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The market is hot and crowded, dust kicked up by deal-seekers and sellers alike making his eyes water. He doesn’t care, though; he was just happy to be off the Mantis for a bit and on solid ground.
Space twitchiness, Greez had called it. Even their pilot wasn’t immune. Fresh air and sun was pretty standardly recommended to all sentient beings in the Galaxy, not just humans.
So the air here isn’t totally fresh, and the sun is blazing down on the back of his neck, the latter of which was sure to be bright red later, but still. The market stalls hold an assortment of complete junk and intriguing treasures, the cacophony of bartering echoing around him; Cal tries to listen in for any of the languages he had picked up on Bracca, but it all melts together in a wave of sound. His other senses are similarly assaulted, but not in a bad way – meat sizzles on hot surfaces, sweet delicacies make his mouth water, intensely perfumed oils and pungent smoke from glass pipes clash together, and trinkets in every color imaginable make it hard to concentrate on any one thing.
BD squawks on his shoulder, trying to right his footing after someone slams into Cal’s shoulder as they navigate the tight crowd.
“All right there, bud?” he asks.
BD responds less than favorably. Cal gets it. It’s enjoyable for the moment, but he’s sure the chaos will get old sooner rather than later.
He’s not looking for anything in particular, but he has a few credits to spend if something catches his eye. The rest of the crew are around somewhere, similarly perusing, though he’s sure Cere is monitoring Greez to make sure he doesn’t end up throwing dice in a dark cantina.
He spots a table with an incredibly odd variety of items – jewelry, hand carved figurines, cables, tools, and what looks like metallic scrap. The latter is what interests him. He’s not a hoarder, no matter what Greez says; sometimes it pays to have that kind of stuff on board for quick fixes. And if anyone would know that, it’s Cal.
He’s poking through a few items when he feels Merrin come up behind him.
“Out of everything here, you go right to the junk,” she says, not even trying to keep her voice down. The owner behind the table glares at them, but Merrin is unmoved, taking a bite from the massive hunk of meat on a stick she’s holding.
“Hey, this junk could help keep the Mantis afloat,” he says, inspecting a cracked manifold. “Find anything good?”
She points down at her feet and wiggles them, taking another bite. “Shoes,” she says around a mouthful of meat.
“Nice,” he says. “Wonder if—”
He doesn’t get to finish the thought. Instead, his fingers brush against something, he doesn’t know what, and the moment of knowing what is about to happen hangs infinitesimally in the air, and then he’s under.
Tight quarters and firelight. An ever-pervasive air of reverence and sacredness. The space has existed for an untold number of years beyond their current reckoning. An altar, a dais, a haunting bell-like tone filling the air, a room filled with their history, manuscripts and fragile tomes bound in animal skin, ceremonial pieces worn smooth with age – it’s all they have left. He’ll do anything to not let them find it. He will give his life. Bintuu be blessed, it’s all they have left —
“–al? Are you with me? Cal?”
He blinks, the searing sun blinding him upon his return to the present. He’s on his feet still, so that’s good – with all the chaos of the market, he must not have been able to sense the echo until it was already too late.
He’s about to respond to Merrin that he’s fine, until he sees the look on the merchant’s face, the man’s eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.
“What did you say?” the merchant breathes. Cal can’t tell if he’s upset or awed or something more dangerous.
“Sorry about that,” Cal says, shuffling back as nonchalantly as he can from the stall. “The sun. Sometimes I get overheated. I’ll be back later to uh, buy a few things.” He loops his arm around Merrin’s and steers them away from the stall.
“You saw an echo,” she murmurs once they’re out of earshot, her posture stiff, sensing Cal’s own tension.
“Yes.”
“What did you see?”
Cal shakes his head a little. “Nothing that earth-shattering. Some kind of sacred place. It felt… old. Someone wanted to protect it from being discovered.”
“Hm.”
“What did I say to make him so spooked?”
Merrin hesitates. “I’m not sure,” she responds. “Either I couldn’t hear it exactly, or it was in a language I do not know. Does that happen? Speaking languages you do not know?”
“I don’t know. If it has, no one’s ever told me. But I try to make it a point to not do that in front of strangers.”
Merrin nods as they pass a food stall laden with candies that look like shining gemstones. “I assume you want to leave as soon as possible, just in case? If you want to head back to the ship, I will find Cere and Greez and let them know.”
He feels bad; this was supposed to be a full day outing for all of them, and thanks to something he still can’t get a handle on, they’ll have to cut things short.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Sorry about that, Mer.”
“You will owe me at the next market,” she says, starting towards the other end of the stalls. “Two sticks of meat and a cold ale.”
He briefly smiles to himself as she goes, and then he heads towards the port where the Mantis is parked. They had, of course, paid for the cheaper lot, meaning it was a fair hike to the outer edge of the port.
BD warbles at him.
“Thanks,” he responds. “I’ll keep an eye out too.”
There’s less and less foot traffic the further out they go, but nothing out of the ordinary. It’s always been a necessity for him and Cere and all of them to constantly stay vigilant, but maybe this is overkill. He had been at the stall for five minutes, tops. Maybe he had passed on some kind of incredible wisdom in the guy’s native language, and that was what unnerved him so badly.
He can almost make himself believe something that harmless.
So caught up in his thoughts, he’s a split second too late to discern the difference between a passing transport and the whine of a blaster set to stun. For a moment, it feels like his body has touched a live wire, and then he’s out.
*
He wakes to someone patting his cheek lightly.
“Hello. Hi. Yes. You’re awake! Hello! I am so sorry for your state. I told Cyrso to be as amiable as possible, but he thought you’d get away and went straight to stunning you without even introducing himself first. I should have gone with him, sometimes he panics, but don’t all of us these days? The state of things.”
The man above Cal shakes his head and tsks through his teeth.
“But, my boy, maybe you can help. Oh yes! I think you might. You seem more than capable, certainly with that weapon you had on your belt, but maybe you also know more than your young features betray, hm?”
Cal’s sluggish brain catches up to what the man is saying, and in a panic, he reaches for his lightsaber, but the loop it hangs on is empty. He scrambles backwards away from the man on the threadbare cot he’s been laid out on.
“Oh no, none of that,” the man says, leather-worn face crinkling into what Cal assumes is supposed to be a disarming smile. “You’re safe here, I promise.”
Cal’s head throbs, and he smacks dry lips. “My kidnapper tells me I’m safe and expects me to believe it,” he grits out.
“Well, point of clarification – I did not do any of the kidnapping. That was Cyrso, as I told you.”
“Great. Then who exactly are you, and why am I here?”
The man’s eyes alight, as if Cal had finally asked the question he had been waiting for.
“I am Dolyn, Keeper of the Past. I keep safe that which cannot defend itself. And as I said before, we are hoping you can help us.”
Cal massages one of his temples and sighs. “Who is ‘us’? And help you with what?”
“Hmm, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Let’s hold off on that for a moment, shall we? Instead, I want to ask you a question. How in Bintuu’s name do you know one of our sacred prayers? A prayer that, by my reckoning, hasn’t been heard by outsiders in centuries.”
Cal closes his eyes and mentally unloads a handful of curses he’s picked up over the years. Of course. The one time he has a public slip-up, and it immediately comes back to bite him.
It’s at that moment he realizes BD-1 is nowhere to be seen.
He shoots up, his head giving a particularly nasty thump, scouring the small room for his droid.
“Where’s BD?” he demands. “What did you do with him?”
Dolyn is stronger than he looks, and quick too – he grabs Cal with gnarled fingers and shoves him back onto the cot.
“My boy, we don’t want to restrain you, but we will if we need to. Answer the question, please.”
“Not until you show me that my droid is okay,” Cal snaps.
Dolyn grunts in irritation. “Fine. Kayah, would you please?”
A dark-haired woman steps into the room with a key and uses it on a metal crate across the room from Cal.
“He’s powered down,” she says, gesturing down at BD. “We didn’t hurt him. Thought he’d about hurt us first.”
A surge of pride rushes through Cal, as futile as it is, but just knowing BD gave as good as he got makes him feel a bit better. It immediately dampens when he realizes he has to answer Dolyn’s question.
He doesn’t have to explicitly state that he’s a Jedi. Dolyn had referred to his lightsaber in all but name alone, so it was absurd to hope they hadn’t put two and two together already, but maybe, for now, he can skirt around it.
He shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just get… feelings when I touch certain objects. I also picked up a lot of Galactic history and languages in my travels. So. That’s probably how.”
Dolyn stares down at him, lips pursed and silent. Cal stares back defiantly.
“Hm. Well. If that’s as you say,” Dolyn gestures to Kayah again, who dips out of the room and then is back with some kind of object in her hand. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind testing out your skill on another item?”
Without the distraction of the market, Cal can clearly feel a hum of an echo on the object – a simple, very old-looking writing utensil. He tenses as Dolyn steps close to him.
“Maybe we could discuss–” he tries to say, but Dolyn grabs his hand and shoves the utensil into it.
The small room falls away.
The aching cramp in her hand will simply not desist, but she must keep going, there is still so much to say, so much her people need to hear. The vision was clear, the voice of Bintuu as calm as a breeze on the first day of Greenfrost, telling her to write, to give their voice a purpose, a meaning –
A child gnaws happily on one end of utensil, burbling to itself, until someone takes it out of their hands –
Frustration – words that will not come, exhaustion making his hand heavy, a deadline that has passed. What kind of scholar is he if he cannot even complete the simplest of assignments –
He comes back to the present with a shuddering breath. For a thing so ordinary, it held more memories than he would have expected.
A shadow of foreboding grows in the pit of his stomach.
Dolyn scrutinizes him like something under a microscope. “Interesting, interesting,” he murmurs. “Now, my boy –” he holds up the writing utensil in reverence, “the test here is – I already know this object’s history. You see, as I said, I am a Keeper of the Past.”
He stoops over to look Cal in the eye.
“Have you heard of the Yimos people?”
Cal shakes his head slightly.
“Of course you haven’t. Because nearly three generations ago, we were run off of our home planet by a warring faction that we had coexisted with for centuries before then. We put up a fight as best we could, but we were not a militaristic people. We had to leave almost everything behind, otherwise they would have slaughtered the rest of us who were left. We’ve been nomadic ever since.”
Cal swallows down the grit in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“What little we did take with us included some of our most precious artifacts,” he continues, pacing in front of Cal. “Pieces of our history that we hold as dearly as a mother would a child. These artifacts – they bring hope to my people. They remind us that we had a place in this Galaxy, once, and that even if we don’t have a permanent home anymore, we still belong here.” Dolyn’s fist clenches tight as he stops and turns towards Cal again.
“The problem is, as the years have slipped away, so too has much of the knowledge of our past. I myself and my predecessors before me have tried our best to keep meticulous records, but between our constant moving and the cruelty of time, some of this history has been lost. And being the Keeper that I am, I would do anything to have that knowledge back. So.” He leans in close to Cal, trapping him in on either side with his arms against the wall.
“Tell me what you know.”
*
Cal does.
The writing utensil is easy enough. There would be other tests, Dolyn had said. If Cal lied or fabricated an answer about an object Dolyn already knew the history of, there would be consequences. To him or BD, Cal didn’t want to know, nor did he want to find out.
They start with smaller objects – not necessarily in stature, but in importance. Some objects only hold a fleeting memory; some, none at all. Dolyn and Kayah bring in the objects and allow him to pick them up himself instead of forcing it on him, which he considers a small mercy.
They were a people group like any other, he sees. At least, in their day to day. Some objects are tied to such intense feelings of fervor to their deity that his heart races and his stomach is in knots when the echo is through.
He repeats back the details of the echoes as best he can to Dolyn, who scribes everything down meticulously and inundates Cal with question after question, wanting to know every aspect, every facet, every single minute detail, no matter how big or how small. Cal talks until he is hoarse, until the pounding of his head drowns out the rasp of his voice.
In between recovering from the echoes and the seemingly-never ending interrogation, he hopes Cere and Greez and Merrin are close to finding him.
He has no idea how long he’s been in this room. No idea how many objects he’s touched and how many past lives he’s witnessed and emotions he’s felt. He feels… stretched. It becomes more and more difficult to concentrate on any one thing. Dolyn oftentimes has to repeat his questions, and each time he does, it seems as if the fuse to his temper gets shorter and shorter.
Cal wasn’t able to stomach the last meal that was offered to him despite knowing he should eat something. But he can’t. Not when the Force is everywhere. He doesn’t know when it started, but it’s almost as if he can feel… everything. Or, if not everything, pretty damn close to everything. It’s as if his skin has been rubbed raw, every touch, every sensation a network of time and memories and intense emotions that flare a brilliant, blinding white and then recede to a dim glow. He sees the history of the cot beneath him with every shift he makes – the sick, the dying, the troubled, the rarely happy. Sometimes a mote of dust landing on his bare skin jolts through him like an electric shock, a whole scene played out and gone before it's barely begun.
At some indeterminate point, he wakes, slumped over on the starchy, frayed sheets, no memory of having fallen asleep. Dolyn and Kayah are nowhere to be seen. But —
He blinks.
He’s in the same room, but he’s also not. It is both cavernous and cramped all at once, like one holo projected onto another. The room is filled with warm bodies all facing an altar, a dais, a haunting, bell-like tone filling the air. The people chant in a language Cal doesn’t understand.
Except that’s not true.
The language pierces through him, the same kind of double exposure, now audible, making his head ache, revealing their words to be a prayer to their deity. Not for the first time, their fervency makes him gasp, and he clutches at his chest, the feeling almost too much to handle.
The scene suddenly melts away, and he’s front and center to a hushed conversation between three older Yimos people, gold spiraling bracelets on their arms glinting in the firelight.
“If we retaliate, their retribution will be swift and even more deadly,” he hears.
“If we don’t retaliate, they will just come for our people again and again. I won’t stand for it.”
“They only came for us because of the incident at the dock – ”
“No.” The second voice cuts in angrily. “If those barbarians hadn’t turned away our message and acted so disparagingly against Bintuu – may he be praised – we would not be in this situation. They’ve shown they have no honor and no desire to better themselves. We must continue to fight back against this blasphemy before it infects anyone else.”
A brief silence. Cal feels the air saturated with a desperate tension.
“We have the weapons at the ready. We can be in and out before anyone knows. Ulyona assures he can make the destruction look like an accident.”
“Eryl, listen to yourself! It took only minutes for them to take down the defense of our strongest. This is not a fight we can win. We must retreat.”
“Retreat where? This is our home! How dare you suggest we give over to these wretched –”
A figure suddenly skids into the room, sweating and eyes wide.
“Fire! On the west end of town! They’re coming!”
So caught up in the moment, Cal is taken aback when the scene dissolves again, and he finds himself once more on the cot.
Except –
A young girl sits next to him on the cot, watching him.
Her face is slack, and her eyes are tired, far more than they should be for someone so young.
“I don’t want to go,” she says, her voice hollow.
“I don’t either,” Cal hears himself saying. “But we’ll figure it out. Okay, sweetheart? We’ll figure it out. You have all your things? We’ll be taking off shortly. Just sit tight.”
The girl’s sadness and fear of the unknown is a crushing weight on his chest. It’s too much. He doesn’t know what kind of cycle he’s stuck in, how this started happening, but he feels as if he’s unraveling, as if he’s too connected.
As if he doesn’t concentrate on himself, on who Cal is, he might lose himself in the maelstrom of the past.
He squeezes his eyes shut tight and focuses. Pictures the room he's been kept in for Force-knows how long. Conjures the damp, musty smell, sees his own scarred, calloused hands, feels the growling of his stomach, and pulls tighter on the weave of the Force around him, the very essence of his being.
He comes back to himself with a jolt, and with Dolyn’s hands on his shoulders, supporting his weight.
“Are you back with us, my boy?” Dolyn asks, moving one hand to cup Cal’s chin. “Now, that was something else! You spoke, some of our old words, words that I have not heard in over half my life. Tell me immediately, I must know what you saw!”
His head lolls as he weakly shakes off Dolyn’s grip. A fire begins to burn in his belly.
“Was your own people’s fault,” he slurs out. “Your ancestors – they’re the reason you have no home.”
Dolyn gapes at him for a moment, clearly not expecting that answer. “What in all the bright suns are you talking about?” he finally says. “If you’ve decided to start lying to me now, know that you’ll pay for it, heavily.”
“Three people,” Cal pushes forward. “Wearing gold armbands. One was named Eryl. They started the fight with your so-called warring faction. He called them barbarians for not worshiping your deity.”
Dolyn’s jaw works, his white brows furrowed low. “Some of our texts,” he starts weakly. “They say – Eryl was quick to anger. But he was a devout man! He would never – ”
Cal sees the moment when his indignation overtakes his doubt.
“You lie,” Dolyn spits out. “What did you see? Tell me the truth!”
“What reason would I have to start lying now?” Cal shoots back. “I’m sorry that your peoples’ past isn’t as clean as you want it to be. Believe me, I understand more than you might know.”
“You understand nothing!” Dolyn’s hand shoots out in some wild approximation of a punch or a slap, Cal isn’t quite sure, but he blocks it before it lands.
He makes a split second mental calculation and decides it’s time.
Cal pushes Dolyn away, making Dolyn stumble backwards. Before Cal can fully stand, Dolyn has a blaster pulled on him.
“Dolyn,” Cal says calmly. “I’m leaving.”
They stand at an impasse for several long moments. Dolyn’s hand shakes, the sound of his labored breathing filling the room.
And then his hand falls as if his strength suddenly leaves him.
“Go,” he says, and Cal can feel the bitterness and resentment aimed at him. “And know that the loss of the history of our people in the Galaxy is on your hands.”
Cal doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing.
With what little strength he has left, he gathers the Force and rips off the lock of the box where BD is being kept. Echoes ripple along BD’s frame, many of them from Cal’s own past, but he strains against them, putting all his effort into not succumbing. What would happen if he did? Would he just be stuck in some kind of feedback loop of his own memories? He’d rather not find out.
His saber sits in the box as well, and he almost reaches for it, but thinks better of it.
Dolyn is gone when he turns around. He doesn’t see Kayah either. He wants to lean against the wall for a moment to catch his breath as he reactivates BD-1, but settles for kneeling on the hard floor.
BD squeals to life, frantically calling for Cal. After a split second of processing time, his little droid demands to know what happened, if Cal was all right, and who dared shut him off without Cal’s permission.
“Yeah,” Cal sighs. “I’ll tell you all about it. Can you hail the Mantis?”
He asks BD to grab his saber before they depart, to which BD enthusiastically agrees. Making his way out, he finds he was being kept in some kind of decrepit, abandoned building, though fortunately for him, the exit signs are still clearly marked.
He touches nothing.
The sun is again brilliantly blinding when he stumbles outside. And he can finally breathe. He stuffs down the lingering guilt and forces himself to put one foot in front of the other.
It works, until it doesn’t. A leg gives out beneath him before he realizes it, and BD whistles in alarm.
As his vision tunnels, he wonders how long he’ll be able to keep the multitude of echoes on the Mantis at bay.
*
– there’s no one else it could be. Of course. Of course Trilla would be tied up in all this, of course she’d be after Cal. They need to find a way to get him off that train and off Bracca now –
– can’t believe that two-timing swindler! Said he sold me gorma root, and this is most definitely NOT gorma root. Now I’m out fifty credits and dinner –
Maybe this was too much too soon for him –
– never seen anything like it before. Maybe I can do this. They accepted me so quickly, even the grumpy, four-armed one. Maybe I can let this guide me to the path of healing –
– he’s not BREATHING –
There is no barrier between the past and the present. He thinks, now, here, he is on the floor of the Mantis, but it’s hard to say when different scenes and overwhelming emotions force their way into his consciousness, whether his eyes are open or closed. He thinks he groans, thinks he hears Cere, but maybe that happened last week or last year, or maybe it never happened at all, and he’s still stuck on Bracca waiting for his alarm to go off to start his next shift.
“–not sure if we should touch him?” he hears a voice say.
“It’s complicated,” someone else responds. “Let me try something.”
“It always is with you guys,” the first voice mutters.
But then he feels… something. Like a call he can’t ignore, insistent and demanding every ounce of his attention. It feels somehow both dangerous and comforting, like a roaring bonfire on a cold night. He follows, because he has no other choice.
He opens his eyes and stares up at Cere, Greez, Merrin, and BD-1. His crew.
“Cal?” Cere asks. In her hand is something. He squints and sees the blurry shape of his lightsaber.
His heart jumps in his throat as he feels himself back in that room, Dolyn with an object in his hand, ready to force it on Cal. He pushes back, trying to scoot away from it, not caring that it’s his.
“‘M not touching that,” he tries to say. “Don’t–don’t get it near me.”
His eyes follow the saber as Cere slowly sets it down behind her, finally out of his sight.
“You’re safe,” Cere says gently. “BD told us as much as he could. I can try to disrupt your sensitivity through shielding and helping you fall into a deep state of unconsciousness. Do you want to give it a try?”
He can feel himself slipping under again, pulled in by present emotions and the history of the ship. So, so, so much history. So tangled and interwoven. Everything that they’ve shared together so far, Cere's desperation after the Purge, Greez’s loneliness before he met Cere, all the way down to the pain of an electric shock some nameless figure received when installing the aft control panel.
“Please,” he rasps out.
Cere’s hand touches his forehead, feather-light, and for a moment the influx of her emotions – fear-concern-admiration-regret-love – is so overwhelming and all encompassing that he arches, heels digging into the floor, needing it to stop stop STOP —
And then, mercifully, it does.
*
It’s quiet when he wakes.
He’s in his bed in the engine room with no memory of having gotten there. Seems to be a recurring theme in his life, but this time he especially doesn’t care because it’s quiet.
The ship is running its night time cycle, so he makes his way just as silently to the ‘fresher and takes his time cleaning up. With the absence of the mental cacophony and washing off the grime of the last few days (weeks? he has no idea), he somehow feels both completely wrung out and like a brand new person, as if his old self had been forcibly scooped out, remolded with rough hands, and then unceremoniously shoved back into his body.
His stomach growls as he finishes up, so he heads to the galley. Seeing Cere sitting in the dark, only lit by the glow of her datapad, doesn’t surprise him in the least.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, setting the datapad down to give him her full attention.
He shrugs. “Been better, but definitely been worse. How long…?”
“Six standard days. We had been searching a nearby cave system when we got BD’s ping. Merrin had suggested we scout out the abandoned facility where we found you, but I recommended we go to the caves instead.” She taps a finger on the table absently. “Obviously picked the wrong choice.”
Cal shakes his head. “You had no way of knowing. And also I… I didn’t make much of an effort to escape anyway. I think I could have. I just….”
Cere says nothing, but her expression shows silent encouragement.
“In some weird way, I felt like I was helping. It sounds ridiculous to say it out loud. But they… their people were run off their own planet, and they lost most of their history. If I could help them get back even a portion of that, despite how they treated me… I don’t know. I felt obligated.”
Cere nods, contemplating for a moment. “Why did you personally, Cal Kestis, feel obligated?” she finally asks.
“Well – because of what I can do. Because I can see the past in ways others can’t.”
“And that means you sacrifice your own well-being to provide that service?”
“Yeah. Maybe. If I don’t, and keep it to myself and not help others, what kind of Jedi does that make me?”
“A Jedi who won’t be alive long enough to actually provide help to others?”
Cal can’t help the noise of dismissiveness. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Wasn’t it?” She leans forward a little. “Cal, we know so little about your psychometry. How do you even know what your limits are?”
He can’t lie, not even to himself – it was a thought he’d had while stuck in that room. What if he pushed too far and never came back to himself? What if his mind – physical or mental – became irreparably damaged because he couldn’t control it?
“Okay,” he breathes out, giving in. “You’re right. I need to train more. Somehow.” He smiles a little at her. “Guess you’ve volunteered yourself to help me out with that.”
“I guess I have,” she says wryly. “In the meantime — maybe keep your hands to yourself when we’re out and about.”
“No promises. But I’ll try.”
Cere hums. “That’s all I ask.”
Satisfied for now, he reaches for the conservator. A whisper of an echo stretches to meet his fingers – comfort and familiarity, intertwined with a fragile, tentative hope.