been healing slowly, but he knows he’s not doing them any favors by skipping sleep when he can, picking at his meals, adjusting the bacta patches only when he remembers to. It’s just…hard to make himself; he’s so used to shoving everything, especially his own health, down, drowning his awareness of his body, that even with the downtime - something he’s not used to, because even on Koboh there was plenty to keep him busy, even when Bode tried to get him to settle and rest - he can’t make himself do anything but keep going, keep going, keep going.

He thinks that if he stops, he might just collapse and not be able to put himself back together again.

Cal is fiddling with their medical supplies, reorganizing them - stepping carefully around the med-droid in the corner, in sleep mode now - when there’s a rustling sound behind him and a quiet groan. He freezes, hands stilling on the box of stims he’s holding, then carefully sets it back down in the cupboard and turns around.

Bode is awake, by some definition of the word, eyes half-open and traveling across the medbay with clear confusion. He doesn’t really look lucid, by any means, but he softens the moment he sees Cal, warmth leaking into his eyes and a smile crossing his face, and it- hurts to see. “Hey, Scrapper,” he says, the words slurred, and Cal swallows hard and walks over to him, sitting down on the edge of the cot. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, probably,” Cal agrees. He wants to reach out and take Bode’s hand, but they never really did that even before- Bode betrayed him, betrayed them, and Bode doesn’t look very coherent anyway, especially if he’s calling Cal by his nickname. “I, uh, haven’t been sleeping well.”

Bode sighs, rolling his eyes and wrinkling his face in displeasure, an expression Cal mostly remembers when Merrin had cooked them all some traditional Dathomiri dish that no one had liked except Cordova (he’d immediately launched into some conversation with Merrin about what the food said about Nightsister culture that Merrin had been very invested in and Cal had barely understood a word of). Cal had eaten it anyway, because of course he had, why waste it, and then he’d snuck Bode his share of dessert so the man wouldn’t be hungry. “Kriffing typical,” he grumbles, and Cal smiles a little despite himself, despite the ache in his chest. “Go take a nap.”

“I’m fine,” he says, waving a hand dismissively, and glances at the monitor - Bode’s vitals look good, at least, but he’d nearly died less than a week ago and- and. Well. Cal hasn’t been able to make himself touch the blaster since then, left it on his workbench to collect dust. “How do you feel?”

If he doesn’t think too much about it - if he just focuses on the logistics, making sure Bode is healing properly, getting him back to sleep, changing his bandages - then it’ll be fine. He won’t have to- worry about the twisting mess of conflicting emotions choking his throat, the way he doesn’t know if he wants to punch Bode or kiss him or both, the way everything still hurts so much but somehow what hurts worst is that he’s going to lose not just his master and the only Jedi besides her he’s met in ten years but the only person he’s ever fallen in love with, too. And the only other Jedi around, but that doesn’t feel as pressing right now, watching the way Bode looks at him.

When he wakes up properly, when he remembers- at the very least Cal doesn’t expect to be allowed to stay around Kata, after that.

“...floaty,” Bode says, after a long moment, frowning further. Cal wants to reach out and smooth away the furrow in his brow. Three weeks ago, he probably would’ve. “Huh. That’s not normal. And you look upset, so- did I pull a dumb stunt?” He tilts his head sideways on the pillow, his voice trailing off after the question. “But that’s not normal either, that’s what you do,” he mumbles, more under his breath, and Cal would be offended if it wasn’t for everything else. He doesn’t pull dumb stunts, he’s just- a little bit reckless sometimes, but it’s always to get the job done. For the  mission. Or because he knows he can handle it, and what’s a little injury anyway?

Everything that happened on the Lucrehulk, the moon lab, and Dagan’s observatory probably doesn’t count as a little injury, considering Cal still bears the last remnants of those healing wounds. But still.

He shrugs, looking down at where Bode’s hand lays on the cot near where he’s sitting instead, close enough Bode could touch him. Close enough he could reach out himself and take out Bode’s hand, if they- if it mattered. He drags a hand through his uneven hair instead, to quell the urge. “You could say that,” he says tiredly, picking at a loose thread in his pants with his other hand. “You’ve been in bacta for a bit, and we’re still weaning you off the painkillers. You should probably go back to sleep - you’ll feel less floaty next time you wake up.”

He thinks. He’s not exactly sure, but that seems right, and talking to a Bode who doesn’t know what happened is- he can’t do this, actually. Why was he hanging around the medbay anyway? Someone else should be here, he’s the one who shot Bode to begin with, and nothing is right between them anymore.

(Even just sitting here, he can feel the edges of Bode’s ocean aura, more lively than it has been in days, brushing up against his own. He hates that it still makes him think about what they could’ve had.)

“Take your own damn advice,” Bode mutters sulkily, almost childishly annoyed. “I’ll sleep when you do, Scrapper.”

“I’m not tired,” Cal says, still not looking at him. It’s easier this way. “I’m not the one stuck in the medbay either, so I don’t think that works.”

Bode huffs disapprovingly and his aura nudges into Cal, like a small wave breaking against a rock - unintentional, probably, more than anything, but it’s still the most Bode has ever touched him like this, still feels almost like the reaching back out Cal used to wish so desperately would happen, when he draped himself around Bode’s shoulders in the Force because he craved the intimacy of it so desperately. Cal swallows down the noise in his throat, trying to break free, doesn’t even know if it’s grief or desire that drives it. Maybe both; he has to ruthlessly strangle the urge to cling to that faint touch. He curls his shoulders forward and digs his thumbnail into his palm instead, quiet.

He should- go. As soon as Bode is asleep again.

For a moment there’s nothing, just Bode grumbling inaudibly, and then he sucks in a sharp breath - Cal glances back at him with a flicker of worry, despite himself, but Bode’s eyes are just wide and trained on him. “You- you aren’t surprised,” he says, almost a question, but there’s a faint trace of a smile on his face, the skin around his eyes wrinkling warmly. Cal wants to map out all the laugh lines with his fingers, has wanted to for a long time. Not that that matters anymore. “You know already.”

Something about the way Bode smiles feels like a knife lodged between his ribs. Cal nods, not trusting himself to speak, and Bode- laughs, soft and hoarse but genuine, nudging his hand weakly against Cal’s thigh. He looks- brighter, somehow, than Cal can ever remember seeing him. “...we found Tanalorr,” he says, and when Cal nods again his grin widens. “We found Tanalorr, and I could tell you everything. Show you Kata- she’d like you, she’s sunny, like you’re warm-” His voice is hazy at best. “You both feel so warm…”

Cal shoves his hands into his eyes before the tears welling up in them can actually spill onto his cheeks, but he can’t quite stop the wretched half-sob that cracks through his chest anyway. He does his best to turn it into a cough, but the exhausted concern Bode pushes at him in the Force makes it obvious he hasn’t totally succeeded. He thinks if Bode was awake properly, he wouldn’t get away with it at all. “Yeah,” he chokes out, sucks in a shaky breath. He shouldn’t be here. “She’s- really sweet, I’m glad I got to meet her.” He thinks of Kata sitting with him, letting him comfort her even though he’s part of the reason she’s struggling right now, and it’s- he really does like her, like he knew he would. They’ll keep her safe on Tanalorr, if Bode lets them, and at least that will mean something.

Bode hums, brushing his fingers against Cal’s leg again, and Cal- can’t keep doing this. “Good,” he murmurs, and Cal shoves himself up off the cot, unsteadily. “Cal…?”

“I think you’re right, I should get some sleep,” he rasps out, pretending his voice isn’t trembling. “You rest too now, okay? I’ll-” Bode probably won’t remember this later, he clearly feels- a little white lie won’t hurt. “I’ll be here when you wake up again.”

“Hmm, okay,” Bode agrees, though he doesn’t sound pleased, but his voice is fuzzy and when Cal hesitantly reaches out to brush against the edges of his aura, checking on him, he feels like he’s practically asleep again anyway.

Which is- good, because Cal can’t- he can’t hold himself together any longer. He ducks out through the medbay door and stumbles through the hallway to the engine room, just enough coherence left to wave the door shut behind him. He drops down to sit on his bunk, shuddering, and then just- lets himself tip over sideways, dropping his head onto his pillow. The sound that tears out of his throat is somewhere between a moan and a scream, barely muffled by the pillow, and then he can’t stop the sobs, awful grating things that shake his whole body and leave him whimpering and gasping for breath, curled up around himself and pressing his face into the pillow like he could find any comfort in it. It doesn’t feel any better to cry, doesn’t do anything at all except hurt, that knife between his ribs twisting and twisting around until he can’t breathe through it. 

It feels ridiculous to think that he’s crying harder for Bode’s softness than he did at Cere’s pyre, but the shattering racing through him feels a whole lot like getting back to the Archive and seeing Cere’s body, cold on the floor and covered in ashes. He just- he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t, he sees now all the places Bode was breaking apart but he can’t- reconcile it, he doesn’t know how. If Bode was hurting so much, if it was all real, then why couldn’t he just tell Cal? Why couldn’t they talk about it? If all the intimacy meant something, if Bode really wanted it- 

It’s easier to think it was all a lie. That’s how he drove himself forward on anger instead of falling into the yawning pit of pain beneath it, that’s how he kept himself moving when all he wanted to do was turn to pieces. But he doesn’t know the truth now, because all those times Bode asked him to make choices, and it’s okay, want you to do it, and Bode half-conscious being so happy at the idea that he’d been able to reveal everything. He doesn’t- he doesn’t know if he can do this.

Because Cere is dead, Cordova is dead, Jedha is destroyed, Vader was there and it was Bode’s fault. And Bode is- almost certainly going to leave, when he’s healed, if he even still trusts them with Kata - when the Empire comes, will you be able to protect my little girl? - or maybe he’ll decide that Tanalorr in Cal’s hands isn’t worth it after all, now that he remembers, and both he and Kata will be gone. He meant what he said to Kata, and he’s sure she meant it too, when she said that Bode wanted him to be here - but that was before Jedha. That was before Cal shot him in front of her. Before everything broke and couldn’t be repaired.

That was back when- when they were so close to being something together, the two of them.

It hurts, to think about that. Because Cal- he thinks he fell in love with Bode early, probably, but he can’t even be sure when, because their months together is all just a blur of slowly-building warmth until it’d been in every breath he’d taken. He’d thought Bode was attractive when they met for the first time on Coruscant, about a month before the heist went off. Being the only two survivors had pulled them closer together - or at least for him it had, because Bode was the only person who remembered his second crew and who he hadn’t failed - and they’d started sharing a bunk early, on the way to Jedha the first time, a habit he’d so easily fallen into. Maybe he was falling even then, when he let Bode cajole him into sleeping, curled up on his chest and finally relaxing. He’d always felt safe when Bode held him, like the ever-present horror of an Imperial galaxy was fading away, a little bit.

He’d never acted on it, not really, even though he’d come close to doing so that last night on Jedha - but there’s no way Bode couldn’t know. Cal’s habit of draping his aura around him was a beacon to anyone Force-sensitive - Merrin, Cere, Cordova, even a few of the Anchorites he thinks - and Bode would’ve felt it every time, the deeply intimate touch of it, suffused with the heat of Cal’s feelings.

Fuck. He’d just wanted- he’d wanted so many things and they were all so kriffing useless- of course he was never going to get to have any of it. Of course, in the end, fighting is all he’s good for. Even Bode saw it, eventually.

Cal cries until there are no tears left, curled up around his pillow and trying not to feel like the bunk is empty without Bode. It’s more comfortable, anyway, not having to try to fit himself alongside another person in a space only meant for one. He tells himself that and it almost, almost works. (Not that it can really erase the loneliness.)

He sleeps for a couple hours, caught in the exhaustion of the post-crying haze, and then he drags himself awake and puts himself back together, ignoring the pain clawing at his limbs to head into the living area and put himself together some supplies. Bode will probably wake up properly soon, and Cal- can’t face him. He can’t. Not with the mess in his head, not with everything awful going on, not with knowing how Bode is probably going to react to waking up again, clear-headed and aware of the- situation.

So he grabs BD and enough food to tide himself over for a few days, leaves a note for Greez and Merrin, and leaves the Mantis behind. They need to explore the temple, after all. Need to- figure out what they need to bring through the Abyss to make the planet self-sufficient enough to start building and try to bring more people here, and knowing what technology the Jedi of Dagan’s and Santari’s time established here is an important first start. He should probably see if he can find a path down to that potential farmland, too, let BD get some scans on it.

Greez will comm him if they need him back at the ship for anything, or when they’re ready to leave. Merrin probably needs privacy to get in touch with the Path again, so she shouldn’t mind. And Bode- Bode will have Kata, when he wakes up, and Cal’s sure he’d much rather that than the alternative anyway.

So it’s fine. Maybe some exploring is what he needs to get his head back on straight.

Greez comms him back to the Mantis after four days of silence, his voice quiet and concerned when he asks Cal to return. Merrin’s made contact, apparently, set up a rendezvous with someone who can get her back in touch with Path leadership (and isn’t that another thing Cal didn’t know, would never have known, that it’s big enough to have leadership), and if Cal’s ready they need to head back to Koboh so he can drop off Cal and Bode and Kata at the outpost and fly her to her meeting.

Cal isn’t surprised, really, that he isn’t allowed to be there. As far as the Path knows, he’s still a very public associate of Saw Gerrera, and he’s sure the rest of them have the same opinion of Saw as Cere did. He doubts Cere told anyone outside the Anchorites about Tanalorr, to preserve secrecy, so why should they be willing to allow him into a rendezvous before they have a chance to confirm he won’t lead the Empire to them? Especially after the destruction of the Jedha base.

Really, they’re probably right. He did lead the Empire there, if indirectly.

Still, it stings a bit to hear. Cal shoves the hurt down with all the rest of it and hauls himself back to the Mantis with an aching body and a rough list of what they have to work with and what they need to bring through, BD happy to ride on his shoulder and chatter about all the new scans he’s gotten the chance to make. He’s tired, but Tanalorr really is beautiful, and he thinks- it really could be a place for the Jedi to rebuild, away from the Empire’s influence, if they could just make it one. If there’s anything left at all to rebuild.

When he gets back to the ship, Greez tells him quietly that Bode is awake and has asked about him, that it’d be good for Cal to go talk to him, probably. Cal just waves him off and joins him in the cockpit to help navigate back through the Abyss, like it doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t leave him feeling torn. But- Cere is dead and he’s failed her in every way he could, and now he’s leaving her pyre behind, and he’s tired and too-alone despite having the rest of his family with him and he can’t help feeling like he’s lost something he’ll never be able to get back, now.

As much as he wants to see the man, he doesn’t want to talk to Bode - doesn’t want to hear what he’s sure he will. It’s better, even if it’s more confusing, even if it hurts, for his last conversation with Bode to be- him happy about the future they could’ve had. It’s easier this way.

He’s so kriffing tired.

Kata comes into the cockpit to watch, wide-eyed, as they travel, asking questions about the ship and the Abyss, and Cal explains everything he can to her, letting her sit in his chair and watch the nebula fly by. She’s interested, eagerly soaking up every word he says, and it’s- strange, he thinks, how quickly she’s attached herself to him despite how little they’ve really talked. It’s probably just how she is - she’s a sweetheart, he thinks, eager enough to talk to Greez and Merrin and BD too - but he wonders if it has anything to do with the stories she said Bode told her.

He knows, once they land, that Merrin expects him to help with Bode - according to Greez he’s able to walk but still weak, and a few weeks ago there would’ve been nothing in the galaxy that could keep Cal away from helping Bode if he was injured. But it’s easier, actually, to just grab his own gear and then help Kata with hers, show her down to the basement room that’s supposed to be his but in practice he shared with Bode for long enough it- well. Why does Cal need it, really? He doesn’t sleep that often, he can crash in one of the unrented rooms upstairs. And Kata likes that she can claim the top bunk and share a room with her papa, though she’s curious about the workbench and the meditation mat. Cal tells her the truth - that sometimes he’d used the room too, but that he doesn’t need it now, and she frowns at him like she doesn’t entirely believe him but lets him say it anyway.

He slips out of the room before Bode can make his way in, grabbing his duffel and BD’s charging port and heading back into the saloon proper and climbing the stairs. With Greez gone, there’s no one to stop him from unlocking a room he knows hasn’t been rented out in a while and dropping his bag on the bed. He sighs, sitting down on the comforter, and BD beeps at him, hopping off his shoulder to stand next to his thigh and look at him.

“I know,” Cal sighs, tracing a hand over BD’s head. “But it wouldn’t be fair to put them in one of the guest rooms, it’d be rude for me to intrude on their family space, and Bode and I- that’s not happening anymore. So everyone is better off if we just stay up here for a bit.”

<Cal =/= better off,> BD bwoops, plopping down into a ball on the bed, and Cal sighs a second time. <Cal = self-isolating.>

He winces, twisting his fingers together in his lap. “Probably a little,” he admits. “But- I’m tired, BD, and what has- any of this done for us? I just…need some space until we start actually building up Tanalorr, okay?”

For a moment BD is quiet, then he plays a clip of a familiar audio file: failure is not the end, Cordova’s voice says, just like it had back years ago when Cal was on Ilum, struggling to make it through the caves, and BD beeps sadly. <Eno = wise,> he says, then tilts downwards, folding up even smaller. <BD-1 = miss Eno.>

“I know, buddy, I know,” Cal whispers, reaching out to pull BD into his arms. BD settles against his chest, a familiar weight and a soothing one, and he closes his eyes, curling forward. “I miss him too. I miss both of them. I’m sorry we couldn’t save them.”

<Cal =/= at fault,> BD says, muffled by Cal’s shirt. <Empire = at fault.>

“Do you blame Bode?” He- doesn’t know what pushes him to ask the question, but once it’s out he can’t take it back, and it hangs in the air like a physical thing, weighing down on his shoulders. Because he does blame Bode, but…but.

For a moment BD is quiet. <Bode = afraid,> he says finally. <Empire = preys on fear.>

“Yeah,” Cal agrees, hoarse and too-quiet. “It sure does.”

He spends the next few days- drifting. He’s tired, bone-deep, an exhaustion that drags at him and doesn’t go away even when he tries to sleep - not that he gets much success, horrific nightmares ripping him awake screaming when he does - and the gnawing feeling of failure makes it hard to talk to the others, even just the local residents. None of them- know that his second master is dead. None of them know about the tragedy on Jedha, or why Greez and Merrin left almost immediately after dropping him off. There are rumors around town, of course, about the arrays activating and Bode being here with his daughter, but they don’t- they don’t understand.

Cal doesn’t want their pity, doesn’t want to have to try to explain the whole mess, but he also doesn’t know how to talk to them like nothing happened at all, like what was left of his life hasn’t fallen apart entirely, so he just- doesn’t. He skulks in the shadows and spends his days holed up in the bedroom he’s claimed or up on the rooftop garden, sometimes helping Pili - she’s one of the few people he finds tolerable, right now, never asking him any questions, just telling him how he can help her with her work and on occasion rambling to him about the properties of the native flora.

He sees Bode a couple times, from a distance, when he ducks inside the saloon to grab dinner one night and once from the rooftop, watching him outside with Kata. They look happy together, Kata laughing and chasing lightning bugs across the grass, catching them between her fingers and running back to show them to Bode, and it- it aches, deep down. He could’ve been a part of that once, he could’ve- it could’ve been- the Force really must hate him, he finds himself thinking, a little bit hysterically, because he knows it isn’t just the Force, it’s his own kriffing idiocy. He’s never going to be anything more than a lightsaber for a cause, is he? He tried, and he fucked it up, and now he’s a half-fallen disgrace.

He really is so kriffing tired.

Late in the evening on the third day after they return to Koboh, Cal is sitting out at the base of the tall windmill, having climbed over the edge of the saloon’s roof and made his way across. BD is downstairs charging, no one else is around, and he’s got his knees tugged up to his chest, watching the evening wildlife. He isn’t expecting the footsteps - isn’t expecting to look up and see Bode walking over to him, arms crossed and a tired expression on his face, though the specifics are hard to make out in the low light. But he looks like he’s bracing himself, like he’s prepared for a fight. “Say your piece already, Kestis,” he says as he gets closer, and Cal tries not to flinch at his last name. World of difference from being warmly called Scrapper in the medbay, that’s for sure. “We both know you’re rarely good at holding back.”

He doesn’t want to have this conversation. “We’re back to Kestis?” he says, mutters more like, tired, and drags a hand over his face, sighing. “Great. Figures.” He doesn’t know why he expected anything else.

Bode lets out a tired sigh, voice sharp and tight. “Considering how things ended up, I kind of thought you’d take more offense to me acting anything like a friend, Cal.”

“Yeah,” Cal says quietly, letting his gaze fall to the ground a ways below him. He could survive that fall, easily, but he probably shouldn’t - his body still doesn’t feel recovered from Jedha and Nova Garon and Tanalorr, probably because he hasn’t really let it. “Sure. Are we done here?”

Talking to Bode just- hurts. There’s none of the warmth he’d gotten used to, none of the softness, none of the camaraderie, everything is just shards of glass between them, and of course Bode’s shields are up too. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. He doesn’t have the energy for it.

“Like hell,” Bode snaps, taking a couple steps closer. “You’re upsetting everyone who cares about you by hiding, including an eight-year-old girl who already talks about you like a favorite uncle, and if it takes me to get you agitated enough to stop being a coward, then that's what it takes. I didn’t tell you what I did after you shot me for you to sulk about me surviving.”

Cal almost flinches. Does Bode really think that’s what this is about? How dare he- throw that in Cal’s face, his stupid fucking declaration that Cal killing him was okay, as if it ever could be, how dare he use Kata against Cal like any of that is- actually true. If he wants to talk, wants to hear about it- fine, then. “Fine,” Cal says, bitter and heavy and harsh, dragging his gaze back to Bode. “I'm sulking because I've now watched two masters die in my arms because I wasn't enough to save them. Because the fucking- future I thought I could have was a lie the whole time. Because I really am good for nothing but being a weapon, if I can't even manage to make the only Jedi I've ever met outside my family trust me.” He laughs, hollowly, shakes his head. “Now none of the plans I had will work, none of the dreams I had matter, and I'm an insult to Cere's memory. But I better make myself palatable again so I can make everyone happy, right? Since it's not my hope that matters, it's everyone else's.”

He’s breathing too hard by the time he’s done talking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, a sharp, aching thing. He doesn’t want to let them fall - doesn’t want that weakness, especially not in front of Bode, not anymore - but it’s hard to fight back. It just- it hurts. It hurts. Cere is dead and Jedha is ashes and everything he thought he could be, everything he wanted, it’s all disappeared in the blink of an eye. Isn’t he allowed to hurt? Isn’t he allowed to grieve?

Bode snorts, closing the last of the distance between them, until he’s standing over Cal like a looming shadow. It doesn’t feel intimidating, just- broken. “Yoda himself wouldn't have been able to make me trust you, or anyone else for that matter,” he says, shaking his head, then changes tracks, eyes sharpening and breathing in like he’s found his stride. “And frankly, Cal? Did a single one of your dreams not involve you single-handedly taking out Imperial bases? Did you have any goals beyond burning the Empire to ash?” He quiets for a moment, clenching one hand in and out of a fist. “Because- because for a while, I was convinced you did. It's why I stalled for as long as I did. And then your plan for Tanalorr was to turn it into a base and not a hideout...and that's no place to raise a Force-Sensitive child!”

His voice rises again until he’s practically snapping - Cal doesn’t have to be able to sense his aura to be able to know, somehow, what it feels like right now, all angry, churning waves and tumult. “And you don't get to cry about making yourself 'palatable' and your hope not mattering,” Bode hisses, “not when the only thing you ever chased was a past none of us will get back. And for the record? You didn't give any of your family hope or happiness by constantly trying to set the Empire ablaze. You made them worry, made them fear for you.”

Cal can’t stop the flinch this time, staring wide-eyed up at him, because he’s never heard Bode yell like this, never heard this kind of lecture, not even when everything was shattering apart. Not even when Cal got himself hurt so badly on the Lucrehulk and had to be half-carried back here. It’s- it’s a hell of a lot more than he expected from someone he thought- would be perfectly fine not acknowledging him anymore.

Bode shakes his head, subsiding somewhat, heaving out a long exhale, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “And- not that my word's worth anything to you- but you're only an insult to your Master's memories- both of them- if you refuse to grow past them. If you keep clinging to what was. You didn't choose to turn your back on them, not like I did with mine. You have time.” He drops his hand, closes his eyes, rocking back onto his heels. “That...future on Tanalorr. It wasn't a lie. I meant it, every piece of it, right up until I had to choose between giving my daughter the freedom to live in peace or giving you another weapon to hurt the Empire with.”

“I wanted to help you build that farm!” Cal barely recognizes his own voice - he’s crying now, properly, the tears cold on his cheeks, his breathing ragged. Of course he fucking had goals, of course he wanted- It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to have a future. Your word was worth more to me than almost anything else you could’ve given me. “I spent- all these hours researching- putting the seeds together- and then it didn't matter anyway because you didn't even- want it.” Maybe that isn’t true, maybe it is, he doesn’t know anymore. The things Bode’s said imply he did want it, maybe even with both of them there together, but does it really count as wanting it if he was so willing to give it up?

Though. I meant it right up until I had to choose. There’s the choices again, the same impossible one he offered Cal without ever telling him what kind of choice he was making.

Cal swipes at his eyes, trying to get the tears under control, and his voice is quiet, almost trembling, when he continues. “All I know how to do is fight. The last time I tried to rebuild the Order I failed because the Empire existed. I was trying, I wanted to be-” His breath hitches and he shakes his head, looking down at his feet, wrapping his arms tightly around his knees. “...just forget it. Nothing I say matters anyway. I know all I've done is spend years fighting a pointless fight and that everyone here is fucking better off without me, okay? I- know.”

He doesn’t look at Bode. He can’t, digging his fingers into his calves like he could hold all his broken pieces together with enough force. “I'm not- if you'd told me- why did you have to call Vader? Anyone else we could've survived, why him? Hate me so much for my choices if you have to but Cere-”

He can’t breathe. He’s saying too much, but fuck, it’s Bode, he can’t seem to stop himself, all the torn-up ache in his chest tumbling out past his lips. He doesn’t know anymore what he feels and he’s lost so much and if they’re going to have this fight then- he has to at least know why. The things Bode told him on Nova Garon, about Tayala, about his history, they make some kind of awful patchwork sense, but Vader- not Vader. Why call the Inquisitorius? Why kill the people they all cared about? Cordova deserved better, Cere deserved better, the Anchorites deserved better-

“I didn't call Vader,” Bode says, and he sounds- confused, now, more than anything else. “I called the stormtrooper outpost in the Holy City, told them to pass the message to the Inquisitorius.”

“Why-” Cal starts, but before he can ask the question - why would you call them, you know Vader leads them, he wanted Cere and I personally dead - Bode keeps going, back to that almost-yelling, his voice intense. Cal wonders, a little distantly, how long he’s wanted to do this, to say these things. Maybe they really never were as- good for each other, with each other, as he’d thought they were.

“And you- you didn't fail because the Empire existed, and you don't actually get to decide what's best for the people who care about you! And- newsflash, I did want that! I- Force, Cal!” Bode is- crying, which makes no sense, gesturing widely with both arms, his voice starting to crack, like there’s too much emotion in it. And still, still his shields stay up. “I wanted that farm there, with you and Kata, I wanted to learn how to make things grow with you, wanted to watch you with our- with my daughter, but you- I've already had one partner killed. And everything you said about Tanalorr after we retrieved the compass- you were going to make it a staging site for an army and I was proof of the fact that there were Imperial spies on the Path! They wouldn't have ignored that. Someone would've gotten past. Like I did. And then they would have come, and you would have fought, because you've never known how to build anything and you stopped after one failure, and you would have died just like she did-”

Bode stops, takes a shuddering breath in, and Cal has to swallow down the urge to- reach out, to comfort him. What would he even be able to do? They had something once. They don’t anymore. It’s broken into pieces, between Bode’s actions and his own, and this conversation itself makes it so clear there’s too much anger between them for Cal’s comfort to be welcome. Bode’s shields are up anyway, so the metaphysical touch is out too. But he still wants- things used to be so good between them.

Where did it all go wrong? On Jedha, when Cal refused to go scout Tanalorr together, just the two of them? Up on the observatory, when Cal first started to think Dagan might’ve been right? Or was it even sooner than that? Was everything already starting to fall apart on the Lucrehulk, even, when Bode saved his life and Cal thought, in his injured, adrenaline-filled haze, that maybe Bode would kiss him?

It had to have been held together at some point, if- if Bode is telling the truth, and the man has no reason to lie to him. At some point it must’ve been going right - Cal just wishes he knew when. I’ve already had one partner killed.

Bode takes another wet breath, shaking his head. Like he knows the question Cal had been about to ask, he says, “And- I called the Inquisitorius because you're the one Jedi I trusted to be able to fight them off and come out mostly alright. Because you and Cere would have lost the Jedha location but not...not everything. You can take Inquisitors, I know you can.” A moment of silence, like he’s trying to let that sink in, which Cal appreciates, because- did he really not mean for it to be Vader? But then why didn’t he just talk about it? “You were supposed to come out of that angry enough to kill me, but not lose any of your family. And the ISB wouldn't be able to hack the computers on Jedha if the Inquisitorius destroyed them, as they usually do.”

“I didn't stop after one failure, Bode,” Cal says, his voice trembling and hoarse. He can’t stop crying, wishes he could, but everything hurts and all he can do is- keep talking, like he’s lancing a wound. Maybe they really did need to have this conversation. “I stopped because my actions meant the Inquisitorius had the entire galactic list of Force-sensitive children in their possession, and Cere and I barely managed to break into Nur to steal it back once, and I couldn't keep putting them in danger. I destroyed my own hope to- to protect them. It was all I could do.” He takes a shaky breath in and out, swallows hard, refuses to let himself think of that whole mess, because he doesn’t need- memories of the only time he’s been face-to-face with Vader right now. “If you'd just told me we could've, could've worked something out, I don't know, I didn't know, you were asking me to make choices I didn't understand. How was I supposed to know? I thought we were finally free and then you shot me off a cliff in the middle of the desert and left me to die.”

How was he supposed to know? How was he supposed to do anything different? He’s a husk of a Jedi and all he’s ever been is a lightsaber and Bode gave him reasons not to be for the first time, but he didn’t- he didn’t know. He didn’t know.

He drops his face into his knees to at least try to hide the sobs, his shoulders shaking with them. “Every choice I've made in the last five years was wrong and now everything that mattered is gone because of it.”

It hurts to admit. He knows- he knows it’s true. As much as he wants to blame Bode for not talking to him-

Part of him thinks the last thing he did right was destroying the holocron, and isn’t that what broke him?

Bode frowns - even without looking up he can hear it, feel it in his voice. “...You had- the holocron. With the list of Force-sensitive children? And you stole it back from Nur and that somehow destroyed your hope?” There’s a half-second of silence, then, heavy, “And no. I couldn't have told you. Be honest with me, and with yourself, right now, Cal. If I had asked you to give up fighting the Empire for me, would you have said yes?”

And doesn’t that hurt to hear?

Cal lifts his head to watch Bode through blurry eyes, though he can’t really see anything more than a silhouette in the dark. “I wouldn’t have agreed to shove my head in the sand,” he says tiredly - he doesn’t have the energy for anything else, “but I would’ve been willing to compromise. Because I was tired of losing, and I-” His breath hitches faintly. “I wanted to keep you.” He shakes his head, tries to swallow around the way the truth of that burns, forges ahead. “Anyway, not that it matters. Yeah, it destroyed my hope, that's what tends to happen when you put your lightsaber through the last archival record of future Jedi to exist.”

He sounds so bitter. Cere would be so disappointed in him, if she could see him right now. There is no death, there is the Force. He finds himself hoping she isn’t watching.

“You saved the lives of every child on that list,” Bode says, not understanding, and Cal scrubs at his eyes with one hand, keeping the other wrapped around his legs. “How does that destroy your hope?”

“Can't fucking rebuild the Order when you see a vision showing you how training kids will just result in all of them captured and broken and you putting on an Inquisitor's uniform, can you?” he says, too heavy, dull and flat and exhausted. He still remembers the vision the zeffo vault had shown him, too clearly for it to have been anything but the Force and the truth and a future. The events on Jedha really just prove its veracity. “Can't rebuild the Order if you can't train anyone, can't gather together, can't keep records- Saw said I could fight back. Make a difference. What else did I have left?” He laughs, empty and echoing with nothing at all. He’s so damn tired. The truth hurts. “Nothing either way, in the end.”

Bode lets out a long breath, his shoulders sagging, the fight draining out of him all at once. “...Cal, we were never going to be able to rebuild the Order like it was,” he says, almost soft. “Not for generations, maybe. The Path....the Path was probably as close as we were going to get.” He shakes his head, smiles, small and sad and barely visible. “...and I know you wouldn't have been able to give up the fight for me. Part of me never wanted to ask that of you. But that's...that's what it became, at the end - that kind of choice, with no time for learning to find a compromise.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Cal murmurs, picking at a loose thread at the top of his right boot. He wants the Order back, the way it was before. He wants his home back, the family he lost ten years ago. But maybe Bode is right, maybe rebuilding all the way was never an option. “Maybe. We…” and he sighs, swallows hard, whispers the ache living in between his ribs, the truth he doesn’t want to give voice to. All of it was so kriffing- pointless, wasn’t it? Years and years, all wasted. All the wrong decisions. “We were never going to be anything anyway, you and me. The Order, my family, you- it was just a bunch of daydreams. They were never going to come true.”

Bode laughs, a familiar bitterness welling up in the sound. Cal misses when he sounded warm. “...well. I destroyed us pretty thoroughly, so…” Some part of Cal had hoped he’d disagree, but of course he wasn’t going to - why would he? “But- this is what I was talking about earlier, Cal. There still can be an Order for you. I think...I think your family would want that for you. They'd help you with it. Kata too, probably, she thinks you're neat.” They’re close enough together Cal can see him smile, a tiny little fond quirk of his lips, at his daughter’s name. “It...won't be the Order that was, in our childhood. It'll probably be something more like a collection of families and their Force-sensitive kids, all learning how to manage said kids with the help of any survivors that remember pieces of the Jedi way of life. You- you have people who will help you build that. They always would have helped you build that.”

There’s a wistfulness to the words, and with a sinking feeling, Cal notices that Bode doesn’t include himself in their- in Cal’s family, in the hypothetical group of people willing to help him rebuild, in the maybe-Order they could bring back. I destroyed us pretty thoroughly, he says, and some part of Cal had hoped so desperately that Bode would think there was something of them left to save. That what they’d almost had had meant enough to him to try. I loved you, Cal wants to say, doesn’t that mean anything? Isn’t that enough? I think I still love you. I think that could be enough for me, if it had to be, with everything else gone. Why isn’t it enough for you?

But he can’t say that. Can’t say that he doesn’t know how to build something like the Path, because Cere did that, Merrin did that, but he never did, and Merrin and Greez are still around but how is he supposed to be in charge of something like that when he’s- bleeding from all the places he’s meant to be steady, full of shadows where there should be light, when he doesn’t even know how to keep going on his own?

Bode steadied him in a way the rest of his family never quite managed to, because the expectations were so much different with him, the dynamic was different, they didn’t have a past history full of baggage. He would’ve been fine, losing Bode, if he’d had Cere, maybe even without Cere but with Cordova, but- losing all of them at once? How is he supposed to do that?

“I- yeah,” Cal says, swallowing hard around the words. “Maybe. It'd be...something, at least. I guess- we can figure something more out when Merrin gets back. Maybe the rest of the Path will eventually trust me to be on it.” Maybe they’ll eventually believe he’s trustworthy enough to funnel a few families towards him, even if he never gets to know anything else about them. He sighs, heavy and quiet, resting his chin on his knees, forces himself to ask the question he doesn’t want to say. “Are you- going to be leaving, then? Kata did say she was afraid you'd both be- leaving, on the run again.” It’s easier if he makes it about Kata. He doubts Bode wants to hear about him.

Bode frowns at him, and Cal can’t really see his facial expressions well anymore, but he doesn’t need to to know exactly the way Bode’s brow is furrowing. He wants to brush the wrinkles away. “...I mean. Of course the Path will trust you- you haven't given them any cause not to. And Merrin and Greez will steer you right, as long as you let them actually help you in the ways that matter.” He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it, sighs, sounds remarkably even when he says, “And yeah, I figure I'll leave. I got Cere killed, no matter my intentions, and Cordova wasn't the first Jedi I killed. I won't cause you any trouble. I might stay on Koboh, to be honest.”

Please stay on Koboh, Cal wants to say, and doesn’t, because this isn’t about him. Please don’t disappear entirely. Even if they never speak again after this beyond rare pleasantries, it’d be better than nothing, at least Bode would still be here. At least Cal wouldn’t lose everyone entirely.

And isn’t that the most selfish way to think about it?

Bode rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, shifting his weight from side to side. “...but if you're planning to make Tanalorr a haven- a sanctuary, and to vet the people you let stay there, then- then Kata should go with you. She'll be safest there, because unless you killed everyone on Nova Garon, I'll be a wanted Imperial traitor. And if you're not going to be taking the fight to the Empire every five minutes, well...the choice is obvious, really.” He swallows, voice gone quiet. “She deserves to be around other people like her. Still part of the Light. And if I'm on Koboh, you all can keep an eye on me, keep me in the loop on how she's doing. And any rumors of Jedi lurking around here...well. I can do maybe one decent thing, and be a decoy.”

The concept of Bode using himself as a decoy for the Empire is- terrifying, actually, a little whirlwind of horror, and so is- so is the confirmation that Bode really is going to be leaving, that despite it all it might not end up much better than if he’d pulled the trigger a second time on Tanalorr. (He still isn’t carrying the blaster with him. It feels- wrong to put it back on, when he knows what he’d done with it, what he’d nearly done.) But that’s the selfish way of looking at it, of course, seeing Bode’s life only for what it can do for him.

Even after everything, Bode deserves better than that.

He can barely manage to make himself speak, slumping forward, shoulders curling inward. If he looks at Bode, he thinks he might break. The tears are barely under control as it is. “That...that makes sense,” he agrees faintly, nodding. “Staying on Koboh would at least let- Kata see you more often.” It’s not about him, it’s not about him, it’s not about him. “And the locals like you, and need protection anyway. And then you won't have to- answer any awkward questions or admit to having the Force or anything.” With the way Bode’s shields are, he doubts that’s something the man would ever want to do willingly. He’s not a Jedi anymore, he’s made that clear by excluding himself from Cal’s rebuilding, and the way he’d been able to wield Dagan’s bled kyber only lends credence to that.”Though- you might not want to call me part of the light. I did kill almost everyone on Nova Garon.”

That, at least, he doesn’t regret. Even if it bled his saber the rest of the way, even if he stepped off an edge there and let himself fall, it’d been so, so kriffing satisfying, the way they’d all been terrified of him, the way he’d finally felt like he had some semblance of power. And he knows it’s wrong, knows both Cere and Master Tapal would be horrified by it. He still can’t make himself care.

“...I kind of provoked you into that purposefully,” Bode says, low, almost blank, and Cal shakes his head.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “And then I shot you, so.” He knows when he’s made his own mistakes, even if only now that he’s on the other side of them.

Bode’s voice is still steady when he says, “I did tell you that was okay.”

“It wasn’t,” Cal snaps back, without hesitation, something hot and aching almost choking him. He’s already crying, so it can’t be tears, but it feels like the moment he’d realized Bode was dying, really dying, in front of him, tastes like ashes and blood in his mouth. “Don’t you dare say that. I was- I was off my head on the fucking Dark Side because it was easier than admitting I was hurt. It wasn’t okay, none of it was okay, stop saying it was.”

His voice is shaking, with intensity this time, and he finally drags his gaze back to Bode’s shadowed face, because even if he can barely see Bode, if Bode can barely see him, he has to- make it clear, has to make this stop. Even if Bode is leaving, even if everything’s gone wrong, he needs Bode to stop saying it would’ve been okay.

“Cal-” Bode starts, then stops, letting out a long breath and shoving his hand through his hair. “I intentionally sent you into a blind rage so you'd chew up the base and cover my escape, and I got multiple people you cared about hurt or killed in the process- and you came back from it.” His tone changes mid-sentence, from confusion and frustration to something that almost seems like wonder. “...maybe not all the way yet, but you will. And- I know this means nothing, after everything- but I didn't want to hurt you,” he says more seriously, something soft about it, like he truly believes it, like he truly means it, like it’s important to him that Cal knows that. “And I don't want to keep hurting you, so...so that's why I'm not staying.”

Cal can barely hear himself when he breathes, “You’re leaving me alone again.”

It isn’t what he means to say. And he should- say something else, still, should correct himself, because this needs to be about what Bode wants, not about him, but he can’t make himself speak. Everything hurts, easily as badly as his ribs had when they were freshly broken, and it makes it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to do anything but sit still and endure.

He doesn’t want to be alone.

Sure, he has Merrin and Greez and BD, and probably whoever they’ll bring back from the Path (if anyone), and maybe even Kata, but it’s not the same. Those are all people he’s responsible for, in some way or another, not- not Bode. And he might be angry, he might be conflicted, but at least half the agony of it all is how much he still wants Bode.

Bode sounds- confused, again. “Well...yes? Well, no- you have Merrin and Greez and Kata- but- don't you want that? You've- been avoiding me, been avoiding everyone- I thought you'd like it better if I left.” He- reaches out, as he speaks, shields falling to reveal the storm-tossed ocean beneath, and they don’t quite make contact but Cal is seized with the desperate desire to reach out the rest of the way to him, to feel him, to fall into the touch he’s never gotten the chance to feel. Would Bode hold him, if he did? Or would he just brush Cal away?

“I was avoiding you because it'd be easier when you were gone if I didn't see you before you left,” Cal whispers, and the worst part of it is that underneath all the confusion and pain, it’s the truth. “And because it's easier to avoid everyone right now. I'm- tired.”

He wants. He never gets to have.

“...you make it sound like you'd almost...like you'd almost want me to stay,” Bode says, very slowly, and Cal lets his eyes fall closed, surrendering to the exhaustion. The windmill’s side is slowly cooling behind his back, though the air is still warm, enough of a breeze kicking up off the river to mellow the heat of the day.

“I didn’t kill you for a reason, you know,” he says.

Bode is quiet for a long moment, like he doesn’t know what to say to that. “...I assumed that was just mercy. The kind I forgot how to offer years ago.” His shields are still down, leaving him close enough to touch, and there’s a thread of tiredness in his voice that sounds all-too-familiar, resonating deep in Cal’s marrow.

Maybe that’s what makes him not-quite-scoff, dragging his eyes open again. “Mercy?” he asks, shaking his head. “From the person who’s in love with you? Sure.” What harm can it do, to say it out loud now? There’s no way Bode doesn’t know. If he doesn’t feel the same- nothing changes, if he doesn’t feel the same. Maybe nothing will change anyway.

“...you- But I-” Bode falls silent again, mouth working, aura echoing with shock and confusion and sorrow and something that feels, maybe, like hope. Cal wishes he could see Bode’s face properly, just to see the expression on it, just to know what kind of light is in his eyes. “You deserve someone who won’t hurt you like I have.”

“I’m not saying I- forgive you,” Cal says, because he doesn’t, he can’t, he isn’t sure if he ever will be able to. Cere is dead, Cordova is dead, everything they were trying to build is dead, and it’s at least partly because of Bode, cornered-animal choices or not. “Just- if you’re going to leave- it better be because you want to.”

Bode’s breath hitches, and Cal gives into the endless pull like a magnet in his core and stretches out, tangling the very edges of their auras together, shuddering at the intimacy of even the barest touch, little more than equivalent to holding hands. It’s still- so much more than he ever thought he’d have, with Bode. “I never wanted that,” Bode admits, very low, and he sounds like he’s crying again, a raw sincerity in the words that Cal hasn’t heard from him- maybe ever, he thinks, a little bit dimly. It feels like- like a balm, somehow, even if everything is still a twisted-up mess.

“Then- please don’t go,” he says, and he’s aware enough to know he sounds almost like he’s pleading, but he can’t stop it. “I can’t- I can’t lose you too.”

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.

Bode exhales heavily, pressing his aura forward to curl around Cal like a blanket, an echo of the way Cal’s been touching him for months now, water cool and deep and rushing against all his senses, and fuck but it’s so much better than he thought it’d be. Then there’s a rustle of grass, a shift, and Bode moves around him, slides down the windmill wall to sit on the ground next to him, just barely close enough to touch. There’s something like surrender about the gesture, the way Bode’s arm slides off his lap to rest up against Cal’s, the same kind of surrender Cal had asked for, before they fought, even if he wasn’t entirely honest about wanting it. Like they’ve finally found some kind of common ground. “Okay,” Bode agrees in a murmur, his breath catching and pulling like he’s crying again. “I won’t.”

Like some invisible strings holding him upright have suddenly been cut, Cal sways sideways into Bode’s shoulder, closing his eyes and leaning in as close as he possibly can. Bode adjusts his own position, carefully moving to drape an arm around Cal’s shoulders and pull him in, and Cal goes willingly, adjusting until he’s tucked up entirely against Bode’s side, held close in an embrace both physical and not. He shudders at the touch, the gentle security of it - this is what he’s been missing, what he’s been needing since he staggered back in from the desert half-dead and delirious to see Cere’s body and all the destruction - and Bode traces a light pattern over his upper arm, again and again, tilting his head to press his cheek into Cal’s hair. Cal wonders, a little distantly, what Bode thinks of the impromptu awful haircut he’d given himself - it’s such a ridiculous, mundane thing to think about right now that it almost makes him laugh.

His hair. Why would either of them be thinking about his hair right now?

“...I don’t forgive you,” Cal finally says, the words whispered into the crook of Bode’s neck where he’s tucked his face. “Yet - maybe ever, I don’t know. But I do- love you. And I really, really want to build that farm.”

“I don’t want you to forgive me,” Bode says heavily, and the truth of that ripples through his aura where he’s still twined tightly around Cal. Cal burrows deeper into the hold, even though he knows Cere would disapprove and Merrin would look at him askance and tell him to go somewhere private for that. They are somewhere private, after all. “...and I love you too. Even if it sounds like a lie after-”

He cuts himself off, leaves the sentence hanging, but Cal doesn’t need to hear the end of it to know what he means. The emotion in the words is- more than enough anyway. I love you too. Cal never thought- he didn’t think Bode would ever say that to him, especially after the whole mess, and even if some part of it is hard to believe he can’t help but luxuriate in the warmth of the tender certainty bleeding through all the places they’re pressed together in the Force. Bode is totally open to him for the first time ever. It can’t be a lie.

“Then let’s work together to make it sound true again,” Cal says, too-soft, and Bode’s shoulders shudder beneath his cheek as he breathes out something that might be a hysterical little laugh. Cal slides an arm around his back and holds on tight, curling the fingers of his other hand into Bode’s shirt, and Bode turns further towards him, resting his other arm over Cal’s lap, tugging him in until they’re pressed together everywhere it’s possible to touch.

“Okay,” he whispers into Cal’s hair. “I’ll…I’ll try.”

It’s not perfect, it’s not fixed, but it’s- it’s a start, a way forward through all the darkness and the pain, something to hold onto in the ashes of what almost was, and in the end- in the end, isn’t that what’s important? They can figure everything else out as it comes.