Chapter Text
Jon’s ears are stuffed full of cotton. It still feels like someone is driving a pike through his head, and yet the force continues to rush excitedly around him like a puppy. It was dizzying, the back and forth it was doing as it danced around him.
The almost.. Glee of the action, of the force rushing for him to get upupup without the usual underlying element of danger got him to stir and lift his head.
Shifting, he lets his head fall to the side and he opens his eyes slowly, excepting a bright room. Rather, it was dark, what looks to be intentionally so. The shadows fall long across the floor, a single dimmed light in the middle of the room.
Myles is passed out at the table on the side of the room, up to aer’s ears in what seems to be old medical holobooks.
Jon briefly wonders where ae got paper books before deciding that he doesn't care and goes to sit up. Pain shoots through his ribs and he gasps, falling back down.
The world spins above him as he attempts to focus on the ceiling and it occurs to him that he may have a concussion.
Wheezing slightly, he contemplates his various mistakes up to this moment. They were many. One of which is the possibility of pissing off a medic. A Mandalorian medic.
..His ears are still stuffed with cotton.
Lightly reaching up and catching the edge of the bed, he slowly makes to sit up. In contrast to his last attempt, he’s significantly more careful as he shifts himself upwards, propping himself up against the extra pillow laid along the wall.
Eyes drifting back to where Myles sits, and the eyebags under the medic’s eyes, he elects not to awaken him. Rather he opts to carefully reach for the force.
The loosening of the shields is like blaring an airhorn directly into his ear, and he clenches his eyes closed. Taking a breath to center himself, he slowly sinks into a partial meditation. He begins to carefully follow the threads of his bond with Fay-the strongest out of any of his rah without competition. But rather than finding a quiet acknowledgment, he spins himself in a circle.
The realm of the bonds is confusing on a good day, and the continuous, direct head trauma he’s experienced over the last few days is most certainly not helping. Either way, he clamps down and tries again.
This time, he’s only slightly more successful and manages a weak poke at Fay before he snaps back to himself with a jerk and a gasp.
There is a new person in the room, which is noted directly before the pounding of a headache in his ears.
As he pulls his shields back up, cautiously making a spot for Fay to creep through if she’d like, the headache fades. A faint feeling of trepidation grows as the headache ebbs and flows with the sorting of his shields, the careful rearranging and dance of keeping his emotions from going out on blast.
Once they are in place and the pain in his skull is nothing more than an afternote, he opens his eyes.
Myles is no longer directly in his line of sight, and is being carefully set down in the extra cot on the other side of the room by Daer, who is wearing a shawl.
The bed creaks as Jon leans forward, tilting to get a better look at the desk, which has been carefully sorted in such a way that the books look somewhat organized.
“Jon.”
He glances up, locking eyes with the Mandalorian. “Daer.”
The mans-teens?-eyes narrow, the red scarf really bringing out the internal criticism. “Ribs?” Jon makes a face in response to the question, scrunching up his nose a bit as he tilts his hand from side to side.
He makes a soft hum under his breath before pulling a datapad out from under his arm, and motioning for Jon to take it. “Something to do.”
Jon accepts, taking the pad and using his thumb to pull it online. It’s connected to the ship's database, by the looks of things. A few books are downloaded, and a few puzzle games. Judging by the lack of any comm connection..
“We in hyperspace?” Daer, who had begun to drift towards the middle of the room, gave him an absent-minded thumbsup as he opens a drawer on Myles’s desk. The jedi watches him for a moment as he digs through what sounds like a collection of random objects before shrugging to himself and going back to the datapad.
There is, very conveniently, a few recent news reports. He takes his sweet time reading them, even if it seems that not much has changed in the months he’s been… indisposed.
Mandalore has gained some significant ground on Kyr’stad, driving them more and more into a pocket between themselves and the Empire. The Empire is getting more and more wound up, the bounty on a live jedi capture climbing by the day.
Again. Nothing new. It would be more reassuring, he thinks, if something new did happen.
Daer makes a pleased noise, and Jon looks toward him as he pulls what appears to be a tangled ball of wires out. Without hesitation, he lightly tosses them at Jon, who jerks slightly to catch them.
In his hands are a bundle of ancient wired earbuds. He slowly looks up at Daer. In response, he rolls his eyes before giving a brief explanation. “Saw Myles using them. Thought you’d need music.”
Ah. “Well. Thank you. Very thoughtful.” Daer shrugs and makes to leave the room.
Jon looks down at the headphones. He is not sure how Myles managed to use them whatsoever. They are so incredibly tangled that he figured it’d be better to cut them and retape them.
At the very least, he thinks, he has something to do. Even if that “Something” is spending 20 minutes untangling wires. He’ll take it.
“You are
not
drinking any alcohol.”
Those are the first words Jon hears when he steps off the ship. Myles stands just behind him, arms crossed and a tight look on his face.
He exhales slowly, before puffing some of the hair to have fallen out of the tie from his face. It takes a moment, but he settles on a response.
“ Kai’an1, Myles. I’m quite certain my jaieh would track me down herself if I did something so idiotic.” [peace, teacher]
Myles may not know that Jon can filter out alcohol, but even with that factor, Fay would still come for his head. Woe to those who are a bad example for Tae, after all.
The medic drifts forward, settling at his shoulder to watch Cruluc and Tevan bicker over something animatedly in mandoa. He settles before ae looks towards Jon with a slight tilt in his head. “I believe you. If you don’t mind me asking?..”
“ Biru-ah.2 ” A pause. “Go ahead."
“Jaieh?”
Jon shifts, glancing at the medic who stands still at his shoulder, eyes carefully judging his reaction to aer question “Closest translation would be...Teacher. Mentor. Perhaps parent.”
Technically, Jon wasn’t supposed to speak of the translations of the language. But on the same level, technically, he shouldn’t be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a Mandalorian.
Myles shuffles, opening his mouth to speak, when a cacophony of noise comes from the ship above them. Tevan comes marching down the ramp, making far more noise than Jon ever thought someone their size could make.
He comes to a halt next to Jon and Myles, his expression hidden by his helmet. Their tense, muscles wound up and shoulders back and stiff. Jon can faintly feel the worry-worry-guilt-anxiety rolling off them. “Jon’s coming with me, yes? Anything I should know?” Myles shrugs. “Just the usuals. Don’t overexert yourselves.” He pauses, then raises his voice with a pointed look towards Cruluc and Daer. “And I mean this for all of you.”
Daer barks a brief “ Ka’tini !” before darting off with Cruluc. Myles makes a faintly distressed noise, shifting on his feet as he lifts a hand to rub at his temples.
Tevan turns to look at Jon. They squint. They squint a bit harder, to the point Jon is a bit worried they’ll give themselves a headache.
Finally, they lick their lips, and speaks with a confused lilt, “Did they not have any clothes that would fit you?”
The baggy clothes on his body suddenly weigh down on him. Myles perks up, aer voice lifting with a tone that screams happy to share. “We don’t have any of your clothes, so it was either mine or Crulucs spares.”
There’s a twitch of Tevans lips as they hold themselves back from smiling. “Do you want to stop for more clothes? Better ones.” Jon shrugs, and Tevan gives him a quick thumbs up.
They only stay for a moment longer before Tevan sets off, with a clear goal in mind. The planet basically hums around them. It’s mostly a trade post between Mandalore and some obscure independent sectors from what he can tell, bargaining and bickering in various languages floats through the air as they walk.
Tevan dodges between people, pausing briefly to look back at Jon and make sure they haven’t lost him in the crowd.
As the groups around them begin to thin, Tevan strides off to the side, speeding up significantly and leaving Jon to scramble to catch up with them.
Catching himself falling behind a bit, Jon gets into step with Tevan and tilts his head towards the jittery Mando’ad. Like they can feel his eyes on the side of their head, they shift to look at him. A deep, deep sigh.
Finally, they speak. “I’m meeting up with a... Buddy, of mine.” Jon raises an eyebrow and responds as he carefully maneuvers around a pole. “Do I need to have a blaster on hand?”
A simple headshake, and then they’re standing outside of a homely-looking bar. Thanks to the proximity to the port, he can still hear engines roaring to life. Small town, he supposes.
Tevan takes a deep breath, emotionally preparing themselves, and then they shove open the door with Jon close on their tail.
It’s very, very empty. There’s a drunkard or two at the main counter and a teenager who was definitely too young to be here sleeping in a corner booth.
Tevan seems to scan the room for a few moments, finally fixing his eyes on an Mandalorian sulking at the counter as far as he could get from the door. Tevan clicks their tongue a few times and skirts off towards a booth to the side. It’s closer to the door, and once Jon is sat, he spends a few seconds shuffling around in their belt pockets.
After an agonizingly long few seconds, they pull a credit chit out and lightly toss it onto the table. They lean onto the table, elbows firmly planted on it as they begin to speak, “Listen. He isn’t a fan of
aruetti
. No offense to you, I just need to get some things from him.” They pause, and then-”Get something to drink. Don’t act suspicious. Just. Wait.”
Before Jon can even respond to... whatever that was, Tevan is striding casually toward the other side of the room with their thumbs in their belt. He raises an eyebrow at their walk, shaking his head with a soft laugh under his breath. That sort of single-mindedness never bodes well in info exchanges.
He flips the chit between his hands for a few moments before waving down a bar-droid, which drifts over slowly. He thinks he can see a bit of smoke coming out of the bottom.
It rolls up at his table with a shuddering stop. A small screen rolls out of the side, and he leans forward, squinting at the yellowing thick plastic. Tapping it briefly, he concludes he can’t scroll down the menu. It’s broken. He turns to look at the droid, then back at the screen. Even with the backlight, he can’t read a thing on it.
“Er.”
The droid beeps, prompting him to continue. “Do you... Have. Any ciders?” A quick affirmative from the droid, then a rattling off of different kinds. After listening for a few seconds, he lightly lifted his hand. “Sparkling cider, then. Thank you.”
With a series of what he could only call happy beeps, the droid rolled off toward the kitchen.
The waiting stretches on.
The faint smell of ozone is what tipped him off.
Ozone, while a common smell in the aftermath of a blaster fight, was an unusual thing to smell in the middle of a place like this. He’s careful not to twitch but shifts his eyes to scan the room. Tevan is in the far back, arguing with his “buddy”.
A slow feeling of unease begins to sink into his gut. He can feel someone watching him.
Jon pulls his hood up, suddenly grateful for the extra length. Slowly shifting his head enough under his hood to see them out of the corner of his eye, he spots one of the drunkards watching him with eyes too clear for a drunk man.
Osik.
He glances towards the teen in the corner, at the blaster carefully placed on the table, up at a single open eye that immediately snaps shut. Then back to the counter where the second drunkard is shifting to her feet and walking off towards the bathroom. Her steps are unsteady, shaky and confused as she wanders off.
The droid isn’t back yet. The bar is silent, the bartender is suddenly nowhere to be found.
Osik.
It isn’t safe to shift to his feet, he suspects the boy in the corner is faster on his draw than he appears to be. Tevan’s voice is rising, he can hear the noise of boots hitting the ground as they both go to stand.
There’s no way to properly warn them, Jon had known he should have insisted on the blaster.
Carefully gathering his attention in the force, he spread it out. Two notes of Beskar ring in the corner, and the force whirls. He hadn’t noticed the way it rumbles in turmoil, the noise just registering as the static of a concussion.
The voices off to the side are growing into a yell, furious words in Mando’a being spat back and forth. The drunkard behind Tevan calmly leans over the side of the counter to the tender's side and pulls a blaster from under the counter. He turns, slowly lifting it to point at the back of Tevans head.
There’s the click of safety disengaging from his left, and without even looking, he knows the teenager has his blaster pointed at him. He lets out a slow, unsteady breath. Tevan has stopped talking.
Jon gathers the force around him. He lets it itch at him, grow and grow, and then he throws out two threads. One carefully wraps around the teens black and blue vambraces, up into the mechanisms of the blaster. Something breaks in it, and the hissing noise of the leaking ozone container spreading into the air. The other grabs at a shadow and pulls .
The world spins, and he slams into the man at the counter. They roll to the ground, the blaster firing off a shot into the ceiling as Jon struggles to control the situation. Beskar scraps against itself in a horrible noise off to the side, Tevans force signature writhing with fury.
An elbow cracks into his face hard enough for blood to spew from his nose, but he lets his head snap to the side before catching the arm and using the momentum to roll on top of his attacker.
They scream below him as something pops in their arm, but he grazes past that as he forces them down and his fingers find the blaster that had slid to the side. He flicks to it stun, and shoots him point blank as he struggles to reorient himself.
Jon rolls to his feet, and locks eyes with the woman who had just burst out of the bathroom. She skids to a stop. They hold eye contact as blood drips slowly from Jon’s chin.
The eye contact is held for a few seconds too long before she bolts from the bar, the door slamming behind her.
He lifts a hand, rubbing some of the blood off.
Tevan’s buddy bolts out of the bar, Tevan close after him. Jon picks himself up carefully, before pulling on the shadows and lunging into the chase close behind.
A jetpack hisses, shots fired down at them. He looks up, only needing a few seconds to register the black and blue before he lunges to the side to narrowly dodge a bolt.
Dust kicks into the air as he skids around a corner, the previously roaring trade center having settled into a chilling silence.
He whips around, shooting a quick few live-shots at the Death Watch soldier in the air, who drops much closer to the ground to avoid them. He can hear Tevan fighting, again, presumably the other gaining confidence with the arrival of his ally.
Aiming a shot carefully, he takes a risky shot at their jetpack. It doesn’t hit, but what it does hit is their shoulder. Hard enough to send them spiraling, cracking into the ground with a noise that makes him wince.
He makes to turn.
The force screams.
Something jams into the side of his throat. A noise leaves him, a strange shaky noise of shock and an involuntary gasp. Tevan locks eyes with him as the butt of his rifle makes contact with the chin of his “buddy”.
A hand on his shoulder shakes, and his eyes slide down to the ill-fitting black and blue vambraces. His vision begins to blur bit by bit.
The needle in his neck burns as he slowly slides towards the floor, and distantly he hears a familiar noise.
Hisss-vrrrm
Red light glows in the corner of his eye. He curses his luck as he falls back into yet another dreamless sleep.