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Korkie didn’t want to give up on his Aunt Bo. Really neither he or Satine did. But when Pre Vizsla showed up with his Death Watch, Satine refused to even talk about Bo. Whenever Korkie did, she would change the subject.
It was as if it was too painful for her.
“I need to arrange for you to leave Mandalore,” Satine said as they sat in the Palace together. Korkie knew that Auntie Satine believed that this was it. That the people would want Vizsla now, but Korkie didn’t want to believe it.
He wasn’t convinced that Death Watch hadn’t aligned with the Sith. It was hard to imagine Bo doing that, but he hadn’t seen her since she had been younger than he was now. He doubted that she had that much control anyway.
Really Vizsla probably promoted her to make Auntie Satine look bad and to hurt her, because Satine would never hate Bo no matter what happened. No matter what Vizsla made Bo do. And no matter what Vizsla might do to Bo.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Korkie said.
Auntie Satine was the closest he had to a mother. Sometimes he wondered if really she was his mother. His had died when he was a young child, but she would very rarely be spoken about. His father was mentioned even less.
He wanted to ask her about it more but there was now a right time and now wasn’t at all. Right now, he had to convince his aunt not to make him leave.
Satine went over to him and pulled him into a hug. Maybe now that he was a teenager, he should be embarrassed when his family hugged him, but he wasn’t. He still liked it.
Auntie Satine pulled away and looked into his eyes. “Korkie, you’re only going to be leaving for awhile.”
“I want to help you,” Korkie said. He needed to help her, especially now. She needed to have one ally still.
A lot of people who she thought were her allies had abandoned and betrayed her. Such as Vizsla who now had Bo even. Vizsla was the worst but he wasn’t the only one either.
“You are helping me by leaving,” Satine said with a sigh. “If you’re here… I’ll be worried. I won’t be able to stop worrying about you.”
“But I’m not a child anymore and—”
“You sound like Bo-Katan,” Satine said, her voice breaking. She even wiped at her eyes. Korkie knew how many tears she had shed when Bo had gone missing. Really it was probably even harder for Satine this time of year when Life Day was getting so close. That had always been an important holiday. The three of them used to have great celebrations. Korkie missed it.
But it wasn’t fair for her to say he sounded like Bo. Bo had been a lot younger when she had started saying that. She had always complained about how Satine treated her like a child. He wondered if that had helped Vizsla trick Bo into trusting him.
“I really just want to help you,” Korkie said.
Satine sighed. “Please Korkie. Please just do this for me. I don’t want to lose you too. I want to know you’re safe.”
Korkie paused but then he nodded.
But he wasn’t actually going to leave Mandalore. No, he couldn’t.
**
So when he was about to be sent away, he escaped from the protectors who had been taking him to the ship. He felt a little bit bad when he did it, but it was for the best. Satine might not think it was, but that didn’t change it. And he was going to help her. He didn’t know how but he would find a way.
And he couldn’t do that if he wasn’t on Mandalore.
He wasn’t about to go back to the Palace. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to. Satine was probably long gone from it now and maybe… he didn’t want to think that she would have been arrested, but it was possible.
Because he knew that they might lose the Palace, he had stored the things he would need somewhere else. It was better this way because then Satine wouldn’t find them also. She wouldn’t approve of what he had.
And finding them might have led to her comparing him to Bo-Katan again.
Really, he should have hidden the items even better, but he instead placed them in his grandparents’ old house. Technically it still belonged to Satine… and to Bo-Katan, not that she had showed up there for years. She had gone missing even before Aunt Satine had found out that Pre Vizsla was the leader of Death Watch.
Once she had found out, everything had made more sense about Bo’s disappearance.
Aunt Satine didn’t go to that house much either. He suspected that it held too many memories for her. It held memories for Korkie too, but it was still a great place to put things.
And just so that they were more hidden from Satine, he would put them always in Bo’s old room. That way even if his weapons were found, he could say that they had belonged to Bo-Katan. Yes, Bo had been young when she left but she was very traditionally Mandalorian in many ways, even when she had still technically been a New Mandalorian. She loved weapons.
Korkie did too but, Auntie Satine didn’t know that.
When Korkie got into Bo’s room, it looked like it always did. Like a holoimage of the past. Since Bo had gone missing, Aunt Satine hadn’t changed this room at all. It looked like Bo could have just gone to the Academy and would be back any minute. There were even some snacks on her desk, which had been opened but had been tied shut. Her bed wasn’t even made. There were holoimages of her and her former friends together trapped in a time that no longer existed. A time when Bo-Katan had been a New Mandalorian like Korkie and Satine.
A time when Bo had been a more normal girl, and not Pre Vizsla’s prodigy.
And weapon.
He always found the room eerie, but he never touched or changed anything because that wasn’t what Satine would have wanted. He knew that she wanted to remember how Bo had been before she had joined Death Watch.
Before Vizsla had gotten her.
It used to make Korkie sad to go in here, but he had gotten used to it.
But today things didn’t go how they normally did. Because he heard the door downstairs open and people talking. Korkie froze, but then dropped the blaster that he had hid in Bo-Katan’s dresser. He mouthed a swear word and grabbed it. He wasn’t going to go down without a fight. His aunt might be a pacifist, but Korkie had no issues with fighting. Not if he had to.
For a few minutes there was silence. The talking had stopped. Maybe they had left. But then the door flung open. Korkie instantly reacted.
But even that wasn’t fast enough.
She grabbed his blaster and tossed it to the side.
Only then did he realize who it was.
“Bo-Katan,” Korkie said.
Even though Bo-Katan wasn’t the preteen that she had been when he last saw her about five or so years ago, she was still all Bo-Katan. Her hair was just as red as before and her eyes had the same piercing green that his grandmother’s had. She looked somehow older than her years, but that was probably because being in a group like Death Watch would do that for you.
She wearing all her beskar'gam, except for her helmet. She groaned and rolled her eyes. That actually did remind him of when she had been a preteen. She looked like that younger Bo-Katan when she did that.
“I knew it would be you here,” Bo said. “I tried to tell myself that you wouldn’t be stupid enough to show up here of all places, but I knew it was you when I heard someone.”
Korkie stared at her, trying to decide what to say. He had wanted to speak to Bo for years now. He wanted to know why she would stay with Death Watch. Did she have a choice? He imagined that she didn’t, but he had never been able to ask her.
But right now…
“Are you going to turn me into your cult?” Korkie asked, narrowing his eyes at her.
Bo laughed. “It’s not a cult. You make it sound like I’m in the Watch.”
“Isn’t the Watch connected to Death Watch?” Korkie asked, but he already knew that they were. He was sure that Bo knew just as well.
Bo rolled her eyes.
“You didn’t say if you were going to turn me in? You know we’re family,” Korkie said. Part of him wanted to go for his blaster, but he doubted he would have a chance against Bo. She had been a better shot than him even before she had joined Death Watch.
“Aliit ori'shya tal'din,” Bo said, which meant family is more than blood. Maybe she didn’t think of him as family. Or at least didn’t want to. But she shook her head. “But no, I’m not going to turn you in. I should, but I’m not going to.”
Korkie blinked. He had wanted to believe that she wouldn’t turn him in, but he had no way of knowing. He had been worried that Death Watch really would have changed her. But if she wouldn’t turn him in… he wanted to believe that there was more to her still. That the old Bo was still there.
No, he knew that she was.
“You’re lucky, Korkie,” Bo said. “You have no idea how lucky you are. If I had come here with Saxon or Kast and their people instead of the Nite Owls, then I would have to turn you in. Saxon wanted to come with me, but Pre must have been feeling… generous and let me come with just the Nite Owls.”
Korkie ignored that. He wanted to go over and hug his aunt, but he knew that she probably wouldn’t like that.
“I missed you, Bo,” Korkie said.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Korkie…”
“I did,” Korkie said. “And you… you know you don’t have to stay in Death Watch.”
There was a silence and then Bo narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“It’s never too late for you to leave. Auntie Satine and I miss you. We love you and Life Day is nearing and it could be like old days and—”
“Stars, Korkie,” Bo said, snapping. “I truly doubt that Satine still loves me, and it’s irrelevant anyway. And why are you mentioning Life Day?”
“She does love you and—”
“It doesn’t matter!” Bo said and she actually grabbed him. Then her eyes widened and she let go of him. “Pre isn’t just the leader of Death Watch and the wielder of the Darksaber anymore. He’s Mand’alor, not that…” She shook her head. He wished that she would have finished what she had been saying. “You’re a fool for coming here. You shouldn’t even be on this planet anymore.”
“Auntie Satine tried to send me off world,” Korkie said.
“Of course, she did. Because Satine loves you so much,” Bo said. Was that jealously? He always suspected that she was jealous of how close he and Satine had been when they were younger, but he didn’t think she still would be. “And because Satine might be a traitor, but she’s not stupid. At least not that stupid.”
“She—” Korkie tried to say.
“I don’t care,” Bo said, clutching her head for a couple seconds. “You need to get the kriff out of this house and leave the planet like Satine wanted.”
“I’m not going to leave—”
“You want to make things worse?” Bo asked.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to get caught, and I wouldn’t tell that you let me go anyway,” Korkie said.
Bo’s eyes widened, and she laughed but there was no humor in it. “I wasn’t talking about me. I meant you could make things worse for Satine. But Pre would get it out of you, and you’re right that you wouldn’t be the only one he would make suffer for this.”
So that must mean that he did mistreat her. He had always suspected that, and he knew that Satine did too, even if she tried to hide it. Really, he thought Satine might know more about what was happening to Bo in the last couple year than she revealed.
But she always tried to protect Korkie.
“You need to get off this planet. You need to leave,” Bo said, gripping him again. She was strong. She always had been but now she was so much stronger than before. He looked at her and noticed she had a faint scar on her face that she hadn’t before. He wondered how she got that since in battles she would have always had her helmet on.
Maybe someone in Death Watch had given it to her.
“I don’t want—”
“I don’t care what you want,” Bo said. “Get off this planet. Do it for Satine. Don’t be a fool.”
He paused but then nodded, just because he knew that was what Bo wanted to see. No, it was what she needed to see.
“Bo, I know that you still care—” But he didn’t get to finish.
Bo sat down on her bed and shook her head. “Just go, Korkie. Go through the backdoor. My Nite Owls aren’t over there. Go.”
He paused and took one last look at her. After that he left. Just like she said, her Nite Owls weren’t there. Soon he was back on the streets on Sundari where he should be able to blend in. But despite that unhappy reunion with Bo, he had no plans to do exactly what she said.
He wasn’t leaving Mandalore.
He couldn’t not when Auntie Satine was still in danger. He still had hope for Bo also.