Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

Jango felt like ten types of shabuir.  

First the trap he’d walked into earlier that day, barely escaping it with his life, even if he had scored a pretty solid hit on Viszla… not that he let himself think it had been fatal.  They’d made that mistake before.

Then the Jetiise cornering him at that awful campsite that should have been the first clue that the Galidraan mission was rotten from the start.  The snide smugness of their blank faces looking down at him had burned along his pride, until the kandosii’la one with the gold hair had done a truly impressive front flip down thirty feet of sheer cliff, their fists cracking the ice as they distributed the impact cleaner than most sen’tra-trained verde could.

Shock had eased the burn, as Kandosii Jetii stood firm before their fellows, honor in their words and in their stance.  Jango dimly recalled Jaster saying something similar about doing what was good and honorable, hang the odds and handle the consequences after.

The cold Jetii leader had stalked forward then, their predatory gait setting Jango’s hackles up as they ordered their verd to stand down, and Kandosii refused, not once but twice.  No, not just their verd, but their Jet'ika, their own child was facing down Ciryc in defense of the Haat Mando'ade.

That second time had been a close one, the snapping hiss of the kad’au lighting had sent his heart racing, but instead of turning on Jango as ordered… they’d sliced free a long braid of hair the gold of vengeance, tossing it at the feet of Ciryc.

It meant something, but for the life of him, Jango couldn’t figure it out, until the Jetiise walked off without Kandosii.  Now that they weren’t actively standing against the galaxy, he could see the youth in that pale face, in the lines of tears tracking silently from their closed eyes.

"Hey there, Jet'ika," he said cautiously, wondering how to comfort someone who’d divorced their parent.  He had experience with losing buire, more than he wanted, but he’d never had the misfortune of having one so bad he’d tell them to forget his name.

"You should go.  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," Kandosii said, their voice dry with a sarcastic edge as they surveyed the box canyon.  He agreed with the assessment, but his pride reared up defensively.

At least he had a good redirection to get away from the discussion of his own failure to see the trap, he’d thought.

He’d been wrong.

"Speaking of things you know nothing about only serves to make you look like an idiot, Mand'alor,” they spat, making a title he barely held into a spear.  He felt his verde snap their attention to them, felt their assessing gaze on Kandosii, and a protective instinct from deep in his soul screamed to put himself between his people and the Jetii, the way they had done for him.

“You have no idea what I did to him just now. No idea what I did to myself.   For you,” Kandosii snarled, scooping up the braid to wave in his face. "I didn't just cut my hair, 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.”

He rocked back, breath not coming to him as he fought his own lungs.  He’d known they were mandokarla, he’d had no idea they had the strength to casually earn a life-debt and not even show it until he stuck his cetar directly in his mouth.  Even now, even with the rage sparking their eyes, he doubted that they would claim the debt he clearly owed.

“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!" Jango said, heart hammering.  Ciryc hadn’t deserved them, hadn’t deserved the bright fire standing here.  He would show them that, show them how they should be treated, how they should be respected and honored for their strength.

"Yeah, Jedi composure makes for great armor,” they said bitterly, and the words felt like a blow to the gut.  A high-pitched whine set up in Jango’s ears, a remnant of a long ago grenade a bit too close, set off by the shame of realizing he’d been disrespecting another’s armor. 

He focused on their lips, catching a bitter mutter he wouldn’t be able to hear over the tinnitus.  ”Another thing I gave up for you I guess." 

Kriff.

He was a total shabuir.  A horrible, idiotic monster.

“Wear your trophy with pride, Mand'alor,” they hissed directly into his audio pickup.

“Well, I could have handled that better,” Jango muttered as they stormed off, taking their fire with them.

***

“Okay, Alor, buy’ce off,” Mij ordered, the soft sounds of his Alderaani accent easing Jango out of the panic-induced tinnitus.  “Ears?”

“Yeah,” Jango admitted, reaching to remove his helmet so the baar’ur could check him.  Mij didn’t wear armor often, mostly just his wedding bracer, and he only removed other’s armor in emergencies.  He must have come down on a shuttle at some point, he should still be safe on their base ship in orbit.

Something caught his gauntlet as he passed the buy’ce off.

The trophy Kandosii had mentioned.  The braid.

Once, in the times Jaster had called the Dark Days, Mando’ad had hunted Jetiise.  Wore these braids with pride.  It was a sick tradition, rooted in the false claim that those touched by the Ka’ra were no longer really people.  That the braids were like pelts.

That Kandosii had hung their own - after making it clear what it really was - on his pauldron….

“I fucked up,” he said.

“Yep,” Myles drawled.

“I have to fix it,” Jango said, only to be pushed firmly down by Mij as the Baar’ur shot chilly bacta spray into his ears.  It wouldn’t fix anything, the problem was inside his head, not his ear canal.  They still never took chances with it.

“You are going exactly nowhere,” Mij said firmly.

“Of course not,” Jango snorted.  “I’m rash and impatient and too prideful by half but I’m not suicidal.   Following Kandosii now would get me a kad’au somewhere unpleasant.”

“Pretty sure there isn’t a pleasant place for those,” Myles muttered.

“That’s why you’re going,” Jango said, ignoring his friend.  Mij blinked.  “You don’t wear as much armor, it’ll be less likely to set them off again, and I don’t know but what they’re hiding injuries.  That landing was mesh’la, but it’s still a thirty foot drop.  Also, your ship is registered as Alderaani, everyone likes an Alderaani.”

“You are very lucky ner riduur is both loyal to you and the hottest being in the galaxy, Mand’alor,” Mij growled.

“But you’ll do it?” Jango asked.  The baar’ur sighed.

“Yes, but you’re calling your Mir’baar’ur, these psychosomatic issues need fixing and I don’t treat that.”

"Of course.  Just make sure Kandosii is okay.  Mando'ade repay debts."

***

This wasn’t Mij’s job.  He wasn’t a warrior to be on the front lines, he wasn’t a spy, he was barely even Mando’ad… if he hadn’t fallen entirely head over heels for the brash orange-armored warrior woman who’d come through his late night urgent care like a forest fire, he wouldn’t even be here.

However, Daara had swept through his life with intensity and joy, upsetting the carefully planned and painfully bland road he’d been on, and in following his heart to her, he had followed her heart to the young Mand’alor with just bags and bags of trauma.

At least now Jango was listening when he told the kid to go talk to a specialist.

So one good thing came out of this mission.

He hadn’t been there when the Jedi that Jango called Kandosii had made her big speech, only knew what she looked like because Myles, bless him, had opened up a call to him the second the kad’au had lit up.  Mij had been on his ship immediately, praying he wouldn’t find his beloved and her people cut down like grain in a field.

His prayers had been heard, but let it never be said the gods don’t hold a sense of humor.

He looked at her from a shadow cast by a shop awning.  If he didn’t know better, he’d assume she was a traveler like any other, casting an eye over the departure board.

He did though, and he had orders.

Pushing off the wall he’d leaned on to observe, he loped up to the girl.

“Goin’ anyplace specific?” he asked her.

“Maybe,” she said warily.  “Why, you offering a ride?”

“Maybe,” he replied, letting a grin slip onto his face.  “Maybe I’m going where you’re headed.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get on a ship with a stranger,” she pointed out, like she wasn’t the more dangerous of the two of them.

“You know any of those captains?” he asked, nodding towards the departure board.

“I know their names and ports of call, Ser Stranger,” she said with a grin like a scalpel.  He could see why Jango called her Kandosii.  He could find himself liking this Jedi.

“Mij Gilamar,” he said, putting his hand out.  “My ship’s the Teal Thranta, out of Alderaan.”

She took his hand gently, not betraying the strength he knew she had to have.

“Thranta, you said?” she murmured to herself.  Normally people focused on the Alderaan part, the hard-won reputation for helpfulness and all around decency smoothing the way.  For some reason though, she locked onto the name of his ship.

“And may I know your name, oh potential future passenger?” he asked.

“Call me Komari,” she said.  “Where’s your ship?”

***

“Well, Komari,” Mij said warmly as he ran pre-flight checks in the cockpit of his little mid-line transport.  Big enough to serve as a mobile apartment when he and Daara were traveling, but not so big he couldn’t use the public landing pads on Alderaan.  “Where to?”

“Melida’Daan,” she said instantly.

“No idea where that is, sorry,” he answered, flipping through his nav database.  “What’s nearby, I can route through there and maybe we can get you set up with a shuttle?”

“I can do it,” she said, leaning over him, fingers flying over his controls like she was playing a Bothan Opera on it.  He blinked as the record pulled up, only possible because she’d input the exact correct hyperspace vector calculations.

“I didn’t know humans could do that,” he said in awe.

“They can’t,” she replied.  “Mind if I catch a nap?”

Chapter Text

Komari knew how to sleep sitting up, and how to meditate while feigning sleep.  It was the second skill she used now.  Her mind was a mess, now that the sudden immediacy of the mission that could have started their doom was over.  Too many years, too much space and time, crowded her mind.  She would have to sort it somehow, or be driven mad.

So much of it dark.

She took the time to mourn it, that Galaxy That Might Have Been, grieve its Darkness, its pain, and also the Light that she had - hopefully - cut short.

Millions of lives she could only pray she had prevented ever being born.

She felt sick, but she shoved the feeling at the Force with a vindictive sense of retribution.  It did no good to blame the Force for the burden of visions, but it made her feel better to make it bear some of the load.

Was it murder, if they had never been born, wouldn't have been for years yet? She Saw, knew, that they were a point of happiness for a part of her family that had far too few, and she'd ended them anyway. 

She would just have to give him enough happiness-es to make up for the loss he'd never know, never know she'd taken. It was the least she could do for stealing it from him.

The Force whispered wordlessly in the back of her mind, wrapping her in comfort and Peace.

***

"So why are you headed to Melida'daan?" Mij asked her.

"Meeting my sibling there," she said casually.  She’d have to confirm Obi’s gender, but she was pretty sure Obi-Wan used male pronouns in basic.  Fortunately that was easy enough to check once they found Obi-Wan, the Force was good at clearly communicating things like that.  She normally would say nephew, since technically her Padawan-Brother was his Master, but there were two things stopping her.

One, she might not know much about non-Jedi families, but she was pretty sure 22 was too young to have a teenage nephew.  It would raise fewer questions from the affable spacer giving her a ride to claim a 13 year old brother.

Two, she was rather upset with Qui-Gon right now.  Her visions hadn’t lingered on him as much as on Obi-Wan and his Padawan, but nobody was that fucking calm about nearly being repudiated for another kid, then losing their Master and taking a too-old Padawan in the space of a week without some SERIOUSLY fucked up expectations of life.  Which was… almost expected, given what he’d done to Feemor.  Qui-Gon could be her brother again when he got his head out of his ass, and in the meantime, she called dibs on Obi, instead.

Mij looked like he might ask a follow up question, probably her sibling’s name, and she didn't particularly feel like letting him know Obi-Wan was Stewjoni until she could easily put a saber between her sibling and danger.

As it was, she was bracing for when he eventually brought up payment for this rather long ride into nowhere.  She just hoped he would hold off until she’d gotten Obi somewhere safe.

"Do you play sabacc?" she asked to head him off of either topic.

"Sure, who doesn't?  Want to play?"

"Might as well."

***

The Jedi was napping again, and Mij used the chance to update the team.

“We’re on route to someplace called Melida’daan,” he told Jango.  “I didn't know where it was, but apparently Jedi can do complex hyperspace vector calc in their heads?  She got the coordinates punched in close enough to confirm on the Republic networks in literally seconds.”

“Told you they were Kandosii,” Jango told someone out of holo pickup range.

“Her name is Komari, you may want to use it,” Mij said dryly.

“Komari, Kandosii, it’s close,” Jango said with a shrug.  “Anything else?”

“She cheats at sabacc,” Mij added after a moment’s thought.  “Not sure how, but it’s that or she has the Manda’s own luck.”

“I meant more like do you know if she has someplace to land safe on this Melida’daan place,” Jango specified.

“Oh.  Well, she said her sibling was there.  Not sure if she means tal’vod or jet’vod, but hopefully they’ve got a decent setup to help her get to her feet.  I’ll stay with her until I’m sure she’s good.”

“Jate, Mij.  K’oyaci.”

“You too, Alor.  I’ll keep you updated.”

***

Melida-Daan was awful, a sad beige-brown morass of suffering and anger and pain.  Komari grit her teeth as she looked at it, and asked the Force where they should land… the answer being on the outskirts of the largest of the half-gutted cities on the northern half of the planet.

“Your brother is here?” Mij asked, and she shrugged one shoulder.

She didn’t particularly feel like giving him more information, especially since he’d kept waving off discussions of where he had actually been headed before taking her as a passenger, and a faint dishonesty clung to his seemingly altruistic actions.

“This place is…”

“You’re welcome to go if you like, I have it from here,” she offered, not really expecting him to agree, but half hopeful he would anyways.

“No, I couldn’t leave you in a place like this alone,” he said, and she resigned herself to his presence.  At least he was reasonably polite, he probably wouldn’t demand anything… unsavory, at least until after they were off this mudball of a planet.

It wasn’t hard to find Obi-Wan.  He shone like a candle in the night, easy to spot in the Darkness of Melida-Daan.  He was with other children, and she walked softly so as not to spook them.  Shockingly, Mij was at her side, just as silent.  She wondered where an Alderaanian emergency medicine specialist learned tactical stealth, but she was too focused on Obi-Wan to ask him.

The younger Jedi was in rough shape.  All teenagers go through times of being more elbows and knees than anything else, but the gangly-ness hung wrong on his form.  Dark shadows clustered under his eyes, around the edges of his mouth.  His hair was rough-cut and longer than it would be if he were in the Temple, an even shorter patch behind his ear, matching her own.

Her heart ached, and she risked the unpleasant sensation of ground-in hatred to open herself to the Force enough to catch his attention.  He looked up like a startled herd animal, and the other children dropped easily into battle-ready stances, relaxed joints and their balance shifted to the balls of their feet for swift running.

She stepped out of the street and into the little courtyard they’d been in, hands visible and empty, Force soft and welcoming.

“There you are,” she said, all too aware of Mij at her back, and the need to keep him thinking this was an ordinary family, not two isolated Force Sensitives.  “I’m glad I found you, Little Brother.”

***

Little Brother.

Little Brother.

Obi-Wan forced himself to release the breath he’d been holding as the blonde woman slowly stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug.  Part of him wanted to shove her off, to draw a weapon and fight.   Part of him was still trapped in a mine on Bandomeer, neck chafing under a collar that cut into his soul and threatened his life.

“I’m Komari, I’m here to help,” she whispered in his ear.  “Play along, please, I’ll explain when I can.”

He turned into her shoulder, a shift that would look like he was just returning the hug, but let him whisper back.

Or it would have if he hadn’t seen the rough-burned patch of hair behind her ear.

Hair is flammable.  Lightsabers burn.  Most people didn’t think about that.  They saw the braid and its absence and the association of lightsabers with Jedi led them to assume braids were cut with a Master’s blade.

They weren’t.  A newly Knighted Jedi would have a rough patch, maybe, a shorter or longer bit of hair, most likely.  But it wouldn’t be burned off.  Not like this.

“It’s okay, Little Brother,” she said again, loud enough to be overheard.  “I’m here now.”

Little Brother.

Xanatos had called him that.  Xanatos hadn’t had a braid either, but it had been cut long ago, no proof left of how he was expelled.  Not like Komari.

Not like Obi-Wan.

What’s the matter? she asked in the Force, a questioning ping along his senses.

“Don’t call me that,” he said, lips barely moving against her neck.  “Please, I can’t hold onto the here and now if…”

“Oh, kiddo, ” she sighed, pulling back, real regret on her face.  “I’m so sorry.  Let’s get inside, okay?  We can figure everything else out later.”

***

Mij was going to go insane.

Maybe he’d already gone insane.

That would certainly explain how he’d ended up here, of all places, on the galaxy’s worst planet, in the best form of holding cell a batch of pre-teens could muster, being vetted by a boy barely old enough for a verd’goten.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know anything else, adiika,” he sighed.

“Then go over it one more time.”

“I’m helping the blonde lady, she said she needed to find her brother, and that he was here.  We came here, she finds the brother, and then I get jumped the second I step foot inside the building said brother takes us to.”

“Why?” the boy asked.  Mij got a sudden sense of looking at his Attending during his residency, or at the Sergeant that had run his verd’goten class before he proposed to Daara.

On a kid barely old enough to shave, it was a weird look.

“Fine, you want the truth, you get the truth,” Mij grumbled.  If Jango wanted a spy, he should have sent a spy.  Mij wasn't the one you sent to deal with skilled interrogation, and this karking kid was more skilled than most Mando'ade.  “I’m a medic working with the Haat Mando’ade Merc Company.  Komari saved all our lives and then our fearless leader pissed her off, so now I’m here paying his debts.”

“So she’s a Jedi?” The kid's face was thoughtfully blank, and Mij couldn't tell if the kid had Ideas About, or Problems With, the Jedi. He hoped it was more of the former than the latter.

“Yes,” Mij agreed.  “Maybe?  I think she quit or something, I wasn’t there for that part.”

“Okay,” the boy said with a sigh.  “Okay, that’s fine then.  No need to worry about what might have been.  I’m Neild, by the way.”

“Mij, nice to meet you.”

Chapter Text

It had taken… a while, to get Kenobi somewhere without a ton of little normal-people ears, and when she finally did, the kid was twitchy as all get out.  Komari didn't know what exactly her brother had kriffing done, but she was already entirely ready to stab Jinn over it.  It was a failing that had haunted her initiate years and her entire padawanship, so she knew what to do about it, but still .  It concerned her how much effort she had to put into maintaining a level head without Master Yan there to guide her to it.

"Okay," Komari said, taking another deep breath. "Obviously I'm not actually your sister.   Qui-Gon Jinn was never my master.  He's my Padawan-brother, and an idiot.   But… most normal people aren't going to understand me calling you my nephew when I'm only 22, so I called you my brother to make sense to them." 

The kid had started hyperventilating again so she sighed and just leaned on him the way Master Dooku would lean on her when her head was getting ahead of the rest of her. 

"Obviously, you have some reason to not handle that well, and that's okay, but I'm not going to call you something different without your input and risk karking it up again.  Is there something else I can call you?"

He didn't answer, and she was karking worried, alright?  Someone, somewhere, had karked things up so badly that just trying to identify herself to him had sent him into a Sith-damned panic attack, and she couldn't even stab them for it.   All she could do was be here and use what she'd learned from Master Dooku to help. 

So that's what she did. 

She breathed deep and let the stabbing go until she had the right target in her sights to stab, and then leaned into him, wrapping him as securely in her Force presence as she could.  It was kriffing weird being on the other side of it, and she was entirely sure she wasn't doing it nearly as well as her Master did, but it seemed to be helping.  She leaned a little bit more firmly and crooned one of the creche songs at him.

"Ben," he said, finally, quietly. Timidly. She'd have to work on that with him. At least until someone better could.  "They call me Ben here."

"Then Ben is what I'll call you.  You good to call me Komari?”

“Yeah… I can call you Komari.”

“Great, that’s handled.  So what’s the deal here?  Catch me up, I want to help, but all good missions rest on good information.”

It was with a bitter ache she listened to him give a better, and more robust report of the situation than they’d had on Galidraan.  This was the mission that should have had ten Knights on it, not Galidraan.  Honestly.

Kark the senate.  At least she didn’t answer to them anymore.  Small mercies from small gods.

“Okay, so we drag these assholes to the peace-table, bound and gagged if need be,” she said with a nod.  “We protect the kids.  We do what Jedi do.”

“We’re not Jedi anymore,” Ben said softly, sadly, looking at the hands in his lap.

“We’re not members of the Order,” Komari corrected gently.  “They don’t get to decide what we believe, where our faith goes.  There is no power in the galaxy great enough to stop us from being Jedi if WE decide we will be Jedi.”

“But… I don’t get it.”

“Ben,” she said with a smile and a thought of the Galaxy That Might Have Been.  “You would be a Jedi if you lived alone on some backwater sandpit planet and never saw the Temple again.  You would be a Jedi if you were the only one of us left.   The Jedi are not a place or a people… the Jedi are the belief that the Force flows through us for a reason and that reason is the doing of good deeds, the protection and preservation of life, and love, and… and hope.  You’re not a member of the Order, because you stayed when you were told to go.  But you are a Jedi, because when you were told to turn your back on these kids, on life and peace and justice… you said no.   You held onto your belief in the Force, and you acted to uphold the duty we know we have as Jedi to do the right thing.  You ARE a Jedi.”

“I am a Jedi,” he said softly, but with a strength that hadn’t been there before.  A core of Truth, unshakable.

“And you will be a Jedi until the day you choose not to be,” she agreed.  “And so am I.  And we are not alone.  We have each other, we have the Force.  To be honest, I feel a little bad for going up against the Elders when they’re so hopelessly outnumbered.  Seems unfair.”

“Fair is for sparring, not for wars,” Ben said grimly.

“True enough.  Now, let’s go win that war.”

***

Jedi, Mij decided, were weird.   Sure, there was some mysticism to them, the stories weren’t wrong about how sometimes they moved and it didn’t look like a real being, about how they knew things, and that was odd but not anything Mij couldn’t handle.

But they were also weird.   Like, ‘half-feral tooka’ weird, jumping at shadows nobody else could see.  Like ‘using the wrong class of adjectives’ weird - he still wasn’t sure he hadn’t misheard when Komari’s vod, Ben, had said the air tasted mauve.  She had agreed and suggested a change of camp that came in handy later when the Daan blew a Melida supply line right in front of the old warehouse they had been in.

Speaking of the Daan and the Melida….

No matter how weird Jedi were, they were better than those demagolkase.  He hadn’t thought there was anything more to the Young than disaffected kids with more exposure to war than is strictly psychologically recommended, at first.  The strange entry-interrogation aside, the camp they’d gone to first was pretty normal, just a bunch of teenagers hiding out in someplace they probably shouldn’t be, but nowhere unsafe.  

They’d told him it was good odds his ship had been stripped already, but he knew he had better security than most - perks of being the Mand’alor’s favorite medic and having an uncle-in-law who liked to tinker.   He’d gone back the next day and noted the multiple attempts to get into his ship, as well as the absence of anything remotely external, even with his security features.

Someone somewhere very likely had nerve damage from making off with the hyperspace comm booster, but that wasn’t Mij’s concern.

Neild and another child had melted out of nowhere as he surveyed the damage to help him clean out his stash of medical supplies before the exceptionally determined thieves got through the hull.  Some of that stuff was dangerous in the wrong hands, after all.

The awed avarice in their eyes at the sight of bacta should have been a sign.

Instead it took him up until being deftly herded into a makeshift clinic where a ten year old was barking orders like a seasoned doctor to realize shit was karked.

“What is this?” he had asked Ben, who had a glassy look in his eyes.  “Who is that?”

“Our medic, Gill,” he’d said.  “Hey Gill, we brought you bacta and backup.”

Gill had sighed heavily, turning to look at Ben.

“Oh thank fuck.  You’re the best, General.  Wash up, grab bacta and the booze bottle.  We were about ready to get the maggots out of Alby’s leg.  With bacta I don’t think he’ll even lose it.”

Ben nodded as though that wasn’t entirely horrifying.

“What?” Mij had said weakly.

“Oh, yeah,” Ben said with a head shake.  “Alby took a blaster bolt to the leg last week, we got him in fast enough that he didn’t get caught by the Elders, but we had to cut through the sewers to do it, so we put maggots in the wound to keep it from festering.  Now I’ll get them out, so Gill can finish up, since we have the bacta to use now.”

Mij felt sick.  Sure, maggot therapy was nothing new, it was pretty useful, actually, but kids shouldn’t just be shoving random insect larvae in each other’s injuries!

“If you’re gonna puke, get out of my doc box,” Gill ordered.  “Kenzo, get the big one a cup of sweet-root tea and keep an eye on him.”

Another child, this one even younger appeared at his side with a chipped cup of something golden yellow and slightly spicy smelling, like a sweeter version of behot.

“Don’t worry, nobody likes the doc-box,” they said, voice high and sweet and gentle.

“Why is this… you’re kids, you shouldn’t have to be treating injuries like this yourselves.  Where the kark are the adults?”

“Who’d’ya’thin’ shot Alby?” scoffed a teen with floppy dark hair and a glare like Jango when he got pissed.  “Th’ parrot-men?”

“Mawat,” Ben said warningly, despite being across the room.  “He’s new on planet, and a halfway decent adult.  Of course he doesn’t realize what the Elders are.”

Mawat made a sound like he was going to spit, but eyed Gill and thought better of it.

“Elders?” Mij asked, stomach sinking even with the sweet not-quite behot.

“The Melida, and the Daan,” Kenzo supplied.  “And we’re the Young.  The Elders like fighting.  They want to keep having the war, and don't care who gets hurt when they do.  We don’t want to keep having the war, because we’re the ones getting hurt.  So we said no.   They don’t like that.  And they’re… not very good at handling things they don’t like.  They hurt people, and that’s not okay.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mij agreed, but he had to admit… he didn’t like these Elders hurting kids, and he was very tempted to go ‘not handle that well’, all over the Melida and the Daan.

****

Obi-Wan huffed.  He hated not having a lightsaber, but with Mij continuing to hang around he had to agree with Komari’s assessment that it was safer not to use hers.  Still, even with the weapons of the Young, her help had been invaluable in improving his ability.  She’d settled him in a way he hadn’t had in… since Bandomeer, really, and reminded him that his limits were up to him to decide and the Force to enforce.

They had just finished taking out a Melida patrol, and were dragging back the gear they’d stripped off the bodies, when he felt a ripple in the Force.

“You did a great job out there, kiddo,” Mij said and Obi-Wan forced himself not to flinch.  “I didn’t even know you could get enough force on a slingshot to crack bone!”

“Umm,” he said, casting about for an explanation aside from ‘I used the Force to enhance my strength to about equivalent to an adult Wookie’ to give.  “I eat my veggies!”

“Huh,” Mij said, looking at Delia, who had also been on the raid and was probably the reason Mij knew he’d cracked one of the patrolmen’s jaw.  “You heard the kid, eat your veggies.”

Delia rolled her eyes, but thankfully said nothing.

***

“Are you sure we can’t just like, let him know we don’t care he’s using the weird Jedi shit?” Delia asked Mij.  She liked him, which was weird.  He was an adult like the Elders and Jinn, but he didn’t entirely suck.  He mostly just helped Gill and sometimes taught them better ways to fight.  He also spent a ton of time trying to boost the range on his comm, the Middle Scavengers had made off with the antenna he needed to reach his people.

It said a lot about Mij and Komari that she didn’t hate that idea.

“Look, Komari made it pretty clear that leaving the Jedi is a painful thing,” Mij said gently.  “It’s still raw for both of them, and it wouldn’t be kind to go poking at that wound.”

“Okay, so we’re still pretending both of them are just the weirdest normal people to ever exist and we’re all okay with that,” she sighed.

***

Komari had been leaning on the Force for what felt like days, reaching into its deep wells of energy to replace things like food and sleep.

“Luminous beings,” Ben reminded her, brushing up against her side as he wound his Force presence through hers like lacing fingers together.

“Fuck that, this crude matter is exhausted,” she grumbled.  “But we don’t have much time before the dawn attacks, so let’s meditate.”

“Great idea!” Neild said, and Komari jumped.  The downside of being one with the Force as the Force was one with all… it made picking apart who was who… kinda tricky sometimes, especially when she was tired.

“YES!” she yelped.  “Lots of people meditate!  Totally normal thing, meditation.  Let's all meditate before bed!”

Mij gave her an odd look, but shrugged and fell into a kneeling stance that wasn’t what Komari would have taken, but she’d seen others use sometimes.

“Sure, might help, can’t hurt,” he said with a grim smile.

Chapter Text

Master Dooku of the Jedi Order was not known for being a patient man.  He had a heart that burned for justice in ways that occasionally flared too close to the Dark for the comfort of other Jedi, and a limited tolerance for fools.  Both of these were at the fore as he sank his teeth into the opportunity his lost Padawan had bought him and refused to let go.  Maybe it wasn’t obvious to everyone, but his fellow Jedi saw what was happening, and to their credit, supported him, silent presences of understanding and sympathy.

Losing Komari was a blow, but he refused to let that loss be in vain.  She sacrificed her whole life for him, for them, for the Jedi to have a chance of following the will of the Force rather than the will of the Senate.  He would ensure they did, even if he felt rather sideways from his own corporeal form as he allowed the Force to move him as it would.

It was with bitter vindication he turned up not only proof the Governor had lied about the mercenaries he’d hired, but to them as well, framing political dissidents as armed rebel insurgents.  And when the massacre he’d paid them for failed to materialize when they found only peaceful civilians upset by the Governor’s heavy handed tactics, he’d brought in different Mandalorians.  It was their crimes used to frame the innocent Mandalorians the Jedi had been aimed at like a blaster.

He downloaded all the evidence onto multiple datasticks, gave copies to each of his team, and arrested the Governor.

He was quite proud of himself for remaining sober all the way through tossing the sniveling coward at the metaphorical feet of the Senate and exposing his crimes.

“This is all very disturbing, I’m sure,” some junior senator from somewhere said.  His oily tone was grating.  “But Master Dooku… you were not sent to Galidraan to investigate the Governor.  This is an unconscionable act of overstep by a Jedi who ought to know better.”

“I followed every law and regulation placed upon a Jedi in the field to the precise letter,” Dooku said firmly.  He would live up to the example Komari set.  He would plant himself like a tree by the river of truth.  

He would not be moved.

“Then how is it that instead of apprehending the rampaging Mandalorians you were sent to subdue, you performed a shockingly thorough audit of the Governor’s business?”

“Jedi are not permitted to act outside their mandate without due cause,” Dooku said.  “When we arrived we found that there was, in fact, due cause.  At the request of a private citizen of this Republic who elected to remain anonymous, we looked into the discrepancies between the case as assigned to us, and the reality around us.”

“And you mean to claim your… Force magics had nothing to do with it?” the junior senator demanded.  He was shouted down by the Senator from Alderaan, and Dooku blocked them out as they began to argue about procedure and precedent and decorum.

After he left the Senate, he was going to get raging drunk, he decided.

***

He didn’t drink often.  Jedi were ascetic by both faith and necessity, all their resources going to the running of the Temple and the various necessary services they provided.  And with the Jedi ability to filter poisons being trained to near instinct by the time one earned a mastery, drinking was a very expensive waste of time more often than not.

It wasn’t a waste now, he decided, and took his sabacc winnings to the counter at the grungy little hole in the wall bar he’d found in the lower levels as a Knight and kept going back to when he needed it.  Once when Rael took his “extended sabbatical” to raise that princess, once when Qui-Gon was knighted and they had a massive fight right after, and a two-day bender when Qui-Gon had lost Xanatos and repudiated Feemor.

And now, for Komari.

“Are you sure you want to put all this on the tab?” the bartender asked.

“I’ve lost my only daughter, I don’t want to remain sober any longer than necessary,” he hissed back.

People nearby must have heard him, as he was pretty sure he should have run out of that tab before the bartender cut him off.

“Hey, buddy, you don’t have to go home, but you really can’t stay here,” the bartender said gently.  Dooku glared at all three of his faces.  “I can call you a speeder, where do you live?”

He didn’t want to go to the Temple.  Vokara would make him sober up and he had earned the liver damage fair and square.  He didn’t want to go to his rooms with the gaping wound that was Komari.  He wanted to know she was safe.

He assumed the Mandalorians she’d saved would have taken care of her.  For all the strained history between Jedi and Mandalorians, they did care about children and she was still so young.   And they owed her, not that he could rely on Komari to point that out, she was always too forgiving.  Too sweet.

“Buddy?  Where to?” the bartender asked again.

“Little Mandalore,” Dooku said with great effort.

“Oookaay,” the man said with a dubious nod.  “I’ll get you a shuttle.”

***

Dooku was pretty sure he’d sobered up in the back of the shuttle to Little Mandalore.  The world had stopped pulling Knight-Pilot shenanigans, anyways.  The shuttle pulled up to a large, well lit building that sounded like crashing waves and warm firelight and let him out.  He wasn’t sure if he paid or not, he was focused on getting inside.

“Suy’cuy gar,” someone said and he blinked at the statue that had greeted him.

“Hello there,” he said to the strange, moving statue.  “I have something that needs to go to the… I think they were called the Hot Mando-aid?  They were on Galidraan, there was an issue.  I have… um.  The things.”

“Why don’t you come sit down and tell the Goran, sir,” the statue suggested, and led him through a very beautiful art gallery of other pretty statues to a booth with a statue of bronze that was at least half again the size of the others.

“What a lovely…” he waved, unsure how to describe a moving statue.  “Komari would have loved this.  She liked art.”

The first moving statue got him to sit, and looked meaningfully at the big one, which seemed to activate it.

“You had something for the Haat Mando’ade?” the big statue asked in accented Basic.

“Yes, I have the.. Oh of course the word is a rabbit.  Here,” he said, pulling out one of the backups.  “The Governor of Galidraan tried to screw them over, screw us over.  I got him, oh yes I did.  My mind-healer is going to be… so pissed at me.  Blah, blah, revenge is poison, blah.  Whatever.”

The big statue shook a little, and Dooku cocked his head to see if he should duck flying parts.  The Force was merely amused, however, so he shrugged it off.

“Anyways.  The point is… the point,  yes.” He paused, and pulled his words back to him out of their explorations of the room.  They brought with them the taste of a dozen accents, a hundred worlds and he licked his lips on the zing of spices.  “I found a lot of links between the Governor and this… Viszla fellow.  I’m hoping it’s not a relation.”

“No, I’m not related to Tor Viszla,” the big statue laughed.

“No, not you, I knew that,” Dooku said, waving his hand to dispel the idea.  “Tarre Viszla.  Good Jedi.  Great swordsman.  Read a lot of his books when I was learning Makashi.  Would not be happy about this other Viszla person and the stunts they’re pulling.”

“You’ve read Tarre Viszla’s books, ones he wrote?”

“Mm, yes, great stuff.  It’s all at the Jedi Archive, but you can get a scan if you ask.  I’ll give you Jo’s comm number.”  He yawned, shaking his head as more alcohol left his system.  “So yes, I have information about this Tor person and I think the Hat… the other Mandalorians need it.”

“Are you sure you should be making these choices right now?” the big statue asked.  That was sweet of them to think, but no.  He had no intention of sobering up a minute faster than he absolutely had to.

“Yes, very.  It’s what she would have done.”

“Who?”

“Komari… my…” he wavered, unsure how to explain a Padawan to a statue.  “I’ve been taking care of her for over a decade.  Teaching her everything I can.  Finding teachers for the things I can’t.  Supporting her, watching her grow and… and blossom into the wonderful woman she’s becoming.”

“Your ad’ika,” the statue said knowingly.

“Yes, that,” he agreed.  It was probably right.  “She did the right thing, on Galidraan.  The only one of us able to see it and brave enough to risk everything for it.  I lost her, I lost my… ad'ika?”

“You said it right.”

“I lost my ad'ika that day.  Because on her worst day she had more courage, more honor in her littlest toe than that governor ever had in his entire body.  And now she’s gone, and all I can do is try to make it worth it.”

The statue laid a hand on his arm across the table, and scooted around the back of the booth to sit closer.  The bronze-like metal of the statue felt cool and soft and quiet, and it halted the nauseous tension that foretold becoming far too sober far too fast.  He leaned into it without shame, weeping for his lost Padawan.

“It’s never going to be worth it,” he whispered into the statue’s arms.  “It’s selfish, but if it weren’t for the fact she’d hate me for it… I would trade this victory for her in a heartbeat.  I would break every oath save one if it meant I could have protected her even a little longer.”

“Of course you would, you’re a good buir,” the statue comforted.  “What’s your name?”

“Dooku, Jedi Master Yan Dooku,” he said, blinking at the sudden change in topic.

“Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, Yan Dooku,” the statue said.  Then they waved at a passing person with thick gauntlets and a metal headband.  “Pirpaak, for my new ad!”

“You said the gai bal manda?  But he’s… old.”

“I am not old,” Dooku protested.  “I’m in the prime of my health!”

“No one is too old for a buir,” the statue insisted.  “And he’s just lost a child, have a heart.”

“Oh!  I’m so sorry,” the person said, ducking their head and scurrying off.

“You’ll feel better after you drink some broth,” the statue informed him.

“I don’t wanna be sober,” he said petulantly.  “Don’t want to feel at all.”

“Okay, ner ad, you just rest then.”

***

Dooku wasn’t sure exactly what had happened in Little Mandalore.  He knew he’d been dropped off at the Temple by a very large Mandalorian, because the Temple Guards came to ask him about it after Vokara released him from her clutches.  He recalled giving them the information he’d found about a conspiracy against one of the factions of Mandalorians.  He might have gotten engaged?  Or something… he remembered lots of congratulations and a very good bone broth.  Context cues seemed strangely absent from his memory and he wasn’t fluent in Mandalorian.

“Jo, I need a book on Mandalorian,” he said, skipping the pleasantries as one of his oldest friends answered her comm.

“Is this related to the excessively formal request for scans of ancient texts I received at the asscrack of dawn today?” she asked back.

“Maybe?” he confessed.  “Komari cut her braid on Galidraan, I’m not okay, and I don’t really remember last night.”

“Oh… my dear friend.  You rest.  I’ll bring you the translation guide this afternoon.”

“Thanks Jo,” he sighed, and laid back down.  He really was too old for this.

***

“So I think it comes down to feeling like I have to live up to the expectations of people who aren’t around anymore to tell me they’re proud of me,” Jango sighed, staring up at his mir’baar’ur’s ceiling.  “So I don’t know if I’m succeeding or not, and I keep moving the goalposts on myself every time I mess up, and it just makes it so hard to do anything.”

“Doing isn’t nearly as important as trying,” his mir’baaru’ur said gently.  “Every day you get up, you put on your armor, and you try, and you do your best, and that’s enough, Jango.  You’re allowed to be your own person with your own goals.  You don’t need to be Jaster, you just need to be you.”

“Thanks,” he said, rolling upwards to sit in the chair correctly.  “I needed that.”

“Now, you mind telling me about the new addition to the armor?” she asked pointedly with a glance at Kandosii’s braid, carefully capped off with beskar aglets to keep it from unraveling and affixed to his pauldron.  Those and the beads sparkled and made little ringing sounds when they tapped his armor, hard to ignore.

“She said to wear my trophy with pride,” he admitted in quiet shame.  “But I’m wearing it as a reminder, a tangible proof of a debt unpaid.  Not pride, but determination to do better.”

“And that’s all we can ask of you, Mand’alor.”

He nodded, the title a signal it was time to end the session.  He had a lot to think about now, so he thanked her and left quickly, hoping to find some peace and quiet to work through it all.

He wasn’t going to get it, since the second he left the comm-suppression zone in the Mir’baar’ur’s office, his comm pinged rapidly with calls.

“Kih’dabe?  What does Goran Kih’dabe want?” he mused, opening the call that was coming in, noting the three missed call messages were also from Coruscanta.

“Mand’alor, I hope this finds your arm strong and your spirit bright,” they opened, more formally than usual.  “We received a packet of intel on the financial activity of Tor Viszla in the Republic.”

“Send it over,” Jango said immediately.  “But if one of our Wer’verde had information, why didn’t they come to me directly?”

“Because it wasn’t a Prudi’ika,” the Goran laughed grimly.  “It was a supremely soused Jedi Master.  He handed me a most likely illegal quantity of information that was definitely acquired by means of dubious legality.  Then he cried on me.  A lot.”

“A Jetii?” Jango asked, head cocking in confusion.

“A Jedi, yes.  And before I send you this, I have to ask you a lot of very pointed questions,” the Goran growled.

“What, why?” Jango said, stopping in the middle of the hallway to stare at them.

“Because I live on Coruscanta and I know what a Padawan braid is,” they said icily.  Jango felt a pang of bitter shame run through him and took a breath to set it aside as the mir’baar’ur taught him.  “And I just adopted a heartbroken Jedi who lost a child on a mission involving Mando’ade.”

“Oh kriff, Kandosii was right,” Jango groaned.  His shoulders shook with the effort of not crumpling under the guilt.  “Ciryc did care.”

“Explain, Fett,” the Goran repeated.  “Is that or is that not my bu’ad’s braid on your shoulder?”

“They told me to!” Jango protests, drawing the eyes of others around him.  “They cut their braid, for us, to defend us, and then when they knew we understood what that meant, the life debt we… I owed, they put it on my pauldron themselves, and told me to wear it.  With pride, they said, but I can’t….  I can’t manage that.  Duty will have to suffice.”

“She lives?” the Goran asked sharply, a hint of hope in their voice.

“Last I saw,” Jango confirmed.  “Mij is with them.  I’ll call him for an update, let him know to reach out to you.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

The comm cut off sharply, and Jango tried to ignore the eyes on him as he walked briskly to the Comm Room to make a long distance call.

***

“What do you mean you don’t have any updates?” Jango growled.  “Mij has to have checked in by now.”

“Not since confirming their landing on Melida’daan,” the tech said.

Dread crept up Jango’s back like a fire licking at his skin.

“Right.  Where the fuck is that?  Send the nav information to the cruiser, we leave in an hour.  We have a medic that needs collecting and I have to make sure Kandosii is alright or I’ll have a Goran after my hide.”

Chapter Text

Meditating was a great idea. Or a karking terrible one. Komari wasn't sure which.

Mostly because it turned out that the neatly torn edges of her training bond with Master Dooku had found the absolutely shredded ends of Ben's training bond with his flaming imbecile former Master – whom she would not be acknowledging any karking relation to anytime soon – and said bonds had decided they liked each other enough to become one. 

Her baby brother was now her Padawan and she wasn't even a Knight.  

It was fabulous. The broken bonds didn't hurt anymore, as they weren't, in fact, broken. And the deeper connection was a delight to both of them. Knowing someone was there and cared was everything either one of them needed.

It was terrible. A speeder wreck waiting to happen because she had no kriffing clue what the kark she was even doing and now she had not just a brother to look out for but also a Padawan to teach somehow. And she couldn't even comm Master Dooku for advice.

Not to mention the active warzone they’d ended up in.  Not that every day was combat and action, most of it was actually pretty boring, waiting for scouts, waiting for decisions to be made by Cerasi and Neild.  Or, more often, waiting for them to give up debating with each other and then waiting for Ben to negotiate something that was what both wanted but they’d been too busy grouching at details to notice.  The slowness of war was a little weird to Komari, who was used to slow peace in the Temple, or fast conflict on missions.

On the other hand, it also provided time to review and parse out the kriffing poodoo that was 30 years of her new Padawan's life dumped into her head. Which, Master Yoda on a bounce-stick, was deeply unpleasant. It seemed there hadn't been a single year without some kind of catastrophe for the kid, and he would need so many skills she hadn't even realized existed before. She'd never really paid much attention in classes, but she was entirely certain they'd never covered even a quarter of the shit Obi-Wan and his Padawans had pulled.

She decided one day when the sound of distant fighting had faded into a sea-side like echo, that maybe it was meant to be, that the Force had put these specific visions in her head.  She also decided that if the Force was going to be using her to do whatever it felt like, so would she.

After all, if one takes the truism that "All things are possible in the Force" to its final conclusion, then nothing was impossible .  That meant that as her vision-memories indicated, there was absolutely a way to stop tankfire with your hand, send a hail of blaster fire back at precisely chosen targets with your lightsaber, or hide a full squadron of starfighters from scanners with the Force. She just needed to figure out how and then teach Ben to do it.

Just as soon as the next incoming attack was dealt with.

***

"DUCK!"

Everyone hit the ground.

“Kriff this all,” Komari growled.  The scales in her mind balanced, secrecy and safety and the lives of children creating an inescapable equation, math cold enough to numb her to the fear.  “BEN!  Hold the line!”

“HOW?” he demanded, holding up a newly-busted blaster.

In answer, she pulled loose the saber she hid in her breast-band against her heart.

“We’re out of options.  I will handle the fallout,” she promised, and passed him the saber.  “You remember Soresu?”

“Yes, but Master Jinn…”

“Kark Qui, he isn’t you,” she snapped.  “ He can be the river, going where the path leads and sweeping others with him.  You are a stone, and the river flows around you.  You endure.”  

She tried to put the knowing the vision had given her, the weight of it, into the words.  She couldn’t teach him in the limited time they had, but she could put her whole self into the confidence he badly needed, an unshakable faith born of having Seen it.  

“Soresu is resilience, Soresu is endurance.  Soresu is you, and it will help here."

Ben drew one steadying breath and gripped the hilt in the starting stance of Form III.

“Understood, Master Vosa,” he said, voice more steady and sure than any teen had a right to be.  He sounded every inch of General Kenobi now, and she set aside her grief at that to go to work.  Ben was the stone, the eye of the storm, the immovable object.  She was the molten magma, the howling wind, the unstoppable force, and she needed to move.

“Mij, get them to safety,” she told the medic that had been sticking to them like a burr, handing him a youngling who had badly scraped their leg fleeing.

“Wha- wayii!” he exclaimed, taking the weight of the small body with a confused look. The little one clung to his shoulder like they had been clinging to Komari's leg a moment before.

"Out the back," Komari ordered and was relieved as he gathered up the others to file out without further comment.

“The Force is with me and I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,” Komari said to herself, sinking deeply into the meditative state that came to her when she fought.  Each light of life on the field became a dancing star in a swirling galaxy, and her Freia Kallea, charting her own Hydian way.  Her steps were sure, her movements economical, as she slipped sideways and around to come up from behind the swirl of enemy lights.  There was the path that lay before her, and the Force.  Everything else faded back as she let herself flow.

Nothing touched her, although they tried.  She was unarmed in the technical sense, her saber in her Padawan’s hands, her blaster not able to fire as quickly as she was moving.  That did not make her unarmed in fact.  She had only her body and the Force.  

That was all she needed.

“Thought is too slow for combat!” Master Drallig had said a thousand times.  “Combat happens in the heartbeats between thought, in the blinks and breaths.  You cannot trust thought when the lives of others balance on your saber’s edge.  You can only trust your body and the Force.”

Komari did not move like thought.  She didn’t waste that much time.  She moved like the Force.

Something exploded, and Komari looked around to find the field rather different than it had been. Mij was behind her, sans toddler, and Ben still stood, dancing with her saber in the gap, a serene, concentrated look on his face. The enemy was cut nearly in half in number, but far angrier at the loss of their artillery.

“I can explain,” she said, and Mij rolled his eyes.

“Explain the nosebleed later,” he said, implying that’s all he cared about.  “We’re getting out of here.”

“On whose orders?” she laughed, the Force rushing through her in an intoxicating wave that tickled not-yet-memories of spice and death sticks.

“On mine,” Mij growled.  “Medics outrank everyone.   RETREAT!  GRAB THE WOUNDED AND RETREAT!”

***

It was late that night when Mij cornered her, nursing a bad case of Force strain in a none-too-stable tower that had once been a stairwell to a speeder parking structure.  It had a good vantage, and was far from the Young in their underground hideout, and that was all it had going for it.

“I brought bacta, and that herbal tea stuff,” Mij said.  “Let me get that blood off your face.”

“So… you know now,” Komari said softly, looking at him defiantly.

Mij snorted as he started to clean dried blood off her upper lip. "We all knew ages ago. We just figured it was traumatic, not being that anymore and decided to let you be."

“You mean… you absolute ASS,” she gasped.  “I could have been using my saber this whole time?   And you let me just… pretend I didn’t have it?  Force’s sake, Ben could have been doing so much more training if we didn’t think we had to hide it from you!”

“Why would you hide?” Mij asked with a blink.  “You’re amazing.”

"Force Sensitives are valuable on the slave market,” Komari said bitterly.  “I should know.  You wanna know why my parents gave me to the temple?”

Mij blinked at her.  “I assumed it was like most people, you got your test, the Jedi show up and you go with them.”

“Jedi don't take children that parents don't want to give… unless the parents don't deserve to have children," Komari growled. "My parents were spacers, very mobile, but good to me.  Good for me.  Adaptable.  We did the test but they didn’t contact the Jedi until later, after my third scare with slavers.  They asked Master Koon to take me with him, so I’d be safe .  I remember it.  I remember he asked permission, my permission, to take me with him.  I was too young to clearly remember the other two times, thankfully.”

Mij whistled low and soft.  It sounded like some species of night-bird.

She looked away from his shocked face and out over the city ruins. 

"They didn't want to shut me down, make me pretend to be what I wasn't.  Squish me down into something less.   They knew what that was like, being wired different, like they were.  But they didn’t want to trap me in the ship and never let me groundside either. And I couldn't….” Komari sighed.  It was an old guilt, and old shame, even after all her work on it with mind healers.  “I kept attracting attention groundside.  I put people in danger, our people.  My family."

“They made the best choice they could,” Mij said, understanding in his voice and in the Force.  “They were good parents.”

“I’d say the best, but then Master Yan….  I studied under Yan Dooku.  One of the best duelists in the Order, a respected Guardian, but able to handle Consular work if needed.  He got me.  It’s not that he was better than my birth family but….”

She sat with the thought, finding the words.  Mij let her, and she felt the walls around her heart soften.

“If you were to raise, say, a twi’lek child.  How would you teach them to process what their lekku were telling them?  Could you talk with them in Ryl and know that you fully understood them and they you?  And don’t say the hand motions cover it, we both know they lack nuance.”

“Oh,” the medic said, blinking.  “It’s... the Force is a sensory organ.  With entirely different inputs.  No wonder Force Sensitive kids throw tantrums!  They’re over stimulated!  I never… does the Jedi Temple do compression therapy?  Emotional regulation service animals?  What’s the mental healthcare situation like?  How do you handle neurotransmitter balance?”

“I should have known that’s what you’d care about,”Komari laughed.  “I’m sorry, for assuming the worst of you.  And… managing all that extra sensory input and the resulting emotional regulation issues is what all the meditation is for.”

“You assumed the worst and you still got on my ship,” Mij said soberly, suddenly focused.  “You led me to your Jedi brother, thinking I would….”

“When I got on your ship, you thought I was a normal woman,” Komari clarified.  “That worst is significantly better.  Easier to handle, anyway.  Paying for a ride with sex is something I’m mentally prepared to deal with. Didn’t expect for you to stick around once we got here, though.  That threw me for a loop."

Mij gagged.  “Aside from the consent issues inherent to sexual currency, my wife would murder me in my sleep if I pressured anyone into anything when they were in as vulnerable a state as you’ve been in.”

"Wife?  And you're still here?"  She didn’t know much about marriages, but she knew the reason most Jedi didn’t have them was that spouses usually expected you to put them first.

"I'm a medic and there are children fighting a war because their parents keep trying to kill them," Mij pointed out with mild hysteria. "I'm not going anywhere until they’re safe, doing otherwise wouldn’t make Daara kill me, it’d make her divorce me.”

He said it like it was somehow worse than murder, and Komari realized that was where the expectation was.  Not to be by his wife’s side or prioritize her over any other, but to be the man she loved, to prioritize the values they both held.  It was beautiful.

“I would like to call her, though,” Mij said, not noticing Komari’s sudden insights into his marriage.  “She works primarily as a bodyguard, but has military experience, too.  I'd like some back-up around that I know I can trust with a few hundred children here."

"You trust your wife, do you trust all the people she might bring with her?"

"With my life. More to the point, with what I know about all of them, I'd trust them with these kids. And with you and your brother."

The Force hummed contentedly. Good enough.

"Then let's get you a way to contact them."

***

On this entire, barren, Force-forsaken, kriffing Sith-spawned planet, there was one entire comms station with off-world capability. Apparently, both the Melida and the Daan used to have more, recently enough Cerasi and Neild could remember them, but they'd managed to obliterate all of them except this one. There weren't even parts left that they could scrounge to fix Mij's ship comms.

And this last kriffing comms station, klicks away from everyone, was both frequently and carefully fought over . No one wanted to lose their last hope of communication with the rest of the galaxy.

Which made getting in that much harder. Even if they weren't planning to take and keep it.

First they had to get past the Melida staging for the weekly run at their own attempt to take the station, then get over the minefields, past the razor wire fences, thirty foot walls that appeared to be made out of concrete with glass shards embedded in it, and then deal with the Daan on duty in the station, possibly the only point not left understaffed by the depletion of the population as a whole, and the backup they absolutely had close by.

A few months ago, Komari would have said it was impossible with what they had, at least for getting more than one sneaky person in and out. Now though….  Now she had a medic with uniquely, if accidentally, helpful viewpoints, and thirty-plus years of proof that Impossible was a figment of the imagination, and the usual rules of the galaxy were more like guidelines, really.

They'd spent a day using the Force to dig up and disarm mines from other minefields and another day rewiring them into bombs the little Demolitions Teams could use to distract both the Melida and the Daan reinforcements from a safe distance. And now the three of them, Cerasi, and Neild were crouched under the bushes on a hill perpendicular to the station and the Melida, overlooking the minefield from hell. Mawat was heading the distraction teams. Komari had wanted Cerasi with him, saying they needed to be sure that no matter what happened on either side, one of them would still be able to lead the Young, but she'd had no luck. If backup was being called, the leaders of the Young all needed to be there for it.

She wished she'd argued a little harder, right now.

The Daan had installed turrets on the walls.  Slugthrower turrets. Where and how the kriff they'd gotten those was a question for later. Right now , Komari needed to focus on finding a way to get a team of five past them uninjured.

“You know, we could really use some armor,” Mij complained, hand touching the bracer he wore.

It reminded her of the Might Have Beens, the soldiers who fought beside someone her accidental padawan could have become.  And that reminded her of Obi-Wan and Skywalker and little Tano and the Force catching blaster bolts in air.  If they could do it with blaster bolts, then she and Ben could certainly do it with the little scraps of metal.  Maybe.  Probably.

“Hey kid, wanna try this cool Force Shaping trick?” she asked, carefully keeping her tone light.  If Ben thought he could, then he would.  She knew it was possible, and if he believed it was too… they could do anything. 

“Sure?” he asked, glancing at Mij, who shrugged.

“So what you’re going to do is use the Force to make armor over your body so you don't get shot,” she explained.  “Picture it the way you do when you pick something up.  The Force is everywhere, it is in the air between you and the turret.  Grab it, shape it.”

“I’ll try,” he said, and she felt the Force contract, air going still and hard as Obi-Wan gasped.  She tried not to gasp either, since what he was doing at such a basic sketch of a suggestion upset something like a thousand years of conventional wisdom.  She followed his lead, though, copying the way he shifted the Force around him, wrapped in it like she was a youngling borrowing her Master’s cloaks again.

“Remember to let it be flexible too,” Mij said, eyeing them both.  “Well fitting armor moves with you, not against you.”

“Huh,” Ben said, flexing his arms.  “Nifty.  We should armor the others too.”

“Good idea,” Komari said, but before she could point out the risk of overdoing it, he had already covered Mij, Cerasi, and Neild in Force Armor.

“Right,” he said with a nod.  “Let’s go.”

“Oya!” Mij agreed heartily, and they were off.

Chapter Text

Mij was not okay. He wanted nothing more than to curl up in a corner and cry and then find a mir'baar'ur and make it be their problem. But he couldn't. Not yet.

First he had to get 247 children out of a karking warzone from hell and not die in the process. In order to do that he needed to comm his wife and Jango. From a comm station in enemy territory. With three feral barely-teenagers and an equally feral twenty-something in tow. 

Komari had lead a path through both the maze of mines and the outer ranges of the turrets, where they just didn't quite overlap enough, while she and Ben had turned kriffing air into personal shield-emitters that some-karking-how worked against non-energy projectiles and still let them breathe. 

Mij never again wanted to see slugs flying at his face and just hit nothing and drop. He never ever ever again wanted to see them flying at kids, even if they did just…stop, for no visible reason. His heart couldn't take it.

Scaling the walls was even worse somehow. Sure, the turrets had stopped firing because they couldn't hit them at all, but the walls were made with large shards of glass and razorwire sticking out everywhere, and their Not-Jedi had just… wrapped everyone's hands up in air and off they went again, while Daan soldiers up on the wall shot down at them with blasters that somehow never managed to connect. Even when they should have.

And then they split up. Komari and Neild, loaded down with weapons stolen from the Daan on the walls, went off one way, making a ruckus and generally being Problematic, while Ben'ika led Mij and Cerasi around through a circuitous path the other way. It was quiet, only the sounds of far-off explosions and shouting that let them know Komari and Neild were still fine. Which was disturbing, as Cerasi had tripped over a bucket of floor cleaner solution someone had abandoned to go deal with the others and it still didn't make a sound.  

Ben interpreted the look Mij gave him and whispered something about pranking the Jetti'alore with his clanmates. Jedi having clans was enough to throw Mij off of the lack of sound, even as the thought of tiny Jedi pranking their elders and learning spy tactics to do it nearly made him not want to comm his wife, lest Daara decide to raid the Jedi temple and adopt them all.

They had a few close calls, far too close, as Daan soldiers ran by on their way to other problems.  Ben just casually led them into shallow shadows which somehow, mystically managed to hide three not small enough people wearing not dark enough colors. Ben only shrugged when Mij looked at him with a raised eyebrow after the first one.

Mij wanted to weep.

He couldn't, though, as they were finally at the comms room, and Ben had sliced the door open and shoved them inside, before calmly sitting on the floor in front of the door.

He typed in Jango's comm number even as his brain scrambled to find words again. Fortunately, while Komari and Ben had been rewiring mines, he'd gone out to his ship and used the comm system there to record a briefing of everything he knew about this cursed planet and the Young and Komari and her brother. It was mostly ranting, but everything important was in there, he just had to send it. And maybe rant some more.

The call connected, and wonderfully, horribly, his wife stood at the Mand'alor's shoulder. Just as an explosion rocked the base from rather closer than he'd like, and Komari was suddenly in the hall outside, screaming Huttese curses and shooting a blaster with one hand while tossing her saber to Ben with the other. 

Ka'ra help him.

He cleared his throat, "So, Melida’daan is fun. There's a civil war, demagolka'se everywhere trying to kill their own kids, who are fighting back because they'd like to not die and maybe have a planet to live on that still you know, supports life, and my passenger's brother is one of the leaders of the army comprised entirely of children . My comm booster got stolen right off my ship within hours of landing, and there's only one comm station left on planet. Which is, of course, held by the enemy. I'm sending a data packet. Send help. Please?"

He looked over his shoulder and promptly shrieked, as Cerasi had somehow wound up on the shoulders of a soldier who'd slipped past where Ben was holding off three more with the saber, while Komari and Neild filled the other side of the hall with blasterfire. "AIM FOR THE EYES, ADIIKA!  Use your thumbs, for kriff’s-- there you go.  Ori'jate!"

***

Melida/Daan, not Melida’daan as Jango had assumed it turned out, was in the Mid Rim halfway across the Galaxy from Manda’yaim. It took four jumps to get there. When they dropped out of hyperspace to redirect for the third jump, Jango's comm began buzzing. From Melida/Daan. Not Mij's com. He flagged down the man's wife, routed the call through the ship's console, and pressed the record button before answering.

Mij looked like osik. His eyes were wide, pupils blown, hair sticking up in every direction. His civvies were rumpled and dirty like he'd just been rolling around on a battlefield. Mij was very clear that he was a medic and had no business being in battlefields for more than five minutes at a time.

“So, Melida/Daan is fun,” he said, and the echoes of an explosion ripped through the end of the words, although Mij didn’t react, eyes wide but steady as he kept talking. “--demagolka'se everywhere trying to kill their own kids, who are fighting back because--”

Another set of sounds cut over his words, sounding suspiciously like slugthrower fire.

“--have a planet to live on that still, you know, supports life, and my passenger's brother is one of the leaders of the army composed entirely of children.”

“Somehow that at least tracks,” Jango muttered.

“My comm booster got stolen right off my ship within hours of landing,” Mij continued, ignoring him as much as he ignored the sounds of combat.

“Your ship with the excessively paranoid security features Ba’vod Fex insisted on?” Daara demanded beside Jango.  Mij was on a roll, though, stress giving him speed at the cost of the ability to pivot in response.

“There's only one comm station left on planet.  Which is, of course, held by the enemy.  I'm sending a data packet. Send help. Please?"

“Of course,” Jango said, seeing the data packet arrive on their side.  “We’re on our way.”

Someone let loose a wild war-cry and Mij finally turned, only to start shouting violent advice to an adiik they couldn’t see.

“How much faster can this ship go?” Jango asked his bridge captain.

“Fast,” the Mando’ad said grimly, shoulders set with determined rage.  The same could be said of everyone who had been on the bridge when he answered the comm.

“Oya,” he said solemnly, as he opened the  packet Mij sent.

***

They got out. Mij wasn't quite sure how, but they did, and none of the three teams lost anyone in the process, which was a kriffing miracle.  

Then they'd partied. As much as they could, anyway. Someone had snuck into the Daan reinforcements camp and stolen a sackful of rations that they parted out, and neither Mij nor the baar'ike had allowed Komari and Ben to give their shares to anyone else like they both had a tendency to do. Cerasi sang songs, Ben told stories of the pranks he'd pulled with his jetti'ike clan, which Mij was absolutely not repeating to Daara, because if he had a sudden urge to go adopt the gremlins, she wouldn't even hesitate. Komari told old Jedi legends and stories about her time with Dooku, which Mij was absolutely not repeating to Jango. They didn’t need the Mand’alor going entirely deaf from guilt when he realized how close the two were.  Or the political clusterkriff of the Mand’alor trying to put an entire lineage of Jetiise in armor.

They got a couple days of peace, which both the jetti'ike spent mostly asleep in a pile of ikkade. 

And then the osik hit the ventilator, as it were. Turns out, they got those two days of peace because the Melida and the Daan were busy signing a temporary truce while they both focused on hunting their kids down.

Karking Fantastic.

***

Komari was really trying to get used to the impossible happening.  She knew, she knew that what she was doing was possible, she’d seen Skywalker and a possible version of Ben do it, but that didn’t mean her brain didn’t hurt grabbing scraps of hot metal out of the air as their patrol was fired on.  In fact, she wasn’t sure she could keep it up for much longer when Neild screamed, body-tackling a Daan with a fury that seemed personal.

Fine.  You wanna play this way, we can play this way, she thought to herself, a Dark and feral grin spilling like blood across her face.

“Nield, drop!” she ordered, and trusted him to trust her as she dropped to one knee, hands in the loose scree that passed as soil in Zehava’s ruins.  Duracrete, rock, and a million shards of glass and metal, ground down by centuries into pebbles and shrapnel.  She wrapped herself around it, around the knowing she had found in her vision on Galidraan, around the idea of three million lights that marched as one until the day their march was halted by a force outside any of them.  She sank that unity, that connection and cooperation into the detritus of war and blind hate, and she gripped it tight.

It had taken a moment, no more, and yet it felt the work of lifetimes.

With a growl of effort, she took her grip on the scree and lifted.   It was exactly like lifting the blocks and balls in the creche.  It was like a game of push-feather.

If, of course, your feather was several hundred thousand projectiles and you pushed at a speed just shy of sound.

“--mari!  Komari!  Are you okay?” someone shouted.  She couldn’t find the energy to open her eyes, somehow.

“Hm, d’ I get ‘em?” she asked.

“You got them, Kandosii,” a familiar voice reassured her.  

“Oh good, you’re here.  Ben will be so happy to see you again, Commander,” she said.

“Really?” he asked in confusion.

“Of course, he cares about you.  I’ll make sure he knows you weren’t really trying to murder him when you had him shot off that cliff.  Not your fault at all.”

“Um.”

“You shot Ben?” Neild demanded, scandalized.

“No!” Komari shouted in the general direction of the voice, trying in vain to sit up again.  “Not his fault!  We do not blame people for the things they do under banthashite mind control!”

“Of course not,” Ben said.  “But why are we talking about that?  I haven’t been on Phindar in months, but I’m pretty sure we fixed that.”

“There was what now ?” the Commander squawked.

“Ben!  Look who I found!” she said brightly, trying to get them all off the awkward topic.  She didn’t have the energy for it.  Easier to kickstart a reunion.  “Cody’s here!”

“My name isn’t Kote,” the voice she’d thought was the Commander corrected gently.

“It’s not?  Sorry, I never met any of you, so I might get more confused than the other Jedi you worked with,” she explained.  “I was busy starting a cult and getting assassination-murdered before you would be born.  Considering it was Jango who did it, I’m not sure if it’ll be an assassination, or just a plain old murder.  He really doesn’t like me, but that’s fair.  I was a dick to him first.”

“I have no idea what’s going on here,” the unknown clone said.

“She’s just a little lost,” Mij sighed.  “Give her here, Mand’alor.  I have warm blankets and one of the Baar’ike made you some ear-covers, and I’ve got a whole passel of bitties lined up to cuddle you while you come down.  We’ll get you nice and buried and you’ll feel better in no time.”

***

“So,” the steel-eyed youngster that Jango had seen Kandosii defending said, glaring at him.  “Back to the relevant bits.  You shot Ben?”

“She thought I was someone else,” Jango protested.

“We’ve never met,” the red-haired kid she’d called Ben said in agreement.  “Also some of how she sounded with the messed up tenses would suggest she got her whens mixed up.   The future is always in motion, so it doesn’t count yet.”

The kid nodded like that made sense.  “Okay, that’s fine then.  Who are you?”

“UM,” Jango said, remembering what Kandosii had said.  “I want to clarify I mean none of any of you harm, especially not… ah.”

“His name is Jango and I want to know tion haar haran she meant when she said you murder her,” Daara announced.  “Mij’ika has half adopted her, or wants to, so now I’m invested.”

“I have no idea!” Jango said, throwing his hands up.  “I would never!  She saved all our lives on Galidraan!  Why would I ever hate her?”

"She said she was a jerk to you first," Ben pointed out, "so maybe whatever it is hasn't happened yet?"

“Everyone out!" Mij ordered. "Force sensitivity is an extra sensory organ, which just so happens to pick up emotions.  Komari has burnt straight through her ability to filter that, and is over-stimulated like no tomorrow. Out. Go emote elsewhere. Except you, Ben, get back here you little medic-dodger. You are getting your own pile of blankets and bitties, because I saw you shielding that explosion away from Cerasi and the Baar'ike moving the wounded, and I am very certain it cost you more than you would ever be caught admitting to."

“Nuh uh,” the kid said mulishly.

“Who do medics outrank, General?” Mij asked, and Jango swallowed hard on the casual honorific.

“Everyone,” Ben grumbled.

Chapter Text

“I think you need to run that by me again,” Goran Kih’dabe said, blinking at her Mand’alor.

“I found Kandosii, your bu’ad.  She’s on a planet that desperately needs our help; the ade here have been waging a defensive war against their own dar’buire, alone. Mij sent a datapacket and I'm forwarding it to you.”

“Ner bu’ad is on a planet of demagolkase?” Goran Kih’dabe said, low and enraged.  Fire like that of her forge burned in her heart, her lungs.  “You’re calling the Mando’ade to your banner.”

To his credit, the young Mand’alor didn’t mistake it for a question.  Instead he nodded short and sharp, a soldier accepting a command.  “Rally the forces on Kih’dabe.  Meet at the coordinates I’m sending you.  And… bring your ad.  Kandosii and her brother need support we can’t give.  My Baar’ur’alor is having conniptions about undocumented neurology and unknown support needs.  Apparently Kandosii had some sort of Manda-vision-prophesy thing and is half convinced I murdered her.  She’s also strangely accepting of that, like it’s not the most horrific breach of honor I can imagine.”

“Brother?” the goran blinked behind her buy’ce.  “I have two bu’ade?”

“Um.  I think?  He also referred to her once as his Jet’buir, but Mij said she called him brother, so I don’t know.  You can sort it out when you get here.  I have to call everyone else, you just got first heads up because of the family connection.”

“Of course, Mand’alor,” she agreed, and ended the call, collecting the coordinates.  “Seri!  Get the mobile kit packed up and then head to the tapcaf to announce the Mand’alor’s call.”

“What?  Where are you going to be?” demanded her apprentice.

“Collecting my ad.  We’re going on a family trip.”

***

Yan would swear he didn’t actually make a habit of getting blackout drunk in dive bars.  He was pretty certain the last place he remembered being was actually a very nice little cafe right outside the Temple, waiting for Tholme to come speak to him about Former-Padawan Vosa.  All very above board and normal, well… for the given values available to a Jedi Master asking a Jedi Shadow for updates on the unofficial investigation into his former Padawan who quit the order to save the lives and Light of everyone on the mission.

And yet somehow, he had a blurry memory of a strangely warm hug from a void in the Force, which resulted in the past several days of less than ideal sleep suddenly and inescapably catching up to him.  Now he was in a bunk on a ship, and he had no idea where he was bound.

“Oh, you’re awake!” a very tall Mandalorian in full armor said, stepping into the bunk.  “Goran!  Gar ori’adiik kyr’nuhoy!”

“Did you wake them, Seri?” another Mandalorian, this one even larger, asked, pushing past the first to kneel by his side.  The armor looked familiar.  “Hey there.  You doing okay?  You passed out the second I touched you.  That doesn’t seem healthy but I don’t know much about Jedi, and apparently things are… different, for you.”

“I…”  Yan weighed his options.  They seemed reasonably kind, and if they wanted to do him harm, they’d had every chance before.  Not to mention, thanks to Komari, Mandalorian relations were more likely to have taken a positive turn than a negative one, recently.  “I can’t sense you, at all, in the Force.  It may be a property of the armor, Master Tarre did write about that, but he used a lot of words we don’t have translations for.  Our only translation guide is several thousand years old and missing a great deal, including conjugation and several other useful features of language.  If it does act as a Force blocker, then yes, I imagine coming in contact with it would have caused me to become unconscious.”

“It’s that harmful to block your magic?” the younger-seeming of the two gasped.

“Not normally,” Yan said with a shrug.  No need to make Jedi look weaker than they were.  “But when one is skilled in the Force, one can use it to supplement other needs such as food, water, air… or sleep.  Take the Force away, and that catches up remarkably quickly.”

“You hadn’t been sleeping,” the big one said with a knowing nod.  “Well, you can rest for now.  It’s a bit of a trip to Melida’daan, you have time.”

“Of course,” he said diplomatically, not wanting to upset his hosts now that he at least had a destination name, albeit one he wasn’t familiar with.  “If it isn’t rude of me to ask… what do I call you?”

“You call me Buir,” they replied with a laugh.  “This is my student Seri.  You’ll meet the others later.”

“Others?”

“Every Mando’ad on Coruscanta,” Buir said proudly.  “Our Mand’alor calls us to war.”

Well… kark.

***

Tholme bit his lip to keep from growling.

“Master Dooku, kidnapped he has been, you say?” Yoda asked slowly.

“Yes,” Tholme said, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes.

“A skilled fighter, my student is,” Yoda said.

“Any skilled fighter can be disabled by the right weapon,” Tholme said, deciding not to pique the Grandmaster’s pride any further by mentioning the weapon in this case was a fairly solid bear hug.  “The footage from the cafe was very clear.  Master Dooku was taken by Mandalorians.  Off planet, most likely, since there was a rather noticeable mass exodus of Coruscant by the Mandalorian population around the same time.  It was in fact, the reason I was late to the meeting.  I was fielding half a dozen calls by planetary security about the issue, which I knew nothing about because I didn’t get back on-planet until this morning!”

“Hrrmmph.”

“Be that as it may, Grandmaster, I request permission to locate Master Dooku, and temporarily halt my other ongoing cases.”

“Find my wayward Padawan you shall, Master Tholme,” Yoda agreed, after checking gently in the Force for his fellow Councilor’s feelings.  Tholme nodded.  

***

“Wait, what does ‘saa sarad coo-year…” Yan asked, struggling to pronounce the words in front of him.

“Sa sarad cuyir gotal de pitat,” Seri laughingly corrected. “It means ‘As Flowers are grown by the rain’ and is a part of the First Mand’alore’s epitaph. It, or the even shorter Sa sarad, is commonly used to reference the whole epitaph and the wisdom therein.”

“Hold on,” Yan interrupted again, scrambling for a stylus and his data pad. “Slow down, I gotta write this down, or Jo will kill me."

The Mando’ade around him stiffened and Yan looked up from writing. “What?”

“Or who will kill you, ner ad?” Buir asked with quiet steel.

Yan blinked. “What? Oh, no.  I didn’t mean literally, well maybe…. No, Jo is the Order’s Lorekeeper and also my... how do I… not relation-relation but Ori Vod?”

Seri, at least, brightened and clapped their hands. “OH!  Okay that tracks. Yeah, so ‘Sa sarad’ references the epitaph of Mand’alor the First. Write this down, you’re gunna want it later, it’s important. In Basic, the epitaph says ‘As flowers are grown by rain, so is the soul grown by war. From suffering comes compassion, from cruelty; mercy, from violence; peace. We are not born when we come into this world. We are born when we learn who we are, and we can only learn by being tested. Adversity is the crucible, honor is the way, and enlightenment the reward.’  Any time you see Sa sarad unconnected to anything else in the text, it’s referring to the Epitaph.”

Yan was stunned. “That’s…. Beautiful.  Right, I have the Basic, give me the Mando’a again. Do you have a translator program? One that has all the words?”

“Yeah,” Seri nodded, “but I don’t know if that data pad can fit it with all the other things you’ve got on there. Besides, you have translators, right here. Whatcha need it for?”

"We have so many texts we can't read anymore,” Yan did not whine, as whining was undignified and he was in fact a Jedi Master.  “Because the only language guide we have for Mando’a is incomplete! We recovered texts from six different Mand'alors from before Revan on one of our digs at the Great Library of Ossus! If I have an opportunity to get complete language guides and don't, half the Temple will murder me and I might help them."

The goran shook themselves out of…whatever they were contemplating while Yan and Seri talked. “And are those also available as scans?” they asked.  

“They should be, Jo is pretty clear about digitization as a step of preservation.”

“I'll translate them for you.”

“Where’s my comm? I need to comm Jo.”

“In your pocket, ad.”

“Right! That would make sense.”

***

Tholme would lay good money that tracking Yan down would lead to a continuation of his previous, far less sanctioned mission.

Komari Vosa had boarded a vessel registered to Alderaan, but the pilot of said ship had a very distinctive bracer on, and a little bit of snooping had turned up a connection to Jango Fett’s mercenary company.

Mandalorians were all over this whole case.

Which was why he headed directly to Jocasta after the meeting, although the Master of Shadows gave him a meaningful look that he wished he could follow up on.  It was more important to get anything he could on Mandalorians, than it was to assure Yaddle that yes, he was going to be retrieving Vosa for their own Order if he could.

Jedi who quit in the field tended to be the best Shadows, after all.  Their cover was built right in.

“What do you want, Ceorll’sh?” Jocasta asked waspishly as he roused her from her work.  “We have an outbreak of spark-mites in the botany section and I need to be organizing the infestation response team, which is always an absolute nightmare.  This is why I promoted Master Tyynnyythhva, but then everyone still wants my help.  Kriffing spark-mites.”

“You know I hate that name,” Tholme sighed.  “I need a research packet on Mandalorians.”

“I just gave it to Yan, ask him.”

“I need it because he missed a meeting with me, and when I sliced the security footage, I got this,” Tholme said, holding up a projector playing the scene.  Jocasta sighed, rubbing her face.

“Of course it’s him.  Karking disaster lineage.  Fine, just hold on one moment.”

A light started flashing among the datapads on her desk.  Tholme wasn’t sure she should be as aggressive with them as she was when she shifted them to reach the comm, but then he wasn’t an Archivist.  Also he wouldn’t have said anything even if he was.  He had functional self-preservation instincts.

“This had better be good,” she growled.

“Jo,” the voice of one Master Yan Dooku said in a gasping rush.  “Jo, I need your help.  Immediately.”  

“Of course, what can I do?”

“Those Mandalorian books we found at Ossus when we were teenagers; do we have scans?” 

“Is that really what you’re calling to say right now?” Jocasta demanded.

“Yes, right now,” he said, seeming to only be grasping part of what she was saying.  “Please Jo?   I have someone willing and able to translate.”

“I thought you were kidnapped, you ass!  Hang on, I'm on my way.  Tell them to make room for one more.”

“Make that three,” Tholme added, leaning over the comm.

“Three?” someone he didn’t know said in a sort of shocked outrage.  Jocasta echoed it with a single twitch of her brows.

“I’m not leaving Quinlan unsupervised,” Tholme explained.  Jocasta shrugged, that was entirely valid, she'd met Quinlan.

“Tell them to make room for two more adult Jedi and one teenaged menace,” she instructed.  “I’m bringing everything we have and extra data-sticks.  I need to leave a note.  Unfortunately for them, the response team will need to deal with my leaving Tyynnyythhva in charge.”

“We’re on route to somewhere called Melida-Daan?  Meet you there?” Dooku suggested after a short staticy scuffle that indicated a side conversation with the audio pickup covered.

“Give us… that’s outer rim, I just did up an info packet… eight days?”

“I have a Shadow-class ship,” Tholme said with a head-shake.  “Make it five, five and a half.”

“I’ll keep at the learning modules until then,” Dooku swore.

Jocasta snapped off the comm without a goodbye, and burst into action, dragging Tholme along with her.

***

“WHAT THE KARK DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE JOCASTA IS?” Master Mundi bellowed.

The Knight Archivist he was yelling at twitched an unimpressed lekku.

“She’s fine.  She’s just not here.  She left a note,” they explained.

“A note?”

A datapad was shoved into his hands.

Staff: Gone to get translations.  Department Heads in charge.  

Tyynnyythhva: No Quarter .

Council: Am out.   Be back eventually.  Don't break anything.

“At least she wasn’t kidnapped by Mandalorians,” Ki-Adi muttered.

***

Komari had to admit she’d slept really well once Mij set the babies on her.  The whole planet felt lighter after she woke up covered in tiny dreaming bodies, and it stayed with her as she extracted herself to find a refresher.

“Hi!” someone said far too cheerily as she exited the out of the way spot they’d found that served for waste elimination.  She blinked, and it was a Mandalorian in bright orange armor that seemed to flicker like flames if she looked too close.  “I’m Daara Gilamar, Mij’s riduur.”

“Nice to meet you?” Komari said slowly.  “I didn’t realize Mij’s wife was a Mando.”

“He downplays it; we’re not always the most popular people in the galaxy,” Daara laughed.  Komari was struck by the sense that she was always laughing.  “Might be more popular after this.  Who would dislike people who save a planet of ade?”

“You’d be surprised,” Komari said, thinking of the Senate and the missions that grated at both her and her Master.  The ways the Jedi had been reduced to a blunt weapon to enforce obedience to those with all the power.  At least she didn’t need to worry about that anymore.  “But thank you for coming.”

“Of course!  We’re family now, after all.”

“Huh?”

“Anyways, I need to get you to our ship’s comm unit.  Your Ba’buir… your grandparent wants to speak to you.”

“When did Grandma Maz get involved?” Komari asked, but she was already being towed along in Daara’s enthusiastic wake.

Chapter Text

Komari was still a little shaken up by everything.  

There had been a strangely warm comm call with a strange Mandalorian who called her bu’ad and seemed to have kidnapped Master Yan.  Lovingly kidnapped, he seemed healthy and the sort of happy that came from a new research project.  He also seemed exceedingly glad to see her, and deeply concerned about the situation she’d found herself in.

That was fair, Komari was also concerned.

He also mentioned something about Jo coming too, and Ben froze up beside Komari.  He’d been quiet enough already, shyly tucked into her side as the Mandalorian armorer reassured them both that they would be safe, and hiding his hands nervously in his sleeves as Master Yan apologized unnecessarily to her.  She hadn’t mentioned the Padawan thing, it was… unorthodox.

However, the second the call ended, she’d dropped to a crouch in front of Ben and demanded to know what was wrong with Jo visiting.

“She’s… scary,” Ben had mumbled.

Komari had blinked at him then started giggling.  When he looked offended, she got it under control.

“I’m sorry, I am.  I forget most people didn’t have close to a decade of twice a month gripe sessions between Jo, Yan, and Sy on their sofas.  It is very very hard to be scared of someone who cries into frozen desserts about a specific caf maker in her break room dying because the others don’t understand her the way Caffestra did. Or does a happy dance whenever Master Yan brings back another lost text or translation guide. Or commiserates with Master Sy about the Council and calls Master Yoda 'The Troll'."

Ben gave a hesitant giggle, and Komari braced him in the Force with love-support-faith-encouragement and in the physical world with a hand resting lightly on his upper back.

***

Tholme's estimate was a little off. Mostly because the Mandalorians were en route and staying together, traveling only as fast as the slowest ship in their fleet. But partially because a Padawan-Pilot named Garen Muln had used the excuse of maintenance to experiment with their engines. Again. They caught up to the fleet before the last jump and were directed to land in the bay of the largest of the ships.

“Jo,” Master Dooku greeted the archivist first as they disembarked.  “This is Goran Kih’dabe, my… newly adoptive parent?  They’re the one who has been making all the scan requests, and they’re willing to translate-- and she’s gone.”

Tholme blinked and nodded agreeably, as it did indeed seem the Head Archivist had abandoned them in favor of the very large Mandalorian who had hugged Master Dooku to unconsciousness on the security footage.

“So, your kidnapping seems to be going well,” he commented.

“Kidnapping?” a smaller Mando standing near Dooku said incredulously.  “We didn’t-”

Tholme held a hand on his eyes as his Padawan raced forward to ineffectually put gloved hands over the helmet about where a mouth would be.

“SHHH!  If you say that we have to go home, and I need to check on Obes.”

“What?” the Mando asked.

“Ah, Seri, please meet Padawan Vos,” Dooku introduced.  “He is… enthusiastic.”

“He’s also not wrong,” Tholme admitted, dropping his hand.  “We received permission to backburner all our current cases so we can solve the kidnapping of one Master Dooku.  The second that is solved, our other six… is it six cases?”

“Seven and a half,” Quinlan corrected.  “The half because the Mandalorian mass exodus thing is also going to get resolved on this trip.”

“Yes, well, the second we officially have an un-kidnapped Jedi Master Dooku, we have to go back to working on those seven cases.  Although we could argue that half a case as a reason to stay, I have a feeling we can more easily avoid official recognition of the kidnapping better than we can why all of you are here.”  Tholme shrugged.  “Shadows have more leeway than most Jedi when it comes to orders.  That doesn’t mean we aren’t restricted at all.”

Seri tilted their helmet, Quinlan’s hands still on the faceplate.

“It is very hard to be a Jedi, isn’t it?” they asked.

“Oh you have no idea,” Tholme sighed.  “So, aside from things We Cannot Know yet, what’s going on here?  I have yet to be caught up about anything aside from Jo’s research and my Padawan’s deep seated desire for a side mission once we’re on planet.”

“Jinn came back without Obes, and Tahl badly injured.  I’m going to be checking on him,” Quinlan said mulishly.

“Of course you are, now please let me get information I haven’t heard a million times,” Tholme pleaded.  It wasn’t that he didn’t care about young Kenobi, but there was a limit to what he could currently do, and any available information he could gather before landing on a planet would be helpful.  “What’s drawn so many Mandalorians away from Coruscant?”

***

"I told them!” Quinlan growled when the recap was over.  “I told them SO many times, but did anyone listen?  NO!  Oh, I am gunna prank the Council so hard when we get home."

Dooku frowned at the boy.  "Padawan Vos..."

“If you're going to remind him that Jedi don't do revenge, save your breath,” Tholme warned.  “He'll prank them, anyway.  They'll assign him to translate something direly boring from a frustratingly complex language.”  

“Only the Council apparently can only think of eight or so of those off the tops of their heads,” Quinlan added with a grin, “and I have them all memorized.”  

“If the firewalls on the library system have been updated enough that he can't get past them and upload a copy of his previous translations and just spend the time playing games instead, he can, in fact, do them in his sleep,” Tholme said, somewhat proudly.  “Sometimes he even gets bored of that and types the first few pages straight from memory and then finds some completely unrelated work in a completely different language and finds a way to make the works be related and writes that.  They haven't even noticed."

Jocasta looked up from the datapads on her lap, sharp gaze proving she was in fact paying attention while doing her own translating.

"And where are those not-translations stored?" she asked.

"On a drive in our quarters, except the copies he turns in to the Council,” Thole said, knowing better than to lie to an Archivist.  “What the Council does with them, I have no idea, but I strongly doubt they add several hundred padawan-punishment translations of the same eight works to the main archives."

Jocasta made a disgusted face.  “They do.  This is why Weeding Week is always terrible.  We don’t need those in the main archive.  The Council has it’s own server if they want to clog it with unnecessary copies of things.”

“I’m sorry,” Quinlan said softly.  “I didn’t know I was making more work for you.   I just wanted to have fun with it, since it’s not actually useful.”

"I know, dear,” Jocasta said kindly.  “And I want to read your creative expressions. All of them."

"Quin, turn in all of your currently existing punishment 'translations' to Madame Nu and Master Dooku, please,” Tholme asked his Padawan.

"...All of them?"

***

They landed on Melida/Daan around the same time as a number of other Mando’ade.  Goran Kihdabe smiled.  This was what Mando’ade should be.  She saluted her Mand’alor with a hand on her kar’ta beskar and then let the war-leaders move in to take direction from him and the wary, gangly teens currently arguing over a map pinned to a few crates with knives.  She had other things to focus on.

“Komari, ner bu’ad, have you been eating properly?”

The blonde former-Jedi twitched a brow.

“I have been eating as well as the medics are letting me,” she said stiffly.  “Apparently none of them believe me, or Ben for that matter although he’s slightly more understandable, that while it isn’t ideal to use the Force to supplement food intake, neither of us have been going entirely without food and do not in fact need to be on post-starvation protocols.”

“Your buir warned me about that.  Come on, I have tiingilar on my ship.  Bring your vod, we can have a family dinner.”

“We should wait a bit if we invite Ben,” Komari snickered.  “Vos dragged him off to some hidden corner to meditate.  They’re gonna be… occupied for a while.”

Goran Kihdabe blinked.  Vos had seemed a good enough kid, but was he good enough for her bu’ad?  Also, did they even have the correct safety precautions?

As though reading her mind, although Yan had helpfully explained that wasn’t possible, Komari shook her head.

“No, not like… physical contact with others is hit or miss with Jedi.  Some of us hate it, some of us love it but only with specific beings, some can’t get enough, but we would never do anything like that while on a mission.  The impulse that most sapients show as needing skin contact, we show in needing contact in the Force.  I was doing what I could, but Vos is closer to Ben, he’ll be more able to help, um.  I don’t know the word in Basic.”

“Talk around it then.”

“Smoosh Ben’s soul back into his body?” Komari offered hesitantly.  “It’s… like trying to overpack a carry-bag, sometimes.  Extra people help, but you have to be okay with them seeing what you’re mentally packing.  He’s a teenage boy, of course he doesn’t want his teacher seeing that in its entirety.  Vos is a friend, he’ll metaphysically flop on top of Ben and hold him down so he can zip that metaphorical bag and not mention anything weird in there.”

“Ah.  And do you need help… zipping bags?” the stunned Goran asked her bu’ad.

“I can wait, I know how to pack light to start with,” Komari deflected.  “Also mine was half on fire when I left Galidraan so I was pretty underpacked by the time I got here.  Mental breakdowns caused by visions can be remarkably clarifying about what matters.”

“Vision?” Yan yelped from several feet behind the Goran.  “You had a vision? Komari Vosa, I thought I taught you proper protocol for-”

“It happened while we were on the cliff!   When exactly was I supposed to report to a Mind Healer or dictate to a scribe droid I don’t have because I don’t kriffing get visions?   While I was falling off a fucking cliff because I was being bludgeoned by a vision from one of Sy’s worst nightmares?   Or maybe while I was literally feet away from the man who might kill me one day, trying to save his kriffing soul because his Fall dooms the entire fracking Galaxy!” Komari shouted, drawing the attention of other Mando’ade, including a stricken-looking Jango Fett.  “Oh, I know, I should have reported to the Council while RESIGNING FROM THE ORDER so YOU didn’t become a FORCE-DAMNED SITH LORD!”   

“Komari… I wouldn’t, you know I would never.”

“Master Yan, I respect you a lot, but there are limits.   I had to act, and there. Was. No. Time.  I couldn’t stop to do a workup of potential consequences,” Komari said pleadingly, even though it was plain she was breaking her own heart to explain what she had been through.  “It was either stop a slaughter and hopefully keep over three million bright, beautiful souls from being born into slavery... all to prevent the purge of the Jedi Order and Mandalore.  Or watch that fucking nightmare again, in real time — right up until Fett storms my cult headquarters and blows my head to fine red mist for my part in murdering his family, stealing his soul, and enslaving him for years.   Forgive me, but I chose to take a karking risk rather than play that part in the grand design here.”

“Was that really-” Fett began, his voice cracking.  “That is what you saw me do?”

“You had every reason,” Komari said dully, fire seeming to bank in an instant in her eyes.  “I didn’t blame you for it.  Not in the Vision and not now.  I understand.  That part anyway.  The cloning yourself seemed like an excessively complicated way to have children, and I definitely have decidedly unfavorable opinions of letting Sith use mind control chips on your kids to force them to slaughter the Jedi.  There were babies in that Temple.  But you didn’t lose quite literally everything on Galidraan, so hopefully that’s not going to happen now.”

“I’m gonna be sick,” someone said.

Jango Fett’s face was a complex mix of feeling, and Goran Kihdabe was yet again reassured by her own choice not to remove her helmet around others.  Her face was likely just as messy with feelings.

“I knew you saved my life,” Fett said softly.  “I knew you saved the lives of my people.  I didn’t know you’d saved my soul.  If… no.  You saw me become the worst of monsters, and you still chose honor, chose mercy.  I owe you a debt I cannot repay, but I will spend the rest of my life trying.”

“Your soul is beautiful,” Komari said shyly.  “It would have been a waste to let it get wrecked.”

“You had your helmet off in combat?” Ben asked in shock, shaking the scene from its painful intimacy.

“No!” Jango protested.

“Then when did you see his soul, Master Vosa?”

Komari blushed and Yan snorted.

“I see you have a Padawan just as perceptive as you, dearest.  Good luck, Komari.  You’re going to need it.”

Chapter Text

The situation on Melida/Daan wrapped up much cleaner than Komari expected.  The Mandos were, true to reputation, very good fighters.  They managed to slap down every pocket of war on the planet and drag the leaders of both sides to the negotiating table, where the combined disapproval of three Jedi Masters and a half dozen Mandalorian Armorers broke all but the staunchest refusals to compromise.  Well, them and the corpse of Wehutti, who had attempted to murder Neild when he saw the boy holding hands with Cerasi as they spoke on behalf of the Young.  Jango had put a blaster bolt squarely through the man’s eye, and Cerasi had kept talking as though it wasn’t her father laying there.

Afterwards, she wept until she vomited up the restoration rations the Young were all currently being given, while Komari held her chin-length hair back.

“He was my father, and I… I didn’t feel anything,” Cerasi cried.

“Was.  Past tense, and long before he died,” Jango cut in, passing Komari a cool damp cloth to help wipe the sobbing girl’s face.  “You don’t owe your dar’buir anything, even your grief.”

“You’ve used that word before,” Komari said later, after they’d gotten Cerasi settled.  “I wasn’t ready to ask this then, but… what does it mean?”

“It means one who is no longer a parent, because they have lost the right to be called that.  One whose child has disavowed them, or who hurt them badly or intentionally.”

“It doesn’t apply to Master Yan,” Komari said instantly.  “I left the Order, I did not repudiate him.  It… probably applies to Ben’s former mentor, even if Qui-Gon was the one doing the disowning.”

“Parents can’t disown their kids,” Jango argued instantly.  “That’s not how that works!”

“That’d be why it applies; Qui-Gon has repudiated three Padawans now,” Komari sighed.  “I don’t know how we both studied under Yan and he ended up… like that.   Although I also almost ended up awful, so… yeah.”

Jango reached out and brushed the back of his knuckles along her cheek, a kiss of cool clean metal along her skin.

“Hey, it didn’t happen, Kandosii.  You’re okay.  I’m okay.  And now we have the warning we need to make sure it never happens.”

Komari realized he was brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized she had shed, a bit belatedly.  The cool brush of beskar had simply felt so soothing to overworked nerves that it seemed a comforting gesture all its own.

“Yeah.  Hey, I’m not a member of the Order anymore, so I guess that means I need a new job.  You hiring, Mand’alor?”

Jango looked poleaxed.  Whatever answer he was going to give got cut off by a polite cough.

“Oh, hello Jo, what’s up?” Komari asked, swiftly tucking her feelings behind shields.  Jocasta raised a thin brow at the equivalent of a youngling shoving toys behind a chair with a foot, but gracefully didn’t say anything out loud.

“It’s not entirely true you’re not a Member of the Order,” Jocasta said.  “At least, not yet.  If the Mand’alor would give us a moment?”

“Oh, ah, of course,” he said, scrambling to stand, giving them both a fist-over-heart salute.

“He’s adorable,” Jocasta chuckled as he left.  “And his father was quite the academic.  You could do worse.”

“If, as you say, I am still somehow a member of the Order, that hardly matters,” Komari shot back.  “I was willing to leave to save the Galaxy, to save the Jedi… to save Master Yan and the rest of my family.  I am entirely not the woman who abandons her life’s work and goals over a man.  No matter how honorable, loyal, and strong he is.”

“Fair enough,” Jocasta agreed.  “How much do you know about Shadows?”

“Jedi Shadows?  They’re investigators.  Why are you asking?  If anyone was going to ask about the Shadows, I would have assumed it’d be Tholme.”

“Investigators is a very polite way to say spies,” Jo laughed.  “And would you be the one asking questions of a potential local informant if Yan was around?”

“No, but he’s my… he was my Master.  He outranks me.”

“And generally the second in command of the Shadows outranks a field Shadow.”

Suddenly a million little bits of incongruent information about the Head Archivist clicked into place like datachips finally orienting correctly in the socket.

“I’ve checked with the Grand Master of Shadows,” Jocasta continued.  “You’ve been offered a place among us.  You would be put on our books under an assumed name, and keep your own for use in the greater galaxy, with no official connection.  You’d still be able to come to the temple, and live there if you like, although Shadows using long term covers like this are required to keep outside housing and pay for it themselves.  Usually this dovetails nicely with undercover work in gangs.”

“I always did wonder why there were so many ex Jedi who became criminals,” Komari said.  “Of course I’m one to talk, apparently Might-Have-Been-Me started a cult.  A real one.  Or co-opted it.  I think it already existed, I just sort of stole it.  That part wasn’t clear, there were lots of drugs involved.  Deathsticks make things… fuzzy.”

“I don’t think we need you to go quite that far,” Jocasta laughed.  “I think a far better cover location for you would be Mandalore.  We can’t put a Watchman out there, the political situation there is… labyrinthine.”

“But I already asked the Mand’alor for a job,” Komari said with a grin, seeing where the lines connected.  “But wait… Ben.  I can’t come back, even unofficially.”

“I’ve already made arrangements for your cover identity on the official records.  I have backdated files ready to upload into the Archive detailing the lives of Knight Vomari Kossa and her Padawan, Ken Binobi.  I hope you don’t mind Yaddle stealing you for her Lineage… she made herself a few paper Padawans that we use for this sort of thing.  We also use the extra personnel funds for missions.”

“Jo, those are the worst cover identities,” Komari giggled, hiding her face in a hand.

“And yet it has worked before.  If your Padawan is still acting like I eat Initiates for afternoon tea, have him read the mission reports for a young Knight Gnocasta Juu.  Spelt with an Nen, rather than a Nern.  I thought it looked better.”

“So Ben and I will be out in Mandalorian space, acting as Wayfinder-Watchmen, our false identities will be on record at the temple to use if we need anything, and you’re going to what… pretend this never happened?  The Senate may be awful and possibly Sith-infested, but they’re not idiots.  They’re going to realize what happened here is more complicated than that.”

“No they won’t,” the Armorer who had adopted Master Yan said, sidling up.  “They’re easily swayed by what they think they know.  And everyone knows Mando’ade and Jetiise can’t stand each other.  You’ve already got one misleading report about a kidnapping on record.  Just say you got your people back from us while we were focused on our contract.”

“What contract?” Komari snorted.  “You came because Mij had a meltdown on comm with Jango.”

“Meh, Mando’a doesn’t really do tenses.  Who’s to say if the contract between the Young and the Haat Mando’ade was already signed before we arrived?”

“And how are the Young paying you?” Komari asked, brow twitching.

“With you, ner bu’ad.  You saved our leader, so we owed it to you to rescue you from the war torn planet you ended up on.”

“That makes the Young seem like kidnappers or slavers,” Komari frowned.

“They agreed,” Ben said, slipping up under her arm.  “Because it makes them seem dangerous.  It’s not easy to kidnap and hold two ex-Jedi.  Who messes with people capable of that?”

“How much has been going on while I was… distracted?” Komari asked.

“You don’t need to worry about that, my dear,” Master Yan said, framing in Ben with a hand on her shoulder.  “Although if he breaks your heart I might revisit that whole ‘leaving the Order for personal vengeance’ idea.”

“Master Yan!” Komari squawked.

***

“So why are we at a school for assassins?” Mij asked his wife.

“Ko’ika suggested it.  Said it was a better place to find ade than the Temple.”

“And why are you two here?” Mij asked the Jedi in question.

“Pissing off Sith,” Komari said with a grin.  “He’s gonna know what we did, and he’s not gonna be able to do shit about it.”

Hey Master Vossa!  I found the Bitey Zabrak! Ben shouted in her mind.

Great job, Ben.  K’oyaci!

Easier said than done, he’s REALLY bitey and the Nautolan isn’t any nicer.

“Good news, Daara, your new adiike are both feisty,” Komari relayed.

“Two!  Oh Mij, I’m so excited!”

Oh wizard!  No worries, Master.  I figured out that teleporting thing you were teaching me.  That makes this MUCH easier.

"I'm glad you're looking forward to kids," Komari muttered as she pushed her heart back down from her throat as Ben casually mentioned his success with her off hand idea about so-called 'lost' skills.  Someday she'd get used to her Padawan's tenuous grasp on the concept of possible.

Maybe.

***

“You cannot possibly be serious,” Senior Senate Oversight Committee Member Sheev Palpatine said.  “Those are very clearly the disgraced former Padawans of Masters Dooku and Jinn!”

“Know what you speak of, I do not,” Yaddle said tartly.  “Padawan records are locked, and you have no reason to know them well enough to make this claim.”

“Ke’pare shev'la,” muttered the young Knight in question.  In the Force, Komari sent a tight pulse of wait-not-yet and he’ll-get-his-eventually and strengthened her shields around her Padawan, who glared daggers at the Sith.

Sheev Palpatine twitched.

“I know you likely meant it as a compliment, to say I look young enough to be a Padawan, Senator,” she said, looking over the rims of her entirely un-corrective eye-glasses at him.  “However, I am Knight Kossa, and not a Padawan, and it merely makes you look foolish to continue pointing out that you got a Knight experienced enough to be recently returning from assignment to a dangerous sector mixed up with a child.   Stop while you can with dignity.”

“A valued Jedi, Knight Kossa is.  A member of my own lineage,” Yaddle added, slipping from Jedi High Councilor to Devoted Grandparent seamlessly.  “Have Youngling pictures I do!  You should see them, maybe that would convince--”

“No need for that, Grandmaster,” Komari said suddenly.

“I dunno, I’d like to see those holos,” Ben said, wiggling his nose as the false facial hair he’d added itched his nose.

“Nevermind, maybe I’d rather be a disgraced Padawan,” Komari sighed.

“Come on, Sheev, give it up old man,” said another member of the Senate Oversight Committee.  “They’re weird, but they’re just Jedi.  Stop jumping at Sith!”

The laughter of the Committee was genuine, but Komari’s Public Jedi Smile of Serenity was cut with a hysterical irony.

She’d get the Sith bastard when the time was right.  

***

“I’m not at all sure I needed a Shadow Escort,” Knight Narec said sourly.  He was taking it well that she’d been shoved into his mission, honestly.  The sourness at being given a relatively green knight as a guardian was understandable.  "Endor is a low-development world with reasonable native lifeforms, not some criminal hive."

“If it helps I’m not here for you or your mission,” Komari said as they set down on Rattatak.  She’d made sure their ship was properly maintained, so it wasn’t even a crash landing.  "Endor just happened to be on our way and I have a nicer ship.  It pays to be the favorite Jedi of the Mand'alor."

“Then what is your mission?” he asked.

“Padawan, you want to take this one?” she offered.

“Foment a rebellion, send a message from your weird pirate Ba’buir, and make sure Knight Narec doesn’t get stranded,” Ben listed, not looking up from his learning module as they walked.

“Exactly.  You gotta set standards for piracy, after all, or they just become boring old slavers,” Komari agreed.  “By the way, are you thinking about taking a Padawan soon, Knight Narec?”

“Um,” the man said with a blink.

“Nevermind.  You’ll get there.  Ben, you made sure Jango and Maz have our trackers yes?”

“Yep, and I've already disabled all the slave collars and chips as we landed.  We'll definitely get the mass Force-Voice projection right this time so we can announce the rebellion whenever.  As soon as Knight Narec finds what he needs, we can drop two armadas on them and be home in time for my jetpack license exam.”

“Good kid.”

Chapter Text

“Are you a Jedi?” a boy asked.

“What makes you think that?” replied a Mandalorian with a huff of laughter that hissed static through their helmet.

“I saw your laser sword, and only Jedi carry that kind of weapon.”

“Perhaps I killed a Jedi and stole it from him,” the Mandalorian suggested, tipping their head slightly.

“I don't think so…. No one can kill a Jedi Knight.”

The Mandalorian went still and calm and knelt slowly to the sandy ground before the boy, with a nod that sketched great sorrow across the lines of their gold and black and purple armor etched with swooping birds, howling loth-wolves, and blazing stars. 

“Unfortunately, adiika, that is not true.  Everyone dies eventually, and our best bet is hoping we live well enough to be remembered when we rejoin the Force.”

“I had a dream I was a Jedi,” the boy said.  “I came back here and freed all the slaves.  Have you come to free us?”

“Ba’ji!  I got the deal on the parts we need, can we go?” another Mandalorian, this one in shades of green and blue like water and life, called out as they trotted up.  “Oh come on, really?  You’re worse than Mij.”

“Be nice to your baar’ur, he’s got anxiety from dealing with your medic-dodging shebs,” the Black and Gold Mandalorian said, looking up from where they knelt before the sandy boy from the sandy world. “Padawan, take Padme and get our friends to safety, I'll call Jango.  We need to fulfill our mandate.”  

“Your mandate?” the sandy boy asked.

“Our job is to plant ourselves like a tree beside the river of truth…” Komari said with the resigned sigh of a teacher with an unexpected new student.

“And say ‘No, you move’ to the whole karkin’ galaxy,” Ben finished with stubborn pride.