Chapter Text
The Worst and Best Week of Jango Fett's life went like this:
Day 1
If there were a place in the afterlife for the dar’manda, and Jango Fett knew he had thoroughly earned that place, then this was it: the Jetiise Temple.
It was barely dawn. He had awoken half an hour ago, disorientated. At first his beheading had felt like a terrifying nightmare. After all, he was alive now. But, a brief examination of the bunk room he found himself in, revealed none of the other children were Boba. A glance in the mirror near the door had him tripping over his own feet. A skinny child with a shock of red hair stared back at him, skin and eyes far too pale for his liking. The force of his shock had shattered the mirror, literally.
Disorientated, terrified, and reeling, he had run. The more he ran, the worse it got. He didn’t recognise the architecture. The air didn’t smell right. Where was his armour? He didn’t recognise the writing on the walls, and he knew how to read Basic. It was only as he burst out of the doors and nearly launched himself down the stairs that it hit him where he was. Coruscanta. A guard snatched him out of the air and lugged him along under one arm and dumped him back at the door.
The Senate dome, he knew that from the news. He tried walking down the stairs, because Mandalore kept a small embassy nearby. The guard strode over and held out a short staff and gestured for him to head right back up. No amount of ducking, dodging or running got around them. For all their actions were precise and exact in their corralling of him, he knew the guard was laughing at him. It fizzed in the very air about him, and tickled at his mind. A very odd sensation, but he understood it as laughter.
He searched his person but came up empty handed. No weapons, who didn’t sleep with at least one knife? What laandur place was this? He looked around, trying to figure out where he was in relation to the Senate dome. What other rich palace was there to rival the Senate? There was the 500Republica, but that was right there, he could see it. In fact, he remembered visiting once for a mark, and from that angle, he could see the Jetii Temple— Kriffing Haran, Arasuum take his soul.
The world was swaying around him as panic crowded in. He stiffly turned around and peered up at the towering edifice, then inspected the guard. He didn’t know Jedi wore armour. That gold thing on their tabards sort of looked like their horrible circle symbol. One way to make certain. He dove at the guard, and tried to grab their weapon, but they moved too swiftly. He managed to snatch a vibroknife from their boot, but didn’t land a hit. A searingly hot blade of yellow plasma blocked the blow, sending the knife skittering away.
Jango froze. He had expected it. Yet hadn’t. This had been a dream. Nightmare. Now it was worse. Reality. His breath came sharp. Harsh. He had faced blades like that thrice, the first damned his people, the second sent him running, the third killed him. Dooku, Obi-Wan, Mace. Those names had kept him marching even as far from the Manda as he had landed.
The guard didn’t do anything, merely lowered the weapon and extinguished it. It hadn’t been a light sword; it had been a whole light staff! He didn’t know they had light staffs as well! Who needed all that plasma? One lethal length of the stuff was overkill, two was typical Republic boorishness.
The guard, without touching him, herded him back towards the temple entrance, and went back to his post as soon as Jango crossed the Temple threshold.
It was all he could do to stand there, trying to find breath. This was real. That was a Jetii guard. And his stunt with the knife had irritated him. The fizzing laughter had turned to spiky annoyance.
Jango clutched at his head. He had heard of that sort of thing. Myles had it, a bit, the sense of if a mission was going to go wrong or not. Never anything accurate enough to be useful, but taking double the ammo on the bad ones always helped. But that was the Ka’ra. He couldn’t feel the Manda, so this fizzing must be the Force. Oh, kark. He was a Jetii adiik.
He sat down as his legs no longer held him.
Had the Manda deemed this his fitting punishment? To live the life of the very being he loathed?
He rested his hands on his lap, too small, too pale.
“Obi-Wan!”
That shabuir? Where? Jango leaped to his feet, searching for the man. He’d steal the guard’s over-compensating light staff to fight him.
“What are you doing out here?”
He smacked at the hand that grasped his shoulder and twisted away to look at a flustered woman in Jetii robes.
“Obi-Wan!” she scolded.
Him.
“Initiate Kenobi,” she put her hands on her hips.
By Arasuum’s shebs, this could not be.
He touched his chest, where his kar’ta would be on his armour.
“Yes, you, Initiate Kenobi. You are in a great deal of trouble. Attacking a guard! What were you thinking?”
Jango had no words.
The woman marched him back to his bedroom. Docent Vant was a supervisor for the Initiates around his age, he discovered this when she made him sweep up the broken mirror, then write a written apology to the guard. He did it in Mando’a, and put in every insult he could just to spite her.
He was just finished by the time the others in the dorm woke up.
“Oi, Oafy-One,” a boy with white hair crowed, “it’s not yet first meal, and you’ve already got punishment?”
Which was his introduction to Bruck, and his sidekick Aalto.
By mid-meal, he had earned ten laps around the training hall, extra homework for not knowing what the osik was going on in the classes a rather flustered Mon Calamari girl dragged him to. She was the nicest one there. She didn’t take his silence as a slight and made sure he kept up with their group.
By late-meal he had earned every punishment detail he was sure an Initiate could earn. Extra kata in the salle with the same guard he had attacked earlier. Couldn’t they let up on that? Then he was stuck in the archives with extra homework. Bant, the Mon Calamari, worriedly hovered and half fussed, half bullied him into finding the datapads needed. He couldn’t read them, so what was the point?
What was that weird language? Then this tiny wizened old Jetii, hobbled up to him, and Jango gawked at him. This was Yoda. The Jetii’alor himself. Coming to see him, an Initiate. He hadn’t even passed his Jetii verd’goten, he didn’t have one of those stupid braids yet. Why the kriff would the alor come to find him?
“Wanting swamp stew, you are, yes? With me, walk, you will.”
Swamp stew could do with some spices, but would be best kept as the base to the traditional stone soup. The sort of thing everyone chucked something in to make the murkiest most flavoursome gumbo. Yoda used seeds as a base instead of the flour-based roux more common on Concord Dawn.
They had a very good conversation over this topic, and Yoda actually invited him to prepare the dish the next time. Which meant Jango had to swipe someone’s comm to place an order to get actual ingredients as he doubted the Jetii had good spices. But if he had a comm, the only place he was calling was the Haat’ade line for an extraction.
“This morning, upset you were,” Yoda began and Jango slithered out of answering anything. He knew Jetiise had weird powers and he had no desire to see them used on him.
“It was like a dream,” he admitted grudgingly as Yoda verbally cornered him. He would have loved to see the fuzzy green guy fence with the Evaar’ade. Those pacifistic types in Sundari needed someone who both got to the heart of things, and then aggravatingly spoke like an enlightened master.
Jango checked the stew, no, Yoda hadn’t added any medicinal spice.
“Dream, had you, when you attacked the Temple guard?”
Jango gave him a look as if he were daft, recalled too late that Jetii could read minds, and that this little quirky being was the Jetii’alor and hastily tried to think of something to say.
“A dream, but I wasn’t asleep, I just saw—” himself die…
Something must have transferred to Yoda, as everything fuzzy and fractious around him soothed as if someone had rubbed an aching area with lotion. Jango twitched so hard he almost fell off the pillow he sat on. Was that the Force? Could it do that? Soothe the soul like one stroked at tooka?
“A vision, saw you. Of the future, it is. Worry, do not. Always in motion, the future is. What is around you, you should see. Tomorrow, it changes.”
Of course it was going to change. He wasn’t going to let it happen.
Mando’a
mando’a – Mandalorian language
dar’manda – one excommunicated from Mandalorian society / excluded from the Mandalorian afterlife for deeds contrary to the Mandalorian creed
laandur – delicate
haran – hell (lit. cosmic annihilation)
Arasuum – Mandalorian God of stagnation
manda – collective oversoul of all past Mandalorian’s
jetii(se) – Jedi/Jedi plural
ka’ra – (lit stars) myth: ruling council of dead Mandalorian kings
ade/adiike/ad’ika – children/child
shabuir – extreme insult
shebs - buttocks
osik – crap
Haat’ade – Haat Mando’ade Ori’ramikade – True Mandalorian Supercommandos
Evaar’ade – Evaar Mando’ade – New Mandalorians
Other Words:
Kriff(ing) – expletive (Hutteese)