Work Text:
Korkie Kryze knew this: one moment he was dozing peacefully underneath his aunt’s desk chair while she worked on a piece of tricky legislation, and the next he was awoken by the most horrible shout-sob he had ever heard in his life. He crawled out slowly from underneath the chair, dragging his soft yellow blanket with him. “Ba’vodu?”
She was crying. His Aunt Satine had her elbows on her desk and her head in her hands and she was crying. His beloved aunt, who was made of beskar and carved from ice, was crying. And it was a completely foreign sight. All he could think to do was lay his yellow blanket across her lap and rest his head on top of it. He felt one of her hands go into his hair, softly stroking it.
“Ba’vodu, what happened?” he whispered.
She cleared her throat. “A very good man has died, ad’ika.”
“Who?”
“Qui-Gon Jinn.” That was a name that carried weight in the Kryze household. Korkie knew the stories of course but Satine took a moment to remind him. “He protected me during the war. He was very kind.”
“And he’s gone now?”
“Not gone. Merely marching far away.” She looked out the window, brushing a strand of ginger hair behind his ear, and pressed her lips together tightly. Korkie pulled himself more fully into her lap and tucked his head underneath her chin. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “There will be a funeral, on Naboo. Would you come with me, little love?”
“Yes,” he said, wrinkling his nose, because he would go everywhere with her if she would let him. “Will the Jedi be there?” He had never known the stories of baby stealers and evil wizards. He had only ever been in awe of the Jedi who had saved his aunt and fought with swords made of light.
“Oh most certainly,” she whispered. “They are his family, you see, even if they are not blood.”
Korkie pulled his blanket up so it covered them both. “Like you are mine?”
“Just so.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi was not the one who invited Satine Kryze to the funeral. But he had been on the ship with the Queen’s handmaidens, and he had teased and laughed and regaled them with stories. Some of those stories included his year on the run with the Duchess. So it was Sabe who told Padme to invite her to the funeral on Naboo. As he caught a glimpse of her through the light of the pyre, he felt eternally grateful that someone else had made the decision. Qui-Gon had loved the duchess like a daughter. It would have made him happy to have her there.
There was a boy clutching at her skirts, dressed in mourning colors and with a furrowed brow. Obi-Wan had heard of Koriarci Kryze, the nephew of the Duchess, but it was strange seeing him in person. For some reason, he thought Qui-Gon would have been happy to have him there too.
The Jedi did not have much organization to their funerals. After the body was burned, some gathered to reminisce and remember. Many offered him their apologies. Anakin trailed after the Queen’s handmaidens, asking question after question. It felt as though he was out of his body, observing the events from the air. That is, until he felt Satine’s hand slip into his own.
He met her eyes. She squeezed his fingers lightly. “I cannot imagine the depths of grief you are feeling. Should you ever need a friend to lean on, I am with you.”
“And I am with you,” he whispered back. “He was your mentor too.”
She nodded and stepped back from him. All of a sudden, he felt a slight impact as small arms wrapped around his legs. He let out a huff of air and looked down. There was Koriarci.
“I’m sorry your master is dead,” the boy said, gazing up at him. “But he’s not gone.”
Obi-Wan took a moment before speaking, making eye contact with the small boy attached to his knees. “No. He’s with the force. Do you know what the force is?”
“It’s the energy of all living things. It’s flowing through and around us, always,” he said matter of factly.
Something in his recitation, something in his piercing eyes, something in his ginger hair, set his entire being off center. Still, he tried to smile kindly. “Very good.”
Obi-Wan looked back up at Satine, who was staring on at the exchange with an expression of mild horror. The familiar sight of her astonishment made him laugh, which made several people look at him strangely. As if sensing her dislike, the young boy stepped back and grabbed on to her hand again.
Satine shook her head, incredulous. “Obi-Wan, this is my nephew Korkie. I apologize for…”
“No need,” he said. “Children are, well, agents of their own I suppose.”
“Quite,” she said in a strained voice.
It was bravery and superstition and perhaps a little bit of the force that made him chase after her like he did when they were young. “After this is done, will you find me?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll see you after.”
She left with her nephew beside her. They walked very much the same.
It was later, when her boy was asleep on a ship somewhere, that Satine came to find him. He was sitting at the edge of the palace dock, staring out at the water and the moonlight reflected onto it. Satine sat next to him wearing a dressing gown over her night clothes. None of her bodyguards were in sight, and it gave him a little bit of happiness to realize that she still trusted him to be her protector.
“Hi, Ben,” she whispered.
“Hi, Satine,” he whispered back. “Thank you for coming. I’m sorry I wasn’t the one to invite you.”
“You’ve had a terrible few weeks. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
He looked away from her, eyes trained on the darkened horizon. “Are you sure, Satine? Do you promise?”
She shivered slightly in the night. This was a conversation she had been avoiding so valiantly. “What are you trying to ask me?”
“I want to ask about Koriarci,” he said. “I want to know if he’s…if there’s something there I need to apologize for.”
“He’s not yours.” Satine’s words were careful, easily said, and convincing. She’d been practicing for six years. “He’s my half brother’s, truly. The timing just worked out that way.” Her feet listed in patterns, hovering just above the water.
He nodded. “Okay.” He would never ask her again. If there was nothing cosmic tying them together, if there was no reason for him to stay, he would accept her judgement and take it like a knife.
“The little boy who was with you today. Who is he?”
“My padawan, hopefully. Qui Gon meant to train him.”
Satine’s head snapped up sharply to look at him. “What? But you haven’t been knighted!”
He nodded slowly. “I still may not be.”
“But he couldn’t have had you both.” Six years had passed since they had last spoken, and still she remembered everything he had ever told her about his life.
“And he wasn’t going to. Anakin needed him, the choice was simple.”
“That’s not fair. All you’ve ever wanted was to be knighted, you’ve given up so much in pursuit of it.” He had given up her. He had given up Korkie, too, even if he didn’t know it.
“Well, it might still happen. It’s all out of my hands now.” And he truly did sound like the hollowed out monk he had always meant to be. Everything was truly out of his reach and happening far away from him. But there was a moon out, and Satine was like a star next to him. “Vor entye, Satine. You didn’t have to be here.”
“I am your friend. You will always be my friend. It is no great sacrifice to comfort you.”
And she told him about Koriarci, and he told her about Anakin, and they spoke of their burdens and joys. When she left him, she did so with a kiss on his cheek and a hand on his.
Korkie Kryze knew this: one moment he was reading quietly in his aunt’s study while she worked on a piece of tricky legislation, and the next he was startled by the most horrible shout-sob he had ever heard in his life. “Ba’vodu?”
She was crying, and he was no stranger to the sight. But this was different. She was pressing the heel of her hand into her sternum, as though she was in pain there. As if someone had stabbed her right between the ribs. As if something would spill out of her if she didn’t cover the wound.
“What happened?”
She simply choked out another cry. He ran to her side and found the data pad she had been using. It was open to a message from Padme Amidala.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was dead. The funeral was in three days. Her presence was requested. Everyone was so sorry.
The Jedi knight, who he had so admired, who had been the hero of his bedtime stories, was dead. His aunt, who had most likely loved him, who had certainly been his friend, was crying. Korkie couldn’t think to do anything except wrap an arm around her and lay his cheek on her head.
“I’m so sorry.” Everyone was so sorry. Did it matter? Did the apologies of the living matter when someone was dead?
“He was the best of men. The best of them,” she whispered.
“He will be in our prayers. We’ll remember him, and he’ll be eternal.”
“I don’t want to remember him. I want him back.”
“He’s with the ancestors. Or the force. Both, maybe. He’s with Master Jinn again.”
“You are so good, ad’ika. I have never deserved you.”
She sobbed for a little longer. When she had stilled, Korkie handed her a handkerchief and watched as she wiped her eyes. “Do you want me to go to the funeral with you?”
“I’m sorry, little love, but I don’t think so. It’s best if I go alone here.”
“Are you sure you’ll be alright?”
“This world is full of great injustice. We bear it as best we can.”
And his aunt proceeded to bear her grief with grace. He did not see her weep again for Obi-Wan Kenobi. Korkie would not admit to it, as he had been made foolish with fledgling adulthood, but he shed a few tears in the privacy of his dorm room. There was something wholly awful about learning the hero of your fairytales was not only a man but a mortal one.
But General Kenobi was no mortal, and rose from the dead like a proper fairytale knight, and his aunt did not cry, but instead she shouted. She shouted at the holo, she shouted at a guard, and when the General himself arrived at the palace to make his apologies Korkie was certain she shouted at him too.
Satine brought him into her private audience chamber. It was more than he deserved, she should’ve yelled at him in the throne room. She should have turned him away. She should have impounded his ship and kept him on her work desk like a fern. Then he couldn’t have died. Then he couldn’t return. He’d just be there.
He stood like a soldier posted by the door. Back straight, armor clean, beard shaven. She didn’t understand how the absence of that beard she so hated made her heart ache. She stayed standing as well, took her own post by the window, and looked out on her kingdom. “Did you know I wept at your funeral?” she asked.
She heard a slow exhale behind her, as though the knowledge pained him. “I didn’t expect you to attend my funeral. I didn’t think—”
She turned around quickly to face him. “That much is obvious, General.” Her steps towards him were quick and unforgiving. “Who do you think I am? What do you think we’ve been doing this whole time? I may not be your wife, but I am your friend, and I mourned you.” She jabbed her finger into his chest as she said it.
He caught her hands in his, running his thumbs over the knuckles. “I’m sorry, Satine. I’m sorry.”
It was a familiar tenderness and it made the ache in her chest spread all over. She was getting old. They were too old for this. “Everyone’s so sorry. I’ve heard nothing but apologies for a month.” She pulled her hands out of his and stepped back to lean against a table and cross her arms. “What in the galaxy possessed you to do something so stupid?”
“I do not regret it,” he said, the air of command in his voice. “We saved the chancellor, I did my duty.”
She scoffed. “How did Anakin take it?”
Something burned in his eyes, not like the fire of war but instead the dying of a candle. “…not well,” he admitted.
“Was it worth it? Can you truly tell me it was worth it?”
He was silent. He could not decide if any of it, leaving her, staying gone, fighting a war, was worth it.
She looked off towards the wall.“At least you know now.”
His voice was an unbearable kind of soft. “Know what, my lady?”
Her eyes were blue like steel when she looked back at him. “That when you die, I’m attending your fucking funeral.”
Korkie had attended boarding school since he was a boy. Still, he returned to visit the palace every weekend. When he returned in the wake of her meeting with the General, his aunt caught him in a fierce hug on the landing pad, and nothing seemed amiss. They were exactly the same height now, and Korkie offered her his arm gallantly as they walked into the palace.
“You are terribly selfish. I know that General Kenobi came to the palace, and I heard that you shouted at him, and you never once thought to excuse me from school to see the man.”
Satine laughed. “Kori’ka, I did not shout at him.”
“Really? Well I’ll tell Lagos her source inside the palace is most incorrect. Regardless, auntie, I haven’t seen him since I was six and he’s visited Mandalore twice since then. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were keeping us apart.”
He watched as her eyes darted away from him for a moment. “Ridiculous. When you go off into the galaxy and have grand adventures I’m sure your paths will cross again and the two of you will get on so famously you’ll forget all about me.”
“Never,” Korkie said. “You are simply unforgettable.”
She smiled at him as they walked through the hallways and into the family sitting room. There was tea laid out, as she always made time to eat meals with him on the weekend. “How have you been sleeping, little love?”
He did not protest at the nickname as he had as a younger child. “The nightmares are worse,” he admitted. “And I am anxious. It’s foolish.”
“Not at all. The body understands things that the mind can’t.”
“I can’t help but feeling as though something terrible will happen here. Sundari feels like a haunted place, but by what I don’t know.” He spread his hands out as if to show they were empty. “I am foolish.”
“You are a young man who feels quite a lot. I am sorry your dreams are troubled.”
“The tea you gave me helps. It is only recently that I’ve been restless. They will get better in time.”
Satine nodded. “But you are sleeping?”
He did not tell her that he was not. He did not tell her that he saw her dead on the ground every time he closed his eyes. He would not tell anything to his beloved aunt, who was made of beskar and ice but would break herself for love of him.
“Well enough,” he assured her.
Korkie screamed when the darksaber plunged into his aunt’s chest. Bo-Katan had made him promise to stay on the ship away from the fighting, and Korkie had agreed because Obi-Wan was there, and he was Satine’s hero, and it would all be alright. But he felt the cold steel in his chest and he knew in an instant he would never be alright again because his aunt was dead.
His aunt who had cradled him when he was small, who had played games with him for hours, who had sung him lullabies, who had discussed great literature over breakfast, who had attended as many school debates as she could, who called him her little love, was dead. Korkie wanted to die too.
He sobbed as loud as he could, he wept for as long as he was able, and when he found there was nothing left in him he curled up on the floor of the hold and trembled.
This was exactly what he had dreamed of since he was a boy. He dared not fall asleep again.
Bo-Katan insisted he stay in Krownest with Alrich while she and Ursa went to remedy the disaster which was Mandalore. Alrich took one look at his swollen eyes and disheveled appearance and led him to the nursery to meet his baby daughter.
“Her name is Sabine,” Alrich said as he handed the bundle to Korkie. “Support her head, there you go.”
“She's beautiful,” Korkie whispered.
“Entirely her mother,” Alrich said, gesturing for Korkie to sit in an armchair while he himself sat on a wooden one. “And thank our ancestors for that. Well, son, you’re no fighting man yourself?”
“No sir. I went to diplomacy school.”
“Worthwhile, I’m certain. But you should’ve been an artist.”
Korkie shook his head. “I can’t paint.”
“Doesn’t matter, everyone should be an artist. Your aunt believed that.”
It was strange to hear someone who wasn’t Bo-Katan speak of Satine. The two of them had been avoiding the subject for most of the trip. “She was my mother, actually,” Korkie said. It was the first time he had said it out loud. He found himself wanting to say it again. “Satine is my mother.”
Alrich’s charcoal covered fingers came to touch his temple. “Then my condolences. I’m sure these last months have been difficult.”
Sabine cooed in his arms and Korkie found tears stinging the corners of his eyes. “It has been. You see, I wasn’t told until after she died. She had her reasons, I’m sure, but it’s been very…it’s been difficult.”
“Parents do the best they can,” Alrich supplied. “It is never perfect, but they do all they can for their children.”
“She was good at that.”
“At what?”
“Doing all she could.”
Bail Organa looked haggard. Korkie had never seen him look anything other than the impeccably composed trophy husband of Queen Breha, so this was fascinating to see. But he suspected that Bail had lost many friends in the past year. The losses were climbing with each new day under the rule of the Empire.
“Koriarci Kryze, am I correct?” Bail asked as Korkie entered the private tea room.
“Korkie, sir. No one calls me Koriarci.”
“I must tell you that you look remarkably like an old friend of mine.”
He straightened his spine, accidentally affecting the posture of a supposedly dead general. “Do I?”
“I wonder if perhaps you are here to discuss him.”
But it was a hard thing to explain, and Korkie did not find the words for more than a minute. “That is not exactly my purpose. I got into contact with Ashoka, and she told me to talk to you. I would like you to put me to work, Senator. I feel as though I must do something.”
One of Bail’s eyebrows ticked up. “I see.” The older man got up from where he was sitting and walked over to Korkie, studying him. Bail eventually nodded firmly. “Yes, you look quite a bit like him. But I suspect this initiative you inherited from your mother.”
Korkie found himself smiling. “I am honored to hear you say so.”
“Well, Korkie. Let’s put you to work.”