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Quelii isn’t much of a planet. It’s mostly dry grasslands, interspersed by thin copses of trees, with relatively little in the way of life; Revan’s buir had ransacked the villages and holds years ago, when she was too young to join him in his fight. At the time, she’d been nine years old and already helping clan Ordo’s smith forge weapons, and she’d insisted she was ready to join her buir in the fight.
There won’t be much glory here, verd’ika, her buir had told her, as he pulled on the helmet marking him Mand’alor of the clans. It’s just a training run for the newer verde. Besides, I need you in the smithy, I can’t trust anyone else to repair my beskar’gam.
You shouldn’t break it! Revan had informed him, utterly scandalized by the thought of her buir, Mandalore the Ultimate, breaking his beskar’gam on a simple training battle.
He’d won, of course, and she hadn’t thought any more of the planet until two years later, when she was eleven years old and the newest initiate in the Dantooine Jedi Enclave (her own idea, to learn the secrets of the Jedi so she could be powerful enough to stand at her father’s side as they waged a real, proper war on the galaxy), and she met Alek. Alek, who was a refugee from Quelii, orphaned by her buir’s attack.
Revan knows what it’s like to be an orphan. Until Mandalore had found her, that’s all she’d been - she wasn’t old enough to remember her parents, and she has no need of those memories now that she has a father who loves her dearly and an entire people and two adopted clans. (Technically, she belongs to clan Ordo, but that’s only because she’d decided to take Canderous’ clan name, because you aren’t supposed to be rivals with your clan-mates and Cassus had been extra annoying that week, and so was temporarily the more important rival.) She would’ve given Alek that same family, had offered him everything - her aliit be vod and her heart and her entire culture.
But he’d turned his back on her instead, and now he’s with the Jedi, with the Republic. She hasn’t seen him in two years, but she knows he’s fighting against her people, the people she’s going to lead some day.
He made his choice. That’s fine, Revan can live with that. It’s not like she taught him Mando’a and offered him armor or anything.
Quelii is of no strategic importance, except for the fact that it has access to a hyperlane that would let the Republic drop a fleet out to attack Mandalore from behind, where their defense cordon doesn’t protect as well. If the Republic establishes a permanent base so close to their conquered worlds, all of Revan’s people are in danger.
She is Mandalore’s daughter, the future ruler of all mando’ade. She is known throughout the galaxy as Revan the Conqueror for her actions on Taris and a hundred other worlds. She will not let her people fall.
She and her buir lead the attack together, Revan in her black and red beskar’gam and her father in his slate-grey with red accents. On her belt she carries the legacy of eight years of Jedi training: two lightsabers she’d forged by her own hand, the hilts made from beskar she’d smuggled into the Enclave. One is modeled after her buir’s beskad, with a blade as black as night, edged in white like an eclipse; the other is silver and sleek and when ignited the plasma beam is a deep, burnished crimson with a dark core. She’d found both the crystals on her trip to Ilum when she was thirteen, and when the Jedi Council had seen the lightsabers she’d made, they’d talked too quietly among themselves for too long.
She likes her lightsabers. They feel like extensions of herself, singing in the Force whenever she’s near them, raging and as eager for a fight as she is, and they mark her as just the right kind of other, a mando’ad trusted to have such a unique weapon. Her father has his beskad, Cassus a spear of pure beskar, hollow on the inside so it’s not too heavy, and Canderous a custom-forged heavy repeating blaster that mows down enemies like dust, and Revan has her lightsabers.
A good portion of the Republic fleet is gathered in the space above Quelii, and Cassus has command of the Gra’tua - normally Revan’s flagship, but all four of them are together for once. Canderous’ older sister Jetna is commanding their defenses on Taris - the most valuable of the planets they’ve taken from the Republic - and Canderous is commanding his own unit of basilisk pilots here, to try and keep the air support busy.
Revan herself is technically in command of the ground forces, but with her buir at her side, she isn’t doing much more than relaying orders as she straps herself into her basilisk droid. She doesn’t mind it, though - they haven’t seen each other properly in months, and seeing his face through a holo isn’t the same as getting to hug him and feel him ruffling her hair the way only he can get away with. Canderous tries it every now and again, but the last time he did she nearly stabbed him in the hand with the knife she keeps in her gauntlet, and that ended up with Revan pinning him to the ground, said knife hovering over his right eye while he pointed a blaster at her stomach.
Then he’d bought her a drink after, like any good brother should do.
“You pilot today, I’ll man the guns,” her buir says, and she’s not sure why but Mando’a always sounds the most comforting, the most like home, when he’s the one speaking it. “We’ll crush those Republic fools yet.”
“Hopefully they’ll give us a good fight,” Revan tells him as she turns the basilisk’s engines on, the controls coming to life under her hands. “The last skirmish I fought was barely even worth getting my sabers out. We didn’t have any casualties, or even any wounded - not even Pezza got hurt, and that’s saying something.” Pezza is a brilliant technician, but they’re rather clumsy at times, and not used to fighting on the front lines, being much more comfortable with controlling war droids. They’d shot themself in the foot, literally, during one battle, and have never been able to live it down.
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll let this place go without making it hard on us,” Mandalore says, and she loves her buir for the cheerful eagerness in his voice at the words. “Quelii would give them too much of an advantage.”
“They’re all a bunch of hut’uune,” she says derisively. “I could hold this planet with just the Gra’tua and a complement of Canderous’ finest basilisks.”
“Not everyone is as brilliant as you, verd’ika.” Her buir is smiling, she can tell by his voice. “Are you ready?”
“Always.” Revan grins fiercely and toggles on her comm. “Mando’ade, today the Republic and the jetiise have given us a special surprise: they’ve brought half their fleet right to our doorstep! They seem to think to catch us unawares, like we wouldn’t keep tabs on every world we’ve ever won, and today we’re going to make them pay for that assumption. Our spies have told us that some of the Republic’s best Jedi Generals are on Quelii’s surface - this is a chance we aren’t likely to get for a long time.
“There is glory to be won today on the grasslands, a victory just waiting for us to reach out and take it. Whoever brings me back the Jedi Generals’ lightsabers will be the guest of honor at tonight’s skraan’ikase! For victory, for glory, and most of all, for Mandalore!”
From all around her in the Gra’tua’s hangar, Revan can hear cheers and shouts and echoing cries of for Mandalore! in response to her speech, and she grins wider, reaches up and seals the cockpit of her basilisk droid. “A good speech,” Mandalore says, “if a bit superfluous. I liked the bit about the lightsabers, though.”
“If we weren’t in a basilisk I’d punch you,” she mutters, and her buir just laughs.
“Empty threats, ad’ika,” he says. “I thought I told you not to make those.”
“You also told me not to stab Cassus, but I didn’t listen then either.” Revan lifts the basilisk off and pilots out of the hangar, joins a swarm of the metal machines jetting out into space, some heading for the Republic fleet and some aiming for Quelii’s surface. “Besides, it’s not an empty threat, I just literally can’t reach you right now.”
“After we’ve won the day, then. I’ll even be sure to stay still so you can hit me.” Even through his helmet, she can hear the smile in his voice.
She scoffs. “I could beat you any day, old man.”
“I taught you everything you know, ad, and I’m not dead yet.”
“Not anymore,” Revan singsongs gleefully. “I spent eight years with the Jedi, remember?”
“How could I forget?” Mandalore says quietly. “Focus on the battle now, Revan, we’ll have time later.”
She hasn’t properly spent time with her father in months. After her success on Taris - which had been her first proper command - at the beginning of the war, her buir had given her the Gra’tua and sent her after the shipyards on Duro, and after Lantilles, and several other important worlds. She’d taken them all, though some proved more difficult than others, and now, after two years, she’s finally had the chance to come home - only for the news of the Republic fleet massing at Quelii to reach them.
It’d been her twenty-first birthday recently, and they’d been planning to celebrate. That particular party will have to wait until they’re back on Mandalore, but she’s excited for it all the same - since she left to join the Jedi, she’s only celebrated her sixteenth and eighteenth birthdays with her entire aliit, and she hadn’t been able to spend much time with them for either. Arren Kae, her Jedi Master who had somehow figured out everything Revan was planning early on (and then decided not to tell the rest of the Jedi, which Revan still doesn’t understand), had managed to snag them missions offworld for those two birthdays and had taken her to Mandalore to celebrate.
Revan dearly loves her former Master. Once the war is over, she’s going to try and convince Arren to live on Mandalore, although she respects the Jedi’s decision to stay on Eshan - the Echani are formidable warriors in their own right. She only has a little bit of an ulterior motive; watching Arren debate her buir had been the highlight of both birthdays.
But none of that will happen if she doesn’t focus and retake Quelii.
It’s pouring rain when her basilisk slams into the grasslands, followed by a thousand others. She has three thousand battle-hardened warriors with her today, and her buir is at her back, and both her brothers are in the space above the planet; what more could she possibly want from life? The thrill of the upcoming battle rages through her blood, the Force leaping up to meet it, and she grins savagely behind her helmet and ignites both her lightsabers, even though they’re still a klick out from the Republic’s half-finished base. Today is going to be a good day.
Revan starts up a battle song as she steps out in front of her verde and takes off for the Republic base and the muddied field surrounding it where they’ve been building defenses and dragging supplies and landing ships. It’s the wet season on Quelii and the grass has been torn up and trampled into the dirt, and the mud squelches beneath Revan’s boots as she runs, her favorite victory ballad on her lips. Behind her swells her warriors’ voices, her buir’s the loudest of them all, and in this moment she’s so overwhelmed with love for her people she almost can’t keep running.
She breaks off her singing for a moment to toss a challenge over her shoulder at her father. “I’ll bet you my best blaster that I’ll kill more Republic soldiers than you,” she says, and he laughs.
“And I’ll bet my favorite dagger you won’t,” he says. She makes a face he can’t see.
“Again? Do you know how many times I’ve stolen it from you anyway? If you really are so confident, you’ll bet something worthwhile.”
For a moment, there’s nothing but her steady breathing and the thudding of thousands of boots and her verde still singing along behind her, and then: “If you’re so insistent, then, verd’ika, I’ll bet you my beskad.”
His beskad? Her buir is never without the slightly curved beskar sword - it’s his favored weapon, and he’s used it since he forged it himself as a teenager. Something rises in her throat, hot and nearly choking; he’s always said he’d gift it to her, when she was ready. “Done,” she manages, shifts both her sabers into one hand so she can reach back to slap their palms together. “I guess I’ll just have to forge you a new one when I win,” she adds in a tone much closer to normal.
He doesn’t have a chance to respond, because there’s a loud blast of sound and the heavy cannons the Republic has positioned around the perimeter of their base start to fire. The Mandalorian war chant cuts off abruptly, and Revan toggles on her helmet comms, orders her warriors to fan out, to take evasive actions, and to destroy the heavy weaponry. Beskar is good, but not all her warriors have full sets, and even beskar can only do so much against turbolasers and heavy cannons.
Blasterfire rings out across the grasslands as soon as they’re in range; the Republic hasn’t had time to build proper walls, but they’ve got fortifications dug into the ground around the cannons, and there are blaster turrets everywhere, and she can see sniper nests on the scattered buildings. Her enemies are as prepared as they can be.
But their fortifications won’t be enough to stop Revan.
She launches herself some thirty meters forward with a battle cry and lands on top of the nearest heavy cannon, black saber cutting through it effortlessly while her red one deflects a hail of blasterfire. Her lightsaber turns the cannon into molten slag and she kicks off the useless wreck and lands behind a piled wall of sandbags, both sabers out, grinning behind her mask. The soldiers around her flinch back and she can taste their fear in the Force.
There’s a roaring sound and her buir lands behind her, jetpack flicking off as his boots slam into the ground, his beskad flicking out and killing two soldiers faster than a striking snake. “You aren’t going to beat me just standing there,” he calls jovially, and Revan grins in response.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she returns, and at the sound of the harsh Mando’a, the Republic troops around her seem to go even more pale. She ignores them and sets into the nearest with her lightsabers. “At your age, you just don’t have the stamina we younger warriors do.”
Mandalore barks a laugh and she spins in a whirl of fabric and plasma, the soldiers around her dying as she does, to hurl her mainhand lightsaber at the enemy he’s about to decapitate. Her blade reaches first, and she flashes him a bright grin behind her helmet as she calls the weapon back to her. “Slowing down?”
“You only wish,” he says, drawing his blaster in one hand and firing off three shots faster than she can blink. Behind her, three enemies fall. “Is that fast enough for you, my daughter?”
“It’ll do,” Revan replies. Her warriors have reached the cannons now and are swarming them, setting off charges and vaulting over the half-walls, and up ahead she can see the bulk of the Republic’s forces spilling out of buildings. The rain drums down on her helmet, hissing where it hits her lightsabers and turning into steam. “I think there’s plenty of aru’ese for both of us up ahead - our verde can handle the big guns.”
“I think you’re right,” her buir says, and together they charge ahead of their army into the fray.
It’s been a long time since she was able to fight at her father’s side; Mandalore isn’t Force-sensitive, but Revan can sense the joy and the thrill of battle spilling off him all the same. The emotions invigorate her and she pushes herself faster, her lightsabers weaving and spinning, steam trailing behind the blades like an afterimage, and she keeps a count in her head as bodies fall around her. After all, she can’t just let her buir win, even if he is her dad.
Together they cut a swath through the Republic’s army. Revan breaks into several of the outbuildings - finding them empty of Jedi, unfortunately, but plenty full of soldiers, who are only worthy opponents in groups where she’s outnumbered at least five to one - and she sets them on fire with strategic sprays from the flamethrower built into her bracers as she cleans them out. It’s raining hard enough now that the grasslands won’t catch, but the buildings themselves should burn to ashes before they’re smothered, and the crackling fire mixes with the smell of blood and the sound of the rain pounding down onto piles of bodies (both Republic and her own) and the feeling of her sabers arcing through the air - it’s a heady feeling, all the sounds and smells of a good fight, and she’s grinning as she catches a thrown grenade with the Force and hurls it back at the soldier who threw it. Above her head, in the low atmosphere, she can just hear the sounds of a dogfight going on; it’s a little unusual for the Republic’s fighters to drop so far down, but maybe Canderous is pressing them against the planet for a reason. She trusts his strategy.
Up ahead, surrounded by more blaster turrets, Balmorran war droids, multiple sniper nests, and a veritable wall of soldiers, is a much more functional building that Revan suspects is the command center for this base. She and her buir are far enough ahead of the army that if they were anyone else, attacking now would be suicide, but they’re both in full sets of beskar and Revan has the Force and her father is Mandalore the Ultimate. This cut-rate Republic army doesn’t have a hope of standing against the two of them.
At the entrance to the command center, there’s a flash of light, and Revan’s eyes catch on a gleaming silver blade - a lightsaber. There’s a Jedi standing there, talking into a wristcomm, pale face serious, and she looks up and makes eye contact with Revan through the helmet and her dark eyes almost look sad.
(Revan’s kept her end of her Force bond with Alek tightly shielded ever since she screamed at him to leave two years ago, but even through those shields, their connection is more alive than it’s ever been. Face to face with another Jedi, it’s almost impossible to ignore that, to stop herself from worrying about what that means.)
“It seems the glory you promised our warriors will be ours today,” her buir says, and she looks over at him to see he’s looking at the Jedi. “I’m looking forward to you announcing my name when we feast tonight.”
Revan grins, shoves all the worries about Alek to the back of her mind. He rejected her and he left and so what does she care if he puts himself in her way? “You assume I won’t kill her first,” she says, twirls her sabers in her hands. The soldiers haven’t attacked yet, and none of the turrets are firing. She wonders why.
“Ah, but if you focus on the jetii, I’ll have time to catch up to your count, and you’ll owe me your blaster.” He’s insufferable when he’s right. “This is one of those times where it’s better to concede a little of the glory for a more important victory, verd’ika.”
Revan laughs. “You just want all the glory for yourself,” she teases, even as she changes where she’s looking - she’ll need to take out the snipers first, they’ll be the most dangerous to her buir. “But I can live with that. Any glory you receive is by default mine as well.”
She’s still laughing when the Force screams with danger and a starfighter roars by so close overhead she can feel the draft. Instinct has her throwing herself to one side, hands flying out and clinging to the Force to shield herself, a desperate plea, and then fire crashes into her and she’s flung to the ground like so much trash, superheated air burning her lungs and smoke stinging her eyes and a thundering clash in her ears she can’t hear over. She’s coughing and choking, shoulder jammed into the dirt, mud caked on half her visor, her HUD shorting out from the impact, and something is wrong.
A fighter. That was a fighter. It fired on her.
And if it hit her, then what about-
“Buir!” she cries out, barely able to hear over the sudden hammering of her heart, the ringing in her ears, and she shoves herself upright and tears her helmet off, discarding it to the ground - it’s useless anyway. Everything aches and she’s crawling through boiling mud to a half-buried gleam of grey, and oh no, oh no.
She digs her hands into the mud, scrabbles at it and pulls it away until she manages to pry her father free - there’s flames licking up the blastweave underarmor and his beskar is blackened and smoking and there’s a charred hole in his chest and blood pouring out of his leg, where the beskar is twisted into shrapnel and jammed into muscle. There’s so much blood and she knows instinctively it hit an artery. “Come on, buir,” she says, can hear the panic in her voice as she presses futilely against his leg. She can’t stop the bleeding.
She leaves behind crimson handprints on his helmet when she tugs it off, revealing his grey-skinned nonhuman face, every line familiar to her and so, so loved. His eyes are fluttering but he focuses on her face, with difficulty. He’s never been this pale before. “I can’t stop the bleeding,” she says, knows she sounds hysterical.
“It’s okay, ad’ika.” Her buir’s voice is a hoarse and scratchy whisper instead of the robust baritone it should be. His skin is grey as the ashes from the buildings she’s burned, and mud and his own blood smears across his cheeks as she presses her hands against his face, reaching for the Force. “It’s okay. You’ve done so well.”
“Shut up,” she says, choking on air, and she doesn’t know whether it’s the rain or tears on her cheeks. “I can- heal you, I have to, what good is the Force if I can’t save you!” She grabs onto his life force with all her might, the fading spark of it, and drags it into full life with nothing but her own will. “I just have to stop the bleeding.”
“Revan,” her father murmurs. “Verd’ika. There’s nothing you can do. My time has come, you have to let me go.”
“No! I can- I’ll-” She stops, fumbling, and loses her grip on his life force for a moment. She can see his skin fade deathly pale, a bluish-white, before she regains her control. “You aren’t going to die, buir, I won’t let you.”
“You are… the Mand’alor now,” he says, so quiet. “Avenge this dishonorable death, my daughter. Make the Republic tremble.”
She moves her hands from his cheek back to his leg, puts as much pressure as she dares onto the wound, but blood just spurts out between her fingers, staining her gauntlets crimson, and for the second time his Force-signature slips out of her grasp. No, she won’t- she can’t- She gets it back, but only barely, and it’s all she can do to hold on. “You can’t die,” she begs. “Please, buir, Mandalore needs you. I need you. We were going to feast together, you promised we’d celebrate tonight.” She’s sobbing now, her entire body shaking, and her hands slide off his leg. “Don’t go, don’t leave me.”
“Come here,” he says, and she can’t but she leaves his leg anyway. He’s reaching one shaking hand towards her and she leans down as he brushes his mud-coated fingers over her cheek, pushing her braids back out of her face. “I am so proud of you, my daughter. You are… everything I could have dreamed.” There’s a smile on his face and his voice is so faint, no, no. “Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum, Revan.” I will hold you in my heart forever. “Remember me… Mand’alor.”
His chest stutters and he gasps a little, a torn, broken sound, and for the third and final time, his Force signature sputters out of her grasp. And she can’t get it back.
No.
No!
Revan shatters.
The scream that tears itself from her lips is haunted and high-pitched and doesn’t even sound human, and all around her, the Republic soldiers that had marched in to surround her die. They collapse to the ground like useless puppets, and she’s still screaming, and she tugs her buir’s body onto her knees and presses her forehead against his and rocks back and forth. She can’t breathe, can’t do anything but keen, pouring her grief and her pain into the Force until the whole planet must be able to feel it. He’s dead. Her buir, the man who adopted her as a child and raised her and taught her how to sing and how to speak and how to tell stories, who taught her how to forge her own armor and weapons and how to kill a hundred species with a credit chit and how to pilot a basilisk droid, is dead.
The Republic killed him.
Revan will destroy them.
There are more soldiers surrounding her. Her army is near, but not near enough, and she knows every blaster in this compound is trained on her kneeling form right now. Every sniper, every droid, every turret.
They won’t be enough.
Revan lifts her head and lets every ounce of pain and rage she feels pour into her eyes and set them ablaze, and then she stands, slowly, covered in soot and mud and blood, dirt streaked across her cheek. You are the Mand’alor now. Avenge this dishonorable death.
She will not let her father down.
She spreads her arms and clenches her blood-soaked hands into fists, and the Force ripples out from her in waves of pain and power, and as the waves touch the soldiers around her their eyes roll back in their heads and they collapse, Force-signatures snuffing out like candles in the wind. There’s still tears streaming down her face, mixing with the rain, and she stands frozen, a statue in the face of certain death, and the soldiers surrounding her begin to flee. The Force catches them before they can get far.
On a nearby rooftop, a blaster turret swivels towards her and shoots a series of bolts. No, Revan thinks, looking towards the searing red bolts, and they all snap backwards into the turret with twice the force they’d been fired with. It explodes and she ignores it again. Avenge this dishonorable death. She will kill every single person here and that will only be the beginning.
Revan the Conqueror, they’ve been calling her. Now they’ll see just what she’s truly capable of.
There’s the snap-hiss of a lightsaber igniting, and Revan catches sight of a familiar blue blade, and she’s already reaching out one hand, pouring all her hatred into the Force when her eyes land on a familiar face and pale blue tattoos, and the sight is so unexpected she stops.
“Alek?” she breathes. Her voice sounds like gravel crunching beneath beskar boots. He's just looking at her and the bond between them is alight with emotion she doesn't let herself feel.
Because he abandoned her.
She gave him everything with open hands and he refused it all and now her buir is dead on the ground because of his Republic and Revan has no mercy left in her heart.
"Revan-" Alek starts, but she doesn't listen, just yanks her sabers into her hands and ignites both blades.
Behind her, her army is attacking the rest of the Republic soldiers, burning down what buildings she left untouched and seeing to the defenses still aimed at her. Ahead of her, the other Jedi, the one with the white lightsaber, vaguely familiar looking, is talking into her comm and starting for the shuttles on the far end of the base, where Revan’s verde haven’t reached yet. She’s calling out to Alek as she runs, saying come on, we can salvage the fleet if we hurry, we can drive them off, and he starts to turn to look at her.
That’s when Revan lunges forward and swings both sabers at his face.
Alek stumbles back a step, his bright blue blade coming up to block on instinct, and he’s looking at her and pleading silently and she can’t. Her buir is dead and Alek abandoned her for the Republic that killed him.
Every wide, furious attack is fueled by her rage and her pain, her emotions spilling into the Force like blood from a wound (like the blood from her buir’s leg) and turning into raw strength; she can hardly see, between the rain and the tears and the smoke in the air, the steam from their three lightsabers, and little gods, she knows she’s being reckless but she can’t seem to stop herself. She hardly feels human, in this moment - she’s a creature of grief and agony and she can barely breathe past the choking lump in her throat.
She lunges forward and Alek twists to the side, and her boots slip in the mud and she falls to one knee, sabers out in front of her in no position to block, her drenched gloves nearly losing purchase on the hilts, and Alek could end her now but he steps back into a defensive stance instead. He’s not properly fighting her, just stepping away from her blows and blocking and parrying, never counterattacking, and why won’t he fight back? She lets out a frustrated scream and drives forward hard, crashing one saber into his shoulders and driving the other straight towards his stomach, and he can only block one, she could kill him right now, her saber is inches away from him and-
Her saber hilts fall from her hands and then her arms are wrapping around his shoulders, pinning his (thankfully deactivated, and when did he turn it off?) lightsaber between them, and Revan presses her face into his shoulder and howls.
“They killed him,” she sobs, and then Alek’s arms are around her, holding her close, and one hand is carding through her hair. “They killed him, Alek, they didn’t even give him an honorable death.”
“I know,” he says, and his voice is so soothing, somehow, even though she hasn’t seen him in two years, even though the last time they spoke was the only time they’ve ever truly fought. “I’m so sorry, Revan, I didn’t know about the order until it was too late. I couldn’t stop it.”
She knows he’s speaking the truth. Alek’s never lied to her before. And they’re so close, and she lets all her shields fall at once, the bond between them snapping back into place, and she can feel everything. He’s aching and sad and he’s missed her, and a part of him is still shocked she didn’t kill him.
As though she ever really could. She’d offered him armor, after all.
“Stay with me.” The words slip out of her mouth before she can think better of them, and beneath her cheek she can feel him stiffen. “Please, Alek, he’s dead and-” and her voice cracks a little on the words, “-and I need you. I can’t do this on my own.”
He hesitates, and she presses her fear and her pain at him, how lost she feels - she’s Mandalore now and she’s supposed to lead her people, but all she wants to do is scream into the skies until her throat bleeds, is curl up in a bundle of blankets and never leave, is face down all the armies of the Republic alone and kill and kill and kill until she’s overcome. She has her vode, her aliit, but they won’t be enough, and once she truly becomes Mand’alor there will be a gap between them that she will never quite be able to bridge. And the space at her shoulder has always felt empty without Alek there.
Even if he won’t take her armor, even if he won’t accept the gai bal manda, she needs him, and she’ll take whatever he’ll give her.
“I can’t fight the Republic,” he says quietly, and the words sound like an apology. “The Jedi are my family, Revan.”
“Then don’t fight!” She’s begging him now, pulling back to stare into his eyes, hands gripping his shoulders tight enough to hurt. “Just- come with me. Please, please, come with me.” A distant part of her hopes none of her warriors are close enough to hear her beg and plead; she knows she’s never sounded so broken before, so utterly desperate, and yet she can’t stop. What will she do if he says no?
Alek looks and feels torn, for a long minute, and then he lets out a shuddering sigh and leans forward to press their foreheads together. The familiarity, the intimacy of the gesture makes her eyes burn and gods, why does he do things like this and then reject her? Besides her buir and her vode, there’s no one else Revan would let show her such deep affection. Warmth radiates out from the contact and she sags against him, eyes sliding closed, a bone-deep exhaustion filing her to the brim as her anger fades, the grief dulling to a sharp ache instead of a twisting knife. He’s going to say no, she realizes, he’s going to leave her alone again, and yet she can’t stop herself from sinking into the tenderness and comfort of his touch.
“Okay,” he whispers. His breath tickles her nose.
The word almost doesn’t register for a moment; they’re so close together and Revan hurts all over (she doesn’t think anything’s broken, but she’s bruised and her head aches and she’s sure there are burns under her armor), but he shifts one hand to cup the back of her neck and that sparks enough of something to press through the fog in her head. “Okay?” she asks, not bothering to keep the painful, bloody hope out of her voice.
“Okay, I’ll come with you, but only if we leave now,” he says, a little louder. “After the order she gave earlier, I wouldn’t be surprised if Qatya- if the Jedi General in charge tries to bomb you before you can escape.”
It’s something Revan would do. The Republic’s forces have almost entirely left the field, so the general’s only loss would be infrastructure, and most of that has burned down already. Reluctantly, she pulls away from Alek, can’t stop herself from brushing one hand against his cheek as she does, and goes over to her buir’s body, kneeling down by him. “I can’t leave him here,” she says.
“I’ll help you.” Alek goes over to her father’s feet, and Revan reaches into the shreds of the Force she can still feel and calls her lightsabers back to her, hooks them to her belt, and then lifts her buir’s helmet from the ground. Mandalore’s mask has been passed down from Mand’alor to Mand’alor for centuries, forged as the faceplate of a new helmet to fit the new ruler. For a moment, Revan just closes her eyes and presses her forehead against the familiar visor, and she can almost imagine her father still behind it, pressing their foreheads together as he sends her off to the Jedi, or as he sends her off to Taris. Haar’chak, she’s crying again, but this time it’s just soft tears that trickle down her cheeks and drip from her chin. She sniffs, pulls the helmet back - it’ll be too big, but she can’t carry it and her buir at the same time, and her people need to know - and then slowly pulls it on.
It feels heavy. The helmet is forged for her buir, a Taung, and yet it’s more than a physical weight; Revan imagines she can feel all the command and responsibility pressing down on her shoulders, and she feels horribly, terribly small.
A warrior comes up to her, Vizsla’s sigil on their pauldron, and salutes sharply, fist over their chest. “General Revan,” they say, and she looks up, her buir’s helmet shifting on her head as she does so.“We can get his body for you.”
“No,” Revan snaps, instinctively, and then forces herself to take a shaking breath. “No, I- I’ll do it myself. Thank you. Give the order to retreat to the fleet and have all our ships jump to friendly territory, the meeting point near Kalevala. My-” and she chokes up abruptly, can hardly force the words out, voice turning strangled, “-my buir deserves a proper warrior’s send-off.”
There’s a half-second of silence, then, carefully, the Vizsla warrior asks, “Who should I say is giving the order?”
Revan closes her eyes. You are the Mand’alor now. Make the Republic tremble. “Tell them… the order comes from Mandalore the Avenger. Tell them we are no longer fighting for glory, but for the honor of our fallen leader.” She opens her eyes, voice hardening into durasteel. “We will avenge his death.”