Chapter Text
Cal’s eviscerated lightsaber is lying strewn across the Mantis’s workbench. Frowning at its innards, he leans in to inspect the detached cycling field energizers. “BD, could you bring the light in a little closer?” he asks, and the droid obligingly gets to his feet, jumps, hooks his head over the neck of the work lamp, and lets his weight angle it downwards. “Thanks… okay, I’m not seeing anything else, so I think we’re good. But let me know if you spot something suspicious I didn’t catch.”
BD gives an agreeable buzz and settles on the upper shelf of the workbench to keep a careful eye on the proceedings. Sorc Tormo may never have intended to let Cal escape Ordo Eris, but he had the foresight to take one small precaution just in case Cal wriggled out of his grasp – he or one of his brainless underlings stuck a tracker no bigger than a grain of rice on Cal’s lightsaber. Unfortunately for them, they’d chosen to solder it beneath the emitter where they thought it wouldn’t be noticed, and where Cal noticed it one second after he’d set down his lightsaber to clean all the Haxion Brood germs off of it. Hasty upgrades and field repairs might occasionally leave his weapon a bit of a mess, but he knows his weapon and that little lump definitely wasn’t anything he’d done. The tracker had been removed, deactivated, and crushed for good measure. Then, paranoid, Cal started taking his lightsaber apart just in case the obvious tracking device was a distraction to make him miss a second one.
“Cal?”
Cal’s shoulders go tight. He almost keeps working without acknowledging her, but that feels like a step too far no matter how upset he is, so after a moment (long enough to express his displeasure, not long enough to be outright rude), Cal glances over his shoulder.
Cere meets his gaze, at least. The ill-fated encounter with that bounty hunter on Zeffo left some stunning bruises on his jaw and around one eye; Greez has studiously avoided looking at Cal’s face since the Mantis crashed Sorc Tormo’s party. Avoided him in general, actually. He didn’t even drag Cal out to the galley to help with a lunch Cal wouldn’t have eaten anyway. “What?” Cal says.
As if nothing ever happened, she says, “I assume you’re not using your datapad at the moment.”
“No. Why?”
“I found something you might be interested in reading. It’s not important – whenever you get around to it.”
She lied to him. “On my cot somewhere.” Cal tips his head towards the bunk and then returns his attention to his lightsaber. Cere pokes through the blanket until she finds what she’s looking for; he hears a soft click as a datachip slides into the slot, followed by a pause as it uploads, and then the datapad gently lands on the cot again.
Cere hesitates after that, but leaves without saying another word, for which he’s grateful. He doesn’t know what will come out of his mouth if she tries. She lied to him – about the circ*mstances of her capture, about what happened to Trilla, and, now that he gives it some thought, probably about however she escaped the Imperial prison, too. Cal can understand not being forthcoming with the details at the beginning (had he known then that Cere was responsible for the Second Sister, for the lightsaber in Prauf’s chest, he would’ve run as soon as he had the opportunity), but she didn’t just obfuscate, she lied. Directly to his face, repeatedly.
He finishes putting his lightsaber back together, drawing on the Force until every component slides smoothly into place, and decides he’s going to bed. The unwanted side-trip to Ordo Eris took them well out of their usual area of operations and they’ve got a while in hyperspace before they reach Kashyyyk. Besides, today’s been a total wash.
Once he’s cleaned up and changed and BD-1 is quietly recharging, Cal plummets onto the cot with a groan and gingerly probes the skin around his left eye. The swelling’s down, thanks to a healing stim, but it’s still purple and tender. His jaw throbs every time he opens his mouth. Kriffing bounty hunters. He has a bad feeling he can expect more of those in his future. He wriggles beneath his blanket, shuts off the light above the bunk, then decides having a datapad digging into his spinal cord is not conducive to a good night’s sleep and yanks it out from beneath him. Before he closes his eyes, though, he turns the screen on and opens whatever Cere thought might interest him.
The title of the article sets off warning bells. Stupidly, Cal ignores them.
Less than a minute later, the datapad smacks face-down on the deck, as if hiding the darkened screen can hide the words from his memory. Too many of them cling like fire burrs. Extremely limited diet. Fear of trying new foods. Refusal to eat. Body image not a concern. Restricted to ‘safe’ foods. May develop due to a traumatic experience involving food or eating.
He does not have an eating disorder. He can’t. And he’s improving, anyway. It’s fine. It’s fine.
Koja nuts taste better than the koja nut ration bars, especially when Greez toasts them in a pan with a sprinkle of sugar and kessinnamon and they’re just shy of too hot on Cal’s tongue.
Ruva grain rolls are surprisingly terrible – dry and crumbly and bitter – but Cal tried one of those ruva bars and then left the rest for Cere, so perhaps it’s not such a shock after all. More surprising, really, is the ability to decide he doesn’t like something and then just… not eat it. He has options now.
Burrmillet bread is superior to the Guild’s burrmillet ration bars. It is, however, inferior to lavender treebread, which might just be the best thing Cal’s eaten in years.
A lot of things in Cal’s life are feeling like two steps forward, one step back right now, and while he knows that isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, it’s still incredibly annoying. He was really beginning to think he could have a place on this crew that isn’t just ‘designated holocron-fetcher’? Greez got him captured by the Haxion Brood and Cere baldly lied to him about Trilla. Cal’s finally started sleeping better? He’s also started having intense, unavoidable Purge nightmares that only end when the escape pod cracks the surface of Bracca’s rocky wastes. The Ninth Sister is, if not dead, nursing an amputated hand and possibly quite a few broken bones from that fall? Cal still has to go to kriffing Dathomir to find an Astrium. Greez hasn’t shut up about rancors and witch cults since he input the coordinates.
The last three actual meals have been great. Cal’s eaten something every single time – half a topato sprinkled with black hole pepper, a few bites of icefish, a voorpak dumpling, a tentative spoonful of Greez’s ‘patent pending’ nuna and polta bean chili. That last one was a reckoning, as he’s discovered he struggles with foods mixed together, but he’d gotten it down and then devastated the Latero by telling him it wasn’t spicy enough. He’s getting better. Greez even dishes out normal plates of food for Cal now, lets him eat what he wants and put the rest back for another day.
So he should be fine with tonight’s dinner: a pan-fried fishcake made from the last of the icefish, a wad of balka greens, and one ahrisa roll. Everything familiar, everything neatly separated into individual quadrants of his plate, including the butter for the ahrisa. 75% of Cal’s diet is still ration bars, but he’s getting better. As Greez embarks on his sixth nerve-induced rant about what rancor claws could do to the Mantis’s hull, Cal gently smushes the edge of the fishcake with his fork. White and soft inside, though ground to paste rather than the flaky flesh he remembers from the fillets. Greez left the Ojomian onions out of the one he made for Cal, since Cal was not enthusiastic about having them mingling with the fish. He has the palate of a five-year-old, now. The fish still smells kind of strong and he isn’t quite ready for that yet, so he tears a few pieces off the ahrisa and smears them through the butter before popping them in his mouth one by one.
If Greez is worried about rancors, he should also be concerned about Alpha Nydaks, says BD-1. Much more aggressive towards strangers; Dathomir-born-and-raised rancors can be surprisingly shy about approaching landed starships, as they’re not accustomed to visitors. And he should really panic if he sees an angry Nightbrother with a calligraphy kit. Imagine how much it’d upset him to have rude Dathomirian words etched into the side of his ship.
The day Greez learns Binary, it’s all over for Cal and BD. Cal suppresses a snicker and prods a glossy sheet of balka greens. He’s not a great fan of these and said as much when he tried them raw, but in the interest of avoiding another lecture on the importance of vegetables and vitamins in a skinny Human scrapper’s diet, he scoops up a piece. It clings to its brethren for a moment before sluggishly peeling away. A string of fluid refuses to detach, bridging between the two greens, glistening under the lights. Cal’s train of thought veers off the Nightbrother graffito track and crashes into a vivid memory of that gooey grainmush, slipping and sliding across the back of his tongue and leaking down his throat.
He makes it into the corridor before throwing up on the deck outside the ‘fresher.
Cere, Greez, and BD are too stunned to immediately follow him. By the time somebody overcomes their shock and peeks into the hallway, Cal’s already begun cleaning up, miserably mopping the deck with a handful of disposable towels and trying not to start gagging again. “Kid, don’t be a martyr,” Greez groans. “Go rinse your mouth out and – maybe sit down for a second. You look awful.” Looking pretty queasy himself, he grabs some more towels off the roll. BD races past them and returns seconds later, shoving the small trash bin from the engine room ahead of him.
There are no cups in the ‘fresher, so Cal slumps down on the closed toilet instead, closes his eyes, tries to meditate through his brain’s incessant attempts to foist that memory upon him. It wasn’t anywhere near grainmush. The balka greens grew moist as they were steamed and the resulting liquid was a little thicker and stickier than water – Cal already knew that, because Greez warned him, and yet he still couldn’t handle it. He didn’t even eat it. He’s so pathetic. Two steps forward, one step back.
“Here.”
Cal opens his eyes to Cere, holding out his cup of water. Getting up, he shakily takes a sip, swishes it around his mouth, and spits it in the sink. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely.
“It’s all right,” she says, probably because she’s not the one wiping vomit off the deck. “You were doing well.”
Were is the operative word in that sentence. Cal shrugs, not meeting her eyes, and grabs his toothbrush from the holder, since there’s no chance he’s choking down his dinnertime ration bar after that. Cere, who’s been exceedingly sensitive to his mood since he confronted her about what Trilla had said on Zeffo, seems to realize he isn’t interested in discussing this and leaves the room. Cal brushes his teeth and tries not to look at his own reflection, either.
The deck in the corridor is wet and gleaming and only smells faintly of bile when Cal emerges from the ‘fresher. Judging by the sound of cutlery clinking against plates, Cere and Greez returned to their dinner; wondering how they brushed this off so easily (even as a child, hearing someone puke killed his appetite for a few hours), Cal drags himself to the engine room instead of giving the fishcakes and ahrisa another stab. BD’s waiting for him. “Yeah, I’m okay,” Cal says in response to his query, drumming his fingers atop the droid’s head affectionately. “Just – remembered something I really didn’t want to think about. I’m gonna lie down for a while.”
BD nods, then asks if Cal wants him to stand sentry at the door and scare off anyone who tries to come in.
“Nah. But thanks for the offer.” If anyone tries to come in, it’ll only be Greez.
Sure enough, Cal’s been dozing for about twenty minutes, an arm clutched to his aching stomach, when the Latero taps on the doorframe and softly says, “Cal? You up?”
“Mhm.” Cal cracks open one eye, then the other. Greez slips inside and Cal sits up, rubbing his face. BD’s gone missing. Hopefully he’s not lurking beneath Greez’s bed, waiting to jump out at him with some horror-film noise the next time Greez comes in. A third scare like that and the Latero may actually follow through with the threat to space him. “Sorry about… earlier.”
“Stars, kid, I don’t care – okay, the barf was gross, but I’m over it. Here.” Greez tosses him a ration bar. Cal catches it automatically, decides he’ll stick it in the emergency stash as Greez is hopping up to sit next to him on the cot. “So, uh. I’ve been wondering… can you think of anything you remember really, really liking at some point? Like, when you were a kid, that one meal you would’ve eaten in a heartbeat any time it was offered?”
“…I don’t know.” Cal leans back against the bulkhead. “What’s yours?”
“These stuffed pasta shells my great-grandmother used to make,” Greez answers promptly. “The shells were homemade with ulitz flour, which you can hardly find anywhere but Lateron. She’d fill ‘em with peppers and minced nerf, qiraadishes, tato, herbs we picked from the garden, falumpaset cheese, usually served with a side of cuanut bread fresh outta the oven….” He sighs, patting his stomach. “Wasn’t a complicated meal, but once I was old enough to help her, we had a lotta good times making them together. When I can get all the ingredients, I still make them now and then… they remind me of her.”
A small, growing part of Cal wants to think about food the way Greez does. Right now, it’s mostly a necessary evil, which he supposes is better than an evil to be avoided at all costs. But to Greez, it’s an essential part of life – a hobby, an interest, something he shares with friends and family because he loves them and feeding them is how he shows it. Cooking with someone is a bonding activity and eating the results a social experience. A specific meal became a memory jar for the years with his beloved great-grandmother. He can describe favorite foods off the top of his head without needing to heal them first, uncouple them from the trauma of being poisoned and struggling to consume a disgusting dish of grainmush so he wasn’t arrested.
Cal used to be like him too, if not quite as aggressively enthusiastic. He wants that back.
“Maybe someday I could try them,” he says.
Greez digs an elbow into Cal’s side. “Sure. But you gotta get a little more comfortable with foods being mixed together, first.” He pauses for a moment. “The reason I’m asking is ‘cause one of these days you’re gonna be fine, and some kinda occasion will pop up, and I’ll have to make something special. Most Humans do birthdays like my people do, right? I think Cere said hers is a couple months away. When’s yours?”
Smiling slightly, Cal pulls his knees up to brace his feet on the edge of the bed and says, “The day before you guys picked me up.”
The Latero’s jaw lands on the cot. “Are you serious?”
“Yup. Not that I celebrated. Prauf was gonna take me out for a drink next time we had a day off, but….”
There’s a delicate silence after Cal leaves that sentence hanging. He’d turned eighteen and the next day he was identified as a survivor of the Jedi Purge, his closest friend was murdered, he lost his job in spectacular fashion (Force-sensitive fugitive status aside, no way would the Guild welcome him back after all that structural damage), and he left Bracca in the Stinger Mantis with two people he’d never met before and didn’t trust in the slightest, a homicidal Inquisitor on his tail. Now he’s trying to unlock the Vault on Bogano and retrieve a holocron so he can restore the Jedi Order. Sooner or later this ride is going to need to slow down so Cal can take a breather and process it.
“Well,” Greez finally says, “someday, then, when you’re ready, we’ll do a belated birthday dinner. If you and Cere are still hanging around by that point.” He suddenly claps his hands, making Cal twitch, and goes on before Cal can formulate any kind of response – “So when you figure out that one meal you really, really want, let me know. Even if it’s something I’ve never heard of. I’ll manage.”
Strangely, unexpectedly, he doesn’t have to think about it at all. “Glowblue noodle soup,” he says. “Not the boring kind that’s supposed to help if you have a cold; the thick, spicy kind, with dumplings and boiled eggs.”
Greez blinks twice, then nods slowly. “Something you had at the Temple?”
“No. A little food stall near it. You made something that smelled like it once, but I don’t know what it was.” He’d been frightened of it then. He closes his eyes briefly, exhumes a memory, unfolds the trauma he’d used as a burial shroud to avoid temptation. “When I was… eleven? My master and I were back on Coruscant for a week or so, and I was sick the entire time, so I’d been pretty unhappy… and one night he went and found the stand and got us some of that soup. It was the first thing I’d eaten all week that had any flavor.” He laughs, to his own surprise. “That was how I found out he had no spice tolerance.” They would’ve made quite a pair to an outside perspective – the full-grown Lasat Jedi Master flushed dark purple and taking the tiniest sips of broth possible, chasing every one with half a glass of sapwater, and the prepubescent Padawan half his size who was happily spooning up every last noodle without a hint of discomfort.
When Cal looks at the Latero again, Greez is smiling. “Starting to think you like spicy food, longbean.”
“…yeah,” Cal says. “I guess maybe I do.”
It’s almost dinnertime and the Mantis has another standard rotation in hyperspace to reach Ilum and Cal is so hungry it hurts.
The pain is nothing new. Something’s always bothering Cal, be it his stomach, his wrists, his head (not as often, these days), his spine, his shoulders. But the stomachache, a dull, simmering burn that’s kept him company for years on end, is hardly worth noticing anymore; the sudden hollow panging catches him off guard. At first, he thinks it’s psychological – he’s been lost in a fog ever since he gingerly opened his lightsaber and the splinters of Master Tapal’s kyber crystal fell out of the mount – but then, as the hours drag on and the pain worsens, his embattled brain makes the connection. He hasn’t eaten a thing since a ration bar about an hour before he set foot on Dathomir. He’s actually hungry.
Greez would probably be delighted to hear that if Cal felt like telling him. Recognizing the physical sensation of hunger after half a decade of ignoring it counts as progress, doesn’t it? He keeps his mouth shut. Greez already won once today, declaring it was well past time Cal’s bedding took a vacation to visit their old friend The Detergent, so now Cal’s comfortable cot is an empty metal frame. Even his pillow got tossed in the laundry. With nowhere else to go, nothing to do, and no desire to look at his broken lightsaber anymore, Cal’s reduced to sulking in the lounge. Hungrily.
He could eat, too. But he doesn’t feel like doing that either.
The ship is very quiet. He’s not sure where Cere’s gone at the moment and BD-1 is mutely sitting on Cal’s ankles. Greez, up in the galley, has been uncharacteristically silent as he slaps together a few sandwiches for dinner with some leftover roba bacon. Cal can hear the bacon crackling at the bottom of the cooker and his stomach snarls as soon as the scent hits him. He’s so kriffing hungry. Gently jiggling his leg to dislodge BD, Cal rolls over and buries his face in the back of the sofa until all he can smell is potolli-weave and a hint of that floral cleaner Greez spritzes on the cushions every week or so.
A minute later, the Latero prods him in the shoulder. “You awake, kid?”
“Mrgh.”
Poke. Poke. “Up and at ‘em, then. Dinner’s on the table. Are you coming or not?”
“Not,” Cal mutters.
Huffing, Greez pokes him one last time and says, “Okay, you didn’t have breakfast this morning –”
“That’s Cere’s fault.” Cal had oozed out of his cot after sleeping for less than an hour, staggered into the galley for a drink of water, and Cere took one look at him and told him to go back to bed. All too happy to comply, Cal did as he was told. His blanket was still warm. He spent the next few hours drifting in and out of nightmares (Master Tapal was right, he had died because his weak failure of a Padawan couldn’t hold it together for five more seconds so they both escaped the Brave alive), but at least he’s no longer so tired he feels like crying.
“No, it’s not. You coulda taken that ration I left you. But fine. And you didn’t show up for lunch, which I let go because I figured you were still sleeping, and I let you get away with moping down here instead of helping me make dinner.”
“According to you,” Cal says, finally turning back over just enough to see Greez out of one eye, “I’ve got almost a year to go before I’m an adult. Which means I’m still a teenager. So I’m entitled to the odd episode of teenage moping.”
“Well, you’re doing great at it, congratulations. Dinner’s still waiting. Let’s go.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re never hungry. Up.”
Cal obediently sits up and folds his legs under him, turning to face Greez, then looks him dead in the eye and says, “I’m up. I still don’t want dinner.” Though you will not force me to eat goes unsaid, he has a feeling neither Greez nor Cere have ever forgotten his ultimatum. He’d forgive them a lot, but that particular breach of trust will be the end of their working relationship, permanently.
With a sigh, Greez closes his eyes for a second and rubs his forehead. “I can’t make you,” he acknowledges. “But I wanna know why you’re refusing. And don’t say ‘I’m not hungry’ because we already established that doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to you.”
It’d be a valid excuse for anyone else, Cal thinks sourly. “I’m in a crappy mood and I don’t feel like bracing myself for every bite of food just in case it doesn’t go over well, okay?” he says. It’s even half-true. He expects Greez wouldn’t find the other half of the truth too palatable. Between the ration bars and the bits of real food, Cal’s almost been eating enough for weeks now, and his body has adjusted to receiving adequate sustenance… so the abrupt cessation is like a groundquake. He’s hungry and it hurts. The part of him (most of him, maybe all of him) that hates himself is viciously pleased. Proper hunger is potent, distracting, the exact sort of punishment he’s been intermittently attempting to inflict on himself for years and usually failing at because he was always hungry. There’s a headache building behind his eyes. The shaking weakness won’t be too far behind. He’ll put himself to bed before then and endure it alone.
“All right, all right, fine. You’re missing out, though. I got all excited to introduce you to the wonders of bacon….” Greez goes up to the galley. Cal slouches against the back of the sofa, plucks a bit of fuzz off one of BD’s antennae, wonders how much longer until his laundry’s finished and he can recluse for the night. A moment later, Greez returns, snagging Cal’s left hand and slapping a ration bar into it. “You gotta have something to eat,” he says, “and I know this ain’t a problem.”
Cal doesn’t close his fingers around the bar, and it slips from his palm to the sofa as soon as Greez pulls away. “I don’t want it.”
“You haven’t eaten all day,” Greez says, exasperated. “Or yesterday, for that matter.” When he gets no reply, he throws two hands in the air, looks at BD-1. The droid tilts his head to one side. “Yeah, he is being a pain in the ass. I’ll be in the galley. Come find me when you’ve decided to grow up.”
He leaves. BD makes a mournful noise and lowers himself flat on the couch, propping his head on Cal’s leg. Cal pats him.
Cere turns up about five minutes later, at which point Cal has curled himself into the corner, arms wrapped around his stomach, cheek smushed against the back of the sofa. If he cranes his neck at an awkward angle, he can sort of see hyperspace through the narrow viewport, but that starts aching pretty fast and therefore he looks at the bulkhead instead. Seems fitting for a sulking teenager. “Greez,” Cere says, “can I ask what that loaf of bread ever did to you?”
Greez grunts. He’s been grumbling under his breath nonstop for the past five minutes, though Cal’s understood none of it as he doesn’t know the Latero’s native tongue. “It’s still edible.”
“I could bludgeon someone unconscious with this piece. And this one is, um….”
“Okay, okay, I mighta mangled it a little. Blame him.”
Cal assumes Greez is pointing in his general direction right now, possibly with a knife. His eyelids grow heavy – he’s not tired, exactly, but keeping them open takes too much energy, so he lets them slide shut. The back of his neck is cold. His back in general is cold, exposed to the air blowing from the vents. If only he had a second blanket for this sort of situation. He’s not sure if Cere’s little sigh is aimed at him, Greez, or the both of them. She must be eyeballing Greez something fierce, though, because she never says a word and he swiftly caves – “Stubborn kid’s refusing to eat.”
“So give him the ration bar and let it go for today.”
“I did. He wouldn’t touch that, either.”
Nothing more fun than being talked about like he’s not in the room. At least he doesn’t have to participate in the conversation. BD, clearly disinterested as well, climbs all over Cal’s legs, scanner humming.
“Greez –”
“And I wouldn’t care so much, except he’s been skipping meals since we left Dathomir and I dunno if he ever ate while we were there, either!”
Nope. He’d been busy. And now he’s angry.
“He isn’t a child. We can’t make him eat.”
…actually, he doesn’t feel too good.
“I know that. But I –”
Not to interrupt, BD-1 interrupts at max volume, but he’s fairly certain Cal’s on the verge of losing consciousness, so could they perhaps shelve this discussion for one minute?
“I’m fine, okay,” Cal mumbles, but it all kind of comes out as one word and he has a hard time opening his eyes, to say nothing of lifting his head, which proves impossible as his vision promptly greys out around the edges. Kriff. Maybe he did skip too many meals – he wasn’t expecting this to happen for a while yet.
Cere – who’s just there, suddenly – lands on the couch in front of Cal and puts a hand on his knee. “You still with me?” He manages a nod. “Good. Greez, grab one of the juices, would you?” To BD, she says, “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Pallor, perspiration, elevated heart rate, the droid lists. Just the same as last time, except then he’d not known Cal was going to faint until it was too late.
“What would we do without you?” She gives BD an affectionate tap on the head. “Greez, what are you –”
“I’m going, I’m going, they got shoved to the back!”
Sighing, Cere taps Cal on the head too. “Hang in there. You really can’t go without eating for this long.”
He makes some kind of noncommittal noise just to let her know he’s listening. “Here,” Greez says, and something cold is pushed into Cal’s hand. He almost drops it again, though not out of obstinacy this time; his fingers are being uncooperative. “It’s already open. Drink.”
Great, Cal thinks irritably, they’re ruining his punishment. Cere’s hand is still on his knee and it tightens as he fumbles the pouch up to his lips, catches the straw between his teeth, sucks. Super-sweet juice floods his mouth. He drinks as much as he can as fast as he can, feeling the cold liquid stream down his throat and chill his empty stomach. Punishment’s ineffective if the guilty party is unconscious on the lounge sofa.
Still, he wishes Cere and Greez would stop looking at him sympathetically, as if he’s in any way deserving of their consideration. For a second, he’s tempted to tell them he did it on purpose.
“I want to go home,” he whispers, hours later, bundled into his blankets. He has two, all of a sudden – either the first one got up to a few shenanigans in the wash, or Greez is feeling magnanimous.
BD’s plugged in for the night, but not yet shut down; he tilts his head and asks if Cal means Bracca.
Cal nods. The place was, to borrow Greez’s phrasing, a dump, and it’d be even worse now that Prauf’s gone, but… nights like this, he wishes he was curled in his damp little apartment instead. “At least there all I had to do was work my shifts, and I was left alone to eat – or not eat – my ration bars.”
He thought Cal liked the Mantis, the droid says.
“I do. I just –” Cal sighs, presses his palms to his eyes. He still has an awful headache. “Sometimes I want to hurt myself, and going from here back to Bracca is the most painful thing I can think of.”
BD takes a long time to digest that before asking, very quietly, if Cal’s going to hurt himself, because if the answer’s yes, he’s sorry but he has to alert Cere and Greez.
“No, I’m not going to.”
But he wants to, BD repeats as if he needs to say the words himself to believe them.
“…yeah.”
After a moment, the droid unplugs. Cal expects him to run straight down the corridor, probably to wake Cere first since she tends to be a little more level-headed in a crisis; instead, BD jumps up onto the cot and snuggles against Cal’s chest like he wants a hug. Cal gives it to him and then doesn’t let go.
