Chapter Text
There was something oddly surreal, Cal thought wildly, in the fact he was being hunted for saving Prauf, considering that before he’d done it, he hadn’t known that was something he could do.
A red lightsaber flashed at him and Cal scrambled back, blinking rain from his eyes. He raised his own saber, holding the blade before his torso instinctively.
“Perhaps you've had some training after all,” the black-clad woman hissed. “Who was your master, Padawan? What Jedi gave their life so you could live?”
Cal couldn't help it. He laughed.
“You tell me,” he said.
It was worth it for the undiluted shock in her stance.
Cal landed on Bracca. His memories didn't.
Cal could tell Cere was surprised that he didn’t ask more questions about her mission, but he didn’t even have a framework to know where to start. Cal had questions, lots of them, but most of the ones he wanted to ask are for the same reason that he doesn’t have more pertinent questions for her now. It didn’t help that what control over the Force he had felt frayed from his haphazard escape from the Inquisitor, and the shields he normally used to ignore the constant echoes in the world around him were practically paper-thin.
The Mantis was a well-used ship, with echoes clinging to every surface in a blinding array that made it hard to think. Cal took the excuse to escape to bed as soon as he could, barely able to hold off the call to listen to them with his battered shields. The cot Greez steered him towards was thankfully mostly echo free, just minor murmurs of warmth and comfort lingering on the bedding.
He wasn’t going to be able to hide from the echoes forever though, so when he woke up, Cal walked to the ship’s lounge and picked up the stringed instrument.
If Cal learned anything on Bracca, it's that avoiding echoes just means they'll overwhelm him when he's not expecting it later. Much smarter to embrace one of the simpler echoes he can feel, take the echoes on his own terms. There’re memories of music lingering in the hallikset, and he let them guide his fingers, drawing out an unfamiliar melody. Grief lingers in the instrument, but also pleasure, and soothing tranquility that reminds Cal of meditation.
Not that Cal has ever successfully meditated, at least not in any year he can recollect. But he imagined it felt like this.
Cal let his eyes fall shut and relaxed into echoes that weren’t full of death for once. The echoes he found on Bracca were almost to a fault violent, full of blaring alarms and horrifying ends. Maybe the echoes on this ship will be actually be restful, if they’re all this soothing.
The music drew Cere, and her revelation that she knows what his ability is.
“I was once a Jedi,” Cere told him, and Cal froze, nearly forgetting how to breath.
“Do I know you?” Cal asked. Do you know me?
His hopes were dashed almost instantly when she shook her head. Cal released his crushing disappointment to the Force, staring back down at the instrument as Cere looks at him curiously.
“There were many Jedi in the Order, Cal,” she said slowly, Force presence prickling with confusion against his senses. “It’s possible we crossed paths at one point, but I’m afraid I have no recollection of it if we did. I was a Seeker, so I interacted with dozens of children.”
Her statement is probably meant to be reassuring, but Cal doesn’t even know what all those words mean.
Cal fiddled with the hallikset for a minute longer, avoiding Cere's gaze.
“Look, if you want a Jedi to help you rebuild the order, I'm not a good bet,” he said abruptly.
Cere stilled, cautious. “Cal, I know you would have been quite young when the Purge happened—”
“That's not it.” He ran his hand gently over the strings again, the echoes of other songs vibrating against his fingers, and forced himself to look at her. “I was hurt, bad, when I landed on Bracca.”
Cere's brows fixed together. “Okay...?”
“Whatever led to me landing there, I don't remember it. The injury I had...it blocked anything that occurred before that from my memory.” He waved a hand. “I don't remember my training, my childhood, or well, anything from before that moment.”
Cere inhaled sharply. “Cal.”
“I know,” Cal said wearily. He set the instrument down, and clenched his hands against his pants. “I appreciate the rescue and all, I really, really do, but I'm not sure that I can actually help you.”
Cere stared at him, frozen. “But, when you fought - that was a traditional stance, you have to remember something.”
“Muscle memory?” he suggested. Cal's actually 80% sure all his knowledge of combat came from echoes off his saber, but he's not going to tell her that. Cal sighed. “My memories from before the Purge are just gone, Cere. I get flashes of things, sometimes, but everything else is a whole lot of blank. The medic I saw once called it total retrograde amnesia.”
Cere just kept staring at him in undisguised horror. Cal hated to have to break her illusion, but it would have been worse to let her keep thinking she'd found a competent Jedi.
“I know my name is Cal?” He offered, guilt starting to creep at his throat. “I know I was a Padawan for at least two years before the Purge happened, and I'm pretty sure I'm nineteen.”
He was mostly guessing on his age, but it seemed right. The tiny bits he'd gleaned from the echoes on his lightsaber had indicated his master had trained him for several years, and he was positive padawanships normally started around age twelve for humans. He'd been short enough when he landed on Bracca to seriously doubt he was fifteen yet, but fourteen had seemed plausible enough, all things considered. Maybe he was actually eighteen, and had been thirteen when he landed, but he was sticking with nineteen as his estimated age until someone told him otherwise.
He sighed. “I'll help you as much as I can, of course, but you probably need to find a new Jedi.”
“What's this about needing a new Jedi?” Greez demanded, marching into the longue. He propped his hands on his hips, affronted. “We went through all that damage to my ship to get this one, and he doesn't even have the common decency to help us?”
“Apparently Cal doesn't have any memories,” Cere said, watching him with sad eyes. Cal turned away, unable to handle the naked sorrow in her gaze.
“Doesn't have—well of course he has memories,” Greez squawked. “Everyone has memories.”
“I don't,” Cal said. “As far as my brain’s concerned, everything from before the Purge might as well not have happened.”
Greez harrumphed and threw up his hands. “Great! We finally find a Jedi, and he's a defective one!”
“I woke up in escape pod with a broken wrist, cracked ribs and a head injury,” Cal snapped. He took a deep breath, and tried to remove the irritation from his tone. “The first thing I remember seeing was a dead body on the floor. I can't help you with whatever you need a Jedi for, because I don't remember how to be one.”
“Any Jedi is better than none at all,” Cere said, and took a deep breath. “Cal... We can keep looking if you really think you can't help us, but you're the first I've found in two years of searching.”
Unsaid is that they were lucky to find even him.
Greez left, muttering something about memory loss and the scarcity of Jedi.
Cere stood, but didn't leave. Her hand lingered on his shoulder. “Cal…the body…?”
“He was my master, and that is the only thing I know about him,” he told her. He stared determinedly down, unwilling to meet her gaze. He couldn’t stand to see yet more sympathy over something he couldn't fix.
Cere sighed and squeezed his shoulder, softly and empathetic. He imagined it felt something like when his caretakers had comforted him once, in the childhood he couldn't recall.
“We'll be at Bogano in a few hours,” she murmured. “I'll let you know when we're ready to arrive.”
Cal stayed on the sofa after she departed, clinging to the faint echoes in its cushions like they'd fill his own past.
There was a certain irony to it, Cal recognized, when he was feeling particularly sardonic. The psychometric Jedi, who couldn't remember his own life. Everything he knew about his life before he had gotten off his master's lightsaber, enough to know that he had always been slight and redheaded.
(His master had cherished teaching him, and grieved for his inability to protect his apprentice from battle. Cal could never quite decide if it was a good thing he had no recollection of his time as a child soldier or not.)
Meeting BD felt like meeting a kindred spirit, frankly.
“I don't remember anything either,” Cal offered. The droid chirped from his back, curious, and Cal cracked a smile despite himself. “Yeah, organics can have their memories wiped too, buddy. It's a lot rarer though.” He thought back to that first moment of awakening, the overwhelming agony he'd found himself in. “And way more painful.”
BD chirped again, informing him that that seemed like a rather poor design choice.
Cal laughed. “Yeah, probably.” He eyed the lizards running along the wall. The rare training flashes he’d gotten off his saber had never shown him anything like that, but then he hadn’t known he could slow things down until he saved Prauf either. “Think I could do that?”
BD beeped encouragingly, and Cal rubbed his hands on his vest briefly.
“If this hurts, it was your idea,” Cal told him, and ran towards the wall, BD’s indignant protests ringing in his ear.
Bogano had been more successful than he’d expected, but it had driven home the point that he hadn’t maintained his master’s lightsaber in years. Fighting his way through splox and bog rats had been bad enough. He did not want to face something worse than an oggdo and find himself with a faltering saber.
Cal sat at the kitchen table, polishing one inner lens with a cloth. The lightsaber lay partially deconstructed before him, parts sorted by sequence so he’d remember how to put everything back.
“Don’t let Greez catch you doing saber maintenance at his table,” Cere said in amusement, pouring herself a cup of tea. She raised the kettle towards him inquiringly, and he shook his head.
“Light’s better out here,” he said absently. He slipped the lens back into place and removed the crystal mount to check for signs of wear.
“You know, I can’t imagine your instructors would have encouraged you to make a saber so long,” she said casually, adding sugar to her tea. Cal was still reeling at the plentitude of food available on the Mantis, if he was to be frank. On Bracca, he would have been happy to even find palatable tea, much less sugar to sweeten it with. Cal was especially careful not to voice those thoughts around Greez, as the only time he had alluded to what he’d eaten for the last five years the Latero had nearly had a stroke. “Most padawans’ sabers start small and adjust as they age, to account for increasing hand size.”
“It's not mine,” Cal said bluntly. He fingered the jagged edge, where a blaster bolt had broken the emitter. He was familiar enough from scrapping battle-torn ships on Bracca to recognize the source of damage, even if he didn't remember it occurring.
“Your master's.” Cere took a seat beside him at the table. “Do you remember anything about him?”
“Male, purple skinned and enormously tall,” he said sourly. It was hard to forget the corpse he'd woken up beside. “I'm not even sure what species he was. Other than that, just bits of echoes off of this.” He wriggled the lightsaber.
Cere hummed softly. “There were multiple masters that fit that description. I can think of several that had apprentices near the end of the Purge, though I don't recall meeting any of their padawans personally.” She rubbed her ear and took a sip of tea. “I can look up images of various species that might match, if you'd like. We could see if that triggers something.”
“Might be able to narrow it down at least,” Cal agreed noncommittally. He wished desperately for more answers about the giant hole in his past, but he wasn't sure about the practicability of filling them.
She tilted her head thoughtfully then. “I do recall hearing about an initiate with psychometry though. Never heard a name, but I remember a few masters discussing training measures for them when I dropped younglings off at the creche.” She smiled at him, expression nostalgic. “I guess that was you.”
“I guess so,” Cal said. His stomach lurched. “It's rare, right?”
“Very,” she confirmed, and took another sip of tea. “I know there was a Jedi Knight who had it, but I was never told his name. The only other living Jedi I had ever heard about with the gift was you.”
Great. He's not just a rare surviving amnesiac Jedi, he's a weird one too.
Cere must have guessed his thoughts, because she set her mug down and laid her palm on his hand. “Cal, psychrometry may be a rare gift, but gifts like these are something to be celebrated.”
Right. He has loads more recollections of other people's bad experiences than his own good ones, but sure, his psychometry is something to be celebrated. He should figure out how to give Cere an echo and see what she thinks. “You know like ninety percent of the echoes I get are from really bad things, right? Strong emotions are way more likely to leave an echo, and since the empire formed, most of those are terrible.”
From Cere's expression, she did not know that.
“Cal,” she began, then broke off, staring into her tea. “Ninety percent?” She said at last.
“There's a reason I don't go into your room,” Cal said bluntly. She had asked her to fetch something for her a few days ago and had been a bit nonplussed when he'd refused. Greez just thought Cal was leery about entering a woman's bedroom. “Even nightmares can leave echoes, and I'm sure you have them.”
If whatever happened to Cere was bad enough for her to cut herself off from the Force, Cal does not want to know what echoes might be lingering in there.
“...I appreciate you looking out for my privacy,” Cere said at last, and shook her head. “Is there anything I can do, to help you—”
“Manage it?” Cal completed for her. “Not unless you can track down that other Jedi who had it, or an instruction manual I guess.” He shrugged, and started to reassemble the saber. “I have it as under control as I can, given the circumstances. Usually I can choose whether to engage in the echoes or not. It's only the really bad ones I can't.”
Cere shook her head. “Still.”
Cal sighed. “Look, unless you want to give me some lessons in Jedi fundamentals...”
Her face shut down, and Cal sighed explosively. “That's what I thought.”
He clicked the last piece back into the saber and made to get up from the table, gathering his lightsaber and polishing cloth. Cere's hand clamped at his wrist. “Cal ...”
“It's fine, Cere.” He shook her off, and gathered up his things, before heading back to his bed by the engines for a nap.
He runs off of instinct and Force suggestions the majority of the time anyway, and it seems to be working well enough. Why mess with a good thing?
Cere might not be willing to give him lessons, but she did slip him a data chip, containing videos of Jedi in action during the Clone Wars that Cal’s sure she downloaded from the shadiest part of the holonet. As apologies go, it’s not the most useful; Cal still has no idea how to do any of the things shown, but it is nice to have some idea of what he should be theoretically capable of.
Although, he’s now confused how Masters Kenobi and Skywalker survived as long as they did. Was there ever not something exploding when they were about?
Cal eyed the wall in front of him, crumbling and only holding together enough to definitely be in his way.
“What do you think, bud?”
BD beeped in his ear excitedly. He’d watched the videos too.
“Trust only in the Force.”
Cal breathed, letting the Force flow about him, and shoved.
“I lied, you know,” Cal admitted one night, in route back to Zeffo from Kashyyyk. His ribs ached from fighting the prison droid, fresh bruises like blaster bolts atop his barely healed injuries. Escaping Bracca had not been fun.
From his lap, BD beeped inquiringly.
“Yeah.” Cal took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “I told Cere I don’t remember my master at all, but…I think I remember his last words. He told me to trust only in the Force.”
He let his head fall back, resting against the metal wall. Above him, pipes curled, their metal tinted blue from the engine’s glimmering lights.
“It’s not an echo, not really. I didn’t get it off his saber, like I did everything else I know, but it still feels like an echo, in my head. Maybe because I was holding his saber when it happened? You can’t pick up echoes of yourself, I don’t think, but maybe because I was creating one it stuck in my brain when everything else didn’t.”
Cal blinked back tears, and felt BD nudge his head against his hand gently. Cal smiled a little, and rubbed the droid’s head.
“I know it’s not my fault I got hurt, I know that, but I feel so guilty all the time, bud. My master trusted me to use the Force to keep myself safe, and instead I just forgot how to use it entirely.” Cal slouched further against the wall, his bed beguilingly soft beneath him. “Cere needs a Jedi, and instead she got a former padawan with memory issues.”
Just because Cal had a bad wipe does not mean he’s a bad Jedi, BD informed him tartly. He’s a good droid, and he can access only a little bit of what Cordova left in him.
“That’s different.” But was it though? Cal certainly did well enough on in the Tomb Zeffo, even if BD had to help him get back on course repeatedly. Navigation is apparently not one of Cal’s strong suits.
It’s not, BD insisted, and bounced a little against his leg. Cal pushed those stormtroopers right off the refinery, and he didn’t need a full memory file to do that.
Cal smiled again. “That was pretty cool.”
They sat in silence for a while, content to simply be in the same space. He was glad BD didn’t have to charge often, as the droid was able to linger beside him most nights, only needing to attach to an energy source every three days or so. He rested better with a friend to sleep with, far better than he ever had alone. Cal let the quiet hum of the engine wash over him, the soft vibrations filling every inch of his being like the Force.
“I’m glad we went to Kashyyyk,” Cal murmured tiredly, eyes slipping half-closed. “Even if we didn’t find Tarfful. The Wookiees are free now, and…it’s nice to know that places like Kashyyyk exist in the galaxy. Sometimes on Bracca, it seemed like the only thing that could possibly exist was acres of broken ships and slowly rusting metal.”
BD wriggled out from under Cal’s hands and pattered over to the end of the bed, where an appalled Greez had shoved a striped blanket the first night on Bogano after realizing Cal hadn’t known where to find them. He pawed at the thick wool, whirring gently.
Cal took the hint and pulled it over them both, slipping sideways until his cheek met the pillow. BD wriggled until he was by Cal’s head, and Cal drifted off to the rhythmic sound of BD’s soft whirring.