Chapter Text
“Master,” Cal tugged on the hem of Master Tapal’s robes. He’d been under the lasat’s tutelage for only a few weeks now, and he was still getting a feel for the Jedi Master’s moods and personality. The man was imposing, rarely breaking a smile or dropping his stern countenance, but he was not unkind. Besides, a padawan’s teacher was supposed to help them, right? If there was anyone Cal could trust with this, it was his master.
“One moment, padawan,” Master Tapal said. He didn’t look down from his conversation with the battalion commander, but Cal felt the warm brush of his mind through the Force, patient and reassuring. Master Tapal used a single meaty finger to sign something on Commander Jax’s datapad. “There you are, Commander. Your report seems to be in order. Good work.”
“Thank you, sir,” Commander Jax flipped the datapad over and stood back at attention. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some new recruits that need debriefing.”
“Of course,” Master Tapal waved a hand in dismissal. “Let them know to come by and introduce themselves. My padawan and I would love to have them over for lunch.”
Commander Jax chuckled a little. “I’ll pass that along, General. Just don’t be offended if they don’t take you up on it. They’re still shinies, so they’ll be scared of you for a while yet.”
“Bah,” Master Tapal crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I don’t see why.”
Commander Jax cast his helmet down, and Cal met his gaze just long enough to throw him a commiserating look.
“What?” Master Tapal glanced between the two of them, and Cal jumped nearly foot in the air. Whoops, he hadn’t meant for his master to notice that.
Commander Jax hid his surprise a little better, but even Cal noticed the hitch in his shoulders as he apparently resisted the urge to cringe in embarrassment. “Um. Well, you are rather…tall, General.”
It was true. Standing at nearly eight feet high, Master Tapal was tall even for a lasat, and he was broad-shouldered to boot, making him one of the most physically imposing Jedi that Cal had ever seen. He absolutely dwarfed Master Yoda, and he even towered over the clones, who (as far as Cal could tell) were taller than your average person.
“And you’re grumpy!” Cal chimed in. He might as well say what Jax had really meant. Master Tapal blinked, as if processing the accusation, and Cal felt a surge of pride when Commander Jax coughed as he tried—and failed—to hide the fact that he was choking on a laugh.
“I am not —nevermind. You had a question, padawan?” Master Tapal’s tone was indignant for only a moment before it evened out into neutral interest.
“Right,” Commander Jax coughed one more time. “Well, that’s my cue. Good luck, kiddo. You’ve got this training thing in the bag.” He ruffled Cal’s hair on the way out, and Cal leant into the gesture, only turning his attention back to Master Tapal when the door slid shut behind the Commander.
“Come on, now. Out with it,” Master Tapal prompted, not unkindly.
“Um.” Cal blinked a few times. “It’s sort of complicated.”
Cal was trying to keep his shields up, but some of his dismay must have bled through, because Master Tapal’s features softened. He knelt down so that he was eye-level with Cal — or, well, closer to eye-level, since Master Tapal was still a good head taller than Cal even when down on one knee.
“That’s alright, padawan. Take your time.”
Right. Now or never. “...Do you ever feel like you’re experiencing deja vu?”
Master Tapal’s brow furrowed, the lines on his face deepening. “I have experienced deja vu, yes.”
“Right! But it’s not deja vu. It’s like deja vu, but different.”
“How so?” Master Tapal leaned back slightly, but he was still watching Cal intently. Cal resisted the urge to avert his eyes. The last thing he wanted was for Master Tapal to think he was lying.
“Well, it’s ‘cause…with deja vu, you’re not always sure if something is happening a second time. But what about when you are? Sure, I mean.”
Silence reigned for a long time. Master Tapal’s expression flickered through several different emotions, and Cal couldn’t identify most of them. There was fear, maybe. Concern. Unhappiness? Cal hoped not. He hadn’t meant to upset his master.
“Cal,” Master Tapal said, and Cal startled at the use of his first name. “Have you been having dreams?”
Cal had dreams all the time, but he didn’t think they were the sorts of dreams that Master Tapal was referring to. He hadn’t had any prophetic nightmares; he just lived things twice sometimes, or at least he thought he did. But then again, could Cal be certain that they weren’t dreams? Maybe when he sat down to meditate, he dreamt of futures that had not yet come to pass. They hadn’t felt like dreams, but Master Yoda always said that the Force worked in mysterious ways.
“Maybe. Sort of? I don’t know.”
Master Tapal scrubbed a hand over his face, swearing quietly under his breath. “A psychometric and a prophet,” he muttered, seemingly to himself. “What are the odds?” He shook himself off and placed a hand on Cal’s right shoulder. “Thank you for telling me about this, padawan. I will do some research into your situation. For now…do not mention what you just told me to anyone else.”
Cal stood there slack-jawed. Of all the things he’d expected from dutiful Master Tapal, that was not it. “You want me to lie?”
“No! No,” Master Tapal shook his head, looking aggrieved. “Cal, the High Council might understand, but the Senate…if this is true, some among them might seek to use your powers. They’re already far too interested in your psychometric abilities. First we will confirm whether or not these visions of yours truly are prophetic. If they are, then I will train you to the best of my ability.”
That all sounded well and good, except…
“But I’m training to be a Jedi,” Cal said, uncertain. “Isn’t it my duty to use my abilities for the Republic? Especially if they could help with the war?”
Master Tapal’s expression tightened. He pressed his eyes shut, exhaling slowly through his nose before gently brushing Cal’s braid back over his shoulder. “You will be of no service to the Republic if you are pushed too far. The most valuable thing that you can do for our democracy is become the best Jedi you can be. If that means keeping this from the Senate for a while, then so be it.”
Cal’s shoulders relaxed, all the tension draining out of him as if it had never been there. Master Tapal had somehow assuaged a fear that Cal hadn’t even realized he was carrying around.
Later, he would regret not telling Master Tapal the whole truth — all of it. He might have understood, might have been able to offer some guidance.
But Cal hadn’t, so Master Tapal could only give him second-hand training exercises and meditations designed for precognitive Force Users. Helpful, yes, except for the fact that Cal was not, and had never been, precognitive.
And now Master Tapal was gone. He was buried on Bracca, chest riddled with blaster holes, and Cal had no one to blame but himself.
~
Between Kashykk and Dathomir, Cal told Cere everything. She watched him, serious and attentive. Cal shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.
“It’s not a huge deal. I just figured, maybe you’ve heard of something like that before? You were a Jedi for a while, right?”
Cere was already shaking her head. “Cal, I’ve heard a lot of crazy things, but…time travel? As far as I know, the Force doesn’t work that way.” Cal opened his mouth, and she lifted a calming hand to stop him from cutting in. “I’m not calling you a liar. I believe you, but from what I can recall, there was no mention of anything like that in the archives.”
“Okay, it’s not time travel, ” Cal corrected. “I just—I meditate, and I pay attention to how the Force feels in that moment. And sometimes, if I need to, I can…hang onto that feeling, and follow it back. Then I open my eyes, and I’m there. It’s not that different from the Force Echoes, if you think about it.”
“That sounds a lot like time travel to me.”
“It’s not. I’m just sort of hitching a ride on the Force. It’s time slipping , at most.” Despite the skeptical glance that Cere was shooting him, Cal meant it — though slipping probably wasn’t the best word for it either. In many ways, it was more of a controlled fall. While using other Force abilities felt a lot like stretching an extra limb, this had always felt more like being on an engineless ship as it re-entered atmo, or like he’d jumped into a river and was being swept away by the current.
“Does anything else stay the same?”
Cal thought about it for the moment. “No. The Force usually heals me if I’m hurt. Sometimes if I have something on me, it will still be there after, but not always.”
“Do you use this ability often?” Cere continued, sharply.
“Huh? Oh, no.” Cal barely used it at all, anymore. He hadn’t used it for years and years, thanks to the fact that his connection with the Force had been so damaged. It was starting to come back in halting pauses and jumps as he repaired that bond, but if that relationship was an electrical circuit to be rebuilt, the slips were a live wire.
“How many times?”
Cal stepped back, unable to stop the jolt of discomfort that he felt at the intensity in Cere’s voice. “Twice! It was life or death. What else was I supposed to do?” The first had been on their initial visit to Zeffo. The AT-ST had gotten a lucky shot to the Mantis’ engines, blowing up the ship with Greez and Cere still inside.
The second had been thanks to a purge trooper hiding behind a door with an electrostaff, ready to bludgeon Cal half to death before he could even ignite his lightsaber. That one had fucking hurt.
Cere’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, thank the Force.”
Cal frowned, shaking his head to clear his ears of the noise that the Mantis’ engine made right before it exploded. “For what?” he said, and it came out less kindly than he intended.
“Listen to me, Cal.” Cere set her hands on each of Cal’s shoulders. Her hands were so much smaller and lighter than Master Tapal’s, but her grip was no less firm and reassuring. “Don’t use it, okay? Not unless your life is truly on the line. The risks of a power like that…I’m not joking, Cal. The harm this could do to you isn’t worth it.”
“Cere, it doesn’t hurt.”
“I’m not talking about your body, Cal,” Cere corrected. “I’m worried about your mind.” She reached up to rap him once on the forehead with her knuckles, then lowered it again to repeat the gesture on the left side of Cal’s chest. “And I’m worried about your heart. This mission will be difficult enough, and we’ve all seen far too much suffering as it is. Don’t put yourself through more unless you have a damn good reason. Got it?”
Cal met Cere’s eyes carefully. Her features were set, determined, but there were worry lines creasing their way around her eyes, and there was a twitching muscle in her jaw, like she was fighting to keep her composure. He did not need to use his psychometry to see that Cere carried the loss of her fellow Jedi, of her clone troopers, of Trilla like it was a hundred-pound weight around her neck.
There was nothing that Cal could do to take that from her, just like there was nothing she could do to heal the gaping hole that Master Tapal’s death had left in his life. But he could avoid adding to that burden for her, so long as she did the same for him.
“Got it,” Cal said, and meant it.
~
Keep moving, Cal. Filtered through the comms as it was, the choppy connection turned Merrin’s words half to static.
Cal couldn’t respond. The Sith was bearing down on him, blade locked against Cal’s own, but they were taller and heavier. Their body weight alone was a decisive factor, and the heat of Cal’s own lightsaber was starting to scald the skin of his neck. He was inches away from being beheaded by his own weapon.
Master Tapal would have been so disappointed.
The Sith exhaled, voice a modulated rattle through their dark helmet. Cal pressed with the Force against his lightsaber. He just needed to gain a little ground, just enough to push off and run —
Merrin’s connection to the Force had felt like a super hurricane, a force of nature. Malicos’ had been a wildfire, endlessly destructive, always hungry for more . But when Cal reached out, his bond with the Force brushing briefly against the Sith’s, it was like coming into contact with a neutron star.
Cal grit his teeth so hard that he bit through the inside of his cheek. He was kriffed, just well and truly fucked.
A spray of sparks. Cal flinched, and then braced himself for the inevitable loss of his head.
The Sith staggered, and BD-1 popped up from behind their helmet, one clawed foot raised from where they’d sent a pulse of electricity through the Sith’s cyborg body. It lasted only a moment before the Sith grabbed BD-1 off their back, and Cal felt a ripple of malintent through the Force, a pulse of energy meant to crush and kill BD-1 on the spot.
If there was any time to run, this was it. Staying to fight was a death sentence, and BD-1’s destruction was almost assured anyways. There was really only one option, only one choice that made sense.
Cal stabbed the Sith anyway.
The good news was that the Sith dropped BD-1 almost immediately, wrapping their hand around the hilt of Cal’s lightsaber. Cal slammed his free hand down on top of theirs; he had more leverage in this position, and even despite the Sith’s resistance, the lightsaber slid deeper and deeper into their armor carapace.
The bad news was that Cal’s gloves were torn, had ripped at some point in the scuffle — maybe by Trilla, maybe by one of the dozen painful falls that Cal had taken in the past hour. None of that mattered. What mattered was the fact that it wasn’t until the skin of Cal’s palm scraped against the Sith’s armored fingers that he realized. He yanked his hand back with a curse, but it was too late.
He was already burning.
The Sith’s memories flashed by more quickly than anything Cal had ever experienced before. He was…Darth Vader, being pulled apart on a table, nothing to ease his pain as they drilled ports for his new cybernetic body into his arms, legs, spine, skull—he was slaughtering younglings in the Temple—
He was a fallen Jedi, lava eating away at his limbs on Mustafar, hatredgriefangerfearfearfear igniting deep in his chest as the world fell apart around him—
He was General Skywalker, bantering with Captain Rex and Snips on the battlefield—
A padawan, waking up after a nightmare, Obi-Wan’s hands rubbing soothing circles into his back as he sobbed himself back to sleep—
A child. Ani , cradled in the arms of his mother, bruises on his face and fingers sore from working with scrap metal—
The vision lightened, and the sounds of the real world began to filter back into Cal’s awareness. But no, that didn’t make sense. How could this have happened? How had General Anakin Skywalker fallen to the dark side?
Cal had never finished his training. If the Republic hadn’t fallen, Master Tapal would have sent him to train with Quinlan Vos, the only other psychometric in the Jedi Forces, for a time. But the Republic had fallen, leaving Cal with only three steps for managing his retrocognition: one, wear your gloves; two, remember your breathing; three, do not, under any circumstances, chase the rabbit.
He’d already fucked up the first two steps. What was one more?
Forcing a vision wasn’t something that Cal had ever done before, but as he tried it for the first time, he found that the Force was practically singing with an eagerness to show him more. The past cleaved itself open before him like a hot knife through butter, and Cal followed it down.
Three words rang loud and clear in the vision. Execute Order 66.
What was Order 66? Cal pushed deeper.
No, oh no. Behavioral modification chips. The clones hadn’t betrayed the Jedi willingly, then. Master Tapal’s killers had been forced to raise their weapons against him, stripped of any semblance of free will and—
Someone had done this; orchestrated the entire thing. Cal needed to know who. It was…there was a voice, speaking softly into Anakin’s ears, again and again and again. Who? Cal chased after the whispering, a dulcet drone that never ceased.
He was in the Senate Chambers. Cal’s breath caught in his chest. He’d only been here once before, following along with Master Tapal on assignment. It was as glorious as Cal remembered, and the traitor…the traitor was here. The one who had orchestrated the genocide of the Jedi, had planned General Skywalker’s fall. They’d been a Senator.
Cal was close. He just needed to dig a little deeper and he would know who . He would understand, finally, what had happened, why everyone he’d ever loved had died, why his people and culture had been hunted down and destroyed.
A burning pain ignited in Cal’s stomach. He opened his eyes and came face to face with Darth Vader’s mask, the Sith’s red lightsaber buried to the hilt in Cal’s gut. BD-1 was gripping Cal’s trousers with one clawed foot, beeping out a high-pitched, frantic plea.
Right.
That’s why Cal wasn’t supposed to chase the rabbit. He knew that.
“You scream too much,” Darth Vader hissed, and Force Pushed Cal off his blade.
A couple ribs made an unfortunate crunch as Cal hit the ground. He curled in on himself, gasping for air. “BD,” he said, and the droid jetted frantically over his side, injecting stim after stim into Cal’s arm before Cal could even ask. Cal shook his head. “BD, stop.”
BD whined in displeasure, bumping their head into his side, ignoring the way that Cal winced in pain in favor of trying to shove him back to his feet.
Cal put his hand on BD’s small body, hefting them up and placing them behind him. “Take the holocron and run, BD. Destroy it. Please.”
BD, predictably, did not do either of those things. Fuck. Darth Vader was advancing yet again. “General Skywalker, don’t do this,” Cal said, more instinctively than anything. “I know what happened. It’s not too late.”
Darth Vader stopped in place, breath rattling through the modulator in his helmet. “Do not call me that.”
A pipe burst, then another, cracks spiderwebbing across the glass wall of the tunnel.
Cal closed his eyes. If there was any time for him to slide back, this was it. “Come on. Comeoncomeoncomeon.”
Nothing happened at first, a stalled ship engine turning over to no result. Cal pushed harder, and harder, and harder, slamming his mind against the wall in front of him. He was dredging an empty well, but there was an endless spring of power within reach. It was just blocked off from him, dammed up either by Cal’s own exhaustion or Skywalker’s immense power. Darth Vader’s steps were drawing closer; the man was above him now, and the Force was pressing down on Cal from all sides, suffocating him under its weight.
Everyone was going to die. Cere, Merrin, Greez, every one of the thousands of younglings on that list—every death as meaningless and pointless as the slaughter of the Jedi, as Anakin’s fall. What were the past five years except an awful cosmic joke? A senseless tragedy with a countless death toll. And it had been preventable . It had been so achingly, horrifically preventable that Cal wanted to scream with the injustice of it.
The dam in front of Cal shuddered.
Anakin Skywalker lifted his lightsaber.
And the dam broke.
~
Cal woke up, and he was still alive. He was still alive! “BD! We did it, buddy.” What exactly they’d done, Cal wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t dead. That counted as a win in Cal’s book.
Or it did, except no beep or trill came in response to Cal’s declaration. A terrible chill set into Cal’s entire body, and he stood up, turning around. The movement felt wrong, almost nauseatingly so, and Cal nearly fell on his face as he tried to find his balance.
His body was too small, and he was no longer in the Fortress Inquisitorius. He was in a small room, sparsely but finely furnished, featuring a small bed, a wooden desk, and a spot on the floor that was reserved for meditation. That last bit wasn’t an immutable rule—it was an arbitrary designation that Cal had decided upon, because this was his room. His nook in the crèche, which was in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, which was…still standing, and just as Cal remembered it. It was entirely unchanged, from the slight scent of dust in the air down to the sight of Cal’s long-lost first lightsaber dangling from a strap at the foot of the bed.
Cal swore and scrambled for his bag. He needed his data pad. There was no doubt that he’d gone further back than he intended, but he needed to know how far. He upended his satchel onto the mattress, and three things tumbled out.
He grabbed his old datapad first. The date and time popped up on the lockscreen, which was just as well, because Cal sure as hell didn’t remember the password anymore.
Two years and some change to go until Order 66 was executed. Cal swallowed. That made him…10, nearly 11. He would have passed his Initiate Trials a month or two ago. Then, like many of the younger test-takers, he had not been selected to be a Padawan for quite a while yet. Despite Senate pressure, the Council was mostly resistant to the idea of sending small children out onto the battlefield, though as the war had gone on, it happened more and more regardless.
Right now, Master Tapal was halfway across the galaxy, not to return for nearly another year. But he was out there, fighting and saving people and alive . Cal clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from…sobbing, or maybe laughing. He couldn’t tell which.
He could save them. He could save everyone, even the people who no longer knew that he existed. Some small, selfish part of Cal wished that he could use the Force to return to the Mantis, before they’d deployed to the Fortress and it had all gone wrong, but that wasn’t an option. When it was moving backward, the Force cut through history like a rip current. Cal had jumped in and let it decide where to spit him out. There was no such current that moved in the other direction. Cal would have to swim back to shore the normal way.
And he would have to do it alone. That was okay, though. Cal was used to it, and that was a small price to pay if it meant sparing the world, including them, a lot of suffering.
Cal began re-packing his bag, and it wasn’t until they were in his hands that he recognized what the other two items were.
The first was a lightsaber. Cal’s lightsaber, in a way that the one by his bed was no longer. This was the one he had created on Ilum after entering the Tomb of Kujet, and when he ignited it, the dual orange blades lit up the room with a warm, pleasant light.
The second thing was a memory chip. That threw Cal for a loop, and then he turned it over in his hands. It was plain gray, except for a serial number printed in incredibly small, white font: BD19203XC93E.
BD-1.
Cal swiped a hand over his eyes, ignoring the wet splotch that the gesture left on the hem of his sleeve. He wrapped the lightsaber and the chip in an extra blanket, just to be safe, then placed them back in the bag. Master Tapal had been right, as was his way. The Force was mysterious, but maybe it really did try to protect its children, when it could.
Still, there would be time for him to search for a new BD-model droid body later. Right now, he had a massacre to prevent.
And Cal was going to start by saving Anakin Skywalker from himself.