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It was my mother's

A family heirloom?

No

My parents were scientists, my father studied crystals and he gave it to her. She believed in the force.

Do you? Believe in it, I mean.

Does it matter?

Yeah.

Humor me.

You're not going to like it.

I don't have to believe. Saw told me it was real, he'd seen Jedi use the force. But the Jedi are all dead and the force now is just an excuse for people to do nothing because all is as the force wills it. Tyranny, the Empire, barely anyone will stand up against them because they beat the Jedi so what use is the force to the people that it abandoned?

My mother told me to trust in the force before she abandoned me, and I watched Death Troopers murder her. I was eight.

[ she was right to warn him. he doesn't like it. not because there's plenty to see behind the words that aches. it's loss, grief.

he takes a deep breath and reaches out to the force where he's sitting, to recenter himself before he replies. there's nothing he can say about the loss, on why that was written into being. too many children became orphans during the clone wars, more after and cal knows loss deeply but he can't even picture his own mother's face. ] I'm sorry. About your Mother.

But we're not all dead. [ both feel like flimsy platitudes and at the same time, maybe, maybe they'll spark the same spark of hope he'd felt when he'd learned he wasn't alone out there. ]

She made her choice.

[ their universe made it very clear to her that she was not meant to have family. not her parents, not saw, not maia or codo or staven, not akshaya and hadder. everyone she has ever loved has left her, many of them by choice. ]

Whatever Jedi lived are ghosts.

I've met ghosts before and I'm pretty sure I'm not one of them.

I'm glad for you. I hope you get to live a very long life and I hope it is fulfilling and happy and I hope that the Empire is defeated in your lifetime and you get to live free and in peace.

But I don't care about the jedi or the force because they weren't there. Not one.

I hope so too. So that the sacrifices everyone made, all the people who couldn't be there because they were hunted and killed while wanting to do something -- I want to ensure that their sacrifice is worth it.

I'm sorry no one was there for you.

I didn't say no one was there for me.

[ cassian was, bodhi, chirrut, baze, melshi and tonc and sefla, the cretin, all those pilots and foot soldiers that abandoned the decision of the alliance high council entirely and flew into scarif to die for a chance, for hope, because they knew they didn't have a choice but to go because who could live with themselves sitting idly by while the empire ripped the galaxy apart at the seams?

just ordinary people, no jedi. ]