Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Shaak ever lays eyes on Mand’alor Para Mereel-Fett, there is something distinctly familiar in the Mandalorian’s cool gaze. Her first thought is that it must be because of Jango Fett’s siring of the child, for Para is still distinctly a child to her despite their comparable heights, and thus their relationship to the clones is the familiar thing. Her second thought is content with this and so she sees no reason to further inspecting it.

Para warmly greets their clone siblings, a trickster set to their lips, and treats Shaak as an afterthought, then heads off to other things, skirts flaring around them and cutting an impressive figure.

Shaak can appreciate the child’s fashion sense, similarly fond of long, structured skirts even if they are considered more difficult to fight in.

Shaak is turned over, to her surprise, to her old master.

“Jo!” she trills, embracing the woman who laughs and returns the hug. “I’m so glad to get to see you. Since the Council announced you weren’t returning, I had been worried.”

Jocasta pats her upper arm, beaming up at her. “Well, LIIL wanted help with setting up the new Archives here, and the Council wanted someone to make sure that the clones who were coming her were being treated well. I of course agreed, and besides, the Mereels have always been welcoming to me. You know that.”

Air and space shifts so subtly that Shaak barely perceives it at first, but when she looks up from Jocasta, she’s looking up at a Mandalorian with impressive and familiar branching montrals.

“Ah,” the Mandalorian clicks, a little chirp making it through their vocoder. “Little Shaak Ti has grown up.”

Jocasta chortles. “She wasn’t that short when you last saw her, Jobal.”

Jobal. Jobal Mereel. She had met the man a few times, on brief visits. He was just as talented as her master and, most importantly to Shaak at the time to her future self’s shame, he was more martially inclined than even Master Jo and had deigned to help Shaak with her bladework.

“Not compared to you, cyare,” Jobal says, smile clear in his voice. He unlatches the clasps of his buy’ce, the shimmering around his montrals coming off with it.

Yes, now Shaak remembers him, the Togruta with full montrals and no markings. Yet his young relative had no montrals and full markings. Odd how that happens.

“You’ll be staying with us,” Jobal says simply. “To the Mereel rooms at the Long House, first, and then back to Sundari when the Mand’alor returns. We’ll see you off from there.”

It’s an eventual dismissal, but it doesn’t feel mean spirited or spiteful. It’s more that...

It says: you will not like it here and we will not make you stay.

Shaak doesn’t properly meet Para until a few days later, in the Sundari palace. She makes her way to find Jocasta, using the older woman’s familiar feeling in the Force and directions from the helpful—if stiff—staff of the palace.

She ends up in a ballroom, the room filled with shivers of tiles moving through the air in their own patterns, consolidating into walls and hallways that all move as they wish. A familiar exercise.

It takes a moment for her to realize her sense of the Force has dimmed and she realizes that the blue-gray metallic tiles must at least be coated by beskar. She’s dumped out into an orb-like room in what must be the center of the ballroom, where Jocasta and Para are standing. Para’s face is slack and joyous. Jocasta’s is impressed but stern. A familiar look.

Shaak’s teeth click between each other, locking down on only air while she watches Jocasta overseeing an exercise that she used to have Shaak perform.

The tiles all shiver once more, then they’re almost blown back, clicking into place in the walls.

In their proper places, they remind Shaak of the walls of the Keldabe Long House they’d all stayed in upon arrival to the planet.

“Ah, Shaak,” Jocasta finally greets, beaming just like she would when she introduced every previous padawan she took to Shaak. “You haven’t been properly introduce, have you? Para.” She waves the Mand’alor closer, putting a hand on each other their shoulders. “This is Jobal’s grand-...What are you feeling today, dear?”

Para’s lips quirk up, again the trickster, and holds up one hand, flashing their pinky, their ring finger, and their middle finger while their index and thumb make an O.

Jocasta laughs. “Of course, make this hard on the terribleness of Basic. Yes, Shaak, this is Jobal’s tat’ba’ad, his grandnibling. Para Mereel-Fett, adopted child and heir of Duchess Satine Kryze, eldest child of Jango Fett, and Mand’alor in their own right. By election, by champion, and, funnily enough, by blood.”

Para scoffs. “Jo’ba, the Vizslas were the only family who truly put stock into blood inheritance of that title, and, even then, it didn’t tend to be like that.”

“Yes, but many other planets have hereditary monarchies,” Jocasta points out.

“Excuse me, were? Shaak interrupts.

Para looks away, pained. “Most of the head family is dead. It’s just my son left.”

That startles Shaak, the son mention. Para is so young, and the pain on their face is clear.

She suspects she would very much be glad of the death of the last of the Vizsla clan leaders if someone explained just why Para is uncomfortable.

She does not ask and she will not. Not just for her own comfort as a Jedi, but for Para’s privacy. She may not approve of her old master’s clear interest in teaching this outsider, but she has seen that look on many young people before. She has never been happy with the still living status of the offenders.

“Of course,” Shaak says softly. “Mand’alor Mereel-Fett, I am Jedi Master Shaak Ti. Jocasta was my master when I was a padawan.”

“Well met, Master Ti,” Para returns with a smile.

Shaak is struck that she doesn’t remember the clones ever smiling like that.

Jobal finds her in one of the numerous gardens throughout the palace. It’s comforting to have another Togruta around, so she doesn’t question it.

“How have you been?” he asks, groaning as he lowers himself into the chair beside her. “Obviously, you achieved your knighthood and then your mastery.”

“I taught two padawans, they passed their trials, and then they died,” she says mournfully.

Jobal nods sadly. “Children are never as safe as we would like. Both of Para’s buire—not Satine, I mean—were like that, in a way. I was so worried, even after we got Para back, that they were going to go the same way that Jango did, where we never really got him back after he escaped his enslavement.”

Shaak has seen that in many young people before. “But you did.”

“And I will never stop thanking every star in the universe for that,” he says with reverence. Then he looks up. Shaak hears them soon after, when Para and a pair of children—one red-haired and one obviously a Fett—and Jocasta enters.

“Ah! Jo’ba, there you are!” Para calls you. “Hello Master Ti!”

Jobal smiles. It’s familiar.

Shaak looks between him and Para, at those same smiles. She looks at the familiarity between them and Jocasta, and that particular way that they let their hands rest when they’re still that’s just as familiar.

Both of Para’s buire were like Shaak’s padawans. Jango returned a shadow of himself, but...

The other one, whose name Shaak does not know, was not said to have returned in any way.

Jobal and Jocasta have loved each other, even the first time Shaak met him she could tell. And... The ages are not so off, for there to have been another, smaller life in between Shaak and her closest youngest sibling-padawan.

Oh, she thinks, it is no wonder that Master teaches you.

Shaak doesn’t actually get a chance to speak to Para for a while, and especially not alone. It’s only hours before she is set to leave Mandalore that she manages to track the young Mand’alor down.

They’re in the library, in trousers outside of beskar’gam for the first time that she’s seen them. There’s a book in their hand and they are vehemently arguing with someone who is not there. The exasperation is so real, though, and there is a kind of tingle to the air. Shaak doesn’t doubt that, perhaps, it’s less that someone isn’t there and more that Shaak cannot see them.

Mandalorians have their own Force traditions, she knows. She has since childhood. Maybe they have ghosts, too.

Before she can call out to Para, they swing around to look at her. She gets a good look at their outfit, the slim grey trousers disappearing beneath a royal blue tunic that’s tailored to their figure and then slashed at the sides below the hip. “Master Ti.”

“I was just about to interrupt you,” she says, and for a fraction of a second she hears another person in the room with them. “I wanted to speak to you before I left.”

Cautiously, they nod.

“When I first saw you, I thought you looked familiar, and I simply assumed it was from your relation to the clones,” she begins, “I didn’t think I would have to examine that thought any closer. And for that, I thought poorly of my master’s decision to help with your training in the Force. But I’ve realized that it is far more than your father’s use as the template for the clones.” She clasps Para’s hands in her own. “I promise to keep your identity a secret from the Order. Many would not be so accepting of you, or of Jo’s decision to train you. But despite my only relation to your family being that I was Jo’s padawan, I hope you might consider me as much a ba’tat as any other sibling of your parents.”

Para stares, almost uncomprehending, then throws themself at Shaak, chest shaking with unvoiced sobs. “Thank you, Shaak,” they tell her, smiling in the most pained way Shaak could imagine.

“Thank you for having me here,” she replies. “When this is all over, I want you and your children to visit me. Alright?”

“Of course,” they assure her.

She smiles and squeezes them once more, then they both say their goodbyes and Shaak leaves.

Chapter Text

Shaak told Para that she wouldn’t tell any of the other Jedi, and she means that promise, but... Well, this is, in a way, a lineage matter. She checks the docket for who is in Temple as soon as she’s done debriefing with the Council. To her great relief, Bol and Olee are here.

They’re an odd little lineage, at the moment, what with the eldest of them off deep in the outer rim where the war probably hasn’t even reached. Bol and Jocasta get along fine, but their paths diverged almost before Bol’s trials were complete. Then the Council had shuffled Olee to Bol instead of having her finish her apprenticeship with Jocasta, thanks to the need for all hands in the war. Olee was doing fine, even if she rather wished she was back in the Archives whenever she—or Bol for that matter—spoke with Shaak.

Shaak tracks them down in Bol’s rooms. “You will never believe what I found out.”

Bol shoots her a slightly annoyed but mostly droll look. “What, has Jo taken a new padawan among the Mandalorians?”

Shaak laughs. “I thought so at first.”

Bol and Olee both freeze—they rumor had been Jocasta was going to take a new padawan before the trip to Mandalore, but she ended up not doing so.

“You remember there was a bit of time between when I passed my trials and she took you on, right Bol?” Shaak asks, making herself at home to Bol’s distant amusement and Olee’s delight.

“Yeah, about, what, five years? She was mostly in the outer rim, but was basically preparing to become Head Archivist. Why?”

“Did you ever meet Jobal Mereel?”

Bol frowns, brow furrowing. “Once, I think? They broke it off during my apprenticeship, I think.”

“Because they had a child.”

Olee shrieks with excitement. “What? Who!”

“I’m not sure,” Shaak admits. “All I know is she died at least a couple years back.  I met her child, though.”

Bol stares at her a long moment. “The karking Mand’alor is our nibling?” she asks.

Shaak trills. “I knew you could still think like an information technician,” she proclaims.

“What do you mean, the Mand’alor?” Olee asks, looking between them both.

“The current Mand’alor, who Jocasta is staying with,” Bol says, “What’s their name, Olee?”

Olee jumps on her toes for a moment—politics are never what she’s most interested in. “Um! Um! Parjai Fett? The clone template’s oldest, who brought the suit against the Senate that is only just being brought forward?”

“Para,” Shaak says, correcting her pronunciation. “And not just Fett.”

“Mereel-Fett,” Bol fills in, nostrils flaring. “No wonder she went! What’s the Mand’alor like, Shaak?”

Shaak spends the rest of the evening filling the two in on Para, eventually extracting promises to keep their lineage’s relationship to the figure that’s becoming such a center of rumour in the Temple anyways.

Not just the Temple does Shaak hear rumours from. She goes to brief the Senate on the Kamino incident, as they’re calling it, and while she’s there she overhears another Jedi, there to brief about a battle, speaking with one of the senators from Kalevala.

“It’s interesting that the Duchess adopted a warrior,” the unfamiliar Jedi says.

“Oh, but that’s the scandal,” the Kalevalan says, not even whispering. “She is just claiming the child, finally. Her warrior sympathies are apparently old enough. I’ve heard that the young future Duchet is the Duchess’s own child!”

“But they’re clearly related to Jango Fett,” the Jedi says.

“Oh, clearly,” the senator agrees. “They’re the Duchess’s love child with Fett! The timeline fits, her more pacifist leanings would have started to come out when Fett made off with the child!”

Shaak feels the skin on her browbone shifting up; obviously she’s spent enough time with Humans that she’s picked up their reaction to the utterly preposterous.

“I can’t see Fett ever having slept with the Duchess,” the other Kalevalan senator says, slipping into the conversation. Something about him makes Shaak’s skin prickle and it looks like the other Jedi is just as discomforted. “I think she stole some of his DNA and had a child created. All the more reason for Fett to steal the kid. They act quite alike, and the little Duchet-to-be has a good relationship with her, but I can’t help but see much of that being due to the political changes.”

Ha! None of them are even considering adoption to be the truth, and it is. Shaak knows this and she contents herself with that knowledge.

Luminara sips her tea as Shaak goes over her own experiences on Mandalore, nodding along as Shaak describes people.

“I only saw two ethnically Togruta Mandalorians,” she eventually admits.

Shaak brightens and describes Jobal Mereel’s armor.

“That sounds like the one who seemed closer to Miss Ra,” Luminara realizes. “I wonder if the Mand’alor is also close to her. It seemed that way when we were discussing matters, but...’

Shaak tilts her head and hums. “What was Miss Ra’s full name, again?”

“Teka Ra.”

Shaak considers the sounds. “Teka Ra. Te Ka Ra. Te Ka’ra. Oh.” She bursts into uncharacteristic laughter, her nibling is quite clever. “Te Ka’ra is the current Mand’alor’s title.”

Luminara stares at her, then sets down her tea cup. “Force. I fell for that easily, didn’t I?”

Shaak shakes her head. “Jocasta is very protective of them.”

In the edge of her hearing, Barriss peaks up from her medical text.

“And the other Mandalorians, as well. The little I picked up is that they were held captive for nearly two years and probably tortured. They’re young and their people don’t want to risk them unnecessarily.”

“I probably would have been less friendly at best if I had known,” Luminara admits mournfully. “That conversation keeps giving me reasons to rethink my own biases.”

“Um, Master Ti?” Barriss asks. “Madame Nu is protective of the Mand’alor so...is that because she’s their grandmother?”

Shaak gives her a startled look, Luminara rearing back.

“What?” Luminara asks.

“It’s just a rumor I heard from some other padawans!” Barriss rushes to tell them. “That Madame Nu had a child with a Mandalorian, and now there’s a grandchild, and that’s why she went to Mandalore.”

Shaak purses her lips; she and Bol need to have a talk with Olee. “That isn’t why Jocasta went to Mandalore,” she eventually says. “But...Yes, the Mand’alor is Jocasta’s grandchild.”

“Oh, wow,” Barriss murmurs. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“Thank you, Padawan Offee,” Shaak says. When tea wraps up, though, she still comms Bol.

Olee sits, fidgeting, between Shaak and Bol’s dual gazes.

“I asked you not to spread this, Olee. It spread through padawans, and your master was the only other person in the Temple who knew,” Shaak says sternly but not meanly. This is a scolding, of course, but it’s of no use to crush anyone’s spirit. And she knows Olee wouldn’t say anything without some kind of reason. The girl has never been tempted to gossip even once.

“I don’t know how the other padawans found out,” Olee finally says. “I didn’t tell any of them!”

Shaak and Bol exchange looks.

“I thought, because of all of the legal stuff with the Senate and the Mand’alor, that uh. That the clones that serve under Master Chatak should know. Since Jocasta was our master, and she’s the Mand’alor’s grandmother, and the Mand’alor is the clones’ sibling, so that makes us family!”

Shaak rocks back onto her heels.

Bol sighs. “I understand the impulse, Olee, but the clones are as bad about gossip as the Jedi. Especially with something like this. I’m surprised it’s not all over the entire GAR by now.”

“I, uh. I told Captain Climber, and he said he’d pass it on.”

Bol groans and brings her hands up to rub the heels of her palms against her face. “Of course. That does explain a lot.”

“Captain Climber?” Shaak asks, sensing something her younger sister-padawan hasn’t told her.

“Captain of Ion Squad, the commandos who work with us most often,” Bol gripes, “He’s... Good at his job, and he’s good with information. He’d have spread it so it’d go slowly. Explains why the padawans of those currently at the Temple were the ones who heard about it. But we’ll have to go to him to get it to stop, and he’s...obstinate.”

“Master likes him,” Olee provides helpfully. “Not like that, but she likes him as a friend.”

“Well,” Shaak decides. “To Captain Climber we go.”

Shaak is pretty sure she approves of Bol and Captain Climber’s friendship when he waves them into a strangely empty office—“Commando central, but the Alphas in charge all left...not the first, not the last.”—and got out the liqueur.

“So,” Climber asks, settling into one of the chairs. “What’s this about?”

“Olee told you about something that was supposed to be kept secret,” Bol says, pouring a shot. “We need the tooka put back in the proximity of the bag.”

“The Mando thing?” Climber asks, one scarred brow arching. “I just figured she’d picked up on one of the rumours I hadn’t heard yet.”

“Like the Mand’alor being the Duchess’s biological child.” Shaak takes a shot of her own. “I’m the one who found out, though, when I was briefly on Mandalore.”

Climber lets out a long whistle. “Damn, I hadn’t thought any of them were going to check out. You hear all sorts of things, you know. One of the most popular theories, in the GAR but we’re keeping it hush but we’ve heard some nasty forms from the public, is that Mereel-Fett is a clone, just like the rest of us.”

“That would have had to have been a particular string of events of Kamino,” Shaak says. “That child is only about twenty-one and as tall as I am, along with having markings from the Mereel side of the family’s Togruta heritage, and they were definitely socialized with Mando’a’s lack of gendered terms. Both she/her and he/him seem to be a little closer to roles that they play instead of how they feel, mostly. And they’re force sensitive.”

“None of us have seen any pictures.” Climber nurses a shot. “But what I’m saying is that this is just another among the rumours. It’ll either die out or the Order will have to make an official statement on it and it’ll split the populous and die out a little later or it will come out as true once this is all over. We barely know what to think about this damn war itself, Generals. I’ll stop spreading it myself, but it’s best to just let it run its course.”

Shaak nods along. “I suppose I see the merits of that. Still, I promised them that this wouldn’t get out.”

Climber squints at her. “Did they ask you to?”

“No, but they shouldn’t have had to,” Shaak replies serenely.

“Understandable.” He knocks his shot all the way back. “Maybe I’ll ask them myself, soon. We’ll see what the Senate is going to do.”