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Skywalker stares.
A lot.
Jango’s… not really comfortable with it, actually, but everyone knows Skywalker’s a bit off, so he leaves it well enough alone. There are rumors the man used to be a Jedi, or even still was, but Jango’s pretty sure most Jedi aren’t like Skywalker.
Jaster would tell him that he can’t talk, because he’s never met a Jedi outside a courtroom, but Jaster isn’t here. He’s off doing boring bureaucratic negotiations with Duke Kryze. He can be disappointed with Jango’s immaturity when he gets back.
--
“Saw him looking at some holopics yesterday,” Myles tells him, apropos of nothing. “Casual stuff with friends, that sort of thing.”
Jango waits for elaboration. None is given. “Alright, and?”
“Well, there was some stuff I didn’t know, like apparently he had a sister? Also, a wife? But everyone in there he used the past tense for, so…” Myles shrugs. It’s nothing that hasn’t been theorized about already, though they didn’t know the specifics. “Anyway, there was a guy, a friend, and he skipped past that photo real quick, but uh, you could’ve been twins. I mean, the guy was blonde and kept his hair buzzed, and there was a scar or two different, but otherwise, identical.”
Jango blinks at him. “What?”
“Pretty sure that’s why he stares at you all the time,” Myles says. “You look like…I didn’t get a name, he was being weird about it, but I think they were close. Real close.”
Like the wife? Jango almost asks. He doesn’t, because Myles clearly did not get all the facts. He knows enough, though.
It makes the staring a little less weird, but it’s still a lot.
--
Months pass. Skywalker relaxes a bit, at least partly because Jaster likes to argue with him about philosophy. Skywalker keeps getting this look on his face that Jango can only read as ‘how am I the sane one here?’ He keeps going off to research or think, saying that politics was never his strong point, or ethical frameworks or moral structure or any of that, but Jaster was wrong and he’d prove it. Somehow.
It generally results in Skywalker storming up with and another thing! that the other Mandos in the room are more than ready to watch. Not all of them, of course, but Jango can usually count on a few other people wanting to see Jaster get into an argument with a maybe-Jedi.
The maybe-Jedi is not equipped for these arguments, hence the research, but he seems to care a lot. He even brings up Naboo, frequently, which is confusing as all get-out because Skywalker’s definitely from Tatooine by way of Coruscant. And yet, there is Naboo, in half his examples, because… reasons?
Myles claims that this is where the alleged wife was from.
Nobody really has a better theory.
It’s a welcome respite from rulership and actual politics, to Jaster, but he still has work to do. So when Jango sees Skywalker marching up with the fire of dying on a molehill in his eyes, and knows his father is in the middle of a call with several agricultural unions to plan out exports to Manda’yaim, he steps in the way.
“He’s busy.”
Skywalker comes up short. “What?”
“Jaster’s busy. It’s important. You can debate him later.”
Skywalker actually looks a little lost at that. Jango savors it. Granted, the expression is tinged with a mix of relief and irritation, he thinks, but the general air is one of having had all the wind knocked out of his sails.
“You can argue with me, if you want,” Jango offers.
The offer is accepted.
They talk. Jango learns about the format of influential democracies of the galaxy, and the specifics of how the Jedi and the Senate are connected. He thinks it’s stupid, and says as much, and is refuted with, “that’s what I thought, but Padmé said—”
And then Skywalker cuts himself off, and goes pink, and looks like he’s about to cry.
Jango does not ask who Padmé is. He can guess it’s either the wife or the sister, probably the former, and he… does not want to get in the middle of that.
“What, do they control too much of your funding to change tacks?” Jango asks.
He’s… pretty sure Skywalker still hasn’t copped to being a Jedi at all, actually, but it’s not like it’s a secret.
“Something like that,” Skywalker mutters.
Right. So that whole discussion isn’t going to go anywhere anymore.
“You want to spar?” Jango offers.
--
It is a similar conversation, weeks later, where Skywalker mentions the name Rex.
The man pales and stutters and turns and leaves, and Jango cannot get to him fast enough to stop him, not without turning on his jetpack or otherwise kicking things up to a notch that isn’t really appropriate unless he wants to turn this into a spar.
“Well,” Myles says, “at least now you know the name of the friend you look like?”
Jango jabs him between the armor plates, and ignores the cussing that follows; he’d much rather try to see if he can follow Skywalker to wherever he’s off to now.
--
It takes. An entire. Fucking. Year.
For Skywalker to admit that he’s from the future and that Jango looks like a guy who was cloned from Jango.
Skywalker does not have an explanation for why Jango did the whole cloning thing, because Skywalker met him all of once, at Skywalker’s own failed execution, for a few seconds, at a distance.
It takes another three months after that for Jango to get over himself, and for Skywalker—for Anakin to stop dithering over whether he’s betraying his clone friends long enough to let Jango into his bed.
(Jango has some sympathy for the betrayal question, but he’s pretty sure that this isn’t that different from befriending a second clone after befriending one, and Anakin was friends with dozens.)
(Jango hasn’t even done any of that stuff yet!)