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' Lightly stabbed,' the little fucker says. Lightly stabbed?!
"Kid," Greez grinds out, trying to settle on one of the many emotions he's experiencing right now, "'No one has ever been 'lightly stabbed.' There ain't a ranking system for stabbing. Either you've been stabbed, or you haven't! And you have been stabbed!"
"This isn't even one of my top five stab wounds," Cal argues, and Greez needs to walk away for a few seconds and compose himself. The painkillers are definitely working, at least. He returns, hands pressed together over his mouth, crouching down beside the cot that he is refusing to let Cal leave unless it's absolutely necessary.
"Okay, look; the worst part is that I know you aren't just fucking with me. You can't just say shit like that, Callie. What do you mean top five?" He doesn't actually want to know; he really doesn't. But Greez is willing to make sacrifices if it will keep Cal sitting still for a little while.
"Knives are easier to come by than blasters on Bracca." He says like it's something obvious that Greez should already know. BD-1 chirps from the floor where he's been dutifully (and passive-aggressively) scrubbing blood from between the metal plating. Cal's face twists in mock outrage. "No, I do not have a ' stabbable personality!' My number one stab wound wasn't even, like, a stabbing, but 'top five penetrating wounds' doesn't work as well."
"The lightsaber isn't number one?!"
"No, that's number three. I got up afterward, and I didn't go into hypovolemic shock since the wound was cauterized." So the lightsaber isn't even number two. Greez slumps, then pulls himself back up, knees popping.
"Alright, scootch over, Pincushion." He pushes lightly at Cal's legs, prompting him to pull them up to make some room at the end of the cot. "As much as I hate your Bracca stories, I think not knowing about what could possibly top a lightsaber will do more damage to me psychologically." He settles, leaning back on the wall with Cal's shins warm against his shoulder. BD, either having finished his task or abandoning it, hops up, too.
"Okay, well, four and five are actually kind of boring, story-wise. Plus, I won both of those knife fights. Don't start a knife fight if you can't handle getting stabbed, right?"
Greez is regretting not getting a stiff drink before sitting down. Just one, because he still needs to make sure Cal isn't going to die sometime in the night.
"Right. I'll keep that in mind if I ever get in a knife fight." The only knives Greez owns are culinary, but he's pretty sure Cal assumes everyone carries an actual weapon knife on them at all times, and now doesn't seem the right time to burst his bubble. "So, I know enough about number three, ugh. But… number two?" Cal takes a breath to answer before seeming to reconsider.
"Oh, actually, that one is a little fucked up." He says with a cheerful tone that Greez has come to learn means, 'Don't push this topic or I'll have some sort of episode about it and neither of us wants that.' It isn't uncommon for Cal to realize halfway into one of his horrific stories the effect that trauma still has on him, usually resulting in him cutting the story off and changing the subject.
"So… your number one stab wound is less fucked up?" Greez still isn't sure how this ranking system works.
"It's the one that came closest to permanently killing me. Lost part of my lung and everything." Cal shrugs. That would have been nice to know much earlier. Greez makes a mental note to make sure Cere is aware of that little medical detail. "And like I said, I wasn't, like, stabbed by a person directly, or whatever. But I still count it because it wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't been trying to murder me."
It was Tabbers and his insistence on looking out for him that first opened Cal up to the concept of trust again.
After almost three years on Bracca, he'd learned that the best method to deal with being one of the smallest people around was to try and stay unnoticed. The second best method was to weld sharp metal scrap to the steel toes of his boots, keep his knife where only he could reach it, and bite hard . A dislocated jaw was a lot better than most of the alternatives.
Tabbers, the only other Human on the rigging team Cal had been transferred to, knew on sight that he was a handful of years younger than he was officially listed as and volunteered to show Cal the ropes. Most of his first day was spent trying to decipher the man's heavy Stewjo accent as he talked about seemingly anything that was on his mind.
It took two months of constantly working near one another for Cal to actually speak to him (the first time he'd spoken in over two years, but he doesn't need to share that with Greez) and another two months to tentatively accept that Tabbers was sincerely trying to help him out. Tabbers' buddy, an Abednedo named Prauf, was another issue entirely.
Apparently, the largest predator on the Abednedo homeworld was barely the size of a Tooka and hunted insects. Abednedos had no concept of the instinctual wariness many species had of creatures bigger and stronger than them. That meant Prauf wasn't great at recognizing when someone was scared shitless of him.
It was a work in progress. At least Prauf wasn't mad about Cal stabbing him in the arm with a pocket knife. In Cal's defense, he'd been sick and woken up after passing out on the train to some random, very large person carrying him somewhere. Cal still preferred to keep Tabbers between himself and Prauf, even once Tabbers managed to convince him to stay at their place.
It was one of the rare times Tabbers managed to drag Cal with him and Prauf to the shitty little cantina they both liked. The funny thing about Tabbers was, as protective as he was of Cal, he was not a very good caretaker. He was lucky that Cal, despite being barely 15, was a more responsible drinker than most people on Bracca.
Cal was mostly there to take advantage of the free food. One of the servers had a thing for Tabbers and thought Cal was his kid brother, thanks to them both being red-haired Humans. So long as Tabbers kept flirting back with them, Cal was content to keep up the act and eat whatever fried monstrosity was put in front of him.
On that day, the fried monstrosity consisted of actual meat, which was typically hard to come by on Bracca. Prauf, whose species was herbivorous, was doing a good job of not acknowledging the dead thing that Cal was devouring. Tabbers was as well, but mostly because he was keenly aware of Cal's minor issue with food aggression.
"I'm tellin' ya, Prauf," Tabbers hissed, jabbing a finger into the sticky table, "Lohr is up to somethin'! Months he's had it out fer me, months! And suddenly, he's all smiles and jokes? I don't feckin' buy it, not one bit." Cal agreed; Lohr had been downright friendly lately, which was weird. He'd previously made no attempt to hide his dislike of Cal for replacing his friend, Fah, after she died and openly blamed Tabbers for her fall.
Which, yeah, Tabbers absolutely pushed the Weequay woman to her death. Cal didn't hold it against him, though. Apparently, Fah had nearly killed everyone on the team at least twice, thanks to her bad habit of drinking too much on the job. Hell, she was the reason Tabbers ended up with his barely functioning prosthetic foot. A safety hazard like that, no one bothers to look too closely when they have an accident. Except Lohr, with his one-sided devotion.
"That guy's always wanting trouble. Pretty sure that's the only reason he liked Fah in the first place." Prauf muttered into his drink. It said something about Lohr's character that even Prauf couldn't stand him. Cal swallowed, leaning toward Tabbers.
"You and Lohr wear the same size boots. His are nicer than yours, too." He stated. Tabbers pinched the bridge of his nose.
" Please don't try to weaponize yer weird boot thing. You know it creeps me out!" He sighed. Cal held up his hands, rolling his eyes before returning to his food.
"Weird boot thing?" Prauf questioned, cautious. Tabbers groaned.
"Any time the kid needs new boots, some poor gowl with the right size gets themselves killed nearby! I wouldn'ave believed it if I hadn't seen it a couple'a months back. One minute Cal is taping his old boots back together, the next some Rodian gets herself chopped up, and her fuckin' legs land 20 feet from us."
"It was a week later, and it was just one of her legs. We had to look for the other one." Cal corrected, finally finishing off the food. Honestly, Tabbers could be awfully dramatic. "And I was joking about Lohr's boots. They're just as shitty as yours." The Rodian's boots had been almost new; she'd either been recently hired or she'd stolen them. Cal had to stuff a few strips of fabric in the toes, but that just meant he wouldn't outgrow them for a while.
They didn't stick around much longer once Cal started nodding off at the table, sleepy after eating something other than lab-grown jerky and poly-starch rations for the first time in a couple of weeks. Compared to that, a little basket of fried mystery meat might as well have been the full meals he barely remembered from the Temple. He was so tired by the time the three of them made it to the apartment, in fact, he managed to pass out on the couch while Prauf was still in the room. It was progress.
"I already have so many questions," Greez interrupts, head in his hands. "And so far, the only actual stabbing has been done by you." Not to mention how upsetting this story is when it's barely started. Greez predicts many sleepless nights in his future, trapped in the thought spiral of what all a kid has to go through over the course of three years to weld jagged metal to the toes of his boots.
"I wouldn't consider sticking a two-inch pocket knife halfway into an Abednedo's shoulder a stabbing. Prauf didn't even need stitches or anything." Cal is very confident in that opinion if his eye-roll is anything to go by. BD-1 tilts his head with a doubtful whine. It's probably the only thing Greez has ever agreed with the droid on.
"What would you consider—Actually, no. Nevermind. I don't even know what's worse: the boots thing or your friend just…casually murdering an unarmed woman. And you being cool with that? Aren't Jedi supposed to generally frown upon murder?" The bigger questions on Greez's mind are, 'Did the boots currently sitting under your cot come off a dead person?' and 'How much of what little you owned when we picked you up did you steal from a corpse?' but he's working on not asking questions he knows he won't like the answer to.
"I mean, I would be a hypocrite if I judged Tabbers for it." Cal shrugs, then his eyes go wide. "Forget I said that."
"...Cal."
"It was before Bracca, don't worry about it. So anyway—"
" Cal."
"I tossed one guy out of an airlock, okay? And Captain Pick was supervising the whole time!" Cal relents, defensive.
"Oh, well, so long as it was supervised murder!" Even when Greez tries to avoid learning more upsetting details about the kid, he still ends up burdened with knowledge.
" Anyway—"
It was another two weeks of Lohr's bizarre friendliness before Cal started to feel a buzzing drone in his chest, the Force weakly attempting to warn him . It was a feeling he'd long since begun to ignore since it didn't mean much on Bracca. It was more of a heads-up that something was coming, something that was going to hurt and scar and damage and he could do nothing about it. That's how it always went since the Purge.
So he went about the same mind-numbing routine, as usual, that morning, sitting next to Tabbers on the train and wordlessly demonstrating his accumulated knowledge of rude gestures the human hand could replicate while Prauf grew increasingly dismayed from where he stood beside them. The anxiety faded into the constant noise of Bracca and Tabbers' snorting laughter.
Then, after Prauf left for his lower station while Tabbers and Cal headed up for theirs, the Force gave a more insistent hum. Two Stormtroopers waiting with the Foreman droid perked up once Cal and Tabbers turned into Base Level.
If Cal's body hadn't locked up, his breath catching in his chest, he probably would have smacked Tabbers for how he instantly stepped in front of him.
"You Tiberius?" The trooper's voice was, thankfully, unfamiliar, and a fraction of the tension holding Cal still eased. He still couldn't pull his eyes up from the ground despite the fact neither trooper seemed particularly on edge.
"I respond better to Tabbers, but yeah," Tabbers replied, tone carefully measured in a way that meant If Cal hadn't been there, the man would have probably said something stupid and gotten himself in trouble. "Howsagoin'?" The trooper who hadn't spoken tapped on their datapad a few times.
"We got an anonymous tip regarding contraband, mentioning you by name. We informed your Foreman, but she's convinced there's some mistake. For once, we're inclined to agree." The second trooper sounded more annoyed than suspicious. "There's been a string of false reports, but we're still gonna need you to come with us for an inventory check and some questioning."
"Sure, look, no problem. Looks like you've got the shift to yerself, Callie-boy." Tabbers ruffled Cal's hair before stepping away. "Do not play that music at full volume just because I'm not keepin' on ya. You hardly listen enough as it is." The first trooper studied Cal for a nerve-wracking moment, then tipped his helmet and left with the other trooper, Tabbers, and the Foreman.
Cal managed to unstick his feet from the floor, forcing himself to breathe normally. He pulled his headphones up from where they rested around his neck, turned the volume up, and ignored the bad feeling burrowing deeper into his chest.
No one knew what had peppered the old Venator full of five to ten-foot wide holes, but it meant navigating the upper decks was trickier than usual. At least someone had marked the jagged edges with brightly colored warning tape. Cal liked to walk along them, looking down the several-story drop at the mess of rubble far below. He'd always liked heights, which no one in his life was ever particularly fond of. Even Master Tapal couldn't mask his anxiety when he caught Cal reading in the rafters of the Albedo Brave.
The section of the ship Cal needed to get to could only be accessed by a handful of the punched-out fissures, one of which had already been set up with rappelling equipment. Equipment which, as he approached it, triggered a new spike of warning. That, he was definitely not going to ignore. It was routine to check the rope and all the connections, so this time, Cal knelt down to check the winch system itself.
It was still securely attached to the metal deck flooring, but he realized the panel hiding the inner mechanism was loose. Pulling it back provided easy access to the rope release, which… looked far easier to trigger than it should have been. There was nothing to indicate the winch would have failed on him, but, like this, it would take only a few seconds for someone to send him plummeting.
"Nope," Cal muttered to himself, rising to his feet and backing away from the winch and drop-off. Lohr had been the one to call that anonymous report on Tabbers; that was obvious, but Cal was realizing it was not nearly as petty as he'd thought. This was some eye-for-an-eye bullshit that he was not going to—
"Couldn't have kept this easy, huh?" Lohr sneered as Cal turned and almost ran directly into his chest. He stopped just short and swung the hardest kick he could manage into the Devaronian's shin. It didn't do much, and Cal only managed to duck a few steps away before Lohr recovered enough to reach out and grab him by the hair with a growl.
Cal cried out as he was yanked off his feet, Lohr beginning to drag him back toward the punched-out hole in the deck. He scrabbled for his knife, the one Prauf gave him after the old one broke in his shoulder, and twisted himself around just enough to swing it above his head. Black blood welled up quickly as the blade dragged down Lohr's bare arm. The grip on his hair released just before the steel toe of a boot connected with Cal's head, just above his right eye.
If he blacked out, it wasn't for very long. Lohr was still screaming through clenched teeth, wrenching Cal's knife from his hand and tossing it aside. There was too much blood spilling into his eye to see where it landed.
"You are just like your little bitch of a brother, huh?!" Lohr ground out, pacing angrily as Cal attempted to push himself up on his forearms. His what? The train of thought came to a halt as the ship rocked violently. Except, no, it didn't. It was the Devaronian arm wrapping around his waist and hauling him back up.
"Get off me!" Cal scratched and beat at the arm around his waist, tried to slam his head back into a nose or mouth, but Lohr just grabbed both of his wrists in his free hand. The wild, uncoordinated kicking of Cal's heels only slowed the man's steps a little. "Let go!"
"I don't feel great about killin' a kid, but Tabs took Fah from me, so I'm taking you from him!"
The spinning of Cal's brain slowed enough for the realization to hit him. The only other Human on the rigging team, who Cal trusted and stuck beside, who had a similar red tint to his hair. The act Cal went along with for free food from the nice server in love with Tabbers.
"Nonono, wait! I'm not—" Cal tried, but it was too late. Lohr, as far as he was aware, threw Tabbers' little brother over the edge.
All of the air left his lungs as he dropped down the 70-foot shaft, and it was pure instinct that grasped for a sliver of the Force, slowing his fall just enough to not kill him on impact. The metal pipe he hadn't noticed sticking up from where it had erupted through the floor also, somehow, did not kill him on impact. It instead punctured through his chest just below his right collarbone, sticking out of his back from where it displaced his shoulder blade.
Cal had experienced many different kinds of pain in his life, but trying to breathe with a tube of metal running neatly through his lung? He was pretty sure he lost consciousness a few times because suffocation was preferable.
He wasn't bleeding out; the only pool of blood he saw grow was from the wound to his head, sticky and warm against his cheek. He knew it was only a matter of time before something shifted and the pipe stopped holding the pressure keeping him alive; the taste of iron threatening at the back of his throat made that very clear.
There was no way to reach his commlink if it was even still functional. It was built into the leather cuff around his right wrist. Even if he could turn his head to look at it, there was no way he could move his arm. He tried, just once, to make sure the limb was still connected to the rest of him and regretted it immediately. The bone of his shoulder blade scraped against the rusted metal pipe where it was pushed out of alignment, causing the muscles around it to spasm and pull on his shoulder blade further.
He probably blacked out again after that, long enough for the little morning light that trickled into the trashed lower deck to have shifted. The room swam as he looked at what he could without moving his head too much. There was a very, very brief moment in which he forgot that the concussion was the least of his worries. Then he tried to push himself up and felt an awful tug in his chest, his lung wanting to stay behind with the pipe. The blinding pain stopped him from doing any more damage as he gave up that endeavor instantly.
His thoughts were difficult to hold onto, but he was able to piece together that this was not good. Every breath he took was strangled and wheezing and left him blinking black spots from his vision on the easier exhale. He couldn't move, couldn't call for help, and he was completely alone in that section of the ship with Tabbers gone.
There was no telling how long the troopers would keep Tabbers. He doubted Lohr actually went so far as to frame an actual crime on him. That seemed like it would defeat the whole purpose of a revenge-killing, anyway. In fact, the asshole was probably counting on Tabbers finding Cal later in the day. He'd just expected Cal to die on impact like Fah had.
Cal could wait for Tabbers, right? He would have to, wouldn't he? He was good at waiting; he'd been doing it for three years. Stay awake. Hold the line. Keep breathing, no matter how much it hurts. Trust only in the Force, even if you're waiting for that, too.
He was getting really fucking sick of waiting.
At first, Cal tried to keep count of his breaths to pass the time, but that quickly proved to be an effective method for getting to sleep, so he stopped. He started watching the scrap rats scurrying around the debris along the half-collapsed walls instead. They wouldn't eat him–well, not until he was dead and their preferred level of rot had set in. After a while, he could tell them apart from one another. They didn't seem to notice or care about his presence as he tracked their movements with his eyes for hours.
And it was hours, though Cal only knew that by the way the light moved and changed, before he heard a sound other than water dripping or rats digging or his own breathing.
"Those troopers are a real pain, I'll tell you that!" Tabbers' voice was tinny through the earpiece that had stubbornly stayed put. "I told 'em I'd bet anything Lohr was who reported me, and I had to sit there while they tried to find the shitehawk. They only let me go because no one can find 'im." There was a long pause, Tabbers waiting for a response that Cal couldn't give.
"You hear me, Cal?" Another pause. Cal's hand twitched with the urge to just pull his right arm close enough to activate his comm and reply, and he cried out as the movement sent another spasm lancing across his shoulder and back.
"Ya know, I'm gonna throttle whoever gave you those damn headphones. CAL! Turn! Down! The! Music!" Tabbers shouted, and Stars, Cal wanted to scream. His headphones had been knocked off when Lohr had dragged him by his hair and were likely still sitting there, 70 feet up.
"Alright, I mean it. Cal. Answer the damn comm, kiddo." He was starting to sound concerned, which was good. Then again, it wasn't a great sign that concern was a good thing. It was harder to breathe than it had been earlier, but Cal wasn't sure if that was due to the rising panic of being unable to respond or if it was because he was actively dying. Maybe both. It was probably both.
"I swear, If I get up there and see yer scrawny little ass boppin' away to the sound of hearing loss, I will channel me damn mother and whoop you!" So Tabbers was on his way up. He tried to steady his harsh breathing the best he could. Tabbers was on his way up, and Cal would still be alive when he got there. He would.
The silence stretched on for about a minute before his comm buzzed again.
"You there, Cal?" Prauf asked. "Tabs is real worried about you, ya know. I said I would try to get a hold of you. Cal?"
At least it felt nice to have been wrong about Prauf. Cal still didn't feel too guilty about the pocket knife thing; he still had the occasional panic spiral when he thought about what could have happened if Prauf hadn't been a good person. The knife hardly did anything, after all. But he was a good person. He was nice and awkward and maybe not the smartest guy around, but that didn't really matter so long as he kept in mind how fucking scary he looked to sick, traumatized kids.
"Well, if you can hear me, I hope you're okay. I mean, I'm sure you are; you're a pretty tough kid, you know that?"
If Prauf kept talking, Cal didn't catch it. He was having to make the conscious decision to breathe, and it was exhausting. The air kept catching on something wet each time he inhaled. The metal pipe made the inside of his chest feel cold in a way that left him wondering if he was dead and just hadn't figured it out yet. He heard someone he knew shouting his name, miles away.
Cal felt the footsteps before he heard them, the vibrations sending little shocks of pain through the pipe that reminded him to breathe again. In that moment, Cal could only deliriously conclude Lohr was back, accompanied by clones with yellow-decorated armor.
There was a rusted piece of what looked like rebar a few inches away from Cal's left hand, and he clumsily reached out for it. It still hurt, but not as bad as breathing did. He only managed to bump his knuckles into the metal, and he winced at the grating sound. Trying again yielded similar results, this time with a spike of panic as he heard another shout, much closer. The clones were right there and he couldn't reach his lightsaber—
"Oh shit, Cal!" Someone fell to the ground beside him, grabbing the hand still desperately scrabbling for his light—no, for the rebar. Cal flinched as they placed a palm on the side of his head, brushing dirty hair out of his face. He wasn't sure what terrified noise escaped from the back of his throat, if any words were successfully formed, but it hurt.
"Hey, it's me! It's me, Cal!" They knelt lower, and finally Cal could see pale orange hair, stringy and wild where it had come loose from the braid that typically contained it. Dark brown eyes were red-rimmed and panicked, flickering between Cal's face and the metal sticking out of his back.
"T…Tab—" Was all Cal could get out before he broke down. The wave of relief also brought everything else from the last several hours crashing over him at once. It wasn't even so much dying itself that scared him; no, he'd been terrified that he would die completely alone. Terrified that the first person he learned to trust in three years was going to find a corpse and blame himself.
"Yeah, kiddo, I'm here! It's alright; Prauf's on his way up, yeah? And we'll get you outta here and all fixed up. All you gotta do is keep yer eyes open and keep breathin'. You can do that, can'tcha, Callie-boy?" Tabbers was lying on his side next to him now, silently assuring Cal that he wouldn't be going anywhere.
"'m tired. " Cal barely whimpered. Something in Tabbers' face crumpled before he shuffled closer, rubbing a thumb over Cal's cheek.
"I know you are, I know, but it's just a little longer. Just wait a little longer, and we'll be right as rain."
"Always waiting…" Cal was sick of waiting. Wasn't it enough that he waited for Tabbers? He would still be waiting, even after Prauf got there, even if this somehow didn't kill him.
"You don't want to break Prauf's big ol' heart, do you?" That felt like a low blow, even through the haze. "That poor dope would never get over losing you like this, and you know it." It was a good point, though.
It was either great timing or Cal's consciousness faded for a little bit because heavier, louder footsteps raced up into his chest moments before Tabbers's eyes shifted and lit up.
"Prauf! Over here!" He started to sit up but kept a grip on Cal's hand.
"Oh no, i-is he—"
"I need you to sit here where I am, yeah? Yer gonna lift Cal up enough so I can cut the pipe under 'im." There was a flurry of movement that left Cal dizzy. Tabbers' hand traded for a much larger one, and Prauf was settled in his place.
"Hey, Cal. You holding up okay?" Prauf's voice shook. Cal almost wanted to laugh at the question, but he instead replied with a weak groan. Tabbers gave a rushed explanation of the plan, though it was too difficult to follow. He watched Prauf rise to his knees and hesitantly pull his hand away, relocating it to Cal's right side. His other hand trembled at his left shoulder.
"Alright, kiddo," Tabbers said, brushing fingers through Cal's hair one more time, "this is gonna hurt like hell." Then Prauf wedged his hands underneath Cal's body.
His punctured lung seized, turning his scream into something strangled and pitiful as he was gently lifted a few inches up along the rough length of metal. Cal dug his nails into Prauf's arm, and when Tabbers got enough room to press the running cutter to the base of the pipe, he couldn't keep from thrashing in an attempt to escape the pain. Prauf was quick to hold him as still as he could, but that was all it took for something in his chest to give with a visceral squelch. He heard Tabbers hiss a string of panicked swears a moment before his next gasp caught with a thick gurgle, and he choked on the blood bubbling its way up his throat.
"Tabbers, he's—"
"I know, Prauf."
"It's a lot of blood—"
"I fuckin' know, Prauf!" The cutter screeched to a stop, and this time, when Prauf lifted Cal, the metal pipe came with him. Tabbers made an attempt to stop up the bleeding, cutting up his own jacket to do so and making sure the bunched-up fabric stayed in place. Prauf stood, Cal held close to his chest, maintaining a string of muttered apologies with each jostle.
If Cal hadn't been coughing up blood with every harried, wet breath, he would probably have told Prauf it didn't really matter. He was too cold to feel it anymore.
Greez remembers, after Nur, and when Cal was finally stable, he'd had to excuse himself to go be sick in the 'fresher. It wasn't because of the fresh lightsaber wound, but the older scars, poorly healed and having clearly grown with him for some time. One was a round scar settled deep into the skin under his right collarbone. He knows now if he'd managed to stick around, he would have seen its twin on Cal's back.
He's silent for probably longer than is comfortable, processing the, mostly heart-wrenching, flood of new information about Cal. How the fuck does he respond to any of that?
"Wait, earlier you said this one came close to permanently killing you," Is what he settles on. "Does that mean…"
"Oh, yeah. Well, I thought I passed out once we got to the elevator, but when I woke up a few days later, Tabbers said I was dead for about three minutes. Eyes still open and everything. Thought he was exaggerating 'til Prauf backed it up. Took him a bit to realize I'd stopped breathing, so no one is too sure how long I was actually gone for." There's some hesitation as Cal says that, though he seems more nervous about further upsetting Greez. Which, of course, it does.
The thing is, Greez has realized that's the point. Even if Cal hasn't realized it himself, something he's fairly damn sure to be the case. The kid needs someone to express the anger and horror and sadness over what he had to go through for him, and Greez has never had a good sabacc face. The blasé attitude with which he recounts his life on Bracca isn't disregard; it's cauterization.
So Greez will play along, let Cal keep pretending this is just their game. He'll cry for the 15-year-old who was brutally attacked and then spent hours in agony later when Cal is mumbling in his sleep.
"Well, first of all, That was not a stabbing."
"Yeah, I said that, Greez! But I count it because it's, like, close enough." Cal argues with a bratty scoff. BD-1 does a decent job of mimicking him.
"' Close enough,' he says! As if getting shivved isn't close enough to count as a stabbing!" Greez is a little shocked when BD begrudgingly agrees.
The argument spirals predictably from there. Cal eventually stretches his legs over Greez's lap, slumping tiredly into his pillow and the wall. Maybe he'll be alright to sleep. After all, he clearly has some experience with internal bleeding.
The next day, after Merrin helps Greez extricate himself from the apparent trap that is a sleeping human's legs and wakes said Human in the process, Cal levels all of his bedrest complaints at Cere. (Who, it turns out, did not know about the missing section of lung.)