#thanks to radiohead for the title; i use the song in one of my cal playlists for bracca

[fanfoolishness]

how to disappear completely (Jedi: Fallen Order)

Cal stumbles upon a particularly powerful memory on Bracca, when all he wants to do is forget. Cal & Prauf friendship, Cal angst, whump, and PTSD. Psychometry is cruel sometimes 🥺 ~4800 words.

-

The train clattered and blared around him, but Cal just turned the volume up on his ancient audiobulb until his ears buzzed with heavy bass and weirdsynth warbles.  He closed his eyes and leaned back against his seat.  Another day in the scrapyards waited for him, and it could wait a little longer.

Especially today.  He’d checked the dates a few times when it occurred to him this morning, ran the conversion back and forth until he was pretty sure.  If his math was right, he’d forgotten his own sixteenth birthday.  It had fallen last week, and he’d completely missed it.  

It was too easy to lose track of time here.  He stared down at his hands, thumbs poised on the audiobulb for control.  They blurred when he blinked.

Some birthday.  It’d been like every other day here, full of the smell of engine oil, the acrid sear of welding, the roar of machinery.  How was he supposed to realize it was different?  Then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised.  No one mentioned birthdays here. 

He didn’t count the ones he’d had before, back on Coruscant, or in the Clone Wars.  Didn’t like remembering time in the Temple, or the time on the Albedo Br--

He nudged the volume higher, losing himself in the jarring music.

The train shuddered to a stop all too soon, and Cal got to his feet, joining the throng of departing scrappers.  Workers queued to have their IDs scanned and start their job on the clock.  Not that it made much difference if they were on time or not, aside from having to do unpaid overtime if they missed check-in.  Cal knew he’d never earn enough to get out of here.

He shoved his tattooed arm under the scanner, the screen flashed green, and he made his way to the lift.  

Cal spotted Prauf waiting for the lift, and smiled despite himself.  He put his audiobulb away.  He waved, and Prauf waved back.  

“Come on, Cal!  We can make it on the next one.”

Cal jogged over, avoiding a gaping hole in the metal platform and a shower of sparks from a welder droid working next to the lift.  “Hey, Prauf.  You caught the early train?”

“Nah, I think I just got off from a different car.  Spotted you earlier during check-in.  You can see that hair of yours for miles, you know,” Prauf chuckled. 

“Well, you’re not exactly hard to miss either,” Cal joked, nudging Prauf with an elbow.  On a human he’d have knocked them somewhere near the ribs, but on Prauf, his arm barely reached the Abednedo’s waist.  “What’re we working on today?  Still tearing down the Providence Dreadnaught?”

“Scuttlebutt says they got a new haul,” Prauf said as the lift descended.  They packed into the lift with the others, pressing in to fill all the space; Cal, one of the smallest in the group, was crammed uncomfortably against the wall.  “Bunch of debris from orbit.  Might be some interesting stuff, but I don’t know that it’s been sorted out yet.”

Cal let his mind drift, which was easy when the alternative was pondering being wedged between Prauf, the wall, and a Trandoshan’s armpit.  He sort of liked new haul days.  The work could get so tedious when it was the same wreck day in, day out, and at least new wreckage provided a break from the monotony.  Sometimes there’d be droids mixed in -- gonk droids in need of recharges, lesser scavenger droids that could help break down the components of the ships they’d come in, even the occasional odd protocol droid.  He liked most droids, liked tinkering with them.  He might not have hands as small as an Anzellan’s for the really fine droid work, but he did pretty well, and it was rewarding to see a droid power back on, its memory and purpose coming back to it.  

The lift ground to a halt and the workers flowed out, taking their separate ways.  Cal, Prauf, and a few of the regulars from their crew - Nintak, Harj, Whistler and Mebs - made their way to their shift boss’ platform.  There wasn’t a roof in this part of the superstructure, and rain sheeted down over them in blustery squalls.  Awesome Bracca weather, as usual.  

The boss, a keen-eyed upgraded scavenger droid, noted their approach.  “We have new scrap deposits available on the two-hundred and thirty-seventh sublevel for initial processing, collected from mid-orbit.  Identity of the vessel or vessels is uncertain.  Priority is given for rare-earth metals and salvageable weaponry with applicable finders’ fees available for bonuses.  Once stripped, scrap will move on to the next level for further reclamation.”  It peered at them, calculating.  “Get to it!”

Prauf and Cal followed the crew up the ladders and across narrow, teetering walkways, through cramped halls of leaning bulkheads and creaking plates.  Cal was steady on his feet, as always, even on the narrowest bridges.  Prauf sometimes called him a natural acrobat for the skill, but privately Cal thought it was just that he wasn’t afraid of what would happen if he fell.

Not that he intended to fall.  No matter what had happened, he always kept going.  He would, because what else was there to do?

But some nights, trying to fall asleep and failing, it sounded rather nice.  

Falling, and not having to get back up.

Prauf whistled, interrupting Cal’s thoughts as the crew spread out among the new wreckage.  They were here.

“Well, this is a mess, no mistake,” Prauf said.  

“They expect us to sort this?” Cal asked.  He shook his head in amazement.  Massive, towering lumps of wreckage were strewn out before them on a vast open-air platform, where it had all apparently been dumped haphazardly from above.  

Most of the stuff they sorted was all recognizably ships, sometimes Republic, sometimes Separatist.  Usually Cal quietly found a way to avoid working on Separatist ships with battle droids, or anything of the Venator class.  Still, there was plenty of work all around for picking clean the ghosts of the Clone Wars.  

This, though, he had no idea what it was.  Metal had fused with duraplast and transparisteel in most of the objects, forming lumpen, twisted, irregular structures that held no hope of recognition, soaring high over the workers on the platform.  No wonder they were mostly just looking for metal components with this lot.  

He sighed.  There’d be no hope of an intact droid here.  Well, onto the other plan, then; collecting enough decent metals for other uses.

“Wish me luck, Prauf,” he said, reaching for his earphones and his mask.

“Luck to both of us for finding anything in this,” Prauf laughed.  “Let me know if you see anything interesting.”

“Always do,” Cal said with a smile.  He clapped his mask over his face, making sure the seal fit as snugly as it could, and cranked up his music.

-

The aches in his back and wrist nagged at him, and Cal shook his head, realizing he’d been crouched at the same door panel for a solid hour.  He’d been stripping out the metal lining the wired components of the door, hoping for enough gold to take back for a bonus.  Not that there was much to buy with Scrapper Guild scrip, but sometimes there’d be new music tracks to buy at the guild store.  He always liked to have a new album, a useful distraction.  And he’d missed his own birthday.  He deserved it.

Cal slowly stood up, stretching with a groan to his full height.  He wondered how tall he was now.  Hard to gauge without a visit to medical, which he avoided as much as he could; better to keep his head down.  Still, he thought he might’ve had a growth spurt lately.  Prauf didn’t seem to tower quite as much as he used to.

Cal lowered his hands slowly to his sides, taking a deep breath, his mind flicking to the day he and Prauf had first met.  Cal had been much shorter then, and Prauf had seemed almost as tall as Master T--

Cal squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his audiobulb, skipping ahead to the loudest, most jarring track.  Sho-drums and screeching vocals brought him back to a rainy, misty day on Bracca, his poncho heavy on his shoulders, water dripping into his eyes from his hood.

Don’t look back.

He gathered up what he’d collected so far into a scuffed metal bin and hauled it over to the staging area, where the boss would grade whatever they’d managed for the day.  He emptied it out onto the weigh-panel and scanned his tattoo.  He wrinkled up his nose at the total weight.  Not near as much as he’d hoped for, nor as pure.

Cal sighed, glancing around the platform, looking for a piece of the wreckage that hadn’t been checked yet and didn’t have another worker at it already.  It took him a moment before he spotted something near the edge, something that looked vaguely like it had once been a modular room and now resembled a work of abstract art.  Cal jogged through the glancing rain, passing Prauf as he went.  He paused his music and slipped his earphones off.

“Anything good?” Prauf called, waist deep in wreckage.

“Nothing to write home about,” Cal said, an old joke between them. 

Prauf shrugged.  “Well, you never know.  Maybe there’ll be something good in the next one.  Good luck, Cal.”

“Same to you, Prauf.”

Cal reached the debris he’d had in sight and walked around the perimeter, trying to figure out the best place to get started.  Most of the surface was a smooth, melted mess of hull and bulkhead, making it difficult to find any kind of entry point, even with a good torch.  

The lightsaber hidden at his back felt heavy.  He flinched, twitching his poncho over it more securely, and moved on.

Hm.  There was a possible point a few feet up, a slender cleft that had opened up inside the metal, distorting a pattern on the twisted white walls.  The opening was dark and dreary in the rain, with loose wires dangling into the gap.  It was going to be a tight fit, but he thought he could make it.  Maybe on the inside, there’d be something to score.  

Focused on the right way to climb in, with the metal surrounding it scored and melted, Cal didn’t realize that the pattern on the outer wall looked familiar.  He hoisted himself up to the gap, head and shoulders already half in, feet braced against the outer wall of the hull.

He reached in and brushed the inner wall.

A blinding flash of light.  

No --!

-

Kicks idled in the hallway outside the training field, leaning against the wall, his blaster secure in its holster.  He wondered how dinner in the mess would be that night; they had a good group in the kitchen, but sometimes, some of their ideas got a little out of hand.  “Creative” nights were usually best spent eating ration bars with Archer and Dibs instead.

He hoped the training session between the Commander and the General was going well.  The Commander had been down on himself, they’d all noticed; had difficulty with one of the trials and couldn’t get past it.  They’d tried to reassure him, but he was a stubborn one, pushing back against the boys who told him it was all right not to make it the first time.

Kicks was sure the General would help him sort it, though.  The General was always doing what he could to make them better, and he expected a lot, but he also picked you up when you were down.  He and the Commander were an excellent match for the Iron Battalion.  Kicks was proud to serve both of them.

The radio buzzed in his helmet, and he laid a hand over it, listening closely.

EXECUTE ORDER 66.

The words leached into his head, written in blood.

Yes.

Of course he would.

He turned toward the training hall, considering.  There was a small sense in the back of his mind, faint and ringing, of something he didn’t want to do, something mistaken, something wrong. He shook his head, unable to name it.  Far clearer was the sense of focus filling his mind, his body, his hands.

The General was too dangerous for him alone.  That much was obvious.

But the Commander --

Kicks opened the door, seeking their locations.  Up above in the mezzanine he glimpsed them.  He made eyes on the towering General first.  But there, much smaller beside him, a shock of red hair --

-

“Prauf!  Prauf, come quick!  It’s Cal!”

What the -- Prauf dropped what he was doing and ran in the direction of the voice, which turned out to be Harj, a sturdy Weequay.  Prauf leaped over a pile of debris and rounded the bend between two looming former structures near the edge of the platform.  Had the kid been hurt, an accident?  He still remembered the day Cal broke his wrist -- nearly lost the whole damn hand -- when a segment of debris fell, and he did not want to see the kid hurt like that again.  But the alternative to an injury was something far worse.

Prauf skidded to a stop near the edge of the platform, a dizzying drop miles down.  He paid it no mind, focused only on the seizing kid on the ground in front of him.  Dank farrik!

Harj was crouched beside him, his poncho off and bundled underneath the boy’s head as a cushion.  “I heard something fall and came to look, and he’s doing this?  What do we do?!” Harj exclaimed.  “I, I took his respirator off in case he was choking, but I don’t know what else to do!” 

“Go call the medic,” Prauf urged.  “I’ll stay with him, look after him.  Maybe it’ll stop on its own, but if not, I know a little human first aid.  Go on.”

Harj took off loping across the field, and Prauf creaked to his knees beside the kid, kneeling between Cal and the edge of the platform.  “Cal!  Cal!  Can you hear me?”  

If Cal could hear him, Prauf couldn’t tell.  The kid’s muscles twitched and spasmed, his back arching, head jerking into the folded up poncho beneath his head.  His hands and feet pedaled; his fingers knotted.  And his eyes stared far, far past Prauf, someplace he couldn’t follow. 

“Cal!”  Prauf watched helplessly, his gut aching.  All he remembered from human first aid and seizures was to make sure they didn’t hit anything dangerous during an episode.  Ha!  This was possibly the most unsafe place to have a seizure, past underwater or making a hyperspace jump.   “I don’t know what to do, kid,” he whispered.  

He took a deep breath, then realized Cal had stilled.

“Cal!”  He bent as low as he could over the kid, searching his face for signs of waking, listening for a huff of breath.  The kid’s green eyes fluttered and his face went slack, the faraway stare relaxing into something more natural.  Then he was blinking, eyes slowly focusing on Prauf’s face, approximately six inches from his own.

“Pr-- Prauf!” Cal gasped, flinching at the huge face above him.  Prauf leaned back hastily.

“Sorry!  Just worried about you.  You gave us quite a scare.”

Cal slowly, clumsily, tried to get his hands under himself to sit up, but couldn’t manage it.  He blinked, breathing hard.  “Prauf, what -- what happened?” he asked hoarsely, clearly dazed.  Prauf reached out to help him sit up.  He locked his arm around Prauf’s and managed to stay sitting upright.

“I don’t know what happened, kid,” Prauf said, blinking back tears of relief.  “You scared the crap out of me and Harj.  He came around the corner, saw you having some kind of a seizure.  Do you know what caused it?  Something in the wreck?  We called medical for you.”

Cal started to protest, and Prauf cut in.  “Don’t worry about the credits.  We’ll pitch in for you, you know that.  Scrapper’s code.”

Cal sagged against him, and Prauf realized he was shivering.  Prauf pulled Harj’s poncho over him to try to shield him from the misting rain.  Cal curled into himself.

“I don’t know what happened,” Cal whispered.  “What I… saw.  I think this is  -- no, no --”  He cast a furtive look at the wreck behind him, then gulped, looking nauseous.

“What you saw?  In the wreck?”  Prauf sniffed, checking for any of the noxious gases that sometimes leaked from wrecks like this.  But no, Harj had had to remove Cal’s respirator; he must have been wearing it, and Prauf knew that was one point where Cal didn’t skimp on safety.  His mind raced.  “Maybe there was a live power source?  Some kinda flashing light?”  Prauf had heard of that triggering shakes in some species.  “What’d you see?”

Cal’s eyes widened suddenly, and the color drained further from his face, if it was possible.  Where the heck was that medical droid?

“No, I didn’t see anything,” Cal muttered.  At least he looked a little more alert now.  “I didn’t see anything.”  He rolled away from Prauf, crawling up to a shaky standing position.  He wavered on his feet, still pale as anything, looking smaller than ever beneath the two ponchos.

“You’re not making a lotta sense.”  Prauf hauled himself back up to his feet, putting an arm around Cal.  Cal leaned hard against him.  “This ever happen before, Cal?  Is it a sickness or something?”

The kid had that glassy look in his eye, the one he got whenever Prauf got too close to asking about his life before the scrapyard.  Prauf’s gut sank.  That look haunted him sometimes.  It was the look that was liable to bug him on the train ride home, a look that set him worrying about the kid he’d found from the wastes years back.  He wondered if Cal was ever going to tell him what it meant.  

He wondered if he did, if he’d be strong enough to hear it.

“I -- uh, yeah,” Cal said.  “When I was little.”  He still had that wary look, like something hunted, but he stood up straighter and managed to keep himself upright on his own.  “Seizing, uh, sickness.  It was just so long ago.”  He tucked his face into his shoulder, not meeting Prauf’s eyes.  “I thought I grew out of it.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed, Cal,” Prauf said.  He patted Cal gently on the back.  “It’s not something you can help.  Is it going to happen again, you think?”

“No,” said Cal, and he blinked back tears.  He reached up and wiped at his face.  “No, not if I’m -- careful, Prauf.  I’ll be fine.”

“He’s over here,” Harj called, rounding the bend and leading the ancient guild medical droid back to them.  The droid clanked its way over to them, one arm whirring with medical attachments.  Prauf looked away.  That thing always made him queasy.  He gave Harj a nod instead, and the Weequay returned to work, though not without looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” Cal protested.  But the droid reached out with a scanner, spitting out Cal’s number and birthday, and started trying to take a temperature from his forehead.

Prauf paused, picking up on the date.  Wait.  Damn it, Cal.

Cal was busy trying to knock the droid’s arm away from himself with one hand, the other arm at his back beneath his layers of clothing, hovering there as if protecting something.  Maybe he’d hurt his back in the initial fall.

“You really should let him check you over, Cal.  You never know.  Not everything’s obvious like the wrist was,” Prauf cautioned.

Cal set his jaw, looking determined.  Prauf sighed in exasperation, both glad to see Cal looking more like his normal self, and very, very annoyed at Cal’s stubborn streak.  Kid could be maddening, and Prauf was afraid it was going to get him hurt sometime.  More than it already had.

“I waive my right to injury credits for this,” Cal said firmly.  Prauf crossed his arms skeptically, and the droid backed off.

“I accept.  No credits will be delivered to you regardless of the nature of this injury.  The Scrappers’ Guild assumes no responsibility for --”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.  You’re good, you can go now,” said Cal, but he looked exhausted even as he said it.  He dropped the hand from his back, visibly relaxing, but looked nervous again when he glanced back at Prauf.  “Prauf… come on, I hate it when you look at me like that.”

Prauf put his hands on his hips, shaking his head.  “You never do that, kid.  If they owe you even a single credit, you need to be taking it.  We all know they don’t pay us enough.  And look at you, you look terrible.  You’re worrying me.”

“I know,” Cal said miserably, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Look, Prauf, just leave it alone.  I’m okay, I swear.”  He realized there was a second poncho draped around his shoulders and shrugged out of it, wrapping it in his arms.  “I -- is this Harj’s?  I should go give it back.”

“You really sure you’re okay?”  The birthdate the medical droid had announced rattled round Prauf’s head.  Sixteen.  That’s so kriffing young.  But then again, the kid had been so much smaller when Prauf first found him, hiding out back of the scrappers’ quarters.  Kid must have come in over the swamps and the mines from one of the dozens of wrecks out there.  He’d been small, but the fresh wound on his face and the haunted expression had made him seem much older.

Cal looked up at him, those big eyes just as haunted as that day years ago.  Just as scared as he was back then.  “I’m fine, I swear,” Cal insisted.  But he was trying not to cry.

Prauf nodded sadly, and clapped Cal on the shoulder.  Kid always was a terrible liar.

-

Cal’s boots clanked on the stairs as he climbed up to his closet-sized room in the scrapper’s dormitories.  He normally took these stairs quickly, eager to get out of the dank, narrow stairwell to go and relax in his dank, narrow bunk.  At least he could kick his boots off, settle in, eat a protein bar, and hope to pass out.

But tonight he dragged himself slowly up the stairs, head pounding, utterly drained.

His brain spun with a sickening mix of thoughts he was too afraid to look at, memories he couldn’t bear.  There was a blank void in his head, and the hollowness flooded down from his head to his feet, gutting him and leaving him nothing but bones.

He didn’t know what he saw, but he knew he’d seen something, and he knew it was… big, whatever it was.  It wasn’t the first time he’d seen something on Bracca, but by avoiding certain types of ships, wearing gloves, and keeping to himself, he’d kept experiencing echoes down to just a few a day, and they’d stayed minor.  Sometimes he’d have the occasional headache or lightheadness, but that was easy to hide, and the rain helped mask the evidence of memories that were more emotional.  He’d thought he had this down.

Prauf said he’d had a seizure.  He hadn’t had a seizure from psychometry since he was a very small child, maybe even from before he went to the Temple; it was lost in the hazy sense of the time before his training really began.  He did remember Master Yoda sitting beside him, back when they were nearly the same height, and telling him about his ability.  

From the Force it is, youngling.  Echoes, memories of the past.  Unique, your gift is.

Cal had been frightened, but curious.  He hadn’t known what the episodes were; all he’d known was that he would be someone else, and then he’d wake up sore and confused.  The way Master Yoda talked, it meant that he was special.  That the Force had chosen him for this.  He’d carried that with him with pride, before.

He reached the eighty-seventh rise and flashed his tattoo at the automatic door.  It slid open for him and he trudged to the seventh door on the left.

He nearly tripped on something in the dim hall light.  He looked down at his feet and saw a small package wrapped in thin foil.  He squinted down at it, expecting some mistake, but the note on the package in Aurebesh spelled his name.  

“Huh?”  Cal reached down and picked it up in surprise, taking it inside his small room.  As the door closed behind him, he sank onto his thin, hard bunk, and unwrapped it.

“What?” Cal said aloud.  He’d just unwrapped three new albums, including the latest from Mister Mockwell and The Agasar, and Max Reebo’s solo album.  “How?”  Had the guild somehow sent him these?  No, that didn’t make sense.  He reached for the note from the outside of the package and turned it over.  The writing was blocky but neat.

Hey, Cal - a little scrap rat told me it was your birthday last week. Sorry I missed it.  Hope you enjoy the new tunes!  And let me know if that old audiobulb gives you trouble, they can be temperamental. Feel better.  - Prauf

Below the signature, in a more hurried, scribbled hand, it said,

PS - Take care of yourself, Cal.  I hope you know you can talk to me.  Any time.

Cal laughed shakily.  “Oh, man, Prauf,” he whispered.  His eyes burned with tears, triggered by Prauf’s kindness.  Cal wished he could take him up on his offer, tell him everything.  But he knew it was impossible.  Knew there was nothing left to do but hide, today, tomorrow, for as long as he could imagine.  

He sniffed, rubbing hard at his eyes with the back of his hand, telling himself to make sure to get Prauf a caf tomorrow.  For the next week, honestly, after all his friend had done for him.  

Cal stripped off his poncho and boots and curled up on his bed.  He reached to his back and pulled out the lightsaber he kept tightly clipped to his belt, hidden beneath the poncho.  The medical droid had been so, so close to examining him fully.  Too damn close.  Anyone could have seen, while he was out --

He set his master’s lightsaber down on the fuel crate he used as a dresser.  It shone dimly in the faint single overhead light, staring back at him.  Sometimes he clung to it, the only thing he had left from his old life.  Sometimes he hated it for what it made him, for the danger it meant.  Tonight when he looked at it he only felt numb.

He nudged the lightsaber to the back of the crate’s surface, making room to carefully stack the new albums with the old ones he’d gathered over the past few years.  The little stack wasn’t much, but it was tall enough to hide the lightsaber behind it, and that was something.  

-

His sleep was broken, tumbled, haunted by shadows as it often was.  Master Tapal roamed the hallways of the Albedo Brave, and he was strong and wise.  Cal trotted along beside him, small and quick.  They talked about many things -- a little gossip, a single treasured joke, news about the war -- and they rounded the corner, coming upon two clones in the middle of sharing a story.  There was Archer with his neat tattoo, and beside him, his best friend, Kicks.

Kicks, standing at attention --

Kicks, turning his head to listen -- 

Proud to serve them both --

Proud --

No, no, Cal couldn’t remember what came next.  Wouldn’t.  He cringed, trying to hide, running in long endless corridors.  The Force taunted him, smothering him with memory he couldn’t bear to recognize, but somehow far, far out of reach.  Fear choked him.  He was pleading for help, pleading not to remember --

Please don’t, please, I don’t want to remember --

But something louder than the memory was stirring, rapid beats in the back of his head.  The melody rose and fell, and he focused on it in his sleep, the fear slowly, slowly disappearing.  His earphones held fast, staying with him despite his tossing and turning.

Cal rolled over in his bunk, pulling his thin blanket closer, and the music played on.