Chapter Text
Spar wakes up after only about four hours, an hour before dawn, and a good two hours before their alarm. They stare up at the mural sketched across their ceiling in the dim light for fifteen minutes, then scrub their face and get out of bed, stumbling to the fresher and turning the water shower on high heat.
The hot water—happy memories from Kamino that make them willing to both pay the extra money for the hot water heater and shill out credits to help revamp the water system in Keldabe—wakes them up and soothes their fried nerves. Once they step back out, they sling a towel around their waist and flick through their comm, smiling at a few messages from Coruscant and Kamino and firing back a quick text to Jango confirming a holocomm once the sun has set. Then they drag their blacks back on and their kute on over it, dragging their kit down to the kitchen, pouring oil and nuts and spice into a pot on the stove and letting it cook while they start twisting the beskar pieces into place, taking little moments to check it and stir when they can. A second pot gains a mix of dried oranges, cherry preserves, muja slices from a piece of bruised fruit at the back of the conservator, and a cup of grape juice. While that simmers, they get Boba’s kit together.
They’re brewing a cup of shig for themself when Boba stumbles into the kitchen, blinking blearily.
“Did you smell it all the way from your room?” they ask, amused. They were just about to override his comm’s mute function and blare something inane through it. They weren’t expecting the scent of food to be powerful enough to pass through the open courtyard and up two stories.
Boba grunts, going to the stove to peer into the pots.
Ka’ra, let Jango be done with the Republic before puberty hits the boy like a speeder. Spar does not want to be in charge of him for that.
“Come on, time to suit up,” they tell him, tossing him his own set of blacks along with canvas trousers and a leatheris jacket. Close fitting enough to keep most glass out, especially once his boots and work gloves are sealed overtop.
He vanishes and they take the time to dish up the nuts and fruit and start eating. Once he’s back and shoving food in his mouth, he brightens up a bit. “Are you okay?” he asks finally. “You said you’d be waking up around now.” It’s said with enough concern and annoyance mixed that Spar’s a bit concerned for what the state of their kitchen would be if they’d actually slept as long as they wanted.
“I am fine,” they assure him, smiling at the dubious look he gives them. “Really. I just woke up earlier than I would like.”
“Okaaaaaay,” he drawls.
“Shut up,” they retort through a mouthful of fruit.
He bursts into giggles.
“Eat your food. I want to do a comm check of your helmet before we leave.”
He sticks out his tongue, but that ends the pestering for the day. After the plates are in the dish sonic and Spar’s shig is finished, he puts up with Spar checking the fit of his helmet with only minor moaning and groaning. It all seals fine.
“Can you hear me?” Spar asks, pushing his head to each side to check where it seals with the leatheris.
“Elek,” comes his crackling voice through the vocoder.
They nod and grab their buy’ce, putting it on and flicking through the comm channels until it connects with Boba’s. “Now?”
“Elek.”
“You could sound less enthused, you know.”
“Nyeeeeh.”
They laugh at him. “Come on. Boots and gloves, then we will head out. Tell me if you have trouble breathing.” They’d grown up with a duriplast version of a buy’ce, so they’re not sure how they feel about the mask they got for Boba. But it’s common, for adiike on Mandalore, in Keldabe and to the north.
“So what are we doing, exactly?” Boba asks as he seals his boots around the ankle then tightens the laces for a bit of extra security.
“Mmm we will get assigned with a group under one of the scientists. Did they talk about it at all at school?” They lead him out to the speeder bike, making sure he holds on tight before they take off.
“I signed us up with my friends and their parents, but uh. Otherwise, everyone kind of knew what was happening.”
“So, we will group with them. The scientists do studies regularly on how best to beat back the encroachment of the glass desert. Thanks to their efforts since the Ha’ran, erosion has been cut down and we have even taken back some of the land that was destroyed, in the last couple centuries.”
“And...we’re helping with that?” Boba asks.
“It is like the trees on Concord Dawn, in a way.”
“Oh.” He’s silent for a ways. “Why do we go so slow? I mean, I get it’s tradition, but it’s been centuries, and if we’ve figured out in the last couple then couldn’t we be working a bit faster?”
They grit their teeth. “We could,” they allow. “But the faster we go, the more likely we will attract the Duchy’s attention. Or worse.”
“The Republic.”
“They did this to us, and then they have kept the Duchy in power.” They sigh. “We will not bring more trouble to ourselves. In this day and age, Death Watch does enough of that for us.”
Boba snickers, a flicker of light at the dark humour. “Maybe...maybe Buir will be able to figure it out?”
“I am not sure, tat’ad,” they murmur, taking a hand off the bike for a moment to pat his hands where they’re wrapped around their shar’tas. “Maybe.”
Spar trails after Boba as he rushes to meet back up with his friends, falling into step with their buire. The area much of the organization is being held at is a camping and nature area, long grown trees and thick moss on the ground. The group is directed to a scientist in gold, yellow, and silver painted beskar’gam, with a few pink flowers littered about the plates. They’re not the only group of school children and their adult guardians, either.
“I’m Bajir Urnau Shaturshi, they/them,” the scientist introduces themself. “I’m a geologist who has been studying the glass desert for the last five years.”
The kids all pay rapt attention as Shaturshi explains the new kind of grass they’re going to be trying out. Spar can’t help but pay attention, either, and they’re sure they’re not the only adult doing so.
“This was discovered off-world, on several other planets a few sectors away. It thrives in sand and replaces nutrient and mineral ions in the soil. Even before the grasses have broken down fully, we’ll start introducing other, larger plants to help with erosion in the back and start introducing biodiversity back into the soil. We’re hopeful this grass, along with the native Mandalorian desert grasses we’ve been using so far, will provide a shorter period of time for initial mineral replacement and absorption of glass. With a shorter period, we don’t have to replant the grasses as much. These also self-seed better in the resurrecting soil. It’s much more efficient.”
Spar nods along, considering what the scientist is saying. It cuts down on the labour that the scientists will have to do over the course of the next year, leaving more time to observe and make adjustments.
The larger group watches as Shaturshi shows them how to sow the grass seeds in a way that is less artificial, but isn’t liable to overseed the dunes. Then, they all spread out, doing their best to follow the directions. When questions come up, Shaturshi puts the entire group on one comm channel, allowing themself to be able to lecture cheerfully as they go.
Far sooner than any of them expected, they break for lunch, making their way back into the trees to get food at the canteen set up and take a break. Spar leaves Boba with his friends and their parents, only a comm away, and finds Parja and Shysa.
“Missed you this year,” Parja teases. “How’s the dunes?”
“Fine. It is interesting, at least. The kids ask a lot of questions, and we have a scientist to answer them. I know I have heard more than one adult ask, too.” They shrug, wiping the sand away from the seal of their buy’ce and their blacks before they take it off to dig into the cheesy pasta they picked. “How is tree trimming?”
“Good! It’s nice to work with other machinery people, though the rigging people pestered me a lot because they missed you,” she says. “And Shysa.”
“You burn one tree,” Shysa grumbles, but it’s with good humour. “I’m planting new seedlings this year. It’s actually pretty cool. We’ve got a scientist who studies trees specifically that’s directing us, working to better the biodiversity so that it’s not as patchy as the old growth can be.” For centuries, they’d been trying to figure out what exactly needed to be done so that the trees weren’t as susceptible to pests or blight. Only in the last decade had major strides been made, to do with biodiversity of tree and fungal species.
“I am glad you’re enjoying it,” Spar says, surprised. “You were not happy about it when the order came down last year.”
He shrugs, a blush building on his cheeks. “Yeah, but you dug into me about it. So I told myself I’d give it a try. And it’s actually fun, talking with everyone about it. Maybe I shouldn’t have followed you two into tree maintenance after all.” He sticks out his tongue at them.
They’d been together, the three of them, since Spar’d come to Mandalore. Other friends, too, but none of them had gone into the trimming group. And with Spar running herd on a pre-teen and his friends over the last year, it had mainly been Shysa and Parja who had stuck around. They were aware, uncomfortably, on why. Shysa’s attraction to them and desire to be near the heart of Mandalorian politics. Parja’s ba’vodu and pathological worrying.
Everyone knew Spar was sick. Everyone knew Spar’s or’tat had left them with custody over his son while he was trying to curb the Republic’s worst impulses and make up for his own mistakes.
Spar sighs. “Well, at least we are all having a good time.”
“For sure,” Parja says, and she’s about to continue when someone steps over to the three of them.
Whoever it is, they’re still in full beskar’gam. Primarily human, dark paint. A peeling shriekhawk on their shoulder, not refreshed but not scrubbed off either.
“Is this worth it?” the Mando’ad asks, crossing their arms. “Fett?”
Spar frowns. “Mereel. Not Fett. And is what worth it?”
“Mereel,” they sneer. “All of this?” They wave their hands out at everything and everyone around them. “If the Republic destroys us again. Or if the Duchy does. Is it worth it, when your family brings them down upon us?”
Spar’s mood, already dark, practically turns to night. Parja winces as wind whistles around them all, drawing attention to their little group. “Even if it is destroyed,” Spar says, voice measured and cold. “Of course it is worth it. Whether that is by the Republic or our own people. Because coming back here every year means we did not give up. We continued to make change. We did not let ourselves die. For over nine hundred years we have fought the devastation of the Ha’ran. We did not roll over and die, or abandon this place. And one day we still might have to, like our ancestors fled Coruscant at the risk of enslavement. So tell me, bur’cya, is it that you don’t think it is worth it or is it that you just want a fight?”
The air around them is vibrating, and the Mando’ad takes a step back, hands raised. A figure looms behind them, a large hand coming down on their shoulder belonging to the keld’alor of Vesho’kel—the keldab pointed true north—an older togruta man called Aran from a clan to the North who was, usually, a cheerful sort. The faceplate of his buy’ce is off; he must have left it where he was eating.
“I do not recognize you, burc’ya,” he says pleasantly, though he’s leaking antipathy. “Are you from Keldabe or one of the other communities who come to this location?”
“Uh, Bes’kel,” the Mando’ad mutters, clearly looking for a way out of this conversation.
“Ah, with Daryc. I was just speaking to xir. How about you come with me to find xem again—and explain why you are harassing cuun cyare’la parjai, eh?” He looks up at Spar. “Terribly sorry, ba’vod’ad. Having a good time?”
Spar ducks their head, grabbing for their dish of pasta once again. “Elek, ba’vodu.”
“Dinuir gar ori’vod ner jatne vercope. We will see you at the next council meeting.”
“Elek, ba’vodu.”
He disappears, dragging the erstwhile Mando’ad with him.
Parja and Shysa stare after him.
“So...that’s the kind of friendships you get with a keld’alor position,” Parja observes.
“He seemed...” Shysa trails off.
“Protective,” Spar agrees, embarrassed. “They probably could feel me losing my handle on things and sent Aran to intervene. He is the nicest of us.”
“Did you ever tell your ori’vod that Petir’kel elected you?” Parja asks, amused.
Spar glares at her. “Boba did. He laughed long enough I had to comm Mij—Baar’ur Gilamar, he was a trainer on Kamino and was close to both of us—to make sure he was not going to pass out. It is not long, with his lungs.” They would prefer that their calls with Mij never be to make sure their idiot brother is not going to die. The later three-way call between Coruscant and Kamino had helped, at least.
Any further conversation is halted by the alert sound that it’s time to go back to groups for one last hour, before the main activity will be done for the rest of the day.
It allows those with children to get them home for some time to destress before school tomorrow.
Over the course of the full day, work will go on enough that a green line will inch further south cohesively once spring takes hold. Forests will continue to grow and thrive.
It’s gratifying to feel, as energy moves and takes hold in ways that the land has long since grown unfamiliar with.
But for now, they do one more hour of work, and then Spar and Boba head home, waving goodbye to friends as they go through the portable sonics before finding their bike and weaving their way back into the city.
Spar stows the bike in the shed beside the old speeder that Myles once taught Jango on and tugs Boba into the mudroom, careful as they unseal each connection. With the helmet coming off, they take a damp rag to his face and jaw, getting rid of any glass or sand that snuck in, especially around lunch. He gets his own gloves and they help with his boots, tossing all of the outer layers into the washer. The movement and water and detergent do better at collecting the microparticles than sonics do alone, though everything will go through those too. It just means they have to click the collection setting so the glass and sand don’t go into the water system.
Boba brings his blacks in after he’s changed back into his sleep clothes then helps them with the pieces of their beskar’gam and getting out of their kute. Then he vanishes to change into clothes for the rest of the day, leaving Spar to strip out of their blacks and toss them and their kute in too. They wait a quick heat cycle of the clothes still in the dryer, choosing to put some of those on and take the rest up to their room.
They should get dinner started, so they don’t have to cook after Jango calls, and should move the clothes to the sonics and put the collection cycle on so they can decontaminate the water tomorrow.
There’s so much to do, and one day is not enough of a break, especially when it’s a full holiday. But they can get through the next three days before the next holiday, a trio of festival days that are much more casual.
But instead of doing any of the things they should, they get about half of the laundry put away before telling themself they’ll just shut their eyes for a few minutes.
“Ba’tat,” Boba says, shaking Spar awake.
They blink blearily at him. “What did you do?” they ask.
“Nothing,” he replies, voice going high and cracking.
They raise an eyebrow.
“...Maybe we can order take away tonight?” he requests tentatively.
They decide they really, really don’t want to deal with whatever he’s done. “You are cleaning the kitchen.”
“’Lek.”
They bury their face back in the pillows and shoot him a thumbs up.
The food is set to be delivered about an hour after twilight, giving them plenty of time for the call with Jango first. Spar pretends that the kitchen doesn’t smell like smoke.
The line on Jango’s end is a mess of noise for a split second before a door slides shut. “Sorry, sorry. Someone had files for me.”
“Oooo paperwork,” Spar mocks.
“Rude. How was it all?”
Spar leans back and smiles, listening to Boba explain everything the scientist had told he and the other children over the course of the day, only guiding the discussion back to the other festivities when he starts flagging. Jango jokes and teases throughout, sharing little bits of his own day. Only when Boba vanishes to collect the credits for the incoming delivery person does his mood flag.
“You are doing alright?” he asks. “Those two asked after you.”
“What in the galaxy is so necessary that all three of you are in the same place?” they ask, annoyed.
“Hah. No, I sent them messages that you had not slept well last night so they wouldn’t comm you tonight.”
“Jango.”
“You need your rest. They agree, obviously, or you’d have heard from them.”
They roll their eyes. “Nosy. Aran sends his best wishes, speaking of.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a story there?”
“None that needs to be told,” they assure him, with the sinking feeling he’ll be comming Aran. “You told me that you would only help me if I asked, with this job.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “You are too much like I am, tat’ka. You will never ask for help.”
The glass in the windows rattles. “And are you learning to accept help, then?”
There’s a smile in his voice when he says, “I am working on it. Habits for both of us to attempt to grow, this year.”
“Rude.”
“I love you too.”
Boba comes wheeling back in with the credits, nearly colliding with the kitchen table as he does. They sign off the comm just in time for a knock to come on the side door.