Chapter Text
BRACCA, 14 BBY
Several months before Cere Junda rescues Cal Kestis
The scrapyard always smelled of iron dust and engine oil. That was the smell of Bracca in a nutshell; not the promise of hyperspace, not the healing scent of clear, cold rain, not the kind of freedom Cal Kestis used to dream about when things hadn't gone south yet. It was all things rust, smoke, and the sharp tang of metal that seeped into his clothes, his skin, his very lungs.
He woke with it every morning, and he went to sleep with it every night.
It was a graveyard world. All day long, ships that had once carried Jedi, clones, Separatist droids, senators, smugglers, all of them ended up here, gutted and stripped to feed the Empire's endless appetite for war. If you stayed too long, you started to feel like one of those carcasses yourself.
Cal was starting to feel that way.
He kept his head down as he walked the familiar route from the workers' barracks to the central yard. Another long day of tearing hull plates from Venator-class wreckage, trading quiet jokes with Prauf, and avoiding the crew supervisors with their clipboards and their stormtrooper escorts. Another long day pretending he didn't notice when the Force tugged at him, whispered to him, begged him to see.
He didn't dare. Not anymore, not here and not ever.
That was the secret to surviving. Don't stand out, don't slip up. Don't even breathe like a Jedi anymore.
The sun bled through the haze of smoke above the yard, turning the clouds into fire. For a moment, Cal let himself imagine it was real flame, burning away the rust, burning away the weight in his chest. He closed his eyes, just for a breath, to pretend.
When he opened them again, the galaxy was the same as it always was: harsh, and completely indifferent to the lower lot.
He worked his shift, hands aching, shoulders tight, ears full of the groan of dying starships. By evening, the supervisors finally called it. The whistle cut through the air, and Bracca's endless noise wound down into a tense quiet. Workers filed away, some straight to their bunks, others wandering toward the cluster of cantinas that had sprung up near the landing pads.
Cal should have gone back to the barracks. Saved what little credits he had and kept his head down. But tonight, the silence was heavier than usual, and the ache and emptiness in his chest wouldn't leave him.
He found his feet carrying him to the bar.
The cantina was run-down, sticky with spilled ale, reeking of fried meat and unwashed bodies. Scrap workers laughed too loudly, drank too fast. Somewhere in the back, a Bith musician tapped a broken rhythm on a cracked drum.
Cal slipped inside quietly, pulling his hood low. He didn't come to such places, not really. Too much noise, too many eyes. But sometimes it was nice to feel like a shadow among other shadows, to be swallowed by voices that weren't his own.
No one looked too hard at anyone else here. It was Bracca, after all. You minded your business, or you disappeared into the shipbreaking yards and never came back.
He ordered something cheap. Something he barely tasted. He sat at a corner table and tried not to think about the temple, or his master, or the life he should have had.
And that's when he saw her.
Felt her more than seeing her at first, really. At first, it was just a ripple in the room, like the way the Force sometimes caught his attention when he least expected it, a hush along his senses he had learn to ignore lest it draw attention to him. Something magnetic, pulling him to look. It wasn't necessarily light, not necessarily dark either. No, even he could tell the Dark Side apart; any Jedi could. But this was subtle, unknown, like a new door had opened and a little light shone through invitingly.
She was sitting at the far end of the bar, not drinking or laughing with those around her, just being. Like she wasn't part of the chaos surrounding her at all.
She looked his age, perhaps older, perhaps even younger. Her hair was black, a waterfall down her back. Her skin was tan, a warmth he didn't see often on Bracca, where most people looked pale and sickly from the smog. She had sharp cheekbones and eyes that didn't waver even when the men around her shouted over drinks. They were steady. Alive, almost defiant in their alertness.
She didn't look like anyone else here. She didn't belong in the scrapyard world, in this greasy, smoke-stained bar. She looked like she had walked straight out of a different life and was waiting for the galaxy to catch up to her.
She looked dangerous, and he was drawn to it like a fool.
Cal couldn't look away. He tried to tell himself it was just curiosity. Maybe recognition, the faintest pull of the Force, reminding him that sometimes, against all odds, threads crossed where they shouldn't.
But when her gaze lifted, when those eyes met his across the crowded bar, unflinching, something jolted in him like a snapped wire.
For a moment, it was like someone had torn the silence inside him wide open.
She didn't smile or frown his way. She just looked, watched like someone who knows they're being watched. And in that look was something Cal hadn't felt in years: the sensation of being seen in return. Whether that was a good thing or not, he could not tell.
He looked down quickly, heart pounding, telling himself it was nothing, telling himself not to be a fool. But the taste of it lingered, electric.
He didn't know her name, didn't know why she was here, only that mere moments later, when he had looked up, he had just seen her leave; and when he hurriedly dragged himself back into the night air, when the rust smell and smoke clung to him again, he could still feel her gaze on him.
The bar's noise spilled into the street behind him, dull and sour like the aftertaste of cheap liquor. Cal should have gone left, back to the barracks, back to his cot, back to safety. That was what survival meant: don't stray, don't follow instincts, don't draw attention.
But his feet went right.
It was impossible to explain. Not the Force the way he knew it, not the sharp tug he remembered from years ago when his master would say Trust it. This was different. It was less determined, softer, stranger, something like curiosity wrapped around his ribs and tugging him toward the dark. To the inexperienced, it would feel like the first whisper of temptation.
He spotted her again just beyond the main strip, slipping through the haze of steam vents and shadows like she belonged to neither. Her hair caught the light of a passing transport before the night swallowed her again. She didn't look back.
Cal hesitated. His heart kicked against his chest. Following strangers in the night on Bracca was not just odd, it was dangerous. People disappeared that way. He knew it; he had seen it plenty, too.
And yet, he kept walking.
She led him further from the bar, away from the main drag and out toward the wreck fields that ringed the settlement. The ship carcasses loomed in the gloom, skeletal frames reaching crooked fingers toward the moons.
She stopped on the broken hull of a cruiser, its metal ribs jutting against the stars. There she stood, arms folded, eyes turned up to the night sky, like she was waiting for something beyond this world to answer her.
Cal lingered at the edge of the wreck, unsure how close he dared to get. He cleared his throat, quietly. "Not many people come out here at night."
Her head turned slowly. Her eyes found him, sharp but not surprised. "Not many should."
Her voice was clipped, her words heavy with caution. She looked him over as if weighing him against some invisible scale.
Cal shifted on his feet. "Guess I've never been good at should."
The barest crack in her armor, not quite as rewarding as a smile, but a less rigid spine now. She stared at him for a long time. "You're a little too curious for a scrapper."
"You're a little too smart for someone hiding in plain sight."
That earned a flicker of a smirk.
Encouraged, Cal stepped closer, carefully, like approaching a wild animal that might bolt. "You looked like you were waiting for something. Out there." He gestured vaguely behind him. "Or someone.”
Her gaze flicked skyward, then back to him. "And what if I was?"
Cal swallowed. He didn't have an answer. At least not one that made sense. "Then... I'd say I know what that feels like."
The words hung in the air. For a heartbeat, she softened. Just for a second. The hard lines of her expression eased, her eyes less guarded, as if his words had brushed against something fragile she kept hidden.
It made her look younger, reminded Cal that they— that he was still a child. Even if he couldn't recall the last time he truly felt like one.
Closer now in the dim light, he spotted a lying, crescent-shaped marking on her forehead, more patterns, faint ones, scattered on her cheekbones, almost symmetrically. Three more prominent ones on her chin.
And then it was gone. She blinked once, the wall sliding back into place, sharper than before. Without another word, she turned from him, stepping lightly across the shipwreck.
"Wait," Cal said too quickly, too desperate.
She didn't look back. She only raised her hand in a brief, wordless gesture. Cal closed his mouth. And then she disappeared into the shadows.
Cal stood there a long while, staring after her until the night reclaimed even her silhouette.
He should have felt stupid. Reckless. Exposed. But instead, he felt like she had left a thread, invisible but stretched taut.
He still didn't know her name. He didn't know if he would ever see her again, but as he made his way back to the barracks, Cal Kestis couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, impossibly, his life had just changed.
Morning came too soon on Bracca. It always did.
The alarm klaxons blared from the barracks wall, shrill and merciless, dragging Cal out of the thin sleep he had managed. He blinked against the dim light, the ceiling above him streaked with water stains and rust. Same as yesterday, same as tomorrow.
But something felt different; quiet but insistent. It sat in his chest, like the afterglow of a dream slipping out of his grasp. The faint image of her face lingered, black hair like ink, eyes dark. She'd looked right at him, seen him in a way nobody else had since... well, before.
Cal shook his head and swung his legs off the cot. Foolish. Dangerous thoughts. It meant nothing.
Prauf was already up, tightening his boots with the resigned grunt of a man who had long since accepted what his life had become. "You coming, kid? We'll lose half the pay chit if we're late."
"Yeah." Cal rubbed the sleep from his eyes, forcing the memory back into the quiet corner of his mind. It was safer there.
The yard was alive with its usual chorus, the hissing welders, the groan of dying ships being torn apart piece by piece. The air was thick with the copper tang of rust. Cal worked without complaint, falling into the rhythm of labor, his body knowing the motions even as his mind drifted elsewhere.
Her voice echoed in him, wary: Not many should.
His own reply: Guess I've never been good at should.
He hadn't meant it to matter. He hadn't meant anything, but the words still buzzed through him like an exposed wire.
"Hey, kid, you listening?" Prauf barked, hauling down a plate of durasteel.
Cal blinked. "Yeah. Sorry."
He grabbed the other end, muscles straining and sweat stinging his eyes. Survival meant focus. Survival meant forgetting. He reminded himself of that with every swing of his cutter, every breath of dust-laden air.
As the hours dragged on, he still found himself searching the crowd when workers passed, scanning faces on the platforms, glancing toward the settlement skyline whenever a shift bell rang.
For her. And each time, she wasn't there.
Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months. The memory dulled, pressed down beneath exhaustion and the endless monotony of work. By the time the season changed and the scrapyard's newest shipment of Separatist wrecks arrived, Cal had convinced himself she was just another Bracca phantom, a ghost conjured by his tired mind.
It wouldn't have been the first time. No one on Bracca comes to stay.
When he dreamed, though, he still saw her. Always half-turned away, always slipping just out of reach.
And in the waking hours, when the Force hidden deep stirred inside him like a storm threatening to break, he wondered if the thread he'd felt that night had been real or just another cruel trick of a galaxy that had taken everything from him.
So he pushed it down. He buried her like he buried the Force, like he buried the boy he had once been.
By the time Cere Junda found him and a rusted transport fell into the scrapyard months later, and his survival instincts failed him for the last time, Cal Kestis had nearly forgotten the girl with black hair and the eyes that had seen right through him.
Nearly.