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Depa trusts Grey to know what he’s talking about, especially when it comes to the needs of their men, so when he brings her yet another set of requisition forms, something tentative and excited running muted through his Force presence, she signs off on them without even looking. Her approval is only a formality, after all; Grey still knows more about the running of a battalion than she does, and even more so now when her attention is split between the troops under their command and the padawan she’s going to be training in a galaxy-wide warzone.
Force, Depa doesn’t remember taking even half of the classes on offer right now, and she grew up in the Temple in peacetime. Should she even bother enrolling Caleb in Diplomacy and Galactic Relations I when those relations seem to shift at least thrice every tenday? Will Intermediate Force Philosophies help him when they end up inevitably separated on a battlefield? Will he benefit more from Force Healing I, or should she enroll him in the GAR-standard Introductory Triage and Emergency Medicine instead? She barely even knows her padawan, beyond the fact that he’s bright and warm, eager and curious, enthusiastic and easily-pleased in the way that children are.
And now it’s her job to raise him, help him keep at least some of that innocence, while bringing him with her to war.
Well. Depa needs to talk to Luminara. To Skywalker. Kit. Mace. She should probably fit her padawan in there somewhere, too. She drops her datapad back down on her desk, and is sorely tempted to drop her forehead down to rest alongside it.
“Sir?” Styles, at her door, a welcome escape. She smiles up at him.
“Styles, come in,” she says, moving to clear some space on her desk.
He ambles his way towards her, taking his time to flick his eyes over the mess of datapads and paperwork, quirking his mouth slightly in a way that Depa knows means he disapproves. He stops right next to her, leaning his hip against the side of her desk and setting his helmet down on top. “Busy, sir?”
“Datawork is the gift that never stops giving,” Depa replies, and Styles huffs a laugh.
“Well, I think it’s about to start giving even more,” he tells her, and Depa sits up from her exhausted slouch.
“We’ve been cleared?” she asks.
Styles nods. “Back on rotation in a tenday. Grey would’ve told you himself, but he got caught up wrangling logistics for Commander Dume.”
A week. A week is all Depa has with her padawan in the peace and safety of the Temple before she takes him out to war. Before she has to send her troops off to their deaths, again.
Styles must read something of her anxiety, because he moves his hand from where it rests on his helmet to catch her hand in his own, tangling their fingers together. “They’ll probably start us off easy,” he assures.
Depa laughs, once. “I’m sure they’ll try,” she says, “but when has anything in this war ever gone the way we expected?”
“First time for everything, sir,” he says, wry, and Depa gives in, leans forward to rest her head against the stomach plates of his armor. He squeezes his fingers around hers, his other hand coming up to rest at the nape of her neck. “You’re tense,” he tells her.
Depa snorts. “No idea why.”
“C’mon,” Styles says, pulling away enough to pull her to her feet. “Datawork can wait.”
Depa thinks about hesitating, about protesting, but his interruption and easy presence are foil enough that she can recognize how close she was to spiraling, earlier. She takes a deep breath, instead, holding it in her lungs until it’s collected enough of her anxieties to take with it when she lets it out.
“Dinner?” she offers. “And then a good night’s sleep.”
Styles gifts her a smile, sweet. “I’ll comm Grey,” he says, and Depa moves to rest her arm in the crook of his elbow as they leave her quarters.
Depa’s only been Mace’s padawan for a month, but in that short time she’s decided that there’s no point in being intimidated or shy around him. He’s quiet, warm and supportive but perfectly happy to let her figure things out on her own, guiding her when she’s stuck, helping her when she needs, listening when she talks things out. He lets her openly explore the parts of his mind she can reach through their bond with a fond indulgence, and expects a certain degree of mutual respect, trust, openness in return.
There’s a space in their shared apartment, one that’s central but easy to navigate around, bare stone floor worn smooth, that Depa’s had her eye on ever since she moved in. She’s sitting there, cross-legged, half trying to meditate, half working out how to ask the question she’s been thinking about for just as long, when Mace comes back home.
“Depa?” he asks, pausing in the entryway to look at her.
“Master,” she replies, easy even as she feels the anxiety rising in her. “You don’t have any plans for this space, do you?”
“The empty floor in the middle of our entryway?” Mace asks, amused. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“Good,” Depa tells him. Mace raises an eyebrow at her, a look that she’s sure she’ll build immunity to eventually.
“I assume you have some ideas,” Mace prompts when she doesn’t elaborate. Depa bites back a sigh. Clearly she’s broadcasting across their bond; Mace usually has the patience to wait her out until she’s ready.
“I thought it might be the perfect place for a rangoli,” she says, and it only comes out a little rushed.
Mace doesn’t even pause. “I agree,” he says. “Did you have a design in mind?”
Depa does sigh, this time. She’s spent a month agonizing over how to present this idea to her Master, and he can’t act even a little surprised?
Mace laughs at her, sends a curl of fond warmth down their bond, and Depa resists for all of a second before giving in and beaming up at him.
“Well,” she starts, and this whole deciding-not-to-be-shy thing is turning out to be much harder in practice than in theory, but Depa’s a Jedi; she won’t earn her Knighthood by refusing to take risks, “designs are usually passed down among generations.”
Mace nods. “If you’d like, we could look up some traditional art-”
Depa shakes her head, decisive, and he stops. “I was thinking-” she pauses, starts over. “Will you help me make a design, for our lineage?”
More gentle warmth flows down the bond.
“Of course, Depa,” Mace agrees, soft.
They might only have a tenday before they ship out, but Depa is determined to get herself and her padawan settled in their new, shared quarters in that time. Most of her immediate belongings are packed away to be moved into her bunk on their flagship, but she packs up and moves everything from her old room into the apartment, intent on getting everything set up before Caleb arrives after he finishes class.
Once everything is in its place, with enough empty spaces for Caleb to settle in comfortably, she pulls out the very last box from where she’d set it on the kitchen counter and begins to unpack it, setting bags of vibrant, colorful rice, sand, and dried flowers on a tray she takes with her to the entry.
She picks out the bag of plain white rice first and begins outlining a pattern she could make in her sleep, the one that she and Mace created in the early days of her apprenticeship and eventually painted on the floor of their apartment when the loose grains became an inconvenience. Slowly, it takes shape: a lotus, surrounded by concentric circles, every other one bordered by a spiraling motif, building out until the design reaches a meter across.
Her hand stays steady as she begins to fill in the spaces with color, dried pink lotus petals in the central flower, grains of dyed sand and rice making up the rest of the pattern until it’s finished, a bright rainbow of delicate color in the heart of her new home.
A knock at the door raises her from her contemplation. “Come in!” she calls, gathering up the bags of leftover materials back into her tray.
Grey comes through the door first, Styles a step behind, and she takes a moment to admire the way their faces are light, posture relaxed, Grey’s wicked grin and the slight flush on Styles’ face where he’s evidently lost their eternal game of friendly ribbing. Depa doesn’t bother to hide her own smile, her open admiration of the way they fill out their dress uniforms.
“Looking good, General,” Grey says, casting a perfunctory glance around the apartment before settling his gaze back on her. Styles snorts inelegantly behind him, and Depa laughs.
“Flattery won’t get you out of troop inspections, Commander,” she teases, and the look Grey gives her is almost enough to make her breath catch. “Let me clean this up and then we can be on our way.”
Styles has moved over to the rangoli on the floor, humming admiringly as he takes in the detail. “Impressive,” he compliments. “The texture really adds to it, huh?”
“Yes,” Depa says, standing and lifting the tray, “I’m afraid paint doesn’t fully do it justice, although it does make less of a mess.” She waves a hand towards the living room on her way to the kitchen. “Feel free to sit, I won’t be long.”
She lifts the tray into its place in her pantry, then moves a container of dried legumes onto a shelf that better suits it, then another, until she’s reorganizing all of the things she so carefully moved in not even two hours ago. Grey wanders in behind her, carrying her robe over his arm.
“Don’t know that we have time for all of that, now,” he says, careful, coming to a stop just behind her. Depa closes her eyes, just for a moment, recognizes what she’s doing, acknowledges it, but can’t let it go. Not yet. She turns around to face him.
Grey’s eyes are soft, concerned, and in the Force he’s asking the question he won’t ask her out loud. Depa tries for a smile, and it must come out alright, because he hands her her robe instead of pushing.
He pulls her in once she’s done got her robe settled, his warm hand cupping the side of her neck, thumb brushing over her cheek. “Ready?” he asks.
Depa leans in to rest her forehead against his, noses brushing. She feels his steady determination, Styles’ careful confidence, the low thrum of anxiety running through all three of them, and bolsters herself. “As I’ll ever be,” she tells him, and Grey’s smile is small, understanding.
“Then we should go,” he says, pulling back. “Our troops are waiting.”
The first time she invites Grey and Styles into the Temple, they’re quiet, reverent, clearly awed by the enormous, ancient structure, this place she’s called home ever since she could remember. They hesitate, when she invites them into her apartment, sharing a look that she doesn’t yet know how to decipher before accepting.
This thing between them is clearly defined but still new, and they waste little time tangling themselves together. Grey and Styles, once openly welcomed in her space, are eager to learn as much of her as they can, poking around her tiny little Temple apartment comfortably. Depa delights in sharing her home with them, learning them in turn.
It’s not the first time she’s had the thought, but being with them like this solidifies it, and in the morning she rises early, pulls out her colors, and gets to work. By the time they stumble out after her, sleep-soft and rumpled, the rangoli is complete, a declaration and celebration in one, and breakfast is on the table, ordered out from her favorite restaurant on Coruscant—one she saves for special occasions.
They sit, and share a meal, and she gives voice to the stories hidden within the design the way they told her, over late nights and stolen moments, about every line on their armor that made it theirs.
They’re all so vibrant, these men the galaxy seems content to destroy in war, and it is impossible for Depa to see them as anything but precious.
Grey insists on taking a holo, before she clears it all away.
The troops making up Depa’s new battalion—men who will fight and die alongside her on her orders—are standing in perfect formation, armor freshly accented with a deep red, when they arrive for inspection, but that isn’t what stops her in her tracks.
On the right side of their chestplates they have, to a man, painted in painstaking detail the same pattern Depa just carefully laid out on her apartment floor. The colors, the spirals, the delicate lotus in the center are all clearly visible, and the obvious mutual claim and acceptance are enough to make Depa’s eyes sting. Behind her, Grey radiates smug satisfaction.
The requisition forms, Depa thinks, remembering his anticipation. He must have gotten the paint, reprinted the stencil he’d used to paint her design on his own armor, all those months ago, and given them to their men. Told them the significance, of the design, of them, and it’s such a Grey thing to do. She doesn’t know what she’d do without him.
“He’s wearing your rangoli design,” Mace comments as he walks with Depa back to her apartment, Grey heading in the opposite direction to the barracks.
“Our,” Depa corrects absentmindedly, exhausted from the long campaign, the journey back, the immediate debrief. “We made that design together.”
Mace hums. He walks beside her in comfortable silence until they get to her door. “I’ll make sure to have an extra seat at dinner tomorrow.”
“Make it two,” she says, and putting that surprised look on Mace’s face is something she’ll never tire of.
Once their formal inspection is complete, and they’ve had an informal mingling to get to know one another in the controlled, slightly awkward environment of a social gathering with required attendance, they circle back around to the Temple to pick up their padawan.
They get there just as his last class lets out, and Depa is still riding the nervous energy from meeting her battalion, but seeing the look on his face as he realizes they’re waiting for him forces it to dissipate.
“Master!” Caleb greets. “Commander Grey, Captain Styles. Hi!”
Depa smiles, Grey and Styles greeting him with a wave. “Hello, Padawan,” she says.
“Is something going on?” Caleb asks her, looking worriedly from the three of them down to his communicator.
“No, Caleb,” Depa assures. She might as well get him used to the three of them together early, although their presence seems to have mildly alarmed him. “I just thought you might like to come with me to our new apartment.”
Caleb beams up at her. “That sounds great! Do I need to get my things from the creche?”
Depa starts walking, Caleb falling into step next to her, Grey and Styles keeping pace behind. “Later,” she tells him. “Captain Styles or Commander Grey can help you, if you’d like, but for now I want to make sure you know where to go.” She waits for Caleb to nod his assent before continuing. “Now, tell me: how were your classes?”
Her padawan certainly is energetic, she thinks as he launches into the events of his day. A glance back at Grey gets her a fond shake of his head, Styles grinning next to him. Caleb doesn’t run out of breath, or words, the entire journey to their apartment, and Depa listens intently the whole way.
“We’re here,” she interrupts gently when they find their door, and Caleb pauses as she opens it. “After you, Padawan.”
“Wow,” he says, drawn immediately to the colorful rangoli on the floor a few steps removed from the entrance. He moves to stand a respectful distance in front of the intricate design, practically buzzing with curiosity barely reigned in. “What is it?” he asks, eyes wide, and when Styles laughs beside him he blinks. “It’s beautiful!” Caleb tells her hurriedly. “I’ve never seen anything like it before!”
Depa laughs, placing her hand on the crown of his head. Caleb tilts back to look at her, grin wide and slightly relieved. “It’s called rangoli,” she tells him. “It’s a traditional form of art in my culture, usually for special occasions. Like holidays, or celebrations, or,” she ruffles Caleb’s hair, “to welcome someone home.”
Caleb turns to look at her, hesitating for just a moment before he visibly steels himself and wraps his arms around her in a breathtaking hug. She hugs him back, running her fingers through his hair. “Rangoli designs are usually passed down through a lineage,” she continues. “You’re more than welcome to add to ours, if you’d like, my Padawan.”
The happy warmth he sends down their newly-forged bond is a feeling Depa will cherish for the rest of her life.