revivalproject | Retreat

That wasn't meant to be a serious statement, and Tony's hand went to his chest in surprise as he interrupted, "Another one?," expecting a whole other Jedi that wasn't supposed to exist anymore and would make it really difficult to ignore the pattern. Somehow, it was, "She?," that shocked him the most out of Cal's report, and Tony almost stopped, looking like he was about to grab Cal to interrogate him about it. After a brief waver, he skipped ahead instead so he could turn to walk backwards, hands out to catch the trees around him and keep him oriented where he could look Cal in the eye with a challenging glimmer and ask, "Is she cute?"

"Not a Jedi," Cal found himself clarifying first, although the look and reaction from Tony that followed had made him pause enough that they maintained their comfortable proximity without an accidental collision. His head canting slightly at the man as Tony resumed his walk ahead of him, the padawan followed, although of all the questions he might have expected, leave it to Tony to ask the one he hadn't.

The confusion flickered across his face for that curve ball, the honest look of someone who had probably never before been asked that opinion on anyone in his life. Cal glanced off to the side almost awkwardly as he continued along, his eyes drifting downwards as though suddenly more mindful of where they were walking. With Tony walking backwards this wasn't completely a lie as he wanted to make sure the man didn't go tripping over a bare root or some uneven patch of ground.

"Her name's Merrin," he ended up replying. "Honestly I'd only just met her right before I ended up here in Temba. From what she's said, she's from a little later, and thankfully on better terms than what I'd remembered." He smiled crookedly at that. Boy, was that an understatement.

The awkward eye-contact avoidance told Tony everything he needed to know, or so his delighted grin said as he tipped his head to try to chase Cal's gaze. It wasn't really mercy at all that he stopped then for Cal to catch up again where they could walk shoulder-to-shoulder, because Tony was still leering at him, only closer. "Merrin," he echoed whimsically, like those soft syllables painted the full picture for him, clasping his hands together as Cal continued, "She sounds exquisite," not at all expecting Cal to just hand him ammunition. On better terms?

"You know that sweet face of yours is irresistible. What a treat to have you here to take care of her," he needled sweetly.

Exquisite. It was like Tony was describing a fine wine or something. Cal gave him a faintly amused look as he fell into step beside him once again, even as he tried not to be unsettled by the grins being directed at him. He rolled his eyes even as he suppressed a chuckle, trying to ignore the comment about having a sweet face.

"I'm uh, pretty sure she doesn't need someone to take care of her," he said, a corner of his lips twitching in a brief, lopsided smile. He imagined she might even be offended at the suggestion.

"Of course she doesn't need it. She doesn't need flowers, either, but we can bring some back for her," Tony offered, quickly snapping a small, yellow bud from a vine twining its way up a tree that they sauntered by to present with a flourish. There was very little Cal could have done to take it from Tony fast enough before Tony was tucking it into the thick mop of his hair, smiling appreciatively for Cal's response despite the argument. He looked awkward, but he was going to do alright.

"You're allowed to do that, right? The Jedi thing, it's not like some--keep it in the faith, thing?" Tony asked, and it still sounded a little sly, but from the way anyone else had talked about their Jedi upbringing, it didn't sound like they were allowed much commingling so it was mostly a question of genuine curiosity. If Merrin was just a gal, it didn't sound like there was any kind of conversion process.

It looked like Cal might protest, although to be honest he wasn't sure what he'd meant to do even as he looked to begin to say something. Tony was already charging ahead in the conversation like a train locked on the tracks, taking advantage of the padawan's further hesitation brought on by the thought of bringing flowers back. Would she like flowers? She didn't seem to not like them. And now he had one in his hair.

Cal sighed.

"Allowed to...what?" He faltered for a moment, half-wondering if they were still talking about the same thing. "Bring flowers?" he asked, partially joking, if only to see how Tony would respond for a change. "Look, we're just friends. Survivors."

That might not have been a question that Cal actually wanted answered, Tony's slow smile, tongue between his teeth, speaking volumes even before he was tilting his head to give some apparent consideration to what kind of flowers were usually on his mind. It only occurred to him then that Cal hadn't seen much of that persona, their time together spent bent more studiously over a workbench, and the smile dropped suddenly like a mask startled out of place, making Tony spin abruptly like he was very keenly interested in finding more flowers for Cal's hair while he decided in a rush whether to affix it again. It hadn't failed him yet.

"When I was your age," he started decisively, spinning back around with another spring-new bud and just about tumbling over a root then in his restless bouncing, not missing a beat even as he smoothly recovered to weight his free hand, more or less, whatever age Cal looked, "I was on my third...serious girlfriend." The number was debatable, and Tony twined his gesturing hand in the air for Cal to interpret that liberally. "Even asked one to marry me, but that just got her sent away to school on the other side of the planet. Probably wouldn't have worked out, couldn't even grow the beard then, so. Anyway. Point is, I haven't regretted any one of them, not even the ones that tried to kill me, I only ever regret that I didn't use my time wisely." He offered the new flower to Cal daintily. "I'm trying to be better about that," he said, softer and with his hand back on Cal's shoulder, before his clipped manner returned to assure him, "You know, in general," with a disappointed shake of his head for Cal's indecent assumption that he could be Tony's new girlfriend. What would Merrin think? It hardly lasted a breath before Tony was still talking yet, "You said she wasn't a Jedi." Not that Tony had any doubt Cal had done plenty of surviving, but that sounded like the big one.

When I was your age... For some reason Cal felt himself tense in preparation for whatever sort of lecture Tony had in store. He wasn't quite sure what to make of the somewhat unsettling smile the man had worn a moment ago. But he still gave the man his attention, ducking under a mop of leaves from an overhanging branch. He almost stumbled over a root as Tony's story began on his third (serious??) girlfriend.

Having absolutely no idea what to say, he could only continue to listen in bemusement while he pawed through his own thoughts. "You know, I don't think I ever really caught what it is you do back in your world." Aside from amassing relationships with women and advancing technical accomplishments. He looked at the flower offered, taking it more out of reflex than actual acceptance of being the latest fling. Despite the shake of the head he was given, and feeling like he'd missed some joke there, he arches a brow, an open inquiry. Tony had spoken of bits and pieces of his world, but as he thought about it, Cal felt he really wasn't all that much closer to knowing anything about the man he'd befriended. It was usually him being asked the questions, the explanations.

"She's a Nightsister," he said, another explanation and at the same time not much of one, but again, Tony had prompted. "From a planet called Dathomir. Her people were attacked and wiped out, so she might be the last of her sisters. For a while she was convinced it was the Jedi who were responsible."

The elusiveness was largely by design, partially by impulse anymore, just like his predictably flippant, "Keep it turning," with a disarming grin to not explain at all what it was he 'did'. He was a lot of different things to a lot of different people, some he was more proud of than others, and it tended to work out better for the company bank account to let those people decide what those things were. What that had to do with his girlfriends or his brand new sense for appreciating people while they were in his life, he didn't know, and his grin twisted up into a questioning quirk. Was dating a lot a job where he came from? That would make the whole repressed Jedi upbringing even more tragic.

Because it wasn't entirely clear, and from what Tony understood, the Jedi were all incredibly nice people but very much did make clones as canon fodder, he gave Cal a beat to clarify how much responsibility the Jedi had in this genocide before prompting, "But they weren't," with some skeptical trepidation. Before Cal had to figure out how to lie to him, he offered, "I'm not going to go disavowing some gal of the notion that you should not have revenge rained upon you. I can manage a convincing poker face."

As much as he figured he should have expected that sort of response from Tony, Cal still felt a little disappointed by it, and unlike Tony, he wasn't all that good at keeping it from showing on his face. Maybe Tony had his reasons, and that was the only reason Cal didn't push for a better answer.

"No, they weren't. I think she's worked that out. But it was a former Jedi who told her that lie. I guess she started to figure she couldn't trust him when she saw him trying to get me to join him."

Cal twirled the flower between his fingers as he stepped ahead, lifting his eyes towards the canopy of greenery at the sounds of some kind of bird calls, at least so far as he could guess that was what was making them. "And then I had a swarm of undead Nightsisters coming after me, and the only thing I could do was run back to the ship."

That newly cultivated sense of appreciating-whatever-blah blah, it didn't feel particularly well formed in the face of that clear disappointment, and only slightly because Cal was immune enough to Tony's charming smiles be disappointed in the first place. Tony didn't have much of a chance to linger on that guilt, though, so quickly dismissed it to dwell on later as Cal dropped several revelations on him very casually. He held a hand up in the moment that Cal was distracted by the sounds of the forest, silent though he was clearly counting off on his fingers as he sorted through the one, two, three, four very nebulous questions that he was already left with. This was before Cal even said 'undead' at him.

"We call those vampires," he decided this had to mean, because 'Nightsister' did sound a lot like what a vampire would call herself. "And, I'm going to be honest with you, we mostly kill them, too. You're very open minded, Calamity, that's incredibly electrifying of you, but I do have my concerns. I can't make any promises about what I might do if she starts biting people."

"Call... wait, what?" Cal turned his head back towards Tony before laughing a bit. "Not a vampire," he insisted.

"Nightsisters are...what they called their people. From what I understand, they lived apart from the Nightbrothers. The Nightsisters use some kind of magick, I'm not really sure if it's some different aspect of the Force or something else entirely." He shook his head, shrugging. "Merrin's not undead, by the way."

That didn't clarify anything whatsoever, leaving Tony staring after Cal with a confused furrow of his brow for thinking that it did, lips curled in a teasing grin even as he raised one in speechless shock. So, they weren't vampires, they just sounded a lot like them and didn't really die, but Merrin wasn't there yet. Great.

"What did this other guy get out of lying to her?" Tony wondered. It didn't sound like a reasonable thing for a former Jedi to be doing, telling tall tales of his people that didn't exist anymore committing mass crimes. "And what is it about you that is inherently untrustworthy? That one, I gotta say, that's a cultural difference, I think mothers would trust you with their newborns on Earth."

He was only passingly familiar with the people of Dathomir so his vagueness wasn't without reason. Unsure of what to make of the grin Tony was giving him, Cal could only shrug.

"From the echoes I'd picked up, he must have crash-landed on their planet not long after the Purge. He won over the Nightbrothers by his strength, and he wanted to learn about the magick of the Nightsisters from Merrin." He laughed weakly, shaking his head. "I was trespassing on their world. Malicos had them all going after me before he found out who I was."

This was not a sequence of events that made any more sense to Tony, particularly not the quick 180 to recruit Cal presumably upon finding out his Jedi training, so after a moment Tony declared, "He sounds fantastically unhinged. And she was spending time with him? I've got to meet her."

The forest by then was growing dense, further from the city than Tony had been yet and blocking out the sunlight but for some glowing, dappled patches where the musky mushrooms shied away and more of those budding vines gathered greedily into tightly packed nests, some looking lush with the coverage of their new flowers. They had to skim tightly by them at times to wind their way around the trees, sending cascades of petals to the leaf-packed ground or leaving them clinging to their clothes. Meanwhile, Tony asked, "How did you go from that pit-with-teeth situation to pulling a B&E on a whole planet? That's the third life you're telling me about. I might have had three girlfriends, but you've been moving through identities."

Here and there BD-1 would hop down freely from his perch to skitter off and scan the interesting flora, or jump around in leaf piles while Tony and Cal continued to pick their way along.

"B and E?" Cal asked, but he supposed caught the main gist, and frankly he couldn't really say it didn't sound like another lifetime. "Same identity. Just had to dust it off and refine some things," he laughed quietly, shaking his head.

"After I gave myself away on Bracca the Empire was there and looking for me. But as it turned out, someone else was looking for me too. I was picked up by Cere and her pilot Greez. Cere said she'd used to be in the Order, and they'd been monitoring Imperial frequencies for survivors. She knew about an ancient vault that her old master hid away a holocron, one that has a list of Force-sensitive children. So we've been trying to find the 'key to the vault'."

Tony flapped his hand at the question, didn't matter, and besides, they were approaching the sound of running water that they were going to have to deal with soon. As Cal explained how he got from point A to point F, Tony swept down to drag a knotted branch out of the undergrowth, snapping it out of a loamy snarl of new roots and testing it with a few taps to the ground as they walked. He didn't expect this journey to include a list of secret kids, making him shoot a sidelong glance Cal's way, lip raised again with a new question that wasn't coming together easily.

"So you can hide it better?" he landed on. It sounded, from this brief recount, that it was quite thoroughly hidden and maybe exactly where it needed to be. "Listen, I don't--There's this thing, on Earth--" he tried, and heaved a sigh of frustration at himself, boxed in now by his own recalcitrance. The understanding the upcoming registration bill depended on a lot of context that hadn't even been enough for Tony's allies back home to understand his position. "We've got all kinds of guys'n'gals with superpowers, you know, Billy and...Cap'n...whatever, you know what I mean. And it works, we work, because we wear masks, we wear the costumes and put on a whole show to become someone else, so no one can follow us home," he tried, and tilted his head with a grimace, eyebrows raised and watchful for any recognition from Cal for the possessive form. "What makes you think it's better to find this list?"

Tony had quite the array of expressions, but what bothered Cal was that he never quite knew what to make of them. What he did know was that there was always something loading up behind them. So he held back from responding right off the back at the leading question, waiting to see what more Tony would say.

He was passingly familiar with the idea of superheroes- it was impossible not to be when you were here among some. But in this light, he had to wonder more of this world, this Earth that they lived in. To hide who and what you were under a different identity? But they were still doing what they could. Maybe he could only understand it a little better for having to go into hiding himself, but there was still some confusion coloring his own expression. It didn't make sense to have to hide if you were doing good for other people. But then people were afraid of what they didn't understand, wasn't that the case?

The padawan lets out a slow breath, brows knitting as he met Tony's gaze.

"The Empire has a key, Tony. They found out about the holocron. They got to the astrium before I could. There's another one on Dathomir- that's why we went. That's why we need to get the vault open, before they can get their hands on that list. I don't want to know what they'd do with it."

That did change things somewhat, though Tony repeated under his breath, "Astrium," trying to place the word in context. A secure server, maybe. Not that it mattered, Cal was here and the vault was a distant problem, but Tony still pointed out, "You're wasting your time." Not that the concern was a waste of time, and he gestured to dismiss that heartless read that he could hear very well now that the phrase was out of his mouth, charging on through the snarl of trees to retreat from it until he was standing at the mossy bank of that river he could hear.

"You know where the key is already, this Empire has it," he continued as he considered the water. "And, presumably, you know where they're going to be. It's not like they're going to be expecting you." That looked to Tony like it would be the most direct route to solving the problem. The river, meanwhile, was wide enough that he considered its length, looking for a narrower crossing to the other side where the trees looked to be thinning once more, perhaps to an alluring clearing beyond. It must have fed into the ocean, and that made Tony throw a puzzled look over his shoulder, back toward the city that, as far as he could tell, hadn't been built on any major waterway like this. He would have to ask Reeve. Using the stick, he carefully tested the depth and pull of the current.

The words almost felt like a slap in the face, but Cal swallowed back an objection at Tony's gesture, forced to follow after him out past the trees.

"We've been trying to avoid the Empire," he said, which was a weak argument, but it was true. "Not that it's done us much good. They've either already established a presence where we need to go or aren't too far behind when we arrive." At least there'd been a distinct absence of Imperials on Dathomir, but then there'd been enough other problems on that planet.

Cal stepped towards the riverbank, watching as the water flowed along, keeping an eye on BD-1 as the droid ran up to its edge and dipped the tip of a metal foot into it. "If the Empire gets to the vault, security isn't going to be light. Greez isn't a fighter, and Cere's cut herself off from the Force. It'll just be me." He shook his head.

"...Merrin said I completed my mission. I guess she's joined us, however far ahead that might be from what I know. I haven't asked about details though. It's still weird to think about."

Whatever logical plan Tony thought was the most obvious was a particularly pointless thought experiment if Cal was destined, or whatever, the get the job done either way, so Tony made an aborted gesture of mild frustration, sure, okay, and raised the stick for Cal to see how deep it had been submerged in the few inches within Tony's reach. They were going to need a way around.

"Billy and Tommy think they're from my future, too," he said, sounding skeptical of the concept but pursing his lips sympathetically, because he knew how uncomfortable that suggestion was. "I don't know how likely that is, but--" Now might not have been the time to insist he didn't believe in these possible future states, because it sounded like Cal's propose future had gone pretty well and the alternative was bleak. Tony's voice was slightly higher as he concluded, "Listen, you know, it's possible. Hey, you've got that to look forward to, get the list, get the girl, what more could you ask for? Get out of here, I guess."

The padawan nodded as he observed the river's apparent depth, turning his head to look further along its banks for another potential crossing, but not without taking some time to appreciate the surroundings.

His thoughts turned briefly inward as Tony admitted his doubts about future time flows. "There are still things that I'd rather doubt when it comes to the future, like the continual fighting going on." The Empire's eventual replacement by something else? He didn't want to think about things like that, lest he start to wonder what the point of anything they did was for.

Glancing back at Tony, Cal's smile looked almost like it wasn't sure if it really wanted to come out as a wince. "At the risk of sounding careless about the future...would there really be any hurry? Knowing at least to a point that things turn out okay. I've had...maybe a year to think about things, to do things I haven't been able to do. It's true that the reasons we were even brought here in the first place are because of of something terrible, but it doesn't mean nothing good has come out of it." He scrubbed a hand through his hair, letting his gaze fall back towards the river again.

"...I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd rather focus on the now. On what we can do and have to do here, and the people that we're here with. That's not something I want to lose."

The close press of the trees dampened their voices, and those of the birds roosting above, leaving them quiet next to the sound of the bubbling river like the forest was protecting this thing that Cal didn't quite want to say. It put Tony on edge, scratching restlessly against his heart at that apologetic smile and watching Cal sidelong like he was ready to quickly give his dismissive gesture the moment Cal said something difficult. The defensive tension melted slowly as Cal spoke, at first a familiar enough sentiment that Tony turned his gaze down to the river again in relief, only for his brow to knit with a new concern. Cal certainly wasn't the only person Tony had talked to who had expressed a reluctance to return to their home world, largely out of the relative security that this place offered instead. And focusing on the people they had the chance to share it with, Tony didn't miss that sentiment, reaching for Cal's shoulder again to slowly pat with appreciation then squeeze like he was just trying to get his attention, indicating some of the vines lashed around a tree at his side. "How strong are those?" he muttered with an impish flash in his eye.

With his hand back on his heart to watch Cal make his assessment, Tony cleared his throat awkwardly to start, "The twins, they won't tell me what happens for me next, not exactly--not all of it, anyway, but I know that it's something bad. And it's my fault." He licked his lip between his teeth, looking back out over the river, tapping a rhythm onto the hollow drum of his chest. "I haven't wanted to go back since I kind of...I figured that out," he admitted, though this was a vast simplification of what exactly Tony had figured out from talking to all of the people who seemed to know some version of him. When he could draw his gaze back to Cal, it was with an inquisitive raise of his eyebrow, testing if he was also influenced at all by that kind of guilt. They both had a lot of people relying on them at home, it sounded like, and for Tony, that meant weighing the amount of good he could actually do against his potential for destruction. "I'm trying to do better, while I'm here," he added hurriedly, before Cal was left thinking that Tony was just infecting this planet with his influence instead, but it did sound hollow.

It seemed to Cal a bit cruel to bring people here and send them back on a whim, more so if they had nothing they brought back, as though their time here was meaningless. Which wasn't true, he supposed, not so long as people were here who remembered, and their efforts would pave the way to restoring the Agrii's home. That reasoning didn't quite soothe his thoughts, and Tony's hand on his shoulder was both appreciated and a bitter reminder of one such bond he'd lose.

He allowed for the distraction, looking over to the vines, a faint smile tugging at his lips. That was a method of transport he was well familiar with. Reaching out with his hand, he used the Force to tug a vine free and let it virtually fly to his hand, giving it a tug in testing.

As Tony spoke of his own concerns in the future of his own timeline, Cal hesitated in the testing of the vine's tension. He looked over his shoulder and back at him, lips pressed in a thin line, but he nodded slowly. That was valid enough reason to relish being in a place even like this. If you couldn't carry certain knowledge back with you, you were essentially locked into whatever timeline of events you were a part of. Was it fair? Hardly.

Again Cal reached out, pulling free another vine from the tree, giving it the same test as he appraised its strength. "All the more reason to make here count, right?" he said, smiling faintly back at Tony. He passed one of the vines over. "These'll do. You need some pointers?" One end of his smile ticked up just slightly higher at that.

Tony met the challenge with narrowed eyes and argued, "Okay," with an exasperated tug of his own at the strength of the vine before starting to loop it into a bundle. "That could have been nice, we could have acknowledged you patience or--emotional maturity, or whatever, that you had to impart on me, and instead you question my ability to make this look incredibly cool." Not that Tony had that much experience improvising a Tarzan scene, but it was easy math, surely, and improvising was a talent. So was raising a hand in surrender and leaning expectantly back on a tree, inviting Cal to demonstrate his abilities with a gracious wave.

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