Chapter Text
Cal and Bode fight, and the Jedi temple crumbles around them.
A surrender that isn’t, an attack from behind, and then Bode’s arm is tight and close around Cal’s neck in a savage mockery of a hug.
Cal gasps for breath, but they are long past talking. Logic dissolves into instinct alone: he panics and struggles and claws for purchase, and when Merrin’s dagger frees him, he and Bode both go straight for their blasters.
Cal hesitates; Bode pulls the trigger.
The blaster spits instead of firing, and darkness roars in Cal’s ears. Everything sharpens into focus: the shock of Bode’s betrayal, the agony of Cere and Cordova’s deaths, and the desperation to make it all mean something. Together they conspire to tighten Cal’s finger. His shot hits Bode square in the chest and pitches him over backwards.
Bode sprawls on the stone, his next breath coming out as a wet, wheezing gasp. His eyes find Cal’s, and they’re so bright, everything in him focused on Cal, pleading.
But… not to spare him. Cold understanding washes over Cal, clear and plain. Bode wants Cal to kill him. And, worse, in that frenzied moment, Cal is tempted.
Shock shivers through him, numbing him on the way down. The blaster slips out of his hand as his knees hit the ground, a sharp jarring of stone on bone.
“Merrin,” Cal croaks, unable to do anything else. “Help him.”
Merrin is there in an instant, her hands on Bode’s chest and pressing, trying to stop the bleeding. Bode’s eyes flutter closed anyway as he slips into unconsciousness, breaths barely there. Cal is frozen on his knees amid the rubble and the blood, his eyes blurring with horrified tears.
The creaks of the temple sound like shifting ice all around them. Cal’s lips aren’t moving but inside his head he's screaming.
Not him too. Please not him.
Bode has to live. Despite everything he's done, despite everything they've done to each other, he has to live. Cal can’t take another loss.
~*~*~
“I think I’ve lost him,” Cal says.
There have been enough perfect days on Tanalorr by now that the novelty has faded into the mundane. Cal and Merrin sit atop a glittering hilltop, bathed in light from the Abyss, and the air smells sweet as a kiss.
“You cannot lose what you never had,” Merrin replies, eyes closed. She sits with her legs crossed, but her weight leaning back on her arms as she basks. Merrin likes to describe Tanalorr as the opposite of Dathomir: bright, inviting, and warm, yet as devoid of life as Dathomir is full of it. Under every rock and in every dark, rust-red nook, Dathomir teems with abundance; here on Tanalorr, the air is so still because there are no wings to beat it nor lungs to breathe it in.
That is, except for the handful of people who populate the new Hidden Path settlement in the valley at the bottom of the hill. A small fire far beneath them sends a winding trail of smoke up into the air. There is no breeze, so the smoke goes all the way up, up, up, until it disperses into nothing.
Cal compares that tiny line with the vastness of the sky and sighs, motes of light swirling away from his lips. At one point, he hoped Bode might have been his; now, he's gone. “I just expected him to stay, that’s all.”
Time is meaningless on a planet that simmers in endless golden light, but Cal has carefully counted all three standard days since Bode packed everything he needed into one small bag – blasters, harness, lightsaber – and plunged alone through the Abyss to chase the ghosts of his past.
“You could not have stopped him,” Merrin tells him. It’s meant as reassurance, but all Cal hears is more failure. “Bode is not one to listen to reason.”
As if Cal doesn’t know that. He tries and fails to stop a shiver waterfalling down his spine. As if it hadn’t taken Cal nearly killing him to force Bode to surrender Tanalorr in the first place. As if Cal hadn’t begged Bode not to leave, and to stay here with him instead.
“The only question you must ask yourself is what you will do now that he is gone,” Merrin says, unfailingly practical. She stands and stretches, then offers him a hand.
Cal shrugs and takes it, letting her pull him to his feet. He isn’t sure, because, even on Tanalorr, every future he ever imagined had Bode in it.
Together they begin the long, gentle walk back to the settlement. There is no path: Cal and Merrin make their own way over the exposed rock and imitation grassy plains. Tanalorr looks beautiful, but it’s inherently empty: every flower and every plant is little more than light and air, tricking the senses into seeing life where there is none. (And yet, for some reason, he never, ever wants to leave.)
When they reach the settlement, Cal takes a deep breath. It smells familiar here, like woodsmoke and home cooking – though he can never quite remember where the wood comes from or what they eat. Unless he glances up at the rippling sky, he might be on a normal planet, among normal people. Instead it's the dregs of Cal's family, a little girl whose father flew off to die, and a handful of Hidden Path members who arrived full of hope, but have not been able to summon up the willpower to leave again.
Tanalorr feels like a paradise, but it’s a prison. They are all willing inmates, trapped not by bars or chains but by their own fascination with a planet that promises everything and so far has delivered nothing. Cal still isn't sure exactly what Cere and Cordova died to achieve.
“Cal!”
A small hand waves at him from a window. Kata. Despite himself, Cal finds a genuine smile for her and waves back. This is no place for a child (where else would she go?) but Cal is determined not to be another source of sadness for her. He peers through the open window, at Kata's bed that is still neatly made, and tuts with mock-disapproval. “Shouldn't you be asleep by now?”
Kata sticks out her tongue. “I was waiting for you. What did you see?”
Every venture up the hill yields a different view. Sometimes it is a misty expanse that stretches to the horizon like a bridge, and other times fingers of sheer rock reach up into the sky. Today it was a river, winking with light.
“Water,” he says to Kata. “A path to the end of the world.”
“This world has no end,” she replies thoughtfully, sounding less like a seven-year-old plucked from an Imperial listening station, and more like a Padawan Cal might have met when he was a child himself.
Kata’s blossoming Force-sensitivity is both a surprise blessing and an aching reminder of everything Cal has lost. He’s been trying to teach her how to rein in her thoughts through meditation, to control her anxieties before they control her, but with no Cere to guide him, he worries that he’s blurring the line between discipline and repression. Kata’s stoic little face, and her determination to start and finish the day with a smile, are just more evidence that he doesn't know what to do with. She must worry about Bode as much as Cal does, yet she carries on with her head held high, too used to saying goodbye to her father to notice that this time he might not come back.
(Won’t come back.)
After saying goodnight to Merrin, Cal joins Kata. The houses here are more shacks than anything, built to provide a semblance of a home and a way to block out the bright, unblinking eyes of the Abyss for sleep, nothing more. There is no rain to shelter from, or chill to keep at bay. The ground emits a gentle warmth and is soft enough to lie on, so Kata’s bed is just a pile of pillows. Together, they kneel beside it with their hands on their knees, and close their eyes.
“Breathe,” Cal instructs. He spends far too much of his own energy trying to stop his feelings of inadequacy bleeding through the Force into Kata. He is no Jedi Master, but he is all she has left. “Let the Force flow through you. You do not control it.”
“I am one with the Force,” Kata says.
Bode may have only left three days ago, but this is a ritual Cal and Kata have been performing for weeks now. What started as a way to induce Kata to sleep while Bode was still recovering from his blaster wound is now something deeper and more spiritual. Cal feels the moment that Kata’s meditation shifts into a trance like a drop of water into the ocean, and opens his eyes to keep watch over her, the way BD-1 always does for him. Whatever she’s seeing, he hopes it’s happy.
Outside the window, Greez guffaws loudly as he jokes with someone a couple of houses over. A bit further away, someone else is humming a tune Cal doesn't recognise, the song parting Tanalorr's air like a blade through warmed butter. A few moments later, Kata opens her eyes with a small gasp.
“What did you see?” Cal asks.
“A ship falling from the sky,” Kata says. The vision made her sleepy, and her voice is soft and faraway. “But… Tanalorr doesn’t want it. It’s a door. An exit.”
Cal knows better than to try and interpret Force visions. “Give it to the Force. What will come, will come.”
“Yes, Cal.” Kata spreads out her pillows and lays her head on them with a dreamy sigh. “Do you think when Papa returns, he’ll want to meditate with us too?”
There’s little chance. If Bode returns, if he re-embraces the Force, if he chooses to let himself be vulnerable with Cal ever again. Cal can’t tell her the truth, but he can’t lie to her either, so he says, “I hope so.”
They have another ritual: Cal drops a small kiss onto Kata’s forehead. The first time he tried it, weeks ago now, she giggled at his clumsiness and asked him if he’d ever kissed anyone before. That time he had lied and told her yes, of course he had.
“Sleep well, Kata,” Cal says. He draws the curtains that surround the room, shutting out the swirling daylight from the Abyss. “I’ll keep an eye out for any ships.”
Cal sleeps on the Mantis, a habit years in the making that he still can’t kick. BD-1 is there waiting for him, snug in his charging station. Something about the air on Tanalorr depletes droids faster than usual, and BD-1 is always sluggish and slow after waking up again. Cal cradles him in his arms and, true to his word, sits on the Mantis’ open ramp and scans the sky, looking for ships. Maybe one ship in particular, if he’s lucky in a way the galaxy's never been to him before.
Sleep won't come easily tonight. The Force is unknowable, and Force visions even more so, but…
Well. A Jedi can hope, can’t he?
~*~*~
The night that Bode left, Cal couldn’t sleep. He wandered out of the Mantis and into the open air, breathing deeply. Even in the middle of the night, it was bright as day, the Abyss burning with all the light of a sun but none of its warmth. The only difference was the energy in the ground beneath his feet, which seemed somehow calmer at night, like Tanalorr itself breathed in and out in a regular cycle. Cal pressed a hand to the soft earth, closed his eyes and listened.
He heard the rushing of vines across his feet, loud but intangible. He heard the shush of the ocean on the other side of the planet, a void that sucked and sucked, greedy to the last. He heard whispers at the back of his mind, soft and easily forgotten.
He heard the splutter of a ship’s engine, just starting up.
Opening his eyes with a start, Cal wove his way towards the noise, though he already knew exactly which ship it was by sound alone. He had flown Bode’s Z-95 Headhunter back from the Jedi temple on the day that they had fought, trying desperately to ignore the fractured layers of echoes left by all the times Bode had flown that ship to save Cal’s life. The ship had sat untouched since then, while the Hidden Path settlement sprang up in front of it. Cal had almost forgotten about it, yet as he rounded the corner, there it was: cleaned and refuelled and almost ready to take off.
“You’re leaving,” Cal said: a statement, not a question.
Bode was crouched low under the ship, all but hidden in its shadow, making his final adjustments for the journey ahead. He glanced over his shoulder and something dark passed across his face that Cal couldn’t interpret. “Don’t try and stop me, Cal.”
Cal held up his hands, empty and unarmed. “You’re not our prisoner.”
Ever since Cal had sobbed over Bode’s prone form on the floor of that desecrated Jedi temple, something deep and vital had changed between them. How could it not? All the facts were there, hard as hammer blows: Cere and Cordova were dead, and Bode had used Cal to murder everyone at Nova Garon, then fought to keep Tanalorr for himself.
And yet, and yet, in the weeks after, when Bode had hovered on the line between life and death, Cal hadn’t been able to stop himself from taking hold of Bode’s hand and begging him not to die.
“Bode,” Cal started. “You—”
“Don't,” Bode snapped. He slammed the final panel shut with a movement so violent it could have been a blow. Five steps away, Cal flinched.
In that moment, past and present rolled together in a sickening wave. Cal stood, mute with pain, hand in hand with the part of himself that had spent endless tear-filled days at Bode's bedside, howling wordlessly: Please don't go. Please.
Please don't leave me here alone.
Bode paused as though he’d heard. He looked at Cal with an ache of longing in his eyes that Cal always tasted as metal on his tongue. “Tanalorr is a grave,” he said. “I will not be buried here.”
Bode was right, in the most literal sense: there were more dead here than living, the lifeless earth of Tanalorr still saturated with the casualties of the battle between Nihil and Jedi so many centuries ago, with the temple at its epicentre. Cal had scattered Cere and Cordova’s ashes on the slope above the new settlement, a place as far away from the Jedi temple as he could find. He had no desire for the Jedi Masters’ final resting place to mingle with that crumbling structure, or the cold remnants of the battle still lying in an untouched arc around it.
“Look around you. You’re alive.” Cal took a hesitant step towards Bode, fragile heart rattling in his ribs. “So am I. Don’t you want a… a chance at something?”
Bode stepped back in turn, keeping one hand on the ship. His laugh was bitter. “A chance at what?”
As if they weren’t both here against all the odds. As if Tanalorr hadn’t promised a new start for both of them. As if, two days ago, Cal hadn’t been crying in ecstasy into Bode’s pillow, while Bode’s hands dug fingertip bruises into his hips.
At the time, Cal hadn’t been sure if the sex was romantic, or hateful, or just a simple source of comfort between the only two people who could possibly understand each others’ pain. He hadn’t asked, and they certainly hadn’t spoken about it before or since. Cal had just taken what he could get, starved as he was, and kept his hopes to himself.
At least he had his answer now.
“Where will you go?” he asked, instead of the hundred other things he wanted to say. His voice cracked around the lump in his throat.
Bode looked away. “You know where.”
Cal scuffed the ground under his boot. Tanalorr got in your head. Somehow the gleaming landscape whispered tantalising things: of potential fulfilled, of promises delivered, of dreams realised. But – it was different for Bode. Tanalorr spoke to Bode of nothing but death, of past regrets he couldn’t escape, of making impossible amends for things that could never be undone.
“Killing the Inquisitor who killed your wife won’t bring her back,” Cal said. It wouldn’t defeat the demons that made Bode cry out in the night when he thought that no one could hear. Those cries had been the ones that brought Cal back to his bedside two nights ago, threadbare with guilt and desperate to soothe Bode’s pain, with nothing left to offer but his body.
“This isn’t for her,” Bode growled, heat rising. “This is for me.”
“And what about your new life?” Cal relished that anger, reaching for the sharp edges of it in the Force just to feel something true. “What about Kata?”
Bode opened his mouth, then closed it again. His hand still rested against the side of the Headhunter, fingers twitching. When he spoke, it was so soft that Cal almost couldn’t hear it. “Kata’s better off without me.”
The metal in Cal’s mouth turned bitter, burnt. If Bode truly believed that, then nothing Cal could say would stop him. He took a deep breath. “At least take a compass.”
Bode shook his head. “Cal—”
“I’ll get you one. Wait here. Please?” He was pleading again, but didn’t care. His name sounded so good in Bode's mouth.
He sprinted back to the Mantis, trying not to think about what it meant that Bode didn’t see a need to plan his return journey. Several copies of the compass existed now, all cloned from the one Cal had taken off Bode’s cold, bleeding body at the temple. The one aboard the Mantis was Santari Khri’s original (for all that none of its crew seemed inclined to leave the planet at all), so Cal unplugged it and hurried back, hoping that Bode hadn’t taken the opportunity to leave unhindered.
But Bode was still there, standing by the side of the Headhunter. He watched with dark eyes as Cal clambered into the pilot’s seat and clipped the compass into the ship’s navicomputer. While he worked, Cal spotted a small bag tucked into a storage compartment under the controls, an elaborate golden hilt sticking out of the top.
“You're bringing your lightsaber.”
“It's not mine,” Bode said, the response a well-trodden road. At first, he'd turned down Dagan Gera's purified saber when Cal had tried to give it to him, despite the days of effort and tears Cal had poured into ridding the crystal of its screaming crimson hue – despite the fact that giving Bode back the lightsaber he’d used to try and kill Cal with was an act of pure trust in the first place. Eventually, though, the lightsaber had found its way into Bode's possession anyway, and who was Bode to argue with the will of the Force?
“I’m glad you’re bringing it,” Cal said with a smile he didn't feel. “You'll need it.”
When Cal jumped out of the ship again, they looked at one another in taut silence. Cal watched the way the glittering lights from the Abyss reflected endlessly in Bode's liquor-coloured eyes and wished that he could freeze this moment, trap them both in it until he thought of the right thing to say, the one perfect sentence that would mean he'd never have to watch Bode leave.
But Bode was already turning away. A heartbeat more and—
“I could go with you.” Even as the words spilled from Cal’s mouth, he knew they were useless. Bode didn't want him (and Cal couldn't leave Tanalorr even if he did).
Bode froze, then his face softened. He stepped closer, into Cal’s space, and for a wild moment, Cal thought that Bode was going to take hold of his hand. Instead he just clasped Cal's shoulder. Cal savoured the contact anyway, in case it was the last time he was ever going to feel Bode's touch on his skin. “You're needed here,” Bode said, the deep vibration of his voice the next best thing to a caress. “The Hidden Path, and Merrin and Greez. Tanalorr is your world now.”
It's not mine if you're not in it. The words clogged Cal’s throat, choking. He covered them with a bland smile. He'd never been able to force Bode to do anything – not to change his mind, not to stay, and certainly not to love him – and one last futile attempt would only shame them both.
“Hey,” Bode called once he was settled in the cockpit. “Look after Kata for me, do you hear? Tell her…” Bode broke off. He hissed in a breath through gritted teeth and tried again. “Tell her I love her. And I'm sorry. I tried.”
Cal nodded mutely. It was a promise he'd already made.
The ship was loud in the still night air, but there was no one but Cal to watch Bode take off. From the ground, it looked like the Abyss opened, a beautiful golden mouth that swallowed the ship whole.
~*~*~
It is a full two weeks before the ship from Kata’s vision falls from the sky.
The settlement grows, Tanalorr thrives, and Cal feels the disembodied vines of it creep deeper under his skin everyday (feels but never quite notices). Life is a blissful, never-ending cycle of meditation, training and exploration, an opportunity to find all the unique ways this planet interacts with the Force, unbroken by sunsets or sunrises.
There is a reason why Dagan Gera fought until his last breath to return here, why it was the only thing on Rayvis’ mind while he stared down a warrior’s death. There’s paradise here, in the warmth and the beauty, and the feeling of belonging that means Cal doesn’t have to define himself as a fugitive for the first time in a decade. Tanalorr gives Merrin’s wandering heart a new world to map, Greez the communal home he always craved, and the Hidden Path a fortress. Kata gets a master and Cal gets a pupil, and the elusive chance to be free and safe with his remaining family around him.
Everyone except Bode. Cal feels his absence everyday like a lump in his throat, and the only reason time is split into days is so Cal can track how long Bode has been gone. He watches the skies, torturing himself with that little matchflame of hope – and that’s why he sees the ship first.
The Abyss spits the ship into the atmosphere in a stream of fire and Koboh matter. It streaks across the sky, burning like a comet, and Cal is close enough to feel the moment it hits the ground as a full-body vibration.
He’s running before he even thinks to call for help, and Tanalorr conspires to slow him down. Grasses-that-aren’t tangle around his ankles, and the rocks that are usually so solid slip and slide under his feet. By the time Cal has dragged himself to a place where he can see the wreckage, his hands are grazed from falling, and his breath comes ragged with effort.
The ship has torn a scar into the landscape. Soft purple meadows are reduced to long ashen gashes, and the black smoke that pours from the wreck looks so out of place that it feels fake, staged, like a baited trap. (He shouldn’t go in, he shouldn’t go in—)
He presses on.
He knows this ship. It’s a Phi-class shuttle – or used to be, before the trip through the Abyss stripped it nearly to nothing – a type of ship used almost exclusively by the Inquisitorius. Cal doesn’t need a warning from the Force to have his guard up. He ignites his lightsaber half in readiness, and half to help him see through the smoke, his other hand pressed against his nose and mouth. The stench is an acrid burn in the back of his throat, and such a contrast to the bland sweetness of Tanalorr’s air that Cal almost retches.
Somehow, the cockpit is more or less intact, made sturdily enough to survive the impact. Inside, someone is alive and struggling to get out, and Cal's heart leaps – even before he sees him, he knows that it’s Bode.
Tanalorr doesn’t want him. He’s a door. An exit.
Something stays Cal's hand. Logically, why wouldn't he reach for the cockpit hatch to free Bode and help him out of the wreck? He's been desperately dreaming of this reunion for long enough that the ache sits permanently inside his chest, and yet he feels like his limbs are wrapped in vines, holding him still. (Don't go in, don't go in, don't go in—)
Then Bode makes a muffled noise that's somewhere between a grunt of panicked effort and a sharp moan of pain, and the moment snaps. Cal surges forward, uses his lightsaber to slice apart the buckled cockpit frame, and rips the hatch door open.
Bode crumples through it with a face blackened by ash and dried blood. He lands heavily in Cal's outstretched arms and coughs like he’s trying to expel his own lungs, the tremours of his body shuddering through Cal's too. Fighting through the smoke, with the lick of flames on their heels, Cal drags Bode away from the crash step by step, until they reach clear air and both collapse to the ground. Immediately Bode rolls onto his back, panting in pain, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy with shock. Fresh blood flows from a cut on the side of his head, staining the ground, and the front of his shirt is charred and torn. Cal reaches a hand out, then withdraws it sharply when he realises that's a lightsaber wound on Bode's chest, cauterised but weeping – and in a nauseating flash, Cal hears the agonised echoes of the spinning red blade that caused it.
“Bode,” Cal chokes, frozen by indecision about what to process first: the fact that Bode is here, alive, or the fact that he could very well be dying again.
Bode looks up, and properly sees him for the first time. A touch of a smile tugs at his lips as they form the shape of Cal's name, and for a split second Cal believes everything is going to be okay. Then Bode sighs and closes his eyes, and he passes out before Cal can think to try and stop him.
Cal has been in enough desperate situations by now to know how to compartmentalise. This is Bode, bleeding and unconscious in his arms again, but right now his only priority needs to be getting an injured person back to safety. He comms Merrin first, but she's already on her way in the Mantis with Greez and several others – because of course everyone saw the way the ship shrieked from the sky to the ground and the cloud of smoke is only getting bigger and blacker in the air. He relays the extent of the injuries, his voice coming out cold and clinical because that's the only way he can stop it from shaking. He doesn't say it's Bode and he doesn't say it's a lightsaber wound, but Merrin infers.
“We are nearly there,” she says, her voice crackling and spitting over comms that never seem to find a clean connection, no matter where on Tanalorr they are. Then, a pause. “Cal. How bad is he?”
Cal looks down. Under the ash and the blood, Bode's skin is pale, covered with a shining layer of sweat. His breaths come short and shallow, and for a moment they are both back in that temple, Cal staring at the bloody handiwork of his own anger and fear. “Bad,” he says. “Please hurry.”
Minutes stretch to millenia, Cal watching each stuttering rise and fall of Bode's chest. He concentrates on doing what he can to stop the bleeding, taking care not to touch the mess of oozing, blackened skin under Bode's ruined shirt. He mentally logs the scattered bruises that bloom across the ridges of Bode's knuckles and the blunt cuts on his face that aren't fresh enough to be from the crash. Whatever Inquisitor he fought, it quickly descended into something primitive and brutal, fists over lightsabers, and maybe that's the only reason why Bode is still alive.
Because Bode is alive, despite his best efforts. Tattered and torn, and who knows how deep that lightsaber cut is, but the fact that he's here at all is a miracle. He came back. The compass led him back here to Cal, and even if Tanalorr doesn't want him, Cal still does.
When the Mantis arrives, many hands make light work. Cal unclenches his fingers from around Bode's to let Merrin teleport him on board, to the cabin that's been set up as a rudimentary medcentre ever since Bode's last near-death experience. Then, there's nothing more Cal can do. Greez, and the Hidden Path members who are helping, know far more about bacta tanks and how to treat festering burns than Cal does. Trembling and empty, Cal finds a place where the stench of the fiery wreck doesn't reach and drops to his knees. His fingers bury into the dead dirt of Tanalorr and cling.
Breathe in, breathe out.
He can't think about Bode, unconscious and bleeding just a ship’s span away, if he concentrates hard enough on the swirling ocean of the Force. He can't hear the wheeze of Bode struggling to breathe through a punctured lung if it’s just his own panicked breaths in his ears. He can't—
Merrin’s gentle hand lands on his arm, jolting him into opening his eyes. Behind her, the Mantis’ engines rumble to life.
“He is stable,” Merrin says, kneeling. She opens her arms and Cal curls gratefully into her shoulder. She glows with a warmth that is more real than anything Tanalorr has to offer. “Would you like to go with him? Greez thinks he passed out more from exhaustion than anything else, though his wound is badly infected.”
Cal shudders, sick. He has dealt out his fair share of lightsaber wounds in his time, but he's only been on the receiving end twice – one glancing blow from Dagan Gera, and a stab through the gut courtesy of the black-clad monster who leads the Inquisitorius. It's hard not to remember the excruciating bite of it, so hot that it's cold, the plasma blade burning off nerve endings and bubbling the skin away on contact. Perhaps that's the point; perhaps the Inquisitor left Bode alive on purpose so he could carry the pain of it with him, in muscles and ligaments that will never be the same again no matter how much bacta they drown him in.
If only Cal had tried harder to get Bode to stay, or at least convinced him to take a medikit with him. If only—
“Cal Kestis.” Merrin shakes him once, brisk and scowling. “You are spiralling.”
Cal twists something around his finger that resembles grass, but isn't. “I don't know if I can do it again. Watch him suffer.”
“He will heal whether or not you spend your days by his bedside.” Merrin turns stern eyes to him. “You owe him nothing.”
This is a conversion they have had before and Cal knows that she's right. He held Bode's hand through the ups and downs of his blaster wound, through the fever and the pain and the long, long nights, and Bode repaid him with nothing but one quick, perfunctory fuck and cold indifference. At the time, Cal thought that he might have deserved it, because he was the one who shot Bode in the first place. This time he bears no such responsibility.
“Walk with me,” Merrin suggests. “Bode is in good hands. We will take the long way back.”
Cal nods, and Merrin signals the Mantis. Together they watch it take off into the smoke-filled sky and disappear with Bode on board, back to the safety of the settlement.
Merrin leads the way. She understands Tanalorr's shifting landscape better than most, and anticipates its patterns in a way Cal has never managed. He misses BD-1, who point blank refuses to map the planet with the excuse that any attempt gives him the droid equivalent of a headache, but Merrin is the next best thing. There is a mountain between them and the settlement that wasn't there this morning, so Merrin patiently charts a course around it, popping ahead in bursts of green fire and returning to show Cal the way. It takes them far longer than it should, but the walk allows Cal to settle his thoughts into a more regular rhythm. He might owe Bode nothing, but he’s long made peace with the fact that he’ll never be able to stay away.
Half a day's hard walking later, the thin line of smoke from the settlement comes into view and they are home. It smells like home cooking and woodsmoke, the sight of their neat little shacks familiar and welcoming. When Cal turns straight towards the Mantis, Merrin stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Do not expect a miracle,” she warns. “No matter what happened to him out there, he is still Bode Akuna, with all that entails.”
She means his stubbornness, his selfishness, his ability to shut everyone else out when it suits his needs. But Cal's mind turns to Bode's fond smiles when he thinks no one is looking, his fierce protective loyalty, and the way it felt when they watched the stars together in the middle of a mission, just the two of them joined in comfortable, companionable silence. To the precious thrill that soared through his heart when Bode breathed Cal’s name warm into his nape, orgasm ebbing from both their bodies, so close to everything he ever wanted and yet still parsecs apart.
He says, “I hope so.”
The Mantis is quiet. Cal ducks his head as he enters, acknowledging Greez who sits alone in the galley, nursing a glass. Next to him is a bottle of something that looks expensive and strong. Greez wears the same expression as he always does when Cal comes limping in with his newest scrape or break, resignation and concern etched deep into the wrinkles on his forehead. It was Greez, under Cere's watchful eyes, who cared for the lightsaber wound in Cal's gut years ago; Greez would never say, but Cal knows he's haunted by the memory.
“Is he awake yet?” Cal asks.
“Despite my best efforts, yeah.” Greez scowls, and tips his head back to finish his glass. “That stubborn bastard woke up early and damn near fought his way out of the bacta tank, so if his infection gets worse again, that's on him, not me.”
Cal winces. So far, so familiar: Bode also resisted every attempt to treat his blaster wound, once he regained enough of his strength to put up a realistic fight. The result was a nasty scar that should have faded to nothing, but instead sat pink and puckered on his chest. The first time he saw it, Cal desperately wanted to kiss it, to press love into the pain and heal it that way, but even on the night that Bode had fucked him, Cal hadn't been afforded the opportunity to touch.
“Luckily for us, all his noble struggles left him too weak to get out of bed,” Greez drawls. “But if you've got something to say to him, better say it quick before he either dies or runs away again.”
“As always, Greez, I love and appreciate your inherent empathy,” Cal says, but it's a gentle tease, just to give himself a little lightness before he faces Bode again. He pours Greez a new glass on the way past, then carries on round to the cabins. The medcentre is set up in Cere's old room, and although Merrin objected to the irony of using it to heal the person who'd gotten her killed, Cal always thought it was poetic. Cere believed no one was beyond redemption, and if she could extend that grace to Inquisitors, she would have extended it to Bode too.
Cal doesn't knock; Bode isn't going to invite him in either way. When the door slides open, Bode tries to turn away, but not fast or fluidly enough to hide his tears. He lies propped up on the narrow bed in the centre of the room, chest wrapped in hasty bandages, in front of the drained but still wet bacta tank. Cal has to take a few breaths in the doorway to steady himself, because this is exactly like last time, and he doesn't want to remember it, let alone relive it.
At least Cal’s own hesitation gives Bode the time to compose himself. By the time Cal has taken a seat by his bedside, Bode's cheeks are dry again, though his eyes still shine brighter than normal.
“What do you want?” Bode snaps, his voice dry and hoarse.
Cal’s had hours to think what Bode's first words to him might be, and he’s imagined worse. The sting of them still hurts though.
“Did you do it?” Cal asks, because he's never been able to read anything about Bode in the Force, and he can't tell if Bode's vengeance – and thus his fall – is complete, anymore than he can feel what Bode is feeling right now. “Did you kill your Inquisitor?”
Bode's shoulders drop in defeat or frustration– Cal doesn't care which, because a wave of relief rushes through him. No. There's still hope then.
“What happened?” Cal asks.
“What do you think happened?” Bode is able to lift his hands to gesture vaguely to his chest, but even the small movement makes him wince. Cal has no idea how Bode managed to pilot through the Abyss in that state, and he suspects the answer is sheer bloody-minded determination. Which begs the question of why, because when he left, Bode certainly had no intention of returning at all, alive or dead.
“But you came back,” Cal says. He sounds like a child. He can’t help it.
Bode can't look him in the eye. “Do I look like I had a choice? I didn't know where else to go.”
Cal shakes his head. “No. That's not it.” Bode doesn't want to be here at the mercy of his former allies again, he doesn't want Kata to see him beaten and broken again. He doesn't want Cal. He could have picked a thousand different planets to curl up and die on, but he chose to hurl himself through the Abyss with a stolen ship and a lightsaber burn (back to a Tanalorr that doesn't want him.)
Bode’s eyes snap to Cal’s, and he swears, suddenly and colourfully. “If you're in my fucking head, I–”
“I don’t need to be. I know you,” Cal says simply; then again, just to be sure: “I know you.”
Bode stares at him, silenced. Cal expects more objections, another iteration of I'm not the man you thought you knew, but something in Bode's face goes slack; a concession.
“It was the compass,” Bode admits quietly. “I couldn't let them get it.”
That might be the most honest thing Bode has said to Cal since their fight, a tiny piece of his soul bared. Cal cocks his head but doesn't reply, trying to coax Bode into saying more.
“After the…” Bode takes a deep, painful breath, and the shine in his eyes brightens. “After the fight, I ran. I just wanted to… to go somewhere to die where they wouldn't find my body. But I couldn't shake them.”
“The Inquisitors wanted you alive,” Cal says, understanding. He almost laughs at the cruel irony: Bode went there hoping they'd kill him, but of course the Inquisitors had a far worse fate in mind. The lightsaber wound was never intended to be fatal, just disabling, but they hadn't accounted for Bode’s stubbornness. Anyone who knew anything about Bode Akuna wouldn't have given him even the slightest chance to get away alive.
“I couldn't let them get the compass,” Bode repeats, stronger this time. “I had to protect Kata and—” His eyes linger on Cal's face a second too long and they both pretend that the responding flush on Cal's cheeks isn't obvious. “Tanalorr was the only place I could bring it where the Empire wouldn't eventually find it.”
That fierce protective loyalty. Cal smiles. Despite everything, he’s still Bode.
“You shouldn't have given it to me,” Bode growls, and the moment is gone. The fleeting tenderness cracks into desperate anger. “You put everyone here in danger.”
Cal squares his jaw, stubborn too. “Giving you the compass is the only reason you're still alive—”
“Well I shouldn't be!” The words tear out of Bode in a guttural roar. He bares his teeth at Cal for a second, blazing, before the fury implodes. He closes his eyes, and the tears flow down his cheeks like they never stopped. “I’ve lost track of how many people have tried and failed to kill me. Clones. Bounty hunters. Inquisitors. You. Why won’t I just die?”
Cal's fingertips burn with the need to touch, to soothe. But Bode doesn't want him, so he links his fingers tight together and bites the inside of his cheek. “I never wanted to kill you.” The words are soft, quiet and straight from the heart. They’re not enough.
“No?” A laugh barks out through Bode's tears. “Then you’re a fucking idiot, Kestis. I gave you enough reasons.”
“You don't…” The words get stuck in Cal's throat and his own eyes prickle. He has to fight to pretend the use of his surname doesn't hurt, as if the last time he heard ‘scrapper’ from Bode's lips wasn't before Cere died. “You did terrible, terrible things, but… you don't deserve to die for them.”
“You're the only one in the whole damn galaxy that thinks that.” Bode glares at Cal with so much intensity that Cal jerks back a fraction, forgetting for a second that Bode is still too weak to stand. Bode sees the flinch, and the fire in him gutters again, his shoulders dropping. The question, when it comes, is barely audible. “Why?”
Cal swallows hard. Every answer he wants to say to that question is selfish, through and through. He knows he can't persuade, or cajole, or force Bode into wanting to live; he can only offer an alternative, and hope that Bode takes the first step. “Because you've suffered enough. You deserve a life that treats you with kindness.”
Bode scoffs in response. “And where will I find that?”
“Tanalorr is—”
“Tanalorr?” Bode sneers. “Did you think it was a coincidence that the Abyss tore my ship to shreds, even with a compass? Tanalorr doesn't want me alive either. It's made that very clear.”
Cal lifts his chin. “Fine. Then I don’t want Tanalorr.”
Two things happen in quick succession. The first is a flash of emotion on Bode's face: a widening of the eyes, lips parting in surprise. The second is that the quiet voice that's been whispering in Cal's head ever since he arrived on Tanalorr suddenly screams.
(Tanalorr is safe, Tanalorr is secure, Tanalorr is where he wants to be. There's nowhere better than Tanalorr. The only thing that threatens the life he's built here is Bode. Bode is the one who needs to leave, he needs to leave, he needs to LEAVE—!)
“Cal!”
Cal opens his eyes, eyelashes fluttering. He’s on the floor by Bode’s bedside, hunched on his knees, and he doesn’t remember how he got there.
“Hey, take it easy,” Greez says, a hand on his back, helping Cal steady himself. He doesn’t remember how Greez got here either. Did Bode call him in from the other room?
The whisper of a voice reverberates in the back of Cal’s mind, the kind of voice that reminds him of home cooking and woodsmoke. (Stay, stay, stay…)
“Can you hear it?” Cal murmurs, although he’s not sure he actually says the words out loud. His body isn’t his own, not quite; a shiver runs down his spine like a fingernail tracing featherlight over skin.
“What was that?” Bode’s face is pale again, and he leans forward as best as he can, with one hand braced against the bandages on his chest. “Was it an echo?”
“The echoes are normally more controlled, right?” Greez asks.
An echo? There are no echos on Tanalorr, because there’s no life here. Cal ignores Greez’s offered hand and pushes himself to his feet with his grip tight on the edge of the bed. He sways, but his feet stay firmly planted. “Tanalorr doesn’t want you,” he says to Bode. “The Force told Kata. Tanalorr told me.”
Greez glances at Bode, lost. “Please tell me this is normal Force stuff.”
“No.” Bode looks up, brows pinched. “That’s not the Force.”
Greez swears. “Let me get the scanner.”
While Greez digs around, Cal looks at Bode, trying to ignore the rushing sounds in his head. Bode’s eyes are on him, creased with alarm, and Cal thinks that if he jumps into those eyes he’ll fall forever.
(Can’t though. Won’t.)
“Can’t though,” Cal repeats obediently. “Won’t.”
“What's that, kid?” Greez asks, medical scanner in hand.
Cal doesn’t say more but dutifully holds still while Greez runs the scanner up and down his body. He doesn't feel unwell. He's not sure why Bode is looking at him so strangely.
“What was the last thing he was doing?” Greez asks Bode while the scanner whirs.
Bode hesitates. “We were… talking about Tanalorr and—”
Cal's head snaps around, his eyes jumping to Bode's with half a snarl ready on his lips. Thorns fill his throat, bloody with an anger that isn’t his. How dare Bode say that name, when he doesn’t belong here? He remembers Bode's earlier words like they've been planted into his skull, and their mocking echo forms sharp on his tongue. “Why won't you just die?” he hisses.
Bode flinches, eyes wide. “Oh fuck,” he breathes. “It’s alive.”
~*~*~
Bode and Greez are barely shadows to Cal. He leaves them and the Mantis behind, and stalks across the earth of (sweet, sacred, precious) Tanalorr. Everything and nothing is swirling through his mind – whispers, whispers, whispers that leave no room for his own thoughts. He has to find her: the girl who saw the omen. Kata.
She is waiting for him in her little shack, her face expectant and bright with a smile. No one has told her, then, that Bode is back, lying injured and unwanted on just the other side of the settlement. Not Merrin, not Greez, not the Hidden Path – so Cal doesn't either.
“Tell me about your vision,” he says, tongue moving of its own accord. “The one about the door.”
The child's smile falters. “You're not Cal.”
“Do you feel safe?” The words aren’t his own. His thoughts aren’t his own. He moves towards her, feeling but not seeing the vines that wrap around his legs, directing his steps. She is strong in the Force, untrained but full of potential. Once the door has been closed, she'll be next. “You are always safe on Tanalorr.”
She backs away with nowhere to go, because Tanalorr is the air above and the ground below. Her fear is thick and heavy, but she is brave. “Let him go.”
A smile cracks Cal's face. “It did not take me – I let it in. I begged for it. For safety and peace, and a home. It gave me everything I wanted. It can give you what you want too.”
“Then do it.” Her hands form small stubborn fists. “I want Cal back.”
The Abyss flares, and the shadows deepen. The child holds Cal's eyes with wilful determination, then, drawn by something he does not sense, flicks her gaze over his shoulder. Cal turns, too late, and—
A pale, tattooed hand presses against his heart. It burns. Cal screams and falls to his knees. He writhes against it, pinned by tendrils of green flames that digs like barbs under his skin, white hot. Behind that fire, the witch’s eyes glow.
“Do as she says, spirit. Let. Him. Go!”
Cal screams again. He's torn in two and then smudged back together, both consciousnesses so closely entwined that pulling them apart does damage. He crumbles, losing parts of himself he can't name, every scrap of him striving, failing, drowning in one word: (Tanalorr! Tanalorr! Tanalorr!)
The witch touches her forehead to Cal's. She is desert heat, hot and dry. The vines within him blacken and curl, scalded away on contact. “I am sorry, Cal,” she breathes against his cheek. “Please forgive me.”
The flames erupt, and this time Cal isn't even given the chance to draw breath. He drowns in fire, head to toe, rent apart again. For an instant he is only agony, only fractured, lonely shards, before he plunges into darkness.
~*~*~
When Cal wakes, his head is pounding, but he is himself again. There are three beds in the Mantis medcentre now: one for him, one for Bode – asleep, no bandages anymore, the colour back in his face – and a third little cot tucked against the wall that can only be for Kata. Cal pulls himself tentatively upright and listens.
Nothing. No whispers. No Tanalorr.
A pendant hangs light around his neck. Cal's fingers find rough bone and smooth fabrics twined together on cord. He strokes it absently, over and over, trembling with phantom memories of vines in his veins.
He's alone in his head again, but for how long? And at what cost?
He swings his legs off the bed – and hesitates, just for a moment. Bode's face is soft, sleeping soundly after so long with nothing but pain, and Cal can't bear to wake him.
The floor of the Mantis is cold on his bare feet. He drags himself along, hands braced against the walls, every part of him sore. Merrin and Greez are both in the main room, Greez lying with his head on his arms at the galley, and Merrin curled up on the length of the couch, eyes closed.
They look at peace. Cal lowers himself to the floor under the terrarium and leans his head back against it. Even after that short walk, he is bone tired, and he doesn’t even know if he’s safe. Tanalorr attacked him, usurped his mind and bent it into submission; that much he remembers. But the rest?
“Don't take it off,” Kata says, voice sharp.
Cal opens his eyes. He hadn't even noticed himself fiddling with the pendant, toying with pulling the cord away from his neck. Kata steps out of the cockpit, hair mussed and wearing loose nightclothes. She is wearing a similar pendant, hanging low.
“Hi Kata,” Cal says, trying to find a smile for her. He doesn’t like the way she’s looking at him, with the same wariness she had when they first met. “What were you doing back there?”
“Watching the sky.” Kata moves a few hesitant steps closer then sits too, cross-legged on the floor by the holotable. She has BD-1 in her arms, and the little droid's head droops sleepily over the crook of her elbow. “The Abyss is so beautiful. Always changing.”
“Couldn't sleep?”
Kata shivers and hugs BD-1 closer. “Not for a while.”
“I’m sorry.” Cal rubs his knuckles against his eyes and sees stars. In them, he sees a flash of a memory: Kata, cowering with her fists clenched, shouting something up at him. Shame rushes cold through his body. “I scared you, didn’t I?”
A shrug. “It wasn’t you. You’re back now though, thanks to Merrin.” She glances at his chest.
“You mean this?” Cal holds the pendant up to the light. It’s made of bone, yet it glows faintly. “Merrin made it?”
“It keeps us safe,” Kata says, touching her own. “For the time being, Merrin said.”
Cal glances at Merrin and Greez. Neither of them have one. “It‘s after Jedi, then?"
Kata nods. “Seems so.”
“But – Bode. Your dad.” Cal frowns. Bode might not call himself a Jedi, but he is one. Tanalorr doesn’t care about semantics. “Why doesn’t it want him?”
Perhaps it’s because Bode’s life nearly ended here, when one shot from the blaster he’d given Cal punctured his lung a thumb’s width from his heart. Perhaps it’s because his life hadn’t ended, and instead the dream of sanctuary he’d wanted for Kata had been sullied with rage and blood, and repaid him only in shame. Perhaps—
“Perhaps Tanalorr is only interested in people who talk loudly when others are trying to sleep,” Merrin grumbles, half-awake. She stretches, full-bodied, then flashes a smile at Cal. “Welcome back, Jedi. You are you?”
Cal has to think about his answer. “More or less.”
“You’ve been unconscious for several days,” she informs him. “And are still sore, I see. I am sorry. I had to burn it out.” Her hands flex, and Cal is suddenly very glad he had no clear memory of his possession.
“You did what you had to,” he says eventually, massaging his wrists for comfort. “Thank you.” Now that she’s told him, he can recognise the scorched ache inside him as Merrin’s fire, its path a barely healed wound deep in his body. It’s painful, yes, but it’s a good, clear pain. Underneath it is worse: an absence, an emptiness where Tanalorr burrowed inside. The emptiness left a gap of grief and uncertainty, a craving for the whispers to fill him again.
His fingers are back on the pendant again. Is he playing with it idly? Or is part of him trying to remove it? It is a strange and awful thing to know that, without this fragile twist of bone and cloth, he’d let Tanalorr right back in.
“What now?” he asks.
“We leave,” Merrin says. “Or, we try. We have been trying.”
There are so many stories, and so much frustration, in those simple words. Silence follows them, and Cal understands the scale of odds stacked against them. The whispers might be gone for the time being, but Tanalorr’s hold remains on all of them. They’re pinned, and the only way out is through a deadly Abyss that will tear them apart rather than let them go. Cal doesn't hear Tanalorr whisper, but he knows what it would say: where else would they go?
He’s a door, an exit.
“We have to find another way." Cal hauls himself to his feet, then waves off both Merrin and Kata who start forward to help him. “I think it’s Bode. Like in your vision, Kata. Bode has to help us find the door.”
~*~*~
When Cal purified Dagan Gera’s lightsaber, soon after the fight at the temple, it wasn't enough to feel what Dagan felt. He had to live it.
He left the settlement behind while everyone else was asleep and ventured to the top of the hill, bacta strips still covering cracked bones and deep bruises from his fight with Bode. It wasn’t a secret; he was just determined that no one would disturb him. If Cal barely understood what he was about to attempt to do, how could anyone else?
Kyber crystals were tricky things, soaked in the Force and vibrant with the energy they exchanged with their owners – not sentient, but by every other measure alive. Even to someone without psychometry, touching another Jedi's kyber crystal gave you a little taste of their soul. For Cal, he saw everything.
And everything about Dagan Gera was tied up in Tanalorr. The moment Cal placed his hands on the crystal, he watched, entranced, as Dagan made his original journey uncharted through the Abyss. Felt Dagan's awe when he laid eyes on that glittering purple planet, pristine and untouched and calling to him. With his first step onto its soft earth, it was like every breath he'd ever taken up until that point had been shallow and unsatisfactory, a mere shadow of what breathing should be. He named it Tanalorr, because that was the whisper he heard on the breeze, the shape of the shiver that travelled up his arms when he dragged his fingertips through tall, ethereal grasses. Tanalorr sighed and smiled, brought to life by his presence, and Dagan let it into his heart without hesitation.
We can help each other, they agreed. Tanalorr would teach Dagan its secrets, and in return, Dagan would bring others.
And come they did – willingly, in their droves, drawn in by the images Dagan painted about Tanalorr's potential in the Force. Dagan planted a Jedi temple on the very spot he had first touched down, a permanent reminder of his connection to the planet, and the power that came with Tanalorr's blessings. Potential fulfilled. Promises delivered. Dreams realised.
Until the Nihil.
The marauders swarmed into Tanalorr’s atmosphere, with their strange hyperspace technology that somehow allowed them to bypass the Abyss. Tanalorr told him to fight, so Dagan did, sacrificing Jedi and Nihil lives alike, spilling their blood into the mud of soft purple battlefields. It was a fight Dagan knew he could win, had been winning, until the Jedi Council counted their dead and baulked.
They were cowards, blind. They did not know Tanalorr like Dagan did, had not felt the wonder of it in their blood, their bones and sinew, the fabric of their souls. He had. He had tasted its sweetness, and embraced addiction with open arms.
They had to drag Dagan away, abandoning the planet to the whims of the filthy Nihil invaders, unworthy of its gifts. But Tanalorr never left Dagan. Even so far away, on the other side of the Abyss, Tanalorr continued to whisper and whisper, in both waking and sleeping moments. (Return, return, return, no matter the cost…) He murdered Jedi, lost his arm, lost his love, lost himself, and still every dream he had throughout the long centuries suspended in bacta was of Tanalorr, and Tanalorr alone.
The rest Cal knew: Dagan’s reunion with his protector, the search for the compasses, the intervention of a young, red-haired Jedi who knew nothing of what he sought. With his hands tight around the crystal, Cal wrestled with Dagan’s anger and grief that had bled it such a deep crimson to begin with. The twisting of Dagan’s heart dug sobs from Cal’s chest, cutting so deep into his soul that he could taste Dagan’s longing, the burn that his separation from Tanalorr had wrought. When he came out the other side, that craving felt sacred. He was home. I am here, Tanalorr, he cried into still skies. Dagan isn’t here anymore, but I am. Take my heart instead.
Tanalorr rose to meet him in a melding of minds. Cal sighed and laid his head on the ground; a rock dropped into magma, melting into the wholeness where it belonged. He would be here forever. (It was all he ever wanted.)
But even after all that, the crystal remained stubbornly red, because after Dagan the lightsaber had one final owner. Bode had never bled a kyber or followed a Sith code, but his rage and desperation were tools of the dark side nonetheless, and the crystal screamed with them.
Cal couldn’t let the kyber crystal go. His fingers were stiff around it, clenched and sore, and he plunged straight into a new set of memories. Bode’s memories.
Bode touched down in the same spot as Dagan, on the very outskirts of the temple. To Cal, the difference was stark: where Dagan was overawed by Tanalorr’s beauty, Bode felt nothing but despair. He'd burned everything to get Kata here – his lifeline in the ISB, his trust with the Mantis crew and the Hidden Path, his relationship with Cal – only to find it empty, dead, no place to raise a child. There was nothing left, nowhere to go, no one to turn to. He'd failed to find the safety he so desperately craved, and had dragged Kata all the way to a graveyard for good measure.
They were there for two days before Cal arrived, Bode trying to ignore the strange whispering just beyond the edge of his hearing, and Kata getting lonelier with every hour. Cal walked in, side by side with the witch, there to compound Bode’s failure, to take vengeance for all the lives he had taken. There to turn the dead meadows of Tanalorr into a training ground for a fledgling army, one that would burn like the Jedi did as soon as the Empire knew it was there.
So Bode broke. He let the anger take control because there was nothing else left. Because if Bode killed Cal, there'd be no one left to bear witness to his shame, and if Cal killed him, then at least Kata would still be loved by someone willing to fight to protect her.
Cal emerged from Bode’s memories in tears, Bode's pain a blade in his heart. At the time, he still wasn't sure if Bode was going to live or die from his blaster wound, and his own fear of losing him made the process a thousand times more difficult. Purification required calmness, a centred mind, focus. He clung to the stubbornly red crystal and poured everything into it: his love for Bode, his longing for what could have been, and his fluttering, tiny, fragile hopes for reconciliation.
When the crystal finally faded to white, Cal rested his head back on the ground, thoughts of Tanalorr forgotten. He just knew that, no matter what happened, he wasn't going to leave Bode's side.