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CHAPTER 12: What Remains

WARNINGS: angst, mentions of blood, canon-compliant violence, possession, explicit content

SUMMARY:

“Din—”

“Quit talking,” he snarls, and Nova snaps her mouth shut. He is a silver star, pulsing for her in the darkness of this room. She cannot make out what he is doing, her Mandalorian, but Nova doesn’t need her eyes to know where Din will go. He is worshiping at the altar of her body, as he always has. Treating her, even now, even halved, as something holy.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: HAPPY SOMETHING HOLY SATURDAY!!! i am... so sorry it's been a year and a half since i updated, but i have an outline for the rest of it, and i'm already 4,000+ words into the next chapter, so PLEASE KNOW Something Holy will never be left unfinished. i will be here, fighting the good fight, until it's fully completed <3

If you're new here, Something More & Something Deeper are the first installments in this series, available on here & ao3!

In the end, it turns out it’s Luke Skywalker who answers the call.

He is shimmering in front of her, now, a sparkling hologram. She’s been trying any line she can, all day—to reach Ezra, Leia, Ahsoka. Both real comms and reaching out through the Force. Nothing is working. Everything is eerily quiet, until she feels Luke latch onto her like a tractor beam, and she’s on his ground now.

Nova knows, innately, that she isn’t reaching Luke. Luke is reaching her. Whatever part of her held the Force was demolished back on Hoth. She is reaching out into an abyss, and Luke reaches back.

She has never been more grateful for the eternity of Luke Skywalker.

He comes into focus, and Nova heaves a sigh, blowing a stray ringlet out of her face, and pushes herself to her feet. “Luke,” she whispers. Nova almost holds up her fingers to his face, to prove that he’s real. She looks down instead, and the evergreen, rocky shoals of Ahch-To shine beneath her feet. Luke’s puzzled expression—confused, but delighted—beams back at her, and she shudders. She could cry.

“Nova,” he says, reaching for her. She wobbles, uncertain, a foal shedding its sea legs, and then she staggers towards him. “Whoa,” he mutters, bracing his hands—one human, one robotic—on either of her shoulders.

“The Jedi robes,” she manages, gesturing at him, “they suit you.” It’s a departure from his usual drama: black robes, black boots. It’s like he’s adapted to the coastline he’s on. All shades of tan and beige, except the ultramarine of his eyes.

The twinkle in Luke’s face subsides. “What’s wrong?”

Nova wants to laugh. The enormity of that question is thundering, horrible. “Oh, Luke,” she manages, “Everything is wrong.”

He tilts his head to the side, considering. “Walk with me,” Luke says, finally, offering her his arm.

Nova does.

*

They’re on the seaside, ocean waves crashing against the verdant shore. Down here, moss and algae flood the rocks, smelling of salt and ochre, and Nova breathes it in. She can almost imagine she’s here in the flesh; superimposing it over the feeling of the Mandalorian palace floor beneath her feet.

She has—against her hesitation, against the thing snarling inside of her chest—told Luke everything. Plunging after Ezra into the Unknown Regions. Crashing the wreckage of their ship into that planet. The midichlorian tanks. Deep, unfettered hatred. Being discovered by Hera and her Ghost. Trying—and failing spectacularly—to save Hoth from being blown to bits. Thrawn being called by name. Ezra blipping back onto the map, reappearing only momentarily, to help them get away. Ezra disappearing again, off somewhere—with Thrawn? She doesn’t know. It’s murky, unfinished. Nova’s entire life right now is a string of unknowns and hurt, coiled tight in her chest like a livewire.

Finally, spilling out of her: the awful thing that has her in its grip. Blackened and horrible, so many glittering teeth.

She stares at Luke expectantly. He’s stroking his chin, gaze faraway.

“I knew,” he says, finally, “about Hoth. I could feel it.” He winces as his mouth curves around the word Hoth. She can feel the pain in the center of his chest—for a little while, from what feels like a lifetime ago, Hoth was Luke’s home, too.

A wave crashes into the shore, spraying them both with foam.

“Why are you here, Luke? On this planet?”

He doesn’t look at her, his eyes fluttering shut. In this light, it’s easy to remember that Luke isn’t the mystical, mythical deity that she’s been told stories about. He’s not the Jedi warrior that felled the Death Star; that slayed Darth Vader. He’s just a man, and he’s only a handful of years older than her, and he’s known horror up-close. Seen the worst of the galaxy, internalized it, fought it off. He has earned his right to disappear.

“I had a grand idea,” Luke says, finally, voice measured and intentional, “of starting a school for Jedi. It was something…purposeful, after the Death Star, and Leia and Han fell into the political sphere. That was no place for me. I wanted to spread the light to the Jedi across the galaxy that remained. To give them a place—” his voice catches, and Nova swallows, curling her hands into fists, “—to call home. Right now, though…”

Nova stares at him, tracing the path of moss against this ancient rock with her big toe as it dangles beneath her.

“I sent Ben away.”

Nova blinks. “What?”

“I wiped his memory, and I sent him home.”

She rears back. “Wiped his memory—?”

“It is not,” Luke says heavily, “something I am proud of.”

Novalise studies him. For the first time, sadness is the primary emotion radiating off Luke Skywalker, and she does not like it. “I didn’t know that was something Jedi could do.”

Luke smiles mournfully at her, boyish charm rubbed away at the edges. “It isn’t supposed to be. It’s an ancient trick, and it warps the user.” He lays his hand against his collarbone. “It is intentionally difficult to do.”

Nova stands, wiping away the droplets that have collected on her pants, her sweater. “Where is he?”

“He was becoming something dangerous,” Luke said heavily, “and I sent him on my ship back to Leia and Han, after I wiped all memory of this place from his mind. I will try again with Ben, in a few years. I’ve foreseen it, the fact that I will try. But he is—he is not a Jedi, Novalise.”

Nova swallows. At the very least, it explains why Leia never returned any of their messages. She is on Hosnian Prime, serving the galaxy as a senator, dealing with a child that’s foretold to become something horrific. Nova has seen it in Ben’s eyes; felt the discordance coming off him in waves. Selfishly, she’s thankful she whisked Grogu away from here weeks ago, even though he is in danger now. Even though his mother is unmoored and untethered, not herself at all.

“Luke,” Nova whispers, “am I a Jedi?”

Her vision warps a little, around the edges. She is exhausted. Nova can feel herself back on Mandalore, wavering in and out of the Force state Luke is holding her in—barely able to be conjured at all, and by the time she thought to try Luke, after neither Ahsoka or Ezra answered the call, she’s depleted herself of all the strength she spent the better part of a week gathering.

He looks at her, those brilliant blue eyes. “Nova, there’s no version of reality where you are not a Jedi.”

“There’s something,” Nova whispers, voice as shaky as it was when she iterated the same point to Din, “wrong with me.”

“Yes.”

She wipes a rogue tear from her eyes. “Am I dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Am I still…good?”

“Oh, Novalise,” Luke says, getting up in a flash, cupping her face within his hands, “of course you are.”

She heaves in a terrible breath. “I don’t know how to get it out, Luke.”

He stares at her with so much care, such warmth. Her heart feels nestled between his hands, too, and he is so gentle, this myth of a man. Luke is subdued, quieted, blunted around the edges from this place.

“Novalise,” he whispers, “I will work on a way to get it out.” He reaches out with his human hand and holds hers. “You focus on staying here.”

She wipes a hand over the back of her nose. It is so similar to what Din said back on Mandalore. It cleaves her in two. “What do I do?” Nova steadies herself. “I can’t—I can’t be trusted to be part of the war room right now. I cannot rule. I can’t—even be around the people I love without being terrified I’m going to kill them, Luke. I choked Din half to death a few weeks ago, and I have no memory of it. Just afterwards—flooding back into my own self. I fell asleep,” she chokes out, “behind the wheel of my own life. How can I be around my son? My husband?” Nova heaves in a shuddering breath. “Bo-Katan? Wedge?”

Something flickers in Luke’s eyes at Wedge’s name, and Nova feels the knife between her ribs twist even further. She inhales, sharply, letting the breath sit behind her sternum, waiting. She holds it there until she feels she has a grip on herself again. What a tenuous, intangible thing.

“What do I do?” Nova repeats.

Luke looks off into the distance, thinking. “I have a plan,” he says distantly, then more concrete. “I have a plan. It’s not foolproof, by any means, but it’s workable.”

“Tell me,” Nova breathes. “Anything. I’ll do anything.”

“I’m going to chase down an old friend.” Luke sighs. “But I need something from you in the meantime.”

Nova nods, eagerly. She can feel the world fracture around her again, threatening to pull her back to Mandalore. She is running out of time. “Anything.”

“I sent Ben back to Hosnian Prime with my X-Wing. I need a ship,” Luke says. “And I need you to deliver it to me.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be here as soon as I can.”

“Novalise,” Luke calls, as she turns to go, step back through the vision to her own world. “You have good instincts. Trust them.”

He vanishes, leaving her on the floor of the cells underneath Mandalore, and Nova squeezes her eyes shut. The question that she wants to ask Luke trembles on her tongue.

But, she thinks, as she climbs the stairs back to the central hall of the palace, what if I can’t trust myself at all?

*

It’s not Din she encounters first in the hallway. It’s Wedge.

He blanches at her face like he’s seen a ghost. Wedge drops what he’s holding on the floor, the clattering loud and discordant in the empty palace hallway. Around the corner, she can hear the lively chatter of Rebels and Mandalorians both eating together in the dining hall, but she doesn’t dare go near. She cannot afford to.

“Oh, Nova,” he manages, and tears form at the corners of her eyes.

She is weary and coltish, moving on atrophied legs, but she hurls herself at Wedge anyway. Lets herself be embraced. He cradles the base of her skull like her father always used to, and the tears leak from her eyes to the familiar orange jumpsuit he’s wearing. If she squints, it’s almost like Arokel is holding her here. Wedge smells of fuel and warmth all the same.

Wedge pulls away to inspect her. “How are you?” He flinches as the question comes out of his mouth. “Sorry, I know that wasn’t—let me start over. How’s your head?”

She offers a wobbly smile. “Well,” Nova whispers, “it’s my own right now, so I’m grateful for that.”

Wedge stares at her. His eyes, brown and unyielding, are so much like Din’s. Older, sunken, but like Din’s—kind. Worried, right now. “Supernova,” he says, sighing. “Come with me.”

She shakes her head. “No,” Nova breathes, “I–I shouldn’t be allowed to go into the war room, Wedge. I shouldn’t know anything—”

“I’m not taking you there,” Wedge assures her. He’s firm in his delivery, and Nova presses her lips together.

“I shouldn’t go anywhere. I shouldn’t see anyone, j-just in case…”

“Where I’m taking you,” Wedge says, so gently, “there’s no one to worry about.”

Nova closes her mouth and lets herself be led.

Wedge wasn’t lying, as it turns out, about no one being there. He takes her out the back of the palace, up a set of seldom-used stairs, and then they’re on the roof. Overhead, hidden in the blue permhaze of the atmosphere, Nova can just make out the sun setting in its grave. Her breath catches in the back of her throat. It is serene up here, up above everything else.

A soft wind blows, lifting her curls off the back of her neck, and she smells the coconut and freesia of her shampoo. If she closes her eyes, Nova can imagine Naator’s pink skies, superimposed over Mandalore’s, and everything goes lavender.

It is such a visceral, lovely image that she feels herself well up.

Wedge has set out two folding chairs on the roof. They’re collapsible and imperfect, and it reminds her so much of the ones that her family used to have on Yavin that it knocks Nova almost entirely speechless. He pulls out one for her, moves the Sabacc table out of the way, the game discarded entirely, and sits beside her.

“Wedge,” Nova says, finally, once they’re settled, once the sky above has begun to darken for the night, “I am so sorry about Hoth.”

He is coiled tight beside her, Nova can sense it. “Yeah, kid. Me, too.”

“I tried,” she whispers. It’s a half-measure, especially now, weeks after the planet has been blown to dust, but she needs to say it out loud. “I tried to stop him. Thrawn. But there—”

“There’s something wrong with you,” Wedge supplies softly, taking her hand in his. It’s scarred, and his skin has worn away into the white lines, but it holds the same weight it always has. “I know, rebel girl.”

Nova swallows. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats. “I felt something there—”

Wedge squeezes down on her hand. “Nova,” he says, gently, so gently it hurts, “there was no one on Hoth except the four of us.”

She shutters her eyes, squeezing tight. “I felt them—”

“Is it possible,” Wedge interrupts, slightly strained, “that whatever it is—whatever’s…sharing your body with you, right now—made you feel like that?”

Slowly, tentatively, Nova opens her eyes and looks into Wedge’s. Oh, you idiot, some logical, steely part of her grumbles, of course, that’s what happened. “Maybe,” she manages, a half-truth. “Maybe, Wedge. But it… this thing…”

“You don’t think it’s Thrawn doing it to you?” Wedge supplies, and although it’s framed as a question, it really isn’t one. “Do you?”

Nova shakes her head. Of this, she’s certain. Many things have become accessible to her through her brain, her Force connection—but never Thrawn. He is not a mystical being—he is terrifying because he is real, tangible. Cunning and strong. He is a standalone.

“I don’t think,” she says, truthfully, “that what’s wrong with me has anything to do with Thrawn at all. I think it picked a terrible time to make itself known—when the Chimera popped back on the map—but I don’t think it’s anything he’s doing.” She swallows. “But, Wedge, I can’t help but feel like everything is connected, anyway. Thrawn isn’t doing this to me, that I know. But him, showing back up now, when there’s a darkness rising? From the midichlorian tanks Din and I found when the Victory crash-landed, to the stormtroopers that nearly killed you and Bo-Katan? And now, Luke’s sent Ben back home to the Solos, and he needs a ship—”

“Hold on.” Wedge’s hand slips out of hers, and he blinks back up at Nova. For a second, a flitting, fleeting glimpse of hope sparkles across his face. “You heard from Luke?”

Nova nods. “Just now,” she whispers. “I sent him a few holograms over the last few weeks—since we left to find Ezra—and didn’t hear anything back. And then today, I was reaching out…” she shakes her head, suddenly furious again that the Force has evaded her, is still hiding somewhere off in the shadows. “I tried to reach him, and Leia, and Ahsoka, but Luke’s the only one who projected himself to me, so I could talk to him.” She looks over the horizon, the azure sky darkening every minute, and exhales. “He—he wiped Ben’s memory, and sent him back to Leia. I think he knows something is coming, Wedge, and I’m very inclined to believe him.”

Wedge stares over the edge of the roof, eyes finding the X-Wings parked outside of the hangar. Far too many to fit inside the Mandalorians’ shelter, spread like checkers around a chessboard that has yet to start a game. “What did Luke say?”

“He said he was going to get in touch with an old friend,” Nova says, watching the shape of Wedge carefully, “and that he needs a ship.”

Something inside Wedge deflates. “Not me, then,” he whispers, barely-there. “If he were talking about me, he would have sent you back a message to pass on.”

Nova lets them sit in silence for a moment, picking at the edge of her fingernail. She’s broached the question before, barely, with them both, but she’s never gotten a straight answer. And Nova doesn’t want to push, but even now, after both of them are stranded millions of parsecs away from one another, there’s no love lost between them. “Wedge,” she says, finally, “what happened? Between you and Luke?”

Wedge sighs, and again, Nova startles with the realization that he’s gotten older without her realizing. His hair is now nearly all gray instead of the brown it always had more of, and something clenches in her chest. “It’s a long story,” he settles on, “and one I will tell you, someday, Nova, but not today.”

She doesn’t press it, then. Nova musters up what’s left of the leadership within her, and she keeps moving. “Wedge, I need to get him a ship.”

“Take any of them,” Wedge says, gesturing to the fleet below them. “Hell, take two of them. We have more ships than we do pilots, and we’re not—” he realizes, in the middle of his sentence, that he’s about to say something that betrays the secrecy of the combined forces’ plans, and he winces toward Nova’s direction.

“I don’t want you to tell me anything tangible,” she posits, carefully so, “because I can’t promise you that whatever has a hold of me won’t do something dangerous with it. But can you tell me… Please, can you tell me, Wedge, if you and Bo and Hera have some sort of plan?”

Wedge locks his eyes on Nova’s now, hand back clasped around hers, and it’s with such sincerity she could cry. “Yes. I swear, Nova,” he says solemnly, “that we are going to make a way out of this.” He swallows. “We will kill Thrawn.”

She heaves in a shuddering breath. “I would do it alone,” she admits, “if I had to. But the truth is, I’m a liability, and I’m not—I’m not stable enough to try to shoulder this on my own.” It’s a confession that pains her to wrestle out from beyond her lips. Her eyebrows knit down the middle, and she tries to look away. Wedge catches her chin in his hand, refuses to let her.

“Novalise,” he assures her, “after everything, don’t you know that we wouldn’t let you do it alone if you tried?”

Words fail her. Love, so radiant and enduring, is coming in waves off of him. Instead, Nova nods, letting one tear fall. Then Wedge is checking the comm on his wrist, pressing a kiss to her forehead, and disappearing down the stairs.

“Stay here as long as you need to,” he calls as he vanishes from her line of vision, “but there’s likely a Mandalorian waiting for you downstairs.”

Nova watches the sun slip, definitively, over the mountains in the distance, and makes her own way towards Din.

*

He’s drinking out of his flask when Nova gets back to their room. The Mand’alor suite is dim in the gathering dark, the sun fully set over the hills in the distance. Still, a temperate breeze filters in, rustling through the gossamer curtains. Nova can tell Din senses her before he turns, back rigid, deep inhale across the room.

“I was beginning to worry.” It’s Din, so his voice is gravelly, regardless, but Nova hears the undercurrent of panic in it.

Silently, she walks toward him, cresting around his side and pressing herself against the wall he’s opposing. “I have a mission,” she says softly.

Din cocks his head at her. Maker, he’s beautiful—his brown eyes warm and simmering, the gentle hook of his nose prominent through the light diffusing through the curtains. Sometimes, even now—especially now—he takes her breath away. “I thought we were staying away from the war room.”

Nova holds up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Din lifts a thick eyebrow. “Then what kind of mission?”

Nova smiles, a true, crack-open-the-sky-and-sing grin, and she can feel it affect Din before she even speaks again. “Luke Skywalker,” Nova says, stepping closer to her husband, “is in need of a ship.”

Relief breaks across Din’s face. It is as breathtaking as a sunrise. “You talked to Luke?”

Nova beams down at him. “Just now. He found me, through the Force. He’s working on his own plan to stop Thrawn—I don’t know what it is, I made him promise not to tell me—but he’s down a vessel, and he can’t get off of Ahch-To.” She bites down on her lip. “He asked me to bring one to him.”

Din studies her.

“I was thinking,” Nova suggests, moving off the wall entirely and circling Din’s neck with her hands, “if I can extract you from what’s going on in the war room… we could bring Luke a ship together?”

It’s Din’s turn to smile, now. It sparks in Nova’s chest. “Yes,” he breathes, grabbing at her waist, drawing her in, closer, closer still. “Tomorrow morning.”

He lifts her, as easily as air, into his lap. When Din’s lips press to hers, any of the darkness coiled tight in Nova’s chest recedes, then dissipates entirely.

*

Din wakes sometime in the middle of the night, the feeling of Novalise’s hands wrapped around his neck. They permeate into his dream, and he’s dragged back to the waking surface by an inhale so ragged and dangerous that he’s amazed it doesn’t wake Novalise, coiled up next to him. She looks so peaceful in sleep, curled up in one of his shirts and their shared bedsheets.

Din Djarin is used to being a ghost, but he tries harder than usual to be noiseless. He disentangles himself from their bed, and he heads toward the fresher. The door shuts with a soft snick as he latches it closed. The light in here is set to the lowest setting, and in it, he studies his reflection in the dark.

Nova’s state has aged him—gray has popped up in sprigs of his beard, in the curls of his hair. Silently, he takes the pair of scissors Nova’s stashed underneath the sink and snips away at the overgrown bits on the back of his neck. He’s cleaned up in a handful of minutes, and he washes the dark clippings of hair down the drain.

He dresses, pulling his armor over his body, clips it into place. Din’s used to dressing in the full shield of it any time he leaves the sanctity of this space. Their bedroom, the starfighter, their house on Naator—anywhere that he and Nova call home. It’s a leftover of his Creed, back when he worshiped something other than his wife and the life they’ve built together, and it feels even more natural to do it on Mandalore. Other Mandalorians do the same, most of them unhelmeted except for battle, like Bo-Katan’s sect always had, but Din’s the only one other than Bo-Katan herself that always wears all of it.

Always prepared, he thinks now, dully, for battle. For war.

Nova hums in her sleep as he brushes past her, over to the entrance to their bedchambers. She doesn’t stir as he disappears, shutting the door behind him.

*

There’s an omnipresent thrumming noise that the war room makes. Din’s always attributed it to all of the holotables in here, alive with electricity. It makes him feel uneasy, most days.

Bo-Katan is in there, alone. Her red hair cuts sharply at her chin. Like a knife. Din walks cautiously through the door, and she acknowledges him with a prolonged look, then returns to staring at the projection of the galaxy above them, arms crossed firmly across her armored chest.

“Thought I might find you in here,” Din says, breaking the silence. His voice sounds even through the vocoder, more even than he feels.

Bo-Katan spreads her arms wide. “Here I am.”

Up close, she looks exhausted. The bags under her eyes are purple, and multiplying.

“When does the fleet leave?”

Bo-Katan meets his gaze through the mask. Din notices, with a small twinge of affection, that it never stops looking like she’s poised for an argument. “Two days from now.” She drags a hand over her face, digging her fingers against her temples, rubbing small circles.

Din nods. Good. That’s good.

“Can I tell you something?”

Din startles. Bo-Katan’s voice is small and unsure of herself, which is rarely ever true. “Always.”

“I have no idea,” she admits, wearily, angrily, “what I’m doing here, Din.”

He feels rooted in place. He knows, painfully, how she feels. Awkwardly, he reaches out to pat her arm, but thinks better of it halfway through. “You and Hera have been making plans?”

“Yeah,” Bo-Katan says, kicking at an imperceptible crack in the floor. She scowls off into the distance. “Yeah, Hera’s taking a squadron to Tatooine to pick up allies. Wedge is leading the battalion to Endor, to see if there’s anything there on base that’ll help in fighting Thrawn. And I,” she sighs, “am heading on a reconnaissance mission to Scarif.”

Din raises an eyebrow. “Scarif?”

“There’s a reason only Mandalorians are coming with me,” Bo-Katan says heavily. “Because Scarif was nearly glassed, and not only are we used to a planet that’s been razed, we don’t know if it’s radioactive.”

“What are you hoping you’ll find?” Din asks, closing the majority of the gap in between them. Bo-Katan’s gaze is affixed to the tiny locus that is Scarif above them. Projected into the chambers of the war room, it looks impossibly tiny. “I mean—it hasn’t been operational since the first war against the Death Star.” He glances from Scarif over to Bo-Katan. “Right?”

She exhales like a smoker, blowing a steady stream of air out from behind her teeth. It almost sounds like a hiss. “As far as we know of,” Bo-Katan says finally. She’s glaring darkly at something in the distance, and Din doesn’t press on the wound. He thinks of the multiplying stormtroopers that cornered Bo-Katan and Wedge on Coruscant—how advanced they were; the shade of their armor. Then to the midichlorian tanks Nova turned to ash back when they crash landed.

Then, finally, to Moff Gideon, who he hasn’t thought of since he was killed in the holding cell in the floor below the both of them, what feels like a lifetime ago.

Din looks back to the pulsating version of Scarif above them. “Have you heard anything from Ezra?”

“Honestly, Din,” Bo-Katan says, a hand on the back of her neck to work the endless knots there free, “if it weren’t for the holograms he left us back in the Unknown Regions, and Hera’s unfathomable, unending belief in him, I would tell you that Ezra Bridger is a ghost.”

They sit in silence for a while. Din almost warns Bo-Katan off her mission entirely, because the air is still thick with things not right, but he thinks better of it. She won’t listen, anyway, and she has her people to think of. Their people.

“Where do you need me?” Din asks, knowing the answer.

Bo-Katan glances at him, and something shifts in her expression. Like she’s putting her guard back up. “Here. With Nova.”

Din sighs, languid through the helmet. “I have an alternative,” he offers. “I take Nova on one of the larger ships to Ahch-To.”

Bo-Katan’s eyes flash. “You heard from Luke? The bastard hasn’t answered any of our calls. Wedge’s in a mood about it, too—”

“Not me,” Din interrupts, “Nova.”

A beat. Bo-Katan narrows her eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Din sighs, letting his eyes track from Bo-Katan to Scarif to Ahch-To. “Nova says he has a plan, but she doesn’t know any details. Just asked us to bring him a ship.”

Bo-Katan traces a thumb over her bottom lip. “Hmm.”

Din crosses his arms over his chest. “What?”

“This could work,” she says, finally, distantly. “Take Nova off-planet, yeah. She’s always most herself when she’s out in the stars, anyway, so this is a good distraction.” She blinks. “Do you need a chaperone?”

Din balks. “A chaperone?”

“Y’know,” Bo-Katan says irritably, “in case whatever’s possessing Nova takes her back?”

Anger flashes low in Din’s belly. “I do not need a chaperone to be alone with my wife.”

Bo-Katan’s eyes flutter to his neck. “Are you sure,” she asks, quietly, almost gently, “about that?”

Din huffs, turning away from her.

“Din,” Bo-Katan calls, and then her voice breaks. Just a shard of glass, really, but with Bo-Katan, a shard is enough. “I hate this, you know that, right?”

He shutters his eyes. Then turns on his heel, walking back to her. “I know,” he says sullenly, miserable. “I hate it, too.”

“I don’t know how you’re dealing with it,” she manages, leaning back against the holotable. “Up close with her.”

“She’s still Nova,” Din hisses.

“I know that,” Bo-Katan snaps. Then, softer: “but something else has her, too, and it’s horrible. Horrible.”

Din hears her voice catch again. For a moment, neither of them speak. Then, carefully, “I think you should talk to her before we both leave.”

Bo-Katan looks away, trying to school her face back into something impenetrable. “Yeah,” she manages. “Yeah, maybe.”

“She won’t hurt you.” It’s out of Din’s mouth before he has the dark, horrid realization that he doesn’t know if that’s actually the truth.

Bo-Katan gives him a half-smile, then hits a button on the table that spirits away the projection. It’s just the two of them in the low light, no stars above them to speak of, not anymore.

“You’re the acting Mand’alor now,” Din whispers, barely there at all. “It goes to her first-in-command. That’s not me, Bo-Katan, not right now. That’s you.”

“I want her to get better,” Bo-Katan says in response. Then, angrily: “I want Thrawn’s ugly blue head on a platter, and I want this war over, but more than anything, I just want Nova to get better. You know that, right?”

“Oh, Bo-Katan,” Din sighs, “of course I do.”

He touches his pauldron to hers. Bo-Katan gently, haltingly, lays her head on his shoulder for a second. Her knees sag, and for a blip, Din can feel her relinquish control; let him hold her up.

“Go get some sleep,” he murmurs, “I’ll tell Nova to find you before we leave in the morning.”

She nods, and with a guarded, thankful look on her face, Bo-Katan leaves him alone in the war room.

*

Bo-Katan wakes in the early hours of the morning.

It’s not enough sleep, but it never is. She doesn’t bother with making her bed, just throws her armor on over her underclothes. When she leaves the door to her room, it shuts behind her with a bang.

Anger is a living thing inside of her chest. It snarls and snaps, over and over again. She has been stricken with it since she was a child—emotion filtered through the animal inside of her. As of recently, that animal has only been angry. Even here in the early hours of the day, she can feel Hera’s brilliant eyes superimposed on the back of her neck.

Half of Bo-Katan wants to storm into the Mand’alor suite and try to take the saber from Nova’s side. It won’t come. It is leashed to her, the acting leader of this planet, and as much as Bo-Katan Kryze has wanted to be on the throne, she knows that she can only win the saber in battle, and that right now, the saber is Novalise’s.

Novalise.

Bo-Katan closes her eyes as she pours the steaming cup of caf into her mug, imagining Nova’s face. When they first ventured after Ezra, was there something off then? Has this thing been buried like a tomb inside of Nova’s body for longer than the last few months? Furiously, Bo-Katan strides toward the war room.

She would’ve noticed if Nova was possessed by something all the way back then, wouldn’t she? If the thing inside of her had reared its ugly head?

Underneath all of it, Bo-Katan is hurt. Her ferocity and teeth is a cover-up for all that pain, all that fear. She does not do well with this crushing weight, and she never has.

Something tugs at her, and at the last second, Bo-Katan diverts her path. She doesn’t go into the war room, which is still empty this early in the day. She turns, instead, to the room that holds the Mand’alor’s throne.

She isn’t alone in there, though. Novalise is sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring up at the silver wrought iron of it, gleaming and brilliant even under a sky that hasn’t opened up into daylight yet.

“I’ve been wondering,” Nova murmurs, just loud enough for Bo-Katan to hear her, “if this throne was ever mine to hold at all.”

Something fractures in Bo-Katan’s chest. She crosses her arms over it, willing that pain to hold. “Of course it was,” she manages, “your name means to survive in Mando’a, Novalise, for fuck’s sake.”

This gets a small, delicate laugh out of her. Nova tips forward, getting up as gracefully as ever. Her brown palms heave herself off the floor. “I would give you the Darksaber if I could,” she says, circling around to face Bo-Katan.

She is radiant, even in this state of disarray. Bo-Katan’s hurt splinters further. She is torn. Torn, between wanting to embrace Nova in her arms and suggest a duel right here.

“But you wouldn’t let me,” Nova muses, tipping her head back and forth. Bo-Katan can hear her neck crack. “You would insist I fight you for it.”

“Doesn’t work without the fight,” Bo-Katan says, voice still gravelly with sleep. And heartbreak, but she tries to toss the second one inside. “I have to best you in battle to win the honor of wielding it.”

“What if I loaned it to you?”

“Won’t work.”

“Temporarily? Even just for a few days?”

“Won’t work, Nova. I can’t even carry it without it dragging me down.” Anger flares again, and Bo-Katan pulls herself away from Novalise. To the side. “Besides, you may need it more than me.”

Nova smiles, sad and low. “To fight what war, Bo-Katan? I can’t even go into the other room.”

“Din told me he took you to the Living Waters,” Bo-Katan says instead, walking over to one of the huge windows on the side of the room. Daybreak has started, although daybreak on Mandalore is always filtered through its permahaze. “Tell me, Novalise, do you feel renewed?” It’s harsher than she intended, but Bo-Katan tries not to regret it. Nova has always been better than anyone at taking the lashings she deals out. Even when they’re entirely undeserved.

Even now.

“I don’t think it worked on me,” Nova says, unaffected by Bo-Katan’s misplaced ire, fingers finding the Rebel symbol hanging in the hollow of her collarbone. “I went somewhere, underwater.” Her gaze is faraway.

Fear lances at Bo-Katan’s stomach. “Went somewhere?”

“Vision,” Nova sighs. “Not—not a typical Force vision. It was weird. It was like—like I wasn’t in this world anymore. I was…between dimensions, almost.” She swallows. “A ghost.”

Silence, for longer than Bo-Katan can stand. “Well,” she says, brusquely, “that bodes well.”

Nova looks at her and smiles. It is so kind, so understanding, and it feels like a blade. Bo-Katan struggles to breathe for a minute, as her best friend dances over to her. So graceful, she recognizes, again, the air that seems to carry her wherever she walks. “Maybe,” Nova offers, “the Living Waters just don’t take well to Jedi.”

Bo-Katan gazes at her. “Maybe so.”

The air is heavy, stagnant. Neither of them want to be the first to speak.

“Nova—”

“Bo-Katan—”

Bo-Katan shakes her head; gestures towards Nova to continue. She feels almost feverish, delirious, sleep-deprived.

“I trust you, more than anyone,” Nova whispers, “to find Thrawn and kill him. You know that, right?”

Against all odds, Bo-Katan feels like she’s going to cry. All she’s able to give in response is a curt nod, and then Nova is throwing herself into Bo-Katan’s arms, her fists still clenched at her sides. Nova smells like coconut and freesia and something else, something Bo-Katan can’t quite name, and she swallows, closes her eyes, and hugs Nova back.

When she pulls away, Din has materialized at the door, outfitted in all his beskar, and Bo-Katan feels her heart lurch.

“Novalise,” she calls, after Nova’s already halfway out the door. She wants to tell her to be careful, maybe even not to go. Nova’s still herself, wholly herself right now, and the uncertainty seeps into Bo-Katan’s blood. Stay, she wants to say, follow me into the war room and lead a squadron to find Thrawn. Stay, and be a Commander. Stay, and be my Mand’alor. Be my best friend.

But Bo-Katan is the war’s, and no one else’s. And right now, Novalise is not her best friend, not the person who knows her heart better than anyone. She is being held captive, and she is not entirely her own, so Bo-Katan slams the door before anything else can get out.

“Be safe out there,” Bo-Katan manages, finally, and Nova smiles back at her.

The room feels infinitely darker when she leaves it.

*

The ship they choose is massive.

Inside its blackened steel hull is a smaller ship, nestled and ready to be given to Luke. Nova walks through the door of the starship and it seems to swallow her whole. It was the only Mandalorian-made one that was up for grabs, and Din didn’t want to take any of the Alliance’s. Whether that was to be safer in the wide swath of unmapped space in the Unknown Regions or simply out of principle, Nova doesn’t know. Wedge wasn’t wrong, there were more ships than there were pilots, but there was a steady stream of hubbub out in the landing bay as Din shepherded her onboard.

Nova knows they’re up to something. An embarking, of sorts. She can taste it in the air, the rush of energy a group of warriors has before stepping into a battle of some kind. She’s spent her entire life in pursuit of the same thing, moving from planet to planet.

Now, she is watching from the sidelines.

In response, she curls herself up into the copilot’s chair. Grogu’s staying at home, on Mandalore—it wasn’t what either her or Din wanted, but it was the way things shook out. Besides, the Alliance and the Mandalorians are down a Jedi; they may need another.

In the back of her mind, Nova knows the real reason they left Grogu behind. Din doesn’t trust that she’s able to keep the thing inside of her in check, not enough to keep her hands from wrapping around his neck. She reels with it. Nova feels sick.

“What are you doing?”

She turns around. A silver bullet he is right now, a vision. The beskar looks to be freshly polished. He is a weapon more than a man outfitted in all of this, and Nova’s heart sinks. She wants him bare, unencumbered. But even though this is not them rushing with the rest of the Rebels into battle, he is fighting his own war.

Right here, on this ship. With her.

She raises an eyebrow. “Sitting?”

Din tilts his head to the side, evaluating her. “You want to take the reins?”

Now both of Nova’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”

“Her Highness Pilotess of the Outer Rim,” Din says, through the vocoder.

Her old nickname, from what feels like centuries ago, lights up in her chest. Nova grins, then shifts into the pilot’s chair. Behind her, she can feel Din’s small smile through the mask, settling into the seat she just vacated. She flips the switches, engages the thrusters. Someone—Din, probably—has preloaded Luke’s location into the nav system, so all she has to do is get the ship airborne.

Underneath them, Mandalore fades into an azure haze.

Nova doesn’t speak until the ship is skyward, through the atmosphere, up away from the blue fleck of the planet both of them come home. Whatever’s inside her has receded, curled deep. It’s only Novalise behind the helm, now.

“You know,” she says, as she’s engaging them into warp, “if I squint, this ship could be Kicker.” She considers. “No, it actually can’t, this one’s too nice. But it could be the Crest.”

Din’s quiet for a while, stoic in that chair, watching Nova pulse them closer and closer to hyperspace.

“I’m going to fix it,” Din says finally, and for the first time, Nova can hear the anger in his voice. It shocks her, the danger of it, coming clean through the modulator. “We’ll give Luke the ship, and then you and I are going to find out how to get this thing out of you.”

Nova swallows. “Remember when our lives were going from planet to planet, hunting bounties down?”

“Nova—”

“There’s nothing I love more than being with you, in space, the world in front of us,” she whispers, as if to prove she’s still there. “Even now.”

She can feel Din’s eyes on her as she punches the ship into warp. Around them, the stars glitter and elongate, the ship purring underneath her control, and then they’re going, going, gone.

*

On Ahch-To, the night comes sooner than daybreak does. Luke hikes to the top of the highest point and watches the sun slip below the horizon. It’s a ritual, at this point—a pilgrimage he started to keep the children connected to the world around them. Without Grogu, and now, without Ben, Ahch-To is quiet, serene. Luke, even now, does not do well in the silence.

He closes his eyes as the night comes in at the seams, unrest thrumming like a butterfly throughout his blood. He’s searching for something. A burst of salt air, sharp and heavy, filters through his nostrils. With his eyes closed, both hands balanced on either knee, Luke goes searching through the Force.

He isn’t entirely sure what he’s looking for. Wedge, always, but the connection to him has faltered over the years, since Luke left the Outer Rim and his love behind, to come here and take up the mantle of education. A lot of good that was doing now, a small, sour voice whispers to him, and Luke swats it away like a gnat. He can see, vaguely, the collection of Allied and Mandalorian starships clustered together on the planet’s surface, and catches a glimpse of Wedge’s weathered, endearing face before he forces himself to look away.

Instead, he travels to Hosnian Prime. Leia, brilliant and beautiful in her Senator’s robes—Han and Ben on the Falcon. He watches his nephew, carefully, observant. Luke notices Ben look warily over his shoulders, once, twice, then his eyes narrow. Luke doesn’t stick around, shame and failure sluicing inside him.

“Ezra,” he tries, because he has no idea where Ezra’s energy is radiating from. They’ve spoken only once before, over the comm, when Luke’s squadron passed Hera’s Ghost on a reconnaissance mission. Everything Luke knows about Ezra Bridger is piecemeal; what he’s picked up from Hera and Nova and Ahsoka.

Ezra, Luke realizes glumly, will not simply materialize. Years of his life stranded with Grand Admiral Thrawn—the boy has gotten very good at hiding. Luke waits around in the ether for a few moments, desperate, hoping a flicker of something will tug at him, but Ezra isn’t reachable.

Luke sighs as a wave crests across the cragged uprising of the mountain he’s sitting on, and wishes that he was not alone on this planet. It seemed noble, and what was required of him as a Jedi, when he first started off here. But Luke is tired. Tired, and lonely, with the weight of a world itself nestled snugly under his sternum. Darkness is coming, is coming, is always coming—and he thought if he took himself out of the equation, if he came here, to teach young Jedi, then maybe when it rose again, he would feel prepared for it. At the very least, he wouldn’t be alone.

Ahch-To is Tatooine’s polar opposite, except in two ways—Luke is lonely here, and there’s nothing obstructing his view of the stars. They pulse above him, determined and glittering. Thousands and thousands of them, more than he can count or name.

“This is a long shot,” Luke murmurs to himself. But he returns to his position, eyes fluttering shut, and lets everything run out of him backward. He has not had success in searching for Ahsoka Tano, not since she vanished. It’s like she’s on a different spiritual plane entirely, removed from this world.

But Luke tries anyway.

In the distance, like a shout echoing from too far away to hear, Luke recognizes a low, keening noise. He pushes forward, to find her.

*

Nova isn’t sure how long they’ve been in space.

Toward the gravitational pull of the Unknown Regions, time becomes a warped, funny thing. There’s a meter mounted on the wall, showing the star-date and time, but it’s blinking. Glitching. She wraps herself tighter in the blanket she stole from the bunk downstairs, leaving Din to sleep. The interior of this ship is sleek, designed for combat. It’s built in the futuristic practicality that her Mandalorian vessel is—durasteel and stainless interior, the control panel tactile and intentional.

She runs her hands over the nav system, the azure signal for Ahch-To creeping closer, closer. Nova presses her hand to the beskar Rebel symbol hanging from her neck, closing her eyes to the familiar lull of the ship’s interior, and tries to let everything flow out of her backwards.

“Hey,” she hears, quiet, and Nova startles.

Din comes up behind her, his hands ungloved and resting on her shoulders. Nova sinks into the familiar warmth of them, the embrace.

“Can’t sleep?” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to the side of his thumb. Din works his fingers into the sore, tired muscles of her shoulderblades, and she relaxes into him.

“I should be asking you that,” Din manages, voice still gravelly.

Nova offers a small smile up to the space in front of them. “No,” she answers him, honestly, “I can’t.”

Din’s hands are still working, thumb brushing against the pulse point of her neck. It’s the same spot he’s claimed over and over again, with his teeth, his mouth, his fingertips. Nova flutters her eyes shut as he works his hands into the base of her scalp, dully aching. “What’s on your mind?”

Nova slides her thumbnail between teeth and tongue, biting down. It’s a bad habit she’s tried to kick, but one she’s never been able to rid herself of completely. “What isn’t?” she answers honestly, and Din stills for a second, but doesn’t stop. “I don’t know where Thrawn is,” Nova says, finally, because she doesn’t want to admit that her dreams are gone along with her fire, along with her tether to the Force. It’s a sick, unsatisfactory thing for this darkness to steal from her, and Nova can’t tell if it’s all gone entirely, or if it’s just that it’s behind a wall that she cannot access. “And if he has that big of an army, Din, I’m afraid we don’t stand a chance.”

Din is quiet, for a moment, knuckle catching on the raised hunch of her shoulderblade. Distractedly, Nova relaxes into his touch, and he resumes. “Novalise,” he says, softly, “it’s not your responsibility to find Thrawn.”

Nova shutters her eyes. But it is, she wants to snap. It’s my job to protect the galaxy. And no, it isn’t on her alone, but she should be there, right now, leading an expedition off into the farthest reaches of where he could be hiding. It’s in her ethos, on everything she was brought up on, and ignoring it because she’s scared of whatever is holding her captive is so antithetical to the person Nova is that it’s scraping her raw.

And the other half of her, the one that lost the battle on Hoth, is exhausted. All she wants to do is give the reigns over to another hero, to pass the torch. She wants to be in the stars, and she wants to be on Naator, and she wants to figure out how all of this is connected so she can disentangle herself from it one and for all.

“I don’t know what to do,” Nova offers up instead, and Din abandons her shoulders to move around to the control panels in front of her. A breath catches in her throat, tangled between a scream and a tear, and she lets herself study her husband. So beautiful, he is, stripped down like this—black underclothes, brown eyes, lashes longer than her thumbnail. “Tell me what to do,” she manages, and then she’s lifted out of her seat and slung into the warmth of his chest.

Nova breathes in, Din’s eternal scent of gunsmoke and cinnamon glittering around her, and a small piece of her halved heart is laid bare. Wordlessly, he carries her to the bedchamber—strong in his silence, unyielding—and Nova lets herself be swept away. Din like a tide, an unyielding, warm wave, and everything on the tip of her mind quiets, is brought to ease.

“Please,” Nova whispers, and he’s on her like a viper, like he always is. His teeth latch to the side of her neck. Din’s tongue works, expertly, against her pulse point. A butterfly, his mouth makes.

It is dark, utterly so—a blackout in the shape of their bedchamber. For a second, Nova is thrown violently into a memory of them entangled like this back on the Razor Crest, and nostalgia stings her. Salt in the wound. She sighs, and Din moves his mouth to her collarbone.

“More,” she mewls out, and the radius of his hand engulfs her. One planted around the base of her chin, head yanked upwards. The other desperate, roving between her legs. Nova’s mouth is open, stars swimming in her vision. Din is singular at this—at devouring her. His tongue laves down her chest, over her base layer. No time for it to be pulled away. He is holding her down, keeping her here.

“Din—”

“Quit talking,” he snarls, and Nova snaps her mouth shut. He is a silver star, pulsing for her in the darkness of this room. She cannot make out what he is doing, her Mandalorian, but Nova doesn’t need her eyes to know where Din will go. He is worshiping at the altar of her body, as he always has. Treating her, even now, even halved, as something holy.

When his mouth finds the slick between her thighs, Nova clenches her mouth shut. The noise that leaves her anyway is skyward and violent. The rough, calloused familiarity of Din’s hands are on her hipbones, anchoring her there. To be devoured, to be taken elsewhere. Out of this room, out of this ship—the two of them alone in their holy space.

Din does not stop. He is on her like a man starving, and after Nova lets him go, go, go, without asking for a break, because this is her divine punishment, being brought to the brink—she is distinctly aware that he is there, pressing kisses to the inside of her thighs, whispering to her in a language she does not understand.

Nova is exhausted, weak, reaching for him. Din does not allow it—he holds her trembling hands in his instead, snaking his body back up to the top of the sheets to hold her to his bare chest.

“Sleep,” Din commands, and in the blackness of their antechamber, here, Nova doesn’t have the will or the gusto to resist her Mandalorian. He is all heat and protection, his body a shield in the dark, and she lets herself be lulled into the quietness. Nova cannot conjure the Force or anything here, but with Din’s even breathing beside her, she lets herself be lulled into the dark.

The Force doesn’t come, but it turns out that sleep does. And Nova is so used to the anathema of a dreamless, sequinless sleep, that when the vision starts, it startles her.

It’s not a Force vision—similar to what the Living Waters pulled her into underwater back on Mandalore. It’s—it’s like Nova is being shown something that she shouldn’t have access to. It’s a blinking blackness, a graveyard of sorts. Thousands of stars broken and glittering over the ground beneath her feet. Something is breathing down her neck, and Nova whips around, but whatever was staring her down is gone. There’s a voice, distantly, somewhere, calling out to her. She can’t tell who it is, or what they want.

So, Nova kicks through this afterimage of burned out stars, some of them still on and burning even after they’ve been stolen from the sky. She feels, belatedly, like she’s at the bottom of a kaleidoscope.

A deep, ancestral thrumming sparks up behind her—from within her, maybe, Nova can’t tell. She looks for anything she can spot, a landmark, but it’s just her and the stars. And then, without warning, she comes to a mirror.

Not a mirror, exactly, no—an imitation of a looking glass. It’s silver and sparkling with the same center of the ring Din put on her finger back on Corellia. Millions and millions of chrome particles, swirling into her reflection.

“No,” she says, more of a reflex than anything else, and then she’s staring at the version of herself that she’s seen in nightmares and visions, the one that’s living deep down in her heart. “You aren’t real.”

“I am as real as you are,” Not-Nova echoes, snapping her blackened teeth. “Let me out, Novalise.”

“Never,” Nova snarls. “I will never unleash you again. I’d rather stake myself through the heart than let you become me.”

“I’m already wearing your skin,” Not-Nova laughs, tapping at the forefront of the glass where their fingers meet, “your smile, your body. I can come for you at any time, you know.”

“Why?” There’s a thousand things Nova wants to say, but that’s what comes out. “Why are you here? I’ll never do what you want. I’ll never turn to the Dark Side, or hurt the people I love, or become this thing. Become you.”

“Interesting.” Not-Nova cocks her head to the side, considering. She is venom-sweet, sepulcher-dark. Nova’s stomach turns over. “Look where you are now—standing in the wreckage.”

Nova looks down, abject horror curling inside her like vines. She feels pinpricked a thousand times over when she sees everyone she loves stranded across the scattershot, bodies long since dead. Din’s brown eyes, unseeing and gone, reflected back up at her. Horrified, a sob works itself out of Nova’s mouth.

“I have chosen this—” Not-Nova gestures to the wasteland around them, each dead star glinting and crying, “because the alternative is to be weak. Power gone, stripped away. Do you see what the Dark can offer you, Novalise?”

“You—”

“You still get to live,” Not-Nova says, and it would be earnest if her eyes weren’t black, if there weren’t blood sluicing through her teeth every time she talks. “And you can rise with the greats of the galaxy. No, you can’t save the ones you love, but you get to be unimpeachable.” She takes a half-step towards Nova, blocking Bo-Katan’s disfigured body from her view. “You get power. Don’t you want to be the most powerful thing in this galaxy and the next?”

“I will never,” Nova says, low and humming with anger, “give Grand Admiral Thrawn that satisfaction.”

Not-Nova’s laughter peals high and clear above her, ringing off the walls of a structure Nova can’t see. “You think Thrawn is behind this, girl?”

Nova stares up at her shadow-self.

“Thrawn is a puppet,” Not-Nova hisses. “He is excellent at what he does, but he is not the king on this chessboard.”

“Who is?” Nova asks, surging forward and knocking Not-Nova off-balance. “Who is?”

Not-Nova just smiles at her, serene and terrifying. “Do you know what it’s called, when a star collapses? Burns itself out?”

Nova holds her fists up, a viper, ready to strike.

“A supernova,” Not-Nova coos at her. She presses her thorned fingertips to Nova’s forehead, and sends her hurtling back to reality.

Nova wakes, fear a sword through her chest, glowing with the afterimage of her dream.

Distantly, violently, their ship is sending out a distress call.

*

whoa look amy amiedala knows how to post more than one chapter a year!!! thank you all, as always, for being here, and for your kindness when i returned earlier this year. i swear i will finish this story <3

not sure when the next chapter will be up but we're hoping for weeks, not months!!!

THANK YOU!

xoxo, amelie

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