Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

While his knees didn’t protest the climb as much as they could have, they protested all the same.

“Hey, there it is! Come on grandpa!” 

“I am not-” Obi-Wan cut himself off with an exhausted sigh; that alias was going to haunt him for the remainder of this trip. “Stop running ahead Leia! This planet is unknown and therefore dangerous. And I am not-”

Not what? That old? Being paranoid? Stressed and exhausted beyond belief with this entire affair and bitterly wishing that at least one Skywalker child would just listen to me the first time?

He’d raised a teenage Anakin, this really shouldn’t be that hard. 

But Obi-Wan was tired. His connection to the force was coming back in fits and starts and it left him jittery and off-kilter. He just needed some time to meditate and reflect - or maybe just some regular sleep - and unravel the fraying, tangled mess of his emotions. 

Of course, the galaxy wouldn’t give him that. 

With a dismayed grunt of effort, Obi-Wan followed the scattered pebbles and oxidised dust left in Leia’s wake to the crest of the ridge beside her. A sleepy little outpost of fading buildings spread out below the ridge line. A shallow, clear river curved around one edge of the town while jutting cliff faces and outcroppings funnelled into narrow gorges and trails. Short trees and scraggly shrubbery dotted the town’s outskirts before giving way to the dusty roads. 

While he’d never want to spend time in imperial company, he’d wished the  transport they had managed to hitchhike on was able to drop them off closer. The short descent into town looked steep. 

“I thought it’d be… bigger.” Leia had the kind of unimpressed pinch in her expression that showed she was holding back a more judgemental comment. “Well, it beats a smugglers closet!” she declared with a chirp of affirmation from her personal droid. 

“Quite.” At least they wouldn’t be in town for long.

While Obi-Wan analysed the dusty town ahead, Leia was looking around the ridge for a way forward and seemed to decide that a direct slide down was the best. His stomach swooped at the concerned trill of her droid as Leia tumbled and slid down the rocky slope with a yelp. She landed in a heap at the bottom, orange dust and small bits of shale clinging to the back of her coat. Obi-Wan clenched his jaw as he slid after her, bending his knees and barely staying on his feet himself.

He stumbled to a stop beside the grouchy princess, reaching out to help her, “Leia! What did I just say about running ahead?” 

“Nothing new or interesting.” She sniped back, swatting his hands away and standing on her own. 

Obi-Wan sputtered- Skywalkers. 

“I’m fine anyway. There’s no point waiting around when we’re going to go in either way. So let’s just go.” Leia primly dusted herself off and marched ahead. At least the only thing that seemed injured was her pride. 

Obi-Wan had to admit that she had a point. So, with a begrudging sigh, he followed her to Ramblers Reach. 

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure what to think.

The impressions he’d received from a surly prospector and an energetic frog were conflicting but at least their directions aligned, and led him to the battered but still newer than most facade of Pyloon’s Saloon. 

According to the prospector, it was trying to do too much too fast. It was full of loud, kitschy music from a wannabe core-worlds mixer with a nosy droid as the barman and mediocre food. According to the frog it was a legend in the making. Pyloon's Saloon was a place inhabited by ‘real hero types’ that stood up against raiders and rescued relics from ancient ruins. 

If Pyloon’s wasn’t the only cantina in town, Obi-Wan would have turned on his heel and taken Leia with him when he saw the security scanner. 

He honestly hadn't expected something in a town this small to have a security system at all. The fact that they wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter if a local system recorded his face calmed some of his anxiety. Still, Obi-Wan bristled under the slow extension of the arm and tried not to glare at its red eye as the seconds ticked by. Leia propped up on her tip-toes and impatiently craned her neck to meet the scanner. A hiss of hydraulics broke Leia's impatient tapping against the porucete flooring as the door hissed open and a soft synthesised beat flowed out of the of the cantina ahead. 

A set of stairs led away to the right side of the island bar as it curved around the long room. A large, but simplistic tank that was teeming with colourful life was set behind the bar instead of a wall to separate the kitchen. Colourful banners and trinkets were draped over the rafters connecting the balcony of the upper floor to the outer wall between dangling cables and light fixtures. Booths were set into the wall immediately to Obi-Wan's left, and he ushered Leia into closest one before she had the opportunity to explore. 

“Do not go anywhere, do not touch anything and do not talk to anyone.” Obi-Wan dropped his voice, “Please, Leia. I need to find the contact so we can get you home.” 

“But I can help! I’ll check upstairs and if something happens LOLA can get you.” she fidgeted indignantly as Obi-Wan shuffled her along the squeaky orange seats. 

“Absolutely not.” 

“But-!” 

“No. Stay here, I’ll be back soon.” 

Leia dramatically threw her hands up and groaned. 

Obi-Wan softened a fraction at the baleful pout Leia levelled his way. “I will be back soon with something to eat. Please be here.” The small ‘fine’ Leia grumbled out followed Obi-Wan as he turned and headed to the bar.

Obi-Wan rapped his knuckles against the counter and leant against it while he waited. “Be right with you traveller, right with you!” Called the droid as it swivelled away from the chiss man seated at the far end. A rich, spiced scent and the sounds of sizzling meat wafted from the kitchens along with snippets of conversation. The cantina sang with the  warmth and peace of a home. Not his, but a home nonetheless. 

“Why hello hello there traveller what brings you to Pyloon’s Saloon this sunny afternoon?” The droid, M-6NK from the number engraved across its chassis, turned its optic to look over Obi-Wan. Warm lighting caught on the torrents of carbonated bubbles floating through honey-toned liquid in its cranial tank. The droid raised a dispenser arm to wave at something behind Obi-Wan, “If there’s anything I can get for you or the little lady don’t be afraid to give old Monk a holler.” 

Karking fuck and dammit Leia. 

Obi-Wan resisted the urge to turn and check on her to make sure she was still there, or to glare at her to stop drawing attention. “That depends on what I can smell cooking - it’s available to patrons, I hope?” 

“Of course it is traveller! Lunchtime special of the day, sizzling Rawka with toasted cactus ball seeds. Grown, hunted and cooked by Koboh locals.” Monk explained with pride, “Think I can put in two orders?” 

“Certainly. Thank you Monk.” Obi-Wan meant it; whatever that was smelled and sounded incredible. 

“Anytime traveller. Unless there’s anything else I can do for you, I’ll head back and get those meals!” 

As the droid turned to leave, Obi-Wan debated calling them back. Even with his damaged connection, Obi-Wan could sense the peace and safety that seemed to be anchored into the Saloon's foundations. It hadn't started out that way, but many people from different places had come together to make this place their home. 

He wanted to trust it so badly it ached. But it wouldn't last. It wasn't worth the gamble. 

"Only directions to a refresher, if there is one." He called with just enough faux cheer to toe the line of politeness and travel-wrought weariness. 

"Of course! Head to your right traveller. I'll keep an eye on the little lady if you need." Monk stalled their exit to gesture their directions. 

"Oh, I won't be long at all. But thank you." Obi-Wan replied with the last dregs of his weary cheerfulness. He shot Leia his best stern 'stay put' look as he headed for the refresher. He was pleased that the years of experience he'd gained from raising Anakin hadn't completely left him as Leia replied with an eye-roll and mock salute. At least she would follow instructions. 

Chapter Text

As Obi-Wan waited for the holo call to connect, he was bitterly reminded of the irony of his situation. What did it say about his life that he was conducting a clandestine holo call from a dubiously clean refresher stall in a remote cantina on an outer rim planet? After checking the room for audio and visual surveillance and finding nothing, Obi-Wan had jammed the main door shut and locked himself in the furthest stall. He was relieved to find nothing more concerning than a lump of grime covered teal mineral in one of the stalls. He tried not to think too hard about how it had gotten into the drain. 

If his memory served correctly, Koboh was relatively close to Tattooine. He’d be able to call Bail, find the contact, and have both himself and Leia back where they needed to be soon. 

The call connected with a warble of static and a grainy image of Bail Organa flickered into life. 

“Obi-Wan, I picked up as soon as I could. Did you find Leia? Is she safe? Are you?” The senators voice was distorted under the poor connection, but he watched Obi-Wan with worry etched across every pixel of the small image. 

“Yes, Bail, she’s alright. We’re both alright. Leia will be home with you soon.”

“Thank the stars for you both.” Bail’s relief released a breath Obi-Wan hadn’t noticed he was holding. It would be okay. This would be over soon, and they would be okay. 

“We’ve managed to contact-” 

”Wait, Obi-Wan,” Bail’s image flickered as he held a hand up, “There have been some… complications here in the core. It’s not safe on Alderaan for Leia - or for me really - but at least that part of our situation is old news.” Bail said with a rueful shake of his head, “key personalities in the Imperial command are visiting Alderaan, and I don’t know what kind of 'intelligence-gathering techniques' they have or what they might be bringing with them.” 

The phrasing seemed intentionally careful; so Obi-Wan matched it, ”Surely the Empire’s ‘intelligence gathering techniques’ are not omniscient?” 

“I wish I could know for certain. The whispers I have heard say the Inquisitorus is hunting and their skills are unfortunately unique.” Bail’s words dropped a cold stone of dread into the pit of his stomach. From the grim look across the small holo, it was a shared feeling. 

“I’m sorry old friend, but I need your help a little longer.” 

Obi-Wan's voice was strained. A poisonous mix of fear and insecurity clawed at his mind like a parasite. "You know I am not the fighter I used to be. I cannot protect her."

"You are the only one who can protect her." Bail affirmed with what was meant to be empathetic smile, but distorted across the low-quality holo into more of a grimace. "I need you to keep a low profile with her for a little longer." 

"Bail, I need to-" 

Bail's expression flickered, "Please, Obi-Wan. You're her only hope." 

"...Alright. I will keep her safe." 

"Thank you old friend." Bail's relief and gratitude thawed some of the icy dread in Obi-Wan's chest, "I will contact you when Alderaan is safe for Leia to return to, until then it's best you do not contact me. May the Force be with you both." 

"And with you." Obi-Wan sighed and cut the call. He absently flushed the lavatory unit behind him and left the stall. Obi-Wan washed his hands and let the faucet run while he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. The cool sting of the water helped wake him up and banish some of his exhaustion. Obi-Wan scrubbed his palms down his face to check his reflection in the the grime-streaked mirror. The greying hair at his temples and in his beard stood starker in the mirror's darkened surface. New lines of stress, age and weariness had been carved into his face from working under  Tattooine’s suns and his usually auburn hair had been bleached to a dirty strawberry-blond.

Obi-Wan wouldn't recognise himself as a great war hero and Jedi general either. 

“LOLA! What did you see upstairs?” Leia perked up from where she’d been resting her chin on the table and moodily picking at the siding as the companion droid hovered down the staircase.

She groaned in frustration at the chipper string of beeps and whirrs from her friend. A Holotactics Table? An entire floor-to-ceiling aquarium? An antique and equally eccentric protocol droid? How was she supposed to just sit here and wait - this wasn’t fair! 

Leia returned to sullenly resting her cheek on the table, “What’s taking him so long?” She grumbled and LOLA buzzed a cheerful but unnecessarily informative reply. “Eww, LOLA! I know what happens in a refresher, adults just take forever to do it.”

Her friend chirped in commiseration.

Two ceramic bowls of a rich and aromatic meal had been placed on the bar’s counter. Leia caught the optic of the droid manning it and they waved to her, gesturing to the portions with one of their manipulator arms. 

Going up to the bar and having some basic manners didn’t count as leaving - right? 

The grumble of her stomach made her decision as Leia murmured a quick ‘come on!’ To her friend and slipped out of the booth. Leia hoisted herself up onto the bar stool with a small noise and was glad to notice the droid didn’t seem to be laughing at her for it. 

“Thank you for the food, Mister… M-6NK.” She clipped her accent on purpose to hit the polite core notes her mom used.

”Of course little lady! You and your father seem like you need it, with all that travelling.” The light in the droids optic flickered as if assessing her as they busied their manipulator arms with cleaning some glassware. 

Leia wrinkled her nose, core worlds politeness evaporating, “Eww, grandfather more like. My dad’s way more fun.” 

“Well I bet!” The droid laughed, “but still little lady, don’t give your grandpa too hard a time. I’m sure he’s doing the best he can.” 

Leia frowned at her food in thought. He probably was, but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy his panicky, tired overprotectiveness and no-fun approach. She blinked and decided to change the subject. “My names Leia, by the way! And this is my friend LOLA. What’s your name?”

”It’s my pleasure to meet you Leia, I go by Monk ‘round these parts and you won’t find a better bartender or cantina from here to Corellia.” He spoke with pride. 

Taking a tentative bite of her food, Leia could believe that. The cantina’s doors hissed open as she tucked into the meal. Monk had moved off, the new arrival taking his attention.

”Welcome back Mosey, your hunt finish up so soon?” 

“Howdy to you too Monk! Not really - had to cut it short when I found this pack of gorgers menacing some of my stock. I’m keepin’ their pelts, but,” there was the sound of something clinking and knocking together as it was hefted, “I reckon you and Greez could whip up a little something with the fillets.”

“We certainly can! Old Greezy’s in the kitchen now, so take those round the back and I’ll have your usual waiting.” 

The woman smiled widely “Pleasure trading with y’all, Monk.” 

Leia turned to watch her leave, her high ponytail and the rack of skinned creatures swaying with her steps. She returned quickly and settled into leaning against the bar beside Leia. 

“Hey there little miss,” she smiled kindly at her, “Name’s Mosey Cimarron, real nice to meet ya. You found Ramblers Reach on your own or had someone to bring you here? Koboh can be pretty dangerous even with the raiders gone quiet.” 

“I’m Leia and this is LOLA,” her droid chirped in greeting, “My grandpa and I are just passing through. We’re visiting a family-friends farm.” Belatedly, Leia realised that the lie might not work so well on locals.

Leia took another bite of her meal to try and jostle loose another story or figure out how to subtly change the subject while Mosey nodded. She smiled in thanks as Monk slid an electric-blue drink fizzing with small bubbles across the bar to her. The woman brightened with another cheerful smile, “You don’t say! If you need a hand making it to your folks, could always give you a ride and a guide.” 

She was about to respond when a stressed and tired old man did for her. 

“That won’t be necessary, but we truly appreciate the offer Miss Cimarron.” 

The woman turned to greet Ben with another bright smile. “Offer’s there all same to ya.” She stuck out a hand to shake and after a moment of hesitation, Ben took it.

“Miss Cimarron-”  

“Please, just Mosey’s fine.”

”Mosey, then, you wouldn’t happen to know anywhere with room and board for travellers, or a spare room we can borrow?” Ben shook his head and shrugged helplessly, “it seems our plans have gone a little astray.” 

Leia stared at him with wide eyes as he spoke. They were staying? For how long? What happened? The only reason they’d stay longer would be if something happened to their ‘contact’ or it wasn’t safe to go home. It made her chest twist with anxiety; were her parents okay? 

“Course I do. Tell y’all what, you and your granddaughter finish off mid-meal before it gets cold then I’ll take ya to talk to Doma. I think she just finished clearing out her spare room, and you won’t find a kinder landlady this side of Kessel.” She leant against the bar with a relaxed gesture towards Ben and the second plate of food. 

He sat with a tired smile, “That would be perfect, thank you.” 

Leia picked at her food as the adults continued to chat. Most of her appetite had been sated and whatever was left sat uncomfortably beside the bundle of nerves in her stomach. Ben was way too skittish to look for a place to stay unless they’d be here for a while. The thought sent a flutter of excitement and anxiety through her brain. 

She’d never been off Alderaan, and definitely never somewhere as rustic as this. This would be an adventure! Maybe she’d even make some friends she could keep in contact with after getting home. The idea of a Holo-Pal was exciting! But also, they wouldn’t be staying unless something was wrong, and until Leia knew what that thing was, she was determined not to get distracted. 

Chapter Text

The prospector he’d spoken to earlier was wrong; the food here was incredible. Having something solid in his stomach helped thaw away some of the frigid dread gnawing at Obi-Wan’s psyche.

Mosey was continuing to speak to him, asking where they were from and if they had any plans for their visit. Locked into Leia’s lie of visiting family-friends, Obi-Wan explained that they were from Tattooine and looking to set up someplace a little more hospitable and hoping to visit some friends of the family on their local farm to help get started. The woman had laughed in a bright yet practical tease, and promised that Koboh was far easier to make a living on; dangerous fauna, raiders, ancient technology and imperial patrols aside. Obi-Wan finished off his portion, paid for their meals and suggested that the trio leave to visit this 'Doma' before Mosey could ask too may detailed questions about what kind of farmers their 'family friends' were or what Obi-Wan did himself. 

He didn't need the force to sense the sharp instincts their new guide had honed. Mosey appeared to be human, or near-human enough she was visually indistinguishable, with dark hair and skin tanned and nicked in a thousand small places from a life spent outdoors. She was fit and limber, with well-toned muscle in her arms and back that her sleeveless shirt contoured nicely. From how the woman held herself, Obi-Wan could tell the large vibroaxe resting against her leg under the bar was not for show. 

He kept Leia close as Mosey gestured out of the cantina across a dusty street. 

A low building with a slightly chipping sign reading ‘Dendra’s Antiquities’ crouched ahead. The lettering had been redone recently and clean off-white lines cut through the deep teal background. 

“Doma’s shop is right there, if y’all couldn’t tell Ramblers Reach is a pretty cozy spot. Head through to her counter in the back and mention I sent you folks her way.” The woman stepped out into the street and hefted her axe by its shoulder strap, “Folks round here are good at helping each other these days, she’ll set you two up nice.”

“Thank you Mosey.” Obi-Wan smiled tiredly.

”No trouble at all!” She grinned in return, “Be seein’ y’all round, especially if you change your mind and need a guide to get to your folks.” 

“We’ll keep it in mind. It’s been a pleasure meeting you, please take care.” Obi-Wan was a little surprised in himself to find he’d meant it. He used to love people, but the joy of socialising and exhilaration of a verbal spar had burnt away like the last embers of the Republic that awful day on Mustafar.

Obi-Wan was relieved to find he hadn’t completely lost the ability to like strangers. 

“And to you too, travellers.” She waved and started off down a path, whistling sharply as she neared the end of the road. 

He fell into Leia’s shorter step as they started towards Dendra’s Antiquities, until Obi-Wan’s attention snagged on the cuboid structure beside it. 

A waxy, canvas sheet partially covered the familiar geometric inlays of bright chrome against the tarnished brass background. He would have stopped walking in the street had Leia not accidentally kicked his heel when he stalled. What had the Order built on Koboh? Why? When? Was the Order's presence why he wanted to trust this place? With a sharp inhale, Obi-Wan filed his flurry of questions away for later. As they would be staying at Ramblers Reach for some time, finding answers could wait.

The warm, dusty haze of Koboh faded as they crossed the threshold into the shop. An array of general and specialised tools were displayed on racks above a sturdy work bench in one corner. Leia's droid flitted to perch among the demonstration scraps of half-soldered metal and wiring with an inquisitive chirp. Small tags of flimsi with arubesh scribbles across them were attached to each tool on the wall, presumably marking the item for sale and providing its price. Semi-unpacked crates lined the walls and gradually climbed into a series of shelf units carrying all manner of interesting trinkets for sale. 

“Welcome to Dendra’s Antiquities, what can I get for ya today?” An almost matronly voice called out from behind a corner of shelving units. 

Obi-Wan and Leia rounded the corner, coming to face the waluna woman standing behind a wooden counter. The beaded strands wrapped around her lek and dangling from her visor clinked together as she shuffled around with indistinct items. The holo-puck against one side of the counter seemed out of place across from the vintage register unit. Leia looked at both curiously, and shushed the inquisitive beep of her droid as the little thing flitted back to her shoulder. 

"Recommendations of a place to stay, if its not too much trouble Madame Dendra." A stronger hint of Obi-Wan's core worlds accent snuck in as he spoke, "My grand-daughter and I passing through this outpost and our plans to move ahead have gone a little astray. We met a Mosey Cimarron who told us that you had a spare room we could rent for perhaps a cycle or two, and that you were the best landlady in the sector and beyond." He smiled somewhat sheepishly and tried to lighten his tone. 

"That's mighty kind of Mosey to say - well of course I can help some travellers in need. But only if you give me reason to trust you won't make off with my stock in the middle of the night. My shop hasn't been here this long because I'm stupid about it." The woman put her hands on her hips, beaded bracelets jingling. She fixed them with an assessing look that Leia fidgeted under. Obi-Wan recognised that she had a fair point but her gaze felt too knowing; she could tell they didn't belong here and needed something specific from the outpost or the people in it. 

"I assure you, we have no interest in causing any trouble." Obi-Wan waved a hand, trying to project as much sincerity and trustworthiness as he could, "We'd simply be grateful for a safe place to stay while our family deals with a few setbacks so we can move on." 

"And we can be helpful! Around the shop, or the outpost, right? Ben-err- my grandpa is really handy with repairing droids." Obi-Wan startled as Leia piped up. She craned her neck to look over the counter at Dendra, her hands twisting the hem of her coat at her sides. Her voice stayed steady and confident as she lied sans the stumble over his name but Obi-Wan wasn't sure the waluna would believe it. 

"Yes, we certainly can." Obi-Wan added, hoping he didn't seem too eager. 

She gave them both another assessing look, her practical caution melting at the edges into curiosity and suspicion. "What did you say brings you to Koboh again? Ramblers Reach ain't really a sought-out holiday spot, as many hidden gems as we have." Her voice grew a touch kinder but remained firm, encouraging them to spit out the answer, "But it's a safe place for all kinds, I promise you that. Whatever you're chasing, we can help you find it." 

Her phrasing was the spark Obi-Wan needed to consider revealing at least a part of their situation.

Before they'd parted ways with Estree, the con-artist had given him a code phrase to pass to a member of the Hidden Path when they arrived at Ramblers Reach. It made perfect logical sense that the contact point of the Hidden Path would be a shopkeeper, as she'd likely be the major point of contact for anyone passing through the outpost. Obi-Wan could tell she was well-respected, and she seemed practical with at least some desire to help others without endangering those who relied on her. As much as he wanted to trust the woman, an old fear whispered poison into his mind.

Obi-Wan had been so, so wrong with who he trusted, and it had cost him the Order, the Republic and the family he'd built within them. 

He couldn't let his poor judgement cost Leia as well. 

"We're passing through to visit family." Obi-Wan answered firmly, which wasn't technically a lie. He looked down as Leia sharply elbowed his side and gave him her best 'come on and just tell her or I will' kind of look and Obi-Wan fought to keep the pang of frustration and fear off his face. He expelled a sharp breath through his nose and leant forward, to shield Leia with his body, "But there was one other thing. On our way here, we heard a rumour that if you're chasing ghosts, Ramblers Reach is the place to be. Would you happen to know where we can find one?" 

The taught strands of tension lacing the air snapped with a sigh of relief from the waluna, "There are ghosts all around you. But the ones you really need will be back on-planet soon." 

Chapter Text

Leia took to her newly granted freedom with delight. Ben had kept her glued to his side for almost a full cycle as he helped Doma with odd repair jobs and requests around the outpost. Some of it hadn’t been so bad when Ben actually shared what he was doing and let her give it a try. She’d only burned her fingers twice trying to fix faulty wiring - and sure it hurt, but Ben had panicked about it more than she did. 

For the last few rotations, Ben was helping one of the local mechanics fix an old barn. Apparently it was too dangerous for her to help by climbing onto the roof and welding pieces of sheet metal together. So, Leia was left sitting on the ground with a data pad she’d borrowed from a local historian and occasionally chatting with a designer from Coruscant. 

It wasn’t bad, but it was boring. 

"All this hard work under the Koboh sun cannot be good for you both my darlings. Zygg come down from there so I can get you something refreshing!" The Namaran designer called up to Ben and the mechanic on the roof with a bright clap of her hands. 

"Wini, I'm fine. I know when to take breaks." The mechanic called back from her perch in the barns guttering. 

"Then you know the time is now my dearest Zygg." The designer's voice was full of affection even as she chided her partner. 

The mechanic sighed and shook her head behind her welding visor while Ben chuckled and flicked his own back, "I think your wife has quite a point Miss Soza." 

Wini laughed happily while the mechanic mumbled something flustered and unintelligible behind her visor. Still, she descended the ladder and pulled off her protective equipment, greeting Wini with a shy smile as the Namaran nuzzled the flat ridge of her nose against her cheek. 

"Leia my darling!" Wini turned to her with a bright smile, "Come help me make our hard workers something to lift their spirits." 

"I'm not sure about-" 

"Oh please Ben! Stop worrying so much we're only going to the cantina. I promise we can stay out of trouble for ten minutes." She promptly shushed his concerns and waved Leia over, LOLA following at her shoulder. 

Leia looked up at him with her best pleading eyes. 

Ben eventually nodded and game them both a tired smile. "Only to the cantina." 

"Of course! Come along now Leia dear, let's get you out of the sun." Once Wini had ushered her far enough away from the barn, she leant in with a conspiratorial wink, "Why don't you stay at the cantina for the rest of the day, I'll keep the hard workers busy and it can be our little secret, yes?" 

Leia whisper-cheered as she walked beside the Namaran with a delighted grin. Wini laughed and patted her hair as they waited for the door of Pyloons to hiss open. 

Leia bolted for the upper floor of the Cantina.

Apparently there was a garden on the roof she had yet to explore, but her mission now was to thoroughly interrogate the antique protocol droid tinkering with old data-disks in a corner upstairs. 

She had only spoken to ZN-A4 a handful of times when Ben was suspiciously but curiously taking stock of the cantina's regulars and Leia had loved every second with the eccentric droid. Zee was smarter and more emotive than most of the protocol droids back home. Definitely enough to give C3PO’s constantly frazzled circuits a run for his credits. She had so many incredible stories to tell of her time in the High Republic in service to Jedi, Leia could understand why a local historian had made Zee her thesis project. 

That was the other interesting thing; the High Republic. 

Leia devoured every drop of new information about the High Republic like a bloom in the desert sought water. Most of what she knew of any pre-empire government had come from the imperial standard core worlds curriculum. It said that the Republic was a corrupt and ineffective bureaucracy that had fallen into the same trap of hubris as the Jedi and led to the war, the thriving development of criminal syndicates and the isolation of the outer-rim planets. Leia didn't believe that it had been all bad; her father had been a senator during the Republic and she knew he'd never support something like that. There had to be more to the story. 

Leia absently swung her feet in the air as she sat on the high barstool opposite Zee's table. The droid was telling some epic story about being captured by the local raiders and their despicable leaders; the Gen'Dai Rayvis and the fallen Jedi Dagan Gera. 

"... I was so thankful Cal and his companion Bode were able to save me from that dreadful ship! Unbelievable - the instruments of destruction that were created against our beloved republic and the horrible things that brute Rayvis would have done, after terrorising this planet for the centuries I had been deactivated, or what Master Gera would have done to rip Tanalorr's location from my circuits. Master Khri had been so sure and trusting of him, I still can't believe how wrong her judgement turned out to be." Zee's elaborate tale trailed off with a melancholic sigh. 

"Tanalorr is that myth planet, right? The one no one could find?" Leia prompted, not sure how to move the conversation along past the somber note. 

"Tanalorr is very real I can assure you! And it's not missing anymore either, we've found it and it's going to become the safe haven Master Khri had always dreamed of. In a way, Master Gera dreamed of it too but he wanted to control that dream and let obsession consume him instead." Zee's tone brightened and her optical display flared with renewed hope, "Perhaps that is how we honour the best of their intentions." 

“By making their dreams come true?” Leia guessed.

“Exactly so!” Zee chimed.

”So,” Leia shifted on her seat in excitement, “what was the High Republic like? Was it anything like the Empire?” 

“Oh dear force goodness no! The High Republic was nothing like this dreadful Empire!” Zee shook her head and gestured vigorously. She had a greater range of movement than other protocol droids Leia had met and seemed to enjoy making use of it. “Citizens in the High Republic needn’t fear any nameless droves of enforcers. Learning and innovation were encouraged, as was kindness and faith in ones neighbour that good deeds would be paid forwards. Even strangers could be relied upon! And they were represented properly by the senate, not simply used to generate wealth for their so-called representatives while the Jedi Order were scattered throughout the galaxy as true peacekeepers and scholars. They build chambers all across Koboh, you know. All to train-” 

“The people are still represented now! The senate still advises and has the interests of their citizens at heart.” Leia argued. She knew the current Empire did bad things, but the senate wasn’t the cause. Her parents would never be a part of that kind of system. 

“Perhaps,” Zee didn’t sound convinced, “I may not have travelled far beyond Koboh but everything I hear from the people here is about how they were driven from their homes by the Empire. If what remains of the senate has their interests at heart, would they really let their people be treated in such a way?” 

“They- I!” Leia opened and shut her mouth searching for a response, “Obviously they wouldn’t allow it, they don’t know!” 

“Then how may the senators truly represent their people if they don’t know what is happening to them?” Zee countered, gesturing with one chrome-plated hand. 

Rather than reply, Leia scowled at the table. LOLA trilled and blinked at her from her spot on the table and followed it with a chirp of admonishment at Zee. 

Zee looked between Leia and her friend, the yellow of her display flickering in realisation, “Oh, my goodness Leia I am truly sorry. I didn't know your father was a senator. I'm certain if he's as good a man as you or your grandfather then his people are well looked after. But Leia please remember that one good jogan fruit cannot save the rotten bunch." 

”Yeah... I guess.” Leia muttered, dropping off the stool with a huff. LOLA trilled a less-than-polite parting word towards Zee as she followed Leia's grumpy stalk towards the stairs. 

She’d wanted to explore the garden before it go too dark anyway. 

When Wini had returned carrying a tray of chilled fruit juices without Leia by her side, Obi-Wan was pleasantly surprised to find the spike of panic in his chest tempered by exasperation. The designer was quick to assure him that Leia was just spending some time around the cantina. 

"I know it’s hard not to be protective, but you've got to let kids go off on their own. Let them get into harmless trouble, you know?" Zygg had told him over the drinks Wini had bought.

Obi-Wan had ruefully agreed with a defeated slump to his shoulders. 

After a wife-mandated break, the mechanic had climbed back onto the roof to finish putting in the barn's guttering while Obi-Wan stayed in the stalls brushing down and preening the animals. 

"If only there was such a thing as harmless trouble left," Obi-Wan sighed. The Nekko leant into his touch as he crumbled and stripped away the calcified shells along its feathers, cooing and occasionally butting against his hands. He’d always been so good with creatures, and for a little while he’d thought those skills had transferred to children.

Leia was not his responsibility to raise. He just needed to keep her safe long enough to return to her parents. Despite that, he still wanted to care for and nurture her best instincts. One way or another, Leia would be a great leader someday and it was important for her to see what life in the empire outside of Alderaan was like. 

Obi-Wan could admit that Koboh was one of the safer places for her to learn that. 

In little starts and bursts, his old instincts had begun to come back to him. Obi-Wan could feel the thrum of renewed life in the force and suspected that the recently-reactivated energy arrays and meditation chambers the Order had left behind were the cause. He ached to explore them properly but from what he had been told by a local twi'lek historian, they were all exceedingly difficult to reach and he would be better off with a guide.

Had Obi-Wan not encountered Estree before coming here, he might have believed the wild stories of adventure and dramatic rescues that claimed a Jedi Knight had made Koboh his home. 

The sun was beginning to set over the valley, scattering gold over everything it touched. Warm light filtered through the windows of the barn and dappled through the dwindling number of holes in the sheet-metal roof. The shuffle of the Nekko's and rustle of grasses was drowned out the rush of a ship's thrusters. Obi-Wan startled upright at the small flare of light that sparked against his senses. It was quickly tucked away and hidden like hands cupped around candle to protect it from the storm. 

Perhaps the tales of a Jedi were not so impossible after all. 

The soft notes of a murmured song mingled with the hum of insects as the rooftop doors hissed open. Leia shielded her eyes against the rich golden sunlight as she stepped out among the bursting garden beds. The garden seemed to divided into four semi colour-coded plots of Koboh-natives. The plants flowed in arcs of reds and pinks, yellows and green and eventually shades of blue and white across the rooftop. Bright green vines mingled with dusty brambles and snaked along the raised edges of the plots before tumbling down the cantina's side. 

Leia took a deep breath and promptly sneezed from the cacophony of pollens and scents the air carried on a light breeze. 

"It's okay, Pilli says everyone has that reaction during this part of the orbit." Leia jumped and sneezed again at the soft interjection. A girl that was roughly her height - definitely not taller! - stood at her side. She shifted shyly on her feet while Leia sniffled and squeezed her nose to try and clear it. "You kind-of learn to stay upwind so it doesn't hit you all at once. This way's better." She added, and Leia followed her to the side of a vine-covered tower. 

Once she'd stopped sneezing, Leia smiled gratefully at the girl, who returned the smile shyly. Her knees and boots were scuffed with soil from the garden and she wore a brown tunic with off-white inserts along her sides. Her hair and eyes were almost black but shone with brown highlights when the sun hit it right. Leia had seen her around the cantina from time to time; ducking through the kitchen at the Latero owner's side or running small errands to pick things up from Doma's shop. 

Leia stuck her hand out, "I'm Leia, this is LOLA my friend. I've seen you around a little but nice to finally meet you." 

"Kata, and um- you too." She pulled off one dirt-crusted gardening glove and shook the offered hand. Kata brightened with a guarded smile when LOLA chirped happily and flitted around them both. Kata traced the little droid's movements with her fingers, her tousled hair ruffling in the breeze. "You're here with your grandfather, right?" 

Leia nodded, "But we're just passing through. Do you live here with your parents? Is the garden yours?" 

The girl's expression faltered, "Um, no. I just live here with... others. My parents aren't around anymore." 

Leia tried not to wince. Not a good start to the first maybe-friendship with someone her age. 

"And no, the garden's not mine but Pili is teaching me how to look after it and it belongs to Greez along with the cantina." She shifted anxiously again, "Was there something you needed up here?" 

"Nope, just exploring. Wait, you know a lot about the plants here, right?" Leia perked up at Kata's small nod, "Show me your favourites then!" 

Kata blinked at her but the expression slowly cleared into a lighter smile like sunlight from behind the clouds. "Okay! All the Dathomiri reds and Nabooan Greens are my favourites, I think the pine ferns are the best. The leaves are are really soft - over here!" 

Leia took her hand as Kata started towards one of the plots. Dirt stained her trousers as Leia knelt beside Kata in the garden. The girl shared odd facts and tips about the plants, even what songs they seemed to like best. 

"There's no way they grow better when you sing to them." Leia laughed with a small eye-roll. 

"Maybe not, but music can't hurt them so if they like it that makes two of us." She defended sheepishly. 

Leia had more questions to ask, when Kata brightened at the roar of thrusters overhead as a blue and silver yacht cut through the sunset. She pulled off her remaining gardening glove and reached for a red lump of fabric to her side, wrapping the hooded scarf around her neck. She waved Leia over and started towards a cable dangling over the edge of the building. 

"Let's go meet them land." She called from the building's edge.

Intrigued, Leia dusted her knees off and followed as Kata climbed up onto the railing and pulled the cable closer. Leia envied the practiced confidence Kata showed as she swung around the cable and slid to the ground. With a nervous gulp, she followed. 

Chapter Text

Cal had started wearing gloves again. 

The waxy bantha leather had already started to scuff and left traces of Jedha's oxidised sand across the flight controls and dials of the Mantis' dashboard as he pulled the ship onto the Ramblers Reach landing pad. Merrin was in the co-pilots seat, craning her neck to watch the landing sequence intently. 

He wasn't used to the shifting dynamic between him and Merrin. Once the Mantis crew had warmed up to each other, he'd soaked up every second of physical touch he could get like sunlight. The same thing had happened once he’d gotten to know Gabs, Bravo and the twins, and the absence of Cere and Merrin followed by his crew's sudden deaths had left a cold scar where they’d been.

Now, Merrin and Greez were back in his life and Cere was permanently gone. 

Greez hadn't changed as much, but the kind of touch he now experienced from Merrin felt different. Her fingers lingered on his shoulder or waist more often, and found their way against his palms to lace together. It healed something he didn't know he'd needed. 

Thank the force that she seemed to have enough figured out to be amused instead of annoyed by his constantly flustered cluelessness. Cal knew his experience with romance was, regrettably, second-hand and had been awkwardly picked up through echoes over the years. It had always felt violating to peer into a strangers private and intimate moments, so he'd tried to shut them out or avoid places he knew they would be, but unfortunately that wasn't always an option. Merrin wasn't pushing him towards anything overtly charged, so instead it was the little changes in their interactions that set a giddy tingle in his stomach and a stupid grin on his face when she (hopefully) wasn't looking. 

It had knocked the thoughts clean out of his head when Merrin emerged from the onboard refresher one night wearing one of his undershirts along with her usual sleep clothes. 

“That’s it for the landing sequence.” Cal explained before BD could prompt him, “the engines need to cool to at least seventy percent before refuelling but in an emergency you can skip that. It'll make the fuel burn off faster and there might be some early reactions that can fatigue the capacitors. Replacing those suck, so it's better not to." 

"It seems to be simple enough." Merrin noted, standing and holding a hand on her hip "Greez must have had very little faith in us not to let me fly. I am a little insulted." 

Cal spun the pilots chair around to face her, his shoulders shaking in a small huff. “You should let him know.” 

"I will. A Nightsisters displeasure is not to be underestimated Kestis." She warned, her voice and expression completely serious. 

Cal couldn't help but smile at her.

Like an idiot. 

Merrin's dead-serious facade cracked with a small twitch at the corner of her lip. She tapped the back of her hand against his chest as she started towards the exit ramp. “We should let the others know what we’ve found.” 

“Yeah,” they hadn’t found much and Cal ignored the simmer of frustration. He reflexively held out an arm for BD as the little droid jetted from his perch on the console to Cal’s shoulder and followed Merrin to the landing ramp.

After their time in hyperspace, the warm and fresh air of Koboh hit Cal like a walking into a wall. He’d noticed that matter how used to the climate of a planet he got, the first breaths back on-world after space travel were always a surprise to his senses. The sun had almost set by now, dipping behind the canyons to the west and casting long shadows over the valley. Outlines of the shattered moon and the distant halo of the Abyss would be refracting in the sky soon. 

At the base of the ramp, Merrin was talking to two young human girls. Cal tried not to flinch as Kata’s gaze flicked up towards him and her expression stuttered. He looked away. 

”Yeah BD, go ahead. I’m gonna help refuel.” He muttered to BD-1’s inquiring trill, holding his arm out to the ground and dipping to a side. The explorer unit skittered down from their perch and down the landing ramp to greet Kata and her friend.

Cal jumped off the ramp’s edge and skirted around the stern to avoid them all. He knew how much Kata adored Merrin and he didn’t need to poison their reunion. 

Leia was embarrassed by her rough stumble at the base of the cable compared to Kata's easy athleticism, but it would have been more embarrassing if she'd lost her grip, fallen off the roof and probably broken several somethings. She was definitely not telling Ben about it either way.

She'd managed to shake off her twinged ankle as her and Kata jogged towards the landing pad, where her new friend had enthusiastically greeted the pale-skinned and tattooed woman that disembarked. Kata introduced her as Merrin, and Leia smiled and waved in greeting. She was clearly near-human, but given a lack of horns, lek, scales, or other distinguishing features, Leia couldn't place her exact species. Outright asking was rude so she'd never do that, but the staff back home were mainly human or droids, so she didn't get to meet many different kinds of people before Koboh. 

A copper-haired young man exited the ship behind Merrin, and promptly jumped the short distance off the side of the landing ramp to avoid the group at its base while his bipedal droid raced down the ramp to join them. Leia frowned as she watched him jog around to the ships' stern. 

Weird. 

Leia turned her attention back to Kata who was crouching down to give the droid an affectionate pat on the top of its casing. She gestured towards her, "This is my friend Leia." 

The droid (BD-1, they supplied) turned its optic towards her and Leia had to squeeze her eyes shut at the bright blue flare of a scanner. She blinked the stars out of her vision while BD-1 buzzed a greeting to her LOLA. 

"I wasn't expecting that!" Leia defended indignantly against Kata's subdued giggles. 

"No one is for the first time, and a few don't see it coming the second either." The woman added lightly. She turned around, and upon seeing the man hadn't joined them, continued in an equally dry but somehow affectionate tone and turned to the droid, "I'm going to see Greez, can you make sure Cal doesn't catch fire?" 

"What? When did that happen?" Kata's voice was soft and concerned, almost drowned out by the sharp 'on it!' BD-1 beeped out and scampered away. 

Merrin only shrugged, "Not recently, but at some point I'm sure. He's very good at getting into trouble." 

Kata nodded with a slightly uncomfortable twist to the corner of her mouth. Abruptly she brightened and stood to look between Merrin and Leia, "Greez is making a Ryloth-inspired stew tonight. He promises it'll be spicy enough for you this time." 

"I highly doubt that," Merrin's expression softened with an amused smirk, "but come along. We shall find out together." 

Kata began telling Merrin what had happened on Koboh since they last saw each other and Leia occasionally chimed in with a question or piece of gossip she'd heard from around the cantina. She gaped in interest and a small pang of jealousy when Kata promised that she'd been practicing the moves Merrin had shown her, and that she was ready to learn more. Leia's shoulders drooped in dismay when she spied Ben moving to enter the Saloon ahead of them and she tried not to groan out loud at the impending lecture.  

Of all the booths and spaces at Pyloons that Merrin and Greez could have corralled this group into, it had to be Bode's old haunt. Cal kept himself straight and stiff on his perch at the end of the booth, trying to avoid touching the synthleather seating or table surface with his bare skin. The senses of planning and calculation Bode had stained into the space was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. While he knew the echoes would fade once he let them run their course, Cal couldn't do it.

The caustic burn of betrayal Bode had left him with had been dulled by guilt in the aftermath of their fight, but Cal still didn't trust himself to handle seeing into the man's mindset with grace. 

So, Cal kept his posture straight, his gloves on, and his hands balled into fists on the table's surface. 

The food Greez had made them all was, as always, amazing. The sharp prickle of spices had helped ground him in the present against the whispers of conspiracy and betrayal, even as Greez and Merrin teased the shade of red he had turned. BD, the little traitor, had joined in by scanning him and deducing that hex codes of his face and hair weren't so far apart anymore. Merrin was pressed against his side from knee to shoulder, their elbows occasionally knocking together while they'd eaten. Her hand had found its way over his own and her slender fingers curled around his gloved fists in an extra layer of deeply-appreciated insulation. 

It would have been a nice evening, if they hadn't all crammed into this specific booth. 

Kata had befriended a human girl and her grandfather who were staying at the outpost after their plans to visit family had fallen through. He could sense a spark of something bright from Leia; a longing for adventure and freedom guided by a strong sense of justice. What interested him more was the older human she travelled with, who radiated a fatigued mote of light like tarnished brass that had been worn down by desert sands.

Cal knew that if he opened his senses just a little more, he’d be able to feel the familiar grief of a broken connection and the lonely song of ‘Ben’s’ Kyber. 

Doing so would also invite the echo attached to his seat in, so Cal kept his senses locked away and avoided the man’s questioning gaze. 

His presence was a curse to other Jedi. 

Cal almost managed to get away from the booth with the excuse of needing to check in on a few things with Doma when the man volunteered to come with him, citing that he'd been staying with her and could help Cal find items in the shop. Cal reluctantly agreed as BD leapt to his usual perch on his back and mag-latched onto the plates Cal wore under his clothing. 

There was a brief, blissful moment of uncomplicated awkwardness as Cal and 'Ben' stepped into the cool, hazy night air of Koboh, before the man shattered any illusion of plausible deniability. 

"I see now I should have believed the stories." He said with a rueful shake of his head. 

“That depends what they are.” Cal replied carefully. He stepped to a side and led the man further away from the saloons door. Just because this stranger was (maybe) an old Jedi, did not mean he wasn’t a threat to them.

Bode and Dagan, in his more impersonal way, had been. 

If it came to a fight, Cal would defend himself and his family. The thought settled with grim determination, even as the possibility of taking the guardian away from a child again made him nauseous with guilt and dread. 

“Stories of much you’ve helped bring together the people here. It’s truly admirable Cal, but whatever you do next must stay quiet.” The man followed him easily enough, voice dropping to plead, “I am sure you know that this Empire has never been safe for survivors of the Order, but it is more dangerous now than ever. The Empire has developed an inquisition to hunt down-”

“I know how to handle Inquisitors.” Cal snorted. 

The man pressed his lips into a thin and unhappy line, “be that as it may, you must disappear. The Empire is not an enemy that can be defeated by the old Order but there is hope. Balance will return to the force if we just-”

Cal was done listening to this defeatist bantha-shit. 

“It’s easy to give up, I get it.” He snapped, “I'm not hiding and waiting for someone else to fight back anymore. We owe that to our masters, our family or our padawans-" He caught 'Ben' flinch "-who didn't survive. So you can go ahead, the Path will get you somewhere quiet and unimportant where you can forget whoever you used to be when repressing it gets too easy." 

'Ben's' posture bristled and he straightened, tone settling like he was arguing with an especially reckless student. Then he cracked with a sad tiredness and the brewing argument died, "Reliance on a connection to the force can lead you astray, or it will give you away to those who are searching. Some things are best left behind." 

"I know." Cal scowled and planted his hands on his hips, looking around restlessly, "I know the galaxy is dangerous, I know the force isn't what it used to be, and I know how to deal with the Inquisitorus. I don’t need a master’s advice.” 

“Alright,” he held up his palms in placation, “Alright. There is something I need your help with. I’ve let my connection fracture and I fear there is something coming, something I cannot keep Leia safe from in this state. The Order built meditation chambers across this planet but I’ve heard they are somewhat difficult to access without a guide. Will you take me to them?” 

Cal was going to regret this, even as he blew a sigh out through his nose and agreed. “Yeah, most of them are pretty far out. But… The Chamber of Clarity is closest and might give you an idea of where to go next, to avoid trying all of them.” 

The tension in Ben’s shoulders unwound with a small, tired smile. “Then I suppose that is where we will begin.” 

Chapter Text

Despite the early start to his day and the odd air of tension, Obi-Wan was relaxed as the turbolift ground to a halt at the base of the chamber. The energy of the Chamber was a balm to anxieties, like he had been dunked in cold water. This far underground, the early-morning dew of Koboh clung to the old devices and stone platforms of the chamber with a clammy chill. The low drip of water echoed up from a deep crevasse below and the old cubes of machinery thrummed in soothing waves. Shafts of white light filtered through slits in the walls and ceiling to mingle with the soft blue glow emanating from the devices. 

"Welcome Jedi," A feminine recording greeted them, "the Force teaches us that what our eyes see, and our hands touch, is not always the truth of the world. The world bends to the will of the Force, as such it may also bend to you."  

"Thanks for the pep talk.” Cal muttered sardonically at his side. At Obi-Wan's raised eyebrow, the young man shrugged uncomfortably, "Her recordings get less enlightening when you've heard them about five times each."

Obi-Wan followed as Cal started towards the platform, reaching out with the force and yanking on the turbines and gears of a device set into the wall. The whirr of the machine was far smoother than Obi-Wan would have expected, as it ground along a thick cable and bridged the gap ahead. "Santari Khri and the other Jedi masters who built the chambers designed puzzles for their padawans to solve. Everything's already in place, so you can skip the force-challenge unless you need it to uh... Anyway the meditation plinth's at the end of the chamber." Cal explained awkwardly as he pointed across the platform to a cube and the beam protruding from the wall. 

"How many chambers did the Order leave behind?" Obi-Wan followed him across the gaps with both less and more difficulty than he would have liked to admit. 

"Seven, I think." Cal's droid chirped in agreement, "There might be more on other parts of the planet but I don't think so." 

"These chambers were undisturbed before you begun to explore them?" 

"Pretty much. Zee was found deactivated in the first chamber, and she had the only tuner to access the others." Cal hoisted himself up the side of a cube and dusted his gloved palms off. After an inquiring trill from his droid, Cal seemed to remember Obi-Wan was with him and offered a hand down. Finding purchase on the ridges and inlays of the device and with Cal's help, Obi-Wan was able to heave himself onto the top of the platform.

Obi-Wan ran a hand along the platform under his feet, feeling for the senses of precision and intention that the force slotted into the spaces beside the engravings, "If each of these chambers is as intricate as this one, I find it surprising that the Order abandoned this planet after the work it must have taken to build." 

"Yeah, Khri was surprised too." Cal muttered before he leapt and made the next jump to grab the edge of a jutting beam look deceptively easy. Cal swung and landed with a slight skid on the platform across the chasm. 

Obi-Wan moved back a few steps, “While I can imagine she would be, you seem quite certain of it!” He called, then took a running jump from the platform. 

His forearms smacked harshly against the beam and he clung to it reflexively. With a grunt of effort, Obi-Wan hoisted himself to balance on the structure in a low crouch, his centre of mass kept as close to the beam as possible. As Obi-Wan jumped for the final platform, he felt  the old habits he’d built into his muscles during the War reignite. But he was out of practice, both physically and in the force, and pathways that the energy should have taken along his limbs was sluggish and rough.

Cal’s expression sparked to match the jolt of alarm that rang through the force as Obi-Wan’s toes slipped off the edge of the platform and he began to fall backwards. In a vague and slightly indignant way, Obi-Wan resented the cool serenity of the Chamber for dulling his own sense of concern. 

A pressure in the air and force closed around him like a fist. 

As Cal levitated him up to the platform, Obi-Wan noted the grip wasn’t uncomfortable, rather it was unrefined. It was courteous to lift living beings a little more gently, with the goal of anchoring around one’s chest to support the neck and spine. Cal’s grip, by comparison, was secure in the same way cargo would need to be latched and strapped down properly before it was lifted by a crane. 

As the young man jerkily set him down, Obi-Wan considered giving him the notes he usually would. But Cal had said he didn’t want a masters advice, and after Anakin - what right did Obi-Wan have to instruct after he’d let his charge be led so far astray? 

Obi-Wan kept the feedback to himself and gave a tired smile in thanks that Cal returned with a tight nod. Aside from the physical tells of discomfort, Obi-Wan couldn’t sense anything from the tight clamp the young man had on his emotions. 

“Did the Jedi here leave recordings before they fled? I hadn’t thought there was time.” Obi-Wan prompted gently. 

"No - well, yes - sort of. Not traditional recordings, but they still left a lot behind." Cal seemed to consider something before he continued, "Strong emotions and impressions in the Force. They can tell you a lot if you know how to read them." 

Obi-Wan studied the young man again. "I take it you know how?"

Despite the tense set of his jaw and scars that littered the few patches of exposed skin, he couldn't be older than twenty-five standard. That would place him at the approximately right age to have been an initiate during the War, but probably a Padawan as the trends of ages skewed younger and younger. He couldn't recall anything dramatic from the time about a 'Cal Kestis', but something about the young Jedi snagged in his attention. Something the Council had decided? 

"Yeah." Cal flexed his gloved hands, "A blessing and a curse, or something." 

Obi-Wan hummed softly as it clicked. "I think I remember now." He stroked his beard (which wasn't as well maintained as he would have preferred to keep it) as he spoke through his thoughts, "The tai-vordrax abilities of a youngling were brought before the council by a crechemaster during the War. We almost assigned them as a padawan to Master Vos, but his clandestine role and unorthodox manner made him a rather inadvisable choice for such an impressionable youngling." 

"Wow, what a diplomatic way of calling the guy crazy." Cal quipped with guarded amusement.  

"Yes well," Obi-Wan folded his arms primly, "The 'Negotiator' was a hard-earned title. I suspect both that youngling and Quinlan benefitted immensely from the decision." 

Obi-Wan almost missed the spasm of fear that ran through Cal like an electrical surge a beat or two after he snorted at Obi-Wan's sass. Brow notched in concern, Obi-Wan opened his mouth to ask the young man what was the matter when static crackled across Cal's comm, followed by the garbled voice of Mosey Cimarron. 

"Fuck." Cal muttered eloquently. Obi-Wan had to stamp down the automatic 'language' chastisement as the young man pulled a comms cylinder from his belt and flicked it off and on again. 

"C-....want to.... check....... Raider-s are..." The rancher's voice crackled through the tinny speaker and Cal cursed a second time before he took a running jump off the platform. Cal swung and landed in a roll when he hit the ground, the little droid on his back keeping flat on the opposite shoulder. 

"What is-" Obi-Wan called after him, taking steps to follow when Cal turned from his landing and held up a hand.

"Just- stay here. Do what you came here for, I can deal with whatever it is."  

Obi-Wan didn't have a chance to argue before the young Jedi was off towards the Chamber's exit at a sprint. The steady flare of his presence faded from Obi-Wan's senses as the chamber's turbolift ground and churned towards the surface. 

With a disconcerted sigh, Obi-Wan turned towards the central plinth behind him. It was the epicentre of the chamber's crisp serenity; like mirrors polished to a shine and refracting back on themselves. He took a seat under the stone arches, crossing his legs and resting his palms on his knees. With the bright, calming energy of the force cocooned around him, Obi-Wan took a deep breath and turned his focus inwards. 

Of course Cal was in the company of the Jedi Master Obi-Wan karking Kenobi. 

Fuck. 

If he didn't know already, then he would figure it out soon. The Master would heal his connection by midday and then he'd know everything that was wrong with Cal, every principle he'd betrayed, every teaching he'd forgotten and the ones he remembered but had broken anyway. He'd know exactly how corrupted Cal was and cut him out of the galaxy like a cancer. 

He was so fucked. 

Kenobi needed to leave Koboh before something awful happened. If whatever curse that shadowed Cal didn't get another real Jedi killed first. 

BD chirped a concerned string of binary from his perch on Cal’s back. Cal sighed, “I think he’s a Jedi master from before. Kenobi was a big deal in the Order.” 

‘Big deal’ felt like an understatement; the man was a legend. Cal remembered his history and politics lessons from the crèche, and how prominently Kenobi and his ‘chosen one’ padawan Skywalker featured in them. With the exception of Grandmaster Yoda who was literal centuries old, the accomplishments of great Jedi weren’t usually taught until that Jedi had passed. Kenobi, the Negotiator, the Sith-Killer and his litany of other honourifics and titles was another exception to the standard. 

Cal was so utterly and completely fucked. 

The beep of his comms unit helped pull his mind away from the panicked spiral. As the lift came to a stop at the surface and Cal stepped into the shade, Mosey’s voice came through the speaker.

“Cal, glad you could make it - I saw the Raiders coming home to roost in that old fort of theirs and figured y’all would wanna know.” 

“Any idea what they’re up to?” He started towards the edge of the plateau and peeked around the corner that overlooked the rusted barricades of the Raiders fort. 

“Can’t say for sure, but they pulled in all the usual outskirts patrols. If it’s anythin’ like before the only time a pack’ll gather up is if they’re planning to hit something big.” Her voice was tinged with steady exertion, like she was running or riding, “I’m headin’ back to the outpost now. Y’all are gonna need the help if the raiders come knocking.” 

“Thanks Mosey.” The leather of his gloves creaked as Cal flexed his hands. Anticipation and bloodlust radiated from the brutal spiked barricades of fort Kah’lin. Through irregular gaps in the corroded sheet metal, he could see the sparks of energy spears and the milling battle droids.

Cal took a breath, “Tell Doma and Moran to keep everyone inside like we practiced. I’ll try to slow them down from here until you can send Merrin my way.”   

“Roger that Cal, we’ll back you up soon.” The coms unit flicked off with a synthesised tone as Mosey cut the call. 

Cal tapped his foot on the dusty stone as he watched the fort. He wasn’t sure how a machine could sound nasally as the argumentative quips of B1 droids floated over the haphazard barricades. These days, he could tear through battle droids like sheets of flimsi but the Raiders themselves were a problem. Even through the scope of BD’s visor, visibility was shit and the fort was a big area with weird corners and janky fortifications. It was impossible to know how many Raiders were left inside. 

Outright attacking the compound was reckless and stupid even for him, but if he could avoid an open confrontation, it might not be so bad. 

“Okay buddy,” he lowered his arm as BD scampered back to his shoulder, peering at him with an inquisitive beep, “here’s the plan…” 

Chapter Text

Plan ‘Sabotage the Fort to Stall For Time’ had taken about three minutes to fall apart. 

Now, Cal was relying on his backup plan of ‘Just Don’t Get Karking Cornered and Stall for Time By Running Laps around this Damn Fort’ which honestly didn’t have as smooth of a ring to it. At least it was better than his ultimate backup plan of ‘Fuck It, I Guess We’re Fighting Everything’. 

It had started out okay.

He’d found a gap in the poorly welded walls to sneak though, and had managed to short-out and hack some of the patrolling B2 droids with BD-1’s expertise. Things fell apart when he’d tried the same trick with a BX droid that wandered around a corner with its blaster lowered at a relaxed-ready stance. A squad of panicky B1’s had been right behind it, and immediately started yelling and taking pot-shots at him and then one of the B2 droids he’d sliced earlier fired a rocket into the middle of the group. The ensuing shriek of B1 droids, plume of smoke and roar of an explosion had alerted the rest of the base and now Cal was here; shoulder-checking the corroded wall of a tower as he pinged around a corner, blaster bolts scorching  the ground where he’d just been. 

The force was pulsing with the thrill of a chase like a second heartbeat in his ears.

Twin orange blades whirled through the stench of burning metal and rust as Cal cleaved through the reprogrammed battle droids. Molten metal and sparks flared across the dusty ground. He could feel something building, an exhilarating tide of power and violence simmering under the surface. 

It was a sirens call, promising something rich and intoxicating.

Cal broke through a line of battle droids and the spear-wielding raider beside them into the central courtyard of the fort. BX commandos and B1’s lined the walkways around the courtyard to rain a hail of bolts and electrical grenades down on him. Cal twirled his sabrestaff in desperate arcs, getting some lucky hits in to deflect the bolts back at the droids. Cal whipped around for his exit routes, his heartbeat picking up in tension as raiders wielding energy-spears and vibro-hammers rushed ahead of the B2 droids plodding behind them. 

Being pinned like this was not good. 

The wide orbit of his sabrestaff kept them at bay for a few precious extra seconds so Cal could watch his exits be cut off. His staff cleaved through flesh and metal alike, finally clipping off the raised guard of a hammer to fly back into his palm a second too late, as a lucky bolt clipped his calf and a raider slashed at his side. Cal grit his jaw through the electrical burn of the spear point as the jaws closed around him. He thrashed under the current, a pained scream getting lodged in his throat when the raider pushed him to the ground.

The live wire in his mind sparked to life. 

“End of the line, Jedi!” 

Vicious satisfaction and anticipation lanced through his senses from the raiders around him. Without their leaders or their purpose to find Tanalorr, subjugating the outpost and defeating the local Jedi seemed to be the last thing to unite them. Cruel, spiteful fantasies bled into Cal’s mind through the haze of pain; the outpost in rubble with that Waluna’s Lek dismembered and mounted beside a B1 droids head at the gates, that pesky hunter dead among her flock and left for the gorgers, that Latero chained to a bench in Fort Kah’lin kitchen to be of some use. 

When the siren call of the darkness reached out, Cal reached back and yanked. 

Red struck him like lightning. 

Leia was woken up earlier than usual by Doma's hand on her shoulder and a gentle shake. When she looked around, Ben was gone with his blanket neatly made over his cot and the shutters of Doma's shop drawn down and locked. The Waluna had told Leia to pack only her essentials and hurry across the town's street to Pyloon's. There might be trouble coming, and everyone in town was gathering somewhere safe. 

As if Ramblers Reach couldn't get any cooler, there was a series of old smuggling tunnels and ancient Jedi ruins under the cantina. 

Doma had told Leia to stay close, but as residents of the town gravitated towards their pseudo-mayor for her leadership and her reliable presence, Leia wandered over the dark rock to find Kata or Ben. Ben was nowhere to be found, but Kata stood at Merrin's heel like a second shadow. She was wrapped in her red scarf, with a brave and stoic expression pressing her lips into a line while a short staff of a dark, almost black wood was slung across her back. 

"Psst," She sidled up to Kata, nudging the other girl, "What's going on?" 

"Mosey noticed some trouble with the Raiders early this morning. Merrin said Cal's trying to slow them down, but he missed a check-in." Kata whispered back. 

When Leia had joined Kata at Merrin's heel, the woman seemed to have already been in a wandering argument with the Latero owner of the cantina so she didn't pay too much attention to them. Both girls startled and looked up at his raised voice. "No can do Merrin! The only reason the Empire hasn't cleared this place out is because we haven't shown off any serious firepower. Taking the Mantis and lighting up the fort's gonna blow our cover. Honestly it's a miracle they haven't sent something big to investigate this planet yet - what with the multiple space lasers and defrosted 200-year-old madmen!" Greez hustled to chase after Merrin's longer stride, stalling her with a hand around her forearm while the other three gestured wildly. 

"The raiders are a danger at our backs that we do not need as we rebuild. If they had been dealt with sooner, then perhaps there would be other options." 

"Well they weren't and I ain't doing it!" 

"I was not asking." 

"You can't fly my ship!" Greez shouted, his old voice cracking slightly on the last syllable, "Wait, can you? Since when?!" He added with a tinge of uncertain horror. 

"Your lack of faith in my skills is troubling. I have done many more difficult things than fly a ship." She stated evenly, arms folded in displeasure. 

"The Mantis ain't some decade-old desert speeder!" 

"I am aware." She added after a beat, "My eyes are not painted on Greez." 

Greez threw his hands up in defeat and turned away. After a moment, a brilliant argument occurred to him and he turned back with gusto, "Okay, let's say you can fly the ship-" he ignored Merrin's dry 'which I can' and continued his point, "- so then what? We need the Mantis here in case there's trouble and we need to get the heck outta dodge - you know, like the plan? You really think everyone here can run into the valley and disappear? Cause I sure can't!" 

He softened under Merrin's disapproving frown, hands raised in placation. "I'm worried about him too, but we just gotta trust Cal to handle himself for a little longer. Just 'till everyone's safe down here, you know? None of us can take another loss and you'll both wanna blame yourselves if something goes wrong here." 

Merrin's expression soothed too, reflecting some of the sadness in the Latero's tone behind her own dry practicality, "You are right Greez, I know." 

They were saved from the melancholic end of their argument by Mosey. The woman jogged up to the small group with her axe in-hand and a communicator being stashed on her belt, "Everyone's accounted for. We can look after things here if y'all wanna be backup. Cal ain't responding it's a good guess he'll need it." 

"Thank you." Merrin briefly rested a hand on Mosey's shoulder as she passed by, Kata on her heels. 

So of course Leia followed. 

The chiss man Leia had seen around the cantina was standing guard at the entry of the smugglers tunnel with a stolen troopers blaster, he nodded to Merrin as she approached. Steps from the exit, Merrin turned on her heel to face her and Kata. "You are not coming with me." She stated, resting a hand on her hip. 

"I've been practicing, I can help." Kata replied evenly. Behind her back, Leia fidgeted with the hem of her coat but covered up the anxiety with a determined expression. She didn't like that Ben wasn't here and hadn't been mentioned by any of the adults. As much as she teased and made things difficult for the old man, she didn't want him to be out there alone. 

"Which is why you will stay here." Merrin leant down to rest a hand on Kata's shoulder, silencing her reply, "Look after Greez for me, you how helpless he is." 

Kata let out a little sigh and covered up her pout with a small but stoic nod. Leia stepped up and held her hand, giving it a small squeeze in reassurance.

Merrin's rust-brown eyes flicked to Leia as she lifted away from Kata's shoulder with a barely-there smile, "You will stay as well. Look out for each other." 

Both girls nodded to Merrin as the woman stepped back with a parting look. She cast her eyes over the crowd, lifting a hand to wave a signal to someone before her fingers curled and the gesture shifted. In a flare of green fire and a strange, bitter scent Leia couldn't place, Merrin was gone, with embers dispersing in the musty cave air where she had been. 

Chapter Text

Noxious sparks of green and black saved him from the disjointed haze of combat. His ribs smarted with every breath and he teetered unsteadily on one leg, but at least he was aware of himself again. Somehow, Merrin’s voice carried above the carnage and the high-pitched ringing in Cal’s ears. She appeared in a flare of shadow and light along the gantries, calling down to him as he was dodged through a field of dismembered bodies and reeking burns. 

When he reached her side, Cal slotted into place beside Merrin like they’d been made for it.

He carved copper arcs through armour plating like air, slashing past the bright strands of Merrin’s magick as she laced pure willpower around the squeaking limbs of battle droids. Bolts ricocheted off the blades of his lightsaber to scorch the crude towers. A second sound hovered at the edge of Cal’s hearing, buried under rending metal and battle droid quips. It was less tangible than the buzzing of his sabre in the air, but stronger than the ephemeral exhale of Merrin’s magick.

His kyber was whimpering.

Again. 

The first time it had happened was on Nova Garon when Cal had let the darkness in enough to turn the crystal’s soft but steadily thrumming pattern into a discordant shriek. He’d spent almost the entire trip back to Koboh dismantling his sabre and desperately checking the kyber within for signs of fracture. The orange glow was still there, flickering steadily on the workbench surface with its lightning-bug heartbeat. It was okay, it hadn’t bled. 

That crystal had saved him more times than he could remember. Cal didn’t know what he’d do if the last traces of light and hope had bled away because of his mistakes.

Tapping into the darkness and pain Bode’s betrayal had unleashed bent his kyber into a direction it wasn’t made for. It burned hotter and cut faster. It moved with him when the rest of the world slowed as if submerged in a crimson-tinted oil spill. It was why Cal had been so terrified the kyber had bled in the aftermath of his rage-fuelled rampage through the base.

But it hadn’t bled then, and it wouldn’t bleed now. 

Survivors, they adapt. 

The last bolt reflected into the chest of a tottering B1 unit. Its final whine faded to nothing as the power core dimmed and it tumbled into a heap off the edge of the bridge. Breath caught on the edges of his throat in burns, and Cal knew he’d taste iron from the exertion if the acrid smoke hadn’t filled his nose and mouth, shoving anything else out of the way. He took the moment of stillness to throw a grateful if slightly lopsided grin towards Merrin. 

“We should give it a sweep to make sure, but there can’t be much left.” Cal flicked his lightsaber away to its clip at his belt. The bridge wobbled under his unsteady steps as he took shelter on the comparatively solid ground of a tower. Merrin appeared beside him in a halo of sparks and negative energy and Cal’s expression cocked into a wry smile. “Just what I was thinking buddy, do you do that so much just because you can?” He echoed the little chirp from his shoulder. 

Mischief sparked in her eyes even as Merrin fixed him with a look of dry amusement, “Some mysteries are not made to be shared, just as some questions will never be answered.” 

Cal scoffed affectionately. 

The soap bubble film of post-battle tranquility burst with a tingle of warning in his blood. Cal threw himself off the edge of the tower and Merrin disappeared a second before the rocket collided into the creaking metal and barbed siding. He hit the ground hard and rolled, some of the impact dispersing through his aching chest but not enough for comfort. 

“My… my little ones…” A despairing tremble floated above the scattered crackle of flames and clatter of falling debris. 

Cal adjusted around, following BD-1’s beeped-out assessment of the area. A species he wasn’t entirely sure of the name to staggered out of an opposing structure. Their wide, glassy yellow eyes lacked a pupil or iris and vaguely reflected the devastation like a visor screen. The sentient was wearing a filthy, cobbled together set of what was maybe one day an engineers uniform, with sleeves tucked into thick welding gloves and padded at the joints. An array of B2 arms were draped over the sentient’s shoulders like battle regalia, the tarnished plating winking with stray embers. 

Cal steadied himself, guard up.

”They weren’t ready! The little ones weren’t ready to sleep!” The sentient trembled as they shouted. 

Merrin reappeared by his side with a questioning look that Cal mirrored with his best ‘I’m not sure but here we go’ shrug. 

“You will pay for this!” Red targeting beams appeared on the arms braced over the engineers shoulders, “For my little ones!”

Merrin teleported away in a shower of embers and shadows while Cal planted himself. He reached out as the explosives cleared their chambers and streamed towards him in a comets trail of white smoke. The intangible grip of the force closed around them as he guided them off course, disappearing through the ajar panels of a thin, listing to-one-side building. 

Apparently that was a mistake.

The spire exploded outwards in a hail of shrapnel and sheet metal. Cal snatched a piece that flew towards him and knelt behind the thick sheet as fire and scrap buffeted the makeshift shield. BD-1 scuttled off his back with a frightened trill to huddle against Cal's chest and Merrin appeared by his side, her magick flowing along the welded ridges to strengthen where Cal faltered. Together, the three of them braced against the pressure and destruction.

Where there should have been relief that he wouldn't be teased for how embarrassingly long it took Obi-Wan to fall into a real meditation, there was only grief because there was no one left to know. He sat cross-legged on the stone tiles under the vaulted canopy of the meditation plinth. Enveloped by the sharp serenity and the stability of the Chamber, Obi-Wan had shifted and fidgeted until the Chamber’s energy stopped chafing against his worn-down shields. 

It was humbling, he supposed, that even though he knew exactly what he was supposed to be doing, the lack of practice made initiates of them all. 

Trying to visualise the source of his hindered connection brought back a memory he hadn't thought of in a long time.

When Obi-Wan was a youngling, he'd been dragged by Quinlan through the temple halls to one of the many galleries. A mixture of beautiful and strange artefacts lined the walls in neat little alcoves, protected by thick but clear sheets of glass and annotated with holo-plaques. The older boy had rushed him past the ornate ceramics and idols of long-gone traditions into a section where textile and woven artefacts had been preserved. Colourful sail cloths fluttered from the rafters of the gallery, casting a kaleidoscope of blending colour over the tiled floors. An archivist working to restore a long strand of rope and beads gave the boys an unhappy glare as they dashed past. Quinlan had thrown an unserious apology over his shoulder, and taken Obi-Wan to the base of a colossal tapestry. The tapestry had been ravaged by time, and the threads pulled loose to tangle together so much that they obscured the original patterns. 

"Want to know how many threads there are? I bet you can't guess it right." Quinlan had snarked, elbowing Obi-Wan's shoulder. 

He hated being this much shorter. Obi-Wan had primly smoothed down his robes and tried not to sound childish when he retorted, "The threads are too tangled to count."

"So is 'I give up' your guess?" 

"No!" Obi-Wan glared at the tangled wreck of a tapestry. "I just need a moment to think about it!" 

"Sure," Quinlan patted his head in an infuriatingly condescending way, "Y'know, thinking really hard about them isn't gonna work. You gotta let the force tell you what it wants." 

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes, "Or, do this magical thing called 'check the label'."

Quinlan had whistled in mock awe, "You can read?" 

"Can you!" Obi-Wan had glared at him until Quinlan almost fell over from laughing at the indignant shade of red he'd turned. 

He never did learn how many threads linked together to create that tapestry. Even decades later, when he'd taken a young, starry-eyed Anakin on a tour of the temple to visit the various museums and they'd found that the tapestry had been restored, no one had counted or recorded the threads. Obi-Wan realised it was probably a tedious and ultimately pointless question. The individual threads didn't matter when put against the perspective of the final pattern. 

Like the tapestry from his youngling days, Obi-Wan had let the world tangle him into knots of stress and trauma.  

Logically, he knew everything he needed to do and exactly how to do it; acknowledge the suffering and release it into the force. But he just... couldn't. It was far too petulant a frustration for him to indulge, but he wished there was a magical solution that would bring back everything that he'd shut away. But of course, it would take work to rebuild his physical and spiritual strength. Even without a magical cure-all, there was something that teetered just beyond his grasp, drawing closer like rolling peals of thunder. Obi-Wan pressed for it, reaching and tugging at the threads in his psyche.

There had to be something, something that the would make the trudge through vicious slurry and tar worth it. That image resonated differently, like the quality of metal in the singing bowl had changed halfway through. Brackish sludge clung to his legs, creeping with cold fingers up his waist to drag him under the roiling surface. Obi-Wan was almost there. Despite the wretched smell of the bog and looming exoskeleton of the ship in the distance, the vaulted entry of the Chamber was just ahead. If only they could reach it. 

The revelation shook the ground and Obi-Wan jerked back to awareness with a disoriented web clinging to his senses.

The rumble and groan that bounced off the carved walls of the chamber was very real, sending trickles of dust and small pebbles scattering from the vaulted ceiling to tumble into the chasm below. While the calmness and serenity of the chamber was unbreakable, the stonework was not. 

Apparently, his ankles could now become sore from the angle of sitting down and applied pressure of his body-weight against a stone floor. 

Marvellous. 

When the shuddering of the chamber stopped Obi-Wan got to his feet with worry gnawing a pit into his stomach. He followed the path he and Cal had taken out of the chamber, trading the rumble of... whatever that was for the grind of the turbolift towards Koboh's surface. 

Obscured by the acrid smoke of the burning fort and long columns of the canyon walls, hovered an imperial viper. The JX9-CS14 model focused its lens through the hazy daylight to fall upon the bearded and stress-strung face of a man in a brown jacket and khaki cloak. The image sharpened, following the man as he hurried towards the burning wreckage of the Fort Kah'lin no-fly zone. 

The signal travelled. 

To the central data repository at base 8L-055 and to the connected transmission tower.

The signal breached atmosphere and travelled through the silent void of space. 

Until eventually, the signal travelled to the Executor. 

And the Executor travelled back.  

Chapter Text

The ‘all clear’ transmission had rippled through the crowd cramped into the smugglers tunnels like an exhale. Where some of the more grouchy prospectors had resented the interruption to their day, others were simply relieved that the Raiders were gone for good. Leia had raced to hug Ben when she saw the old man returning from the town's outskirts with a significantly dirtier Cal and Merrin in tow. Where the other two were covered in streaks of soot, ash, and bruises, Ben only sported Koboh’s usual dust and tarnished soil.  

At Kata’s bright smile and Doma’s reserved but pleased encouragement, Ramblers Reach celebrated the end of the Bedlam Raiders. Greez had invited some key figures in town to an ‘extended family dinner’ at the cantina, and Leia was excited to be considered a part of it. Music and the happy rumble of conversation wrapped around her as it wound through the Saloon's levels. She perched beside Kata on the tall chairs at the bar, empty plates and half-drunk glasses of fruit juice spread across the surface. 

When Doma had first suggested to Greez that a small celebration was in order, she’d dreaded it. On Alderaan, parties meant scratchy dresses and gaudy decorations over the usually refined chambers. It would be full of sour food in tiny portions and fizzing drinks that smelled like polish she wasn’t allowed to have (and didn’t want to). Leia would dutifully mingle with the guests at her parents heels until the visiting dignitaries or imperial officers ushered the children away to play pretend at being important while they talked in circles about politics or the state of the economy. Ramblers Reach was so much more alive than those suffocating parties. 

Leia loved it and knew her parents would too. 

Maybe when the galaxy was safe, she’d get to share this place with them. 

Despite the apparently open-secret of Cal’s true background among the residents of Ramblers Reach, Obi-Wan was not quite as willing to flaunt his own history. At dawn and dusk, Obi-Wan found a quiet, tucked away space among the bright plants and buzzing insects of the Saloon's rooftop garden where he meditated and stretched. The routine helped smooth out the jolts of his healing connection, turning the return of the force to his active senses from a spasm to a stretch. He was already well accustomed to rising early, but the morning dew and crisp breeze that swept through the valley each night to banish the days warm haze sunk into his bones harsher than it used to as he moved slowly through the familiar exercises. Those mornings, coupled with his labour-intense days working with prospectors around the outpost left him with a clean kind of soreness that he welcomed, because Obi-Wan knew it indicated progress. 

As much as knew he needed the practice, until he found somewhere more private (or better yet returned to Tattooine), Obi-Wan was not going to risk practicing any lighthsaber forms. 

It would be invaluable to spar with Cal, but on the rare occasions he was able to catch Cal alone and Obi-Wan considered asking him, the young man would shift away and find an excuse to leave; dodging an impending blow. The protective streak wrapped around Obi-Wan's heart broke a little at that, even as he reminded himself that Cal expressly did not want his care and didn't seem to want his presence at all. 

The source of young Jedi's discomfort was one of the simpler subjects Obi-Wan considered while he meditated. It was easier to be compassionate and examine Cal's undisclosed trauma that it was his own. Ultimately, that is what the Jedi were made for as protectors, scholars, diplomats and teachers. Others always came first.

If Cal didn't openly wear his lightsaber, Obi-Wan would guess that the young man was wary of him because of the extra scrutiny and risk his presence brought. But Obi-Wan could see a deeper discomfort behind the stilted beginnings of their conversations and Cal's general avoidance. A combination of the young Jedi's whisper-quiet shielding and Obi-Wan's fragile senses made the force surround Cal like an abrasion. The living force's metabolic flows caught against the scabbed-over edges and stumbled. 

Somehow, Cal was afraid of him. How to fix that was a related subject of Obi-Wan's meditations. 

Through his time meditating and reflecting, Obi-Wan revisited the imagery of tar and putrefaction that the Chamber of Clarity had shown him. He had been trudging through the mud as it climbed up his thighs, grasping the fabrics of his cloak and pulling him into the darkness away from the golden light of the Jedi. Before Zee had animatedly described the locations and purposes of Koboh's scattered meditation chambers, Obi-Wan had thought the force was giving him an ominous metaphor to signal his impending fall from grace.

Instead, he had simply received an uncharacteristically literal vision.

Zee explained how the Chamber of Connection had been built in the centre of a fertile wetland. The ecosystem had been destroyed when raiders attacked the Jedi strongholds on planet centuries ago, and when a separatist Lucerhulk crashed into the remains it had bled engine oil and foul chemicals into what remained. Now, a poisonous and deadly bog surrounded the Chamber which Cal had navigated through to rescue Wini and Zygg when their barge lodged itself in the viscous rot. 

Again, Obi-Wan needed to coax the young man into being his guide. 

He'd managed to corner Cal while the young man was explaining a quirk of the Mantis to the pit droid running diagnostics and refurbishing the blaster scorches across the lower hull of the ship. The droid let out a disbelieving string of binary, insisting that no, the ship was not supposed to be making that noise when it entered atmosphere. Cal repeated that it was fine with the explorer droid perched on his shoulder trilling in agreement, "It's always sounded like that. The turret Greez put in siphons power through the shield generators so they're always a little weak when the ship enters atmosphere." The droid responded with a high-pitched and somewhat plaintive 'but that doesn't work!'. 

"Look, argue with Greez about it, but he doesn't speak binary and isn't a fan of anyone telling him what to do with his ship." Cal shrugged with a knowing tone that the pit droid muttered a complaint about Greez in response to. Cal smirked, "Is the Mantis safe to fly or not?" 

The droid had warbled petulantly about the technicalities of 'safety' when organics evidently had such low standards of ship maintenance. "Hey, we've got great standards for the Mantis." A corner of Cal's lip pulled down indignantly. 

Obi-Wan joined them to distract the pit droid's distress with an intentionally light chuckle. 

He almost lost his nerve when Cal flinched at his inclusion to the conversation. But he pressed on, "Cal, might I have a word?" 

The young man hesitated, his hands absently flexing where they rested at his sides as he drifted away. Obi-Wan followed. "Your suspicions about the Chamber of Clarity were correct and I believe I know the Chamber which is best to visit next. Your experience with this planet would be invaluable in reaching it. Zee termed it as the Chamber of Connection." 

Cal winced. He scrubbed a hand down his face to scratch at the hairs behind his ear, "That's in the Bog, isn't it?" 

"Unfortunately so." Obi-Wan smiled apologetically. 

BD-1 made a put-out beep, "Yeah you said it buddy." Cal shook his head and studied Obi-Wan, "It's a pain in the ass to get to." 

"Precisely why I am asking for your assistance." Obi-Wan pressed, his voice tight with sympathy, "I trust this outpost to keep Leia safe in my absence, but I do not trust myself to protect her when we leave. Her, Kata, and all others like them are the future. We owe them their chance to change the galaxy." 

Like the first time, Cal regretted agreeing to being Kenobi's guide.

It wasn't because anything the Jedi Master had done, more what Cal was waiting for him to do. He couldn't shake the feeling that Kenobi knew what he'd done and was just waiting for the right moment to deal with him. Permanently.

It didn't help that Cal didn't entirely trust the older man to be able to keep up with the physically demanding short cuts he usually used to navigate Koboh's landscape. The quick route to the Viscid Bog was characterised by hard climbs across sheer cliff faces and faith-led glides over Koboh's seemingly bottomless rifts. Their 'safer' route turned what Cal could manage there and back in a three-hour hike into an all-day trip with the intention of resting in the hut Wini and Zygg had salvaged when their barge crashed. Mounted on a pair of Nekkos with saddle-bags strapped to their sides containing climbing equipment, bed rolls and camping rations for if the weather on their trek betrayed them, Cal led Kenobi through the trails and steep ridges of Koboh. 

Zee would adore the imagery of this story; two steadfast Jedi knights trekking across an untamed planet with their trusty mounts on a quest of self-betterment. Weak shadows under the bright noon sun dogged their steps and the wilderness hummed around them with a thousand motes of life, caught in the intricate currents of the living force. 

Cal didn't get the chance to move slowly across the planets he visited and wished he could use this opportunity to actually appreciate the world around him. Instead, breathing in made the warm air mingle with the dark anxieties that chewed on his brain stem, pressing everything closer and harder. Cal tried to breathe through the onslaught of claustrophobia, and when that failed dismounted from his Nekko to walk beside it with the reins in hand to burn off some of the energy vibrating under his skin. 

What made it all worse was that Kenobi was... actually pretty likeable.

Once the old man seemed to get over his protective stress at leaving Leia out of his reach for the day, he'd settled into a steady stream of conversation to ask questions about the planet or share anecdotes about his time travelling through different worlds during the War. BD-1 answered most of his queries about Koboh's wildlife and topography in chipper strings of binary, and as Cal began to walk off the trapped, animalistic instincts scratching in his blood, he found himself chiming in too. He'd been taught about Kenobi's wartime exploits, and then there was the Temple's gossip mill, but hearing pieces of it from the man himself was something else. It turned the man from a mythic figure of exaggerated sass and insane feats of skill or power into... someone real. 

"Yeah, BD's picked up a lot of tricks over the years." A small and genuine smile pulled across Cal's face as he twisted back to watch BD show off his various augmentations from the little droid's perch on Cal's empty saddle. Kenobi watched little flecks of violet dust settle on the saddle as BD-1 demonstrated the Koboh-Matter grinder they'd acquired. 

"He's an extremely versatile little droid. My companions have mostly been astromech units, and while I adored R4 and R2, they aren't as... adaptable." Kenobi noted, sheepishly defending his old droids. 

"Never would have made it this far without him." Cal affirmed. He reached out a hand to BD-1, and the little droid raised a leg to bump against his knuckles. 

In the end, they made pretty good time getting to the Viscid Bog, and decided they could leave their supplies stashed among the boulders in shaded alcove that overlooked the noxious swamp. Both Cal and Kenobi had enough of a connection with the creatures that letting them roam freely wasn't an issue, so the Nekkos had their saddles and bridles removed to be able to graze freely on the sparse shrubbery and low-hanging tree branches and flee if there was danger. 

The Viscid Bog stretched out below the plateau like a dark scar on Koboh's sepia-tinted landscape. What had once been a vibrant wetland had become a necrotic wound surrounding the hollowed-out exoskeleton of the Lucrehulk. He’d passed through the Chamber of Connection after the ships escape pods spat them out on a stretch of blackened rock that luckily had yet to be consumed by the swamp, so Cal and BD knew where they were going. 

Cal hadn't visited this festering graveyard since he and Bode rescued Zee from the Raiders. 

Reentering it with Kenobi, the former bastion of mythic light beside his own scarred deception, felt like the start of a bad joke.

‘A Jedi Master and fallen padawan walk into a dead bog…’ 

Descending into the putrid muck of the bog was as awful the second time as it had been the first. From the looks Kenobi was making and stifled gagging whenever he forgot not to breathe through his nose, Cal was glad that his time on Bracca had killed most of his sense of smell. He shot the older man a sympathetic look and promised that no, you don’t get used to it. A lucky strip of chemically scorched rock snaked out from the base of the plateau. When that ran out, Cal was able to yank other jutting mesas or bits of stranded junk out of the sludge to build them a functional if extremely haphazard and slightly sinking bridge. 

Ahead, the brassy cube of the Chamber’s entry jutted out of the darkness of the swamp. 

Leia was helping Kata in the garden when it happened.

Well, 'helping' maybe wasn't the best term when 'distracting' was more accurate. The duo who built their holotactics board downstairs had given Leia one of their beta test chips. The chip and data complexity was small enough that LOLA could run it, and the two girls had been having fun attacking each other with pixellated blobs of colour from their nest among the feathery pine ferns. LOLA sat on the ground between them, dramatically narrating the colour-blobs attacks and counters. 

She entirely wasn't sure what changed. 

Maybe it was the flicker that passed over Kata's face, like her stomach had swooped out from under her after falling from a height. Maybe it was the pressure change in the air, even though there was no way she'd actually be able to feel something entering Koboh's orbit and outer atmosphere. Maybe it was the shadow that brushed over them like a fingernail down Leia's spine. 

Whatever it was that changed, when the two girls looked up to see the colossal silhouette of an Imperial Venator high in Koboh's pale blue skies, she knew it couldn't be good.

Chapter Text

"To be still is to be calm. To allow for wisdom to spring forth. Yet the galaxy is seldom static. Motion, however, can provide clarity. Let truth flow like a river, and carve new channels around any obstacle."  Santari Khri's recorded voice echoed around the Chamber's vaulted ceilings. Obi-Wan breathed in a deep breath of the chilled cave air, relishing his freedom from the swamp's rancid fumes. Pressure plates dotted the gantries and platforms of the Chamber, lit by pale teal sensors that reflected off the tarnished brass trims. Crystalline veins of Koboh-Matter snaked through the stonework of the Chamber like capillaries through the body of the planet.

Despite the devastation above, the flow of the force in the Chamber felt clean and safe. It wove a gossamer blanket around the two Jedi as they assessed the Chambers tests, whispering encouragement to Obi-Wan that there was kinship and safety - to reach out again and connect. And a moment later, he tried. 

Obi-Wan would describe the mental hello-connected-Jedi he projected through the force as if he was speaking through a voice rough with sleep; disused but not silent. Cal stumbled in open shock and Obi-Wan winced behind his back in fear that the young man would curl away into his shell. In a single moment of impulsive experimentation, Obi-Wan had undone all the work that had taken place on their trek to the Chamber. 

It was his turn to stall in surprise, when a timid hello-Jedi-Master drifted from the tense lines of Cal's turned back. 

"There are uh, pressure plates in this Chamber. I'll activate it while you go through." Cal gestured awkwardly across to the raised platforms and a suspended bridge of glittering Koboh-Matter at the far end.

Obi-Wan surveyed the obstacles Cal indicated, "I assume this Chamber was designed to be solved in pairs?" 

"Yeah. I guess." 

Obi-Wan placed a hand on the young Jedi's shoulder, trying to convey as much genuine warmth and gratitude as he could without overwhelming the poor boy with any shaky control. Cal tensed, but didn't flinch away from it like Obi-Wan had expected. The young man risked a glance at him, uncertainty flickering deep in his forest-blue eyes even as the muscles of his face forced his expression into neutrality. There was a lot he could say, but perhaps a more simplistic approach was best, "Thank you, Cal."

Right on the mark, Cal shifted self-consciously under the praise but he didn't withdraw. The young Jedi's expression twitched into a guarded not-quite smile but it was still better than the tension he'd been holding. It wasn't perfect, but it was progress. 

He gave Cal's shoulder a reassuring pat as he moved past. Obi-Wan carefully made his way around the winding staircases to clear a short gap and he managed it on his own this time. The arched plinth of the meditation chamber rested ahead, a central point in the intangible web of connections that strung through the chamber and beyond. Standing at its epicentre brought back a sense of belonging Obi-Wan hadn't experienced since his days in the temple. With enough time and focus, he could trace his mind down each of the gently shifting strands to see the spark of life they met. One of them traced to Cal, the brightest but also most sheltered glow in the wilderness. Above them, smaller creatures struggled against the suffocating darkness of the swamp, finding ways to adapt and survive in spite of an environment that did not want them.

Before Obi-Wan could follow the shining threads any further the candlelight of Cal's presence rushed closer, compressing the strand linked to him enough to wash a wave of vertigo over Obi-Wan's senses. He blinked the stars out of his vision to fall on the grim expression pulling across Cal's face. 

"Kenobi. We need go." 

Cal and Kenobi left the Chamber as soon as the message BD-1 patched through finished playing. As much as he loved BD-1, he didn't believe the little droids cautious optimism for a second and neither did Kenobi. They needed to get back to the outpost. Now. Several hours ago, actually. Koboh’s bright, warm sun was languidly rolling across the sky to mock their rushed pace, passing the midday point and guiding them into the afternoon. 

Cal was vibrating with stressed energy as he waited for Kenobi to clamber down from the tangled vines that trailed across Koboh’s cliff faces. It wasn’t entirely fair to blame the older man for slowing them down but the overhead scream of TIE fighters and Imperial shuttles carrying who the fuck knew what had erased any kind of care Cal could give. Every instinct he had was shouting at him to go. 

“This isn’t working.” Cal didn’t wait for his companion to finish yanking his ropes free of the climbing pitons he’d set among the vines. 

“No,” Kenobi agreed grimly while he caught his breath, “It is not.” 

The older Jedi beat him to spitting out the solution. 

“Go ahead Cal, I will catch up with you at the Outpost. Or,” he smiled ruefully through a face tight with exertion and waved vaguely at his travelling pack, “I will apologise profusely for getting lost and ask for directions.” 

Cal hadn't noticed he was waiting for Kenobi's approval until the confirmation lit a spark in his veins. He threw a grateful but stressed half-smile over his shoulder as he started towards the plateau’s edge. Vines dangled over the misty chasm a short leap away, and he’d have to hope there was something to land on across the other side. 

“Good luck and,” Kenobi hesitated for a beat as Cal bounced on the balls of his feet to psych himself up for the jump, “May the force be with you.”

Cal swallowed. “Yeah. You too.” 

He didn’t look back at Kenobi before he threw himself over the edge, racing ahead to Ramblers Reach. 

The dust-clouded musk and crisp mist of Koboh began to take on the sulphurous tang that wafted from the geysers of the Igneous Fissures. The golden dirt and vine-riddled cliff faces gave way to winding layers of orange and ochre dust, compressed into ribbons of strata that ran through the rough canyon walls. The ferns and scraggly grasses that had dotted the tarnished soil under his feet gave way to the rubbery polyps of succulents and crimson gills of fungi. Pools of chemically bright water trickled over the flat ridges fitting against the edges of the canyons and gold sediment swirled around Cal’s boots as he splashed through the pools. This canyon ended in a wall pockmarked by animal dens and loose rubble. While he’d climbed worse, Cal didn’t like his chances of getting over that minefield efficiently. 

“BD, show me where we are again?” Cal folded his arms and turned to a patch of clear ground as BD-1’s projector flared and a geometric holo flickered over the orange soil. Cal frowned as he studied the map, gesturing for BD-1 to move it back along the canyon. A few hundred metres back was a section where the walls narrowed together, and Cal could easily touch both sides when he stretched his arms out. From this angle, it would be a steep drop, but if he kept his up momentum he might be able to scale it to the top. 

“There’s our way out.” His companion chirped in agreement as the map winked out and Cal jogged to double back. 

His legs burned with each jump across the narrow gap as his boots sent torrents of sediment into the gorge below. With a sharp inhale of effort, Cal caught the chasm’s lip under his fingers and hauled himself onto the plateau. He took a moment to breathe, sat on the sun-warmed rock with his hands braced on his knees.

With a whirr of excitement, BD-1 leapt off his back to trot ahead. “Yeah, I’m coming. Just… give me a sec BD.” Cal groaned as he got to his feet and followed where the little droid had scampered off to. BD’s scanner flared over the lip of a snaking fissure on the rocky plateau. Cal followed BD to the edge of the cracking terrain. The steaming and cracking salt flats of the Igneous Fissures spread out ahead, disappearing into the narrow gorges that eventually led into the valley of Ramblers Reach. Just a little further, and they’d be home. 

Cal had a bad feeling about this. 

Yellowing steam rose from the vents dotting the salt-flats, stinging his eyes and clogging his throat. Everything blurred through the reflexive tears. BD-1’s stream of warbled directions from his shoulder stopped Cal from walking in circles through the sulphuric fog. Mostly. 

There was a second. A little twinge of aggression that rippled through the back of his mind even while a burst of steam covered the telltale thrum of a lightsaber igniting. Cal jolted to block the red strike that arched towards his head. BD yelped as he backpedaled across the cracked ground, trading quick, brutal blows with the black-clad inquisitor sneering at him through the smoke. She stalled when a burst of steam erupted from the vent between them, the red line of her sabre held in an aggressive stance distorting her silhouette. 

"Well, well, you aren't the Jedi trash I expected." The inquisitor called across the geyser, prowling around the crater as the steam began to clear. 

Cal bit out a short laugh, "Still Jedi trash though, right?" He snarked. 

"Only until you die." 

Cal noted there was more venom in her tone than the icy callousness Trilla had projected. They moved slowly as the steam cleared, circling each other like lurca hounds. The inquisitor was a human or near-human woman with dark skin and textured hair pulled into tight braids along her scalp. The matte black synthleather and plastoids of her uniform absorbed the diffused light as it filtered through the fog while a black cape fluttered dramatically at her heels in the warm updrafts. Her eyes flicked to something behind him and her lip curled in distain. 

Cal blocked the red glow that snaked towards his thigh with the second blade of his saberstaff. The mint-green-skinned Artemite snarled at him as Cal kicked the inquisitor in the side and spun away from the sabre-lock. 

"Come on," He gestured between the two glaring inquisitors, adding with faux confidence. "Two on one's hardly fair. How about we take turns? Or even better, why don't you wait here and I'll be right back..." 

The woman's expression twisted into a cruel, mocking snort while the other inquisitor sneered. "Kestis." The second blade of Fifth Brother's lightsaber lit with the growl of his kyber, "There is no failed master or heretical witch to save you this time." 

Cal scowled and set his stance, "I don't need saving from you." 

The duel tore across the baked ground as red and orange sabres clashed in bright flares of spitting plasma. Cal slashed over Fifth Brother’s forearm in a shower of sparks while the woman skimmed the tip of her sabre in a line up Cal's calf. Cal bit down on the resulting shout of pain and parried her next blow with a ripple of the force in the air, shoving her off-balance. The reprieve did not last long. 

Twin blades locked against his own as the inquisitors bore down. Dust and small pebbles accrued behind his heels as the weight and strength pushed him back into the column of rushing steam behind him. BD-1's weight lifted off his back with a trill of shock, the light chassis caught in the draft. Cal thought he shouted too, as the little droid's mobility thrusters fired to wheel through the turbulence in an attempt to return to him and Fifth Brother's squared-off jaw curled into a cruel grin. He left the sabre-lock to swing for the red and white casing of BD-1. 

There was an awful moment when Cal's heart stopped. 

When it started again, it was with a wave of protective, animal rage. Cal reached for the screaming crimson of Fifth Brother's lightsaber and yanked it. He drove it to a side, turning the strike that would have cleaved BD-1 in half into a clip against the little droid's leg. Sparks scattered. 

Cal didn't stop there. 

He wrenched the sabre around; its second, deadly blade cutting into Fifth Brother's clavicle and splitting down into his chest cavity. Cal wanted to pull it further; to cleave the wretched inquisitor in half and leave his body for the gorgers, but the lightsaber flickered out with a pained, splintering grunt from the inquisitor when it had only partially lodged in his chest. Fifth Brother fell to a knee, one arm hanging limply and his torso smoking in the sulphuric fog.

Cal wrapped his hold around BD-1 to pull him out of danger before the other inquisitor had the same bright idea. His droid shrieked when he collided with Cal's chest, the glass of BD's optic might have cracked, but couldn't tell. There was so much noise. His teeth were grinding together into a vicious sneer, or maybe it was the ground? A pent-up pressure and power buzzed at his fingertips that the dark, powerful thing that had unfurled in his chest guided him to reach out and touch. But there was also the tremor of the ground below him, the pressure-plates of brittle stone and cracking salt they stood on.  

He'd repelled the other inquisitor at some point, and she stalked closer warily with a hateful and wild look in her eyes. She was appraising him differently now, like there were new dimensions to figure out before she would kill him. 

Tough shit that she'd never get an answer. 

His lightsaber flicked away as Cal reached out to the buzzing pressure below his feet and gave it a jolt. Jets of steam and boiling groundwater erupted around them to launch sheets of stone into the air. The inquisitor staggered and was thrown by the pressure. She dug her lightsaber into the side of a mesa and threw her arm over her face to shield herself from the burning spray. Cal let it streak against him, burning new chemical scorches across the reinforced knees of his trousers and into the leathers of his boots and blaster holster. As the plates beneath his feet flew into the air, Cal sprang from it, disappearing into the hail of shale and caustic smog with the whirr of his ascension cable.  

Chapter Text

Kata had only run away from her new guardians once. 

It had been an accident too. She'd panicked when a trooper rounded on her and Greez to demand their credentials on the hangar dock, and while backing away from the blank helmet and modulated voice of the trooper had slipped and tumbled down a storm drain. Kata watched the dingy neon lights of Coruscant as they distorted across the wet duracete from her huddled and shivering shelter beside a dumpster. She'd skinned her elbow on the way down, and the cut stung in the lukewarm rain. From her curled-up hiding spot, Kata had thought about getting up and leaving. It would be so easy to slip into the gutters of Coruscant and vanish. It was the biggest city in the galaxy after all, and her papa had taught her how to hide. She could do it. 

But then what? 

She wouldn’t have to figure out how to talk to Cal, for one. 

It wasn’t that she didn’t like him? Cal had been nice to her when they’d first met even though he was angry with her papa. Kata just never felt seen by him. Like he was always looking through her and seeing something else that’d make him lean away. 

And there was the fact that he’d killed her papa. 

She didn’t really know how to process that one. 

It opened a dark, yawning chasm with the feeling of a roiling storm somewhere in Kata’s chest. The best adjective she could think of for it was a mix of loneliness and maybe anger? She knew her papa did bad things, and had done bad things to Cal specifically. But... he was her papa and she'd still loved him. Even when he’d become different. And Cal had killed him. 

But what did that mean for her? 

In the end Kata hadn’t moved from her hiding place, and a few hours later, Cal and BD-1 had found her. The flickering blue of BD-1’s scanner passed over her while Kata sniffled in the dampness. Cal was kneeling in front of her, halfway towards reaching out but hesitating with a timid grief swirling in his expression. 

This wasn’t about him though. Her arm hurt and her clothes were wet and Kata felt so small and alone as she hid in the shadow of literal garbage. 

Equally timid but determinedly, Kata had crawled forward and wrapped her arms around Cal’s neck. He’d frozen as she hid her face in the folds of his clothing. Stiffly, he unwound a red hood to wrap the slightly itchy fabric around Kata’s back and pat her damp hair.

”I… I don’t like it here. It’s big and cold but differently to Tanalorr or Nova Garon. Can we go home now?” 

“Yeah. Yeah Kata.” Cal picked her up when he stood, BD-1 climbing up onto his shoulder. Kata reached out a hand to pat the top of BD’s head. “I don’t like the rain either.” 

Cal had killed her papa.

The sadness and hurt he felt over that couldn’t change the past. But neither could her own grief; she couldn’t bring her papa back to life or change him back to the man he’d been before her mama died. Kata hadn’t quite understood Merrin when the nightsister had told her the loss would always be with her, but now it made a little more sense. 

Maybe, just maybe, that loss could move a little to one side and let there be space for kindness, too. 

A future? 

A new home, at least. 

Cal’s heartbeat was marching in his ears with a dull echo. Once he’d left the steaming salt flats behind, Cal hadn't stopped moving until the eroded dust under his boots turned back into grainy soil and scrappy grasses. Inquisitors on Koboh were a bad sign. The cliffs and vines of Koboh’s ravines were harder to scale with one arm, but he wouldn’t risk BD. Cal kept the other clamped against his chest and curled around the little body of his best friend.

The burning stress to get back to the outpost warred with the scratching tide of worry to check how much damage BD-1 had sustained. 

Squeezing through the other side of a narrow crevasse and finding a semi-flat rock littered with junk and rusted tools was a good enough for a work bench. His breathing was starting to taste like blood anyway, so stopping for a minute was probably in his interests too. Cal’s arm almost tingled as he unclenched it from around BD-1 and let the droid limp onto the flat surface. 

It was worse than he’d thought. 

The metal of BD-1’s leg had bubbled and curled inwards from the jagged slash of Fifth Brother’s lightsaber. The rubber coatings of BD’s intricate circuitry and fibre optic wiring that connected to his scomp link had melted into an amorphous, messy stump. It was severed just over the knee joint and sparked dully whenever the remaining limb twitched. The lenses of both BD’s optic and scanner had cracked, and as Cal leant over his friend little shards of glass scattered onto the stone surface from the folds of his clothing. 

It was also so, so much better than it could have been. 

“We’ll get everything fixed as soon as we get back to the ship. It’s going to be okay buddy.” Cal laughed a little breathlessly at BD’s answering trill of encouragement and complete trust in him. The light behind his optic wasn’t as smooth as it used to be and flickered unsteadily without the glass to diffuse it. Cal knew it was illogical, but he was hit by a vivid fear of watching the light go out like eyelids drooping closed to blood loss. 

“Yeah buddy, of course I’m gonna help. Let’s get you a-“ he stood and twisted to pull his hooded jacket over his head and almost fell over at the spasm of pain that travelled up his leg.

Ah, right. 

Following the scattered rays of BD’s broken scanner, Cal clenched his jaw and inspected the wound across his leg. The female inquisitors lightsaber had skimmed a burning line up the outside of his left leg; dipping into his calf and out at his knee before cutting about half way up his thigh. She’d barely caught him with the tip of her saber so the wound wasn’t too deep, but now that he’d stopped moving the burnt muscles and tissues throbbed with his heartbeat. It was shiny with weeping platelets and blood from where the tissue had torn during his adrenaline-fuelled flight from the salt flats, making the singed fabric of his clothing stick to it. BD-1 whined at him in concern so Cal turned his attention back to the little droid and the stim canister BD nudged at him with his working leg.

There was relief in Cal’s tight twitch of a smile, as he picked up the canister, “Ha, we do kinda match. Thanks buddy.” 

This was going to fucking suck. 

He jabbed the needle into his thigh with a sharp gasp as the cool, tingling burn of the bacta stim washed over him. It sent pins and needles skittering down his leg but at least it eased some of the tight and cracking muscles. Cal tore the fabric of his jacket into crude strips and wrapped his leg as much as he could. He saved the hood to tie around his chest and shoulders in a makeshift harness, securing it to the mag-plates BD usually latched onto. With repairs complete for at least one of them, Cal scooped up the droid despite his half-hearted reassurances that his thrusters were fully operational and he was therefore still capable of movement and settled him in the folds of his hood. BD latched his remaining leg onto the plates for added stability. 

“Comfy up there?” Cal’s lip twitched upwards at the determined ‘affirmative!’ BD-1 chirped out. He tested the weight on his leg which prickled with the familiar, almost carbonated, sensation the healing stims usually left him with. Later, he could (and would) crash hard but that was a problem for Future Cal. 

Squeezing through another narrow canyon and finally making it into the valley of Ramblers Reach cast the golden hour of Koboh afternoon sun across the land. It wasn't fair, how the  bright light made the Imperial phi-class shuttles and troop transports glow with warmth and a sick mockery of comfort. Someone had kicked a wasps' nest, and stormtroopers swarmed through the two dusty streets in their white armour wielding their stingers as blasters or electro-batons. From this distance, Cal couldn't tell what was happening to his friends, his family that had been left behind. He could tell they hand't left, as the Mantis was still perched on its landing pad at the edge of the outpost. A shuttle had landed nearby and an angry swarm of faceless troopers were churning around his ship's landing gear, trying to get in. 

"Merrin's here, she wouldn't let anything happen to them." Cal wasn't sure if he was saying it for his benefit or to soothe the concerned warble BD whistled from his back. 

Cal kept low as he crept towards the overrun hive of the outpost. As he got closer, Cal saw the vague shapes of stormtroopers corralling the outpost's residents into a line. Purge troopers stalked between the haloed white outlines of the TKs, absorbing light where the stormtroopers glared harshly with it. The conditions couldn't have been more different, but seeing the blocky shapes of prospectors helmets, jackets and gloves shot Cal back to Bracca; where stormtroopers had pulled them off the train and shoved him and his coworkers into a line, acidic rain sloughing off the stiff fabric of their ponchos. 

Water splashed up his burnt shin and sunk into his boots as Cal dropped into the shallow river. He stuck to the shadow of the bank, skirting along the side to keep out of the view of the troopers. Shouted orders and modulated threats drifted over the ridge on the lazy Koboh breeze, along with the tang of ozone and engine exhaust.

A purge trooper with an electro staff clasped in one hand stalked along the line of prospectors, monologuing. 

Mosey had been pushed into the end of the lineup by an irate stormtrooper, but she stood tall and kept her hands up placatingly despite the rough and jeering TK. Her weapon had been confiscated. Toa stood in the middle of the line, bracketed in by burly prospectors, staring at the ground to make herself look small and unimportant. A little ways behind, Moran was being led away in cuffs with a acerbic twist to his expression as the stormtrooper captain harshly nudged his back with their rifle as they marched towards a transport shuttle.  

He couldn't see Greez. 

Imperial ships were starting to take off, having arrested any obvious criminals or received new orders. The purge trooper stalking in front of the lineup stalled and lifted a hand to the side of their helmet, listening. Sharply, he twirled the staff and beckoned a group of TK's closer that coldly took aim at the line of prospectors and residents. Fear and cold detachment  bled through the force, washing over Cal in a sickeningly familiar wave. 

The Imperial forces rounded on him when he vaulted over the rivers embankment. Bolts flew, prospectors scattered. 

The marching boots of stormtroopers hadn’t actually shaken the ground. But now, it was definitely shaking with the concussive bursts of ships taking off. 

"Do you think it's over?" Leia whispered to Kata as they crouched in the dim light. Merrin was standing in the entrance of the tunnel with her back turned to them, protecting them with her body and keeping a look out. 

"I don't think so." Kata whispered back. 

“But they’re leaving, right? At least there’s less of them out there so we can help.” Leia insisted, LOLA chirping quietly in agreement. Merrin’s shoulder twitched back towards them and Leia shushed her friend. 

She hated feeling useless like this. 

Kata was quiet for a while as the girls waited for Merrin to relax her attention back on the tunnel ahead. She hadn’t told them to be silent, but Merrin and Kata were so serious that Leia floundered not to disrupt their focus. 

“…I hope Greez is okay.” Was all Kata murmured in response. “Cal too, and your grandfather. Everyone really.” 

“Me too.” Leia forced her expression to perk up into a reassuring smile, “I’m sure they’re fine. They’re both Jedi, or something so I’m sure they’re okay. They’re probably on their way back right now to save everyone - Zee said Jedi are pretty dramatic like that.” 

To her relief, Kata’s shoulders shook with a timid giggle, even if a butterfly’s wingbeats would make more actual sound. Leia grinned. 

Merrin shushed them. 

The woman was pressed against the alcove wall, one hand resting on a dagger at the small of her back while ashes scattered from her fingertips. She was peering around the corner as footsteps crunched along the uneven stones. Leia hurriedly stashed LOLA into her coat pocket while Kata tensed her hold around her staff. Modulated, cruel voices bounced off the cavern walls, coming close enough for Leia to hear the electrical whine of charged blasters and batons. 

“Kata,” Leia almost jumped at Merrin’s whisper, “you must stay here until I return for you both. I will lead the Imperials away.” Merrin looked back at them out of the corner of her eye and her lips twitched into a soft smile. “I will be back soon.” 

Merrin turned her gaze back onto the tunnel and disappeared in a scatter of embers and ash.  

Shouts of surprise and the distinct pings of blaster bolts followed shortly after as flares of green and red bounced off the dim cavern walls. A screamed echoed away as the trooper it belonged to was thrown into the chasm running through the tunnels. Leia and Kata hid themselves as far back in the alcove as they could while the crackle of Merrin’s magic and the sneered threats of the purge troopers moved deeper into the tunnels. It was muffled by the layers of rock and harsh brambles, and eventually went quiet. 

Kata caught her arm as Leia inched forward to check. “We need to stay here!”

”I’m just checking what’s happened. I won’t go anywhere.” Leia promised. Kata hesitated before she let her go, anxiety simmering under the surface. 

Leia didn’t see anyone immediately in the tunnel, just a trail of scorches and chipped rock where Merrin had led the imperial forces away. The white body of a stormtrooper was slumped gracelessly against the caverns sandstone wall like a dropped doll. Leia stared at the slumped armour and the trio of blackened, smoking blaster holes across his chest plate for much longer than she should have. Until very recently there had been a living person inside that discarded white shell who, after a few distant shouts and the distorted echo of blaster bolts was now an inanimate, faceless shape in a forgotten cave. 

It felt wrong to dismiss a life like that. 

If she’d been paying attention to the tunnel and not the directionless, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, Leia would have noticed the black and red shadow that detached itself out of the cavern entry. 

She yelped when the black-clad stormtrooper grabbed her arm and yanked. Her toes dragged along the ground to kick up flurries of dirt and pebbles as the trooper hauled her out of the alcove and threw her to the ground. Leia landed harshly on her elbow and side with a small metallic clang from LOLA in her coat pocket.

“Hello princess, someone leave you here alone?” The modulated voice of the trooper dripped over the rough stone and dust as Leia scrambled back. Whatever he was about to say next was cut off with a grunt and stumble as Kata smacked her staff into the back of the trooper’s knees. 

“Leia! Get out of here and find Merrin!” Kata swung at the trooper again who spun on her, her staff cracking against the side of his ankle. He swore and lunged, catching the strike Kata aimed ant his crotch and pulling aside it to knock her off balance. Kata’s staff bounced as it was yanked out of her hands and thrown across the uneven rock. Kata backed up as the trooper advanced on her, expression set into a focused glare and her hands uncertainly held in front of her.

The trooper only twitched in annoyance as the rock Leia launched bounced ineffectually off his helmet. There was even a modulated sigh. 

“You kids won’t win this.” The trooper’s hand twitched near the blaster on his hip. 

“No,” Kata agreed and Leia was briefly stunned by confusion out of her bubbling dread, “we just need to keep you busy until our friends come back.” 

The vocorder in his helmet interpreted the next sound weirdly. What was probably meant to be an amused huff or even a bark of laughter came out as a garbled sneer. “Nice try.”

Kata barely opened her mouth for a rebuttal when the trooper spun his blaster out of its holster and shot her. Leia screamed as the blue outline shuddered over Kata’s form and she fell to the ground. The trooper spun on her, an electrified halo flying from his blaster. 

Leia’s momentum carried her forwards and she fell on her front in the dirt. Her head tilted to one side to watch the trooper stride away from her as the world went dark. 

Chapter Text

The red bolts flashed past and through the after-images Merrin left in her wake as she danced through the tunnels below Ramblers Reach. Merrin dodged across the narrow stone gantries and bridges that snaked through the tunnels, sending the white carapaces of stormtroopers screaming into the chasm below. As good as a stormtroopers aim alleged itself to be, her magick was evidently better.

The purge troopers that fanned out behind those stuttering white shapes like shadows posed a slightly trickier problem, but not an insurmountable one.

Merrin led them away until the dust beneath her feet began to sparkle with iridescent motes of Koboh-matter and a familiar but always uncanny resonance hummed at the edge of her hearing. If it was possible, she would shelter Kata and Leia from the ensuing violence. Children should not need to be familiar with death and it was a tragedy that her and Cal had been. Pillars carved with the intricate geometry and constellations of the Jedi order flanked the stand Merrin took. Three purge troopers slotted into formation with each other before her, two with rifles and one with a blade that lit the floating motes of dust into a violet haze. 

One rifleman's limbs were caged by the vicious swirl of her magick, as the other took a knee to stabilise their aim. A red bolt streaked past as the searing purple of the purge troopers axe as it skimmed over her bicep. She repelled the attacker with a blaze of green that followed him like a comet trail into the misty bowels of Koboh. Within a blink she appeared before the rifleman, her staff twirled to land hard strikes into their gut, their knee, and finally the underside of their helmet. As the trooper dropped backwards, a crimson flash streaked by her side, and Merrin staggered from the flare of pain that charred over her ribs. Her expression curled into a grimace as two more bolts passed dangerously close as Merrin rushed forward, her magick sparking at her fingertips and her staff a noxious green blur. 

When the shining black armour of the troopers lay still, Merrin allowed herself a moment to breathe. It returned to her in quick, sharp pangs that broke the stillness of the tunnels. Merrin leant to a side, her staff fading into the dagger and her good arm braced against the old Jedi pillar for support. No living sounds other than her breathing punctured the musty cave air as the walls and ceiling shuddered under a ship's thrusters. Small rivulets of dust and pebbles fell from the cave rooftop, painting a dirty streak across Merrin's back and settling particulates in her hair. 

Scrunching her nose to stifle a cough, Merrin hurried through the tunnels to return to Kata and Leia. Her shoulder spasmed mildly when she moved it too far back and her side burned from where the bolt had grazed past. With a murmured incantation and brief spark of magick her injuries numbed, but she’d still be careful. 

Signs of a brief struggle made the fatigue and ache clouding the edges of her senses evaporate like the morning fog. 

The alcove was empty, and heavy footprints retreated up the tunnel, into the basement of Pyloon's Saloon, where Merrin coalesced in a halo of green sparks and acrid smoke. She sprinted up from Cal's room, the doors hissing open to a burst of hot air and thick smoke as the Saloon burned. Merrin threw an arm over her eyes, shoulder twinging, and launched herself forward. Intention turned to magick; changing the colour of the flames and wrapping them around her like a cloak.

Merrin appeared again on the dirt path outside the Saloon, the chipping paint of the sign flaking around her as it swung unsteadily from one chain.

Around her was carnage. 

The once cozy buildings of Ramblers Reach burned, mocking the fading tinges of Koboh's gentle sunset with brutal orange and red flares. Thick, oily smoke belched from the burning buildings and stray embers caught in the dry foliage bracketing the Outpost. Troop transports circled the carcass of the Outpost like vultures, their doors open and dotted by the white and black armoured shapes of Stormtroopers. Their engines thrummed with white light as their passengers dispassionately threw explosives into the shadows of the burning Outpost. 

Aboard one transport, two slumped bodies in a red scarf and brown overcoat were being handled by the Stormtroopers. She almost missed them through the hazy smoke. Almost. 

Merrin appeared on the deck of the open transport in a whirl of violence and magick. Her staff was quickly trapped in the tight press of bodies, so she turned it to a dagger and viciously jabbed it between the gap of the nearest trooper's helmet and their neckseal. Hot lifeblood sprayed over her as Merrin yanked the dagger free with a snarled curse. 

Several modulated voices shouted for assistance. 

A Stormtrooper swung to strike her with the butt of his blaster as Merrin lunged for him with a snarl, wrestling the weapon from his hands. A shot went wide, pinging off the roof of the transport.

She whirled on the remaining troopers with magick sparking in her eyes and wreathing her outstretched hand. It coiled through the pressing bodies in the transports cabin. Someone screamed as they spiralled into the darkness and destruction below. The others were forced to a knee and the unconscious form of Kata was unceremoniously dropped, sprawling across the cabin floor.

Her small wrists had been cuffed.

Pointlessly, as if two children were such an immense threat to a squadron of adult Stormtroopers that they needed to be imprisoned. When Merrin spoke, her sisters lent their strength. Raw power mingled with the rush of air at her back and brought the imperial soldiers to their knees. The embers of her magick reflected in their emotionless visors and contorted grimaces into the shadowed contours of the smooth plastoids. 

“You will not take any more children-”

She should have been prepared for the blaster bolt that tore through her back.

And a second bolt ripped through her abdomen, leaving the threats to die unspoken in her throat. Inky stars danced across Merrin's vision as she staggered, reaching blindly for the cabin's wall to stabilise herself. Distantly, Merrin could tell her magick had flickered away and released the convulsing soldiers. 

When reality rushed towards her it was shaped like a purge trooper; cruelly landing a boot against her chest and shoving her out of the open cabin. 

Merrin fell like a comet, trailing a blaze of green magick, as Kata and Leia blurred out of reach through the bright light. 

At this point of the bitter, seemingly endless fight, Cal was a wreck on legs while around him, another home lay in ruins and its people were being scattered or swallowed whole by the Empire. He was so fucking tired of it. Maybe they should have retreated to Tanalorr and hidden like they'd all dreamed, but the others had hated it there. It was so empty; despite the ephemeral chimes from nowhere carried on the wind and the needle-prick of life life life that gnawed against Cal's senses from the shifting flowers and iridescent puddles. It was empty. Everything there had been abandoned, left inhabited by nothing but illusions and echoes. 

It was... probably for the best that Merrin had insisted they leave once they had mourned the dead. 

But without Tanalorr, what had everything they'd lost been for? 

Cere and Cordova were gone. 

Kata was an orphan. 

Cal had... broken. 

And everything they'd built had fallen apart, again. Ramblers Reach was turning to ashes and dust under the march of imperial boots and the shriek of explosives, even as Cal tore through the stormtroopers and AT-STs that stomped down the dusty streets. Daylight had faded, and now the only light was from the fires that had sparked in the haphazardly constructed buildings had caught on the dry grasses of Koboh. It was spreading, with imperial explosives to fan the flames and rend the sheet-metal and duracete houses into hollowed-out skeletons. 

It was BD-1 who noticed the flare of green light from the open cabin of a troop transport. Cal, distracted with blocking another barrage of blaster fire, barely caught it in time for the tight stress in his chest to unclench itself in utter relief. Merrin was okay. He didn't have time to process the reasoning of why she would be inside a troop transport before crimson bolts tore through it from an adjacent transport and the light guttered out like a cracked projector lens. Cal made some indistinct noise of grief and terror at the shining trail falling from the open cabin, an unlucky bolt glancing off his shoulder. 

He needed to move. 

Launched towards a twisted spire of what used to be the load-bearing beam of Mosey's barn, Cal snapped over the remnants of the Outpost. His limbs whined from the sudden jerk of his ascension cable and smoke stung his eyes, but he threw a hand out towards the falling star Merrin had become; wishing he would catch her. 

Cal's leg screamed as he landed with a stagger and crash in the debris-strewn dirt, and Merrin was brought to the ground nearby. Softer, but still harder than he had intended. Cal scrambled to her convulsing body, as her chest spasmed with pained gasps and magick flicked in her eyes and at her fingertips. The back of her jacket was charred where fresh bolts had landed, and sticky from the rough, leaking wounds. His fingers came away from the wound that tore through her side blackened. 

"BD-" 

Already on it, the little droid ejected a canister that Cal snatched from the air. Without thinking, he jabbed it into the soft side of Merrin's belly near the bolt's exit wound. The relief was immediate, and Merrin's convulsions of a body in shock and shutdown eased. Her back arched from where he'd frantically pulled her close and a flare of magick sent stars dancing across Cal's already blurry vision. 

"Give me another one buddy-" 

"No, Cal-" Merrin snatched his hand out of the air where he had poised to catch the next canister from BD-1, "You must go after them- Before-" 

Cal tucked himself around her as engines roared and the transport shuttles surrounding the carcass of the Outpost faded into the sky. It whipped the smoke, embers and dust into a frenzy like something alive - swarming and feeding on whatever doomed lifeforms had yet to escape it. Weakly and with an unfocused, glassy shine in her eyes, Merrin clung back. The imperial ships were... retreating? No. They were winning, that couldn't be right. The force was shrieking around him to leave run flee now the same way it did before something awful happened. Beyond it was a cruel satisfaction. Annihilation. 

"Come on- we... we have to- go..." Merrin let out an agonised shout as Cal pulled them both to their feet. She hooked an arm over Cal's shoulder while he wrapped around her waist and they struggled to regain their footing. In a pained, four-legged stagger, the two of them half-dragged and half-carried each other through the wreckage of the Outpost. BD-1 trilled directions in Cal's ear as the silvery fin of Mantis on its landing pad came into view through the smoke. 

Miraculously, it still looked intact. 

Maybe there was some hope of escaping this latest home turned tragedy. 

High overhead, missiles hissed through Koboh's atmosphere. 

Chapter Text

The Mantis' blue and silver fin refracted the fading sunlight like a beacon, shining despite the haze of the destroyed outpost around it. By a miracle of the Force, the ship was whole as Cal and Merrin staggered over the landing ramp's groaning hydraulics. The Mantis shuddered as an explosive crashed against the landing pad, sending Cal and Merrin tumbling against the holo-table to stop themselves from falling. Merrin shrieked as the lip jutted into her wounded side and BD let out a worried trill. 

"Sorrysorry, I'm sorry-!" Cal rambled as they staggered into the cockpit. BD-1 wriggled free of the harness on his back and used his thrusters to jet across the ships console, ending in an awkward limp to flick through the dials and controls with his remaining leg. 

The Mantis thrummed to life around them while Cal manoeuvred Merrin into the co-pilots chair as carefully as he could. His hands trembled as he tried to help buckler her in, until Merrin swatted him away with a look that was so uniquely her that a hysterical laugh threatened to bubble out of Cal's throat. Pain twisted in the look of mingled irritation, unending fondness, and bemusement as Merrin stared him down. Dirt and soot streaked across her face, with sweat and dust making her hair stick together in chaotic spikes at weird angles. "I am injured, not useless, Cal." She briefly touched his cheek, the heel of her palm fitting against the old blaster scars across his jaw, "Get us out of here. I can handle a seatbelt."  

Cal allowed himself a moment to ghost his fingertips against the hand Merrin placed on him before he pulled away to the pilots chair. He didn't bother buckling himself in, weight lurching forward as one hand settled on the control's dual grips, and the other yanked for the thrust. Engines fired, landing gear creaked back into its compartments, and the Mantis took to the air with a rumbling groan. The ship tore free of the cloud of smoke haloing the Outpost like a prey animal fleeing the undergrowth. And like a prey animal, a scream of imperial ships followed them. 

Both BD-1 and the Mantis' proximity alarms yelled at Cal a split-second before the ship was violently rocked to a side. 

He tore his right glove off as he flew, banking hard to starboard as a second missile careened across the windscreen. He always flew better without gloves, where the habits Greez left everywhere across the Mantis' controls vibrated under his fingertips and helped steady his hands.

Cal was thrown forward and barely avoided smacking his forehead on the controls as the ship jolted again; this time with a hit to the aft. 

"I know, I know, I'm looking for cover!" He snapped at BD-1 and instantly regretted his tone.

Blood was rushing in his ears over the staccato whines of Mantis' sensors, and he was pretty sure he'd heard Merrin let out another pained shout at the impact. BD-1 limped across the console to pull up a flight path that would take them through the twisting gulleys of the Basalt Rifts, eventually towards the Forest Array. There would be cover, plenty of natural hazards to dissuade troopers and maybe some medical equipment left in the Rehabilitation Wing that he could scavenge for them both. "Yeah, okay! Good job buddy!" Cal shouted as he veered the Mantis towards their new course,

Branches whipped against the cockpit windows as Cal brought the ship crashing into the lush canyon. Imperial ships dogged their path with blasts of artillery streaking past the Mantis' thin and swerving chassis to impact the cliff sides. Below them, a herd of Nekkos yipped and scattered in panic at a cascade of broken foliage and rocky debris. Cal grit his teeth as the ship's sensors pinged warnings to port; a TIE fighter racing ahead to try and cut them off. Cal swore as he braced. 

He'd apologise to Greez for this one later. 

Green blurred around the cockpit windows as Cal swung the ship around into a harsh diagonal, boxing the TIE fighter in between the chromium line of the Mantis' main deck and the canyon walls. Everything tilted and BD-1 let out an alarmed warble as Mantis' deck rolled, straining the rotational axis of its fin. Cal pulled at the thrust - a little desperately and very recklessly - letting out a shout as he felt the ship's side ram against the TIE fighter enough to send it scraping against the canyon wall. He released the roll and the Mantis jerked back into its axis, the whine of instruments calming now that the gyro could correct and balance itself. 

Their victory was short-lived, as the smoking remains of the TIE fighter fell away and another took its place - firing on their heels as Cal desperately pulled the Mantis steady through the maze of jutting, overgrown pillars. 

Kark, this couldn't keep up. 

He wasn't that good of a pilot. They were going to go down. They'd be captured - fuck, assuming they didn't die in the crash first. 

Fuck! 

"Cal!" Merrin's subdued call helped pull him away from the spiral and he risked a glance across the deck at her, "Get us out of sight, I will hide the ship..." 

BD-1 trilled that a cave was coming up ahead. Cal recognised it, and had navigated through it on his first exploration of the Array. He remembered the freedom he'd felt as followed the pull of a bright, new goal that sent him leaping from hanging vines over a seemingly-endless chasm coiling lazily with mist at its basin. The burn in his muscles from hard climbs across thickets of vines on the cavern ceilings and walls had felt good; like Cal was finally doing something his training had prepared him for, chasing something that his masters could be proud of. 

The ship jolted again as Cal pulled the controls, pitch sending them into a harsh drop to stop the Mantis' fin from being bisected by the cavern ceiling. His stomach swooped, churning like the silvery mist in the chasm as the Mantis' thrusters burned it away. Sparks of Merrin's magick shone through the fading darkness of the cave, glinting like stars emerging from the dusk above them. Her magick gathered at the corners of the ship's windscreen, spreading across the thick panes of glass with that strange, iridescent green film like a soap bubble.

Her chanting reached a crescendo as Cal pulled them up and out of the hollow, breaking through the canopy surrounding the Forest Array with a scatter of leaves and sparks. The Mantis swerved jaggedly to port, pitching down into the trees with all the grace of a falling stone. 

Air punched out of Cal's lungs from the jarring stop as he jerked forwards, smacking the controls into his chest and stomach. He wheezed dazedly as the Mantis dragged to a stop in the underbrush. The world around them was blotted into green silhouettes under the halo of Merrin's magick. Her spell melted them into the darkness of the woods, making unwanted watchers glaze over the less-than-subtle trail of broken forest Cal had created with their semi-crashed landing. Still bent halfway over the console, Cal craned his neck to peer up at the sky through the Mantis' windscreen. Merrin's magick flowed over the ship in slow ripples, sparking and reforming whenever a stray piece of debris broke the shining membrane. Through the noxious glints, Cal watched ships streak overhead. He didn't breathe properly until the echo of the engine scream had faded from the dark sky.  

The distant rumbles of explosions had Obi-Wan tripping over the rocky terrain in the fading light as he ran. The gorge had grown too narrow for the wild Nekko he coaxed into a mount to waddle down so Obi-Wan was making the final stretch of his trek to Ramblers Reach on foot. He could barely see the shapes of Imperial ships high in the sky but he could hear the discordant whirr of their engines as the wind carried them over the mesas and valleys of Koboh.

Obi-Wan was trying very hard to convince himself that the awful feeling he had about Leia was just a general anxiety about the situation. 

She had to be okay. 

A tumble of loose rock from the gorge walls had Obi-Wan whipping around with his lightsaber drawn. The flare of warm blue light speared through the darkness and Obi-Wan blinked the stars out of his vision from the sudden light. "Who's there? Show yourself slowly and there's no need for violence." 

A very small voice called back, "...Ben? I'm sorry, I didn't want to startle you but... is that you?" 

Obi-Wan held his lightsaber higher to cast light over the dirtied, shaking form of a twi'lek woman as she emerged from a narrow break in the gorge walls. He recognised her from around the saloon as the local historian that kept Zee company. Leia had delighted in talking with her about her studies and research, occasionally beating her in holotactics matches too. 

"Toa? Ah- my apologies, here let me-" Obi-Wan held his lightsaber to a side and offered the woman a hand as she clambered down the short descent to the gorge basin. "Are you alright?" 

She eyed his lightsaber in a mix of relief and trepidation, then nodded shakily, "I think I twisted my ankle while running but I am not too badly hurt." 

"Running..." Obi-Wan repeated dully as he flicked the blade away, before the light drew attention. 

In the sudden darkness her expression was difficult to make out but he caught her shallow nod. She took a breath and started out strong, but the tremble in her voice crept higher, "The Empire came to the Reach looking for contraband, they said. There were Stormtroopers with them wearing all black that I had never seen so close. They arrested Doma, Greez, Moran snd a few others, then were questioning any of us who were left... they rounded everyone up into a line and..." 

Obi-Wan put a soothing hand on her shoulder, giving her a small squeeze. He spoke with as much comfort and patience as he could muster, though it frayed a little with the desperate stress to know where Leia was. "What happened? How did you escape?" 

Toa took a deep breath, "Cal showed up and well... he gave the soldiers something else to shoot at. I ran in the chaos as far as I could go, until I started hearing explosions from the Outpost and I haven't seen anyone else... I saw the Mantis fly though! To the east but she was being chased and... I lost sight of her quickly..." 

Some of the roiling despair eased with a small, fragile bloom of hope in Obi-Wan's gut. Leia would be on the Mantis. With Cal, probably. Or at least with the Nightsister, even though that idea wasn't Obi-Wan's favourite possibility it was leagues better than- 

No, don't even think that. 

"Alright, it's going to be alright now Toa. I will try to contact the Mantis once we get a little further from the valley." Obi-Wan cast a glance around them, as if a squadron of Stormtroopers would materialise from the shadows themselves, "Can you move, or do you need some time to rest?" He was thoroughly surprised at how steady his voice sounded. 

"No," She shook her head resolutely, "We need to move while we can." 

Obi-Wan nodded tightly agreement. He was secretly glad that the woman hadn't wanted to rest. He couldn't leave her after making the offer but... he had priorities. Surely, she would have understood that, if it came to it.  

"Here," He held out an arm to the twi'lek with what he hoped was more of a smile than a grimace, "If we can find a herd of Nekko on the way, we'll make better time. But until then, we should go." 

Obi-Wan caught a twitch at the corner of her mouth as she gratefully and took his arm, weight leaning lightly against his side as they walked. 

"So..." Toa ventured carefully, "You are a Jedi, then?" 

Obi-Wan's next step was stiff, "What... gives it away?" 

"A special information-gathering tool I possess called a brain, with the help of eyes to catch some details." She replied with a dry chuckle, "I won't tell, obviously. But... I feel safer knowing for certain. Thank you." 

Rather than reply, Obi-Wan concentrated on keeping his footing stable. 

Merrin! 

Cal levered himself off where he was draped over the console and jerked to his right. In the one step it took him to reach the co-pilots chair he almost fell twice as the tilt of the Mantis' deck and his injured leg sent him stumbling into a kneel. Merrin was strapped into the co-pilot's chair and slumped forwards, her hands limp by her sides and head lolling against her chest. 

She wasn't moving. 

"Merrin, Merrin! Hey, please be okay- Merrin listen to me!" Cal's voice cracked as he patted down her chest, working up to cup a hand over the back of her neck and fumble desperately for her pulse. He couldn't tell. There was a weak flutter under his palms, but was that just delusion and adrenaline? Cal helped roll her head upright as gently as he could, ignoring the string of binary BD-1 beeped out at him. He pressed his fingertips against her lips and felt a soft, shallow exhale of moisture against his scratched hands. 

It was a physical wave of relief. 

Cal's attention snapped to a familiar pressurised hiss as BD-1 ejected a stim canister with a trill of warning. It was their last one. Cal noted that as he positioned it over Merrin's abdomen and hit the injector. A second later, she gasped awake with a jolt. Her hand flew to grab weakly his where it rested over her side and Cal sagged his forehead into her lap in relief. 

"As I said, Kestis." Cal drew a shuddering breath where he slumped against her, "I am injured, not useless." 

"Yeah. 'Course." Cal huffed out a noise that was closer to a sob than a laugh, "How are you feeling?" 

 Cal looked up when she hummed. Merrin had let her head roll back against the headrest, looking down at Cal through her lashes. There was glassy, faraway look in her eyes, "I have been better." 

"Just," Cal gave her hand another squeeze then heaved himself upright, "Hold on here. I'm gonna look for a medkit. Hey BD- Yeah, great." 

Cal left Merrin under the watchful scanner of BD-1 as the little droid trilled a melodic string of binary, promising Cal that he would look after the organics. Cal limped through the wrecked main deck of the ship, leaning heavily on the short railing to make it up the stairs into the ship's galley. One of the plastic compartments had burst open during the rough landing, sending sachets of dried herbs and dehydrated grain scattering across the floors. Shards of broken glass with the ruined food and crunched underfoot as Cal rifled through the cabinets.

Cal sighed in relief as his fingers closed around the ship's medkit where it had been buried in the back of the cabinet by other falling items. Even though he knew it would be there, and that it would be well-stocked, his anxiety didn't ease until he had it in-hand. 

When he returned to the Mantis' cockpit, BD-1 was perched on Merrin's knee, fixing her with a stern look from the broken scanner. Merrin's fingers drummed idly where her hand rested lightly on top of the little droid's casing. She was resting back against the chair and cracked her eyes open to slide glassily across the deck, following Cal's movement where he knelt by her side and unpacked the medkit, setting aside what he'd need.

He patted the top of BD-1's head and gave Merrin's hand a soft squeeze as he settled beside her. 

They were going to be okay. 

Chapter Text

Cal ground the heels of his palms into his eye sockets where he was bent over his knees, gaze blurring between the floor and his scorched boots. The weak glimmers of dawn were creeping through the canopy overhead, and shining through shimmering membrane over the Mantis' windscreen. The forest around them was waking up, adjusting. Where scattered creatures recovered from the Empire's most recent attack and found the remnants of their packs. Kenobi paced the ship's deck, frantically running a hand through his hair and pulling at his beard. 

There were so many people who should be with them, that weren't, that he'd been able to glaze over the details, until Kenobi's look of utter horror had dragged the admission into the daylight. The man was teetering between terrified and furious, and Cal swore that just watching his footsteps track across the Mantis' deck in his peripherals was raising his blood pressure. He understood it though, why Kenobi was reacting like this to how he and Merrin had left them behind. 

He twitched, 'them', as if his remaining family were some anonymous and impersonal group. 

Greez and Kata had been taken by the Empire. Cal tried to breathe normally as he let the thought run its course. 

He and Merrin had been approximately done patching themselves up when Kenobi and Toa had found their landing-turned-crash site. Like a coward, Cal had flinched away from Merrin’s gentle admission and hollowly promised her they'd fix things, even as she blamed herself for loosing the two girls. Merrin had explained that she’d left Kata and Leia alone for a few minutes to lead a patrol away and protect them, and they’d been gone when she returned. Cal had found her as she’d failed to save the two children. 

They would find them. 

Cal tried to ignore the poisoned thought that he could have gone after them in her place… but he’d chosen Merrin. 

If just he’d gotten back to the Outpost faster-

Kriff, if he’d never left it in the first place-  

If he’d just been better- 

His family would all still be here. 

“We must go after them - before the Venator leaves Koboh’s orbit and-”

Cal let out a dry huff, “How? In case you hadn’t noticed, the Mantis can't siege a Venator.”

“What other choice is there?” Kenobi snapped; Cal tensed. “I cannot loose Leia!” 

“Your granddaughter isn’t the only one who’s been taken-” Cal retorted, lifting his head to glare at the older Jedi. Kenobi whipped around in his pacing to glare at him, brow twisted into an angry line.

“I am well aware, but these people are not my responsibility to protect. Leia is. They were depending on you, Cal. Where were you?” 

Cal hated his hypocricy. How, despite the fraying threads of desperation and anger lacing through his tone, Kenobi was self-assured enough to lecture him. Like he knew Cal well enough to be disappointed. 

“I do not like the idea of waiting, but all we will do if we chase them now is get ourselves killed.” Merrin tried to cut in evenly. Exhaustion had carved dusky shadows under her eyes, making her usually pale skin corpse-like and ashen.

Cal barely registered Merrin’s smooth reasoning, and he was on his feet before he could think properly about it. “Where was I?! Fuck you! You know exactly where I was because you asked me to take you there! Oh high and righteous Jedi Master - where were you when everything fell apart!”

Kenobi sputtered, "I was fighting a war! To save the Republic to-" 

"And look at how well that worked out!" Cal shouted. He was pacing as well, almost squaring up to his full height and loose on the balls of his feet. Kenobi was straight-backed and glowering, a hand folded across his chest to tuck into his elbow while the other gestured sharply. 

“Where was I?” Cal repeated with a breathless sneer pulling across his face, “Where the fuck were you the last ten years!” 

“I have been protecting the future in more ways than you can imagine! To return balance to the Force!” Kenobi shot back. He drew a breath through clenched teeth and pinched the bridge of his nose; like conceding anything was causing physical pain. “Yes, you’re right these last ten years have been hard and I regret that I have not been able to do anything about it. I have been hiding for a reason and while there are many others in danger, Leia is a child-" 

"SO WAS I!" 

The accusation hit the room like a sucker punch. 

Cal's voice had cracked with the shout, and his breath was coming back in short, shallow gasps. His hands trembled as they clenched into fists at his sides. Kenobi was flushed from the argument, with his expression twisted into a glower. Cal didn't know what his own expression looked like, but it must have been something pathetic as the furious cut of Kenobi's features flickered and cracked with empathy. It filled the room like fog, radiating regret and apologetic resolve, now that the heat of anger had burned away  

The way it chafed made Cal’s skin crawl. 

“Don’t…” Cal hissed out, “Don’t do that! Don’t look at me like that, fuck!” He ran a hand through his hair and pulled, pacing like something trapped. "Don't give me your pity when you don't know anything about me!"

Cal whirled on the stunned Jedi, "Do you have any idea how long I spent dreaming about how the Council would swoop in and fix everything when you never did! You all hid like a pack of fucking cowards so you don't get to charge back in and lecture me about what to fight for now that it suits you!" 

"Cal, I am sorry," Kenobi started off, softly. The anger had evaporated and it was just empathy, radiating off the old Jedi and trying to reach out like a soft hand on Cal's shoulder. It should be steadying, something to ground to and ease the high-pitched static of anger. 

"SHUT UP!" He spasmed away from the ephemeral touch. "Stop pretending that you care!" 

Then there actually was a hand on him.

Merrin reached out to touch his forearm, gently pulling it down from where he had clenched into the copper strands at the crown of his head. Cal's gaze flicked to Merrin and he went limp as she carefully laced her fingers around his hand and held it close. Her warm breath ghosted over his knuckles as she sighed, "We are all injured, exhausted and afraid. We need to rest. We know where the Empire will take Kata and Leia, so we can go directly after them once we are ready. But now. We need. To rest." Merrin punctuated each phrase with a soft squeeze of his hand. 

"We don't know where..." Cal repeated numbly. 

“We do,” Merrin's expression twisted with grim resolve, “We know exactly where the Empire would take children like them.”

He could feel Kenobi's attention on them, and it skittered like first touches of frostbite. 

"Nur, Cal. They will be taken to Nur." 

When her papa had taken them to live at Nova Garon, he gave Kata some very strict rules to follow so that she would be safe. There were a lot of them, but they were all some variation or expansion of core four themes. Don't go anywhere, don't talk to anyone, don't do anything. 

Never let 'them' see you vulnerable. 

Kata kept her focus on those rules as she sat on the cold, metal chair with her cuffed hands resting in her lap.  She stared at the featureless grey table and let her feet sway lightly where they lifted off the floor. 

Don't talk to anyone, don't do anything. Don't let them see you rattled. 

Just like Nova Garon. 

This was the fourth time she’d been brought here, after she’d woken up and the groggy headache had faded. A medical droid had hovered into her cell and dispassionately taken some scans, proclaiming she was “in acceptable heath”. A pair of stormtroopers had taken her to what she now recognised as a questioning room where a man in black armour asked questions and she stayed silent. Eventually, she'd be returned to her cell, where she stayed tucked up against the wall, raised off the panelled floor on the thin metal cot. Kata would watch the occasional trooper or droid patrol past beyond the red halo of the ray-shielded door as it sparked in her peripherals. It diffused some of the harsh white lighting and crackled with a background static in the dry, recycled air.

She’d forgotten how easy it was to lose track of time in space, how the hours and (maybe) days bled together. 

She never saw Leia, and had to hope the other girl was okay. 

Kata eyes flicked up as the door opened with the pressurised hiss of machinery. 

The trooper was back, but this time with his helmet and a data pad tucked under one arm. Kata looked away quickly, before the man could catch her. She kept her eyes on the table as the trooper sat down on the opposite bench, placing his helmet to a side where Kata tried not to stiffen under the red visor’s glare. 

He flicked through the data pad for a few minutes before letting out a defeated sigh. 

“No name, no chain code, I gotta admit - I’m pretty impressed kid. You’re a ghost. Someone did a real good job hiding ya, huh?”

Papa, Kata thought with a pang of sadness. He’d been so good at keeping us all safe… until mama…. 

“But you gotta give me something to work with here, or the next person who comes in to ask you questions won’t be nice about it.” The man continued. Despite the even tone, Kata could hear the pleading edge. She looked up and eyed him carefully, properly taking in the man’s tan skin and strong features despite the creases of age and the demanding life of a soldier. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, making dark brown stubble speckled with grey dust across his jaw. His eyes were a warm, soil-coloured brown, with a scar running between them over the bridge of his nose and into the receding arches of his hairline. 

“Is…” Kata tested out the words and watched the trooper instantly perk up. Her voice came out so small, disused, “is there another girl about my age, on this ship?” 

The time he took to mull over the question was enough of an answer. His expression shuttered, and Kata knew before he said anything that Leia was here, somewhere. 

“She’s human, dark hair in braids and dark eyes.” Kata continued determinedly, “I’ll answer some questions if you let me see her.” 

"Kid," The trooper sighed, "I can't do that. You gotta know that's not how it works, but I can see you've got a good head on your shoulders so maybe we can work something out after-"

"I have nothing to say to you." 

As the trooper sighed and scratched at his stubble in frustration, Kata tried not to let her lips twitch in satisfaction at how Merrin would be proud of that answer. 

"Look, I don't want to see ya get hurt, and that's what will happen if you stay quiet like this. 'Sides, the sooner we sort this out, the sooner we might be able to get you back to your parents. They'd be worried, right?" He was pleading again, data pad resting unused on the table between where he was leaning forward on his elbows. 

With a shaky breath, Kata relented. "My name is Kata and... I don't have parents." She stared at the data pad, seeing the troopers armour reflected in its smooth black surface. 

"Okay, Kata. Hey," She could hear the relieved smile that flooded into the room, "My name is Jett. And that's okay, I don't have any parents either. But I have Brothers - a lot of them, actually. Do you have any family like that?" 

Kata shook her head. 

“Ah, okay then. So, who’s been taking care of ya? The galaxy’s a pretty big place, even for a tough kid like you.” 

Kata looked up at the trooper then, fixing him with the kind of blank stare she’d sometimes seen on Cal. “You attacked us and brought me here, so what do you think?”

“Yeah, I figured there’d be something like that…” The trooper winced in sympathy, “Kata - is it okay if I call ya that? You’re with the Empire now, and we’re giving ya a chance to be safe and meet other kids just like you. Hell, work hard and when you’re a few years older you'll get a place at the Academy easy - you can be anything you want. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Kata tentatively nodded. “I… I’m not sure what I want to be when I grow up yet. Maybe a pilot? Or a chef, or maybe a gardener?” She bit her lip, but continued at the trooper’s encouraging smile. “But most of all, I want to help people. Especially people who don’t know they need it yet.” 

“That's really sweet of ya, kid. I want to help people too, everything my Brothers and I do is to help people by making the galaxy a safe, ordered place. You can help with that too. Ya just gotta tell us what ya can about the dangerous people you were with." The trooper flicked on the datapad with a few muffled taps across its surface. A small hologram projected from a lens on one corner of the device, while lists and images scrolled across the screen. Small, blue-tinged portraits of Cal and Leia's grandfather looked back at her from the projection; ever defiant and world-weary from the harsh things the galaxy had thrown at them.

The trooper continued, "Because people like this, Jedi, are a threat to the whole galaxy and the sooner we can find them, the less people have to get hurt. Whaddya say Kata, help the Empire make the galaxy a safer place?" 

Kata swallowed the lump in her throat and jerked her gaze away from the holograms, from the trooper, from everything in the sterile, cold questioning room. With her eyes screwed shut, Kata took a shaky breath, twisting her hands in her lap. "I have nothing to say to you. Can I please go back to my cell now?" 

Without looking up, she could tell the trooper's encouraging and hopeful demeanour had hardened over like a calcified shell. 

"You sure about that, kid?" 

Kata shook her head mutely.