Chapter Text
“Korkie, will you tell me a story?”
The man in question blinked and looked down at the sandy-haired kid laying on a bedroll by the fire. It was the first time Obi-Wan had ever left them, on some errand for Bail Organa, and Korkie was still trying to figure out how exactly he would fill the hole his father had left.
“I’ll tell you about Mandalore’s sky,” he said. “Have you heard of it?”
Luke scrunched his nose. “I don’t think so.”
“The sky is filled with stars which are the souls of our ancestors,” he began. “And the sun is named Mandalore, like our planet, and it is the general that marshalls them onward. Our ancestors train every night, the general keeps watch for them during the day. And when thunder comes, it is because they are marching.”
“But Duchess Satine! Where is she?” Luke asked. He had heard of the Duchess’s brave refusal to fight. She could not be one of the warriors made of starlight.
Korkie smiled, for he loved to speak of his mother, and he had fit her easily into his childhood cosmology. “She’s one of the dancing stars—a comet or meteor. She’ll never need to fight again, simply waltz her way across the sky. She watches over me, and she watches over you, and I bet she watches over Ben.”
“She must. He needs a lot of looking after.”
Korkie poked the boy’s stomach and he giggled, like the galaxy was full of things to smile over. “So when you look at the stars before falling asleep, remember there is an army there prepared to fight all evil till the end of time. And remember there is my mother, dancing and keeping an eye on us, protecting us from monsters.”
And for a moment, both boys looked at the endless expanse of the stars and felt as though there was some vast power in the universe that loved them. And then Luke said, “Too short. Tell me another one.”
The young man who materialized on the battlefield was weeping. His clothes were covered in blood while his chest and forearms were protected by blue beskar armor. He clutched a lightsaber to his chest, crying out in Mando’a for a brother and father who were nowhere in sight. Though the air was filled with blaster fire and smoke, he fell to his knees and bowed his head as sobs tore through him. It was raining on Vorpa’ya, and the thunder was relentless.
Someone lifted him into their arms. Someone carried him off of the battlefield, away from enemy lines, and back towards base. He cried and screamed the whole way. When he felt the lightsaber leave his hands, he snapped his teeth and kicked like a mule. All the while his screaming was in a language none of the Republic soldiers were particularly fluent in.
“What the hell?” Kix said when Rex deposited the boy onto a bunk in the medical center. “Who is that?”
Rex pulled off his helmet and placed it on the table. “I have no idea where he came from, but he was holding a lightsaber, so it’s probably Jedi bullshit. When we were ordered to retreat, he was just lying there.”
“Kid, are you hurt?” Kix asked with what was supposed to be a gentle tone. The boy simply cried and curled in on himself, shrinking away from both men.
“That’s beskar armor, and he was yelling in Mando’a. Should we get the General in on this?”
“Probably best. Maybe he doesn’t speak Basic.”
In a moment of divinely inspired profanity, the boy yelled, “I speak Basic perfectly well you fucking Imperial bastards!” through his tears.
Rex ignored that comment and pulled his helmet back on before stepping outside. The Republic forces had mostly gathered back at camp after their hasty retreat. Rex searched for yellow armor and the man who commanded such brightly decorated troops.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was speaking to Cody, gesturing out towards the front and then towards a datapad in his hands. Rex called out, “Sir!”
The General looked at him and inclined his head, wet hair sticking to his forehead as the rain continued. “Yes, Captain?”
“There’s a situation in the medical center. We need you specifically.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
The two men fell into step together as Cody departed to handle the rest of the post-battle headaches and paperwork. Rex began to explain the situation, voice low and measured. “There was a boy on the battlefield wearing beskar armor, holding a lightsaber, and speaking in Mando’a. He was injured and wasn’t moving even as we retreated. I brought him back to the medcenter. He’s hostile, for sure, but he also looks fourteen. No one here is fluent in the language but you.”
Obi-Wan let out a snort. “Fluent is certainly a word for it. But I can stumble my way through a conversation.”
“He speaks Basic, too. He just yells out insults but he does speak it. Still, I think it would be helpful if he talked to someone a little more connected with his people. He doesn’t seem to like us.”
They entered the medical center and were greeted with the sight of Boil holding down the boy's arms and Waxer holding down his legs while Kix applied antiseptic to a cut on his face. The young man thrashed back and forth, yelling insults in Basic and Mando’a alike. He was blonde, bloody, and loud. Despite all of his Mandalorian bluster, he shone in the force like a star. Obi-Wan had only felt that power once in his life.
“Ad’ika. Tion’olaror olar? Meg gar aliit?” Obi-Wan asked in accented but almost fluent Mando’a. His voice was sharp and commanding as a gunshot.
“I am not your ad’ika!” the boy shouted. “Vaii ner aliit?”
“Where did you find him?” Obi-Wan asked, blinking as though this were some hallucination.
“He was just kneeling on the battlefield, sir,” Rex said.
The boy thrashed in the grip of the soldiers and tried to bite Boil’s hands. “I have to go back, I have to go back! They’re going to die!”
“Kid, I need you to lie still. You’re hurt, you have to let us treat you,” Kix said in a hushed voice.
“But they’re going to die,” he shuddered. With that, he stopped struggling as the sobs overtook his body. He shook and trembled and let every cry wash over him.
The soldiers stepped back just as Obi-Wan stepped forward. “We will do all we can to help you,” he said in a softer voice. “We will save whoever we can. But you have to let Kix treat you.”
“It hurts, it hurts.”
Obi-Wan knew that it was not the injuries or the antiseptic the boy was referring to. He remembered holding Satine when she learned her father had died. He remembered Anakin’s nightmares about his mother. He remembered Qui-Gon’s body going cold in his arms. Without thinking, he grabbed the boy’s hand and squeezed it tightly, sending waves of comfort to him through the force. “I know it does. But you will be alright.”
The crease in the boy’s brow smoothed. “Ben,” he whispered reverently. And then he fell limp as whatever shock he was enduring finally dragged him into unconsciousness.
Kix went to the bedside and began to gently wipe away more of the blood with a wet cloth. Obi-Wan stepped back, brow furrowed. “You said he was holding a lightsaber. May I see it?” Rex retrieved it from the shelf they had stored it on. He handed it back to Kenobi, who inspected it carefully. His eyebrows raised. “This is Anakin’s.”
Rex startled. “It is?”
“Yes.” He looked around the medcenter and all those gathered. It had not been a graceful retreat. Dread filled his stomach as he thought back to the battle and those he had seen make it back to camp and those he hadn’t. “Where the hell is he?”
Anakin wanted to be home with his wife. He wanted to watch her brush her curls, and he wanted to sleep with her in his arms, and he wanted to live in the space between her neck and shoulder. Instead he was retreating in a goddamned jungle surrounded by blaster fire and millions of kilometers away from her. And his knee hurt like a bitch.
He had sustained a blaster shot that he was too distracted to dodge because he had felt, for a brief moment, a supernova exploding in his heart as the force trembled with something new. He had been careless and reckless and was now suffering the consequences as he limped back to their own encampment.
He stumbled his way into the medical center where Rex was pacing, Waxer and Boil were in some kind of hysterics, and Kix was shouting at all of them while tending to a complete stranger in the medical cot. Obi-Wan was on the verge of a breakdown, which is to say his posture was a little more slouched than normal.
“What the hell is this?” Anakin asked as he leaned his forearm heavily against the doorframe.
Rex looked up and then his shoulders let go of their tension. “Oh good, Padmé won’t kill us all.”
“They thought you were dead,” Kix supplied as he pulled off a bracer of the boy on the cot.
“I certainly did not,” Obi-Wan snapped as he drew a hand down his face. “We were worried. No one has seen you, and we have your lightsaber.”
Anakin narrowed his eyes. “No you don’t.” He pulled the lightsaber off of his belt. “Some of us can keep track of our equipment.”
Silence reigned throughout the medcenter. The men exchanged looks as Obi-Wan pulled a second lightsaber off of a shelf, a replica of the one Anakin held in his hands. Even very similar lightsabers have different crystals, and sing a particular melody, and are therefore distinct. These crystals were identical.
“Where did you get that?” Anakin asked.
He gestured to the boy on the bed. “He was holding it.”
They all looked a little closer at the young man Kix was tending to. Without the armor to hide him, his blonde hair and sunburned skin suddenly felt a little more familiar. There was no certainty at the moment, with the injuries and the strange circumstances of his appearance. Still, Kix pulled out a device used to collect a drop of blood with a fingerpick and quickly collected a sample from the stranger.
“Where did you find him?”
“He just appeared on the battlefield out of thin air. I had to carry him back to camp,” Rex said.
Anakin nodded, as if that fit his understanding. “I felt something in force that knocked me over. Did you feel that, Obi-Wan?”
“Yes. Do you think it’s like Mortis?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Obi-Wan ran a hand through his hair and let out a short breath. “He called me Ben. No one calls me Ben. I haven’t used that name since I was a Padawan.” He paused as he considered his words. “Although I suppose if anyone knew that name, it would be a Mandalorian.”
“Do you know him?”
“No. Do you?”
“No, how would I? He’s a kid and a Mando one at that.”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “He could be from anywhere in the galaxy. Their adoption policy is incredibly free. He could be recent.”
“Where’d he get the lightsaber then?” Anakin said, continuing to press as though every mystery should dissipate before him. “Why’s the force reacting to his presence?”
“All very good questions, but unfortunately I don’t have the answer to them.”
“Furthermore, I don’t think it really matters right now. He doesn’t need us all crowding him while he sleeps,” Kix said in a tone of voice he used when pulling rank.
“But he won’t trust you when he wakes up,” Rex said. “He doesn’t trust any of us not to murder him. The only one he’s reacted positively to is Obi-Wan, and he didn’t even properly recognize him.”
Kix nodded. “Then Kenobi stays, everyone else gets out.”
“He’s got my lightsaber,” Anakin said.
“The generals stay then! Everyone else, out. Someone let the commander know what the situation is.”
Rex, Waxer, and Boil dutifully left the medcenter to go hunt down Cody. Obi-Wan settled in a chair with a datapad while Anakin paced and went over what steps they would take next in the campaign. Kix continued to attend to the young man’s wounds, occasionally letting out a harsh breath when he came across another scar.
At one point, Obi-Wan looked up to watch Anakin pace. “You’re limping. Why?”
“A blaster bolt grazed my knee,” he responded. “It’s not serious.”
Kix looked up from the cot. “You’re next,” he threatened.