Chapter Text
Tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, TAP.
Din Djarin cracked an eye open under his helmet, and sighed, stretching a little in his small cockpit and switching the autopilot of his N-1 Starfighter off, before glancing over his shoulder at Grogu. “Seriously, buddy? Did you even sleep?”
Another tap of the Razor Crest ball against the domed glass of Grogu’s little port as response, and the Mandalorian couldn’t help but chuckle, a warmth filling his chest to have his odd little magic alien companion back with him.
Son. He’s your son , a voice inside his head reminded, and Din chewed on the inside of his cheek, anxiously. He was; of course he was. So why did it still feel selfish to acknowledge that? He pushed those thoughts to the side and took the controls of his ship, steering them carefully through the dark sky full of stars.
“I’m not sure if this is a good idea, kid,” he said, to himself, and also the child. He glanced over his shoulder at him. Everyone seems to think it’s where I’m supposed to be but–I’m not sure what to expect when we get there.
Grogu tilted his head and babbled, tapping again as if to reassure his father.
Din chuckled. “Thanks, kid.” He let out a sigh, and furrowed his brows, an expression unseen by the alien boy. Mandalore–what the hell do you have in store for us?
He glanced down at his hip, at the Darksaber, and frowned. Guess we’ll find out.
“You should have gone.”
Cal Kestis was tinkering at his work bench in his cabin on the Mantis when he heard the accented lilt of Merrin’s voice from the doorway. In actuality, it was their cabin, and he chuckled a little and turned his eyes back to his lightsaber as she entered the room completely.
“No,” Cal responded, connecting his emitter back to the lightsaber hilt and placing it down on the cool, faded metal of the bench in front of him. “It wasn’t my place to do that.”
“What do you mean?” Merrin asked, stepping to one side of him and leaning against his work bench to watch him.
Cal chuckled again, and looked up at her. Their eyes locked. Even after twenty years of marriage, a few small wrinkles, a few gray hairs (on his part), they admired each other in a way few could say had outlasted the stresses of their decades-long war. She was his person, and he hers.
They had even had a child together.
“My focus is Jorrela,” Cal said. “It would be arrogant of me to split that focus and pretend like I’m giving her the training she deserves.”
“That isn’t the only reason, though,” Merrin said with a matter-of-factness that Cal hated to hear–especially when she was absolutely right. A third chuckle bubbled up from his chest.
“If I were a betting man,” Cal murmured, popping the switch off of his saber and replacing it with a new(er) one. “I’d wager Luke Skywalker was one of the names on that holocron I destroyed twenty years ago. And now, he’s a Jedi master, the direct apprentice of Master Yoda himself…”
This was all word of mouth, of course. What few Jedi were left had their ways of communicating with one another and even though he kept himself, and his family, under the radar even from other Jedi, he had a way of hearing the rumors,. “...but he’s still a new Jedi. A Jedi who needs to learn how complex the ways of the Force can be. The lives we built for ourselves when the Republic was thriving–they don’t work anymore.”
He took a deep breath. “At least not for me. Not for us. Luke Skywalker will have a lot to learn–and a lot to teach. And he won’t learn how to do either of those things without someone to impart that knowledge to.” He placed his saber down on the workbench and turned his full body toward her. “I could just feel it in the Force, Merr–this situation wasn’t for me to interfere in. As with Jorrela, it’s time for the next generation of Jedi to be a force for change in the galaxy.”
Merrin pursed her lips. She didn’t entirely understand–the Force spoke differently to the Nightsisters. It moved differently through them. But, she had always trusted Cal to make the right decisions, and he had very rarely been wrong.
“Besides,” Cal said, his grin widening a little as he reached out and pushed some gray-white hair out of her eyes. “I get the feeling this particular little padawan won’t be committing himself to the ways of the Force for too long. At least not in the way that we’d think.”
No , he thought to himself, little Grogu’s path with the Force is–different. Not the path of a Jedi. At least not in the traditional sense.
Merrin slid her hands up her husband’s broad chest, and over his shoulders. “You are a good man,” she whispered, “who needs to learn to close the info on his datapad when he’s done with it. I know you’ve been tracking Jedi movements.”
Cal sighed and rolled his eyes, snickering as he slid his arms around the belted waist of his Dathomirian partner. “Ah, you caught me. I have been monitoring Skywalker’s plans for a Jedi school. You know that stuff is still important to me, even if I don’t necessarily agree with restarting the Order the way it looked back then.”
Obviously . None of the masters back then would exactly smile on the fact that Cal was married to Merrin, or had a child with her. There was a reason Luke Skywalker was a widely known name, even in their covert community–and his father’s melancholic relationship with Senator Padme Amidala was part of that reputation. It had led to the rise of Darth Vader, after all–Anakin Skywalker’s downfall.
The downfall of the entire Order.
“Hey,” Merrin murmured when she saw Cal disappearing inside his own mind–something he often did when he was thinking about the Clone Wars.
“Mm? I’m fine,” Cal murmured, and then shifted a little when Jorrela Kestis peeked her head, all Nightsister white-skin and a shock of carrot-red hair, into the cabin, blinking, all of seventeen years old.
“Dad?” she asked, and when Cal gestured her into the small room, she squeezed in and handed him the data pad that Merrin had teased him about earlier.
He took it–and then chuckled when he saw what it said. “....the Child has returned to his father–as I suspected. He has rejected the conventional Jedi traditions and chosen to rejoin his surrogate parent–a Mandalorian.”
“A Mandalorian?” Merrin asked, and snorted. “I thought those were about as extinct as my people.”
“Mm, there are hidden coverts all over the galaxy, as my intel tells it anyway. I’ve been watching this one’s movements. He’s interesting–and a little unsettling. He refuses to remove his helmet,” Cal admitted, setting the data pad down and leaning back against his workbench, arms crossing over his chest, one ankle crossing over the other, head tilting as he glanced at his little family.
“What’s the problem with that?” Jorrela questioned. She was young–the galaxy as it was now was what she knew. Of course, her father was one of the most honest people in her life. He had told her, in detail, stories about the war. But even he had learned about the fate of the Mandalorians second hand. Everything he knew had come from the Jedi involved or informed in what had happened on Mandalore.
Merrin knew as well–and it made her wary of Mandalorians. She had found out second-hand, also, but the fact that one of her own people had been involved in the de-structuring of Mandalore–it made her realize that Dathomirians would likely not be welcome in the days to come for the helmeted people.
“There was a radical group of Mandalorian zealots,” Cal began, “who believed removing their helmet was a violation of their right as war-mongering people. They–joined a Dathomirian Sith named…Darth Maul.”
“A Dathomirian?” Jorrela said, quirking her lips to the side, uncertainly. It was upsetting. Her people dwindled by the day–there were no more women for the Nightbrothers to mate with. She and her mother were the last.
There were other clans on Dathomir. Other witches, other men. But the Night flan—the clan she, her mother and Maul, were drone, was dying.
And clearly, a Nightbrother was not her mother’s type. But to hear it was a Nightbrother who had caused such pain–so much divide. No wonder so many endangered alien peoples were fractured and dying off.
“They overthrew the peaceful sects of the Mandalorian government,” Cal continued, placing a comforting hand on his daughter’s shoulder when he saw her face twist, sadly. “Mandalore was eventually freed from Maul’s rule but–the Empire has a way of worming its way in. If Maul couldn’t be their puppet, they’d find someone else. And they did–and then they betrayed Mandalore and destroyed…everything.”
Merrin noticed Jorrela’s pensive expression and slid an arm around the younger woman’s waist, before she glanced down at her feet, her own countenance written with disappointment, anger and confusion.
Jorrela took a step toward her mother, placing a hand on her shoulder as her father had just done for her. “Mama?”
“I’m alright,” she murmured, her eyes meeting her daughter’s. “As if Dathomirians don’t already have a bad reputation in this galaxy.” Sure, it hadn’t been Maul’s direct involvement that had sealed Mandalore’s fate. Still–
“Hey,” Cal said, breaking her from her pensive thoughts, and wrapped his arms around both of them, kissing each of their heads. “Not to me.”
Merrin chuckled, and laid her cheek against Cal’s chest. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“So,” Jorrela asked, “how did the zealots survive if Maul was forced out–and then the Empire betrayed Mandalore and destroyed everything?”
“There were hidden sects of them,” Cal said. “Concealed on the moons surrounding Mandalore. When the fighting stopped, they snuck off to other parts of the galaxy, hiding their coverts on distant planets. At least according to the rumors I’ve heard on my own journeys.”
He pushed the flap of his poncho back and clipped his saber to his side once he finally finished fixing it, before moving into the larger part of the ship with his family, out of the cabin. “Most of those who were left were Death Watch–the zealots. My guess is that’s who our Mandalorian friend who adopted the Jedi child is–he was likely part of one of those coverts.”
“Then why adopt a Jedi child? Wouldn’t Death Watch hate Jedi the way Darth Maul did? Or hate any Force users because of Maul?” Jorrela asked.
“Unless we’re vigilant to pass on our history accurately, it gets muddled,” Cal answered. “My intuition tells me that all of the dogma of his helmeted existence, of his use of weaponry, bounty hunting, a lot of what makes a Mandalorian who they are, was preserved. But the messier parts–the parts where they allied themselves with Maul and were betrayed–I’m guessing those parts of history aren’t so freely offered to their younglings anymore.”
It would have made them look weak. And weakness was not a part of the Mandalorian creed– certainly not Death Watch’s creed.
Jorrela sat down on the couch across from the galaxy map, and frowned up at her parents. “Will the Child be safe with them?” As Cal had implied earlier to Merrin, Jorrela was learning how to use the Force–the ways of the Jedi and the Nightsisters. She had felt the Child’s call from the Seeing Stone.
“Yes,” Cal said with a smile. “If there’s one thing I can be sure of, that the Force has shown me as a father and a Jedi, it’s that the Mandalorian is willing to give up all that he learned before to take care of the Child he sees as his son. Which is likely the only reason the Child left Luke Skywalker to return to him. He feels it, too.”
Jorrela nodded, and smiled warmly when her mother sat next to her. The younger Dathomirian woman laid her head on her mother's shoulder, soft against the red cloth of Merrin's tunic.
Merrin chuckled and slid an arm around her, speaking to her in Dathomirian, and causing Jorrela to laugh a little, and hug Merrin tightly.
“Hey, none of that,” Cal said with a grin before moving up front to consult with Greez and Cere. Something was drawing him to Mandalore. He wondered if Jorrela and Cere were feeling it, too.
Their part in this was far from done.
“Loss is part of life.”
Ahsoka Tano sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose as she watched the hooded man near her turn his back to her, trailing deeper down a mountain trail of Boz Pity. The Togruta followed him, pausing when she saw the little house built in the middle of the thicket of brush and mountain flora.
“That’s bantha fodder and you know it,” Ahsoka replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “Everything happening in the galaxy regarding the Force, and you’re hiding here. I need to find Ezra–and you can help.”
“I’m not the only one with that ability who can help you find him,” the hooded man replied. “And you know that .”
He wasn’t wrong. She knew of one other Jedi–at least, rumor of a Jedi with the ability she was looking to utilize. But he was even harder to find–cunning, and rumor was, traveling with a Nightsister who could mask his Force signature with her magic.
“Vos,” Ahsoka murmured as she followed him into his small home. “That man is just a rumor. None of us who are left have met him. Even if I could find him, there’s no guarantee he would lend me his psychometry, either.”
The hood was pushed back, off of his head, revealing long, braided dreadlocks reaching all the way down his back, almost to his bottom. Then, he removed the robe entirely and hung it up, before starting a fire and hanging a cast iron kettle over it to allow the water within to boil.
Quinlan Vos, then, sat down and glared daggers up at Ahsoka. “I’m out of this game, Tano.There’s a reason I’m hiding out on an uninhabited graveyard planet.”
“Vos,” Ahsoka said again, leaning against a hand-crafted table, crossing her ankles, her brow furrowing with understanding. “There’s also a reason you came back to the last place you took a stand with Clone troopers...” Even if, rumor was, he couldn't stand the Clone Commander he had fought along side during those battles. She wondered how much of that had to do with the Commander and how much it had to do with his shredded heart.
Vos snorted, turning his head to stare out of the window at the crags and greenery that kept his solitary home well hidden, and Ahsoka noticed how much gray had made its way into his intricately matted locks.
She sighed, and crossed her arms over her chest, her two sleek sabers swinging on her hip. “Vos, I know you feel like you’ve lost everything. Like the Force has let you down. Like it took Aayla–who was my friend too, by the way. Like it took Obi-Wan–Desh, Ventress–”
“ No ,” Vos snapped, suddenly, and the glare he served her with was one of darkness, rage, and a deep-running well of pain, “ I took Desh and Asajj. I did . I killed Desh with my own hands, and it was my actions that got Asajj–”
The pain turned to tears, the rage palpable in the Force. His connection to it was still so strong despite hiding himself away.
“Ventress sacrificed everything–because she loved you,” Ahsoka whispered. “Do you think she’d want you to be sitting in the middle of nowhere, wallowing?”
There was a heavy silence between them. Vos didn’t look at her. She was a reminder–in her way, she had been a sort of friend to Asajj before her death. At least, that was what she’d told Vos years ago when she’d first tracked him down. Asajj, herself, would never admit to caring about anyone–except maybe him. But he was inclined to believe Ahsoka, regardless.
So looking at her was just a reminder of what he had lost. She was Aayla’s friend. She was Asajj’s friend. And she was alive .
“Go away,” Vos mumbled.
“You know,” Ahsoka said, and the sharpness in her voice finally caused Vos to look up at her, “you’re not the only one who lost everything . The Temple was my home. Plo Koon was like my father–and Anakin Skywalker? Well–we all know what happened to him.”
She was glaring now, but her tone was even–like a mother scolding a child. “We don’t get to pick and choose in this life. But what we do get to decide is how we handle what we are given. I won’t call myself Jedi any longer–but–”
She touched her lightsabers and closed her eyes. “I still carry these. I still let Morai watch over me. I still use the Force for good. This is a new galaxy, Vos. It’s not dictated by the hard and fast rules of our long-dead Order anymore and–”
“What?” Vos snapped. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Tano. It doesn’t . The only benefit I would have reaped from a galaxy where Jedi are not held to some ancient, stringent rules would’ve been a galaxy with Asajj still alive . Where I could love her openly. Or where I could treat Aayla like the daughter I always felt as if she was. But Aayla and Asajj are gone . Alright? They;re gone. I don’t owe this galaxy anything else. I said I’m done .”
Ahsoka looked down at her boots. She saw Ezra’s face behind her eyes. She saw Kanan’s. “...you’re right.” Her eyes scanned the small house. He was punishing himself for the losses he felt he should’ve prevented. Aayla gunned down by her own Clones.Ventress killed because he couldn’t control his urges toward the darkness. Living alone, in the middle of nowhere, away from, perhaps, anyone else he thought his presence might destroy. But–
”Loss is a part of life. Do you know who Ezra Bridger lost? Kanan Jarrus–or maybe you’d know him better by the name Caleb Dume. Do you know who else lost Kanan? Hera Syndulla and her son, Jacen. And do you know who Kanan lost? Depa Bilaba.”
She stood back up straight, feet flat on the dirt floor, and turned. “Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa lost Padme Amidala, and Anakin Skywalker. I lost Anakin, too–I also lost Obi-wan, Ezra, Kanan, even Ventress.” She glanced back at him again. “...and so many more. They were all my friends. I was connected to each of them at one point or another in my life. We go on. ”
She reached the door, and placed a hand on the knob, placing her gaze back on her hand, on the door, on the small metal handle. “Because if we don’t, we perpetuate the loss we feel so deeply. Do you want to pass on this pain you feel to someone else?”
No answer behind her.
“Think about it,” Ahsoka said, finally. “I will search for this mystery Jedi from Bracca–with the information we have on Thrawn’s whereabouts, I need someone with psychometry to paint a trail for me and Sabine to follow…but think about what I said. If I come up empty-handed on the one they call Cal Kestis–I’ll be back.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet,” Vos replied as his kettle began to whistle. “And you won’t be welcome.”
“Maybe not,” Ahsoka said as she opened the door and stood in the doorway, the light from the abandoned planet now painting an illustrative silhouette from her striking lekku and montrals, “but unlike you, I refuse to give up on the people who are still left to fight for.”
And with that, she walked out, and back down the winding mountain trail, toward her ship.