Chapter Text
Ch 1: Epaar
The Duchess of Mandalore walked with a purpose through the palace corridors, the clicking of her heels echoing off the transparisteel walls in her wake. The day had been a long one, and albeit not as productive as she’d liked. Talks had stalled with the governor of Concordia over taxation compromises, which, in turn, had shifted her entire agenda for the remainder of the afternoon. She strongly disliked leaving her day on such an unfinished note, but none of that was of any importance now.
She rounded the corner into the ostentatiously large dining hall. The lights were off, but specs of waning sun dotted a path along the large bank of windows lining the sidewall.
With the sunset to guide her, she made her way across the room and paused in front of the back wall. To an untrained eye, it looked like nothing more than another carved panel in the stonework. She reached her hand out and ran her fingers over a ridge, pressing lightly, as a nondescript door slid open. Satine soon found herself in an industrial-sized kitchen, fit to feed an army, or at the very least, an entire Clan. In the middle of the room stood a man at least twice her age, dressed in a dark gray smock, his tall frame hunched casually over a large stockpot.
“That smells divine, Kal’man,” she remarked with a deep inhale.
“I had to get a bit creative with the ingredients…or rather, lack thereof, Your Grace. But it’s a take on an old Kalevalan favorite of your father’s.”
The man dipped his head at her as he stirred the pot’s contents. The war had all but destroyed Mandalore’s ability to provide food security for themselves, forcing the re-building world to rely heavily on imported ingredients—an on-going issue Satine had been working tirelessly to change.
“I’m sure it will be wonderful,” she smiled, nodding her head back respectfully as she crossed through the kitchen to the large opening on the opposite side of the room.
Kal’man’s head followed her path as he smiled knowingly.
“He’s already waiting for you, Your Grace.”
Satine felt her heart thump deeper in her chest as her smile brightened even wider. This was, and would always be, the highlight of the Duchess’s day.
She stepped through the archway into a much smaller, almost secret space. Surrounded by transparisteel walls on three sides that stretched high into a vaulted ceiling, this room provided a much more intimate dinner setting compared to the grand hall, free from distractions and where discretion was guaranteed. A round table with enough space for only four or so individuals was situated in the center of the room under a large, polished metal light fixture.
One lone occupant sat at its far side, opposite the doorway, in front of one of the two place-settings. His head was focused downward on a datapad which sat atop the table. She opted to stand quietly at the entrance to the room, just for a moment, taking in the scene of him—the auburn strands of his hair hanging messily, obscuring the brightness of his gray-blue eyes that she oh so adored—as he was lost, nose down in whatever had grabbed his attention.
By the stars did she love him, more than anything in the universe.
And just like that, he whipped his head up as if he’d heard her most intimate thoughts, meeting her awestruck smile with his own toothy grin.
“Auntie! You’re here! Finally! I’m staaaaaaarving,” the boy whined while feigning to collapse in his chair.
With a chuckle, she crossed the room to claim the seat next to his, stopping to place a gentle kiss atop his head before ruffling his hair.
“I’m sorry, cyar’ika,” she said with an air of sincerity as she settled in to her chair. “But the work involved to turn the back garden into a fathier sanctuary takes alot of time.”
The boy’s eyebrows shot upward, his enthusiasm uncontainable. “Really, Auntie?!”
She pursed her lips playfully. Ever since he’d started learning about different animal species across the galaxy in his biological sciences class, he’d been begging her for what amounted to a menagerie of pets. What had first started with a lothcat (no, he was allergic to their dander), soon became a vulptix (definitely no as it was an endangered species), and most recently, he’d settled on the idea of roaming across the galaxy (or the back garden as he’d tried to offer as a compromise) on the back of a fathier (certainly not—did he even know how much they ate?!).
Satine narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to one side.
“Did you remember to feed Milee today?” she asked, already knowing the answer to prove her point that he was not yet ready for this type of responsibility.
The boy’s eyes widened from excitement to horror as he realized he had, in fact, not “fed” his starter pet, a small, obsolete MSE-series droid turned companion named M1-L33. Because of her age and the scarcity of replacement parts, Milee would often run out of power mid-task, requiring the need to be recharged or “fed” on a daily basis.
“Oh no!” he shrieked.
Satine laughed as she patted his hand. “I found her in the hall this morning. She’s been safely returned to her dock in your bedroom.”
The boy sighed, his shoulders slumping as he came to the realization that he would not be getting a living creature to care for in the near future.
The familiar aroma from earlier filled the room as Kal’man entered with a large serving bowl. He set it down in the middle of the table, and as he reached for the serving utensil, Satine stilled his arm.
“You’ve done plenty already,” she said kindly. “I can manage the rest from here, thank you.”
With a small nod, he handed her the ladle before leaving them be.
Satine grabbed the empty bowl that sat in front of the boy and scooped a hefty serving.
“Other than starving to death, how was the rest of your day, cyar’ika? What did you learn at school?” she asked, placing the steaming bowl in front of him. “Be careful, it’s hot.”
The boy grabbed his spoon as he blew the steam away from his dinner.
“In my Galactic Languages class we were talking about etimog…etimom…”
He stuttered and dropped his spoon in frustration.
Satine filled her own bowl and stopped to tend to the boy’s irritation.
“Etymology?” she probed curiously to bring him back on track.
The boys eyes lit up. “Yes! Eteemollygee!”
Satine decided they would work on pronunciation later.
“Well, what did you learn?” she asked before taking a bite of her dinner. She closed her eyes with a satisfying hum—Kal’man really outdid himself with the limitations he’d had to work with.
The boy’s enthusiastic recounting of what he’d learned jarred her attention back to their conversation.
“We talked about names and what they mean and how they hold power! Did you know that my name means ‘heart contract’?”
Satine paused just slightly before taking another bite. “Well, that’s a very literal interpretation, but not—”
But the boy was unfazed by her subtle attempt at a clarification, his excitement pushing him to speak over her.
“What a weird meaning!” he exclaimed as he continued to rattle off what he’d discovered. “Korkar’tan… he stated slow and drawn out, rolling the R’s and enunciating every syllable. “Do you think my mother knew what it meant when she named me?”
Satine felt an all too familiar pang in her heart as she smiled wistfully at the boy.
“I’m certain she likely did…”
“What’s a ‘heart contract’ anyways?” he asked, shoveling another spoonful of stew into his mouth.
She sighed, giving up any fight to correct him, so instead, she indulged her own curiosities.
“What do you think it means, cyar’ika?”
Korkie crinkled his nose, quietly searching for an answer as bits of his dinner dribbled down his chin.
“It’s a pre-duel blood pact between two warriors that says whoever wins rips out the other’s heart!”
Satine choked on her stew, coughing to clear her throat. “Korkie Kryze have you been sneaking onto the Holonet again after bedtime?”
She stared him down, her gaze hard as he shrank in his seat.
“Ummmm…no Auntie?” he squeaked as he squinted his eyes, the guilt written all over his face.
She leaned over to him, napkin in hand, to wipe runaway stew from the corner of his mouth.
“I swear…you keep up staying up past your bedtime, and I’m going to have no choice but to let the jetiise take you away to live locked away in their tower forever with all the other disobedient Mandalorian children.
The threat came out so casually that she hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud. It was an ancient folktale, a holdover from the Old Ways, that Mandalorian parents used on naughty children to gain their compliance. And it was one that Satine’s own mother had uttered a time or two in her youth. But as Korkie’s eyes grew wide with excitement, it was then Satine realized that the boy who dreamt in a plane beyond the Ka’ra would not respond to such a threat with the sense of horror and disgust she’d intended.
“Really?!” he asked, bouncing upward with such a force that he nearly knocked over his supper.
“No,” Satine sighed sharply as she pursed her lips. “But do not make me reconsider my decision to even allow you access to the Holonet.”
Korkie shrugged back down and started picking at his food again. “Sorry, Auntie…”
The boy had been born with an adventurous spirit and an unparalleled imagination, something Satine preferred to encourage instead of stifle. And while it was never her intention to smother him, she was concerned about his predilection for leaping head first into any situation, a character trait she was certain he’d not inherited from his mother.
After a comfortable silence she asked, “Tell me what else you learned?”
These were the moments she would never tire of—the uninterrupted time she was afforded to spend with him, reveling in his natural zest for learning about the world around him.
Korkie slurped another ungainly mouthful as he spoke.
“Well…after we did our primary names, we had to assign meaning to our secondary names.”
“Swallow first, then speak,” she reminded him gently. But curiosity had already piqued her ears. This would be…interesting.
“And what did you decide your secondary name meant?” she asked with an interested nod.
He set his spoon down and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms like she had asked him to tell her the secrets of the universe. And maybe, she thought to herself, she had.
“Well…I couldn’t come up with anything,” Korkie conceded. “Do you know?”
Her heart leapt, just slightly at his question. That, in fact, was a complicated answer.
With a soft smile she met his gaze and offered quietly, “It’s…a family name…”
Korkie’s brow furrowed. “But no one else in our Clan shares my name.”
No, they did not, as he’d reminded her. Perhaps there should have been? But it was no matter for that time had long since passed.
“It’s not Mando’a…” she hesitated, wiping the corners of her mouth before laying her napkin down beside her bowl. She cleared her throat as she continued. “It’s from your father’s side.”
A half-truth, technically. For the name was, in fact, inspired by their ancestral tongue but was a name only one person called him as such.
The boy’s eyes grew wide as he leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. They would work on refining his table manners another evening, she decided.
“Buir wasn’t Mando’ade?”
But of course Korkie had assumed both of his parents were Mandalorian, because she’d never led him to believe anything different. Perhaps it was time she had this particular conversation with him finally…
“No, cyar’ika. He…was not.”
Korkie was still for a long moment, a bewildered look upon his face as if he’d been sucker punched. She hadn’t considered that he’d possibly be upset at the revelation that his father was an outsider. This had been a mistake, she realized.
But then the boy’s body loosened as excitement overtook his face.
“Well where was he from! What language did they speak on his homeworld? Can we go visit? Maybe he’s got more family there!”
Korkie’s head bobbed back and forth as each new idea popped into his mind at a rapid pace. His enthusiasm was boundless when it came to the subject of his parents. Satine would have found it exhausting had it not been for the constant prickle of guilt that leached from her heart every time he sweetly looked up at her with his brilliant blue eyes.
“Slow down cyar’ika…you’re getting way ahead of yourself.”
She paused, her eyes wandering over the boy’s face. Every curve and point and crevice had long since been committed to memory, well before he’d been born. It was just…she just hadn’t realized she was memorizing his face at the time.
“Your buir…he came from the Core,” she began hesitantly and then as she let herself relax, she laughed. “Your mother used to speak in Mando’a around him because it would rile him up. He was convinced she was speaking poorly of him right to his face…which, she certainly was knowing her temperament. But he did start to pick up some of our language here and there the more time he spent with her. She eventually began to teach it to him.”
Satine was guarded in the information she was willing to share with the boy. It was for his own protection, she reminded herself. If anything were to happen to him because of her carelessness, she was certain she’d never be able to live with herself.
It was ironic, really, for carelessness was the mitigating factor which had precluded his introduction to the world.
Carelessness, yes, but not regret. He was the piece of her heart she’d not even realized had been missing until he’d unexpectedly entered her life. And now she couldn’t fathom her life without him.
Korkie bounced intently back and forth, eating up every piece of information she offered instead of his actual dinner, begging for more.
“Can we go visit his family?”
An image of an older man with a kind smile and long graying hair flashed across Satine’s mind.
“I’m…sorry, cyar’ika,” she said softly as a sad smile tugged at the edge of her lips. “I’m afraid the only family of your buir’s that I knew of passed away several years ago.”
Another half-truth. The man’s biological parents might have very well been alive, but the person who’d raised him into the stubborn and frustratingly apt and smart and brave and clever and charismatic and…
She breathed in sharply and shook away her spiraling thoughts. Dwelling on such things served no purpose but to weigh down her already heavy heart.
No, the man who’d raised Korkie’s father had passed away approximately two years prior.
“Oh,” the boy responded, deflating back into his chair. He cast his eyes downward into his bowl.
Satine did not need the Force to feel the disappointment reeling off the boy. She kept her gaze on him, as her heart began to beat so hard she was afraid it would burst from her chest. She would do anything for him—give her life for his a thousand times over—if it meant he could have a safe, happy, and comfortable existence free from the same horrors she’d faced as a child.
Another comfortable silence blanketed the room as Satine struggled with what to say next.
“So no one knows what a ‘Ben’ is then…” Korkie’s disappointment cut through the quietude.
As Satine focused on the boy next to her, her mind started to wander…