Chapter Text
It was a mission, like any other.
It was a snowy planet, a mountainous rock with a thin atmosphere, like so many across the galaxy.
It was almost mundane, its only appeal the chance of saber combat.
It was no such thing.
***
She stepped up to the edge of the cliff while Master Dooku told the Mandalorians to surrender. Komari Vosa looked down at a sea of brightly-painted armor that felt like blank gaps in the Force, creepy hollow pits that sent a frisson of confusion through her that she deeply disliked.
The vision hit without warning, as she was looking down at them the armored figures were overlaid with an after-image like a poorly processed holorecord, skipping and scratching with the scene of bodies sprawled like crecheling’s toys.
Then the Force grasped her in truth.
Komari wasn’t gifted in the Cosmic Force, her strength in the Unifying mainly limited to her uncanny skill in combat, striking where foes would be, before they were, and the ability to meditate with almost anyone, in any number, and sync up perfectly. Visions were not her forte.
The Force, clearly, did not care.
She was thrust through the consequences of the mission she’d been so dismissive of before. Through her Master’s long, slow Fall, of her own much faster sprint into a hedonistic darkness that smacked of self-destruction. Through the slavery of a noble spirit, breaking the last best hope of an entire culture into a selfish, wounded monster who would sell his own soul for a bitter, twisted revenge. Through the rise of a darkness so vast she cried out in pain as the vision sped through decades of it.
Dimly, she registered pitching forward, muscle memory letting the Force slow her fall. She should apologize to Battlemaster Drallig… those drills had come in handy.
She felt the pain of endless war across the galaxy, exactly as Master Dooku’s friend Sifo-Dyas predicted, complete with millions upon millions of copies of a man with every reason to want the Jedi dead. The copies burned in the Force, bright and lovely and sweet enough to mask any trace of the trap they were.
She landed hard, catching her weight on one knee and her hands in a parody of fealty, as the trap sprang. She felt three million lights shuttering into Darkness in a moment, and the guttering flame of the Order following after.
She swallowed down bile as the youngest member of her lineage survived. She didn’t even know the kid, but it knocked a painful breath from her lungs as he weathered and hardened and stood against his former Padawan, saber raised in acceptance as the boy who should continue their line screamed in horror.
No, sweet Force, that cannot be the path forward! her heart screamed.
It is A path, my child. Is it yours? the Force whispered back.
"No," Komari whispered, standing on shaking legs that she demanded be firm. Her hair had come free from its knot, and she tossed it back as she took stock of where she was in the here and now.
The fall had brought her directly in front of the Mandalorians. In front of Jango Fett, the man who would murder her someday. Part of her burned to strike him down now, before he could make the choices he did, but a greater part of her knew that would only replace one sea of identical faces with another.
She couldn't let it happen at all, couldn't let her Master Fall, couldn't let this warrior now standing within striking range be turned into the death of the Jedi. Couldn’t let her family die in pain and fear and resignation. She turned to face the man who raised her, the man she loved like kin, like breathing.
"No!"
"Padawan Vosa, what are you doing?" her Master demanded from above her.
"This is wrong," she said. "We shouldn't be here, we should be investigating."
"The Governor said-"
"It doesn't matter what the Governor said!" she snapped. "It doesn’t matter if the whole galaxy decides that something wrong is something right. The Jedi are founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds… or the consequences.”
She unclipped her saber hilt, letting her kyber warm her clammy palm as she dropped into the stable opening stance of Soresu.
“When the whole galaxy tells us to move, our job is to plant ourselves like a tree beside the river of truth, and say 'No, you move.' And this. Is. Wrong."
The armored spot of blankness behind her moved closer, and she swallowed hard at the feeling like an open drop at her back. Master Dooku frowned and stepped off the cliff, landing more elegantly than her own headlong tumble. Her hand on her saber hilt shook, but she stood firm.
"Padawan, get away from him," he growled, voice low and protective.
"No," she said. "No, Master. You move."
Master Dooku's eyes flew wide, and she felt his shock in the Force as clearly as if he'd reeled backwards from a blow. His concern for her, his distrust of the Mandalorian she was currently protecting with her body, angling herself to stay between them, all bright and clear over their training bond.
"I could order you aside, if that will clear your conscience," he offered her, kindness rich and warm beneath protectively bland words. He would do it, too, he would accept the guilt and shame. He would break himself under it, for her. "As your Master, this is my unpleasant duty, it does not need to be yours."
"As your Padawan I would have to obey," she whispered, bringing up her saber across her body, lighting it with a snap-crackle that felt like a sob.
She felt the blank spots behind her jolt in shock, but her focus was on Dooku as he realized her intent, on his pain, his loss. She would not look away from what she was about to do. She would be honorable as she carved the heart from her Master's still-living body.
Her braid was long, a lifetime of work and loyalty and achievement. It cut quickly all the same, laying at her feet like the line in the sand, the gauntlet of challenge tossed at the feet of the man she once called Master.
"Komari..." he said, and it felt like a wound in the Force as she pulled free the training bond.
"I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me," she said softly. Now that she wasn’t a Jedi, she could say things that could be presented as reasonable doubt, could open the door for her former Master to escape this dead end of a future. “You should look at this more deeply, Master Dooku.”
"We will investigate further, as you wish, Lady Vosa," Master Dooku said formally, giving her a bow just shallow enough to border on being overly familiar with a former Jedi. It hurt, how he still showed her his love while also making his acceptance of what he couldn't change clear.
She wished she could run after him, beg him to understand, to let her explain. She wished she'd had that Force-damned vision on the ship, where they could change plans after discussing it together, rather than in the field where any true emotion had to be communicated in the Force to keep them both safe. She wished a lot of things, but she couldn't make those wishes come true, and she watched her former family walk off without her.
She couldn't say how long she stood there. Long enough to let the last lights of the Jedi team leave her awareness as she fell into a mild meditation trance to keep her legs from buckling in grief.
"Hey there, Jet'ika," someone said, a hand on her shoulder jerking her out of her light trance.
"You should go," she said, turning to look at Jango Fett. She'd certainly seen enough of his face in her vision to recognize him. "Our enemies will figure out we didn't kill each other, and they'll want to finish the job, which will be easier if you stay in this killbox you made camp in."
"We didn't really have a choice, this was where the Governor let us land," he defended.
"Hopefully Master Dooku finds the control tower records of that," she said curtly.
"Who, the Jetii you fought with?" he asked. "He's what, your dar'buir? Kind of an asshole."
"Speaking of things you know nothing about only serves to make you look like an idiot, Mand'alor," she hissed, and several blank spots froze, an eerie echo through the camp, like a sound without sound. "You heard half a conversation and understood even less. You have no idea what I did to him just now. No idea what I did to myself, for you."
"Me'ven?"
"I didn't just cut my hair," she snarled, scooping up the braid to wave in his face. "I cut myself… out of his lineage, out of my family, out of the only home I have, the only place I have ever been safe. I gave up EVERYTHING to save your life, the lives of your family, and for what? So you can insult mine? Insult the person I care most about, who cares most for me?"
"He didn't even blink when you told him to shove off!" Fett protested.
"Yeah, Jedi composure makes for great armor. Nobody can ever see you bleed," she spat, and watched the warrior falter. "Another thing I gave up for you I guess."
She looked at the braid in her hand. Years of training. Years of her life. She looked at the man whose life she'd saved, who - Force be kind - would never know exactly what she'd done for him, what she’d stopped.
"Wear your trophy with pride, Mand'alor," Komari snarled, shoving past him with the hand that held the braid, leaving it caught on his armor as she ran away.
***
“Well, I could have handled that better,” Jango muttered.
“No shit, Alor,” Myles sighed.