Chapter Text
Korkie was asleep, finally, after being awake an entire twenty-four hours.
Never had Satine thought she’d feel such overwhelming relief at the sight of one little boy closing his eyes. But just thinking of it now, even as she walked the dark Sundari streets an hour later, made her breathe a little easier.
The funeral had tired him out.
Just the opposite for her. She felt like she could never close her eyes again for fear of what she’d see against her eyelids. For fear of what she’d wake up to.
Her home felt too cavernous to stay, too much like something in the shadows was nipping at her lungs, making it difficult to breathe, so she buttoned up a cloak and gasped in the cool air outside. Her feet took her away, one step after the other, and before she knew it, she was standing in the cemetery before their grave markers.
She sat, arms circled around her legs. She stared at her brother’s name. And stared until she couldn’t anymore and blinked her burning eyes.
Goro was gone. Thinking it didn’t feel real unless she was staring. Her older brother was dead, as was his wife, and Satine was left without them.
That was something she thought of too often—being left behind, left alone.
Her parents were next to Goro.
Satine remembered standing here before with Goro next to her, their sister too distraught to join. The war was over, and Satine still chafed under the weight of her headdresses, but she’d worn the ornaments anyway. It fell to the ground as she’d sobbed into Goro’s arms.
Now, the longer she traced their names with her eyes, the further away the tears seemed. Perhaps it was because she’d already cried. Or perhaps it was because of that shadow encroaching on her insides, a feeling she was all too familiar with.
Or perhaps she was just tired.
The sound of a speeder in the distance disturbed her thoughts, and Satine blinked away the letters, pulling her gaze to the sound. She couldn’t see them, the vehicle already whirring away, but she clung to that sound drifting further until it was gone.
Satine had realized it when she returned from her Jedi-led adventure; Mandalore was quiet at night. The same couldn’t be said for the busier areas, of course, but places like the cemetery, in a tucked-away corner of Sundari, there was nothing. When she was a young girl, she’d thought the worlds she visited were noisy, holding that opinion even when a young adult fleeing from her home. Leaves rustling, bugs chirping, animals screeching or scurrying—there was nothing like it on Mandalore. The decades and centuries of war had seen to that, the barren, dried landscape barely accessible to a human without protection. There were some species of creatures and plants that had adapted and survived, but they were rare and few.
Inside the domes, only the sounds of machinery and people filled the air, and when there were none…silence remained.
For Satine, silence only made her mind all the louder, so she already wished the speeder would return. Because if not, she’d only think and think and think about what the world would be without her brother.
Satine already thought about it too often since his passing, and every time she faced the prospect of her—alone—with a tiny little boy who clung to her dresses, her breath would thin, and her chest would tighten, and she was left fleeing into the night to spend her time with the dead instead of the living. She didn’t want to feel her lungs constrict and her head implode in that dark apartment, so she’d left Korkie with a guard.
Shaking her head, she forced her eyes to focus on something that wasn't spiraling her thoughts, but she didn’t have many options, and they merely flicked below Goro’s name to the musical notes carved into the grave marker.
It was his favorite song, which he played on his bes’bev. The flute was always strapped to his hip, and when they were younger during the time of the Civil War, she remembered that clang against his thigh, beskar against beskar.
Even when they were older, it was rare she didn’t see Goro with contrasting dark blue and silver armor she remembered so vividly. He’d even been wearing it when he…
Satine tightened her arms around her legs. Beskar’gam couldn’t protect from everything, she thought. Not from the nothingness of space. Not when his ship critically malfunctioned and broke apart during a hyperspace jump.
Ni’ila didn’t have any protection, and Satine didn’t know if Goro would’ve survived without her even if his armor had helped.
Satine hid her face in her knees, and she breathed in, though it was tinged with the taste of her detergent, her mouth too close to the fabric to welcome a fresh breath. She dug her nails into her knees until it hurt.
The silence, it ached in her ears like a weight on her senses, and she was desperate for something, anything to distract her from the building sob she didn’t want to release.
Then she heard it.
Her name—and her head whirled around, her entire soul reaching out for that voice. Only one voice could make her heart stutter like it was, and a pitiful noise escaped her lips when she saw him.
Obi-Wan. On Mandalore.
His dark brown cloak almost swallowed his form in the darkness of the cemetery, but…Satine knew that silhouette. Warmth pulsed in her chest at the sight of him on her home planet again, dissipating the shadows like it was high noon. She didn’t expect to see him—ever, if not for a very long time.
Obi-Wan pushed his hood down and stepped forward, out from under the light, to sit beside her, and she watched him. He hugged his legs loosely in front of him to mimic her position. If not for the way she leaned in to press her shoulder against his arm, Satine may have believed he was an illusion the way the lamp haloed his form. But there was nothing imaginary about the solidness against her sleeves. The scent of him. The sight of him. The way her whole body hummed in his presence.
No, nothing imaginary about that, she thought.
They didn’t speak, not for a long while, not until she’d almost forgotten he was there, both of them now looking forward at the markers.
Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
Satine inhaled sharply. She was grateful he didn’t say anything further, for if he had, there wasn’t a guarantee she would be able to hold in her tears. They already burned on the bottom of her eyelids. She refused to blink, and her vision blurred.
One trickled down her cheek anyway. She felt it slide down each centimeter until it stopped near her mouth, not even having the decency to complete its route, lingering like it had found its permanent place. Satine was hyper-aware of the sensation, and she willed it to fall from her chin to her clothes, but it didn’t. It stayed. It stayed, and she clenched her jaw in frustration.
A thumb brushed the pebbled tear off. It wasn’t her own.
Satine moved her eyes to Obi-Wan, who was already turning away from her, but she saw him wipe his thumb on his robe sleeve.
Something soft and delicate and likely to break her further swaddled her chest when he didn’t comment, merely continued to accept her weight on his arm and sat with her. Just sat with her in silence.
She grabbed his hand, and after a moment, he squeezed back.
Seconds ticked by, then minutes. His thumb caressed hers.
Again, she didn’t know how long time had passed before one of them spoke. This time, it was her: “You came.”
“You came for me,” he whispered back, squeezing her hand again.
Satine concentrated on the feeling of his thumb as it slid across her skin—not unlike her tear. She wished she could enjoy the feeling, not simply fixate on the sensation to distract herself.
She remembered taking his hand at Master Qui-Gon’s funeral.
“Does it hurt any less yet?” she asked, but she didn’t know what answer she expected. It still hurt to think about her parents. Her people. The friends she’d lost. It hurt so much.
It had only been a year since Qui-Gon had passed, and that hurt too.
Perhaps she’d asked because she couldn’t remember at what point the pain lessened. The grief clung to her like dye, something penetrating and invasive, and after a while, the clear skin underneath wasn’t her skin anymore. It was a new color, something foreign—but then it lightened, and it lightened again. It lightened until it was a shade close to the original. But it never would be the same. Always changed. Goro’s death caused her to feel like her whole body had been submerged, filling her throat and blackening her lungs.
Satine wanted to scrub her skin raw, though some days she felt like a molten collection of bruises anyway, visible in the way she walked or spoke.
She pressed her face to Obi-Wan’s shoulder and shuddered. She heard him swallow.
“Anakin.” Her heart jumped at the name. “Anakin helps.” Obi-Wan tried to give a little chuckle. “If nothing else, he certainly takes up time enough to be an adequate distraction.”
“How…How is he?” She found it hard to imagine him as she’d first seen him; now, only a blue, crying face came to mind.
“Good.” He cleared his throat. “He’s well.”
Satine opened her eyes, and they immediately found Goro and Ni’ila’s names and the description underneath.
Buir. Father. Mother.
“I have Korkie now,” she said. “I think I understand when you said you didn’t know what you were doing. I have no idea.” Satine exhaled when she felt Obi-Wan’s head rest on hers.
“How old is he?”
“Three. He’s only three.” The next breath that escaped her was as close to a sob as she would allow. “He…probably won’t remember his parents when he’s older. And—And I don’t know what to do about that. I-I don’t…How do I raise him? How do I do that? I’m not a mother. I’m not Ni’ila or Goro.” She closed her eyes and forcefully breathed in something close to an even inhale.
“You’re not,” he said, and before her heart could pulse painfully from the agreement, he continued, “Just as I’m not…not Master or Anakin’s mother. We are…us. We are who they have.”
“And who do they have?”
Obi-Wan hummed. “Well, Korkie has you. And I know you, so that’s enough for me to know he’s in good hands.”
An image came to mind then of fairy lights in a green hedge maze, her thumb brushing against the fabric over Obi-Wan’s chest, and her heart shuttered.
“I obviously have no child-rearing experience outside of my sister, but I do know you. That’s enough for me to know he’s in good hands.”
Nuzzling her head into him, she sniffled. “Oh, Obi.”
His long breath shifted her bangs, and a couple hairs tickled her nose, but she didn’t care. She let them stay, caught in her eyelashes. Soon, Satine would probably mind, would huff in annoyance and swipe her hand across her face, but not at this moment. For now, she kept half of her face buried in robes that smelled of tea leaves and Jedi soap, nothing like the kind on her planet.
Satine wished she could stay in his arms forever. But she knew she couldn’t. She had to return—to her system, to her responsibilities, and to Korkie.
Anxiety spiked through her again at the thought of that sweet boy, and her stomach roiled in fear.
“I was too,” Obi-Wan muttered into her hair, and she furrowed her brow.
“What?”
“I was…anxious, too.”
Satine expected the confusion to prickle into irritation as it had before when the Jedi rifled through the emotions of others, but with a realization that rolled over her like a warm tide—a faint awareness she’d always known, really—she knew she didn’t mind when it was Obi-Wan. Strange how something so abnormal could bring her such comfort.
Of course, when she first met the Jedi, she hated it, was frightened by it. All the old stories of their devilish abilities whispered at night echoed in her head the first time Qui-Gon stared at her and told her she was frightened. Told her because he knew very well what she was feeling.
Then Obi-Wan flaunted the talent during their childish spats, and the eerie became annoying like an immature prank.
And now it had shifted into something that made her chest warm. Satine considered it just another facet of understanding her. Just as she knew Obi-Wan from the twitch of his lips or his hands in his sleeves, he knew her with another sense and could categorize and place it alongside her other mannerisms.
“Not only anxious,” she whispered. “I’m scared, Obi.”
There was a moment before he answered, sighing beforehand. His thumb brushed over her hand. “I know.”
The corner of her lips curled up. “Yes, you do, don’t you?” Satine pinched some of the fabric of his robe in between her fingers. It was an odd texture—soft yet prickly—but she loved it. He’d let her wear the overcoat a number of times in the past.
“Do you remember when we argued—”
“That hardly narrows it down, I’m afraid.”
“Shush.” She poked him, and she felt him smile against her hair. “The argument when you were sick. On Illya, I believe.”
Obi-Wan hummed. “That terrible flu going around the population at the time. Yes, I remember. I was unconscious for a couple of days.”
“You were also stubborn. So stubborn about resting that we fought—viciously.”
His thumb ran over her skin once more, settling into a rhythm. His voice was quieter. “I remember.” He paused before saying, “You cried.”
“Only after I said such hurtful things to you. And only because you told me…”
Obi-Wan ducked down to press his forehead to hers as her throat tightened.
“I told you that you were afraid,” he finished.
“Exactly.” She closed her eyes before they could start doing something as cruel as well up. Releasing his hand, she wound her arms around her knees once more. “I was frightened you’d leave me to face the bounty hunters on my own, that I would be left alone.” Her eyelids separated, and Goro’s name enveloped her sight. “I was afraid I’d lose you.”
“Satine, you don’t have to—”
“I’m not.” She sighed. “This is not another apology.”
“Then what…?”
She bit her lip. The roiling in her stomach only worsened as she remembered the way she’d lashed out at him, the way her insides felt the same back then as they did now. “Will I really be so different with Korkie?”
“What?” The pressure of his hand on her shoulder had her blinking over at him. “Satine, of course it won’t be the same. You know it won’t. We were young and running from people who wanted to kill us.” He shook his head. “Besides, you can hardly compare the two. It was us. And we hadn’t had—not yet anyway. There was—there was tension. The argument was bound to be…what it was at that time.”
The stumbling explanation lightened her mood enough for her lips to curl up.
“We hadn’t what, my dear?” she asked, a teasing lilt to her voice. She’d always found endless amusement every time Obi-Wan became so flustered, and it was adorable when his face flushed talking about their “tension.” She wasn’t sure if it was an eccentricity Obi-Wan alone had or was one shared by all the Jedi, but she knew Mandalorian certainly had no qualms about discussing the subject quite plainly.
Obi-Wan huffed out through his nose, taking his hand back. “Satine,” he whined, though she knew he would be horribly offended she described the tone in such a way.
She chuckled. “Oh, alright.”
Her shoulder found his arm once more, and they settled next to each other just as they had started. His warmth contrasted the outside temperature, and she shivered. The night grew chillier, the hour late, and she clung to that heat as her mirth disappeared.
Obi-Wan would need to leave soon. Satine would need to return.
Another speeder in the distance gripped at her ear, and she followed it until it disappeared.
“Satine.” Obi-Wan's voice shot through the silence, and she could do nothing but let all of her attention focus solely on him. His fingers brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, a motion she suspected let him consider his words longer. She could tell he was chewing on his tongue. Finally, he spoke.
“I know you're frightened of the future. You look at Korkie…You look at him, and you see what he could've been without you and what he could be with you. You focus on every one of your failures, but you hope for your successes, hope for them for his sake. Because this boy will look to you for… everything. And you must be everything you can be.” He swallowed, eyes darting to the side. There was a quality to his voice that she clung to desperately, holding onto every word even as they built up against her ribs, in her stomach and head.
“You’ll help him read and teach him to swim,” he continued softly. “Guide him, lecture him…smile with him.” He paused to quirk his lip up. “Even if he is being a little hellion.” Obi-Wan then locked eyes with her again, and her heart trembled. His gray-blue eyes glittered with a sincerity that made warmth seep into her chest, a boiling pressure that made her eyes burn.
“Satine,” he said, “I have every faith in you—to be all of that and more.” Obi-Wan brushed one finger down her cheek, the same line her tear had marked. “I always have, my lady.”
As soon as the last syllable left his mouth, she had no warning before she reacted, first with the tiniest sound deep in her tightening throat. The sting of welling tears came next, as did her wobbling lip, how her chin quivered. And finally, the tears tumbled down her cheeks, and she let out a mewling whimper.
Out of everything to finally make her cry, it wasn’t surprising it ended up being Obi-Wan. Not a surprise at all, really.
Satine didn’t have to hide her face in her hands, for Obi-Wan brought a gentle hand to the back of her head and guided her to his chest.
Tea leaves and soap made her cry harder, and she twisted her hands in his tunic.
Every moment the tears built throughout the night all released at once, and she cried for her brother, Ni’ila, Korkie, herself. She cried.
Satine didn’t sob, didn’t bawl or yell into Obi-Wan’s chest. No, the sounds were small, swallowed by his fabric, but she vaguely wondered if a passing speeder would hear. She wondered if they would hold onto the sound until she quieted too.
Obi-Wan brushed a steadying hand down her back. The motion soothed the ache that constricted her chest at every sniveling cry, and she pressed her forehead against his chest until the tears finally stopped.
She sniffled and blinked, her eyelashes catching on Obi-Wan’s tunic.
The fabric of his robe shifted against the concrete, a pebble trapped underneath, scraping. His voice lined his breath when he sighed, and Satine remembered those noises any time she was settled into the barricade of his arms. Urya, Concordia, Coruscant, even quiet Mandalore.
His hand came up to comb through her messy hair, the second following to brace against a particularly stubborn knot, and her lip weakly twitched up.
“I never thought this would become a habit every time I cry in front of you. You did this after our argument, too,” Satine said, closing her eyes to the sensation.
“I can always stop.”
She tugged on his tunic. “Don’t you dare.”
After a small pull, Satine felt his fingers feed smoothly through the strand, and he rhythmically carded his hand through a few times more. He was much better at it than he had been all those years ago when she’d sniveled in front of the bewildered Jedi.
“I didn’t know what to do that day,” he said. “It was alarming, seeing you cry.”
“It all hit me then—the war, running for my life. My brush falling into the river made it all come out.”
Obi-Wan moved to the back of her head to the next section. “I felt as if this was all I could do. I couldn’t take you home. I couldn’t stop your war or…bring back those you love.” His hand ran through her hair again. “But I could replace your brush.”
She remembered the way he’d nestled her head against his chest just as he did now, and Satine nuzzled her nose into his shirt.
“You did more than that,” she whispered.
Her arms looped around his waist. The smooth draw of his fingers through her hair indicated he’d made it past all the tangles, so he drifted through strand after strand, a pleasant touch over her scalp.
Each movement gave her heart an inkling of peace, injected it with strength enough to let it beat without that gnawing ache.
Satine didn’t know how long it was before she dared to open her eyes. The cemetery was still dark, still the middle of the night, and the markers still stood stalwart and permanent before her.
Adonai and Kori Kryze.
Goro and Ni’ila Kryze.
She breathed in Obi-Wan’s scent, let it drift into her senses and hold there as she stared at the names.
She breathed out and loosened her hold on Obi-Wan’s waist.
His movements slowed, and he called her name, questioning.
Satine didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to leave his arms because moving felt like she would be committing to some absolute, as though a ray shield would strike up through the ground as soon as she did.
Leaning back, she felt his hands slide from her head down to her shoulders, then elbows, where he cradled them in his palms, so Satine grasped his forearms, linking her and Obi-Wan together in two ways.
“Obi-Wan,” she said, voice almost impossibly soft. But he heard her, tilting his head just a fraction of a measurement, waiting for her. Satine tightened her grip on his arms but left a little strength to cradle her heart, let it wean off of the warmth of Obi-Wan.
“It’s late,” she whispered, and with nothing more than a softening of his eyes, she knew Obi-Wan understood.
He always did.
Their hands drifted to clasp one another’s, and they stood. Neither let go or made an effort to move further.
The last time they parted ways, the room steeped in grief and desperation and longing for something unattainable, it was hard to find anything about that day worth it, worth the heartache of prolonging their story for another couple of hours. She spent too much time thinking of how she’d found bruises darkening her skin from his tight grip. How she remembered the frantic way she’d clawed at his shoulders like she’d been grasping at something slipping from her fingers.
They weren’t supposed to hurt each other, she had thought, eyes swollen and red. That wasn’t meant to be how they parted, bruised and scratched and aching—more bitter than sweet. Not Satine and Obi-Wan.
She’d accepted it, though, reluctantly and with effort. Satine tried remembering every other moment and found herself stopping after seventy-something thoughts like she had when he’d first left her.
But then there he stood.
And this, Satine thought, this was how it was meant to be. Whether it was some higher power, the will of the Force as Obi-Wan would say, or just them, standing here together, strengthening each other…this was it.
Satine released his hands. He did the same, though both of their arms fluttered down like a feather, slow and delicate.
“Until next…” Satine shook her head then stepped forward to cup Obi-Wan’s cheek in her palm. “Goodbye, Obi-Wan Kenobi. And thank you.” She breathed. "Thank you."
His hand came up to her face as well, drifting to the back of her neck to feed through her hair, and his breath warmed her face. The look in his eyes likely mirrored her own, eyebrows tilted just so to frame how much their departure affected them.
Their lips met, and it certainly wasn’t a soft kiss, but it wasn’t anything passionate, nothing that made her blood spike. It was words not spoken, but a sentiment all its own.
I love you, she said through it.
Goodbye, she released as they pulled back from one another. But Obi-Wan pressed his forehead to hers, and flicking her eyes up, Satine saw how he kept his closed. She did the same, counting seconds until Obi-Wan leaned back.
A full minute passed before he stood back. If he stepped back another handful of steps, he’d be the silhouette from earlier, that distinctive outline of Obi-Wan she knew so well.
“Goodbye, Satine Kryze.” He waited until the last sound left him before he pulled up his hood, shadowing his face. “My lady,” he finished with a whisper.
“May the Force be with you, my dear knight.”
“Ret'urcye mhi.”
Her heart skipped at the words, mouth opening in surprise, but she then smiled. She watched him go and repeated the Basic of that phrase to herself.
“May we meet again.”
Satine dearly hoped that was the case.