Chapter Text
10 BBY
Just as it had snuck up on him how he’d gained another Padawan, how he’d become a Crèchemaster, it slowly dawned on him that if Order 66 had never happened, he would have been recommending Talé for the Trials soon.
It had been a passing thought one day some six years after he’d taken her on, as Ben had her help him smuggle a Force-Sensitive off Coruscant. As he’d felt confident that she could handle anything that might come up shy of an Inquisitor, or Force-forbid, Vader. In another time, he would have begun stepping back in his role in their missions, let her make decisions with only his consult and support.
He’d been distracted from perusing that thought further by the antics of his Wampa clan, and then by news from Gramps about some of the moves that Caleb had made before disappearing into the ether like so many others of the Jedi that had survived Order 66.
A year or so later, she’d been working with Ben when they had a run in with an Inquisitor, and even as he’d had Gramps ready a way for him to perform a rescue before she went the way of Master Luminara, trying to censor the curses tumbling freely from his mouth for the sake of the younglings he was teaching as he’d fretted and worried he would outlive two Padawans, she’d come back on her own. One arm in a sling to not agitate a saber-burn to her shoulder, but she’d come back under her own power, with Ben snarking at her about how he was going to hunt down some durasteel armor for her before she gave him grey hair.
A shatterpoint over her broken.
He called her a Senior Padawan then, and had been thinking of what teachings were left that he would need to impart on her while trying to process the fact that he’d known the Inquisitor she’d met, remembered him as a Shadow that had disappeared in the wake of Order 66, and what that might mean of the other Inquisitors.
Another year and the thoughts of lessons left untaught was changing to how a Padawan might become a Knight in these dark times, with the traditional way lost with the Temple she would have been raised in.
It had dawned on him then that soon he would cut her braids, that Caleb would have likely have been ready to be knighted himself, and he and Depa would have fretted together as all Masters did once their Padawans were grown, as the two would have likely partnered up for missions separate from them after the traditional six months of solo-ing.
He’d mourned fresh of Depa, of Caleb, for a little while, before Talé had joined him and they’d meditated together over her impending Knighting.
Two years he deliberated on which site to send her so that she could go through the Trials in pilgrimage; which one might still remain hidden, forgotten since they’d been closed with the Jedi’s declining numbers in the last few centuries.
Ultimately, he’d given her a list and allowed her to choose, to see which the Force led her to.
She’d meditated on it for several weeks before leaving.
~
It had taken her six months to return, and for a moment when he’d seen her, he’d been stricken by the sight of her tanned, her braids looped back like Depa’s instead of Padawan braids.
At how she was smiling as she’d told him all about landing on Jedha and having a close call with ‘troopers before a blind man had aided her, then led her to the remnants of the Order of the Whillis. They’d then guided her through her Trials before gifting her with one of the kyber pieces that they’d saved from their home when it was raided by the Empire and then destroyed. She’d stayed with them for months to learn anything they could teach her, while building a lightsaber of her own.
It was all very much like he remembered of Depa during her early days of Knighthood, and it had really hit home that he’d raised another Padawan (daughter) to Knighthood (adulthood).
Talé hadn’t come back alone either, with a loth-cat around her neck and having apparently picked up Ben before he was taken to a prison by the Empire somewhere along the way, and he’d stolen an Imperial droid that snarked and cussed as badly as Skywalker’s R2 once he’d somehow overrode its loyalty at some point in the last few months.
Mace almost put his head in his hands, because he was clearly cursed.
(Somewhere in the Force, Qui-Gon was laughing because he’d found the man’s second coming, a boy that was both Obi-Wan’s and Skywalker’s match in Trouble, with a cantankerous droid to rival Skywalker’s.)
He knew it because he’d finally remembered why the name Ben, not for being literally the most common hume name in the galaxy, had left him with a foreboding feeling that haunted him all these years that Ben had gone out and always seemed to find some sort of trouble.
Ben was the name that Obi-Wan had taken that year he’d been on the run with the Duchess of Mandalore, the name he’d used whenever undercover without his Padawan, the name of the saabac player that had gotten that trouble-magnet of a man on the blacklist of Serenno’s nobles for twenty-plus years.
It was probably the name that Obi-Wan was going under wherever he was hiding, which was probably in someplace that was a taunt for the Empire that would be in the one place they’d never think to look.
He really hoped Obi-Wan wasn’t strolling around on Naboo like he wasn’t trolling Palpatine.
It would be just his luck to find out Obi-Wan was doing such a thing, considering his former Padawan and her partner in crime was a terrible cross between the Jinn-Kenobi and Kenobi-Skywalker pair.
He was actually a little afraid that they’d find a Tano to complete their team of trouble.
Then for a moment, it was like Depa was leaning over their shoulders, smiling when Talé abruptly laughed at his misery.
<<They’re good for you, Master.>>