Chapter Text
Desperation can make a person do a terrible thing, Korkie learns over and over again.
It drives his aunt to betray them, leave, and re-join the Watch.
It drives his father, Vizsla, to make a bad deal with the wrong man. First Dooku, and then Maul. He pays for his lust for power and revenge with his life.
Desperation makes his mother tell him that he is not her son.
And finally, it makes him kill a man in front of her to save her life.
But first, it makes him call his aunt.
Desperation begins in fear, and the thing he fears the most seems just over the horizon. Unable to turn to his mother for help, he goes to the next-best option.
Bo-Katan is loyal to Mandalore first, then to their family, and finally to the Watch. She comes the moment he calls, not only eager to save Satine, but ready to restore her to power as well.
She and a group of defectors help him infiltrate the prison.
As they ride up in the lift, without taking her helmet off, she looks at him.
“Twice in my life has The Watch been this close to reclaiming Mandalore…”
He turns his body to look at her, saying nothing. It is an odd moment for philosophizing or sharing history.
He’s been unable to relax, unable to slow his heart rate for days. All he cares about is getting to his mother, and getting her out of here.
Bo sniffs an ironic laugh. “Both times now I’ve prevented it.”
This comment makes him nervous. Is she having second thoughts? He loves her, more than almost anyone, but he is hesitant to trust her.
When Death Watch began to gain followers at the beginning of the war, she’d left, saying that their power was growing too quickly, they posed too great a threat to him and Satine, and that someone needed to be on the inside.
His mother had begged her not to go. He had too, but to no avail. And over time, Satine’s voice soured when she spoke of her sister. Bo’s holos became less and less frequent.
And all the while, Death Watch became more and more bold. It seemed she had done nothing to temper their violence.
“Really?” he asks, allowing her to pontificate as she pleases.
“Once to help my sister save you, and now to help you save her.”
He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and he is almost angry that she’s chosen to tell him this now. His whole life he’s been asking for the story of his parents and his birth. But today, it seems like a distraction. It all seems hollow without the person at the center.
All that matters is that he saves her. He doesn’t care if she’s his mother or not, he doesn’t care that she’s lied to him.
“You helped her save me from what?” He asks gratingly, making his irritation known.
“From Vizsla,” she replies simply, as the lift stops and she presses the button to decompress the door.
With her back to him, she reaches to her holsters to pull out her blasters. The one she’s given him suddenly feels heavy in his hand.
She has one moment of hesitation, and looks over her shoulder at him, cocking her head.
Perhaps she’s realized the storm she’s caused in him with this new piece of information.
His mother had to save him from his father? Bo-Katan helped her? It feels like lurching over the edge of a cliff.
“It’s all going to be okay, Korkie,” she says in what is probably the most comforting voice she can muster.
He looks back at her with a brief pang of gratitude, and swallows the lump in his throat.
“Thank you, Aunt Bo,” he replies as he brushes past her to exit the lift.
Everything blurs for a few moments, and then re-focuses as he presses his blaster into the soft skin of the trooper in front of him, below his armor, and pulls the trigger. The man falls, revealing Korkie’s mother.
And though he feels such a burden of shame and fear and anguish, nothing matters except that she jumps to her feet and throws her arms around him.
“Korkie!” She cries, the name that she chose for him, promised little one. He hopes to ask her why one day.
But for now, he will pull her to safety, he has to. Like she had apparently done for him before his memory began.
They make it back to the lift, the door decompresses as his aunt shuts it, and relief overwhelms him so violently that his knees go weak.
Everything starts to catch up to him, the things he did, what his aunt said, his father’s death, the coup, it’s too much.
Satine and Bo’s voices are vague noises in his consciousness, and he can’t tell what they are saying until he hears a familiar name and it anchors him in reality.
“What impact has Vizsla’s death had among the Watch?” His mother asks.
Are they really talking about politics right now?
“Mainly the-”
Anger simmers in his gut until his need for answers boils over bluntly after a lifetime of ignoring it. “Was he my father?”
His mother and aunt each inhabit a corner of the lift, with him between them. He faces off with Satine alone now, his eyes deathly serious, and the air in the lift as still as a tomb.
He studies every hint of a reaction on her face, realizing his mistake too late as his aunt can always be relied on for a more emotional reaction than his mother. Bo-Katan’s first reaction is to laugh in shock. Then her hand reaches for his shoulder, and he shrugs her off as he keeps his eyes trained on his mother.
Hers are trained on him, in turn, glassy orbs that haven’t blinked now in several moments. In fact, it seems as if time has frozen Satine Kryze just as she was in the moment before her falsely orphaned son finally questioned her claims. Specifically her lack of a claim.
In fact, she stands so frozen, juxtaposed with the panels of transparisteel that run by as the lift descends, that he begins to feel guilty, and softens his posture, stepping up to her in a way meant to ease her fear.
Placing his hands on her arms and squeezing them, he gently repeats, “Was Pre Vizsla my father?”
Now she does react, swallowing heavily, nostrils flaring, turning her face away and squeezing her eyes shut as if the words Korkie has just spoken are so revolting that she must hide herself from them.
Her hands wake, though they are trembling, and she places them where his chest meets his shoulders. That isn’t enough, and so her fingers tremble a path up his neck, his jaw, and finally to his cheeks.
When she turns her face back toward him, twin tears have fallen from each of her eyes, but they are clear and deep. He sees his entire life and more love than he can describe in them, so why does the truth cost her such a heavy price?
“I will never forgive myself for doing this to you.”
His face falls because her guilt wasn’t his intention. He takes her hand from his cheek and presses a kiss to it.
“That isn’t my desire. I just need to know-”
She interrupts. “Your father is alive.”
Now he stands frozen. In the opposite corner he hears his aunt sniff and whisper something under her breath.
“My father is alive,” he echoes emptily.
She steps up to hug him, and it is different from normal. She is an affectionate mother, though she doesn’t call herself either of those things. She takes him in her arms often, wrapping him in a strong embrace. Comforting him. Protecting him.
This is not the same. She is weary. They have become equals in their need of comfort. She falls into his arms as much as he does hers. The lie of a lifetime has taken everything from her, and finally caught up with her.
He realizes that he is the only thing holding her upright, and it seems a good metaphor for his life. Who would she have been without him? What would she have had? Look at what she did to raise him, look at what she sacrificed! How much had she suffered?
“And my mother,” he says, and though it isn’t a question she whispers a tremulous agreement.
“And your mother.”
He is certain that these words alone heal every wrong in the galaxy, and that when they exit the lift, Mandalore will be at peace. Everyone will be.
“But there is a reason we’ve kept this truth guarded so closely in our hearts, my Korkie,” she warns as if he has no idea.
“You’re in more danger at this moment than you’ve been in your whole life.”
He scoffs. “Me?” It’s incredible. Has she forgotten that he just rescued her from prison? “They don’t care for me, they hardly know who I am! You’re the one they had locked up!”
“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful,” she teases him coyly.
But then her face melts, and she brings both of her hands back to cup his cheeks. “We don’t know this threat. Vizsla is dead. I am familiar with Maul…” a shadow crosses her face, one that he has rarely seen.
His aunt shifts uncomfortably in the corner. This name that he’s never heard fills the lift with a chill.
His mother avoids his eyes as her fingers caress his face. “His intentions frighten me.”
What could be more frightening than Vizsla wanting to take Mandalore from her? And make a martyr of her? He feels rather unimaginative. He’s never dreamed of something worse than that. But his mother’s fear is real.
“What do you mean?”
He feels the two of them make eye contact, and cranes his neck to look at his aunt. Bo-Katan shakes her head at him, finally removing her helmet to catch his eyes.
“There’s no time to explain, Korkie. You have to trust us. We need to get off the planet.”
“If they capture me again, I want you to take him and leave,” Satine interrupts her.
He steps back away from them indignant, tired of their making decisions for him, like he’s still a child. Have they been doing this since before he was born? Has his entire life unfolded according to their plan? Have they forgotten how much he loves them in turn?
“I’m not leaving you! Never!” Forget what he’s learned today. Forget that he thought he’d never see her again. His eyes well up against his will. Forget that she’s his mother and he’s never even called her that.
She smiles gently. “I’ll be right beside you. But promise, my darling.”
His tears are reflected in her eyes, and as she blinks one catches in her lashes. She wraps one of her hands into his hair and pulls him in the way a mother cradles an infant, even though he has to bend to rest his head on her shoulder.
“If it comes to that, say you’ll let go. Promise me, my son.” She presses a kiss to his cheek.
“I promise, Mom,” he answers immediately, and she holds him to her even more tightly. He feels tears pool where their faces press together.
She’s been asking him to let go since the day he was born, and now it seems she can’t even do so. Though he has grown accustomed to it himself, he doesn’t want to anymore either.
“But I won’t let it come to that. I’ll never leave you behind.”
He doesn’t receive the scolding he expects, not from her or his aunt. Instead she chuckles sadly against him.
“You’re very like your father,” she whispers as she pulls back to look at him. The awe in her eyes tells him everything he ever wondered about his parents. “I see him in you every day.”
“He was a good man?” Korkie asks, and the vulnerability of that question touches his soul more than he anticipated.
She smiles broadly, and it reaches that deep place as well. She still loves his father, he realizes, what a revelation!
“The best man I’ve ever known, but for his son. When this is over, I’ll explain everything to you,” she says, and making this promise must feel good because it seems to embolden her, and lights a fire in her eyes. “I’ll tell him about you, and take you to meet him. We’ll be something of a proper family one day.”
Before he can answer or even process this idea, she continues.
“Raising you has been the great joy of my life, my Korkie.”
She sniffs. He is worried for a moment that she will be overcome.
Suddenly, speech leaves him entirely. The possibilities are endless- they’ve never been this free. But he can hardly put together a thought.
“I’ve always known,” he blurts out.
“I know,” she smiles sadly, tears still glistening on her face.
The lift jolts to a stop on the deck, and as his Aunt reaches to open the door, his words find him.
“Mom-”
Just one word, but one is enough. It says everything.
As always, she sees his need and comforts him. “It’s alright, Korkie.” She smiles. “We’ll have all the time we need to talk about this. It’s all going to be alright, I promise.”
“Satine.” Bo says, and they all know it is time to leave.
“Mom,” he says again. “I love you.”
“I love you too, my promised little one,” she says, smiling with finality.
And then the door decompresses, and he chases them out onto the landing pad, while the world ends around them.
But even in the chaos he has everything he needs. His mother, his aunt…
He watches Bo guard Satine like a hawk, and wonders what they could have accomplished, had they united politically the way they did to protect him.
He wonders what his people might have known if the Kryze sisters had focused on their mutual love for them. If they had worked together for Mandalore, instead of against each other.
If the life they gave him is any proof, he thinks that perhaps they could have prevented this.
But perhaps not all is lost. Though everything smolders around him, he finds a new and resolute strength in his family, in his identity.
Together, perhaps even with his father that Satine speaks of, they will make this right. United, he knows that his family can face any foe.
This safety, this destiny, this home, is better than he imagined it would be. And even though the dome of Sundari grows smoky, surely poisoning the air that they breathe, he thinks he can feel the warmth of the sun on his cheek, and swears that nothing could dampen the gem of hope that is the truth finally told. Nothing could ever rob him of his family.