Chapter Text
Sange asks if he’s alright when he shakily sits back down in their little space, and he nods, mute. He’s not sure if he’s capable of saying anything else at the moment. Being alive has so much mess attached to it— why is he so much younger? Why didn’t he wake up at Vader’s feet? Where did Vader even go? Why is he here?
“If there’s one good thing about all the new miners,” Agah is saying, “it’s that all the overseers are too busy processing them to keep every single one of us working.”
If Cal is alive, could the others be alive, too? His chest clenches, and his throat feels thick, out of his control.
The old man hums. “I’ve never seen this many people below at once.”
Cal has never been this bewildered in his life.
The newest batch of miners are integrated into the great machine of the mines in only a few days.
The work has gotten harder, and they’re all stretched thin despite the sudden influx of workers— that much is clear. Cal would need to be drifting to not notice that. No one is allowed to leave anymore, given a shallow excuse over the necessity of every worker; there’s the rumble of discontent, and there’s a lot of silence, too.
Most seem resigned to their fate of digging for carbonite. A few are not. One man is incredibly vocal about where he came from and who he is and how very unjust it all is: he calls himself Hylemane Lightbringer.
“I ruled a planet,” Hylemane Lightbringer claims. “The Republic loves me, they’ll come for me soon.”
“What planet?” someone asks.
“Selmiea,” he says with pride.
“...Never heard of it.”
Lightbringer nods as if in agreement. “Yes, it is quite secluded— it makes for great protection.”
“If it was so well-protected, why are you here?” someone else laughs.
Lightbringer opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
The Republic will come for me, the alive-man said, and Cal knows with utter certainty that there is nothing left of the Republic. He knows with certainty that there is no war— not one by name, anyway. As long as any institution of power exists, there will always be some conflict, some struggle over it for people to throw themselves at and die for. The one these miners speak of cannot be the one Cal watched his master and people die for.
But that begs the question— what the kark are they talking about, then? Whatever war they’re thinking of is very clearly real to everyone else except Cal. Rather than the place he’s ended up in being completely bizarre, as an outlier, he must be the reason why it seems to be so.
He figures he can start with the small things. He asks Agah, the next time they are near each other on a shift, “What’s the date?”
“First Taungsday of the second month,” the man answers between pickaxe swings, and Cal still finds himself scratching his head. The day and month don’t really tell him much other than the disparity between when Vader impaled him through the chest and when he woke up in the makeshift medbay. But, if he’s apparently been disconnected from reality for months, it probably won’t be a stretch to ask about the new year.
“Already the second month? So now it’s…” Cal trails off, looking expectantly at the other. It’s difficult to phrase the question as to not make himself seem completely out of his mind— people like to fill in the blanks between words, though, and he banks on this as Agah pauses.
“Oh, right, you missed the new year,” Agah shakes his head. “Happy belated 20,043, then.”
Cal stares, uncomprehending, for a long moment. 20,043? That’s the Standard Calendar, not the Empire’s new calendar. It’s the Standard Calendar, and— it’s over five thousand years off.
“Oh,” he says, for a lack of anything else to say. He can’t quite bring himself to dig the tool in his hand into the earth in front of him.
Agah’s eyes soften, and he lowers his pickaxe. “I’m sorry you were out for so long,” the man says, and his words ring with sincerity. “It must be scary to wake up somewhere all disoriented like that.”
No, what’s scary is that Cal feels himself approaching an answer that should be impossible; as impossible as his current existence, perhaps more. He forces his arms up, forces them to swing into carbonite, forces himself to talk. “...What happened when I was out of it? All of it.”
He keeps his gaze fixed on where his pickaxe is landing, watching tiny chunks of ore fall to the ground. He hears Agah hum, and the other man is silent for a moment. “Bad people came from outside Koros-space. Cinnagar’s become a stepping stone.” The man is being deliberately vague, glossing over most anything vital, and Cal remembers that Agah thinks he’s talking to a child. His fingers twitch in frustration. Agah continues, “We’re a little stuck, for now. But we’ll be just fine soon.”
“Who are the bad people?” he asks, searching for more information, wanting it.
Agah’s response comes quickly. “The Dark Force-users. The Sith, I think they call themselves?"
Agah’s answers align almost exactly with the medic’s, and it’s not enough. “Why are they here? What do they want?” Cal presses, pausing after he speaks to take a moment of rest.
The man’s brow is furrowed, and he looks at Cal from the corners of his eyes. It’s a look of hesitation, like he’s searching for the right words to say. It’s a sweet notion— or would be, if Cal was actually an impressionable child. It makes him want to grab the man by the shoulders and shake him, to demand a straight answer.
“They’re angry at the Republic, and want more power for themselves,” Agah says finally. “This planet can give a lot of power to them, like these mines. But Empress Teta is very clever— I don’t think they’ll be here for long. Nothing to worry about, alright?”
“Right,” Cal responds lamely, mind racing. Empress Teta… does that sound familiar? He digs through the meager fragments of memories he has of his classes at the Temple, and to his dismay, finds absolutely nothing. He knows that he’s in the Koros sector, at least, and— and that it’s the first Taungsday of the second month of 20,043.
If it is really 20,043, then something has gone terribly wrong, he thinks, a little hysterical. He is five thousand years away from the people he loves, is five thousand years away from his death, five thousand years away from the death of the Republic, of the Order.
He’s alive, and he’s trapped here, in some long-gone era of the galaxy. The Sith are fighting the Republic, which still stands. The Sith are trying to eliminate the Jedi, still, and Cal suddenly envisions the sheer scope of how long they’ve been waging war against each other. Five thousand years loom over him, and he thinks they’re going to swallow him whole.
Now that Cal has come to realize where and when he is— more or less —he finds himself at odds with his previous complacency.
This unsettledness makes itself known as a fine tremor runs through the earth, and dust falls in tiny plumes from the ceiling. Everyone in the tunnel freezes, faces turned upwards as though they might be able to see the surface.
They wait in silence, the air thick, stifling. The dust does not tell Cal to run, so he too stands in wait as ten, twenty, thirty seconds pass— a collective sigh leaves the people in the tunnel, and Cal watches them visibly deflate.
“What was that?” he asks the old man beside him.
The old man’s eyes squint at him, brows furrowed, carving deep and weathered lines into his face. “Just an earthquake,” he tells Cal.
Cal glances dubiously at the jagged ceiling. “Is this place stable enough for those?”
“It’s lasted this long,” the old man says. “I doubt it will fall now.”
“Yeah, but what if it’s not just an earthquake?” Agah cuts in quietly, having approached in silence from his previous spot of work. Cal follows his gaze to Sange, who remains where she had been during the tremor some twenty paces off, head tilted carefully in the direction of the overseers huddled over their comms.
“Sange’s listening,” Agah informs them. “She has been listening for some days now.” He casts a cursory glance around, then beckons the two of them closer. “The Empress sent out forces to try and reclaim Cinnagar. They’re directly overhead.”
The old man frowns. “Here, of all places?”
Agah shrugs. “Don’t know why. But…” he pauses, here, as if his next words will be monumental. “I think we should be prepared to run. I don’t think this will end well.” Agah turns to look at Cal, eyes set in a promise. “Listen, we’ll be just fine, alright?” He wonders if that phrase is the man’s favorite, if he’s had practice with the ease it rolls off his tongue.
“I can run,” he tells the other.
Places like these seem to be the breeding ground of hope and anger and resistance. Cal knows these things like he knows the frequency at which they are also beaten into submission.
Bracca had had one of these things, maybe one and a half; Cal had never allowed himself to be hopeful of escape. It’s easier, in some ways, to resign yourself to your fate, to spare yourself from being fragile. Even so, he had never truly felt resigned. He doubted anyone did.
But he had felt plenty of anger, with nowhere to put it. He’d spent countless nights staring at the water-stained ceiling of his tiny apartment, chasing sleep, not quite able to temper the rage lurking beneath his skin. Wondering, why? Why? Why? Wondering why the Force did not answer, why it had gone unnaturally silent. Squashing his anger was all he could do, then, a new and bastardized attempt to mimic what he remembered from the Jedi.
The Mantis is a marker of his freedom, of the unwavering life of both himself and the Jedi, of some tiny resistance against an unstoppable force. Like recognizes like as he regards the steely set of Agah’s shoulders— that is all one needs to seek freedom, when it comes down to it.
Cal thinks Agah might recognize this, too, because instead of pushing the issue further, the man simply presses his lips together and nods firmly. “Alright,” he says. “Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll run.”
He sleeps with the rest of the miners in the barracks now, and as such, hears every scrap of information they let slip past their lips. Agah and Sange try their best to shelter him from the majority of the wallowing and discontent spread around the barracks, but it does little when he actively chooses to listen in.
A man close to Cal’s bunk spews long-winded curses nearly every night. He seems to find despair in anything and everything.
“Stars-damned nonsense,” the man spits one night, beginning a spiral he has gone down many times before.
“Can you shut your mouth?” his bunkmate groans. “‘S too late for you to be barking on and on—”
“They’re why we’re here! They’re why we’re trapped here!” the man laughs.
Cal shuffles to the edge of his bunk, peering at the man.“Who’s ‘they’?” Cal asks quietly. The man has never shared who, exactly, “they” are.
The man looks at him with the frightened eyes of an animal, big and sallow. “Those star-touched ones,” he says quietly back, like he’s sharing a big secret, “They make the world go ‘round and ‘round and ‘round,” His teeth glint in the dim light. “‘Round and ‘round and ‘round,” he repeats, “When we die, it will be because of them.” The whites of his eyes glimmer in the dark, like they’re looking through Cal, and Cal dimly thinks he should be the one looking afraid.
Cal understands that there is a misunderstanding in the greater galaxy about Force-sensitives and what exactly they are. He understands there is fear, hatred, awe, envy— there is blame, too. Even this has not changed in five thousand years.
He slides back, removing the man from his view, unable to respond in a way that would result in anything other than further disturbance. His answer provided no significant insight. These people are exhausted and ragged enough; discrete misery layers itself like silt over them.
Their hours have grown longer, harder, and the overseers jab and prod at them with a franticness that Cal can only imagine the reason for. If the miners’ prospects are getting worse, they are certainly not being informed.
In the barracks they share this discontent quietly, a restlessness lingering in the hours when they’re meant to be sleeping deeper than the dead. It’s a movement towards something more, to that resistance Cal tastes on the back of his teeth. They hear the distant clamor of battle, sometimes, in the sound of bombs falling. The mines are at risk of collapse, but their authorities make no action for this, and Cal worries that they never will.
These people don’t want to be buried alive beneath a war. That, too, is something that hasn’t changed. That won’t ever change, as long as anything alive at all clings onto the will to live.
He tries moving pebbles.
There isn’t anyone actively hunting Cal down for being a Jedi, or for showing any sign of Force-sensitivity, but he still squirrels off to as secluded of a place he can find, compulsively checking his surroundings in a way that would likely read as suspicious if someone were hunting him. He can’t help the unease prickling at the back of his neck.
And when he does squat down before a pile of dust and small rocks, reaching out with a small, tentative nudge in a different plane than the physical, it’s like tearing a muscle. It hurts, in an odd way. Almost like how he had struggled to use the Force when he first left Bracca— it’s the ache of disuse, the atrophy from a fracture.
Cal breathes heavily, and tries again.
The resistance is frustrating. It makes him feel like he’s actually twelve again, struggling with moving objects larger than a decently sized rock. He tries moving the pebbles. They rattle, and they tremble as they rise into the air. And they fall as a punch of air leaves him.
It’s fine. He’ll just need to practice more. It’s fine.
Something wet drops onto the ground, onto the pebbles, and Cal realizes they’re tears.
Sometimes there are martyrs along the path to resistance. Sometimes you can wonder about who they might be, and you might be right. Sometimes you can know who it won’t be.
Hylemane Lightbringer will become the opposite of whatever a martyr is— a heretic, a narcissist, someone who would never die for any cause at all.
He harps about the Republic and his glories, boasts his strength, refuses to prove his words. His behaviour is stark against the placid flow of literally everybody else— the disdain for this man ricochets from mind to mind, day to day, and so Cal starts the tedious task of reworking and strengthening his shields. He carefully conceals himself here in the earth, subtle enough that the well of feeling of every miner slides easily past him.
His shields are good, and he knows that. They have to be good, otherwise he’d be dead in a ditch somewhere on Bracca, or perhaps an Imperial starship, and having his shields feel so flimsy is… unsettling. It leaves Cal feeling off-kilter, like he isn’t his own person, instead an amalgamation of the fear and anger and joy of those around him. He hasn’t felt this way since the days following the purge.
When Agah starts to whisper words of dissent among the mines, Cal carrying his words further too, it’s startlingly easy to fall back into the habit of watching every other person’s move, waiting for something off.
“I don’t like the idea of staying here longer,” Sange had expressed some cycles ago.
“Think we should go for it?” Agah had asked.
“Alone?” Cal had wondered.
Agah’s brow had furrowed, and he said, “Well, it would be easier.”
“It wouldn’t,” Cal had answered immediately. “You think that the overseers aren’t watching the entrance? If not to keep us in, then to keep things out. ”
Agah had exchanged a look with Sange, considering, and then turned back to Cal with appraising eyes. “I don’t know how much more successful we’ll be with more people, then.”
Cal had shaken his head. “If we can get a majority of the miners to leave with us, we’ll outnumber them. Overwhelm them. They’re more likely to agree than you think, and the overseers hold less power than they let on.”
Agah had sighed. Sange had tilted her head as she looked at Cal. “That all true? You know a lot, kid,” she’d said, attentive, and Cal had cursed himself in silence. He had kept himself calm by rationalizing that Agah and Sange can think him to be a strangely smart, well-spoken child, but they will never learn the truth. It’s unbelievable on so many levels that they can’t even begin to look in the right direction to learn it.
Agah had then said, “What if they don’t agree? What if it’s just us?”
Sange’s face had hardened. “We’ll do it together,” she’d said. “We’ll make it out.”
Even if the outside is dangerous? Lethal? Cal had wondered. But he learned a very important lesson about the nature of survival a long time ago: people will always search for the elusive better chance when given the choice and the will to. Each and every time.
The three of them had asked the old man, later, and he’d been the first to agree to their half-baked plan for freedom.
They’d catalogued the weapons the overseers carry, and how much manpower would be needed to take them. ( “Six people?” Agah says. “What? No, three or four people and an attack from the back,” Sange says. ) Cal ends up being right that they’ll outnumber the overseers— they don’t get an exact count, but the overseers barely make up ten percent of the miner population.
Agah spreads word to the bunks closest to him first, and Cal watches him slowly gain confidence, a surety in his movements previously unseen. It almost feels nostalgic, watching the spark in his eyes become a forge.
Cal approaches those that Agah and Sange do not. Being a child means, by nature of his small stature and big eyes, disarming those around him. He feels for the gentle glow of the minds of those who seem unapproachable, leaves the ones muddled and shredded drawing caution and sensitivity for later.
“Who’s to say we won’t die as soon as we step foot on the surface?” a woman asks as the minds of the rest of the circle she’s sitting at resonate with hope. “What if it’s safer down here?”
Sange scoffs. “You’ll die down here far sooner than up there, that’s for sure.” she sinks to the ground next to her. “Better to die tasting fresh air than carbonite and exhaust fumes.”
Sange’s eyes slide to Cal, then back to the woman. “Besides, a lotta people here deserve the chance.” The woman looks to Cal, too, and she sighs and looks to the floor.
The swell of hope grows. He’d known it would, that unsquashable thing called dreaming.
“Is there anywhere we haven’t hit?” Agah thinks as they go over the pockets they’ve planted their seeds.
They trust that the people they’ve spoken to will in turn speak to those around them— they’ll reassess in a few days. Cal doesn’t know the layout of the mines incredibly well, and he knows gaps exist in his knowledge about how far they extend and where different barracks are.
He navigates mainly by keeping track of the soft pings of life that radiate through stone. It’s how he’d wandered away from the medic and— ah.
“The medbay,” he says. “Have either of you gone there yet?”
Sange and Agah shake their heads, and Sange says, “I almost forgot we had one, to be honest.”
“It’s far out of the way,” Agah agrees. “I remember we brought you there.”
“Oh,” Cal says, something tender unraveling in his chest. “Thank you.”
Agah doesn’t say anything, lips curving into a grin, and he simply reaches out to ruffle his hair. He squawks, but makes no move to dodge.
“Oh, I was hoping you wouldn’t come back,” is the first thing the medic says when Cal enters the medbay, Agah at his back.
Cal smiles, this kind of banter familiar from his time with the 13th Battalion— “Master Tapal, does Chess hate you?” a chuff, the thud of footsteps, “No, Cal, he simply worries about my tendency to skip medical treatment. I imagine I frustrate him endlessly.” — even in this slightly different form.
“I’m fine,” he says, and steps to the side, Agah coming up beside him. “We’re here for something else.”
The medic pauses, sitting up from a corner with a haphazard desk and the contents of a medkit strewn all over it. The dinky lighting of the medbay allows Cal to get an actual read for who this man is, compared to the last time he was here, too distracted by the push and pull of thousands of minds to notice the world in front of him.
The medic is young; younger than Cal would have expected for this position in the mines. He has a gauntness to him, dark circles lining the bottoms of his brown eyes. He has freckles, like Cal, and that makes him seem younger, somehow. It’s not quite like looking at a reflection— they’re not similar enough for that.
“We’re here to ask you if you want to die down here, or if you want to live,” Agah tells the medic bluntly. It’s become a go-to tactic, Cal notes, to target the fear of death, of a death entirely out of your own hand.
The medic raises a brow, assessing the two of them for a long moment. “Do I want to die? Of course I don’t,” he says, moving to a cot with a man unconscious laid upon it, breath rattling and loud. “I assume by ‘living,’ you mean escaping.”
Agah nods. The medic hums. “I might wish for the same thing. But there are some people who can’t leave,” he gestures to the wheezing man on the cot. “And some who will be hurt trying to leave. I can’t abandon them.”
“They’re more likely to die down here than on the chance of making it to the surface,” Agah presses. “There will be people above who need help, too.” This will happen with or without you goes unsaid, and Cal watches as the medic turns his back to them in lieu of an answer at first.
“I know it’s impossible to ask for a guarantee with something like this,” the medic speaks. “But can you guarantee that the people under my care will make it to safety? That I will still have patients to treat?”
Agah is quiet for a moment, and he is very still. Making promises you can’t keep is dangerous. Abandoning people below the surface is no better. It’s a fine edge to walk on; Agah answers, “You’re right, I can’t guarantee anything. But I can promise to try to get as close to a guarantee as possible.”
This promise can mean nothing and everything— it’s a matter of trust, in either Agah as a person with his honesty or his capability to follow through. The medic can’t know the man well enough to make a well-informed choice. It’s a risk, a chance, it’s the uncertainty of life. It’s what an awful lot of living down here is.
“Alright,” the medic says finally. He looks back at the two of them, something unspoken passing through the air. You can promise we’ll get a chance? Prove it.
Keepers of balance, the Jedi have called themselves for as long as Cal has been alive. Keepers of peace, the Jedi had called themselves in increasing frequency as masters turned to generals, as padawans turned to commanders.
Meddlers, some say. Saviors, say some others. Two sides of the same coin, another line to balance on, to cross. Devote yourself to the light, the good of the galaxy. Believe in the good of people. Believe in the light chasing away the dark.
This line of thinking had failed them. Or, it had failed the person it mattered the most for. Cal tries to imagine condemning his master, his crechemates, other people he never knew at all, to death. He tries imagining being the singular judge and jury and executioner and— he can’t. He just can’t.
How could a singular person hold so much destructive power? How could someone turn so firmly into the dark? He doesn’t quite know what drove Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader. He’s seen fragments, sure— but they were just that. Fragments. He’s missing large pieces of a large picture, and there’s no way to find those parts, not here, not now.
Cal tends to frustrate himself as he begins thinking in circles over what he’s seen and what he’s known. Anakin won’t be born for thousands of years. The conflict he knows won’t happen for thousands of years.
There is a second chance before him, yes, but— what is he meant to do with it?
“I wanted to be a geologist,” Agah tells him once, sitting against a vein of carbonite. “I wanted to study Cinnagar’s volcanoes— one is the size of a continent, did you know that?”
Cal imagines the cut of great mountains against Cinnagar’s sky— the little he’d seen of it. He understands the wonder of looking at the raw, natural world and the things in it of great scale. He can understand the desire to dedicate his life to it.
Cal wonders what he would have done if he had never become a Jedi. If he had been born without a scrap of Force-sensitivity in his bone marrow, would he be the same? Would he still have ended up on Bracca? Would he have pursued a fine craft, would he have learned a family trade, would he have chased the stars?
He wonders if Agah has wondered about what his future might have been like. “Why didn’t you?” he asks, already knowing more or less what the other’s answer might be.
Agah exhales, turning to look at the ceiling like he can see the sky through it. “Life, I guess,” he says blandly, not quite able to hide the bitterness in his voice. “We couldn’t afford it. I didn’t have an official record, for school or for my birth. All that I know is from what could be stolen– it’s meaningless, now.”
“What you know has to be worth something,” Cal tries. “And it’s not stolen. Making knowledge something to steal… that destroys what it means to learn. You just learned what you could.”
“Learning loses meaning for most of us when we aren’t given the means to, anyway,” he says. “Someone makes it something to steal, sure. But it’s only something to steal if there’s someone who will steal it. ”
Circles and circles, Cal thinks. “Believe what you want,” he murmurs. “But you learned what you did. You could learn more. Knowledge isn’t a limited thing like food or water. You can’t place a value on it.”
“On some things you can,” Agah argues. “On things that are dangerous, on things that give people power.”
“If it’s something you really want to know, or something you’re meant to know, you’ll learn it. Nothing will stop you.”
“That sounds too much like fate,” he sighs. Cal shrugs. Maybe his belief is still grounded in the Force, even after all this time, even after how badly he severed himself from it after everything fell apart.
“Maybe,” he says. Is he meant to know why he’s here? Is there even a reason? There must be. There must be. If there isn’t, he might break.
“You’re wise for a kid so small. It scares me sometimes,” Agah says lightly, changing the subject. “I can only imagine the kind of old man you’ll grow into.”
“Like the one we know?” Cal’s lips spread into a small smile, at odds with the unease building in his chest.
“As graying? Sure,” Agah huffs. “But I think you’ll be even wiser. You’ll have a long life on the surface.”
“And you’ll explore a volcano.”
“Well, it’s not really exploring a volcano— most of it is like a mountain. I want to know what happens underground. ” And not like the underground they’re in now, Cal thinks sardonically. Agah will get the choice to come and go as he pleases to whatever volcano he wants. He can dig a hole or use some specialized equipment and learn only what he wants, leave what he doesn’t want buried. He won’t have to pick up a pickaxe again if he doesn’t want to.
Cal simply hums. He’s seen a lot, and heard a lot from people wiser than him. It’s all been condensed into bone and flesh shorter than five feet. It feels heavier than his grown body ever could.
This is where Hylemane Lightbringer solidifies himself as the antithesis of a martyr.
It’s on no particular day that the exhausted, fearful miners overwhelm the overseers.
It goes as smoothly as it does, perhaps, because the overseers aren’t strong enough to hold back thousands of emaciated miners; perhaps they aren’t dedicated enough, or don't care enough to keep people beneath the surface when they are at risk of dying here, too. Maybe they see something as worthwhile in a chance as the rest of them do.
Cal watches an overseer drop their weapon before anyone has the chance to take it. They stand at a stalemate with the miners before them, and words are exchanged that Cal cannot hear, and then the miners take the weapon. They make the overseer walk in front, and the overseer points in a direction, and they go.
It’s a strange union, but not as jarring as he knows it could have been. Plenty overseers resist, too, of course— it’s all a myriad of responses to every individual’s desperation. It’s loud, both with the clamor of countless bodies and voices, and with the mental rush of gogogo and outoutout.
He sticks to the shadowed parts of the tunnel walls as he makes his way to the medbay.
There are thirty-seven people too sick or injured to move on their own; the rest are slated to leave at a slower, safer pace, after the initial rush and danger of a crowd has passed. Cal’s been grouped into this plan, too, out of concern for his size to be easily missed and easily hurt. It’s a little irritating.
Sange is supposed to meet him somewhere along the way. Agah is up front, helping pave the way to the surface. He’d claimed that he wouldn’t leave without Cal and Sange and the old man and the others in the medbay, though; Cal trusts him in this with a startling ease.
He finds Sange by the familiar flare of her soul, bright and warm, stark against the newfound sparsity of the tunnels. She spots him as soon as he’s in her line of sight, the air almost relaxing as she looks him over, searching.
“You’re okay,” she affirms. “That’s good.” and she waits for him to get to her side, and her hand trembles as she places it on his shoulder, grounding.
“Are you okay?” he asks her.
Her mouth turns up into a thin smile. “I’m fine, Cal,” she assures. “I’m just tired, and I’m ready to get out of here.”
There’s truth to her words, certainly, but she’s withholding a deep sense of unease. Cal breathes out and gently draws his shields back up, realizing he’s accidentally started peering into the mirage of her internal feelings— it’s not his place to watch and analyze her, it’s not his place to watch and analyze anyone right now .
“What’ll be the first thing you do outside?” he asks her.
It takes Sange a few seconds to answer, but she takes the distraction for what it is. “Maybe roll around in the dirt,” she huffs. “Maybe I’ll go find a lake and take a swim. That much water in one place…”
They come up with more ideas, and Sange’s hand stops trembling.
By the time they get close to the medbay, Sange stops suddenly. Cal is about to open his mouth in question when a sound carries from further down the tunnel, something like a groan. Sange presses down slightly on Cal’s shoulder— stay here —and she steps forward. “ Hey, ” she calls down the tunnel, “who’s there?”
Footsteps speed up somewhere beyond the bend, and he watches the shadow of a man come around first, then the actual man, and— it’s Hylemane Lightbringer, of all people. He looks disoriented, but he recognizes Sange in a matter of seconds.
“Oh,” Lightbringer says. “You wouldn’t happen to know the way out, would you?” How did he manage to get so turned around? The medbay is surprisingly far from the entrance— it’s closer to the active mining sites, closer to the source of injury.
Sange tilts her head. “It’s not a straight line from here. You’ll have to wait if you want me to guide you out.”
Lightbringer shifts on his feet, a kind of impatience visibly buzzing through him. “Hmm,” he hums, and then his eyes find Cal. With that same impatience, he asks, “Does the child know the way out?”
Cal blinks, and before he can say anything, Sange steps back, closer to him. “He’s not going alone with you,” she says flatly. Her frame hides a decent portion of Lightbringer from view. “How about this? You help us move people out of the medbay to the surface, and you don’t get lost.”
It’s quiet for a few moments. “Fine,” Lightbringer sighs. “I’ll help you.”
Lightbringer trails behind the two of them as they finish out the distance to the medbay. For once, he’s quiet, and neither Cal nor Sange let him stray out of their line of sight for more than a few seconds at a time.
The medic is by the entrance to the medbay when they get there, rifling through a cabinet, filling a pack with its contents. He nods in greeting when the three of them enter. “Good, you made it,” he says. “Sange, right? And Cal? I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself before, I’m Rigano.”
Sange grins, and opens her mouth, but—“I’m Hylemane Lightbringer,” Lightbringer speaks up from behind them.
Rigano glances at him. Cal isn’t sure if he’s heard about Hylemane Lightbringer and his glories, but if he has, he doesn’t show it. “I’m glad you’re all here to help,” the man says, perfectly amiable.
“Sange! Cal!”
Agah approaches from behind the medic, and he looks a little winded, a fair bit roughed up, but otherwise intact. It settles something in Cal’s chest.
Sange raises her hand to his face, poking a purpling bruise on his cheek. “Where’d you get this?” she asks quietly.
He bats her hand away gently. “I’m fine,” he says with a small grin. “I’m surprised I didn’t walk away more hurt.” Agah looks them over, and when he’s deemed them to look satisfactory, asks, “Have you seen the old man anywhere?”
Sange shakes her head, and they both turn to Cal. “I didn’t see him either,” he answers.
Agah bites his lip. “I’m worried. I left him by this sector of the tunnels before leading the others out. When I came back, he was gone.”
“He’s probably waiting somewhere,” Sange reasons. “Maybe someone found him and tried to guide him out.”
From the way Agah glances over his shoulder to where they can catch a glimpse of the tunnels, this possibility is less favorable than he’d like. “There was— a lot of chaos, I’m sure you saw.”
“I’m sure you’ll find him,” Rigano assures. “If he stays put, he’ll join us soon.”
“Right,” Agah says, and though his shoulders are tense, he moves on with an impressive composure. “What do you need us to do?”
Rigano blinks, but follows on. “The packs I had you load— we’ll need more of them. Some of my patients in better health volunteered to carry a couple of them, but I think those packs can afford to be lighter.”
He steps back and glances at the room at large. There are still many people unconscious on their cots, and others are sitting against the wall. “We’ll need to carry out the cots,” he says, and turns to Agah. “Did you ask more people who could help?”
Agah nods. “They’ll also be on their way soon, with luck.”
“Good,” Rigano sighs. He leans back against the cabinet. “I believe that’ll be the most important thing.”
“How’re things on the surface?” Sange asks Agah.
Agah purses his lips. “I didn’t go outside, I only caught a glimpse. Some said there was smoke still rising off the ground, but it seems safe enough.” Agah had a chance to run. Some people wouldn’t have returned down here. Rigano seems to know this too, a glimmer of respect and relief passing through his eyes.
The sooner we leave, the better , passes unspoken.
“Fresh smoke?” Lightbringer says.
Agah nods, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah. Why?”
Lightbringer’s eyes swivel about the room. “The longer we stay here, the more in danger we become. I bet whatever battle just happened isn’t over,” he says. “We could just leave now.”
“We need to wait for more hands,” Rigano reminds him.
“That time waiting could very well be our doom,” Lightbringer insists. “Carrying the people in the cots will slow you down enough as is. How badly do they need to come?”
A glare enters Rigano’s eyes. “I don’t know what you’re trying to suggest, exactly, but we are not leaving anyone down here.”
“If you take them, none of us may make it out of here.”
“Waiting a little more isn’t going to kill you—”
“It will! Mere minutes can change our odds! Have you ever heard of the concept of cutting your losses and running?”
“Aren’t you an officer of the Republic? Do you hold no compassion for your own people?” Rigano asks, baffled.
Lightbringer lets out a sound of indignance. “I have led great conquests—"
Agah frowns. “Hey, listen,” he starts, “I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to get over it or put a cap on it so we can all make it out of here. Arguing isn’t going to help when we won’t budge. Understand?”
Sange tacks on, “You don’t know your way out, either. You take your chances with us or you wander.”
Cal watches Lightbringer look toward the medbay exit, clearly considering, and that consideration over his options is disconcerting by its very nature. But Lightbringer must weigh his precious odds against himself and against them, because he turns back to them with a dark look in his eyes. “ Fine, ” he says, irate, and Cal isn’t sure if this is someone they want to be trusting to help carry people to safety.
But there is a sizeable distance between the medbay and the surface, and the only direction they have to go is up.