Chapter Text
It started on Dantooine, although Canderous didn’t realize it at the time. Then he had just been baiting the tightly-wound Republic soldier for the sake of his own amusement; he needed something to do on that dull, grassy world after all, and smirking at skittish Jedi couldn’t fulfill all of a person’s entertainment needs. Neither could kath hounds; the beasts were endless, but killing them didn’t require a great deal of skill. Just dedication, and enough situational awareness to not let oneself get swarmed by more than five or six at a time.
He understood the importance of training, of course; no Mando’ade did not, at least none who had survived past their thirteenth year. But training was tedious for the people whose only involvement in the process was to stand around and wait until their erstwhile leader was done with the latest lesson. Not that Canderous had exactly vowed fealty yet—but what else did he have to do? There wasn’t a lot of traffic on and off Dantooine so he couldn’t just book passage on some other ship and besides, he didn’t have to be able to touch the Force to know how to trust his gut. He’d never met anyone quite so interesting before. He wanted to be there to see what happened next.
Besides, somebody had to stick around to keep an eye on the kid. She wasn’t a bad sort, and neither was the Wookiee, for all that he was stand-offish. That was all right; Canderous could respect a stand-offish warrior. And the kid was annoying sometimes, but she wasn’t a wimp. He could respect that, too.
What he couldn’t respect was a man who lied to himself, and Carth Onasi was a man full of self-deception. He was at war with himself and on one hand, that kind of inner-conflict was dangerous because it left a warrior open to too many distractions and uncertainties—but on the other, as long as they weren’t facing any threats more dangerous than some dumb beasts and a few dumber thugs, it was funny.
Canderous had always enjoyed baiting rancors—in a metaphorical sense; he didn’t approve of pointless cruelty to non-sentient animals. That kind of thing was beneath a true warrior. Baiting a soldier who was too full of himself to see his own flaws, though—that was fair game. Especially when that soldier had fought on the opposite side of the last war you had been in, and never shut-up about his precious Republic.
It hadn’t started out as deliberate goading. Initially Canderous had thought he had found a fellow spirit in the art of combat, albeit one who had once been an enemy. That wouldn’t have made a difference in how he thought about Carth, though; Mandalorians didn’t hold grudges over a fair defeat. He still considered his fight against the Republic to be the crowning element of his life, and he had hoped to share some stories about those great deeds with Carth.
“You fought in the Mandalorian Wars, didn’t you?” he asked, in between drilling bolts of red hot lasers through kath hound skulls. “We may have faced each other in combat. What battles were you in?”
Carth looked up, incredulous, then narrowed his eyes in a glare. “I try not to think about my past battles too much,” he said in a terse voice, glancing away from Canderous to shoot down another hound. “The horrors of war are something I’d rather not relieve,” he finished grimly.
“The horrors of war?” Canderous couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “My people know only the glory of battle,” he retorted harshly, shouldering his heavy blaster and walking forward to give the last kath hound he had shot a kick, just to make sure it was really dead. “I’m disappointed in you, Carth,” he spat. “I thought a warrior like you would understand.”
A light voice interrupted before the Republic officer could answer: “Carth isn’t like you, Canderous.” The reluctant Jedi-in-training was leading their kath hound hunt today; Canderous wasn’t sure if it was an officially-sanctioned task, or just a much-needed break from the Jedi Council’s prodding. Regardless, their erstwhile leader was here, and was clearly trying to stop a fight from breaking out between the tenuous allies.
Carth was having none of it. Now he had the bit between his teeth and he intended to say his piece. “I’m not a warrior,” he explained sharply, glowering at Canderous and ignoring the attempted peace-making. “I’m a soldier. There’s a difference. Warriors attack and conquer, they prey on the weak. Soldiers defend and protect the innocent…mostly from warriors,” he added accusingly.
Canderous smirked. “Nice speech,” he sneered. “I bet you tell yourself that every night so you can sleep.” He was disappointed in Onasi, and annoyed with himself for being disappointed. He should have expected no more from someone who was so loyal to the weak and doddering Republic. This wasn’t Revan he was talking to, after all—just one of the men who had had the good fortune to follow that great commander. But he had let himself be lulled into a false sense of comradeship by Carth’s quick hand on his blasters and the man’s sharp, ruthless aim. It took more than being a good shot to make someone a good warrior, though; it took integrity. “But I accept who and what I am,” he continued in a growl, returning Carth’s glare with a blazing look of his own. “I don’t have to justify it with words. Victory in battle is my justification.”
“Justification through victory?” Carth said, his eyebrows raising. “So what happens when you lose?” he asked after a pointed pause. “You know, like you did against us?”
Canderous was taken aback and found himself, much to his surprise, on the defensive. “You had us outnumbered five to one. You had more ships, more troops, more supplies—and the Jedi on your side. And we still made the Republic tremble before we fell.” He could hear his pride and pleasure in those memories leaking into his voice and did nothing to stop it. His people had nothing to be ashamed of in their defeat at Revan’s hand; that sort of glory was what a Mandalorian lived for, win or lose.
“Nice speech,” Carth said sourly, “I bet you tell yourself that every night so you can sleep.” His sullen, petty response was childish, and he apparently knew it, because he quickly went on to say, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Canderous. The war is over. You lost.”
“Hmm,” was all Canderous said, making no move to stop Carth or continue the conversation as he angrily stalked away across the grass. Canderous shouldered his heavy blaster and followed, sparing their leader a glance before he did. Was it the Jedi training that had kept the third member of their little group out of the conversation, save for that one half-hearted attempt at reconciliation? Or was it just more amusing to watch the two of them butt heads without interference?
Canderous couldn’t find fault with the latter supposition; his amusement at watching Carth squirm was why he returned to the subject again and again over the course of the days and then weeks that they traveled together.
“How about it, Onasi?” he asked, as they sat uselessly cleaning their weapons in the main hold of the Eben Hawk. “Do you have any stories about fighting Mandalorians face-to-face or not?”
The others were off negotiating for information with the tedious Czerka officers. It had been decided that Zaalbar, being a native of this planet, was crucial to their success—although the Wookiee hadn’t been enthusiastic about the idea of returning home, Canderous thought. He hadn’t pried; not only would that have been rude, but he knew better than to needle an already-grumpy Wookiee. (A lesson their erstwhile leader might do well to learn, but who was he to tell a Jedi prodigy how to talk to the rest of the crew?) Bastila had insisted on going along “to supervise your training in the field,” she’d said arrogantly, tilting her dainty little chin up as though daring the rest of them to argue. Mission had refused to let “Big Z” brave the perils of a homecoming alone, and while the Wookiee had protested that Kashyyk was too dangerous a jungle for the city-dwelling twi’lek child to brave, Mission hadn’t listened. (Canderous could have told Zaalbar that was going to happen, but he hadn’t bothered because he had a feeling the Wookiee had known it wouldn’t work all along.)
Since they were planning to start with the delicate scalpel of diplomacy, Canderous had offered to stay and watch the ship because someone had to, and that sounded boring. It wasn’t his strong-suit anyway. “Come get me when you need something done right,” he’d smirked. “Like roughing-up one of those bureaucrats so they’ll give you an honest answer, or shooting them in the kneecap when they lie.” Mission had laughed and Canderous was pretty sure he’d seen their not-so-Jedi-like-after-all leader crack a smile, but Carth and Bastila had just glared at him. “I’ll stay too,” Carth had said immediately, and while the reasoning he gave was, “I’m not going to be much help with sweet-talking Czerka after all, and the bigger your group is the more notice it will attract,” Canderous knew that what he really meant was, “because if the Mandalorian is going to watch the ship, someone else has to watch the Mandalorian.”
Canderous had just snorted and settled back in his chair. Carth walked the others to the hatchway, muttering in the ears of the two Jedi the whole way there, then stood in the opening for a long while watching them walk down the primitive-but-sturdy wooden pathway. Eventually he’d come back, paced the room a few times, and then slumped down in one of the chairs opposite Canderous, who had already started to disassemble his oversized repeating blaster.
“Does it count as guard duty if you’ve taken your weapon off line?” he asked peevishly.
In answer Canderous just reached into his vest and pulled out three vibroblades, which he stuck into the edge of the plasteel table. Then he leaned over and slipped a small hold-out blaster from his boot, followed by another, longer vibroblade, which also went thunk into the table. When he reached into his vest again Carth held up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right,” he grumbled, “I get it, you’re still plenty armed. Fine.”
He’d sat and sulked in silence for a while, although when Canderous pushed his tin of oil over to within easy reach, Carth had grudgingly pulled out one of his blasters and started the meticulous process of cleaning it, too.
Canderous viewed that as a large mark of trust on Carth’s part, under the circumstances: while he still had his other blaster holstered at his side and ready for a quick-draw, the fact that he had allowed himself to be vulnerable enough to clean one of his weapons in Canderous’s presence meant that he had come a long way since their meeting on Taris. In deference to that gesture, he had kept quiet for a while.
But eventually the opportunity to amuse himself was too good to pass-up, and he’d started by saying cheerfully, “How about it, Onasi? Do you have any stories about fighting Mandalorians face-to-face or not?”
Carth shot him a glare and then pointedly returned his attention to his blaster. “You were right there next to me on Dantooine a lot of the time,” he said, his voice sullen. “You saw it for yourself.”
“Bah,” spat Canderous, “Dantooine. Those chakaare were nothing but the dregs, pitiful dogs chewing on scraps after they slunk away in their shame. Those were not true Mandalorians. Fighting them was nothing like fighting a real Mando.” He growled quietly. He was too professional a warrior to take out his temper on his weapon, but the motion of his arm gliding back and forth as he polished the barrel had become jerky and sharp, like his temper.
“Mmm-hmm,” Carth said, eyeing him sideways. “And working for Davik, that was…?”
“Pathetic,” Canderous said, nodding ready agreement with Carth’s implication. “Why do you think I jumped at the chance to help a bunch of Republic outlaws? I saw a chance for something better and I took it.”
“So helping the Republic, that’s a better cause than being a petty crime lord’s enforcer?” Carth shrugged. He was trying to speak casually but Canderous could see the tension in his shoulders even through his heavy jacked. “I can’t disagree, but I’m a little surprised you feel that way.”
“I’m not here for the Republic, boy,” Canderous said.
Carth couldn’t really say anything to that; he might claim that he was here solely out of loyalty to his precious government and their precious fleet, but both men knew that he could have returned to the military itself if he’d wanted to. Instead he had chosen to continue on as their pilot. He was following something all right—someone—but it wasn’t the Republic. Not entirely.
Canderous meticulously scoured microscopic traces of burnt ozone from the barrel of his weapon for a while, letting Carth simmer…and releasing the last of his own temper. It wasn’t Carth he was angry at, anyway; it was his people. How they could let themselves fall so far—how he could have let himself fall so far, too, but so many of them had fallen even further. Reduced to pushing-around a bunch of hapless farmers…it disgusted him. It made him feel disgusted with himself.
Fortunately, he had a ready distraction close at hand. “So,” he asked cheerfully, “did you ever face us on the ground during the war, or were you always up in space hiding in your ships when we fought your Republic?”
Carth bristled, as Canderous had intended. “I was not hiding,” he snapped. “There was just as much fighting going on between the fleets as on the ground. More, in many ways; if the war had been a solely planetary-based conflict, it wouldn’t have engulfed half the Republic, would it? If you’d kept yourselves on your little moons—”
“Fighting over scraps?” Canderous interrupted mildly. “Yes, I know the Republic preferred us that way. Most ‘civilized’ people did. But eventually one tires of the same horizon. Real challenges can only be found when you step outside and look up, move beyond the little walls of what you think is the whole world. Surely you figured that much out, during the war? Isn’t that why you reenlisted?”
“That’s not—” Carth’s heated retort died on his tongue, diverted by Canderous’s question. “Who told you I reenlisted?” he asked. He was frowning, confusion and hurt writhing in his hooded brown eyes; certain he’d been betrayed and ready to lash-out at whoever had done it. He was so predictable. But then, most wounded animals were.
“Your service records,” Canderous told him and grinned.
“How did you get access to my service records?” Carth’s outrage had not diminished.
“I looked them up. I may not have the kid’s skills but I do know the rudiments of using a computer terminal.”
“How did you get access to Republic files?” Carth asked. His cheeks were starting to turn red now and his words were grinding out of his mouth like a durasteel-processing conveyer belt.
“We were at a Jedi facility,” Canderous explained mildly. “They’re still patched-in from the war. Or at least, they are if you know how to look for the right access paths.”
“And you knew how to look for those paths?” Carth didn’t sound convinced. “For that matter, how did you get access to the Jedi’s terminals?”
“They don’t exactly have security patrols trooping through their halls,” Canderous said dryly. When Carth continued to glare at him suspiciously he added, “And it’s amazing what you can talk a talented slicer into doing when she’s a fourteen-year-old who wants to prove her value to a bunch of stodgy adults.” Canderous’s smile showed all his teeth.
Carth reared back in his chair like an affronted ronto. “I can’t believe you took advantage of Mission for—”
“Oh, save it,” Canderous flapped his hand dismissively. “The kid didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do already. She was bored out of her mind, cooped-up on that dead-end grass-ball world. She’s a city kid, Carth. She doesn’t care from farms and kath hunting. Once the allure of fresh air and a horizon that doesn’t end wore off, she was restless. None of her old hobbies worked there. All I did was suggest that she could find some constructive ways to fill her time while the rest of you were busy panting after the Jedi, and she was more than happy to join me on a bit of harmless skullduggery.”
“Harmless?” Carth was going to give himself a stroke if he didn’t learn how to relax.
Canderous smiled sweetly. “Sure,” he said, “harmless. It’s not like we left any nasty surprises behind or sliced into classified state secrets. We just looked up some details on our new companions. Nothing wrong with getting to know the people who are going to be watching your backs out there in the cold, hard galaxy, is there?”
“That is not the way to do that,” Carth growled.
“Well you weren’t exactly forthcoming, were you?” Canderous shot back.
That shut Carth up for a moment. After a while he asked, in a disgruntled but calmer tone of voice, “So how much did you learn, then?”
“About you?” Canderous asked mildly. “Or about our…other comrades?”
“…About any of us,” Carth said, but he wouldn’t meet Canderous’s eyes anymore. Carth’s attempt to hide his interest in the secrets he was so morally outraged that he and the kid had sliced was pathetic, but maybe Carth realized that he wasn’t going to fool Canderous no matter how sincere he played it and had chosen surrender as the less embarrassing option. Or maybe he just wanted to know badly enough to be willing to swallow his moral outrage and listen.
The Mandalorian just chuckled. “So the kid and I aren’t the only one who are curious, huh?” Carth started to voice a protest or an excuse, but Canderous decided to take pity. “No, don’t get your skivvies in a twist, of course we looked for information—on Bastila too, for that matter. There isn’t much, though. Well, there’s plenty on Bastila…but she’s not who you’re curious about, eh?” Canderous grinned. Carth shifted uncomfortable in his seat but he didn’t deny it. “Well, there wasn’t much. Not that we could find on the surface, anyway. I don’t know if it’s because our mysterious friend wasn’t involved in much of the war, or just spent it in clandestine efforts that nobody wants to talk about publicly, but the last time I saw a profile that bare-bones it was a false persona a mark had put together to avoid paying their debts. Didn’t work, by the way,” he added as an aside, although Carth hadn’t inquired. “I found the slimy little dung-beetle in three days and put a laserbolt through his skull. Anyway, there was a lot more data on you and Bastila, although neither of your profiles were what I would call detailed reading either. Just the basic facts, rank and homeworld and some family stats. That sort of thing.”
He didn’t say anything else for a while, giving Carth a chance to speak—or not.
Eventually he said, quite slowly, “Well then you should know what battles I was involved in, from my records. You should already know…pretty much anything you might want to ask.”
“Didn’t look that close,” Canderous said easily, as if he hadn’t just spent several minutes baiting Carth over the idea that his records had been sliced and all his secrets exposed. “Really I just wanted confirmation that you were all who—and what—you said you were; I prefer hearing about someone’s exploits from their own lips to reading about them on a datapad. You get a more…personal account that way. Facts can be misleading when they’re stripped of all context. It’s the way the story’s told that really matters.”
Carth raised an eyebrow, clearly neither convinced nor mollified.
“Well all right,” Canderous admitted, “that, and the kid got distracted looking-up news about Taris. Wanted to see if there was any word of anybody else she knew making it off.”
“…And?” Carth asked, when Canderous did not continue.
The Mandalorian shook his head.
After a while, once he felt the silence had dragged on long enough for Carth to start brooding, he asked again: “So did you?”
Carth looked up, startled out of his bleak memories. “Did I what?”
“Ever face any Mandalorians on the ground, of course,” said Canderous. “What do you think we’ve been talking about all this time?”
“I thought we were talking about your delight in invading other people’s privacy,” Carth said sulkily.
Canderous slapped a hand to his chest as though he was wounded, although he was smirking. “So you really weren’t listening at all, then,” he said, voice sad. “Otherwise you would know that I take much less pleasure in invading someone’s privacy than I do in hearing them tell their own stories. So come on, soldier, regal me with some thrilling heroics. Or failing that, if you haven’t actually got any to tell, you could at least annoy me with another lecture about your moral superiority. Nothing makes the time fly like listening to a bitter hypocrite wax philosophical.”
“I am not a hypocrite,” Carth growled.
“No?” Canderous shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll take your word for that, if it means all that much to you. But if you have any anecdotal evidence to back the claim, now would be a good time to share. Or let me guess—you ‘don’t want to talk about it,’ right? Just like everything else anyone tries to talk to you about.”
Carth glowered. “You have got to be the most frustrating, insensitive, bloodthirsty, uncivilized sav—”
“Hold that thought,” Canderous interrupted, and rocked to his feet. He clicked a new powerpack into his freshly-oiled weapon and walked toward the hatchway.
“Hey,” Carth called after him, “don’t you walk away when I’m telling you what I think about you!”
“Tell me later,” Canderous shot back over his shoulder. “There’s trouble outside.”
“What kind of trouble?” Carth was already reassembling his blaster as he moved to join the Mandalorian and Canderous noted with approval that the man’s hands were sure and swift; here was someone who didn’t rely on droid maintenance or Republic armories to look after his weapons for him.
“The kind that carries blasters,” Canderous said. “What more do you need to know?”
“Well, whether our friends are mixed-up in it, of course!”
“Oh come on.” Canderous shook his head mournfully, but his smile was wide. “Do you really think there’s any question about that?”