Chapter Text
Going back to Sundari wasn’t something Jango Fett could just… determine on a whim. Especially after all that hypocrisy about not getting involved in politics any longer. ‘He wasn’t Mand’alor,’ he constantly reminded. Even to Satine, he wasn’t particularly convincing.
It wasn’t even that she wanted him as a leader, it was about the gall he had to sit there and judge her while simultaneously pretending that he didn’t care at all.
She especially hated that, when he did say something, it was with the charisma of a leader, obviously natural in a way that she had to painstakingly cultivate these last few years to even approach an imitation of. She hated him for walking away from it in the same moment she envied his ability to simply give up on his responsibility.
But Death Watch would want her dead regardless of her capability to fulfill her duty to her people. At least giving it her all would cause them trouble in the process.
Obi-Wan had always been so careful about covering their tracks, but every time new soldiers bore down on them her suspicions grew. No one tried to kill them outright in the villages, often considered neutral territory to any travelers, but she could feel the eyes on them. She wondered why Obi-Wan hadn’t mentioned it.
She felt the knot of fear in her heart throb at the idea of venturing out again. Death Watch wasn’t tracking them, she’d realized.
People were calling them in. Mandalorians in the marketplaces they stopped at, in the spaceports they tried to travel with, all loyal to Tor Vizsla, the megalomaniac, and eager to see her dead.
She watched, suspicious, as Vau pressed something into Fett's hand and told him to 'find the others' while the younger man scoffed. She stayed in the rec room, far from Fett, when Vau went to the marketplace for them, picking up just the basics. 'Enough to get them to a spaceport,' he’d said.
She didn’t have the heart to tell either of them that they’d tried that. She and Obi-Wan had tried valiantly to get passage off of Mandalore. They’d tried to buy tickets. They’d tried to sneak aboard cargo freighters.
They’d been met with blasters at every point. Now, they had no plan except to survive long enough for Master Jinn to call them back to Sundari. With Fett here instead of Obi-Wan, her Ben, she’d thought that Jinn would immediately take her back with him, bomb threats be damned.
She thought wrong, and she couldn’t help but be furious about it. If Fett had been even slightly more interested in power, she’d be long dead. So if he wanted to deliver her to Sundari instead, she would go along with it, and they would leave at first light.
The shouting woke her well before then.
Fett was crouched against the wall, carefully peering out the window.
“What’s happening?” she whispered, even as dread pooled in her gut. He just made a cutting motion across his throat, a signal for quiet.
Vau’s voice crackled with the microphone of his helmet, rising over other, less distinct calls in Mando’a, “Don’t be a pack of striil, Maliik. They’re barely kids.”
Another voice replied, “They’re outsiders and invaders, Walon. Your defense of them is un-Mandalorian.”
They were about to be found out. Again.
That thing inside of her that ached for a Mandalore she could recognize cracked a little further.
A face blocked her vision. Not Ben, she reminded herself. Ben smiled gently, and Jango Fett almost never smiled at all. She didn’t think the man could even be gentle, obvious as he grabbed her arm, grip too firm, hauling her away towards the back of the house as she got her feet under her.
He threw open the window in the kitchen, “Vau said he’d play distraction, but we need to go. Now.”
She didn’t doubt it and pulled herself through it, landing as light as she could with the urgency they faced. Fett slung the pack of supplies they’d gathered earlier after her that she barely managed to catch, then followed, as silent as Ben had ever been. Distantly, her mind wondered if that was a trait from the Force or if Fett had just been trained. She heard shouting behind her again and dreaded when the soldiers would appear. How long would they last before more were called in?
He pointed out towards the village wall. She always hated scaling those, with the way rivets dug into her hands. He jumped and caught the edge of it, pulling himself up with ease, then extended a hand down towards her, ready to haul her up, too.
A part of her still didn’t understand why he was here. Why he was helping her. He could’ve run off the minute they’d met Master Jinn and left her to fend for herself. She didn’t understand anything about him or his strange meditations that always seemed more restless than Ben’s or his quiet determination when he’d used a lightsaber that had been all too much like Ben or his anger at her and Walon Vau in equal measure despite one being his ally. She didn’t understand him, and part of her hated him for it.
She took his hand.
Mij hung over his shoulder as Obi-Wan typed in the code that Vau relayed was to a burner comm he’d given Jango.
It rang in the heavy silence before it connected and the holo appeared. Jango was clearly running, a long-range blaster rifle strapped to his back as he dragged someone, probably Satine if Obi-Wan had to guess, behind him. His own voice cried out in eerily accented Mando’a, “Ke’bana, Walon, Ka’ra, tran be ibi’tuur atin.” He heard the sound of blaster bolts making impact around them, “Gar sirbu ibic r’ara’novo?”
Even after talking to Kal on the flight there, Obi-Wan honestly only understood some of the more common words, so he wasn’t quite sure what Jango was yelling about. But, he had a feeling that it was probably about the Death Watch. Every place they’d made contact with the local populations it seemed to bring the fanatics out of the woodwork. Most of the other Mandalorians just turned a blind eye, too used to ignoring it to keep the peace in their compounds.
Obi-Wan didn’t want to break Jango’s concentration and get him hurt in the process, but he watched his body narrowly dodge a blaster bolt and felt a fissure of envy. Jango had the Force to protect him, now. Obi-Wan had to hope that would be enough.
That was when Jango snarled, a sound and expression he’d never seen on his own face, and shoved the comm at Satine, lunging out of the frame. Her face was all grim lines as she greeted him, “Ben. I’m glad to see you’re well,” he heard his own voice cursing and the snap of a readied rifle, “Jango is convinced that fleeing Death Watch is a futile effort when I,” she raised a hand in air-quotes, “‘should be taking care of my own damn government.’ I fear that I agree with him, at least in this instance,” she ducked, suddenly, and the comm was yanked back from her.
“Ben,” Jango snapped in Obi-Wan’s most irritated tone, “you better have one hell of a reason for not coming straight to us.”
“It’s not as if I was waylaid by pirates on purpose, Jango, really.”
He crouched behind cover, setting the comm down then yanking Satine around beside him and into the holo frame as she looked affronted. He slung the rifle back to ready from his shoulder and asked, clearly still annoyed, “And are pirates the reason I see Mij Gilamar hovering over you, or are you too busy making a mess out of my life to fucking switch back?”
He rolled his eyes as Jango fired, “I hardly think that you have room to judge my handling of the situation when you are currently making a mockery of my mission directives.”
He snorted as he ducked behind cover again, “Yeah, because your mission directives were osik and the Republic should keep its nose out of Mando business.”
Obi-Wan huffed, “We were requested to be there! And even then, our intel grossly misrepresented the political climate of the sector. Otherwise, the Council would’ve never let me get remotely close to another warzone.”
Jango ignored him and started firing again. Obi-Wan heard the sound of bolts hitting their marks, the return fire lessening with each one. “The moment we’re back to normal, Kenobi, I am teaching you actual shooting posture. This would be child’s play if I could land a shabla shot. The way you stand pulls the stock too much, you ever notice that?”
“Is that really relevant at the moment? More importantly, what am I supposed to do about the Haat’ade , Jango?”
The sound of blasters stopped entirely as Jango picked back up the comm, giving Obi-Wan his full attention, “The what? Did that shabuir Skirata catch you, too?”
“In my defense, I was concussed–”
“You’ve got some luck, jet’ika, I’d managed to dodge him for months and you manage, what, two days?”
“...I am not certain of the timeline,” Jango chuckled incredulously at that, “but that does not magically make it my fault that I was unaware of potential restrictions, now does it?”
Jango started to snark back, but Satine groaned in the background, “We understand, boys, you are both very good at being trouble, but for the love of the gods, focus, please!” Obi-Wan and Jango grumbled apologies as she continued, “Ben, you cannot reveal our predicament until I have been properly installed, otherwise I would lose all credibility with my people in collaborating with Jango Fett.”
“And I wish you well in that endeavor, Duchess,” Obi-Wan sighed, “But how am I meant to act like Jango Fett to all his followers? Currently, I’ve told them I have amnesia, but I doubt it will hold them for long.”
Jango laughed at him, “If I thought it would work I would’ve tried that ages ago. No, you are too much jetii to pass as Mando’ad . If you can learn to think like a Mandalorian then maybe you can pretend, but your best bet is to flee. That’s what I was doing anyway, so they would expect it.”
He was nodding when Mij finally pitched in, crossing his arms, “I did not expect our old Mand’alor to encourage his stand-in to act like a hut’uun.”
Obi-Wan watched him visibly flinch then glare at the baar’ur. “And what would you have me do, him do, Gilamar, rebuild the ori’raamikade from scratch with no funds and no training and no support? Rally the clan heads? Ba'slan shev'la is not dishonor here.”
“And how would you know what his status is? All we need is your face, Fett. That will be enough to flush out Kyr’tsad compounds. If you’d just reached out right away we might have–”
Jango cut him off, “Save your lectures and your regrets for someone who cares. Kenobi, get to Sundari so I can get on with my life away from this insanity,” and he hung up without another word.
Obi-Wan sighed and shook his head.
Jango resisted the urge to crush the comm in his hands. Next to him, the duchess crossed her arms, “I’m starting to get the impression that you are always this dramatic.”
He just glared at her and wrenched himself to his feet. Death Watch had been chasing them consistently once they’d caught wind that they’d been at Vau’s place. It was all the older Mando could do to keep them out of his house. At least they’d already packed up some rations to go to Sundari, so it was a quick escape, even if they’d had to leave Vau behind.
The utreekove had chased them with a speeder, at least. Jango had been picking them off one by one for hours, and now he could take the vehicle instead of sacrificing his still-tender feet to the hard soil of the wastelands. Silently, he and Satine stripped the dead of their beskar and loaded it into the back of the transport. They’d have to find a goran to deliver it to at some point, but the closest one would be the one in Keldabe, and Jango really didn’t want to turn around. He did pull off a pair of boots from one of the verde that looked like they might fit and tossed the tattered ones with the rest of the armor. They were heavier, and Jango grimaced as he realized that he’d have a harder time moving in them. This body just didn’t have enough bulk for beskar’gam.
As he was pulling them on, the duchess got into the driver’s seat, and she got a stubborn set to her face when he approached. He crossed his arms, “Do you even know how to get there?”
She rolled her eyes and didn’t move. Jango stared, his fingers automatically tapping in annoyance. She very obviously grit her teeth and stared back.
Her hostility seeped through his mental armor like water getting into his shoes, and he took a deep breath, trying to bat it away from him. The way that the life had winked out of the verde earlier had already been startling enough without adding her baggage. Jango hadn’t expected it to give him an almost physical sensation when his bolts landed, and it had thrown off his aim. Now he knew what to expect though, so he could reinforce against it. Just like he had gotten used to doing anytime Satine looked at him for too long.
When she still wouldn’t move, Jango shrugged and shoved his way into the seat anyway, using bony elbows and sharp hips to do the work he’d usually rely on muscle for. He resolutely ignored the way Kryze protested loudly, and he expertly blocked her return jabs until he’d forced her into the next seat over where she huffed in defeat.
It wasn’t until he had started the speeder that he realized that he probably could’ve just pushed her with the Force. Next time.
The ride was silent as he turned them towards Sundari, mulling over what clan lands covered the length. Vau’s aliitsad and Briik were all in Aloriitsad Vizsla territory, as far as Jango remembered. Who knew what clan lands they were in, those shifting sands were always someone else’s problem when Jango had been Mand’alor.
Which once again begged the question, why had the jet’ika taken Kryze there?
It was straight into the belly of the beast. It would’ve been far safer to retreat to traditional Kryze territories, like Kalevala or Draboon, and wait out the unrest. He glanced at Kryze. Was this her play, rather than Ben’s? Jango didn’t know, he’d been too far from politics since his fall to say what angle she could possibly have.
He was rusty, and he had a feeling that the duchess wouldn’t be interested in sharing her plans with ‘an opposing faction leader’ as she thought of him.
The wastelands bled into grasslands, a good indicator that they were closer to Kryze-friendly territory. Their clans were always concerned with pollution, when the sector had been stable enough to worry about it, and Jango remembered approving at least one major soil remediation project on Manda’yaim proper. Those proposals had bled together at the time, distractions from his latest campaign against Death Watch.
That had probably been part of the problem. Jango had never had the patience to worry over every little detail the way Jaster had.
Kryze finally seemed to tire of glaring at him from her spot in the passenger seat and closed her eyes.
Well, at least she trusted him enough not to kill her, at this point. He didn’t know whether or not to be offended by that. She gave up her guard too easily.
He told her so, “Gar aranov osikla.”
She sniffed derisively, “Nukad’la beskad al’mirjahaal.”
“Shi'meh beskad ru’pirimmu. Me’vaar beskad be Evaar’ade?” he rolled his eyes.
Jango laughed, “Right, because you just sell them to everyone else and call it virtue.”
Back to glaring, “If we had established trade routes in the Republic, weapons and warships wouldn’t have to be our greatest export.”
“And what, switch production to civilian models? In direct competition to Corellian models? You’re out of your mind.”
“If we could specialize and corner a different market–”
“Look around, duchess,” he gestured broadly, “there aren’t any more markets to be cornered. You’ll just cripple people’s livelihoods, for what, your feelings?”
She fully sat up, pointing a finger at him, “It’s about short-term losses for long-term gain! Weapons are a stagnated industry at this point, and we need to stay ahead of the curve.”
Jango felt his too-thin lips press together in frustration. He’d just wanted her to learn to dodge better, not sink into some stupid debate on foreign policy. He shook his head, “You can’t duck and roll correctly, Kryze. You’re going to get injured before we make it to Sundari, and you’re going to give yourself a concussion by the next assassination attempt.”
She said nothing, closing her eyes again and slumping back into her seat. “I know more than you think,” she muttered.
Jango was very, very aware that Satine Kryze was being a surly teenager. It did not make it easier.
He let her sulk. He wasn’t her ori’vod, and even if he was it wouldn’t be his job to manage her because she was an adult.
Jango chased away memories of teaching ade the first steps of aranov as the speeder streaked over the plains.
Despite how he agreed to keep his secret for stability’s sake, having an ally in Mij wasn’t particularly useful, ultimately. In fact, it might have put him at a disadvantage in the long run, because now his gaze felt heavy and assessing when Kal and Silas were finally allowed back in and told half a diagnosis: that “Jango” would not recover his lost memories. Obi-Wan himself could not… Tumi tamahru kar lukawaytho nepa Jango nak eiyhunchair ol nak padawanir eyco pai tamhru ehnap karel ru tumi imfaziiru daiel kar ru–ru–
He breathed, grateful for the helmet covering his expression.
Why? He asked himself, Xai sahrhiiru Sundari’ux eyco?
He resisted the urge to drop his head in his hands, if only so that Silas wouldn’t be concerned.
Obi-Wan could not go to Sundari, not as Jango Fett of the True Mandalorians. That would be an act of aggression that the small and still-recovering people under his command could not afford, nor would it win him Satine’s favor.
Which meant that his best bet was to stay put and hope that Jango could make his way to him instead, once the mission was complete. He’d have to call him again, next time he was finally alone. The Force would guide him, surely.
Obi-Wan did not have time for a yhua kat xari in the middle of being unexpectedly redeployed as a General-tepetux.
Because that was what the Haat’ade needed him to be, wasn’t it? To be Mand’alor , a rallying point that wasn’t Death Watch or New Mandalorian and the Commander in Chief of all their warriors. To pull people away from both, too.
Kal had talked about that, some, before they made it to Concord Dawn: that while the numbers of the Haat’ade ori’ramikade were always relatively small, and he had never been in them, the Mand’alor had the backing of the majority of the clan heads across the sector. That was why things that had once been tense, but relatively stable for Mandalorians, had crumbled after Galidraan.
Jango and any potential successor had been gone in an instant, and the power vacuum had swallowed up any neutrality left.
Jango Fett was nak ania kat kai to these people, and Obi-Wan felt sick with it.
Silas knocked into his shoulder, “Don’t worry, ‘Alor, we’ll just have to make new memories instead.”
Obi-Wan smiled weakly and bumped his shoulder back, trying for easy camaraderie, “I guess we’ll have to, then, just because you said so.”
Mij shook his head, “Other than the amnesia, he’s in good health, so you can go ahead check his training level and get him cleared for duty. Now get out, and you,” he pointed at Obi-Wan, “come back in a week. I want an update, even if nothing’s changed.”
With a nod they were shooed out of the medic’s domain.
Kal stalked ahead of him, leading them back towards the ship. Obi-Wan was honestly confused by that. Would he just be living out of the ship? Should he be meeting others?
They walked (closer to a march) in silence until Silas closed the ramp behind them and slumped in a chair in the main living area. Obi-Wan stood, settling into some sort of natural parade rest. Kal had kept going towards the armory and soon re-emerged with a single-edged blade, the gentle curve of it glinting in the artificial light. Silently he handed it to Obi-Wan.
Lightsabers were incredibly unbalanced weapons, with no weight to their blade at all, so none of his grace translated as he tested the distribution of the sword. The beskad, if he was correct. It didn’t seem like Jango was a natural talent with the weapon, but holding and swinging caused no strain, and that was comforting enough.
Silas was giving him an odd enough look that he felt another pang of loss as he wished he could simply sense what the man was feeling instead of speculating. Kal, on the other hand, was clearly assessing.
As Obi-Wan stilled, the older man spoke, “You were always a good enough of a shot that I never doubted whether you could take out Vizsla before he forced you to cross blades,” he sighed, “Now, I am less sure. I want you to refresh both.”
Internally, Obi-Wan groaned. This man clearly had plans for Jango, whether or not he was a willing participant. Truthfully, he’d been in less stressful hostage situations. He considered his options: going to Sundari like Jango wanted and certainly causing an outbreak of violence, or staying here and training so that a third faction could re-enter the fray, also certainly resulting in an outbreak of violence.
Mandalorians. It really would be violence either way, wouldn’t it?
Still, he’d rather delay it as long as he could, and if he stretched the length of his “training,” Obi-Wan could stall for quite a while. At least enough to come up with a solid plan.
He grinned. Yes, training with a new sword form would not exactly be a burden. Already, he was considering how he might incorporate future techniques with his current expertise.
He hefted the blade again. “When do we start?”