Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sometimes Feemor thinks that he really should have become a Temple Guard instead, maybe even a crèchemaster like so many of his clan. Force, he could have even gone back to his birth planet, to tend to the forests like his parents before him.

He would revisit the thought now, had he the time. Being a wandering Jedi isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“Kriffing sith hells !” Feemor gasps as he narrowly avoids losing an eye to a pointy tree branch.

He doesn’t have time to stop or slow down. 

The Force had led him to this planet well over a tenday ago. More precisely, it had shown him a few paths he could follow, the faintest of tugs to where he could be needed, and this is the one that he chose with the roll of a die. 

This whole time, he had done nothing but wander the planet. The Force did offer him a vague direction of where he would need to be, but that same sense was followed by a strong feeling of it not being time for him to go there quite yet. So it had caught Feemor unaware when, as he was crouching by a tree and examining a very colorful fungus that he was extremely tempted to try for dinner since the Force didn’t exactly scream about it being a bad idea, it was like someone had put a hand into his chest and yanked.

For all that the Force had been vague in directing him so far, it’s now practically pulling him by the hand like an overexcited child.

A strong, agitated, and very insistent child.

Tree bark scrapes grooves into the palms of Feemor’s gloves when he uses his grip on a trunk to swing himself in a new direction while conserving the breakneck momentum of his force-assisted sprint.

He leaps over the large trenches that cut through the landscape, bounces off grasping roots and thick trunks. Around him, the landscape bleeds from darkness to light to dark again as older trees give way to younger canopies then back again.

His chest feels tight, his breath comes in harsh pants barely timed to the beat of his feet against the dry dirt. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since the foreboding sense of ‘soon’ that has been bothering him for the past tenday has shattered into a ringing ‘right the kriff now’ .

Whatever the Force is leading him to, Feemor has a hunch it won’t be anything good. He suspects that the rumble that had sent him running to the Force’s call wasn’t distant thunder after all.

Over the pounding of his heart and his feet, he hears blasterfire.

The air is thick with smoke when Feemor crashes out of the treeline. The sharp tang of spilled starship fuel nearly makes his eyes water and the acrid aftertaste of tibana gas that follows an intense firefight almost forces him to cough. Only long years of practice have him wrestling his body forcefully - hah, Force-fully! Nevermind. Focus, Feemor - away from such reactions.

He has to keep moving.

To Feemor’s not quite human-standard senses, the smell of spilled blood and laserbolt-charred meat calls above the stench.

“Just for once,” he grinds out, addressing the energy between all things, “Can’t you lead me to something or someone nice?”

Complaining any more wastes too much breath and Feemor doesn’t dare risk slowing his stride. 

In his mind's eye, faint lights wink out in the rolling smog of battle - the wounded and those still fighting both dying in the mud, choking on blood and blaster ash and the smoke from burning ships.

It pains Feemor to turn away. His mandate as a jedi calls for him to preserve life when able, but the Force tugs him away, insistent.

He skirts the edge of the forest. There, ahead, deeper in the trees. Blood, gas, and the roiling sense of fear-fury-fight , oddly muted where it isn’t blazing bright. It nags at something in his brain, a half-forgotten memory from his travels. He almost turns towards this separate fight but no, not here, not now. 

The distant glow of fire, screams, and the stink of charred flesh carried on the wind.

The part of his brain that will never grow out of its past as the key persistence hunter of his birth planet makes his teeth itch and mouth water. He takes the urge to reach for the source of pain-desperation-pleasedon’tletmedie , to hunt, and turns it towards the tug of the Light instead.

There. Hurry, hurry, almost there.

This time the Force does tug him into the battlefield and away from the cover of the forest. The plume of smoke and dust carried by the wind shields him from being noticed, but so too does it shield the battlefield from him.

He navigates blind, trusting his steps to the Force as it calls and calls.

Over there, over here.

Anger, fear, determination.

Betrayal.

Feemor fights the urge to spit the taste of it from his mouth as shouts echo not far from him at all.

“Montross!”

Another gale kicks up. It tears at Feemor’s tabards and makes the belts and buckles of his spacer’s coat clatter. At last - at least - the image of the field before him clears.

A tank upon a ridge and a plain beneath littered with corpses, both those of Korda VI natives and-

Oh, the oddly muted presences make much more sense now. Mandalorians.

Only one remains alive, struggling desperately to stand. Pain and anguish leech into the air even through the beskar as the man fights against his own body not to greet his death kneeling and fails. Once again, his mangled knee gives out, sending him crashing down.

The kordans don’t care enough to watch. They turn away as the turrets mounted on the tank begin to glow.

The Force screams.

*****   *****

Jaster shuts his eyes against the turret bolts.

He has failed. As alor, mand’alor, and ge’buir. He has failed his troops, his people, and Jango. This time, he knows in his heart that the coward Vizsla has won.

His death never comes.

The realization hits home with enough force to make his eyes open and the sight that greets him is not one that he would have ever expected.

A cloud of blue bolts outlines the silhouette of a man that stands before him like a living shield. Raised arms shake as they brace against the air. This close, Jaster can hear the deafening crackle of concentrated energy, can swear that he can even pick up the creak of protesting leatheris of his savior’s coat as he rolls his shoulders against the onslaught.

Then, the man shoves.

The bolts go flying back towards Vizsla’s tank.

Jaster can hear the impact but he doesn’t get to see it as the man whirls around to face him, sweeping a hand out towards Jaster and-

Jaster finds himself flying through the air. His helmet cracks against rock, pain blinding him for a moment before the impact jars the rest of his body and the agony from his mangled knee comes so sharp that he can’t even manage a scream.

K’atini. Endure. It's only pain.

By sheer force of will, he forces his head up. Mud, blood, and smoke greet him. He’s in one of the trenches. Blaster bolts dig into the ground high upon the bank before him. The sound of high-energy bolts impacting wet clay, the gurgling sizzle and pop of flashboiled moisture, is not unlike that of them burrowing their way through deep tissue.

Each bolt of light is like a flashbang to his pounding head. The HUD of his buy’ce glitches, so he rips it off. The way it jars his head leaves his surroundings spinning, his eyes watering, and his stomach ready to expel the rations he had for firstmeal.

He forces a breath in, even when he thinks that exhaling will have him choking back bile.

Prioritize, or’dinii. K’atini.

First, assess injuries. The fact that everything hurts complicates things a little bit. His ribs are sore from the rough crash-landing of his dropship, made all the worse by a lucky hit from one of the kordans who decided that brute force trumped blasterfire. At least of the four glancing blaster shots that were lucky to hit where his armor did not cover, three are just burns. The fourth already has red staining his kute, though whatever gouge it tore into the flesh of his arm must be mostly cauterized, since the stain isn’t that large despite all the movement jostling the injury.

Just trying to move his left foot has Jaster screaming behind his teeth. He yanks on his thigh to bend the leg when his muscles refuse to listen, then has to take a moment to breathe.

Behind him, blasterfire and shouts, the roar of jetpacks and flamethrowers, and a strange hiss-thrumm that he cannot place.

It’s not drawing any closer and that’s the only comfort Jaster has. He can’t fight and he can’t run. He can’t even stand, not yet.

He blindly upends one of the belt pouches, digs through the mess of damp shards to find the stim that hasn’t shattered. Jaster doesn’t even bother pulling on the fabric that the tank’s laserfire must have baked into his skin, just stabs it into his leg through the cloth.

The hit comes quickly, a sudden jolt of energy that makes the pain feel further away and sharpens his vision. Light stabs into his eyes, but his injuries feel like they’re vaguely happening to someone two steps to the left. Mij will kill him for using a stim when he clearly has a serious head injury, but at least Jaster will be alive to see it.

If he can get himself out of here.

He can get himself out of here.

Probably.

The trench wall he’s leaning against is slippery when Jaster tries to find enough purchase to push himself up. The muck sloughs away under his hands until at last he finds what might be either a root or a stone, he can’t quite tell, but it feels solid enough for him to grip.

Okay, on the count of three. One, two, th-

A figure lands in front of him with enough momentum to send a wave of mud splashing every which way.

Jaster would have scrambled back, had he anywhere to go. His one good leg slips in the muck and though his hand does reach for his blaster, the holster is empty. Only then does he realize that the figure crouching before him wears no blue armor.

Or any armor, for that matter.

With his vision swimming in and out of focus, it takes Jaster a couple of tries to take a good look at his savior. The man is tall, Jaster can tell even with both of them crouched in the dirt, and he has a stature to match. The sharp V cut of his overcoat, clearly echoing the shape of the orange tabards and tunics beneath, does wonders to highlight the breadth of his shoulders.

A verd, this one, and a handsome one at that. Golden hair hangs just barely long enough to begin curling at the ends. A brief flash of sunlight through the clouds above makes it glow like a halo.

The man is coated in sweat and mud and glancing carbon-burns. Blood stains one of his sleeves and another splatter trails from the corner of his jaw and then up over the bridge of his nose like macabre warpaint. The slowly drying red only makes the blue of his eyes stand out all the better when his pupils flash silver with reflected light.

Jaster had never believed in those stories of mando’ade who saw one another across a room or a battlefield, sometimes even on opposing sides, and knew at once that the other was who they would say the riduurok with. After all, it seems improbable, ill-thought-out, and even foolish to base a whole relationship on a feeling that is probably entirely due to adrenaline.

Jaster’s lucky he never said so out loud, because he’s pretty sure he has just fallen shebs-over-buy’ce in love.

“Oh, you’re like concussed- concussed,” the human incarnation of the ka’ra’s wrath says, amusement clear in his voice. 

A warm hand comes up to Jaster’s cheek and he leans into it without thinking, though the grip only turns his head this way and that to check for injuries. Oddly enough, with each second, his vision swims less despite the movement.

“You’ll live.”

Jaster blinks as the hand leaves. The light hurts a little less. Everything, including collecting coherent thoughts, hurts a little less. The man - kriffing damned hells, that’s a jetii - looks a bit more tired than when he first crouched down before Jaster.

“Who?” Jaster manages.

“Your knight without shining armor,” the jetii replies breezily, “Come on up, we shouldn’t stay out in the open.”

He picks the buy’ce Jaster had left behind in the mud with care, brushing off the specks of dirt that have already begun to dry on the beskar. When it’s handed to him, Jaster takes it and clips it to his belt on automatic, then reaches for the hand extended to him.

He does not squeak when he isn’t as much helped up as simply lifted to his feet.

Jaster knows he’s on the shorter side of average. He's Concord Dawn born and raised, and none of them get all that tall, but he now feels it quite acutely since he finds that his head only comes up a tiny bit above the jetii ’s chin.

At least the height difference makes it easy for him to take the weight off of his injured leg when the jetii helps Jaster toss his arm over his shoulders. Jaster leans heavily into the man and tries to take a step - more of a hop than a step, really - then another, down the trench. Whatever the jetii did, at least he can once again feel his toes and twitch his ankle, but even the accidental attempt to take a step on the injured limb makes him bite down on a scream and a slew of curses.

He breathes through it. The pain ebbs away to a dull ache.

The jetii’s shoulders tense under Jaster’s hand. Jaster turns his head to look at him.

“Easy, now.” The jetii’s encouragement is quiet and strained with the agony Jaster no longer feels. He does not look at Jaster, eyes locked on some distant point, somehow tracking movement through the solid dirt. “It’s a good distance yet to the treeline.”

“I can manage,” Jaster argues. He’s not one of the fools who take pride in their own suffering, it just feels wrong to see someone take on his share.

The jetii already saved his life, Jaster owes him not to bring him future harm.

“I can see that,” the jetii replies, clearly missing the point on purpose. “Watch out for the rocks.”

The uneven ground threatens to send Jaster sprawling and it most certainly would have succeeded if his companion was any less careful, or any less capable of holding up the weight of a ori' ramikad in full kit with startling ease.

Jaster tightens his grip on the jetii’s shoulder, enough that he can feel the shape of a push-knife sewn into the padding there even through his gloves and the leatheris trim of the coat.

“Smart,” he says without quite meaning to.

The jetii hums, eyes snapping up to scan some far corner of the field behind them. “There’s plasma cutter in the other.”

“Smarter,” Jaster repeats.

The jetii’s laugh is barely louder than an exhale, but it’s a nice sound all the same.

“Let’s make sure I don’t need to use them, alright?”

*****   *****

Feemor is somewhat surprised to find himself still alive.

He isn’t, exactly, an exceptional knight. In a (ex-)lineage of masters of some form or another, he has always found himself somewhat lackluster, learning bits and pieces of forms and mastering none.

Luckily, the sheer fear factor of an unexpected lightsaber going for your throat is quite effective all of its own. 

It may also have something to do with the fact that Feemor, in a slightly impulsive and very stupid action he wasn’t even aware he could do, had sent the tank’s own blasts flying back at the gathered troops.

In the Force, all things are possible, especially with adrenaline there to help you forget your limits.

There is still a phantom ache in his arms even now, a physical echo of a much deeper force-exhaustion. He blocks it off as best he can and focuses on gathering the pain that saturates the air and all but drips from his companion, before he siphons it away.

It’s not an advisable thing to do. The healing classes that taught him the trick had horror stories aplenty about how bad of an idea it is to risk straining a wound further when your whole body is screaming at you to stop, but it’s not like there’s much choice. He could carry the man, but Feemor needs at least one arm free to wield his saber.

It’s likely that the survivors of the fight have already called for reinforcements. After all, Feemor had left quite a few of them, even when killing blows may have ended the fight much more easily.

Kindness and compassion is the core strength and weakness of any jedi. It's not kindness and compassion that had Feemor aiming to disable rather than kill, it was simple math.

One killed soldier is just that, one soldier taken out of the fight. An injured soldier takes out two - them, and whoever comes to the rescue.

Jedi fight to disarm and Feemor had taken a rather… etymological approach to that statement.

Feemor had aimed for gaps in the armor when he frantically deflected blasterfire or ducked under swinging fists and blades to slice with his saber. He aimed rocks and debris at helmets when plumes of flame forced him back.

Some of those gut wounds, he knows, will not have missed vital organs as he had intended. Some of those cuts will bleed out - a saber is hot enough to cauterize, but this doesn’t always hold up under pressure.

He had pulled men from the sky when they tried to attack from above and he jumped after them to slice through their jetpacks. Some hit the ground and lived. Some did not.

He had seen one fighter fall, arm gone, and watched as the impact broke the seal of scorched flesh and sent blood gushing out like a popped balloon.

A loud scream in the Force, at one point. Feemor had reached out towards the sound, felt his will wrap around the thing lying in the mud, pulled. Something metal had slapped into his palm and without much thought he had slipped it in the somwhat hidden gaps at the back of his coat, tucking the item behind his obi beneath.

Just in time, as he had to extend that arm again as another metal item came flying at him, though now without his prompting. He had recognized the ridges of a thermal detonator and returned it where it came from.

A rain of shrapnel followed, tailored to punch through what part of the body armor wouldn’t cover. A few dead, more mangled.

Yet the Force, weeping at the death and pain, had still told him he was right.

He had heard calls to regroup and retreat and at the first lull in the fighting, Feemor ran.

Now here he is, bloodied and bruised and soul-sick from the pain that still soaks the mud of the planet, half-supporting half-carrying a man that the Force told him to save for reasons it would never tell him.

He wants to throw up as if he could purge that feeling of correctness from his gut. He was right, it tells him, the man that he carries he was fated to meet.

Feemor tries to discreetly get a better look at him when the distant lights of lifeforms aren't drawing away his attention with each movement or flash of aggression. He doesn't get many opportunities. This stranger has been abandoned by his own, so Feemor is set to treat any and all living beings as enemy combatants unless told otherwise.

Still, he manages to steal a glance or two, when the man isn't watching him in turn and is instead focused on the uneven ground they're trying to traverse.

If not for the mud and blood, the mando could maybe be handsome in a plain sort of way some humans have - a sharp jaw, expressive brows, dark hair. Feemor is more curious about the tales hidden in the details - the at least twice-broken nose, that odd scar where cheekbone meets ear, the keen mind that even the haze of a concussion as well as quite impressive natural shields can't quite hide.

His vocation clearly calls for violence. His armor, for all that beskar resists the touch of the Force, sings with echoes of bloodshed and battle. Wardrums, the focused thrill of a hunt. Yet there's care there too, achingly deep, and dedication, drive. It tastes sweet on Feemor's tongue when he brushes against it in the Force and he nearly sneezes from the strength of it.

The man is surprisingly Light and the odd curl of it that focuses on Feemor serves as a great distraction from the distant pain that chokes the air.

He can't quite tell what it is. The steady mind proved itself to be quite well-wrapped in natural shielding after Feemor had done some rudimentary healing for the concussion. Now anything deeper than an overall assessment of emotion is hard to parse without an intrusion that would be extremely rude at the very least, but as long as the good-natured obedience lasts, Feemor will take it.

It's a reprieve from death and he leans against the man mentally as much as the Mando leans against him physically.

Like this, it's just a little bit easier to pretend to be steady and self-assured when he's feeling anything but. It keeps the light beside him from faltering, the tiniest of feedback loops of mutual comfort in this dark moment.

A little funny, considering the shared history between their people.

Oh stars, he'll have to tell the council about this, won't he?

The forest and the cover it offers can't come close fast enough.

*****   *****

“You are efficient in a fight, for a peacekeeper.”

They have reached the forest at last. Jaster has never felt more thankful for trees. From the way that his companion relaxes minutely the tense line of his shoulders once they walk into the gloom beneath the canopy, Jaster would guess that he’s not the only one glad to be out of the open.

That’s the reason why he dares to speak up. He is not comfortable in the dark without his HUD to help him - his helmet is still clipped to his belt, growing heavier with each step - but the jetii is an oddly comforting presence. Jaster, against all that history should have taught him, trusts the quiet man. They have not spoken much, the jetii focused on scanning the horizon for things Jaster could not see and he was loath to disturb him.

Still, the thought had been nagging at him ever since they came across a death watch helmet - head still inside - lying in the dirt a good distance from where Tor’s ambush took place.

When he had seen it, his first thought was that he was very, very happy that the jetii had targeted the kyr’tsad and not Jaster’s troops. The second was that he almost regretted missing the firefight.

The third was that he really wished to ask the jetii to spar when Mij wouldn’t wring his neck for even considering it. He then promptly had to wrench his thoughts away from that because some of the musings that followed that particular idea probably shouldn’t even be considered in passing when one is pressed up against an empath and, if stories are to be believed, a mind-reader too.

The ache that persists despite whatever jetii osik the man is doing to keep at bay the worst of it serves as a wonderful distraction.

“I did have an advantage.” The jetii replies. He pauses, waves the hand not securely wrapped around Jaster’s waist behind them. The tracks that Jaster’s clumsy movement have left - upset dirt and misplaced leaf litter - disappear when an unnatural wind shifts the mulch and fallen branches. Then, the jetii begins walking them down a slightly clearer path.  "They forgot the one thing that would have helped them."

"Oh?” Jaster tries to keep his tone light even when his leg gets jostled as the jetii helps him over a root reaching from the dirt. “What would that be?"

The jetii glances at him, face perfectly serious.

"A med-evac."

Laughing is a very bad idea with the state of Jaster’s ribs. He does so anyway.

He would swear that, for just a second, he hears a muted snort come from the jetii too.

The man directs him to stop at last. They had agreed somewhere along the walk that Jaster’s wounds could wait until they were somewhere safe enough to treat them. This deep into the woods, where the trees grow large and crooked, Jaster can’t even smell the smoke from the ruined battlefield.

“ Haar’chak !” Jaster can’t hold back when he doesn’t as much lean against a tree as just fall against it. It sends pain flashing across every injured part of his body, which might as well be the entirety of him by this point. “ I wish we had a med-evac.”

“Unfortunately, you have me instead.”

Jaster finds that he misses the warmth of the man as the jetii steps away.

“Considering I’m still alive, I consider myself quite fortunate.” Jaster huffs. “Vor entye. I owe you a debt.”

“There’s no debt at all.” The jetii echoes the mando’a answer, whether knowingly or not. His smile is kind, though Jaster only gets to see it for a moment before the man looks away, focused on rifling through the many pockets of his coat - and apparently even more hidden in the folds of his tunics beneath. “The Force was quite intent that I intervene.”

Oh. 

“It was?” Manda, apparently the jetii magic wanted him alive for some reason. Or did it just want to kriff over Vizsla? The thought was almost funny, the stars themselves being annoyed by the kyr’tsad . “Did it also tell you to drag me out of that haran ?”

“It did.” The jetii replies. “Though I would have done so regardless. Backstabbing is not something I tolerate.”

Without ever looking up, he holds out a packet to Jaster, who takes it. Oh, bacta patches. That won’t take the sting out Montross’ actions, but it should at least help the injuries left behind. Jaster almost goes to tear the packaging open, before a chiding click of a tongue stops him.

He looks up to lock eyes with the jetii who raises one very, very judgemental eyebrow before he pointedly looks down at Jaster’s filthy gloves, then at the pack of sterile wipes that he’s holding out for Jaster to take too.

“Right.” Jaster is mand’alor, he should not be turning red because a handsome man is intently staring him down. He hopes the dark of the forest is enough to hide the heat that he feels rising to his face. “I’ll just-”

He tucks the packages under his arm, then tries to widen the burnt and bloodied rip of his kute on the bicep. The place is already dirty, might as well have better access before he cleans his hands.

Forcibly not paying attention to the jetii turns out to be a bad idea. Jaster nearly jolts out of his skin as pale fingers wrap around his hand and pull it away with startling care.

“Let me help.”

The jetii is close, far too close. Jaster freezes, eyes locked on the sharp cut of his profile while the man inspects the wound on Jaster’s arm, fingers featherlight. He’s clearly proficient at first aid, moving with the efficiency of long practice. He pauses, midway through applying the bacta patch, head tilting up slightly before he cocks it to the side, listening to something Jaster cannot hear. Bent down as the jetii has been this whole time, Jaster would only need to lean forward to give him a mirshmure’cya.

As it is, he instead nearly gets his teeth knocked out when the jetii jolts up, all ease gone as pushes Jaster to the side, something that nearly trips him before he manages to dig his shoulder into the treebark once more-

“Wha-?”

Jaster doesn’t even get to finish the question because there is a hand over his mouth, another holding back the arm Jaster lifts to fight him off, and any and all of Jaster’s struggles are rendered obsolete when the jetii bodily presses him into the tree. Jaster would probably have more luck trying to move the tree.

“Two in beskar.” the jetii murmurs, more a sigh than actual speech “Focused. Hunting.”

This close, Jaster can feel his breath ghost against his cheek, can see the way the pupils of his eyes blow out then narrow to nearly nothing as the jetii stares at some unknown point over Jaster’s shoulder and through the tree they’re pressed against.

Jaster flexes his jaw. Luckily, the jetii takes the hint and his hand slips down just enough to let Jaster speak.

“Can you check their colors?”

Those blue, blue eyes look at him for just a moment. They search his face for something. Whatever it is, the jetii must find it.

“Get ready to run,” He warns.

The wall of warmth that boxed Jaster in withdraws slightly. A warning look, then the jetii carefully takes a step to the side, then another. The hand that once gripped Jaster’s jaw now drifts down against his kar’ta beskar, pressing Jaster further into the cover the tree trunk provides. Without quite meaning to, Jaster finds himself still holding on to the jetii with the hand he doesn’t even remember curling over his hip, ready to pull him back from danger.

Jaster breathes in, out, tries not to feel so very vulnerable without a single weapon to his name. All he can do is watch as the jetii peers around the tree and into the woods, a faint crease forming between his brows as the man squints at something in the distance.

A moment later, he steps back into the shadow of the tree, looks back at Jaster once more.

“Green, red trim, and circle on the chest.”

Jaster almost collapses under the sudden rush of sheer relief. “Jango.”

“You trust him?”

“He’s my so- my ward.” He quickly corrects himself. “I trust him with my life.”

He has yet to say the gai bal manda to Jango. He had wanted the boy to make a name for himself without the pressure of being the mand’alor’s son - and thus de-facto heir - being laid onto his shoulders. He had pretended that it would keep Jango safe, but it’s clear now that Death Watch cares not for collateral. Jaster doesn’t know the final count of the dead, but he already knows it’s far too many.

Had Jaster died today, never officially acknowledging Jango as his child would have been one of his greatest regrets. He hopes that the kid will accept him as more than a mentor, even after his complete failure as leader in this campaign.

The jetii nods, glances as if to look through the tree. Checking on Jango's advance, probably. “What about the one with blue trim?” 

Jaster’s mind jumps to the worst possible option, but before he can do something rash, the jetii adds, “Lighter green base, I think. Blue green?”

Not Montross, thank the ka’ra. Jaster wracks his brain. A couple of Jango’s grunts had painted their kits in quite similar colors. If Jango was alone with the verd, though… Jango would most likely keep the least experienced soldier safe, which left one option, the rookie, Silas.

“He’s safe too.”

This close, he can feel the tension leave the jetii. His forehead thunks against the wood just above Jaster’s shoulder, close enough that he can feel golden hair brush over his cheekbone.

“Thank the Force. This day has given me one too many heart attacks.” Whether it’s a shaky sigh or a quiet laugh that follows, Jaster cannot tell. The jetii looks back up quickly. “They're heading right for us.”

Jaster glances down at the buy’ce still clipped onto his belt. Likely, the tracker did not give out when the HUD did.

The jetii shifts, clearly ready to step out and away from cover, but Jaster tightens his grip to stop him. “Wait.”

He receives a raised eyebrow in clear question.

“They know me, they don’t know you. Let me go first.”

The jetii looks pointedly down, at Jaster's injured leg. Jaster stares back, trying his best to radiate what he hopes is self-assuredness. 

Kal likes to call it Jaster being a bull-headed jarela di'kut, but to each their own opinion.

A moment later, the jetii nods. When he moves, it’s to step back only enough to allow Jaster to move past him. Jaster looks out into shaded woods and tries to pick out green and red armor among green foliage and brown-red tree trunks. He has no idea how the jetii ever managed. Force osik, probably.

There. Jaster nearly stumbles in his haste to move towards them. It’s Silas he spots first, the blue visor trim standing out in the shadows. Then, a second later -

“Jango! Ke’mot!”

The two armored figures jolt, blasters instantly raised towards the noise. They drop down just as quickly as Jango jolts forward, sprinting towards him, Silas close on his heels.

“Buir!”

“Alor!”

In his haste, Jaster does not watch his feet. His boot catches on a root and as the jolt of pain races up his injured leg he feels himself tipping forward -

Behind him, footsteps a little too fast for a standard humanoid.

In front of him, Jango and Silas both raise their blasters.

Muscle memory has Jaster twisting around as he falls. When he hits the ground, the impact against his back is enough to wind him. He looks up just in time to watch the jetii recoil right before the bolts impact the ground between him and Jaster. 

One misses the jetii's hand by a hair's breadth, the same hand that was probably extended to catch Jaster.

The next bolts impact the tree the jetii ducks behind, sending scorched chips of wood flying into the air.

The jetii is out of Jango's and Silas' firing line, but not out of Jaster's sight.

Their eyes meet. Jaster sees worry there, before they flick away to stare through the tree at the source of the blaster bolts, then at Jaster once more.

Of all things, Jaster receives a smile.

“Stay safe,” the jetii mouths silently, then looks away entirely towards the deep woods. He shifts his feet. 

Jaster has chased enough bounties to know when someone is bracing to run. He’s still catching his breath, so he barely manages, “Wait, don’t-”

The jetti glances back at him and for just a moment Jaster believes that he will stay. Then the man twitches, a shoulder coming up to shield his ear from a noise Jaster can’t hear.

The other arm rips something from behind the jetii’s back. He tosses it Jaster’s way - more of a flinch than a toss, really. Jaster catches it before he can even take a good look at what it is.

The movement, brief as it is, brings another hail of blasterfire that sends shards of bark raining down as it chips away at the jetii’s cover.

Another smile and then the man dives out of cover, blasterfire nipping at his heels.

He is gone in a blink, swallowed by the shadows of the forest.

Less than a minute later, Jango lands where his shots once did, worry in every armored fiber of his being. Jaster doesn’t spare him more than a glance.

His eyes are locked on the darksaber clutched in his hands.

Chapter Text

Returning to the temple is as exciting as it is routine.

Without priority codes afforded for official jedi missions, Feemor drops out of hyperspace hours early. Corruscant is a bright pinprick in the distance; the trillions of lives that call the ecumenopolis home shine bright, both in terms of Light and light pollution.

While the overworked Coruscant flight control takes its time clearing his approach vector and make sure he won’t end up as yet another fool splattered across the orbital mirrors, beacons, or holonet satellites, Feemor checks up on what he missed while in hyperspace.

His comm chirrs with all the messages that come in at last. A notice from the council - or whichever senior padawan got saddled with scheduling duty - that he can come to the last open session that evening. A quick ping from Leelian, one of his temple-bound crèchemates, demanding to organize an outing to celebrate his return. He doesn’t stay long, so his crèchemates have learned to move quickly when he’s home. He sends back an affirmative to both.

The clock overhead counts down the ETA. Feemor kicks his feet onto the console, avoids all the important buttons due to painfully-earned experience, and calls a datapad to hand from across the room. Might as well start catching up on all the things his crèchemates might end up chatting his ear off about, anything from holoseries to entertaining diplomatic disasters, to the new top contender in the unofficial Archives ranking of ‘worst romance holonovels featuring jedi’.

That last one leaves him thoroughly traumatized away from any other literary pursuits as well as a bit more disappointed in the general education level of some people.

He's pretty sure the author has never met a human, let alone a jedi.

He's also pretty sure he won't be able to look a human-passing person in the face for a whole tenday, his own reflection included.

He’s distracted when Rat, a modified MSE droid that had thrown a tantrum this morning until Feemor put him in the co-pilot’s seat, beeps to inform him that they’re near orbit. Feemor disconnects the autopilot and takes some risky (by force-null standards) turns through traffic and directs his ship towards the temple.

The sight of the ancient structure, slowly shedding away shadow under the light of the coming dawn, brings a unique sort of relief.

“Incoming vessel Misfit Star, please proceed to pad besh-twelve.” A voice crackles through the slightly busted cockpit comms after Feemor checks in with his codes. It’s likely that he has never met the jedi currently suffering the misfortune of early morning security duty. Despite this, their voice carries a smile that Feemor, or any jedi, rarely receives outside of the Temple when they add, “Welcome back.”

It’s a matter of minutes, after that, to dock the modified smuggler’s ship at the appropriate location. He shuts down the necessary programs and leaves others running, just to make life a little easier for the astromechs that will no doubt be swarming the vessel the moment that the mechanics are awake enough to supervise them.

Bag thrown over his shoulder, he makes his way out of his way out of his ship.

This early in the morning, the Temple is at an odd lull as the nocturnal jedi prepare to sleep and the diurnal ones have yet to drag themselves out of bed. The main halls are empty at a glance, only carrying the distant echoes of shifting robes and near-silent footsteps as well as the imprints of a millennium of force-users making their way to and fro.

Soon these halls will fill with knights leaving on missions, with padawans who were foolish enough to consider early morning classes a great idea as well as the masters that will follow, carrying whatever datapad or flimsi notes that their charges inevitably forgot.

As it is now, Feemor quiets his steps until even his sharp hearing can barely pick up the sound and enjoys the moment of stillness before the Temple blazes to life once more. Here, silence doesn’t make the hair at the back of his neck stand on end and his smile isn’t one meant to show teeth.

He turns a corner, then ducks behind a pillar. He nods towards the temple guards that he passes, brushes a thought against their shielded presences in greeting. Hidden as they are, they register as almost less than force-null, so he recognizes nothing in return besides the fact that he has met these ones before.

The shorter of the two twists their fingers in a silent indication of amusement when Feemor ducks into a shortcut most knights wouldn't be aware of.

"If Drallig has a problem with this, he can let me know," Feemor replies.

Another flash of movement. Fool. Sibling.

True - once a guard, always a guard, trainee or not.

"Have a good watch." He tells them before he lets the tapestry drop behind himself, he then quickly checks his comm and, confirmation obtained, peeks back out. “Also - hello, Lee, see you tonight.”

The taller of the two guards, his crèchemate, gives up on the image of the anonymous temple guard in favor of tossing an unlit saber in his direction. The other guard snatches the hit out of the air and whacks them over the helmet with it before handing it back.

“There’s no emotion, there is peace!” Feemor chides. He doesn’t laugh out loud, but he’s sure the idea of it stains the air just the same before he leaves.

There's a thumb against the tapestry at his back. Another smack against a helmet a moment after.

Soon he's sliding out from behind the shadows of a different pillar and into the halls containing the knights' quarters. It takes only a couple more turns down the maze-like corridors to find his own.

The plate by his door is an absolutely awful scrawl resembling 'Feeimmr' that Taban made when absolutely blitzed on the good painkillers in the Healing Halls after a mission gone wrong. The doodles around the name-adjacent scribble are even less legible than the handwriting.

He loves it dearly.

When he reaches for the keypad, he pauses. After more than two years away, he has entirely forgotten what his access codes are. Feemor is forced to spend five minutes slicing the door panel and twenty more  in conversation with the passing knight who had paused to watch him.

He doesn’t learn their name, but he does learn some new tricks and shares some of his own. He was always better at hot-wiring speeders or securing comm lines than bypassing locking mechanisms, so the input is appreciated.

The rooms beyond the door are not much to look at. They’re normal quarters for a knight and even the furniture is standard, the sole exception being the large well-loved couch and a couple of additional shelves that carry an odd array of souvenirs. There are only three flowering plants in the whole of his quarters, two gifts from his crèchemates and one from Rael Averross. Apparently, they were chosen because they were nigh-unkillable even with minimal care. The fact that one Qui-gon Jinn is allergic to each and every one of them is entirely coincidental.

At least that’s how it should be, but Feemor also finds his quarters far more chaotic than when he left them. 

A pile of pillows has spawned in a corner and pieces of a droid make home in another. The rug is not his regular one, but some kind of monstrosity he instantly steps on just to feel the way that his feet sink into the fluff. Judging by the half-emptied packet of seaweed chips on the low table, at least Eko remembers Feemor's door access codes. Lee too - he can recognise that particular sabacc deck.

Maybe another would be annoyed to come back from years of travel to chaos they themselves haven’t caused, but Feemor is thankful for the habit, even if it means that he will find crumbs on his couch and a pantry full of things he can't even eat.

There's love soaked into the walls of his room and laughter staining the couch cushions. There's a burn on the ceiling that reeks of exasperation and embarrassed shock, and he can smell the good-natured ribbing among the shadow of char that still clings to the kitchen counter.

There's bittersweet goodbyes at the door, tinged with a promise of 'see you later, whatever it takes'. 

That last one is a comforting lie.

A sense of peace soaks a tattered meditation mat in the corner. It had belonged to Varania’s master until Varania started shamelessly stealing it away whenever she forgot hers in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. After her master’s death, she brought it to Feemor’s rooms to meditate. After her own, it stayed.

Kaye’s veritably ancient pazaak deck, brought back from a trip to the far rim with her explorcorps expedition, gathers dust the same way it once gathered echoes of her mischief.

Nax’s antique holo-camera that he took everywhere, the cracked and broken screen fixed on one last picture, taken the morning he left for his first and last solo mission.

M’rens favorite books, the trace of intrigue almost faded. 

Feemor wraps his arms around himself and just stands there, breathing, for a moment or two. Saying goodbye, saying hello.

The whir of gears is the only warning Feemor gets. He throws himself onto the couch just in time for the hard chassis of the MSE droid to miss where his ankles once were.

It beeps angrily at him, then rams the couch a couple times in clear robotic annoyance before backing up. Though it has no optical sensors visible from the outside, Feemor gets the distinct impression that the cleaner droid is glaring at him.

"Missed you too, Mouse."

The droid beeps again.

"Rat would try to kill you within the day. No.”

Rat and Mouse are the unfortunate results of a mechanic's class during Feemor's early padawan days. He and his group had decided to test whether they could fit the reasoning modules of an astromech and an explorer droid into the chassis of two MSEs.

Yes. Yes, they could. The result was two months of chaos and one droid banned from the premises of the temple.

Mouse beeps back at him in binary no proper droid should use. It then spins around with a mechanical sound of disapproval.

“I don’t need a nap.” He glowers at the insistent droid.

Mouse beeps. It whirs back and forth in sharp movements that make it clear exactly what will happen to Feemor’s ankles if he dares get off the couch.

He’s sure Eko is responsible for this. Fussy mother nuna-hen, that one.

Feemor does take that nap, if only to miss the morning rush hour, or so he tells himself. The fact that the Temple is the only truly safe place for a jedi and he has been away for years has nothing to do with it.

When he gets up to collect his bad of artifacts and other spoils from his travels, he pretends like he won’t miss waking up well-rested after he leaves.

First on the docket - making sure he doesn’t receive a lecture come evening. Since Lee has already clearly seen him alive and his ex-lineage is scattered among the stars on their own missions, that only leaves Feemor to track the remaining two of his crèchemates. The fourth is about as allergic to returning to the Temple as Feemor is.

A quick detour to the crèches leaves him with vague directions towards the room of a thousand fountains courtesy of Master Awell, as well as new stains on his robes courtesy of the clan the kind besalisk is watching over.

The three tiny handprints in green or orange paint now clinging to the hem of his tabards are adorable, so Feemor really doesn't mind.

The sprawling greenhouse is probably the easiest place to find in the entire temple, even to those entirely new. If the green smell of flowers and running water doesn’t give away where to go, the sheer bloom of life in the Force would. Soon enough, Feemor is leaving tiled halls and lamplight behind in favor of barely-paved paths and the glow of the vast artificial sky.

A blip in the force has Feemor stepping aside just in time for a young padawan to sprint past, the twi'lek's face split by a wide grin.

She leaves in her wake the echo of breathless giggles and a trail of shimmery mischief, quicksilver-fleeting.

It feels like it was just last week that Feemor had been running down these same trails towards the swampy biomes of the garden, him, M'ren, and Farah, all wreaking havoc on the population of frogs there while their crèchemaster was too busy trying to coax Nax and Eko back from where the two nautolans had run off to jump into a pond. Leelian would try to help, all for naught, as the remaining three of the clan would use their distraction to sneak away to the archives.

It feels like it was centuries ago at the same time. All but four, gone. He hasn't seen Taban in person for nearly a decade; he wonders which one of them is the tallest of the clan, now.

The temple hums with centuries of enduring Light and he breathes in the warmth, breathes out his brooding.

Maybe he should make more time for visits home.

Over the burbling of water, laughter and the impatient tug of a familiar mind.

He rounds a couple of decorative rocks to the sight of a crèche clan scattered in the little clearing along with their minders. A tall blue-skinned twi’lek, crèchemaster Vant, doesn’t turn her attention away from her task - walking a mon cala girl through some text displayed on a datapad. Feemor happily leans into the faint and distracted touch of warmth-hello-welcomeback from her that brushes past his thoughts, there and gone. The next moment it’s hard to think when another presence demands his attention, as if the arms around him aren’t enough.

“Hello to you too, Farah.” He tucks his chin between yellow-streaked montrals lest they risk knocking his teeth out.

His crèchemate tightens her hug once more, threatening the healthy state of his ribs.

“You,” says Farah as she takes a step back, voice perfectly even and expression screaming indifference as if her mind isn’t exploring every corner of his shields, poking and prodigy at every scrape and shadow, “Need to comm more often.”

“I’m alive.” Feemor casts a glance at the initiates who are failing to pretend like they’re not watching the conversation. 

“I would prefer if that wasn’t a surprise,” Farah says, but it sounds more faux-haughty than truly dismissive. Een as it squeezes around him, their bond rings with the glimmering contentment of reunion, the cold tinge of worry there only for the most fleeting of moments.

“You’d think that my own clan would have more trust in me.” Feemor lets his shoulders slump just a tiny bit and shares a commiserating glance with the children. A big sigh. “Alas.”

A couple of poorly muffled giggles answer him. The fretting disapproval from Farah eases and Feemor reaches out from behind his shields to smooth away the rest.

Step number one for getting out of a crèchemaster’s shit list - get into the good graces of their clan.

If step one fails, step two - run.

He feels a familiar wordless question pass him by. He responds with a jokingly exasperated sort of agreement. After all, he knew what would happen when he came here.

“Initiates?” Farah prompts to gather everyone’s attention. It’s clear she is only an assistant crèchemaster still - the experienced ones barely need a glance. That’s alright, she has a bit over a year until her clan ages out and she’s granted mastery and a clan of her own. Rumor is, she will be taking over their old one - Krayt - and the legacy of chaos that it carries.

“Good morning!” Many initiates echo, though some remember him enough to chirp a quick, “Hello, Knight Feemor!”

Feemor offers them his best jedi consular bow. His smile probably ruins the image. 

“Now, I know some of you have essays about the hyperlanes of the outer rim for astronavigation class. Knight Feemor here, who can’t be bothered to inform anyone about his travels and who you should not emulate-” Farah announces and though her tone is strict, her presence flares with a silver-bell laugh that smooths away her reproach. It somehow does not feel forced in its intensity despite it being clearly projected for the sake of the initiates, “- has just returned from the edges of wild space. I’m sure he would be happy to answer your questions.”

That is how, as is expected of any knight or master who find themselves in the general vicinity of a crèche clan, Feemor ends up conscripted to teach his tricks to the initiates. After all, it is important that the younglings be exposed to as many perspectives as possible, and passing on knowledge is one of the key tenets of a jedi's way of life.

If it also allows both Vant and Farah to take a break while Feemor entertains the younglings, that's entirely beside the point.

The task is made easier by the fact that Farah has been assisting this clan ever since they were brought to the crèche, so these are initiates which Feemor has met more than once. Still, how well the initiates remember his previous visits varies. A pair of human-appearing ones, at least, instantly park themselves by his side. The first drills him on stories about his travels - with much more developed terminology, compared to last time - while the second listens intently while Feemor demonstrates an exercise.

Whether it's due to the competitive spirit of trying outdo one another or the stories of Feemor's exploration of the outer rim, soon he has the whole clan gathered around him. Between answering questions about living on a spaceship for extended periods of time or how to outrun spice-smuggling gangs and pirates, he walks them through his favorite way of practicing precision in Force-manipulation, which is to make elaborate houses out of sabacc cards by only moving them with the Force.

It's also a great way to pass the time in hyperspace, as long as one can handle the rage-inducing frustration when the ship's vibrations send the cards scattering, again. No, he's not speaking from experience, what gave you that idea?

"Very well done!" He praises when the initiate by his side is the first to complete the third and last layer of the card pyramid.

The pale redhead nearly turns the color of his hair before he manages to smooth his expression into an initiate’s best mimicry of a jedi knight’s serene look.

Which is to say that it’s over-exaggerated and incredibly adorable. Feemor does his best not to coo at the sight.

“Now try to make a tower instead of a pyramid,” He directs the boy instead and receives a very serious nod in return.

When Vant and Farah are satisfied that he has retained his babysitting skills and excuse themselves to go pick up midmeal for the kids, he collects the cards and continues the long-standing knight tradition of teaching the younglings how to gamble and, more importantly, efficiently cheat while they do so. That particular exercise is an even bigger hit among the pre-teens, even if all that they have to gamble is pebbles.

Midway through him explaining how to tag cards with the Force, Tholme drops by to visit his 'not my padawan, Feemor, any other master may still ask him and he is free to accept'. Feemor shamelessly volunteers the shadow for what amounts to a game of hide and seek under the guise of training the initiates' skill in finding force presences.

Whenever it’s his turn, the psychometrist tracks down his not-Master with the drive and dedication of an akk on the hunt and Tholme entirely fails at not acting proud about it.

In a couple of years, those two will terrorize whatever draws the attention of the Shadows out in the outer rim, Feemor is willing to bet on it.

He leaves the master shadow to the task when Farah’s presence steps back into the room. He’s sure Tholme can handle the kids for the ten or so minutes it will take for the crèchemasters to get back.

The rest of the day is a blur. He conscripts a helpful wayward padawan to deliver his bounty of artifacts to the archives in an effort to avoid going himself. The kid is clearly ditching class and, well, Feemor is clearly not around often enough to know this, so why not provide the padawan with an excuse?

Feemor's friendship with Master Nu means that he knows exactly what information to gather when he finds something that may be valuable to the archives and has a datachip prepared with each such report. Unfortunately, it also means that Master Nu will take any chance to question him in meticulous detail, which is why he's trying not to be the one delivering said chips or artifacts.

Luckily Padawan Cordova is very excited about getting to look over old pieces of force-imbued junk.

Like a good jedi knight, he drops by the Halls of Healing, because he would not put it against the healers to just show up on his ship one day if he misses a vaccine booster. He then flees before the genetic mystery that is his shitshow of a species can lead to more questions from young healers-in-training and goes off to raid the quartermaster, only to be derailed along the way when a couple knights call for him to join them in the salles to settle a debate.

Feemor finds out that while a saberstaff and shii-cho is a bad combination (that long hilt leaves too much of an opening), a crossguard saber and ataru is so much worse.

He does not go back to the halls. He’s not fearless enough to face Healer Talo’s disappointed glare.

By the time he’s done slathering bacta on the burn and then tidying up to make sure nobody can tell he actually had to do so, his comm beeps to let him know he should head towards the council rooms.

The portion of the spire is near-abandoned. Knights rarely want to go before the full council and luckily they just as rarely have to unless, of course, they’re particularly bad at writing their reports - oh hello, Jinn - or have a tendency to encounter utter chaos - hello, ex-lineage and clan.

There’s just one knight already waiting, sitting next to the doors, head bowed as he focuses on a datapad in his hands.

Due to his change in hairstyle, it takes a moment for Feemor to realize that the young knight before him is, in fact, quite familiar. He pokes him in the Force, the equivalent of a shoulder tap, 'hello there, friend'.

Mace looks up at him and instantly winces. The faint echo of a headache-to-be pings across the air between them before it's hidden away. "Oh kriff you, Feemor."

"I guess I was right in contacting the council, then." Feemor tries to go for some levity lest he allow himself to consider what Mace’s reaction would mean to him. “And you’re still not my type." 

“No wonder Jinn repudiated you.” Mace intones, voice full of reproach. “You come in front of the council of your own volition.”

Once, such a comment, even in jest, would have been hurtful. Now, Feemor stares down his friend with the most unimpressed expression he can manage. He learned it from Master Dooku - it’s quite effective.

A moment, then amusement flickers through the Force as both men look away from one another, stifling laughter.

It fills the air between them all the same, silent and tasting of sunlight.

Feemor drops into the seat across from Mace. The chairs are oddly far more comfortable than they look, or maybe Feemor has just gotten used to the luxury of living on a spaceship - which is none. 

Since his old friend is very obviously not waiting for a reaction about the biggest change in his appearance, not at all, Feemor lets him stew for a minute. Then, at last, he says, "I see congratulations are in order, Knight Windu."

"It's been almost two years." Mace brushes a hand over his newly - at least as far as Feemor has seen it - bald head.

"And I've been away for longer than that. You could have comm'd me, you know?” Feemor can’t even manage to keep up the annoyance for more than a second. He’s happy for his friend and happier to let him know. They may be sitting across from one another but in the Force, he practically curls around him in a hug. “It suits you.”

Mace had still been a young initiate when Eko took up his apprenticeship under Mace’s crèchemaster. Feemor often tagged along with his crèchemate whenever Jinn took missions not fit for an inexperienced padawan and his then-lineage was not available to supervise him.

Feemor and Mace had bonded over shared tales of their home planets. The dense jungles of Haruun Kal and the towering forests of Feemor's nameless moon held similar darkness and they had spent hours comparing the Force habits of ghôsh and clan, what little they knew from scarce cultural visits.

Mace had built a combat style out of his, and Feemor had gotten himself repudiated. Now Mace is a knight and Feemor is starting to feel quite old.

Damn, and here he thought his mid-life crisis was still a couple decades away. The repudiation debacle sure had the quarter one covered.

Mace leans back in his seat and draws Feemor’s attention with a soft tap against his shields.

“I thought the council had yet to call on you.”

It’s a rather simple agreement that Feemor had struck with the council before he left. Feemor gets access to Temple resources while he does what the Force demands of him with no council supervision and, in return, the council can request aid if they ever require it without needing to alert the senate.

If his deeds ever get back to the senate then, oops, he was only in the temple’s datawork due to a clerical error - don’t you see how his entry had been rearranged so suddenly all these years previous to delete him from any lineage trees? They just missed a file, that’s all.

Even without any outright requests, it’s a surprising amount of times that Feemor has found himself helping jedi which were led astray by Senate briefings that either left out far too much or were outright false.

“They have not.” He tells Mace as much. “I just have a personal matter to discuss with them.”

“You finally decided to finally pick up a padawan!” Mace’s smile is brief, but bright.

Feemor doesn’t roll his eyes at that, but it’s a close thing. “Mace. No.”

His friend huffs, just a tiny exhale that Feemor notices only because he has known the korun for so long. “You considered one before.”

“That was before.”

He had planned to choose a padawan, years ago. He had agonized over whether he was fit to teach, took to spending time learning from crèchemasters and helping Drallig in leading initiate saber classes. He had sought out his master for advice, at last tried to cast away his doubts when Jinn told him he was ready.

Then Xanatos died and Jinn threw Feemor aside.

So Feemor threw away the beads that he had carved and, after a couple months of flitting between the Shadows and the Guards, left for where the outer rim called him.

To outsiders it might have seemed extreme, but the Jedi very much employ the 'it takes a village' mentality when it comes to raising their padawans and, to follow the metaphor, most of Feemor's had just been burnt to the ground.

He has rebuilt. He has his crèche clan to lean on and has in fact grown closer to those who once had been his grandmaster and lineage uncle - Dooku and Rael - since the two resolutely disregarded the fact that tradition told them to ignore his very existence. Then in turn Feemor got practically officially adopted by the whole lot of their own crèchemates - since he had no lineage, he was up for grabs, they had told him.

Still, something tells him that he should wait. 

“You’ve been visiting Clawmouse Clan.” Mace points out.

“Farah is Master Vant’s assistant.” Feemor waves him off. “They’re also barely padawan age. In a year, I might consider it.”

In a year, they will have probably found better Masters to learn from.

Mace sighs in a way that means he’s only abandoning this conversation for Feemor’s sake. “Why are you here, then?”

Well if Mace wants to be an annoyance, Feemor can return the favor. “Why don’t you guess?”

"Did you put a new political faction into a position of power?"

"Not this time."

"Get accidentally engaged again?"

Why won't his friends ever let him forget that one? "Absolutely not."

*****     *****

"So, mand’alor . Did you find your jetii ven'riduur yet?"

“ Copaani mirshmure’cye, Kal?” Jaster glowers at his friend.

Unfortunately, Kal is one of the best strategists in Jaster’s circle and as such he can’t land him in the medbay, no matter how tempted Jaster is to smack him full force over the back of the head.

“Just asking, alor.” Kal intones. How Kal manages to convey a shit-eating grin without actually smiling is a mystery for the ages. Worse, nobody ever believes Jaster whenever he calls Kal out on it. 

“It’s not relevant to this meeting.”

“I think it’s plenty relevant to this meeting.” Pipes up Alek Tervho, the traitor. His ad, Vhonte, an ori’ramikad quickly climbing the ranks and now shadowing her buir to learn the ins and outs of running a larger force, nods along. 

“He doesn’t need to find the jetii, Skirata. The verde will do it for him whether he wants it or no.” Adds Bralor - so far she has found the situation hilarious and has made it well known. Loudly. And often.

“This is exactly why I intended to keep this quiet .” Jaster groans.

Mandalorian shereshoy is something Jaster has always seen as one of the most admirable traits of his culture. He just wishes it didn’t mean that they did obsession quite so well.

Maybe it’s for the best that the jetii vanished into thin air, not even a drive-trail in the atmosphere left to betray his departure.

Back on Korda VI, once Jaster had explained the jetii's involvement to Jango and Silas - this is after him panicking over having the darksaber in his hands, impulsively saying the gai'bal'manda, hugging his ad with what strength he had left, and nearly braining himself after trying to stand up right as the stim started wearing off and the pain returned - Jango was quite contrite about the whole thing, no matter Jaster's insistence against it.

Shoot first ask questions later is a tried and tested strategy. Had the bastard not run away by then, Jaster would have proven it by shooting that hut'uun Montross the moment he got back to camp.

Alas much like his savior, the traitor was also gone.

On their way back to camp, Jaster, Jango, and Silas had mutually agreed to keep the presence of the jetii down as much as possible, only need-to-know. Though he himself had no ill will against the jetii order, Jaster did not know how the rest of the haat'ade would react. It would be poor manners to repay a life-debt to the jetii by accidentally sending after him a bunch of ramikade who thought he had meddled where he shouldn't.

So Jaster planned to keep the presence of the jetii quiet until he figured out how to make sure he would not be bothered by haat’ade. Maybe that way Jaster could see him one day without the threat of blasterfire.

This would have worked, had Mij not taken a single look at him and accosted him with a hypo before he could even make it to the medbay. Mixed with the dregs of the stim, it hadn't been enough to rid him of his consciousness entirely, but it sure had taken away his filter.

So apparently Jaster did the only thing worse than revealing the existence of the jetii to his troops - he inadvertently created a fanclub.

It seems that Jaster deliriously waxing poetic about how the jetii held back a barrage of laser-cannon fire through nothing but sheer force of will is an invitation for his verde to try and see it on their own.

Luckily, nobody dared to touch Jaster’s kit, no matter how curious they were. Unfortunately, a team had already gone out to collect the armor and particularly the buy’ce of the kyr’tsad hut’uune, and they suddenly had a different goal in mind than the usual recon when they sliced into the HUD recordings.

Soon there was a whole trading ring for clips of the jetii decimating kyr’tsad forces. The fan favorites were where the man bodily flipped verde in full beskar kit, dispatching them of limbs along the way with a strike of his blade all without a single glance backward, or the one from a fool that thought that taking to the skies would save him - there’s only a couple of frames before the recording breaks where the visuals blur as the man whips his head around only to see the jetii right there, coming in from above .

Jaster may or may not have seen many of those clips. Only a part of them were shown to him by others.

Even mando’ade are not immune to that period in life where plasma swords and strength beyond that of normal mortals is the most wizard thing ever. It just seems that Jaster hadn’t quite grown out of it as much as he thought, especially not when those things come wrapped up in a package that looks like that .

Somehow his passing knowledge that the jetii likes to offhandedly crack bad jokes and takes field first-aid more seriously than some medics only makes it easier to fantasize.

At least, unlike most ramikade, he keeps his admiration quiet, not that it helps any. After all, he’s the one who started the debacle.

“Ne’johaa.” Jaster orders when it seems like the younger Tervho is winding up to continue the teasing. “If it’s not about kyr’tsad or something equally pressing, keep it for after the briefing.”

“No news on that front, Alor.” Kal, thank the ka’ra, at least recognizes when it’s truly time to give up and be professional. “They’re crawling out of the woodwork like roaches, but we have yet to find where they’ve been hiding.”

“We’ve got verde looking,” Bralor adds. “We’re even getting reports from unaffiliated clans too, though the way the storm is turning, I don’t think they’ll stay neutral for long.”

The occupants of the room exchange looks of mutual understanding that this existence of theirs, as a group of bounty hunters and mercenaries united by a single creed, is about to inevitably change to something bigger.

Once, it had been a just dream they had spoken of. Now that it’s here, the magnitude of it is terrifying. Jaster, nominally at the head of it all, feels it more than any other.

The events on Korda VI have truly kicked the hornet’s nest.

After the failed assault on Concord Dawn years before, Tor Vizsla had been considered dead. Any kyr’tsadiise that were spotted around were assumed to be remnants - fanatics, nothing more. For all that Jaster’s haat’ade had continued gathering numbers, they had slowed, relaxed. They were the victors, sure, but compared to those mando’ade that stayed neutral or the republic-backed evaar’ade, they weren’t exactly a force with a lot of weight to throw around. Their actions had gained them favor, but few clans officially joined the cause.

Now Tor’s attack had all but pointed a spotlight at Jaster. He wasn’t just a reformist with his own band of followers anymore, the mand’alor of his own little faction who just so happened to successfully butt heads with kyr’tsad. No, Tor’s ambush had officially named him an enemy of the wannabe warlord, it had all but declared that Tor considered Jaster a threat, an equal if opposite force, leader against leader.

Mand’alor not as in leader of a group of mando’ade, but mand’alor as prospective a leader of all mando’ade.

Foolishly, it gave Jaster’s codex legitimacy. In the eyes of the neutral clans, the haat’ade were no longer seen as a movement or mercenary band or a popular creed, but a legitimate third side of the brewing civil war. A middle ground.

And now Jaster had the darksaber clipped to the back of his belt.

“We know how we could speed that up.” Kal notes as if he had read Jaster’s thoughts.

Were he as obsessed as Tor with the traditional image of a mand’alor as a warrior that leads by strength and terror, Jaster could now wave the ancient weapon around and demand that clans bend their knee. Some would even listen - it's a powerful symbol.

“We’re keeping the dha’kad out of this,” Jaster reminds him. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth. Tor would just claim I have no right to it.”

Oh, Tor had not won it either, he had stolen it from the Coruscanta Temple, but at least he could spin tales to his underlings about how he dared strike against the Republic and the ancient enemies of Mandalore - jetii. So maybe the jetii did have the right to give it away - it was stolen from them, so one of their own could choose where it went when they got it back.

He imagines that story wouldn’t quite go over as well with the traditionalists.

Not that he’s about to toss the dha’kad away. While Jaster’s not about to claim that a fancy sword grants him the right to rule, he’s not about to disregard the weight of history.

“It sure would make this much less confusing.” Ram’ser, another occupant in the room, speaks up. A sniper from a particularly orthodox clan; he has a good eye for troop movements, if not for armor paint. Maybe being decked out in eye-searing shades means little when you’re picking opponents off from two klicks away.

“I’m just saying,” The older Tervho says with a grin, “We know how much those jetii like their archives-”

A couple poorly hidden snickers here while Jaster glares at the man, 

Okay, so maybe he had complained one time too many about his difficulty in finding direct sources of Tarre Vizsla’s writing when he first wrote his codex, or at least in accessing them. It has taken him a couple years until some random acquaintance he found on an obscure site helped him find copies of the documents - he still suspects that the kind Corruscanti researcher must have friends in the Jetii'yaim, since some of those documents have only ever been listed to be preserved either there or in Jedha, though he never quite dared to ask Jo if that was the case.

Tervho ignores his glare with the ease of practice “-this one must have known what he was doing.”

There are very, very few reasons why a weapon of such importance could be given to another by mando'ad standards. Jaster almost wants to consider it.

And there he goes, thinking of the jetii again.

Tsch, Jaster doesn’t even truly know the man. It’s just an infatuation and maybe a bit of hero worship, nothing more. Who knows, maybe the man is, uh, as prudish as some imagine the jetii to be or he’s bad with ade or, just, something . Jaster won’t be getting his hopes up.

Maybe they could make it a friendly challenge. The jetii could lose the saber in battle against Jaster, though Jaster doubted how well he could last against a man who had fought a whole force of dar’manda and won. 

Unbidden, the recording of the jetii ducking a kyr’tsad verd’s blow only to lift the man off his feet with a hand to the throat before slamming them to the ground with enough force to stun comes to mind.

Hrngh.

No, focus. There are so many things that need doing.

The jetii is not something Jaster should consider doing.

He has other things to think of right now, things that aren’t relics of a bygone golden age or men with kind eyes and warm smiles and hands that healed as easily as they killed.

“We’re never seeing him again. Korda VI is barely in the same region and at least four sectors away from Mandalore. They’re not even close to the same hyperlanes.” Jaster says and he’s not sure who he’s trying to convince - his advisors or himself. “The jetii do not concern themselves with Mandalore - we do. Now tell me about those kyr’tsad sightings so I have something to say to Eldar when he comms for the full meeting.”

*****     *****

"You sent your report three days late."

The quiet words make Feemor stop in his tracks and look back towards the councilor making their way toward him. It's not wrong - his report did send three days after the events at Korda VI, in the brief window between his latest jump and him entering a hyperlane. Not that anyone but him should know that.

"You saw something." Feemor doesn't bother asking.

"More like I stopped seeing something." Syfo Dyas shakes his head. His smile highlights crows feet and laughter-lines that have seen less and less use since Feemor had first met him.

From their conversations over the years, Feemor knows that the future had only been growing darker in Sifo-Dyas’ eyes, the visions more frequent. It was one of the things that had chased Feemor away into the Rim - not the suffering of his pseudo-grandmaster, but the vague hope that he might do even the smallest thing to change it.

Feemor had noticed, when he had stepped into the chambers, that Syfo-Dyas had looked far better rested than what he remembered. The bags under his eyes were far lighter, the tension in his face giving way to a rarely-seen smile.

"Is it for the good?" Feemor asks. "I only saved one man."

It was just some mando and a piece of shrapnel that Feemor had forgotten to even mention in his reports. Stars, he didn’t even know his name.

"It's too early to say. We all have our parts to play in the grand scheme of things and what you did is shift a lynchpin, just a little." Sifo-Dyas shrugs, just a shift of his shoulders when he goes to clasp his hands together, hiding them in the billowing sleeves of his tunic. "Maybe you can change it further."

"I'm just one jedi." Feemor sighs. He's just a random knight, chiefly middle of the pack. Not too strong or smart or influential. All he has is a friendly attitude, a handful of eclectic skills, and a willingness to make stupid decisions when the Force asks it of him.

"None of that, Feemor." Sy shakes his head. "I wouldn't have proposed it to the council if I thought you would fail."

An unseen hand ruffles his hair. It's a familiar gesture and for a moment Feemor is reminded of the first time Jinn had been given a mission that Feemor, then barely twelve, was too young to follow him on.

He had been left behind in the care of a grandmaster he had not even met before that day. Dooku had proudly introduced Feemor to his crèche clan who had been gathered in his quarters for tea.

Sifo-Dyas had smiled at him, that knowing secretive smile that only seers have, and reached out to ruffle his hair.

"We've been waiting for you for a while, my dear." He had said with the familiarity of someone who has known him for years.

It had gotten Feemor to relax for the first time that day. Seeing him unwind from his shell at last, Master Nu had offered to teach him to play pazaak. He still has the deck, in a smuggling compartment of his ship.

From that day on, through meetings with grandmaster Dooku, Feemor had routinely heard about what Sifo-Dyas saw in his visions, from the mundane to the terrifying. A time or ten, they had saved his skin.

He might as well trust him just a time or two more.

"I guess you would know, wouldn't you, Grandmaster?"  Feemor tries for a smile. "But maybe this time I'll surprise you."

"Don't you dare. Honestly, you're as bad as Rael." Sifo-Dyas clicks his tongue in reproach and gently tugs at a strand of Feemor's hair like masters tend to pull at a padawan's braid before he hides his hands back into his sleeves. "Now, I do have some suggestions."

"Oh?"

"Yes, just for this evening - enjoy some good music and don't drink anything blue."

"What?"

The absolute bastard just smiles serenely at him, gives a shallow bow to excuse himself, and turns down towards the archives because he is well aware Feemor would be avoiding Master Nu after dropping off his latest finds.

Silent laughter and warmth tell him goodbye and Feemor sends them away with a sense of good-natured exasperation.

Temple-bound jedi have to find their fun somewhere. At least Sifo-Dyas isn’t as bad as Yoda.

Yet.

Feemor gets an inkling that he can guess what the warning was about when he steps in through the door to his rooms and drops to the ground to avoid an object sailing right at his face.

The shirt hits the wall in the hall outside with a sad little thump before it drops to the floor.

Farah stares down at him like she’s questioning every single one of his life choices. Feemor, who has spent far too much time being shot first and questioned later, stares right back.

“Get changed.” She tells him. “The Bounty Puck pub, Side Track, or Aravo’s?”

Eko, at least, has the wherewithal to give Feemor a nudge of warning before the shirt comes sailing back overhead to slap into the hands of the nautolan laying on the couch.

Feemor at last picks himself off of the floor enough to let the door close behind him.

“Aravo’s.” He sighs. “They have good music and cheap drinks. We can move on to more jedi-friendly places later.”

The next thing he knows, Feemor is waking up in his quarters, but not in his bed.

It’s habit now to brush his surroundings with the Force before he even opens his eyes, though the Light-soaked stones of the temple stop his tired mind from questing as far as it usually would.

Safe, it tells him. Safe but not exempt from consequences of last night - his mouth feels like something died in it. 

Two soft lights from the direction of his bedroom, sleep and decades-old bonds tangling them together like crèchelings in a pile. Another one, on the floor by the couch, just as familiar as the first. A third, foreign, matches up to the wall of warmth on Feemor’s left.

He cracks his eyes open to check and takes a moment to match silver hair and tan skin to the fuzzy memories of last night. Ah, right, the shadow that their quartet met at the first bar. Feemor and his crèchemates ended up providing unplanned cover for them after some shifty patrons began paying too much attention.

Feemor doesn’t think he ever got their name, even after the four of them decided to drag the shadow along for the rest of their bar crawl. He vaguely remembers them having very loud opinions when their game of ‘befriend-bed-behead’ had them decide between Darths Revan, Malak, and Vitiate.

Clearly, they had become good enough friends that they are now snuggled into Feemor’s side. Their arms are around his waist, while their legs tangle with Lee’s who, it seems, either fell or crawled off the couch sometime in the night to join the two of them on the carpet.

The surface of the shadow’s mind is clouded with a fitful sort of sleep which Feemor has unfortunate first-hand experience with after spending so long out alone in the galaxy. Jedi are like tookas, he has found. Colony creatures, the lot of them - alright alone, but better together.

He hastily pushes a quick impression of safe-Ihavethewatch-sleep when his attempts to wiggle out of the surprisingly strong grip lead to the shadow frowning in their sleep. Obediently, the spy mumbles something unintelligible and turns over to latch onto Lee instead. They're entirely dead to the world within seconds. 

Feemor floats a duvet over both of them and tucks it up their waists; no need to cause a commotion if someone wakes with their arms tangled and panics.

He checks the clock on the wall. Now, for the two bastards who took over his bed.

Feemor makes his way towards the tiny kitchen, careful to muffle his steps. Once there, he quietly fills a cup with water, tucks a solid cutting board under his arm, and slips silently into his bedroom. A quick thought is enough to shut the door behind him. The light spilling in under it is just barely enough to see by, even for Feemor’s night vision, but he doesn’t turn on the lights quite yet. 

He places the cup on the nightstand. With his now free hands, he holds the cutting board a small distance above the two occupants' heads.

Then he jabs the two roughly with the Force.

There's a dull thock against the wooden board when Farah rockets up, sputtering. Eko makes a surprised snort-squeak which turns into a yelp when Farah falls back onto him.

"Fee." Eko makes a valiant effort to smother himself with the lekku that fell across his face. His petulant whining sounds even more pained than Farah's, who still has a hand slapped over her reddening forehead. "Why?"

"Don't you two have places to be?" Feemor inquires in a tone of perfected innocence. "It's almost eight."

Farah's eyes fly open.

"Kriff! The kids!"

Feemor steps out of the way for the suddenly panicky bundle of crèchemaster when the togruta half-climbs and half-falls out of bed.

Eko winces at the noise. "Tell them I'm dead."

"Tell them yourself, you coward. Up you get."

Between the two of them, Feemor and Farah do manage to get him upright, even if the nautolan is two shades paler than usual when he finally stands. Feemor shoves the cup of water into his hands.

Eko doesn't voice his thanks, too busy chugging the whole thing down, but the feeling still brushes against Feemor's shoulders.

When he's done, he eyes the door - and the light spilling out from under it - with trepidation.

"Could I just be shot?" Eko mumbles when Farah hands him one of Feemor’s outer robes from the closet. Not a great fit, but it will be enough to hide the clothing underneath until the crèchemaster has a chance to change. 

Without prompting, Feemor steps around to untangle the leatheris wraps that got undone around Eko's head tendrils while the nautolan tries to get the obi to fit. "I told you not to drink that blue shit but how would you know, Feemor, it looks so good, Feemor. Suffer."

Feemor feels the annoyed glare drill into the back of his head even though he’s the one standing behind Eko. "I hate you so, so very much right now."

Feemor leans over his shoulder to make sure his grin is seen. "Which code are you meant to teach your initiates, again?"

He doesn't bite the fingers that push his face away, but he does snap his teeth in playful warning when they pull back.

“You’re both children,” Farah tells them. She looks incredibly put together for someone who’s only been awake for five minutes. Oh the joys of not having any hair and only three lekku to take care of.

Neither Feemor nor Eko help their case when they both stick their tongues out at her.

After that, they get themselves in order quickly. Feemor accompanies them out into the hall where they all pause. Farah and Eko look at him silently and he needs no crèche-bond with them to know what they are thinking.

They hadn’t exactly been ecstatic yesterday when he told them what the council had requested of him or how quickly he would be leaving.

His departure window is in a few hours.

“It’s just a watchman position,” Feemor repeats his words from last night. 

The council had agreed that it was odd for the Force to so clearly prioritize the life of one single person. Then it was only left to decide what to do about it.

Feemor’s Force-assigned missions often ended up only with him wandering where it led and figuring out what he was supposed to do when trouble crossed his path or his curiosity led him astray into a new viper’s nest.

So that’s what they had asked of him, as boldly suggested by Sifo-Dyas and then tentatively echoed by the other council members present at the time - to go and investigate, to keep an eye out for brewing unrest. A watchman position in all but name to a sector that Eko had jokingly called a ‘suicide posting’ when Feemor told his clan. 

He had almost refused, yet the suggestion tugged at something in his mind and rang with truth. So instead he had agreed without protest.

For his own safety, they would not put it on any record. Jedi forgave, but they did not forget. Their history with mandalore was written in blood and ash.

“You have to check in. And visit for the initiate tournament.” Eko’s end of the bond twists with an echo of past grief. He had laughed about Feemor’s misfortune last night, because it was better than crying. He does not laugh now. “For once, don’t follow clan tradition.”

He had been closer than the rest of the clan to M’ren and Nax, who had also gone away just to investigate a passing rumor, out into Hutt space. They had come back - in pieces. They were only the latest of their little batch of knights to meet such an end. 

That’s what clan tradition was, an off-color joke - their crèche clan got the wildest assignments they survived by the will of the Force and then, from the simple ones, they would not return.

“You’re not wheedling me into taking a padawan quite this easily, my dears.” Feemor says, because there are no promises he can make and be certain to keep. For all that they had joked about his assignment just last night, now any levity falls flat.

“Come back for the tournament.” Farah echoes both Eko’s words and his worry. “They’ll want to see you.”

Guilt tripping him with initiates. That’s… not new, actually.

Feemor reaches out, tucks Farah under one arm and plants a kiss in the dip between her montrals. A look is all the invitation Eko needs to slot himself into his free side. He bops his forehead against Feemor’s temple.

“I’ll visit.” 

Maybe if they were not jedi, his crèchemates would demand to go with him. They have the skill and the training both to keep up. Yet they don't, because they each have their duty. Them, to the future members of the order. Feemor, to the galaxy those children will one day have to face.

One last squeeze, and then Feemor lets his siblings go.

“Stop worrying and run along, I still need to sacrifice Lee to Madame Nu as a distraction.” He tells them, earning a fleeting smile from both. “Nobody will even know I’m in the sector.”

*****     *****

“Buir!” Calls Jango as he rushes into the room, waving with the large holopad in his hand, “You have to see this!”

Jaster looks up from where he and Kal had been looking over the list of clans that had reached out to join forces with the Haat’mando’ade. Clan politics were a tangled mess at the best of times and since many clans had ties to the Vizsla, if not kyr’tsad, at some point in time or another, Jaster had to be careful about who he accepted and how.

Though it was already clearly heading that way, he would rather avoid throwing fuel on the fire that was the brewing civil war for as long as possible.

It has been a good hour since the official meeting has concluded, but most of Jaster’s unofficial council have remained lounging around the room, ready to throw out entirely unhelpful suggestions whenever the mood strikes them. In fact, a couple more ramikade may have crept in over time to keep their vode company; there’s an intense game of cu’bikad going on in the corner. Like stray tookas Jaster made the mistake of feeding, the lot of them.

So along with Jaster and Kal, it’s almost a dozen ramikade which drop whatever they’re doing in the face of such a proclamation.

Jango doesn’t even pause, unlike Silas, who was clearly trying to stop Jango from barging into the room and failed. To his credit, he only pauses for a second before he scuttles in after his friend.

Jango is already linking the pad to the holo-display. “Myles found the jetii!”

Well if the sudden entrance hadn’t captured the attention of the room, that sure did.

Jaster does his best not to look too enthusiastic. The confusion helps. “Wasn’t Myles tracking a bounty?”

The young ramikad had only recently begun taking solo jobs, usually something easy in the mid-rim. His buire had done a good job of instilling in their ad the importance of asking for help if he as much as suspected he might need it.

“The bounty fled coreward, so he stopped by Kih’Keldabe for a bit,” Jango shrugs right as the holo pops up with a frozen blurry shot of neon-lit Coruscanta rooftops.

Having owned a buy’ce for over half his life by now, Jaster is quick to recognize a HUD recording - the motion blur of the image comes framed with semi-translucent overlay readouts and text-to-speech transcriptions that mean there’s unregulated chatter too busy to properly listen to.

There are only a few things that could create such an uproar. Either something blew up and Jaster would have heard about it by now, or-

“An adiik went missing, there was a search, Myles joined.”

That would have definitely kicked the hive. Kih’Keldabe is a good few levels down and with well-earned mando’ad warryness, there’s quite a propensity for bolt holes and emergency exits, most of which only lead deeper into the bowels of Coruscanta.

The lower levels are unsafe for unarmed adults. To children, they are deadly.

"Were they found?"

If they weren't, then Jaster may have a war on more than one front on his hands. Kyr'tsad he could challenge, but there would be little he could do if the Senate took note of the blood flooding their basement.

Around the room, a tense sort of susurruss of armor pieces shifting along with their owners as verde draw themselves up.

Jango waves his hand for them to calm down. It's an exact copy of the gesture Jaster himself uses far too often.

"Ieva was returned to her buire safe and sound. Though you may now have competition, buir."

"What?"

"Just watch."

The holo bursts into motion.

The audio catches just the faintest trace of a shrill, young voice ringing the air.

Myles' view leaps onto a scaffold and skids to a stop before he can topple over the edge. It reveals what goes on below. A dingy alley and a trandoshan, dragging a twi'lek'i adiik by the wrist.

The young girl tries to kick the reptilian but the effort nearly sends her stumbling.

In the meeting room, Jaster feels his own rage be echoed by his verde, a heat at his back as they watch the events unfold on the holo.

A hand snaps up into view with a blaster ready.

Myles doesn't get the time to aim and fire before something else intervenes.

The demagolka is sent stumbling as a full bottle impacts their head. The sudden cloud of glass shards and fluorescent blue liquor has them releasing their hold on the adiik in an aborted effort to claw the sharp shrapnel from their skin.

By some impossible miracle, not a single piece or droplet hits the child.

Not a miracle, it seems, because as soon as there's a gap between the adiik and the trandoshan, a second, much larger item drops right into the vacated space.

A humanoid, golden hair and black leather glittering in the neon of the alley as in one smooth motion they straighten and push the ad into a corner behind them. It gives them just enough space to twist and-

The kick sends the trandoshan flying with enough force to dent the dumpster they slam against.

Myles HUD helpfully zooms in to scan the newcomer.

"That's him," Jaster says out of sheer surprise, "The jetii."

Because with the close-up image, he recognizes that face, though where it once held a distant gaze and a friendly smile, now it bears a murderous sort of blank focus.

The jetii doesn't look much like a jetii at all, dressed as he is. There's a metallic, glittery sheen both in his hair and sharp stripes around his eyes. Jetii tunics, once hidden under a spacer's coat, are now nowhere to be seen. Instead he's wearing a grey turtleneck and black pants, both tight enough that they leave little to the imagination, though they sure give it a lot of material.

The jetii rolls his shoulders and widens his stance. When the trandoshan stumbles to their feet with a snarl, the jetii's hands come up - not fists but a loose almost claw-like hold - with all the smooth grace of long years of practice. 

"Alor, if you don't want to tap that, I'd be happy to-" Ram’ser starts.

"Ne’johaa!" Jaster levels a glare at the helmeted ramikad. 

On the holo, the tradoshan leans forward, readying himself to charge.

Jaster has to relax the grip he has on the edge of the holotable. The jetii may be taller and stronger than the average human, but the reptilian has the advantage of bulk, claws, and thick skin that, from experience, can take far more of a beating.

In-buy’ce sound and comms have clearly been saved on a separate recording as there is no interruption before the speech-to-text comm transcripts at the corner of the HUD recording suddenly start to scroll by at double-time, possibly in response to something Myles had said.

Half are demanding a location, the others a sit-rep. The word ‘jetii’ comes up more than once, so too do orders to not engage. On the edge of the recording, where Myles’ gloves are barely in view, Jaster can see them clench and unclench around the edge of the metal scaffolding he’s holding on to. The recording just barely picks up the edge of a blaster’s scope edging into view again as Myles tentatively gets ready to strike, need be.

The jetii grins. It is not a kind thing. The trandoshan doesn’t even have the time to twitch forward.

It's a clear show of skill that the legs that wrap around the trandoshan's neck and twist do not break his spine. Both the impact of a second body falling from above onto his shoulders and the way that they turn sends the reptilian to the ground. It stuns the demagolka just long enough for the newcomer to come out of top, straddling their prey, and bring their fist down.

The trandoshan's skull is ground into the pavement with a resounding crack.

The togruta has pale yellow montrals and skin the dark umber of old blood. Much like Jaster’s jetii, she wears clothing meant for a night out - leatheris pants and a sequined halter top that shows off black ink twisting around the white marking of her arms. She tops the look off with a threatening snarl that puts all of her fangs on display.

The trandoshan is at least dazed, if not unconscious. The togtura grabs his head in a punishing grip and slams it into the ground once more.

“I feel like visiting Coruscanta all of a sudden.” Says one of the ramikade in the room.

“Get in line, vod.”

For a second in the alley, nobody moves. Then the togruta stands up like nothing at all happened, wipes her hand onto her shirt, and takes a step away from her opponent. She considers the body for a moment, the anger wiped from her face like it was never there, before she kicks him in the side. Hard.

Jaster’s jetii cocks his head to the side like a hawk assessing prey, raises an expressive eyebrow. “That was a little brutal.”

If he aims for chiding, he fails - that tone sounds far too approving.

“It was calculated.” The togruta rolls her eyes, then smiles up at the sky. “Come on down, boys.”

The recording blurs with how quickly Myles must have snapped his head up to look. It’s just fast enough to see two more figures leap down from a rooftop - seven floors up. One even does a flip.

The two land on the ground with nary a sound. A tan silver-haired near-human and a mottled orange nautolan, both are carrying take-out boxes and bottles of drink. The one in the nautolan’s hands has the same dregs of green-blue shimmery liquid as that which had originally nailed the trandoshan in the head.

"I'm surprised you didn't go for the throat." He says. He nudges the thrandoshan's lolling head with his foot.

“I’m not nine, I don’t bite everyone anymore." Jaster’s jetii shoots back without a moment of pause. "Lee?"

“You only bite back.” The nautolan huffs, then tilts his head towards the alley opening. “Lee’s keeping watch.”

They twitch to the left just enough to let the togruta pass by as she goes to crouch before Jaster’s jetii. It turns her away from the camera, but the way that the ad peeks out from behind the legs of her guardian shows that she’s probably being spoken to, too quietly for the audio pick-up to catch.

"Are all of your outings like this?" The silver-haired near-human asks. Their strangely sibilant accent is noticeably different from the rest of the jetii, who have a much more rough and rolling tone to their words.

"Absolutely," respond three voices in precisely the same cadence.

The near-human pulls a face and quickly downs the rest of their drink before dumping both the bottle and the take-out box into the dumpster the trandoshan had dented open.

"We rescued your ass, didn't we?" The nautolan tacks on. He too gets rid of his food and pointedly chooses to step on the trandoshan's unconscious body as he goes to do so.

"I know half the bars of lower Coruscant." The silver jetii makes a haughty little sniff. "Of all of them, Aravo's is the last place I would have expected to find members of the Briar syndicate."

While the jetii guarding the ad had not shifted at his companion’s approach - if anything, he had planted himself more solidly as a bulwark between the child and everyone else - he now steps away just as the ad lets go of his leg and dives into the togruta’s open arms. She sweeps the twi’lek’i girl up with the ease of extensive practice, murmuring soothing words while the child tucks her head under her chin.

Jaster’s jetii steps around them to stand between the pair and the trandoshan. That demagolka is now also stood over by the other two jetii, or stood on - the nautolan has a foot planted on his arm.

The togruta leans back into the blonde jetii’s presence with an ease born of familiarity. This close together, it’s clear that the golden slashes across his face mimic those painted on to accentuate the sharp edges of the togruta’s own white marks.

Jaster can’t help the disappointment that swoops cold in his gut.

“Oh don’t tell me they’re riduure. I can't compete with that,” one of the ramikade whines, echoing his thoughts. There’s a lot of disappointed murmurs that agree with him.

Maybe this can be a good thing? Jaster doesn’t have to worry about what the dha’kad at his belt means and maybe he can stop thinking about the arms that easily held up his weight and the dangerous blue of those eyes.

A couple more questions, the togruta’s voice returning to normal volume as the child calms, stray words picking up now again over the background din of Coruscanta - home, return, safe.

“Do you know where your parents are, darling?” Her words are a little distorted by the rumbling purr that probably growls too low and quiet for Myles’ audio to track.

The child nods, mumbling something into the togruta’s neck. She’s practically burrowed under her lekku, it’s rather adorable.

"Oh wow, Little Keldabe?" The togruta says a bit too loudly for it to only be meant for the kid.

The two other jetii whip their heads around to look not at the togruta, but at the blonde jetii with an expression that is hard to decipher. He appears to sigh.

"I heard that place is very pretty." The togruta continues, all wide smiles. "My brother here-”

Behind Jaster, a relieved, “Thank the ka’ra- ow!” 

There’s the distinct sound of someone getting smacked over the back of their buy’ce.

“-will be going to the big one soon."

"Just the sector." Jaster's jetii corrects with a serene cheer that is clearly practiced. 

There’s more than one whoop or cheer around the room. A bit of a buzz starts then dies down as Jango warns, “Ne’johaa!”

The jetii has his eyes still locked on the entryway to the alley, scanning back and forth. He uses the togruta's body to hide as, out of sight of the child, he signs something that makes the other two jetii nod. Jaster doesn't recognize the language, though with how the jetii keeps his two middle fingers stuck together throughout, it's from a species with only four digits.

He then taps his knuckles against the togruta's shoulder, a quick staccato rhythm.

She appears to ignore him, but her montrals twitch in a way that's more than reflex. Out loud, she simply continues talking to the child. "He's never been before. Do you know what food he should try first? What's your favorite?"

Slowly, in small steps, she's edging out of the alley, keeping up a stream of chatter. The way she bounces the ad turns them away from the crumpled form of the attacker anytime the ad turns her head even a little in that direction. The nautolan has dropped into a crouch, frisking the unconscious body for weapons. 

Jaster’s jetii follows, though he stops once the togruta is far enough that even if the trandoshan somehow woke and attacked, he wouldn’t be able to clear the distance.

The numerous weapons secreted away somewhere - Jaster will admit to not paying attention - the nautolan has moved on to tying the trandoshan's hands together with a strap of leatheris they have liberated from their tendrils. When he’s done, he tosses the unconscious body over his shoulder like it weighs nothing at all.

Jaster's jetii cocks his head to the side, just a twitch.

"I'll only bump into every other corner, I swear." The nautolan replies to the silent question, his wide smile entirely unrepentant.

"Just don't give CorSec too much trouble." The blonde rolls his shoulders. "See you at Side Track when we're done?"

The near-human, throughout all this, had unhooked a strip of cloth from their layered skirt and efficiently wrapped it over their upper body to conceal the bejeweled strip of cloth they had worn as their top. As they tug the last of it into place, their outfit has skillfully gone from something meant for clubbing to attire one could almost call modest. 

"By this point you might as well head for that Mando bar, shee - sher- sheresh-whatever-the-kriff." They drawl. Somehow, their accent has gone from sibilant to perfect high coruscanti. The saber they pull from somewhere and attach to their belt as well as the he quick, severe bun that they twist their hair into only completes their new image. "Meet whatever's already coming for you."

“They’d probably hunt him for sport.” The nautolan doesn’t seem against the idea at all, judging by that toothy smile. “It would fit clan tradition.”

Another twitch of the head that might be an eye-roll or a snort. Jaster’s jetii turns on his heel to follow the togruta who, by this point, is at the far end of the alley.

"It wouldn't be any fun if I didn't make them work for it." He tosses over his shoulder. His smile is wide. It reveals dimples and also a set of impressively sharp fangs. “And I’m pretty sure I already invited them to try.”

Laughter follows him. The nautolan does ‘accidentally’ clip the corner of the building with the trandoshan’s lolling head on the way out.

“They took Ieva right to her buire. A verd tried to take her off their hands but nearly got thrown off the level when he admitted he wasn’t her direct caretaker.” Jango reports as the holo flashes to a stop and reverts back to the first still image.

A couple clicks of his pad, and it’s replaced by a few other images, clearly taken on the jetiise’s walk to Kih’Keldabe by the verde that must have shadowed them. One has the togruta struggling to hold on to ad while the girl leans precariously around her shoulder, reaching behind the woman to play some hand-clapping game with the other jetii.

Another is the jetiise caught right as they hand over the ad to her grateful buire. A new person has joined them, possibly the ‘Lee’ mentioned in Myles’ recording. They’re a zabrak with hair braided into a complex crown around the horns that are filed down and capped with a coppery-gold metal. They’re dressed like their companions, all tight fabric and glitter, though they have a decorative veil over their face, not quite opaque enough to cover the skeletal and scarred empty socket where their right eye once sat before it was, by those marks, violently clawed out. Their left is staring right at the camera, a sharp shriek-hawk glare that, even sectors away, makes Jaster want to reconsider his life choices.

“That one has fire,” Jaster can hear someone whisper in the back of the room. “Mesh’la.”

“Vod, don’t stick your dick in a bear trap.” someone else whispers back. Only Galaar Lone says osik like that with a straight face, so the first must be Nau.

“Somehow they managed to leave without even giving their names. A few verde tried to follow, but apparently drunk jetiise use ventilation and hydroponics levels as shortcuts because they can just-” Jango looks down at his pad, frowns like he isn’t sure what he is reading. “Freeze the vents in time for a while. Yeah, I don’t get that one either.”

Of course the jetiise would stroll around the levels that are entirely impossible to navigate if one isn’t a droid or capable of flight in one way or another. Jare’la, but at least they can clearly back it up. Jaster kind of wants to see how the hell they manage.

Unfortunately, Jaster has to be mand'alor first and a verd with a hopeless infatuation with a jetii later, “Any noise from Kih’Keldabe?”

“Only from the kyr’tsad supporters, but they can’t say osik without being shut down since all the jetii did was return a lost adiik.” He smirks, then. “Myles says that bars next to the jetii’yaim might find themselves with a bit more traffic.”

Well, now Jaster understands what Jango meant when he said he would have competition. Not that he can blame the verde. And he’s not annoyed with the increased attention now fixed on the jetii, not at all. He just wants to clear up the darksaber debacle, that’s it. Absolutely.

Not like watching a man spin-kick a demagolka across an alley while wearing clothes tight like that does anything to him. Absolutely not.

Judging by the quick look Kal casts him, he fools nobody.

“And how many are aware that a jetii is coming to the sector?” Kal asks as the murmur in the room picks up. 

Jango grins “Besides Myles? Only the people in this room.”

“Well then,” Kal claps a hand on Jaster’s shoulder and gives it a bit of a shake. “ Oya , mand’alor.”

Chapter Text

Spaceport stations are the only true neutral ground in the Mandalore sector.

The excision has made Manda’yaim near-uninhabitable, but the repercussions have echoed further than the planet. With one focused strike from the Republic, the sector lost its main source of agricultural land. Oh, they could struggle along, some better than others, but without imports of significant magnitude, nobody would live in comfort.

Cut off from the Hydian Way by the Meerian sector, it falls upon the Mandalore Road to funnel the traffic, which is where the spaceport stations came into play. 

It takes far less fuel for the massive freighters to land at and take off from an orbital spaceport than to fight the gravity of moons and planets. Cutting fuel, of course, saves money. So instead of dealing with landbound spaceports, the colossal transport ships dock at the numerous stations that drift through the black and then a swarm of smaller freighters comes in to do the tedious work of shuffling wares back and forth to any dome or city or town or compound that demands it.

Cause trouble in a station and you risk the already wary importers raising their prices or, worse, cutting off supply altogether until things calm. Cause trouble in a station and you piss off everyone, from your worst enemy to your staunchest supporter. Nothing sows discord quite like an empty stomach.

And so the stations, such as the tiny satellite port that now only goes by Orenth-Five thanks to the meteorite strikes that have long whittled away the true name painted upon its outer surface, are true neutral ground.

As it tends to happen with neutral ground, it’s full of assholes.

Case and point - one of the Takel clan whelps currently harassing the aruetii by the counter.

Now, Ruben Tay'haai is just as curious about the stranger in their midst. If he knows his riduur any - and he knows his dearest Ara’va well, after spending well over six decades by her side - so is she.

Everyone in ba’buir Herrah’s diner must be.

Aruetii aren’t uncommon in Orenth-Five - who brings in the ships, after all? - but they are rare at Ba’buir Herrah’s. Unheard of, actually, to come in unaccompanied. Ba’buir Herrah has been on Orenth for as long as anyone can remember and will probably stay longer still if tales are to be believed. The ancient harch is well into her centuries, though nobody knows her age, just like nobody knows what to call her besides Ba’buir Herrah.

Her diner reflects her age. It is something beyond a hole in the wall. Built up and built over, there is no real sign to tell it apart from the blast doors in the dark halls beyond, here in the deep levels. Those who come here know where to go by being led here in person, rarely by word of mouth. By this point, the visitors only come from three tiny clans that tend to call Orenth a home - the Tay’haii, the Les, and the Takel.

It is generational loyalty that keeps them coming, even if the Tay’haii have sworn to Mereel, the Takel have decided to lick that di’kut Tor’s boots, and the Les just sniff haughtily and refuse to budge from their neutral ground. They politely ignore each other under ba’buir Herrah’s gimlet gaze because if there are two people who you don’t mess with, it’s a mando’ad cunning enough to reach old age and the one who makes your food; she is both.

The aruetii, who had happily declared that he was recommended the place by a friend when the old harch demanded what brought him here, has no such protection.

For some reason, the Takel di’kut took issue with that. What a verd sees a verd will do, guesses Ruben.

The aruetii weathers it in silence, eating like the kyr’tsad wanabee is just a buzzing fly. He has guts, that one. Maybe he took Takel’s.

Even the two Les ade appear amused by the situation, at least the younger one. The paint on that ad’s armor has seen no weathering besides that of daily wear. His ori’vod, whom Ruben has seen grow up on over the past twenty years whenever the Les clan came to visit from Gargon, manages to keep an impassive face. They still toss bits of fried nuna into their mouth like it’s bangcorn while they watch.

Well, if the Takel youth is putting up a show of puffing up and acting tough, might as well.

“Favro should reign in his ad.” Ruben mutters into his noodles.

His riduur taps her laughter against the table in dadita, too busy pretending to pick through her own bowl while she watches the scene unfold from under her lashes.

Still as beautiful as the day he met her and just as much of a gossip-monger. It’s not like he missed her turning up the volume on her hearing aids the moment the mess started. Ruben lets himself admire the way her smile deepens the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes before he turns back to the quiet confrontation.

Takel has stepped closer. Ruben would swear that just for a moment, right as he looks, the aruetii smiles so very briefly before he eats another spoonful of blisteringly red broth.

Must be an outer rim lad, to not even flinch at the burn, or maybe a carnivore. Not from the core, that’s for sure, with such rough clothes that are not as much worn out as worn in. Stiff pants and boots that barely retain a hint of polish above the ankle, a shirt that had once either been white or a deep sandstone, the color long washed out either way. The only well-maintained pieces of kit are the shereshoy-orange bandana at his neck, the holsters at his hips, and the kama around his waist, made out of some odd armorweave Ruben has never seen before. 

The few pieces of armor are odd too. In good condition, for being cheap durasteel - dented from blasterfire, but the carbon-scoring cleaned off. An unusual configuration, however, as the plating only lays around the shins, both shoulders, and down only one arm. Nothing for the vital organs, though it must work since despite what battles he’s seen, the lad has clearly come out the other side alive. Maybe despite the blaster at his hip he prefers something flexible - close combat, or a kad.

“Do you think Exio met him?” Ruben asks Ara’va. Ex’ika is the eldest of their ade and always meets the odd ones.

“Tove.” His riduur mutters into her food. 

Good point, though he was sure their bu’ad was visiting Coruscanta this season with her own little clan. But out of their gaggle of descendants, adopted and not, they were the most likely to mention Ba’buir Herrah’s. Tove’s new ad loved the uj’alayi here, last that the new family dropped by.

The gentle tap of his cyar’ika’s fingers draws his attention back up to the situation in front of them.

Takel, it’s clear, is done with the aruetii ignoring him.

Ruben will admit that he did not expect the fist that goes swinging; a bit overdramatic, no? Somehow, the aruetii who wasn’t even looking in the direction of the di’kut, does.

The aruetii ducks down so low that his cheek brushes the countertop; the only reason that he doesn’t plant his face right into his bowl is that he slides it away at the last second, so smooth that not a single drop spills.

The armored fist that would have struck the back of his skull passes harmlessly overhead. Takel, throw off by the fact that his fist impacts nothing, over-reaches and loses balance.

The aruetti straightens out now harmlessly behind the arm and returns the favor. A hand to the back of Takel’s swiveling buy’ce, and then a sharp push down that has it impacting the durasteel counter with a resounding crack. Efficient and quick - well practiced.

Takel drops to the ground. The aruetii slides his bowl of noodles back into place, where the di’kut’s helmet may have left a scuff mark.

Silence.

For a moment, the entire diner stares at the aruetii and the aruetii stares down at the crumpled kyr’tsad with what might almost be disappointment.

Then suddenly he freezes for a breath and his eyes widen. His head snaps up. “Does anyone know where the nearest medic is?”

“Wayii, don’t worry! That di’kut will come to in a minute.” Crows the younger of the Les vode.

Ruben and Ara’va share a look. After so many years together, he doesn’t need any words or dadita to know that she shares his thoughts. 

The boy is entirely too gleeful - maybe the clan doesn’t plan to remain neutral for long, if even their ade are so open with their dislike of Tor’s lot.

They turn back towards the show going on before them.

“I’d rather not give someone a TBI on my first day in the sector.” The aruetii replies. He has knelt down to reach under the unconscious verd’s neck seal, looking for a pulse. He must find one. “Come here, dear.”

He heaves one of Takel’s arms over his shoulders, hefting the smaller man up easily despite the weight his beskar’gam must add. He doesn’t even wobble a bit when he stands up. When the aruetii is about to take a step, the older of the Les slides out of their seat and interrupts him with a click of their tongue.

“I’ll show you to the baar’ur.” They declare, staring the aruetii down, “But you’re covering the fee.”

Maybe they’re making sure that the aruetii isn’t about to rob Tekel of his beskar’gam, though if the di’kut lost it like this, it would serve the kyr’tsad fanatic right. Might teach the ad some manners. Or maybe the Les ad just wants some good gossip material.

Ruben is sure Ara’va would have volunteered them both, if their old legs could keep up with the trek.

The aruetii smiles. It makes him look a good ten years younger and about as dangerous as a tooka kit. “Of course. Lead the way?”

Les nods, gestures for their kih’vod to sit tight, and ducks out the door.

From behind the counter, ba’buir Herrah makes a loud click with her chelicerae, then holds out one of her arms. 

“On the house, for taking out the trash.” Ba’buir Herrah doesn’t as much offer as she demands. The words are followed with a clicking chirr that Ruben has heard more than once while listening to the ancient harch work behind her grill, though he could never tell if those were words, or just noises of her species.

The aruetii obediently takes the take-out container thrust at him, shuffling awkwardly to reach over the dead weight at his side. Good choice - nobody refuses ba’buir Herrah. Then Ruben gets an answer to that old mystery of his as the aruetii, of all things, chirrs right back.

Ba’buir Herrah’s chelicerae twitch into the first large smile he has ever seen on the harch. It’s more than a little intimidating.

“Thank you.” The aruetii tells ba’buir Herrah, then looks over the diner again. He shifts a little, like one might do if trying for a bow, or maybe it’s the weight of an unconscious mando’ad on his shoulders finally having an impact. “Have a nice evening, everyone. Sorry for the mess.”

With that, he and the still-unconscious Tekel vanish through the door to join Les.

Silence reigns for a moment as the durasteel plates whoosh shut behind them. The ventilation clunks as filters change and ba’buir Herrah churrs under her breath when something is placed on the grill with a loud sizzle. The Les vod’ika is giggling under his breath as he types into his comm.

“You call the ade and I call the bu’ade?” Ara’va volunteers.

“Of course, ner kar’ta.”

They definitely need to find out who met that aruetii.

*****     *****

Feemor is glad for the three-hour long flight from the space station down to Gargon, because jedi serenity or no, he had been about to combust out of sheer embarrassment. Good going, Fee - not a week in the sector and you already gave someone a concussion.

To be fair, he expected those helmets to have more padding. He thought he would just warn the bothersome guy off, that’s all.

His crèchemates are not allowed to learn of this. Ever.

The medic he had brought his unfortunate victim to may have had an impassive face and a gruff demeanor, but Feemor had felt his silent laughter loud and clear after his guide - one Emma of clan Les, as they had introduced themself - explained the situation to the doctor in mando’a.

Feemor had only caught every other word. He’s learning the language, but it’s slow going, seeing as his teachers are a holocron intent on making him deadly with a saber - and not a light saber, mind you, which he was not aware of when he swiped it off the shelf with the Archivist’s blessing, so he needs to find himself one of those -, what reading Master Nu has recommended, and the republic dictionary which he has found is hilariously wrong on far too many levels.

One particular piece of writing that Master Nu directed him to look over came without a translation to Basic. I was apparently never actually read by the Archivist, though she assured him of its accuracy. A bit odd, since she preferred to validate each and every source, but Feemor was sure she knew an eclectic mix of academics, so this must have come from someone she trusted.

However some of the auto-translations of this Codex had him laughing himself to tears - he had even amused himself on the hyperspace jump to Bandomeer by posting the most inaccurate ones on one of the obscure historian sites Nu had shown him years ago, then had continued at the behest of some of the strangers there. One even kindly provided the correct interpretations, so Feemor now purposely tosses him the most outrageous mistakes.

All in all, his vocabulary currently consists mostly of combat terms - might be good if he ever needs to eavesdrop, random bits about history, honor and good conduct - surprisingly useful if he wants to insult someone, and whatever new words his new friend employs to call him an infuriating smartass.

Feemor wonders what other word he’d learn if he told the mando he’s a jedi. Probably not kind ones.

He already brings enough attention just by being an outsider. Maybe choosing Gargon as the next stopping point was a mistake, but the planet was nearby and Emma had spoken of it with clear affection. She was definitely right about the impressive view - the mountains that cover the whole planet rise high into the purple-blue sky, the teal-grey rock a vivid contrast to the deep green of old-growth forests. A pretty place, one that fits well with Feemor’s role as a wandering spacer who’s as much sightseeing as looking for a job.

The town he lands at feels like one of those forests he had seen from orbit - old, rooted in. There are less foreigners here, more people in armor, more eyes that watch as Feemor wanders around town. 

It’s easy to tell the mandalorians apart from the visitors, even beyond their armor. They are bright in his mind’s eye, as colorful as their clothing. They’re not bright the way that jedi are bright - distant suns, powerful, as likely to be life-tending and world-ending, but safe and shielded by a vast void. No, the mando’ade are like campfires - bright, always in flux, just as likely to offer comfort as they were to cause acute harm if you reached out without care.

Half of them scowl when Feemor shuffles past on his way back to his ship with a new crate of rations, half offer a smile in greeting. He can feel-hear their opinions of him passing on the breeze in shades of curiosity and wary watchfulness. 

Feemor admires the intensity with which they feel, even if it gets a little loud.

He would expect the Force to call him just as loudly, but instead, all he hears is a whisper of intent as his eyes are drawn to the forest’s edge beyond the landing pad. A mando in red and blue armor checks something on a receiver, then walks down a path, vanishing among the trees.

It’s easy enough for Feemor to reach out and get a measure of their presence while he fiddles with unlocking the landing ramp of the Misfit Star.

Someone, it seems, is on a hunt. Feemor has an odd feeling that the mando won’t be walking out of that forest on his own.

The ramp comes down. Feemor drops his supplies on one of the stray boxes in the cargo hold. His eyes fall onto the swoop bike strapped tight to the bulkhead.

Might as well take a look around.

*****     *****

Cain Rau is surely about to end up dead.

Oh, just a quick detour, Cain, just look around whether the rumors of kyr’tsad using the forests around Farr’ya as a hiding place for their camps may be right.

Well, alor, good and bad news. Good news - he didn’t find the camp, but he sure did find kyr’tsade. Bad news - they also found him.

His heart must be beating itself bloody against his hal’cabur, his chest hurts so badly. Every breath in scrapes its way down his parched throat, stabs a new nail right into his side.

There’s a reason he wears a jetpack for quick getaways. Rau has always despised running.

Not that he has much choice now as he blindly crashes through the deep undergrowth. Branches and brambles catch and scrape against his beskar’gam as he charges through. They snap shut behind him and Rau hopes that they will cause as much trouble to the kyr’tsadiise at his tail as they do for him.

He curses as one branch nearly rips off his bes’mabur, mag-locks be damned. He can’t risk taking to the skies, it would just give the kyr’tsad’e a clear shot right at his back. With how low his fuel is - stupid, so kriffing stupid, if only he hadn’t forgotten to check - he cannot outfly them.

Rau can only run, even if his legs feel so heavy that it must be his bones, not his armor, that are forged from beskar.

Before him, an opening. He nearly loses footing at the sudden lack of resistance when his feet hit packed dirt instead of fallen leaves

Then instead of being run down he nearly gets run over as a swoop bike screeches to a halt so sharply that despite the floaters, the nose of the hovercraft nearly scrapes the ground. The momentum still carries it. The end of it goes spinning up, up, up over Rau’s head as the rider somehow turns the machine around at an impossible angle.

The engines cut out with a sputtering cough. The swoop lands with its tail seat towards Rau, nose pointing where it had just come flying from.

Rau tries to figure out whether or not his heart gave out while the swoop’s pilot kicks his leg over the chassis to face him.

The stranger has a smile as wild as his wind-swept hair when he asks “Need a ride?”

“Kyr’tsad.” Rau gasps.

“No clue who that is.”

“Death Watch.” Rau manages, because he’s not getting some random aruetii killed for his own mistakes. He may be an idiot sometimes, but he has more honor than to involve strangers in his own trouble. “You have to go.” 

“Seems like you need that ride after all, buddy.” The aruetii, of all things he could do, hops off the swoop and smacks his hand against the surface to open the maintenance panel. That smile is gone. “Speeders?”

“What?”

“Are they on speeders? Quick, now.”

“Jetpacks.”

An acknowledging hum before the pilot rips something out of the mess of machinery and slams the panel closed.

“Was that the limiter?” Rau demands because surely the exhaustion must be making him hallucinate.

The stranger shrugs. “We don’t need it.”

“We don’t- You just made that thing into a death trap!”

The aruetii makes a see-saw motion with his hand, then throws a leg over the chassis and settles into the seat of the swoop bike, comfortable as can be. “Not if I’m driving it.”

The engine kicks back on not with a purr, but with a shriek. Yeah, that was definitely the limiter.

“Death. Trap.” Rau repeats himself.

The shriek of the engine before him is joined by the screams of the jetpacks behind him.

The aruetii doesn’t even glance in the direction of the approaching kyr’tsadiise. He just pats the space behind himself, foot slipping dangerously down from the brakes. The smile that he gives Rau is far too cheerful.

“Get on the Death. Trap. Or you can go with Death. Watch. Pick a poison.”

Well, when you put it like that .

Rau tosses a leg over the metal hull that really shouldn’t be shaking like that, oh ka’ra. “At least we’ll die quickly.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

“What do y-” If Rau had something to actually say, the words get left behind along with what feels like his lungs and the rest of his guts meters behind, right where the swoop was a second ago.

Rau would swear his mind goes black for a second because the next thing he knows he’s clutching onto the aruetii for dear life. The chest under his hands twitches with what must be laughter and as Rau dares to look up - oh ka’ra, trees should not blur like this - he spies the edge of smile.

“Comfy there?” The aruetii shouts over the roar of the wind whipping past them.

“Look at the kriffing road!” Rau snaps right as this kriffing jare twitches to the right and, at the speeds that they’re going, the minuscule shift of weight is enough to set them off-course and just barely miss ramming straight into an ancient pine.

He’s pretty sure the shrubbery at its base has just left scrapes on his boots.

“It’s fine.” The di’kut says, looking away from the road, again , like his swoop is not trying to outclass a kom’rk-class fighter in terms of speed.

“Ka’ra preserve me.”

“I’m trying.”

Cain Rau is surely about to end up dead. He tucks his buy’ce into the aruetii’s shoulder and prays.

*****     *****

Feemor is still grinning like a fool when he drops into his chair.

Oh, it might not be very jedi of him, but chases like these may just be the times outside of meditation that he feels closest to the Force. That’s why he favors a swoop over a speeder - it’s just an engine with wheels, the controls and vanes so unpredictable at high speed that all you can use to drive it is instinct. It’s the closest you can get to a Jedi Vector while on the ground, or at least while not in orbit. 

Racing down forest roads, his body is just a mote in his awareness as he catalogs every shift and vibration of the swoop. The Force guides him in every minute shift and adjustment, his mind far ahead in every tree and shrub that he passes.

He still feels a little bigger than his own skin. He can almost feel the thrum of the town in his bones, the creeping roots of the forest they have just escaped. Somewhere out there, a cantina or two, filled with cheer and drunken buzz. Out there, homes, laughter and warmth and the sharp tang of an argument that just boiled over before reason calms it down.

The Force is quiet in his bones. He has taken the opportunity it gave him, now only to figure out why it was given.

Though, maybe his rescue isn’t quite up for friendly interrogation.

“Food helps,” Feemor tells the man as he pushes one of the two bowls towards the mando. 

They had gotten some odd looks as Feemor had parked by the kiosk-slash-diner, though by then he was moving within in-town speed limits. Him, grinning and wind-swept, and his still anonymous tag-along, wobbling like a grasser colt on unsteady feet while Feemor hustled him into a seat by the table.

The rattle of the bowl against the tabletop, or maybe the nose-searing scent of the spices, at last jolts the mando into awareness.

“What?” The mando mutters, “Why are we-”

“Would two runaways stop in town to eat? No, they would not.” Feemor draws his own bowl closer. “So eat up. You look like you need it.”

It’s something that has worked for him surprisingly well, to just stop running, right in the middle of a hunt. Only fools dare to hide in plain sight. Fools, and the ones daring enough to pull it off.

Jedi know very well, what it’s like to be hunted.

Still looking somewhat dazed, the mando takes a bite, then another.

They eat for a while in companionable silence. Feemor can feel the mando coming back to himself as he relaxes, the edges of his mind sharpening now that exhaustion and adrenaline have ebbed away.

He had wanted to ask about what that commotion was out there, but there are calculations slowly running in that mind sitting before him and he’s wary of being a variable instead of an accident.

Because whoever chased this man? They wore beskar too.

This is no bounty gone wrong. He thinks of the shadows in the sky that the dust-trail of his swoop had blotted out and tastes the ash of Korda VI on his tongue. His feet itch. Forward, forward. He has yet to find his quarry. 

“Got any recommendations for my next stop?”

The mando blinks at him. “Me’ven?”

“Clearly whatever that was didn’t like you.” Feemor indicates the mando with his fork before he stabs a piece of grilled meat with it.  “I’m sure they won’t like me either.”

He pops the morsel into his mouth. Cocky spacer flair comes easy to him, he just has to pretend he’s Eko.

“And you want… recommendations?”

“I’m sightseeing.”

The mando stares at him like he’s questioning his sanity. Feemor leans back and cocks an eyebrow, daring the man to ask. It’s not like he can be proven wrong.

“How about this,” Feemor adds, “I’ll give you a lift. Free of charge.”

The mando blanches, eyes flicking towards the swoop.

Bless his jedi training - Feemor doesn’t laugh. They didn’t even max out the engine! Instead, he waves a hand in the vague direction of the landing platforms. “I have a ship - no swoop necessary. It’s a good deal, just tell me where to.”

For a moment, the mando considers the offer, but survival instinct must win out.

He grimaces, then, tentatively, “Concord Dawn?”

*****     *****

Tarre Gervhe slows his speedercar to a stop when he comes across a man by the side of the road. The stranger is standing by a swoop bike, sleeves rolled back and arms soot-stained. He runs a hand through his hair, staining the gold strands into tarnished silver, while he stares down into the maintenance hatch of the machine.

He’s found a poor place to break down. While the road is one between two towns, it’s not an active one - the Gervhe farm is the only one around for many klicks.

“Need any help there, burc’ya?” Tarre calls.

The man startles a little, laughs awkwardly as he rubs at the back of his neck. “Honestly, I’m not sure at this point.”

Tarre puts his speeder on park and ambles over. Might as well take a look. The aruetii budges over without protest and, just, damn .

“Were you trying to take off into low orbit?” Terre asks in disbelief.

The limiter has melted at some joints, the metal misshapen and wrong. The piece must have gotten quite a bump somewhere and then given up the ghost mid-ride. It’s a wonder the poor man didn’t run into something and get splattered into an impressive amount of pieces with how fast the swoop must have accelerated.

“No?” The man doesn’t quite sound sure. He grimaces. “I guess I’m not outrunning that storm today.”

Tarre frowns. He’s sure he checked the forecast this morning, but- “Storm?”

“Yeah, gathering over those mountains there.” The aruetii twitches his head towards the nearest range. “Can’t you feel it in the air?”

Tarre is well aware he’s ka’ra-touched, just a little. It’s nothing that would grant him any power. No object had ever moved under his will, no matter how much he had tried as a child, nor did he have prescient dreams or stamina exceeding his species standard. That sense, that niggling feeling at the back of his mind, it’s just enough for him to have much better luck haggling at the markets back in town.

Now, the ka’ra tell him that this aruetii is honest and, more importantly, that he’s telling the truth.

When Tarre really thinks about it, he can feel that building heaviness in the air. Not quite moisture, not quite pressure.

“Haar’chack!” He curses under his breath. “The nuna birds.”

He had just let them out and they’re not trained to return on command yet. The crops are too young to withstand harsh winds either, not unless he covers them up. Even with his riduur and his ade helping out, that will be a mess and a half to manage and-

“Need any help?” The aruetii suggests kindly. He gestures at the broken swoop. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.”

Tarre doesn’t think for more than a second before he accepts. Might as well.

*****     *****

Despite the fact that everyone at the table is soaked to the bone and tired from chasing nuna birds, dinner is a lively affair. Feemor had been offered - read: shamelessly hustled into - the family home right as the storm rolled.

He’s even happier about being indoors when the fifth member of the household runs in half an hour later, teeth chattering so hard it can be heard through the vocoder and dripping so much water that it almost like her very armor may need to be wrung out.

The newcomer introduces herself as Juno of clan Gervhe - beroya and riduur to Alenn and Tarre, as well as the reason why the family of near-humans is raising a pair of togruta. The ten-year-old twins, Arsha and Erret, sing Juno’s praises and delightedly recount the tale of being rescued from a burning ship with great gusto as well as a lot of embellishment.

“Ju’buir says I can go with her on her next hunt!” Arsha gloats. Unlike her brother, she seems very excited to travel the galaxy. 

Erret just rolls his eyes.

“My next trip off-planet, not my next hunt, Ar’ika.” Juno corrects, strict, but not unkind.

“But I have to train if I want to be a ramikad!” Arsha complains.

Alenn and Tarre shoot Feemor apologetic looks as a well-rehearsed argument starts up between mother and daughter.

Still, soon enough dinner is over, Feemor is chased away from trying to help with the dishes, and there really isn’t much to do until the storm ends. The twins don’t take long to become restless and as the only new item in their environment, Feemor ends up as the target of all that energy.

Luckily whether they’re showing off adorably wide-visored helmets or excitedly babbling about their first training sabers, children are children, and entertaining them is a skill Feemor has had a chance to practice at length.

He ends up sitting on the ground, knife in hand, while the two siblings try to teach him a particularly fancy flourish with the blade.

It’s a nice skill to have, much like how initiates are first taught to twirl and spin their sabers - useless in a fight, but a fun way to build up wrist and forearm strength while losing the instinctual fear of a plasma blade passing by close enough to feel its heat. As the spins gain complexity, so too do they teach awareness of where the blade is in relation to the body or how to rapidly change grips. 

Unfortunately for the children’s teaching endeavors, Feemor is as good with regular blades as he is with plasma ones.

It’s easy enough to fake exaggerated fumbles in the same spot where the twins struggle and soon the two children are debating with each other, trying to figure out why exactly this aruetii can’t get the move right.

Feemor lets them. Teaching is the best way to learn, and if they don’t figure it out soon enough, this aruetii may just suddenly have a breakthrough on where he was going wrong and give the kids a hint. They should hopefully get it after that.

He trades sneaky smiles with Tarre, who then quickly turns his attention back to the impressive embroidery he’s adding to a coat sleeve when his kids look toward him.

Feemor busies himself with messing up the flourish yet again and looking contrite about it. The twins get back to their intense study of why he keeps dropping the knife.

Come on now, Arsha, you almost got it there, just shift the weight a little.

Something pricks against his back, tells him to pay attention.

He lets the twins’ words wash over him while he chases that sense. Not the twins - they have not changed in behavior and are as careful with their blades as always. Not Tarre, whose presence is all meditative concentration as the needle dips in and out of cloth in quick, sure moves.

In the kitchen, voices. Alenn and Juno heard laughing over the clatter of dishes - from Alenn - and the buzz of the plasma-solder fixing the maglocks on plates of armor - Juno.

Their voices have quieted and laughter has fallen away. That’s what changed.

“Clan Ordo isn’t about to go allying themselves with Tor.” Alenn is saying, carefully low and quiet, but not quiet enough to avoid Feemor’s sharp hearing.

A huff, must be Juno’s. “They might,”

“Just because you saw kyr’tsade on Ordo doesn’t mean they’re welcome there.”

“They sure felt comfortable enough to be out in the open.” The plasma torch makes a crackle like it was scraped too close to metal. A quiet curse. 

“That’s because they know that clan Ordo won’t do osik in fear of showing favor.” Alenn soothes. “The kyr’tsade are just taking advantage.”

A sharp click of the tongue and a clank of metal against the wooden tabletop. “And where else will they push? You think our Protectors will do anything if Vizsla comes knocking?”

“It worked out fine last time.”

“ Mereel worked out last time.” Juno hisses. “We need to consider it. Next council meeting-”

“Mister Finn! You got it!”

“See Erret? I told you I was right!”

“Ah,” Feemor says smiling as he focuses back on the twins. “That’s only because I had such great teachers.”

He twirls the knife just right, with only a small catch where the issue first was; can’t make it too unbelievable of an improvement. The twins puff themselves up with pride.

Tarre looks up from his stitching and behind their backs, gives Feemor a thumbs-up.

“Now you teach us something!” Arsha demands with the sort of self-assured authority that only children seem to be capable of. Erret perks up, but in this he lets his sister speak for them both.  “What do aruetii fight like?”

Feemor sneakily glances behind them. Tarre gives him another thumbs up.

Uh, now this is something jedi training did not prepare Feemor for. Were they initiates, it would be easy enough for him to pick out a simple Force-manipulation exercise, or maybe a fancier twirl of a training saber. He can’t teach them knife tricks, since he just pretended not to know much about them for almost a whole hour, and he doesn’t think gambling is as much of a life-saver out in the galaxy for mandos as it is to jedi.

Some self-defense moves, maybe? At what level are mando kids in that? What could have their parents taught them? He’s at a bit of a loss.

On a second note... he thinks about the twins' parents for a moment. A human, a pantoran, and a near-human that was maybe a quarter twi'lek'i at best, judging by the fact that his numerous freckles were far redder than that sort of tan coloring would usually allow.

Well then, there's one thing that the togruti kids probably have missed out on.

It might create some chaos for the next week until the novelty wears off, but that won’t be his problem anymore.

"Do you know how to correctly bite your way out of a headlock?"

Feemor leaves the next morning with a fixed swoop, enough leftovers to feed himself for a week, and a set of comm codes. He has promised that he would get the family in touch with his sister, who would surely have better pointers about non-human self-defense that Feemor couldn’t impart. Yes, his bite strength did outclass a togruta by a good measure, but his nails were closer to human standard and he risked losing some if he attempted some of the tricks he had seen Farah execute.

Crèchemasters are the last line of defense for the initiates if the Temple falls and they take to that duty with utmost devotion. There’s a reason even the guards back out of the salle when the crèche-knights come in to train.

The Force hums with approval at the thought, the same way it did when he first coached the twins and their curious parents on how to avoid cracking their teeth against bone until their adult set of fangs grew in.

Whatever the twins will need those skills for, he hopes they won’t need to use them for many years yet.

He also leaves with a destination in mind. If this kyr’tsad is making noise in Ordo’s ports, he might as well pay them a visit.

*****     *****

Parjai Arvhet is absolutely not anxious to the point of vibrating out of her own skin and the fact that she’s almost a whole hour early to this meet-up is just a coincidence, nothing more.

This will be her first trip out of the sector. After years -years!- of pleading with her buire, she’s finally allowed to join her ba’vodu Mara out there, in the galaxy. She can finally start her training as a beroya.

Oh, she has had training before - she has earned her armor, has learnt to handle a blaster with skill from the retired verde that live down the road, has ground many of her friends into the dirt in the sparring rings. At seventeen, she’s well of age to take on an apprenticeship. In fact, she has been demanding her buire’s blessing to go ever since she first put paint on her beskar’gam.

Her buire had refused. They thought that the safety of managing a cantina was preferable to a life of hyperspace lanes and blaster burns, and ba’vodu Mara refused to take her on until they had agreed.

Now they had. Finally. She can leave Ordo behind and see the stars.

This is why Parjai finds herself in this desolate little landing pad, as far from the town of Kra’yaim as you can possibly get while still having a road accessible.

She has a bag by her feet, almost an hour until ba’vodu Mara’s expected ETA, and a jitter in her very bones that has driven her here so early.

It makes her want to go for a run. She adjusts her hal’cabur, takes her buy’ce off and then puts it back on again. Her right foot tap, tap, taps a rhythm against the jet output-scoured ground. Her hands shake as she adjust her ghet’bur. She pretends that they don’t.

She would actually go for a run around the area to get rid of that jitter, if not for the vessel already taking up a portion of the landing strip.

It’s a nice model, though she can’t name it off the top of her head. Equally good for a short pleasure trip as for a firefight, or maybe a smuggling run since those engines are definitely custom. For a ship this size, they can probably give the hyperdrives some competition while still running sublight. The paint, a starburst around one of the wing joints that then trails down the hull, is scoured by space dust and traces of carbon-scoring near one of the landing ramps.

On a regular day, Parjai would try to imagine what kind of verd owns a ship like this. She’d see what adventures she can gleam from the carbon-trails across the durasteel or the expertly hidden weld lines of reinforced plating, but unfortunately, the likely captain is right there.

On the tarmac.

Sitting.

He hasn’t moved the entire time that Parjai took to circle the ship, nor did he pay her any mind when she dropped her bag in its slowly lengthening shadow.

The aruetii is just… sitting there, face turned towards the sun, still as a statue in shoddy armor and a leatheris duster, the rise and fall of his chest the only sign of life.

He looks like a di’kut. He looks like whatever the opposite of the restless energy in Parjai’s bones is. She’s not sure if she admires or hates him for it. Something about the calm rankles, maybe because it’s something she can’t feel herself right now.

The anger is just misplaced fear, that’s what her buir always tells her. Fear leads to anger and anger leads to mistakes and mistakes make you dead.

A breath in, out. Her foot taps against the ground.

She checks the chrono. Fourty-five more minutes until she’s supposed to meet ba’vodu Mara. She waits for a while, checks the chrono again. Fourty-three minutes.

The areutii is still sitting there. 

She walks around, dipping in and out of shadow. She ends up closer to the stranger. He is still just sitting there.

The sun does feel a little nice. Parjai can feel it heat her beskar’gam, soaked up by the black paint. The steady warmth makes the muscles in her shoulders relax, just a little.

The aruetii has yet to move a limb, kneeling there, straight-backed and still.

“What are you doing?” The question comes out before she can think it through. She has the sudden urge to apologize. Who is she to question a stranger who is doing nothing wrong at all?

He doesn’t open his eyes to look at her, but Parjai would swear that somehow, she can feel his attention focus on her all the same.

Of course it does, she just asked him a question. She refuses to shift her weight despite the urge to fidget, though that restless itch to run that has dwelt in her bones somehow feels just a little less pressing. She clasps her shaking hands behind her back and stands straighter.

“I’m taking a moment to enjoy the sunlight.” The aruetii answers. His accent is foreign, the voice friendly.

“Why?” Parjai demands, because speaking is better than walking circles around the landing pad.

The aruetii tilts his head up, just slightly, towards the warmth beating down upon them both. “It’s different in every planet, but the light always feels like home.”

Well, that sounds stupid, Parjai thinks. A waste of time.

"Feel free to join me,” The aruetii adds.

She looks at the areutii. She looks at her chrono. She looks back at the aruetii.

Oh well, she has another twenty-seven minutes left. At least now she has an excuse to be here instead of pacing around like a concussed nuna bird.

With a huff, she sits down a couple of paces away from the aruetii. He smiles up at the sky and says nothing at all.

Parjai watches him for a minute, closes her eyes, settles in. “So, how do I do this thing?”

A week of travel later and in a whole other sector, her ba'vodu will walk up to find her sitting on the ground with her eyes closed, bare face tilted up to face the rising sun. Mara will ask what Parjai is doing.

"I'm not sure," she'll say, "I just wanted to test something stupid."

That evening, when the bounty spots them far too quick and draws their weapon, when all that matters is aim and speed, she will raise her blaster first and fire. Her hands will not shake. She will not miss.

*****     *****

On Ordo, Feemor follows his feet throughout the town of Kra’yaim. There is nothing urgent in the air that calls him, nothing like the aimless drive to explore on Concord Dawn or the odd ghost-scent of blood on the air that had sent him out into the wilds of Gargon. So he simply walks forward, thinking of nothing beyond what it feels like to breathe.

In. Out. Take a turn to the left, down that alley and back into the main road.

The planet is alive beneath him, in this strip of overflowing growth at the very equator. This early in the morning, the town is only waking up and most people ignore him or offer a polite smile in greeting, something which he gladly returns.

Maybe repainting the armor pieces had been a good choice. He had just felt bad walking about in a kit so used when the locals took such care. 

He left in all the divots and scrapes of past use, but now the dursteel carries an even coat of sandy orange. He had secretly found it a little funny when he figured out the color meanings after already having picked the paint  - the best revenge is a life well-lived, after all. 

Over his one armored arm, constructed from scattered geometric shapes, the red silhouette of a greater krayt curls. It’s only apparent for what it is when the armor is worn together; the odd triangles that make up its tail tip start at the back of Feemor’s hand and its maw, open wide to catch a stylized sun or maybe a falling star, decorates his pauldron. 

If one squints and looks at the jagged teeth and the star, the only details done up in deep black, they might just imagine that they see the outline of a familiar symbol within the blur.

Plausible deniability and all that.

Feemor breaths in. Out. Another right. A brief pause in the sun before taking another step forward.

There is something here, but it is not urgent. An opportunity. He suspects he knows what it will point him towards.

Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern.

He can see it coming into view, now if only someone would tell him what exactly this problem he’s supposed to land himself into is .

Luckily, or maybe unluckily, the only blue and gray that he spots come accompanied by other, different hues.

Here, the trail ends. Feemor comes to a stop, blinks a couple of times to actually focus on the sight before him. The place before him is something he recognizes. Much like limmie courts are common in parks within republic space, here training grounds are just as common, usually along with the aforementioned limmie court too.

This one is of moderate size, just packed dirt and a spray-painted grid marking off different areas. There’s a small equipment rack in the corner by the low wall that makes sure that a lost weapon won’t hit some unfortunate passerby. It currently holds a couple of cheap training staves and some padded plates for practicing hand-to-hand with a companion.

Blood and sweat and competitive spirit have soaked into the ground, stained it with fighting thrill and iron will. It reminds him almost of the salles, that thrum of battle-focus, though where his home hums like a cutting blade coming to a stop just right, the clarity of a bell chime, here it’s the rumble of a war-drum as one loses themselves in the beat of hearts and fists.

This early in the morning, the grounds are entirely empty. 

The Force doesn’t tug him along to any new destination, so Feemor shrugs to himself and crosses the grounds. He grabs one of the blunt staves from a rack, gives it a twirl to learn the weight of the polished wood.

It comes to a stop with a sharp whistle-snap as Feemor slides his feet into position. Breathe in, strike, step, out, sweep.

It’s moving meditation he has learned in Jedha, a challenge of endurance if done slowly, of control if done fast. The tap of his feet makes for a repetitive rhythm that the whistle of wood cutting through the air sings to. Had he a bell to attach to the handle, the sharp stops would make for a new counterbeat, an easy way to keep track of whether the movement lands right.

It’s pleasant to move outside the confines of his ship. The cargo hold of the Misfit Star is large enough to practice in, but such training sometimes ends with scorch marks staining the hull. Practicing open-hand katas or going through drills with a shut-off saber just isn’t quite as fun. Maybe it’s a failure of his as a jedi, one he is well aware of - he is a restless one, forever chasing something he cannot name.

A satellite without a sun, Lee once called him. An akk without a herd - that was from Mace.

Feemor chases the thought of his friends from his mind, closes his eyes.

He follows his feet and continues the dance. There, turn, repeat from the start once more.  He lets time pass him by unimpeded by worry. It may be minutes or hours later, but a light wanders into the grounds. Feemor pays it no mind until it draws close.

“How did you do that?” Comes a very heavily accented voice. “The, um-”

Feemor relaxes from the guard position he had just taken, somewhere in the latter half of a series of strikes. He looks up at the one who spoke, the only other presence in the grounds.

The mando is a trandoshan in exercise clothes and bits of armor done up in cheerful green and blue. On their shin-guard there’s a tiny little flower doodled up by a child’s hand in what looks like orange marker instead of paint. The chipped acrylic trail is barely holding on despite the clear coat applied carefully overtop.

“Which part?” Feemor asks gently, because curiosity and slightly shy awkwardness are radiating from the trandoshan like a cloud. The embarrassment eases a little as Feemor tries for a friendly smile to make it clear he doesn’t mind the interruption.

“Uh, the-” The mando twists his upper body a little, hands moving like he’s sweeping a staff low, then makes a vague ‘you get?’ motion. “I don’t know in basic, uh- the kih’laamir.”

Feemor recognizes that word, if only because he regrets picking up a combat-form holocron as a way to practice his pronunciation with another party.  Master Vizsla is a right bastard when it comes to footwork drills.

“The small jump - the hop?”

“Yes! That! How did you time it like that?”

The Force hums, quiet and pleased. An opportunity.

Feemor holds out his staff. “Why don’t I show you?”

*****     *****

Yarro isn’t sure where Atin found this aruetii, but the man - who introduces himself as Finn Morai while deftly dodging a swing of Atin’s training staff - is surprisingly good company.

Yarro, Stuk, Garrett had expected to pass a couple of hours in the training grounds with Atin, catching up and just wasting time on their day off while all four of them are on-planet for once, but soon enough they’re spending a whole day there.

The aruetii is dragged into the group by sheer chance. 

First it’s because the aruetii is still trying to teach Atin a particular set of moves with a staff, which of course means that Stuk needs to learn it too just to show his vod up, forcing the whole impromptu lesson to start over, at which point Yarro and Garrett might as well join in since they're going to be here away. 

Then they notice that the aruetii is keeping up with their group’s broken mix of mando’a and basic with ease despite only responding in basic, so somewhere along the line that moves on to Garrett trying to teach Finn - and the aruetii has become just Finn by now - all the different words for armor, which turns to discussions about whose kit is better, which then means they have to indeed prove that their kit is better. For science.

Then Finn somehow manages to unhook Stuk’s vambrace mid-spar and stab the verd in the gut with it and Yarro has never seen someone pull that jaro trick before so he demands to learn that , in exchange for showing Finn his own tricks with a bes’kad.

It continues that way until the sun sets and they, sweaty and bruised and laughing, end up at a cantina, Finn in tow because the spacer offhandedly admits that he has been in the sector for a month and has somehow yet to try tihaar.

Easy problem to fix, that.

Yet for all the hours spent in his company, something nags at Yarro whenever he looks at Finn. He swears that he should be remembering something. Had met briefly before? A quick conversation at a far-away port? 

Yarro misses his buy’ce and the custom ID algorithm installed in his HUD. Finn could be the kriffing chancellor of the republic and Yarro wouldn’t be able to tell - that’s the curse of being face-blind. It’s the main reason why Yarro never became a beroya and instead chose the somewhat more annoying path of serving as a ver’gebuir. Usually whoever could afford mando bodyguards dressed distinctly enough for Yarro to recognise his employer without too much trouble. 

With Finn, if you dressed him in plain clothes and tossed him into Sundari, Yarro wouldn’t be able to tell him apart from the rest of their blonde lot. Not that he could tell apart the rest of them in the first place, mind you.

However, it’s clear that others don’t have that problem.

Moments after Garrett and Atin walk off to fetch another round, three figures in blue and grey march up to the table. Kyr’tsadiise. Yarro would have guessed that he’s the one they have issue with - among their lot of five, he’s the only one with the haat’ade aliik on his pauldron, but those buy’ce aren’t fixed on him.

No, they zero in on Finn.

“You-” Starts the leader of the di’kut trio. He has his buy’ce on, but it’s clear this isn’t a friendly visit, with a growl like that.

“Buddy,” Finn cuts him off. The blonde smiles, bright and friendly, and lifts his empty glass in greeting., “I’m glad to see you back on your feet.”

“Y-”

“How’s the head?” Finn interrupts, again. One of the kyr’tsade, a step behind the other two, shifts a little from foot to foot. Beginner mistake, that, to be so visibly wrongfooted. Must still be young. Shit weapons too, that blaster has been out of date for a decade.

The lead kyr’tsad puffs up further in indignation. “What are you doing here, aruetii?”

Finn raises his empty glass with a pointed look. “Are you sure that medic cleared you? Should you be in a cantina?”

“Ne-”

“You know him?” Stuk asks, following Finn’s lead in being a nuisance. 

Now the second of the kyr’tsade has begun to twitch a little.

Yarro shifts to keep his aliik out of view. That shoulder is facing the wall already, but better not throw fuel over what seems like a ticking detonator.

“We met briefly on Orenth-Five. I accidentally knocked him out, then dumped him at a medic. Covered the bill.” Finn waves a hand, then turns back to smile up at the kyr’tsad. “If you wanted to settle the tab, don’t worry - it’s the least I could do.”

Yarro isn’t sure if Finn means paying for the medic or giving the kyr’tsad’s bell a ring. His smile is kind, but his eyes are cold. Both, maybe.

Finn leans back in his seat. It’s not the slump of someone backing away, more of a relaxed slouch; he doesn’t need to bother to prepare for a fight - he’d win anyway. The kyr’tsadiise posture and threaten with their numbers and bulked-up armor. The aruetii does so with a loose slump and hands that have, somehow, drifted close to his holsters without Yarro ever seeing them move.

“Is there a problem here?” Comes a low growl. Garrett suddenly looms over the kyr’tsade.

She steps in far too close, Atin is at his heels.

The kyr’tsade are di’kute one and all, in Yarro’s opinion, but not foolish enough to mess with a hungry-looking klatooinian in full kit, nor a trandoshan with his teeth bared.

Finn leans over to snatch his own order from Garrett’s hands with a cheerful, “Thanks, dear.”

He looks at the kyr’tsade and takes a particularly pointed sip.

The leader of the troop growls but, outnumbered, slinks away.

Drinks are distributed. The air around the booth slowly warms. Finn still watches the door the kyr’tsade left through with an unreadable look in his eyes. Yarro can’t help but feel that his new friend is about to do something ill-advised.

“What was that about?” Asks Stuk after a minute of wary silence.

Finn shrugs, takes a sip of his drink. “When people try to rule by fear, show them none and you bite off the hand that feeds them.”

“No, I mean, what did you do to piss kyr’tsad off?”

Finn sighs. “You tell me, buddy.”

*****     *****

Maybe he should feel a little bad about getting his new acquaintances purposefully drunk, but at least the mandos are enjoying it.

Feemor expands his vocabulary with a dozen different words for liquor thanks to Garrett and hears a drinking rhyme from Atin. Yarro, the twi’lek with the meanest dropkick out of anyone Feemor had ever had the fortune, or misfortune, to meet, stops trying to stare through his face.

He’s terrible at recognizing people, the mando admits, and Feemor internally sighs in relief because he had been wary ever since he saw the sigil on the mercenary’s shoulder. 

It had taken him a second to place it, back in the sparring grounds. The last he saw one like it, it was black on gold and bloodied up with red kordan muck. Now hours later at the bar, he ignores it.

Luckily Farah had done the work for him years ago in censoring the rhyme, so Feemor teaches the mandos a drinking game popular among knights, though simplified in deference to their force-null lack of tolerance. Even with the particularly jedi-specific details removed, the not-so-subtle jokes about saberwork have the mandos laughing more than once, sometimes hard enough that they spill their glasses, earning them two more.

Soon words are flowing as easily as the liquor, all of them sloshed. Feemor is building up a buzz and compensating for it with shields lowered enough to let the lowered inhibitions in.

Best way to pregame as a jedi - bring a force-null drinking buddy. He now has four.

“So those pompous pricks in blue,” Feemor speaks up at some point, swinging his glass towards the door the kyr’tsad - he is sure that’s what they’re called, now - had left through. “What is their problem ?” 

Drunk and rowdy is a good combination to kickstart a slew of complaints.

“They think that it’s the akaan, uh, the fight that makes a mando’ad,” complains Atin, “Var mirshe solus.”

That devolves into rapid-fire mando’a that Feemor isn’t yet practiced enough to follow.

“Assholes,” summarizes Garrett. She doesn’t add much else.

“Like alor, so verd,” Stuk speaks over the devolving rant, they gesture wildly as they speak “Ooh, look at me, I’m Tor Vizsla and I’m your leader because I’m very scary. Darling, your conquest of Concord Dawn was ruined by a ten-year-old.”

Atin’s rant comes to a stop because he chokes on his tihaar. Garrett slaps him on the back with enough strength to nearly have him face-planting onto the table.

“Look, Finn, you’re an aruetii, be safe and stay out of it. Those di’kute have no honor.” Yarro explains. He looks dead serious and Feemor pays attention, even with how badly the mando is slurring his words. “They’re dar’manda fools clinging to all the worst lessons from history. But if they do give you trouble-”

The man taps at his shoulder and the symbol on top, the same one that had Feemor wondering whether or not the Force was leading him into a trap this morning.

“If they give you trouble, you just find us haat’ade. We’ll set those idiots to rights, yeah?”

He punctuates his words by downing the rest of his cup, then has to step in to break up the argument rising between Stuk and Atin.

Feemor lets the noise of foreign rapid-fire words wash over him as he thinks about his next step.

Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, thrice is a problem.

There’s a tracker in one of the pockets sewn into the back of his belt. He has trained himself out of the habit of fidgeting with his tools, but the urge to run his fingers over the ridged surface of the disk remains.

It’s a tricky little piece of jedi tech - near undetectable since it activates only in response to a particular signal and then transmits for a brief window before it turns entirely inert. Hard to find and impossible to trace, but reliant on getting the timing just right, blind luck.

With the Force, there’s no such thing as luck.

Clearly, the death watch grunts were looking for a drink, so if they have a ship, they’re probably still docked nearby - there’s more than one cantina here. That conversation between Juno and Alenn had implied that Ordo is but a transit point. So there are two options - either the Death Watch are leaving for somewhere out in the galaxy, or they’re going back to wherever they stay within the system.

If they were leaving - it would make sense for the man from Orenth-Five to be picked up at the space station under the guise of a refueling stop. Instead, he is here.

It would be such a shame if someone messed with their ship, just a little.

His fingers catch on the ridges of the tracker as he adjusts the holster at his belt.

“I think this is enough liquor for one night if I want to pilot come morning,” Feemor tells his new friends. The last of the cotton around his thoughts is gone when he slams his shields down over the second-hand buzz. He lets himself sway and catch against the table as he stands up. “Let’s repeat this sometime when I’m back on planet, yeah?”

The goodbyes are cheerful and full of drunkenly clumsy half-hugs and back-pats over the table. He’s delayed by the mandos demanding to share comm numbers, then by them continuously messing it up as they fumble and hit the wrong buttons.

Right as he takes a step away from their booth at last, Yarro calls out to him.

“Oy, burc’ya!” He cuts himself up with a hiccup, “Avoid the kyr’tsade, alright? And remember-”

He taps his shoulder, though it comes out as more of an uncoordinated slap. The mythosaur skull stares at Feemor like it knows what he’s about to do.

Over the sugary burn of tihaar, Feemor tastes blood and battlefield dust.

“Of course, dear,” He nods. “Wouldn’t want to get in trouble.”

*****     *****

Sylva Mav’ad aimlessly walks through the crowds on the Concordian settlement. For a half-ruined moon, this is still a breathtaking place. Even in the middle of town, the layered sheets of stone that make up the unusual mountains of the region blot out the sky on the east and west, boxing in the town of Choru’kurs and cutting up the sunlight into jagged slivers.

Stone Forest. It’s fitting, not that the region isn’t lacking in trees here either. The strip mining had not come close enough to impact the settlement before it was shut down.

Officially, Sylva is here to fix some plating on her ship that got loose during her last jump. Unofficially, she and her verde are following up on rumors of kyr’tsad in the area.

Like roaches, those dar’manda. Running about everywhere, but the stars will fall before you manage to find the nest.

And much like roaches, they’re not there when you’re looking for them.

Sylva sighs in the privacy of her buy’ce. Every so often, her HUD pings a notif about chatter on the off-channels, but since her verde never join the main line, it means they haven’t had any luck either. Sylva would scold them for not paying attention, but it’s not like they’re new to the job, they can talk and keep their eyes open at the same time.

It’s just dumb luck, and maybe Sylva’s love for shiny trinkets, that makes her eyes catch on a sudden flash of gold.

Sylva has hunted as a beroya for ten years before she joined up with Mereel, and she hasn’t exactly stopped from that point on either. When her instincts tell her to pay attention, she does.

The source of the flash - a person passing through one of the sunbeams that litter the market square. Light gold hair, an orange piece of cloth around his neck. Durasteel painted a sandy tone somewhere between the hues for vengeance and shereshoy, patterned with red, though she can’t quite interpret the collection of random shapes from this angle.

Something about that figure, the way they walk…

As if they somehow felt her staring at the back of their head, the figure turns. Their eyes meet.

Even if the face had not been the one she had seen in far too many holo clips shown to her by her verde, Sylva would have still recognized that look. A neutral, almost serene smile, as warm as it is distant, and a gaze like a jai’galaar assessing prey.

A jetii.

The jetii.

Sylva clicks her back teeth to open the short-range comm channel in her buy’ce. The chatter that had filled it cuts out as her team hears the beep of her unmuting.

“Hey vod’e. call up Mereel, will you? I think I found something.”

The jetii tilts his head and, with one last unreadable look, turns away and vanishes into the crowd.

Sylva follows.

Chapter Text

So close to his face, the mic must have caught his slight grunt of effort because the tiny holo of Eko cocks his head like he can see Feemor despite the return call being audio only, and the voice in his earpiece asks, “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

His crèchemates must have been done with his nearly two-month-long bout of radio silence because the encrypted comm buzzing in his pocket had startled Feemor quite badly. Usually, they went at least four before someone figured it was time to call, probably because he didn’t normally inform them about where he was going for precisely this reason.

Eko’s little holoprojection now lies a little crooked on the grass while Feemor tries to nudge his headset back on correctly with his shoulder. 

“No, no. Just moving around some stuff.” Feemor quickly soothes. When he drops it, the unconscious body of the kyr’tsad grunt slumps gracelessly against a rock.

Feemor can’t exactly let them down all gentle right now; kriffer got him right in the ribs with a lucky punch and it burns any time he as much as thinks about bending at the waist. They might be cracked, but he has worked through worse, so he just bolsters himself with the Force and breathes through the pain while he continues his work.

Eko’s miniature image shifts and tilts, probably the nautolan dropping onto a couch or bed. It’s late on Coruscant and the assistant créchemaster looks exhausted. Really, you’d think that it’s the tweens that would cause the most trouble, but they tend to be at their best behavior to try and catch the eye of a prospective master. It’s the toddlers that give the crèches hell - enough power to throw a destructive tantrum, not enough reasoning to stop.

Eko wiggles to settle into invisible pillows. “All that training to be a jedi knight and here you are, hauling cargo.”

“We all have to eat.” Feemor hums and tries to prop up the third and last of the small patrol that as much ambushed Feemor as he ambushed them.

He did luck out a week back with ferrying some crops when he made the jump between Concord Dawn and Ordo. Without mission funds allocated by the Senate, he needs to find his own way to pay for fuel and food. Unfortunately, those with lucrative bounties on their heads aren’t usually stupid enough to go to ground in the mandalore sector, so cargo is the other legal way to go unless Feemor wants to fly out for a bit and chance ruining some pirate’s day.

He has a good bit of savings for one person, but running relief for an earthquake or flood or some other disaster will wipe him out. He’s used to it. Give him a week or two, and he’ll be good enough at cu’bikad to try his hand at gambling again.

Actually, he might just make these grunts pay the idiot tax, as M’ren had loved to call it, use it to cover the bacta patches they cost him. He’ll keep it in mind for later. Feemor randomly picks one and pulls off their buy’ce instead.

“Run any trouble yet?” Eko inquires. “Anyone acting strange, paying attention…”

The kyr’tsad twitches a little. While their mind is still unconscious, Feemor takes the chance to slap it with a suggestion of go the kriff to sleep . The kyr’tsad doesn’t twitch again.

“No, all calm, at least by mission standards,“ Feemor hums as he looks into the buy’ce, trying to make sense of the wiring. “Did something come up?”

“No, nothing. It’s just… Lee says they saw some mandos quite close to the temple when they were going plain-clothes to pick up a pair of shadows from CorSec.” The tiny holo of Eko shrugs. “I think it’s just confirmation bias. They’re worried about you, we all are.”

The Gervhe twins were very excited to show off their new helmets and Garrett had been proud of all the redundancy systems installed in her kit, so it’s likely that-

There. Manual controls. Feemor flicks through the channels.

“It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. Maybe you should listen to Lee.”

Feemor tilts the buy’ce back and forth, trying to see through the HUD at this awkward angle. He’s not about to stick his head in. Someone really should learn to rip out and sonic the foam inlays more often; just because those pads are meant to soak up sweat doesn’t mean that it has to stay there.

Oh, that’s how they saw him. The HUD blazes bright yellow as some kind of thermal imaging picks up the hand Feemor waves in front of the visor. He can turn away the eyes of curious people, but he can’t mind-trick his way through machinery. Advanced scanners will be hard to avoid unless he invests in some tricky tech or figures out a way to confuse the scanners enough to lose the bead they have on him.

There isn’t exactly much around here, just trees at his right and back, a jagged mountainside before him, and the quietly rustling snowmelt river down below the cliff on his left. Only one of those gives him an option to hide and it’s the most unpleasant one of the lot.

In his ear, Eko huffs. “Don’t play favorites.”

Feemor places the buy’ce back over the head of the grunt he’d snatched it from. “I’m not playing favorites, I love Lee and the rest of you equally.”

“Oh, very funny. Aren’t negotiators supposed to make everyone like them? You must have missed a lesson.”

“Is that why I got repudiated for?” Feemor seizes the chance given to him. “Damn, I knew I should have studied more between the political disasters and near-death experiences.”

Eko doesn’t reply. Whole sectors away, Feemor can feel the disappointed glare radiating down their old crèche bond. It’s a little impressive, to be honest.

He considers the mandos for a moment. What now? His fingers itch. He leans in to search the pockets of the nearest one. If he’s lucky, he might find a datachit with patrol routes.

He finds nothing besides some ammo and such a pitiful amount of credits that he doesn’t even bother taking them; he’d just feel bad. Looking over the inventory of the last pocket, he checks the expiry date on one of the ration bars he finds there and unwraps it.

The packaging must contain all the flavor because the bar surely does not.

Eko loses their one-sided stare-off. “So, did you find any of those?”

“Any what?” Feemor asks around a bite of the ration bar and reaches for the next kyr’tsad.

“Near-death experiences. I know you, you would be gone if there wasn’t some trouble abound. You’d tell the council and then kriff off for a jaunt around wild space.”

He would kriff off to meet up with Diath and take a jaunt around hutt space to cause cartels some trouble, but Eko didn’t need to know that two years ago and he doesn’t need to know that now. He should also track down that Antilles lad. Feemor hadn’t liked how skittish the teen had been when they met in the aftermath of an earthquake, but by the time Feemor was done moving rubble and negotiating resource allocation with the local government, Antilles and his master had left.

Unfortunately, he can’t exactly lie by omission about this one. He has been planning to send a report to the council soon and the archivists have a soft spot for Lee and his loth-puppy eyes - or is it loth-puppy eye? Whatever.

“They have a bit of a terrorist problem,” Feemor admits.

Eko lets out a chittering hiss of disapproval. “Will you try to negotiate?”

People tend to forget that in the years during which Jinn earned his title as the Maverick Jedi, it was Feemor who was following at his heels, getting the master both in and out of trouble in equal measure. There has been more than one senate mission where they were sent to apprehend a terrorist force, only to find out those were only civilians trying to survive, misrepresented by those in power.

But he has met the civilians of mandalore, and kyr’tsad ain’t it. You can’t negotiate with someone whose whole stance is set on wanting the other parties dead.

All he can hope to do is cripple the lot before they truly manage to prepare for outright war. They have a headstart. He has only himself.

“Aggressively, maybe. Would prefer not to” Feemor replies. “I don’t exactly have judicial at my back, right now.”

Nice, this one has some bacta patches. Had. Feemor slips two into a pocket and rips open a third. Might as well try and improve those pesky ribs. Just tugging the bottom of his shirt up makes them twinge.

“You could ask Sundari. They want to be Republic, no?”

“I see someone has done their assigned reading.” Feemor teases then grits his teeth and holds his breath when he presses the patch into the purpling bruise on his side.

He must succeed in keeping quiet because the conversation in his ear carries on uninterrupted.

“Do you know how much near-human and humanoid three-year-olds sleep? I’m halfway through the Archives at this point,” Eko groans. “Don’t change the subject. Sundari. Back-up. You coming back for the tournament in preferably less than two pieces.”

As if he would forget. All three idiots kept spamming him with retellings of the initiates’ newest achievements far more than usual. And no, he wasn’t inordinately proud that some of them used Feemor’s own tricks to put dye in the crèche laundry pile, not at all.

Anyway, he does have a terrorist problem to solve first.

“I’m not pulling a Jinn.” Feemor waves his hand to chase away the idea of contacting Sundari like Eko could see it. “It would be a waste of time anyway. They’re pacifists, not peacekeepers.”

He had considered it, during the jump between Bandomeer and Vanquo, the last before he lept to Mandalorian space. A jedi watchbeing tended to report their presence to the highest governing body in the sector and follow their directives, as strictly or loosely as needed, and the New Mandalorians of Sundari is the party that the Republic not-quite-unofficially backs.

Since he was not an official watchbeing, he had decided to hold off. Feemor was sure that if he spun the words right and painted himself as an unofficial seal of approval from the Republic, he could easily get the Sundarites to back his presence, fund his travels, and assist in his investigations. Yet he was also sure that the New Mandalorians would publicize it, parade him around like a pretty senatorial gift, painting a massive target as his back.

Now he holds off because he hasn’t seen a single so-called Evaar’ad on his travels and he’s not about to be a lapdog to a single dome the rest of the sector views as a joke at best and an insult to their culture at worst. Feemor likes peace and pacifism as a concept, but jedi serve the people. As long as the Sundari crowd are being left alone to live in their little bubble, he will not step into that political arena.

“So what, the Force will provide?” Eko’s tiny holo is frowning, when Feemor glances towards it.

He tucks his shirt back in. It catches uncomfortably on the sticky edges of the patch as he does so. Now onto mando number three, he’s pretty sure this was the leader.

 “I’ll figure it out.” He replies. A memory comes unbidden, knuckles tapping against the emblem of a stylized mythosaur skull. He shakes his head.

“Sure you will.” From Eko that sounds like both mockery and honest encouragement. “Want to hear what the younglings did today?”

“You’ll tell me anyway.”

“Yes, I will! So, there’s Layla, she’s been entirely obsessed with megafauna lately, as children do-”

Feemor lets the meandering tale of a youngling’s fascination with something called a zillo beast wash over him like background noise while he searches the mando.

Ammo. Thermal detonator. Rations. Ammo. Credits. Ammo. Personal Comm. Ration bar wrapper. Cred-

Feemor feels the hair on the back of his arms stand on end as his fingers brush over a wooden surface. Despair and fear stain the grain of it, seep into every pore.

When he draws the hand out of the pouch, he finds himself holding a little whittled figure, misshapen but the general shape of it still vaguely recognizable as a four-legged animal of some kind. Someone had been attempting to make a children’s toy with a blunt knife. He has a strong feeling it wasn’t the kyr’tsad.

“Hey Eko, I have to go. Something came up.”

“I was just getting to the best part,” Eko complains half-heartedly, but doesn’t continue. “Don’t die.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“I’ll tell the others you said hello.”

Eko cuts the call. Feemor calls the holocomm to his hand with a curl of the Force.

He rocks back on his heels, sits down facing the three unconscious bodies. In the Force, they are numb, suspended in deep sleep. Lost within the mountains of Concordia as they are, their surroundings are cast in shadow despite the sun having risen hours ago.

“Who did you get this from?” Feemor asks the leader, not expecting an answer.

He has taken to checking the holonet for news on each planet, now that he can somewhat navigate the local language. There have been no attacks on Concordia, but the sense of sudden loss still hangs onto the little trinket. He is no psychometrist - this must be recent if made by a force-null, days at most. The last ship he had vaguely spotted had passed two days ago, leaving atmo.

He doesn’t know where it had come from, only that it must be close. When Feemor had activated the tracker, the ship he had bugged on Ordo had shown up as stationary in one portion of the wilderness. He didn’t find it there when he arrived a day later, having landed and trekked on foot from the nearest settlement.

Either they left or, judging by the presence of the kyr’tsade in the forest, they had a base hidden somewhere nearby with patrols running interference. They had not taken this toy from someone on Concordia - any outright hostilities and the holonet would have had a field day. Tensions were running high and each slight fed the rumor mill.

Captives, then, somewhere out here. What would terrorists want captives for? They can’t be hostages, you don’t keep hostages without demanding something in return and there hasn’t been a single whisper of such things.

Feemor rolls back onto his feet and stands up. He could wake one of them up but, no. He has felt those minds as he waited for them to sneak up and strike. Two followers, the leader too hard-headed. He had only sprouted something about glory when Feemor had laid him out on his back, before Feemor decided to stop wasting time and knocked the man out.

A mind like that, cold and frozen in its thinking, would not bend to tricks until he pushed it to breaking. That was not the way of the jedi.

He had planned to investigate. To follow and listen in, maybe sniff out a base and sneak in. The patrol had interfered and now, with the threat of hostages, he cannot let them go. He had thrown one across the clearing when they snuck up, there’s no way it can be written off as anything but the use of the Force.

He cannot let them prepare to face a jedi. He is under no illusion that he could face a whole mando terrorist force head-on. Korda VI only worked out as well as it did because Death Watch expected to fight other mandalorians and didn’t expect to be, in some way, ambushed right back.

He needs to get rid of them. He cannot kill them, not when they are now harmless, asleep.

The memory of a painted skull and tihaar. The mythosaur and the taste of blood and tibanna smoke.

Fine.

“Don’t go anywhere.” He tells the kyr’tsade. With a wave of his hand, the sleep suggestion turns deeper, less of a gentle push and more of a chokehold. He turns in the direction of the nearest settlement; Choru’kurs, if he remembers correctly. The city is two hours away if he walks, less than half that if he runs. “I’ll be right back.”

He hopes the haat’ade will be easy to find. 

Less than an hour later, he realizes he shouldn't have bothered. The haat’ade find him all on their own.

“The Force must hate me,” Feemor mutters under his breath as, not fifteen minutes in town, he feels attention narrow down on him like the bead of a sniper’s scope.

He knows what being watched feels like. From the first childhood excursions around Coruscant with his clan under his crèchemaster’s watchful eye, so easy to tell apart in initiate robes, to any time that he landed on a new planet as a padawan, his braid and saber a dead give-away even when the tunics were not. He doesn’t feel watched now, he feels like he’s being analyzed.

He turns to meet the eyes that follow him. In the crowd, a helmet crowned with a set of drop-down binocs, frozen still while the market moves around them. Deep green lined in black and gold, a mythosaur skull in stark indigo blue over the chest, like a proclamation. The visor is dark, unreadable, but the instant of recognition rings clear through the air like a bell, or maybe a gunshot.

Somehow, they know. That attention sharpens, zeroes in. A nexu scenting blood. A bounty hunter spotting prey.

Well, he had wanted to lead the haat’ade to the downed kyr’tsad. He had hoped for it to be on friendly terms but, it seems, the Force has a sense of humor indeed.

He turns towards the road out of town. The haat’ad follows.

*****     *****

“Me’vaar ti gar?” Jaster demands a sitrep the moment the call connects with Sylva’s channel. He ignores the curious murmur of the ramikade at his back.

The priority missive from one of the Concordian teams had flashed onscreen the moment the flagship Legacy had dropped out of hyperspace on their way back to Manda’yaim from a trip Jaster himself hadn’t expected.

The summons from clan Ordo had come as a surprise, but apparently between the heads of the greater clans, rumors of a call for an alii’aliit had been building. A council of the clans, something which had not been called for way over a century.

Aliit’alor Ordo had wanted to ask whether he intended to participate. With the amount of followers he had, he had the numbers to declare House Mereel as one of the largest clans. It had been news to Jaster. The way that question had been pointed was not.

“Ret’urcye mhi, mand’alor.” Aliit’alor Ordo has said when Jaster had turned to leave.

Fuel upon a ticking detonator.

Jaster had bit the bullet and ordered a jump to Keldabe. Might as well get a lay of the land before the shitshow began. Sylva’s call came as a welcome distraction, at least before he spotted the subject attached to the missive.

Jetii. That single word explained why the peanut gallery had assembled this quickly.

“He knows we’re here.” Sylva’s voice comes through a second before the holo flickers in. It displays her buy’ce for just a moment before the view jitters and changes to a different image. HUD readouts scroll past - blips of vitals from her team, pulses of semi-translucent overlays to show noise sources. An ID scan initiates when an avian takes off within view. The aiming interface for whistling birds blips in and out as the beroya accidentally blinks a sequence then dismisses it.

Jaster’s head hurts just from looking at the mass of information, he isn’t sure how she manages it all on the daily. Training and habit, probably.

Beyond it all, the view is one of dense trees and towering slabs of rock. A band of off-colors slides back and forth across the display, tracking a figure that Sylva struggles to keep in view. Their thermal read-oud of heavily upgraded scanners is overlaid like a ghost over all the objects between them and Sylva. A single person, far ahead.

The figure pauses and the shimmering ghost of compounded scans shifts as they must turn around, like they can see Sylva right back.

“He’s been doing that since I spotted him in the market. Gains distance, then waits until we catch up.” Sylva explains.

Why the jetii needs to wait becomes clear as the figure turns back around and, after a few steps, takes an impossible leap into the air. They must land on some ledge that can’t be seen through the canopy, because the figure stands there for a moment before they continue, the image stuttering as the scanners struggle to lock on.

“You’re losing him,” Jaster warns.

"He’ll wait,” Sylva replies, heading towards where her HUD pings as the last location of her quarry. In the corners, the numbers next to the arrows indicating her squad count down as they too close in. “Got any clue what a jetii might want in Concordia, alor?”

“Not anything I could think of.” Jaster shakes his head. Really, he has nothing. “Kal?”

By his side, Skirata is already tapping away at a datapad, flicking through files faster than should be viable. “I’ve got nothing.”

Sylva reaches the rockface and the view blurs for a second as she must kick up her jetpack to send her rocketing onto the ledge above. There’s only more forest ahead and her HUD obediently finds its quarry again from the smallest of glimpses, just a flash of a person before they vanish into the trees.

Sylva pauses. The reason why is apparent as the roar of jetpacks comes close and then cuts. She looks back just enough for the view to catch glimpses of one figure in sandy yellow and another in dark red before Sylva turns back. Her hand flicks in and out of view at the edge of her HUD as she directs her squad to follow close. A third arrow on her HUD indicates another still catching up, or maybe holding back to make sure nothing sneaks up on the team.

“Has he said anything?” Jaster questions.

“No.”

“Do you know what he was doing in town?” Jaster asks. Kal tilts his datapad towards him and Jaster quickly assesses the map. The town is on the larger side, though around it there’s nothing but farmer fields, forests, and many klicks away, the ruins of the abandoned mines. The landscape next to those dug-outs is withered and dead, even decades after they shut down.

“I left Mada to ask around.”

“Nothing yet, alor!” pipes up a cheerful new voice from Sylva’s end without any warning, “Except that he has good taste in kaf. Hey burc’ya, you wouldn’t have happened to see-”

A beep as the transmission is forcibly cut.

“That would be Mada.” Sylva says, in the tone of a long-suffering buir.

There’s a choked-off laugh before it cuts itself off and then a masculine voice- “Alor, you don’t think the jetii is leading us into an ambush, no?”

On the HUD, the scanners blip a notification that Sylva must accept before the bright yellow figure of the jetii is joined by three more.

“You don’t exactly plan an ambush sitting down, Markus.” Sylva’s murmur has gone blank. The HUD blips as scanners try to do something but fail due to a lack of data. Sylva huffs.

A flash in the periphery that must be her lifting an arm. The arrow that indicates the location of the verd at her left begins to fall back.

The jetii’s form is standing there on the HUD overlay, letting the team draw closer than before. Then it turns away again, takes a few steps over the warm forms still sitting on the ground, then a few more before his yellow shadow drops sharply down and- nothing. Gone.

“Wayii!” Calls one of Sylva’s men. “They can kriffing teleport?”

Jaster finds most of the eyes in the control room suddenly fixed on him. 

“They shouldn’t?” He hedges. At least he didn’t believe that they could. That power was entirely in his ‘probably a rumor’ column.

Sylva raises her blaster before she steps out of the overgrowth, the scan overlay of the HUD shutting off as what it marked as humanoid bodies come into direct view.

“Looks like the jetii left you a gift,” Kal says at the sight of the kyr’tsade laid out on the ground, leaning back against wayward rocks.

The three don’t even twitch at Sylva’s approach, their only movement the rise and fall of chests. Silva levels her blaster right on one’s throat as her verd in red crouches down and gives the kyr’tsad a quick tap on the shoulder. When there’s no reaction, he goes as far as to take their buy’ce off in one quick move.

The kyr’tsad’s head lols a little bit. They continue drooling in their sleep. No reaction - out like a light.

“Jetii osik.” Sylva says.

“And a very cold river.” Adds another of Sylva’s verde. Her HUD blips with vitals readouts when she looks up to find him peering over a ledge, right where the jetii had disappeared. “Must have jumped in.”

“Quick thinking.” Says Kal, approving.

“Non-freezing cold injury.” Says Mij, who had so far been watching quietly. He glares at the ramikade in the room as if daring them to try such a stunt. “Cold-shock response. Hypothermia .”

“I’m sure the jetii knows his limits.” Jaster throws in his five credits and instantly regrets it when Mij glares at him.

“Do you?”

Jaster chooses life and stays silent.

“What’s our next step, alor?” Sylva interrupts. Under her watch, the red ramikad has already started tightening binders around kyr’tsade’s arms.

“Bring them back to town,” Jaster suggests. “I’m sure the local governor won’t be able to deny us entry if we show him that kyr’tsade are sniffing about.”

“And the jetii?”

“Kyr’tsad is our priority. The jetii must have shown himself for a reason, I am sure we’ll see him again in due time.”

And maybe next time Jaster will actually be there too.

*****     *****

The haat’mando’ade are incredibly efficient.

Feemor curses that fact all the way to both Sith and Correlian hells. He is cold, he is tired, he is nowhere closer to his goal and he has no clue what he’s doing anymore.

Luckily he had thought to move the Misfit Star before the troops arrived in force. The ship is now parked in a hangar, entirely legally and with full documentation. He is banking entirely on the fact that it is outright lunacy for a runaway jedi to park his ship right next to the landing lots used for mando gunships, only a couple towns over. The ship can’t be tied back to the jedi order, registered under Feemor’s old bounty hunter persona, so it should keep well. If anything, he will leave it behind. He will be sad to lose Rat and all the little knick-knacks he has collected over his travels, but needs must. Duty comes first.

Anything truly incriminating is now on him or buried like the holocron. A dead-drop comm will send appropriate coordinates to the temple if he doesn’t check in within two months. His second saber, the one that Dralling told him to keep when he at last made the decision not to join the order-within-the-order is in pieces, all the components scattered over his kit as either scrap or decoration. He can snap them together with a single thought, if need be, after so many years of maintaining his own saber. The yellow crystal thrums, serene, in the pocket sewn over his heart.

He himself feels anything but calm. He had sought to kick the kyr’tsad hive a little, see where they might come crawling out of, and he had succeeded in only half of his mission. Oh, they have come crawling out of the woodwork alright, he just has yet to find the source.

He can feel them sometimes, moving there, in the woods, doing something. He doesn’t yet quite grasp the range of the scanners some have installed in their kits, though he thinks he might be getting better at dodging the patrols. He has learnt to look for missing things - the blank echoes of beskar, the broken song of the forest when campsites trample grass or disturb branches. The few failures have, unfortunately, left him with a blaster burn to his side and another that has scraped his cheekbone, as well as having to lead two more haat’ad patrols to the downed terrorist crew.

At least that group seems to want him alive, though he is unsure of the reason. It’s what chased him out of town - hearing them ask around for a man matching his description, clearly invested in the search. There was a sort of excitement to them when he had listened in, though both the beskar and the natural shielding of a well-trained mind left that emotion muddled, with Feemor unable to tell its true intent.

He wonders if the mando he saved on Korda VI is here to hunt him too. He had recognized the presence the moment that he felt it one evening when he had been trying to walk the town in mind and soul if not in body. Now that he knows to look for it, the familiarity serves like a guiding star pointing towards civilization and the hunters that live there.

He learns the feel of his companions too, after a couple of days. He's never close enough to learn their names or faces, their voices, he knows them only by the distant light of their souls and the way the echo of their armor shapes it.

One is cold and burning at once, like a knife between the ribs. It's the sort of quiet calculation that is just as likely to bring fiery loyalty as it is to be quenched into icy cruelty.

Another reminds him of the trained, steady feel of a war-front medic. Feemor decides to avoid that one with prejudice.

A younger light, this one also familiar - Feemor makes a point of remembering those that shoot at him first and ask questions later, though he excuses last time on behalf of inexperience. It comes and goes, patrolling town but never leaving, orbiting their parent like a satellite. A very protective one, unless their own friends distract them.

Sitting here, far in the forest, he tries finding them despite the distance and distortion of their armor, some of the alloys worse than others. Practice makes perfect. 

He can keep himself warm with the Force, but that doesn’t mean that he feels no instinctive urge to shiver as a gust of icy wind blows through. The nights on Concordia are cold, this time of year.

On the breeze, the faint scent of blood.

It’s both instinct and habit that have Feemor parting his lips just enough to draw in a deep breath through his mouth and yes, that’s blood indeed. His nose finds the vague direction before he even reaches out with the Force, but soon, there, pain like the edge of an iron blade on his tongue, cold and heavy and one wrong move away from growing worse.

Whatever leaves the trail, it is an animal, sentient but not quite sapient, yet Feemor follows anyway because pain is pain and for a jedi it is natural law that he should help if he can.

He stands and lets both the Force and his own sense of smell lead him among the trees and boulders until his eyes at last catch on fresh scarlet drops left on a rocky slab.

The source of pain and endurance pushed to its limits is ahead, not far now at all, because whatever it is starts to bristle with a wary sort of aggression. It knows he is here, it knows it’s too tired to run.

He finds the creature with its flank against a towering outcrop of rock, one of those odd formations that litter Concordia, like some massive being simply took plates of stone and stuck them into the earth at an odd angle.

A six-legged mass of muscle covered in bristly fur that may have once been a dark gold but has now shot through with grey, peppering the body and staining the muzzle almost entirely silver. Not quite canine, not quite feline, but it’s still simple enough to recognize agitation in the way that the tail whips through the air, particularly when it bares a mouth full of very, very sharp teeth. Its one good eye, the other milky with cataract, bores into him as the beast pins its ears back, snarling.

There are many old scars on the beast, scratches and gouges, a chunk ripped out from the webbing between its limbs. None are quite as gruesome as the new stain of red on its flank, clotted and fresh blood smeared around a deep, bubbling burn of a blaster shot fired from too far away to go through neatly. 

It does an impressive job of keeping balance even as it takes a step back and the damaged leg drags, twitching, across the red-stained grass. 

A growl like the echo of a faraway storm comes from behind bared fangs. The sound dips low enough that it’s almost experienced rather than heard. Feemor needs no Force to know the meaning.

Stay away.

Well, he doesn’t intend to do that .

“I’m here to help,” He tells it, low and calm. 

He knows, in a purely ‘read a random bit of interesting media and remembered it for whatever reason’ sort of academic way, that strills can live three or four centuries if cared for. It doesn’t change how odd it is to reach out to an animal mind and feel the sort of intelligence that comes from having lived his lifetime many times over.

It speaks to that wealth of knowledge that at the touch of a foreign mind, an entirely new experience, the beast doesn’t snap or startle, but pauses to assess.

Feemor has worked with smaller openings than these. With both of them solidly in the realm of the Living Force, Jinn had been well aware of Feemor’s limits, and liked to push them with a happy ‘do or do not, padawan’ before he placed Feemor in front of some raging monster or other. The fact that he still had all his limbs either spoke to Jinn’s skill and quick intervention or his own dumb luck until he caught up.

“I’m here to help,” He repeats to the still lowly-growling beast. The words mean close to nothing compared to what he tries to show it in the Force, but they serve as a guide to his own thoughts. “I will not hurt you.”

The strill’s rumbling picks up in volume as he takes one step forward, but it doesn’t quite snarl, doesn’t snap. Those beady eyes are fixed on his, every muscle coiled to leap towards him if he proves to be a threat.

“I just want to help you,” He speaks again, sending over the tangle of thought and intent, equal parts words and explanation, the feel of lessening pain and the relief of moving a limb when just seconds again you thought you couldn’t. He takes another step.

It watches him still. In that ancient mind, snatches of the recent past - strangers in its territory and prey scattered by noise. Grey and blue and the red of a discharging blaster before the pain.

“I don’t like them either,” Feemor assures. To animals, actions speak louder than words, so he takes a moment to figure out how to pass the message through. The difference in his clothes, like the varying coats of different beasts, the sting in his shoulder as he drives it into blue durasteel-beskar alloy, the lessening pain as he presses a hand to his aching ribs.

The growling peters off.

Feemor takes the risk to crouch down. If the strill lept, even with its injured leg, it would surely reach him.

Or, it could try to reach him, at least.

When he reaches out with a hand towards the beast, it stops and hovers only a couple of inches away from that fang-filled maw.

“So, shall we be friends?” he asks with the vague memory of Eko collapsing as a warm weight against his side, the quiet camaraderie of him and Lee, in matching attire, doing nothing but stand side-by-side for hours at the gates of their home as their minds patrol the streets bellow.

A warm snout bumps against his fingers as the strill takes a shaking step forward. It wobbles there for a moment, waiting for him to turn upon it, to act as a predator should, to go for the easy meal. When he does not, it slowly, carefully, settles. Sits, lays down.

Without the defiance to warm it, cold exhaustion creeps in.

Feemor waits for a moment, another, then carefully shuffles forward without standing up.

The strill gives the sort of deeply world-weary sight that Feemor is sure only canines are able of accidentally doing.

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there,” Feemor mumbles, a bit more sure in his movements now that the animal doesn’t feel like it’s going to go for his throat.

It still twitches under his touch but this close, it’s easy enough to soothe it with a nudge of the Force, to dull the pain even as a ghostly echo of it begins to bloom in his own limb. When he buries his hands in it, the fur proves itself much coarser than it looks, but the undercoat is soft and thicker than expected.

An echo of thought has him reaching up to scratch a spot on the strill’s back, pushing ruffled fur there to lay right once more. There’s a vague sense of gratitude in return.

Without his hands, he reaches for the wound.

The beast had gotten lucky. The shot had just barely missed the major vessels and, though it burrowed deep into the tissue, the heat of it had been just enough to cauterize the one larger vein that it did encounter, leaving but a shallow cut in the vessel. That’s where the blood had been welling from. The trickle was slow enough that the beast could still move on its own despite being hit over an hour past, yet with time it would have bled out all the same.

Feemor is a rudimentary healer at best. He can manage his own wounds well enough, if roughly and not quite as efficiently as a healer could. Healing another is trickier work. Most humanoids he can manage, but the strill lucks out entirely by the fact that Feemor doesn’t need to heal any of the squishy internal organs. Coaxing a foreign vein into knitting itself back together is odd enough as is.

The old beast lays obediently under his hands while he does his best to fix the damage and later, when expending so much energy goes from alright to slightly inadvisable what with two camps of mandalorians still on the prowl, he instead spares some of the bacta packets at his belt to cover what he couldn’t.

A click of his tongue and a vague sort of encouraging nudge through the temporary bond has the beast rolling to its feet. It stumbles up uncertainly then takes a tentative step. Pauses. Takes another, much more sure, before it turns around and sniffs at the previously mangled limb.

A quick warning thought from Feemor keeps it from licking the bacta.

It turns to him then and he waits patiently as it watches him for a moment, deliberating.

A warm snout bumps against his chest and in a reaction that might be universal to most sentients that find themselves in proximity to furry animals, Feemor doesn’t hesitate before he scratches the strill behind the ears, earning himself a happy churr in return.

“Those who hurt you.” He thinks of grey and blue and red and pain. “Do you know where they are?”

Rare is the animal that is capable of Darkness. It requires malice, a concept of morality and empathy and a willful rejection of both. To derive pleasure from depriving another.

So when the beast things of blood, of flesh split under teeth familiar and foreign, of blue and grey stained by the red of a hunger satisfied, of taking back what has always belonged to it and no one else, it doesn’t feel Dark. It feels right.

“Alright, my friend,” says the jedi to the monster, “Let’s hunt.”

*****     *****

Jaster eats his firstmeal in silence down by the edge of the haat’ad camp. Some had chosen to rent rooms in local cantinas, but majority have simply parked their ships in the field next to town in formation and now the circular space left between them serves as a gathering point of sorts. Some enterprising verde have even stretched tarps between the closest vessels, which allowed them to bring out both machinery and benches.

Jaster watches the early morning activity from the edge of the Legacy’s ramp where he sits with his rations. Over on one side, Jango and other young verde are supposed to be training, but it looks like it has devolved into wrestling instead. Not too far away, some other ramikade are enjoying their own firstmeal or are catching up with those who have finished their night rounds and are about to retire for the day. Not too far from Jaster, a separate group of verde lean over a projected holomap under one of the tarps, discussing something, probably scans of the area if the gesturing is anything to go by.

They have confirmation that kyr’tsad is here, thanks to the jetii, but they have not found them on their own. At best, some output trails of ships leaving atmo in the area, but nothing more.

“Any more sightings of the jetii?”

“Nothing.”

“There’s a jetii?”

That question halts the conversation so sharply that even those eating start paying attention.

“Vod, where have you been? Under the sands of manda’yaim?”

That’s Kartok Rau, so the previous speaker must be- ah, Jaster recognizes that one. The scout has had a bit of an unfortunate run recently and had only arrived yesterday.

“Gargon almost qualifies,” Replies Cain Rau. “Since when is there a jetii?”

“Vod- I- Okay, look, so this is him-” Kartok quickly waves away the projected map and taps something into his vambarace.

The picture that pops up is the only concrete proof they have of the jetii having visited the city at all. Some street vendor had snapped a picture with their buy’ce of what they thought was an aruetii in a funny moment. The holo has caught the jetii as he sits at the edge of a fountain, laughing as a large pack of street tookas had beset him, trying to beg for whatever takeaway food was in the box in his hands.

It is unfairly adorable. Jaster absolutely doesn’t have a copy, no sir.

Cain Rau looks at the picture for only a second before his eyes widen and he turns first red, then white as snow.

“You know, this has been a fun run, but I’ll be leaving the planet now.” Cain declares and turns on his heel.

His vod is faster. Kartok grips his shoulder and spins him back around.

“Spill.”

“I’m not risking being near that sort of jaro again.” Cain declares vehemently. “I’m leaving.”

“Jaro? Wait, is the jetii the jaro from Gargon?” Rau’s vod demands. “The one that got you away from kyr’tsad?”

“Gargon?” Demands another verd. Ah, Mara. Sylva’s ad cannot leave a mystery unsolved. She probably couldn’t care less about the jetii himself - she only cares that they don’t know where he’s been or what he’s doing and that now she has a chance to find out. “Where?”

Cain’s shoulders come up so high that his pauldrons brush the edges of his buy’ce. He looks like a turtle trying to pull his head into the safety of his shell.

If the ramikade had not been excited before, now they’re grinning like strille that smelled blood in the air.

Jaster settles in to listen to the chaos.

*****     *****

Feemor feels like a fool.

He has looked for clues, has looked for what was missing, what was hidden, and yet passed over the most obvious of answers. An absence that is now part of the whole, a scar instead of a wound.

Even years after the mines have shut down on this side of the planet, trees have yet to return to poisoned ground.

It’s not the same swatches of deforested grassland and struggling greenery that can be seen from orbit, but the ground here carries only the first signs of the shrubbery, not yet recovered enough to maintain the trees that already grow just a short distance away.

It’s not a mine entrance - far too small for any serious machinery or for lugging ore, but it may be a vent shaft or maybe a droid passage, perhaps an emergency exit. Whatever it is, the cut of the stone is too precise to be natural and when Feemor shines a light into the dark he sees rusted-away grating and beyond, a hint of old wires.

Orar - because Feemor felt bad about referring to it as just ‘strill’, an elder deserves more respect than that and no, he’s not getting attached - paws at the ground. Its long claws rip up tufts of struggling grass and carve at stone.

It whines, frustrated, as Feemor gently pushes it away from the opening.

“I need you to watch my back.” He tells the animal. It doesn’t quite understand that concept, but it does understand the strategy of flushing prey out of a burrow and into a maw already waiting to snap shut.

The old beast is happy to leave the harder part of the job to the youths.

With that amusing blessing, Feemor shuts off his light and heads off into the dark.

He realizes quickly why the kyr’tsade never showed to his senses until they were in the forest proper.

This is not just a mine, it’s a beskar mine, and the ore has yet to be sapped from the walls. Oh, it’s ingenious - so much metal would surely confuse even the scanners of passing survey ships, particularly if the group has settled in the deepest passages. It serves well to hide from the Force too as here, reflected by the raw ore, it echoes endlessly, confusing his senses beyond the here and now.

He’s half-blind, barely sensing anything a meter or two in either direction before it becomes fuzzy, but he dares not turn on the light. The Force guides him still, like a far-away breeze that guides lost souls towards an exit. Him, it guides deeper in.

Left, left, right. The passages have become wider and he feels wires under his right hand, though they’re so old that the casing sometimes crumbles under his touch. Scuffing noises of animals, one is a blip in the force as it scurries past his foot. Left, right, right.

So deep under the mountain, the odd Force echo is strong enough that Feemor loses track of where his reach ends and begins, but he has no time to spare for any meditation that would help him learn to navigate the odd currents. The whispers he hears above ground, the mutterings of life and the universe are all distant, muted.

Not muted enough that he misses it when the Force screams in warning.

He turns, leaps. Not away from danger, but towards it.

A blue blade splashes golden fire as it melts through durasteel. The severed end of the blaster goes skittering across the ground, clinking against stone and briefly illuminating veins of silvery metal.

It's a lifetime of practice that makes it easy to tip the wrist just right and bring the saber swinging back for a strike as vicious as the first, now aimed for the kill and-

It's only that same lifetime of practice that stays the blade.

It hovers just a hair's breadth away from flesh, so close that the heat of it must still scorch the sensitive skin that is now one minute tremble away from burning.

The strike stops at the attacker's neck. It stops at waist level.

The indigo glow of Feemor's saber reflects off the tear-filled eyes of a child.

Chapter Text

Feemor has entirely given up on meditating. His mind is a mess of thoughts, ideas, and emotions, but that is good, those are the building blocks one makes action from. He is sure that now he no longer has the choice to wait and see what kyr’tsad will crawl out of the woodwork. He needs to act boldly and to act fast.

It’s terrifying how just a hint of basic decency - asking whether the boy was okay, if he could help - as well as the promise that he will gut any kyr’tsad that shows their face in the area, has secured the kid’s trust, at least enough for him to follow Feemor out of the mines.

Orar, luckily, has lived up to the stereotype of its species despite being as far from a housepet as a strill can get. It has followed the boy ever since Feemor introduced them, protective of the youngling. The quick round of introductions even got the boy to give up his name at last - Levo. The boy too had noticeably felt safer with the beast between him and Feemor, though he didn’t make a break for it even if Feemor purposefully turned his back to the pair.

The ancient strill is curled around Levo even now, a bulwark against the cold and hostile outsiders both. The boy is entirely bundled up in Feemor’s coat, deep asleep. He, like his adrenaline levels, had crashed the moment that Feemor had bid him to sit and eat some of his ration bars.

Feemor reaches out to tug a corner of the coat more securely around the kid. He looks way too small under the heavy fabric and leather. The jedi part of him rails against such an injustice. The rest wants to burn its cause to ash.

The kid had escaped kyr’tsad, had said as much, though he kept quiet about any details. There, somewhere deep beneath the ground, a compound that Feemor now desperately needs to find. 

Unfortunately, most of his options run into dead ends.

Searching the mines manually would take too long. Levo cannot guide him - he had been hopelessly lost in the dark and close to starving by the time Feemor had run into him. Maybe Orar could sniff out Levo’s trail, but that has its own risks too - he could run into whoever is looking for Levo, if kyr’tsad didn’t just expect the boy to starve to death in the labyrinth of the mines and adjoining cave systems. He could stumble into some sensor they placed to watch out for precisely such an incursion.

Feemor cannot rush in blind. He strives to be selfless, not needlessly self-sacrificial. That would just put another person in the pile of those who need help. Yet he has no time to find a perfect plan. If he takes too long, if kyr’tsad become aware that Levo has survived and told someone, if Feemor arrives and finds only corpses, will he be able to tell them that his life outweighed their own?

He needs to break in without anyone knowing that he’s doing so. A hard task.

Well, as Jinn likes to say, the Force will provide.

He has an idea, an intentional twist to a situation that has accidentally occurred far too many times during his padawanship. Either he’ll survive it, or it won’t be his problem anymore now, will it?

But before he can even try, he’ll need allies. Levo needs safety and Feemor needs backup. Luckily, he knows where to start looking, as much as it might backfire spectacularly.

Feemor sighs.

“Is everything okay?” Asks a tiny, scratchy voice. The kid is clearly not from the sector. If the heavy foreign accent to his basic had not given it away, the way that he trusted a jedi would have. He hadn’t even hesitated to believe Feemor when he swore to protect the child until a safer place could be found.

That same trust, if somewhat fragile, now shines at him over the edge of the coat the child draws closer around himself until only his eyes and a tuft of hair peek out.

Feemor smiles at the kid in a manner that he hopes passes as reassuring. Were this a crècheling, he wouldn’t bother and just pass such emotions more easily through the Force. But as a null the boy can’t even notice the nudge of encouragement that Feemor first sends, too tired to curb the more natural - at least to jedi - way of communicating. “You should get some more sleep. It’s safe - I’m keeping watch.”  

Orar grumbles as if in agreement, though more likely in reaction to a tiny hand petting its flank.

“You look worried.”

In any other situation, it would be just an offhand comment. Here, it nearly makes Feemor wince. Few are the people who can see worry on the face of a jedi who’s trying to keep it hidden and no child learns such skills without reason.

“A little bit,” He doesn’t enjoy lying to children, so he won’t do so now either. “I was just thinking about tomorrow. We can’t stay here.”

“Do you think they’ll find us?” Levo asks. 

“Not if I can help it.” Feemor shakes his head. “But I do have an idea, if you would like to hear it now.”

There’s a pause until the kid realizes that Feemor does in fact expect a reply. “What is it?”

“How would you feel about meeting a friend of mine?”

‘Friend’ might be stretching the truth a little, but what choice does he have but to try?

*****     *****

Jaster makes his way down the path between one of the camps the haat’ade have set up and the nearby town.

Jango’s latest attempt to conquer the skill of cooking has gone so terribly that even Jaster couldn't salvage the dinner. The two of them had been left scratching their heads over a smoking pile of black something for a good while before Jaster volunteered to pick something up while Jango scraped the cremated remains of their food out of the pot.

He could have grabbed the speeder but he had decided to walk instead. It's a short enough trip and he really doesn't look forward to returning to the stink of impossibly charred failure. Might as well give it time to air out. Plus, with both the jetii and haat’ade patrols haunting the woods, this is probably the safest path this side of the planet.

Since his troops are usually all accounted for, it means that Jaster nearly jumps out of his skin when he rounds the corner around a massive rock outcropping and nearly runs into a person who, it appears, had been waiting there, leaning against the boulder.

The jetii’s lips twitch with a poorly hidden smile.

“You're a hard man to catch alone,” the jetii says.

“What?” Jaster ask and then promptly dies a little inside about that being his first words to the jetii today.

“Walk with me?” The jetii asks then walks past Jaster and off the path.

Jaster, well aware of all the trouble his curiosity has previously gotten him into, doesn't think to do anything but follow when the jetii glances back to check if he’s moving.

In the privacy of his buy’ce, he quickly sends a ping to Jango that would mark him as delayed. He then blinks a sequence to call the members of his unofficial council and, in an effort to not get distracted if they do respond, takes off his buy'ce and tucks it under his arm.

He hopes it doesn't get too much in the way of the different receptors built into the earcaps of the helmet, but he doesn’t much regret the decision when the motion is met with a slight widening of the jetii’s smile as both of them step into the woods.

The path had already been growing dark with the setting sun, but it had also come with an opening in the canopy above, letting through what light remains.

Here among the trees, the light vanished much faster. When the jetii turns back to check on Jaster's progress, his eyes flash like two coins. The faintly red-tinged silver sheen almost reminds Jaster of how Manda’yaim’s moons appear through the polluted atmosphere. Seeing both full on a clear night was said to bring bad tidings.

Strangely, their quiet walk through the woods is surprisingly companionable. Jaster can't find it in himself to break the silence, not when the jetii is walking with purpose. The jetii doesn't wait for Jaster to catch up and lets him follow, leaving his back open all without any conversation to signal Jaster’s precise location. Jaster thrills at the show of trust. Not only does he trust Jaster not to strike - not that he ever would, with how much he owes the man - but since Jaster is wearing the heavier kit between the two of them, it implies that he trusts Jaster to stand between him and danger. 

Never one to pass up on a good opportunity, Jaster shamelessly takes the chance to look the man over as best he’s able. He had seen holos and glimpses of him in what few verde had gotten close enough to see him, but the change is still surprising. The coat is the only familiar thing from their last meeting. Without the robes underneath to soften the look, he's all harsh lines and angles. The pieces of armor only add additional bulk. They pull his shoulders back, make him stand taller.

Jaster remembers the clip of the jetii kicking a demagolka across an alley while dressed for a night out and wonders how much easier he would move in this kit that he has clearly worn in to his liking. Or maybe if he was in better armor than that durasteel.

The jetii glances back right as Jaster is trying to figure out whether that krayt was drawn entirely freehand. Jaster probably looks away a little too fast. He catches the brief glint of teeth before the jetii turns forward once more.

At last the jetii comes to a stop in a small grove where jagged boulders have kept the trees from encroaching into the small space. If Jaster’s somewhat rusty mental compass is right, this spot is somewhat between the point where the jetii ambushed him on the path and the haat’ad camp, if a little further into the woods.

The jetii spins around to face Jaster and he freezes for a moment, suddenly keenly aware of the fact that he has someone assessing him in turn.

“Your people are hunting Death Watch.” The jetii states. He might as well be commenting on the weather. 

It sounds somewhere between question and statement so just in case Jaster nods. 

“We do,” he replies, then feels compelled to elaborate. There is a sort of distance to the jetii’s tone today, something that wasn’t there the previous - and first - time Jaster met him. “Vizla wants to impose himself as mand’alor by force whether the people want him or not. He can’t be left unchecked.”

The jetii makes a small noise Jaster can’t quite interpret. “So you haat’ade serve the people?”

“I'd like to think so.”

A small crease forms between the jetii’s brows. It’s the only thing betraying a frown that doesn't otherwise show. “Then from one peacekeeper to another, I come with information you might find useful.”

“I imagine it isn't good news,” Jaster points out. He can still hope, but his mind is already listing options. Reinforcements? Were the guards just a distraction? Another traitor? Montross’ betrayal still stings.

“No, it really isn't.” The jetii shakes his head. His eyes once again flash in the faint light of the clear night. Twin moons and bad tidings, Jaster thinks. “What if I told you that somewhere beneath that mountain range up north, there is a base, and in that base, there are children - ones trained for war without a word of say in it.”

It takes a moment for Jaster to understand what he's talking about. Then-

“Demagolkase!” Jaster snaps. He knew Tor was willing to cross lines to reach his goals, it was the main reason why Jaster ever chose to speak so publicly against him, but forcing ade into his ranks? Jaster barely allowed Jango to join in this campaign and the boy was a good couple years past his verd’goten! He takes a step forward. “This is- Where are they? Do you know how many-”

The jetii raises his hand, just a twitch, but Jaster cuts himself off. He can feel his buy’ce buzz ever so faintly under his arm, right where the audio output lays behind the metal. Maybe someone caught his call after all.

“Those children - would you fight for them? Would you protect them?” The jetii asks, still as calm as before despite the horrid topic at hand. 

No, not calm. Blank. The difference, however small, is there, and now that Jaster looks for it he can see it. One is a state of being, the other is a mask. He wonders if the fury beneath burns as bright as his own. So he swallows it down, summons determination instead, that will of beskar, his own armor.

“Of course!” He replies. What is the jetii trying to get to? What does he want him to say? “No mando’ad worth their armor would dare to harm a child. Tell me where that camp is and I'll dig that mountain up myself.”

“Trust me, I would be right there with you.” The jetii’s shoulders lower just a fraction, but Jaster is used to working around faceless armored bodies and that little shift is big enough for him to see. “I don't know where the base is, not yet, but I know that time may be running out to find it.”

When Jaster goes to speak the jetii silences him with another gesture and then continues.

“Charging in blindly will help no-one. I’ve seen people put blasterbolts through children’s heads just to create horrors they could blame the other party for. I don’t think Death Watch cares for their charges enough not to try it.”

Just imagining it, it makes Jaster have to swallow down both fury and bile. How could anyone do such a thing? Easily for a hundred reasons, if one is heartless enough for it.

“What can I do?” He asks instead. Surely, the jetii must have a plan. He cannot be here to just deliver a warning, not when for weeks he has been laying out kyr’tsad patrols at his doorstep. That has almost been a game, a challenge. This is something else, outside of this mutual hunt of theirs.

“I have a plan to find the base. A little risky, but viable,” the jetii says and breathes out, breathes in. His shoulders lower just a hair’s breadth more. “If I can get you its location, could you convince your people to strike?”

Does he think they don’t trust him?

If Jaster calls, he knows his verde will answer. Even if he wasn’t their mand’alor, oh, some would have followed just for the chance of fighting side-by-side with a jetii, to test their mettle. But with kyr’tsad on the other side? With ade on the line? He doesn’t hesitate as he answers, “Absolutely.”

It may come out a little more enthusiastic than he intended.

That mask of emptiness that the jeii wears cracks just a little. A flicker of a smile.

“Admirable confidence,” the jetii says, a curl of approval around those words, and Jaster finds himself grinning back, holding his buy'ce tighter to his side as he draws himself up straighter.

“I know my verde,” he says and is glad it comes out confident because he’s currently wishing away the heat that had started gathering at the tips of his ears and across his face. 

“As you say.” The jetii replies and his eyes flick, just barely, to the side. “What do you think, Levo?”

At the foreign name, as well as the jetii turning his head just barely to no longer look at him but behind him, Jaster turns around.

He nearly flinches.

A child aims a blaster at him, though the grip looks half-hearted at best. Jaster’s a little bit more concerned by the massive strill by the ad’s side. It bares its teeth at him, one good eye glinting in the moonlight, as reflective as the jetii’s. Meanwhile, the child, who must be the Levo that the jetii addressed, says nothing. He looks Jaster up and down with a wariness meant for someone much older.

Jaster's heart breaks at the gauntness of the ad's cheeks, the discoloration of old bruises.

He suddenly no longer has questions about how the jetii obtained his intel.

“He’s okay,” the boy declares. His voice wavers. “But only if you trust him.”

“I do.” The jetii says, suddenly sounding closer.

Jaster thinks about it for a second, then turns back to the jetii. Not fully, but enough to show the ad his back. Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see the blaster wobble and lower, just a little.

The jetii has in fact stepped closer without making a single sound, enough that Jaster can make out details he couldn't before - a new line of bacta-smoothed scar tissue on his cheekbone, a fresh scrape on his brow.

“You said you owed me, back on Korda VI,” the jetii speaks up again. “All I ask is that you find him a way home.”

“You'd trust me with this?” Jaster asks. It's a responsibility and an honor few would dare grant a stranger.

“I've read the codex your haat'ade follow. I could think of no safer hands.” The jetii shrugs, just a twitch of his shoulders. “I sensed no lies when you spoke to me.”

So the jetii can actually sense lies? Wayii! More importantly - the jetii has read his work? But it's entirely in mando’a! Can he speak it? What did he think of his codex?

Oh, Jaster wishes they could talk freely, but he is mand’alor first and historian second. This is not a chat at the dinner table, this is a negotiation, as informal as it may be. There is still an ad behind him, rail thin and holding a blaster with far too much skill for his age.

He bites his questions back.

“Children are the future,” is what he says instead of the questions crowding his mouth. That's a line that Ram’ser was a fan of reciting, it must have stuck.

At least the jetii looks approving because he nods his head low, just enough of a bow to be respectful but not insulting.. “Thank you.”

“There is no debt for this,” Jaster hurries to clarify. “The haat'ade - and I - will make sure that he is safe. Haat, ijaat, haa'it.”

“I’ll trust you to keep your word.”

“If I break it, I'll welcome whatever justice you choose to seek,” Jaster vows. He would be without honor anyway, not worthy of even calling himself mando’ad. If he falls so far, he'd welcome a blade to his neck.

The jetii blinks. The motion is slow like that a tooka watching something odd. 

“Jedi do not seek vengeance, but we do strive for justice.” He tilts his head just slightly and Jaster doesn't quite see the smile, but he swears he can somehow know it's there. He feels like he missed some inside joke wrapped up in that warning. “I shall endeavor to prove this to the kyr’tsade.”

“How will I know when you've found them?”

“I'll send something. You'll know it when you see it.” The jetii says, then visibly pauses to think. He then adds, “Two weeks. If you don't hear from me in two weeks, I've failed.”

“Where can I find you then?”

“Dead, probably.” The man grins, then his eyes leave Jaster again. “Oh, dear, don't worry about me. I'm a jedi, remember?”

He says those words as he lowers himself to one knee, opening his arms. 

A small blur races past Jaster who jolts out of the way.

The jetii hugs the child without any hesitation. Jaster cannot quite make out what he murmurs to the ad. He's a little distracted by the massive old strill that pads past to instead circle around the boy and the jetii, whining quietly. 

The jetii cards his hands through the ad's hair gently, giving it a little ruffle. The boy swats the hand. The move forces him to step back of his own volition, which gives the jetii an excuse to rise. The man repeats the motion and whispers something though now Jaster catches snatches of words - brave, trust, safe.

The ad nods once hesitantly, then as the jetii touches his shoulder, repeats the motion much more confidence. Wiping a hand over his eyes, the boy glances back towards Jaster before walking over, though he keeps some distance.

Jaster lets the boy go to stand somewhere outside his field of view. Obviously the child knows the angles that his HUD can display. He doesn’t quite want to consider the reason for this knowledge.

The jetii looks away from the boy at last. His eyes gleam with something sad before that determined cold fire shutters over it once more. As if given an unheard command, the ancient strill huffs before it bounds off into the trees, the jetii taking a step to follow.

He pauses, turns back.

“I look forward to dancing this hunt with you,” he says. The words have the air of translation to them from some source Jaster cannot place. The gesture that accompanies the words is near that of a mando’a salute, but the palm faces in, the fingers only half curled into claws instead of a fist. It comes with a brief bow and an even bigger smile that makes the jetii’s teeth flash, sharp and dangerous.

Jaster's heart skips a single beat.

Then just like that, the man disappears into the dark.

Jaster looks down at the ad who looks up at him with wide, hesitant eyes.

Jaster gives him what he hopes comes across as a reassuring smile before he fits his buy’ce back onto his head, ready to go.

“Tell me you at least got that di’kut’s name this time,” comes Kal’s voice right away.

Jaster takes his buy'ce back off.

“Just had to check for comms,” he tells the ad who is now looking at him with a puzzled expression. “So - Levo, was it? - are you hungry?”

*****     *****

Is it a good idea to rest a key part of his plan on the word of one half-stranger? Absolutely not. Yet that’s the best that Feemor has at this point. If the mandalorian doesn’t come through, he is rather sure he can still accomplish at least part of his mission. He’ll just need to account for… alternative exit strategies. That sounds better than ‘escape plans’.

He had been ready to bolt, then, when he had at last found his mandalorian alone and had intercepted his path. Had the man even twitched towards a weapon he would have been gone, left to find some other way to fulfill his task.

But no weapons have been drawn and their brief chat had turned out better than Feemor had expected, both tasks accomplished and out of his hands.

Leaving Levo behind had been a difficult decision to make. Though Levo might have been hesitant when Feemor had pitched the idea, the jedi was sure that this would be safer for the boy than whatever Feemor could achieve, particularly with the kyr’tsad to consider. It should be fine  - he has read the codex, a manifesto in all but name, so the troops that swear by it should keep to its core tenants, among which is that of not harming innocent civilians. Even if he hadn’t read the piece - Feemor has seen the kindness of the people he has met on his travels in this sector, has heard them talk of their youngest like they were the greatest treasure for them to protect. Not unlike jedi, really. 

And he remembers too how that youth - Jango, he thinks he remembers the name -  had called out for his father, the crushing relief at seeing him alive, the drive to defend. That sort of loyalty… no matter friendship or family, by blood or by choice, that sort of loyalty isn't earned by chance.

The mando had gone as far as to turn his back on a weapon and a snarling beast just to make the boy comfortable. Feemor can admire that gesture for what it was.

That only left convincing the mandalorians to help him raid the kyr’tsad base, or at least convincing his mando to convince his fellows. A risky request and yet, oddly, the Force didn’t ring of deceit or even hesitation when the man had agreed to the task. When he had sworn that he would convince his people to act despite Feemor being a jedi, there had been… not stubbornness - though Feemor’s sure the man must have it in spades, since he did walk through a battlefield on a shattered knee all with minimal complaint - but a sort of determination to prove his words. His fury against the kyr’tsad had burned true, but not the sort of blaze that would turn to hasty decisions, only motivation.

Maybe he is good friends with whoever the mand’alor of the haat’ade is. While Feemor is aware of the name, Jaster Mereel, he probably couldn’t pick him out of a crowd unlike this particular mando.

It had been nice to see him undimmed by pain. There had been a jitteriness to his presence today, like he had been genuinely happy to see Feemor. When Feemor had revealed his ability to discern lies - an oversimplification for what amounted to trained intuition - he didn’t balk at what most perceived to practically be mind-reading. If anything, there had been an inquisitive gleam there. Excitement, one different from that hunt-sharpened shine that he had gotten used to from the haat’ade.

A new and very welcome change of pace. It had been almost enough to tempt Feemor to stall a little, let their conversation turn away from mission matters, see what this odd man would think of him, a jedi roaming alone on a mandalorian planet, leaving behind unconscious corpses in his wake for his hunters to find.

Speaking of questions, he also has once again forgotten to ask the mando his name. 

All of it makes Feemor curious, probably the most dangerous state for a Jedi to be.

A huff from his side draws him from his musings and instead lands his focus on the source of the sound - Orar. Their jog has slowed to a brisk walk now though they still make good time, Feemor anxious to return to his search and the beast preferring to stay in what it claims as its territory.

Parsing animal thoughts is difficult despite the extensive practice he has been getting lately, so it takes him a moment to understand.

Then he nearly stops to stare at the hound.

“No, he’s not my- You know what? Whatever makes you feel better about leaving Levo behind,” he cuts himself off and wipes a hand down his face. “Honestly, you’re like a nosy grandmaster. Should have named you Ba’buir.”

Orar makes a happy rumbling sort of sound, not quite feline enough to be a purr, but far too happy to be a growl. 

Feemor is pretty sure it has decided that he qualifies to be a barely-grown pup, seeing as he probably is maybe half the age of the strill’s youngest. However it sees him, the thoughts he skims tell him that the animal is happy that he has found himself a strong partner that he could trust with children.

Great. He’s had experiences with his friends trying to set him up with whoever they thought he had expressed interest in, but this is the first time that an animal was the one match-making.

Not that the mando is not his type, but he could do with fewer bad ideas in his life, particularly since he’s already planning on going through with a terrible one.

“No, we don’t need to bring them food,” Feemor interjects when the strill starts to sniff the air, intent clear in its mind. “They probably have more of it than us.”

How does one explain things like rations or cold storage to an animal? Restaurants? Grocery stores? Feemor doesn’t even bother and hopes that the idea he pushes towards Orar gets through all the same. He doesn’t think that their constant communication has made him any clearer in his messages, just faster at getting them through.

Hopefully one of his friends knows a knight or master who is proficient in the skill and would have the time to give him a crash course. Didn’t Amelie once say her Master had studied wildlife extensively? 

Orar only snorts at him, sneezes out some dust that it had breathed in, then puts its nose to the ground again. Blue and grey and red spilling out. Strain around teeth as a heavy weight is dragged away towards home.

“I’m not feeding kyr’tsad grunts to them,” Feemor sighs, pushing the idea of intense denial towards the insistent creature.

Should he explain the concept of cannibalism to the strill? He can't find it in himself to bother. He's also pretty sure he had explained himself away as being a creature separate from the death watch mandalorians, which he doesn't quite want to backpedal on.

Orar’s fur bristles at his refusal to cooperate.

He smooths it over with a pat on its nape and a thought sent its way. A tangled web of dark burrows and prey always one step ahead, useless energy waste that only makes for empty stomachs and heavy limbs. The way that the ground seems to fly under his feet as he runs down his prey out in the open. Singling out the weak, the odd one, the colt of the herd that will always stumble first. The bounty struggling, alive even when it's subdued.

Orar's chuffs. A particular figure and smell, a flash of red and warmth under teeth as the struggle stops with one sharp yank.

“Okay, you can kill that one if we find them,” Feemor concedes because negotiation is all about compromise and he can write this one off as cultural differences. Jedi rules don't bind outsiders, teammates or no.

He only needs a particular brand of death watch member, if he's lucky enough to find one and not resort to plan besh.

The hound puts its nose to the ground and leads the way.

*****     *****

Naast, known as Laar to his friends when he still had them, wishes he could be anywhere but here.

He should have left when he had the chance. He should have stopped making excuses, gathered his courage.

Where had it gone, that nerve that he had before when, at thirteen, he had screamed and yelled that he would simply refuse to follow through his verd’goten until his buire agreed to make it a test of wilderness survival instead of a hunt?

He had been fourteen and he thought that it was just two more years. Most of the civilized galaxy set humanoid adulthood at eighteen but they wouldn’t really care about someone a couple years younger traveling alone. 

He was fifteen when, on a hunt, he put a blaster to some poor fool’s head and pulled the trigger. His ori’vode had laughed and congratulated him on his first successful bounty and he had felt nothing at all. He could prepare. He looked at a departing ship and thought - not yet. He had nothing to his name, not even clothes he wouldn’t outgrow within the month, what to say of his armor that kept having to get adjusted for his frame.

He was sixteen and he hadn’t yet gone. He knew now how vast the galaxy was, how small his own world and wealth of experience. He knew exactly how many credits it would take to get lost in that great unknown and how many he lacked. Almost there, he had thought, because he believed that he could take the risk of running away, but he couldn’t stomach the risk of having to come back.

Then a day before his seventeenth nameday, his buire told him he'd be leaving. They'd all be leaving. He had just finished drawing a bird on his pauldron when they told him to scrub away the paint that had yet to even dry on its wings.

He felt the door of the cage he'd comfortably lived in for so long snap shut at last.

So here he is now, following in the footsteps of killers when all that he had ever wanted in life was to make music.

He wonders if he could still run. Right now, maybe. Could he do it? Put a bullet through Dayo’s head - no, it should be Ayal. If he shoots Ayal that should stun Lishan since the man idolizes her so, hopefully enough that he can get a second shot off before Dayo pulls his own blaster and then it would be one-on-one and if he really went for it, there’s a blade in his vambrace and Lishan is missing an ab plate, so if he strikes just right-

But he's a better man than that. He's a more cowardly man than that.

He turns away from the three ahead of him, lets his HUD flood red and yellow as he scans the horizon. There, a large source of heat. But the distortion is not right for the way that kute and beskar distort heat output. A second comes into range and as it moves to sit next to the first, Laar counts six limbs.

Ayal shot a strill almost a week past for nothing but the fun of it. They had just collapsed some of the entrances to the mines on another portion of the mountain, leaving a select few open, and had been hiking back to the one left behind. She tried to snipe the old beast with her blaster as it had come sniffing after them. Laar had quietly hoped that she had missed anything vital, that the beast had survived.

Maybe it’s the same one, come to return the favor.

“Getting tired there, Naas?” Calls Ayal.

Laar knows better than to startle, but he does turn lest she ask what he has been watching. If the strill is here for revenge, he is more than happy to let it get in a bite or two in. It’s not like anyone besides him has long-range scanners and if they have mid-range ones, they never bother to use them when they can just foist the job on him.

“It’s Naas t ,” Laar tries to sound annoyed instead of just tired. Might as well be naas , for all that his companions care for him. He gathers what bravery he has at the moment to shoot back, “ Naas is what you have between your ears.”

Ayal glares at him and for a moment, Laar can’t help but think that he will end up like that strill that now prowls some distance back.

She doesn’t shoot. In this team she’s bigger, but where Laar’s clan is small, hers is smaller.

They walk on across the maze of rock and trees that builds up the landscape of the mountainside and Laar resolutely does not look behind them in the direction of the beasts. Maybe they’ll be smart enough to run away.

It’s maybe five or so minutes before someone breaks the silence again, this time Dayo as he offhandedly remarks. “You know, there’s been rumors that there’s a jetii around.”

“A jetii?” Ayal says slowly, scorn in every fiber of her being. “Which di’kut had too much tihaar?”

“I’m just saying-” Dayo raises his hands in surrender. “Apparently Jian heard some of Mereel’s lot talking about it.”

“So we’re believing all those dar’manda say, now?” Speaks up Lishan. Always following Ayal’s queues, that one. Laar likes to imagine that if they didn’t have buy’ce on, he would see Lishan glance at their alor’ad every second like a massiff puppy seeking approval after doing a trick. “Next they’ll say there are mythosaurs under Sundari.”

“Let the jetii come,” Ayal scoffs. “They should have learned their lesson when Tor retrieved the dha’kad from Coruscanta. If one shows up here-”

Urgh, that mad, proud bloodlust in her voice. Laar isn’t sure if it makes him shudder with fear or revulsion.

“If the jetii comes here, I’ll rip his head off and mail it back to their yaim myself. We’ll teach them why kyr’tsad is to be feared!” Ayal punctuates her threat with a laugh that Laar can’t hear as anything but cruel.

Dayo laughs. Lishan laughs.

The jetii laughs.

Silence.

"Oh, was I not supposed to hear that?" Comes in a polished Coruscanti accent before a glowing blade of plasma silences any opposition.

It happens far too quickly. 

Lishan doesn’t get to draw his blaster before he’s flying through the air, impacting a boulder with a sharp crack . He does not get up. The jetii doesn’t even check, he’s already ducking low with a swing of his saber that Dayo dodges, but not well enough because it proves to only be a feint that makes him step into a brutal leg sweep which brings him down - and also brings the pommel of the saber to crash across his durasteel buy’ce with enough strength to dent it.

Ayal tries to take advantage of the fact that the jetii is crouched - she shoots. The bolt shoots right back, off a cobalt blade and across the brim of her visor, a millimeter away from going through.

A thrust of the jetii’s arm. It doesn’t reach Ayal, but something does. She stumbles back from the unseen force and straight into the path of a mass of tooth and claw and fur. Red sprays as the strill wraps its maw around her neck.

And Laar? Laar stumbles. Hesitates. Does the one thing he should have been trained out of - panics. Only once everyone else is gone does he raise his arm, not even thinking, because there’s a rocket there on his vambrace and he is desperate and-

It never has the time to go off.

A hand around his wrist, immovable like a ship’s docking clamp. It pulls at him stronger than gravity and he is being flipped over, crashes down. The ground against his back knocks all the breath out of him but he still desperately tries to jolt up, away, anywhere-

He finds that he can’t.

The armor that should guard him holds him down, a trap molded to his own shape. He struggles against the durasteel and finds himself as unable to escape his metal skin as he would his own flesh.

His futile struggle comes to a halt when the cobalt blade stops at his throat, so close that he can feel the rubber and armorweave begin to warm and warp despite the layers that insulate his skin from the neck seal.

The jetii, crouched at his side, watches him silently. Laar can hear the sound of armorweave and flesh tearing somewhere nearby. Well, he was right at least once in his life - the beast did come to get some revenge. He’s glad he can’t turn his head to see it, not that he would dare look away from the terrifying man before him.

The jetii tilts his head. His free hand, the one not holding Laar’s life on the line, reaches for him. Laar can feel the odd shift at his shoulder as the jetii tugs at the pauldron where it isn’t attached by clamps, peels back some of the padding from where it makes sure that the durasteel won’t tear the kute beneath to shreds within a day of wear.

He knows what the jetii must find there. Contraband. Orange and indigo and forest green, snuck into the hidden pockets of metal the day his buire told him to repaint his armor into kyr’tsad blues. It wouldn’t be visible to anyone but those nonexistent people he trusted with his armor or, apparently, a jetii.

As if called by that thought, the jetii looks away from Laar’s pauldron and instead stares straight through his visor and into his eyes, into whatever small, shivering thing has hidden behind them.

Laar feels very, very small and very, very scared.

“Not really a fan of Death Watch, I take it.” The jetii doesn’t ask. He states.

Naast should spit out something defiant. Recite Vizsla’s rhetoric, parrot the fanatical words of his buire and ori’vode. He really should.

Laar thinks that the time for lying is well and truly over.

“Nayc,” he tries, clears his throat when his voice breaks. “No, not really.”

The jetii hums, a single noncommittal note. Eyes never straying from Laar’s - searching, seeking, analyzing something Laar can’t find in that reflective blue - he draws his weapon away from his neck. The sudden cold as the cobalt light vanishes with a crackle cuts like a blade across his scorched throat. The jetii balances the hilt precariously on Laar’s chestplate, steadying it with a single finger, right over his kar’ta beskar. The emitter points down.

Laar is almost thankful for the weight crushing him because he fears that if he breathes just a little too deep, some internal component will shift, and then…

His clan couldn’t afford beskar, particularly not for Laar.

“I recently learned some things about Death Watch that I find simply… unacceptable. I’m in a bit of a rush to put a stop to it.” The jetii says, casual as you please. He might as well be describing the clouds that must surely be drifting overhead, though Laar dares not look away to see. “Your base is somewhere within this mountain range, is it not?”

“The mines,” Laar agrees. “I haven’t been, but there’s a large cave somewhere - I’ve heard the echo when alor comm’d Ayal.”

“Thank you,” the jetii says pleasantly. His finger tap, tap, taps against the pommel and the hilt doesn’t even shake. “Do you know how to reach out to them?”

“I- You’d need Ayal’s comm. Or Dayo’s.” He has to pause to take a breath before he continues. “They’d send someone for pick-up if it was important enough.”

“Good, good.” The tapping stops. “You see, my friend, I have a plan. Unfortunately, it needs a hostage.”

“They won’t care,” Laar says at once and feels like this might be it, he has outlived his usefulness in mere seconds, but maybe if he doesn’t lie then the jetii will feel merciful. “We are supposed to die for the cause.”

The jetii smiles. Laar wishes he was smiling at anyone but him. “Oh, I didn’t say anything about that hostage being you .”

*****     *****

Jaster is, for all intents and purposes, pretending not to fret when the call comes in.

The deadline the jetii had given is drawing close and try as he may, he cannot cover the nerves that build like a jitter in his bones.

Just today he has already scouted so many future bounty job offers that it made Kal nervous, he has run Jango through so many drills his ad complained about it - at least until he finally managed to land that kick at which point it had turned into gloating - and had gotten kicked out of his own ship by his son because, by Jango's words, he had been cleaning too much.

So he finds himself sitting on the boarding ramp and idly checking his datapad, his last source of distraction. No dice - nothing from his verde and even that academic that had been picking over Jaster’s codex hasn't shown up again, his last messages still complaining about a cold night spent camping outdoors.

Jaster amuses himself by trying to imagine how much the man would bitch if he got to experience the cold snaps of Concordian nights instead of camping out on Alderaan or whatever other cushy inner rim planet he must be at.

Over the edge of the datapad, he watches Ram’ser practically speedwalk through the camp, the ad - Levo - jogging to keep up. The boy had latched onto the sniper for some inconceivable reason, maybe because nearly a dozen colors with half bordering on neon was as far as you could get from blue and grey.

The sniper only kept up his calm and collected air because his creed prohibited him from removing his helmet. Thus the near-hourly panicked pings about how the kriff one takes care of a child were only heard in short-range comms, though luckily there were always volunteers around ready to share advice.

Not a single parental bone in that verd. He's practically begging for someone to please take on the kid so that he can go back to playing the fun ba’vodu. Jaster hopes that for the sake of Ram’ser’s blood pressure, the slicers do manage to track down Levo’s family sooner rather than later.

As if to prove a point about the sniper’s fretting, three muted pings go off in the buy’ce Jaster has laying by his hip. Jaster ignores them.

He doesn't ignore the much louder one that chimes through both his pad, his buy'ce, and even his commlink. He quickly slams the helmet back onto his head, accepting the call before the HUD even finishes adjusting to his eyes.

“Alor, we have a situation,” comes Myles’  voice, clipped in a way it rarely is. The young verd had been allowed to supervise today’s patrols, easy but good practice in case he wanted to one day lead a larger team.

Jaster gets up and marches back onto the ship to put away the datapad, feigning calm. “What is it?”

Jango, sprawled on one of the benches, tapping away at something in his own pad, raises an eyebrow at him when he just drops the pad on the nearest box and turns to leave again. Jaster quickly gestures the signs for commcall and all-clear. The boy looks back to his task, mollified.

“One of the groups just brought in a kyr’tsad. Didn’t want to comm in case someone was slicing the long-range frequencies.”

“I believe Skirata takes care of those,” Jaster points out, already turning to go towards the largest dropship at what he hopes passes for a leisurely pace. This late in the day, most verde around don’t pay him any mind. Those who do don’t take long to look away again.

“He’s being informed it’s just…” Myles hesitates, here, “The kyr’tsad surrendered, alor. Walked right up to patrol.”

That’s new. Before Jaster can ask, Myles continues.

“He… he had a jetii’kad on him. Said it was to be given to someone at camp.”

Jaster rounds the corner at a jog before Myles is even done speaking. He can see the verd now, at the ramp of the dropship. He’s not so new as to shift nervously from foot to foot, but the lines of tension are there and only draw up more when he spots Jaster in turn.

Jaster leaves the comline on because verde on this side of camp are clearly curious about what is going on. The fact that Jaster doesn’t pause before marching up the ramp and Myles quickly follows on his heels probably won’t help matters.

“You said-” he begins.

A bladeless cylindrical hilt is held out towards him. Silver metal and black leather, thin brass rings the only embellishments on the design or maybe added for some purpose Jaster cannot discern. The pommel has a single groove around the base, maybe to hook a finger into for grip, before it tapers to nearly a point. A single button, close to the other end. There the lines and gleam of lenses deep inside betraying that part to be an emitter.

A lightsaber. Jaster takes it into his hand without thinking much, surprised at the weight of it. Heavy, enough so that the tapered hilt could almost be a weapon in its own right.

“The kyr’tsad is in the fifth cell with the verde that brought him in,” Myles jumps straight to the point. “Alor Skirata is on his way back from town. ETA twenty minutes.”

He should wait for Kal to get here. Prisoners are his job, after all, both gathering information and then getting rid of them, be it surrendering them to the local governor and handing them over to their displeased aliit’alore.

A little risky, the jetii had said. Jaster refuses to think about what the hilt in his hands could mean.

He breathes in deeply under the safety of his buy'ce, focuses his mind on his current task best that he's able. Assumptions are confounders and he needs truth. He will not get it if their newest prisoner is will just say whatever he thinks Jasters wants to hear just to escape his perceived wrath.

Just another polite chat before interrogations begin properly.

His verde haven’t been in a good mood ever since Levo came to the camp, though they keep their tempers out of view from the ad. He imagines that the presence of a jetii’kad with no jetii attached certainly will not make it any better. He is sure that tales of how it came to them would already be trickling into the rumor mill.

He doesn’t even know if this kad’au belongs to his jetii. Any pictures or clips they had of the man fighting, back on Korda VI, the weapon is a blur of motion more often than not, most of it covered by the hand that wields it either way. The emitter might be similar, the pommel resembles the vague shape.

That’s it. There's still some chance it might not be his.

But whoever’s it is - it’s trouble.

“Well done, Myles,” he tells the verd who was actually starting to shift a bit with indecision. “Wait for Skirata, then tell him to join me. I’m going to go have a chat with our newest visitor.”

The ease in his voice, faked through years of practice, does its job. Myles’ shoulder lower, if just a tiny bit. As long as Jaster appears to have everything under control, it should help the unrest that surely will start building. That should actually give him time to figure out what the hell he’s doing.

With one last encouraging clap on Myle’s shoulder and an order to keep him appraised on Kal’s ETA, Jaster turns towards the brig.

As he marches, he tightens his grip on the saber. His hand slots into the shadow of another, easily finding the faint lines that years of use have worn into leather and metal in equal measure. He is almost tempted to take a swing, test how it would feel when carving through the air.

He wouldn’t quite dare turn it on, in case he sees a familiar blue.

He lets the arm holding the kad’au drop and raises the other to hit the control panel that unlocks the door.

It slides open with a faint whirring sound, revealing a sight he has seen before, though with a few variations.

A chair in the middle, a seat for one, turned away from the door so that its occupant has no clue who walks in. Three verde surround it - one in either corner up front, one standing guard by a table next to the door, waiting for someone to pick the items up for lock-up somewhere safer.

Jaster assesses the pile with a quick glance. A set of beskar’gam in blues and greys. A pair of blasters, disassembled. A vibroblade, still in the holster attached to one of the boots that are also there. Belts are haphazardly thrown over it all, making it all the harder to reach for something specific. A tracker’s receiver, set aside from the kit, with no tracker chit to match.

Jaster continues without pause to stand in front of the captive who stiffens as his footsteps draw nearer and only tenses further when he comes into view.

The kyr’tsad is young and, with haat’ad verde posted in each corner of the room wearing their full kits, he looks comparatively tiny in nothing but his kute and a pair of binders around his wrists. Slightly tanned skin with a tinge of non-human grey, maybe zabrak ancestry if the faintly discolored lines on his face are to go by, that guess rendered only more probable by the yellow Jaster spies when the verd’ika glances, wide-eyed, towards him before looking away. His brown hair, shorn short, still carries faint tinges of pink at the tips where the attempt to cut it off hadn’t quite worked.

Someone among the ramikade must have taken pity on the verd because the young kyr’tsad is fidgeting with a slip of metal - a kar’ta beskar, the outward side the blue Tor’s lot wore, but the inside, around the magnetic fastings, streaked with chipped orange and forest green.

The fate of the verd’ika will still depend on what he says, but Jaster is suddenly feeling a little more lenient.

The verd’ika must find the walls very, very interesting, he looks away so quickly from anyone his eyes land on. Even when Jaster clears his throat, his eyes only pause on some point over Jaster’s right shoulder for a moment before the kyr’tsad looks down again.

Silence stretches for a moment, but the verd’ika doesn’t jump to fill it.

“Got a name?” Jaster asks, faux-casual. A simple question, far from the much bigger ones that burn on his tongue, but a test all the same.

Unlike with others that they have brought in - caught by their own or, on Concordia, left for them by the jetii - there is no mulish silence. The kyr’tsad doesn’t even wait more than a second.

“Naast, aliit be-” The verd’ika starts, then cuts himself off with a slightly nervous laugh that sounds like it slips out of him entirely unbidden. “Pretty sure it’s Naasad, after this.”

He sounds almost relieved to say it, a fact that is wrong on so many levels that Jaster grimaces under his buy'ce. How far have kyr’tsade fallen? His eyes are drawn, just for a second, back toward the little heart of metal, fresh blue paint on one side and a battered riot of oranges and greens on the other.

“Rank?”

“None.” The reply comes quickly again. “Just a grunt.”

“You gave yourself up. Why?”

“Needed a way out. You were the best option.”

“You could have run,” Jaster states, though he knows it’s rarely that simple.

The verd’ika smiles, a quick quirk of the lips there and gone, sad and self-deprecating. “I did. I simply chose who would catch me.”

“Why did you have this jetii’kad on you?” Jaster demands because curiosity has always been his failure. There are many things that should be asked. This is the first time that they had a kyr’tsad come to them, to willingly give up information, give up clan .

There is a fine line between a deserter and a fugitive.

But the silvery metal in his hands burns him like his curiosity. He has to know. He has suspicions, he hopes they’re not true.

“I was told to bring it to a mando’ad in black and red armor, with a mythosaur aliik on a golden pauldron. For safekeeping,” the verd’ika recites. “I assume that’s you.”

That bad feeling in Jaster’s gut grows.

“Who gave it to you?”

“A jetii. Never asked his name. Tall, blonde, blue eyes. Wears a krayt as his aliik.”

Jaster’s heart ends up somewhere near his feet because despite how brief that description is, he knows only one man that matches it. The verde around the room shift subtly as they recognize it too.

“And where is the jetii now?” Jaster asks. His voice, at least, stays steady.

“Kyr’tsad have him,” the verd’ika states, simple and to the point. “They caught him this morning. By now, he’ll be at the outpost for questioning.”

The room was quiet before, but now it goes entirely silent.

The jetii, caught? It doesn’t quite sound believable. Yes, jetii were people, they must be fallible, but after the way he ran circles around them in the Concordian stone forests, the way that he slipped away, last second, vanishing into thin air... It’s hard to believe that kyr’tsad could have managed to catch a ghost, all without the haat’ade knowing.

How did they do it? Cunning? Brutal force? Even jetii had to sleep and there have been no reports of a man matching his description in town, not since the last time that he led them away.

Had their presence chased the jetii out into danger?

A faint murmur picks up as buy’ce twitch along with whatever riotous conversations must be going over the comms channels.

“How?” Jaster demands. The other kyr’tsad grunts knew nothing - not movements of troops, not locations, nothing. “How can you be sure they have him?”

The verd’ika squares his shoulder, bracing himself like a tired hound braces for a strike from its owner, and finally looks Jaster in the eye.

“I’m the one who gave him up.”

Like it's laughing along to his words, the tracker on the table begins to beep.

Chapter Text

It feels nice to be proven right. Not that there had been anyone who disagreed, or even anyone that he had spoken his thoughts to, but sometimes it’s nice to find that an educated guess has turned out to be true.

The caves are much easier to understand if one just takes the time to sit and listen to the way they echo.

Feemor yawns, rolls his shoulders, and settles his mind back into the comfortable cradle of the Force.

As a youngling, Feemor had always liked to meditate with his crèchemates because besides the pair of nautolans - Eko and Nax - no two of them had been of the same species. They had made a game of it, passing sensations back and forth, trying to explain what the world felt like to their unique senses. They taught one another what it was like to smell emotion or to know your surroundings through echolocation, how different it was to eat the same thing with varied tongues and senses of smell, to see with eyes that perceived different spectra, to speak around fangs or chelicerae.

It feels a little similar, to relearn this corner of the world from two steps to the left - to adapt, because this isn’t wrong, just different.

The ore here doesn't muffle the Force as he once thought, just reflects, or maybe refracts. It's like stepping off a shuttle and onto a world lit by an uncommon sort of star or maybe like trying to see through troubled water. Ripples - a mix of pure veins and flecks of ore as well as normal rock, nowhere quite the same. But if spear-fishers can track their quarries through the currents, so too can he learn to adapt to this noise.

If anything, he finds himself curious. What if he went deeper? What if the metal was purer? Caves often have aquifers and Feemor knows that some beskar mines have vast lakes, though the limited tales the holocron wove didn’t specify the planet - he suspected it to be Mandalore proper, though he couldn’t rule Concordia out.

What would the water be like, deep in those planetary veins? Filled with mineral run-off from the water that had taken ages to percolate through rock and metal ore, would it echo like the caverns with each ripple or would it chime like the surface of a mirror? If he dove under, would he lose his sense of the Force outside of himself entirely, or would the Force sing back the tune of his own soul, as reflective as Illum's ice when, as an initiate, he had found himself drowning under it?

He ponders such things because being imprisoned proves very, very kriffing boring.

You’d think that being among hereditary enemies would spice it up a little but no, being jedi means that people prefer to leave you to rot.

“You could at least try to torture me again. Some variety, you know?”

No answer. Typical.

Feemor sighs into the oppressive quiet and opens his eyes to the dark around him.

His shoulders twinge with the persistent pain that has worked its way down to the bone thanks to a mix of damage and the persistent strain from the weight of his shackles. The heavy binders have rubbed his wrists raw despite his best attempts to sit still. He acknowledges the burn and the irritation that follows then lets it go, knowing full well it would return again and again, as all things do, for him to acknowledge and cast away once more.

He shifts his weight, uncurls his legs from where he had been kneeling and folds them together in a different pose, then takes a deep breath which makes him yawn once more. The caves are cold this deep down and the persistent chill urges him to curl up and go to sleep in a state of sedate torpor, to wait until warmer temperatures bring his prey back out of their dens and burrows.

He acknowledges that urge and lets it go too, much in the same way as he catalogs the twinge in his left knee where a boot had come down on it, the pull in his ribs where armored gauntlets had left bruises.

Oh the tender welcome of the kyr’tsad. Laar had made sure the marks Feemor was delivered with were only superficial but the greeting party that fetched him had made sure they were not.

He had to hand it to the young man - he was a good actor. Had Feemor not felt how his hands shook minutely where they had held onto him arm, how each vile word made his very presence twist with raw disgust, he may have even believed him. 

Yet that disgust was the truth of the matter. The way that it had spiked and seethed, cornered-prey-desperate fear kindling into a roiling mass of tangled survive-persist-outlast sort of determination and anger, was what had led Feemor to the man in the first place, like a beacon across the Concordian mountains. Laar had been desperate to escape the gang he had been forcibly initiated into and, once Feemor told him about the kids trapped beneath the mountain, also burn them down to ash as he left. 

Here is the simple truth tyrants sometimes forget - subservience can be forced, obedience can be bought, but loyalty must be earned.

If the haat’ade aren't treating that kid right, Feemor has resolved to break him out once this mess of a plan has run its course. He has a few contacts who would be willing to host him until he finds his feet. People deserve a second chance and Feemor has a feeling that this would be Laar's first.

Wouldn’t even be the first time he stole members from the organization he was dismantling. Last he heard, Ctris and Ivan had opened up a cantina and adopted a trio of elderly tookas.

Yet that’s not exactly his top priority right now. That spot goes to the shackles on his wrist that tether him to the power emitter set into the floor and the people that put them on him in the first place.

He wishes he could give them more credit, really.

With an aggrieved sigh he shifts from his kneeling meditative position, resettles with his legs crossed.

That freedom of movement is once again enough to show him that, no matter what history they may share, mandalorians really haven’t gotten any better at trapping jedi than any other group seeking to do so - of which there are many.

Besides the shackles, what is there to keep him? The door? A hard shove with the Force would rip it open. If he didn’t have the strength, he’d rip apart the hinges. Soldiers in the tunnel? He can avoid them since he can feel them far down the mineshaft, avoiding his cell. There isn't even a blip of reaction whenever he speaks, too far to hear him, too far to be effective.

Their roiling disquiet would at least be somewhat helpful to their cause. You do not trap a jedi in binders. You trap them in misery, theirs and that of others, the exhaustion and pain that would keep them from finding balance, hostages that turn their chains of duty against them. You trap them in suffering, in pain so strong that focus is impossible, that the Force slips through their shivering grasp like silken sand. You injure and drug them, until what little control they have must be measured between survival and action.

Instead he is isolated, left to rot.

To think. 

The most dangerous thing a wildcard can do.

Feemor shifts once more, pushes down the ache in his wrists, the growl of his stomach, the bruises and aches where one of the kyr’tsad had unkindly asked questions while Feemor just bled at the bastard in reply.

That same man had taken his saber. Hadn’t even bothered to check for other weapons under the same assumption that most other sentients had of Jedi only ever using that single one. They’d barely checked his pockets, assured by Laar that he had already been searched.

A shiv presses into the sole of his foot when he stretches out his legs.

Not perfect, but without his favored weapons, Feemor will make do.

He misses the comfort of his kyber, even the quiet hum of the inert one settled in the guard saber.

If the bastards damaged it, someone is getting thrown through a wall. He doesn't trust them to have any respect for such an important weapon, which is why he chose to send away his personal blade to the haat'ade, no matter if this put it entirely outside his reach.

That and he knew his own crystal far better.

Case and point, a soft chime joins the background of noise that always follows his thoughts. Not anything new, just an old part of him singing of a reunion, carried to him through far-off echoes and, more importantly, growing steadily closer.

Unbidden, a soft laugh escapes his throat. What he wears can’t be called a smile, more a bearing of teeth.

Feemor awkwardly raises his hands as much as his bindings allow, just enough to pull at the hardened cloth of his coat, bunching up the leather panels over his shoulders. Treated or not, the hide rips beneath his bite like any other. It tastes of sweat and oil. The fibers of the padding that had been lying beneath tangle around his teeth even as he spits it out, but Feemor smiles anyway.

“Smart,” a mandalorian had once praised, bloodied hand pressing against that same spot, if on the other shoulder.

This feels like vindication - a small plasma cutter falls right into his waiting hands.

Might as well go meet his rescue party.

*****     *****

Jaster marches through the caverns and hopes he isn’t too late.

The little location indicator on his HUD still blips, reading the distance to the triangulated coordinates of the latest ping.

A tracking fob transmitting its location through a comms relay, one no haat’ad slicer managed to crack, which hopefully meant that no kyr’tsad had tampered with either. Something about having to slice into it straight through the main chain node, one which somehow kept moving even more than the transmitter itself, sometimes vanishing altogether and taking the signal with it.

Jaster only understood every other word of that explanation and remembered even less. All he got is that now even verde like Silas wanted to get their hands on the jedi, if only to pick his brains about the method.

Hopefully he still has brains to pick. Kyr’tsad sure do like their brutal executions and, laserfire or no, a point-blank blasterbolt to the head isn’t pretty.

The small HUD display blips again and with a couple of blinks, Jaster summons the overlay.

A map blooms across his vision - the diagram of an old mining operation, or at least its expansion, which had never gotten any official approval but which had, unknown to anyone until now, happened anyway. Had he and Kal not dug up the schematics in some old archived proposal in a desperate attempt to locate anything that would explain the rather regular paths the tracking signal took, they wouldn’t have suspected there to be anything but natural uncharted caverns there in the first place.

Though Naast insisted there must be some of those too. He claimed some of the calls that his patrol leader took echoed far too much for their alor to be in a confined space.

Everyone had stared at the verd’ika at that statement, but he had insisted. It would explain why sometimes the path deviated from the layout of the illegal mine, disappearing into the unknown.

So here they are now, following centuries-old maps into the dark.

For a moment, Jaster tracks the progress of the other teams, all approaching from their own entrances, set to converge at the exact same moment. One of the markers disappears with an alert of a dropping signal, then returns a minute later along with a blip of all-clear.

Ahead of them, the scout for the small party raises his arm, sending a ping across the channel for those whose buy’ce sensors aren’t strong enough to pick out the motion in the dark. Jaster and all the verde behind him freeze.

He surely isn’t the only one suddenly holding their blaster a little tighter. He rubs the trigger guard, the seam of his glove catching at the familiar notch left by an old fight. He is too well-trained to let his finger drift to the trigger quite yet, but the desire is there. 

So is the urge to adjust his belt. The unusual weapon hanging there makes for an odd weight that he can’t help but be hyperaware of.

“There’s light ahead,” comes through the comms, then, “Alor? Orders?”

Jaster walks forward to join the scout, urging his own HUD to scan the area. True enough - the program detects a change in lighting, most likely a lamp down the passage that must open around that bend. It matches the map when he summons then dismisses it, and so too does it match their ETA.

The rest of the squads ping back ready.

Jaster trusts his men to know the plan, trusts his assigned alor’ade and ver’alore to lead them if it falls apart.

There is only one thing to say, then.

“Oya.”

*****     *****

Feemor slowly lowers the corpse to the ground.

The little pushknife from the lining of his coat is surely too flimsy to make through the reinforced armorweave most mandos favor for their kute, but the shiv he had ripped out from the sole of his boot had slipped easily right where the neckseal met the helmet’s catches.

If the sliver of metal embedded in his throat hadn’t made the man bleed out within the minute, the arms around his neck and a quick but brutal twist had sped up the job.

Beskar or no, the flash of startled pain and then nothing at all as a light winked out of existence was as clear as ever. 

Feemor lets himself mourn the fact that he can’t risk leaving an opponent alive, then pushes it away. Maybe once he meets up with the fighters surely making their way into the compound, he can act more like a jedi, but necessity trumps his oaths of compassion. Self-preservation outweighs mercy. He can’t handle a force being sent his way when he is practically weaponless.

The knell of his kyber is steadily growing clearer, a comfort like no other. The quieter song of the guard saber guides his eyes to where he should head next.

He reaches for the blaster the kyr’tsad grunt dropped right as the Force chimes a warning.

It’s a split-second decision to leave it - a bolt would be too loud and currently a free arm serves him better. Feemor presses his back into the stone wall and wishes he had tried to find a vibroblade instead.

A disturbance, like a shift in the dancing shadow cast by tree leaves on an overcast day. Hard to spot unless one is desperately paying attention.

It rounds the corner and Feemor strikes.

In the Force, a rising tide. He brushes it away in the same breath with which he buries the thin knife into the mandalorian’s throat.

The hit lands true, but not neatly.

Something catches and Feemor stumbles forward as in one last instinctual twitch the soon-to-be body jerks back. Something in him freezes his muscles before he can compensate and just in time too, as the momentum pulls him down and out of the path of a blasterbolt.

A push of the Force and long years practicing Ataru’s tenets of finding balance in movement lets him turn the fall into a leap forward. In his hand, a snap drowned out by the percussion of a second bolt.

It misses. Whatever the second mandalorian had expected to see in this hall, surely it wasn't this. 

A moment of frightened hesitation is a moment of opportunity.

Feemor swings out his arm - in his hand, the shiv is now a shard, the razor-sharp but also incredibly thin metal snapped under the strain of the fight - reconsiders.

The mandalorian didn't expect to be straight-up tackled either. Not usually a recommended tactic when pitting squishy flesh versus reinforced armor.

A thought sends the blaster skittering away, enough of an opening for them to trade blows as Feemor reaches-

A hand flails up, maybe aiming for his throat. It misses in a most unfortunate way.

Feemor’s teeth sink into the armorweave with some difficulty, but into the flesh underneath with ease.

With a howl of pain, the mando yanks his hand away. He leaves a couple digits behind. They get spit out to follow their old home.

The opening is enough for Feemor to grab for the helmet, to channel strength into his arms and-

Snap. Flash. Silence.

They lay in an intersection of tunnels, both curving away too soon to offer a glimpse of what lies further in. Feemor hears it anyway.

Klaxons in the Force, echoes of battle and bloodshed, determination and fury. Distantly, the percussion of blasterfire and slugthrowers. The drums of a hunt.

Feemor swallows down the blood in his mouth and wishes both people and animals didn't taste the same, wishes it would make him sick instead of reminding him idly that he hadn't eaten in days.

But he is a jedi and he is a peacekeeper, not a pacifist. He has put this bloodshed into motion himself and hopes that the good that comes from it will outweigh the sin of slaughter.

A shift in the dance of the Force. Beskar.

He reacts.

Leap, reach, snatch the blaster that flies into his hand, grab.

He slams the body into the wall, using his own bulk to trap it as he brings the weapon to bear right between two plates and-

"Oh hello," Feemor sighs, breath fogging against a visor trimmed in red.

Chapter Text

‘Wayii!’ Is what Jaster may have exclaimed.

“Hrrngh,” is what comes out instead because you don't exactly form words when all breath is being knocked out of you by a sudden impact.

It's embarrassing being taken by surprise like this and for a moment he flounders between reaching for a vibroblade or bringing up his blaster or simply taking a swing, all choices having their own issues against an enemy in beskar'gam, but-

Through the tint of his visor, blue eyes stare into his own and make him pause for just a moment, enough that he doesn’t quite manage to bring his blaster up and fire into the body caging his own.

Oh. Not kyr’tsad.

His mind very efficiently reroutes all the adrenaline on a though path he resolutely doesn’t acknowledge because ka’ra help him this is very much not the time to contemplate the fact that he is being held up against a wall by a warrior who can bodily lift him, seriously, Mereel, what the-

Then there is the faintest tug against his belt and a flash of cobalt ignites. The plasma practically purrs as it leaps upwards right in time to deflect a blasterbolt.

Years of training have Jaster follow its path with his eyes and right as he feels the jetii step back, feels his weight drop back to his feet as he is released, he uses the first bit of free space afforded to lift his arm and fire.

A new body drops seconds after the first, both with blaster-holes through their throats.

For a second the two of them watch the hall, waiting for someone else to round the corner, but then the jetii’s head snaps around to glare in the other direction, just as Jaster's comms crackles with-

“Alor! We heard- oh.”

The commando that rounds the corner skids to a stop, rapidly snapping his blaster down towards the ground to keep the aim off of the jetii they clearly had not expected.

Seeing as Jaster had split off to map an unmarked passage, he hadn't expected the jetii either, particularly since the man was supposed to be locked up somewhere in the compound.

Tipped off by the reaction of the first, the next ramikad to round the corner do so at a more sedate pace.

Only now does the jetii take a step back entirely out of Jaster's personal space.

Someone on the comms wolf-whistles because Jaster’s verde are a bunch of degenerates.

Bless the fact that in-buy’ce audio are the default during missions and vocoders need to be manually unmuted, because at least that saves Jaster a tiny bit of embarrassment.

“Apologies for the rough welcome,” the jetii says, powering down his saber. The sudden lack of light forces Jaster's HUD to flicker as it rapidly readjusts. “You snuck up on me.”

Snuck up on him? If the jetii’s first reaction is to bodyslam an opponent into a wall, Jaster doesn't want to find out what happens when he's prepared.

Or maybe he does, as long as he's not the target.

Actually if he finally had a chance to invite the man to spar…

“I could have shot you,” is the thought he voices instead.

“Only because I have a working set of eyes and a good sense of what the patrols feel like in the Force.” The jetii shrugs, apparently unconcerned. He wipes a hand across his mouth, smearing the drying stain of-

“Is that blood?”

The jetii grimaces a little.

“Not mine.” He gestures at one of the bodies in the hall.

There's more than what he and Jaster had put down. Their heads loll at unnatural angles where they're laid out on the ground.

Jaster looks at them, then looks the jetii over.

He looks far more ruffled than Jaster has ever seen him, though the true state of it may not translate through the low-light overlay of his HUD. The jetii isn’t wearing his armor - surely even kyr’tsad wouldn’t have been stupid enough to let him keep any - nor vest or coat. It leaves him in just a tight under-shirt and pants, both creased and dirtied, ripped in places to reveal cuts and scrapes, though Jaster isn’t sure how much of the blood splatter would belong to the jetii and how much to his prey.

Prey taken down without any weapon that he can see, because that saber had been hanging on Jaster’s belt but a minute ago and the blaster in his hand has streaks of pain that matches one of the corpses.

In comparison, the corpses are in full kit.

Oh, now he almost hopes that kyr’tsad have cameras in here because the haat’ad slicers will surely be on a mission before Jaster will even have to ask.

He definitely doesn’t contemplate that, had the jetii not hesitated, he may have joined the bodies on the floor.

But hey, what a way to go.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a rescue?” Ach’ram interrupts Jaster’s thoughts, their sibilant accent only ringing louder with their amusement, mangling their basic somewhat as they now speak through their vocoder.

The jetii blinks at them, the only readable sign of surprise, “Yes? I assume you have other teams looking for the children, right?”

Not wrong, but- Okay, not the time to question why the jetii wouldn’t expect his own retrieval to be part of the ‘rescue’ part of the mission, though that may be because the man clearly just rescued himself without Jaster getting to return the favor so, oh, nevermind.

Jaster quickly directs a command through his HUD to reactivate some programs in his gauntlet, then raises the kom’rk with a twist meant to turn on the dormant comlink set into the metal.

It obediently displays the same file that had been steadily been updating in the overlay of Jaster’s visor - the map of the mine, now wish flashing displays of other team positions and rudimentary lines of uncovered halls or collapses.

The jetii steps closer to look it over. Jaster notes that he doesn’t take just a step towards him, but a little to the side too, to keep distance between him and the other ramikade even as he approaches Jaster.

Will he be reading into it when this is all over? He unfortunately knows himself enough to put a firm ‘yes’ on that.

“There.” The jetii jabs a finger into the display, indicating a spot next to one of the breach teams - Cuir, team Four - which would be Myles’ squad. “I think they are there, or somewhere very close.”

“How do you know?” Jaster asks, even as he directs Oryn with a quick ping to contact the team. He has the best comm capabilities among them, used to running larger jobs with his aliit.

“A lot of listening with the Force,” the jetii says with a smile that reads as apologetic, maybe at the lacking explanation, “And the leader tended to patrol there when he wasn’t visiting me or staying in the main area that would be…”

He trails off, then points at another section. Not the mine, this time, but a natural cave the mine would have crossed into if the plans were followed. It had been intended as the original access point for the mining droids, until they could excavate other, more direct, routes.

Jaster knows the original entrance to the caves had been collapsed recently - his scouts had checked and Naast had confirmed that it would have been kyr’tsad work, not a natural landslide.

“You know the kyr’tsad’alor?” Ach’ram inquires.

“If you want to find the biggest bastard in the room, look for the one that takes a jedi saber as a trophy,” the jetii shrugs, “He made a show of carrying it around when I informed him of the insult it would be and it often stayed there- is there now, actually.”

Jaster has so many questions. He, unfortunately, also has a job to do.

“Alright, we concentrate our forces on that point then,” He says resolutely. “You good to fight, jetii?”

“Now that you’ve returned my saber to me?” The jetii’s smile is wild around the edges, blood still staining his cracked lips, “Of course I am.”

*****     *****

Feemor twirls his saber before extinguishing it. 

While it does help resettle the hilt better into his hand after the last strike had made him snap quickly from pistol to hammer grip to channel the right amount of strength, in truth it's a needless flourish.

Not entirely needless, perhaps. It’s a way to keep the muscles in his wrist mobile and, from an outsider perspective, it looks quite impressive when paired with the last sparks of a disappearing blade.

Any jedi would clock it right away - Feemor is showing off. Successfully too, judging by the attention he feels prickling along his back.

At least he’s doing it with a purpose. It may be a bit underhanded to throw in a few embellishments into his bladework, but he isn't blind to the importance of leaving a good impression.

He somewhat trusts his mando - kriff, he really needs to find a way to ask his name without looking like an idiot - but he trusts the rest about half as far as he can throw them without the use of the Force.

It wasn't so long ago that these same people had been hunting him. Maybe they've set that goal aside for the promise of dealing Death Watch a blow, but that doesn't mean their aim won't shift back once their time as allies of convenience is over.

Feemor only hopes to convince them that it would serve them well to keep him around a little longer, if not out of respect for this fight they share, then maybe out of respect for his skill. 

He's well aware that sometimes jedi are only tolerated as long as they are useful, so he endeavors to prove himself useful indeed.

By his side, his mando raises a hand to order the group to hold instead of continuing down the corridor.

Feemor obediently stills. The Force isn’t giving him the clearest of pictures of this place, he can’t quite navigate this maze as he could another, so now that they have moved into more consistently mapped hallways, he is happy to leave pathfinding to the mandalorians.

No words come, though some helmets twitch or move.

Feemor clears his throat slightly and bites down a smile as a few visors turn his way.

The presence next to him blooms with a hint of embarrassment as a vocoder clicks to unmute. To his credit, the mandalorian doesn’t show any of it as he lifts an arm to project a cobbled-together map of their positions. He points at a junction, where a group of golden spots are clustered at an entrance towards a chamber not unlike the one they just crossed.

“Team Ehn got pinned down, two heavies, and an unknown number of others.”

“I say we throw a det at their backs.” Says another mando. A rather uniquely petite one, even for a twi’lek, though her armored lekku curl long enough to show she’s far into adulthood. Her armor is lined in cheerful orange and she sounds equally cheerful about the prospect of explosions.

Maybe he should start calling them by their accent colors, for ease of mind? Oh, no matter, there is something more urgent.

“This mine is under stress already.” Feemor shakes his head.

There is a burst of interest from his Mando - fine, Red - and a few others, though their presences muted by the lack of proximity.

“Oh, ka’ra osik?” Asks another - brown and red armor with harsh blue stripes cutting through, so Blue it will be.

Blue gets a sharp cuff over their head by their companion, almost entirely in grey.

Feemor brushes it off with the ease of a well-traveled jedi - calling the force ‘banthashit’ is the least offensive thing he has heard aimed at him or his powers, and this inquiry sounded genuine, if impolite.

“This is a room-and-pillar mine,” Feemor explains. He is pretty sure that is the correct term, even if the relevant mission was over a decade ago. Urgent search and rescue. “We passed collapses from retreat mining, which means that outside of the reinforced hallways, the weight of the rock ceiling above us is now resting almost entirely on the remaining pillars. It should be stable if not disturbed and if the collapses had been calculated and executed correctly.”

That last one had not been. Thirty two souls dead, slowly extinguished as they choked on dust and their own stagnating breaths.

It had been a painful lesson to learn, that sometimes you simply arrived far too late.

“This wasn’t exactly a legal operation.” Red points out.

There is an odd appreciative glow to him that Feemor can’t quite parse among the echoes and the gleam of beskar. He tangles his senses against it, like a sunbeam to distract himself from the rest of the cacophony of this place.

“Then we can only hope they had good engineers,” Feemor shrugs. “If the barrier pillars are at regular intervals and held up alright, we could follow the wall and then sneak up on them from behind here.”

His traced route is met with a shake of the head.

“That hall is way too long. They'll just turn one of the rotaries on us instead.”

It doesn't look that long for him. He recalls the ones they passed before, looks over the map again, then, “How long does one take to recharge after it’s paused? They can't fire continuously since the bolts might bounce off the walls due to the metal content, so if we force one to turn, how long until it powers up?”

Red doesn't answer, but another - red and purple with green accents, often being hid behind the one in green and black that tends to step in front of him - pipes up instead.

“Depends on the charge pack. Two-point-oh-eight seconds if it's a good one. Twice that for the other most common model on the market.”

Feemor gives him a thankful smile and nod while he does the mental math. He is going to start flagging eventually, but he has enough strength for a creative maneuver, particularly if it guarantees reinforcements. Two or three seconds at minimum, not accounting for the element of surprise and the time it would take to react…

“Automatic night vision or heat scanners in your HUD, what’s the calibration time after a rapid change? If you had a top of the line model.”

Now Red replies, “Around a second, up to three if it’s an extreme flash.”

Nothing quite like a dark cave to set off the blazing heat of a plasma blade.

Well, he did want to show off. Damn his luck.

“Yeah, I can clear that,” He decides.

“Me’ven?”

“You want an opening? I can give you an opening.”

*****     *****

Jaster breathes around what he thinks is his heart trying its damndest to climb up his throat.

He is too practiced to let fear or anxiety take over during a mission. Oh, an adrenaline rush could make you fight like Kad Ha'rangir himself, but with it came an inevitable and disorienting crash which could spell death if the fight wasn’t good and over by that point.

Still, he worries, because the jetii must have surely lost his mind.

The distinct rapid whir of a heavy repeater blaster is loud around them, as they gather around the last turn into what must have once been one of the main access halls used to ferry materials out of the active mineshafts. The metal remaining in the stone makes the display flicker and warp, but the heat sensor overlay now shows him the figures of the kyr’tsade harassing Team Ehn when he turns towards the wall.

At least they’re not looking towards them. Skirata and his team are doing a great job of being nuisances, shooting right back as much as they can before a new volley of bolts forces them back.

Still, they look way too far from him, for his liking.

If the jetii is nervous, there is nothing to show for it.

Mara lowers her hand from where she had been dialing something into her own scanners from the pad on her kom’rk, then nods and gestures to the wires running across the ceiling and towards the kyr’tsad.

The jetii nods back, lips curling into a slight smile.

No-one about to jump towards certain death should have the right to look so satisfied - or be handsome about it. Damn this man.

The slight misplaced irritation gives way to something fuzzy and definitely not acknowledged when the jetii turns that smile at Jaster instead.

Then the jetii taps a point next to his eyes with a finger and tilts his head in question.

“Displays off,” Jaster orders even as he gives the jetii a resolute nod, following the briefly discussed part of the plan.

Without the reinforcement of night vision and other HUD enhancements, the mine is terribly dim, lit only by sporadic age-faded lights and the flashes of blasterfire that only make it look all the darker as they extinguish. It’s almost as far as you can get from optimal combat conditions, particularly in unknown terrain.

It only gets worse when the jetii raises his hand and the wires above them shred in a shower of sparks, plunging them into an absolute darkness that is only ever found underground.

Blasters rapidly cut out under shouts of alarm, leaving the embers the only thing to show the way as they fall.

By the time that the glittering shower hits the ground, there is nobody under them to hit and they extinguish under Jaster’s boots as he charges around the corner just in time to see-

Sounds of anger, as HUDs must have compensated for the pitch black.

Sounds of pain, as blue bursts to light, blinding in the black void, a flashbang even without overexposed inputs to make it worse.

Jaster sees it bury itself right under a chestplate and raises his blaster right as it vanishes.

The afterimage remains and Jaster takes a chance, fires, sees the red briefly illuminate the scene - the jetii crouched low and then springing upward, spinning out of the bolt’s way to let it splatter against the side of a buy’ce.

Darkness, then-

Blue, spilling from beneath the rim of a helmet, the jetii hidden behind the body, the kyr’tsad turning aimlessly. A repeater falling from slack hands. The first body is still crumpling. One has their sights raised and aimed.

Fire, three bolts.

Red - the jetii shoving the body towards its previous companions, forcing them back as the laserfire hits - kom’rk, bicep plate, flesh - right between shoulder and chestplate, either a graze or a deadly burn.

Darkness.

Blue - the one Jaster hit dropping, the other falling under the weight of a corpse and its armor. The plasma severing an arm while the jetii raises his own and two are pushed off their feet by nothing-

Darkness.

A percussion of red from down the hall from down the hall, to greet those toppled.

Blue as a blade slices down on the prone fighter right as they raise their arm wreathed in a glitter of primed whistling birds.

Darkness.

“Clear,” The jetii calls, slightly winded.

The blue turns on and stays, the emptiness of the stone hall turning the rumble of the blade into an odd drumming whisper that cuts through the sudden silence. The harsh source of light makes deep shadows dance across the jetii’s form, throwing every plane of him into contrast sharp enough to cut. Cold, moisture-rich air of the mine turns to vapor around the plasma blade, dancing in the air like satin ribbons as the mist reflects the light before it dissipates.

The jetii’s eyes, reflective like coins in the uneven angle of the light, crease as he smiles at Jaster. “Wonderful aim there.”

Jaster’s stomach does an odd swooping thing.

A sharp bark of sound cuts through the moment.

“Osi’kyr! Me'shab’vaar ti ibac?”

Okay, maybe a ‘what the kriff was that’ is a rather deserved call from Skirata, in this situation.

“Naas!” Jaster calls back out of habit which luckily reboots what emergency systems his brain had going there for a good second.

Unfortunately it also jars the peanut gallery that had run out after him.

“Alor, respectfully, but if you’re not going for that, then dibs-” Comes Ruusan’s voice over the inner comms.

“Vod this is so not the time-” That’s Mara.

“No, no, let my riduur speak.” That one’s Ivar.

“Aren’t you into women?” That would be Ach’ram.

“After that ?” Ivar laughs, “Not as exclusively as I thought!”

“Skirata, just shoot me,” Jaster pleads as his HUD signals Team Ehn switching channels to his squad’s.

They’re no better, of course, as he can hear-

“Hey do you think if I just asked for his comm number right here-”

“Ray, stop thinking with your ovaries and start thinking of how we can convince him to teach us that low strike.”

“Osik, Teeve, you’re right-”

“Were there any injured?”

Silence, as they turn towards the jedi.

He is now truly Jaster’s savior. He had really been considering putting a bolt through someone’s kneecap to shut them up.

The jetii glances between the two groups, then, a little less assuredly as he gestures towards his head, “Um, no helmet comms, so, are we waiting on another squad or-?”

“I have a spare comm…” Someone from Skirata’s side offers still over the inner line.

They are shut down with a deluge of panicked ‘no!’s.

Jaster wonders if it’s too late to abdicate.

As it is, he just raises his kom’rk to display the hologram of their map and the jetii clears the field of bodies with a few graceful steps to join him, Team Ehn at his back.

“We should rendezvous with Team Rayshe'a over here-”

*****     *****

He would never say it out loud, but Feemor practically thanks the Force when they finally break into the main encampment.

One last push, and then it may just be over.

By now, Red’s team has not only been joined by the one they had rescued - Team three, Ehn, as led by who he has dubbed Gold, a mandalorian that he recognises through the Force as one of Red’s common companions from his previous scoutings - but two more, with a fourth set to spill down some vertical shaft that they had discovered should offer them a drop straight into an adjacent cave.

That was probably a repurposed ventilation or elevator construction that the kyr’tsad could have easily employed as an entryway to drop off cargo from ships landing above. It had been on no map, only recently found by the commandos swarming somewhere on the surface above, picking off escapees.

They spill into the cave led by a flash of energy shields and the percussion of metal slugs and laserbolts as they cut through the quickly dispersing cloud of smoke grenades that served as an opening salvo.

Were it any other day, Feemor would have stopped to admire the cavern. Maybe, if he had the time, he would have sat in its center, where all those metal echoes converged, and tried to count the glittering not-stars on the vast roof that now glimmer red and blue and green in the reflection of the carnage below. It would have been a great meditative exercise, plucking the symphony of reflections trying to tie each one to its source.

He has no such luck.

It is but one observation among many as a tired brain tries to take in a deluge of new information - people there, others there, crates and a generator, screens and a man kyr’tsad colors bent hurriedly over a console, another figure there moving while Feemor’s ever tensing grasp on the Force screams for attention in a double-vision of laserfire hitting metal, body, metal, carbon-scoring golden paint-

He swipes a holdout blaster from Red's belt, shoots an armored man in the throat before he can unload his blaster into Gold’s open flank, then puts the gun back into its place just in time to ignite his saber and parry a bolt sent his way.

His arm burns with the effort as starved muscle begins to protest louder than his willful ignorance of pain can handle. This left wrist screams with the echo of the kickback it had just been forced to endure and he knows the wounds carved by the shackles must be open and weeping.

He has fallen back to the defensive in an effort to conserve energy, shielding Red and whoever else strays close to give them a chance to open fire. His own returned bolts now miss more often than not, glancing metal instead of sinking into unprotected flesh, a failure he will need to correct some other day because for now it’s enough, those minute stumbles giving openings for others to exploit.

Then just like that, it’s over.

Battles have a way of being horribly anticlimactic.

He doesn’t see the last strike, doesn’t see the last man fall, barely registers it against overstrained senses. One moment there is combat and targets and either-us-or-them, and the next there is not.

Feemor straightens from his guard and watches as the mandalorians rapidly disperse, directed by orders he is not privy to, some for exits, some towards the fallen, some to Force-knows-where.

He raises his arm, watches dispassionately as a familiar hilt comes to his hand from just one corpse among many. The impact is sharp and painful, drowning out the ghost of a heartbeat song that he would feel-hear drum against his fingers. 

Red is walking towards one of the consoles, gesturing along with words that never leave his helmet, so Feemor follows, at a little bit of a loss.

A job is done and life moves on.

*****     *****

Jaster watches over the organized chaos of his ramikade, coasting on that odd high between exhaustion and the elation of a job well done.

It is not over, not yet, but this time the pause gives them all a moment to breathe.

They have taken losses and there are injured, but they are being seen to by the medics, enough to stabilize them for retrieval and already the ones most capable of moving are being led from the caves.

There are still ramikade in small groups scouting the smaller passages and boltholes, there are regular reports coming in as teams outside report numbers - dead, injured, captured, rescued, stashes found, armor, weapons, so many things. Even here around him others are cracking open containers and a slicer is bent over the console where they try to reverse the work of the scrubber program that had been scorching its way through the data.

Apparently whatever virus had been in the datasticks the jetii had handed her, it had successfully stopped it in its tracks, though it couldn’t undo the damage.

Jaster hopes that his buy’ce had captured the puzzling sight of the way the jetii’s other saber - silver and gold, longer and double-ended - had fallen apart in mid air into a cloud of parts lit by the golden glow of a crystal before quickly snapping back together, leaving behind two datasticks and a blinking tracker that had apparently taken the place of the electronics required to power the second blade.

That tracker chip is a match to the receiver Jaster had followed into these caves.

Dini’la jetii had apparently bugged the damned kyr’tsad’alor.

“A jedi’s saber is their life and I like mine with some surprises,” The jetii had quipped even as he tossed the items to Teeve.

Now he is sat on one of the crates next to Jaster and Jaster is trying very hard not to look.

Okay he is looking. Politely. And mostly out of worry, because he’d rather worry about the jetii, who is next to him here and now, than the shitshow this campaign promises to bring him in the future. Even if there is no data to be recovered, just the buy’ce recordings from Myles’ team are sure to quickly set fire to the powderkeg that is the current clan tensions in the sector.

So yeah, he’d rather acknowledge reports and keep half and eye out on the jetii next to him.

A jetii that just bullied away one of the haat’ad medics and is currently shucking off his ruined shirt.

Jaster reigns in his curiosity for about five whole seconds before he hears the sound of a pack being unzipped - the trauma kit the medic had all but thrown at the jetii when the man all but ordered the baar’ur to go tend to the others first before he could even think to start looking the jetii over - and uses that sound as an excuse to maybe glance over-

“When did you get hit?” Jaster demands as he swivels around, all attempts of peering through the edges of his HUD entirely gone.

The jetii startles slightly, tugging the pack close for a moment before he relaxes. His brow twitches with a suppressed wince and, possibly, for good reason.

Part of his ribcage is more bruises than not, some blooming deep blue around shallow scrapes that rub down to his torso.

The jetii looks down at them as if seeing them for the first time. Blood slowly wells around his wrists and starts to trail slowly down his forearm, no longer soaked up by dirtied fabric.

The jetii looks back at Jaster, unperturbed. “Oh, this was here before. Common terrorist hospitality, you know?”

Jaster isn’t sure what to call the sound that he makes at the statement. Did he really just have this man lead most of the charges throughout the campaign like this? Oh, he should have checked, should have had Ivar, the assigned medic of his team, do a scan or something, follow normal protocols.

Something of that must reflect in his body language or that jetii Force, because the blond winces, then settles his expression and draws himself up a little straighter.

“If I felt incapable of keeping up, I would not have suggested our charge back with Team Ehn,” he declares, “I assure you, I would never put your lives at risk if I wasn’t sure I-”

“That is not-” Jaster begins, then, “Just sit back down.”

The jetii sits on the crate.

Jaster tries not to think too hard about it as he marches straight into his personal space and takes the first aid kit out of the jetii’s hands.

As he shoves it under his arm and goes to tug off his gloves lest they only add more germs to the mix, he feels a sense of odd deja-vu.

At least he is not the one wounded this time.

“This is really unnecessary.” The jetii points out, “I’m sure you have-”

“Hold this,” Jaster shoves the pack towards the jetii. It works as expected, in that now the jetii has one hand occupied and Jaster is free to grab the other as gently as he can and ascertain the damage to the wrist.

Raw and scrapped up, but only surface damage. It looks kriffing painful either way.

“How did you even swing your jetii’kad like this?” Jaster asks, not exactly looking for an answer, as much as to express his distaste at the situation.

“It’s just pain,” The jetii shrugs. He doesn’t flinch even as Jaster quickly wipes down the area and begins to wind one of the antiseptic bandages around the worst of the damage. “I can block it out.”

Jaster glances briefly up at the jetii’s face. He is looking at Jaster with an odd pinch to his brow, as if trying to puzzle something out. He is also not leaning away as most maybe would and that also means he’s close enough to have Jaster thanking the fact that he has a buy’ce on as heat floods his face.

He quickly looks back to his work as the jetii’s words catch up to him.

“You don’t feel that?” Jaster asks, disbelieving.

“Oh I do.” Out of the corner of his vision, Jaster can see that the jetii shakes his head. “But if I focus, I can mostly… ignore it, I guess you could say. I will be feeling it when I wake up tomorrow, though.”

Then he hears the sounds of a hypo depressing and looks up to see the jetii pull an empty cartridge away from his side.

“That wasn’t calibrated-”

“Jedi metabolism,” The jetii cuts him off, and true enough there is a little more color already returning to his complexion that had been washed out by both his stay in the caves and the poor lighting within the cavern. “I’ve once seen a human Knight down three of these in succession after a bad run.”

“Did he die?” Because really that sounds like a guaranteed heart attack.

“Practically bounced off the walls for fifteen minutes, managed to lift our ship from where it had been buried by an avalanche, then had the galaxy’s worst caf-crash the whole way back to Coruscant.” The jetii shrugs easily. “But that might be because neither of us had slept for three days by that point.”

Jaster kind of wants to hear that story and yet dreads it in equal measure.

When Jaster lets go of one hand, the other is offered to him without complaint.

The jetii favors this one as his main sword hand, Jaster thinks, and true enough to saber hilts are now left behind on the crate by the jetii’s hip, out of reach if Jaster had half a mind to tighten his grip.

The easy show of trust is not one Jaster had hoped to earn quite this easily.

It makes him hesitate for a moment. Oh his ramikade will either tease him incessantly or go green with jealousy. He can practically hear Skirata laugh about how he hasn’t even had a chance to introduce himself-

He can correct that one.

“So, I realize-”

“I’ve been meaning to ask-”

They each fall silent and Jaster looks up only to be met with a grin far too sunny for a place like this.

“You first.” He offers.

The jetii glances away and despite the dim surroundings and the grime, Jaster would swear that his complexion darkens just a little bit. “Oh, it’s just I’ve realized-”

He freezes mid-sentence, tensing as his head snaps to the side to glare towards the console and the slicer still working there.

“What did you just do?”

*****     *****

Something has just gone horribly wrong.

That is a statement the truth of which Feemor feels in his very bones. The first domino in a long line has just tipped over, he can hear the echo of it ping across the cavern, originating right there .

“Evacuate the caves.” The order is spoken as soon as it comes to mind.

The mandalorian before him draws up sharply, his hands still wrapped around Feemor’s half-bandaged wrist. “Me’ven?”

Feemor rolls to his feet, nearly collides with the man before he finds himself heading to cross the cave, pulled by sudden turbulence that chokes the air.

The gentle grip that hadn’t let go of his arm stops him.

“What is happening, jetii?”

Red’s odd warmth, the one that sparked as more than just body heat against Feemor’s skin is gone. Skin-to-skin, it’s easier to read the sudden sharp focus, steady like the glow of a banked fire, yet ready to burn if need be.

The problem is, Feemor doesn’t know.

“Something happened. Something will happen,” he says.

They have drawn eyes, now, as he hears the surrus of the moving and working haat’ade quiet as they stop. All this time they had been working in near-silence, words probably kept to helmet comms that he had no access to, but he is sure if he could have heard them, now he would see them fall silent.

“Please,” he says, tugs his arm to free it and summons his blades to his hands in the same motion. It’s an automatic gesture to attach them to the scrap wire he had previously folded into rudimentary hooks that could hang from his belt loops. “Something’s wrong . We need to go.”

Red stays silent and then, with feeling, simply says, “ Osik .”

If he says anything more, Feemor pays it little mind.

Jedi training has this odd little saying that would be nonsensical to anyone else but those who hear the universe whisper to them: don’t think, do.

He strides toward the comms array, willing the readouts on the screen to give him a hint.

“You triggered something,” he tells the mandalorian at the keyboard, who had grown still at his approach. “Find it.”

The slicer resumes their work, if a smidge faster.

Feemor glances towards the display for the scrubber program that had been in the datasticks, a nasty little thing of shadow-make. Slow, but thorough. The progress bar places its progress at 78%.

“Leave a skeleton crew if you must, but get everyone out ,” He tells Red again as he feels the man step up behind him, then after a moment adds, “You trusted me this far.”

From the twitch of the helmet, there must be some harsh words said that the helmet muffles. But then that sharp tilt stills and a good group of soldiers in the room make for the exits. Some return to their tasks with increased speed, others march closer to the array with hands on their weapons - not yet drawn up but surely ready.

Feemor feels like cornered prey and it rankles. He pushes the thought away. These are allies. 

Whether it’s the shock of sudden warning or the stim making its way through his system, his exhaustion is giving way to a confusing sort of clarity, threadbare in places and too sharp in others.

He can feel the echoes shift as the room grows significantly emptier, a wave that sweeps into the other parts of the complex if he bothers to listen for the sounds there.

Feemor swallows around the stone in his throat because despite the relief that brings, the feeling of weight around him doesn’t ease. He begins to type at the other padd attached to the machine, scrubbing and filtering the files, hoping to find the one thing that may stand out. A counter-virus that would render their efforts null, an executable program, a warning beacon.

Nothing.

[85%] the display tells him.

“What do you feel, jetii?” A voice asks. The mandalorian in grey from Red’s original team.

“I don’t know, but it’s here, in the caves,” Feemor replies and realizes the words to be true. The disturbance is in the cave, the mines, not further. 

He suddenly remembers his one trip back to his home planet, out in the unknown regions. The ritual hunt, the dread as the beasts that hunted with the Force realized that they had a much brighter morsel among them, one that had escaped them so many years previous in the arms of a visitor. That instinctive feeling, a recognition of a predator approaching.

He had rarely felt afraid as a padawan, so trusting he had been in the will of the Force, but at that moment he had felt like nothing but prey.

This doesn’t feel conscious enough, but it’s drawing closer.

Grey scoffs, may try to say something else, but Feemor cuts him off.

“We’re running out of time. How many people are left?” He then turns to the slicer, “Anything?”

“Thirty,” Red responds, then corrects himself, “Twenty-seven.”

“Nothing is running except your virus and the original scrubber-”

Feemor draws himself up, “That’s supposed to be off.”

If it had a secondary purpose, a delayed subroutine-

[90%]

“I set it to run in circles to restore some files,” The slicer points out, “It had scrambled some things too.”

“Check it again,” Feemor warns. “How many?”

“Fifteen,” Red reports. He is turned away, one arm raised and gesturing some message to the other warriors in the room that shift around to follow their orders.

“You should go too. I can wait for the program to finish.”

“Not happening, jetii.”

Commendable loyalty, but stupid, Feemor thinks yet doesn’t bother to argue. His foot wants to tap tap tap against the ground like a countdown or maybe a preparation to bolt. The echoes in the cave do not change but he imagines something there all the same, a shadow of a disturbance, like something crawling up into that metal-starlight ceiling, ready to pounce.

He tries to search for it in the Force, finds nothing but a warning. Soon. Sooner.

[95%]

His fingers brush the metal of the datasticks, ready to snatch them out of the ports the moment that the last percentage point finally ticks up and announces that the job is done.

Just that one second more and then they can go, flee from whatever wrong thing crawls ever closer to completion.

[97%] 

[98%]

He knows he's out of time when it all just stops.

The warnings from the Force grow quiet as it settles back into his hold. No more sense of fear, no more jumping at shadows, no more anxiety that something is coming. 

That raw animal thing in his chest that no jedi training could ever claw out of him stills, ceases trying to find the predator approaching in the dark.

It's here, it says. It's now.

Feemor looks up just in time to watch the stone sky begin to fall.

Chapter Text

Kal Skirata has always prided himself for always having a plan on hand for any possible situation.

Not that he can’t deal with the unexpected, but life is easier - and much more likely to not end prematurely - when one can follow a nice plan built upon a solid foundation of verified information.

That is to say, the sudden call to pull back from the mines with no other explanation - it rankles.

The beskar content in the stone is wreaking havoc on comms systems that are already not calibrated to work underground in the first place. As such, he gets the order second- or third- hand, a sharp ping from one of his ramikade - Ray Faar - just moments before she rounds the corner.

Her sitrep consists of a brief ‘Orders from the mand’alor, sir!’ before he directs her to where a medic could use help moving out one of the injured.

The haat’ade - at least the combatant ones, the ones in these caves - are too well-trained to panic at the sudden call to evacuate.

This is why having an established plan is ideal - they swarm through the halls in an orderly fashion and Kal barely even needs to ping any to know where they are heading, be it to help someone unable to navigate on their own, pick up equipment that was already packed up to go, or to simply regroup and leave.

Yet he still doesn’t get any answers as to what they’re retreating from .

He is one of the captains on this mission. It is his duty to watch over his lot of commandos and draw either glory or dishonor from the results of their actions. For a mando’ad, it means leading from the front and upon retreat, watching their backs.

So even as more haat’ade pass him or check in on their progress through the mines outward, he heads further in, trying to catch his wayward mand’alor on the comms so that he can give him some answers.

Unfortunately, the deafening echo of a mine collapse beats him to it.

Then, he runs.

*****     *****

The world-shaking noise of rock splitting and smashing drowns out even the sound of the charges that must have set off the collapse.

There is nowhere to hide when the sky is falling underground.

The part of him that precedes logic and functions by a simple equation of cause and response, something between ingrained training and natural instinct, has Jaster bring his arms up to try and brace. Handplates and vambraces shield the much more fragile armorweave that pads his neck, the edges catching the lip of his helmet in an effort to transfer the pressure to his shoulders if it gets hit.

His eyes had shut on instinct, but he can tell by the noise when his world is drowned in dust and gravel. It shrieks like claws and teeth against metal, a furious hailstorm testing the beskar.

Almost distant, the whir of his helmet cycling from external filters to recycled air.

Yet, at the end of the onslaught, he stands.

Isn't that a surprise?

It's one part terror and two parts déjà-vu to open his eyes to the face of death and see a jedi instead.

The man stands a few steps away from where Jaster had last seen him, arms raised towards the ceiling, or what remains of it.

The wondrous landscape of water-carved rock and elegant stalactites is gone.

Sheets of rock pile haphazardly at impossible angles, casting a dizzying array of reflections across Jaster’s HUD as the ore reflects the scanner output now that the upset has ruined what lamps once lit this great cathedral. They shiver and shake, fighting a hold that shouldn't be, each little shift eliciting another cacophonous crackle of stone against stone or the thundering rumble of fissures carving their way across rock.

Half a dozen mando’ade are scattered across the room. Some too had brought their hands up to protect their necks, some had been sent sprawling by the sudden downdraft of air and gravel. All have their visors tilted up to gawk at the impossible.

The Jedi's fingers spasm and for a moment his brow isn't furrowed in concentration, but agony.

Like a beast infuriated by its prey being denied, the rockfall shrieks as it claws its way just that inch or two closer.

“Everyone out!” Jaster barks into his comms. “Run!”

He starts forward, hooks his hands around Teeve’s shoulder to help her stumble to her feet and towards where the exit still stands open, for now.

It forces the rest into motion, like a wave, as the first rush towards the exit the mines, still open, if only for now.

There are less rocks suspended above it, and isn't it strange that the exit was so far from where the supplies and console stood, the perfect lure for a delayed trap.

A few make a dash for the elevator shaft across from it at the opposite end of the cavern, their jetpacks engaging with blinding bursts of fire.

Jaster too goes to follow the runners headed for the mines, once again stuck regretting his lack of sen’tra, but makes it but half a dozen steps when his brain takes notice-

The jetii doesn't follow.

*****     *****

One's reach in the Force is only limited by their mind, or so Yoda would teach.

Luminous beings, not this crude matter.

But this crude matter is still here, screaming for attention. It's tired and tiring further still.

It hurts.

The reach of his mind is determined by his focus, but a brain is a brain, it is a network that developed for survival first and everything else second, and right now it says this -

It hurts.

Make it stop.

He cannot.

Not now. Not yet.

He is too big for his skin, he is too small for this task.

It's just the surface layer raining down but that is still tons of rock, tons more than he can hold.

Like a tower of cards. Focus on the ones that are holding up the weight, for if they fall the whole thing will topple down.

Rock leans against rock leans against slowly crumbling walls. A single nudge will tip the balancing act over.

A thousand little points poised for breaking.

Don’t think of it, focus. One great action, great, but just one . Hold.

It's easier to channel when one imagines the Force like an extension of flesh and blood, when one asks the impossible to follow the twist and turn of something done without much thought.

The weight presses against his bones, curls in his shoulders and spine, threatens to make his legs buckle.

Something shakes.

His arms? All of him, maybe.

He isn’t sure when he leapt forward, somewhere between when he registered the flash of danger and before the first rocks could hit the ground.

Raise your arms, imagine pushing upwards, action and reaction, feel the weight pushing back, let it flow, redistribute, hold. 

Whatever you do. Hold.

Beyond the darkness of his closed eyes he sees - the iron starfall suspended, lights fleeing out, away, one standing strong - unlike him, but please not him.

“Go,” he urges. It tumbles out among the shriek of rocks shifting, the cost of sacrificing even the smidge of composure to talk, to open his eyes to actually look and see. “Go!”

Red stands there, half-turned, as if torn between two anchors - Feemor and the clear way out.

Somewhere there in the mines fed by another generator, the dim lights gleam. Safe. For now.

“You-” Red starts.

Feemor doesn't listen, or maybe he can already hear the denial before it's given voice. “Go.”

“I- No- I can't just leave you!”

The weight keeps pressing down and he keeps giving in, inch by inch. On this, however, he will stand.

“You- You must. I move - the rocks fall.” Each word is ground out with effort. Another shriek of rock, the price of thought, however basic. “You have a duty. Your people need you. Your son needs you. Go.”

Feemor doesn’t see any other outcome. He moves and the mountain crushes them both - they would need to cross the cavern in seconds, faster than mortal feet can carry. The math is simple in his mind, the oversimplified worldview that governs those raised among jedi - cost versus benefit and the oaths that bind the values of both. If Red leaves, once Feemor fails, he will live. If Red stays, once Feemor fails, he will die.

Other options are not to consider - he could shove him towards the exit, push him away faster than the rocks could fall, but the sudden collapse could unsettle the rest of the mines, trap those who haven’t gotten far enough. The price of attaching a higher worth to one than to many.  

“Please,” Feemor says, “Go.”

“Damn it all,” the man says, like a goodbye. “I’m- Ni ceta, jetii.”

He goes.

Thankful, Feemor closes his eyes and holds.

*****     *****

Jaster turns and goes because maybe mand’alore of old may have valued the indomitable hearts, but corpses are only of use to scavengers and storytellers.

He still curses every step that he takes as he sprints out of the cavern.

The rocks overhead now scream louder in protest as they press ever down, threatening to shatter some of the jagged natural pillars that are still helping hold some of the weight off of the jedi.

The entrance to the mineshaft is right there, dreadfully tiny compared to the room that once was, but now a bastion of dubious safety. One single lamp, tied to some other generator hidden within the tunnels, hangs from the metal struts that brace the opening where droids once had dug into the rock.

Room and pillar mine, made to collapse upon retreat. The irony is bitter.

He tries to keep running, to do what he must, but this is an excuse as good as any, the false safety of durasteel and not yet broken stone. He slows. Looks back.

The rocks floating overhead are sparse here, enough so that one could even see through the debris to their source. Clearly, the sabotage had been intentionally limited in scope, maybe to give any kyr’tsad fighters in the mine time to bail instead of burying them right away, though surely the mines won’t last long once the stone comes falling. It also serves to give glimpses of the true mass of rubble he had just been under- which the jetii is still waiting under.

A lone figure, collapsed to one knee, fingers spasming as joints lock in an effort to maintain a grip on the unseen.

His heart breaks at the sight of it. Kriff, it is dishonorable to leave behind a man he’s indebted to, yet he’s too honor-bound not to do so.

Streams of grit and gravel pour down like water as stones grind together in their slowed, but inevitable, descent.

For a moment Jaster wishes he was brave like a fool, enough so to be selfish, to give an impossible rescue a try. But the jetii had said it himself - Jaster had a duty to his haat’ade, to Jango, to the people that would surely be up in arms about kyr’tsad and could cause so much strife if not united, redirected, organized.

He has a job to do, even if it means adding another ghost to his nightmares through inaction.

So Jaster turns away and he runs.

*****     *****

Kal clears a corner just in time for his HUD ping an established connection and then drop it at once. Still, it’s a waypoint to follow in his quest to catch up to the mand’alor.

Though he knows better than to speed up, to surpass what he knows is his best pace for endurance, he still finds himself sprinting down the stone hall just that little bit faster. An ache builds in his side and his lungs burn from sustained effort.

There had been snatches of information - hidden bombs, the jetii stalling for time - but the flood of it has run dry. His comms are quiet now, the ramikade out of range as they hurried away from the epicenter of the collapse. 

There, another ping, but this time the connection holds, even if weak without other nearby commlines to piggyback from now that the mineshafts are all but empty.

“Alor!” Kal calls between harsh breaths even as he clears a corner to follow the moving point now displayed on his HUD, “Sitrep!”

The fact that he doesn’t instantaneously hear a quip about how Jaster’s supposed to be the one asking that really doesn’t bode well.

“Trap. Ceiling collapsed.” Each word of the reply comes punctuated by harsh breaths. “Team's clear. Tunnels, or went up with their sen’trase.”

“The jetii with you?” Kal asks, trying to calculate already the headcount he should expect once they’re out. Two of Jaster’s team had their jetpacks with them, then one of his that had stayed behind to help go through the supplies kyr’tsad had stored, so with the jetii, that's-

“I left him.”

“What?”

“He’s-” Jaster cuts himself off with a cough or a snarl, “He’s holding up the mines. Told me to go. I didn’t- I couldn’t-”

Whatever he means, the thought is never given voice, trails off to nothing but the shared static of their unstable connection.

He only repeats, quietly despite the strain-

“He told me to go.”

Kal knows Jaster enough to read the true thought behind those words - I left him.

Blasted kind-hearted fool of a mand’alor. He’ll be an idiot about it and blame himself, won’t he?

Ka’ra, even if there wasn’t the foolish crush that Jaster had been nurturing for the jetii; Kal had joined the haat’ade precisely because Jaster was the sort to value people, to repay honor and loyalty in kind, take his oaths to the grave.

Munin Skirata’s teachings had painted mando’ade as honorable, indomitable people. Working with Mereel actually made Kal believe that they could be so.

The jetii may be helpful, but he is an outsider to this brewing civil war of theirs. He shouldn’t even be here in the first place, had they been any better in their hunt.

Kal checks the map overlaying his HUD and thinks - this is his job as ruus’alor, to make sure everyone who can do so makes it out.

“If I don’t make it to you in twenty, I did something stupid,” Kal tells Mereel as he takes a sharp left.

It seems like the mines are still holding up, but there is a stream of dust drifting from the ceiling up ahead, as bad of an omen as any.

“Kal-” Jaster’s tone is one that Kal recognizes as being prelude to an order.

“I got a jetpack, the cave shaft’s a faster exit,” Kal cuts him off with an excuse that is equal parts true and absolutely idiotic. “Ori’jate’kara, alor!”

They’ll both need that good luck.

Then in a move that he knows will have him lectured not only by the mand’alor but also all the ramikade that Kal usually has to lecture himself, he shuts off his comm.

It takes under a minute to reach the dark tunnel leading to the cavern, but that handful of seconds feels like a lifetime in and of itself. Each step is punctuated by the sound of protesting rock growing louder, the soft pings of stray pebbles suddenly raining down and bouncing off Kal’s beskar, for now still too small to feel through the armorweave between the plates.

They’re nothing but dust motes compared to the ones up ahead. 

The mines are still lit by the remains of kyr’tsad installations or the revived and assimilated remains of whatever operation had dug them, so many years ago. The cavern at the end is but a pit of darkness.

Kal clicks on his favorite set of scanners and the really underwhelming little glowrod attached to his audial for good measure, and then tries not to second-guess his terrible life choices. 

He hadn’t lied to Jaster, really. It hadn’t been in the plans when Kal brought his jetpack with him, but the unfinished elevator shaft at the end of the cavern would still provide a chance at escape, or at least a way to make it above the rockfall to then make his way out through the upper layers of the mines, the way that the strike team had gotten in before.

He focuses on that plan instead of anything else as he finally crosses the entrance and the image of the space unfolds in all of its glory. He skids to a stop on the threshold between two paths of action.

He could gawk in awe, feel a frisson of fear in the face of something impossible. As it is, he feels none of it, mind still forcibly compartmentalizing his existence into simple facts to make battle bearable.

Rocks, suspended, and a figure, about to collapse.

The jetii.

A lone flare of bright infrared in the deathtrap.

‘Good’ and ‘mandokar’ don’t always coexist, something that Kal had learned despite his buir’s insistence otherwise.

Much like what the jetii is doing right now, what he thinks of doing is an outright mandalorian stunt to pull, but it sure as hell isn’t a good idea.

Hells, it would be a Mereel sort of stunt to pull, if Jaster was just a little more selfish about his priorities and a little less accepting of something weighing down his conscience for the greater good. Kal has been spending way too much time around the mand’alor if he has started getting these sorts of ideas, that’s for sure.

Maybe he should go back to solo hunting for a while.

If he survives this, that is.

Because now that he has thought of this, he won’t be changing his mind, lest he brand himself a coward for the rest of his days. He can try, and so he must.

“Jetii!” He calls as loud as he can, letting the vocoder of his helmet do the rest, “When I give the signal, can you push the rocks up? Gain us a second or two?”

He doesn’t bother explaining the plan - waste of time, he’s not giving the jetii the option to refuse anyway.

You are being rescued - do not resist. Makes life easier.

For a few long seconds, he thinks he wasn’t heard. 

Then, in the uneven display of his night vision, movement. The jetii doesn’t answer, but his chin dips, just a little, a minuscule movement that is nonetheless deliberate, not just a give under the increasing strain.

One last chance to make his excuses. He doesn’t have the time for it, so he moves on.

Kal crouches into a ready position, breathes in, then out, judges the distance, weighs the situation, but also his training.

It’s a trick that’s all about the timing of it. Step one is not talking yourself out of it.

Kick forward, fall, and- “Now!”

It takes only a brief input to make his sen’tra roar to life on his back. He shoots forward, parallel to the ground, and if it wasn’t for all that core training that jetpacks required, just the slightest bit of slack would have the toes of his boots skidding along the uneven ground.

He can’t tell if the jetii actually does as he was told. He sees motion, maybe, just the smallest straightening of the spine that had begun to bow, the strain of arms reaching up - pushing up - and then-

The impact is jarring, despite Kal trying to get it right. Clotheslining someone at flying speeds would never be gentle, but his pauldron bites into muscle with enough strength that he is almost afraid it has dug through his armorweave kute, but instead of letting go from the pain he uses the jolt to lock his muscles, hold on in that one split second on which his foolish plan rests.

He just manages to dig his hand into the jetii’s ratty shirt even as the man almost slips from his grip from the impact as they skid, but then the man’s arms had been extended, and there is a horrid sound even as Kal’s pauldron now digs right under the jetii’s shoulder and then there is a hand gripping the arm that had slid to rest around the jetii’s chest now, he twists to try and put the beskar’gam between the two of them as the floor they’re about to hit-

Half a second to hold on, and then the first sheets of rock hit the ground somewhere in the distance.

Half a second of clearance is all they need to make it out.

Even as the sudden redistribution of weight has them skidding, dragging along the floor with enough force to have Kal’s armor send up sparks, the momentum is enough to carry them in the right direction.

The impact forces what was left of Kal’s breath out of him, the drag not enough to draw them to a stop by the time that the end of the line arrives, the back wall of the unfinished elevator shaft.

The impact of the collapse sealing the opening they had just gone flying through is strong enough to make it feel like it’s better that he had no air in his lungs anyway, because they may just be at risk of turning to jelly from the shockwave.

His ears ring.

There is blood in his mouth where he had accidentally bit into his cheek.

The air fills with dust and grit, but nothing besides stray shards ping off Kal’s beskar.

He had guessed right. At least the kyr’tsad huut’une knew to guarantee themselves a safe way out. The metal struts hold, or maybe the collapse had been aimed away from it, concentrated in the middle of the room over all the equipment.

It lasts forever and yet settles far too quickly. The indescribably mess of noise settles into a consistent sort of rock-on-rock crackle as tons of material find their new home and faultlines on the largest shards shatter under new weight or give out after the sudden release of pressure.

For a moment, Kal relaxes, lets himself just be, exists on automatic. He blinks the sequence to request a pick-up and takes in the fact that he survived.

They survived.

The jetii is sprawled on his side next to Kal, more dirt and scratches than man now. He curls in on himself weakly to cough, having had no helmet filters to guard him from the dust that now covers them both. Even then he looks only half-aware, eyes flitting erratically yet focused on nothing.

It's a habit to reach out the way he would for a vod, slap an uncoordinated hand onto a shoulder as gently as he can manage - which is not at all. Prove that this is real.

He can feel the jetii still, then Kal jolts as a vice grip locks around his wrist, as immovable as a ship’s docking clamp.

Instinct makes him try to yank the hand away and as he turns to the source of danger he sees the jetii looking at him with wide, terrified eyes, the glassiness in them fading right as they drop to stare at the dust and blood smeared ground-

When had that sound of rock settling grown louder once more?

The floor gives out before he can even start to figure out an answer.

*****     *****

Jedi find themselves falling an awful lot.

As younglings, cheering and demanding that their crèchemasters lift and gently send them tumbling into piles of pillows and blankets. Laughter is found in the thrill of simple games that secretly train their sense of balance both in their physical bodies and in that extra sense they're still too young to recognise as something most of the galaxy doesn't share. 

Then later in the training salles as initiates, once instinct gets usurped by logic and just catching themselves doesn't work anymore. They stumble into learning graceful landings or dynamic rolls, work it into muscle memory. 

Padawans, afterwards, regretting their life choices as a laughing master shoves them off a cliff - ‘Do or do not!’ - only to catch them at the bottom when they inevitably fail, again and again, up until they don't.

Then taller cliffs, caverns, even crashing ships mid-atmo. Catching themselves, catching others, falling, landing, laughing, cursing.

It's second nature for Feemor to pivot, to put himself between whatever waits below and the other body, then to gather his strength and reach out, shove down towards the approaching impact in an effort to slow it, up towards the screaming sense of danger in an effort not to get hit head-on by the rockfall.

It's second nature, but also a mistake.

That one second of respite before all this is his undoing. His focus flees from his grasp as in the blink of an eye it all hits at once - the hunger, the battle, the wounds, the exhaustion that hadn't been as much kept at bay as forcibly, desperately , ignored under the numbness of focus up until this moment.

There is nothing left now, not enough to grasp for reserves he doesn't have. He does it anyway, by instinct or ingrained habit, reaches for what abandons him, that last dreg of power.

It's raw and uncoordinated, not as much a push as just bodily throwing all that he is outward, and then nothing.

Like a loyal old hound that returns to its master's feet to breathe its last, so too does Feemor leave his fate to the Force. He closes his eyes.

He loses consciousness before they even hit the water.

Chapter Text

Feemor comes to coughing up water, already midway through rolling over to try and push himself up and gain that little bit of clearance from the ground while his body shakes with the effort of failing to breathe.

His existence is narrowed down to the base need for oxygen. Each breath in is met with protesting muscle as his chest seizes in an effort to clear his lungs, expelling water only for him to draw it back in as he gasps for air. The desperate attempts to cough up the liquid soon has him gagging from the effort, bringing up more water, the metal taste drowned out by acrid bile.

By the time that he can take a shaking breath without it being choked by it, his chest and core ache from the effort.

Not just his chest - everything aches as awareness reasserts itself onto his consciousness in fractions.

Any attempt to categorize and prioritize fails.

The world is screaming. It is a noise without sound, familiar and unbearable. Sensitivity trained over years now morphs every tiny input into an irritant since he has no mental reserves of energy to parse and ignore them. A dizzying, blinding mixture of synesthetic overload.

Trying to center on the physical is no better. He feels all his limbs, which is victory enough with too many problems vying for his attention, the misery topped off with a splitting headache.

Someone must be trying to carve his right eye out with a spoon, starburst of tension burrowing into the brain cavity or seeping along nerves down his cheeks where pain has made him grind his teeth so badly that even opening his mouth makes it feel like they're about rattle right out of his aching gums. 

There is a hand between his shoulder blades, a cold weight warmed by the concern beyond the fabric and skin.

Noise, true noise, not the echoes of the Living Force. 

His mind parses that it’s words, then somehow remembers that words must have meaning.

“I’m good,” he tries, but it comes out as an unintelligible croak.

An attempt to clear his throat nearly sets off another coughing fit.

There’s a brief pause in the noise - speech - before the voice comes again, along with a shift of that hand, a brief pat.

"Surprised you survived that, jetii."

Some skills taught to jedi could be applicable in a wild variety of situations.

For example, all those oratory lessons that guaranteed you would be understood whether you were speaking in a senate hall, across a crowd, over the worst mic imaginable, or while desperately pretending you knew the language and didn't just memorize the speech three seconds ago, they had other uses. 

One is easily avoiding a sobriety test while three sheets to the wind.

The other is somehow managing to speak clearly even when you're sure your body would rather be a corpse right now, evolutionary drive to survive be damned.

He channels that now.

"All hail the power of bacta," That at least comes out understandable, “And a stim overdose.”

The attempt at levity falls flat even to Feemor.

The hard and freezing rock digging into his forearms is becoming more and more noticeable along with the way that his shoulders protest the strain of holding up his upper body braced only on his elbows. In the end, he somehow convinces his limbs to shift.

It’s an odd sensation. On one side he is hyper aware of every ounce of effort needed to press down just so, to brace, push, every muscle that needs to engage so that he can draw himself up without tipping over. On the other, he feels disconnected, like his reasoning is just a series of inputs for the machine that is his body.

The dark world ahead of him swims.

It takes a moment to recognize it as light reflected off water and damp rock, the glimmer made unstable by the fact that the only source of dim light is whatever is affixed to his companion’s helmet and it shifts with his every move.

He can’t find the end of the space, not with how every dim reflection stabs into his head and worsens the ache behind his eyes as it pulses to the beat of his heart.

“Safe here?” Feemor asks.

Ignore the pain you can’t fix, assess what remains of the situation.

He is resistant to the more deadly effects of the cold that seeps through the waterlogged rags that now make up his clothes, but moving would be advised to just keep himself conscious.

He dreads warming up, because he’s sure the numbness caused by his brief stay in the freezing water is keeping the irritation of at least some scrapes and cuts away.

All of that is much less of an issue if a rescue party is likely to come jetpacking down through the hole they must have punched in the roof of this place.

In the periphery of his vision, movement. The vivid gold of painted beskar stands out against the grey-brown undersuit, making it a little easier to make out the shape of the mando where he is half-knelt at Feemor’s side.

Shadows shift around them as Gold looks up, though the light cast by the glowrod at his earpiece doesn’t reach the ceiling. He shrugs.

“Maybe, but I don't like the sound of-”

There is a somewhat distant crackle and then a much nearer splash.

“-that.” He concludes with a sigh.

Barely discernible metallic ripples burst over the surface in the darkness far ahead as rocks upset the surface to wake the microscopic bioluminescent organisms that must float there.

Huh, maybe that's why they call the lake under Sundari ‘living waters'. Algae or plankton feeding off of whatever chemical reactions are catalyzed with the help of metal run-off.

Feemor tears his eyes away from the momentary distraction.

“Okay,” he says.

There is an absence that claws at his mind despite the fact that the world rings in a riot of whispers. A familiar song of his heartbeat, too far. He reaches for it with a leaden hand.

Whoops, Feemor thinks, when everything burns.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to give adrenals to unconscious people.” He says, suddenly aware again.

Time has passed, he is sure, though he can’t tell how he knows it. 

There is a chemical taste at the back of his throat, a telltale explanation as to why he can feel his heart pounding like he had just been running, and why all the pain is happening to someone else two steps to the left. Despite it, the buzz in his ears is still deafening, muddling the noise of a loud galaxy and an almost equally loud mandalorian.

“Is that really the first thing you say?”

Feemor opens his eyes to a face he doesn’t recognize and a kit of armor that he does. The man’s features are cast in sharp relief by the light that comes from somewhere off to the side, making the frown look all the more severe.

Shit, he could give Mace a run for his money with that sort of disappointed judgment. They look about the same age too, maybe he should introduce them.

“I assume a ‘thank you’ would be more appropriate?” He says instead of voicing that nonsensical thought.

“Definitely a jetii,” Gold huffs. He gives Feemor a little shove to help him lean back, bringing to attention the fact that he had been keeping him from slumping forward.

With his silhouette now taking up less of his fuzzy sight, Feemor can make out a stone wall behind the mando, probably a match to the one pressed against his back. They’re not where they were before.

In the distance, splashing.

Something must show on his face, because Gold sighs. “Been getting worse for a while now.”

“No rescue from above, then,” Feemor voices the unsaid conclusion.

“No,” Gold shakes his head minutely, “And I wasn’t about to lug your unconscious corpse through that-”

Feemor follows his gesture to look down the end of the passage the noise hadn’t come from. It gets narrower as it goes. Not claustrophobically so, but enough that someone would need to put in some effort to navigate around the uneven water-carved surface of the walls.

“That the way out?” He asks, already dreading the trek.

“Kriff if I know,” The mando shrugs, “But I’m not getting any comm signal here and the path slopes up as it goes. Might get lucky.”

Feemor can read between the lines - however far the mando explored without catching a signal, it was far enough to cause him to turn back and try waking Feemor to continue.

Well, beats getting left behind.

“Good enough for me,” he says and the lack of enthusiasm must come through despite his attempts to muster some, because the mando snorts.

The mando also lifts a commanding finger to point at Feemor the moment that he shifts a limb. 

“No more Force osik,” he orders.

Oh, right, that.

“No more Force use,” Feemor agrees readily. Not that the drugs now in his system would allow him to go unconscious anytime soon unless he really put in some effort. Bless modern medicine. Then, the reason why he made the mistake in the first place- “My sabers?”

“I got your broken light sticks,” The mando replies, entirely unaware of the jolt of alarm that it brings to Feemor, though it doesn’t do much else thanks to the fact that his body is currently happily experiencing a synthetic panic attack already. “Can you move?”

“Sure,” Feemor replies, not feeling sure at all, “Just give me a minute.”

He isn't sure what he can do with a minute, except contemplate exactly how much he doesn't want to move right now.

But such is the jedi way - he must, so he will. Whether he wants to or if he can are not to be considered.

His moment of repose only spans as long as it takes for Gold to stand up and put his helmet back on. Soon there is a hand offered to help him up, even if Feemor rapidly regrets turning that way as glancing up towards the expectant visor - and the glowrod over the earpiece - nearly threatens to burn out his eyes and makes the migraine reassert itself with a vengeance.

No way out but through.

*****     *****

Kal is not one to talk too much.

However in the dark caves, there really isn’t much more to do that isn’t walking forward and contemplating the fact that they’re running out of time.

Eventually, the batteries in Kal’s buy’ce will run out and plunge them into darkness. No matter how good someone’s night vision is, it is pointless without a source of light.

So, he tries to distract himself with the jetii. It beats trying to once again check over his meager stock of supplies - one bacta patch that didn’t get slapped on the worst of the jetii’s injuries, two stims, one half-broken verpine and one that was entirely busted, since the shatterguns really didn’t bounce, his trusty three-sided kal and an extra vibroblade.

“You kick it back there?” He calls.

The passage they have been following has once again narrowed significantly, so much so that instead of helping the or’dinii limp along, Kal had been forced to go ahead. He had almost gotten stuck in places when his beskar’gam had caught against the rock while he tried to force himself sideways through the fissure.

Since the man can't quite stand without something to lean against and looks to barely manage lifting his arms above chest level, the jetii takes even longer to follow whoever they must split up.

A loud scuff of something against rock answers before the jetii does.

"Trust me, this situation is low on my list of places to die."

The statement delivered by the dark void in the wall is so incredibly deadpan that it startles a snort out of him. "What, you got a favourite?"

"Somewhere warm," the jetii says without hesitation and with the assuredness of a man who has given it much thought. "Somewhere close enough for the Order to recover my saber but far enough that my friends don't have to feel it when it happens. The usual."

Are the jetiise okay? Like, in general?

“Didn’t seem to have a problem back up there.” He points out because Kal, at the heart of him, is a bastard.

An echo of what might be a laugh or a sign. “It was for a good reason.”

“And getting yourself captured?”

“It worked, didn’t it? They got my bugged saber and you got a bead right on their hideout.”

Kal scoffs. “Uselessly risky.”

“The worst they could do was make me one with the Force,” the jetii replies as if that helps matters.

Kal paces ahead before he remembers that without him, the jetii will be entirely blind and doubles back to stare at the passage again, though it’s not like much of the light is making it past the bend of it. “So what, either it works or it’s not your problem anymore?”

“Pretty much,” the nonchalance makes the shrug nearly audible. “I believe it goes - nu kyr’adyc, shi taab’lo’kar’nau.”

Not gone, merely marching into starlight. The variation of the usual saying is said so smoothly it’s clear it wasn’t something made up on the spot, but learned and repeated.

“Your accent is odd,” Kal notes.

It’s weird in a familiar yet foreign way, nagging at something at the back of his mind.

“Tell that to Master Vizsla,” The jetti calls back.

The kriff? “Vizsla?”

“Tarre Vizsla,” The jetii clarifies, or maybe tries to clarify but only muddles matters further in Kal’s opinion. “They left a combat holocron. It’s chatty, for a limited recording.

No wonder the accent was a little familiar. It sounds like that semi-popular holodrama series half the sector is obsessed with, one set back far enough in history that the actors had the bright idea to try and learn a time-appropriate accent of mando’a that hadn’t shifted to mimic the way the more modern vocoders warped certain consonants, or however Jaster explained it. 

Honestly, Kal had zoned out three minutes into the spiel about linguistics and how the mando’a pronunciation always evolved with shifts in helmet design. He was practiced enough to just nod along at the right moments.

Jaster gave him the same treatment whenever Kal wanted to rant about his favorite meshgeroya team.

At least he retained enough to know that he should keep his buy’ce recording if he has a chance to see Jaster witness the jetii speak mando’a.

He takes a couple steps to the side when finally there is motion from the void he had been facing. Soon enough the jetii half steps, half falls out of the passage, then rights himself by holding onto the wall Kal had been leaning against.

“Everything alright?” the jetii asks, as if between the two of them he’s not the one looking like a pathetic wet tooka. From the way his gaze sometimes loses focus and others skitters all around the place, it’s clear it’s only a mix of adrenals and sheer force of will keeping him up.

Soon enough, either of those things will fail, and it won’t be the only one.

“We’ve got six more hours of battery life, maybe seven if I switch to a different light mode,” Kal points out.

The jetii frowns, glancing towards the light attached to Kal’s helmet. Luckily they already figured out jetii could see in a spectra some humanoids could not, if very poorly. Those LEDs ate less power than the previously activated visible spectrum and gained them an extra hour, even with Kal forced to use the HUD, now stripped to only that very specific input.

One busted battery and it will truly be the blind leading the blind.

Right, they should move. Every second counts more and more.

Kal turns away to take point. 

The sound of shuffling behind him tells him that the jetii follows.

“We could-” the jetti pauses, then when he continues distaste is clear in his voice, “We could strip the powerpack from my saber.”

Kal had in fact almost missed those sabers clattering onto the lakeshore back in the cave they’ve now long left behind, too busy trying to catch the already half-dead jetii that had suddenly slumped like a puppet with its strings cut.

The jetii had reclaimed them almost as soon as they’d started walking, actually rather insistent about it.

“You don’t sound that sure,” Kal points out.

One of the damn things - the longer model, not the one Jaster had so fretted over - was a wreck, half of its paneling cleaved off by some unfortunate collision with a rock and insides caked with lake-bottom sludge. If any electronics there hadn’t fried, Kal would be surprised.

It would make sense that the jetii didn’t want to leave himself entirely weaponless by dismantling the other.

But it’s not like they can just turn on the thing for light. Crawling through the narrow passes was already hard enough without worrying about molten rock.

He scans the road ahead. It splits into two channels, so he picks the wider one, which also heads just that slight bit upwards.

“Lightsabers are important.” says at last.

“You sent one off with a kyr’tsad turncoat.”

“I expected it to be returned to the Temple once the Order requested it.”

So the or’dinii either informed someone of his plans - unlikely - or had something in place to warn the other jetii if he failed, then. 

“And if not?” Kal frowns behind the safety of his visor. Had Jaster been in danger had the jetii’s stupid plan not come through. “They’d come take it back?”

"Oh, they’d consider it lost. Any jedi that came across haat’ade in the future would still follow their oaths to the letter," the jetii replies, "but not even a single step more."

Somehow, it sounds like a threat. The fact that Kal can’t quite figure out what it would entail doesn’t exactly help.

"All over keeping a laser sword?"

"Imagine if someone scalped your family member, wore their face on a belt, but you could sometimes still hear it weeping," the jetii says, so matter-of-fact it borders on dismissive, "Or, I suppose, if someone took your best friend's kar'ta beskar and fashioned it into a crude shiv, then tried to slit your throat with it."

In the monotonous dark of a cave that fails to distract the mind, the image is vivid.

“I guess we’ll consider taking apart the battery pack later.”

Maybe they could stop talking for a while.

*****     *****

Step by step, minute by minute, power runs out and hope grows scarce.

The monotony of it all is only interrupted breaks that become increasingly shorter, or moments when they need to force themselves through thin crevasses, though those too come further and further apart, the caverns growing wider. With enough space for the mando to help prop up the Feemor as they walk, their pace has increased.

He loses time in the repetitive motion, the meditative focus needed to consciously force himself to lift one leg, then the other, to ignore the way his arms burn or go numb depending on if he dares try to raise them. It threatens to carry his mind far away, if not for the mando’s random bursts of conversation.

They’ve laughed, they’ve argued. Gold seems keen on criticizing every statement Feemor makes, though maybe more out of an urge to gather information than any true dismissal. 

Feemor can’t quite tell - to his overworked senses, even with beskar the mando is nothing but a riotous headache. He is a wall of nervous noise that refuses to settle into background static even now, when they’ve grown silent.

The cold cave air is only filled by the sound of their dragging footsteps and the mist of the Feemor’s ragged exhales.

He won’t complain. His chest burns more and more as the chemicals clear from his bloodstream, one pain among many. The urge to just curl up and sleep calls like a siren, numbing his limbs and making each footfall heavier than the one before.

His feet urge him forward, habit and a desperate need to survive.

Then, the background cacophony that disturbs his senses is interrupted by one sharp single note.

“Stop,” Feemor says as soon as he thinks it and luckily the mando does.

“What is it?” Gold asks. The way he tilts his helmets makes odd shadows dance in the dark

“I just-,” the Feemor replies but doesn’t elaborate further. He isn’t sure what calls him. “Give me a moment.”

It’s not a gentle nudge like he is used to. Without the effort needed to dull the galaxy it is like a fishhook that has dug into the flesh of his hands and threatens to tear the skin as it pulls.

He sways for a moment as he steps away from the mando’s support, then catches himself against a wall. There, below. He only sees the barest outlines, it looks like a pebble but he knows it is not.

Feemor goes down to one knee, sure that trying to simply bend forward is liable to send him toppling over. Footsteps warn him that the mando has come to see what he’s doing, though Feemor pays him little mind.

His cold-numbed fingers refuse to listen to his commands, so it is with great care that he reaches for the not-pebble. He knows he has got it when he feels something soft and almost warm drowned out by a sharp acid burn of alarm.

When he straightens and lifts his hand higher to look at what now rests in his palm, he finds a small creature there.

It squirms in the way of young, underdeveloped things, wrinkly skin covered in patchy fuzz, bulging eyes dark through the thin membrane still shut tight over them. Overlarge ears are only outdone by its grasping forelimbs, spindly fingers spread into tender wings that might break at a hard gust of wind with how delicate the bones must be.

A tiny fangless mouth lined with scales opens to let out a soundless noise of complaint as it stumbles and wobbles, seeking out something without aim, then tries to burrow its snout into a gap between two fingers that entirely dwarf it.

It’s ugly and the disappointment that he feels from the mandalorian is uglier still.

Experience makes Feemor raise his eyes to look and there, the faintest shadow of motion, an increase of noise and sense-static.

He needs to lean against the cave wall to keep his balance and his arm shakes with the effort that it takes to keep it held aloft but eventually, the tiny winged reptile stumbles off his palm and into the nest it had fallen from.

"Really?" the mandalorian asks, not hiding his scorn quite as well as he could. “You wasted our time on that?”

Feemor lets his arm drop. The whole of him slumps with the motion and sends a fresh wave of pain over his shoulder and down his back.

"If I can't be kind when it costs me nothing, how will I have the strength to do it when times are hard?" He asks the mando. It is a question he had been asked, again and again as a teen whenever he had complained about Jinn wandering off to do something unrelated to the mission. He had meant it as a challenge, but it comes out as a defeated sigh.

“Ridiculous,” the mandalorian crosses his arm. "It will still die,"

He may not be wrong. The young creature had been small and weak, probably only worse off for having spent however long on the cavern floor. 

"It will die, but not today," Feemor snaps, "Just like all the soldiers who had been up in the mines with you."

A low blow, maybe, but Feemor is exhausted and he has been exhausted for decades now of every random civilian questioning jedi philosophy at every turn. Just let him help, damn it. The universe isn’t kind, sure, but he will be kind, if only out of sheer spite, if it's the last thing he does.

“I think we’re a bit more important than flying lizard bats,” the mandalorian scoffs.

“Every life is a universe to its own perception,” Feemor responds out of habit, when a thought strikes him, “And unlike us, it knows a way out.”

*****     *****

Me’ven? “What?”

“Flight is a very calorie-intense mode of transportation. Whatever it eats as an adult must be abundant and either close enough to fly to, or close enough to come flying here,” The jetii explains, “At that size it’s either plants or bugs, which must feed on plants. In the open air, plants don’t grow without sunlight and that means a way out.”

Hope, insidious like a poison, starts to stir despite Kal trying to squash it with realism. “A way out for a bat. We’re a tad bit bigger, if you haven’t noticed.”

“And a comm signal is smaller.” The jetii points out.

And, shit, he’s right, isn’t he? 

“So we’re almost out?

“Almost out,” the jetii nods, “Just keep an eye out for our guides.”

That Kal can certainly do.

True to the jetii’s prediction, the creatures progressively grow more numerous. 

First it’s just small bits of movement that Kal can barely spot in the dim display of his HUD, nests like the one the jetii had first found, just a flash of squirming shadows when the light disturbs them. 

Then, one by one, the adults. Not much bigger than the young, they could probably sprawl comfortably in Kal’s palm and have space to spare. Somehow they’re even uglier than their offspring.

Beady liquid eyes glint from above wide maws that open to shriek soundless complaints at the intruders. Spindly, spidery limbs connected by that parchment-thin membrane spreading wide as they leap away from the rocky walls and race off into the dark on erratic and unsteady flight paths.

They all head in the same direction, though, no matter how many crevasses and halls open in their path and that’s as good as any sign.

Not so good, when suddenly the flighty things come racing back where they came from then cling to the ceiling in a writing mass of disquiet, one or two swooping past Kal and the jetii though they don’t quite go as far as to return to their nests, probably unwilling to show them off to possible predators.

“Any chance whatever’s ahead is friendly?” Kal asks, quietly.

Sometime in the past minute, the jetii has slowly lifted his head to regard the disturbed creatures instead of just letting Kal drag him along. His expression is unreadable as he watches them silently for a moment.

“I don’t think we’re lucky enough for that.”

Of course not, but a fool could hope.

“Quiet and slow, then,” Kal decides. He doesn’t quite fancy leaving the jetii behind to scout ahead.

Much like the batteries in Kal’s buy’ce, what synthetic energy the adrenals had forced into the jetii is slowly running dry. It takes noticeable effort for him to nod.

They shamble forward together, now a little more careful. The jetii is forced to take point, supporting himself against the wall while behind him, Kal tries his best to avoid scuffing his beskar loudly against the uneven stone that presses ever closer.

More bats swoop away at their passing, but a portion returns all the same. Hopefully what awaits ahead hasn’t taken notice of their behavior.

A clank echoes, metal against rock.

It doesn’t come from Kal.

The jetii flattens himself against the wall while a cloud of startled creatures passes overhead, a susurrus of flapping wings and small bodies colliding.

Kal passes him by carefully, happy at the widening of the passage, but far less glad at the sight ahead.

Another wider room that maybe had once housed a small lake that had drained away to some deeper cavern. The hall they’ve been following would empty them on a small ledge that falls down and then slopes into the open water-smoothed space. There, in a bubble of actually visible light, three figures stand, one gesturing irritably at the other two.

Harsh shadows flatten the colors of their beskar, but the shriekhawk insignia is a bright flare of white on a shoulder bell.

A few tiny motes of motion streak through the air in and out of a passage right across the room, beyond the three kyr’tsade. They don’t pay the things any mind, distracted by whatever soundless argument is undoubtedly going on through their comms.

Metal on rock as one kicks away a stone then drops down to sit in a boulder, irritation in every line of their body as they cross their arms. The taller of the three throws his hands up and then follows it up with a rude motion in the direction of the first while the third takes off their buy’ce to press a hand to the bridge of their nose.

From the way that the first is stubbornly making a show of settling on his impromptu seats, they don’t look ready to move anytime soon. By the time they do, Kal and the jetii could be left entirely blind and unable to navigate anyway.

Well, shit.

Kal looks to his left, where the jetii has joined him. His eyes are too fixed on the passage ahead, the best lead they have out of here.

On any other day, Kal would consider him and a jetii absolutely overkill when it came to confronting three random grunts who clearly are lost and frustrated enough to not even pay attention to their surroundings.

Now, however, even if he somehow got the energy to hold his own in a saber fight, it’s not like the jetii can reach melee range before one of the kyr’tsade snipes him dead. 

Besides his knife and vibroblade, Kal has one single functional verpine to his name and while the shattergun can and will make easy work of the armor unless they somehow have mostly pure beskar, the chamber takes a second or so to cool, a delay which is usually covered by double-wielding the blasters but now gives the grunts enough time to react and shoot back.

“There,” The jetii whispers, gesturing towards the extension of the ledge they’re on. The rock there has formed a small hill, enough to give someone even more cover than the elevated position already offers. He then tilts his head to indicate the other side, a collection of stalagmites. “If I head behind those and cause a distraction, do you think you can take them?”

Kal considers the idea. If the jetii throws a rock or something from that side, he can probably cause the grunts to turn their backs entirely to Kal, or scatter them if they go investigate. If that one di’kut doesn’t put his buy’ce back on, that guarantees he’s down in one shot…

“I don’t have anything,” Kal admits with a sigh. “You better make good on that distraction.”

“Don’t worry,” the jetii replies. ”It will work just fine.”

They split off quickly.

Kal settles into position, crouching as best he can behind the meager cover. Put that foot there against that stone lip, turn the knee resting on the ground just so, ready to bolt if need be. Settle the shoulders, lead with the blaster and use it to cover the weak point that the visor forms. Look down the sight and aim at the bare head-

He glances away just once to find the jetii gone.

If he can’t see him, hopefully the kyr’tsad can’t find him either.

He waits for something to clatter at the other end of the cavern, to see something sail through the air more steadily than those bats that still mill in and out of the passage can manage…

A sharp shout cuts through the air and Kal nearly curses at the idiocy of the man.

Kriffing or’dinii!

All in the span of a second - aim, breathe out, hold, fire.

The muzzle flash is blinding.

The kyr’tsade that startled at the distinctly sentient-made sound now number one less but for hut’uune they are still mando’ad-trained, fast to draw arms and aim, one towards Kal and one in the direction of the jetii and the chamber is cycling just a slight bit too slow, probably damaged from the water and the fall in ways Kal hadn’t noticed-

The bats scatter from the dark passage, bursting out to join the wild riot of motion that the sound of gunfire had woken overhead.

A mass of fur and clawed limbs crashes into the back of one of the grunts, easily bringing him crashing to the ground.

Unprepared for a third assailant, the one that remains standing startles away.

The small glint of a charged chamber.

Fire.

The third body crumples.

The second has ceased trying to claw off the six limbs that so easily had found purchase in armorweave and the jagged edges of their beskar, the motion stopped by the teeth that too had found purchase, right around their throat.

The strill snarls as it shakes its prey. The thing is larger than any Kal has seen, clearly a wild counterpart of the kind that had grown smaller and more manageable through centuries of domestication and selective breeding.

Kal keeps it in his sights, because an animal is just that, wild and unpredictable, and this one is clearly smart enough to take down someone in full armor-

A sharp whistle.

The strill raises its head, teeth dripping with rubberized armorweave and blood, and lets out a shrill yip, a disturbing cut off scream of a sound. Its sharp tail wags so hard it moves the body with it. The beast leaps away from the body, brays again, then scurries straight for the source of the call.

Sharp claws meant to allow it to clamber up trees and boulders to gain the height needed to glide clear cavern stone just as easily.

Within seconds, it crashes into the jetii with enough force to topple him over.

Kal doesn’t fire.

The jetii isn’t screaming the kyr’tsad had, audible for a second as the seal of his helmet had broken. No, the man is laughing.

The strill has stopped trying to cover the jetii in slobber by the time that Kal makes it to the pair. It’s now sprawled over him, keeping him pinned by its bulk, still wagging its tail energetically and panting happily while it gets scratched behind the ears.

One good eye glares at Kal for a moment before it gets distracted by the attention again.

“Di’kut,” Kal says, keeping what he considers a healthy distance from the animal. “You could have gotten shot.”

“My distraction worked,” The jetii replies, entirely unapologetic. “Orar’s a good hunter. Aren’t you, you stinky murder machine, yes? Now get off, let me breathe.”

The strill growls in complaint when it gets shoved, though it does get up and shake itself off, then tries to lick the jetii’s face again as soon as he sits up.

Something glints at its neck, dangling from a loose cord. Kal reaches for it, but freezes as that bloodied maw turns in the direction of his hand. The strill sniffs at it attentively; it's like being investigated by a pair of curious bellows.

It doesn’t even budge while the jetii uses its bulk to support himself while he corrals his limbs into standing, only shifting forwards a couple seconds later to clearly demand attention from Kal.

At a loss of how to act around a strill that isn’t the annoying yappy pup that Vau had recently taken on, Kal complies, giving it a brief scratch behind the ears before he guides his hand to the cord.

The strill shakes its head as the makeshift collar easily slips off. When he lifts it up, the contraption attached proves itself to be a partly disassembled comm, wires leading to what looks like a cracked tracking chit remote.

The dim blinking light marks it as active.

The pieces slot together.

“You know, the slicers were stumped on how you programmed the first relay beacon of your set-up to appear like it’s moving.” He informs the jetii.

“You can’t shut down what you can’t catch,” The jetii shrugs. “As I said, Orar’s a very good hunter.”

Smug or’dinii.

Well, he would look smug, if he wasn’t still wheezing like he didn’t just stand up but run a whole race.

Right, Kal can call him out for being a lunatic another day.

“Stay put. I’ll see if these di’kute have anything of use.”

*****     *****

Jaster is trying to distract himself from his worry when it happens.

The fight is over and won by most metrics. 

What kyr’tsad had been captured alive have been given first aid and tossed into ship brigs to be dealt with later - the local governorship was braying for their blood even more than the haat’ade, and if any of them were from clans that didn’t wholesale swear to Vizsla, they will be lucky if their aliit’alore chose to see them imprisoned and executed instead of stripping them of their beskar before exhiling them from the sector with an order to kill on sight if spotted.

The injured are under the care of the medics, hopefully terrified enough of those same medics to actually stay there. Those who could escape from their clutches have already done so happily, though they’re all conscious enough that being fighting fit also means healing well, so they are lounging around or taking on only the easiest of tasks while everyone else prepares for the best part of a campaign - the party that inevitably follows to celebrate those surviving and those lost.

Mando’ade have always been migratory people, so a temporary camp has been thrown together within hours of the fighting being done, a couple ships shuffled over to the closest landing spot with a handful of supplies. No need to wander all the way back to town while there is still work to be done.

It also makes the younger verd’ike feel all proud that they’ve been entrusted to watch the larger ships back at the main camp, ignoring the fact that their few overseers are actually the ones who have enough experience and raw firepower to make any sneaky attacker regret it.

Jango, unfortunately, has grown too old for such cheap tricks for a while now. It had been a relief to see him unharmed once Jaster had reached the surface at last, the boy proud of his team despite the easier job they’ve been given of tagging and catching any stragglers that may have slipped through the main force.

Now they are the cause of most of the ruckus, assembling a bonfire and shoving one another ‘by accident’ as they carry ration crates.

Jaster too takes part in the preparations despite the fact that half his mind is still stuck on running numbers and drafting far too many messages he has to send, always checking whether there’s any news from the teams trying to crawl through the caverns, map out what remains unstable and what can be marked for search and recovery. 

The jetpack now attached to his back is a heavy warning that at any moment, he may still need to move, rejoin the effort. His eyes still stray to the mountain from time to time as new messages blip across his vision, always the same.

Nothing.

No sign of Skirata or the jetii, no sign of a path that could allow them to drop into the chamber where they must have gotten trapped, since the shafts to the unfinished elevator had collapsed. Few of them have the skill to assess which of the rocks can safely be moved without making the situation worse.

Sure, most of them are mercs by trade, so everyone knows someone who knows someone who can offer guidance, but such things take time, something which they may not have.

They’re all aware of it. It dampens the laughter that rings across the camp, sharpens the smiles, hurries the steps. It is not their way to leave a mission unfinished, but now all they can do is hurry and wait.

Jango wrestles with Myles after the older verd purposely drops a piece of firewood far too close to him, only for Silas to creep up to wallop both of the nuisances over their buckets with a leafy branch.

Watching them, Jaster absentmindedly accepts the call marked as coming from one of the team leaders. He expects it to be the same news - failure, returning for a break while the next group takes over.

“So are you sending anyone to get us ‘alor, or what?”

Jaster drops the ration crate he was about to lift right on his own foot.

That’s not the only reason why his voice cracks as he asks, disbelieving, “Kal?”

“No, Tor Vizsla,” Skirata deadpans. “Yeah, it's me. Think you can spare a medic? The jetii is about to keel over- you have no right to glare at me like that, di’kut, sit before you eat dirt-”

The mic picks up an echo of a second voice, though not the words.

Jaster stifles a relieved laugh that bubbles up in his chest, channels that energy into his hands as he flashes signals to the ramikade.

The motion in the camp picks up at double time for some while the rest drop whatever they were doing.

Jaster doesn’t need to wait for confirmation. He ignites his jetpack the moment that his HUD flashes a bead on the location of the comm signal. The sharp noise of others kicking off to follow is carried away by the wind.

“Shit, battery- wait, I think I actually hear sen’trase,” Kal points out. There is laughter in his voice. “Alor, remind me to never badmouth strille again, alright?”

Over the comms, the echo of a braying hound.

Jaster hears it echo on the wind, turns sharply in the direction and has to nearly cut the power to his ‘pack before he can overshoot the nearly invisible thinning between the trees, an almost overgrown clearing that reveals a crack in the ground and the three figures there.

He hits the ground in a way that he knows he will regret tomorrow with how the impact shakes up his legs and threatens to buckle his knees, but he turns that momentum into forward motion.

Kal all but collapses into him and Jaster takes the weight for the moment it takes the commando to regain his balance and step back, slapping Jaster hard on the shoulder as he goes. Skirata’s figure shakes in a way that means he’s either swearing or laughing or maybe both as he retreats and reaches up to scramble against the seals of his helmet, hurrying to take off the dead weight that must have suddenly rendered him blind and deaf. The dead comms silence means the batteries must have given up the ghost, their task complete.

The golden mando’ad nearly collides with the figure that had stood up and approached him, forcing the man to try and dodge, nearly step on the hound and overcompensate by lunging forward, which sends him stumbling forward towards Jaster.

Impulsively Jaster hugs the jetii too, relief ridding him of his better judgment for a second before he panics and steps back, if not far, due to the grip around his upper arms.

When he does he finds the jetii grinning at him, wild in the manner of survivors.

“Nice to see you too,” the jetii says cheerfully. The tension in his shoulders visibly uncoils and the man sways. Still smiling, he adds with a surprised laugh, “Oh, I think I will pass out now.”

Then amid Skirata’s now audible colorful swearing, he does exactly that.

*****     *****

“Skirata?”

“Yes?”

“You get the jetii’s name?”

“...haar’chak.”