Cook Islanders are the indigenous Polynesian people of the Cook Islands, and the identity is best understood as a diverse island-based heritage rather than a single uniform culture: Britannica notes that, apart from the people of isolated Pukapuka, almost all Cook Islanders have mixed Polynesian ancestry, with historical intermarriage also involving European, Chinese, and African settlers, while Te Ara emphasizes that the wider community includes multiple island histories and dialect communities. Linguistically, Cook Islands Māori is an Eastern Polynesian language related to New Zealand Māori, Hawaiian, and Tahitian; Pukapuka belongs to a different Western Polynesian branch, and there are several distinct dialects across the islands, with Rarotongan often serving as the main taught form. Socially and culturally, Cook Islanders are strongly organized around kinship, with the extended family remaining a powerful unifying force, while church life has long been central both in the islands and in diaspora communities. Their cultural life is visible in practices such as tīvaevae quilting, ceremonial hair-cutting at adolescence, energetic dance and drumming, and social music built around ukulele and guitar, all of which Te Ara describes as flourishing customs. Modern Cook Islands identity is also deeply transnational: many Cook Islanders live outside the islands, especially in New Zealand and Australia, and Te Ara reports that by 2018 more than 80,000 people in New Zealand identified with Cook Islands ethnicity, around 85% of them New Zealand-born, while an estimated 28,000 lived in Australia in 2021. That dispersion has made language preservation a major concern, because only a minority of Cook Islanders in New Zealand could converse in Cook Islands Māori by the 2000s and 2010s, prompting language nests, school teaching, and other revitalization efforts. Christianity is also a major part of the cultural landscape, with the Cook Islands Christian Church historically the largest denomination and other Christian traditions also present.
ahhhh this is niche but I just found the funniest scene I had to cut from Tivaevae (this takes place during the journey from Kamino to Geonosis) (also let me know if y'all want to see more of these bc I have 50k+ words of cut content from Tivaevae alone)
With a groan, Rex rolled over and retrieved his commlink. He reopened the message center and navigated to Ahsoka's chat. Being that it was hosted on the internal GAR network, all it needed was a holonet connection to work instead of the long-distance communication equipment required for holocalls.
CT01987567!REX>How's Boba doing?
There was a few seconds wait, then Ahsoka's typing ellipsis appeared.
JC79190509!TANO>He's okay. He had a rough day.
CT01987567!REX>What happened?
JC79190509!TANO>He was looking for something in Prime's quarters but they threw it away after he died.
JC79190509!TANO>He was really broken up about it.
CT01987567!REX>Stang. What was it?
JC79190509!TANO>Something in a lockbox. I didn't want to pry.
Rex rubbed the scar on his chin.
CT01987567!REX>Keep doing what you're doing. It sounds like it's working.
JC79190509!TANO>It is.
JC79190509!TANO>Oh, by the way
JC79190509!TANO>He's my vod'ika now :)
Rex dropped his commlink on his face.
CT01987567!REX> You know that means he's your problem forever now, right?
JC79190509!TANO> :)
"Vod'ika," Rex groaned out loud. She was insane. She remembered that Boba had been both cursing her out and propositioning her thirty hours previous, right? They'd been away for one rotation and a half and she'd adopted him.
It… it didn't actually surprise him, he realized. In fact, it was inevitable. Boba was a clone, even if he did age normally, and she already felt so protective of the clones twice her size. Could there ever have been another outcome when she finally found one smaller than her?
CT01987567!REX>Any leads on the Cuy'val Dar?
JC79190509!TANO>None, except for Kal Skirata, and I'm not taking Boba to that bastard except as a last resort.
CT01987567!REX>He's not that bad.
JC79190509!TANO>He's not that bad??
Rex watched her typing ellipsis animate for a concerning amount of time and felt like it may have been something he said.
JC79190509!TANO>Don't tell me that he's not that bad!! If he let his shabla dinii'la nulls do HALF of what Boba said they did to him, then he's not just bad, he's a massive dickhead. And you were there too, so you know for a fact that it DID happen, and a gentle reminder that you were the one who told me about it in the FIRST PLACE, REX, so please don't act like I'm somehow out of line for saying that he is bad.
CT01987567!REX>Please calm down, Commander.
She didn't respond. Rex frowned and made sure that the commlink still had a strong signal to the GAR's internal network, then a message from Wolffe arrived.
CC01713636!WOLFFE> Do you have any idea why Ahs'ika is yelling so damn loud about you in Toydarian right now
Rex quickly closed the messaging center, threw his commlink on the charging pad, and rolled over in his rack. Not his circus, not his kowakian monkey-lizards.
Still struggling to emotionally recover from Master Obi-Wan's deception, Ahsoka discovers in the aftermath that twelve-year-old Boba Fett has been locked up among adults in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center. After convincing Chancellor Palpatine to grant him a pardon, she manages to secure his release on the condition that she serve as his legal guardian. Now, with the help of Master Plo and the Wolfpack, she vows to help him track down what family he has left.
The crèche still smelled the same as it had as far back as Ahsoka could remember; chalky aquarelle paint and sweet craft paste, sharp calligraphy ink and sun-warmed tatami mats, all overlaid with the minty dalas wood incense that Crèchemaster Vereixem always claimed was calming to a child's disposition. He'd lit a stick ten minutes ago, probably sensing her irritation.
Kento—the ancient dras lizard that Ahsoka had once liberated from the Halls of Learning and hid under her bed for a week—lay sleeping on a java wood branch in his transparasteel enclosure in the quiet corner. The bone masks that her Kaleesh Crèchemaster wore were displayed high on the bamboo wall, out of reach of his curious wards and magnetized to avoid being pulled down with the Force. Each youngling he helped raise decorated a mask for him. They were made from mumuu bones that he harvested himself then carved to resemble the faces of various animals across the galaxy.
Hers hung three spots over from the floor-to-ceiling window that looked east; she still remembered painting the mask with careful fingers, sure that she would make the best mask ever for the nicest Crèchemaster in the galaxy. She had chosen the one that resembled a borgle bat and covered it with green, pink, and purple splotches–attempting a sort of patchwork look that she had really thought that she'd nailed at the time—and glued an obnoxious spray of white feathers in the center.
At the time she'd thought it a masterpiece, but now that she looked at it with fresh eyes the best she could say was that it wasn't quite as ugly as some of the others. The patchwork effect she had been going for made the skull look diseased and the feather crest was doing the same thing Anakin's hair did when he fell asleep flat on his face. Not that Vereixem cared, of course; as far as he was concerned, every single mask that one of his younglings made was perfect, no matter how ugly it was.
Taarak made a happy chirp that was muffled by Anakin's thumb. She glanced up from her coloring page just long enough to see that the little usurper was still dreamily munching away on her Master's ruined glove instead of coloring, distracted by the taste and feel of leather in his mouth and the toys levitating in front of him.
She knew she was being irrational. There was nothing to be mad or jealous or territorial over. Taarak was a kriffing toddler, he wasn't about to steal her Master out from under her. His constant scent marking was done from instinct, not as a challenge to her.
"Ndi mtundu wanji?" Anakin asked Taarak, bouncing him on his knee. His aura was a radiant cloud of coppery-blue pride-affection that made Ahsoka fight down the possessive urge to lean across the craft table and scent mark him into oblivion. "Pano, look. Ndi mtundu wanji, do you know?"
Taarak cooed and reached for the yellow block Anakin was pointing to. "Dzuwa," he sang softly.
"Inde, inde, very good." Vereixem had put out a bowl of raw bantha meat cut into cubes for them to share. Anakin popped one into his mouth, chewed it, then fed it to the toddler as a reward. "In Basic it's yellow, can you say yellow? Nena yellow?"
"El-low," Taarak said, blinking up at him.
"Yellow, inde, good boy." Anakin fed him another cube of chewed bantha meat, practically glowing with blue pride.
"Are you treat training him?" Ahsoka asked, trying not to scowl.
Anakin smirked and shrugged. "Worked for you, didn't it?" he asked, his aura going deep, brassy gold with affection-humor. He popped another cube in his mouth.
"You didn't—" Ahsoka began heatedly. A familiar tutting noise cut her off.
"Big feelings, my little kit, what do we do with our big feelings?" Crèchemaster Vereixem cooed at her over her shoulder. The mask he wore today was a ronto, decorated with rainbow-colored Sriluurian butterflies. Hundreds of small yarn chains the color of ruddy turu grass clicking with glass beads hung down his back.
"I don't have big feelings, Master," she grumbled.
"Really?" Vereixem chuckled. "How odd. My Empathy may not be visual like yours, but I could have sworn I sensed some very big feelings coming from this table."
"Perhaps they were Taarak's," she replied, coloring in her bantha forcefully.
Vereixem squeezed her shoulders. "Shall we sing the big feelings song together?" he asked.
"Master, I don't think that's necessary," she said faintly, cringing. She felt her stripes heat to black.
"I do," Anakin said in a serious voice, his aura gone molten gold with hilarity. "In fact, I'd like to learn it so that I can help you with your big feelings out in the field, Padawan."
"Oh, what a good idea!" Vereixem beamed at Ahsoka. "Ready, dear? We'll sing it together."
Ahsoka glared at her Master, who smiled back like a tooka with a mithoo in its mouth. "Go on," Anakin encouraged her.
Ahsoka took a deep breath. "I have big feelings, very big feelings. They make me yell and, they make me cry. But I'm bigger than, all my big feelings, so to the Force, all my big feelings fly."
Anakin helped Taarak clap his little red-orange hands with a face-splitting grin.
"Force, Force–" Vereixem paused with his hands above his head. "Come now, Ahsoka, don't forget the next part."
Ahsoka sighed and raised her hands. "Force, Force, like the rain, wash my big feelings away." They trailed their fingers down in tandem. "Force, Force, like the breeze, blow away my big feelings." They made their hands swim through the air. "Force, Force, like the sky, help make my big feelings fly." They painted a rainbow above their heads in an arc.
Vereixem clapped cheerily. "Well done, Ahsoka. See, don't you feel better?"
"Yes, Master," she said tonelessly, wishing she was dead.
"Can you do that again?" Anakin asked innocently, opening up the holocam on his wrist-mounted commlink.
Ahsoka growled at him. Taarak's eyes went wide, round, and nearly black, and his yellow aura brightened with milky fear and teal protection. He bared his little baby fangs at her and let out a returning high-pitched growl. Across the room, Kento's rainbow-colored frill popped up around his neck and he made a high shriek that Ahsoka had never heard before. He threw himself at the transparasteel wall of his enclosure and slid down, leaving a wet trail of venomous drool behind.
"Ayi, Taarak, ayi," Vereixem said sternly, striding over to the enclosure with his hand out. His pink aura reached out to Kento with minty serenity and calmed the creature, who sulkily crawled into his hide. "We do not use animals to hurt people. Knight Skywalker, translate for me please."
"Calm down, you two, there's plenty of me to go around," Anakin said, his aura gone a very smug shade of red. "Palibe nyama, Taarak."
"Inde," Taarak sang sweetly, pulling Anakin's head down so he could rub his lek all over his cheek again. He made steady eye contact with Ahsoka as he did, his aura glowing bright metallic green with victory-possession.
Ahsoka closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and centered herself. She was sixteen. Taarak was two. She was not going to snap at a baby. She focused on empathizing with the toddler instead of dreaming about biting him. Coming to the Temple was scary. He was possessive of Anakin because he was lonely and he was the one who had brought him to the Temple. It made her Master feel more familiar to him than he really was, so he was clinging to him like… like a little tick.
She opened her eyes and met Anakin's. He was biting down the urge to laugh and his aura was still bright gold, but he pulled a chewed cube out of his mouth and offered it to her. She accepted it, slightly mollified; she remembered what he'd said about treat training her a second too late.
His wide smirk said that he remembered too. "Good girl," he said with a pat on her head.
Taarak stuck his lip out and turned red with offense-disappointment at seeing her be fed one of his bantha cubes. He sniffed and looked away from them both.
"Why don't the three of you go for a walk?" Vereixem suggested. "Wear out Taarak for me so he's good and ready for a nap when you return."
Anakin seated him on his hip and Ahsoka accepted a farewell kiss on her cheek from Vereixem. "If you run into Parna, please tell her that I need Grogu's updated nutrition plan by tomorrow."
"Grogu?" Ahsoka asked, trying and failing to place the name.
"Have you not met him? He's a youngling assigned to Master Beq. For this decade, at least." Vereixem chuckled. "I believe they're in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, if you're headed that way."
"We're going to the meadow meditation room, but we'll keep an eye out for Parna." Anakin tickled Taarak's deeply clefted chin.
"And don't be afraid to come back and visit me once in a while, my little kit." Vereixem gently stroked her cheek with his dry, reptilian fingers that smelled like red clay. "You are all so precious to me, and this war has taken too many of you." His aura thickened with violet grief.
Ahsoka's heart sank. She took his fingers and kissed them. "I will, Master," she promised guiltily.
"So what did he mean by Grogu was assigned Master Beq for this decade?" Anakin asked once they were back out in the hall.
"He must have a long infancy," Ahsoka said with a shrug. "Some species need longer individual care before they can join a clan." She plucked a cube of meat from the bowl Anakin carried, chewed it, then held it out to Taarak along with a tendril of amber amenability.
Taarak darted narrowed eyes between her face and the offering. Ahsoka watched the little wheels turn in his head as he weighed his options, his aura switching back and forth between yellow suspicion and green trust, before he cautiously took it from her fingers. He held the meat in his mouth, swallowed it with a loud gulp, blinked a few times, then chirped and held his arms out to Ahsoka.
"I knew he'd warm up to you," Anakin said warmly as he handed him over, his aura awash with solid blue happiness.
Taarak nuzzled up against her neck, then pulled the tip of her lek into his mouth and started to suckle. One hand snuck around the back of her neck and started absently stroking along the seam between her rear lek and the base of her skull, sending a warm tingle down her spine. "We should learn to get along now. I have a feeling we'll have a Master in common one day." Ahsoka tried not to let her knees buckle from the endorphin rush.
Fierfek, and to think that she'd been labeled as a master manipulator as a kit. Taarak put her to shame.
"Are you trying to choose my next Padawan for me?" Anakin asked teasingly.
"Pretty sure he chose you, Master," Ahsoka said, then grinned. "But maybe I'll do what you did to Master Kenobi and steal him out from under you once he's old enough to be a Padawan."
"Hey, I didn't steal you, that was all Master Yoda!" Anakin protested, his aura still glowing gentle gold with humor.
Ahsoka purred and rubbed at the crook of Taarak's lekku buds. He purred back and her heart melted a little. "Kriff," she mumbled under her breath.
"So you never actually told me what the big deal was with his clan name," Anakin said, trying not to laugh at them.
Ahsoka caught Taarak's other hand before it weaseled down the front of her robes. If he thought she was going to nurse him just because she had the equipment for it, he was sorely mistaken. "Na'Hane is what we call people who were exiled after…" she tapped on her teeth and raised her brow markings meaningfully.
"They have their own clan?" Anakin asked, surprised.
Ahsoka shrugged. "Some of them end up sticking together for survival's sake. They can't chew, right? But a baby born to the Na'Hane would never be forced to bear that name after they were taken. I can't imagine why his adoptive parents would have kept it."
"Well, they were Toydarian. They must not have known." Anakin looked away and his aura briefly flickered with a purple line of guilt. "They probably thought they were honoring his heritage."
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "It would have taken them five minutes on the holonet to find out what it meant, but you're probably right. Is it too late to change it in his records?"
Anakin held the turbo-lift door open for her. "I'll find out. So when you say taken…" He trailed off and looked at her sideways.
Ahsoka shifted Taarak's weight. "A Na'Hane can't be trusted with a child," she said firmly.
"So you just… take them?" Anakin asked, frowning.
"It's not like we go out hunting for them," Ahsoka said. "Usually, they're left on the edge of the village in the middle of the night by the Na'Hane."
"But if you ran into one out… doing whatever your people do, you'd just take them home?"
"A Na'Hane is a Togruta exiled from their clan for doing something horrible, Master," Ahsoka snapped, trying not to get annoyed with him. She pulled Taarak's hand out of her robes again. "It's to protect the child, we don't–"
"Easy, little one, easy." Anakin patted her between her montrals and fed her a bantha cube. "Don't get defensive, I was just curious."
Ahsoka swallowed her treat and tried not to sulk. Taarak's purr sped up and he suckled harder, running a fat little hand up and down her lek comfortingly as he did. She hugged him closer. "Anyway," she said, "I'm not saying that it would be a big deal here at the Temple, but if Taarak ever goes back to Shili it'll be pretty awkward. Imagine having to introduce yourself as Starkiller for the rest of your life because of something your mother did before you were even born."
Anakin's eyes widened and his aura went pale yellow with surprise-amusement. "Wait, Starkiller? His name means Starkiller?"
She didn't like how pleased he looked. "Na'Hane means killer," she said sourly. "Taarak—well, Tara—means star."
Anakin threw his head back and laughed. "Snips, there's no way I'm changing that. That is way too cool of a name to change."
Ahsoka scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Master…"
"Aww, who's my little Starkiller?" Anakin cooed, tickling Taarak's stumpy little rear lek. It twitched happily at the stimulation. "You are, yes, you're my little Starkiller…"
"Master, don't call him that!" Ahsoka said, exasperated. Taarak giggled around her lek.
"I'm absolutely calling him that and you can't stop me." Anakin pulled Taarak off of her lek with a loud pop! and blew a snozzberry into his neck. "Alright, Starkiller–"
Ahsoka groaned. "Master!"
" –Go get tired." Anakin set him down on the grass of the meditation room and released him. The kit squealed and took off for the koi pond, diving into a forward slide on his belly until he was peeking over the edge. His little red feet kicked in the air and he cooed at the fish in broken, babyish Toydarian.
Anakin put an arm around her shoulders. "So, did you and Obi-Wan make up? If I have to listen to him whine about his hurt feelings one more time I'll puke."
Ahsoka felt something go quiet in her chest. "Yeah. We're fine."
Anakin glanced down at her, his aura darkening with dark green unease. "Why do I sense that's not exactly the truth?"
She shrugged. "It's never going to be the same. It can't be. But I've forgiven him and I'm moving on."
Anakin sighed. "Ahsoka–"
"We can't stop change, Master," she reminded him. "I had to let him go. It's the Jedi way."
She rested her head against him and subtly rubbed her lek on his cheek while Taarak was distracted. "We'll have to let each other go one day too, Master," she said softly.
Anakin's aura brightened to staticky white with anxiety. "Yeah," he muttered. "One day." His hand twitched on her shoulder.
Ahsoka watched Taarak's aura lighten to burning orange with anticipation-excitement and his stubby little rear lek wag back and forth. She elbowed Anakin. "Just so you know, you've got about five seconds before Starkiller goes fishing."
"Before he–" Anakin's eyes went wide and he bolted for the toddler. "Ayi, Taarak, ayi! Osasambira!" He missed Taarak's ankle by inches, tumbling ass over elbows into the koi pond after him. He surfaced with a gasp a few seconds later, holding a giggling Taarak above his head while struggling to not let his long brown robe drag him back down. He looked like a sad, wet cat with his hair plastered to his forehead, but Taarak was delighted.
Ahsoka burst into hysterical laughter, falling to one knee and wheezing like she'd gotten the wind knocked out of her. Anakin's aura turned a menacing shade of orange with mischief. "Keep laughing, Snips!"
Ahsoka's laughs morphed into screams as Anakin lifted her up into the air with the Force and dropped her into the pond with them.
Notes:
TOYDARIAN TRANSLATIONS
Ndi mtundu wanji?: What color is it?
Pano: Here
Dzuwa: Yellow
Inde: Yes
Ayi: No
Osasambira: No swimming
Still struggling to emotionally recover from Master Obi-Wan's deception, Ahsoka discovers in the aftermath that twelve-year-old Boba Fett has been locked up among adults in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center. After convincing Chancellor Palpatine to grant him a pardon, she manages to secure his release on the condition that she serve as his legal guardian. Now, with the help of Master Plo and the Wolfpack, she vows to help him track down what family he has left.
Ahsoka took a deep breath of the heavy, wet air. It smelled like petrichor and mud, wet stone, moss and ozone, but most intensely of all was the smell of freshly-opened tiarek flowers that had opened to greet the morning sunlight; a sweet, floral smell that tasted like sunshine and citrus in the back of her throat.
It was a pleasant, delicate smell, and one that ironically didn't suit Rex at all. Rex smelled like clean soap and warm musky skin, not citrus flowers and sunshine. She could picture Rex sneezing if he got a whiff of them. She did know that Padmé would absolutely love them though. The wind blew their heavy scent straight to her nose from her spot atop the hill that bordered the creekbed. They were gorgeous, if tiny; small and plush, a vibrant yellow pistil surrounded by six-petaled starbursts of creamy platinum the same shade as a certain captain's hair.
Rex had been named after a flower. A flower. And she couldn't even tease him about it without traumatizing him.
Ahsoka split the stem of one flower with her thumbnail and carefully threaded another through the hole. She almost had enough of a chain to circle Boba's head, though she knew that she'd have to sit on him if she wanted to get a holopic of him with it on.
If Cody woke up, maybe he could hold him down. He had been performing eyelid maintenance on the blanket next to them for the last half hour, stripped to the waist and face down to let his fresh ink breathe, using Robert the Rancor as a pillow. Ahsoka followed the diamond-dash pattern of dadita names along the sunburst to the newest addition; Ponds.
Her heart broke a little, remembering the holorecording Aurra had sent to taunt them. She looked away before Boba saw where her eyes had settled. He lay between her legs, leaning back against her chest with his face tucked next to her lek. He hadn't left her side since he had returned except to strip out of his sodden flight suit and into his civvies. As for her, she'd changed back into her white and red robes, the ones that Obi-Wan had seamed up for her on the way to Corellia.
"The Force is not a power that Jedi wield, as many believe it to be." Obi-Wan sat cross legged in front of Boba's brother, who'd dragged himself from his hoverchair to join the Master on a blanket atop the damp grass. Obi-Wan's aura was a warm, sunny blue with happiness-peace. "It is the energy between all things. It is the tension and the balance that binds the universe together. One can learn to wield it if they have the natural ability, which you most certainly have." Obi-Wan's lip twitched and the air shimmered soft gold with humor around him. "Catching a plasma bolt, for example, is a remarkable feat without any training. Ahsoka can't do that."
Ahsoka frowned. "I also haven't tried!" she called down defensively.
Obi-Wan winked at her. "Would you like to learn how to meditate, Cassus?"
Cassus nodded eagerly. He was starved for contact with any sentient that wasn't his mother or the droids he had programmed himself. He wanted to learn so badly, but this would most likely be the only lesson he ever received; not just because of Kaisa, but because of their own Jedi dogma. It didn't seem fair that Cassus had to let his own natural affinity wither away because he'd had the misfortune to be born to Jedi-hating bigots. His naturally turquoise aura was radiating vibrant green curiosity-excitement-joy. His little BD droid made an offended series of beeps at being jostled on his lap and took himself to the corner of the blanket, where he curled up and pouted.
Obi-Wan smiled wide. Getting the opportunity to teach an eager student that was interested in more than just how to use a lightsaber must have felt like a novelty to him. "Very well. Close your eyes and reach out. What do you feel?"
Cassus shut his eyes, still beaming, and extended his hand. It trembled, but Ahsoka didn't see anything in his aura that said it was a result of his nerves.
Obi-Wan chuckled and gently pushed Cassus' hand down. "Not like that, young man. Reach out with your feelings. Take a deep breath and sense the forest around you. Tell me what you see."
Cassus, pink cheeked and aura yellowed like a bruise with embarrassment, took a deep breath as instructed. "The bunker?" he said hesitantly, eyes still closed.
"Yes, the bunker. What else?"
"The trees. The bugs in the moss." Cassus' breathing deepened and his aura flowed out like soft smoke around him. "A herd of shatual does. A convor. Life, so much life. It sings around us."
"Very good. The Living Force is strong in places such as this." Obi-Wan smiled. "What else?"
Cassus' face screwed up in concentration. "Death. A tree fell in the storm. It had a banshee bird nest in it, and the babies died when it hit the ground." Cassus sagged a little and his aura darkened to purple. "I think it was fast."
"Their bodies will nourish new life, will they not?" Obi-Wan's voice was gentle. "They will be eaten by scavengers and insects, who in turn feed the moss, the trees, all of it. Do not linger there, keep going. Take all of it in."
"Warmth. The sun is warm." Cassus tilted his head. "But the ground is cold from the rain." He turned his head towards Ahsoka, Boba and Cody snuggled together on their blanket. "Peace." His head tilted the other way. "And violence."
Ahsoka's arms tightened around Boba.
"And between it all?" Obi-Wan encouraged him.
"Balance. An energy… a…"
"The Force. That is the Cosmic Force." Obi-Wan's aura was lush green with pride-appreciation. "Very good, Cassus."
"Mama said the Force isn't the Manda. The Force is what Jedi call on to do their magic."
Obi-Wan laughed quietly. "On that, we disagree. I think that the Manda and the Force are simply two names for the same concept. You listen to the song of the Manda, and we strive to follow the will of the Force. It is not so different, those two philosophies."
Cassus blinked his eyes open. "You're not going to make me live at your Temple, are you?"
"No." Obi-Wan shook his head. "No, dear boy, even if your mother consented to it, you are unfortunately too old to be trained as a Jedi. It's a shame. Your temperament is very well-suited for this life."
"It is?" Cassus' eyes went big and round, and his aura flared staticky white with surprise.
"Yes." Obi-Wan smiled, but his aura pulsed with red-violet regret. Ahsoka could see why. Cassus was desperate to learn, but even this small lesson toed the line of impropriety. Teaching the ways of the Jedi to someone outside of the Order was forbidden, and Obi-Wan was a shabla Council member.
"Mama… she's said a lot about the Jedi, but I don't think she was told the truth. And she ran into some bad ones, maybe." Cassus reached for Buddy, his aura gone white with anxiety; Ahsoka watched the little droid crawl up his arm and snuggle next to his ear, cooing the whole time.
"I think you may be right. I know that she suffered at Galidraan, and combining her own experience with, well…" Obi-Wan hesitated and chose his words carefully, "Salacious rumors about the Order, her prejudice runs deep."
"So you don't steal babies?" Cassus asked, looking up at Obi-Wan with shining gray eyes.
"We do not. I do not doubt that it has happened, unfortunately, but if such a thing were ever to be discovered then the child would immediately be given the choice to return to their old life."
"Oh." Cassus wrung his hands in his lap and squirmed with violet guilt-shame. "I'm sorry that Mama tried to hurt you and Ahsoka. When her friends in town called to say that they saw two Jedi and a clone trooper heading for us, she… she got so scared. I've never seen her that scared."
Obi-Wan patted his hand. "Given her trauma, that is understandable."
"So you're not mad?" Cassus blinked at him from under his lashes.
"Holding a grudge is not the Jedi way." Obi-Wan didn't look at Ahsoka but she felt a gentle nudge through their bond, almost like a hand slipping into hers. She returned it with a copper tendril of affection.
"Can we do that again?" Cassus asked shyly. "Meditating, I mean."
"I'd love to." Obi-Wan grinned broadly and closed his eyes. "First let's try a breathing exercise."
"She'd shit if she saw this," Boba said wryly. "Cassus learning from a Jedi? It's her worst nightmare come true."
"Seems like it." Ahsoka gently rubbed her lek against his cheek. "How are you doing with all of this?"
Boba shrugged. "Can't you tell?"
"To an extent." She eyed the confused kaleidoscope of colors that circled around her vod'ika. "But you've got a lot going on inside, I think. I'd rather hear it from you. And talking it out usually helps."
Boba didn't answer, choosing to silently watch his brother instead. "He's not like Dad at all," he said after a minute. "He'd be horrified if he saw how soft he is."
"There's a lot of sharp edges in the galaxy, especially when it comes to Clan Fett." Ahsoka huffed a quiet laugh. "Maybe a little softness is needed to balance it out."
"He's not Clan Fett," Boba said glumly. His aura solidified into solid purple sadness before spinning back up into its fractal rainbow. "He doesn't claim that name. He's Clan Skirata."
"That doesn't mean he's not Jango's son," Ahsoka said.
"Yeah it does." Boba watched a fat pink butterfly flap around Cassus' head and smirked when it landed in his curls. "Once you declare someone dar'buir, that's it."
Ahsoka hugged him tighter. "Did he, though?" she asked.
"I… I guess I don't actually know," Boba admitted. "I assume he did, if he goes by Skirata."
"You should probably talk about it with him."
"Yeah. Probably." Boba sighed. "I don't think my dad really loved me."
Ahsoka blinked, too surprised to respond. "What?" she finally managed, her voice jumping an octave. Beside them, Cody cracked an eyelid, his aura tinted green with curiosity. "How can you say that? Before, you said–"
"I said a lot of things before," Boba interrupted. "That was before I knew why he shot them down. Why she left us behind. Everything I thought I knew was based on banthashit."
His aura went spiky and deep violet; Ahsoka recognized it as the warning of a meltdown and bit her lip. "When we were on The Babasta–"
"He told M– Kaisa, he told Kaisa he loved her too. All the time." The violet spikes in his aura spun and sharpened. Ahsoka smelled salt. "He told Cas and Tiarek he loved them. He tried to kill all of them." He squeezed his eyes shut too late to stop a tear from escaping. "I don't understand how he could do it, but I'm… I'm glad he's dead. I hate him."
Ahsoka sucked in a breath. "Boba…"
"I do. I hate him. He tried to kill my brothers, my mother, and for what? Because Tiarek looked at junk in a stupid box? Because my mother was trying to protect Cassus from the longnecks? We weren't…. He never loved any of us. Not really.” He stared at his hands, his aura throbbing yellow-green with disgust, and Ahsoka had to wonder if he was thinking about how much they looked like Jango's. "And I’m just like him. I tried to kill Windu in some stupid, half-assed revenge attempt. You've almost died for me twice already. My donor was a monster, and I'm going to be a monster too.”
Ahsoka couldn't help the tears that escaped from her own eyes, though it was hard to tell if they were truly hers or an echo from the boy in her arms. “I didn't know him," she said quietly. "And what he did to Cassus and Rex is unforgivable, but–"
“But nothing, Ahsoka! He was a monster!" Boba's face crumpled and he seemed to shrink in her arms. "And I am too. I shot Kaisa. I-I threatened to use the same poison on Cas if she didn't give us the antidote."
Ahsoka's brow markings raised. "You did?" she asked, trying to keep the shock out of her voice. "When?"
"When you started going all glitchy and babbling." Boba shuddered and grayed with the memory of fear. "I was so mad at her, so scared that you were going to die, I couldn't… I couldn't…"
"Sssh, udesii." Ahsoka rubbed his back and purred. "I'm sorry, vod'ika. I don't…" she took a deep breath. "I don't think you have the whole story. I don't know that you'll ever get it without Jango, but right now, you only have a few pieces."
"I wish Kal would have just minded his own fucking business," he sniffled, hiding his face under her lek. "Now everything is… it's different. It's not like I didn't know that it had happened, b-but…" He took a deep breath. "But I know now that he couldn't have loved them, which means he couldn't have loved me." Boba stared down at Cassus with a bruise-dark aura of grief. "You don't hurt people if you really love them. Not for a stupid reason like that."
She looked down at Obi-Wan, laughing silently at the butterfly that had landed in Cassus' curls, and felt her left arm throb for a brief second. "Do you love Cassus?" she asked Boba, gently enveloping him in a warm copper blanket of love-safety-comfort.
"I don't even know him." The spikes were slowing, going dull.
"That's not what I asked."
"I don't know. I used to." Boba flared soft copper with love-humor as he watched Cassus finally open his eyes and dissolve into a peal of laughter at the discovery of his new friend.
"Would you like to know what I see in your aura when you look at him?" Ahsoka asked softly.
Boba's lip trembled and he looked down. "I can't love Cas. I was going to hurt him. I was so mad that I didn't even hesitate, and… and…" He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Fuck, I really am just like him."
"That's not a bad thing," Ahsoka said.
Boba whipped his head around. "How the fuck–" he began hotly, but she shushed him.
"Because he was more than just the bad things that he did, Boba." She threaded their fingers together. "He also could make a drawing out of pencil that looked as real as a holopic. He played quetarra and sang for his boys. He fell asleep on the couch snuggling them, and he told you that he loved you every single day, even when he was mad at you. And he raised an amazing boy. With all of the things that he did wrong, he still made you into the person that you are today. And that person is pretty amazing."
Boba turned in her arms so that he could hide in her neck. It quickly started to feel hot and wet where his eyes were pressed. "How can I believe that he ever meant it when he hurt everybody else he said he loved?" he whispered, a dark-green cloud of noxious misery.
"You love your brother. But in the heat of the moment, you lost your head and were fully prepared to hurt him. Right?"
Boba nodded, clouded with deep yellow shame.
"But now that the sun is up and everything is okay, I have a feeling that you really regret it."
Boba nodded again.
"Don't you think it's possible that your dad felt the exact same way?" Ahsoka pulled him out of her neck so she could look him in his tear-swollen eyes. The purple had faded to green, at least. "What your dad did was wrong. There's no way to rationalize it, kiddo, no matter how angry or scared or drunk he was, it was wrong, and that's just something that you're going to have to live with. The difference is that he didn't have an ori'vod to stop him back then, but you do. And I won't let you get away with that shit." That earned her a shocked little laugh. "So we're going to nip it in the bud now. We'll work on our anger before it gets out of control and we do something we can't undo, 'lek?"
Boba nodded, his face still all screwed up and teary, but his aura glowing soft gold with humor.
"We're more than the bad things that we do. They just stick out a lot more than the good." She wiped his eyes. "Change is hard. Trust me, I know. But you can't stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting, Boba. You just have to keep going."
"How?" Boba whispered.
"You just do." Ahsoka smiled sadly. "You are a survivor, Boba. You've been through so much, and you've gotten this far because of what your dad taught you. You can get through this, too. And it'll be better this time, because you won't be alone. You're not meant to be alone. None of you are."
Boba nodded, soft green with coppery green affection-acceptance. "Thanks, ori'vod."
"Any time, vod'ika." She kissed his temple, slipped the chain of flowers around his head, and snatched Cody's helmet to take a holopic before he could shake it off like an uncooperative tooka.
"Seriously?" Boba asked, then burst into laughter that echoed with bright gold.
"You look beautiful," she teased.
Boba gingerly pulled it off with a roll of his eyes, then glanced at Cassus. "We're not meant to be alone," he repeated quietly. "But Cassus is alone."
"He has Kaisa," Ahsoka said, watching him gently rotate the flower crown in his hands.
Boba snorted. "Yeah. And look how that turned out." He took a deep breath and went silvery-green with determination. "But if I go back with you, I'll be alone too. I know there's that school that Plo talked about, and yeah, you'll visit when you can, but I'll be on my own there most of the time."
Ahsoka's heartbeat sped up. "That's true."
"I have to stay here. For Cassus. He needs an ori'vod, even if he is technically older than me." He looked up at Ahsoka. "Plo won't be mad, right?"
"No," she said. "No, I think Plo will be so proud of you when I tell him why you stayed." And so was she, though her first instinct was to put him under her arm and run. She couldn't do that. She had already come to terms with letting Boba go when it was time, it was just… now that it was actually time, it was proving a little more daunting than she had expected.
"Maybe I can bully Kaisa into moving to Coruscant," Boba jokes, going soft gold again. "She's been locked in this fucking hole for a decade, after all." He adjusted his legs and his aura lightened to pale blue with surprise. He reached for the pocket above his right knee. "Shit, I keep forgetting to give you–"
"Breakfast!" Gotika toddled out of the bunker entrance, trailed closely by Pinky. The astromech was wearing a frilly black apron. "Cas'ika, breakfast is ready, it's time to–" She stopped dead at the sight of her maker on the ground. "Cas'ika, what do you think you're doing?" she wailed, waddling at hyperspeed towards him.
"I'm fine, Gotika," Cas said, exasperated. He quickly clambered back into his hoverchair before he could be scolded again.
"But the ground is wet! You could get sick, or–"
"I'm fine!" he said crossly, his aura yellowing with embarrassment. "Let's go in."
"Finally," Cody groaned, flipping over and reaching for the top half of his blacks.
Boba tossed the flower chain to his brother as he zoomed by. "Ahsoka made this for you," he lied casually, smirking.
"Really?" Cassus put it on his head and grinned at her. "Thank you!"
Ahsoka smiled at Cassus and kicked Boba's ankle. "You are very welcome," she said sweetly.
"He's a natural," Obi-Wan said softly, coming up behind her. They watched the two boys and Cody follow Gotika up the short ramp to the bunker door.
"I noticed." Ahsoka allowed him to put a careful arm around her shoulders. "It's a shame that he can't be taught. I could see him in the Agricorps."
"He has a Force Talent. Mechu-deru. A very rare gift, one once thought to be linked to the Dark Side. We know better now, thankfully."
Ahsoka raised her brow markings. "What is mechu-deru?"
"He has an intuitive understanding of mechanics, and can manipulate them with the Force. He said that he rebuilt and programmed Gotika when he was five." Obi-Wan shook his head with an aura of green disbelief. "All of these droids, the drones, the turrets– those were all built from scrap by him with absolutely no guidance. He would have been a wonder if he'd had a teacher."
"Reminds me of Anakin," Ahsoka said quietly.
"In a way, yes." Obi-Wan squeezed her a little as they walked. "How are you feeling this morning?"
"Like I was put through a laundry pod and hung up to dry," Ahsoka joked. "Otherwise, I guess I'm fine."
"And the leg?"
Ahsoka twisted her leg to show him. "It's already closed up," she said with a smile.
"Good." Obi-Wan returned her smile but his eyes were tight, and his aura thrummed with staticky-gray anxiety. "Thank you, Ahsoka."
She side-eyed him. "For what?"
"For allowing me to accompany you on the final leg of your journey. I know…" he took a deep breath and his aura flooded with pewter determination. "I understand, now, how deeply my actions affected you, but I need you to know that none of my decisions were made out of malice, or indifference towards you, but out of my duty to the Republic."
Ahsoka nodded, feeling cold resignation sink down into her guts like an iceberg. He wasn't saying that he regretted it. He wasn't even really apologizing for it. He was just asking for her to understand that it wasn't personal.
Somehow that felt even worse than everyone telling her to get over it.
"I care deeply for you, Ahsoka," Obi-Wan said, his voice cracking. He stopped and took her hands, looking frighteningly young without his hair and beard. He looked almost like the Padawan Bobi of her youth, and it hurt to look at him for too long. "More than even you, with your marvelous gift, will ever know." His aura shone like a star with intense copper and his eyes pleaded for her forgiveness, for her to tell him that they could go on again as normal, but she couldn't make the words come out.
She had been furious at him at first, almost more for what Anakin had been through than her, but now that anger was gone and all that remained was just… sadness. She wasn't angry anymore, she was in mourning; not for the man, but for the trust that was gone for good. She loved him, and she could see how much he loved her, but the unshakeable faith that she'd always had in him was gone. She was expendable to Obi-Wan in a way that she had known in the abstract, but had never been forced to confront before now.
"Would you do it again?" she asked him, trying and failing to not let her grief leak into her voice. "If you could do it all over again, would you put me in that alley and let me hold you while you died? Make Anakin watch them burn your body? Or would you trust us enough to bring us in?"
Obi-Wan looked away, darkening with a familiar shade of yellow shame-regret. "Hindsight is notably clearer than foresight," he said quietly. "Perhaps I should have had more faith in the two of you, but the life of a Jedi requires us to sacrifice everything in service of the greater good. I regret that I hurt you, Ahsoka, I truly do. And… I may have gone further than I needed to in order to sell the lie."
But he would do it again if he had to. He may even hate it, but he would do it, because that was what a Jedi did. They sacrificed everything and held onto nothing, all for the greater good.
And Ahsoka… she was a Jedi too, and it was time for her to follow her own advice. To keep walking, and not look back. She'd always looked at him as the closest thing as a father that she'd ever have, and his aura matching the color of her actual father's had only cemented it for her, but he wasn't her father. He was her mentor and one of her dearest friends. He had shaped her into the person that she was, guided her lightsaber forms and taught her about the Force, but it was long past time that she let go of Bobi and what he represented to her and move forward with Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. She quieted her mind and took a deep breath, then opened herself up to the flow of the Cosmic Force and surrendered her dull, icy grief to it.
"Ahsoka?" Obi-Wan asked softly, teal with concern over the way she'd gone quiet.
The gentle hooting of a convor sounded directly above their heads; she craned her neck up to search the canopy but saw nothing but a sea of green against a sunny blue sky. "I'm starving," she said, looking back down with a watery smile; she felt lighter now, but empty in a way that she couldn't describe. "Let's get inside before Cody inhales the table."
She felt her wound throb as she walked away, but it didn't reopen.
"So is this an everyday thing?" Ahsoka asked, staring at the spread before her. Roba sausage, scrambled nuna eggs with little pieces of spicy peppers, a giant pot of hominy, some sort of cake crusted with sugar and amber syrup, a bowl the size of Pinky's dome full of sliced-up shuuras, snozzberries and meilooruns, all sprinkled with shredded kokanini… It was the sort of breakfast feast that was served to a busy working family in a holovid that would have two bites taken then be promptly abandoned in favor of the plot.
Cassus blushed, fogged with yellow embarrassment, and fiddled with the napkin on his lap. "No, but I-I thought since we haven't really been good hosts, I could at least make sure you had a nice meal before you left."
"You kicking us out?" Boba asked casually, dipping a fork full of nuna eggs into the amber syrup before shoving it in his mouth.
"No, of course not, but I didn't… didn't think you'd want to stay after you got your armor."
Boba swallowed the whole mouthful in one go. "You don't want it?" he asked, flaring white with surprise.
Cassus shook his head. "It would be wasted on me," he mumbled. "I'm not a warrior. I'm–" his bronze cheeks were nearly puce and his aura was getting more yellow by the moment. "I can't walk. My hands shake too much to shoot straight. I made my drones to try and be useful, but I'll never be able to fight someone face-to-face no matter how much beskar I'm wearing."
"Well, not with that attitude," Boba grumbled, shoving more eggs in his mouth.
Ahsoka gave him the look that she so often received from Rex that said behave. "Is your mom going to join us, Cassus?" she asked.
Cassus shook his head. "She's packing the armor up now," he said, not meeting Ahsoka's eyes.
"Then I'll go take a plate to her." Ahsoka stood up and almost walked face-first into Gotika.
"Mistress Kaisa needs to rest while she recovers from her injury, Master Jedi," she said brightly.
Ahsoka nearly choked at being addressed as Master, and she saw gold flicker around Obi-Wan out of the corner of her eye. "I'll make sure she's abiding by your recommendations and take her some food," she said pleasantly, stepping to the side.
"I already brought her a plate." Gotika matched her step.
"Then I'll join her so she doesn't have to eat alone." Ahsoka stepped to the left, mirrored by the ominously pleasant protocol droid.
"No need."
"Gotika, let her pass," Cassus said sharply.
Gotika's eyes dimmed and she immediately stepped out of Ahsoka's way.
She tossed a tiny smirk over her shoulder at the droid as she made the hallway. Gotika's left eye strobed as though it was twitching.
Ahsoka rapped softly on the door at the end of the hall before opening it. Kaisa sat on her bed, dressed down into a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of loose pants that ended at the knee, both black and well-worn. There was a green bacta sleeve wrapped around her left knee. She stared at Ahsoka as she came in, her aura pulsing like orange smoke with distrust-anxiety-fear.
"Thought you could use some company while you ate," Ahsoka said gently, projecting a cool sage aura of serenity-trust.
"Why?" Kaisa's aura cautiously bled back into her base of coral, tinged with a bruised line around the edges.
"Maybe it's the Togruta in me talking, but I hate eating alone." Ahsoka set her plate down on her wooden dresser and leaned against it, taking in the room. It was rather plain in comparison to the vibrant colors of the karyai; the walls were gray and she had a carpet thrown over the plascrete floor that was a soft blue, but the only decorations she kept in her room were a few holopics on her dresser and a knitted blanket on her bed that faded between ripples of orange into purple, like a sunset reflecting off the surface of a lake. Boba's beskar plates lay in front of her on the bed, along with four bright blankets folded into neat squares.
"I think we got off on the wrong foot." There was a rocking chair opposite of Kaisa's bed; Ahsoka gestured at it. "May I?" She took a seat after Kaisa's nod, careful to respect her boundaries. Ahsoka was in her bedroom now, her most intimate space. She was going to be defensive no matter what, but she would also be unbalanced, too wary to be able to lie convincingly.
Kaisa's aura developed a telltale pewter line around the edges, preparing to go on defense.
"I apologize for screaming at you last night." Ahsoka watched the pewter shiver.
Kaisa tilted her head. "I poison you."
"I'm fine now." Ahsoka shrugged. "I could hold a grudge if you'd prefer, but it isn't the Jedi way."
Kaisa snorted. "Jate, if you speak it." Her gaze fell back to the bed and softened as she looked at the plates, her aura flooding with violet so dark that it was nearly black with grief-despair. "I hear Jango die many time. Six, seven, more. I before hear he die on Geonosis, I think same again." Her shoulders fell. "Not rumor, this time. Jango nari taabi'an."
"Elek." Ahsoka watched the woman carefully, curious as to why she would mourn the man who had done such terrible things to her. "He tried to kill you. He tried to kill your son. You had to stay in hiding for a decade because of him. I admit that I don't know you very well, but his death seems like something you'd celebrate."
"Not simple, my Jango." Kaisa took a deep breath. "Long story."
"Then start at the beginning," Ahsoka replied easily. "How'd you meet?"
Kaisa's eyes flicked up from the beskar plates. It was eerie how close the colors matched. "My Clan, my home in Kyrimorut, Death Watch burn. My ba'vodu take me in. Kal."
"Kal's your uncle?" Ahsoka asked, surprised. "I didn't realize you were blood related."
Kaisa raised an eyebrow and her aura went chartreuse with disdain. "No blood. My buire find me when kih'ad. Aliit ori'shya tal'din."
Family is more than blood. She didn't disagree there. "I agree. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Please, go on."
"Kal join with Jaster Mereel. Haat'la Mando'ade. I meet Jango there. We grow up together." Kaisa's aura flooded to mauve with love-yearning. "We happy, for while. Then not. We always fight. Too… too same. He never back down, I never back down." Kaisa gently bopped her fists together. "Like gotaliise, Jango and me." She smiled softly in wistful remembrance.
"What happened the night you left Kamino?" Ahsoka asked. "Why did you leave?"
Kaisa's face fell. "Cassus almost... Jango not does trying hurt him. Our fault, together." She took another deep breath, flaring bright red with the memory of anger. "One day, I find Cassus does floating with his toys. I know we must leave. Not safe, he does singing around kaminiise. They will take him, they want his blood. Want everything." Her aura flared to bright violet sadness. "I speak Jango, we does leaving, with him or not with him. I want take all my boys. All." She wiped her nose. "Jango stop us on landing pad, speak Tiarek and Boba his. I fight him, I not does leaving without my boys."
Ahsoka's heart lightened. She'd fought for them. She hadn't just gotten in her ship and accepted Jango's claim, she'd fought for them. That changed things.
"He… he hit ner sen'tra."
"Your jetpack?"
" 'Lek. He hit it, he… he want disable it. Make me stop from does flying. But it make me fly hard. Very hard, very fast." Tears leaked down in twin trails on her cheeks. "I hold Cassus when happen. Sen'tra fly me at wall before I can stop."
Ahsoka had seen how violently a person could be jettisoned with a malfunctioning jetpack more than once, and felt ill to imagine it happening to a toddler. "That's how Cassus was hurt?" she asked.
Kaisa nodded miserably. "I hit wall hard, h-his spine break." Her face crumpled and her aura darkened with even more violet sorrow. "Jango… he scream. He think he kill him. I never hear him scream so loud, long. He want my death, I see in his face."
"So it was an accident," Ahsoka said softly.
"I have stasis pod on my ship for bere, for I does hunting." Kaisa stared at the four blankets, haunted. "I run. Cassus does dying, kaminiise not help if I stay. I try reach my ade, my Boba and Tiarek, but Jango…" Kaisa looked up at her. "I put Cassus in stasis pod, fly. No choice. He die, if I stay."
Ahsoka couldn't answer for a few moments, her mind racing to picture the scene. Kaisa and Jango arguing in the Kaminoan storm, Rex and Boba being held back by their father. Jango sabotaging Kaisa's jetpack, and Kaisa being rocketed into a wall hard enough to break the spine of the baby in her arms. Being forced to choose between fighting for her remaining children and saving the one actively dying.
It was a choice that Ahsoka wasn't sure she would have been able to make. She had been forced to leave troopers behind on the battlefield and it destroyed her every time, but to have to make that choice about her own children? If Boba knew, it might change how he looked at Kaisa, but Ahsoka feared it would also erode his father's memory even more.
"Jango shoot. I drop escape pod, missle hit it." Kaisa sniffed. "We call move goteni muun'lan, when we Haat'la Mando'ade."
Ahsoka raised a brow marking. "Laying an egg?" she asked, unsure if she was translating correctly. "Because… because you drop the pod to be blown up?"
" 'Lek." Kaisa looked at Ahsoka with eyes shining with tears. "He think Cassus dead, or will be. My fault. He want kill me, not him."
She sniffled again. "I get away. I make Corellia. Cassus… No does feeling under here." She drew a line under her large bust, but above her navel. "We hide. Jango kill me, take Cassus back if he does finding us. So we hide. I…" she started crying again. "I know Boba and Tiarek alive on Kamino. Not in danger, not like Cassus. So I hide. I pray for my boys one day does finding me. I not expect jetiise with him."
She really hadn't had a choice. Ahsoka's heart twinged with sympathy for the woman who was practically drowning in her own guilt on the bed.
"I not understand how he hurt Tiarek." Kaisa's eyes looked far away. "Boba, he… when almost two year, climb up front of traciyam. Pot of tiingilar does boiling on top, Boba pull off, miss him by inch. I hit him on his shebs, two hit so he not climb again. Jango hit me." Kaisa showed Ahsoka an open palm and huffed a soft laugh. "He speak I hit anyone, I hit him. Never his ad'ikase. He hold ad'ikase in his heart. He never hurt them."
But he had. How broken had Jango become to have hurt Rex the way he had? To abandon him?
"Yes." Ahsoka nodded and felt her heart clench. "About a year after you left. He and Boba were going through the things you'd left behind and he walked in on them. He had forbade them from going in it, and he struck Tiarek with the box." She swallowed. "Hard. After his head trauma was treated, he was reconditioned and reassigned to the Marshall Commander batch under Dred Priest."
"Priest?" Kaisa's voice cracked and she doubled over, drowning in black despair. "Ner ad'ika. Ni ceta, ni ceta ner kar'ta."
Ahsoka cautiously examined her aura. She saw no sign of any deceit silvering its edges. Her grief and guilt looked real enough. She strengthened her projection of serenity and waited for Kaisa to catch her breath.
It took her almost a minute for her to compose herself before she sat up, wide-eyed and trembling, and looked at Ahsoka with yellow desperation. "You know…He alive? Or he die in war?"
"He's alive." Ahsoka moved from the chair to the bed, and took Kaisa's hand. "He serves directly under me as a Captain in the 501st clone battalion."
Kaisa blinked, going white with shock, then shook her head. "Good boy," she said laughing, flush with blue relief-pride. "Good boy always. Sweet always. Naughty never, listen Mama always. Take care of kaysh vode."
"That sounds like him." Ahsoka couldn't help but smile. "He goes by Rex, now."
"Rex?" Kaisa raised an eyebrow. "What wrong with Tiarek, eh?"
"I think he remembered it, to an extent. That's why he chose it." Ahsoka shrugged. "Reks'ika. Rex. It makes sense."
Kaisa nodded. "It makes sense," she repeated softly. "Shabla kaminiise. They had no right. No right." She squeezed her eyes shut. "But maybe… maybe better, he not remember me. Boba has pain, much pain. Easier Rex does forgetting. Not open a wound with good, clean scar. Stay heal." She wiped her eyes and turned to the folded blankets, sniffling. "You before see this?" she asked, changing the subject.
Ahsoka shook her head.
Kaisa unfolded the blue blanket. Dozens of tiny tiarek flowers had been cut from cotton and sewn to the front of it in a pattern that mirrored itself in four directions, like a mandala. "Called tivaevae," Kaisa said softly. "Tradition on Concord Dawn, not Mandalore. Buire make together for they ade. Meant as a…" Her hands flailed. "I not know word, ah… symbol speak? Sa'johaa."
Ahsoka thought for a second. "A metaphor?" she asked, as it was the closest thing she could think of to like speak.
Kaisa shrugged. "Not know, but needle, thread, fabric, all sa'johaa. We stitch up our ade and make them strong with thread, weave our fabric and create for them. We make our ad like we make tivaevae." She brushed at an invisible piece of lint. "Not only thread. Holes from needle. We must be gentle, or more big, more big than we can does hiding. We… give violence on our ade, in does making them." She stared at her boots instead of Ahsoka. "But I make one for all my boys. Not finish, but I make. Give on his verd'goten, if return. This for Tiarek."
"It's beautiful." The appliqued flowers had been sewn flush to the front of the lake blue fabric with thousands of miniscule stitches. It was clearly still unfinished, with a half-dozen flowers still loosely basted on and almost a meter of blank blue space between the flowers and the edge, but hundreds of hours must have been poured into it already. Ahsoka glanced back at the other blankets. "But there's four?"
" 'Lek. All need more work. Take more long, only one parent." Kaisa smiled sadly and her aura darkened with grief again. "Cassus." She patted the bright turquoise square, then the lush, fern green square beside it. "And Boba."
"And the orange?" Ahsoka asked, eyeing it curiously.
"Gavin." Kaisa unfolded it. It hadn't been worked on as much, with only a few bright-red laceleaf flowers attached in the center. "Our first son."
Ahsoka nearly fell backwards off the bed. "You have another son?" she asked, her voice pitching up sharply.
"He die." Kaisa's bruised aura retreated on itself, stuck tight to her skin like a bandage. "Death Watch kill him on Galidraan. Five years old." She trailed her hand over the red flowers, her face haunted and distant. "They make me watch."
Ahsoka covered her mouth. The pain in Kaisa's voice was indescribable, an agony that split the Force with a shriek like a knife on porcelain. "I'm sorry," she managed after a few seconds.
Kaisa refolded the blanket. "You take Boba and Ti… Rex, take they tivaevae when you leave. Maybe you finish." She shrugged. "You his ori'vod. Close thing like buir for him."
Ahsoka watched the pain on Kaisa's face echo in her aura. She was dar'buir to Boba, now, and the declaration was as much a wound to her as the gash on the back of Ahsoka's leg. "Boba's staying," she said.
Kaisa's aura turned bright white with shock-disbelief, and her mouth fell open in a small o. "He stay?" she whispered, almost too quietly to hear.
Ahsoka nodded. "He's staying for Cassus. He doesn't want to be separated from his brother again."
"H-he speak, though–" Kaisa began, her voice shaking.
"He's staying. Consider this a fresh start. Cin vhetin." Ahsoka squeezed Kaisa's cold hands. "Give him some time. He's been hurt badly by the adults he's trusted in the past. Don't demand anything of him, show him that you can be trusted. As hard as it may be, he's not ready for you to be Mama again. Not yet."
Kaisa nodded as Ahsoka spoke, pale pink hope swirling around her like smoke. "Any chance, I take," she said desperately. "Any price I pay."
Ahsoka fought the urge to smirk. "In that case, have you ever considered moving to Coruscant?"
"Coruscant?" Kaisa's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. "Dangerous place. Not… Cassus, he not go city in many year…"
"Boba has an invitation to a prestigious academy there." Ahsoka's lip twitched. Anakin would have been proud of her for that not-lie, but an offer of a scholarship was still an invitation even if it was extended out of pity. "I'm sure that a spot could be arranged for Cassus, too."
"I… I think." Kaisa looked disturbed at the notion of moving; her aura matched her face with ugly green disgust.
Ahsoka had to wonder if it was because she was a country girl, or because she just found the notion of living on the Jedi's home planet so despicable.
Kaisa shook her head and straightened her spine. "Now, you does coming with me. You must eat, too skinny. More food. Come. Later speak me, I have tiingilar spices. I give for you later cook, ad'ikase love tiingilar." Kaisa got to her feet and carefully hobbled back out to the karyai, Ahsoka's cold plate in her hand and her coral aura suddenly missing its bruised tinge.
"I've programmed in everyone's private frequency—mine, Plo's, Anakin's, Obi-Wan's, even Master Shaak-Ti's. If you need anything, anything, just call one of us right away." Ahsoka smoothed down the shoulders of Boba's jacket. "Even if one of us can't come, we'll send someone. Someone you can trust."
"Take a breath, Tano," Boba said, smirking down at his kneeling ori'vod.
"I'm breathing just fine." Ahsoka scowled at him and got to her feet. "Can you blame me for being cautious? You can't go more than a day without somebody trying to kill you."
Boba shrugged. "Yeah, well, I got a guard dog now." He jerked his head back at Gotika, standing at the door of the bunker next to Kaisa, glaring pleasantly at their departing guests in the creek bed.
Ahsoka's eyes narrowed. "Yeah," she said, not sounding convinced. "I guess that's true. I'm allowed to be worried a little bit, though, right?"
"Yeah, I don't think I've much say in that. You're a fucking worrywort." Boba smiled like his heart wasn't pounding in his ears.
Ahsoka was leaving. He was staying. It was all over. She had a war to get back to, and he… well, he had a brother that wasn't dead, but who needed to learn how to grow a fucking spine. What he had left of one, anyway. And he had a former mother he needed to somehow convince to leave her bughole and move to Jedi home base. He needed to get to work on her now, or he'd never see a Biscuit Baron again.
"You be a good ori'vod to Cassus, alright? And watch your language, he's sensitive."
Boba snorted. "Oh, you noticed?"
"And when you talk to Kaisa, keep in mind what I told you about what I saw in her aura. Her guilt and remorse… that's all genuine. She didn't want to leave you."
Boba looked away. She wouldn't tell him exactly what Kaisa had said, just that she now understood why she'd made that choice and that he should ask her about it. "So, um, there's a long-range communicator at the cantina. It charges by the second, but we can still talk on holocall. If you want." Boba rubbed his wrists anxiously.
"That's why I put my frequency in your commlink, vod'ika." Ahsoka smiled and opened her arms.
Boba dove in and buried his face in her neck, his eyes suddenly stinging. He felt Kaisa's eyes burn a hole in his shoulder blades. Was it jealousy over freely giving Ahsoka affection, or was she afraid he'd kill Cas in his sleep? "Will you come back for my verd'goten?" he asked, hating how whiny his voice sounded.
"There's no telling where the war will take me, but I will do everything I can to make it back, I promise." She purred and rubbed her soft lek against his cheek.
Boba took a deep breath of her weird, spicy pollen scent and tried to commit it to memory for when he already knew he'd feel alone, even with Cas, and for when Kaisa would inevitably try to mommy him.
He didn't want her to go.
"I don't want to either," Ahsoka said quietly into his scalp. "But we have to let go of each other for now. Our paths might divide here, but it's not for forever. We'll always find our way back to each other."
"Fucking sap." He closed his eyes and tried not to cry.
"Comes with the job." She seemed in no hurry to let him go either. She really was too sweet for her own good, tooth-rotting sweet like a—
"Oh shit, right." Boba sniffled and reluctantly pulled back, shoved his hand in his pocket then pulled the tooth out, hidden in his fist. "I found this on Geonosis when I took your belt off. It fell out." He opened his hand and showed her.
Ahsoka stared in pure shock, her jaw hanging down to her chest. "You've gotta be kidding me," she whispered, gently taking it from him. "You've had it this whole time?"
"Yeah. Not on purpose, I just kept forgetting to give it back to you." Boba awkwardly kicked at the damp moss underfoot.
"I—do you know what this is?"
Boba shook his head. "I've never seen that animal before. Must have been big."
Ahsoka bit her lip and closed her fist. "He was pretty big."
Boba stilled and glanced up at her. "He?" he asked sharply, his eyes darting between the tooth in her hand and her face. "That… that's from a sentient?"
"Os'ika," Cody called. "I know it's hard, but wrap it up. We're going to miss our train."
Ahsoka glared at him. "Go ahead without me, I'll catch up!" she called, then gestured with her head for Boba to follow her. Cody and Kenobi shared an exasperated look but began to climb the steep hill in the opposite direction.
She dragged him to the tiarek grove. "Did you kill somebody?" Boba asked, impressed.
"No. I'm not the one who killed him. I'm the one who took his teeth, though." Ahsoka took a deep breath. "My people have a ritual. We don't execute our murderers and rapists. Instead we pull out their teeth one by one before releasing them to wander clanless in the forest."
It was a pretty hardcore punishment, but Shili was a hardcore place. "Nice." Boba nodded.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "This tooth belonged to a Jedi. Pong Krell."
Boba's eyebrows hit his stubbly hairline. "No shit?"
"I don't think that he's been widely reported on in the media, but, uh…" Ahsoka bit her lip. "There was a battle he led on Umbara. Anakin was called away by the Chancellor and Krell was left in charge of the 501st on the ground. I was in orbit, leading the space battle." She swallowed hard and looked down, and Boba saw tears glinting in her eyes. "We had no idea, but Krell wanted to become a Sith, so he was trying to get the attention of Count Dooku by throwing battles, which he did by killing clones. He had casualty rates ten times that of any other battalion. He used them like cannon fodder. His one and only strategy was to overwhelm the battlefield with clones and attack until they completed their mission, no matter how many died. On Umbara, he… he tricked the 501st and 212th into attacking each other by telling both of them that the enemy had stolen clone armor. Over four hundred men were murdered through friendly fire." She looked away, squeezing her eyes shut.
"Fuck." Boba stared at the tooth. "So you ripped his teeth out?"
Ahsoka nodded. "Yeah. Seemed… seemed like the right thing to do."
"You ever see a bayleg?" Boba asked her and glanced up; she shook her head. "It's a huge, scary, dragon-looking fuck. Nasty creature. My dad had me face one, once. Told me to bring him back a tooth."
"Is this a flying lesson?" Boba asked, craning around to look at the jetpack Dad had just snapped onto his back.
"Sort of. Remember those fluffy little chakaare we flew over on the way here?" Dad spritzed him with something that smelled foul. "This is their piss."
"Dad!" Boba squealed, sticking out his tongue and gagging. "Why would you put pee on me?"
"Because they're the prey of the bayleg."
"The what?" Boba squawked. He heard a roar from deeper inside the cave.
Dad handed him a blaster and grinned. "The bayleg. Go bring me a tooth. I'll wait here."
"How old were you?" Ahsoka asked, crossing her arms and frowning.
"Ten." He snickered at her horrified look. "I fucking lived, obviously. But it tried to eat me, and when I came back I was crying like a bitch and asked Dad why he would do that. He told me it was because now I'd faced my own death and knew true fear, so I'd never have a reason to be afraid of anything else." He shook his head. " 'Course he was wrong about that. I'm afraid of all sorts of shit. Some days I think I'd rather be back with the bayleg. But I've been keeping the teeth of monsters ever since. They remind me that I lived, and they died, because I was stronger than them."
"We don't actually keep them. Dogma's the one who stepped up and finally executed Krell. It's for him, for the ceremony once he's back with us, if he wants to do it." Ahsoka untied a small leather pouch from her belt. "They're not trophies to us. The ritual varies among clans and cultures, but the Binishii, my people, we toss them away, usually into a body of water, while singing our grief. No words, just the emotion of it. It's hard to describe without being there." Ahsoka looked up at him sadly. "It's ironic, you know. I forgot too." She put Krell's tooth in her pouch and withdrew a different one, a more humanoid one with a gold filling in it.
"What the—" Boba glanced up at her. "You keep a jar of these somewhere?"
"No," Ahsoka huffed. "Why do people keep assuming I've got a jar? Why would I have a jar?"
"You're the one pulling teeth out," Boba said, taking it from her and examining it. "So whose was this?"
"It's Aurra's."
He dropped it, just like his heart dropped out of his ass and into Corellia's mantle. He dove to his knees and picked it up immediately with shaking hands, staring at it. Now that he actually looked, he knew exactly which tooth it had been; the second-furthest molar on the bottom right. He could still remember what it tasted like when he kissed her. "I… what the f…" He looked up at Ahsoka, feeling dizzy. "Why? When did you take it?"
"Anakin took it, actually." She sank down on her haunches to be at eye level with him. "He thought I could do the ceremony with you."
We don't execute our murderers and rapists. Boba slowly turned the tooth over in his hand.
"But I think you should keep it." Ahsoka closed his hand over the tooth. "My peoples' way is to throw them away, to dispose of them in a lake or a river so that their memory will be washed away from us. Your way, and your father's way, is to keep the teeth of monsters, and to remember so it makes you strong."
Boba stared at it for a few seconds longer, then nodded decisively and put it in his pocket. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right." He swallowed hard. "Vor entye, ori'vod."
Ahsoka pulled him into a hug and gently pressed her forehead against his in a kov'nyn. "I'm going to miss you," she said quietly, swaying with the breeze. "You're really something else, kid. Thank you for letting me into your life."
"You're not bad." Boba sniffed. "For a Jedi."
"Sure, tough guy." Ahsoka laughed and squeezed him in one last spicy-smelling Togruta hug. "You have to admit, this was unexp—" She suddenly stilled, then tilted her head and clicked with her mouth open. "No way. No, what is he doing here?"
"Who?"
Ahsoka spun, her eyes huge. "Rex?" she squawked, taking off east.
"Are you fucking daft, Tano?" Boba called, jogging after her. "He's on that shitho—oh." No, there was Tiarek, alright, and he had an armful of squealing Togruta rubbing her head all over him and laughing. There was a break in the canopy ahead, and he had put down a Y-Wing neatly in the center of it.
"What are you doing here?" Ahsoka asked once she was back on the ground, blinking like a tooka kit with eyes all shiny from the tears that had popped up when she spoke about Umbara.
Boba took a weary breath. Her teacher had to see this shit all the time, right? Was he okay with it, or was he as stupid as they were?
"The General had a bad feeling. You know the kind. Seeing as you were all out of comm range, he sent me to check in on you." Tiarek yanked Boba into a hug as soon as he was within reach. "You behaving like I told you to?"
"I'm always a fucking delight." Boba closed his eyes and gave the Manda a silent prayer of thanks for letting him say goodbye to his brother one more time. It hurt, knowing that he wasn't going to be seeing him now that he was staying… with…
His heart started pounding and he locked panicked eyes with Ahsoka. "Fuck," they said simultaneously. Tiarek could not go down to that bunker. Kaisa and Cassus were there, and fuck, fuck, this wasn't how he needed to find out—
"What is going on here?" Tiarek asked with a suspicious look.
"Nothing!" Ahsoka said brightly. "Nothing, we were, um, we just forgot something?"
Boba stared at her. Was she lying badly on purpose, or was she that bad at it?
She shot him a look. "We, um, we…"
"She doesn't want you to know that when we first got here, Kaisa sniped at Kenobi and nearly fragged him with a slug," Boba interjected. "Got her all shook up. She knows how protective you all are of your pet wizards."
Tiarek's brows went up. "She almost got General Kenobi?" he asked, turning to her.
Ahsoka nodded solemnly. "He's fine, but she's not very Jedi friendly. It was a hard welcome."
"That's one way of fucking putting it," Boba grumbled, then stilled at the way Ahsoka's eyes had gone perfectly round and black like a porg's.
A sharp whistle sounded from behind them. Boba's heart stopped and he spun to look. "Su'cuy, verd'ika!" Kaisa called out aggressively, her slugthrower butted up against her shoulder, pointed at the ground.
Tiarek immediately put himself in front of them. He took a step forward and snapped into a perfect salute. "CT-7567, Captain Rex of the 501st Clone Battalion, Sergeant," he said briskly, then lowered his hand.
Kaisa dropped the rifle to her waist and stared. "Tiarek?" she asked hesitantly. She put a hand to her chest. "Tiarek… tion'gar kar'tayli ni?"
Tiarek shook his head. "Sorry, Sergeant, early years are a bit fuzzy for me. Got a little too close to a grenade as a cadet."
Boba stared daggers at Kaisa, mindlessly begging the Force that Plo had assured him was in everything that she'd shut up—don't fucking tell him, don't fucking tell him, you have no right, no fucking right—and he felt like he was going to throw up from the way panic was squeezing him. He just knew that if she told him, she'd rip open something that he would never heal from. He'd believed at first that he needed Tiarek to know, needed him to remember but that was before he saw how… fine he was. Boba was lonely, and he thought that Tiarek remembering everything would somehow undo something that they'd lost a decade ago, but Tiarek wasn't torturing himself with the need for answers at night like Boba was. He was fighting a fucking war and watching his vode die on the daily, he didn't need to be haunted by memories of Jango telling him he loved him and trying to murder him on top of it.
Boba was Tiarek's ori'vod long before Cody was in the picture. Back then, it was his job to protect his little brother. It didn't matter who was bigger, Boba was older. He had to watch out for Cassus, now, but that didn't mean he couldn't still protect Tiarek—no, not Tiarek, he had chosen Rex—from this. Boba willed Kaisa to understand that if she said a word, he'd tackle her off the edge of that fucking hill and take them both down to the creek.
Boba could let go of Tiarek, for Rex's sake, and Kaisa would too if she knew what was good for her. He caught Ahsoka's eyes; she looked sad, but nodded in understanding.
Kaisa swallowed hard and gave Boba a small nod. "Wer'cuy," she said in a shaky voice. "I… I before does teaching. I think you before remember me."
"Apologies." He crossed his arms. "So what's this I hear about a sniper shot taken at a High General?"
"Misunderstanding, right?" Boba asked sharply. "She won't do it again."
Kaisa nodded and gave Boba a flat, meek smile. "No. Won't do it again."
Rex harrumphed and turned to Ahsoka. "You're alright, then? Nothing happened that I need to tell the General about?"
"Nope." She gave him a bright smile. "I'm fine, Obi-Wan's fine, everyone's fine."
"If you say so." Rex pulled Boba into a kov'nyn. "Cin vhetin, ner vod," he said quietly. "Don't waste this. Ahsoka worked hard to get you here."
That was a fucking understatement. "I won't," Boba promised Rex.
"Good man." He nodded at Kaisa. "Nice meeting you, Ma'am," he said.
"And you," Kaisa whispered, trying to smile.
"Mind if I hitch a ride to Goran with you?" Ahsoka asked Rex, bumping him with her shoulder.
"Sure, but where's General Kenobi and Cody?"
"Walking back to Bockin proper to catch a turbo-train." Ahsoka shrugged. "But we've got a battle to get to."
Rex chuckled. "I'll brief you on the way there, then." He winked at Boba. "See you around, Boba."
"See you." Boba nodded at him, nearly blind with relief, and Rex turned to go back to the Y-Wing.
Ahsoka pulled Boba into one last, last hug. "This is going to be hard, but I know you can do it," she murmured. "I am so proud of you, Boba, and I am so lucky to know you."
Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum. Boba squeezed his eyes shut and memorized the sound of her purr, but didn't dare say the words out loud. He knew she wasn't allowed to say it back. Nothing was forever, that wasn't the stupid fucking Jedi way.
Ahsoka hugged him tighter, and he wondered if she had heard that thought too. "Vercopa gar mar'eyi mirjahaal, ner vod'ika," she said softly, pulling away after one last rub of her soft lek.
Boba took a deep, shaky breath, "K'oyaci, ori'vod." He meant it literally. If she got her shebs blown off by a battledroid after this mess, he'd pay a Nightsister from Dathomir to bind her stupid fucking ghost to a toilet.
Ahsoka's eyes went wide; she'd heard his thought. She threw her head back and laughed. "Never change, Boba." She let Rex put an arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the Y-Wing.
Boba cupped his hands around his mouth. "Oblivioussayswhat?"
Rex turned and squinted at him. "What?" he called back, and Ahsoka clapped a hand over her mouth too late to stop her bark of laughter.
"Use a condom on the ride back, your kids would be fucking ugly!" Boba bellowed right before they closed their cockpits, and he cackled at their identical looks of mortification and their mouths silently bellowing his name.
Rex shook his head and started up the landing sequence. Ahsoka blew him a kiss as they ascended. Boba tracked them until the ship turned into a tiny dot, then stared at the place in the sky where they disappeared until it all went blurry. He felt cold, even though it was so warm and humid that he was sweating through his jacket.
Ahsoka was gone. He was on his own, again.
Or no. No, he had Cassus now, and he was going to be a good ori'vod to him or kill one of them trying.
Kaisa shifted, in clear discomfort from being on her knee. "Ahsoka bal Rex, eh?" she asked with a small smile.
Boba rolled his eyes. Even fucking Kaisa could see they were more than vode, even if they didn't want to acknowledge it, but that didn't mean he wanted to gossip about them with her. "He's her ori'vod, that's all," he said frostily.
Kaisa nodded and her smile faded. "Tion'gar copaani uj'alayi?" she asked him timidly. "Fresh. I make, not Pinky."
Boba looked at her sideways. "Let's get one thing straight," he said. "You're not my mother anymore. I am here for my brother, not for you. I know we have a lot of shit to talk about, but right now I'm not up to it. I'm going to go to my room, take a nap, and nobody's going to bother me. I don't want fucking Five Nights at Flimpo's down there stalking me, or any of the other droids spying on me. Leave me be. That's all I want from you."
Kaisa nodded and looked away. "Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum, Boba," she said softly. "Darasuum."
"Yeah, that's great. I'm still not fucking calling you Mama." Boba stalked past her and down the hill, his hand throbbing. He'd squeezed the tooth so tight that he'd drawn blood with its razor sharp roots. Awesome. He was off to a great fucking start.
He strode over to Cassus, who had parked his hoverchair at the top of the ramp and was casting something onto a set of knitting needles. Buddy was perched on the back of his chair, playing soft quetarra music. "Are they gone?" Cas asked, his hands still making complicated loops around a needle while he looked at Boba.
"Yeah." The song sounded familiar, like an old memory, but he couldn't place it. Boba swallowed hard and tried to breathe normally. "I'm gonna lay down for a bit, alright? I'll see you at dinner."
"Alright. Gotika made your bed up." Cas looked back down at his knitting and started humming along with Buddy's music.
Boba jogged to his room and locked the door behind him. He looked around. It was plain, with just an empty wardrobe, an armor stand with his beskar carefully displayed, and a bed of white linens with a blanket made out of a hundred crocheted squares laid over the top. Robert the Rancor and the silver tooka doll had been placed together on the pillow.
He kicked off his boots and laid down on his new bed, facing away from the beskar, and let loose a muffled sob into Robert's belly.
Cody checked his chronometer and let out an uncharacteristic growl. "Sir, you go on ahead. I'll run back and make sure Os'ika didn't fall in a hole."
Obi-Wan bit down a laugh. "Cody, you are aware that I know what that nickname means, correct?" he asked.
Cody met his eyes shamelessly. "Is it inaccurate?" he asked dryly.
"Not in the slightest." They both snickered, and Obi-Wan's commlink blinked with an incoming transmission. He raised an eyebrow and opened the channel.
"Master, you're never going to believe who I ran into," Ahsoka said wryly.
Cody leaned in. "In the backwoods of Corellia? We know for sure that all that poison's out of your system, right? You're not snuggled up to a mother nexu in a den somewhere?"
Ahsoka laughed. "Oh, he's definitely a mother nexu."
"Very funny, Commander," a familiar, disgruntled voice said.
Obi-Wan and Cody both did a double take at his wrist. "Rex?" Cody asked incredulously. "What the heck are you doing all the way out here?"
"General Skywalker had a bad feeling. Sent me to check it out."
Obi-Wan sighed. "Of course he did," he said wearily. "And I suppose simply sending a message to us was out of the question?"
"To be fair, Sir, you were out of range." Rex sounded like he was smiling.
"Did you…" Cody cleared his throat and met Obi-Wan's eyes nervously. "Did you meet Kaisa?"
"Yes. She seemed nice enough, though more timid than I expected for a Mando."
Cody almost choked. "Is that so?" he asked, his voice squeaking comically. "Did she say anything to you?"
"Besides hello?" Rex asked. "Not really?"
"Oh." Cody looked relieved.
"Is it true she shot you, General?"
"Why would Boba lie about her shooting Obi-Wan?" Ahsoka snipped.
"I didn't say he lied, I'm only asking."
Obi-Wan could almost hear Rex's eyes rolling. "A misunderstanding, Captain, no worries," he assured him. "Boba will be perfectly safe with her."
"If you say so, Sir."
"I'm hitching a ride to Goran with Rex, Master. I'll see you soon."
"Are you leaving now?" Obi-Wan asked, dismayed.
"My instructions were to join Skyguy as soon as I returned to the Temple, Master," she reminded him.
"Yes, but…" Obi-Wan stopped, pulled himself together and stopped trying to argue his illogical case. "Yes, that makes sense for you to skip the trip back to Coruscant. Very well. Be careful on Goran, Padawan. May the Force be with you."
"And you, Master." Ahsoka disconnected the channel, and moments later Obi-Wan felt her Force signature fade as she presumably entered hyperspace.
Cody frowned. "Well, that was… abrupt."
"Indeed." Obi-Wan pulled his cloak around him and tried not to visibly sulk. "Let's keep moving, then."
"Yes, Sir." Cody was clearly unhappy, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he walked. They walked in silence while Obi-Wan stared at the ground and brooded. Something had changed after he'd apologized to her. She'd not broken their bond, nothing so dramatic as that, but it was different. Lighter, in a way, though that didn't make sense. It had never felt like a weight before, but now he keenly felt a new absence, rather like an overdue haircut that was shorter than desired.
"Give her a bit more time, Sir," Cody said after a few minutes of listening to only the starry-leaved strings of leaves whip in the wind and a convor that occasionally hooted sadly overhead. "She'll come around."
"She has come around, Commander," he said pleasantly. "This is what that looks like."
Cody clearly didn't like that answer, and his unease thickened the Force around him. He was far too used to coming up with a solution to any problem that came his way. "I… expected this to end differently, I think," he admitted.
So had Obi-Wan, though he'd never admit it. "How so?" he asked Cody anyway.
"I suppose I expected the two of you to have a go at each other, but then go on as you always have. Not sure I like the way this is turning out."
Obi-Wan patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. "Ahsoka and I will always hold deep affection for one another," he reassured him. "But nothing is permanent except the Force. We have both become unduly attached to who we were to one another. It's best that we both let go and move on."
Cody huffed, still displeased. "Are you sure, Sir?"
"We must, for her sake," Obi-Wan answered blithely. "She cannot heal unless we do. Unfortunately, my deception has had longer-lasting repercussions than I anticipated." He never would have agreed to the Rako Hardeen mission if he had known the real cost.
Cody frowned. "Seems a bit… extreme, is all."
"It isn't. It is the foundation of our beliefs, after all. We must not allow ourselves to become so attached to the past that it impacts our future." It was the truth, so why did it hurt so badly? Obi-Wan had told Mace that he understood that his actions had consequences, but he hadn't anticipated that the consequences would be… so permanent.
Ahsoka forgave everyone everything. She couldn't help it, it was part of her nature. She could feel when one's remorse was genuine and she always, always capitulated, but she hadn't in this case and he had no one but himself to blame. She would grant a blank slate to everyone except for him, but their slate was far too full to be wiped clean. A lifetime of memories had been etched past its surface and into the foundation beneath.
Their slate needed to be discarded entirely and started anew, and so he would. He would do whatever Ahsoka needed to be able to heal. No matter what words he chose, nothing seemed to stop the bleeding. Clinging to her even harder had done nothing but left new bruises behind, so now he would do the opposite. He would let her go for her own peace. His attachment to her was the shrapnel in the wound causing it to fester, the broken thread causing the whole tapestry to unravel.
Kyber did not shatter as easily as Kaisa Skirata seemed to believe, and a real buir knew that sometimes one had to let their child go, especially when holding onto them would harm them far more than help.
"Bo-bi," Ahsoka said with a quivering lip and eyes almost completely swallowed up by her pupils. She waved at Obi-Wan over Plo's shoulder as he walked away. "Bo-bi!" They turned the corner and were gone.
They broke the treeline, and Obi-Wan could see the train station just ahead. "I've been meaning to ask you, Sir, what does mo nighean mean?" Cody asked.
"My girl," Obi-Wan answered with a smile he didn't feel. He didn't tell him that it also meant daughter.
Notes:
MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS
Ori/vod/ika: big/brother/little
Dar'buir: no longer parent. Essentially a parental divorce/disownment
Udesii: calm, easy
Cas'ika: Little Cas
Gotika: Little Machine
Jango nari taabi'an: Jango is marching (marching being a metaphor for the afterlife)
Elek/ 'lek: Yes
Ba'vodu: Uncle
Buir/e: Parent/Parents
Aliit orshya tal'din: Family is more than blood
Haat'la Mando'ade: True Mandalorians, a mercenary group composed of mainly former Mandalorian royal soldiers formed by Jaster Mereel, who was considered rightful king (Mand'alor) of Mandalore. Jango took over leadership (and possession of the darksaber!) after Jaster's death
Kih'ad: small child (ad'ika is the more cutesy and commonly used term)
Gotaliise: Gotal people
Kaminiise: Kaminoans
Ner sen'tra: My jetpack
Goteni muun'lan: Laying an egg
Traciyam: stove
Jetiise: Jedi (plural)
Tiingilar: Spicy Mandalorian stew
Ad'ikase: Children
Ner ad'ika, ni ceta, ner kar'ta: My baby, I'm so sorry, my heart
Kaysh vode: His brothers
Reks'ika: Little Tiarek (s added for ease of saying, as otherwise it would be a hard stop in the center of the word)
Shabla kaminiise: Fucking Kaminoans
Sa'johaa: Metaphor
Verd'goten: Mandalorian rite of passage into adulthood, usually done at 13
Cin'vetin: Fresh start (literally fresh snow on a field)
Karyai: Large central living chamber of a traditional Mandalorian home
Os'ika: Little shit, a pun on the normal diminuative of Ahsoka, Ahs'ika
Chakaare: Assholes
Vor entye: Thank you
Kov'nyn: headbutt
Su'cuy: Hi
Tion'gar kar'tayli ni: Do you know me?
Wer'cuy: It was ages ago
Ni kar'tayli darasuum: I love you/I hold you in my heart forever
Vercopa gar mar'eyi mirjahaal: May you find peace of mind
K'oyaci: Stay alive
Bal: and
Tion'gar copaani uj'alayi: Do you want some uj cake?
MAOR-GRASTA TRANSLATIONS
Mo nighean: my girl/daughter
OTHER NOTES
GIRL YOU'RE NOT EXPENDABLE BOBI LOVES YOU HE ALMOST STRAIGHT UP MURDERED SOMEONE FOR YOU AHHHHH *is dragged off stage by a comically large shepherd's hook*
Still struggling to emotionally recover from Master Obi-Wan's deception, Ahsoka discovers in the aftermath that twelve-year-old Boba Fett has been locked up among adults in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center. After convincing Chancellor Palpatine to grant him a pardon, she manages to secure his release on the condition that she serve as his legal guardian. Now, with the help of Master Plo and the Wolfpack, she vows to help him track down what family he has left.
Fandom: Star Wars
Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, Plo Koon, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Kanan Jarrus, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, CC-1119 | Appo, Dexter Jettster, FLO | WA-7 (Star Wars), Shaak Ti, ARC Commander Blitz (Star Wars), CT-6922 | Dogma, Original Clone Trooper Character(s) (Star Wars), CC-3636 | Wolffe, Clone Trooper Sinker (Star Wars), Clone Trooper Comet (Star Wars), CC-2224 | Cody, CT-5597 | Jesse, CT-4860 | Boost, Aurra Sing, Tobias Beckett, Null-11 | Ordo Skirata, Kal Skirata, Original Mandalorian Characters (Star Wars), Original Droid Characters (Star Wars), Original Jedi Character(s) (Star Wars)
Total Word Count: 123,000
Chapter Word Count: 8,248
Chapter Summary: Anakin gets a bad feeling, Boba and Cody desperately search for an antidote, and Obi-Wan tries to keep Ahsoka alive long enough to get it.
Strongly recommended listening for this chapter
Goran CXXV was the smallest, farthest terrestrial planet from the massive star of its namesake system. It didn't have a breathable atmosphere, but it did have a surface that had been glassed by a particularly violent solar flare from the blue supergiant into pure trinitite, which was in high demand by both mercenary miners and Techno Union industrialists for use in radiation-resistant microchips. A legion of battle droids had taken the planet a month ago. If they didn't take it back now, there wouldn't be a planet left once it was stripped to the core.
Anakin drummed his fingers on his vambraces, thinking hard as he stared at the holomap of their drop zone. Something was breaking his concentration, an annoying metaphysical itch of a feeling that felt like an invisible sand flea had crawled down his back and latched onto his skin. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck.
"You alright, Sir?" Rex asked on his left, leaning in with a low voice.
"Yeah, fine, I'm just…" Anakin knew it wasn't an actual itch, it was the Force telling him that something was wrong and he'd regret it if he kept ignoring it. "Let me get this call out of the way, first."
"As you say, Sir." Rex leaned back. Across from them, Appo popped the seal on his helmet and hooked it on his belt.
"Ridge, get Master Koon up on holo for me," Anakin ordered.
"Right away, Sir."
Plo Koon's hologram flickered into view, Commander Wolffe standing at attention beside him. "Koh-to-yah, young Skywalker."
"Koh-to-yah, Master Plo." Anakin bowed. "I hope the journey here has treated you well."
"Oh, indeed, as did the one previous." Plo chuckled. "Captain Rex, Sergeant Appo, it's good to see you both. Have you had a chance to review the simulations Wolffe prepared for you?"
Anakin rolled his shoulders again, trying not to twitch. "We have. I wanted to run an idea by you, if you don't mind."
"By all means."
Anakin brought up a topographic map of the surface. "Taking a look at what has bounced back from the scouting team, there's suspected to be a large ipsium deposit in sector eighteen. This is obviously not where we want to be staging a firefight."
"Agreed." Master Plo tucked his talons into his sleeves. "Unfortunately, that is also where there's the highest likelihood of a ground ambush. Those valleys are rife with blind spots."
"Exactly." Anakin pointed at a small canyon between two jagged, trinitite hills. "I'd like to send in a small team to see if we can get this pack of B1's away from the ipisium. I'd prefer we recapture the sector without blowing it into a crater the size of ten limmie fields, not to mention destabilizing the neighboring plateau."
"Agreed. Excellent catch, Anakin."
Anakin kept a neutral face but his back did straighten a little. "I'm thinking that we have Appo lead Akul Platoon down to these coordinates, let them lure the B1's over to the canyon to swing around behind here." Anakin pointed to a small dead end. "We'll box them in, have a LAAT/i grab Akul before they get pinned down, then you mop up with a bombing run. Hopefully we can clean up the battlefield and lower the odds of blowing the thing sky high."
"Any additions, Commander?" Plo turned to Wolffe.
"Sounds solid to me, Sir."
"Let me run some sims so we can get our timing down. I'll send them over to you as soon as I can, Master." Anakin jumped like something bit him.
"Are you alright, Anakin?" Plo's head tilted curiously.
"Just fine, Master." Anakin smiled a little too wide.
"We shall speak soon then, I hope." Master Plo disconnected the channel with a bow.
Anakin shook his arms and legs out as soon as the hologram disappeared, the glowing warmth from Plo's compliment quickly fading at the reminder that something was wrong. Kriff, he had a bad feeling about something; he had no idea what, but if he had to guess, it concerned his conspicuously absent sidekick that normally would be running the simulations for him and complaining about it the entire time.
Ahsoka was with Obi-Wan and Cody, taking Boba to go meet his mom and get his armor back. She was fine. He was being a worrywort for nothing. She was probably just… arguing with Obi-Wan. Hopefully she was letting him have it and getting it all out of her system. He couldn't message her, as all of them would be out of comm range for the day; rural Corellia wasn't exactly flush with public long-range communications that they could tap into.
"What's eating you, Sir?" Rex asked wryly, looking him up and down.
"I've got a weird feeling." Anakin swiped through the holomap. "You haven't heard from the kid, have you?"
"No," Rex said. "Cody said that they'd be off-grid for a while. Public holonet connection doesn't go past Bockrin limits." He paused. "When you say a weird feeling…"
"Yeah, one of those." Anakin brought up a bomber simulation. "Maybe it's nothing. I can worry about it later. Right now, we need to focus on the mission. Let's get our timing nailed down so Appo's boys don't get turned into falumpeset cheese."
"I appreciate that, Sir," Appo deadpanned from the other side of the table. "I'll head down and start prep, if that's alright with you."
"Absolutely, Sergeant. Dismissed." Anakin returned Appo's parting salute and turned his attention back to the holotable to start throwing numbers into his flight simulations.
Ten minutes later the feeling wasn't going away, no matter how much Anakin tried to stomp it down, and what was worse was that now his knee was throbbing. Well, not his knee, it was actually a few inches below his knee on the back of his calf, but it was so sore that he figured his knee had to be the source. Had he pushed it during his katas that morning?
"Sir?" Rex finally asked, fed up with watching him shift his weight and make annoyed noises.
"Ugh." Anakin let out a long groan and let his head droop. "Do me a favor, Rex, and–"
"Eight hours."
Anakin popped his head up. "What?"
"From here to Corellia. Eight hours in a hyperspace ring."
Anakin winced. "I hate to even ask."
"No you don't, Sir." Rex sounded amused under his helmet. "If I leave now I can be back before the fighting's completely over."
"We're not even staging for another twelve hours. Plo's still got all of our AT-TEs on his Venator for maintenance. I'll be shocked if we fire a shot within twenty hours." Anakin slung an arm around his captain's shoulder and gave him a conspiratorial squeeze. "I owe you one."
Rex laughed. "Vaughn's in charge of Jaig Platoon until I'm back. Not Jesse, I don't care what he tells you. Vaughn."
Anakin laughed loudly and patted him on the back, relief washing over him like a rainstorm. "I'll send Skirata's coordinates to your commlink. Get going, Captain. There's a ticket to a Gungan shaak roast in it for you if you make it back before Plo realizes you're gone."
"Don't worry, Sir. I'll update you as soon as I'm on the ground." Rex gave him a parting salute and left the bridge at a pace brisk enough to set his kama swishing.
Anakin turned his attention back to the holotable, feeling like a bantha had been lifted off his shoulders, and started the simulation over.
The room around Boba exploded into action. Cassus buried his face in his hands and started sobbing, clearly horrified at what he'd just done; Gotika raised her glowing palms and aimed at Kenobi, and his mother swung a knife at Cody. The trooper ducked the blow and snared her hand before she could slash again. He yanked her arm forward and cracked her elbow over his knee, forcing her to drop the knife with the strike to her nerve, then put her in a headlock, drew his carbine, and held it to Gotika's faceplate with his free hand.
"Kid, stop crying and take the droid to your room," Cody said calmly, like he didn't have a squirming, snarling Mandalorian fighting to get loose under one arm.
"Mama…" Cassus whimpered.
She wrenched herself out of Cody's grip and pushed her hair out of her face, but didn't try to attack again. "Udesii, Cas'ika. Mama ven'cabuo cuun, ner ad'ika. Ni kar'tayli darasuum."
Cassus' lip quivered. "Al–"
"Ke'cuyoli gar haav'yamika. Ke'hiibi Gotika bal beskar'ade. Tion'jate?" She whistled and Pinky appeared a few seconds later.
Cassus nodded miserably then hung his head. "Jate, Mama." He hovered to the bedroom hallway, followed by Gotika, Pinky, and Buddy quivering in a little ball on his shoulder. He turned and gave Boba a last, desperate look. "Please don't hurt her," he begged, then disappeared. His bedroom door beeped with three descending notes as he locked it behind him.
"Don't fucking move, bitch," Boba spat, pressing the WESTAR against her temple again.
"Boba, stop this," she growled in response. "Jetiise ne'baati par gar, ner ad'ika. Ni–"
"Shut. The fuck. Up." Boba hissed the words through gritted teeth and pushed the blaster harder. "You're a fucking monster. You tried to fucking kill us!"
"Nayc gar!" she barked. "Beskar'ade be'Cassus ne ru'leneda gar, bic du'cari."
"Sure, the drones were just delaying us, not shooting to kill," Boba said mockingly. He wanted to pull the trigger. Behind them, Ahsoka thrashed around in Kenobi's arms, whimpering like a beaten massiff. "Sit the fuck down."
"You does making mistake, ner ad'ika," she said softly, but didn't fight Boba as he pushed her over to one of the few chairs with armrests.
Cody yanked off her cuirass and gauntlets and ejected a length of whipcord, then began to tie her to the chair with the same inescapable knots he'd used on Ordo. "Now, Sarge, you're going to–"
"I know you," his mother interrupted, watching him. "Jetii before speak your name Cody, 'lek? You are–"
"CC-2224, Sergeant," Cody said stoically, crossing his arms. "I remember you. You specialized in close-quarters combat and knifework."
"Cody." She smiled. "Sound like kote. I before speak you what it mean, 'lek?"
"Yes." Boba saw him bite back the automatic Sir that nearly followed it. "Glory. But like I said back then, I don't care about glory. I care about ner vode." Cody leaned down until he was at eye level with her. "And you just poisoned my vod. Tell me where the antidote is."
She blinked in surprise. "Jetii not your–" she began.
"Don't you dare try to tell me who is and isn't vode to me," Cody said silkily, and Boba felt a shiver go down his spine at his tone. "Commander Tano is a vod in all but genes. She has fought at my side and my brothers' side for years. She says the Rememberance, she leads from the front, she's put her life on the line for us more times than I can count. Now tell me where the antidote is–" Cody brandished the knife he had just taken from her, " –or I start cutting things off."
She scoffed. "Do you think you scare me, ad'ika?" she growled.
"I know he does," Boba snapped. "You're not used to seeing them grown. All you can see is Jango. He scares the hell out of you, I can practically smell the piss in your pants."
Her face screwed up in anger. "You forget, Boba," she snapped. "I Mama. I raise you, I nurse you on my breast, I hold you in my heart second I see your face."
"And then you fucked off!" Boba snarled, eyes stinging. "I don't care if you loved me once. You obviously don't anymore, so tell us where the antidote fucking is."
"How you speak it?" She looked horrified. "I never, never stop, Bo'ika, you believe me. I have no choice when I leave."
"I don't care." Boba's face was wet and he didn't know how long it had been that way. "You tell me where the fucking antidote is, now."
His mother looked at him with heartbreak plain on her face. "Mama kar'tayli darasuum, ner Bo'ika."
Boba saw red. "I fucking hate you," he said venemously, then shot her in her exposed knee.
She shrieked at the top of her lungs and bent over in pain, while the rest of the room jumped a foot in the air. "I need to focus!" Kenobi barked; one hand hovered over Ahsoka's rancid blue knife wound, the other over her heart. "Do not fire that infernal thing inside again!"
"Fine." Boba grabbed the knife Cody had taken from his mother, fisted the bitch's curly black hair into a handle, then tugged her head as far back as he could without breaking her neck. He held the knife an inch away from her eye. "I'm not going to fucking ask again, you evil cunt," he spat. "Because if you don't tell me, I'm going to dig out your eyes one at a time and make Cassus fucking eat them." He dug her nails into her scalp and bared his teeth. The tilted blade caught the firelight at just the right angle; he saw the subtle rainbow sheen on the kal's edge. "This one has manax root on it too, doesn't it?" Boba whispered. "But you won't give it up for yourself, we both know you're too stubborn for that. How about I go see what Cassus is up to–"
"Boba!" She gasped. Her beskar-colored eyes were already bugged out from the angle he held her head at, but now they bulged even further from terror, or maybe horror; he could have asked Ahsoka which one if she hadn't been poisoned for no fucking reason at all.
"You don't think I'll do it?" Boba seethed. He wanted so badly to put the knife in her eye, slip it behind the globe and sever her optic nerve, scoop up to pop it right out–
"He your brother," his mother said, trembling.
"That would mean that you're my mother. And you aren't. Not anymore." He spat in her face. "Gar cuy dar'buir, shabla dalgaan."
"Boba…" his– no, Kaisa, whispered.
"I choose my family, now. I chose Ahsoka, and she chose me too. She's my ori'vod." Boba's voice cracked and he tasted bile. "I swear, I will jam this fucking knife down Cassus' throat if that's what I have to do to save my sister, so tell me where the antidote is. Fair trade, right? His safety for hers?"
Kaisa's eyes rolled desperately to Cody.
"I'd do what he says, Sergeant," Cody deadpanned. "He's a civilian and a citizen of the Republic. I have no authority to tell him not to do anything."
Her big silver eyes rolled back over to Boba, full of tears. "Go out, walk creek. Follow until see tiareke. I before bury there, over by bush." She swallowed hard. "I plant for gar vod, Bo–" She froze when the poison blade kissed her eyelashes.
"General, we're going now." Cody put his helmet back on and picked up his carbine.
"I'll stay here," Kenobi said, still concentrating with his eyes closed. "I've slowed the poison down enough to where we should have a bit of time if she stays calm and you hurry, but I need to maintain the trance."
"Roger that. Come on, kid." Cody put a hand on his shoulder.
Boba let go of Kaisa's hair and tucked the blade into his pocket. "You better hope we fucking find it in time," he spat. He looked at Ahsoka one last time, moaning and twisting like she was on fire inside, then turned and followed Cody out into the storm before he put the dagger in Kaisa's heart.
They'd only made it five meters away from the door before it made the same three-note melody as Cassus' door had when he locked it. "Fuck," Boba said faintly. If the bunker was locked, they didn't have the ordinance to get back in. Even if they found the antidote in time they wouldn't be able to give it to Ahsoka, she'd be dead and they'd be fucking useless out here and–
"Boba!" Cody barked through his vocabulator. He went to one knee in front of him. "Focus, trooper. We have a mission to complete. Commander Tano is counting on us to get her that antidote, so that's what we're going to do. We don't have time to waste panicking. General Kenobi will figure out a way to let us back in."
Boba stared at Cody, caught between laughing, crying, and punching him; he wondered if that was the speech he usually used on shinies when they were on their first drop, trying not to soil themselves. "Sure thing, Commander," he choked.
"Good man. Now let's move!"
Boba cursed Cody's long fucking legs as he hustled behind him, trying not to trip over the slick pebbles. They ran through the pouring rain until the dry – or not so dry anymore – creekbed ended. Just ahead, there was a ring of wide-leafed flower bushes that looked nothing like anything else in the forest around Bockrin.
"Right there. See those flowers?" Boba pointed at the bushes dotted with small, pale, yellow-white flowers, curled up in protective buds from the storm.
"Those are tiarek flowers, eh?" Cody held out a hand and helped Boba down the steep hillside.
"Well, the name's accurate." Cody turned on his headlamp and shined it around the flower bushes.
"No." Boba used the flashlight on his commlink to search underneath the dark-green canopy, but saw nothing. "Where the hell…" he whispered to himself. "I don't get it. I don't see anything out of place, do you?"
"She must have put the sod back," Cody said. "I'll start on this side, you go the other way. Work in a circle, we'll find it."
"We don't have anything to dig with," Boba said, trying not to shake. They didn't have time for this banthashit, they needed the antidote now. Kenobi had said she had time but they had to hurry, and if they had to dig up every single bush–
"You've still got her knife," Cody reminded him. He'd already yanked out his own vibroblade and was carefully cutting at the grassy ground, trying to see if anything was looser than normal.
"Right." Boba started poking around in the grass under the bushes, trying not to panic again. He just had to keep looking, he'd find it. Ahsoka's Force or whatever would guide them. Hopefully.
He found nothing under the first bush, nothing under the second, and by the time he had crawled on his hands and knees under the third he was shaking so badly that he could barely loosen the dirt. He was going to be too late, wasn't he? Ahsoka had almost died for him going after the armor on Geonosis, but it was his own mother who would be the one to actually finish her. The armor was cursed. He should have let it rot with whatever was left of Dad in that bughole. His soul didn't deserve to be retrieved.
Boba continued to dig, hating himself more and more every moment that went by without finding it. He was useless, nothing more than the defective clone of a murderer. All this time, he'd thought that Dad had to have had a good reason to shoot Mama and Cas down. He couldn't have imagined what it was, but there had to be some reason.
"Mama wanted you and Tiarek to come too, but Dad wouldn't let you leave. He kept telling her that he couldn't go and she wasn't allowed to either because of the clause in her contract. Ten years, that was the deal."
He was enforcing her fucking contract. She wanted to leave because Cassus had powers, obviously, and she was right when she said the longnecks would have cut him open and taken his cells for their clones. But Dad wouldn't let her leave, and when she'd tried he shot their ship out of the sky. It was something that Boba had known his whole life had happened, but he'd trusted that his dad had a reason. Nobody just shot their wife and kid out of the sky for nothing, and his father had a code of honor. He had to have a good reason.
"Listen well, Boba, and remember our code. Be polite to clients, especially to enemies. Never complain; never say more than necessary. Face your fears. Die with valor. He who hires my hand, hires my whole self." Dad looked down at him. "And remember, never tell the truth in a trade."
The only reason Jango Fett needed was his fucking name on a signature line. Whoever hired him hired his whole self, after all.
Boba crawled to the fourth bush, gulping down silent sobs and trying not to puke. He was thankful for the rain, in a way; it made digging easier, but more importantly Cody couldn't see what a little crybaby bitch he was.
Every memory was poisoned by knowing. Dad playing quetarra and singing to Cassus, helping Tiarek blow out birthday candles, falling asleep on the sofa during holofilms, taking Boba on jobs, showing him how to fly the Slave I, teaching him how to shoot, telling him he loved him–
"He told me he loved me every day. Even when he was mad at me because I'd done something stupid or messed up, he still always told me he loved me."
Was everything some sort of act? Were Jango's sons ever anything but pets to him, pets that had to be put down once they were too disobedient? He'd shot down a ship with Cas on it. He'd almost beaten Tiarek to death and had him reconditioned afterwards. What would he have done to Boba if he'd lived?
Boba crawled to the fifth bush, feeling like a dog. He was no better than Jango in the end, who was he kidding? He'd threatened to poison Cassus, he'd threatened to feed him his own mother's eyeballs. What the fuck was wrong with him? Was he rotten down to his DNA? Jango's DNA?
He wanted to say it was because he just wanted to save his sister at any cost, but he'd be a fucking liar if he did. He wanted to hurt Kaisa. He still wanted to, he wanted her to feel a fraction of what he was feeling inside now that he knew that she had been alive this whole time and had left them both there, had accepted that they were someone else's property and gotten on her ship to leave anyway.
Kal had known she had survived, had somehow been in contact with her, but she'd hidden herself and Cassus away. She hadn't tried to get them back. She probably hadn't even asked about them, just pretended that they never existed. Maybe she'd added their names to the Remembrance after her parents' names and Gavin. It was probably easier to pretend that your kids were dead instead of acknowledging that you'd abandoned them.
"Why now?"
That's what Cassus had asked. He hadn't been surprised that Boba was alive, only that he'd shown up.
"He's dead, isn't he?"
Boba had meant that he had nowhere else to go, but maybe Cassus thought that Boba knew they were alive and it was only because their father was dead that he could finally find them safely.
Ahsoka would be disgusted with him if she knew what he'd threatened to do to Cassus, and she'd be right to be. Whatever had happened to his brother, it had led to Kaisa keeping him soft. It wasn't his fault. Maybe… maybe if they made it through this, that could change. He couldn't consider Kaisa his mother anymore, not after everything she had done, but Cassus didn't deserve to be disowned. She was the one who had separated them, Cas never had a say in it.
Boba moved onto the seventh bush, then the eighth, then by the time he got to the ninth he was crying too hard to see straight in the pouring rain. He already knew he wasn't going to find it. Ahsoka was dying, but there was no larty coming to save them this time. She had a fucking Jedi Master doing everything he could for her and it still wasn't enough.
Boba couldn't pull through for her. He was a fucking failure in every way that mattered. His hand tightened on the kal. So much for a fair fucking trade.
"Never tell the truth in a trade."
Fuck.
"Fair trade, right? His safety for hers."
The world spun around him as he realized what she'd done. "It's not here." Boba looked over at Cody, shoulder deep in a tiarek bush and covered in mud, and felt panic claw at his insides like he'd swallowed a wolf. "Cody, it's not fucking here! She just wanted us out of the bunker! She's going to kill them!"
Ahsoka's lekku were twitching, curled up on themselves unnaturally. The capillaries and veins closest to the surface of her skin had turned dark blue, eerily mirroring the image that was still forever burned into Obi-Wan's brain of her curled up on herself in a crumpled heap, tainted with Dark Side corruption.
At least the manax root hadn't affected her eyes. He didn't have to stare down at his little girl and see yellow glaring back. Her pupils were so blown that he could see the reflection of firelight in them and she twitched constantly, her jaw clenched in pain.
"Bobi…" Ahsoka said weakly, still tucked against his chest like a child.
"Easy, mo nighean," he said soothingly, scratching little circles at the root of her rear lek and rocking her.
"Cràdh mo chnàmhan," she mumbled. Her brain couldn't seem to decide on a language to speak, but she didn't understand anything but Basic whenever Obi-Wan replied. He feared her brain was beginning to swell.
"All of your bones hurt, or a specific place?" He kept scratching her lek. Her chest vibrated with a weak purr.
"All."
"Hurt only worse from now on," Kaisa said quietly. Cody had tied her wrists together tight enough for her hands to turn red, and she held her wounded knee at an unnatural angle. Blood had begun to pool under her boot. "Bring Boba back, and leave. She may live if you hurry."
Obi-Wan glared at her while Ahsoka shivered in his arms. "K'uur," he said icily.
"Bic cuyi ner yaim, chakaar."
"Ni ne'baati."
Ahsoka laughed into his robes. "Thas' rude," she mumbled. "There are other ways of… altering speech. Instead of shut up."
Obi-Wan craned his head to look down at her. "What?" he asked.
"Shut up. Ndi zoipa kunena. Plo sakonda." She nuzzled deeper into his robes. "You used to call me a tick," she said through a mouthful of linen.
"Call you…" Obi-Wan laughed softly as he remembered. "Oh. Oh, that's right, I did call you that, didn't I? I'd forgotten." He smiled and hugged her tighter. "My little tick."
If only she was still as small and easy to hold as she had been back then. A remarkably portable little creature, by four Ahsoka had mastered the skill of clinging to him while bearing enough of her own weight so that he would barely even notice he was holding her until she shifted dramatically, or if he needed to change his robes. He'd walked into more than one fresher with her sneakily hanging off his back.
"Am I dying?" Ahsoka asked softly. Questing fingers danced over the back of his head, seemingly searching for a long-gone Padawan braid to tug on.
Obi-Wan's heart raced hard enough to burst from his ribcage. He forced it to calm, then refocused the healing trance he had laid upon her. "No," he answered immediately. "You are not dying, Ahsoka. I've slowed down the absorption of the poison. You are going to be fine." He kissed her sweaty forehead; she was boiling hot to the touch from a dangerously high fever. "You'll be just fine, mo nighean," he continued over her purring. "We need to keep your heart rate nice and slow until Cody returns. There we go. Take a little rest. You're safe. I've got you."
Ahsoka's breathing slowed and deepened. The room went silent except for the crackling of the firepit. "Tion'solet gar kar'tayli kaysh?" Kaisa asked after a minute.
"What makes you think I know her?" Obi-Wan asked sarcastically. "I've obviously never met this girl in my life." Ahsoka stirred and whimpered in his arms, twitching pitifully. "I'm sorry, little one. Keep resting." Ahsoka's breaths turned slow and even again. She wasn't sleeping but not quite awake, instead lingering in the twilight between the two.
Kaisa watched him with a thoughtful expression. "Gar ori'canara, ni mirdi," she said quietly.
Obi-Wan heaved a long sigh. "Yes, a long time," he whispered.
Kaisa rolled her eyes. "Boba speak you know Mando'a."
"Yes, I'm fluent."
"So speak it," Kaisa said with a resentful look on her face.
"I'm not in the mood to make anything easy on you, actually, so no." Obi-Wan gave her a brittle smile. "It seems like you could use the practice anyway."
Kaisa snorted. "My Basic enough."
"Tion'vaii Boba?" Ahsoka mumbled.
"He's outside, dear. He and Cody'll be back soon. Don't worry."
Ahsoka sniffled loudly. "I'm sorry."
Obi-Wan craned his neck down. "Whatever for?" he asked, bewildered.
"Za kale." She nuzzled further into his robes. "Bha mi eas-urramach."
"Don't you worry about that." Obi-Wan continued to rock her and closed his eyes, regretting every complaint he'd made about her attitude. He had to focus on the moment and not dwell in the past. For now, he had done everything possible. He had reached out with the Living Force to dissolve as much of the poison in her bloodstream as he could and slowed her metabolism, but she had absorbed so much already. It was ravaging her system like a rancor in a glass factory. There was nothing he could do but watch her suffer, and the one person who knew exactly where the antidote was wasn't about to share its location more specifically than over by bush.
Force suggestions wouldn't work on her, he could already see that, and trying too hard would only break her mind. There was nothing else to do except maybe beat it out of her. It was a more tempting proposition than he was comfortable admitting, sitting there with Ahsoka twitching in his arms as she faded slowly like a spider who'd been sprayed with insecticide. The urge to put his hands around the Mandalorian's throat and squeeze the answer out of her grew stronger with each passing moment.
"You hold her in your heart," Kaisa said suddenly, breaking the silence.
Obi-Wan glared at Kaisa. You love her is what she meant; holding someone in your heart was how it was stated in Mando'a. "Of course I do," he said quietly. "I've known her since she was three. I've watched her grow from a sweet, curious child into a strong, talented young woman with a heart filled with endless compassion. When her training is complete, she will be a far greater Jedi than I could ever hope to be."
A crash echoed from the hallway that led to the bedrooms, followed by a loud sob. Kaisa flinched in her chair and looked at her feet.
"Cassus?" Ahsoka mumbled.
"Presumably," Obi-Wan answered. "He's been crying in his room since you fell ill. I got the impression that he was terrified to use the Force in front of two Jedi."
"Not your Force," Kaisa snarled. "Cassus manda'laarii. Not jetii."
Obi-Wan paused. "Manda singer?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Kaisa sighed loudly. "You know why beskar is urman'la par Mando'ade, 'lek?" she asked. "Or story not before speak to jeti'kase?"
"I don't really care," Obi-Wan said stonily.
"Copaani sulusu," Ahsoka murmured against his shoulder.
Kaisa smirked. "Long, long before memory, enemy of Manda'yaim does attacking. Manda sees suffer, pain, death of ade. Manda'laariise call out, beg for it help. Many day, many night, they sing until they voice break. Manda cry for it ade, reach into… into it haalas, squeeze heart for blood. Blood harden and change, later become beskar in ground. Manda tells manda'laariise, dig for blood, for beskar, and song will guide hammer when does forging. But only manda'laariise does forging, other ade not hear song."
"Armorers?" Obi-Wan asked. "Mandalorian armorers are Force sensitive?"
Kaisa bared her teeth. "No. You not does listening. Manda not your Force."
Obi-Wan had spent almost a year at Satine's side. While she had never spoken of this specific story, they'd had many philosophical discussions about the nature of his Force and her Manda, and they'd eventually agreed – for once – that they were almost certainly the same thing. "I've heard differently," he said blithely.
Kaisa snorted. "Who speak it?"
"An old friend."
"Satine?" Ahsoka murmured.
Obi-Wan smiled against her montral. "Indeed."
"Satine Kryze?" Kaisa's eyes suddenly blazed with disgust. She spat on the ground. "Hut'uunla chakaar. Dikut'la ad, kaysh ru'trika–"
"Yes, yes, we get it, you are not a fan of House Kryze," Obi-Wan said irritably.
Ahsoka patted his chest. "Is that why your people believe their souls live in their beskar?" she asked Kaisa.
"Our soul live in beskar because beskar is our soul, our Manda. Manda shed blood for it ade. Manda'laariise let song guide hammer, forge first beskar'gam and defeat enemy. Wear time always, our family live in beskar always." She suddenly chuckled, low and slow. "I before know one Jedi. Kiffar, brown big eyese, stripe, ah… shi'yayc, what it…"
"Yellow."
" 'Lek, yellow. He have yellow stripe on eyese."
"Wait." There was no mistaking that description. "Quinlan Vos? You know Quinlan Vos?" he asked sharply.
" 'Lek. He very good man. More good for jetiise, you not deserve him."
Obi-Wan's eyes bugged out and he made a mental note to comm his old friend the second they were back at the Temple. "How do you–"
"It is my business, jetii." Kaisa chuckled again. "He before speak about it, call it, ah, attachment. Ke'gar ne'kartayli, or it will make you evil." She snorted. "Shabla dinii'la jetiise. How it will make you evil?"
"It's a vast oversimplification, to start," Obi-Wan said flatly. "I could just as soon say that winning a duel for the Darksaber automatically endows you with the wisdom and knowledge to be a competent ruler."
Kaisa threw her head back and laughed. "Strong Mand'alor make strong kingdom. But our heart, I already speak, it beskar. We wear it on our beskar'gam, not hide it. Jetiise hide it. Mando'ade not afraid to wear our heart."
"Jedi are not afraid to love," Obi-Wan shot back. "Love and compassion are intrinsic to our very being. Following the will of the Force is impossible without love. What we forego is attachment to that love, to individuals and possessions alike. We understand that all things are temporary, and that we must be prepared to let them go at any moment for the greater good."
Kaisa scoffed. "Never let go of your child, real buir know. You have weak jetii heart. Kyber will shatter. Beskar, never. If she your child, you would not allow me live when she does dying."
Obi-Wan's heartbeat quickened. "So you believe that because I am not torturing you, I don't care about her?" he asked frostily. Ahsoka shivered.
"Revenge for your ad'ika, 'lek? Look at her. Her blood on fire. She not can breathe, her brain swell. She will die crying for you, and you do nothing."
There was a tug on Obi-Wan's robes. He startled and looked down into a pair of the biggest, bluest eyes he'd ever seen. There was a tiny orange Togruta youngling at his feet, barely coming up to his knees, with stubby blue-and-white lekku framing her face. She whimpered, eyes brimming with unshed tears, and held up two fat little arms in the universal request for up.
"Tha i a’ feuchainn ri do dhèanamh feargach, Bobi," Ahsoka murmured. A soothing warmth settled over him; even now, poisoned and fading, she was still comforting him with her Empathy.
Obi-Wan tucked his face into the crook between Ahsoka's lekku for a few moments and breathed in her warm, spicy, pollen scent while he centered himself. "You should be thankful that revenge is not the Jedi way," he said softly, pressing a kiss there. He had to trust that the Force would guide Cody and Boba and they were close to finding the buried antidote. The alternative was unacceptable.
Kaisa clicked her tongue. "Is mine. She make my son hate me, shoot me. She use her magic and change his brain. Take your revenge or no, but I have mine."
"You poisoned her long before Boba ever raised his blaster," he snapped.
"I could be… serim'shya. But not now. Not after she make him hate me."
"I didn't make him do anything," Ahsoka said quietly, but he could feel her agitation leaking through their Force bond. Being accused of manipulating emotions was the last thing Ahsoka needed with poison flooding her bloodstream; Obi-Wan rubbed a soothing circle on her back and sent the feeling of calm through their Force bond.
"Never my son does shooting at his Mama. Nu draar. Neret'yc. She hurt his mind."
"You hurt his mind when you abandoned him," Ahsoka growled, surprising Obi-Wan. "Both of them. You made them believe that you loved them, and then you left them behind and ran."
Kaisa's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She opened her mouth to reply but Ahsoka beat her to it.
"You made sure you took the son you bore, though, didn't you?" Ahsoka laughed an ugly little laugh. "So much for a heart of beskar. Gar ne buir, gar hut'uunla dalgaan."
"Ke'shab!" Kaisa snarled. "You not know. I leave because I have no choice, not if I keep Cassus safe. Kaminiise–"
"And Boba's safety? Tiarek's safety?" Ahsoka raised her voice. "Do you know what Jango did to them because you left?"
Kaisa's face crumpled and she looked away. "No," she whispered. "No, you lie. Jango know our ade. He never hurt them. Neret'yc."
"He shot down a ship with his son inside of it," Ahsoka hissed, struggling to get out of Obi-Wan's shocked arms. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. "Do you really think he wouldn't hurt Boba and Tiarek, too?"
"No," Kaisa whispered miserably. "No, he not does thinking. He hold B–"
"He hurt them." Ahsoka tried to push herself up, but Obi-Wan kept his arms firmly circled around her. "And it's your fault. You left them unprotected with a fucking psychopath!"
"Calm down, Ahsoka, please," Obi-Wan said desperately, struggling to keep his hold on her.
Kaisa's face twisted into an ugly mask of guilt and grief before she started to cry. "I have no choice!"
"You could have taken them too!" Ahsoka snarled. "First Jango nearly beat Tiarek to death–"
"No," Kaisa sobbed.
"Yes. He smashed him upside the head with a metal lockbox full of your things." Ahsoka growled like a raxshir and Obi-Wan's hair stood up. "He split his head open, and then when he was done beating him with it, he put him back into rotation and had him reconditioned!"
Kaisa turned her face away, heaving ugly, gulping sobs.
"Stop!" Obi-Wan begged her, trying not to panic at the way her veins were rapidly darkening.
"I can't stand hypocrites," Ahsoka snarled. "She wants to sit there and say she has a beskar heart, that a real parent would never give up on their child? She gave up on two of them!" Her voice escalated into a shriek that pierced his eardrums.
"You not understand," Kaisa wept. "If kaminiise know Cassus does singing, they want… want yo'baare, val ru'hokaani bal hibii par eyayade–"
"Enough!" Obi-Wan barked. "Both of you, stop!"
"B…" Ahsoka's eyes rolled back into her head and she went stiff in his arms, violently convulsing.
"No, no–" Obi-Wan sank to the ground with her stiff in his arms and carefully lowered her onto her side. "You're alright, you're alright, little one, you're alright," he said frantically, She twisted and shook on her side, her jaw clenched so tight that he feared she'd crack her teeth. He slipped his outer robe under her head as a pillow and sank back, holding his breath and helplessly waiting for it to be over.
"I not want this," Kaisa began, still crying. "You go, this not–"
"Shut up!" Obi-Wan snarled.
Her lip trembled. "I protect–"
"Shut up!" he roared, on his feet before he knew it. "I don't care who you're protecting, she's dying! She's dying for nothing!"
"I not let you take him," Kaisa said, trembling. "I will protect my ade, any price I pay. Horrible price, but I will pay."
"Who– who do you think we came here to take?" Obi-Wan asked in disbelief. "Cassus? He's nearly thirteen! The oldest human child that has ever been admitted to the Order is nine, and the Council's arm had to be twisted to allow it!"
Kaisa shook her head. "I not believe you. You take my boy, I know jetii lie."
"We're not here to take your child, we brought Boba here to be reunited with you!"
Kaisa stared at him. "Tion'meg?" she whispered.
"If she dies…" Obi-Wan turned, choking on his rage, his hands clasped on the top of his head so he didn't wrap them around her neck.
"Booo…" Ahsoka slurred, then whined like a kicked shunka.
"I'm here." Obi-Wan dropped to the ground and immediately pulled her into his lap. He pressed his face against her boiling hot lek and squeezed her tight against his chest. "I'm here, I'm here. You're alright, mo nighean, you're alright. Cody's on his way back now. He's almost back, little one, just hold on a little longer."
She shuddered and clung to him, in visible pain.
His mind raced for anything, anything to soothe her. There was nothing he could think of, but a memory returned to him. "Qui…" Obi-Wan cleared his throat. "Quietly while you were asleep, the moon and I were talking…"
Ahsoka, even in her agony, stirred at the lullaby he had made up for her as a youngling. He felt her pulse race weakly in the lek pressed against his face.
"I asked that she'd always keep you protected." His voice cracked. He didn't care; not if he was in tune, or if Kaisa was watching, only that he could give Ahsoka even a tiny bit of comfort. He rested his head between her montrals. "She promised you her light, which you so gracefully carry… You bring your light, and shine like morning."
Ahsoka's breathing slowed and evened; she was asleep, or more likely unconscious. "And as you so gracefully give, her light as long as you live…" He carefully lifted her up to the padded bench and laid her on her side, just in case she began to seize again. "I'll always remember this moment."
Obi-Wan stroked her forehead for a few seconds and watched the rise and fall of her chest with paranoid eyes, afraid it would stop if he looked away. "If she dies, you will rot in a Republic prison for the rest of your life," he finally said, trembling from rage, or fear, or grief; he didn't know anymore. He could see small puffs of his breath in the air as he spoke. "Do you truly think that we'll walk away with our tails between our legs, content to leave you alone after you've murdered her?"
"Bunker has lock," Kaisa said quietly. "Only I know code. Not Cassus, not Gotika. Without code, door not unlock until after one Corella rotate. Not you does leaving unless I allow."
Obi-Wan slowly turned to look at her.
"Cassus room, different air," she continued, and gave him a watery smile. "Gotika have… command. Ret'lini. I protect my ade, any price. Even me."
Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut and turned back to his little girl. He couldn't watch her die senselessly like this right in front of him while he did nothing to stop it.
"Please, p-please Bobi, open your eyes, open your… no, no, no, please no, Bobi please–"
Obi-Wan opened his eyes and reached for his saber with a shaking hand.
"Mama!" Cassus sat at the mouth of the hall leading to his quarters, his face red and puffy from crying. Gotika lumbered ominously behind him, but the boy had a hypospray in his lap. "Tion'vaii cuun ijaat? Bic cuy ori'dushla, Mama, gar kar'tayli bic ori'dushla."
Kaisa squeezed her eyes shut and silently shook her head.
"Cassus, please," Obi-Wan begged, ripping the hand away from his saber and holding it out to the boy instead. "Please don't let her die."
The boy tossed the device to him over Kaisa's head. She dissolved into loud sobs that flew in one ear and out the other as Obi-Wan dove for Ahsoka and jammed the hypospray directly into her neck. He watched her without blinking for ten solid seconds, nearly collapsing in relief when the sickly blue in her veins finally began to recede from the injection site. "Oh, mo nighean," he murmured, tugging Ahsoka into his arms. He kissed her forehead and whispered it into her skin over and over, rocking her like she was three again.
"General, come in. You need to get out of that bunker right away, do you copy? General!"
Obi-Wan's commlink blinked at him. He slapped the channel on. "Cody," he managed.
"General, I've torn up this entire grove and there's nothing. She just wanted to separate us. You need to get out of there, now!"
Obi-Wan stared at Kaisa, feeling sick. "It was never out there, was it?" he asked softly.
"Kenobi, get the fuck out of there before that crazy bitch kills you both!"
Kaisa's lip trembled. "You before should go. Not Boba."
"And you would have shot us in the back as we left and left no witnesses as to where you were hiding." Obi-Wan closed his eyes. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion there is–
"General? General, we're coming back now, just hold on. I've got a thermal detonator, I can–"
"Come back, Commander," Obi-Wan said quietly. "I've just administered the antidote. Ahsoka's going to make it. I'll explain everything when you get here." He distinctly heard a child's relieved sob before he disconnected the channel and went back down to his knees. He gently stroked Ahsoka's forehead and took his first deep breath since the ambush. "And then the wind pulls the clouds across the moon, your light fills the darkest room, and I can see the miracle that keeps us from falling…"
Notes:
MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS
Udesii, Cas'ika. Mama ven'cabuo cuun, ner ad'ika. Ni kar'tayli darasuum: Easy, little Cassus. Mama will protect us. I hold you in my heart, always
Ke'cuyoli gar haav'yamika. Ke'hiibi Gotika bal beskar'ade. Tion'jate?: Stay in your bedroom. Take Gotika and the droids. Okay?
Beskar'ade be'Cassus ne ru'leneda gar, bic du'cari: Cassus' droids didn't lock onto you, they delayed.
Tabiriise'tatugirii: lit. Marchers' litany, the repetition of names of the dead (it took me 250k to realize that it didn't have it's own proper name? Wtf Karen)
Gar cuy dar'buir, shabla dalgaan: You are no longer my mother, fucking bitch.
Tion'solet gar kar'tayli kaysh?: How long have you known her?
Gar ori'canara, ni mirdi.: You've known her a long time, I think.
Urman'la par Mando'ade: holy to Mandalorians
Copaani sulusu: I want to hear
Ke'gar ne'kartayli: You must not hold in your heart/you must not love
Jeti'kase: Little Jedi/Padawans
Hut'uunla chakaar. Dis'ne. Dikut'la ad, kaysh ru'trika: Cowardly asshole. Person who spits on their heritage. Stupid child, she will regret
Serim'shya: More accurate
Gar ne buir, gar hut'uunla dalgaan: You're no mother, you're a cowardly bitch
Yo'baare, val ru'hokaani bal hibii par eyayade: Cells, they would cut and take for clones
Ret'lini: Just in case/plan b
Tion'vaii cuun ijaat? Bic'cuy ori'dushla, Mama, gar kar'tayli: Where is our honor? This is evil, Mama, you know it's evil
TOYDARIAN TRANSLATIONS
Ndi zoipa kunena. Plo sakonda: It's bad to say. Plo doesn't like it
Za kale: For before
Gwiritsani ntchito ubongo kuphulika zinthu: We use our brains to blow things up
MAOR-GRASTA TRANSLATIONS
Mo nighean: My girl
Cràdh mo chnàmhan: My bones ache
Bha mi eas-urramach: I was disrespectful
OTHER NOTES
Me: how do I write a conversation between two characters fluent in Mando'a in a way that readers can understand? Oh make Obi-Wan a bitch?? Okay. anyway that song has had a gorilla grip on my heart for months and I finally got to use it ayyyy
Also yes I'm a Cody≠kote truther sorry lmfao
Still struggling to emotionally recover from Master Obi-Wan's deception, Ahsoka discovers in the aftermath that twelve-year-old Boba Fett has been locked up among adults in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center. After convincing Chancellor Palpatine to grant him a pardon, she manages to secure his release on the condition that she serve as his legal guardian. Now, with the help of Master Plo and the Wolfpack, she vows to help him track down what family he has left.
Fandom: Star Wars
Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, Plo Koon, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Kanan Jarrus, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, CC-1119 | Appo, Dexter Jettster, FLO | WA-7 (Star Wars), Shaak Ti, ARC Commander Blitz (Star Wars), CT-6922 | Dogma, Original Clone Trooper Character(s) (Star Wars), CC-3636 | Wolffe, Clone Trooper Sinker (Star Wars), Clone Trooper Comet (Star Wars), CC-2224 | Cody, CT-5597 | Jesse, CT-4860 | Boost, Aurra Sing, Tobias Beckett, Null-11 | Ordo Skirata, Kal Skirata, Original Mandalorian Characters (Star Wars), Original Droid Characters (Star Wars), Original Jedi Character(s) (Star Wars)
Total Word Count: 123,000
Chapter Word Count: 8,013
Chapter Summary: Ahsoka, Boba, Obi-Wan and Cody arrive on Corellia and travel to the small village of Bockrin to finally meet Boba's mother.
It was easy to forget that Corellia wasn't the ecumenopolis that Coruscant was when all that was ever spoken of were its urban shipyards and corrupt cities. Ninety percent of the global population resided in one of the five massive urban sprawls, but there were still a great many rural settlements on the planet. After they arrived at the spaceport, the group took two subtrams and a turbo-train and finally arrived in Bockrin; a rural village nestled in the warm, temperate rainforest an hour east of Coronet City. Demographic reports stated it was primarily populated by Mandalorians, and not the kind that ascribed to Satine's philosophy; Ahsoka heard the gentle vibration of the locals' beskar'gam ringing in the Force even before stepping off the turbo-train.
The village looked simple enough, with several blocks of wooden buildings and gravel roads that crunched pleasantly under their feet. Ahsoka could smell spicy, curried meat coming from the nearby cantina and ignored the way her stomachs rumbled. The locals looked at them suspiciously, their typical Mandalorian prejudice on clear display towards the two obvious Jedi in robes with lightsabers and clearly concerned for the young boy with two black eyes they escorted. Boba had changed into his flight suit but he had kept the black canvas jacket, which was short enough for the WESTAR-34 in his new holster to show.
Ahsoka made sure to hold his hand and stake a claim on her vod'ika lest he be forcibly adopted by one of the many well-meaning strangers in beskar who eyed them suspicously.
According to Kal Skirata's intel, Kaisa's homestead was about a fifteen-minute walk from the turbo-train station. The sun shone in their faces as they set off towards the treeline and walked the use-trail through the dense forest. Ahsoka had never seen anything quite like what was in the Bockrin valley; their trunks were skinny and covered in a thick layer of green moss with tiny red blossoms, and the leaves were large and five-pointed, plump like succulents, and hung in cascading strings from the trunk's crown like ribbons on a maypole that danced in the strong wind. The moss was incredibly prolific, as it grew down off the trees and onto the ground surrounding it, leaving only blue-striped ferns as the only other visible vegetation. Ahsoka heard the rumble of thunder in the distance, unfortunately in the direction they were heading, followed by a high pitched whine in her montrals with the change in air pressure. Insects buzzed in the moss, a high-pitched vibration that was almost mechanical.
"Did you hear the thunder?" Ahsoka asked the group. "Due west, probably a hundred kilometers."
"Great. We're walking right into it. And with this wind, it'll be here sooner rather than later." Cody had his bucket on but she knew the exact face he was making. His aura vibrated with chartreuse annoyance.
"Well, let's hope Kaisa will invite us to stay for latemeal," Obi-Wan quipped.
Ahsoka gritted her teeth. The wind was blowing the scent of Taarak's greasy little scent mark on Obi-Wan right in her face, as if she wasn't annoyed enough. Little biter had certainly gotten around, hadn't he?
Boba glanced over his shoulder at Ahsoka, his aura teal with concern-protection. He slowed down to pace her, a little over three strides back from Obi-Wan and Cody.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
Ahsoka raised a brow marking. "Nothing? Just trying to think of how to approach your mom without getting gutshot before we can introduce ourselves."
Boba snorted. "Yeah, right. You've been a bitch all day. Spill, ori'vod."
Ahsoka laughed quietly and shook her head. Boba's base aura was as vibrant green as she'd ever seen it, but it was staticky white around the edges with anxiety. She checked the wind again and verified that it would keep their conversation away from Obi-Wan and Cody. "I have to admit, I expected you to be more nervous about meeting her," she replied.
"Don't change the subject." Boba bonked her in the hip with his satchel. Robert nearly fell out of the flap he was peeking out of.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'm… I'm trying to get over it with Obi-Wan. Move on, be the bigger person. It's hard." It was a massive understatement, but not a lie.
"Kick him in the dick." Boba mimed the motion with a grin, his aura flaring gold with humor.
"No, Boba."
"I'll kick him for you?"
She rolled her eyes. "No. My Master actually told me to yell at him and get it out of my system, but I can't." Ahsoka shook her head.
"What do you mean, you can't?" he snorted. "Pussy."
"Ke'pirimpir gaht tay'briik," she retorted.
"Naysh gar." Boba stuck his tongue out at her.
"I… there's just no point." Ahsoka sighed. "I'm not like Anakin, that's not how I make myself feel better. Sometimes, yes, because even I can only take so much before I explode, but screaming at him almost a month later about how much he hurt my feelings isn't going to change anything. He already knows what he did. We just… have to keep walking forward, let the wound close. No looking back."
"Well, what'll help that happen, then?" Boba asked.
She opened her mouth to answer, then felt a tingle of warning slap her on the back of the head a half-second before the sound of a distant crack! rang out, far closer and sharper than the rumbling thunder. Obi-Wan's lightsaber ignited immediately and he swatted at the projectile.
It didn't deflect, it exploded. The sniper was using a slugthrower, and the shrapnel from the bullet flew everywhere.
Ahsoka and Cody leapt into action. She shoved Boba to the ground out of the line of fire and tossed her own saber forward, cutting through half a dozen skinny trees that didn't fall until after she recalled the saber to her hand. Cody unleashed a barrage of cover fire, crouching over his stunned General's prone form to protect him with his own body. Ahsoka lifted the trunks with the Force, pulled them towards the foursome, then dropped them in a pile on the path to give them cover. Cody moved off of Obi-Wan and fired over the logs towards the direction of the sniper, ducking often to keep his head out of range. Boba dove towards the log and backed him up, extending an arm up over the log and firing blindly.
Bright red blood bloomed above Obi-Wan's heart through his robes. Ahsoka ripped her outer robe off and pressed it down on the wound with shaking hands. "No, no, Bobi you're alright, it's okay, it's okay, you're okay–" She was whimpering like a wounded animal and didn't know how to stop, barely able to see him through the panicked sheen of tears welling up in her eyes. The coppery smell of his blood was so sharp that it overpowered everything else.
"Ahsoka," Obi-Wan coughed, his aura pale orange with pain-surprise. "Ahsoka, I'm–"
"It's okay, you're okay!" she said frantically. "Cody, Cody he needs a– he needs a plug and a patch, d-d-do you have, have a patch, he's–"
"Ahsoka!" Obi-Wan stared at her, his beautiful, gray-blue eyes round with shock. "It's just shrapnel, I'm fine!"
"Cody, help!" she sobbed. She pushed down harder. He couldn't die, not again, not again not right in front of her again, he couldn't he couldn't he couldn't–
"Ahsoka!" Obi-Wan gripped her face and rubbed hard at her temples with his thumbs, just like he had when she was a baby screaming at akul lilies. "I'm alright, mo nighean, I'm alright. Just breathe. Breathe deep, there we go. Shhh. I'm alright. It's just a flesh wound. I'm fine."
She shakily matched Obi-Wan's calm, deep breaths and saw that for the first time since his return, his aura was flush with a miserable shade of purple guilt-grief-shame. Another sharp crack! rang out; the bark directly above Cody's head exploded.
Ahsoka spun her head at the return of the mechanical whirring noise she'd mistaken for insects and realized that it was emanating from a small, hovering drone that had been painted the same green as the verdant moss. A small, rotating barrel unfolded from the drone and began to spin up. She lifted one hand and crushed it with the Force before it could start firing, then ignoring Cody's cry for her to wait, vaulted over the logs.
She moved her head to the side and avoided the next shot that came their way, thanking the wind for its help in throwing the sniper's shots off, then dropped to all fours and sprinted. Her vertebrae popped and loosened as she gained speed, and she dug her hands and feet into the soft moss to push faster and further than she could've on two legs. Another shot popped the moss just beside her hand. The wind blew an acrid trail of sodium nitrate from Kaisa – for who else would be taking potshots with a slugthrower but the Jedi-hating dalgaan – straight to Ahsoka's nose for her to follow.
The mechanical buzzing of more drones surrounded her on both sides as she ran, and seconds later they began to spin up and fire blue blaster bolts. She jumped to her feet and did a front flip, igniting her sabers as she leapt. She deflected the bolts, destroyed the little pests, and followed her nose to the sniper's tree blind. She threw her sabers on her belt while still running, then took a mighty leap at the tree and clawed her way up the rest of the trunk like a gundark, reaching the perch before Kaisa could shoot her off. She peeked over the edge and nearly went deaf from the booming shot Kaisa fired at her at the same time another drone swooped her face. Anakin would have called it luck that she barely avoided both. She rolled up and kicked Kaisa off the edge of the blind, drawing on the Force for an extra boost of strength.
Kaisa went flying off the side. Her jetpack fired and softened her fall, giving her just enough of an extra push to avoid Ahsoka's pursuing lunge. She ignited her sabers midair and sliced the Mandalorian's rifle in half before she could fire again. Kaisa threw the rifle at her face in response and loosed a jet of flame to force her back.
Ahsoka sprung back on her hands to avoid it, cutting black scorch lines into the moss with her lit sabers. She fell into the opening Shien stance and hissed, walking in a slow circle opposite of the other woman. Her lekku stung and swayed on her chest, undulating like snakes at the predator in front of her. Her rear lek thumped her back with a loud, angry slap.
Kaisa was tiny, shorter than Boba even. The armor she wore over a wine-colored flight suit had been painted a deep, matte gray just a hair too light to be called black, and it had been tinted with olive green to be the perfect camouflage for a mossy forest. The wind blew her scent right at Ahsoka's nose; sodium nitrate and spicecake, with a sharp undertone that she didn't recognize. She drew a DE-10 blaster pistol with her right hand and a kal dagger with her left and matched Ahsoka step for step.
Ahsoka swallowed hard and tried to bring her heartbeat to heel. The last time she'd seen one of those was when Dol Sylen had buried it to the hilt in her thigh. "Kaisa Skirata?" she said in a voice tinged with a growl, her montrals still ringing from the rifle going off so close to her resonance chambers.
"Jetii." Kaisa practically spat the words at her, managing to sound venomous even through the vocabulator of her helmet. "No welcome for you." Her voice was heavily accented, rounded and almost musical with a pitch that went up and down like a rolling hill. Her coral base aura was covered in a brittle line of teal, protection-wariness-determination shining like a sheet of stained glass.
"Ahsoka!" Boba cried out for her in the distance. Blaster fire from the buzzing drones sounded to Ahsoka's left and Cody roared to take cover. She stupidly turned to look, fear for her vod'ika overpowering common sense; Kaisa fired and it was only the reflexes honed by hundreds of hours of Anakin's training that stopped the blaster bolt from taking Ahsoka's head off. She deflected it and dodged Kaisa's follow-up dagger to her ribs. Her shoto swung over the top of Kaisa's helmet and cut her rangefinder off.
Kaisa suddenly dropped and swept at her legs with the dagger, catching Ahsoka's right calf almost like the Mandalorian knew where she would plant it. She opened a thin, burning line across the back of Ahsoka's knee. She collapsed and brought up her sabers to block the dagger swinging for her head, cutting it off at the hilt and nearly taking Kaisa's head with it from her own momentum. The Mandalorian rolled over the crossed sabers and spun in a crouch with her blaster raised.
Adrenaline screamed through Ahsoka's veins. She shoved the other woman back with the Force so hard against a tree that her blaster popped out of her hand and her jetpack emitted a shower of ominous steam and sparks. Ahsoka lunged, her mind blank except for the hindbrain urge to protect her clan. She'd tried to kill Obi-Wan. She'd almost shot Cody. Boba was pinned down by her drones.
Ni ven'kyramu ad kebbur.
Kaisa crossed her beskar gauntlets and braced herself for the blow just in time. Ahsoka dropped her shoto and beat down on her with a two-handed grip on her main saber like it was a scramball bat, trying to break through the Mandalorian's guard with brute force. She came down over and over again, she had to destroy her destroy her destroy her–
A wide hand snatched her wrist with a vice grip before she could bring the saber down again and held it still. Obi-Wan pulled Ahsoka backwards and wrapped his strong arms around her in a firm wampa hug, the smell of his blood and the juniper incense he favored for meditation sharp and intense in her nose. "Enough," he ordered, deactivating her saber. "You've beaten her, Padawan. Enough."
Ahsoka trembled in his arms and tried to remember how to breathe. A high-pitched, animalistic whine escaped from her. Obi-Wan planted his chin firmly between her montrals and pressed down hard; his stubble pricked her uncomfortably but the pressure point worked, and she slowly matched the rise and fall of his chest.
Boba and Cody flanked the dazed Kaisa and pointed their blasters at her on the ground. Cody leaned forward and ripped her helmet off.
"Don't fucking move, sleemo," Boba seethed, his aura screaming red with anger-fear. He shoved the barrel of his hot blaster against her silver-streaked temple.
Ahsoka smelled burning flesh and hair. Kaisa's stormy gray eyes, shining like polished beskar around pinprick pupils, glared up at her with undeniable hatred. Her aura mirrored Boba's with the same vivid red shade of rage-fear. "You won't find him," she snarled, her teeth bared. "He does hiding. I will kill anyone who tries."
Ahsoka kicked Kaisa hard in the chin before she could stop herself. Her head snapped up, smacked hard against the mossy tree trunk with a sharp crack, then fell to her chest. She was knocked out cold.
"Ahsoka!" Obi-Wan snapped, dragging her backwards. "Stop it, now."
Ahsoka clenched her jaw and took a deep, shuddering breath. Her lekku throbbed and she closed her eyes tight, the scent of Obi-Wan's blood still overwhelming her other senses. She spun in his arms and buried her face in his neck, unblocking her side of their bond so she could feel his life force roaring through it for the first time in weeks. Her hands roamed for hair to run her fingers through but found only velvety stubble. She could hear his pulse, taste his sweat, smell his skin, feel him shining and vibrant in the Force. He wasn't dead. He wasn't dead. He wasn't dead.
Obi-Wan crushed her against him and petted her rear lek soothingly as she bawled like a baby, his aura quietly clouded with deep violet guilt-remorse-love.
Obi-Wan tried not to wince too obviously as Ahsoka picked shrapnel out of his chest with a tiny pair of forceps and a miniscule magnet she had commandeered from Cody's currently-disassembled sidearm. He'd been lucky, truly; it was a careless mistake to have tried to deflect a bullet. He had spent far too much time on the battlefield these past three years, he was becoming… not lazy, but thoughtless, relying too much on muscle memory instead of the memories of his Master's teachings.
He hissed softly as Ahsoka removed a rather jagged shard of shrapnel; she winced at the size of the piece. "No wonder you bled so much. Did any of them manage to miss you?" She removed one more piece, then began gently wiping the blood away with a sanicloth.
"I believe Cody caught a few pieces for me," he joked weakly. Cody shot him a look that he felt rather than saw.
"Very funny." Ahsoka rolled her eyes and started cutting the bacta patch to size.
"Yes, well, please heed my example and don't ever try to do that. It was a novice mistake."
"Then why'd you do it, General?" Cody asked grumpily, snapping a second pair of binders around the Lady Skirata's petite wrists. Cody had laced her feet through them so she'd not only be hobbled, she wouldn't even be able to stand. Force, the woman was small, so short that Obi-Wan wondered if she had some sort of dwarfism or if she was just stunted. Her speech cadence as well… she spoke Mando'a as a first language. That was rare in this day and age.
Boba didn't seem to trust that the binders would hold. He stood over her with his father's blaster pointed at her head, stone-faced and iron-eyed, his hands shaking almost too subtly to see. Obi-Wan thought it a bit ironic that the woman had escaped death by Jango's hands once, only to find herself with his gun to her head a decade later in the hands of his clone.
"Because I'm an idiot, obviously." Obi-Wan glanced at Ahsoka to see if she'd smiled. The poor thing's eyes were still bloodshot and swollen from crying. Her guttural reaction had hit him like a runaway turbo-train. Pure panic, begging him not to die, screaming for Cody to help while she nearly broke his ribcage pressing on a bullet hole that didn't exist…
And she'd called him Bobi. He had never felt like more of a bastard in his life than he did in that instant, staring up at her terrified face as she thought he was dying in her arms again.
"We all make mistakes." Ahsoka carefully smoothed the patch on and readjusted his robes. "All done." She tossed the magnet back to Cody and brushed her hands against her leggings.
"Thank you." Obi-Wan grabbed her gently by the wrist before she could escape and pulled her down next to him on the fallen log. He had to duck to catch her eyes. "Are you alright?" he asked her softly, stroking her hand with his thumb.
She stiffened, visibly embarrassed with her dark stripes and burning cheeks. "I'm fine, Master Kenobi. I'm sorry that I lost my head. It won't happen again."
She was hiding again, retreating behind her icy facade. His heart ached anew. "I'm sorry that I scared you so, my dear." He wiped a bit of blood off of her cheek with the sleeve of his robes.
She gave him a tight smile and tugged her hands away. "I'm fine. It's… fine."
Obi-Wan knew it wasn't, but now wasn't the time to say everything that needed to be said to bridge the rift between them. He instead turned to look at the tiny Mandalorian cuffed on the ground. "Shall we give her Ladyship a stim to wake her up and ask what we did to earn such a welcome?"
Cody shook his head. "Not with a concussion, Sir. We've got to wait it out, unfortunately."
Ahsoka tilted her head, then looked behind her and stood. "Someone's coming," she warned, drawing her sabers. She retreated to Boba's side and put herself in between him and whatever was coming.
Obi-Wan retrieved his own hilt and nodded at Cody, who aimed in the direction Ahsoka was looking. Boba kept his blaster trained on the unconscious Kaisa.
" …hello, please don't shoot! Hello! Hello, do not shoot, please, I am not armed!" A protocol droid with feminine programming waddled over the crest of the hilly path, waving a large white handkerchief tied to a stick. "I have come to parley! Please do not shoot!"
Obi-Wan nodded at Cody, who lowered his blaster. "Hello there," Obi-Wan called to the droid, tucking his arms in his sleeves with his saber still in hand. "Parley, you say? On behalf of whom?"
The minty, matte-green protocol droid came to a stop a few paces away. "Greetings. I am TC-35, but you may call me Gotika. I am here on behalf of Master Cassus Skirata, who would like to discuss your terms for the safe return of his mother."
"Our terms?" Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow.
"Yes. She is your hostage, after all." Gotika peered around him at Kaisa, unconscious on the ground. "Goodness, Mistress, are you alright?"
"She's alive," Boba snapped. "And she's not a fucking hostage. She's lucky to be alive after she tried to kill us."
"Oh dear," Gotika said, dismayed.
"Why'd he send you and not come himself?" Cody asked.
"Bucket of bolts wants to lead us into a trap." Boba turned his blaster on Gotika.
"Please don't!" Gotika squealed, raising her hands in surrender. "I am here to escort you to Master Cassus and to provide medical attention to any who need it, no more!"
"A protocol droid with medical programming?" Ahsoka asked, her rear lek swishing suspiciously.
"A Teecee unit such as myself would normally not support such a module, but Master Cassus has made upgrades to my base programming that allow me to perform a plethora of roles that would seem unconventional for a protocol droid. Please follow me. There is a storm rapidly approaching." Gotika spun on her heel and began to toddle down the path, still waving her white flag in one stiff hand.
Obi-Wan exchanged a look with Ahsoka and shrugged. "Let us go meet with Master Cassus, then."
Cody slung the hobbled, unconscious Kaisa over his shoulder like a purse; an undignified position, but given that she'd just shot him and stabbed his Grand-Padawan, Obi-Wan was having trouble mustering up too much pity for her. Ahsoka tucked her fallen blaster into the back of her belt and laced her fingers with Boba's, then gave Obi-Wan a nod. They took off down the path together, heading straight in the direction of the rumbling storm.
Obi-Wan felt a raindrop smack against his cheek and looked up at the dark sky warily. "How much further?" he asked Gotika.
"Just ahead, Master Jedi, just ahead." Gotika waved cheerily over her shoulder. "Come, come. Watch your step, please, this hill is steep."
They awkwardly clambered down a hillside to a dried-up creek bed. Gotika's metal feet clanged loudly on the colorful pebbles.
"This is a fucking killbox if I've ever seen one," Boba growled from behind him.
"I agree, General," Cody muttered quietly. "What's the plan for when things go south?"
"We keep our eyes open and weapons ready," Obi-Wan replied. "We have what young Master Skirata wants, and we shall not give up our leverage until we know it's safe to do so."
"So she is a hostage," Ahsoka said wryly.
Obi-Wan shrugged. "From a certain point of view, perhaps, but I prefer to think of her as our honored guest."
Ahsoka glanced back at Kaisa, still hanging from Cody's shoulder like a freshly-slain boar roba, and clicked her tongue. "Honored. Right."
Obi-Wan frowned and suddenly realized that she was limping. "Ahsoka, what happened to your leg?" he asked, peering around her back at it.
"She cut me a little. It just stings, I'm fine."
Obi-Wan's frown intensified. "Why didn't you say anything before?"
"We only had one bacta patch. I'm fine." Her lek thumped again.
Obi-Wan tried not to sigh. "Then you should have–"
"Here we are!" Gotika called back cheerily at them. Before them, at the end of the dry creek bed, loomed a massive, mossy hill with a metal door embedded into its side that had been painted with mossy camouflage. Strings of star-shaped succulents from the trees on the hillcrest trailed over the front, rendering the door virtually invisible from more than ten meters away.
Thunder boomed overhead. The sky felt moments away from opening up in a downpour.
"Master Cassus! We've arrived, Master, can you hear me?" Gotika dropped her flag and waved her arms at the bunker door.
Obi-Wan stopped and crossed his arms, with Ahsoka mirroring him moments later. "I have a bad feeling about this," she muttered.
Obi-Wan glanced at her. "I don't sense anything."
Ahsoka tilted her head, opened her mouth, and clicked quietly. "Can you hear the buzzing, or is it too high a frequency for human hearing?" she asked a few seconds later.
"It must be." Obi-Wan tried not to look around too obviously. Cody and Boba both put anticipatory hands on their holstered blasters and turned so that they stood back-to-back to him and Ahsoka, keeping all angles covered.
"Oh dear, the uplink must have gotten wet again. We have had nothing but storms for the past week. One moment." Gotika waddled quickly up the side of the hill and opened a panel built into a false log, then extended a scomp from a compartment in her wrist. "Just one more moment, please."
"Something isn't right," Ahsoka whispered urgently. "I hear metal moving, servos… some sort of mechanism."
"It may be the door." Obi-Wan readied his saber anyway, as did Ahsoka. Rain finally began to fall in earnest and he tightened his grip.
"There we go!" Gotika announced cheerfully. "Now, esteemed guests, may I have the privilege of introducing you to Clan Skirata!" She began to laugh a bit maniacally.
Obi-Wan and Ahsoka exchanged a confused look, then everything happened all at once; the wind picked up and the sky opened up in a deluge, dirt and moss exploded from the ridge of the steep hills alongside them as a line of laser-guided turrets emerged and fixed their sights on them, thunder crashed directly above, and Gotika made a mighty leap straight up into the air and landed behind the group with two miniature ion cannons glowing in her palms.
Well then. She had said that Master Cassus had upgraded her with some unconventional upgrades, but that wasn't what he had expected.
Obi-Wan and Ahsoka both ignited their sabers and shoved Boba between them, while Cody drew his carbine and aimed at the droid's head. He made sure that the unconscious Kaisa was fully blocking his chest, inadvertently upgrading her from hostage to human shield.
"You have five seconds to put my mother down and run before Gotika disintegrates you," A child's voice boomed from a loudspeaker, thick with the same mountainous Mandalorian accent that Kaisa bore. "Five…"
Gotika cackled. Her eyes matched the glowing light from the cannons in her hands as they both intensified. "Four, three.." she began to count gleefully.
"Cassus!" Boba shouted, wide-eyed and ashen. "Tion'gar olaro gar vod ti tracy'uure? Gar sa Jango ori'shya ni'cuy!"
"Two…" the droid continued.
"Gev, Gotika, gev!"
Both Gotika's hands and eyes dimmed and she lowered them, visibly disappointed.
A small hatch opened above the bunker door and a little drone flew out. It hovered above their heads for a moment, scanning them, then cautiously buzzed down to Boba's eye level. "Boba?" the speaker from the drone asked.
"Yeah," Boba replied; Obi-Wan could feel him shaking like a leaf both against his back and in the Force, but his voice was as tough as bronto hide.
"Why now?" The voice sounded painfully young.
"He's dead, isn't he?" Boba asked harshly. "And you've got something of mine. Let us in and we'll talk."
Gotika shifted miserably from side to side. "Master Cassus," she whined, "May I remind you that nobody is allowed inside the bunker without your mother's express–"
"I know!" Cassus' drone said irritably.
"Then allow me to–" Obi-Wan tightened his grip as Gotika's hands began to glow again.
"I said stop!"
"Either let us in, or let us go!" Boba barked. "It's raining like Tipoca City out here and I'm not in the fucking mood for wet drawers."
Lightning flashed across the sky again and the resounding boom of thunder made them all flinch. "Just you. The jetiise and the eyayad stay outside."
"I'm a shabla eyayad too, remember?" Boba snapped; at the same time a guttural, terrifying growl escaped from Ahsoka and sent a shiver up Obi-Wan's spine.
Her rear lek slapped against her back so hard that it sent a spray of water into the air from her sodden robes. "He goes nowhere without me." She bared her fangs in a very unJedi-like display of aggression.
"Let us in, ner vod, before we fucking drown down here," Boba ordered the drone.
It hovered for a few moments more, then the bunker door slid open behind them silently. The drone flew up and into the hand of a small, seated silhouette in the doorway, from which warm yellow light poured out and illuminated the heavy rain like drops of gold. Gotika sighed loudly. "Follow me, please," she said disdainfully, then waddled towards the steps with a recalcitrance Obi-Wan couldn't remember ever seeing in a protocol droid before.
Boba pushed past them and bravely led the way.
Over the last ten years, Boba had fantasized about Mama and Cas still being alive. Maybe they were dug in deep on Mandalore, up high in the Kyrimorut mountains; somewhere near the old homestead she'd grown up on, maybe, back before Tor Viszla had massacred most of her clan and burned the place to the ground. As time went on, he'd envisioned wilder and wilder scenarios. They were on Canto Bight, living large off the sabacc earnings she made as a high roller. They had their own pirate fleet and ran circles around Hondo Ohnaka's crew. They were exploring Wild Space, charting hyperspace routes that would make them a fortune.
He'd never considered his fantasies anything more than just that, though. They had to be dead. Jango Fett had killed them, he'd shot them right out of the sky into the Kaminoan ocean, and Jango Fett never left a job half-done.
Except he had, somehow, and Boba didn't really know how to actually believe that it was all actually happening. Mama was alive and more ornery than ever; Kenobi's new paint job was proof of that. And Cassus, well…
He sat awkwardly in his hoverchair as they passed him by in the bunker's vestibule, a crocheted blanket the color of maize folded over his lap. Ten years on and they still had almost the same face; even being an honest, good old-fashioned, fifty-fifty organic blend of Kaisa and Jango, Cassus' bone structure made him instantly clockable as a Fett. His nose was thinner, his eyes were bright gray like their mother's, and he had about ten kilos on Boba, but otherwise they could still pass as twins. He wore his hair long enough to cover his ears, hanging heavy in ringlet curls that matched Kaisa's. He was chunky on top, soft and round with a double chin and shy eyes like he wasn't used to making contact with anyone, but his legs were skinny and folded off to the side of his footrest.
He was clearly paralyzed, but why? When? Was it when Dad had shot them down? Boba felt like throwing up. Dad… he'd made mistakes and he'd regretted them, but if he had known that he had paralyzed his own son he would have…
He would have done nothing, actually. Boba's anxiety quieted into an aching, hollow emptiness in his belly as the realization settled. He'd tried to kill Mama and Cas. He wouldn't have done anything but get drunk and weep about what a horrible person he was if he'd found out Cas had survived.
The burn of alcohol stings Boba's nose as he tosses the empty tihaar bottle into the trash compactor. Dad sits swaying on the couch, splotchy-cheeked and red-eyed. He stares at his hands. Boba brings his father a blanket. "Dad?" he asks softly.
"I should've just let them go. I… I'm so selfish, Boba. I should've just let her go and kept all of you safe." Jango flexes his big hands. "S-safe here, with us. All of us. You, me, Tiarek… I… I could've…" His bloodshot eyes flood with tears.
"It's okay." He doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't like it when Dad cries, but at least tonight he's just sad, not angry too. Dad sniffs, wipes his eyes, then smiles at Boba and cups his face. His hands are warm and rough, calloused but gentle, able to dole out love and pain in equal measure.
"I'm sorry Boba. I'm sorry for a lot of things." He pulls Boba close and presses their foreheads together. "Be better than me, Boba. Gar ne'ente eyayti ner dunare."
Boba jumped as a skinny orange hand squeezed his. Ahsoka smiled down at him. "I'm right here with you," she whispered.
Boba rolled his eyes. "Fucking obviously," he sniffed, his nose suddenly runny for some reason.
"Gotika, take Mama to her room and treat her injuries," Cassus ordered the droid.
"Right away, Cas'ika." Gotika waddled at top speed towards Cody and flashed the lights in her eyes at him menacingly. She held her arms out like she was going to hug him whether he wanted her to or not and tilted her head. "My Mistress, please," she said in a singsong voice that promised unimaginable violence if denied.
Cody handed off the cuffed, unconscious Kaisa like she was a belt of live grenades to the droid.
"I will be right back." Gotika scampered away, her stiff legs moving far faster than they should have been able to.
Cody shuddered. "That's one creepy clanker," he muttered to Kenobi as she disappeared into a small hallway.
Kenobi hid a smile. "I don't think we actually introduced ourselves," he said, then held a hand out for Cassus to shake. "I am Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is Padawan Ahsoka Tano, and that's Marshall Commander Cody of the Grand Army of the Republic."
Ahsoka gave him a smile and a little wave. Cody took his helmet off. "Nice to meet you."
Cassus blanched and looked away, visibly unnerved. Boba felt a little sympathetic. It had to be weird to see your dead father's face on a stranger if you weren't used to it.
Boba wondered how weird it was going to be to look into the mirror in a few years.
"Y-You too," Cassus mumbled at his lap. "Are, um, are any of you hurt?" He blinked at the group, his eyes lingering on Kenobi's bloodstained chest.
"Only a little shrapnel. I'm fine. But Ahsoka's leg needs attention." Kenobi smiled a flat, brittle smile.
Ahsoka shifted her weight guiltily. "It isn't–"
"If you're pretending nothing is wrong, then it's far worse than you're letting on," Kenobi said sharply. "Young man, I'd appreciate Gotika taking a look once she's done with your mother."
"Gotika is far more likely to cut my leg off than treat it." Ahsoka glowered at Kenobi.
Boba sighed loudly. "If it were me, would you be arguing about it or sitting on me until I let the droid look at it?" he asked her flatly.
Ahsoka blinked at him a few times, obviously trying to come up with a counterargument and failing.
Boba smirked at her. "That's what I thought. Now." He stepped forward with his arms crossed and examined the bunker; it had been built like a traditional Mandalorian vheh'yaim, with one big, central living chamber and a few hallway offshoots to an armory, bedrooms, and hopefully a fresher. A large, plascrete firepit smoldered in the center of the sunken seating area, colorful rugs had been thrown all over the hard floors to take the chill of the stone away, and all of the furniture was low to the ground, overstuffed, and had plenty of gaps in between pieces so Cas could move around easily. He spotted three different weapons caches right away, but knew there had to be more. There was a mural painted on the octogonal wall; all nature scenes, dragonflies flying low over a pond where shatuale fauns froclicked, giant tiarek flower bushes, sunshine over a field of maize with strill pups playing in the foreground. "Nice place," he finally conceded.
"Thank you," Cassus said meekly. "Do you, um, would you like something to drink? Pinky can make cocoa."
"Pinky?" Cody asked. His voice sounded a little choked through the helmet, like he was trying not to laugh. "Who is–"
A pink-plated astromech zoomed out of a hallway on the left, beeping. "Pinky, make some cocoa, please," Cassus asked politely, navigating around the furniture and disabling his repulsors once he had reached what had to be his usual spot in between a very comfortable-looking orange beanbag and a small, wooden table with a little doily and a coaster on it. A bag of yarn sat on the floor next to the table, knitting needles poking out of the top. "You all can sit, if you like," he said over the beeping of the droid zooming away to the furthest hallway on the left.
"Don't get visitors much, do you?" Boba asked, plopping down on the beanbag. Ahsoka took a seat on a padded bench beside him and Kenobi slid next to her before she could protest. She bit the inside of her cheek and made a face like she'd just smelled something rotten.
"No. We go into town once a week to get food and supplies, but nobody comes out here except for Illippi." Cassus whistled, and a BD unit scampered out from underneath a low sofa opposite of the firepit. "Hey, Buddy," he said fondly, patting the droid's head.
Boba raised an eyebrow. "What's with all the droids?" he asked.
Cassus' smile fell off his face and he looked embarrassed. The BD climbed up to his shoulder and settled into a loaf like a tooka. "I, um, I like to work with them. Rebuild them." His cheeks were getting darker by the second. "I have a lot of free time when Mama goes on jobs. She salvaged them for me and I repaired all of them." He looked up shyly. "I made my chair, too."
"Wizard." Boba drummed on the tops of his legs. Fuck, this was awkward. How had they gone from a standoff to talking about droids while waiting for cocoa?
"So, um, you said Kal told you where we were?" Cas finally asked, breaking the silence.
"Yeah. You said Illippi comes out. Were you talking about his dar'riduur?"
Cassus nodded. "Yeah. She lives in Coronet City, but she visits. Or she used to, anyway. She hasn't been by in a while."
Boba sank deeper into the beanbag and stared at his brother, sick already of small talk. "Okay, fuck it, I'll ask. What happened?"
Cassus looked like he wasn't sure if he should be offended or scared. "What?" he asked.
"Last time I saw you, you could definitely walk, so what happened?" Boba crossed his arms and waited as Cassus wrung his hands nervously. Fucking hell, he really didn't get visitors often, did he? He was more nervous than a Gedonian ground weevil in a room full of hungry tookas. Had Mama kept him locked up in the bunker all this time in case Dad had come looking for them?
"It was when we… left." Cassus looked relieved at the sound of Pinky's beeping getting louder as he reapproached the karyai, a tray with a copper kettle and six little ceramic cups on top of his dome. Cassus spoke while the droid started distributing the cocoa. "Mama wanted you and Tiarek to come too, but Dad wouldn't let you leave. He kept telling her that he couldn't go and she wasn't allowed to either because of the clause in her contract. Ten years, that was the deal."
"I'm sorry, I can't have chocolate." Ahsoka gently waved the offered cup away with an odd, unfocused look on her face.
Cas looked embarrassed again. "I should have asked, I'm sorry. Do you want some tea?"
Ahsoka shook her head and blinked a few times. "No, no. I'm, um, I'm fine. But why did she want to leave?"
Cassus' face shuttered. "We just had to," he muttered, and nodded at Pinky once the cocoa was all distributed. The droid zoomed back to what Boba presumed was the kitchen. Cassus blew on his drink and took a little sip.
"So it happened when Dad shot you down?" Boba asked.
Cassus shrugged, his chubby cheeks getting dark again. "No. It was before. That's… that's why we couldn't take you, too."
Boba felt his heart jump into his throat and try to escape from his mouth. "What do you mean?" he asked sharply.
"Know what?" Boba nearly spat, hearing his pulse pound in his ears. "That you left us? Do you even know what happened to Tiarek? Do you even give a fuck about him, or was he just–"
"Of course I do!" Cassus protested, his eyes going shiny with tears almost immediately. "What happened to Tiarek? Is he… is he dead?" His voice was so small and pitiful that Boba wanted to hit him. Why was he so weak? Because his legs didn't work? Big fucking deal, plenty of people's legs didn't work. Ahsoka's teacher was missing his fucking arm, bum legs didn't mean Cas had to be such a snivelling little bitch, wringing his hands in his hoverchair with a scared look on his face like he had a reason to be afraid of him.
"Why'd you leave us behind?" Boba demanded. "Tell me, and I'll tell you what happened to Tiarek."
Cassus looked like he was about to piss himself. "Ni ne'vegyc johaar'i par jetiise olar," he said, glancing at Ahsoka and Kenobi nervously.
"Jetiise johaar'i shabla Mando'a, di'kut, now fucking tell me!" Boba threw his cup of cocoa against the wall and started pacing, forcing down the bile surging up in his throat.
"Mama tried to take all of us." Cassus looked as sick and miserable as Boba felt. "Dad wouldn't let her. He said you were his… his property. You and Tiarek both. You were his payment for being the template, and he'd bought Tiarek fair and square. She wasn't walking away with his property."
Boba bit through the inside of his cheek and tasted blood. That's all he ever was to him, wasn't he? Jango's property. His payment for being the template. He was never Jango's son, not really.
"Boba!" Ahsoka caught his shoulders and spun him. "Okay, Bo'ika. Alright? Yes. Okay. Don't, don't–" she swallowed hard. Sweat had beaded up on her forehead and she smiled a weird, forced smile. Her lips and eyelids twitched. "Don't. It's inde. Chan e coire do bhràthar… bhràthar…" Boba had no idea what fucking language that was but something was very, very wrong with her. She wasn't breathing normally and her pupils had practically swallowed up her irises. She fell to one knee, shaking, her jaw trembling and gaping open and shut like a koi fish.
"Ahsoka!" Kenobi shoved Boba to the side and caught her before she hit the ground. "No, no, look at me, mo nighean, what's the matter? What's wrong, what's happening to you?" He twisted her and yanked her legging up above her knee; on the back of her calf, right above the edge of her boot, there was an angry-looking blue gash weeping thick, foul-smelling fluid.
Boba heard a soft laugh from behind them; the bitch herself was leaning against the entryway, a sharp, ruthless gleam in her eyes and a tiny smirk on her lips. Her curly black hair, streaked with silver and wet from bacta spray, hung just above her shoulders. She'd grown older, had lines around her eyes and had gained a little weight, but she still looked almost exactly like what Boba saw in his memories when he let himself think about her. "Manax root," she said softly. "It does growing in forest. It work more fast with humans. Togrutiise has big liver. I forget, take more long to start."
Kenobi hoisted the twitching Ahsoka into his arms, rage burning in his blue eyes like cold fire. "Where is the antidote?" he asked icily.
"Outside. I before bury." She smiled a wide, unnerving smile. "Leave my boy, jetii, go out my home. She will live if you find it in time." She met Boba's eyes, her expression softening. "Bo'ika. Mhi–"
"Don't you dare fucking call me that," Boba snapped. "You don't get to call me that, not anymore. Not after what you've fucking done. What you just did."
Something shattered in her eyes, then they hardened like winter ice over a river. She huffed a loud sigh. "My boys stay. You will find antidote, and after find you will leave."
"B-Bobi," Ahsoka managed to get out through her chattering teeth.
A shiver went down Boba's spine and the temperature of the room dropped like someone had opened a door into a blizzard. "Cody, I need to concentrate on slowing this poison down," Kenobi said silkily, laying Ahsoka down on the padded bench like she was made of glass. He took a knee beside her. "I shall leave the acquisition of the antidote to you. I unfortunately will not be able to supervise."
"Understood sir," Cody growled, then aimed his carbine at his mother.
"Please don't hurt her," Cassus begged, his terrified eyes darting between the two of them.
She flinched; a motion almost too small to see, but Boba noticed. "Been a while since you saw a clone, hasn't it?" he asked her softly, and the way she wouldn't look at Cody's face told him that he was right. "Tell me where it is or it'll be the last time you ever see one." He drew his blaster – Jango's blaster – and aimed it right between her silver eyes.
They went wide. "Oro'nas, Bo–"
He fired; the bolt stopped a foot away from her face and hovered there for a few seconds, then flew straight up and burned a black scorchmark in the ceiling.
Cassus, red-faced and shaking, lowered his hand and dissolved into tears.
Notes:
MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS
ori/vod/ika: big/sibling/little
Ke'pirimpir gaht tay'briik: go piss up a rope
Naysh gar: No you
Tion'gar olaro gar vod ti tracy'uure? Gar sa Jango ori'shya ni'cuy!: You greet your brother with blasters? You are like Jango more than I am
Gev: stop
Gar ne'ente eyayti ner dunare: You must not echo my mistakes.
Ni ne'vegyc johaar'i par jetiise olar: I shouldn't say with the Jedi here
Jetiise johaar'i shabla Mando'a, di'kut: The Jedi speak fucking Mando'a, idiot
Togrutiise: Togrutas
Oro'nas: Stand down
TOYDARIAN TRANSLATIONS
inde: yes
MÁOR-GRASTA TRANSLATIONS
Chan e coire do bhràthar a th' ann: It is not your brother's fault
OTHER NOTES
Oh look who finally showed up! Kaisa speaks the way she does because she's a native Mando'a speaker who translates everything in her head to Basic first. Hopefully that was explained well enough in text but if not then uhhhh yeah this is me telling you 😃🤙 Also Cassus is baby
