Private Stranded Lights

[Maeve Linahan]

The wildman glanced nervously between Cale and Maeve. Her threat had clearly struck a chord, and it was obvious he understood what she said, chewing on his lip with rotted teeth. He couldn't tell if she was bluffing, but the look on her face said otherwise.

Maeve sighed impatiently. "Seven, six, five…"

"East!" The wildman practically barked. "East! By mountain!"

She smiled warmly. "Perfect. Now, tell me about him. This Denth. Who is he? What can he do? I want to know everything you know."

The wildman shivered. "He is a god—plunged from sky, born from smoke! Small, but fierce! He tamed great beast with own eyes! He rose from ashes of fallen star!"

Maeve glanced at Cale. Although the man's words were jumbled and near unintelligible, it seemed to imply enough. The wildmen were treating Denth like a god. They worshipped him. Still, there were other pieces she felt she was missing, so she turned back to the wildman and glared at him, intending to squeeze him for more information. However, one look down and she noticed he'd pissed himself.

"Oh, Ashla's Light," she groaned.

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

The more he heard of Denth, the more Cale was sure that he was either a charlatan or something a deal more dangerous. The wildman flailed and whined, and ultimately pissed himself in a powerfully embarrassing display of capitulation. He couldn't help but wonder if the thing was more afraid of Maeve, or of what Denth might do to it for talking.

His eyes met Maeves, and a wave of unease ran up his spine. There was a piece of the puzzle they could not see, and that the mewling wildman was not going to give them. Cale took in a deep breath, looking to Reina for a moment. "If we aren't back by sunrise, send a communique to Jedi Master Valery Noble, use our names, she'll send more help."

Cale gave the wildman another look and sighed, longing for a smoke or something to otherwise un-fray his thinning nerves. "Alright, lets get moving, before you scare him into doing something worse." He said, inclining his head in the cardinal direction their new associate had so graciously provided and headed in that direction without another word. He was trying to be who he was supposed to be, but his own mind had rattled him more than any rancor.

Cale supposed he could've told her, and that doing so might make them more effective, but it could also have the opposite effect. What would he do if something happened to her because they were off? How could he live with that. Cale decided it was best not to.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

"Worse? What could be worse than wetting yourself?" Maeve scoffed. Of course, several ideas came to mind at that, and she realized what he meant.

Perhaps Maeve had been too hard on the wildman. She'd only been bluffing, hoping to intimidate the man into talking, and it wasn't like she was actually going to mash his acorns into jam. Too messy, for one. If anything, she'd been more surprised the wildman had bought her threat so readily.

She knew she could be menacing, but Mother of Moons…

Maeve sighed. Evening was almost finished, and the sun was beginning to sink behind the trees, painting the sky the color of burnt-orange. A cold wind started to blow down from the mountains, and Maeve adjusted the shawl draped over her shoulders, following after Cale. As she fell beside him, she threw him a sideways look.

"Wait, am I really that scary?" she asked him.

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

“You? Oh yeah, terrifying. When we first met I thought you were about to give me the meanest earful of my life for smoking.” Cale teased, feeling a bit more himself as they trekked under the treetops. Maeve was strong, capable, but he’d never thought of her as the kind of frightening that’d make a being piss itself. That kind of fear usually was born of witnessing what the person could and would do to another, most Jedi weren’t like that, and hadn’t ever been.

He took in the setting sun, the blue of his eyes filled with the soft glow of the fading orange light. The galaxy was a beautiful place when it wasn’t trying to kill you for living in it, and Cale found himself wishing he’d taken more time to appreciate it as the cooler winds blew in.

“Speaking of, I should’ve asked those people if they had smokes. I’m gonna lose my mind going like this.” Cale lamented, only half joking at that point, his mind buzzing with the craving. He needed to cut them out eventually, but there was enough going on for him on this misadventure to put it on the docket.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

"Oh, I remember," Maeve said, reminded by the memory of their first meeting on that balcony so long ago. "I was certainly considering it, especially since you had the look of a spice dealer about you. Of course, then I realized that was how you always look."

She couldn't resist casting him a tiny smirk. "Besides, I was drinking that night, so I had no right to judge. Although, if I also recall, you were drinking, too."

Her hair caught the last shreds of sunlight pouring through the forest canopy, and her bright-blue eyes flashed at his next words. She knew he was something of an alcoholic, but she hadn't taken him for a heavy smoker. An addict.

It should've been obvious, given how gruff his voice was, but at the time, Maeve had given him the benefit of the doubt. She didn't realize he was dependent. Normally, that would've irked her, but she had her own bad habits, and for reasons few could understand.

She huffed. Instead of dressing him down for his addiction, Maeve plucked an edible leaf from a passing bush and offered it to him. "Take this. I've heard chewing gum or mint leaves help."

Maeve shook the leaf at him. "I promise it's not poison."

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

“We’d just won a war, it was supposed to be a party until that psychopath showed up.” Cale recalled her well, all long legs and crimson sabers, a malice in her eyes that went to the core of her soul. It was for the best that they’d killed her, the Sith wasn’t the type to willingly reform. He supposed she could’ve been like him though, a puppet on a string, dancing to another’s tune, but he doubted it.

She looked at him with the sort of concern that made him feel small, though he knew that was only born of a wounded pride that should’ve mended a long time ago. The smoking had started after the arm, when his false life fell apart and he was outed for what he’d once been. There had been worse vices than stimsticks though, and he’d beaten those.

“Sure it isn’t.” Cale teased reached out and took the leaves, but his arm remained at his side. Instead, it was through the force he reached out, felt his fingertips brush the surface of the greenery, and gently took them from her hand. It’d been so long since he’d lost the now, but ever since he’d managed the technique Cale found himself using without meaning to.

“Shit.” He hissed as he caught himself, the phantom limb that had held the leaves suddenly no longer there, the contents it had held falling. Cale stopped down, took them back up off the floor with his real hand, then popped them into his mouth after quickly dusting them off. “Thanks for these.” Cale said quickly, biting down on the leaves to hide his frustration with the unconscious manifestation.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

"…you're welcome."

Maeve watched Cale with one eyebrow raised. She'd felt the Force reach out and brush her palm, sensing the fingers of his phantom limb before it had unexpectedly vanished, and the question about his missing arm rose to her mind again, a question she'd been wondering since they first met.

"Your arm," she told him. "Why don't you use cybernetics? A prosthetic? I'm sure you don't need it—you're capable enough—but I have to ask."

Many Jedi relied on cybernetic enhancements. There was no shame in it. Jasper Kai'el, for one, used a mechanical arm for much of his career as a Knight, and that certainly hadn't stopped him from earning a position on the Jedi Council.

"You never did tell me what happened, or where you lost it," she said about his arm. Maeve knew a story like that was personal, maybe not up for sharing, but she felt she'd known him long enough to at least ask. Whether he answered or not was completely his choice.

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

Cale paused for a moment, chewing on the leaves as he debated pushing forward without any answer or explanation. “Maeve!” He declared, feigning offense. “You don’t just ask what’s with someone’s arm! Where are your manners?”

He laughed, probably for the first time about the subject, shaking his head and wiping away the mortified expression he’d conjured up with a sigh.

“No, but I can’t use a prosthetic. Some tech explained it to me once but I wasn’t paying attention, something with the nerve endings is shot, so no metal half-measures for me.” It was a simple explanation of a rather complex medical problem, but Cale doubted he’d understand it even if he was walked through the specifics a hundred times. Something in him simply didn’t work anymore, he that was all that matters.

“I crashed an X-Wing then fought a platoon of Sith Airborne with railguns on Roche. They were part of the Sith Empire before this one, the Alliance actually fell for a moment around then.” Cale tried not to buy into his old cynicism much, but it was sometimes hard to look at the wider galaxy and think that anything they did mattered.

“Couldn’t get to an aid stations since some alliance grunt finally recognized me, put me in cuffs for a few hours instead while I bled all over the floor.” Cale wished he’d held back to words as soon as they’d left his lips, but by then it was too late.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

"Manners?" She snorted. "You should know by now that I have none."

Maeve was a Jedi Shadow. She was used to asking uncomfortable questions. Cale should've counted himself lucky that she'd been kind enough so far not to force an answer out of him like she had with the wildman. Not yet, at least.

She found herself leaning in at his explanation, and then his story. Talk about eventful. It seemed he wasn't much that good of a pilot either if he'd been going around crashing X-wings, but facing down an entire platoon of Sith Airborne on his own? Impressive.

"You're fortunate to have lost only an arm if you'd managed all that," Maeve said. "But the fact your injury came about because of some Alliance grunt? That's just ridiculous."

She felt outrage on his behalf, and her lips pursed at the thought of some fool stopping a Jedi, a hero, from receiving proper medical care after such a battle. And for what reason? It made no sense. Cale had fought on the right side. Why would they—?

Maeve frowned. "Wait, what do you mean they recognized you?"

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

“No no, the grunt just made it worse. I’m sure it was the railgun slug that did the damage.” Cale assured her. He had downed five TIEs, and strafed Sith artillery for close to an hour before he’d gone down, there had been a time he was a better pilot than he was a swordsman, and once that had made him feel strangely insecure. If he’d known what it would cost to change things around, he would’ve been more grateful at the time.

But that wasn’t what Cale was thinking about at all in that moment.

He chewed on the leaves until they were mushed, and spit them out as he came to a sudden stop. Cale looked Maeve in the eyes as a sadness overtook his own, light and laughter leaving his gaze cold and distant. He’d made a mistake, and now there was no going back.

“Yeah, we’d fought together once in the Republic, he knew me, knew what-, You really don’t know?” She didn’t, and Cale knew that, but he’d wanted the galaxy to spare him this, but it wouldn’t. Cale leaned against the tree, mind replaying the nightmare, the final moments, Maeve’s hateful stare, it all looped again and again. Would she hate him? Could she understand?

“I told you on Courscant that we lost once, I was there. I was one of the reasons why.” Cale could still smell the temple burning.

“A week or two after I was born, my brother and I both. He was found by darkness, and I’d always thought, once we’d brought him into the light, that I’d been the lucky one.” Cale’s mouth felt dry, the words fuzzy on his tongue. “Turns out, both of us had it bad.”

“The people who saved me, my paren- whatever they were, they were agents of a Sith Lord. He had plans, ones that he’d laid for decades if not centuries. Sleeper agents were sowed through the ranks of the order, disciples of the dark hiding in the light. But I was-,” Cale remembered how it felt when the words gripped him, how his limbs had seized, his head had throbbed, and the sheer terror that had overwhelmed him as his own hands began to move without his willing it. “I was something else, Maeve. My par-, they left him a door, in the back of my mind.”

Cale had left them when he was four years old. They’d done it to him all before, he’d been so small.

“He said these words and I-, my body just-.” Anger rose in his voice, directed inward. “I tried, I tried so hard but it didn’t matter. I don’t know why me, I wasn’t special. Why puppeteer a middling Jedi Knight when you have full masters as willing servants?” Cale had wrestled with the question for a long time, and cruelty was the only answer. He realized then how his mind was wandering, she didn’t need to know the details, why would she want to?

“I spent ten years as a spectator in my own body. I fought his wars, I hurt people, and he made we watch. But nobody knew that, nobody knew what he’d done to me, they just thought I was a traitor.” Except Marek. His brother had never given up on him, not once.

“When I was free, I took a fake name, signed up with the Alliance Navy, and tried to I don’t know, atone? That’s how I ended up there.” Cale felt the blood running through his fingers, heard the screams of those his hands had slowly cut apart as his mind begged for them to stop. His hand tightened into a fist and he shoved off the tree.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for not sharing. Not something I care to reminisce on.” Cale turned, and started forward again in silence.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve felt as if she'd been struck in the face.

His story made her heart ache, then her gut churn. A sleeper agent for a Sith Lord? It was one of her worst nightmares, being trapped in her own body and forced to carry out the will of monsters, killing innocents and turning worlds to glass.

She'd never thought Cale had lived it, and suddenly she understood why he smoked, why he drank, why he was always so reserved about his past.

Hesitation rippled through her as she struggled to accept his explanation. Her hate towards the Sith, to all things Dark Side, ran deeper than for most Jedi. She should've been disgusted, and the overzealous part of her almost was.

But this was Cale she was talking about here. Cale.

Maeve stared at him, the forest quiet. "Why didn't you tell me this sooner? You were a Sith. That's not something you should've neglected to tell me. I mean, how do I know I can still trust you? How do you know that another Sith Lord won't be able to take control of you again?"

The questions were harsh, and she regretted saying them the moment they left her mouth.

Maeve looked away from him, feeling suddenly distant. "Forgive me. I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean… well, I just wish I'd known."

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

“For fucks sake, because he’s been dead longer than you’ve been alive.” Cale shot back, anger flaring in his voice. He should’ve said nothing, instead he was angry, alone, old. “They pulled the pieces out, bit by bit, use your head, why else would they let m-,” Cale cut himself off, and kept moving, creating a gap between the two of them as he pushed ahead.

He didn’t respond to her apologies, in fact he did not say anything, he just walked on. His brother was dead, his student was gone, and one of the few other people he trusted enough to even explain his history to-, Cale pushed it aside, buried the thought alongside with the lingering desire that he’d never been woken up from cryostasis. He could wallow later, but first they’d need to deal with Denth.

Assuming she still trusted him enough for that.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve never flinched. Not in battle, not during training, not even when their shuttle had been hurtling towards the sea. But at the anger in Cale's voice? It was one of the few times she did.

She had said too much. She'd hoped maybe her half-apology would've bridged the gap she'd wedged between them, but Cale was already turning away, his face a dark cloud.

"Cale, I—" Too late. The words fell uselessly from her lips as she watched him continue on through the forest, radiating frustration in his every step.

She frowned. Normally, she'd have snapped back at him or smacked him over the head for his pouting, but instead she felt something else. Guilt? Was that what it was? Her brow furrowed, and although she also felt the incredible urge to say something more, she didn't. She just stood under the forest canopy, watching him shamble away.

Maeve sighed, then followed after him.

The next hour passed for what felt like an eternity. Night fell, and with it, a foreboding chill came with it. Neither of them made much conversation, and an awkward silence had eventually settled between them. It was only the mission that kept them together, kept them walking.

Maeve didn't know how much longer she had to suffer it, not until her enhanced vision spotted a glimpse of firelight in the distance between the trees.

"Wait," she whispered. "Do you see that?"

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

Silence held over them, and Cale stewed in it. Some part of him felt foolish for his response, like a petulant child who’d thrown a fit. But he’d spent ten years like that, and every moment since afraid that after all this time, Darth Sortis would rise from the grave that Carnifex had put him in, and claim Cale again. It didn’t matter that every healer and mentalist had assured him every bit of conditioning had been erased, and every door closed, because he still saw the crimson flash in his hand when he dreamed.

Maeve didn’t understand, and Cale never wanted her to.

As soon as Maeve spoke, his eyes flicked to the shimmering orange glow between the trees. The woods around them were quiet, almost strangely so, and so the soft crackle of the blaze could almost be heard in a whisper.

“Think it’s him?” He whispered back, as though it could be anyone else.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

"I don't know. I sense nothing."

Maeve attempted to reach out with the Force, to seek out another presence, something darker, but she found nothing. Just the cackle of a fire and then, murmured voices. She squinted through the night and spotted a dozen wildmen gathered around a large bonfire.

"More of Denth's men," she muttered. "Sentries."

Behind the wildmen was the barely visible outline of a ship: a crashed CR90 corvette, covered in tarps and scaffolding, the wreckage transformed into something like a base. No doubt Denth was somewhere inside, enjoying whatever spoils the wildmen had brought him from the last raid, unaware that most of his men had been ruined and scattered just hours ago.

Maeve touched the hilt of her lightsaber, considering their options. After having taken down a rancor, she felt confident in their odds, but this time she left it up to Cale to decide. "How do you want to do this?" she whispered.

Cale Gunderson​

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[Cale Gunderson]

It was an old ship, but one he recognized from the multitude of redesigns and refits he’d seen of them on the frontier. This one looked old though, and it dashed any hopes Cale had been nursing to end the ordeal tonight. Even if they finished Denth in the next thirty second, they’d still be stuck on the world until someone came to pick them up. That hadn’t sounded so bad until an hour ago. Now he wasn’t so sure.

He was still perplexed at what Denth had done to subjugate and organize the Wildmen, or where the Wildwomen were. There were scores of unanswered questions, ones that no matter how they tried, might never be answered.

But he could answer Maeve’s question with ease.

“How else?” Cale asked, calling the saber to his hand and igniting the weapon in an instant as he moved in on the sentries with a purpose.

“Bring out Denth, and no one dies.” He called out to the Wildmen. If any had seen them handle the Rancor, perhaps they’d be scared enough to comply, but Cale doubted it. Violence would beget violence once more.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

"Wait, don't tell me you—" Maeve said, her words lost as soon as Cale stood up and made himself known to the entire camp. She sighed. "So much for stealth."

She supposed she could appreciate a direct approach. They had spent the night weary and walking, and since Cale's revelation about his Sith past, the air between them had grown tense and strained. Better if they got Denth dealt with, where they could focus on signaling a Jedi rescue team for pick-up, where the two of them could part ways once more.

She felt a resistant tug in her chest at that thought. How strange.

Maeve shook her head and stepped out into the light beside Cale. She switched on her own lightsaber, a cold-blue to his own, and met the stunned eyes of the wildmen. Not many of them here had been present at the raid on the village, but they seemed to understand the threat of their presence enough.

Just not the way she'd hoped, unfortunately.

The wildmen hollered and raised their weapons: clubs, axes, quarterstaffs. They didn't even bother to engage in dialogue before charging towards them, a dozen screaming bodies eager to tear them apart. Or eager to die. End of the day, it made little difference to Maeve.

Cale Gunderson​

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[Aster Jace]

Man.

 

[Cale Gunderson]

The first to get close came screaming in with a heavy-headed axe, the blade fashioned from what might’ve been a shard of the corvette’s communication dish, sharpened to a wicked edge. Blue flashed up its chest and across its throat. The second, one hefting two clubs and screaming bloody murder, lost one arm, then his head was split in two quick slashes. The third Cale just hit, a ghostly blow snapping the Wildman’s head to the side so fiercely that a loud, wet snap came from beneath the base of the skull.

Cale didn’t stop, didn’t wish the dearly departed an easy passage into the all-surrounding force, he just killed and kept killing. Cale slipped beneath one blow, shoving his blade through the attackers chest then called on the force to yank the blade free and into the throat of another. An axe swung down, and the Jedi sidestepped, face cold and expressionless as he shattered the Wildman’s jaw with a strike from his open palm, then snagged it by the collar, and threw it into the firing line of one of the few who’d managed to secure a blaster.

“If they run, let them go.” His voice wasn’t cold, just empty, a void where the rest of him should’ve been, like he’d turned a piece of himself off. It wasn’t how he usually fought, but he’d not been in a fight like this since the X-Wing. Maybe he’d just been waiting. Or maybe there were more important things he risked losing than an arm if this fight went wrong. The saber came back into his hand, and he batted back a blaster bolt into the Wildman who’d fired it without so much as a flinch.

He killed another, then another, and another still. Cale was going to carve his way to Denth even if it meant every step cost another life. It was a dark thought, but he’d bury it with all the others when they were done.

Maeve Linahan

 

[Maeve Linahan]

Maeve carved her own bloody path towards Denth's ship. She leveled shoulders, slashed off limbs, and skewered through the chests of men too stupid to know when to stop. The wildmen fought as if possessed, but it didn't seem like they were under the spell of a powerful Force User. They just fought because they were utterly insane. Dedicated to protecting their 'god.'

As she hurled a wildman into a tree with a Force Push, Maeve turned to see Cale tearing through the men at a ferocity that made her suddenly uneasy. It was almost like she could see a glimpse of the Sith he was, like—

No, she thought. Stop thinking like that. He isn't who he was.

Maeve grimaced, struggling to brush aside her own inherent biases. Why couldn't she trust him after everything? He'd proven time and time again that he was no longer a Sith puppet, that he was a Jedi, braver than any man put together. He had saved her from a manipulating Sith Lord, from the waters of a storm-tossed sea, and even from a rancor, for Ashla's sake.

When she could stop and look past his flaws?

She shut her eyes. By the time she opened them again, the wildmen around them were either dead or scattered, leaving just the entrance into the old corvette. The doors had been solidly closed, sealed from the inside, but they were Jedi. It was going to take more than just a wall of steel to stop them.

"He's close," Maeve said, nodding to the hatch. "I can almost feel him, but he's not alone. There may be more inside."

Cale Gunderson​

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