Here's Kix for the Jedi!Qymaen AU!! The pitch is that he gets temporarily transfered into Qymaen's battalion... There's a lot to adjust to. Mostly his new, stupidly hot Kaleesh general ✌️
Started posting the series on Ao3 if anyone would like to give it a read (i will love you forever)! Also, come harass me about them, kitty cats, and dragons on Art Fight!
Paz gave a small shake of his head. “I didn’t say he did anything.”
Sabine lifted an eyebrow and dipped her chin. “Somehow Din always becomes ‘my husband’ when you’re ticked at him.”
She expected a rebuttal but, instead, he conceded with a small cant of his helmet. Before she could figure if it was a good thing or not that he wasn’t arguing, he came and sat beside her, heaving a sigh as his weight made the bench creak.
“He’s the Manda’lor. We’re welcoming a new tribe. He should be here,” he stated, straightforwardly but, thankfully, without much heat.
“You know how much Din hates being the centre of attention. Are you really surprised?”
“He doesn’t have to be the centre of anything, he just has to be present. This doesn’t look good.”
“He is present,” Sabine assured Paz. Without making too much of a show of it, she glanced around, trying to keep it casual though she realized she had most likely just lied. “He probably just… stepped out to catch his breath.”
Paz turned his head then so she wasn’t sure if the little sound she heard was a scoff from him or a crackle from the bonfire before them.
Unperturbed by (and likely uninterested in) the conversation, Grogu pushed himself up from his spot between Sabine’s boots and toddled over to Paz. With all his bulky gear and armour, he was a perfect jungle gym to the little one; he scaled his leg easily and continued on until he surmounted his shoulder. There, he plonked down to sitting, enjoying this high vantage point from where he could watch all the world. Paz brought a hand up, giving the kid his finger to hold.
The general merry-making continued before and around them.
An official count was yet to be taken, but Sabine guessed the tribe had now swelled to somewhere in the neighbourhood of six hundred. Not all were out tonight: quite a few had peeled away and returned to their homes. Still they contributed to the picture with the warm light spilling from their windows, painting a soft bokeh around the heart of the village.
Through the walls of bodies, Sabine’s sight pierced like a heat-seeking missile, ever finding and following her mother and Indigo.
They were fine, of course.
Nowhere in the galaxy could be safer than right here, encircled by Mandalorians.
She didn’t see Fenn anywhere nearby. It was just a fact and it shouldn’t have meant anything more—it likely didn’t mean anything more—but she had become somewhat accustomed to the sight of Fenn and her mother beside one another.
The other Protector, Koska, sat watching the fire. Still healing, she declined from dancing. Just looking at her, no one would see she was in pain unless they knew to read the way she favoured her one side. In all the time she had known her, Sabine had never seen her sit or stand any other way than ramrod straight, so the slight lean to the side practically screamed of something wrong.
These days, wherever Koska was, Kix wasn’t far away. It made sense when she first returned from Suraci, badly injured as she was; as the necessity wore away, however, their gravitating to one another transformed—subtly, gradually.
Currently, Kix stood just a few paces away. He and Pekka were helping some young ones roast sweet-mallows on the fire, jamming the fluffy sweets on the points of antler-like branches picked off the forest floor.
Sabine couldn’t hear them across the distance and through all the noise, but it seemed Pekka was trying to coach Kix on how to cook the sweet-mallows without incinerating them. It was quite comical, watching the massive Mandalorian so delicately rotate the branch in the heat haze, toasting the sweets a perfect brown.
Kix concentrated intensely as he jabbed a loaded branch into the fire. Going straight into the flames rather than the heat, the sugary sweets caught light within seconds. With eyes blown wide like he’d just set a whole camp on fire, he drew it out and hurriedly blew out the flames.
Watching on, Koska tried and failed to stifle a laugh. Kix turned and held the branch up for her to see his failure, and though he smiled sheepishly, there was a kind of relief in it—he could endure his mistake, maybe even enjoy it if it meant making her laugh.
Casting her gaze about, Sabine just happened to see someone making a beeline through the crowd, headed for her.
Their species, their build, their face was all shrouded: if they wore any armour besides the ash and charcoal-painted helmet, it was hidden beneath layers of clothing and a thick, black cloak to boot.
Paz stood, his frame setting straight and solid. The other Mandalorian slowed their pace and stopped at an overly respectful distance.
He bowed his head. “Su cuy’gar, Manda’lor,” he said, thus revealing a gravelly, distinctly hissing voice.
A glance at his large, three-fingered hands confirmed it to Sabine.
A Trandoshan.
“Su cuy’gar. You may call me Sabine, vod.”
“And I am Lyon,” he introduced himself, laying a hefty claw on his chest.
“No clan?”
“I was the only one of both my clan and my tribe to survive the Great Purge,” he said, a hiss stretching out every S.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, you’re in good company.”
“But as long as we live, as long as we remember them, they remain as good as alive.”
“Of course.”
His helmet turned, his wide visor surveying them. He seemed to stick on Grogu a moment, and the child stared right back, a subtle steel in his gaze. He also pressed closer to Paz, Sabine noted.
She couldn’t blame him.
He had spent the greater part of his life shuffled around pirate dens and mercenary camps. Many Trandoshans out in the galaxy took to such work—they revered just about any form of hunting. Grogu probably couldn’t help associating them with those dark places.
Generally, though, he didn’t hold a grudge against an entire species based on the actions of some who happened to be of said species…
“I was hoping to meet your riduur tonight,” Lyon said, returning his visor to her.
“He had business to attend to,” Sabine told him, pulling on an expression of regret. (It wasn’t a lie. Whatever Din was doing, even if it was just getting out of the crowd before it drove him insane, was a kind of business. His business, in any case.)
“I understand. Perhaps another time.”
Lyon said it simply, but his disappointment, though politely veiled, struck her like a wave. Right in that moment, she felt like rising to her feet, marching to wherever Din had slunk off to, grabbing his arm and hauling him right here.
But that didn’t seem rational.
Still.
She really felt like doing it…
With one last respectful bow of his head, Lyon took his leave.
It was a moment before Paz sat down again. Grogu on his shoulder remained rigid, his ear ticking like he was straining to hear something at a very fine frequency.
“Something wrong, ad’ika?” Sabine nudged.
He seemed to mull over his response before shaking his head and signing: “I don’t know.”
“There is something off about that one,” Paz commented as if to back Grogu up. Usually, he spoke deep and clear and didn’t care to check his volume; now, however, he purposely lowered his voice to keep these words between just them.
“Like?”
“Well, for one: he’s too warm-blooded for a Trandoshan.”
“Did you scan his heat signature?”
“Not intentionally. It just so happened that I had my visor on that setting when he came by.”
Sabine cocked a disbelieving eyebrow but didn’t pursue it. “So he’s something else then.”
“Maybe,” Paz said but not like he agreed.
“You’re still up?”
Din didn’t react or reply. His head remained down as he sat on the couch, elbows on knees, focus devoted to a datapad on the low table in front of him. The device’s glow painted bluish streaks in his eyes and across his cuirass while the lamp beside him (the only other current source of light in the living area) cast a cool, golden halo around him.
Beady sat right up beside him, resting on his folded legs like a tame Loth-cat. His head turned the moment Sabine appeared. As she approached, Indigo softly squirming and griping in her arms, the little droid turned to Din and nudged his thigh with his boxy head to get his attention.
Din glanced to the droid then looked in the direction he turned. When he saw Sabine and their daughter, his head snapped up, his eyes wide like a child caught doing something they shouldn’t.
She pointed to him, then pinched thumb and forefinger together beside her eye, flicked them open, then flicked them off her chest.
He blinked for a moment and the kybuck-in-the-headlights expression faded. Her question finally registered but rather than answer it, his brow pinched in the middle and he looked around, trying to spot a chrono (which they didn’t have).
“It’s long after midnight,” Sabine informed him as she came closer. She nodded to Indigo in her arms. “Someone destroyed a diaper and now demands more ammo.”
She doubted he heard her but he must’ve surmised the situation.
She wasn’t waiting on an invitation and he knew it but, regardless, he patted the couch cushion beside him (the opposite side to Beady). He pulled out the pillow he had had wedged behind his lower back and set it up for her.
“Why are you awake?” she tried again, her voice straining on the last word as she lowered herself down onto the couch. The long day and the premonition of a storm to come had rusted up her knees and seized some muscle in her back—in addition, of course, to the tax of caring for a newborn. The couch—a perfect balance between soft and sturdy—felt like heaven.
Din frowned and shook his head. “Sorry, I—I didn’t catch that.”
“Beady?” Sabine prompted and the droid swung its bubble-like optic to her, little antenna wobbling softly, not unlike the tail-wag of a lap-pet. “Can you give me subtitles, buddy?”
The little droid chirped his understanding and clambered up to perch on Din’s lap. With a soft flickery sound, he activated his hologram program, spraying the request she just gave in a string of bluish letters, projected in the space between her and Din.
“I didn’t know he could do that,” Din said, genuinely amazed.
“So? What’s keeping you up?” she asked once more, the words appearing almost the very instant she spoke them.
He shrugged. “Can’t sleep.”
Pointedly, she raked her gaze over him. He followed and looked down at himself, frowning like he only now registered the fact he was still wearing his armour.
He hadn’t even tried to come to bed.
He had slipped away from the gathering at some point and never returned. When she finally turned in, she found him here, on the couch, but having just the energy to tuck Grogu and Indigo in, she didn’t linger. Once the kids were settled, she spent the dregs changing into sleep clothes herself and then promptly conked out in bed, falling practically comatose until Indigo’s cries woke her just now.
“Alright. I didn’t go to bed,” Din admitted now. “Been going through the footage from—” A yawn interrupted him. Halfway through, he scraped his hand down his face and covered his mouth until it was done. Once free, he shook his head as if to wake himself up. “—Cara and Boba,” he finished.
Sabine got Indigo situated and then stretched her neck up to see the datapad. Without being asked, Din held it up in front of her.
Stills from the thefts purportedly committed by Mandalorians populated the screen: kidnapping Pershing, breaking into weapons factories, stealing equipment and data from at least three different laboratories. She had seen them before.
All except one.
She lifted her eyebrows, indicating one that looked like a shipyard.
Din’s expression soured. “That’s the latest one Cara sent.”
“What happened?”
“This one wasn’t like the others. Five ‘Mandalorians’ broke into a facility on Corellia. Stole enough coaxium to fuel a fleet.”
“That’s bad.”
“Gets worse.” Taking the datapad back, Din opened a report Cara sent with the footage and showed it to Sabine.
Much of it was blanked out—hastily and sloppily. She wasn’t sure whether Cara or whoever sent it to her had done the redacting. It was a weak insurance measure; Sabine doubted anyone’s job (or head) would be safe if it got out that this report had made its way to Din—it probably wasn’t even supposed to reach Cara.
The only parts not blanked out were the planet, the pilfered goods, the thieves, and the victims.
“Nine dead,” she read, lowering her voice as if to keep it from Indigo.
“Youngest was eighteen. Just started working there a cycle ago. Maintenance.”
Din took the pad back and stared at the report. Sabine read him as he did so, her heart constricting at the furrows in his expression—the same creases that held mirth and melted warmth now carved in with something dark, chilled, and grim.
Not only were these deaths unnecessary, they were innocents and non-combatants. There was not even a trace of honour in taking their lives.
But something more unsettled him.
“There’s… something else. Isn’t there?” she prompted, tentatively, acidic ice growing in her stomach.
He didn’t move, just flicked his eyes to the side to read her words as Beady transcribed them. His mouth pressed into an even tighter line and he turned his head away for a moment, drawing a short, shallow breath, like he was bracing for a bone-setting.
Flicking through images and reports on the datapad, he stuck on one. After a moment of internal debate, he held it up for her to see.
A still image of a duracrete wall, taken at night but well-lit by floodlights. Some crates lay skew in the foreground, pushed and shoved out the way hastily, roughly, to allow someone to get close enough to carve words straight into the duracrete.
In Mando’a—language and script:
When the Manda’lor falls, Demagol will rise.
Instinctively, Sabine tightened her hold on her baby daughter, bringing her hunched knees up to shield her. “Demagol?” she breathed, the name barely leaving her throat for fear it could call him out of his rotting grave, wherever it be.
“Apparently, it was carved at the sites of the other crimes, too,” Din said, his jaw almost clenched shut in barely tamped frustration.
“Then why haven’t we seen it before?”
“Because they thought it was gibberish. Just… random vandalism. They didn’t bother adding it to the reports. Boba happened to spot it in the background of one of the stills; he told Cara and she managed to get this from Teva.”
“But why Demagol? Why—why any of this?”
He scrubbed at his eyes, harshly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to work out.”
Putting the datapad back down on the table, he leaned back into the couch like he was deflating. Still wearing all but his helmet, he couldn’t properly relax, but he could recline at least.
No one spoke for a while, so Beady clicked his hologram off. He remained perched on Din’s thigh, ready to reactive the hologram at a moment’s notice. For now, though, he settled down on folded legs, content just to be by his favourite organic.
Indigo’s little gulps abated the silence that tried to take over. Sabine never imagined it would be a sound she would enjoy but it quickly—instantly, really—became one of her favourites.
Her little hand clutched her mother’s finger as she fed. The tiny fist flexed softly, like a calm pulse, and it wasn’t, but Sabine felt like she was trying to impart some comfort.
She feared nothing.
Never had she woken paralyzed from a nightmare about Demagol: the ancient flesh-carver for whom the word “despicable” couldn’t begin to cover. She hadn’t heard the stories, hadn’t wondered what was true and what was inflated sensationalism, hadn’t lived to see and hear of such horrible things, it became easy—sensible, even—to believe all the tales.
The world to her was innocent and fresh and clear. Only the present mattered; only the present existed.
What Sabine wouldn’t give to make that a reality…
Din unlatched his vambraces and one of his pauldrons, and grabbed a cloth off the back of the couch (they had lived here less than a week but already they had these cloths strewn everywhere). He folded it and tossed it on his shoulder at just the moment the infant had had her fill. Marvelling at their synchronicity, Sabine passed her to her father and let him burb her.
“You see the threads, too; don’t you?” he asked, quietly, as he patted Indigo’s back.
“A clone engineer, lab tech, research,” Sabine listed as she closed her sleep shirt. She sighed as if accepting defeat. “Yeah. I see it. It’s got all the makings of a new Demagol.”
“I don’t think we can ignore this anymore.”
“We weren’t ignoring it before. We just… there wasn’t anything we could do about it.”
“The New Republic got nervous when Bo-Katan killed just one person—nine… nine will cause a panic.” Din inhaled and then sighed twice as deep. “And it just had to be Corellia.”
Had it occured somewhere in the Outer Rim, the incident might not have gone unnoticed, but it would’ve cooled down fairly soon. Refineries and fuel depots got targeted by pirates and thieves and gangsters constantly; most outlets factored the lost profits in when pricing their goods and just carried on.
But Corellia was Coruscant’s neighbour and one of her most prominent symbiotes. To a planet with a couple trillion citizens and mountainous buildings, transport and freight were lifeblood; Corellia was the bone marrow, supplying the speeders and ships and the fuel that kept Coruscant’s hearts beating. Strike it, and Coruscant would whip around and slash like a frightened, wounded animal.
“They wanted to send a message,” Sabine deduced.
“It’s in Mando’a. It’s meant for us. But why strike Core Worlds? We’d hear them loud enough out here.”
“But then the Core wouldn’t care. Whoever’s behind all this, they’re trying to get the Core’s attention, get them to turn on us.”
“But why? What does that accomplish?”
“Well, who’s stronger than the Core?” (And who’s easier to manipulate than the New Republic? she thought but didn’t feel it needed saying.)
Din’s frown dug in even deeper, but he continued patting and rubbing little Indigo’s back with featherlight pressure. A small burp eventually popped up, soon followed by a much louder one. Though he would’ve felt them, Beady determined it was part of his job to ensure he didn’t miss them, so he dutifully wrote out the sounds as they occurred.
Satisfied and sleepy, Indigo yawned. Din resettled her in his arms, cradling her. He curled over her a moment, holding a kiss to her forehead.
Not for the first time, Sabine marvelled at how the same hands to win and wield the Darksaber could hold their daughter so gently. Indigo, for her part, never appeared safer than when her father held her.
His gaze lingered on her. It was a horrible thought, but with how discomforted and worried he looked, he seemed as if he were readying to farewell her.
“Talk to me,” Sabine prompted.
“I keep… wondering,” Din confessed. “Did we—did we do the right thing, putting out the call?”
“Of course we did the right thing.”
“But this all started happening when we did. Maybe it’s a sign. That we should’ve waited; should’ve stayed hidden.”
“You mean hidden and divided?”
His mouth pulled, bitterly, but he didn’t refute that.
“Din. This started before we put the call out.”
“Having no Manda’lor is better than having a Demagol.”
“That—” Sabine pointed to the datapad, “—is not a prophecy.”
“Then what is it?” Din asked, looking at her directly. Though an edge had crept into his voice, he forced himself to keep his volume down. “A warning? A call-out? A challenge? What is it?”
“It’s someone trying to scare us off this path. Hey. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Just because it’s getting difficult and—and weird doesn’t mean we’re wrong or that we need to turn back. We can’t control how the galaxy reacts to us; we can’t just decide not to have enemies.”
Din huffed and almost smiled.
“What?”
“Korcoran said something similar. That just because the path is difficult, doesn’t mean it’s the wrong path.”
“Sometimes you can only know it’s the right path because it’s difficult.”
His eyes flicked to her after reading her words. He made the shape of a smile and nodded but couldn’t undo the hard knot of his eyebrows. He looked back at the datapad, the jagged message glaring back at him, silently taunting.
“I think I should go there,” he said.
“What for?”
“Well. They left this out. What else did they ignore?”
“Good point. But I don’t think they’ll be happy to see a Mandalorian sniffing around their crime scene.”
“Then I’ll just have to look like something else.”
Sabine laughed. When Din didn’t crack even the edge of a smile, she stopped. “Wait. You’re serious?”
Guys. I have more "clones get married headcanons" 😏
let us start off with Kix!
So towards the very tail end of the war he gets injured😱 and is rushed away, believe it or not, to a civilian hospital, when he comes through he is out of it and confused, like "why are there so many civilians around??? Is this a hospital??? Am I in a civilian hospital??" And promptly, tries to get out of bed. He is immediately stopped by a nurse with a hand on his shoulder and a gentle but firm "no, lay down, you have stitches, you can't risk tearing out. We worked hard on those."
He gets a good look at her and decides he'll listen, (not because she's pretty and obviously knows what she's doing or anything, of course not *wink, wink*) anyways, while he's there, he becomes a shameless flirt. (Fives is so proud) and she agrees to a date and the rest is history ✨️
I think their marriage would be them being very caring about each other's well-being, like
Her: you should take a nap, my love, you look so tired😕
Him: oh, I'm fine🤗
Her: the last time you slept, you slept for 5 and a 1/2 hours and you have been awake for 17 hours. You have already had 7 cups of caff and I wouldn't be surprised if you snuck an eighth one🤨 please take a nap.
Him: ......
Him: wake me up in three hours
Her: eight.
Him: four🤨
Her: no, eight.
Him: five?
Her: *shakes head*
Him: seven, that's my final offer😌
Her:😐
Him: fineee. are you going to drink a gallon of water then???
Her: *Gasp* this isn't about me😡this is about you getting some sleep!
Him: I'll sleep, when you drink😀
Her: go to sleep before i sedate you😑
Him: Drink water before I give you an I. V.🤨
Both of them:🧍♂️🧍♀️
Him: Snuggle with me until I fell asleep?
Her: okiii😊
Do they open a medical practice together? I think so🤭
(Also their song is "I wanna remember" by NEEDTOBREATHE)
