Chapter Text
Mace Windu was exhausted and troubled. His head pounded both from the stress of dealing with the Senate and the pain and unease of the Force. He needed to meditate, to follow the lines of the shatterpoints, but he had a weary feeling that it would be just as unproductive as it had been for years. The Force was darkened, clouded, and it was difficult to find the light in the face of so much pain.
War.
The Jedi had gone to war.
Mace Windu was leading thousands of men wearing the face of the one he had killed on Geonosis. Their template. The father of the boy who had screamed in such agony at his death that the Force had echoed with it. More than one had screamed when Jango had died at his hand.
The first of many victims of the Jedi in this coming war.
Mace threw himself backwards and a blaster bolt slammed into the wall where he had just been, continuing into a flip to carry his momentum onward as the attack continued.
The source was not difficult to find. A burning point of rage and pain on a roof top, focused on him.
Boba.
He caught a flash of a silver and blue helmet, a t-visor burned into his memory before another flurry of blaster bolts peppered the area around him. Mace pushed through his guilt, drawing on the Force to lend him speed to run up the side of the building towards where Boba was trying to kill him.
One of the bolts slammed into his shoulder while the other three were deflected harmlessly into the walls. Mace ignored the pain and leaped over the rain sluice to land on the rooftop. Boba fired again, and again, frantically and furiously, and Mace batted the bolts away, slicing his lightsaber through the barrel of the blaster to render it more dangerous to use for Boba than himself, and it was painful how similar the situation was. It would take half a thought and a redirection of his wrist to take Boba’s head.
He didn’t, Boba was a hurting and grieving child. A highly trained child who threw the smoking blaster at him, driving Mace back because deflecting it with his saber would cause it to detonate. Boba charged at him with a knife, tackling him at the knees and twisting his small body to unbalance Mace, taking advantage of leverage and Mace’s unwillingness to kill a child.
He hit the ground, and Boba was swift, stabbing down through his side and robes into the roof beneath them, pinning him long enough for the child to climb up and straddle his chest, another knife touching his throat. Mace held his hands out at his sides, accepting the boy’s grief.
“This will not bring him back,” Mace warned gently.
A woman with a youngling tied to her back and a blaster and knife in each hand, stalked forward, clicking in a language Mace didn’t know.
The visor of the helmet stared down at him and Mace felt the tip of the knife dig into his throat and draw blood.
“I won,” Boba said, his voice cold and modulated. “I won. I- You are going to train me.”
“Boba, I-”
“NO!” Boba slashed the knife across Mace’s throat, shallow, not enough to kill him, but in a warning.
The woman aimed her blaster at Mace’s head as Boba sat back on his chest and pulled his helmet off. The boy bared his teeth at Mace, eyes wet with unshed tears and pain and anger in every line of his young face already hardened by violence.
“You killed dad. You killed him! You are going to train me. Everything. Everything you know. The sabers. The jumping.”
“Boba, you are not Force sensitive-”
“I don’t care! You killed my dad! You’re going to train me or I’m going to kill you right here.” Boba leaned in, putting the knife back to Mace’s throat. “My sister is born and you killed Dad. He can’t teach her because he’s dead. You killed him, so you have to teach her. You have to teach us. You have to.”
There was a primitive form of justice in it. Mace had taken their father, so Boba was insisting he fill the role. It was not the Jedi way, and yet…
“I’m going to be in a war-”
The woman clicked and hissed angrily, priming the blaster to execute him and Boba’s throat worked as he dug the blade in again. “You think we won’t be? You think that I’m not going to have to fight and kill and bleed because YOU KILLED MY DAD!?”
“Alright,” Mace agreed, staggered to tears by the sheer force of the pain and grief from Boba and the woman “Alright. I will- I will do my best to train you and your sister, Boba. I am sorry.”
“Shut up with that nerf shit,” Boba snapped, scrubbing the back of his wrist over his eyes before grabbing his father’s helmet and putting it on.
Mace lay on the roof for a moment, unable to rise under the weight of the pain he had caused.
Boba stepped back towards the woman, visor turning up to look at her face, and she clicked something to him that had his little shoulders squaring in determination. He was not going to lay there and be smothered by his grief. Mace should be as strong. He lifted himself up off of the roof, pressing his hand to his throat to stem the bleeding.
“We… should go to the temple, then. Have your mother and sister checked over.”
“She’s not my mother,” Boba snapped. “She’s Edee.”
Mace bowed. “Very well.”
He hesitated before motioning for them to follow him, accepting the responsibility. He was a Jedi, a peacekeeper, one meant to keep the balance. And the pain and grief he had brought into the universe with his violence troubled him.
Jedi were not meant for war.
He made it three steps before dropping to his knees with a sob. Jedi were never meant for war.
He was never meant for war.
They were ruined.
They were destroyed.
How were they supposed to remain in the light? In compassion and kindness when a single battle brought this? A fraction of what was coming. Children destroyed. Boba’s hate was suffocating and it was because Mace had decided to kill rather than disarm.
The silver and blue visor filled the air in front of him, a ghost, a son.
“It’s okay to cry but you have to keep fighting while you do,” Boba said tightly, angrily. “Dad said.”
Mace nodded, accepting the advice and rising to his feet through the tears. “He is right. I- must not let my regret keep me from doing what I must.”
The headache behind his eyes doubled as a shatterpoint snapped and the lines of fate rewrote.
Mourning the previous Avatars was foolish and pointless. Their spirit lived on in the new one.
And yet..
Edee couldn’t stop herself from grieving. Jango had been… Jango. His spirit lived on in Boba, but it was different. Boba was Boba and Jango was Jango even if Agaryu lived in both of them.
She couldn’t stop herself from crying at night when the tasks of caring for Boba and his temporary den had halted for rest and there was no activity for her hands to distract her. Boba would crawl into bed with her and they would cry themselves to sleep. Him for his father and her for… her Avatar was here in front of her. She wasn’t crying for her Avatar, she had him still, it was for Jango.
She missed him.
The jingle anklets he had given her felt like maybe he was whispering to her from the Eternal Plains as she walked, and she learned how to set her feet down softly enough not to rattle them as she served Avatar Boba during his time in the Jedi Temple. They were pack hunters, but wrong. They denied themselves instinct. Denied themselves herd.
The Voiced at Agaryu’s temple had declared Boba needed to learn from the one who had defeated his previous incarnation, and Boba had. He had defeated the slayer of Jango and… Edee had given birth to a strong girl, loud with Jango’s spirit.
She recovered, healed, fed the child from her breast as was right.
Now Edee walked the silent, solemn halls of the Jedi’s temple, learning with Boba the flowing moves of their acrobatics and saber forms. What they had was not strength, it was simply magic.
Wizards commanding the armies of copies, unnatural shades wearing Jango’s face.
Boba burst into her room that night, slamming a book down onto the floor in front of her. His eyes were wet and his teeth bared in anger.
“You are going to learn to read.”
She shook her head. That was forbidden!
“No! I need you. I need you to be able to read. To write. To help me. Dad is dead and these Jedi are useless. I need-” Boba slumped to his knees in front of her, catching her hands. “I need you, Edee. Me and my sister both need you. Read, please? I’m not full grown but I can’t stay here. I can’t forgive them. I can’t.”
He needed her. She was meant to serve him. Everything she had sacrificed. Everything she had endured. She was supposed to be devoted and faithful to the Avatar but-
But Boba needed her because Jango was dead. Edee covered her face with her hands, bowing until her forehead was pressed to the floor as she tried… tried to breathe. If she learned to read, she could never return to the temple. If they discovered it, she would be stripped of her status as High Priestess. Sacrificed to face Agaryu’s judgement. It would mean she could be with Jango. It would mean she abandoned her duty to Boba.
But Boba and his sister needed her. He had asked her to learn. To stay with him. Agaryu’s will or the traditions.
His hand rested on the top of her head in silent blessing and she nodded under his little palm.
She would learn. Not because the Avatar demanded it of her… but because Boba needed her. Agaryu had to forgive her for breaking the traditions so that she could protect and care for her herd. He had to.
She wiped at her face and got up on her knees, removing her necklace of station and holding it out on her hands towards Boba. He searched her face before taking the necklace, dropping it on the floor and putting the book in her hands, closing her fingers over it in acceptance of her service. She was no longer his High Priestess. She was… his mother.
Boba crawled into her lap so she could open the book slowly and he could point at the first symbol and match a sound to it. So he could teach her to read.
She convinced him to wait to leave the temple until he’d finished his growth spurt and his sister could support her own head, looking around and watching with wide eyes when Edee tied her to her back. She was not worthy to name Agaryu’s offspring, but in her heart, she called her Bes’Karta, like the symbol in the center of Jango’s, now Boba’s, chestplate. Boba just called her Sister.
The three of them left the temple in the middle of the day, walking past Jedi and clones alike to the Slave.
This time… Edee watched and listened to Boba explain how to fly the ship as they left to go find their first hunt without Jango to guide them. Agaryu help them. Those without a herd die alone and her herd was young and small. Give her strength to protect them and strength to go on until she was called to the Eternal Plains.
Her neck felt naked without the necklace of the High Priestess and her head ached with how many symbols and patterns she was cramming into it. Her temple and rank were lost to her now. Jango was gone.
She had to serve Agaryu on her own.
She would take care of Boba and Bes’karta on her own until they could meet Jango again.
“You’re crying,” Boba muttered as he put in strings of numbers Edee didn’t understand yet.
I named your sister.
Boba’s head lifted from his work to stare at her in surprise.
Beskarta.
Boba translated it to a voice. “Beskarta. I like it. Her name is Beskarta. Thanks… mom.”
He accepted his sister’s name, given not by a supplicant, but his mother.
Edee wiped her face and lifted Beskarta to her breast to feed her as Boba finished his strings of numbers and flew them onwards to their first hunt as a family and not just a herd.