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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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Anakin and the Jedi Babies: A Child's Ink

Context: Anakin and the Jedi Babies, chrono

WARNINGS: underage characters get tattoos/piercings

Word Count: 5680 Rating: T Ships: primarily Gen (Disaster Lineage + Shmi), offscreen JangoShmi, past Obitine, past Anidala ----

Ylliben Skywalker is known as a preternaturally calm and quiet child, serious and pensive.

He jokes. He roughhouses. He is as responsive to tickle attacks and shoulder rides and warm hugs as any other child.

But he is Jetii'Manda, not just Mando'ade, and that fact is impossible to forget.

This is a child that can read before he can speak, a child who can talk at length about 'grassroots antiestablishment propaganda and its influence on rural sociological development' before he can say the words without a lisp. This is a child who looks a man in the eye and tells him to check over his blaster one last time, or it will explode in his hand only minutes into the next engagement. This is a child who is not only willing, but capable of discussing the plausible ramifications of Duke Adonai Kryze's latest decrees with Jaster Mereel himself, while still in possession of all his baby teeth.

(His father is not worried by this. Upset, sometimes, pained and tired, but not worried.)

(His sister only laughs.)

It is, as a result, not as surprising as it could be, when a six-year-old wanders his way into Na-Tsuyon's parlor and asks her what the risks of getting a tattoo at his age are.

"I'm not having that conversation with you unless your parent is here," she says. A few of the other artists crane their heads in her direction, but she waves them off.

"I'm not trying to get it right this moment," Ben protests. "I'm just gathering information. He said that was fine."

"Still need your parent here here," she tells him.

He leaves for about ten minutes, and then comes back with a tall, gangling figure in tow.

"I hear this isn't the place for unaccompanied minors," Knight Skywalker jokes.

(She has heard him called a General. She does not know which war he fought. Nobody does.)

(They no longer ask.)

"Well, he is young," she says, brushing her tentacles back over a shoulder. "I don't let anyone under human-fourteen get tattooed without a parent on hand, and giving preliminary information to anyone under twelve is... generally not worth it, shall we say."

Skywalker smiles, oddly amused in the way he always is when someone points out his children need supervision. "Glad to hear it. Are you the Na-Tsuyon whose name is on the door?"

"I am," she says. "And you're Knight Skywalker."

He's pleased at that. She can feel it in the chemical receptors of her head tails, and wonders. "Yep. So, do we jump right into the discussion or do you need me to sign something, or..."

"No, it's enough that you're here," she assures him. "Now, the main reasons we discourage tattoos for younger sentients is the distortion factor. While the level of pain is much lower than it would have been several millennia ago, and we have the technology to remove ink from below the skin, a tattoo before your body stops growing will distort as you grow and your skin stretches. You would need to come in yearly for touch-ups, to remove the sections that have moved out of place, and fill in where the ink is no longer settled."

"That makes sense," Ylliben says. He looks up at his father, and then back to her. "You'd be able to tell me if any of my choices would be... bad for a Mandalorian, yes?"

"I would," she confirms. She glances up at Knight Skywalker. "I don't suppose you have any history of getting tattoos?"

"No," he says. "I'm from Tatooine, so..."

Different connotations to the very act of it, for him.

She ducks her head in a nod. "I understand. Generally it's easier if the parent has experience in the process, but it's far from mandatory. You're willing to work with the distortion maintenance?"

"Yes'm," Ylliben says, and his father shrugs and gestures, as if the word of a six-year-old is thus law.

"I'll walk you through the details of the process, including the care, relevant allergies, and so on. I don't suppose you have anything in mind already?" she asks.

"I do," he says. He doesn't tell her what it is, yet.

Anakin Skywalker stays there the entire time, and they make an appointment for later in the week.

----

"My buir isn't my only father," Ylliben says quietly, when it comes time to get details on what he's getting tattooed. "I had another father before him. A Jedi. He died, to protect me, and a lot of other people. So, um..."

He shoves a picture to her, the symbol of the Jedi, plain and simple. She looks at him.

"In red," he says, shifting on his feet, looking up at his father and then back down at the page. "For, um, to honor a parent."

"Your first father was a Jedi?" she asks, gentle as she can.

"Mm-hm," Ylliben says. "He died, um... he saved buir from slavery, too, a long time ago. Both my dads were Jedi, and I'm going to be one, too, and so is Sokanth. It's--it's about where I come from, and--"

"You don't have to justify it if you don't want to," Na-Tsuyon tells him, reaching out to place one hand on his. It's very warm and dry, in her opinion, but she finds that most humans are. Mandalorians are some 80% human, or near human.

Nautolan Mandalorians aren't unheard of, but she's a rare one.

Ben sucks in a breath, and says, "I want it up here, on my right shoulder, like a pauldron."

Na-Tsuyon nods, and looks up to Skywalker. "You'll have to sign some papers to approve it, Master Jedi. You approve of the design?"

Skywalker hesitates, and then goes to one knee in front of his son, and speaks so quietly she can only hear "--remind you of the generator complex?"

Whatever Ben's answer is, it's too quiet for her to catch. It satisfies Skywalker, though, and he stands. "Alright, let's see this paperwork."

----

When Ylliben comes in again, a year later to get his slightly-twisting tattoo fixed, it's with Miss Shmi in tow. Na-Tsuyon greets the middle Skywalker, for all that she's still not entirely sure how to address the girl. "I heard you've been attending the university at Sundari. Some kind of engineering?"

"Mechanical, yes," Shmi says, oddly soft. "I'm going to spend another year to specialize in vehicular engineering. I'd like to design starships, since I already know how to fix them."

"A worthy goal," Na-Tsuyon says, as she leads them over to one of the stations and starts sanitizing Ylliben's inked shoulder. She doesn't entirely see why a university education is needed for something that, in her opinion, an apprenticeship could more thoroughly cover. It certainly worked well enough Na-Tsuyon herself. "You're on vacation, then?"

"I am," Shmi confirms. "It's... unfortunate that Anakin couldn't be here a the same time, but we'll see each other in a few days."

Ylliben fidgets for a bit as his jedi symbol is fixed, and then finally asks, "Ori'vod can approve new tattoos, right?"

"Sokanth, no. Shmi..." Na-Tsuyon looks up at her. "I have no idea if you're listed as his legal guardian anywhere, and I'd need proof of that."

"Secondary to Anakin," Shmi confirms. "Ben would like this to be a surprise for Ani."

Ben pulls out a sheet, with a careful design on it, and presses it into Na-Tsuyon's lap when she lifts the tattoo gun and he's not at risk of ruining his own ink. It's simpler than the Jedi symbol, though it's two colors instead of one.

"It's the Open Circle Fleet," Ben says, shy in a way she's given to understand he usually isn't. She thinks his shyer moments may be connected to admitting to emotion, something that he's tying quite closely to his choice of Tattoos. "I thought, um, since I'm already--already honoring one buir, then, er..."

"The Open Circle Fleet was under the command of my brother's Jedi Master," Shmi explains, one hand on Ben's. "And I am given to understand that the symbol was designed as a subtle nod, of sorts, to the two of them as a team. Ben's looking to honor Anakin as he has his first father."

Ben looks down at his lap, and doesn't meet Na-Tsuyon's eyes.

"Bring me proof of guardianship," she tells them. "And I'll make sure you get it finished early enough that the bacta comes off before Knight Skywalker makes it home."

She holds true to her word, and talks her way into being there to see the reunion and reveal.

The emotions that cross Skywalker's face are complicated and unexpected in ways that she can't identify.

Then it's all too simple, because he starts crying on little Ylliben in the middle of the hangar.

----

It doesn't take a full year for Ylliben to come in for another set. It's only five months, maybe six. He has a sketch again, a geometric design of something she doesn't recognize, but still pings as familiar for some reason.

"It needs to be the right shade of blue," he tells her, serious as anything. Knight Skwyalker is right next to him, smiling all soft and indulgent, and maybe a little sad. "It's for Soka."

Oh. This is based on her facial markings, then. Or... what they will be, maybe. This doesn't look quite like what she's seen on the girl, but everyone knows little Ben is more touched by visions than his father and sister.

Na-Tsuyon thinks she knows where this is going. "The same blue as her montrals and lekku?"

Ben shakes his head. "No, 501st blue."

Or not.

"It's close, but a little darker and more saturated," Skywalker offers, and shrugs when she looks his way. "It's a long story, but the 501st was the legion I led before I arrived at Mandalore. It had a specific shade of blue assigned for armor paint, so legions could easily identify each other in the field."

That's... odd. She doesn't ask for more detail, though. It's not her business. "Where do you want this one?"

Ben shows her his left forearm and frames a section about two-thirds the length of it, along the outer side. Like a vambrace.

She has a feeling all these symbols will be on his armor, once he's old enough for it.

"Let's go through my inks and see which one will work best," she says, and does not comment on the rest.

----

When Ylliben comes in again, a few months before his next touch-up appointment, he doesn't have an image on hand. His father is trailing him again, and Na-Tsuyon has a guess.

"Time for Shmi?" she asks.

Ben ducks his head, flushing and not meeting Na-Tsuyon's eyes. "Yes'm."

"I thought as much," she says, and smiles at Skywalker. "General."

"Don't start."

"There have been oh so many rumors flying since the last Jedi run-in, you know."

"I don't care," he grouses, dropping into a seat. "Hells, a man takes emergency command for one battle, and it's all anyone can talk about."

"You ended a civil war, sir."

Ben giggles into his hands as Skywalker groans and slaps a hand over his eyes.

"No respect," the man complains. "Ben, be nice to me, I'm your dad."

"Nuh-uh," Ben says. "I know all the most embarrassing secrets."

"A cruel child," Skywalker accuses. "Ruthless."

"You're the one raising me," Ben says, swinging his legs back and forth. He's got plastoid training vambraces, now, and greaves that clink against the legs of the chair.

"Somehow, yes." Skywalker sighs, with great drama and all such things. He drags himself up to sitting. "Anyway. Moving on."

"Do you have something in mind already?" Na-Tsuyon asks.

"Binary suns," Ben says. "Just two overlapping circles, coin-sized, one bigger than the other, in sunset colors. In a gradient, with a sort of... flare to it? Halo? The... oh! The stellar corona. Buir knows the colors better."

"I want to see what you have to work with before I sketch out the design," Skywalker says. "But yeah, sort of pink and yellow and peachy."

"I can do almost any color," Na-Tsuyon promises. "Especially on fair human skin like Ylliben's. I won't have a problem getting those to show up the way I would on myself."

Na-Tsuyon is a color most would call 'aquamarine.' She's a light shade between blue and green, and much as she likes her skin, it's an absolute pain to make red and orange show up.

She can do it.

It's just annoying.

Ben asks for this one to be on the inside of the left forearm, high and opposite to the widest point of the mark for Sokanth.

----

"Can I see your fonts?"

Ben's alone, for the moment, but Na-Tsuyon knows that when he makes his decision, his father or Shmi will approve it without question. It's no harm to let him browse.

"Basic, Mando'a, or Huttese alphabet?" she asks. "Or something more esoteric?"

"Mando'a, please."

He's eight years old, now. He's still far younger than most of her clients, but she's long gotten used to him. Even when he's acting like a child, there's something to it that doesn't quite sit right. 'Born middle-aged,' a few of the other civilians on base had joked.

She wasn't sure if she thought it was just a joke, these days.

Na-Tsuyon passes her fonts book to the boy, and settles back in her chair for a long afternoon of running numbers. He, meanwhile, goes to sit in the lobby, legs still not long enough to reach the floor, paging through with unwavering, unsettling gravitas.

Half an hour, and then Ben returns.

He points to a font. "This one."

"What's it going to say?"

"Vode An," he tells her, as serious as can be. "In black, over my heart. It's important."

"It's a fairly common phrase," she notes idly. "Should be quick."

She doesn't expect much of a response, and certainly not the one she gets.

"It was different for them," Ben mutters, not looking at her. She sees him twisting the toes of one shoe into the floor. "It was... it was different. I can't talk about it. They were brothers, actually brothers, and they had--they had nothing, they were basically slaves, but--"

"You don't have to talk about it," Na-Tsuyon assures him, a hand on his. "You don't have to explain it to me. If it means something to you, that's all that matters. I just need you to be sure."

"And buir to sign the paperwork," Ben quips, smiling at her. She notices that several teeth are missing. It's cute. "You need that too."

"That too," she agrees.

When Skywalker shows up, he hears what it is that Ben would like, and makes a few suggestions for a border--a gear that sounded too much like the Republic's symbol for a Mando'a phrase, a building on stilts from a city she's never heard of on a planet that rings no bells, a human genetic strand for reasons she can't imagine--most of which are soundly ignored, until Skywalker sketched out a stylized ship of... some sort.

"Venator," Skywalker says, and taps the image. "Nobody will know it except us, but it'll mean something to you, for them."

Ben looks at it for a long moment, and then takes the scrap of flimsi with Mando'a on it and lays it overtop the center of the sketch.

He stares at it for a few long moments, and then nods sharply and pushes it to Na-Tsuyon. "This, please."

He's such a polite child.

It makes it easier to ignore the more confusing parts of his presence in her parlor.

----

"Hi!"

Sokanth Skywalker is in her shop.

That's new.

"Hello," Na-Tsuyon says. "I didn't know you were thinking of getting ink."

"I'm not," she says, hopping up on a stool across the counter. She holds out a hand, and Na-Tsuyon clasps it with bemusement. "But you guys do piercings too, right?"

"We do," she confirms. "You're... ten?"

"Yep!" Sokanth chirps, kicking her legs back and forth. "Is that old enough to get these without permission, or should I ask my dad to come by?"

"At least twelve for piercings without in-person, signed approval from a parent or guardian," Na-Tsuyon says. "Though if you're anything like your brother, I don't imagine that'll be a problem for you."

Sokanth grins at her, bright and a little wild. "Nose, bottom lip, eyebrow. I don't know the actual terms, but I know what I want. Which do you suggest getting first?"

"I'd say nostril," Na-Tsuyon tells her. Most species even vaguely humanoid kick off with the ears, but that's not exactly an option for a togruta. "Let me get a chart and you can figure out what type of piercing you want, and what kind of hoop or stud. I don't actually do the piercings myself, though. Comm the General if you want this done today, though."

"Thank you~!"

----

Nostril, labret, and a horizontal brow, the piercer notes down at the end of the latest Skywalker visit. Na-Tsuyon wonders if the brow piercing will look strange with Soka's markings, and then doesn't think on it further.

----

Ylliben, almost nine, is silent as he gets the touch-up.

His father isn't here. Neither is Shmi. It's pre-approved, signed permission and all, but it's still odd that neither of Ben's adults is here.

Sokanth is, but she's almost as quiet as Ben is.

Na-Tsuyon has heard the rumors, but she's not going to say anything. She's not. It's not her business.

"Ben," Soka speaks up, towards the end of the appointment. "Ask her the thing."

Ben shakes his head. "No way."

"She knows more about tattoos and how important they are than anyone!" Soka urges. "Ask her!"

"Do you want to wait for your father?" Na-Tsuyon suggests.

"No!" both immediately yelp.

She pauses, glad the needle hadn't been to skin, and levels a look at Ben. He flushes and settles down, mumbling an apology for jerking as he had. She goes back to fixing the stretch of the binary suns tattoo.

Soka shifts in her seat, watching them intently.

"Shmi's upset with buir," Ben suddenly says. He doesn't meet Na-Tsuyon's eyes. "I'm... I don't know if you heard what's going on."

"I do my best to avoid rumors," she says, keeping her voice as neutral as she can. "I did hear that the Mand'alor is about to have a grandchild, and something about an upcoming wedding. That much has been announced officially."

"Dad freaked out," Soka says, legs kicking back and forth. "He's happy for her, and he's fine with Jango being the other parent, but it kicked off a... philosophical crisis? Ben, what do you think?"

"Metaphysical, maybe," Ben mumbles. "Definitely existential."

"And he told Shmi some stuff and now she's hurt that he didn't tell her before and it's all a mess," Soka finishes. "So, uh, we don't... want either of them involved. Until. Um. Until that's settled."

Na-Tsuyon bites back any deeper questions she might have. "Alright. I won't pry. What did you want to know from me?"

"I had a plan for what I was going to get next," Ben says, staring at the fold of fabric over his sister's knees in lieu of something more pertinent. "A peace lily, on the inside of my wrist, for..."

"You don't have to tell me," she reminds him.

Ben bites his lip, and closes his eyes, and breathes in deep. Neither of the girls comment.

"She was important," Ben finally says. "In the big memories. But she doesn't... she's not... she isn't here. And Jango is. And he's marrying Shmi, and they're having a baby, so I should put a mark down for him first, right?"

"He's gonna be Mand'alor, too," Soka adds.

"He is," Na-Tsuyon says, as neutral as she can.

"He's joining the family," Ben says, his gaze fixed on the floor in front of him. "And there's going to be a baby, and that's. That's important."

"There's no order that you have to get things in," Na-Tsuyon assures him, squeezing his shoulder in a light gesture of support. "You've prioritized family so far, so I think it would make sense to get a mark for the coming cousin, at least. Unless... is the lily for your birth mother?"

Ben's face twists, uncomfortable for some reason she can't begin to guess at.

"No," Ben says.

"Skyguy's Jedi Master did almost marry her when they were younger," Soka explains. She glances at Na-Tsuyon and then away and at the wall. "They had a whole dramatic 'forbidden romance' thing going on, 'cause Jedi aren't supposed to get married. She died before Ben came into the picture, though."

It's a neat enough explanation.

It feels fake, but much of what the Skywalkers say about their pasts does.

She's sure it's true in some way. In some perspective. From... from a certain point of view, maybe.

"Alright, then," Na-Tsuyon dismisses. "All things aside, I would suggest adjusting your order of tattoo acquisition, but there's no particular requirement by Mandalorian standards. Your choices are rarely anything that intersects with set traditions, nor do you have a historic clan or house that comes with mandates of the sort. It seems that you're leaning towards prioritizing something for the new additions to your family, though; you've made it clear that these things are important to you, and I think you should pursue it if you're comfortable with it."

Ben nods, eyes somewhere far off.

"It'll make him flustered," Soka pushes, kicking lightly at her brother's ankle. "Jan-Jan's still worried you don't like him anymore."

"He is not," Ben huffs. "He's just scared of buir."

"Nah, your opinion matters too," Soka argues. "And you've been avoiding everyone 'cuz Skyguy freaked out and Shmi's upset, so Jango's worried you're mad at him about the baby happening. If you get a tattoo about him, he might actually cry."

"Is that why you want me to take that route?"

"Not the only one," Soka says, utterly guileless. She blinks at him, bright and innocent. "But I definitely do want to see the future Mand'alor crying because you made it obvious he's family now. It'll be funny."

Ben sighs, very clearly being dramatic about it. "Soka, I'm not going to pick a tattoo based on what you think will be funny."

"Imagine his face, though."

Na-Tsuyon doesn't comment at the expressions Ben makes as he very clearly does exactly that.

"Well, kriff," Ben sighs, and Soka giggles at the swear. "I'll have to get a tattoo for Jango, then."

----

Ben is already nine by the time he comes in with his father to actually get the tattoo for Jango's addition to the family. The choice he makes isn't particularly imaginative, but it'll suit well enough. A mythosaur skull, the symbol of the Haat Mando'ade, in a grey the same shade as beskar.

There actually are traditions to this one, specific adjustments to the framing and stylization meant to indicate how one fits into the faction, but also how one is associated with the Mand'alor. Ben is family, and close family, but not related by blood, nor adopted directly by the Mand'alor, rather a relative through the riduur be alor.

Na-Tsuyon explains each element and adjustment in detail, lets them process and agree, until she's taking a needle to Ben's skin once more.

"Will you be getting one for the coming child as well?" Na-Tsuyon asks while shading in a curve of bone.

"Not yet," Ben tells her, quiet and oddly contemplating. "I need to meet them, first. Figure out who they are."

"Sensible," she agrees. There's the usual oddity in his phrasing, and she ignores it as ever. "Did you tell Fett that you were getting this?"

"No, it's intended as a surprise," Ben says, watching her work.

She can almost feel the coming question.

It does not come from the human she expects.

"Do you know any Mando tattoo artists in Little Keldabe?" the General asks, voice low.

She finishes the line she's on, lifts the needle away from skin, and turns to him. "You're leaving for Coruscant?"

"Not yet," Skywalker says. He meets her eyes evenly. "But... soon. The time's coming. A year, maybe two. The Force will let us know when the time is right."

"Uh-huh," Na-Tsuyon acknowledges this. She does not comment further. The Force is not her wheelhouse. If they think it wants them back on Coruscant, with the Temple, then that's what they believe.

"These are Mando work," Skywalker continues, almost painfully earnest, "and I'd like to ensure whoever maintains them until Ben stops growing knows the right way to handle Mando art."

It's really not that different from a standard tattoo artist, but she's a little charmed anyway. Enchanted, almost. The man really does care.

"I can get you some names and addresses next time you stop by," she promises him. "It's been a few years since I checked in on their work, and I'll need to look them over before I make any recommendations."

He smiles at her, relieved in a manner she finds appallingly open for a Jedi like himself.

Ben mimics his father.

----

She gets to attend the wedding, months later.

The food is very, very good.

(Ben waits until the reception to show off his new tattoo, and the future Mand'alor does, in fact, cry.)

(So does Shmi.)

(So does their eight-week-old daughter, but that's probably unrelated to the tattoo.)

----

"Do you think getting a belly button ring would be good?"

Na-Tsuyon doesn't lift her head from her paperwork when Sokanth poses the question to the piercer. She's in for the horizontal brow bar, this time, and the labret is going to be somewhere a few months down the line.

"That's really up to you," the piercer says. His name is Hujnak, and he's a Devaronian that's been working here since Na-Tsuyon opened up the place. She loves him dearly, but he stole the last piece of cake and for that he will have no help with difficult customers for the next fortnight.

Or until she gets bored.

"I'm leaning towards 'no,' but I'm not sure," Soka muses. "I like the idea of it, but I feel like it might get snagged on things more easily. Plus, it's going to be a point of higher damage and pressure if I get a gut punch. It's one of the parts of my body I'm never really going to armor up, you know?"

They do know. There have been screaming matches about all the Jedi's refusal to wear enough armor on many occasions. The Jedi prioritize their agility to such a degree that armorweave is more reasonable than actual armor, in their opinion. This is an opinion that Fett and Mereel both take issue with.

At great volume.

(Shmi has vambraces, a gorget, and greaves, Na-Tsuyon knows. Some of it was exchanged at the wedding. Shmi doesn't wear much armor, certainly less than even the children. Shmi, crucially, isn't a warrior or otherwise planning to see battle.)

"Then I would say it may be best to hold off."

"Phooey," Soka says, though she doesn't seem particularly upset. "Ben's gonna be cooler than me forever, then."

"You think tattoos are cooler than piercings?" Hujnak challenges. "I'm offended."

"He can just get more," Soka protests. "Without it looking weird or getting dangerous, I mean."

Hujnak hums, noncommittal. "And you're worried about being cooler than the younger brother you have told me is, and I quote, the biggest nerd ever?"

"Well, yeah," Sokanth scoffs. "He's gonna start acting older than me as soon as he thinks he can get away with it. I gotta have something to hold over his head, you know?"

"Seeing as you are the older sibling..."

"Ehhhh..."

Nope.

Not paying attention.

----

"These are House Kryze colors."

Ylliben's breath hitches.

He is ten. He doesn't seem ready to provide answers. She turns to the father instead.

"Will that be a problem?" the general asks, calm and even.

"Yes," she says, and Ben slumps. She continues, because this is her job, and for a reason. "Unless you have a ready justification for when House Kryze asks, yes, it will be a problem. If it were a landscape or an animal, it wouldn't matter, but the pairing of the colors and the peace lily is an explicit statement of loyalty to Adonai and his heir, Satine. Unless you've suddenly decided to adjust your political stance to total pacifism instead of your Jedi approach, or have another reason to take on House Kryze colors, I'd warn against it at all, and would refuse to perform the work myself."

Ylliben's eyes are fixed somewhere behind her, and shining wetly.

"Okay," the general says. "Ben, do you have any other pallettes in mind?

"These were her colors," Ben whispers, and then he swallows thickly. "I just..."

"Simplify," Skywalker suggests. He fiddles with a necklace half-hidden in his Jedi layers; the japor one is visible, but a dull gold glint is all Na-Tsuyon can see of the other before it's tucked away again. "She'd understand, yeah? There's political ramifications. Dangerous ones, especially to you."

Interesting thing to say about a woman who, by Soka's earlier statements, died well before Ben was born.

They could at least try to stop dropping hints about their oddities. She doesn't want to know more.

"Lilac," Ben finally decides. "And... pale silver. With a filigree pattern in the shading?"

"I can do that," Na-Tsuyon promises.

She does not ask further.

----

"We're moving to Coruscant in a month."

Na-Tsuyon's head snaps up, head tails jolting almost painfully with the movement.

Sokanth is getting her labret, finally. She's gossiping as Hujnak prepares the tools, as usual, and Na-Tsuyon tries to ignore it when they Skywalkers do that, she does, but...

"You're leaving," she repeats, feeling oddly blank.

"Um... yeah?" Soka answers. She scratches at one stubby montral. "We've talked about it before. I thought you knew."

"I didn't realize it was so soon," Na-Tsuyon defends. She's more upset than she should be. "I thought you'd be waiting until the little princess was older."

Sokanth blinks at her, slow and... not judging, no. Evaluating, maybe.

"I'm almost thirteen," she says, slow and deliberate and heavy. "And Ben's eleven. There's no hard age limit for becoming a padawan, but I'm getting into the peak years for getting chosen, and I've been living here instead of in the Temple. I haven't had years to impress a potential Master like the others. That might not matter; sometimes a Master sees their future student and just knows, but... I need to have other Jedi to spar with, not just Skyguy and Ben. And Ben's visions are getting stronger, and Dad was never that good with his own in the first place, so he's worried about being able to help at all. We could stay longer, but..."

She trails off, and shrugs, and the weighted air disappears. "It's not the same thing as a verd'goten, at all, but it's about the same age, you know? I should be in the Temple for it."

"What would a verd'goten equivalent be?" Hujnak prompts, when Na-Tsuyon fails to find her words. "Being an adult and equal member and all such things?"

"Knighthood," Soka answers immediately. "Dad got knighted when he was twenty, but that's really young, usually. His master was knighted at twenty-five, which was a bit late, but apparently there was a whole dramatic thing going on there that Dad never got all the details about."

"Becoming a Padawan is a sign that your teachers see you as someone that is ready to take on the responsibilities of a Jedi, yes?" Hujnak asks. "That you may not be ready to go out on your own, but that you're old enough to understand your oaths and choose how to follow them, and to protect others?"

Sokanth considers this, and then nods. "Yeah, I guess it's similar to using the verd'goten to gauge if someone's ready to swear the Resol'nare, that way. Still not moving out, and just about entering an apprenticeship, but enough of an adult to make the choice of how to change the world."

"I think most cultures have something like that around the same age," Hujnak comments. "Some do it a bit later in the teens, but it's usually around your age that most... well, most cultures who age at the 'human standard' rate--"

Na-Tsuyon can't help the reflexive snort of derision. Neither can Soka. Hujnak, the closest to human in the room and yet still very much not, smiles like this is exactly what he intended.

"--most who age at that rate do have it somewhere in that eleven-to-seventeen range, I'd think."

Soka shrugs. "Yeah, well. Still gotta go to the Temple for it, you know?"

"Are you going to take the verd'goten at all?" Na-Tsuyon asks, suddenly a little desperate to keep the Skywalkers here, with Mandalore and all its people, just a fraction of a moment longer.

"I don't think so," Soka muses. "I've been thinking about it, but I should probably talk about it with Jango, yeah?"

"Yeah," Na-Tsuyon says, and feels like she's swallowing down around rocks.

----

As it turns out, the timing is very deliberate. Three weeks later, Jaster transfers the title of Mand'alor to his son.

(Though Na-Tsuyon does not know this, twenty-six is older than Jango was when he lost the title, once upon another life.)

There is a week of festivity. There is food, and drink, and dancing. Some people get married. Some people make announcements of impending births. Some people reveal songs they composed in preparation for this very day.

For a week, Mandalore celebrates a new king.

Then, the Jedi and his children leave.

(Ben gives Na-Tsuyon a hug before he goes.)

(She tries to understand why she feels like she's losing something when he does.)

#Obi Wan Kenobi #Anakin Skywalker #Ahsoka Tano #Shmi Skywalker #JangoShmi #Jango Fett #Disaster Lineage #star wars #time travel #de aging #mandalore #mandalorian culture #phoenix posts #Anakin and the Jedi Babies #tattoos #original characters #outsider pov #this is part one of three I think #it's two in the diddly darn morning and I am going to bed

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jaigeye · 3 years

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My name is Remington, I'm a lesbian and I use they/them pronouns. I'm a writer and an artist. Find my work on AO3! Feel free to share, and check out my writing tag!

single chapter works:

nostalgia is a well intentioned wound. - leia organa & ahsoka tano. / on dagobah, ahsoka trains the grieving leia in the ways of the jedi. (reblog here.)

how to disappear completely. - jango fett & mace windu. / jango rubs a hand over his throat where his head was severed from his body. some pain lasts beyond a thousand deaths. jango is stuck in a loop that just won't stop.

things you people wouldn't believe. - vader attempts to resurrect padmé amidala. it fails. her body remains cold and dead. upstairs, a KX-series security droid stirs from its slumber. / (reblog here.)

politicians in my eyes. - fox & palpatine. / fox looks down at his armor, awash with blood. there are no identifying marks on him anymore. he's as red as Coruscant.

in loving memory. - garsa fwip was once a dancer in jabbas palace. she does not trust the new daimyo of tatooine to be any different.

heavyweight champion. - luke skywalker & anakin skywalker. / the burden of his father is the heaviest weight luke has ever carried.

blame. - commander thorn, commander fox. / thorn is dead. fox isn't-- at least not yet. a character study of commander fox. (reblog here.)

signs for people who understand. - finn & boba fett. / the story would begin as it did the last time; with a little boy in a sea of blank white plastoid. (reblog here.)

what is and what should never be. AU. - din djarin vs the xenomorph. / din djarin has been offered a lucrative job opportunity that he can't turn down. the xenomorph he's meant to exterminate proves to be a lot more than he signed up for. (reblog here.)

my hands are yours. - padmé amidala/sabé. / padmé and sabé behead anakin skywalker. (reblog here.)

the wild hunt. - the ewoks hunt the stormtroopers down on endor. horror. (reblog here.)

shadowbox. AU. - boba fett/din djarin. / (his dark materials au.) boba fett claims that he has no daemon. he's always been a good liar. (reblog here.)

been waiting so long. - beru whitesun/peli motto. / the recently widowed beru whitesun has been having issues with her moisture vaporators. peli doesn't repair farm equipment- but she might be able to make an exception just this once. (reblog here.)

the waves have come. - qi'ra & darth maul. / darth maul teaches his apprentice how to kill a sith, the same way she killed her first master. (reblog here.)

the butcher. - padmé amidala/anakin skywalker. / padmé comes to mustafar with a knife up her sleeve. she cannot let anakin live, but she can let him die. (reblog here.)

forsaking all the rest. - padmé amidala/aayla secura. / at a senate gala, padmé disguises herself as a handmaiden to eavesdrop. she spends the evening with the handsome jedi aayla secura. (reblog here.)

last night i dreamt i was dead. - padmé amidala/aayla secura. / padmé was disguised as a handmaiden when she met aayla secura. she thought her secret was safe- until the jedi was assigned as amidala's bodyguard. (reblog here.)

how to decay gracefully. - padmé amidala. / hear the grand tale of amidala, across the stars. (reblog here.)

for all who were not forgiven. - cere junda & finn. / finn seeks council with the world-weary ex-jedi cere junda who insists, despite the breadth of her knowledge, that she is not suited for taking on another padawan.

bird's eye view. - the armorer & grogu. / the mandalorian did not survive; his foundling was returned to the covert along with his memory, passed on to the last survivor to watch over him.

an instrument of memory. - din djarin & grogu. / din seeks council with the ghosts of the darksaber.

like a sibling in my arms. - fives & echo, fives & rex, fives & ahsoka tano. / fives is gone but not forgotten. (reblog here)

the gang kidnaps lando calrissian. - boba fett & lando calrissian, part of the odd times at the krayt's spa round robin series. (reblog here.)

nostalgia. - saw gerrera/ct-7567 - rex. / lost in a hostile universe, rex is hungry and alone, nameless. saw gerrera remembers him.

calm on the valley. - chirrut imwe/baze malbus. / baze is becoming one of the monks of the whills. to become one with the many, he must cut his hair. there is only one he trusts to ask for help. (reblog here.)

i will come in fast & low. - leia organa/amilyn holdo. / throughout the years of dutiful, thankless work, leia grapples with the choices she made in life. amilyn holdo stays by her side through all of it.

piece by little piece. - fennec shand & boba fett. / fennec was given a second chance at life. second chances hurt. healing isn't linear, and her wounds were grave. boba fett remained by her side throughout her recovery. (reblog here.)

the hands of a working man. - boba fett x din djarin. / Boba looks at the slopes of the Mandalorians helmet, silver and shiny as a knife, and asks him; "How many people have you killed?" (reblog here.)

multi-chapter works:

while there is still time. - boba fett/din djarin. 12/12 chapters, 83k words. / (reblog here.)

stuck in the system. - boba fett & fennec shand. 5/5 chapters, 20k words. / how boba fett survived the sarlacc pit, and the friend who saved his life thereafter. (reblog here.)

before the otherness came. AU. - obi-wan kenobi/CC-2224 - cody. 5/13? chapters, 30k words. / cody and obi-wan are knights of coruscant's round table, and it is their duty to hunt werewolves. one day the danger comes too close for comfort. (reblog here.)

just the two of us - boba fett/lando calrissian. 3/3 chapters, 15k words. / a gambler, a bounty hunter, and a heist. what could go wrong? (reblog here.)

a song for a lover of long time ago. - boba fett/lando calrissian. 4/6 chapters, 18k words. / boba and lando reconnect years after their disastrous falling out during the events of ESB. as king of tatooine, boba fett needs allies. (reblog here.)

the dark end of the street. - captain rex/original togruta character. 3/3 chapters. / when rex is given shore leave on coruscant in the aftermath of his injury, he must find his place in the world when off the battlefield. the handsome chef at 79's is happy to help. (reblog here.)

the rubicon. - fennec shand/enfys nest. 6/6 chapters, 20k words. / enfys nest swore an oath to hunt the five syndicates to extinction. fennec shand has worked for every last one of them. (reblog here.)

#my writing #fic recs #writing #:D #i FINALLY!! MADE ONE OF THESE #fic masterpost #god i never realized i wrote this much LMFAO

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novelmonger · 2 years

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Thoughts on Jedi Apprentice 6: The Uncertain Path

Like the previous book, I would often skip over this one when rereading the series as a kid. I don't know if anyone else is/was like this, but when I was younger, I would have a really hard time reading parts of stories where the POV character was breaking the rules, getting in trouble, or going through something embarrassing/humiliating. I guess you could say I identified a little too closely with whoever's POV I was in, so it felt like I was the one getting in trouble or being embarrassed. I used to skip or skim through the rule-breaking portions of the first few Harry Potter books, for example ^^' It was too much vicarious embarrassment and shame for little me to handle!

Anyway, I'm really curious about this book, because I remember even less about it than the previous one.

Jedi Apprentice #6: The Uncertain Path by Jude Watson

Chapter 1

We pick up shortly after we left off last time - Obi-Wan is fighting with the Young against the Elders, hoping to finally put an end to the centuries-long war on Melida/Daan. Their latest plan is to sabotage and hopefully destroy the Elders' small fleet of starfighters, taking out their most powerful weapons. Obi-Wan, Cerasi, Nield, and a young girl named Roenni sneak into the hanger and successfully sabotage the starfighters, though not without alerting the guards and engaging in a desperate shootout before escaping through the underground tunnels again. But the mission is a success, and they might just have succeeded in ending the war, too.

Now that Obi-Wan has forsaken his Jedi training, he's finding the Force elusive and hard to tap into. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Can't help but notice the similarities to what happens to him much later in life.... "The Force had left him. Leave you, the Force cannot. Constant, it is. If find it you cannot, look inside, not out, you must. Yes, Yoda, Obi-Wan thought. Look inside, I should. But how can I when I'm in the middle of a war?"

Chapter 2

Oh, now here's a surprise. Qui-Gon is back in the Temple, helping out with some lightsaber training. And guess who he's sparring with? Bruck Chun, the guy who got Obi-Wan in trouble way back in the first book! Apparently, Bruck is now in the same position Obi-Wan was back then - about to turn thirteen, desperately hoping that Qui-Gon will pick him to be a Padawan. But... "He would never choose a Padawan again."

This chapter is just so heartbreaking to read. At every turn, Qui-Gon is distracted with thoughts of Obi-Wan - wondering what he's doing now, wondering what he could have done differently so that things wouldn't have come to this.... You can practically feel his heart bleeding out and freezing over at the same time. He talks with Yoda about what happened, and to his surprise and discomfort, Yoda gently admonishes him for how he handled the situation.

"A hard choice it was, Qui-Gon. Yet willing are you to blame your Padawan. Place the choice before him you did: forsake Jedi training, or children die, friends are betrayed. Thought you understood a boy's heart, I did. ... Impulsive you were yourself as a student. ... Led by the heart, many times you were. And wrong, many times you were as well. This I remember. ... Commitment you had. Absolute it was. Does this mean that to question, others must not? Like you always, they must be?" - Wow. As usual, Yoda cuts right through to the heart of the matter. I really like that, even though Yoda is the leader of the Jedi Council and thus upholds the Jedi Code, he doesn't actually put following the rules in higher priority than anything else. Depending on the circumstances, breaking the rules might actually be the right course of action. He also mentions that prioritizing bringing Tahl back and not staying to ensure peace came to Melida/Daan was his counsel, not his orders. Qui-Gon could have stayed.

Chapter 4

Apparently, Qui-Gon has been called before the Council more times than most Jedi Knights. Guess he really is a rebel XD

The reason the Council has called Qui-Gon to see them is to assign him and Tahl to investigate a string of petty thefts in the Temple. This is unheard-of behavior for Jedi, so needs to be treated seriously. Tahl is recovering, but has learned that she will never regain her sight, despite the skill of the Temple healers. Both of them suspect one reason the Council wants them, specifically, to investigate is to keep their minds off their recent problems. I actually didn't remember that this happened now; I thought it was in the next book. But here we go! I was wondering what Qui-Gon was going to do all alone.

I also forgot that Tahl has been given a modified protocol droid, 2JTJ (or TooJay), to help her as she learns to deal with her new disability. But it turns out he's almost more of a liability and a frustration for her.

"'You see, Master Tahl, you spilled the tea,' the droid said. 'I spilled it because you startled me, you hunk of recycled tin,' Tahl sputtered. 'And don't call me Master Tahl.' 'Yes, certainly, sir,' the droid replied. 'I'm not a sir. I'm a female. Who's the blind one here?'" - I like this droid already XD

"And he didn't want to discuss his Padawan with Tahl, or even Yoda. No one knew how much of himself he had invested in the boy in such a short time. No one knew how Obi-Wan's decision had grieved him." - ಥ﹏ಥ *sad Jedi noises*

Chapter 5

Meanwhile, back on Melida/Daan, the Young have been struggling to establish their new government. They've been destroying the old war monuments and mausoleums that commemorated the ongoing hatred between the two peoples. They're also facing the dire situation of food, housing, and heating shortages. Obi-Wan is in charge of a squad of Young who are going around gathering up everyone's weapons. Fewer weapons on the streets will lower the chances of another war breaking out and undoing all the progress they've made. This time, they go to gather weapons from a group of stubborn Melida holdouts - one of whom, it turns out, is Wehutti, Cerasi's father. He doesn't recognize her; they haven't seen each other since the last ceasefire. It's a truly sobering moment.

"The wind picked up, cutting through their cloaks and making them shiver. Still, they kept their palms together. Obi-Wan felt the warmth of Cerasi's skin. He could almost feel the beating of her blood against his." - See, it's moments like these that make me wonder if Cerasi is supposed to be a love interest of sorts. They're not holding hands, by the way, just pressing their palms together. It's a sort of special handshake the Young have developed as a sign of solidarity or camaraderie or whatever.

Chapter 8

Things haven't been going too well for either of our heroes. As winter approaches, the situation on Melida/Daan has been deteriorating, because Nield has been prioritizing the destruction of the old war monuments over making sure people have shelter and food for the winter ahead. Cerasi and Obi-Wan talk about how the whole planet's history will be lost, because after years of war, the only family records remaining are in the Halls of Evidence that are now being destroyed. But they're kind of stuck, because the Young aren't too popular among the older generations, so if there's any sort of disunity among themselves, they're liable to crumble from within. Meanwhile, the petty thefts at the Temple have escalated into vandalism of the senior training rooms and theft of lightsabers - much more serious crimes. The Temple goes on high alert, and suspicion and rumors spread like wildfire.

"'Get lost!' Tahl yelled over her shoulder. 'I'm in a hurry!' 'I cannot get lost, sir,' TooJay replied, hurrying after them. 'I'm a navigation droid.'" - I love the little blips of comic relief TooJay offers us in the middle of two very dire plotlines XD

At first, it only seems like things are getting worse. The next theft they discover is the healing crystals, a priceless Jedi artifact that has been under the tightest security during this time. It's clear beyond all doubt now that there's nothing random about these thefts. The pattern is clearly moving deeper and deeper into the Temple, undermining layer after layer of security. But then, when Qui-Gon and Tahl return to his quarters to plan their next move, Tahl notices the smell of someone other than Qui-Gon and herself, the only people who should have been in there recently. They may have just found a way to track down the culprit!

Chapter 9

"The emotion swamped him. He missed being a Jedi. He missed his sure, strong connection to the Force. He had lost that. It was almost as though he were a first-year student again, aware of something he could feel, but unable to control it. He missed the sense of purpose he felt at the Temple, the sense that he knew exactly where he was going and was content to follow his path. And he missed Qui-Gon most of all. That connection was over. Obi-Wan could return to the Temple. Yoda would welcome him, he knew. Whether he could be a Jedi again would be up to the Council to decide. Others had left and come back. But Qui-Gon would not take him back, nor would he welcome him. The Jedi Master was through with him. And, Obi-Wan knew, he had every right to be. Once broken, such profound trust cannot be regained. ... 'From what you've told me of the Jedi, no one will blame you.' ... 'One will blame me,' he replied. 'Always.'" - 。゜゜(´Ｏ`) ゜゜。

One thing I find really interesting and encouraging is this mention that some people have left the Jedi Order and then returned. I think we get so used to people like Xanatos or Anakin, who forsake the Jedi ways completely and become agents of pure evil, we assume that once you give up that life, you're basically a Sith or something. I mean...obviously we all know that Obi-Wan's going to be a Jedi again; this isn't an AU. But he's not the only one who has strayed from the path. There's a precedent for Jedi turning aside, then realizing the error of their ways and returning - and maybe even being welcomed back into the fold. It's not like you get one chance and then if you blow it, too bad.

Chapter 10

Qui-Gon and Tahl have been interviewing the Temple students, trying to track down the culprit. Finally, they interview Bant, Obi-Wan's best friend from his time in the Temple. And Tahl catches a whiff of the same smell she detected in Qui-Gon's room before!

Ultimately, Qui-Gon and Tahl agree that timid, tender-hearted eleven-year-old Bant is probably not responsible for this well-calculated string of attacks against the Temple's security. And then, when they go into the lake room, Tahl catches the same smell again. What she's been smelling is the lake! That means the culprit had been in the water recently when they sneaked into Qui-Gon's room. So they recruit Bant's help to dive down to the bottom of the lake and find a waterproof crate down there, which contains all of the stolen lightsabers. They're that much closer to catching this thief.

The most gut-wrenching moment of this chapter is Bant saying to Qui-Gon: "B-because you are Qui-Gon Jinn. You took Obi-Wan away. All he wanted was to be your Padawan, but a short while later he left the Jedi. And I wonder.... W-what you did to him."

Chapter 13

Okay, this is like...the one chapter I really remember from this book. Ouch >_< The situation on Melida/Daan has been deteriorating even further, the division among the Young proving impossible to prevent as different people have different ideas about what their top priorities are supposed to be. And finally, it all escalates to a showdown between Nield and his followers, and Wehutti and other Elders, facing off in front of a Hall of Evidence. Obi-Wan and his team go to try to stop any bloodshed, but despite their best efforts, the tensions are too high, and shots ring out. Cerasi falls in the crossfire.

"Tears ran down his face as the pain grew and expanded to every corner of his brain, his heart. It seemed unbearable. His body could not hold this much pain. It would simply break apart. Yet he knew it was only the beginning." - Oh, Obi-Wan.... T^T

A quick tangent from the tragedy of this moment to talk about the writing: Watson writes simply, no doubt keeping the target audience in mind. But despite the simplicity of the writing, it's still vivid and powerful. Just read that paragraph again. No, it's not the most beautiful description of a moment of loss I've ever read, but it still packs a punch to the ol' feels.

Chapter 14

This chapter is so heart-wrenching to read. This is when Cerasi's death really sinks in for Obi-Wan, when he begins to understand what it's going to be like to live the rest of his life having lost someone dear to him. And I think it was reading stories like this one, that don't shy away from the grief but expose all that raw pain for you to feel along with the characters, that helped me put such things into my own stories, even back when I was just a kid who had never really lost anyone super close to me.

"He had to take his grief and his love for her and fight to stop it." - Look at that. Look at it! It's right there in front of my face, that he loved Cerasi...and somehow, every time I read these books as a kid, it never once occurred to me that it might mean romantic love. I suppose it says something about me that it just feels so much more natural for this relationship to be platonic. I don't know, maybe that's just me having no experience with romance when I was ten years old. This isn't a hill I would die on, but I choose to believe this is the love of two good friends with a deep connection, nothing less and nothing more.

Anyway, both sides are using Cerasi's death as fuel for the continuing conflict. Obi-Wan eventually drags himself out of his grief long enough to go seek out Nield and beg him to stop the fighting for the sake of Cerasi's memory. Nield...doesn't take that very well. He blames Obi-Wan for Cerasi's death, and vows to keep fighting until he can avenge her.

"'You aren't part of the Young. You never were. You're not Melida. You're not Daan. You're nobody, you're nowhere, and you are nothing to me.' ... Every cord that had connected him to his life had snapped. Everyone he cared about had gone. Nield was right. Without the Jedi, without the Young, he had nobody. He was nobody. When nothing was left, where was he to turn?" - Oh, Obi-Wan.... TT______TT

Chapter 15

This chapter is short, to the point. Qui-Gon alerts security and the Council that the one who stole the lightsabers is Bruck Chun (they followed him when he put more stuff in the crate, but he detected their presence and ran away). Then he gets a message from Obi-Wan about what's been happening. Obi-Wan is asking Qui-Gon to come and help stop the fighting.

"Qui-Gon took an unconscious step toward the hologram. Obi-Wan's face was etched with grief and something else, something Qui-Gon had seen on the faces of those most stunned by an awful fate: incomprehension. ... At that moment, he saw what Yoda and Tahl had been trying, in their different ways, to tell him. He had not been betrayed by a Jedi. He had been betrayed by a boy. A boy overtaken by passion and circumstance. The boy deserved his understanding. No, he had no secret way to see into a boy's heart. Perhaps all he needed to do was listen." - I actually teared up for real at this part. Obi-Wan is lost, so he asks Qui-Gon for help...and as soon as it sinks in what situation Obi-Wan is stuck in, Qui-Gon immediately turns around to go get him. ಥ﹏ಥ

Chapter 16

Obi-Wan's thoughts about how far gone Nield is feel like such an echo (what do you call an echo that comes before the sound? a pre-echo?) of the way he'll eventually feel about Anakin. Roenni tells him that Nield is a good person and he'll come around eventually, but Obi-Wan isn't so sure. He doesn't feel like there's any way he can reach out to Nield through his anger and grief.

"He believed in his Master absolutely, even if Qui-Gon didn't believe in him." "He knew one thing now. He'd known it the instant he'd seen Qui-Gon. He wanted to be a Jedi again. Not only a Jedi, but the Padawan of Qui-Gon Jinn. He wanted everything he'd thrown away. He wanted his life back." - T^T I just wanna give this poor boy a hug....

Chapter 18

Qui-Gon has arrived on Melida/Daan, and it's so awkward and tense between him and Obi-Wan :C There are so many unsaid words hovering in the air between them, but the situation is too dire to deal with that now. They have to do what they can to stop the war. They try urging Wehutti to tell his faction to stand down, but Wehutti is paralyzed with grief and can do nothing.

"Cerasi's death was not your fault, Obi-Wan. You cannot prevent what you cannot see coming. You can only do what you think is right at each moment as you live it. We can plan, hope, and dread the future. What we cannot do is know it." - The irony of these scenes of their reunion is like a horrible reverse of the glorious irony in The Hidden Past. Since we've seen both characters agonizing over what happened and trying to make sense of it all, we can see how Qui-Gon is trying to be fair with Obi-Wan, still angry with his betrayal but willing to forgive. But then we can also see how Obi-Wan's hopes are raised, then dashed again as he assumes the worst - that Qui-Gon will never forgive him, and everything between them is just business. This is so painful to read D':

But, between the awkwardness and the turmoil of emotions they aren't talking about, they do manage to figure one thing out, using Obi-Wan's Jedi-trained recall of that day: It wasn't Nield or Wehutti who shot Cerasi. It was someone on a roof.

Chapter 19

"Of course Qui-Gon had forgiven him. He was not sure when it had happened--when he heard Obi-Wan's voice as he reported Cerasi's death, or when his former Padawan had greeted him at the gate with so much hope in his face. Perhaps it had been gradual, but it was there, in his heart, and he knew it. ... Forgiveness was not the point. Qui-Gon had already passed to the next step. Would he take Obi-Wan back if he asked? He did not think so. But that feeling could change, Qui-Gon told himself, struggling to be honest. It had before." - Ugh, my hearrrrrt.... TT_TT

After some investigating, they find out that the warehouse with all the confiscated weapons was emptied out by none other than Mawat. It seems Mawat wanted war to break out again, perhaps to take over the government from Nield and the council. So he made sure that shots would be fired that day, if Nield and Wehutti backed down. And now he's planning another attack--now, when both leaders are grieving Cerasi's death and don't have the heart to lead their people. So Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan split up to try to find Nield, tell him the truth, and urge him to help them stop the fighting.

Qui-Gon gives Obi-Wan his lightsaber back at last, and for the first time in a long time, he feels that the Force is with him. "As he slung it onto his belt, he lifted his chin and met Qui-Gon's gaze. For the first time since Qui-Gon's arrival, he felt no shame. It didn't matter what Qui-Gon thought. He was still a Jedi." - ಥ◡ಥ

Chapter 22

Obi-Wan finds Nield in the Hall of Evidence where Cerasi was laid to rest. He's finally able to reach past his anger and grief and connect with him again when he tells him what he and Qui-Gon have discovered. Their friendship is repaired, now that Nield can see hating himself or Obi-Wan is not only pointless, but dishonoring to Cerasi's memory. They agree that they need to stop Mawat before he causes any more damage--none too soon, because Mawat is about to blow up the building they're in. They fight their way out side-by-side, and it's looking pretty dire, until some of Obi-Wan's friends in the Young come to back them up, and Qui-Gon turns up with a hologram of Cerasi he found. Her final message is a plea for everyone to put down their arms and have peace--not clinging to the past with vengeance, but not erasing it either. And, just as she asks, everyone puts down their weapons one by one.

"'I know I am meant to be a Jedi,' Obi-Wan added. 'I'll never doubt that again.' 'I know you are meant to be a Jedi, too,' Qui-Gon answered carefully. 'But whether you are meant to be my Padawan again is not so clear.' Obi-Wan's heart fell. He knew it was useless to argue with Qui-Gon, or try to persuade him. Desolation filled him. It was not enough to be a Jedi. He had to be Qui-Gon's Padawan. Not because he'd failed him once, and his pride demanded a second chance. It wasn't pride that moved him. Deep in his heart, he felt it was right." - It sort of feels like the way things were in the first two books, only...sadder. Heavier. Now they've hurt each other. Even if (when) they patch things up again and are Master and Padawan once more, they'll never be quite like they were in the beginning, when the relationship was fresh and new.

The book ends with a brief summary of how negotiations are made between the factions, and a peace treaty is agreed upon and signed by all parties. Mawat goes to the countryside with his followers, sort of as an exile, but he also sees the error of his ways. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan head back to their transport to return to the Temple. Right as they're about to leave, Qui-Gon gets a message on his comlink: Someone has tried to kill Yoda! CLIFFHANGER ENDING WOOHOO!!!!!!! \(°〇°)/

#star wars #jedi apprentice #obi-wan #obi-wan kenobi #qui-gon #qui-gon jinn #sorry this took so long to finish #i had a few things from the library to get through first #and unfortunately library books with people on the waiting list so i couldn't renew it take precedent #over the out-of-print series that's been sitting on my shelf for most of my life #but i finally got through it!#this book is super depressing too #but it sets up the next one #which is REALLY GOOD #can't wait!

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 4 years

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THE BOX IS NABOO

That’s it, I’m doing it, I’m writing that stupid meta I’ve had in the works for two and a half years, I’m sharing it with the world. I promised it for last Thursday, my poll was forever ago, but whatever! I’m writing that freaking thing.

(super duper long post, press j to skip)

Enter my rabbit hole.

First thing to establish: the Box makes no sense whatsoever in-universe.

((EDIT: Something I forgot to mention. IRL, the premise of a giant murder cube and the aesthetic - wall patterns, light designs, etc - of the episode come from the 1997 horror movie Cube, (see the episode’s wookieepedia page). However, while the two are very closely linked visually, the Box does not follow the movie structurally or narratively, as you can verify by simply reading the movie’s summary.))

Recap of the context for the "Box" episode (s4e17): Palpatine is planning his own kidnapping. It was never meant to succeed, and while the plan would obviously benefit him (making the Jedi look bad, pushing Anakin closer to the Dark Side, making Republic citizens more afraid -> more docile, etc...) his actual goal is never explained, and it’s weird that he’d go to such extreme lengths for results so minimal that we’re never told what they are.

So Palpatine asks Dooku to kidnap him at the Festival of Lights on Naboo. Dooku hires Moralo Eval to design a giant box-thingy to test bounty hunters to hire the best of them to kidnap Palpatine. Moralo then gets arrested to alert the Republic that something is afoot, and hires Cad Bane to break him out. Obi-Wan - undercover to learn Moralo’s plan - goes with them. They evade capture and go to Serenno, and Bane and Obi-Wan have to pass the box-thingy test. The level of brainkarked logic here... Truly on par with Megamind, Gru and Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

Setting aside the insane plot holes and utterly nonsensical behavior of the villains, the Box itself is moronic from a plot perspective. It’s insanely complex, obviously incredibly expensive and would have taken months (more like years but it’s a short war) to make when it’s not even needed for the dastardly plot! Just hire some guys who have already proven themselves against Jedi! Throw cash at Bane and Embo and a few others! Maybe attack them with your saber and see how they do!

And after all that, Dooku still ends up trying to kidnap Palpatine on his own. I can’t even...

So why does the Box exist? Well, apart from being a nerdy callback to Cube, giving us a good thrill and being generally awesome to look at, it has actual narrative purpose within the SW universe.

The box is Naboo.

What the Box lacks in plot relevance, it makes up for with its heavily symbolic meaning. It very closely follows Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s experiences on Naboo - but only certain parts, which I’ll explain later.

We start with clean, sterile environments, SW’s favored way of showing villainy.

Then we have the protagonists locked in a room as dioxis, a poison gas, pours in.

And then they escape... this way.

(Okay, here the shaft is down, not up. And it’s not a ventilation shaft per say, it’s the designed escape route. Same difference).

We then skip most of TPM (namely, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discovering the droid army, finding Padmé, leaving Naboo, landing on Tatooine, going to Coruscant, etc, etc) to come back to Naboo and go directly to the lightsabers and catwalks.

(Note: in both scenes, Obi-Wan has to propel himself from a catwalk.)

In TPM and TCW, the catwalks are immediately followed by ray shields

And we finally end with the last scenes. Now, they don’t look the same but they are structurally identical.

Obi-Wan is faced with a challenge unsuited for his abilities (facing Darth Maul // shooting three moving targets when he’s far more skilled with a blade than a blaster) on a narrow space above a melting pit/pit of fire.

He first watches someone die failing to complete the task...

... and has to do it himself, faring much better than expected (holding his own against Maul // shooting all the targets easily).

He then almost falls to his death and gets saved unexpectedly.

And then there’s the final showdown.

In both scenes, Obi-Wan is angry. And in TCW Dooku eggs him on, banking on his anger. (More on that later.) In both cases though, he centers himself and is able to overcome both his opponent and his own unbalance. But in TCW, he doesn’t go for the kill, because he doesn’t need to.

The Box, as a literal character-explorator ex-machina, thus shows us Obi-Wan’s growth.

In TPM, Obi-Wan follows Qui-Gon’s lead. In TCW, he is the leader. He identifies the gas, makes the plans. He doesn’t fall from catwalks anymore - he runs atop moving ones. He doesn’t stay stuck behind ray-shields, he finds the solution. (Btw, how did Moralo know what blood type Derrown the Exterminator was? There was a 50% chance of him dying - thus killing all of the bounty hunters. Was that an acceptable outcome? TCW I need answers!) He doesn’t slay his foes, because he’s become powerful enough, skilled enough and wise enough to survive (and win) without needing to kill.

He’s grown - and, even more interestingly, he’s also stayed the same. In the previous episodes, we see some of the dark aspects of Obi-Wan. How he - like all Force-wielders, all people - could lose himself if he stopped maintaining absolute control.

But in the Box, surrounded by the worst criminals of the Galaxy, the most ruthless, worthless people, he’s still kind and tries his best to keep them alive.

The Box is a reminder and a reassurance for the audience that Obi-Wan Kenobi is still there under Rako’s face. He hasn’t lost his compassion, his restrain. He’s still a Jedi. And he’s an awesome, badass one.

And now, for what it tells us about Dooku!

It’s much shorter, don’t worry. Basically, Dooku considers that the best way to pick “the best of the best” of the deadliest people in the Galaxy is making them go through what killed his Padawan. There, I’ve broken your hearts, you’re welcome.

More seriously, Dooku is a manipulative ass. It’s pretty clear that he knows Rako is Obi-Wan, or at the very least suspects it.

He has an interesting reaction upon learning Rako’s identity, he keeps praising him despite his usual distaste for low-lifes, he smirks secretively after Eval says “I’ll show you who’s weak” (not included there because it’s a close-up of Dooku’s lips and no one wants to see that) and he tells Rako he’s very disappointed when he doesn’t finish off Eval.

[Later]

(Look at this smug asshole - I can’t. YOUR GRANDSON IS THE BEST, WE KNOW, STOP ACTIVELY RUINING HIS LIFE ALREADY.)

(Dooku... why...)

Now obviously Dooku couldn’t have made the Box specifically for Obi-Wan, because it would have to have been designed months before the Council ever decided to send Obi-Wan undercover, but he has no qualms trying to use it to push Obi-Wan to the Dark Side. Ffs Dooku, making your spiritual grandson relive one of the most traumatic events of his life on the off chance that he’ll join you (and desecrate his Master’s memory in doing so) is not okay!

Final tidbits of analysis: I mentioned that not all of TPM is mirrored in the Box. What’s omitted is the droids (even though Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight B1′s and droidekas between the dioxis and the ventilation shafts) and anything pertaining to Sidious (all the political stuff on Coruscant). You’ll also note that the fake lightsabers are orange.

=> The Box distances itself from anything that connects Dooku to Naboo. Red lightsabers are the trademark of the Sith, so they’re not used. The bounty hunters will be facing Jedi, so logically the fake sabers should be green or blue - and yet they’re orange, the color closest to red without being red. It fits with Dooku’s special brand of dishonesty - he always tells bits of the real story but twists them just enough to absolve himself of any fault and to justify his choices.

(”We can destroy the Sith” -> could maybe destroy Sidious with Obi-Wan, but fails to mention he’s a Sith Lord himself; “the Viceroy came to me for help, that’s why I’m attacking the Republic” -> political idealism is a small part of it, but fails to mention he’s Sidious’ underling and is playing the Viceroy like a fiddle; “Qui-Gon would have joined me” -> maybe, still fails to mention he’s working for the man who ordered Qui-Gon’s death; “I told you everything you needed to know” -> debatable, never said that Palps was Sidious; “Sifo-Dyas understood, that’s why he helped me” -> partly true, doesn’t admit to killing Sifo-Dyas right after getting his help)

So we have a twisted version of Naboo, droid-free (as droids are now irrevocably associated with Dooku, even if that wasn’t the case in TPM) and with sabers that aren’t quite red. Keep in mind that Dooku had already fallen by TPM. (We know this because he killed Sifo-Dyas and created the Clone Army - part of Sidious’ plan - when Valorum was still Chancellor, as per the episode The Lost One.) That means Dooku was (in)directly complicit in Qui-Gon’s death. And the Box doesn’t (=refuses to?) acknowledge that.

(Also omitted in the Box are the Gungans and Tatooine. It makes sense, because Dooku probably wouldn’t have the full details regarding those parts of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s missio as they weren’t as public, and would see them as irrelevant if he did. He utterly despises Anakin, and Gungans are the type of people he always dismisses out of hand).

Anyway, that’s my two cents about the Box. To quote Lucas...

“It’s like poetry. It rhymes.”

Thanks to @lethebantroubadour @impossiblybluebox @nonbinarywithaknife @ytoz and @kaitie85386 for voting for this one. Next up is a compilation of the Jedi being casually tactile with each other (because they’re a warm and affectionate culture, dammit).

Also thanks to @laciefuyu for giving me gifs I ended up not using ^^; you rock anyway!

#meta #my meta #the box #deception arc #rako hardeen #rako hardeen arc #naboo #obi-wan kenobi #count dooku #cad bane #moralo eval #darth sidious

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amiedala · 3 years

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SOMETHING DEEPER (a mandalorian story)

CHAPTER 1: There's Always Three Things

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: sexual content, hints of voyeurism

SUMMARY: HELLLOOOOOOOOOOO AND HAPPY SOMETHING DEEPER SATURDAY MY LOVES!!! this is the first chapter in Something Deeper, the

second installment in the Something More series. in this one, Nova is her established character, they're still trying to save the galaxy, and the spice is racketed up even hotter ;) more notes at the end, as always, and until then, ENJOY!!!

If you're a newcomer, my fic "Something More" is the first installment of this story! <3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: HELLO MY LOVES HAPPY SOMETHING MORE SATURDAY!!!! this chapter is quite the whirlwind, i hope you love it! more notes at the end as always <3

Novalise Djarin is absolutely certain of three things. One, that the strongest thing in this galaxy is the green alien baby she calls her son; two, that her gorgeous, commanding bounty hunter husband is an excellent leader but a fantastically horrible diplomat; and three, that she is by far the most skilled person she knows at getting out of a particularly sticky situation.

Nova is excellent at getting out of things, period—her husband would argue that she’s an expert at getting the both of them out of their clothes and Mandalorian armor, respectively—but she excels at somehow, miraculously, wriggling herself free from between a rock and a hard place. And, right now, the asteroid belt that makes up Polis Massa is the abundance of rock, and the TIE fighters right on the tail of Kicker’s infamously sporadic power is the hard place.

They’re relentless. Nova squints her eyes, making the starry backdrop of the Outer Rim split and fractal into a thousand more glittering balls of light. There’s only three of them, this time, but this is the closest they’ve ever dared to follow her to Mandalore, and there’s something dangerous and electric kicking around somewhere inside of her chest. They keep shooting, jarring bolts of blasts that do their best to try and knock down Kicker’s very stubborn shields.

“Stupid,” Nova whispers, her breath low, the ghost of a smile stretching across her face, even in the crush of space. A year ago, she wouldn’t have recognized herself—this fearless, feisty pilot, the fully-formed reconstruction of the girl she used to be. On the ground, even with the Force on her side, she’s clumsy, an amateur. But up here? This is where Novalise shines. She has the upper hand out in the stars, and, besides, even if she were being chased by an artillery of a hundred more, there’s reinforcements on her old, lovable beater of a starship.

“Surrender,” one of the mechanical, ordered voices comes over the comm, and Nova giggles to herself in the darkness.

“Does that ever work?” she asks, flipping the right switches to make Kicker drop down and over itself, sending one of the fighters careening into the nearest asteroid. It doesn’t deter whoever’s in the cockpit for long, but it’s enough to utilize her infamous barrel roll to twist up and away from the other two fighters close in tow. “You know, asking impolitely for whoever you’re chasing to surrender?”

Silence. Nova smiles again, biting her teeth down against the fullness of her bottom lip. Her stomach grumbles. It was a sleepless night and a long day she spent back on Hoth before making the short trek back home—Mandalore, which isn’t the kindest of planets to call your own but is undoubtably better than some of the other alternatives—and the broth-based soups and dried legumes that frequent the base there are not nearly as filling or delicious as the feasts that being Mandalorian royalty entail. Still nothing from the other fighters, which is perfectly fine, because she’s about to feign dropping into warp and leading through a wormhole that’ll lead nowhere but the barrenness of the Mid Rim, but usually, they’re much more demanding.

“Surrender,” comes the voice again, and Nova sighs, cracking her neck, readjusting the familiar, worn helmet still stamped with the orange Rebel insignia. Kicker beeps angrily, and she lends a soft hand to the worn metal of her beloved ship’s dashboard, coaxing the metal to just go a tiny bit further.

“I’m just saying, you might have a stroke more of luck if you’re a little bit nicer. Less demanding, more asking. Who am I surrendering to?” she asks, and even though the TIE fighters are still volleying an array of blasts at the back end of the starfighter, they’re not quick to identify themselves. Nova squints again, catching a glimpse of one of them as she swoops to avoid a larger chunk of asteroid. It was stupid to come here, she admits internally to herself, even though it makes her heart drop a tiny bit inside of her chest. All she wanted for the hours she spent on Hoth was to get back to Din, to hold Grogu against her heartbeat for as long as she could before she reluctantly had to relinquish him to the one and only Luke Skywalker, but when Wedge called, it seemed urgent. “Hello?” she whispers, only to dare the strange, affected voice on the commlink to rattle back across the stars.

“Andromeda Maluev,” the comm blurts, and the sound of her name—her birth name, still heavy and pearlescent with the weight of losing her parents—makes Nova’s heart drop even further. Everyone left in this galaxy that Nova associates with—Din Djarin, Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles, Bo-Katan Kryze, Boba Fett, Cara Dune, Greef Karga, and every person she met along her trip with Din through the galaxy and back—knows that Andromeda Maluev is dead, and that Novalise Djarin rose from her ashes. But every single bounty Nova’s had on her head has slammed that full weight of her first identity back into her bones, like a brand, like something she can’t escape. It makes the force of people after her—the shadowy legion of the obscured First Order, and all of their cronies—feel just a bit more insidious.

“Not my name,” she volleys back, but the brace in Nova’s voice doesn’t sound like anything dangerous, anything sharp enough scare them off. “I’ve ran into enough of you by now for you to get it right.”

“We’ve got you surrounded. Surrender or be killed.”

Nova snorts. There’s three fighters on her tail, and they’re nowhere close to surrounding her. It’s so ludicrous, so unexpected, that the laugh catapults out of her mouth and echoes in the small hull of Kicker. She wishes Din and Grogu were here to equally share in her utter disbelief—she can practically see the helmet cocking and the baby’s giant, intuitive eyes crinkling—but she dodges another set of shots, which are almost completely aimless and hardly land on the tail end of the ship. “Be killed?” she repeats, swerving and ducking through another large chunk of asteroid, seamlessly, barely paying any attention to the terrain around her. She doesn’t need to. Even in a field this littered, space is Nova’s strongest suit. She could do this with her eyes closed. “As far as I can see, you’ve landed what, three shots? I don’t think you’ll be getting anywhere near close enough to even do damage to my ship. You’re three fighters strong, and one of you has a wounded wing. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“The First Order demands your services.”

Nova’s blood runs ice-cold. It’s a familiar request at this point, but still, the name sends a very real shiver all the way down her spine, rocking and rattling her vertebrae. She swallows, blinking furiously, avoiding the tailspin of a smaller asteroid as she lurches out of the chase. That wasn’t the lowly voice of some sorry stormtrooper that got the shitty job of trying to wrangle her out of the skies. It sounds evil. Dark. Mirthless. It wasn’t Moff Gideon’s voice, but it was something close to the memory of the dark timbre of it. Fear forms wet and cold on the back of her neck, curling up through the bottom of her hairline, seeping underneath the warmth of her standard, Rebel-orange jumpsuit. She swallows, but the air feels like it’s evaporating out of her mouth.

“The First Order,” she manages, finally, trying to detach the nervousness from her voice, “will not be getting my services. Not now, not ever.”

It’s only been two weeks since Din’s coronation. Two hectic, packed weeks in which her big, brave bounty hunter boyfriend got forcibly turned into a very reluctant diplomat under the watchful—and perhaps slightly resentful—eye of Bo-Katan Kryze. Din never seemed to really need sleep the way a normal human being did, but Nova watched as the bags under his eyes darkened and grew as he spent long hours in the war rooms, buried somewhere in the giant, stark palace they’d moved into, eyelids pressed into the warm hollow of her neck in the early hours of the morning when he made it to bed at all. In the meantime, Nova was spending every single precious second of her waking hours with Grogu, who she knows is on the verge of needing to go back to Jedi training, trying to absorb as much of his small, green light as she possibly can. When Wedge called the other day, though, he sounded desperate, which didn’t happen often, and she had wrenched herself away from her family on Mandalore to try and stop the impending doom of the First Order on Hoth, but it had been yet another dead end. Polis Massa was a pit stop—an impulsive, foolish one—because Nova ran furiously out of the library archives the last time she was here, and she wanted to pick up books on the history of Mandalore for Din and herself, and a small star of yearning in her chest was to spend a little more time in the shelves like her father used to before the Empire killed him.

And as much as Nova wants to put Andromeda Maluev to rest, longing for the days when she was tiny and growing up on Yavin with her parents alive and happy beside her outweighs the alternative. She swallows through the lump in her throat and closes her eyes to shake the starshine of her past lives away. The time to focus on getting the hell out of here is now, all yearning and ache can blossom fully formed when she’s away from the reaches of the First Order, safely back on Mandalore.

“Surrender,” the voice says again, only this time it is the timbre of some sorry stormtrooper and not the one that still haunts her nightmares, and Nova sighs, flipping all of the switches on Kicker’s dashboard to feint left and fake drop into hyperspace.

“I’ll ask you again. When,” she exhales, straightening up in the pilot’s chair, “has that line ever worked?”

“We are granted permission to obliterate your starfighter under Order Number—”

“Obliterate?” Nova interrupts, stifling another giggle. “Is the Order giving you vocabulary lessons? I’m impressed, trooper—”

“Andromeda Maluev,” the voice comes again, and Nova tries her absolute hardest to ignore the pulsing and aching in her heart that comes with the punch of her previous identity, “you are to surrender to the First Order. Failure to comply will result in termination. This is your final warning.”

Nova sighs, pulling Kicker to a temporary halt. If she stares, the ghostly outline of Mandalore, embedded forever in her memory, will flash in front of her vision, even out here in Polis Massa’s gigantic asteroid belt. She knows that the troopers, whoever they are, whoever they’re working for, will understand that she’s intending to go straight back to the strange palace she’s started calling home, but she also knows that any force in this galaxy, no matter how dark, no matter how strong, is smart enough to know they can’t take on a planet full of Mandalorian warriors without all the strength they’ve got. From the way Kicker is paused in the middle of space, she knows it looks like she’s about to surrender, or at least like she’s weighing her options heavily, and the satisfied, smug silence of the trooper on the other end of the commlink is enough to assure herself that her plan—hasty and rash as it may be—is working.

“Okay,” she whispers, feigning resignation, into the comm. “I understand I’m dealing with forces a lot stronger than I am. I don’t surrender, but I’ll come with you. But first,” she whispers, silencing the clicking that the switches to go into hyperdrive with the muffler of her right hand, “I need to tell you something.”

There’s a pause. “So be it. Reeling you in via tractor beam now.”

The unmistakable whirring of a ship forcibly being dragged onto another’s power starts up, and Nova swallows, pushing the second to last toggle into place, keeping a steady eye on the rocketing meter on her dashboard that indicates the ship is fully charged. Under the noise of Kicker being pulled into the largest TIE fighter’s proximity, the beeping goes unnoticed by the other party. Nova slips her hand off the switch and finds the necklace Din gifted her back before he accepted his role of Mand’alor, pressing hard enough that the symbol embosses itself into her thumbprint. “First of all,” she starts, trying her hardest to keep her voice level and even and not reveal a single ounce of the glee that she’s concealing, “my name hasn’t been Andromeda Maluev in a decade. You want me to answer to you, to answer to the Order? You’ll call me Novalise.”

The sigh from the trooper is short, clipped. “Noted.”

“Second,” Nova continues, leveling her jaw with the center of the dashboard, watching every single thruster lock itself into gear, “I am married to the galaxy’s most ruthless bounty hunter. It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than the word surrender to scare me into submission.”

Kicker grinds to a halt in midair. Nova straps herself in tighter, just enough to ensure that she won’t be sent reeling across the perfectly aligned dashboard when she breaks free of the tractor beam and shoots Kicker straight into the stars, back to Mandalore, back to Din, back home, and steels herself.

“Stop,” another voice says, tinny and nervous over the speaker. “She’s—she’s screwing with us, sir—”

“I’m assuming,” the original trooper speaks, trying to intimidate Nova with the ice in his voice, “that there’s a third thing?”

“Oh, there’s always a third thing,” Nova volleys back, eyes catching the light of what’s been powering up the entire time the troopers thought she was weighing her options and deciding the First Order’s clutches sounded warm and delightful, after all. “Not only am I a commander in the New Rogue Squadron, not only am I the wife of the reigning Mand’alor, I contain multitudes.” She grins, her teeth bared and gleeful in the low light of space, knowing this is by far the most badass exit she’s ever attempted. “And do you know what that means?”

The trooper in the largest fighter sounds defeated. This was barely even a scratch compared to the narrow scrapes Nova’s been entangled with before. She bites down on her bottom lip, cracking her neck, taking advantage of Kicker’s stationary position to break free of the tractor beam, and as the angry clamor of the three troopers in the fighters trying to reel the ship in starts to filter across the commlink, Nova does what she does best.

She barrel rolls the entirety of Kicker, flipping downward and over so that she’s facing the three fighters, staring through her Rebel helmet at the floodlights drenching her whole ship in florescence that shouldn’t be possible in space, and shows every single one of her teeth, smile stretched so far across her face that it hurts, “My starfighter is Rebel-made, sure, but it’s gotten a few upgrades in the past few weeks. The only reason you got this far was because I was waiting to unload the artillery loaded up in the guns that are pointed at you right now. And you know what they’re made of?”

“All aim to kill—”

Nova can’t resist. She tries, but this whole royalty thing, the whole leading the New Rogue Squadron thing, this whole being a Jedi thing—well, all of it has been tallied up enough to recognize she can stand to be the tiniest bit cocky to the people trying to kill her or bring her in as a slave. She raises a single middle finger, making sure that the pilot of the largest fighter catches her elongated, elegant bird with the floodlights. “Same thing as my resolve is. Beskar, bitch.” And with that, she punches all the thrusters, Kicker dazzling and evaporating through hyperspace, gone before the first trigger even pulls.

Mandalore is quiet. There’s a strange serenity that lives on the horizon, pulsing and shifting, but never quite tangible from the planet’s surface. It’s hard to look at the place where the greatest warriors in the galaxy are born and bred and not see anything but a whetted, sharp arena, but so much of this planet is soft around the edges. The blue architecture in the capital, for one—something Nova knows is much newer than the ancient history of the land here—and there’s a silence here that teeters on eerie but mostly stays in a strange sense of tranquility.

It doesn’t hold the feeling of abandonment, like so many other planets do these days, but it seems like the rest of the world around the city is disconnected. Inhabitable. Nova parks Kicker in the nearest landing bay, watching the strange haze that hangs over the atmosphere, trying to find other places where lights are lit, where people live, but so much of the planet is quiet. It’s the same sort of stark contrast that Yavin had when her and Din got engaged all those months ago, or Hoth’s anesthetic brutality, but Mandalore’s environment feels different.

And, Nova reasons, as she disembarks off Kicker’s gangplank, running the tips of her fingers over the Rebel insignia hidden under the outermost coat of white and silver detailing, it’s likely because this isn’t home. Not yet, anyway, and it might never have that feeling of belonging that the Crest did, that Kicker does, that her and Din found on Naator and Kashyyyk and Nevarro. Nova climbs the marble steps to the palace, smiling at the stoic Mandalorians stationed outside as she slips up the stairs and through the main entrance, immediately cutting sideways up the hallways to the left, watching as her shadow traipses behind her in the blue dusk, trying to not stake stock of the silence that most of the building holds. In true Mandalorian fashion, their holding cells are built into the palace itself, alongside training arenas and the war room where Din spends most of his time. Nova moves as quietly as she can through the halls, up the other marble staircase, and when she bursts into the chambers twice the size of the starship that she and Din usually call home, a gurgle from Grogu on the floor makes the entire day turn around.

Nova grins, dropping to her knees. Grogu beams up at her, his big bug eyes full of nothing but love, and she scoops him up, pressing his tiny, warm body against her chest. It chases away all the chill of Hoth and the crush of space, and for a second, she just runs her fingers over the top of his fuzzy head, pressing kisses to his green skin, soaking in every second she can.

“I missed you, lovey,” she murmurs, and Grogu’s giant green ears perk up. “What did you do in your day here?”

Grogu pulls away from her chest, pressing a three-fingered hand against Nova’s temple. The visions that used to terrify her, the ones Grogu put into her head, filled with screaming and loss and desperation, fall away as he shows her the bath he took, the feast he got for dinner, sitting on Din’s lap while in the war room. As he drops his touch, Nova grins down at him, all teeth and excitement, all of the panic and isolation of the last few hours melting away.

“He terrorized Bo-Katan,” a familiar voice rings out from behind her, and Nova pushes herself up on the heels of her hands, her heart flipping over with the same butterfly menagerie Din’s always given her. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop.”

“Hi,” Nova whispers, giddy, watching as Din steps forward out of the shadows. It doesn’t matter how many times she’s been lucky enough to gaze over his handsome face, it doesn’t matter that he’s been spending more time helmetless here on Mandalore, every time she sees him, it’s like the first time. In the moonlight, obscured by the permafrost of Mandalore’s blue twilight, Nova’s eyes roam over the valleys and mountains of her husband’s face. His hair is the length it was when he proposed, long enough for the ends to curl up gently. His mouth, even in the near darkness, is pink and gorgeous, his lips slightly parted in the unconscious way they do when Nova’s the only thing in his eyeline. His scruff is there, long enough to scratch her chin—or her thighs—up something terrible, and the ghost of the mustache she used to feel in the dark is strong, dark, manicured. His eyelashes are longer than the length of her thumbnails, and his eyes, his gorgeous brown eyes, soften around the edges the second Nova smiles.

“Hi,” Din echoes, bridging the gap between the two of them with two quick strides, and Nova feels her breath catch in her throat. Din’s hands, gloved in black and twice the size of her own, balance on the curve of her hips, his fingers digging into the loops of her orange jumpsuit, pulling Nova over her own feet, anchoring her body right up against hers. The way he kisses after only being separated overnight is desperate, longing, filled with words he doesn’t always know how to say. Nova leans into his embrace, head fuzzy, waterlogged, like everything else fades away. It does. She loses track of time, how many minutes pass, the stars behind her eyes dazzling, supernovae, regenerated.

When they break apart, Nova’s hand trails over the regalia Din’s wearing. It’s his familiar beskar, the armor he’s worn since they first met, but it’s been cleaned, and underneath, where his typical black undergarments used to cling to his build, he’s wearing Mandalore blue. It’s the color of the skyline at dusk, a faded azure that signals something more than warrior, something a shade closer to royalty. The material is lightweight, practical. It’s the same kind that every single one of her matching outfits are made out of—Mandalorians don’t have much use for aesthetic, it just gets in the way of practicality—but it seems more vibrant on Din. “How was today?” she whispers into the hollow of his mouth, and Din exhales, low and slow, tipping his bare forehead against hers.

“Long without you,” he admits, his voice barely anything. Nova’s eyes search his deep brown ones, trying to figure out where his exhaustion is hiding. “Come with me. I—I want to show you something.”

Nova nods, catching sight of the dirty orange jumpsuit stretched over her tan trousers, the black tank top she’d spent the past year replacing every time Din tore it off of her body. “I should change.”

Din’s eyes flick hungrily over her silhouette, and when he speaks again, his voice is husky. “No,” he says, finally, digging his thumb slightly into the flesh on her hip, “you shouldn’t.”

The trek downstairs is quiet. Both of them move in the shadows, lulled into an easy silence, their hands knitted together in between their two bodies. Nova watches as the low light of the corridor flickers as they cross over another staircase and down a side hallway, entering through the war room by the back entrance instead of the front, even though there’s no one left in here to try to hide from.

Nova’s been in here at least ten times, but the decoration steals the breath straight out of her mouth every time. A glittering holotable, top of the line, at least twenty years more advanced than the one on Hoth, sits in the direct center. The ceiling looks more like a cathedral than it does anything else, which is perfectly fitting for a group of people who treat fighting as their religion. Nova looks up through the sheer domed ceiling, watching as the moody dusk falls into a silent, quiet night. Stars dazzle and shine from above, and even though they’re not nearly as poignant and powerful down here as they are out in space, the direct line to the cosmos is bright enough to make her throat ache. “Wow,” Nova whispers, voice barely anything at all, staring straight upward, mapping constellations under her breath. Eventually, her eyes slide off of the ceiling, traveling over the careful architecture, the shrines in the corners, the murals painstakingly hand-painted across the circular walls, all of beskar and helmets and Mandalorian history. It feels so ancient, even though the palace was recently rebuilt, reconstructed from nothing during both of their lifetimes. She’s been in here a handful of times before, but never as night is on the horizon. There’s something transcendent about this place, this holy center of Mandalorian worship. Something deeper, something divine enough to make a Jedi believe in them, too.

Din’s standing across the other end of the holotable, fidgeting with the controls until a map of the galaxy sparkles to life in front of them. Through the light, Nova watches the peaks of her husband’s face getting caught in the reflections, letting everything except his face blur out to stardust. “Did you get anything from Wedge?” he asks, and Nova blinks her eyes to refocus on the map. “Anything new? Anything…useful?”

Quietly, Nova shakes her head. “He thought—he called me back to Hoth because of a prison break in one of the sectors Cara doesn’t have jurisdiction in, or I’d suspect she’d have already taken care of it. It was small, just a few criminals with nothing more than petty charges breaking out of a hold somewhere, but he thought it might be related to—”

“The First Order?”

“Me,” Nova finishes, quietly. Her eyes narrow just a fraction, refocusing on Din’s silhouette through the glitter of the galaxy between them. “Yeah, the Order. We couldn’t prove anything, but I—”

“You feel something is coming,” Din interrupts gently, stealing the words right out of her mouth, bracing his strong, gloved hands on the side of the holotable, and Nova nods, watching his grip, starting to get a little dizzy, with lust or with the reflections above them or both. “Don’t you?”

“I do,” she echoes, confirming his theory. “I—I took a detour coming back here. I went to Polis Massa, to try and return to the library archives so I could learn more about Mandalore and bring you back something other than a dead end.”

Din stares at her, his face partially hidden in the glow of the rotating image of the holotable. “You brought yourself back here,” he says, finally, and Nova’s knees buckle a little under the husk of his voice. “It’s hard to care about much else.”

Nova bites down on her lip, butterflies swirling up a storm inside her tummy. “Din,” she whispers, leaning forward on the table, cocking her head in the signature way he always does, lifting her chin slightly with the tilt, “we are tasked with the incredible privilege of saving the galaxy, you know—”

“Fuck the galaxy,” Din breathes, and despite the fact that what he’s wanting to shirk is their top priority, and really has been for months, it buzzes inside Nova, wet and hot. “Let someone else handle it for once. I don’t care.”

“You do care,” she protests, weakly, but his tongue slides out from the hollow of his mouth, and everything else seems to evaporate. “I know—fuck, I don’t know, I know you missed me when I left overnight, I know we’ve been apart more than we’ve been together, but it’s for good reason, and when we save, y’know, the whole galaxy and everything, it…it’ll be all the time in the world for the two of us.”

“I’m impatient,” Din counters, roughly, and then he’s around the table in three quick, determined strides. Nova sighs, letting her body crumple a little as Din moves forward, his hands on her hips, anchoring her pelvis against his. “Don’t make me wait any more for you, cyar’ika, I won’t be able to stand it.”

Nova inhales sharply, feeling him harden against her leg, and she lifts her chin a touch more, enough for their lips to only be an inch apart, enough to make eye contact, enough for all of this to let the rest of the world fade right out. “You know,” she whispers, finally, blood pumping furiously, “you’re the leader of this planet. You could order me to do anything, and I’d be helpless to do anything but comply.”

Din lets out a groan, low and desperate, a choked off, guttural one. “And if I told you I wanted you right here on this table?”

Nova grins, her teeth glittering against the quickening darkness, pulling away only to drape herself over the holotable, face down, letting the spots where her body occupies the space filter out of the reflection. The glow of the lights is disrupted by her figure, and she hears Din’s voice catch in the dark behind her as she arches her back, still fully clothed, an invitation for him to come closer, to take what’s rightfully his. “Then you’d have me right here on this table, Mand’alor.”

She feels Din press up against her, hard against the soft, voluptuous curve of her ass. He inhales, heavily, she can hear it whine through the darkness, not hidden under the evenness of the modulator built into his helmet. Nova knows she’s an expert at getting out of things—sticky situations, clothes, everything in between—but right now, she wants to make Din wait beg for it before she complies. Something to prove that even while he’s the one on the throne, her neck is holding up the crown. At least here. Especially here.

“And if I told you I wanted to fuck you on the floor?”

“Then you’d take me on the floor, Mand’alor. I quite like the floor, you know.”

“You—” Din’s breath cuts off again, and Nova lets the timbre of his voice soak into her. It turns her heart over, first, that excitement tangling up with the knowledge that she’ll let him do anything. It’s been over a week since the last time they fucked, because he’s been spending most of his time in this room, trying to prove to the rest of the planet that he’s worthy enough to hold the throne, and she’s been splitting her time between Grogu and saving the galaxy. All of them necessary evils, deserving distractions, but it’s nearly impossible to think about anything other than the feel of Din up against Nova, his mouth on her neck, his hands on her hips, concerned only with burying himself as deep into her as he possibly can. “I brought you down here to show you the stars. You’re distracting me.”

Nova smiles, then braces her palms on top of the holotable, pushing herself up, gliding her body backwards up against her husband’s. “What an honor,” she purrs, quiet, low, the same kind of voice Din always uses when he wants her so badly it hurts to breathe, “that the king of Mandalore thinks I am a suitable distraction.”

“Novalise.”

“Use me as a distraction, then,” Nova continues, taking hold of one of Din’s gloved hands, guiding them against the curve of her chest, making sure he feels how her nipples harden under his touch, a soft, mewling sound with her mouth completely indicative of the flush of warmth rushing between her legs. “Show me anything you want, oh worthy Mand’alor, please—”

Her breath is cut off as Din whirls her around by her throat. It’s sudden, desperate, the kind of electricity he used to greet her with whenever he finally tracked down the bounty he was hunting and could let loose with her on the Crest.

“Get on,” Din starts, voice raggedly, both hands clenching against Nova’s cheeks, puckering her lips, “the fucking throne, cyar’ika.”

“The—throne?” Nova repeats, breathless. “You want—”

“I want to fuck you on my throne,” Din interrupts, and stars above, she can feel the way that his cock is throbbing in his pants, through the regalia, through the beskar, all of it. “You said anything I want. I want to make you scream my name on the planet we rule while I’m seven inches inside of you. That work for you?”

Nothing but a strangled moan comes out.

Din nods. “Good. Get over there.”

Nova reels back as he releases her. It takes more than a few seconds to collect herself enough to move, and when she does, her legs feel like they’re made out of rubber, elastic and wobbly. She can feel his heavy gaze on her as she makes her way around the holotable, and when she takes the few steps that lead to the ironclad, menacing chair that sits atop the highest point in the room, Din’s voice rings out.

“Stop,” he commands, and she does, feeling her heart hammer. “Face me.”

Nova turns, her breath caught in her throat, staring down at Din. The few steps she’s scaled make her just a tad taller than Din is, and she watches as he slowly moves forward, crossing the tile of the floor with quiet, intentional steps.

“Take your clothes off,” Din manages, and Nova’s almost a hundred percent sure that he’s whispering, even though it might just be that she can’t hear anything over how loud her blood is pumping, over how hard her heart is hammering.

“Now?”

He raises a single dark eyebrow, and Nova nods, trying to peel off her shirt and her trousers as fast as she can. She kicks off her shoes, and they land at the bottom of the steps with a very incriminating thud, but Din just kicks them out of the way as he presses the soles of his beskar boots deliberately against the tile. Everything in here is blue and reflective, even after night has fallen on Mandalore, and Nova catches sight of her silhouette in the floor. Her breath stutters in her throat, suddenly very aware that she’s completely naked and Din, save for his forgotten helmet, is fully clothed, but with the way his eyes are roving over her body like he’s starving and she’s the only thing in this galaxy or the next that can satiate it, she forgets how to care.

“You,” he starts, trailing a single gloved finger down the curve of her body, “are so beautiful.”

“Stop,” she whispers, smiling, everything burning and in flames. It’s the opposite of what she means—she never wants Din to stop calling her beautiful, stop revering her, stop treating her like something holy—but when they’re in a public room that just about anyone left on this planet can walk on, and she’s the only one naked, the risk burns hotter than her desire. “Din, I—”

His finger is on her lips before Nova even realizes he’s moved. “Do you believe me?”

Nova blinks, stuttering over the dying words hidden somewhere between her teeth and the back of her throat. The answer is yes, because Din Djarin never utters a single word that he doesn’t mean, because he uses so few of them to begin with, and also because he’s seen every single inch of her body and worshipped it, but in this reflective room, usually full of figures so much more athletic, razor-sharp, warrior-grade, a tiny bead of insecurity spools down the back of her neck. Nervously, Nova’s gaze filters off of Din’s, flicking over to the ornate door on the other side of the room, and when she looks back, he’s staring at her.

“Nova?” he repeats, gently, and something about the way he’s saying it makes tears spring up in her eyes. “Here. Come here. Look at yourself.”

She lets him guide her over to the throne, which is made out of the shiniest, most reflective beskar she’s ever seen, polished so effortlessly it doubles as a mirror, and Din pulls curls of her dark hair away from her collarbone, fingers grazing the new necklace he gifted her, one hand curling around her jaw, the other sliding down the side of her body.

“Look at yourself,” Din repeats, his touch still so light, and when Nova doesn’t immediately obey, his grip tightens. Not hard, just filled with enough desire to snap her back to her senses—that he took her into this room to fuck her senseless, that his eyes don’t meet anyone else’s, that Din Djarin isn’t a pious man in any other capacity than his Creed and all the rules he broke to worship Nova instead. She relaxes under his touch, her eyes glazing as they travel over the valleys of her naked body. Her skin doesn’t glow in the darkness like it does during the daylight, but it’s a rich brown, three or so shades darker than Din’s. Her eyes, a deep sage green that dips into brown in the darkness, glitter as they flash against the beskar. Her eyelashes, dark and tangled up in the corners from where her laughter lines are. Her nose, not as prominent as Din’s hooked, curved one, but big, slightly upturned, and anchored in the center of her face. Her mouth, plump and perma-stained deep pink from where she bites hard on it in concentration. Her hair, so long now that it trails down to where her curved hipbones protrude, woven into a deeper curl than the natural wave of her hair from the braids it’s always tied back in. Din’s hand on her hip clenches gently at his knuckles, and she lets her gaze shift off of her face, down the stocky muscles of her upper arms, slightly sore from twirling Grogu around and from flying out of her skirmish with the TIE fighters. Her hands are long and elegant, princess fingers, her mother used to call them, dainty and slender, nails kept short to flip all the necessary switches on whatever vessel she’s flying, thumbs worn down with callouses from fighting and twirling Luke’s lightsaber around for the last two weeks, trying to conjure the power he radiates on her own. Down the left side of her tummy, which is rounded and collects weight around her bellybutton, is the scar that Jacterr Calican left in an attempt to rip her soul out of her body, and Din’s finger traces over the bump of it, gentle, endearing, protective. Her hips, which are wide, the curves of her upper legs, the muscles that pack on more weight in her calves. Nova looks at herself and sees, just for a glimpse, just for a split second, that sure, she’s not shaped like a Mandalorian, but she’s certainly desired by one. Din pulls her hair back from where it’s settled against her throat, pressing his lips to her skin.

“What do you see?” he murmurs, his voice deep and electric.

“The girl you love,” Nova whispers, grinning at him in their reflections. Din spins her back around, much gentler than he did a minute ago, all the fire gone, his eyes gentle like the oceans on Yavin.

“Damn right,” Din affirms, the timbre of his voice in her ear making goosebumps spark up across Nova’s bare arms. “Now get on the throne.”

She’s giddy. Her heart is, as usual, racing a thousand beats per minute, threatening to hammer right out of her chest. It’s cold—the throne—cool to the touch. As Nova slowly slides down onto the beskar, she watches Din’s brown eyes flash with lust and longing, and his look alone is enough to take away the chill against her bare skin. The beskar warms to her touch, and she crosses one thick thigh over the other, trying to quell the nervousness that’s still whining at the back of her mind.

“Don’t look at the door,” Din orders, his head cocked to the side. It’s been a few months now since Nova’s seen every single contour of his face, but every new expression not hidden behind the helmet makes her stomach lurch up into her throat. Right now, she can see the tenseness of his command in his clenched jaw, but his eyes soften as they roam over her body. “Look at me.”

“Din—”

“Look at me.”

Nervously, she does. The second her eyes meet his, everything else fades away. In the back of her mind, she’s aware that she’s completely naked, her skin up and against something divine, something not meant for her, this throne that she’s about to be desecrated on.

And sweet Maker above, she doesn’t even care. Din slowly canvasses the distance between the two of them, the intensity of his gaze never once wavering off of Nova’s face. The pure look of animalistic desire on his unmasked face makes her whimper under her breath. If she were weaker, she would cower away, avert her eyes, but by this point, she’s earned her brazenness. There are exactly two things in this galaxy that the ruler of Mandalore, the most ruthless bounty hunter, and the man in front of her would do anything for. Grogu and Nova.

He doesn’t make a noise. Everything is an electric wire as he finds his secure, silent footing on the first step, and Nova’s heart catches in her throat. She wants to say something, to make a silly comment, to cut through the tension, but she knows that whatever’s about to follow Din’s ascent will be worth her quiet. Instead, Nova bites down on her trembling lip, watching the rest of the throne room disappear as Din steps closer, still not making a single noise, pulling his body weight up the lip of each step, staring at her.

“What?” she manages, finally, the word all air.

Din moves closer. Nova’s seated against the throne, the beskar suddenly warm against her bare skin. Everything in her is burning. “What do you want?” Din asks, his voice deep, rumbling through her like a honeyed thunderstorm. He doesn’t even have the modulator to filter his words, and even though the deepness of his voice through the helmet runs rivers through her, Nova’s suddenly glad for the bareness of all of this. It makes it easier, dirtier, better.

“I want you,” Nova manages, hollowly, the words surrender out of her parted lips. “Just you.”

“You want me?” Din repeats, and a flash of lust sparks up behind his beautiful brown eyes. There’s something dangerous in his tone, something deeper, something electric. She stares at him, unwilling to break his gaze. If it were anyone else, Nova would think that the timbre of Din’s voice was teasing, but the edge to it suggests towards pleading.

“Yes,” Nova echoes, and Din moves forward, towering over her. She stares up at him as one gloved hand easily notches against her right cheek, eyelashes fluttering as the pad of Din’s fabric-laden thumb traces over the mountain of her cheekbone. “I want you, Mand’alor—”

“I’m not Mand’alor right now, cyar’ika,” Din interrupts, his voice low and ragged, sparking somewhere in his throat. “Look at who’s on the throne.”

Nova gulps. Air is suddenly impossible to come by. Everything in her is electric, alive. Everything else fades out except for Din’s touch. Her doubt, her insecurity—it’s all been chased away and zapped into obliteration by the way Din’s speaking, touching, breathing. “I—”

“Say my name,” Din says, hooking his free hand under Nova’s chin. She swallows, letting the roughness of his gesture manipulate her body in any way that he wants, pliable against Din’s weathered hands. “Say you want me.”

“Din,” Nova squeaks out, and a single one of his dark eyebrows quirks up against the celestial darkness of the throne room, daring her to speak. “Din Djarin,” Nova rectifies, her voice suddenly loud and clear. It booms out, fills the throne room with sound. For once, the buzzing in her head completely drowns out her fear of being discovered. This palace doesn’t exist. Anyone walking the strange, ornate, blue halls doesn’t exist. Stars above, Mandalore itself doesn’t exist at this point. She’s emboldened, as if her will has flooded back, full-force. “Three things. There’s always three things included in how I want you. I want you without armor. I want you without titles. I want you like I had you back on Dagobah.”

“And how,” Din whispers, his voice running through Nova like heat, “is that?”

She gasps as Din’s hand slowly slips down to her throat, bracing itself there. He barely squeezes, and without all of her senses screaming at her that Din’s hand is against her, she thinks his touch would feel like a ghost, like nothing there at all. “Like we belong to each other,” Nova manages, and Din’s grip intensifies. It’s a slip. She can tell, with the way that his eyes roll back, with the way that a moan slips out from the hollow of his open mouth. Stars blur through her vision—some refracted from the open sky up above, and some from the restriction to her airflow, and she leans into the pressure just as Din retracts his grip.

“Cyar’ika—”

“I belong to you,” Nova whispers, the words sounding like a confessional, deeper and darker than she intended. Her hands find Din’s, wordlessly pulling his hand back to rest like a vice against her throat. “Everything in me is yours. Remember?”

Din squeezes again, and the grin that was hiding slowly spreads across Nova’s face. She knows that in the darkness, her teeth glow white, framed by the plump pinkness of her mouth. Din’s standing, still fully clothed, but she can tell by the way his grip tightens against her throat that he’s rock hard under all that beskar.

“Din,” she manages, her voice high and thready through the pressure of his hand, “what do you want?”

“I want you,” he chokes out, guttural and dangerous, his voice coming from somewhere beyond the horizon. Immediately, he pulls Nova to her feet by her throat, eyes flickering carefully over her own gaze to double-check that what he’s doing isn’t too far. She smiles back at him, and when she’s fully standing, smile still plastered across her starstruck face, she drops her grip on Din’s wrist and immediately moves to unhook his armor. She could do it in the dark. She could do it blind. By now, Nova’s memorized every single inch of Din’s body, whether he’s armored in all of his beskar or not. Even the new additions to his regalia since becoming Mand’alor are burned into Nova’s memory, bright and gleaming. She doesn’t break Din’s gaze as she undresses him, pulling the pauldrons off, the chest plates, the silver V of covering that protects his lower stomach and his crotch. It’s over in what feels like seconds, and then the only thing covering Din is the soft fabric of his underclothes. Nova tugs at his trousers first, pulling them down to reveal the silky feeling of his boxers. She positions herself in between Din’s legs, grabbing his right hip to anchor his hardness against her, and he groans out again, the desperate, wet sound filling up the throne room. It's loud. Too loud. The kind of loud that Din never reaches, not unless they’re the only two people on a planet, not unless they’re lost out there in the crush of space. If his cheeks redden at the sound, though, Nova doesn’t catch it, because her touch is too focused, her vision still spinning off starry, impassioned, loud. Slowly, she reaches up through Din’s weakening grip to pull the shirt off of his torso, breath catching in her throat as she takes the King of Mandalore without armor, without clothes, without anything. Nova smiles up at Din, blinking away the small tears of pleasure that gathered in the corners of her eyes, and then she sinks back down on the throne, squaring her shoulders, tossing her loose hair out of her face, eyes full of allure and desire.

“I want you,” she echoes, and then her mouth is on his stomach. Din gasps out, the sound of it ringing out like infernal bells, and Nova hides her teeth as she grins against his stomach, tongue swirling up and down his belly, fingers grazing like butterfly wings across the bones of his hips. She can feel him growing harder and harder as she teases, parting some of the faint hair that trails down his stomach with the wetness of her mouth. Din’s hands find her shoulders, and his fingers clench down, leaving small half-moons imprinted on either side of her neck. “Can I taste you?”

“W—want you,” Din chokes out, his voice demanding and desperate, but the rocking of his hips against her chest betrays him, and before he can make good on his command, Nova’s already slid every inch of him down her throat. She moans in rhythm with him, as Din’s hands leave her shoulders in a frenzy and instead tangle in her hair, wanting. Quietly, Nova swirls her tongue around the base before she pulls off of his cock with a loud, slurping, sucking noise, and she doesn’t even have time to be embarrassed before she’s sinking her mouth all the way down over Din again, the tears that have returned at the corners of her eyes springing back to life. They feel like satisfaction. She can feel him trembling, and when she drops one of her hands between his legs, lightly cupping his balls, Din cries out again. “Nova—”

“Shh,” she interrupts, which is truly a feat, considering her mouth is full of him and her saliva and not much else, “let me finish you here.”

“No,” Din interrupts, and his voice is strangled, muddled. Immediately, Nova does, pulling her mouth off of him regrettably, blinking up at him, lower lip slowly jutted out. “I k—fuck, I know you wanted to finish me like this, but—but I need you to break in my throne.”

A jolt of lightning strikes through Nova’s body, and she shudders as Din’s shaking grip finds the small of her back and pulls her to her trembling feet. For a moment, everything else evaporates, just the two of them breathing and holding each other, Din’s forehead stooped low to press against hers, and then he whirls her around.

Nova’s used to Din’s manhandling, the expert way he spins and lifts her, like she’s made of nothing but air. This is much clumsier than his usual vigor, and when she’s done a complete 180 and is facing her husband, Mand’alor, the big brave bounty hunter, he’s seated on his throne like he owns it, and his hands are on Nova’s hips in the same place where she was sitting a second ago. There’s something deeper and more intense in his gaze right now, something beyond just lust. It’s power, Nova recognizes as Din pulls her hips down, her knees splaying to the sides of the beskar throne. The metal is unyielding against her bones, but still, she doesn’t feel the impact. Din has collapsed her on top of him, the only thing keeping her upward is his grip and her knees trying desperately to cling onto the straddling position that Din’s holding her in.

For a moment, she just stares at him. He looks like divinity, here, something deeper than just another human being in front of him. Nova doesn’t know if it’s the starry sky spinning through the throne room, or because this feels like a holy place of worship, or if it’s just been weeks since they’ve had longer than a handful of minutes at the end of the day before they both fall asleep, too exhausted and dizzied by their work to touch each other relentlessly, but she feels like she’s spinning. Like this has been months in the making, even though it’s only been a handful of days since Din pulled her down over his lap and anchored her hips to his. Her eyes are on his, desperate, searching. When a single hand trails up to brush against her throat, she eagerly leans into his touch, nodding before his outstretched hand makes contact with her neck, skin on skin.

“You want this?” Din breathes, eyes fixed on her open mouth, and Nova nods against his question, his touch, everything.

“More than anything,” she manages, voice throaty and high, stars spinning beyond her eyes. Din nods in assent, and then his hand is gone, a claw rounded around her hipbones, his fingernails sinking into the plushy flesh. The way he holds her as he grinds her down on top of him is enough to make the rest of the world—and every insecurity—trickle out of Nova. When he pushes inside her, slick and warm and so big from this position, she gasps, the sound of it wet and obscene, too loud for the silent room.

“Fuck,” Din hisses, and then Nova starts moving of her accord. She can’t really feel her knees as they dig into the smooth, impenetrable surface of the beskar throne, but it doesn’t even matter. This is worth never feeling either patella ever again. There’s something humming low and urgent in Din’s throat, his scratchy face buried in Nova’s neck, tongue licking and snapping at her most sensitive pulse point. She groans. “You—you’re perfect, cyar’ika.”

“Not perfect,” she murmurs, hands wrapping around Din’s neck and tangling in his dark hair, eyes fluttering open enough to catch a glimpse at it, her fingers long and beautiful as they tug at his hair.

“Listento yourself,” Din pleads, one of his strong, toned arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her down over and over. In any other situation it would be embarrassing, the sucking noise coming ceaselessly between her thighs, but she’s so wet and so close to the edge that she doesn’t try to obscure it, and doesn’t try to fight Din’s insistent, guttural words. “You’re perfect. Everything about you. Your hips, the—the way they move. Your eyes, rolling back into your skull as I fuck you. Shit, Nova, everything about your pussy, I—”

She can feel her cheeks burning. It’s not often that Din is this vocal, this unhinged, especially not in this situation. It’s dirty and forbidden, and as she bounces up and down on his cock, eyes rolled back like he loves, everything wet and slippery between her legs, she forgets all about the fact that they’re naked and desecrating the throne of Mandalore. It’s everything. It’s so much, and when she’s right on the edge of orgasm, Din grinds his hips up into her.

“Din—”

“I want to show you off,” he grits out, and before she can ask him what he means, he’s lifting her off of him like she weighs fucking nothing, pushing himself down to the hilt inside her as she watches the empty throne room, the empty seats around the holotable, watched by the lifeless warriors painted on the wall. She doesn’t try to hide any part of her body. Din’s still whispering every dirty sound he can think of in her ear, one broad arm wrapped around her waist, the other hand tangled up in Nova’s hair.

“To whom?” she asks, the words barely even air. She’s on the edge still, eyes blinking, torso trembling. She wants Din to let her cum so bad, she can barely hear what he’s saying over the pumping rush of blood in her ears.

Din lifts up a lock of hair, the same stubborn wave that always falls in her face, tucking it gently behind her year. For a second, she sees red, legs shaking, completely subject to whatever Din’s doing. “Everyone,” he whispers, and the shock of how guttural and feral his voice sounds sends Nova right over the edge she’d been teetering on. He makes her cum so hard that everything explodes out into the same number of stars shimmering above, divine and dangerous, white-hot, so, so alive. And before she has a chance to gain her senses back, Din’s dragging and rushing as deep into her as he can, every inch of him warm and desirable, and when he lets go to follow Nova over the edge of the cliff they’re both standing on, she gasps as he fills her, hot and thick. It’s so much harder than the last time they fucked, both of them devastated, exhausted, fulfilled.

Nova leans back against Din’s chest, heaving, spinning, trying to catch her breath. They’re both inhaling and exhaling intently, trying to return back to the planet they rule, to the throne they just fucked on. “Well,” she starts, pulling the long waves off her back, looking over her bare shoulder at Din, “wow.”

He laughs, and he’s still inside her, slowly softening as he comes back down from the high of it, pressing his pink lips against her exposed skin. “High praise.”

“It’s the truth,” she whispers, giggling, suddenly remembering where they are. “I—I can’t believe we just did that—”

“We’re newlyweds,” Din interrupts, his voice still rough from the aftermath of sex, and something sparks up low in Nova’s belly as he talks, “plus I’m the ruler of this planet, remember?”

She grins, tipping her shoulder back into his bare chest, trailing her fingers over his tan skin, tracing fault lines she’s never seen but knows are there. “I like power on you.”

“Nova—”

“No, seriously,” she continues. “It’s hot. Do you get a crown, maybe? Do I?”

“I think one of us will have to duel Bo-Katan for that one,” Din groans, and Nova laughs again, sliding off of his lap, slowly pulling together the pieces of armor she discarded earlier, tossing them through the dark air for Din to collect. The mention of Bo-Katan, though, sends a shiver of a reminder down Nova’s very exposed spine. She pulls her own underclothes on, quickly whipping her tank top back over her head, suddenly remembering how cold it is in here when she’s not writhing between the proverbial sheets with her husband. She bites down on her lip, hastily zipping her trousers up, the noise loud and discordant. “Nova,” Din continues, squinting at her, “what’s wrong?”

“Oh,” she says, dazed, tossing the last piece of armor back over to him, “you know, we—we just desecrated a holy part of Mandalore, we don’t know how the hell to fight off the First Order, and Bo-Katan is probably standing right outside that door, ready to kick both of our asses.”

“She,” Din answers, pushing against the heavy beskar doors, “is not here. We’re working on how to stop the Order. And this holy part of Mandalore,” he breathes, walking back towards her, one eyebrow raised, as if he’s questioning the way his face is displaying expression, “is ours to desecrate.”

“When you said,” Nova breathes, staring back at him, everything else fading out, “that you wanted to show me off to everyone—”

Din suddenly looks sheepish, and she giggles. “Nova, I didn’t—I was just into the moment, if you don’t want to—you never have to, I—”

She grins, smile glittering in the dark, sliding past him and into the empty hall, drifting in the general direction of their bedroom. “I didn’t say,” she whispers coyly, holding out one hand for Din’s gloved one, “that I didn’t want to.” She winks, pulling a still-stammering Din behind her. “I just can’t believe you want to share me with anyone.”

They’re up the stairs and back to the entrance to the master bedroom, and Din finally finds his words—or his grip—and grabs her, twirling Nova back into his arms with the force of the bounty hunter that he used to be. “You’re mine,” he whispers. “I won’t let a single person in this galaxy forget it.”

Nova grins, heart doing backflips in her chest. By the time they finally make their way into the suite, it’s dark across the whole wide expanse of sky, and Grogu is asleep in their bed, comically small compared to the king-size that takes up most of the room. “I know,” she whispers, looking back and forth from her husband to their son, a smile etched into her lips. “We should get to bed,” she murmurs, after a second, and Din nods, pulling off the armor and his underclothes in his silent Mandalorian way, Nova weaving her hair back into her usual braid, feeling the bruises from her knees banging forcefully into the beskar throne.

“What’s on your schedule for tomorrow?” Din asks, both of them gently pulling the pillows that line the bed onto the ground, until it’s empty except for their usual spread and the baby’s tiny body. His eyes drift down to Grogu, and so do Nova’s. He knows. She knows. Neither of them want to say it aloud. It’s time for Grogu to go back with Luke and resume his Jedi training, even though none of them want him gone. Nova swallows.

“You know,” she tries, halfheartedly trying to lift her voice into excitement, “Back to business.”

Din rolls over, facing Nova in the darkness. “You don’t have to,” he whispers, and she knows losing Grogu again, even though it’s to Luke Skywalker, even though they’ll be able to fix it, is wreaking havoc on him too. Nova settles down next to him, ears focused only on the miniscule snores of Grogu’s open mouth, her hand finding Din’s, her eyes falling over where Luke’s lightsaber is hanging ceremoniously by the door.

“But I do,” she answers, finally, closing her tired eyes. “We have a galaxy to save. And I,” she breathes, snuggling in closer to the baby, “have a Jedi to see.”

if you would like to be taken off the taglist or put on it, send me a message/ask/comment!! <3

I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!!!! whether you're a returning reader or a longtime lover, i m so happy you're here with Din, Nova, Grogu, and me. i just simply could not stay away from this story, and i cannot wait to go across the stars and back with the second fic in the series!! leave all your thoughts in the comments here, or find me over at tumblr @ amiedala, or scroll through my tiktok @ padmeamydala

CHAPTER 2 WILL BE UP SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH, @ 7:30 PM EST!

xoxo, amelie

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tessiete · 3 years

Note

Prompt: "Please don’t regret me." You know what I want.

Oh, I tried! I tried to get them to dance, but I could only fit in so many of your tropes. So have bodyguard, party, fancy dress, declarations of love Obitine, with Satine whump! I hope you enjoy, my love!

(And yes, I'm still filling prompts. I love you all, I'm just REAL SLOW!!!)

DEEPER THAN THE SEA

Despite the best efforts - on both their parts - the evening had passed quite pleasantly.

The food had been good (though too many dishes included hoi for his taste), and the wine had been plentiful (though she’d found it too sweet to tempt her), and the dance floor had been packed all night, though neither of them had condescended to partake.

While the Duchess Satine played the socialite, skirting the edges of the room to flatter this senator and that, doing her best to keep her tongue in check and her temper mild, Obi-Wan Kenobi had been at work securing the venue from any would-be assassins. The threat had been commed in to the Senate nearly a week ago, which, in Kenobi’s eyes, was plenty of time to reschedule or cancel the event. But Satine would not hear of it.

“It is not the Council’s decision whether or not a senator may host her own charity ball, and it is not your duty to censure me for it. If I knew you were so fascinated by the intricacies of my schedule, I might have simply offered you a ticket. As it is, you’re welcome to come stand guard by the door.”

He’d rolled his eyes as she’d turned her back, and sighed. “How long?”

“All night, if you wish.”

“I meant how long is the event?”

She’d stopped, and faced him, the slope of her neck a smooth, unbroken line, the skin there pale and soft, aching for a touch. He’d kept his eyes resolutely on her face, and his hands tucked in his sleeves.

“As I said, my dear Jedi,” she’d said, eyebrow raised. “It shall last as long as you wish.”

She was absolutely infuriating.

And so it was Obi-Wan found himself playing bodyguard while the duchess laughed and teased. The only small consolation was that he was fully justified in spending the evening staring at her - in fact, it was his duty. It shouldn’t have been a hardship. After all, it had been years since he’d had the privilege of being assigned a mission he might complete in perfect comfort. He wasn’t cold, or tired, or injured. He wasn’t being shot at, or pursued by droids or Sith. The only thing he had to worry about was being distracted by the hem of her dress, and the swirl of her skirts, and her bright laugh, and claricrystalline gaze. And every so often, from across the hall, the crowd would shift, and she would turn, and he’d catch her looking back.

Agony.

He should have insisted that Mace accept the assignment, but when he’d questioned him in Council Chambers, his friend had only smirked. “We saved it for you,” he said.

Hours pass, and Obi-Wan stares, and no one comes to kill Satine. At half past one, when the more modest guests begin to retire, he allows himself a brief moment of indulgence and grabs a glass of frizz from a passing server. He throws it back, and grimaces as the alcohol runs over his tongue and cools the back of his throat. Satine was right. It is too sweet.

As if summoned by thought, she appears at his elbow, sidling closer until their shoulders touch, and she can nudge him out of his disappointment.

“Still alive?” she asks.

He sets the glass aside, and shrugs. “As far as I can tell.”

“Well,” she says, taking a sip from her own glass. “You’re welcome to check more thoroughly if it would let you rest easier.”

“Am I?” he asks, and for a second - for the length of time it takes for the words to slide over his lips - he is uncertain whether he is meaning to rebuff her, or if he wants for reassurance.

She must hear that uncertainty, too, because she looks at him full in the face, her brow drawing close and a quizzical look of concern falling over her.

“Do you want to?” she asks.

And in his brief, foolish, selfish moment of consideration, the assassin strikes.

He doesn’t realise it at first, and neither does she. All he sees is her mouth open, her red lips wet with wine, and her breast lifting as she gasps out an exquisite little exclamation of shock. All he hears is her indrawn breath, and the high chime of glass as it shatters against the ground. All he feels is the heat of her body as she stumbles, then reaches for him, then falls into his arms.

“Satine! Satine!” he calls, and as he slips his hand beneath her neck to cradle her head, he feels the hard carapace of some strange creature lodged into the skin there.

She whines as his hand rakes over it, and cries out when, with a sharp tug he rips it out of her flesh. It is no creature at all, but a metal dart fired from the barrel of some airgun, based on the way it is fletched, and the silence of the attack. The body of the dart is empty, it’s poison delivered, and there is not enough of it remaining to determine what it is without a toxicology droid. In his arms, Satine gasps and writhes. Her arms come up to grip at his shoulders, and he throws the dart aside. They don’t have time to wait.

“Obi-Wan,” she gasps, her eyes dark with fear. “Ben, Ben, I can’t breathe.”

“Hush,” he says, doing his best to keep his own terror from rising up, and sweeping him away like the swollen tides of Kamino. “You can. You can.”

He looks around, frantic to find some sign of her attacker as they flee the scene, but instead the room is a whirling mass of horrified bodies, rushing to and fro as the situation becomes clear. Someone screams. A window breaks. Satine’s muscles seize, and she cries out as her spine arches and her limbs go stiff and crooked like kindling. Obi-Wan holds her closer, not restraining her but supporting her body as it balks at the presence of a foreign invader in her veins. He runs a hand through her hair, and whispers to her until the fit passes, leaving her gasping and weeping.

“I need to get help,” he says.

“No,” she protests, gripping his sleeve in desperate fingers. “Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.”

He grits his teeth, and nods his head, unable to deny her anything. “Alright,” he says. “I won’t.”

Instead, he hits the emergency signal on his personal comlink, knowing that it will summon whichever Council member is closest. Mace is the one to answer, his voice breaking through the din of chaos with the promise of salvation.

“Obi-Wan, are you alright? Your com activated -”

“It’s Satine,” he says, not bothering with the little civilities of conversational etiquette. He interrupts and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that he speaks her name with no title. “She’s been poisoned. I don’t know what, but she needs - she needs -”

She screams again, her agony dissolving into a whimper, pulling Obi-Wan’s attention. He presses his forehead to hers, and begs her to hold on. She quiets in his embrace, and he’s not sure if it is exhaustion, or his words which have brought her relief, but in the stillness, an idea comes to him. A dangerous one. Mace can feel the shift, even through the mechanical impulses of the tinny comm.

“Obi-Wan,” barks Mace. “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m going to do a purge,” he says, and he ends the call. He moves from out beneath her, settling her body gently on the floor.

The movement is enough to stir her from whatever stupor claws at her, and her lashes flutter as she tries to bring him into focus.

“Are you leaving?” she whispers, and the resignation in her voice nearly breaks him.

“No,” he says, choking on the word, choking on his own guilt. “No, I’m not. I won’t.”

He presses his forehead to hers, and holds her face between his palms, but she doesn’t seem to hear him. She sighs, her eyes closing again, her fingers twitching at her side, her hands loose and empty.

“I knew you would,” she says. “I knew you’d have to. I wanted you to.”

“I know.”

“I loved you,” she says, so softly that it is carried to him only on her breath, fluttering against the hair by his ear, turning and glittering like leaves in the wind. “Please just don’t regret me.”

He feels like dying. He feels like a hand has forced itself, elbow deep down his throat, knocking at his teeth to grip his heart in a tight fist, and tear it out of him again.

“I don’t,” he swears. “I don’t. Don’t leave me. Don’t you dare.”

He begs her like she begged him, and the injustice of it lashes against him like a slaver’s whip. He knows how that feels, but this time, he can act. This time, he has the Force. He lays her down - just for a moment - so that he may reach into his boot and withdraw the Vespari blade that Qui-Gon once gave him. The knife is sharp. He has always kept it so, though he has rarely had occasion to use it, and it parts the flesh of his palm as though undoing a seam. There is almost no pain as blood begins to well, spilling over his hand and down his wrist. He has to cut deep.

Then he takes her hand, and does the same.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “This will help.”

He wipes the blade on the edge of his tabard, and tucks it back into his heel, using the ritual of care as an opportunity to centre himself for what he is about to do. But he finds he doesn’t need it. He is calm. His heart has stopped its frantic race, settling into a steady pulse. His lungs don’t ache with the need to take in air. He is not lightheaded, or panicked. He is ready. He is resolved.

He takes her bleeding hand in his, and presses the seam of their flesh together so that their blood mingles, and their heartbeats meet. Then, he closes his eyes, and reaches into the Force.

The concept is simple. As a young knight, his master had taught him a technique to purge toxins from his system. It was not perfect, and relied heavily on the user’s ability to manipulate the Living Force into identifying and binding to the poisonous substance to prevent its absorption into the body. It became infinitely more difficult when the poison was already in the bloodstream. It became impossible when it was in the bloodstream of somebody else.

Satine is Force null. She can neither feel its strength, nor guide its flow. But that does not mean she isn’t touched by it. The Force lives in all things. Obi-Wan knows this. Obi-Wan sees this. And he hopes that by exposing his own blood to hers, by bringing them both into such intimate contact he can follow the line of his body directly into hers, and seek out the poison that way. He opens himself completely, unaware of anyone or anything around him. He feels the heat of a cosmic wind through his hair, though he is so far gone that he has no hair to stroke, no skin to touch, no body at all to feel - except blood. He grounds himself in the flow of his veins, and stitches it to the flow of hers. He feels the Force and imagines its infinite currents as his own, until he is gone, and she is gone, and the Force and the Light is all that remains, burning away everything, even the poison.

And everything goes dark.

He wakes a week later, alone in his quarters. There is a cup of hot, but badly brewed tea by his bed that could be from none other than Anakin. He can feel the concerned furling of his presence looped around the handle of the mug, and creeping along the floor, and only he could have anticipated his awakening so precisely, but he is no longer nearby. His saber lies reverently beside it. His cloak hangs over a chair, and his boots sit upright and polished beside it. But he is on his own. There are no dancing senators, no screaming politicians. No assassins, or broken crystal, or tears. There is no Satine, and he throws back the covers, frantic to see her once again. To know that she lives, to know that she is fine, even if she is without him.

The door to his room slides open at his approach, and he races into the front room on bare and clumsy feet. There, resting elegantly at the centre of a low table sits a modest bouquet of Mandalorian Peace Lilies, beside it, a note scrawled on encrypted flimsi. At his touch, the random symbols rearrange themselves to reveal a message coded only to him.

My Knight, it says. And ever mine. Thank you for your sacrifice. Without regret - Your Lily.

#obitine #obi-wan kenobi #satine kryze #shameless whump #prompt fill #my fic #I TRIED FOR YOU #XD #lovely lovely lovely #thank you!

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sushiburritonoms · 3 years

Text

Din/Luke Kyber Crystal Drabble for Tene <3

Hi gang!

My dear @bronze-lorica has been so supportive to me this year so I wrote her this short Drabble (ficlet?). I'm sorry it wasn't smutty my darling ;_; (next time tentacles!)

This is untitled, not beta'd, doesn't really make sense and its just vibes and thoughts about sentient kyber crystals. Maybe one day it'll turn into a real story, idk. Enjoy!

All kyber crystals are sentient.

When Luke told Din this, it was said so casually, so matter of fact that Din failed to immediately grasp the enormity of the statement. He’d been too busy processing the revelation that the Darksaber, the ancient Mandalorian weapon that was so coveted and desired by his people, was the source of his recent spat of odd dreams and strange phantom sensations. The faint pulse against his palms. The way in which the saber seemed to curve in the desired direction even before his arms completed the move. The strange weight that the Darksaber had when he dwelt for too long in negative thoughts. All of it was real.

It was even more impressive because Din was only slightly Force-sensitive. More than most, but not to the level of Luke and Grogu. Apparently, for a full Jedi the sensations were a lot more intense. “You’ll get used to it,” Luke had assured him, with a sheepish look on his face. “Eventually.”

It was a lot to take in and there were so many other things to worry about; Bo-Katan and Boba Fett’s Tatooine takeover and revenge tour being his biggest problems. Then when Mandalore was reclaimed and Fett and Shand were mostly content with the Empire they had built, Din had found himself distracted with Luke himself. He had completely forgotten the existence of other kyber crystals until the day when he had pinned Luke against the wall of his newly built Jedi temple and accidentally pressed his beskar clad hip too deeply against the metal shaft of Luke’s saber.

One second he was sucking on a particularly sensitive part of Luke’s lower jaw and the next second he felt something like electricity shoot through his left thigh and down his leg.

“Ow! Kriff!”

Luke also flinched, his hand pulling away from Din and immediately going towards his side. “Oh! I’m so sorry.”

Din winced and pulled away so he could rub at his leg. “It’s ok.”

Luke’s eyes flicked to Din. “Not you.” His hand closed around the saber and his eyes fluttered closed. “I was apologizing to my crystal.”

Was it just Din’s imagination, or was there a slight hum in the air? A mix of electricity, the sound of a X-Wing’s engine, and a soft metal chime.

Din’s hand immediately went to the Darksaber. He felt nothing.

“They don’t like the feeling of your armor pressed against their casing,” Luke explained as his eyes opened.

A thousand questions rushed into Din’s head but all that came out was “They?”

Luke shrugged. “They prefer they/them as their pronouns in Basic.”

Din swallowed nervously. “They being the kyber crystal in your lightsaber,” he clarified.

“Yes.” Luke looked apologetic. “I think it’s the Force damping properties of beskar, it bothers them. It’s interesting, the Darksaber never said anything about that before.”

The Darksaber. Talked to his ...to Luke. Din’s grip tightened on the Darksaber and in the back of his mind he was bewildered to realize he felt the slightest pang of jealousy.

He pushed away the feeling and thought for a minute before he spoke. “Do they...have a name?”

The look Luke gave him could only be described as ‘fond’. “They’re a kyber crystal, they don’t identify like that.”

Of course, they kriffing didn’t. Din had a dozen more questions about the nature of kyber crystal identity and how they were sentient enough for pronouns but not names, but he squashed all of them in favor of the most important one. “Does the Darksaber use pronouns?”

Luke tilted his head, perhaps asking Din’s saber silently. “The Darksaber....identifies as The Darksaber.” Luke sighed. “The Darksaber has a very unique presence in the Force.”

The Darksaber finally gave Din a slight pulse against his palm. The sensation reminded Din of a massiff headbutting his hand for attention. He gave it a reassuring pat.

“You looked disturbed.” Luke held out both of his hands for Din again.

“I’m….thinking,” Din admitted, but he let Luke pull him close again.

“As much as I treasure the ability to watch you think, I was really enjoying making you stop.” Luke leaned to press his lips lightly against Din’s chin. He knew that even the gentlest touches were still intense to Din after his many years of covering his face. He only needed to caress Din’s cheek with the tip of his nose and he was a boneless mess in the shorter man’s arms.

“But we should go to my room and put the sabers away first,” Luke sighed in between nips to Din’s neck. “It’s not like they’ve consented to any of this.”

That was like a burst of ice against Din’s back. He pulled back in shock, only to see a wicked grin spread across Luke’s face. He giggled and Din swatted at his ass.

“That’s not funny.”

“My crystal thought so,” Luke laughed. Then before Din could pout Luke grabbed one of his hands so he could lead him back towards his room.

That night they were very careful to lay the sabers side by side on the softest cushion in Luke’s room. Just in case.

—---

It was possible that Luke’s kyber crystal had enjoyed riling Din up because after that night he became more aware of the crystal’s presence. It started with Din hearing the strange starfighter/wind chime noise more frequently. When Luke appeared content or when he was in deep mediation, Din would hear the hum emanate from Luke’s side. In the rare moments when Luke lost his patience or became annoyed, the air around him would become charged with static electricity. When Luke held Grogu close or laughed at something that Din said the hum would shift to a vibration that reminded Din of a Tooka’s purr. Eventually--he wasn’t quite sure when--he started to hear the crystal every day.

But where Luke’s crystal was loud, the Darksaber remained mostly silent. It didn’t seem to respond to any of Din’s moods nor did it react when he tried to talk to it, both out loud and in his mind. The only time it reacted at all was when it was used.

When Luke and Din spared, the Darksaber would finally open up and pulse like a living breathing creature. The longer Din practiced with Luke, the more the Darksaber seemed to come to life. Perhaps it was his imagination, but there were times when the Darksaber seemed to become heavier in his grip when he needed a steady blow but as light as a vibroknife when he needed to reach. Din wasn't Force-sensitive and he couldn’t make the saber come to his hand with his mind, but it soon became clear that no other Mandalorian was going to disarm him. It was like it was glued to his hand in combat and only Luke had the power to part the blade from Din’s grip.

Din asked Luke once why the Darksaber never seemed to hum like Luke’s crystal.

“Well. My crystal has never partnered with another sentient before. It’s very young compared to the Darksaber. The Darksaber is ancient even for a kyber crystal and it and has passed hands so many times. The experiences it has had, the lives it ended or saved are so incomprehensible to the average human, so there’s no way for me to tell you why it reacts to you the way it does.”

Din had frowned at that. “Are you saying the Darksaber is traumatized?”

Luke had shrugged. “I’m saying I have no idea. All I know is it’s chosen to be with you.”

Maybe the Jedi said that to make Din comfortable but if anything it made him feel worse. At least Luke’s saber sounded like it liked him. It gave off an aura of warmth and the soft chimes and hums it made seemed to fit the Jedi’s personality like a true partner. He didn’t have that any of that with the silent Darksaber.

Or least that’s what he’d assumed until the day when they encountered the Sith.

—--

Technically, it was an Inquisitor, which Solo would repeatedly remind Din of later. She wasn’t a fully trained Sith. But then, what did any of them know about the Sith? Even Luke’s knowledge had gaps. The Inquisitor was dressed in all black skimpy clothing that looked like it wouldn’t protect her from a strong breeze, let alone a battle. She had the exact same lack of common sense that Luke had by refusing to wear armor. Truthfully, she looked like a diseased womp rat, with beady yellow eyes, equally yellow sharp teeth. Even her lightsaber was ridiculous, all sharp with unnecessary spikes along the hilt. She didn’t have a name, just a number and she wanted nothing more than to murder Luke. Seemed Sith-y enough for Din.

The fight between Luke, Din and the Inquisitor was intense. Despite her decrepit appearance, the Inquisitor fought like a woman with nothing to lose. Where Luke’s strikes were powerful with purpose in each swing, hers were wild and chaotic and her randomness and desperation was slowly pushing the battle to her favor. Soon their sabers moved too fast for Din’s eyes to follow. After wasting precious moments trying to follow, he gave up and focused all of his attention on the monitor in his HUD that was monitoring Luke’s heat signature. He watched and waited.

When the monitor suddenly detected a heat spike, it coincided with a choked gasp from Luke. That’s when the Darksaber was vibrating in Din’s hands before he was even fully aware of it. His body was moving before Luke’s could land on the ground.

Din didn’t scream–the Darksaber did with a howling sound that reminded Din of the booming scream of a detonator, the wail of a child, and the growl of blaster fire. He felt warmth pour out of the hilt in his hands and wrap itself around until there was pressure against his shoulders, molded to him like his own beskar’gam. The Darksaber pulled Din’s arms and he instinctively followed; he went just low enough so the red saber nicked the top of his helmet. Instead of shooting up, the Darksaber pulled him around, like a child’s top. He stuck out his leg and the Inquisitor went flying with a rageful screech.

He could feel the Darksaber like he never had before, still vibrating like the aftermath of an explosion, its warmth wrapped around his arms just like beskar. For a moment he even thought he saw something shimmering, reaching out to Luke as he lay stunned from the deep burn in his side.

Before Din’s brain could start to panic he felt something pull his chin away from Luke and towards the Inquisitor. The Darksaber brought him back into the battle and directed his gaze past the still screaming woman to the abandoned silver hilt lying abandoned in the dirt behind her.

Din is not Force-sensitive.

But kyber crystals are and that is how Din suddenly ended up with a green blade in his left hand.

Both Din and Luke did not how to duel weld.

The Darksaber did.

It pulled back so that Luke’s crystal could wrap itself around Din like cool water that flowed along his forearm and wrist. Where the Darksaber growled, Luke’s saber sang. It moved Din’s left hand defensively while Din’s right hand attacked. Every time the Insquistior tried to harm the crystals’ partners, they helped move Din’s arms up in ways he only vaguely recognized from Luke’s training. Together they managed to push back the Inquisitor long enough until her saber was pinned under twin blades, leaving her face unprotected.

Which allowed an injured Luke to finish the battle. He pulled Din’s beskar staff off his back and directly into the Inquisitor’s neck with the Force. Din didn’t even flinch as blood splattered onto his helmet’s visor. He was too distracted by the harmonizing hum that flooded him from both the Darksaber and Luke’s saber. They sang together in a type of kyber crystal victory song that shook Din’s entire body and it didn’t leave him even after he clipped both sabers into his belt and rushed back to Luke. The Jedi didn’t have the strength to say anything but Din could tell that he heard it by the look of awe and wonder in his tired eyes.

—---------

The two crystals continued to hum softly as he carried Luke back to his ship. The Darksaber steadied Din’s shaking hands as he tried to bandage Luke’s wound with bacta. It was Luke’s crystal that pulled his attention back to the cockpit so he could direct their ship to the closest inhabited planet for medical help. When Luke was taken into surgery, the crystals comforted Din with tendrils of warmth pressed along his arms and around his chest. They stayed wrapped around his body until Din was finally allowed back into Luke’s hospital room and was seated by his side.

He felt Luke’s crystal finally leave him as he gently brushed some loose hair from the Jedi’s sleeping face. His left hand tingled as the crystal slowly slid down his fingers and into Luke’s forehead, disappearing into the other man, like particles of dust being blown off his fingertips by the wind. Luke smiled in his sleep and something shifted inside of Din and he felt himself relax.

He slowly moved his right hand towards the Darksaber on his hilt. This time, he felt the saber pulse under his palm.

Thank you, he told the Darksaber silently. Thank you.

The Darksaber hummed back, satisfied.

#tene my beloved #the world needs more bestie Darksaber #like the only time the Darksaber possesses Din is emergency battle tactics and when the man needs a nap #he's great on road trips #I want more Darksaber in love with Din damnit #Luke's crystal on the other hand is a little shit #it likes to chime at inappropriate times like sex #it keeps asking to be dumped into a cup of caf and Luke refuses #don't want to see that crystal caffeinated thats for damn sure #Luke's kyber crystal is a hyperactive dog that craves violence #The Darksaber is a no fucks given cat #sbficlets #dinluke

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ariainstars · 4 years

Text

The Mandalorian: Is He “Better Vader”?

This may sound funny, but please hear me out for a moment.

The further I watch Star Wars’ new live-action tv show, the more I get the impression is that Mando is meant to be a positive version of Darth Vader (the “dark father”).

Father figures usually don’t have a thankful role in this galaxy - either they are absent like Anakin’s, terrifying like Luke’s, or well-meaning but failing in their primary duty of keeping their child safe, like Ben’s.

Not a few fans, though a little mockingly, like to call Kylo Ren “better Anakin” since his conflict is more fleshed out and the whole figure inspires more sympathy. My theory: is Mando meant to be “better Vader”?

It was repeatedly and amply shown that the cause for the never-ending conflicts in the galaxy lie for a large part on the side of the Jedi, whose stuck-up attitude ultimately failed. Their order prohibited personal attachments, and even the wisest among them were not affectionate. This was what drove the all-powerful but passionate Anakin, who desperately wanted to have someone he could love and protect, to his ruin: the moment he finally became a father he also became a ruthless monster. Mando is introduced as a merciless bounty hunter, but as he opens up to the child, he becomes kinder and begins to find friends. He grows even more valiant, but also learns how to be gentle and caring.

Since the Jedi are almost all extinct, but Force-sensitive children still are born throughout the galaxy, we are left with the question of what is to become of them. Some were brought to Luke’s new temple later, but we can assume that not all were identified.

Mando’s little protegee is staying and making life experiences with a guy who doesn’t know anything about the Jedi and has no clue of the source of the child’s mysterious powers, but instinctively does the right things: he keeps him safe, instructs him, scolds him when necessary, and offers him friendship and companionship. (The Mandalorian who adopted him probably was a good father figure, too.) The child never sees his “father’s” face, but nevertheless he trusts him explicitly. Mando is the living proof that coolness and fighting qualities are not opposed to being gentle and caring.

Ben Solo’s tragic fate was the result of failed fatherhood: Luke did not know how to be a father because he had no children of his own and had had no role model, while Han did not trust his capacity to protect his son from his own powers.

The Parallels

Both Vader and Mando are soldiers. Though not Force-sensitive, Mando is extremely strong and well-versed in martial arts; he never shows his face; he wears an armor completed by a black cape which does not seem to have much practical use. He usually speaks only in short, clipped sentences and has a wry, sarcastic kind of humor.

Vader was a follower of the Emperor, factually a slave who had no choice but to obey his master, and wherever he went he wreaked terror. Mando does take jobs from the bounty hunter’s guild, but essentially, he is a free man and often offers his services negotiating on his own terms. Noticeably, he fights against raiders and mercenaries or remnants of the Empire, peace following in his wake.

When he first reaches out for the baby, it looks like the opposite to another famous scene in the saga: here we have the adoptive but good father, while the other was the biological but cruel father. Luke did not take his father’s hand, while the baby instinctively reached out to the man who had protected him.

Note also the scenic reversal: one figure is standing on the right side, hand with upturned fingers reaching out into a void, the scene is bathed in cold light. The other figure is standing on the left, hand reaching down, illuminated by warm light.

When we do see his face once, Mando is lying down and helpless like Vader; he is not disfigured though and despite being injured, he is not dying. Shortly after this he finally accepts his task as the child’s father figure, while Vader died a few minutes after his unmasking and could not fulfil his fatherly task any more. Also, in both cases we learned the person’s real name not long before the mask went off: Anakin Skywalker respectively Din Djarin.

Given the saga’s love for cyclical narrative, this would make a lot of sense. Star Wars is telling us once more how important a protective and kind father is for a child, both as a role model and an attachment figure. We do not know yet how baby Yoda will turn out; but it would have made little sense for the storytellers to think up such a figure in the first place if they didn’t want him to go another (possibly better) way than his more famous predecessor.

Is the galaxy at last healing after the terrible conflicts caused by both Jedi and Sith, and will the good fathers be responsible for a better future, maybe even for the long-awaited Balance in the Force? I hope so.

May the Force be with the Clan of Two. 😉

(On a side note: Vader / Anakin was in his mid-forties when he died. Din Djarin is about the same age.)

After the closure of Season 2, I would like to add a few details that also set Din Djarin apart from Anakin.

Attachment vs. Affection

Anakin’s greatest weakness was his anxiety to lose the ones he loved. In the end, he sacrificed all of his ideals for the purpose of saving his pregnant wife. Luke also loved his friends and wanted to save them, but in that fateful moment before Palpatine, he realized that he would have had to give up his integrity for the purpose, and that was when he decided to throw away his weapon.

Din suffers deeply when he has to give up “his” child to a literal stranger for an indefinite time. However, he knows that it must be done because he does not have the knowledge to train him. Grogu also, reluctantly, lets go when he sees that his “father” is doing the same. This goes to show, again, that he is much stronger than Anakin.

Following Rules vs Following One’s Heart

Like Anakin / Vader, Din takes his helmet off the moment he has to say goodbye to his child. The famous sentence “Just once, let me look on you with my own eyes” comes to mind. Vader was a Sith Lord and Anakin had been a Jedi. Both adhered strictly to their code: Anakin was a faithful Jedi until he became a Sith and Vader obeyed to the rules of the Sith until for a brief moment he acted like a Jedi again (and, also, like a father, which was a first). Mando unmasks not only before Grogu but also

- Luke, who is a total stranger - Moff Gideon, an enemy - Bo-Katan, a possible potential enemy since she pursues the Dark Saber - Fennec, an ally but not a friend - Cara, a friend who never saw his face.

That he is willing for all of them to witness the moment he lifts his incognito shows that Mando is finally listening only to his heart. The Way of the Mandalore, which was his guideline for his entire adolescence and adult life (i.e. thirty years or more), has become less significant to him than the bond he has with Grogu.

Anakin’s tragedy was that he could not follow his heart but that some rules defined by an outside source always were in control. He wanted to be a husband and father and loyal friend, a mechanic and a pilot, not a Jedi or a Sith.

Ben Solo’s tragedy was the same; though not born a slave, he also had no choice about what to do with himself and his life. It was either being a Jedi or a Sith. But we know that he wanted to be a son and a lover, and a pilot.

The same fate occurred to Luke, many years later: the kind-hearted, affectionate young man from Tatooine, who so easily befriended everyone and always was compassionate and helpful became aloof and detached on being a Jedi, because he thought that was what this task required. But in the end, it was exactly what made him not understand and even fear his nephew, with disastrous results.

Din Djarin chose the way of the heart, he is no longer adhering to “the Way”: he said himself that now he can’t put his helmet back on. (Alternatively, he could put it on again, but that would mean defying the Way otherwise.) Grogu has witnessed that a man can very well choose family over a code that was taught to him, even if he adhered to it all of his life. Luke is the one who carries him away, but Grogu looks over his shoulder to his “father”. Luke may become his teacher, but Grogu’s role model, his hero, will always be Din; as it was for Ben with his father Han.

Hints at the Future

Anakin died twice: once on Mustafar, where he also lost his blue light sabre, and on the second Death Star, where he had lost the red one. Din Djarin, at the end of this part of this journey, receives a sabre, although he never wanted it.

With the Dark Saber, a new fate is awaiting Mando. Is his destiny that of being the warrior-king, protective and honorable, that ought to have been Anakin’s place? Maybe. As they say, the best leaders are the reluctant ones. 😊

#star wars #sw #read more #the mandalorian #mando #din djarin #baby yoda #anakin skywalker #darth vader #luke skywalker #han solo #the Jedi #father figures #clan of two #kylo ren #ben solo #greef karga #grogu

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katelynnwrites · 4 years

Text

pairing: Ezra Bridger x f!Reader (mostly platonic)

warnings: some fluff

word count: 710

summary: you can’t sleep and decide to take a walk around the Ghost, bumping into Ezra as you do

Febuwhump Prompt: ‘Insomnia’ (Day 6)

You wandered around the Ghost, your bare feet padding against the cool metal floor soundlessly. It was one of those nights where you just couldn’t seem to sleep. You had been too restless to stay in your bunk so you got out, hoping that by walking around, you would become tired enough to sleep.

Making your way to the nose gun, you hesitated as you heard the faint sounds of someone speaking.

Curiosity overcoming you, you crept towards the door.

‘I’ve been training with Kanan every day and I’m getting better at being a Jedi.’

You immediately identified the voice as Ezra’s, wondering who he was talking to.

‘We’ve been fighting against the Empire, continuing your work. Hera says that you would be really proud of me and I know that. I just wish you were here to tell me that.’

There was a pause, almost as if Ezra was thinking about what to say next.

‘There’s something else I would’ve liked to talk to you about.’

Ezra’s voice had changed. The tone of it had seemed almost softer?

You stepped back, realizing that you had unintentionally intruded Ezra’s privacy. This was a moment meant just for him and his parents and you guiltily turned back around.

Then you heard your name.

‘Y/n. I think you would have liked her. She’s funny, caring and ever so kind. She makes me laugh harder than anyone ever has before and she’s always looking out for me. Even when we’re not on missions. Like how she’s outside right now.’

You freeze, panicking at your discovery. A few seconds passed and your panic increased. Ezra didn’t speak about his parents often, preferring to keep those memories to himself. The last thing you wanted to do was cross a line.

‘Just come in Y/n.’ Ezra’s voice has an underlying current of laughter and you relax, knowing that he wasn’t angry.

The door slides open and you see that Ezra is sitting on the gunner’s seat with the holodisk projection of his parents in front of him.

‘How did you know I was there?’ You ask, smiling sheepishly.

‘I can sense you remember?’ Ezra grins, stretching his arms out in front of him.

‘Oh.’ You blush slightly at his statement.

‘Does it work on everyone?’ You ask curiously. While you had watched Kanan and Ezra train, you had never quite understood the nature of their abilities.

‘Yeah. I just have to concentrate more. Sensing your presence comes easily to me. Sometimes I don’t even have to think about it. It just happens.’ He explains.

Turning back to the hologram, his lips quirk up in a little smile.

‘I told you she was watching. Meet Y/n, Mom, Dad. She’s special. I wish you could have met her.’ His tone was gentle and you blushed even harder at his compliment.

Spinning the chair around, he shut off the hologram.

‘Why are you up?’ He questioned.

‘I could say the same of you E.’ You fire back, giggling softly.

He grins again at the nickname.

‘Can’t sleep. You?’

‘Same.’ You reply, gazing out into the stars.

There was a small click and you turned back around to find that Ezra had opened one of the overhead compartments.

‘Here.’ He tossed a blanket to you and you smile gratefully.

‘Stay and watch the stars with me?’ He asked, his bright blue eyes sparkling with hope.

You didn’t even have to think about your decision.

‘Of course.’

******

‘Ezra? Y/n?’ Hera’s voice echoed through the ship.

‘Kids!’ Zeb yelled.

Hera shook her head as she moved down the corridor. Those adopted space kids of hers were always getting in trouble. The rest of the crew woke up this morning to find both Y/n and Ezra were missing.

There was a hiss as the door slid open and she sighed in relief at the sight.

Snickering, she smiled at the two teenagers who were cuddled up against each other in the corner of the room.

‘Y/n?’ She softly murmured, attempting to wake the sleeping teen.

Her smile widened as the girl shifted and burrowed further into Ezra’s side.

She giggled softly as Ezra wrapped his arm around her, almost as if he didn’t want her to leave.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

Febuwhump Tag List:

@febuwhump

Ezra Bridger Tag List:

@bythevay

#star wars rebels #star wars #ezra bridger x reader #ezra bridger #the ghost crew #hera syndulla #kanan jarrus #zeb orrelios #chopper #c1 10p #febuwhump2021 #febuwhump #febuwhumpday6 #febuwhump day 6 #whump #whump prompt #katelynnwrites

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Text

part 3 of Escape Your Destiny (Star Wars Wangxian AU) - on ao3 or tumblr part 1, part 2

He had been right to reject seclusion, Lan Wangji thought grimly. The sweet siren call of calm contemplation had nearly seduced him, the Dark Side seeking to eat away at him through other means now that anger and hatred had not done the work – he would have meditated himself into a stupor, becoming little more than a vacuum within the Force, a black hole of deathly intent.

More than that, though, he would have missed – this.

This disaster.

Wei Wuxian’s lips were pale from blood loss and hypothermia. Two of his limbs were at odd angles, probably broken, and Lan Wangji feared that there were more like them beneath the body that was bruised like a tender peach – he had been shielding as many people as he could, Lan Wangji knew, because he knew his Wei Ying too well to think that he might have done anything else.

Lan Wangji still didn’t know all the details, what exactly had been the disaster or why Wei Wuxian’s starfighter had crashed when he knew (with painful recollection) exactly how good a pilot Wei Wuxian was, but it hadn’t really mattered. Xue Yang had rushed into his chamber shouting excitedly - not exactly a rare event - saying something about an alarm and a disaster and a crash and can I have one of these gadgets? possibly two, maybe, I’m thinking two but haven’t really committed yet, it’s a big decision you know, and Lan Wangji’s blood had run cold when he realized what alarm he was referencing.

(A proper Jedi would never have tagged the object of his affections like an endangered bird or a criminal, injecting the tracking chip so deep into bone and muscle that standard scans wouldn’t pick it up and even in-depth scans might register it as a naturally occurring aberration. A proper Jedi would think of such intimate surveillance as cruelty, dehumanization, the caging of a free bird –

A proper Jedi wouldn’t have known what happened.

A proper Jedi wouldn’t have been able to rush over at once, wouldn’t have been in time to retrieve the body from the wreckage, finding it still warm and breathing but swiftly fading into the Force.

A proper Jedi would have been worthless.)

“That looks pretty bad, Master,” Xue Yang said, the comm crackling in his ear, and for once his tone was almost solemn. Perhaps the lessons on empathy were working, following the introduction of the rancor Xue Yang had named Chengmei with an expression so pained and vicious that Lan Wangji had refrained from asking. Perhaps it was that he’d grown so obsessed with his pair of bounty hunters and their foundling assistant, a little not-blind Bothan girl who liked to mouth off at him. Or perhaps it was just something as simple as knowing that if Wei Wuxian were lost, Lan Wangji would have no reason to –

No reason to anything at all.

“It is within the limits of what a bacta tank can heal,” Lan Wangji said, because it was, it would be, as long as he got him there in time.

Time that was swiftly running out.

Later, when Wei Wuxian was safe, Lan Wangji would return to that obscure little space station that had nearly caused his beloved’s death and he would find out what had happened properly. He would find out, and he would slaughter every one of them that caused it, torment them for days if he needed to in order to know who to blame – it didn’t matter if their contribution were accidental or deliberate, major or slight. He would offer up a sacrifice of their suffering to the Dark Side, as solemn as lighting a stick of incense at a temple –

When Wei Wuxian was safe.

Because he would be. He had to be.

Lan Wangji’s Wei Ying would not die so easily.

“Uh, Master? We don’t have a bacta tank.” Xue Yang was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know that many people around here that do. This is Outer Rim, remember? Not even the Hutts have one.”

“There is one in an outpost in the Quiberon sector,” Lan Wangji said. His attention was split between piloting their stolen ship as fast as he could and monitoring Wei Wuxian’s vital signs. He had transferred a certain amount of energy into him already, but the Dark Side was poisonous in overly large quantities, especially if one was not accustomed to it; a pure Jedi like Wei Wuxian couldn’t tolerate it, and Lan Wangji would not risk making him worse. “Inat Prime system. I’ve entered the coordinates. Set us up for a jump to lightspeed.”

“Inat Prime,” Xue Yang repeated, instead of doing as he was told. “Isn’t that – near Rothana?”

Lan Wangji said nothing.

“Rothana’s a manufacturing planet. Heavy engineering – warships. It used to belong to a subsidy of the Jin Engineering Corps, maybe still does, I don’t know, but either way manufacturing planets like that are where those sleemos keep their precious IP. And that means it’s going to be guarded and booby-trapped up your chubba. Who in their right mind would set up an outpost anywhere near there?”

Xue Yang was descending into Huttese slang again, Lan Wangji noted to himself, keeping his calm only by sheer force of willpower even as the Dark Side screamed in his mind that now was the time for rage and pain and blood. Given his hatred of the entire species, Xue Yang only did that when he was especially anxious and didn’t want to admit it.

Later, when he didn’t have more pressing things on his mind, Lan Wangji would have to inquire of his apprentice – which he had previously believed was as transparent to him as a sheet of transparisteel – how he had learned about things like top-secret Jin Engineering manufacturing planets and IP and such things like that.

Later. Right now, he didn’t care.

“Prepare for jump,” he said again, the threat in his voice clear, and this time Xue Yang scrambled to obey, mumbling curses as he went. This was more typical of Xue Yang, but in this case it signified that he was concentrating, and that was all Lan Wangji cared about.

The rest of the trip passed as if in a daze, time counted in the beats of Wei Wuxian’s heart. Still strong, because Wei Wuxian was strong – this wouldn’t be the end of him. It wouldn’t.

Lan Wangji would make sure of that.

“We’re here,” Xue Yang said, breaking through Lan Wangji’s extreme focus on the rise and fall of Wei Wuxian’s chest. “I’m going to guess that our destination is the third planet? If you can call those other ones planets, they’re barely more than asteroids…”

Lan Wangji hummed, affirming.

“So, you going to tell me what this place is? Some super-secret Sith hideout?”

“No.”

“Smuggler’s base? Bounty hunter lair? Mandalorian terrorist cell? Clone factory?”

Lan Wangji rolled his eyes. Xue Yang had been reading too many historical action comics again.

“No, but seriously, Master! I deserve to know what we’re getting into, don’t I? What is this place?”

Lan Wangji was tempted to say you deserve nothing but what I give you, you filthy-tongue swamp-rat, but that was the Dark Side speaking, not him, and not only because the Gusu Lan Jedi order in which he had been raised did not permit cursing. It was simply anathema to him - he was Sith, but not a Lord, and he had encouraged this self-same insolence because it was better than having Xue Yang cringe before him like a kicked dog.

No matter how irritating it might be at times like this.

“It’s Jedi,” he said shortly, and to his amusement that actually shut Xue Yang up for a solid minute.

“I’m sorry, Master, I think I temporarily went insane due to Dark Force poisoning,” Xue Yang finally said. “But did you say that we’re planning on popping over and ‘borrowing’ the bacta tank of a bunch of Jedi?”

“Mm.”

“Master. Master. Please tell me you remember that we’re Sith, right? Sort of the sworn enemy of the Jedi? Arrest-on-sight orders? Any of this ringing any bells here? No? In short, have you lost your mind?”

Lan Wangji took Wei Wuxian’s pulse again. It was getting increasingly thready; he frowned.

“Take us in,” he ordered, and Xue Yang made a whining sound not unlike an especially agitated cat, but he obeyed, finding the planetary base and flashing them with a urgent medical attention required signal and transmitting the passcode Lan Wangji recited to him.

The base opened its doors in silent invitation.

Xue Yang took them in, apparently resigned to his fate and determined to pointedly suffer and judge him without saying a word.

This determination cracked the second they passed through the gates.

“Master!” he shrieked. “Master, Master! That’s the Qinghe Nie emblem!”

“It is,” Lan Wangji agreed. Foreseeing Xue Yang’s next question, he added, “It is here because this is an outpost of the Qinghe Nie Jedi order.”

Xue Yang sounded a bit like a rusty door when he hyperventilated, and even more so when he started laughing hysterically. How had he ever survived being a Sith before, if this was how he reacted to stress?

“Great, right, yes,” he said, nearly howling. “Sure, why not? Let’s go knock on the door of some Jedi and ask them for a bacta tank like we’re borrowing a cup of sugar, sure, okay, we can do that. Jedi are chumps, they’re all about mercy and sympathy and bantha fodder like that; we can con ‘em - it’ll be tricky, but it can be done when you’re in a pinch. I’m fine with that, up for it, it’s cool, all cool. You know who we can’t con? Qinghe Nie, that’s who. ‘Suppress evil no matter the cost’ Qinghe karking Nie.”

Lan Wangji ignored him, scooping Wei Wuxian into his arms and heading out into the saber hall.

Three grim-faced Jedi dressed in the immediately identifiable colors of the Qinghe Nie were waiting there, hands on their lightsabers and droids lingering in the corridors, but they did not attack. Instead, they led Lan Wangji, a nervous Xue Yang dogging his heels, to the medical bay, never uttering a single word.

The medical droids took Wei Wuxian from his arms – Lan Wangji forced himself to recall the Lan sect mantras on restraint and allowed them to do so without ripping out their wires for daring to touch him – but it wasn’t until Wei Wuxian was firmly encased in the bacta tank, the oxygen-rich liquid flowing into his lungs to heal him, the colors on all the screens all showing positive signs, that he was finally able to release the breath it felt that he’d been holding since he first saw the broken starfighter that encased Wei Wuxian’s broken body.

This was fine.

“Wangji,” a low voice said from behind him, and Lan Wangji’s back stiffened.

This was not fine.

The Qinghe Nie were a strange order of Jedi – almost heretical, really, by any traditional measure. The orthodox Jedi order, for the most part, valued calm and serenity and selflessness, prioritizing the logic of the mind over the yearning of the heart, preaching detachment from worldly concerns and attachments…

Qinghe Nie, in contrast, valued righteousness, and cultivated rage.

Halfway to Sith, Lan Wangji’s uncle had once remarked after a glass of something stronger than tea. He’d regretted it later, of course, and tried to walk it back, smooth over his uncharacteristic rudeness, but Lan Wangji still remembered.

The adherents of Qinghe Nie were of the view that for every virtue there was a fault – that the Jedi’s emotional remove would at times render them passive, that self-control could too quickly shade into indifference. They argued that it was the duty of the virtuous to be enraged by evil, intolerant of it, and that only through that anger would they be motivated to act to eradicate it.

Their philosophy often led to their deaths, whether through reckless action or through the corruption of rage into madness, but even their harshest critics had to concede that they were devastatingly effective.

Lan Wangji had always thought that there was something heartbreakingly sincere about all the Jedi that took the harsh vows of Qinghe Nie, each one willingly trading away long lives for the sake of righteousness, for the ability to make a change in the world, each one unable to tolerate life if it meant they weren’t striving to make things better. Perhaps they did not match the Jiang for creativity or the Lan for elegance, perhaps their techniques were more brutish and less refined, their diplomacy little short of appalling, but no other Jedi order could match them for sheer power.

Very few people wanted to be between a Qinghe Nie Jedi and their target, and still less if they had allowed themselves to succumb to the beserker rage that sometimes took them on the battlefield – indeed, in a crisis that called for force of arms, most people who knew what they were about would rather have a single Qinghe Nie on their side than an entire battalion of war-droids from the Jin or Wen engineering corps.

Still, even that efficiency might not have been enough to convince the ancient sticklers of the Jedi Council to condone such a Sith-like view of the Force, but the Qinghe Nie also had an unsurpassed connection to the kyber crystals that were essential to the creation of lightsabers – the mines under their hands were far more numerous and more fruitful than any other order, and for all that they seemed to have dubious connections to the lightsabers they crafted and wielded, with their highly unusual one-sided edge, they were always open-handed and willing to let other Jedi pick freely from their stores.

With the ancestral weapon of the entire Jedi order at stake, even the Jedi Council unwillingly bowed its head to reality and compromised.

Not very happily. Especially since the fierce young head of the Qinghe Nie order – the great Chifeng-zun, Nie Mingjue – had been constantly causing trouble for them ever since he had been admitted to their deliberations.

More relevantly, though, was that Nie Mingjue was also a good friend of Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji’s elder brother by blood, and it had been the gift of his token, his passcode, never revoked, that they had used to enter through the gates.

(Look what happened to the Twin Jades you prized so much, my old clansmen, Uncle, Father, Grandfather. Look at me now. Begging for scraps from a Nie -)

Lan Wangji turned and saluted, bowing deeply and ignoring Xue Yang, who had progressed so far into hysterical laughter that he was now hiccupping.

Nie Mingjue caught his hands and raised him up, just the way he always had, and that grim face surveyed Lan Wangji from top to bottom, those searing eyes seeming to pierce into the depths of his corrupted soul.

“You look well,” he said, which surprised even Lan Wangji, who had thought himself beyond surprises. “That’s good.”

“What the fuck,” Xue Yang muttered. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck – you guys are with me here, right? This is kriffing insane…”

The Qinghe Nie Jedi ignored him.

“Chifeng-zun,” Lan Wangji said politely, and ignored the man’s raised eyebrow. He was not about to fall back into calling him da-ge the way he’d done back when he was in the Jedi crèche, no matter how tempting – everyone had called Nie Mingjue da-ge back then, too young to be afraid of his fierce and barely leashed energy. “Thank you for lending us temporary use of your base.”

There wasn’t really a polite way to say I wasn’t expecting to run into you here under the circumstances, but from the way Nie Mingjue snorted, Lan Wangji suspected he’d understood regardless.

“Checking up on the Jin,” he said, an explanation that Lan Wangji didn’t deserve to hear. “Treasonous svapers, the lot of them. Is this Wei Wuixan?”

Lan Wangji nodded. His heart was unexpectedly in his throat as Nie Mingjue studied the other Jedi through the glass of the bacta tank, though he wasn’t sure why.

He was Sith now, after all. Why would he care what Nie Mingjue thought?

It would have been easier if Nie Mingjue had been angry at him, full of rage the way he so often was. Easier if he’d turned his tongue as sharp as any lightsaber to scolding him, or turned his face away in coldness. Nie Mingjue notoriously despised the Sith, had probably meant to call the Jin Sithspawn instead of svapers earlier, had probably switched the word only in deference to Lan Wangji’s current occupation – which meant he knew, because of course he knew, there was no way Lan Xichen hadn’t told him even if his position on the Council hadn’t already entitled him to all such secrets.

He knew, and he still persisted in acting like – like –

“Cute enough,” Nie Mingjue commented, and Lan Wangji covered his suddenly burning face with both hands. “You have good taste.”

“Please stop,” Lan Wangji mumbled, mortified beyond all belief. Xue Yang was looking back and between the two of them with his jaw gaping wider than a Gungan’s.

Nie Mingjue snorted, amused. “I carried you around on my shoulders when you were knee high, Wangji. I think I’m entitled to torment you a bit about your crush.”

Xue Yang looked like he was going to forsake the ways of the Sith, convert to Qinghe Nie, and start logging prayers at the temple of Nie Mingjue, and Lan Wangji couldn’t even blame him.

“Don’t you have anything to say about –” Lan Wangji shut his mouth with a snap.

He didn’t actually want to hear Nie Mingjue exorcising him for his choices, no matter how little he regretted them.

Nie Mingjue was silent for a moment, contemplative. “No.”

Lan Wangji blinked, not understanding.

“I don’t have anything to say,” Nie Mingjue clarified with a shrug. “I can’t say I entirely understand why you chose what you did, but we all choose our own paths in the Force, Wangji. I have faith that even though your path leads you to the Dark Side now, it will eventually lead you back to us once more. If you keep your sense of righteousness about you and continue to stand up for what you believe is right as you always have – and avoid engaging in the wholesale slaughter of innocents the way so many Sith do – I will never be disappointed in you.”

…maybe Lan Wangji would allow the people in that spaceport to live.

But only because it would hurt Wei Wuxian to know that he had sacrificed so much for nothing, of course. It was pure selfishness, nothing more.

(The Dark Side hissed in his head, bitter-angry-vicious-hate-hate-hate, but Lan Wangji hadn’t been Hanguang-jun for nothing. He controlled himself, allowing for only the influences he chose to accept – it was his independence that had led him to the Dark Side, and his independence, he believed, that would allow him to forge his own path, as Nie Mingjue had said, even inside the ways of the Sith. His uncle would say that such thoughts were pure arrogance, pride before the fall, but, well. He’d already Fallen, hadn’t he?)

“Would you like to stay with him until his vital signs have recovered?” Nie Mingjue asked, and Lan Wangji nodded, grateful despite himself.

Grateful, too, that Nie Mingjue did not speak of Lan Wangji reconciling with the rest of his old order.

“I will not stay longer,” he added. “I know it must be a burden to you, opening your doors to one such as me –”

“Ridiculous,” Nie Mingjue scoffed. “This is a secret base, Wangji. If you don’t say anything about it, who’ll know? And before you ask, I’m going to tell Wei Wuxian that you saved his life whether you’re here for him waking up or not, so take that into account when selecting your leave time. And I’ll exaggerate.”

He would, too, Lan Wangji thought fondly. Nie Mingjue had always been big brother to all the Jedi younglings, no matter how grown up they eventually got, and he never let them forget it.

“I’ll consider it,” he allowed, and settled into a meditation pose at the side of the room.

“As for you,” Nie Mingjue said to Xue Yang, who straightened up so quickly that he might as well have attached a ruler to his spine. “I hear that you’re the one that’s been attacking Hutt palaces?”

Xue Yang glanced at Lan Wangji, who sighed.

“You shouldn’t encourage him, da-ge,” he murmured. “He gets into enough trouble as it is.”

“Comradery does more to defeat evil than any amount of solitary philosophizing,” Nie Mingjue proclaimed, certain as ever in his own righteousness. It would be unbearably irritating if it was anyone less sincerely bullheaded about it, earnest but full of flaws. “Anyway, it’d be good for some of our padawans to see a Sith in action without needing to go up against one right off the bat. You in?”

“…in? I don’t – there aren’t any Hutt palaces around here..?”

“They take their travelling palaces on the Quiberon Line,” one of the Qinghe Nie Jedi said, and Xue Yang’s eyes lit up at the promise of what he undoubtedly thought was an opportunity for wholesale slaughter. It wouldn’t be, of course, not when he was going to be fighting alongside the strict Qinghe Nie, but it would keep him busy for the time it took Wei Wuxian to stabilize and recover.

Maybe Lan Wangji would even stay long enough to speak with his Wei Ying before retreating to be his silent and unwanted protector again.

Maybe.

#mdzs #lan wangji #wei wuxian #xue yang #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #escape your destiny #star wars au

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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#9 “Tell me to stay and I will be here for as long as you’ll have me.” with Obi-Wan & Jango & Satine? (... or Obi-Wan/Jango/Satine, I'm not picky)

Hurt/Comfort Dialogue Prompts

Oh, I'm going to make this deeply stupid and AU because I got struck by a plot bunny and I'm taking it out on a prompt.

Satine hates the man named Jango Fett.

They've met before, once or twice. He'd known her father, before the latter's assassination. She'd met Jango when she was a child, before he'd lost his people at Galidraan, before she'd lost her sister to a terrorist group and her father to a blaster shot. She'd thought him gruff but kind, at the time, and very sad.

Now, she just wants him to trip on a pipe and brain himself on one of the many rusted, broken beams around them. She won't strangle him herself, won't turn her back on her oaths and commit violence, but she's not too proud to hope for an accident.

"Pick up the pace, princess."

"I am a Duchess," she snaps, lifting her skirts to step delicately over something that might have been machinery at one point.

The only light they have is from his helmet, and the only reason she hasn't fallen from the fabric catching on some matter or other is that he has a sense for when she gets caught.

He'd suggested that she pull the skirts up to gird her loins, and then found that the numerous layers made it impossible. He'd offered to cut the skirt down to something more manageable, without depriving her of the coverage she still needed in the cold of these darks, dank ruins. He'd then found that the vibroblade did nothing against the skirts.

(She was a pacifist, not stupid. Of course her clothing was reinforced.)

"I don't care," he says back through grit teeth. She's not sure why he hasn't just left her for dead, but she's not going to complain. Much. "Just move."

They've been making their way through the ruins for hours. They still don't know how they got here. They have no way to find out.

They just head up, and hope it gets them somewhere.

(Signs litter the walls, all in a script unfamiliar to them. Archaic, or simply foreign, they don't know.)

"Wait."

She freezes.

Fett moves behind her, light shifting with the noise of his beskar, and then he says, "I'm going to turn out the light for a second. Give us a minute to adjust to the dark after I do. I think I saw something glowing, but I can't tell with the flash on."

She nods, sure that he can see it, and they are engulfed in the dark again.

It's not for long, because the glow that Fett described is real. Faint, far off down the hallway and a pale blue that winks in and out in multiple spots at once, but there.

"We'll need the light to make it there without you getting rust sickness," Fett mutters. He flicks the headlight back on. "Might get some kinda hint out of it, whatever it is."

"You'd risk it?"

"Don't have any other choice," Fett tells her. "Move out, Princess."

----

They reach the blue glow, entering a large, cavernous atrium, just as dark as the rest of the ruins so far, but much less cramped than the previous hallways.

It is mostly floating motes of something, and the something in question makes Satine's skin crawl. She has no idea what it is. She doesn't think Fett does either, but he's a little busy trying to get a scan of the room around them. Satine can just barely see the floor from the blue light, and she steps closer carefully. Part of her screams about deep sea fish and wild space ancients, creatures that use light to hunt, but they've had nothing else yet. No hints.

This place feels ancient. Perhaps the spirits that linger are even older.

"Kryze!"

"I'm fine," she calls back, deliberately refusing to understand the man's worry. She just... reaches out.

And one of the blue lights comes to her.

Fett swears and comes closer, but Satine pulls her hands to her chest, cradling the little light to herself. It's larger than she'd expected, perhaps the size of a Chandrila plum. It's warm, too.

"You're going to get yourself killed," Fett snaps.

"It's friendly," she says. "I think."

"You think," Fett hisses, the noise crackling through the vocoder. He puts a hand on her shoulder. "Listen--"

The lights coalesce. They are, for the moment, blinding, and Satine flinches away.

Fett has a blaster out before Satine can even open her eyes again. She knows the noise better than she'd like. She can identify which blaster it is by the click of the safety alone.

Any Mandalorian her age can.

"Oh dear," an unfamiliar voice says. "I'm afraid that--well, yes, Mando, hello there. I'm afraid that the blaster won't do much to me. I'm already long dead, you understand."

When Satine manages to blink the spots out of her vision, it's to see a glowing, slightly blue-tinged human figure in clothing that is distinctly Jedi, if very... very outdated.

The man--she thinks it's a man, beards usually indicate such--smiles and waves at her. "I apologize for the light show. It's been quite some time since I've had reason to take a solid form."

"I can imagine," Satine says, her voice weak even to her own ears. The man isn't much older than her, or at least wasn't when he... died? Or perhaps he was elderly when he died, and just rolled his age back as this spirit for some reason.

He smiles kindly, and then looks past her shoulder to Fett. He rolls his eyes, and smirks, and says, "Su cuy'gar, Mand'alor."

"I am not Mand'alor," Fett growls out. "I don't hold that title anymore."

"You do in spirit," the figure claims. "None other can say the same, not yet."

Before Fett can argue further, the man smiles pleasantly, and says, "I don't suppose you could remove yourselves from my shrine? Just a few steps back, thank you."

Satine looks down. She notices the raised platform and carved sigils and the stone column she hadn't seen in the earlier darkness, and flushes. She steps back and down, and Fett does the same.

"Now," the figure says. "As I was saying--"

"What are you?" Fett demands. "Ghost of a Jedi?"

"Something like that," the figure allows. "I was not just a Jedi, but... yes, I'm something you could call a ghost. I'd prefer simply a spirit."

"Like the ka'ra," Satine mutters, and grunts in disagreement.

"Those, Duchess, are only Mandalorians."

"Then I suppose it is fitting that I am both," the spirit says, and his form shifts.

Armor. It does not cover all of him--his pelvis and head are distinctly bare--but the shapes are distinctly Mandalorian. The colors aren't quite exact, with the blue glow he carries about him, but she's fairly certain she's seeing blue, green, and black. Reliability, duty, and justice.

Fitting, for a Jedi. The symbol for the Order is on his pauldron, even, and the hilt of his saber hangs easy at his side.

The gasp that comes through Fett's vocoder is harsh. She can't imagine he likes this.

"You--" he cuts himself off, takes a breath audible even past the helmet, and tries again. "There is no way you are Tarre Vizsla."

"No, I'm afraid not."

"So you must be Obi-Wan Kenobi."

The man smiles and tucks his hands into his sleeves, the swinging of the fabric allowing them the glimpse of vambraces beneath. He ducks his head in a shallow nod. "I am indeed."

Satine feels how empty of blood her own face is. She can't imagine Fett is doing much better.

"This is the Kar'ta-yaim be talyc rang," Fett mutters, horrified in a way that Satine feels her own self echoing. "You..."

"Well, we certainly never called it that," Kenobi says, head tilting faintly. "But I imagine that after the siege... Yes, Temple of Bloodied Ash would certainly reflect our final days."

It was one of the few stories that didn't pit Jedi and Mandalorians against each other, in the histories.

It had been the first attempt to coexist, the warriors of the saber and the warriors of iron. None managed to wed the two philosophies the way Kenobi had, but that hadn't mattered. They'd lived together, in peace. The reports had been clear enough, that there hadn't been weapons storage. There hadn't even been real defensive measures, barring the force fields. The Jedi had refused to let war reach this building, even whilst the Sith still raged across the galaxy. The other temples could handle the atrocities afar. The children, the elderly, the infirm, they were all to find a home here. The only weaponry were the sabers and whatever metals the Mando'ade carried in their armor.

Just a place of peace, a home to research, to children, to hospitals, all slaughtered to the last man, and set ablaze after. Nobody had ever tried such an attempt at peace between Mandalore and Jedi since. The location has been lost for longer than anyone remembers, but...

"Why are we here?" Satine asks.

"I wonder," Kenobi says, seeming far too pleased for the revelations of the last minute. He strokes at his beard, and then turns and sweeps an arm across the air. As he does, a whirring noise surrounds them, stuttered and heavy, but growing in power. Bit by bit, the sections of the wall that he'd gestured at begin to glow.

There are lights set into the wall like circuitry, warm and bright. The generators, which much be centuries old, at the least, continue to run.

"They draw energy from the river in the mountain," Kenobi says, before either of them thinks to ask. "Come along, my dears."

Satine hesitates. So does Fett.

Kenobi turns, presumably noting that their footsteps aren't following him. He smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle.

Satine can't remember how old he supposedly was, at his death. His eyes are much older, but...

"I assure you, it's perfectly safe," he tells them. "The building won't hurt you."

"The building?" Fett asks, sounding perhaps a little more dubious than the situation warranted. They were already talking to a figure of legend.

"Yes, the building," Kenobi repeats, indulgent in a way that Satine would have found irritating if aimed at her, but rather approved of like this. "The walls are already straightening out, I feel. And the droids are going to be clearing out the debris soon enough. The rust will be a little difficult to manage, of course, but..."

"What do you mean the walls are going to straighten out?" Satine asks. "And how... this place has been dead for centuries, hasn't it? How did you wake it?"

"Duchess Kryze, I didn't wake the Temple," Kenobi tells her. She doesn't know how he got her name. "You did."

She doesn't know what to say in response. She stays quiet, and waits for him to elaborate.

"Is it because she woke you up?" Fett asks, clearly unwilling to play a waiting game. "You're a... guardian? The keyholder to the power?"

"Mand'alor," Kenobi says, with a smile playing on his lips behind the carefully-groomed beard, "I am the Temple."

What.

He smiles and starts walking backwards, gliding in a way that makes it clear he doesn't need to step, really, because his feet don't stay planted where he puts them. They have to follow, now, or risk losing him. "My consciousness, my very self, is woven into every bit of this building. I have no flesh, not anymore, but while my sense of self stays coherent in the Force... the Temple is my body."

"How?" Satine demands, hurrying to keep up. She tries to ignore the way the flagstones shift and settle ahead of her, still and level by the time she steps forward. She tries to ignore the grinding of metal, as it's pulled into the walls like it's soup instead of stone. She tries to ignore the creaking of the foundation about them, and stays focused on the pleasant smile of one of the only two Mandalorian Jedi in history that maintained the balance.

"Do your history books carry the name of my apprentice?" Kenobi asks.

"Skywalker," Fett says immediately. "And... Tano, I think, before she changed it. She escaped, didn't she?"

"Yes, she was away at the time," Kenobi says, voice distant for but a moment. Somewhere far off among the tunnels, there is a mighty crash. "I'd fought until I couldn't any more. My armor, what I had of it, protected me from the flames. I'd worn a helmet during the siege, and it filtered the smoke, even as I lay dying from other wounds... between that and the Force, I lasted long enough that Anakin found me. The others had all died of smoke inhalation, if they hadn't succumbed to their injuries or the flames themselves by that point."

"The fire didn't reach you?" Fett questions.

"Mm, no, the alcove I was in was all stone, and there wasn't anything flammable enough nearby to reach," Kenobi says, sounding distant again. "In any case, Anakin found me. He was... distraught. Desperate. Not entirely sane, I think, but with what he walked into, I can't find it in myself to fault him."

"Master Kenobi," Satine finds herself saying. "What did he do?"

Kenobi's smile is sad. She'd call it resigned, really. He's lived--sort of--with this situation for centuries now. It makes sense. "He took my mind, my soul in the Force, and 'saved' it in a way that would leave me tied to the world past my death. It was ingenious, but... I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I don't think Anakin realized what he was doing until long after he'd already succeeded at the impossible."

"He cursed you," Fett declares.

Kenobi shrugs. "I think he expected the temple to be cleaned and re-inhabited again soon enough. It wasn't, as you can see. The generators have been gathering power for centuries, but the fire destroyed most of them, and we didn't have anything in reserve with how much we poured into the shields during the battle. I couldn't fix the ruins, and with the horrors that had occurred, nobody was coming back. Anakin said he would, he promised, but... he disappeared. He visited, and he spoke with me, but a few years in he was simply... lost. I had a connection to his ship's signal, and it winked out in the blink of an eye, and never came back."

Oh. Terrifying.

"For all that I am the Temple, now, there are still secrets here that I don't yet understand," Kenobi tells them. "Your arrival, for one thing. The sediment carried up the mountain has slowly buried the temple over the centuries. There isn't a way in, save for two tunnels leading to the river, both of which I know are untouched."

"We just woke up here," Satine admits.

"Yes," Kenobi says. "You did. And part of me knows why."

"...part?" Fett asks.

It's a fair question to ask of a man who happens to have a brain that is also an entire building, somehow.

"Areas are cut off from my awareness," Kenobi admits freely. "Cave-ins and the like, mostly. There are one or two that I think I cut deliberately, due to what lay within."

Also terrifying, thank you.

"But I do believe I know what happened," he says, with that same damnably soft smile. "You two are the leaders of your people, yes? Tradition on one side, and peace on the other."

Satine shares a glance with Fett, and then turns to Kenobi and nods.

"Then I do believe it's simply the right time," he tells them. "You'll need to work together."

"I don't think so," Satine immediately denies.

"The Force works in mysterious ways," Kenobi tells her. "And if it brought you here--and you couldn't have arrived otherwise, I promise you that--then it was for a reason. Two leaders, the same people, with ideologies that I do believe are possible to bring together into, if not mixing, then at least coexistence."

"Impossible," Fett says. "The New Mandalorians are cowards, Kenobi. To share a culture with them--"

"Is as unlikely as Jedi and the old Mandalorians?" Kenobi asks, smiling so very politely that Satine wonders at how they aren't frozen stiff at the sight of it.

The sigil of the Order gleams mockingly from his pauldron.

Kenobi huffs out a breath, just a shadow of a laugh the slightest duck of his head, and then he turns and waves open a door.

Beyond him, sitting clean and pretty and entirely free of dust on its ancient stand, rests the Darksaber.

Satine stares.

She's sure Fett does, too.

"That can't be real," she says, her mouth moving before she can control it. "The Darksaber is lost, but it's popped up in history too recently to have been here since the fires."

"I saw it in Tor Vizsla's hands less than a years ago," Fett confirms. The vocoder cuts emotion from his voice, but not enough. "This place has been locked tight for centuries. The saber can't be here."

"The same could be said of the two of you," Kenobi points out.

It's true.

Satine steps forward, when it becomes clear that Fett won't. She picks up the weapon, holds it like the antique it is, square and unwieldy, but so very, very old that she cannot deny its importance. Weapon or not, it is her people's history.

She lights it.

The blade burns black.

"Turn it off," Fett rasps, and she does.

Satine looks back at him, and then to Kenobi. She turns fully, and steps forward, and holds it out to Fett.

He looks at her, uncomprehending.

"If you'd like to check for yourself," she says, and her voice is too quiet, but she can't help it. Something is happening, something heavy and broken, and she can't ignore the pressure of the future in this moment.

Fett takes the saber. He looks at it in his hands, and she thinks he is shaking.

"Your people need you, Mand'alor," Kenobi says, and there is no room for question. "They also need the Duchess."

"Why you?" Fett asks, voice strained and shattered in a way Satine can't even begin to pick apart.

"It was either me or Tarre, really," Kenobi says, with an idle shrug unfitting of the situation. "And I'm a little more... accessible, shall we say, to those who aren't sensitive to the Force."

Kenobi steps forward and rests an immaterial hand on Fett's shoulder.

"I already failed my people once," Fett says, barely audible.

"And now you shall save them," Kenobi says. His voice is firm. It is as if there is no question, to him, about whether or not Fett will succeed. "You won't be alone, either."

Satine shifts her weight, refusing to meet Kenobi's eyes. Her hands fist in her dress, and her mind races.

"What do you need of me?" Fett manages.

"...Mand'alor?"

"What do you need of me, Master Kenobi?"

Satine looks up.

Fett... Fett removes his helmet, and looks at Kenobi with an expression that is more desperation than deference.

"To cooperate with those who would follow a different creed," Kenobi says, so low it's practically a murmur. His hand, still intangible, reaches out to cup Fett's jaw. Fett leans into it. "To protect those who cannot do so for themselves. Our people are warriors, Mand'alor, but to refuse violence for violence's sake, after the wars that have killed our home and rendered it little more than glass, that is its own bravery."

"Master--"

"Listen to me," Kenobi says, and Fett falls silent. "You will need to protect them. The Duchess may have the funds and the support to bring forth education, agriculture, childcare, and so on, but there are many who would take advantage of that peace. She provides the home for tradespeople, but you are the shield that keeps them safe."

It could be a balance, Satine tries to tell herself. Maybe.

Kenobi seems so certain of it, and Satine may hate violence, but she is far from unaware of the pirates and warlords that nip at their borders.

"The foundlings need homes," Kenobi continues. "The stories need to be told. The culture is fading, Mand'alor. Bring it back."

His eyes flick to Satine, and she looks away.

(Her pressure was only ever on violence. Her advisors had pressed at the erasure of the rest, but if it meant children grew up without the worry of their parents dying in pointless battle, then wasn't it worth bending?)

(Couldn't she look the other way as they tightened restrictions on even symbolic vambraces, if it meant few too-small bodies in the streets?)

(Her planet was a wasteland. What did culture mean in the face of so many dead?)

(She knows Fett doesn't see it that way, but she is the only governing New Mandalorian with any blood on their hands. She knows the weight of violence, of lives taken by her actions.)

(She knows it, and she rejects it knowingly.)

Fett breathes harshly, and Satine closes her eyes.

"I agree to try," she says. "If we can get out of these ruins and back to our people... I will try. I cannot speak for my people on this, but to instate the old Mandalorians as a planetary guard... it may be doable."

"Little steps, my dear," Kenobi says. He looks down at Fett, who's... not well, it seems. "The Mand'alor needs some help, I think. I'm no trained mind healer, but I imagine I can help. More than most, maybe. There are few who know what it is to be a sole survivor."

He smirks, just a little, at the joke that he is not, in fact, a man who survived.

It's not very funny.

"I'll stay," Fett says. "I'll... I'll learn. Master Kenobi, you... Tell me to stay and I will be here for as long as you’ll have me."

"As a student?" Kenobi asks, catching on to just the same thing as Satine has. "Not in the Force, surely, but... you truly wish to stay?"

"There are none left alive that I would trust to show me the way," Fett says. Beseeching, he reaches for Kenobi, and his hands pass through. There's a pain in him that Satine can't quite comprehend, and Fett falls to his knees. "Please."

"You need only ask," Kenobi says. "The Duchess will look after our people until the King takes his throne, and then you will rule together."

They'll have to, Satine tells herself, and steps forward. She puts a hand on Fett's shoulder, and pulls him to his feet.

"Where do we begin?" she asks.

#satine kryze #obi wan kenobi #jango fett #ghosts #massacre mention #is this vaguely inspired by GLaDOS and Castle Heterodyne? ...yes #but less murdery overall #star wars #the clone wars #Phoenix Answers Memes #supernatural au #kinda #one shot #death mention #child death mention #horror au #also kinda

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