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The table at the galley is crowded.
It has always been crowded at mealtimes, admittedly, since I rescued Jango and got two children for the trouble. But this time it’s different.
This time, the other beings crowding the table with me are my children. Because Jango – the not-so-little brat – apparently coaxed Obi to request to become my child “the Mandalorian way” when I wasn’t there to give my own opinion. And Obi’s earnestly pleading, incongruously timid gaze is lethal to anyone’s decision-making capability. Also his well-crafted and equally earnest – if paradoxically unsure – reasoning. Also Jango’s terribly hopeful, terribly vulnerable look.
And the fact has just sunk in. properly. Horrifyingly.
Now, how am I to support and train two beings alone?
Yep, not just Obi. Because Jango is a capable fighter, even against Force-adepts, as probably more than six dead Jedi can attest – and I am yet to fully come to terms with the fact that the boy I am so fond of has killed so many of my brethren, too! But I was teaching him how to be more diplomatic and less hasty when our communication began to suffer under our different duties and the literal distance the said duties brought us. And how bitterly I rued that, when I heard about what had transpired on Galidraan! I refuse to let it happen again, if I can help it in any way.
No amount of determination can put supplies in the cubbies and fuel in the tank and act as replacement teachers, though. While we are already so close to Concord Dawn and a whole new set of problems that will no doubt come alongside Jango’s return and my adoption of him.
Worse, both overly watchful tagalongs have noticed my current… preoccupation. Because Obi is giving me concerned glances and slowing down from his meal, and Jango is staring at me pointedly, his own meal stopped entirely.
I let loose a soft but lengthy sigh, imagining my problems going out with it, and give his discarded meal my own pointed look.
“What’s in your mind, Fee’bu?” the brat needles, undaunted.
I wince inwardly. That address is yet another problem that I myself have to deal with. Because it sits so easily and so naturally on Jango’s tongue. As if he has been calling me that for years already. And, more troublingly, more heartbreakingly, more horrifyingly, maybe he has, if only in his own mind. While I left him. Twice.
But the fact remains that I am not ready.
Oh, how shameful it is to tell any of them that, let alone both at once. But Obi is all too skillful of hiding his hurts already and I don’t want to give him a bad example, while Jango will just keep needling me anyway.
So I tell them. Right away. Right here.
Specifically, I tell them that I would really love to be familiar with my new status first, before Jaster’s flock can heap on the problems. An uncharitable thought, maybe, as Jango’s stare clearly tells me, but true nonetheless. And I refuse to elaborate on the topic, however much Jango tries to coax, cajole, wheedle, bribe, or even threaten me with endless pranks.
Because Jango might know of this later, but I shall not be the one who lets him know that not a few of Jaster’s people disagree with his leadership and want me to lead instead, whatever the reason.
Fortunately, perhaps noticing something that has accidentally leaked through our nascent bond, Obi figuratively jumps in and asks what I would like to do, if Concord Dawn is currently not a viable destination.
Worryingly, Jango is so gleeful when I confess that I was tracking Tor Vizsla down when I heard that the former governor of Galidraan had sold him. And it’s not only because I came for him after all.
The perils of having a thoroughly Mandalorian child….
*
…And the perils of fighting a diehard but paradoxically cowardly terrorist, I cannot help but muse morbidly, as I behold the newly headless corpse of Tor Vizsla, sprawled on the soil of one of Corellia’s remaining forests.
Nearby, Jango is cheering.
Also nearby, a direcat is wwatching.
And, clipped to Tor’s belt, a strangely inert, strangely shaped lightsabre hilt hangs.
`He would’ve fled and ruined other families,` I keep reminding myself, even now. Being a slaver hunter, this is not my first kill, either. But a big part of me still feels reluctant, still feels that this is big – too big for me, perhaps even too big for anyone.
Still, the direcat is waiting, and the armour needs dealing with, and Jango probably needs lots of counselling – scrap it, the whole family need it – and I probably have to return that strange lightsabre to the temple. So, with Obi’s help though strangely not Jango’s, I push myself to divest Tor off his armour and weapons as quickly as possible.
I clip the strange lightsabre last to my own belt.
And only then I realise that Jango hasn’t been helping because he has been filming the whole thing.
*
…And the resulting vid goes everywhere as soon as the filming has stopped, apparently. Because, not ten minutes after I’ve managed to literally and figuratively wrestle the raw file out of Jango’s grasp, calls and texts flood in via my “official” commcode as Mor the bounty hunter, which is also the code I’ve given Jaster’s folks.
Various ships belonging to Tor’s people are circling overhead, too, which is much more worrisome, because we are yet to reach our own ship.
We are still so near the site of the fight, in fact.
I growl and curse grumblingly at Jango, even as I lead the way with Obi right behind me, running full-tilt through the jungle towards the clearing where our ship is parked.
And the brat still has the breath to laugh.
*
Nobody laughs, though, after the chase in atmo and in system and far beyond, after the various dogfights that have ruined half of the enemy ships, after the declaration of the remaining Death Watch combatants that I am mand’alor.
And partly, it’s because Jango is not here.
We’d been chased out of Corellian Space, we’d been playing a lethal form of tag through various hyperlanes, we’d been grounded on an uninhabited, barely livable single moon – or is it planetoid?? – orbiting a dying – or probably just weak – star within Mandalore Space, and I’d convinced Jango and Obi to get our ship back up again and patrol the airspace while I talked it out with the remaining Death Watch…ers? And it’d all gone smoothly. However, the moment the crazy Mando cultists saluted me heartily as their ruler after such a vicious fight to kill me and my children, Obi told me he’s distracting Jango and following a vital lead, then they jumped into hyperspace immediately. Without even waiting for my acknowledgement.
It doesn’t help that now the Death Watchers are fawning on me. Bitter of me, I know, and most likely un-Jedi-like by the standards of the modern order, but I’ve never claimed to even myself that I am an acceptable portrayal of a Jedi, anyway. I got my mastery by successfully winning a three-year shadow war – in more ways than one – against Zigerria, for Force’s sake, with liberal help from the books regarding warfare strategies and philosophies of previous Mandalorian rulers and heroes that Jaster let me read. Three of my fellow Shadows got their mastery the same way in the same event, while one Fell, bringing down those who’d killed their padawan while they were at it, before dying in a suicide bombing that proved to be the end of that particular war.
It also doesn’t help that, sometimes, I hear snippets of casual guesses among the verd’e about my future plans, among which is to ruin the Republic and the Jedi Order.
Damn, it’s only been an hour after my traitorous, troublemaking tagalongs stranded me here and I’m already so fed up with this. If someone asks me if I’d like to eat or sit or rest or hunt or be armoured “properly” one more time….
*
Fortunately, nobody asks, perhaps at last daunted by my glare, perhaps distracted among themselves, perhaps both.
Perhaps, also, distracted by the streak of light along the thin atmosphere that resolves into my ship, going larger and larger faster than if the atmosphere were more robust.
… But it is not alone.
And the Force swells correspondingly, like a tidal wave about to crash atop my head and sweep me away into depths unknown.
Fierfek.
“Kids, who are in those ships?” I demand into the mic built into my helmet – the helmet that I never remove since my fatal duel with Tor – the moment I’ve managed to establish a line to the lead ship and muted the external output, even as I move away from the circular gathering of the Death Watch ships and the Death Watchers themselves.
“Lots, Bu,” is Jango’s blithe answer, which only heightens my tension and irritation and worry.
“Those who wanted to meet you in person, Master?” Obi offers uncertainly, placatingly, tripping in hastily right after his… elder sibling. “Uh. They’ve sworn to behave if the other party also behave. And we did tell them about the Death Watch. And… uh, your… new status.”
Mandalorians? Behaving? Ha! What a joke. I know Mandalorians rarely “behave” according to galactic standard as set up by cultures in the Core and Mid Rim worlds, or even the Outer Rim.
In fact, right now, the Death Watchers here on the surface are preparing and stealing glances at me and the new ships every so often.
Fierfek.
“Get to the point, kids. I don’t want another bloodbath,” I press them, deliberately projecting my displeasure at the situation both in my voice and the Force.
“Technically, it wasn’t a bloodbath. There’s no blood spilt in an explosion out in space,” Jango parries. But the insolence is toned down, now, wavering.
Not enough, though. I can acutely feel a growl building up in my throat, just like the tension emanating from the ships above and below. My end of the bond with Obi is no doubt leaky, too, with how endlessly stressful everything has been since Jango leaked the footage I hadn’t known he’d taken.
Damn. What a “good” time for Jango to try to reclaim his lost teenage years, and Obi to test boundaries….
Fierfek.
Breathe, Fee, breathe.
Easier said than done, but – breathe, breathe, breathe, calm down, come on….
It’s so ironic that I often said that to Jaster, whenever he was about to rush into things, fuelled by excitement or anger. But maybe it’s still related, if… “You brought Jaster’s folks here, kids?”
The dense silence that answers it is telling, oh so telling. But I can’t just leave it at that. Especially when guilt is pouring into my leaky connection with Obi now, accompanied with determination and a sense that there’s something more I’ve yet to find out.
I pounce at that last point with gusto.
“Who else are with you, kids?”
It really doesn’t help that a brief but intense scuffle is their only response, followed with the piping voice of a child younger than Obi that greets me as Mand’alor, introduces themself as Pre Vizsla, and professes their readiness to serve.
Because what Mace might describe as a shatterpoint looms large and menacing in front of my mind’s eye, just so.
Force, those boys will regret these… shenanigans. Involving a younger child belonging to Tor’s clan, at that! I just have to find the right thing that will not be… too traumatic. But a good deterrent. Definitely a good deterrent.
Also, I have to focus on heading off the conflogration that’s about to explode, first. And it could even be literal, since I’m spying primed cannons being aimed by the Death Watchers at the descending ships, which is being responded likewise by the said ships.
It’s the last strike against my crumbling self-containment walls, in fact.
“GEV!!!” I roar in the Force and through the voice amplification in my vocoder and across the short-distance channels, and direct the frustrated energy that has been building up in me into speeding up the landing of the intruding ships – well, and cushioning them, too, as I am not that far gone, though barely.
Silence ensues. Blessed silence, if tense and fragile and still heavily soaked in anticipation.
And then the ramp to my ship lowers, and Jango in full armour stands on top of it, bravado as well as defiance written clearly on every centimetre of his figure, with Obi and an even-smaller figure cowering behind him in a file.
The bubble is punctured, just so, and cold slime oozes from it, travelling down the edges of my soul, threatening to seep in.
Kriff. Kark. Fierfek. Dang farik. Karabast. Haar’chaak. – What have I done?
*
What have they done, too, because Pre is apparently Tor’s child, and Jaster’s folks also claim me as their mand’alor, and there are folks who’ve just come back into the fold just for me.
I do not appreciate those. Not really. Because Jango deserves not to be so blatantly distrusted as wholly incompetent like that. He’s just young, and reckless because he is young, but not stupid regarding how to keep a people running. He’s led the True Mandalorians for six years with very minimal input from me and lots of advice from those who are with him!
But, at the same time, though I do appreciate Jango trying to rescue me, however questionable his method is to my taste, and I do appreciate him bringing a child – a nine-year-old – with him who would otherwise most likely have been either indoctrinated into becoming a second Tor or disappeared, I would rather not be gaslit as the Mand’alor for his faction, too, nor do I appreciate all the weighty revelations being sprung on me like this.
And that’s not saying what sort of thing Obi apparently deemed worthy to “distract” Jango.
To think that I have so foolishly claimed both as my children….