cieleniti

As a Youngling, he learned his head is not always occupied by his thoughts alone. Echoes from unsuspecting nooks and crannies (and war) overload his brain, baring to him everything they once were, and forcing his mind to compute emotions too strong, too heavy. He had desperately wished, at the time, that it was his own feelings that were too big for his body.

After his Master dies, his lightsaber is twice the size of his own. It hangs heavy on his waist, bruising the sides of his thigh. It's foreign, unsuitable, a tragic reminder that drags his weight down yet he finds himself clinging to it like a child during the coldest nights on Bracca. No matter how many times his palms encircle the hilt, it would never fit the way it should.

His first poncho was five sizes too big. Prauf, like every other Scrapper, was living hand to mouth. "You'll grow into it" he insisted, a quiet muffled chuckle betraying his amusement as the heavy material hovered by his ankles. Cal is thirteen and his face itches from the cold, but the poncho is warm and it reminds him distantly of home. Cal never grew as big as Prauf, and the poncho still hangs past his shoulders, a few sizes too big.

Cal is seventeen and the names of a thousand Force Sensitives rests in his palm. He's seventeen, and the future of his kind is compacted into a single Holocron stained by bloodshed. His gut twists and turns with uncertainty and fevor and deep fatigue from the lengthy chase and almost getting his insides boiled, and he desperately wants to reach out snd grab that opportunity for a future. But Cal is seventeen, and can give nothing more to these children than their freedom. He's seventeen and he is unfit to guide the new Order, and it gnaws at him.

He's seventeen and he doesn't fit into this found family who place their needs over the Fight. So he leaves to find a place where he could fit as if being one of the last of his kind would allow him such mercy.

He's twenty-two and his emotions eventually settle as the sounds of battle become white noise and bodies become numbers. He is angry and betrayed, and loathing himself and losing himself, but the need to Fight thrums like electricity under his skin. He's twenty-two and he no longer fits into the mold of the old Jedi Order. He is not them, something in between.

Loving the throwaway lines that indicate what kind of training Tapal put Cal through in addition to the flashbacks.

Cal: "I was trained by following strict protocols, prepared for everything"

Cal, about Yaddle: "My Master was her padawan. He said she trained harder than anyone he knew which was something, if you knew Jaro Tapal"

The way during Order 66, Tapal insistently says "We trained for this", trusting that Cal can make it through the admittedly dangerous maintenance halls where he'd have to wall run and climb like crazy.

And in the end, it is that skillset that keeps Cal alive as a Scrapper on Bracca at 13 years old.

The difference between 13 year old Cal Kestis and 13 year old Cameron Monoghan kinda explains why in fics he's always made to look younger than he is. Even when Cameron acted as Nick Peyton in NCIS, a character commented that Nick is 18 although he looks 12.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66107215

Cal's future memories being sent back to haunt his Youngeling self is something I absolutely lovee, and haunt it does. It's almost feels like the Force is doing a do-over now that it's been pulled back in time but leaving Cal out of the loop. Cal's initial fate changed from his previous one the moment he woke up, and he doesn't even know it.

Spoiler:

The way the biggest change was the fact that Jaro Tapal chose someone else as a padawan because he had been in a coma from the "Echo", and how that played into his internal grief. The previous timeline echoes in the Force, forcing hallucinations and trauma when he's already grappling with jealousy and devastation.

Future Cal leaks sadness into the Force from memory alone, the melancholy like a second skin. And Youngling Cal just doesn't understand why everything is changing, why he's having trouble with sadness that doesn't seem to fully belong to him, why he's seeing and hearing things in the walls.

To everyone else, he's taking the "Not being chosen as a Padawan" heavily, but in reality it's like he's become a vessel containing the echoes of the future (not like he knows that). And gosh seeing a child not fully understanding what's going on with him is painful, especially since we know as readers.

The way the Force still feels out of reach. The way people try to understand from the lens of a devastated force-sensitive child but they're so off that it hurts.

And you just want to grab the Force by the throat to give him a proper vision or something before things go wrong.

I find this Cal so unique mainly because he doesn't know. He's being haunted by echoes from the Force and from his future self, and he doesn't know anything other than the fact that people are blaming him for things he can't control.

Padawan Cal Kestis, because I've been binging those Time Travel Fix-It fics.

I haven't consumed enough main media to write but I do like the idea of him being pulled back in time and actually grieving his previous life throughout the entirety of his second life, especially if he's pulled back randomly (because the Force said enough) and not because of death; cue mini fic

He'd grieves Merrin and Greez, of a life on the Mantis filled with rowdy dinners and polite backtalk, of adrenaline fueled lengthy conversations keeping them up until midnight.

He grieves his Master from before rather than his Master now. This Jaro Tapal has never shared a cup of tea with him after a particularly bad fall, nor promised him a sip of caf for every milestone. He grieves the trust, the concern, and admittedly, the ache of his last words chiming in his head before he stepped into battle.

He grieves the Force that settles like a warm (yet distant) guiding hand . This one dances with intent, demands his attention with almost childish nudges. He feels it like a second skin, pestering him to get UP. To move, but he can't. Not yet.

He grieves freedom and the high of adrenaline from a hidden blaster under his poncho. He grieves the control he had over the Darkside as now, it seemed to creep into the deepest crevices of his heart, reminding him what the Force has stripped him of. The sound of a bleeding Kyber crystal haunts him every time he ignites his old lightsaber (yellow, because the Force never wanted him to hide)

Ahsoka and Caleb and maybe a few others (whoever the Force wanted, it seems) keep Anakin on track and seek out Palpatine. He hears them talk, pretends he's not one of them Returnees (which is useless because his Wanted posters were everywhere) He was near catatonic from grief for a week, mute for two.

Cal...is tired.

He's tired. But he raises his saber and fights anyway. His heart feels like it's dropping from between his ribs but he plunges forward into gunfire, gets back on his feet and customizes his lightsaber with whatever he loots. He destructs and pulls himself together and destructs again.

"A drag path" but it's the reminiscences of Jason left behind after his death and Tim desperately clawing at the remains of the previous Robin after Bruce cleans out the manor (he wants to know what Bruce expects of him, what he wants to see whenever he calls out for Jason instead of Tim)