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“That blade,” a voice says, cool even in the swampy heat beside the river. “It isn't meant for you.”
Arla tightens her grip on the black hilt, closes her eyes as something like a fractured laugh shakes through her. It’s true enough, but—
Arla has spent her entire life taking what isn't meant for her, and she’s not about to stop now, right on the cusp of finally having everything.
“Come and take it from me, then,” she says, though she still can't summon the will to lift her head from the bark of the tree she’s leaning against. Tor didn’t hurt her. Not as much as he used to. But there's an ache like exhaustion rooted so deep in her bones that she doesn’t know she’d be able to escape it if she slept for a thousand years.
There's a pause, then the faintest brush of cloth over the long grass, bent and twisted from all the struggles. Against the metallic reek of mud and blood and viscera, cooler air curls, soft with the smell of flowers and clean cloth, and Arla opens her eyes as the Jedi sinks to her knees before her, head cocked, long sandy-brown hair falling around her like a veil. She’s in white robes, and Arla has to swallow at the sight.
The color of a new start, a new beginning, a clean slate. Arla is bruised and bloody and aching all the way through, clutching the blade Tor used to kill her family, and the white almost burns her eyes.
Something makes the Jedi's expression thaw, just a little. Her gaze flickers down over Arla's battered armor, all but useless from all of the Darksaber's cuts, then slides up to settle on Arla's face, and she reaches out. Arla's breath catches at the press of fingertips against her bruise-hot skin, and she closes her eyes, has to swallow hard to keep any reaction in.
It doesn’t matter. The Jedi breathes out, too soft to be a sigh, and leans in. Her fingertips trail down Arla's cheek, shimmering with a soft light, and the pain eases, slips away as if it’s water in sandy soil.
“You look like the harvest goddess we had on Concord Dawn,” Arla says, the words catching rough in her throat, and—she hasn’t thought of it in years, but her mother used to keep a small shrine out in the fields, used to carry bundles of herbs and bowls of fruit out to it at the start of every month. Old superstition, her father had called it, but he’d never stopped her, and Arla remembers the statue that looked over the offerings, bare of clothes and armor, her long hair her only covering as she spread her hands as if to bless the fields.
The Jedi's brows rise, her mouth curves just slightly, and like a spring thaw all the lingering coldness melts from her features. “Do I?” she asks, amused. “Are you a farmer, then, Mandalorian?”
“My parents were,” Arla says, like it’s a confession, and curls her fingers tighter around the Darksaber's hilt. Tor hadn’t entered the house until her father was dying on the ground, until her mother was pinned between three armored men and entirely disarmed. He always was a rancid coward before everything else. “I haven't—I haven't gone back.”
It feels like a failing, in that moment. The farm is doubtless still there, all the fields and gardens run wild, the river they kept clear choked with debris. Arla hasn’t even tried to go back, but—she realizes now, like a tremor along a fault line, that she could. It would take work, so much backbreaking work, but she could go home, fix up the house, tame the fields. Salvage something of her clan’s legacy, even if she wasn’t able to save them.
Her eyes burn. She could go home.
“Duchess Kryze reigns on Mandalore,” the Jedi says, and she presses a hand to Arla's chest through a great rent in her armor. The wash of that healing warmth drags a gasp from Arla's throat, and she catches the Jedi's delicate wrist, then pauses.
There's a hum to her skin, a vast and overwhelming sense, like standing too close to the hyperdive of some great star destroyer. This woman burns with power, so great that even someone with no sense of the force, like Arla, can feel the very edges of it.
“I don’t have anything to do with those bastards,” Arla says after a second. “They rounded us up and exiled us. They left us to starve and die out on that damned moon. I’ll rot before I so much as spit on them.”
The Jedi flicks a glance at her, thoughtful. “Mandalore isn't the only Mandalorian world,” she says after a moment. “If a Mand'alor rose on Concord Dawn, I'm sure people would follow her there.”
Mand'alor. Arla clutches the hilt of the Darksaber, and it feels like that final blow, her blade through Tor's heart when he had nowhere left to run. And—revenge isn't supposed to feel good. It’s supposed to take a toll. But—
Right now, all Arla feels is relief, vicious joy. Tor is never going to hurt her again. He won't hurt Jango. He’s never going to orphan any more children. She won.
It took so long, and it took playing loyal even when it made her skin crawl, and it took planning and careful maneuvering and risks, but the revenge is worth it.
“I didn’t do it to become Mand'alor,” she says, and the Jedi smiles, small and crooked.
“No,” she allows, and her hand falls, curls over Arla's on the hilt of the Darksaber. “That’s why I haven't taken that blade back. For so long, it’s been a prize. But you just wanted it to save someone.” She tips her head, and her eyes are as grey as a thunderhead, as grey as unpolished beskar. “A little girl, alone in the dark.”
“Myself,” Arla whispers, and she turns the Darksaber's hilt over in her fingers, watching the sunlight play over the black metal. It hums, the same way the Jedi's power does, right beneath her skin. “And—now he can't kidnap any more little girls.”
“Little girls like that need someone to keep them safe from the next Tor,” the Jedi says, soft. “Tarre became Mand'alor to guard his people from the threats to them, not for the sake of power. I think you could be the same.”
Tarre, Arla thinks, startled, and looks up. “Tarre Vizsla?” she asks, and—Sephi are long-lived, but not to that degree. She pauses, taking in the woman’s unlined face, those sharp eyes, and swallows around a lump in her throat. Tries for humor, even though her voice cracks when she says, “So you really are the harvest goddess.”
The Jedi snorts, but leans in, pressing a soft kiss to Arla's brow. “I can be, if you’d like,” she says, amused. “Though I'm rather out of practice at growing anything.”
It’s an offer. Arla can read it between the words, can see it in those beskar eyes, and she turns her hand, lets the Darksaber drop into her lap as she threads her fingers through the Jedi's. “I can teach you,” she offers, raw, and tries for a smile. “I'm Arla.”
“Well met, Mand'alor the Restorer. My name is Fay,” the Jedi says, and she squeezes Arla's fingers, doesn’t resist when Arla wraps an arm around her, pulls her in. The press of another body shakes Arla to the bone, and she hides her face in Fay's shoulder, can't swallow down the sound of grief and loss that rocks her. Cries, desperate, for the little girl in the darkness, for a warm embrace after so long keeping herself cold, and Fay wraps Arla up in her arms and holds her until the tears finally run themselves dry.