Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jaster.

Dying hurt both more and less than Jaster had expected.

He’d been shot before, of course—it would’ve been impossible to lead the kind of life he had without being hit at least once in the field—and so the pain of that, the bolts hitting, sharp and hot enough to take his breath away, wasn’t unexpected. But the feeling that came after that… It was as if he’d been pulled out of his body, though he was still able to feel—everything went dark, and it felt like he was being stretched thin and compressed at the same time, the something-that-wasn’t-a-body-anymore that he could feel twisting and swirling, and then there were lights streaking by, and—

Jaster gasped, feeling his lungs inflate with air, prying his eyes open, met with the familiar view of his HUD, staring up at an open, empty sky. Was this the Manda? He couldn’t think of what else it could be, given what had just happened, but this didn’t quite match the old songs and stories he knew describing it. But, then, he supposed that the songs couldn’t have described everything, given that they’d been crafted by the living about the dead, on separate planes of existence.

Groaning to himself, feeling so stiff and sore—but not, at least, feeling those points of agonizing sharp-heat anymore; thankfully, it seemed as if being dead came with one perk, no longer feeling the pain of the injuries that had killed him—and pushed himself up, taking in his surroundings. He was seated in a field of overgrown grass just beside a road, and not far off down the road, Jaster could see the ruined remnants of a city, marred by the obvious scars of war and destruction, smoke still rising in places. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around, though he could faintly hear shouting.

Well. Jaster supposed there was nothing else for it—what else was he meant to do, of course? Climbing to his feet, he quickly took stock of everything he had on him, confirming that his usual gear was all there, and that those blaster holes that had ripped through him really had just disappeared, though there was a hole in his kute on his thigh where the first one had gone clean through, and the hole appeared on both sides. Shrugging to himself, deciding that didn’t much matter to the dead, Jaster started off down the road, towards that city. Ruined though it might be, there were still people there, and that would be a good place to begin in figuring out… how all of this worked.

Jaster wasn’t sure how long he spent walking into the city and looking around when he reached it, searching for those voices and the people they had to belong to. Eventually, though, he saw something that made him pause, freezing in place for the briefest of seconds as he took it in.

He’d found several people: four adults grouped around the mouth of an alleyway, all of them holding blasters—and pointing them at two much smaller figures.

Two ad’e.

And not just pointing blasters at them—they were actively firing, now.

Growling, low and quiet enough not to be picked up by his vocorder, several things happened at once: Jaster drew his blaster pistols even as he realized he had to be in Hel, not the Manda (because there wouldn’t be demagolkase in the Manda, of course, and if they were here, with Jaster, then that could only mean that he’d been dragged down to join them—and, in truth, that wasn’t wholly surprising; Jaster had hoped that he’d made up for the sins and mistakes of his earlier life, but now, he could see that he hadn’t); the ad’e noticed him before the demagolkase did. In one smooth motion, Jaster raised both blasters and fired.

Two of the adults dropped, blasters clattering to the ground, and the remaining two whirled around to look at him. Jaster didn’t bother to dodge their return fire—besides the fact that it hit beskar and bounced off mostly-harmlessly, aside from the usual sting of the impact that would almost certainly bruise, Jaster was dead, so it didn’t kriffing matter if he got shot again —and sent off another two shots. The other two demagolkase went down, and all noise ceased in their little alleyway, the only sounds Jaster could hear the harsh, ragged breaths of the ad’e, and, off in the distance, the continued sounds of shouting.

Now that the immediate threat had been ended, Jaster turned his attention to the ad’e. They both looked so young, and so small, too-thin, pale, dirty, and wearing threadbare clothes that had obviously been patched and re-patched. And they were both frozen, staring with wide, wildly terrified eyes at Jaster. Slowly, he holstered his blasters again, nodding to them.

“Are you alright?” he asked, deciding to start with the basics. One of the ad’e made a little “eep!” sort of noise, and the other pushed in front of them, trying to shield them from view. Still keeping his movements slow and deliberate, Jaster raised his hands and crouched, going down to one knee, trying to make himself seem smaller and, therefore, less intimidating to them. “Udesii, ad’ike —I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you’re alright.”

The ad in front stared at him for a moment, giving Jaster a hard look, and he felt a warmth-Light reaching out, brushing up against him— ka’ra’tigaanla, then. He kept most of his shields up, but didn’t tighten them, letting the ad peer at his presence. Finally, the ad nodded jerkily.

“Jate —good,” Jaster said. “Where are your buir’e? Your parents, or guardians?” The ad in the back let out a little whimpering sob that tugged at Jaster’s heart, and the ad in front outright flinched. Bad question, then. “N’eparavu takisit, ad’e —I’m sorry. Where are you supposed to be?”

The ad at the fore stared at him for another moment, shifting uncomfortably. Jaster saw it the moment they came to some decision, squaring their shoulders and taking a deep breath, staring straight at his visor.

“You’re a Mandalorian,” the ad said, and Jaster nodded. Their accent was posh, polished—straight out of the Core Worlds, Jaster thought. Where in the Hels they were, he still had no idea, but he couldn’t think of any Core planets that matched this description. He almost laughed at himself, trying to make logical sense of being dead, and what was happening now, but clamped down on it, staying still and quiet, letting the ad work up to whatever else they were trying to say.

Finally, they took another deep breath, still staring straight at his visor, and said, “I’ve heard that Mandalorians care about children.” With a glance at the bodies around them, the ad’s lips twitched in a grim sort of smile, though that faded quickly. “It looks like there’s at least some truth in that rumor.”

“‘Lek —yes,” Jaster agreed. “We do. I wasn’t about to let them hurt you.”

The ad nodded slowly, something like fear warring with hope on their face—though none of that was reflected in the ka’ra. Someone had obviously taught them how to shield, and a bad feeling started to settle in the pit of Jaster’s stomach. Core accent, ka’ra’tigaanla, trained to shield…

“There are many children here who could use the help of someone who cares, and has some skill with a blaster,” the ad said. “The Elders are… Well, we’re doing our best, but… We’ve lost too many already.”

The ad’s gaze fell to the ground, a hint of their angry-sorrow-guilt flaring around them, too strong to be kept hidden behind those shields, and Jaster’s breath caught as he processed what they were saying. Ka’ra, if they meant what he thought they did, he really must have ended up in Hel.

“Ad, are you… Do you mean that this wasn’t an isolated incident? The adults here are actively hunting the ad’e —the children?” Jaster asked, and the ad reluctantly met his eyes through his helmet again and nodded. Jaster growled low, his own protective-rage starting to spike—

The ad flinched, taking a step back, pushing the ad behind them along, creating some extra distance between them and Jaster, and he forced himself to breathe. Right— ka’ra’tigaanla, and already afraid of adults. He would have to control himself.

“I’m not angry with you, ad’ika,” Jaster promised, cracking his own shields open just enough for them to be able to feel his sincerity, and his rueful-apology. “I’m angry with those who would hunt children. If the situation is as you say, and ad’e really are being hunted, then it is my duty to help them.”

The ad stared at him for a long moment and then, finally, slowly nodded again. They were still tense, but it was… marginally better than it had been. Jaster nodded back.

“What’s your name, ad’ika? And gar burc’ya —ah, your friend?” Jaster asked. The ad hesitated before answering.

“Ben,” the ad said, and Jaster nodded. Ben glanced behind them to the other ad before turning back to add, “And this is Delia.”

“Jatne urcye, Ben, Delia,” Jaster said, remaining crouched where he was and nodding to them again. Delia peeked out around Ben’s shoulder, blinking big eyes at him. “Well met. My name is Jaster Mereel.”

“Can you fly, Jaster?” Delia asked, and he couldn’t quite help his chuckle. Though he supposed the question made sense; depending on what stories they’d heard about Mando’ade, they might well have included jetpacks.

“No, ad’ika. I can’t fly.”

“Oh,” Delia said, face scrunching up in confusion. “But you fell out of the sky?”

Jaster hummed, tilting his head. “Did I?”

“Uh-huh,” Delia said. “I saw you, and so did big brother Ben. I wanted to come see what happened, and Ben wouldn’t lemme go by myself.”

“You ran off without telling anyone, and without asking for permission, and I wasn’t about to let you go out alone,” Ben corrected, voice even, but Delia still cringed.

“‘M sorry, Ben.”

“I know you are,” Ben answered, softening. “And next time, I’m sure you’ll be more careful, won’t you? It’s dangerous up here.”

“Yes, big brother,” Delia said, looking appropriately chastened. “Are we gonna take Jaster to see big brother Nield and big sister Cerasi, now?”

“Not just yet,” Ben hedged, still eyeing Jaster. “First, I think we’ll take him to see big brother Mawat. You like visiting Mawat, don’t you, Delia?”

“Uh-huh! It’s nicer there than here in the big city,” Delia agreed.

“Good,” Ben said. “Then we’ll take Jaster there, and you can stay with him and Mawat while I go tell Nield and Cerasi and the others about his… offer.”

“Okay!” Delia agreed chipperly. They darted out from around Ben, heading for Jaster, ignoring Ben’s disgruntled look and pointed “Delia.” “You’re not from here, huh?”

“Nayc —no,” Jaster agreed. “I’m not.”

“So you dunno the way to Mawat’s, do you?” Delia continued, and Jaster shook his head. “Okay! I know the way. I can take you! C’mon, it’s this way!”

Jaster wondered how long these ad’e had been hunted, how long this had been going on, for one so young to be so unaffected by what had happened, so unfazed by seeing a Mandalorian randomly appear and kill four adults in front of them, so unbothered by having blasters pointed at them in the first place, but put those thoughts aside. The cold rage they inspired had Ben flinching again, so Jaster tucked all of that carefully away, and nodded to Delia before rising.

“Lead on, then, Delia,” Jaster agreed, and it didn’t escape his notice that, as they started walking, Ben pointedly positioned themself just a step behind Jaster, keeping him in sight while Delia led the way, protecting their “little sibling.”

Something—the Manda, maybe—whispered that things weren’t as they seemed, but Jaster decided that didn’t matter. Whether this was some sort of Hel or something else entirely, there were ad’e in danger. His duty and his purpose were clear.

Jaster had a job to do, and he wouldn’t stop until he’d seen it done.

“Mawat’s” turned out to be a little farm in a forest fairly near that large city, and, funnily enough, rather close to where Jaster had first appeared—had he turned the other way down the road, he would’ve gone right by them. There were ad’e, so many adiik’e, and some even true ikaad’e, everywhere, and even though the sight of so many small, obviously malnourished, exhausted, and sickly ad’e made Jaster’s jaw clench beneath his bucket’s cover, he tried his best to stay calm, and obeyed Ben’s request that he stay at the edge of the farm-turned-camp until they came back for him.

Delia stuck rather close to Jaster, though they did get distracted chasing a nuna, which made Jaster laugh, a bittersweet feeling lodging itself in his chest. Despite everything happening here, and everything he could tell these ad’e had already been through, they were still just ad’e, after all. The other children shied away from him, staring and whispering to each other, but none approached him. Jaster just nodded to those he caught staring, ignoring the way that made many of them flinch or outright run away to hide, reminding himself that this was a place full of demagolkase, and they had little to no reason to trust any adults, let alone an obviously armed and armored stranger.

Jaster spent much of that time trying to get his HUD to interface with the ‘Net, but it refused to connect. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, given that this was some sort of Hel, some kind of afterlife. The HoloNet was probably a moot point here, totally irrelevant.

After about twenty minutes, Ben finally reappeared with another ad in tow, just as pale as Ben was, but with messy black hair and a suspicious look on their small, thin face. Jaster guessed that this was likely the “Mawat” Delia and Ben had spoken of.

“So,” they said, “you’re a Mandalorian, huh?” Jaster nodded, and they huffed. “What’re you doing here, then? This is on the opposite side of the galaxy from Mandalore.”

“I didn’t come here intentionally,” Jaster said honestly, and then paused, weighing his options, debating how honest he should be. In the end, he decided that he needed to be as truthful as possible with them, given how they obviously distrusted adults, and so he added, “I’m not even sure where ‘here’ is, to tell you the truth.”

The new ad exchanged a look with Ben, and then Delia. Finally, they turned back to him, still so suspicious, practically glaring at him. “This is Melida/Daan. The city over there—” The ad gestured back towards the sprawling ruins they’d just come from. “—is the capital, Zehava. Or what’s left of it.”

Jaster nodded. He’d heard of Melida/Daan before, but only in passing, and he knew little about it. He wondered why Hel would bother putting a name and a setting to the torture, but put that from his mind, for the moment. No matter the rest of the… circumstances surrounding all this, the ad’e had to be his focus, and his first priority. That was the Way, after all.

“I see,” Jaster said. “Thank you for telling me.”

“They said you just fell out of the sky,” probably-Mawat said, still giving him that hard look that seemed to belong on a much older face. Jaster just shrugged.

“I couldn’t say one way or another,” Jaster said. “All I remember is waking up in a field by a road, and wandering into the city to try to find civilization.”

Probably-Mawat snorted at that. “Not gonna find much that’s civilized here on Melida/Daan,” they grumbled. “Well, I guess if you promise to keep your distance from the rest of the Young while you’re here, you can stay until Nield and Cerasi get here to decide what to do with you.”

“Fair enough,” Jaster said, nodding to them. “Thank you…” He trailed off, tilting his head pointedly, silently asking for their name.

“Mawat,” they confirmed, and Jaster nodded.

“Thank you, Mawat,” he said.

“Honestly, he’s not going to hurt you,” Ben muttered, rolling their eyes. Mawat turned and raised an eyebrow at the other ad. “He won’t. I can tell.” Mawat rolled their eyes back, and Ben just huffed softly. “I’d better get going. I’ll do my best to be back quickly, but it will depend on the patrols passing by. We might not make it back until after nightfall.”

“Fine,” Mawat said. “Be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” Ben said with a broad grin on their face, and even Jaster, who didn’t know them at all, could tell that it was a blatant lie.

Delia giggled and called him out on it: “Liar, liar, blaster’s on fire!” Ben huffed again and reached out to tousle Delia’s hair, ignoring their answering squawk.

“I’ll be back soon, then,” Ben promised, nodding to Mawat. They looked up and met Jaster’s gaze through his visor again and nodded to him, and Jaster nodded back.

Hefting a blaster rifle that was far too big for them into their hands, Ben turned and scampered off, heading back down the road towards the city. Jaster watched them go for a long moment before turning back to Mawat and Delia, the former of whom was still glaring at him, and the latter staring off into the forest, attention caught by something else.

“Make yourself comfortable here, and don’t move,” Mawat barked, and Jaster nodded. With that, he settled himself down in the grass, pulling his armor kit out of his belt and stripping off one vambrace. He would’ve turned to his weapons maintenance, but he wanted to keep his hands far away from his blasters around such skittish ad’e. As Jaster started polishing, Delia turned around to watch, seemingly fascinated by it, and plopped themself down beside him. Mawat stared for a moment, then turned on their heel and stomped off.

Whatever this was, wherever it was, this was certainly… strange. Jaster had such an odd feeling about all of it, though why, he couldn’t have said. He was dead, and that should’ve been the end of it—why he felt like it wasn’t, why he felt like there was something… more going on here, Jaster had no idea.

With a soft huff and a shrug to himself, Jaster turned his full attention to scraping the dried mud and muck from Korda 6 off of his beskar’gam.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long before Ben returned with two other ad’e in tow. Jaster spent the time cleaning his beskar’gam (aside from his buy’ce, unwilling to take it off just then, in what still seemed to be hostile territory, if how tense and quiet all of the ad’e were was any indication) and answering Delia’s many and varied questions about it, the ad asking what each one was called in both Basic and Mando’a, and what each of the embedded systems and weapons did. It was obvious when Ben had returned, though, Delia losing interest in him immediately in favor of jumping up and running to meet the trio approaching the strange little farm run by a ragged group of ad’e.

The other two with Ben were just as thin, tired, pale, bruised, and dirty as all of the other ad’e. All three stopped close enough to be heard easily at normal volumes, but well out of Jaster’s reach; he didn’t bother getting up, deciding that sticking to the ground and making himself smaller than the ad’e the only way he could was the best bet for the moment.

“Ben,” Jaster greeted the ad, nodding to them, and Ben flashed him a nervous little smile.

“Jaster,” they returned, and then gestured to the ad on their left with chin-length hair that might have been red if it were cleaner. “This is Cerasi, and this—” Ben gestured to the ad on their right, with darker hair and a scowl to match the one Mawat had worn. “—is Nield.”

“Jatne urcye,” Jaster said, nodding to them both politely. “Well met.”

“You’re the Mandalorian who supposedly fell out of the sky, then?” Nield asked, a hard, suspicious edge to their voice.

“Oh, come on, Nield,” Cerasi sighed. “Ben, Delia, another ten of the Young, and I all saw it. That’s the truth.” Nield huffed, folding their arms over their chest, and Cerasi shook their head, looking fondly exasperated for a moment before turning back to Jaster, forcing their expression into something more neutral—though Jaster could also feel the faintest flutters of hope starting to radiate from them. “Ben said that you want to help us against the Elders. Is that true?”

“‘Lek —yes,” Jaster agreed, nodding. “From what I’ve seen, these ‘Elders’ are demagolkase —ah… Evil, twisted beings who bring pain and suffering for no reason.” Cerasi nodded slowly, and the hope radiating from all three grew a little stronger. “If I turned away from ad’e —children—in need, and in danger, then I would become dar’manda. That’s… Someone who used to be Mandalorian, but lost their soul by turning their back on the Way.”

“I see,” Cerasi said, and then they and Mawat both turned to Ben; Ben stared at Jaster for a moment, and he felt the ad brushing up against his presence again, and Jaster widened the cracks in his shields, letting Ben probe at him. Finally satisfied, Ben looked to Cerasi, first, and then Nield, before nodding.

“What do you want in exchange?” Nield demanded, and Jaster shrugged.

“Some information would be appreciated,” he said, keeping his voice light. “I appeared here with no real idea of where ‘here’ is, or what the situation is.”

“What else?” Nield persisted, and Jaster shook his head.

“I can see how little trust you have in adults—all of you, and I’ve seen why already,” Jaster said. “But I am not from here, and I am not like these ‘Elders’ who would hunt you. To me, the protection of ad’e, children, is the goal in itself. I would help you not for any reward or payment, but because it is what is right.”

Nield stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded. “Fine. Okay. We’ll give you a shot, but if you try anything, we won’t hesitate to blast you. Got it?”

Jaster didn’t fear that threat much, truth be told—it was rather meaningless, given that he’d so recently been blasted full of holes and was already dead, but he didn’t say so, just nodding solemnly. Nield nodded again curtly before returning their attention to Cerasi and Ben.

“Someone has to get back to base,” Nield said. “I’ll go make sure the others stick to the plan.”

“Be careful,” Cerasi said, just as Mawat had to Ben.

“I’m always careful,” Nield shot back, and Jaster got the feeling that the exchange was a ritual. With one glance back at Jaster, Nield slipped away.

“So, ad’e,” Jaster said, “if I’m going to help, I’m going to need to get to know the lay of the land. What can you tell me about these ‘Elders?’”

Exchanging looks with each other again, Cerasi and Ben both sat, and Delia immediately went to wedge themself between the two on the ground in front of Jaster.

“Before the Elders,” Cerasi began, “the war was between the Melida and the Daan. They’d been fighting for centuries, for so long that no one could even remember why they were fighting, what had started it all. And… We were tired of it. So we ran away, hoping not to have to fight.” They paused, a small, sad sort of smile on their face and a faraway look in their eyes. “But that’s not what happened…”

By the time the sun sank down below the horizon, night falling, Cerasi and Ben had finished their summary of the situation. With every word they spoke, Jaster grew angrier, more horrified—but also more confused. This certainly was a strange afterlife. But, mindful as he was of the fact that Ben was ka’ra’tigaanla and obviously at least somewhat trained themself, Jaster kept those emotions locked down tight, just nodding along and asking clarifying questions as he needed to about what they told him.

These ad’e —the Young, as they called their faction, their army —had done so well. They’d accomplished so much with so little, and Jaster focused on that, on his appreciation and admiration for their skill, determination, and courage. Ben obviously felt it, blushing ever more furiously the longer Jaster let himself radiate those emotions, but none of them commented on it.

Finally, Delia—the youngest of the three at eight years old—started to doze off, and Ben volunteered to go find them a bed for the night before returning. Cerasi nodded easily, remaining where they were, just in front of Jaster. They both watched Ben lead Delia away, towards the ramshackle farmhouse, before turning back to each other once the two ad’e were out of sight.

“Ben isn’t from here, are they?” Jaster asked, and Cerasi hummed.

“No,” they admitted. Voice edged harder, Cerasi added, “But that doesn’t make him any less one of us, one of the Young.”

Jaster smiled. “Peace, verd’ika,” he said. “I understand. My people are much the same; anyone can become Mandalorian, should they choose to walk the Way. I only ask because I wondered if you have any contact with anyone outside of this place, any other allies.”

“...oh,” Cerasi murmured, looking away. “No. We… We might have, but they… They left. Ben chose to stay, to help, but… No one else has.” Jaster nodded, again carefully tucking his anger at that away. Cerasi started to perk up, then, another flare of hope fluttering around her. “Are there… Are there other Mandalorians you could call? Anyone else who would help us?”

Jaster paused, mulling that over, humming to show he’d heard while he thought it through. He still wasn’t sure how this afterlife worked, but it almost seemed as if it was another life-after-death, mirroring the universe and the galaxy he’d known before he died. If that was the case, then it could theoretically be possible for him to call others who were already marching on.

“Possibly,” Jaster said. “I’m not certain how to contact any of them. My HUD—the systems in my helmet—” He clarified at Cerasi’s look and the accompanying flare of confusion from them. “—won’t connect to any comms buoys from here.”

“That’s because there aren’t any,” Cerasi sighed. “The Republic hasn’t bothered deploying any around Melida/Daan. To send any off-world communications, we would have to use one of the comms towers, and those are both under the Elders’ control. There used to be one for the Melida and one for the Daan, before they banded together to kill us off.” Jaster couldn’t help the low snarl that escaped him at the easy, casual way Cerasi said that, the ad’s unflinching acceptance of the reality of the situation bothering him. Cerasi hummed, tilting their head, but said nothing about his reaction.

“If we could use one of those comms towers,” Jaster said, bringing himself back under control, “then I suppose it’s worth trying to send a message to my people. Any True Mandalorian would come to help as soon as they knew about the Young.”

“I’ll bring it up with the others,” Cerasi promised. “For what it’s worth, I believe you. I believe that you really do want to help us—but some of the others… They might take longer to come around.”

Jaster nodded easily. “Understandably so,” he agreed, and Cerasi relaxed a bit more at his lack of offense and his easy acceptance. “I’m sure they’ll come around, in time, so long as I prove true to my word.” Cerasi nodded and started to say something else before they interrupted themself with a yawn, and Jaster cracked a smile. “It’s getting late, ad’ika. Perhaps you should follow Delia’s example, and find a bed for the night.”

Cerasi hesitated. “What about you?”

Jaster shrugged. “I’m fine where I am,” he assured them. “Wouldn’t be the first time I slept out in a field under the stars in my beskar’gam.”

“If you say so,” they murmured, and then rose. “...goodnight, Jaster.”

“Jate ca, Cerasi.”

More of the Young from the “other base”—what Jaster suspected was their primary base, and they just didn’t trust him enough to take him there, yet; it was a smart call, for all that their caution grated at him, because knowing more accurately what their numbers and resources looked like would have helped the planning along significantly—arrived the following day, during breakfast. The Young were willing to share what little they had with him, and their kindness even when they couldn’t truly afford it was touching. Still, Jaster came from a culture that appreciated the gesture inherent in sharing food and drink, and so he didn’t refuse it, and finally took off his bucket to eat with them.

Firstmeal was simple, broth and scavenged berries, for the most part, though some of the Young were also given nuna eggs. It seemed they went on a rotation for that, and prioritized the youngest and the sick. Jaster ate quickly, ignoring the stares aimed at him now that the ad’e could see his face.

As the Young, and Jaster, ate, Nield, Cerasi, and Mawat all took turns speaking; Jaster couldn’t help but find it rather amusing that they conducted their briefings over meals, because the Haat’ade had always done much the same. It kept tempers lower, and lessened the chances of a fight breaking out if and when tempers flared when the verd’e inevitably disagreed over their plans and suggestions.

Mawat summarized the state of the farm for the others, what supplies they had, what other supplies they’d scouted, the nearest viable sources of fresh water they had, and the animals they were trying to breed; Nield told them about the enemy’s positions, what the Elders were up to, what was going on inside their factories, what little they knew of their enemy’s plans, and where their greatest strengths and weaknesses were at the moment; finally, Cerasi spoke about the other Young, the state of their supplies, their wounded and sick, their able-bodied soldiers (and ka’ra, knowing that the oldest of them were only fourteen, and the vast majority were younger than that made more of that cold rage rise up in Jaster’s belly, but he shoved it back down when Ben shot him another nervous little glance), and their plans for their next strikes. Throughout it all, they kept looking to Ben, who would pause, hum, tilt his head, and then give some sort of answer, likely listening to the ka’ra and allowing it to guide him.

Finally, when all of that was over, Cerasi locked eyes with Jaster through his visor again—his helmet had gone back on the instant he was done eating, of course—and cleared their throat pointedly, drawing everyone’s attention back to them.

“I think we should plan for an infiltration into one of the comms towers,” Cerasi said, and then barreled on before the others could truly react to that: “Jaster said that there’s a chance he could contact more of his people that way, and that ‘any True Mandalorian would come to help as soon as they knew about the Young.’ If there’s a chance of that, then I think it’s worth following up on.”

Hushed whispers broke out throughout the group of gathered ad’e, and Nield scoffed. “Of course you want to contact your people,” he spat. “They’re your way off this Hel-hole.”

“Though that is true,” Jaster said, and paused to smile a bit wryly at Nield, exaggerating the tilt of his head to communicate the expression as best he could with his face still covered, before adding, “and that would be a nice out when this is all over, I have no intention of leaving until we finish this.” Nield still looked rather dubious, so Jaster cracked his shields open a bit wider, letting his sincerity radiate outwards. Even though they weren’t ka’ra’tigaanla, aside from Ben, that would still affect them, to some degree. “I am not going anywhere until I’ve ensured your safety— haat, ijaa, haa’it.”

Though there was no way any of the ad’e could’ve known what that meant, or how serious an oath that was, Nield’s shoulders dropped as their tension eased a fraction, Cerasi smiled, Mawat tilted their head curiously, and Ben sucked in a soft breath, just staring at Jaster.

“Fine,” Nield said. “But you still said there’s only a chance that they’ll answer, right?”

“If they receive the signal, then they will come,” Jaster assured them. “But with Mandalore so far away, there may or may not be anyone to receive that signal, that much is true.”

“So we try it, but we can’t rely on them coming to finish this for us,” Ben said, the reasonable middle ground, as Jaster had seen them to be each time they jumped in to offer an opinion. They were surprisingly good at mediating, for one so young—a fact that only added to the suspicion that had started to settle in Jaster’s gut about them.

“We still have to plan how we’re even going to get inside one of those towers,” Nield said. “And that’s going to take time. Time that we don’t really have—we can’t just sit here. We still need supplies, and we were already planning a strike on one of the Elders’ weapons depots.”

Jaster wanted to refuse. He wanted to say that they were just ad’e, and shouldn’t have been fighting, and that they should all just pick up, move somewhere farther from the capital, and hide until qualified, adult verd’e could come to handle things for them. It went against everything he believed in to take ad’e into battle with him, especially without any proper armor. Every fiber of Jaster’s being wanted to shout no —but he knew they would never accept that. That would only serve to ruin the meager trust he’d built with them so far.

Instead, he made sure his shields were fixed in place again so that none of that reaction reached them—though he thought Ben still felt something, based on the way their eyes narrowed as they looked at him for a moment—and swallowed hard, forcing himself to nod.

“Alright,” he said. “Tell me about this weapons depot and your plans for it, and we’ll see how I can help.”

Ben.

Ben (and he was Ben, not Obi-Wan, not anymore—he was different, now, he couldn’t deny that, and he wasn’t the same person that child, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had been) didn’t know what to think about Jaster Mereel. Something about him seemed familiar, somehow, though not enough for Ben to place how he knew him—it could’ve been anything from one of the stories they told in the Temple creche to a vision he’d had years ago and barely remembered. Ben didn’t know, so he tried to shrug off that feeling and focus on what he actually knew.

His introduction to the man had been brutal, with Jaster shooting four Elders in quick succession, dropping them all in a matter of seconds—but he’d done it to protect Ben and Delia, so Ben couldn’t find it in himself to fault Jaster for that. And, honestly, the sight of a fully-armored Mandalorian suddenly showing up after having fallen out of the sky, appearing from nowhere, should have frightened him. If not because Jaster was a Mandalorian, and they had history with the Jedi, then because of the implications of the man having appeared out of nowhere.

But it hadn’t. Ben still didn’t know if it had been Jaster reaching out in the Force, or a message, a whisper, from the Force itself, but as soon as he’d set eyes on the man, he’d just… known that Jaster was safe. Ben had just known somehow that he was the safest he could be anywhere in this galaxy at Jaster’s side, and he’d known that he could trust him with all of the other Young as well.

And after so long spent alone, after spending so much time trying to be strong for the Young, having someone else he could trust to help standing there right in front of him had been such an utter relief.

Jaster hadn’t let them down, either. He’d been polite to all of them, and kind in his own, gruff sort of way, and he only ever unleashed the terrifying martial skill Mandalorians were known for in battle against the Elders, in defense of the Young. Every day, Jaster proved that Ben hadn’t been wrong to trust him.

But there was something… strange about him. Ben couldn’t quite put his finger on it, had no idea how to explain it, so he hadn’t said anything to the others. Honestly, there were many facets of the Force that he couldn’t work out how to explain or describe to anyone who wasn’t also Force-sensitive, and this was just another one to add to the list. There was a… particular sort of feeling hanging around Jaster in the Force, a sense that he didn’t quite fit, and yet that he’d been meant to be here, a feeling that in the puzzle that was the galaxy, Jaster was a piece whose edges didn’t quite slot into place where they should have, and yet he also felt like the missing piece that completed that puzzle at last.

It was… very odd, and Ben had no idea what to make of it.

Despite his good feeling about Jaster, for the first week, Nield and Cerasi and Mawat insisted that Ben couldn’t be alone with Jaster—just in case, of course. He’d been kind to the Young, and helpful, but they were just children, and Ben was also—or, well, he had been —a Jedi Padawan, and everyone, even the Young on Melida/Daan, where the educational system was now nonexistent, knew about the history between Mandalore and the Order.

But after a week of group trainings on everything from marksmanship to battlefield triage, they had agreed that Jaster was safe enough to be around, even for Ben. And Ben found that he liked spending time around Jaster, because when he looked beyond that feeling of right-and-yet-wrongness that hung around Jaster in the Force and saw the man himself… He was such a steady, bright warmth, his presence disciplined in a way none but Jedi usually could manage, and overall so Light despite the murderous anger he felt rather often (but, again, it was only ever on the Young’s behalves, and Jaster never acted on it thoughtlessly, never flew into a rage, only killing when they had to for their objectives in the field, and so even that wasn’t truly Dark). It was… nice.

It was confusing, certainly, but nice.

Jaster seemed to have noticed that Ben liked to be near him, and he’d also noticed that, of all of the Young, Ben had the most skill with blades (vibroblades, longblades, and knives all included, with the similarity of the former two to a lightsaber making his forms fairly well applicable, at least). He’d called on Ben to help him as an assistant instructor in those lessons, and once he’d realized that Ben had a bit more knowledge of human-and-near anatomy and physiology than the others, he’d asked for his help in their field medicine lessons as well. It was… nice, to be needed, to feel helpful for more than his ability to kill.

Thinking too long on that feeling following Jaster in the Force gave Ben a headache, so he tried hard not to. Thinking too long on the conundrum of how someone as gentle and genuinely good as Jaster could’ve been one of the terrifying Mandalorians the Padawans and even some of the younger Knights told awful, horrifying stories about in the creche gave him headaches as well, so he tried not to. Thinking too long and too hard on the problem posed by his origins, and what might happen if Jaster ever found out… Well, that was headache-inducing as well, so Ben just tried to put all of those thoughts from his mind, and release those worries in meditation.

In the meantime… Jaster was warm, and Light, and steady, and Ben missed his family, he missed the Jedi, and however ironically, those traits helped make up for the loss. Jaster kept him steady, and he was teaching them so much, and he’d saved so many of them already, and… He was just… good.

Ben liked Jaster, he’d decided that rather quickly—even if he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of him. But that was alright—he would have time to decide. Jaster had promised he wasn’t going anywhere until the war ended, and the Young were safe; though they’d made a great deal more progress far more quickly, after Jaster’s unexpected, strange arrival, the war was still far from over.

Yes, for the moment, it was enough to know that Jaster was good, and that, with him, they were safe. There would be time enough for the rest later.

Right now, they had a war to win.

“Jate vaar’tur, Ben.”

He looked up at the now semi-familiar greeting, smiling and accepting the canteen Jaster held out to him, taking a few careful sips before handing it back. They were doing better, now, in terms of clean, fresh water than they had been—Jaster had equipment on him that allowed them to test the water, and he’d also shown them several purification methods that would work in a pinch, when the tablets weren’t available. But even so, water was a precious resource, and not to be wasted.

Jaster nodded in satisfaction and screwed the top back on as he took it before clipping it back onto his belt, still leaning against the outer wall of the farmhouse the Scavenger Young had claimed for their base. “You were up early.”

“I’m always up early,” Ben retorted with an easy shrug. He liked waking up just before dawn, and heading out farther into the forest where there was no one around—save for the local wildlife, of course—to meditate as the sun came up, feeling its rays start to shine through the canopy. It was the closest he’d come to the Room of a Thousand Fountains since he’d left the Temple, and that settled him enough to meditate, which he knew was a necessity, if he didn’t want the desperation and the Dark of this war to topple him into a Fall.

(And he really, really didn’t. He’d meant his promise to Master Jinn, and he still meant it. Even though he wasn’t a Jedi anymore, he was determined to remain in the Light. He wasn’t going to become like Xanatos—he wasn’t.

Ben would die before he would Fall, and that was a vow he was determined never to break, even if he’d already broken his vows to the Order.)

“Scouting the forest, ‘lek?” Jaster asked, and Ben hummed, neither a confirmation nor a denial. Jaster just nodded again as if that was answer enough. “I’d like to set up a few more traps, try to catch some more small game, and do a bit more hunting. Some of the others told me about a few larger animals out there; I can show you all how to smoke the meat, to preserve it longer, and how to use the hides and bones for different things as well.”

Ben perked up—that had been their main objection to hunting the larger game out in the forests. While there were quite a few of them, they knew that they would still have excess of both the meat and the other parts of the animals they killed leftover. And even when it came to animals, the Young were determined to be better than the Elders—they would never kill needlessly, mindlessly, or wastefully. They’d been muddling through catching rabbits and mice and a few birds here and there, and scavenging and foraging for safe greens and fruit, but it wasn’t quite enough.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Ben agreed. “We could also take a few of the more inexperienced Young with us to get them some low-stakes target practice.”

Jaster smiled and nodded. “Gar serim —you’re right,” he said. Ben didn’t know if it was intentional or if Jaster simply forgot to stick to Basic, but in the last two weeks that he’d been with them, he’d been slowly teaching them all Mando’a, speaking in his native language and then translating himself for them. Many of the younger set, the Littles, were delighted by the newness of it, how different it was, which made it exciting, and the older Young had thrown themselves into learning it with a great fervor once they realized the advantage they could gain in having a shared language that none of the Elders could possibly know.

“It might be more convincing if it came from you,” Jaster added, and Ben hummed again, this time a questioning sort of noise. “Nield and Mawat have both been pushing hard for the next run, but I’d like to give it a bit more time, first. Give the others some more practice, and get a few more good meals into them before we see any other real engagements.”

Ben nodded. “I think they’ll be alright with delaying for a few days for this,” he said. “It’s a good enough reason, and I have no doubt Cerasi will support us. With both logic and her on our side, they won’t be able to resist.”

Jaster snorted and nodded. “Jate. We’ll cover it during this morning’s briefing, then; if the wind is with us, I’d like to go this afternoon,” he said. “Get a head start on hunting enough game to feed a literal army.”

Ben laughed and nodded in return. “Alright. Over breakfast, then. Speaking of which…” He trailed off as he heard the whistle that signaled the beginning of firstmeal being served, and Jaster waved a hand.

“Go on,” he said. “I’ll be there in just a bit.”

Ben’s smile turned softer, and he nodded again before taking off to help dish out their breakfast. Jaster always showed up once all of the Young had already gotten their portions, making sure each and every one of them went first before accepting any of it for himself. It was just another little way that he showed how much he cared about the Young, just another little thing that made him trust in Jaster’s kindness, his inherent goodness, that much more.

Despite the worries he could never quite shake lurking in the back of his mind, wondering what could happen if Jaster ever found out what he was—or, rather, what he had been… Ben was quite grateful to the Force for bringing Jaster to them.

Ben had always been determined to see this through, to help the Young to win this war, but now, he had more than determination. Jaster Mereel had brought them hope.

Jaster.

Two months and six raids deep into Jaster’s time in this strange place with “the Young,” they were beginning to trust him more.

They’d shown him their primary base, down in a network of tunnels and catacombs, what had started out as ancient burial halls and eventually grown into a system that stretched from the lower levels of one “Hall of Remembrance” to another (and hearing about those, how the Melida and the Daan glorified their hatred, had explained quite a bit about how and why this place had come to be in this situation in the first place; Jaster empathized with Nield’s desire to erase it, but he also shared Cerasi’s desire to preserve history, lest they forget and repeat it, and hoped that the two would accept one of the compromises Ben suggested, eventually). The Young also left him alone with their littlest members, now, rather than constantly leaving one of their four leaders as a guard with him. They told him about their plans, and their goals, and shared what intel they had with him.

He spent most of his time tending to the Young, training those who were old enough for it, helping triage and treat injuries in all of them—because all verd’e, even if they weren’t baar’ur’e, had training in basic field medicine, and though it still wasn’t enough, it was better than what the Young had been able to do for themselves—and planning. The Young came and went in little clustered groups from his lessons, even their leaders spending some time with him, letting him coach them in their marksmanship, teach them how to properly hold and throw knives, how to use other blades effectively, and any and every other skill that became applicable to them.

Finally, Jaster had brought up the idea of reaching out to his people again. He’d held off, so far, wanting to make it clear that he was a man of his word, a man of honor, and he would not be leaving until this was over. But they’d gone on enough raids together, now, and he’d been an effective spotter, prioritizing saving their lives over keeping himself safe (because what did it matter if he got hit, when he was already dead? He wasn’t sure what would happen if he died again here, wherever this was, but Jaster wasn’t nearly so wary of dying as he, perhaps, should have been, not anymore). They trusted him, now, at least to some degree—enough that none of them immediately assumed he was just trying to make a run for it, anyway.

They agreed, and worked out a plan. Jaster hated the plan, but he agreed it was likely the best option they had: a squad of the Young would head out to cause a distraction, raiding one of the smaller depots—one of those housing rations, ammunition, and medicine; those were more lightly guarded than the weapons depots themselves, just another sign of the utter idiocy of the Melida and the Daan, prioritizing their warfare over the lives of their own people—while Jaster slipped into the communications tower and sent his message. If all went well, no one would spot him, and no one but the Young would even know that help might soon be on its way.

(Jaster didn’t know if anyone would answer—and, if there was an answer, he didn’t know who it would be that showed up. He was so terribly confused by all of this, so unclear on what was happening, because this was such a strange afterlife. But he had to be dead, didn’t he?

It made his head hurt to contemplate, so Jaster just reminded himself that there were Mando’ade still in the land of the living, and many who had already marched on. There would be someone to hear his message. Someone would come, and even one squad would be a drastic improvement on the situation as it stood now.)

The part of Jaster’s mind that was so well-trained that half of his responses were ingrained reflexes and not necessarily conscious choices was screaming at him that he didn’t have time for this. But the much larger rational part of his brain was screaming even more loudly, because this made absolutely no karking sense at all —

There, displayed in bold characters on the terminal inside the communications tower, was the date. That in itself wasn’t unusual, wasn’t surprising, and it wasn’t something Jaster would’ve normally thought twice about, except that… It couldn’t be right.

[3609.07.19]

According to the terminal, it was the nineteenth day of the seventh month of the year 3609, as dated from the Treaty of Coruscant.

But that couldn’t be right.

Jaster had been prepared to accept that this was some strange sort of afterlife. He’d been prepared to accept that, after death, he’d been reincarnated, in a sense, into another life. He’d been prepared to accept any number of strange possibilities, but this was…

Well, according to the terminal, he was seven years in the future from where he’d just been before this, on Korda 6.

According to the date on the terminal, he was a karking time traveler.

Jaster heard low voices down the hall and mentally swore, shaking himself out of his fugue. He didn’t have time for this now—he would have to verify this later, with one of the ad’e, but for now, he had a mission to see to.

Jaster was quick, and quiet; he didn’t need to record a message now, since he’d already done that on the commlink embedded into his kom’rk. Instead, he hooked his embedded comm up to the terminal, uploaded the message, ensured it went out, and then took a moment to erase it from the logs. Once that was done, he took two seconds to just stare at the unmoving, unchanging date displayed there, and then he shook himself out of his stupor again, and turned to leave, using his grappling cord to rappel straight down the side of the tower, neatly avoiding the Elders patrolling inside of it, and at the main entrances on the ground level.

The walk back to base was a bit of a blur, Jaster too busy thinking, not-quite-panicking. Ka’ra, if it was true, and he really had been thrown seven kriffing years into the damned future, and flung across the galaxy in the process…

What had happened to the Haat’ade in the meantime? What had happened to Jango? Where were they now? Would they be the ones to receive his message? He’d used their normal programs, so the message would ping off of any comms buoy it could reach throughout the galaxy, trying to reach Mandalore. But would they even be there? Or off on some other job elsewhere?

Would they even believe that it was him if they did get it? Manda, if it was true, and it had been seven years that had spun by in the galaxy while, for Jaster, it had been just the blink of an eye—they must have thought he was dead. Jango had been there, he’d seen it —

Jaster was startled out of his thoughts as he felt Ben’s semi-familiar presence brush up against his, finding that he’d been pacing back and forth in the grass at the farmstead the Young had taken over, and Ben and the rest of the Young had just returned from their distraction mission—with a whole loaded hoversled of supplies, thank Manda. That would keep the Young going a while longer.

“Is everything alright?” Ben asked, tilting their head. Jaster laughed, but it was a rough, ugly sort of bark. He forced himself to stop and take a careful breath, clamping down on his panic, for now, when Ben winced at the sound.

“I’m not sure,” Jaster said honestly. “I… I’d like to ask you something, but I’d ask, first, that you… keep an open mind, and don’t look at me like I’ve suddenly grown a second head.”

That startled Ben into a genuine laugh, but they just shrugged. “I’ll do my best, though that may be a promise I’m unable to keep, depending on the question.”

Jaster nodded. “Fair enough. What… What’s the date?”

“Oh, ah…” Ben paused, brow furrowing as they thought over that question. “It’s… Well, we don’t have any commlinks or terminals to track the exact date—at least not here with us, though I know the Elders do. The Young just go by the changing of the seasons, measuring time from the first snowfall of one year to the first of the next. But I know I haven’t… been with the Young for a full year yet, so that would make it 3609, dated from the Treaty of Coruscant.”

Jaster stared at Ben for a long moment, and then, realizing that he wasn’t breathing and suddenly desperate for fresh air, he yanked his buy’ce off. He scrubbed a shaking hand over his face, sucking in air, and felt Ben tentatively reaching out again.

“Are you alright?” Ben asked softly, and Jaster barked another laugh.

“I thought— Well. That’s another thing that will probably make you look at me like I’ve grown a second head,” Jaster said a bit ruefully, and Ben hummed, quietly encouraging him to continue. This particular ad seemed far older than their thirteen years with that sort of steadiness and patience. “From my perspective, right before I arrived here, I was on a planet called Korda 6. I’d gotten shot— definitely fatally—and then, all of a sudden, I was here. And the last thing I knew… In my mind, it should be 3602 after the Treaty of Coruscant.”

“...oh,” Ben said, and Jaster dropped his hand, looking at Ben. They were frowning a bit, their eyes wide as they stared at Jaster, but finally, they just nodded. “I… That makes sense, actually. You feel… You don’t feel bad, but you feel… off. Different, in a way, like you don’t quite fit, but also like you were meant to be here, and I… Oh. Oh, I— I remember you, now! One of my crechemates wrote a paper about your disappearance for one of our theoretical For—one of our classes. You were the Mand’alor, weren’t you? Until you disappeared in the middle of a battle—I’m not sure anyone would’ve believed it, if there wasn’t footage—”

Jaster’s mind must’ve been desperate to latch onto something else, anything else, because he seized those two small details: crechemates, and what Jaster was fairly certain was meant to be “theoretical Force-use classes,” or something of the like. Ben abruptly stopped talking, turning bright red, shifting uncomfortably and averting his gaze, looking somewhere to the left of Jaster’s face.

“I… I suppose honesty is owed honesty, isn’t it?” Ben murmured, and Jaster wanted to reach out in the ka’ra with a reassurance, but knew he was feeling too many tumultuous emotions for that to be soothing, at the moment. Instead, he reached out physically, moving slowly and giving the ad ample time to move away or protest if he didn’t want to be touched; Ben’s eyes went even wider, and they froze, but they didn’t tell him no, so Jaster rested a hand on one of those small, bony shoulders and shook his head.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jaster said. He was fairly certain he already knew what secret Ben was keeping, anyway. It might not’ve been obvious to anyone who couldn’t sense the ka’ra, but Ben had given him too many clues that way for them not to add up.

“I… I want to,” Ben said. “At first, I didn’t because… With everything that’s happened between Mandalorians and… Well. I’ve… I’ve come to think I can trust you, at least.” Jaster smiled, and Ben’s eyes flicked to his face for a moment before he looked away again, face still flushed. “I’m… I was a Jedi. But I’m not anymore—” Ben rushed on, as if fearing that if he paused for even a moment, he wouldn’t get the words out. “—because I left to help the Young. My Master, he had to rescue Master Tahl, and take her back to the Temple, because she was injured, and she would’ve died if we hadn’t gotten to her when we did, but when it was time to leave, I just… I couldn’t. Most of them are younger than I am, and I couldn’t leave them to fight alone, not when I could help, and—”

“Udesii, Ben,” Jaster sighed. “I know. I already knew.”

Ben froze. “You did? How?”

Jaster tapped at Ben’s shields, and the ad flushed even brighter, drawing a huff of laughter out of him. “That, for one. Your shielding is too good for you not to have had some training, and that combined with the accent alone was enough to make me suspect it,” Jaster said. “I know that, in the Core, most buir’e give their ka’ra’tigaanla —ah, their… stars-touched? That’s what we call it. Anyway, most of them give their ad’e to the Jetii’tsad to be raised. The chances were too high, and I couldn’t figure out how a Core-worlder would’ve ended up here if not for that explanation.”

He hadn’t, of course, suspected that the ad’s Jetii’ba’jii  had just left them to fight a war with fellow child-soldiers. No, Jaster had suspected that the Master was dead, and the ad just had no way to call the Jetii’tsad for help, or that the Master had been captured by one of the warring factions, and was still missing, or that they’d gotten separated somehow, and their Master didn’t know where they were.

He hadn’t suspected outright abandonment and neglect.

But that was a problem to think on another time, Jaster decided, because Ben winced again, no doubt feeling Jaster’s rising anger. He let it go with a slow breath, squeezed Ben’s shoulder gently, and then dropped his hand.

“You don’t… mind?” Ben murmured, and Jaster shrugged.

“Why would I? You’re an honorable, compassionate person, you love learning, and you’re one Hel of a fighter,” Jaster said. “I like you, regardless of where you came from, and who raised you. That’s what counts about any being in this galaxy, isn’t it?”

“I… Yes,” Ben agreed, a small, slow smile spreading over their face. “Yes, it is.”

“Jate. Now, I… Much as I hate to ask, I don’t want to spread this too far amongst the other Young,” Jaster sighed, and Ben nodded. “Do you think you might be able to give me a summary of… recent major events?”

Ben’s smile grew wider, revealing dimples, and ka’ra, that was so copikla. It was one of the first genuine smiles he’d ever seen on their face, and it made them look as young as they truly still were.

“I think I could manage that,” Ben agreed. “But let’s see to the supplies, first, and tell the others how things went.”

Jaster nodded his agreement and smiled once more at Ben before he slipped his bucket back on, gesturing for Ben to lead the way.

The future. The fucking future. Ka’ra- damned time travel.

It still made Jaster’s head hurt to contemplate it, but, since it seemed to be the truth, there was nothing to be done about it, no way to send him back that he’d ever heard of. No, Jaster only had one course left to him, the same path he’d taken every day of his life up until now: put one foot in front of the other, and keep moving forward.

Myles.

Jango was livid.

Myles couldn’t really blame him, of course—Jaster was a sore subject for all of them even after all these years, and it had hit Jango doubly hard. Watching him go down under a barrage of bolts from a kriffing ion cannon, only to have his body disappear into thin air right after dying in Jango’s arms… The loss of a buir was always hard, of course, but to have lost him like that…

None of them could explain what had happened that day. Not even the goran’e they’d shown their HUD footage to had been able to tell them what in the ka’ra could’ve done that—Hels, they’d even asked the Temple of the Kyber on Jedha, with whom they had a better relationship than they did the Jetiise, and they hadn’t been able to hazard a guess, either. It obviously had been the ka’ra, the Manda, somehow, but none of them could puzzle out any solid theories better and more specific than that as to what the fuck had happened to Jaster, and his body, or why.

And now, just over seven years after Korda 6… This had happened.

Jango was sitting there at the galley table and scowling at his ‘pad again, gripping it so tightly that Myles could hear it creaking, and he had no doubt that Jango was looking over the message again. The contents in itself were alarming, even without considering that whoever had sent it had used some sort of holo, some sort of simulacrum, of their previous, now-long-dead Mand’alor.

Ad’e, most true adiik’e with the oldest at fourteen, forced into becoming soldiers, fighting against their own parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles; their army left with no stable supply lines, reduced to raiding their enemies and living off of the land to keep themselves going; unsuccessful aid attempts by the Jetiise…

‘Lek, it truly was disturbing —and it was made that much more disturbing by the delivery, recorded to look like it had come from Jaster Mereel, so long dead and utterly gone.

The question of who could’ve come up with a plot like this, who might’ve lied about adiik’e in danger, and used Jaster against them all, trying to lure them to a planet that had been at war for at least the last century, was a troubling one. Myles was betting on Kyr’tsad, and so was Jango, and with a lead like this, they hadn’t had any choice but to spring the trap—because this just had to be a trap.

The one sticking point in all of it, though, was the fact that the message had used Jaster’s code phrase, the one he’d only ever given to Jango and Myles, to prove that it was him. How someone else had found out about it, neither of them knew; they both swore up and down that they’d never breathed a word of it to anyone else, not even Kal or any of the others, and Myles believed Jango, and Jango believed him in return. It was… kriffing odd, and it only worsened the bad feeling Myles had about all of this.

They’d had to decline a major contract in favor of heading for the opposite end of the karking galaxy, but all of the Haat’ade had been unanimously in favor of going, and springing the trap. Galidraan would’ve been easy credits, but the majority of the reason they’d intended to take it had been to gather intel on Kyr’tsad, and this message had shot up the priority list, and it was that much more likely to give them something on the hut’uun’e than Galidraan might have.

It had taken just over a full week for the message to make it as far as Mandalore, the datestamp coded in it telling them when it had been sent, and verifying that it really had been sent from Melida/Daan had been their first step. It had also taken weeks to get to Melida/Daan, but they were finally reaching the end of their trek across the galaxy. Myles glanced over at his own ‘pad, synced with the ship’s systems: only one more hour, and they’d come out of hyperspace for their final approach.

Jango growled softly as he reached the end of that message: “Akaanati’kar’oya; shereshoy; buirkan.”

That fucking phrase, one word chosen for each of them. Akaanati’kar’oya, the War of Life and Death, one of the old fables, had been Jaster’s selection; shereshoy had been Myles’s pick; buirkan, responsibility, had been Jango’s. The three words that they could each say to each other to prove who they were, because no one else should know which ones they’d picked, or in what order to say them.

So how had whoever laid this trap for them found out about that particular secret?

Jango huffed and threw the ‘pad down, letting it clatter onto the table, and reached up to scrub a hand over his face. Myles sighed softly and slipped out of the bench, leaning over to clap Jango’s pauldron as he did.

“We’ll be coming out of hyperspace soon,” he murmured. “And we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Jango nodded, but didn’t actually respond. Myles patted his shoulder once more, and then headed for the cockpit. Only one more hour, and then just over two hundred angry, vengeful Haat’ade would descend on Melida/Daan, find whoever had dared to use their dead and missing Mand’alor, harm against ad’e, and their secrets against them.

Then, they would have their vengeance.

Jaster.

Jaster woke up with a feeling, deep in his bones, purring in his chest, that told him something good was going to happen soon. He thought Ben sensed it as well, the ad wearing a small smile all throughout breakfast, and he kept exchanging looks with Jaster, as if asking if he felt it, too, and Jaster only smiled back in reply.

Given that his message had gone out about five weeks ago, now, Jaster had a feeling what it might be that was about to happen. It would’ve taken at least a week for the message itself to reach Mandalore, the missive programed to hijack comms buoys and piggyback off other signals until it reached its destination in the home sector. From there, it would’ve taken a minimum of three weeks, if not the full four, for any of his people to finally arrive here, had they actually been coming from Manda’lase.

They had been planning another strike, this time on one of the arms manufacturing plants, starting to tackle their objective of crippling the Elders’ means to make war, the main tactic they could use to force them to the negotiating table, but between Jaster and Ben, they managed to get the agreement of even Nield and Mawat that they should wait. Cerasi hadn’t been difficult to convince, of course, generally one to advocate caution, preparation, and planning over decisive action. It could be a good trait, or a bad one, in a leader, but that was part of what made her and Nield such a balanced team, since Nield swung the opposite way. Together, they met in the middle, and compromised.

Jaster whiled away the morning helping to show the Young how to properly skin an animal, using one of the wolves they’d caught on their last hunting excursion into the forests, until he finally saw what he’d been waiting for all this time: overhead, a small fleet of ships passed right on by them, heading for the fields on the opposite side of the road from where they were holed up near the forest.

And, more significantly, Jaster recognized those ships—especially one in particular. They’d changed the paint, but it was unmistakably his gunship, JAST-07.

“Mawat!” Jaster called, and the ad quickly scampered over. Jaster gestured at the wolf with his bloodied knife. “Take over, will you?”

Mawat nodded, and Jaster flipped the knife around and held it out; Mawat took it, and with one glance up at the ships now heading down to land, he whistled to regain the attention of the other Young surrounding the remnants of the animal, and carefully started cutting.

Jaster nodded to himself, satisfied that the animal wasn’t going to be wasted just because they were now distracted, and headed for the little gaggle of ad’e he could see forming up just outside that farmhouse. He saw both Ben and Cerasi in the crowd, though Nield was back in the tunnels for the day, with the rest of the Young. Jaster made a mental note to send a scout to run a message over to their other group to let them know that backup had finally come.

Reaching out with a light touch of the ka’ra to warn him of his presence, first, Jaster reached out to clap Ben’s shoulder just as he turned, a small, nervous sort of smile on his face. Jaster squeezed lightly in reassurance and then dropped his hand, nodding in greeting to the others.

“Do you think those are your people?” Cerasi asked, always one to cut straight to the heart of matters. Jaster laughed.

“I know they are,” he said. “I recognized more than a few of the ships, and one in particular: it’s mine. Or, ah, I suppose it was.”

He’d had a bit of time to get used to the idea that it had been seven karking years for the galaxy at large where, for him, it had only been a matter of minutes, if that, between Korda 6 and Melida/Daan. But even so, trying to consider how everything might have changed, what might have happened to the Haat’ade, and Mandalore, in that time… Well, Jaster had tried to stop himself from speculating, since he knew that wouldn’t be helpful, but he hadn’t quite been able to manage to keep himself from it.

Cerasi just nodded again. “I’ll go with you to greet them,” she said, “since Nield isn’t here. Ben?” He nodded, still looking nervous, and feeling it, in the ka’ra. Jaster leaned over to bump their shoulders together gently, and Ben shot him another of those small, fleeting grins.

“It’ll be fine, ad’ika,” Jaster assured him. “Ori’haat.”

“I want to go, too,” Delia demanded.

“Me, too,” added Deiral, and Jaster shrugged.

“I don’t think we need a fire team with us,” he said honestly. “While I’m sure that the Elders noticed those ships landing as well, with as many verd’e as I suspect they have with them, it won’t be an issue to repel any attempts at an attack from that quarter.”

Cerasi gave him a hard, discerning sort of look, and then she turned to Ben. He hesitated for a moment, but eventually he nodded his own agreement. Cerasi smiled and nodded again decisively. “Alright,” she conceded. “You can come.”

Deiral and Delia both cheered, and Jaster chuckled, spirits buoyed by both the good news of his peoples’ arrival and their enthusiasm.

“Since we’re probably on the clock, trying to beat the Elders there,” Jaster said, “we really should go.”

“Of course,” Cerasi agreed, nodding for him to lead the way.

With a broad grin on his face underneath his bucket, Jaster turned and started off towards the fields where he’d seen the ships heading. Soon, he told himself. Soon. Though it’d only been a few months, to him, since he’d last seen his people, and especially his ad, Jaster knew that, for them, it had been seven years.

But, just then, he was far too pleased, too honestly happy to consider what kind of reception he might get, the shock he was sure this was going to be for them. Instead, he hummed to himself softly and, when Ben drew even with him, threw an arm over the ad’s shoulders, letting the ad lean into him as they led the march.

Jaster didn’t know what would come next, but, for once, he was very much looking forward to it.

Myles.

“We’re reading a group approaching on foot,” Myles reported, and Jango grunted, still standing in the field between the ships, peering out into the distance. Myles guessed he was tracking that same group via his HUD, but Jango had been even less talkative than usual, ever since this mysterious message had come through. “Only five, and only one of them is armored. The other four… They look small enough that they could be ad’e.”

Jango grunted again, and Myles waited patiently for any other response, any orders, to come. Finally, Jango said, “Keep the snipers in position, for now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kyr’tsad stooped to using ad’e as bait.”

Myles grimaced, but nodded. “‘Lek, ‘Alor.” Dutifully, he relayed the orders to the others, and received their acknowledgements. Many of the verd’e had gathered around behind Jango, but, as ordered, the snipers had taken up positions on the wings of the ships, and hidden in the cargo holds, peering out the open ramps.

That done, Myles returned to watching through his HUD, on an infrared setting, as that gaggle of five approached. Two of them were definitely small enough to be ad’e, unless they were Ugnaughts or some other, smaller species. The readings became clearer as they emerged out of the forest, starting to cross the road about a half a klik out, and Myles switched over to his regular viewer, still watching their approach.

Jango growled again as soon as they were within sight of their magnified viewers, and Myles couldn’t blame him. There were several ad’e in that group—two of them for sure, and two who could’ve been teens or small adults, based on their heights—and one armored being. That armored adult was wearing beskar’gam — familiar beskar’gam. It was painted just the same as Jaster’s had been before he’d died and vanished.

“Be ready to circle them on my signal,” Jango said, voice flat and obviously rough even through his vocorder. “We’ll have to separate the ad’e from the others before anyone fires.”

“‘Lek, ‘Alor,” Myles acknowledged.

The wait was tense, and even through his shields, Myles could feel the tension ratcheting up amongst all of them, feeding off of each other’s anticipation and anger. Finally, though, the approaching group came close enough to be heard, using the audials in their buy’ce’se to amplify them. The two adiik’e were tugging on the Jaster-imposter’s arms, trying to slow them down.

“I’m scared,” one of the adiik’e whined.

“Now why would you be scared, Deiral?” the Jaster-imposter said—and Myles had to hand it to them: it was a very convincing impression of his voice.

“They don’t look very nice,” the adiik, apparently Deiral, said. “They look scary.”

“I’m sure I looked scary too, at first,” the Jaster-imposter said. “But you like me well enough, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Deiral conceded.

“There you go, then,” the Jaster-imposter said with an easy shrug. “They’re Haat’ade, just like I told you about. They’ll be perfectly ‘nice’ to you, ad’ika.”

“If they’re nice,” the other adiik spoke up, “then why are they pointing blasters at us?”

“How d’you know that?” Deiral asked. “I can’t see from here.”

“I saw the bright light on the wings—there! See it?” the other adiik said. “Those’re blasters. Why are they pointing them at us?”

“They landed here without being able to speak to Jaster first,” one of the older ones said—still an ad, Myles thought, given the relatively high-pitched voice. “They haven’t been able to confirm who’s approaching, and you have to admit that the Elders don’t make this place very welcoming.”

“I guess,” the still-unnamed adiik said slowly. “But why didn’t they call ‘im first? I know you said it’s ‘cause you couldn’t get anything long-range out without the tower, but now that they’re here, why didn’t they call you?”

“It’s… complicated,” that older ad said, darting a look at the Jaster-imposter. “Just let us wo—”

The adiik made a frustrated noise, cutting the other one off. “If you tell me to let the grown-ups worry about it, I swear I will take my knife out of my boot and stab you in the face,” they said. Despite themselves, that had a few of them—including Myles—snorting in amusement. That one was a little spitfire, that was certain.

The older ad laughed, but the Jaster-imposter just sighed. “Nayc, ad’ika,” they said. “You won’t. Because what would Mawat say about that, hmm?”

“That knives are for killing food or stabbing Elders,” the adiik grumbled. “I know, I know.”

Well then. These ad’e were definitely a little… off. Myles made a mental note to see if any of their mir’baar’ur’e would be willing to make the trek out here to Melida/Daan—these adiik’e definitely needed them.

The group kept walking, and at last, they were within shouting range. Still, Jango said nothing, and he gave none of them any signals until they were almost across the road: “Everyone in position?”

“‘Lek, ‘Alor,” they all chorused over their internal comms, with their speakers off.

“Ke’slana,” Jango ordered, and the Haat’ade obeyed.

Those in front of that group drew their blasters, though they kept them pointed at the ground, for the moment, waiting for the squad who’d crept around behind that group to get the ad’e clear. They sprung into action, four of them hitting their sen’tra’se to jet forward, grabbing the adiik’e and going for the two older ones.

The teens surprised them, though: they dropped to the ground in a low crouch, avoiding the grab, and drew their own blasters in unison. The Jaster-imposter raised a hand in the signal for hold, and Jango growled again, low and rough and angry.

“Stop it, all of you!” the teenager who’d been speaking on the way over shouted.

“Step away from him, kid,” Jango barked, and the Jaster-imposter startled at the sound of his voice. (And somewhere in the back of Myles’s mind, he had the inane, probably irrelevant thought that if that really could have been Jaster, that he hadn’t recognized Jango until he’d spoken made sense, because he’d changed his paint since Korda 6—but it wasn’t, it couldn’t be, and Myles knew he was being silly, so he dismissed the thought.)

“Udesii, Ben,” the Jaster-imposter said, turning away from the Haat’ade to look at the ad —Ben. “I’m sure you understand why they’re… confused, and upset—”

“That isn’t license to go charging in blasters blazing like kriffing di’kut’e,” Ben snapped back, and the Jaster-imposter laughed.

“Of all the words I taught you, you go straight for insults—” they muttered, and if it hadn’t been for the audials on Myles’s buy’ce, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it. (And some part of Myles’s mind couldn’t help but note how well the imposter had even gotten Jaster’s personality down, just based on what he’d heard so far, at least—

But that, too was irrelevant, because it still couldn’t be him—)

“What are you talking about?” the other teenager hissed, but Ben just shook their head without looking at them. Ben took a deep breath and closed their eyes, and their expression smoothed out, face going calm and almost blank and—

And then Myles felt a little whisper of a warmth at the edge of his mind, and reflexively snapped up his shields; beside him, he felt Jango’s familiar sparks-and-flames feeling close itself off as he did the same, bringing up his own shields. Ben opened their eyes again, looking so smug —and they were looking back and forth between Myles and Jango.

“If one of you who actually knew Jaster happened to be, ah…” Ben trailed off, looking frustrated for a moment before huffing and continuing. “Stars-touched? If any of you were, then wouldn’t you be able to tell, beyond any doubt, that it’s him?” Again, the ad looked pointedly from Myles to Jango and back again, silently challenging one of them to try that.

It… actually wasn’t a terrible idea. Grudgingly, Myles switched off his external speaker, making sure that only the Haat’ade would hear him over their general channel.

“He’s got a point,” Myles said, and Jango growled again softly. “It’s proof, one way or another, and it’s a quick way to be sure.”

“He’s dead, Myles,” Jango snapped, thankfully turning off his speaker, too. “I’m already sure, because he died a long time ago.”

“I’ll do it, then,” Myles volunteered.

“Stubborn kriffing—fine. Fine,” Jango grunted. “Together, then. And when it isn’t him, be ready to move.”

“‘Lek, ‘Alor,” the Haat’ade chorused.

Myles closed his eyes, allowing himself to concentrate better on the ka’ra —he was a little more connected to it than Jango, who’d only been identified as ka’ra’tigaanla at all because Jaster had been able to feel it, not strong enough to have any of the outbursts and episodes that usually flagged it, but Myles still wasn’t as strong as Jaster had been.

Letting that thought go with a soft whoosh of breath, Myles reached out to Jango, first, prodding at him. That feeling of him sparked again, prickly (and afraid, Myles noted, afraid of the answer he was going to get, probably equally afraid of both options, if for vastly different reasons) and sharp, and then Jango pulsed back more deliberately, telling Myles he was ready. They both felt it when Kal joined them, the barest whisper of his presence brushing up against both of them, and together, they reached out.

The ad, Ben, was kriffing bright, even with their shields up, and it took Myles a moment to redirect himself away from that light as if he’d been blinded by it. As soon as he did, though, the instant he touched that other presence, Myles felt his knees go weak and quickly locked them to keep himself standing upright, because—

Even now, Myles remembered what Jaster had felt like, a steady-rippling-like-a-river sort of presence, the currents indicating his mood. He remembered that distinctive feeling, the one he could never put into words, but one he would have recognized in an instant.

One he did recognize in an instant.

It was clear that Kal did, too, his presence suddenly winking out as he shut himself behind his shields, as thick and heavy as he could make them, which was considerably so. And Jango…

Jango tensed and then froze, and Myles barely heard his breath hitch, almost too quiet to be picked up by his vocorder. He stared at Jaster —not an imposter, it was him, it was real, he was real, and how was this possible, what the actual kriff? —and then finally he spoke again.

“Tion’ret’yc?” Jango managed to say, his voice shaking, and the fact that he’d turned his external speaker back on showed that he really did believe it, if he was letting everyone else hear that.

“Nakar’mi,” Jaster returned.

“It’s… It really is him, then?” Silas murmured over their channel.

“‘Lek,” Myles said, and he sounded breathy and dazed even to his own ears. “It is.” Murmuring broke out over the comms, but Myles ignored them, focused on Jaster and Jango.

Jango staggered forward a step, and Jaster took that signal to move, too. He reached up to slip off his buy’ce, and he— Kriff, but he looked exactly the same as Myles remembered. The dark hair, shot through with grey at his temples, curling slightly with his helmet hair, the slightly crooked nose and narrow face, that stubble-verging-on-a-beard he’d always gotten on campaigns… Even the curve of his smile and the crinkling at the corners of his eyes was exactly the same —

A strangled, almost wounded sort of noise escaped Jango, and he moved faster, now, towards Jaster, tearing off his own bucket as he went. Myles clocked the shock that flashed over Jaster’s face for a moment—because, a distant part of him realized, it had been seven years, and even though Jaster looked exactly the same, Jango, and all of the rest of them, had aged in that time. When Jaster had last seen Jango, he’d been fifteen, and a brand new squad leader. Jango now, though, was almost twenty-three, and he’d been Mand’alor for years, ever since then—

Oh. Oh, fuck.

That was going to be… complicated.

But as Jango slammed into Jaster, both of them stumbling and rocking with the force of the embrace, Myles couldn’t bring himself to really consider the politics and the repercussions of all of this.

Like Jango, he was just too elated, too overjoyed, just to have Jaster back to bring himself to care about anything else just then. When Jaster picked his head up and held out an arm, looking straight at Myles, he grinned giddily to himself and didn’t hesitate to race forward, slamming into both of them and joining in the hug.

However this had happened, and whatever was going to happen because of it— Well, they would figure it out together, and it would be well worth it just to have Jaster back.

Jango.

The rage that had been burning away just beneath his skin had finally been quelled, subdued by the mix of elation, joy, wonder, hope, fear, and amazement. The sudden release of that tension had him feeling boneless in a way he usually only did after a particularly hard training session or an intense battle they’d managed to win—or maybe, this time, it might’ve had something to do with the way Jaster was holding him, the two of them pushed up together in one of the circular benches on one of the larger transport ships, one arm wrapped firmly around Jango, who was leaning in to keep his head just so on Jaster’s neck, just above where his armor sat.

Jaster was alive. His buir was alive, and he was here, and it was really him —

The Haat’ade had taken their turns joyfully greeting the man they’d thought dead and gone for so many years, though Jango had stuck very close to him the entire time, and tried to ignore Ben’s hushed explanation to the other ad’e for what had just happened, and why they’d gotten the reception they had. Once that was all over, Kal had barked out orders that Jango hadn’t really listened to, too busy focusing on Jaster, alive-and-here, alive-and-here, alive-and-here the only thoughts rattling around in his brain just then. The verd’e had scattered, mostly back to their ships, no doubt to recon and secure their landing zone a little more thoroughly, to give them something to do.

With that, Kal had ushered Jaster, Jango, Myles, and the ad’e Jaster had brought with him to meet them into the Bes’bev, sat them all down in the galley, and then aggressively brewed up some caff and shig, pointedly clanging and banging around in the little galley. It wasn’t surprising, really; Kal had a tendency to blow off steam that way, with extreme passive-aggression in normal situations. And, again, Jango didn’t care, so focused on his buir, alive and here.

Ka’ra, but Jango didn’t even feel like the fifteen-year-old he had been when he’d first lost Jaster, at that moment—no, he felt more like the eight-year-old he’d been when he’d lost his maan’aliit, and Jaster had taken him in, so quickly coming to embody safety and security in Jango’s mind. He distantly thought that he would likely be embarrassed by the clinging, later, but Jaster didn’t seem to mind, and Myles, on Jaster’s other side, was doing much the same, anyway.

“What happened?” Myles finally asked, breaking the lengthy silence. Jaster huffed.

“From my perspective, I was on Korda 6, and then I was just… here, on Melida/Daan,” he said. “I just appeared here a few months ago. It only felt like seconds, maybe a few minutes, between the two to me.”

“You fell out of the sky,” Delia, one of the adiik’e, said. “That’s why I left, remember?”

“I remember, ad’ika,” Jaster said, and Jango huffed a bit of a laugh. Kal returned with a tray, two pots and plenty of cups, starting to pour and pass out the drinks. The ad’e all got shig, as did Jaster, but the rest of them went for the caff, and Jango finally managed to pull himself away from his buir, sitting up properly to drink it.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Cerasi asked, and Jaster snorted.

“Frankly, at first, I thought I was dead,” he said, and Cerasi blinked at him. Jaster’s smile turned tight, then, not quite reaching his eyes. “Believe me, it was the most reasonable assumption I had, at the time.”

“I guess it makes just as much sense as time travel,” Cerasi acknowledged. And, really, the ad’e were all taking the news of Jaster’s fucking time travel well, overall. Deiral’s eyes were wide, and Ben wouldn’t look straight at any of them, but overall, the four of them were surprisingly calm and collected.

“Even once I started to think that this was something else, that something I didn’t understand had happened,” Jaster continued, “I didn’t know that I’d moved through time and not just space. Not until I made it into the comms tower—I hadn’t thought to ask anyone for the date until I saw it on the terminal, and needed to confirm it.”

Cerasi nodded slowly, a lopsided sort of smile on her face. “Well, I suppose that makes sense, too,” she said.

“But how?” Myles said, still sounding and looking as stunned as Jango felt. Jaster shrugged jerkily.

“The ka’ra, somehow,” he said. “The Manda. Anything more specific than that, I couldn’t say.”

They all fell silent again, and Cerasi and Ben exchanged looks, seemingly silently communicating, though Jango couldn’t feel any hint of them using the ka’ra —and he’d torn quite a few of his shields down, trying to feel Jaster as much as he could. Already, he could feel the old, tattered bond they’d had—rather weak, overall, even back then, because Jango wasn’t very strong in the ka’ra, just enough to be able to reach out that last bit to complete the connection—starting to heal and form up again.

Finally, Cerasi turned back to them, looking at Jaster with a determined-yet-worried sort of expression that made Jango frown. “Will this… change anything?” she asked haltingly. “I know you said that when your people got here, they would help.”

Jango stiffened. He hadn’t even considered the other implications of Jaster truly being alive, yet—but since he was, and he was here on Melida/Daan, and he had ad’e with him…

Then the rest of that message had to be true, too.

“The ones you call the ‘Elders,’” Jango said, and all four of the ad’e turned to him. “You really are at war with them?” All four nodded solemnly, so gravely, and Jango growled low, feeling just a little bit of that rage rising up again. “Demagolkase.”

Cerasi tilted her head curiously, and Deiral and Delia both leaned over to her, whispering questions about what that meant, but Ben just flinched— Ah. Right. Ka’ra’tigaanla. Jango paused, taking a moment to shore up his shields just a little, just enough to keep himself from flooding the room with his emotions, and Ben relaxed a bit.

“I dunno what that means, but it didn’t sound nice,” Deiral said.

“It wasn’t,” Kal said. “It’s a very serious word for the worst sorts of scum, including people who hunt adiik’e.” Deiral nodded again, still so serious, and Cerasi perked up.

“Then, you’ll…?”

“Of course we’ll help,” Jango said, and even through his shields, he could feel Jaster’s burst of pride-relief-joy, and smiled. “We won’t be leaving until we’re sure you’re all safe.”

Cerasi slumped back, shoulders dropping, exhaustion overtaking her now and sagging in her own sheer relief. “Thank you.”

“This is the Way,” the Mando’ade at the table chorused together, and Jango’s smile grew a touch wider just to hear the familiar chorus include Jaster’s voice again.

“There are… other things we’ll need to speak about, later,” Kal said, looking from Jaster to Jango and back again, one eyebrow pointedly raised. Jango suppressed the urge to flash a rude hand gesture at him, and the urge to tell him to kriff off. Much as he didn’t want to think about the politics of this, the repercussions it would undoubtedly have, they would need to, at some point.

But not now. For the moment, both Jaster and Jango just nodded.

“But the ad’e are our first priority,” Jango said decisively. “We’ll have plenty of time to figure out the rest on our way back towards Manda’lase once this is all over.”

Kal nodded his acceptance and then turned his attention to his caff. Jango slid just a bit closer to Jaster, just enough that their arms were brushing, pauldrons barely clinking together, and then turned the bulk of his attention to the ad’e.

“We’ll put together a briefing later,” he said. “For now, though, I think our priorities need to be medical checks, food, and rest for all of you, given the conditions Jaster cited in his message. Tomorrow, we can call a full briefing, ‘lek?”

“Alright,” Cerasi said, nodding. “That will give us some time to introduce the Young to all of you, too.” Jango smiled and nodded and then busied himself with his own caff, keeping part of his focus all the while on Jaster, the reassuring form of his buir beside him again for the first time in seven fucking years, and the waves-of-steady-warmth in the back of his mind that felt just like Jaster.

And, admittedly, if putting any briefings off until tomorrow also gave Jango more time to just be with his buir again… Well, that was a definite bonus, if actually not the full reason for the decision. Still, he was grateful for the time that would give them, the chance for Jango to wrap his head around all of this, and he shamelessly leaned a little further still into Jaster.

Manda, but he’d missed him so much. Having him here, now, Jango felt settled in a way he hadn’t managed in those long seven years his buir had been taken from him.

They could, and would, deal with the rest later —for now, though, Jango was wholly content just to have this again.

Jaster.

His ad’e had grown up without him.

With Myles being a few years older than Jango, the last time Jaster had seen him (still only a matter of a few months in his head, despite all the evidence before him telling him how much longer it had been in reality), he’d at least been able to see the adult ramikad Myl’ika would eventually grow into. Myles had been eighteen, then, and the difference between eighteen and twenty-five seemed like so much and yet so little at the same time.

But Jango… The difference between fifteen and twenty-two was staggering—and, in truth, Jango seemed older than his early twenties, now. That did make some sense to him, at least, given what he’d been able to puzzle out so far about what had happened to them in the long years since he’d been… gone. Almost immediately after Jaster’s “death” on Korda 6, the title had gone to Jango—who, at the time, as Jaster had just been remembering, had been fifteen. He’d already been an adult by the standards of Mando’ade, but that had been his very first mission as a squad leader, and he’d jumped straight from that into the role of leader of their entire people. It was no wonder, no surprise, therefore, that Jango had both aged more quickly with that responsibility on his shoulders than he otherwise would have, and that he’d tried his best to seem older, too.

It didn’t escape Jaster’s notice that his presence was now throwing a wrench into the normal operations of his people. Kal and Silas had interrupted the reunions and easy chatting with the Young about the situation on Melida/Daan with various reports and questions, and each time, Jango had answered immediately, easily, and decisively—only to turn to Jaster after each, as if trying to defer to him or ask for approval. Jaster just smiled and shrugged with each silent question, and quietly resolved to pull Jango aside at the first easy opportunity to… settle things, at least for now.

(And if Jaster also made a mental note to ask Kal and Silas if they had any holos of Jango and Myles in those intervening years—well, he was a buir through and through, and that was a buir’s right.

And if he also made a mental note to make sure that when he pulled Jango aside, he got an answer as to why he didn’t have any mis-matched beskar’gam —that was just another prerogative of a buir. Even so young as they had been then, the connection between Jango and Myles had been obvious, though he wondered if they’d decided that they made better friends than they would riduur’e, in the end, and he itched to ask—but only in private, of course.)

“Jaster?” He hummed, looking up at Ben as the ad spoke, starting to frown as he saw their lightly furrowed brow. The rest of the table turned to them as well, but Jaster ignored them, for now, focusing on the ad. They’d been rather quiet, overall, since they’d come aboard the ship; at first, Jaster had thought they were just embarrassed by their earlier outburst, convincing the Haat’ade to stand down rather forcefully, but now… Now, Jaster wasn’t so sure about that. “I think someone is coming.”

“The Elders?” Jaster asked, stretching his own senses out, but feeling nothing. Ben shook their head.

“No, I…” Ben’s eyes darted over to Jango, and then Myles, and then to the corner where Kal and Silas were whispering to each other, referencing a ‘pad with some report or another on it. Finally, they turned back to Jaster, not quite meeting his eyes anymore. “Could I talk to you outside?”

Jaster felt a suspicion starting to bubble up in his gut, and he hummed. “Alright,” he agreed easily, ignoring how both Jango and Myles grumbled even as they moved to make space for him to slide out of the booth seat of the galley on the Bes’bev. “Is this about… your maan’aliit?”

Ben blinked at him for a moment, and Jaster could see the moment he translated that, going a shade paler but nodding reluctantly. Jaster bit back a curse and nodded in return. Ben hopped up from his seat almost too quickly, nearly knocking over the chair they’d pulled up to the table for him, and Jaster reached out, slinging an arm over his shoulders to steady him.

“We’ll be back in just a moment,” Jaster promised. Despite that reassurance, Jango’s eyes narrowed, his lips pursed, and Myles slid over closer to Jango, pressing them together from shoulder to hip. Jaster reminded himself that, from their perspective, they’d thought he was dead and then somehow just gone for seven years —it was no wonder they were both so reluctant to let him out of their line of sight. “We won’t be going far, ori’haat.”

Jango nodded jerkily, and Jaster decided that was good enough, for now—only time would convince them that he wasn’t going anywhere, now. Ben let himself be led out of the ship easily, and though the verd’e gathered between the ships all stared at Jaster as he passed them, they didn’t pause to acknowledge them, Jaster just nodding back as they kept moving. He led them out of the ring of ships just a little ways, far enough to give them some privacy, but still keeping a line of sight to the Haat’ade —all of whom were acting like mother nunas, hovering and staring, just like Jango was.

“You sense Jetiise coming?” Jaster asked, keeping his voice soft and low despite the distance they’d gained from the others. Ben nodded reluctantly.

“They just came out of orbit,” Ben said. “I don’t know any of them well enough to recognize them this far away, but Jedi have a… distinctive feeling in the Force.”

Jaster nodded, accepting what Ben said. “Alright,” he said, thinking that through. “Do you want to see them? Or not?”

“I… I don’t know,” Ben said, looking away, down at the ground. “I’m… They’re my family, the only family I’ve ever really known, but I— I left, and they left me here, and— I… I don’t know.”

“Alright,” Jaster said easily. “I’ll do my best to ensure you have the time to make whatever choice you want to, and keep them away from you in the meantime.” He felt Ben’s pulse of gratitude and smiled, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder briefly. “I do think we should tell a few of the Haat’ade, though.” That inspired a flash of panicked-fear, and Jaster huffed. “Not all of them, though I doubt they would hold it against you, not when you’re just an adiik yet. But the officers, at least, should know.”

“I… Fine,” Ben sighed softly. “Alright. I… trust you, and if you think they should know, then…”

Jaster smiled. “Jate. Come on, then,” he said. “We’ll head back to the others, and finish briefing them on… the rest of the situation.”

Ben nodded again, still so reluctant, but willing to trust Jaster’s judgment, and he draped his arm over the ad’s shoulders again as he steered him back towards the ship.

And… Well. If part of Jaster had started to hope that Ben might choose another path, that he wouldn’t return to the Jetiise —and ka’ra, how he hoped Ben wouldn’t, because with everything that had happened to him, everything Ben had eventually admitted from how he’d left the Morut be’Jetiise to Bandomeer and then this osik on Melida/Daan… It was so clear that the Jetiise weren’t proper guardians, and that was… worrisome, given how many other ad’e Jaster knew they had in their supposed care, in their morut.

And if a large part of Jaster had started to hope that Ben, if he didn’t choose to go back to the Jetiise, would make a different choice, choosing another path—one that would lead him back to Manda’lase, one that would make Jango an ori’vod at last…

Well, he was a buir through and through, and Mando’ad besides. Every instinct he had was screaming at him that Ben needed care and protection—and Jaster desperately wanted to be the one to provide it for him.

And it wasn’t as if Ben would be going back with them alone, if that was what he chose. Jaster was certain that once the Haat’ade and the Young properly met, there would be quite a few adoptions in the near future. The thought made him smile before he put it from his mind and turned his thoughts back to the rest of the intel they were going to have to share with the others.

Still, the smile didn’t leave his face. The good feeling he’d had all morning had only grown even stronger, and things were finally looking up—for both the Young and for Jaster.

He had his people back, he had his ad’e back, and the Young finally had enough people on their side to fight back properly. They would end this soon, one way or another.

As for what would come after that… Every instinct Jaster had, and his sense of the ka’ra besides, insisted that all would be well. They would take care of the Young first, and these Jetiise who were on their way, and then…

Mandalore. The Haat’ade. The ramifications of two Mand’alor’e now both in the same place at the same time, one of whom had been assumed dead for so long, but had instead traveled through time and space…

Well. They would… figure it out—together, as they always had before. 

Chapter Text

Jaster.

Before Ben, Jaster had never met a Jetii before.

He’d heard plenty about them, of course, and though much of it was just rumors (bordering on slander at times, he thought) told amongst their people about their ancient enemies, he’d also visited the Temple of the Kyber on Jedha before— Mando’ade had made the trip out to Jedha for centuries, when they needed more help and instruction for their ka’ra’tigaanla than their own ba’jiise could provide, and Jaster had been one of them, in his youth. And though the Guardians of the Whills weren’t Jetiise themselves, though they weren’t part of their Order, they were… friendly enough with them.

So Jaster had learned more than a little about their doctrine and philosophy already, and he knew enough to realize which of the rumors and stories told about them by most Mando’ade were true, and which were false. He knew better than to think that Jetiise stole children, and he knew better than to buy into the idea that they were emotionless, unfeeling drones.

But Jaster also knew that whatever truths he knew about them, those facts he had confirmed, were not universally known and accepted by the rest of his people. It was no surprise to Jaster that Ben, it seemed, realized that, too—either that, he thought, or Ben bought into a few too many of the stereotypes told about Mando’ade just as they did about the Jetiise.

Ben was nervous as they headed back into the ship, given away by both his physical tension, shoulders climbing up towards his ears, and by his presence, waves of sharp, prickly anxiety strong enough to crack open his normally impressive shields. Jaster knew that some of that was because of the Jetiise themselves, the fact that they were here, and Ben might run into them, and the question of why they were here—but he also knew that Ben’s fears weren’t all centered around the Jetiise.

Jaster gently reached out in the ka’ra, offering comfort if it was wanted, but not pressing too hard. Ben immediately clung back, latching onto the steady-calm-warmth he’d offered—and as much as Jaster hated that he’d needed the comfort in the first place, he was admittedly pleased that Ben was so ready and so willing to accept it. As they crested the ramp back up into the Bes’bev, Jaster reached out physically just as he had in the ka’ra, putting an arm around Ben’s shoulders. After the way he’d reacted to the touch of Jaster’s presence, it came as no surprise when Ben immediately sank into his side, the closest to clinging to him physically as Jaster thought he would let himself come.

As soon as they were back in view of the others, a bright, loud wave of sheer relief washed over them, radiating from both Jango and Myles, still curled up together on the galley bench. Jaster smiled, a bit of a bittersweet expression, so happy for the simple fact that they were all together again, but— Well, just the sight of them made something twist unpleasantly in Jaster’s stomach, because…

He’d missed so much.

But, he reminded himself, it could certainly have been worse. Jaster could have died, really and truly, on Korda 6. If not for the grace of the ka’ra, the Manda, sweeping him away to another when, he would never have gotten to see his ad’e like this at all—not until all three of them were marching on, of course, and Jaster hoped that would be a long time in the coming.

Jaster gave himself just a moment to look over them both, the two of them giving him the same wide-eyed, amazed sort of look they had when they’d first seen his face, when they’d first realized it was really him, and then he let it go with a slow breath. They would have an opportunity later to… come to terms with everything that had happened, to figure things out, and to catch up on all that he’d missed. But this wasn’t the time for it— now, they had something far more urgent and pressing at hand.

“You were right,” Kal said, nodding towards Ben, breaking the almost awkward silence that Jaster hadn’t even realized had fallen as they entered, and Ben just blinked up at him, still pressed firmly into Jaster’s side. “Your vod’e, Cerasi, Deiral, and Delia, all went back to the others when we confirmed several more ships are coming in to land in the fields not far away from us. Don’t worry—we sent an escort with them.”

“How many would you guess?” Jaster asked, partly asking Kal for his estimate based on the size and number of the ships they had seen, and partly asking after what Ben was able to sense. Jaster himself still couldn’t feel them with anywhere near the clarity Ben seemed to, but as they had drawn closer, he had been able to feel a faint sense of… concentrated-warmth-Light.

“Three ships,” Kal grunted. “Each on the larger side, though with minimal external weapons. I’d estimate a maximum of sixty, if each ship was packed to capacity.”

“Twenty, or maybe thirty,” Ben murmured. “I think, anyway. I still can’t… With so many of them still somewhat far away, it’s hard to feel them instead of… all of them.”

Jaster hummed and squeezed Ben gently, pressing him closer to his side for a moment before letting him go and guiding him back towards his chair. Jango was quick to make room for him in the bench seat again, and Jaster gladly joined him. He was immediately boxed in by Myles on one side and Jango on the other, pressed in just as close as Ben had been just a moment before. Kal himself was still lurking at the edges, leaning up against the counter in the little galley, arms folded over his chest as he looked over them all.

“These… visitors,” Kal said, the word coming out a bit too flat, telling Jaster he’d used that more innocuous word in place of some swear or another at the last second, “are Jetiise, ‘lek?”

“‘Lek,” Jaster said, and Kal grunted. His eyes narrowed as his gaze slowly panned over to Ben, no doubt remembering what Jaster had said a few minutes before about his “maan’aliit.” Kal had always been observant like that.

“Anyone know what they’re here for?” Myles asked. “I know your message said that they made two different attempts to negotiate an end to the fighting here, but once they failed the second time, they’ve stayed clear for almost a year, now.”

“Only to show up once we arrived, of course,” Kal said. “That timing doesn’t bode well.”

“It doesn’t necessarily bode ill, either,” Jaster said even as he quietly shored up his shields. He didn’t want any of them to catch how conflicted he was, now—but especially not Ben.

Before meeting Ben, before learning what had happened to him, Jaster wouldn’t have claimed to have any problem with the Jetiise. The Jetii’tsad had its issues, yes, but all organizations and peoples did, and theirs mostly stemmed, he thought, from their close ties to the Republic’s shabla shu’shuk of a government. While there was yet a significant portion of Mando’ade who hated the Jetiise for the Dral’han, even still, Jaster wasn’t willing to blame those who were living here and now for something their ancestors many times over had done, and he had never encountered any of them before to have any more recent experiences with them, poor or otherwise. Jaster couldn’t have claimed to have been personally wronged by any Jetiise, and between that and the knowledge he had of them, gifted by the Guardians, he’d felt fairly neutrally about them until very recently.

Until Ben had admitted just what had happened to him, of course. The way he’d been forced out of the Temple, his home; Bandomeer, and everything that had happened there; being abandoned in a warzone, left weaponless when the adult in charge of his care had known that the ad’e here were in direct danger…

Well, Jaster still couldn’t claim to have been personally wronged by any Jetiise, but neither could he claim to feel quite so neutrally about them anymore.

Even so, that didn’t mean that Jaster wanted this to come to a fight. True as it was that he ached to take the Jetiise to task for the abandonment, reckless endangerment, and neglect of an ad in their care, an all-out, literal battle wasn’t the only way to do that. And besides, Jaster could tell that Ben wouldn’t thank him for that. Even after everything that had happened to him, Ben still considered them his family.

“Are they here for you, lad?” Kal asked, always one to be blunt, though at least his tone was gentle enough. Both Myles and Jango startled, leaning forward to exchange looks over Jaster—and ka’ra, that was such a familiar little gesture that Jaster saw double, the images of the familiar-yet-almost-strangers beside him replaced for a split second by the younger versions he had known so well just a few months ago, from his point of view.

But now wasn’t the time for that, he reminded himself, and refocused on Ben.

“I doubt it,” Ben said, voice coming out soft, eyes downcast, staring at the table in front of him. He’d tensed right up again, and Jaster made sure his own inner conflict was locked down tightly enough not to be felt before reaching out with another wave of reassurance-warmth. That had Ben glancing up, a small, fleeting smile on his face before he ducked his head again. “I’ve been here for nearly a year, and they haven’t… Well, they’ve known where I was all this time. Why they would come for me now… It doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re a Jetii?” Jango asked slowly, something prickly starting to buzz around him.

“No,” Ben said, still not looking up at any of them. “Not… Not anymore. I… I left.”

“I won’t force you to say anything more than that if you don’t want to, Ben,” Jaster said, “but I do think they should know about the… full situation.” Ben winced and Jaster sent him an apologetic pulse in the ka’ra.

“I don’t… You can tell them what I’ve already told you,” Ben said. “But I don’t want to…”

“Alright,” Jaster said. “Vor’e —thank you. In any case, whether the Jetiise have come for you or for us, I have no doubts that they’ll come to investigate what so many Mando’ade are doing here, of all places. They will find their way to us. If you don’t want to see them, then perhaps it would be best if you return to the other Young for now.” Which would also give Jaster an opportunity to explain the rest of the “situation” without Ben having to remain for it, sparing him from that much, at least.

“Yes,” Ben agreed. “Alright.”

“I’ll grab Silas,” Kal said, pushing away from the counter at last. “He can escort you back. Don’t start the briefing without me, ‘lek?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jaster said.

“Then get back on time,” Jango answered at the same time, their voices overlapping. Jaster chuckled at the familiar snark, sparking another strong wave of pleasure-disbelief-awe from both Jango and Myles at the sound of it alone.

“Thank you, but I don’t need an es—” Ben started to say, but Kal must have given him that look, the stern one that he had practiced to perfection on his own ad’e, and Ben didn’t finish that sentence.

“Ke’shekemi —follow me,” Kal said. Ben darted another look at Jaster, who smiled reassuringly at him and pressed up against him in the ka’ra once more. Yet again, Ben leaned into it for a beat before giving him another one of those barely-there smiles; then, he drew back, and slipped away from the table once more.

Jaster watched them go, wishing that the Jetiise hadn’t decided to show up now. He wished that he had more time with Ben, wished that he had more time with Jango and Myles, wished that he had more time with all of his people, wished that they had never gone to Korda 6 in the first place, wished that he had never been taken from them—

Jaster let go of those thoughts with a shake of his head, putting his arms more firmly around Jango on one side and Myles on the other, and pulled them in closer. He was here now, and that was what truly mattered. He was here with Jango and Myles again—and he would be here for Ben, as long as the ad would let him be.

It was barely two hours later that the first Jetiise approached the camp they’d set up in-between the ships. Jaster was grateful that the Young hadn’t yet come to meet the rest of the Haat’ade, relieved that they had put that off until tomorrow—given what had happened to Ben, he didn’t trust them with ad’e. They were safer where they were, for the moment, hidden away in their bases.

And if this did come to a head, and end in a battle… Well, Jaster would be doubly glad that the ad’e weren’t present, and they would be that much safer.

The Jetiise weren’t stealthy in their approach, simply walking straight down the road from their own landing site to their camp, and their progress was easily tracked by the sentries the Haat’ade had patrolling. There were only four of them in the little group heading their way, which soothed Jaster’s fears somewhat—if they had been planning on causing trouble, planning on starting a fight, then they would have come in force.

Most of the Haat’ade had been told very little about what had happened, overall, as far as the Jetiise went. Largely to protect Ben, all that they had said was that after the first Jetii’ba’jii had nearly died attempting to negotiate an end to the war, they’d had to be rescued by another, and that Jetii had come with their hibir. But the ad, they had admitted, had been left behind when the Jetiise fled the planet, and had been on Melida/Daan, with the Young, for nearly a year. Ben’s name—both of his names, since he had told Jaster his full name—had been kept out of it.

Still, that had been more than enough. While hunting Jetiise for sport as the Kyr’tsadiise wished to was demagolkyc in itself and firmly outside the bounds of the Codex, few of the Haat’ade felt very warmly about the Jetiise in the first place. Many, perhaps even most, Jaster thought, could barely even claim the neutrality Jaster had once held towards them.

None of them felt anywhere near neutral now. Their indignation, their protective anger, was so thick that the air around them was buzzing with it, and Jaster had no doubt that the Jetiise sensed it themselves as they drew nearer. All eyes were on them, hidden behind the intimidatingly blank visors of their helmets, and those gazes were very much hostile. Though no one moved, all of them staying very still as the Jetiise drew ever nearer, the sense of a threat hung heavy in the air. Give me a reason, more than one of them was thinking, strong and pointed enough for Jaster to catch the thought—as he was certain the Jetiise themselves did.

Shaking his head to clear it, tightening his shields so that he could focus without that added distraction, Jaster turned his full attention to the Jetiise coming to stand in front of Jango—Jaster had pushed him to the fore of the little group in the center of the camp when Jango had hesitated, looking like he wanted to try to defer to Jaster again. Together, they stood there, waiting for the Jetiise, Myles on one side of Jaster, just behind Jango, and Kal on the other, the rest of the Haat’ade neatly moving to surround and encircle the Jetiise.

There were, as the sentries had reported, only four of them. The Jetii at the fore was human-or-near, dark-haired with a narrow face, and just behind them was a younger human-or-near with a shock of blonde hair—and a braid. A Jetii’hibir, then. The other two seemed to be fully-fledged Jetiise, neither of them sporting braids or the beads Jaster knew the hairless species used: one was a Togruta, and the other was Tholothian. All four stopped several feet away from them, and for several tense, silent seconds, they just stared at each other. Behind the Jetiise, Jaster saw more than a few of the Haat’ade resting their hands on their still-holstered blasters, though they at least had the discipline not to draw them just yet.

Finally, the Jetii at the fore, the one who seemed to be their leader, broke the stalemate by sweeping into a bow. The other three followed suit just a beat behind them; none of the Haat’ade moved a muscle.

“Greetings,” the Jetii said, their accent just as posh, crisp, and immediately recognizable as Coruscanti as Ben’s was. “I am Jedi Master Yan Dooku. You are the ‘True Mandalorians,’ are you not?” Jango nodded sharply, but didn’t verbally answer; Dooku hummed, just staring at Jango for another beat. “And are you the leader of these people?”

“What do you want, Jetii?” Jango asked, and Jaster caught the way his hands flexed, a tell that he apparently hadn’t fully quelled even now, one that meant he so desperately wanted to take his own Westars in hand. But he didn’t, and that, Jaster thought, was the more important thing.

“We have come to Melida/Daan in the course of two separate, but intertwined, investigations,” the Jetii, Dooku, said. “Both of which involve your people directly.”

“What do you want?” Jango repeated.

“The more pressing of our investigations, at the moment, involves a missing Jedi Padawan,” Dooku said. “One we have good reason to believe is somewhere on this planet. Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” Jango said, the truth of it chiming in the ka’ra. Oh, he knew, of course, who Dooku had to be talking about, but he was able to say that so honestly because Jaster hadn’t actually told him what name had been Ben’s before. “And we only just got here today. I doubt we’ll be much help to you.”

Dooku’s lips twitched as if they wanted to frown, but they quickly forced their expression back into that bland, neutral, diplomatic mask so many Mando’ade hated. Inclining their head marginally in a nod of acknowledgement, Dooku waited a beat before continuing.

“Our second investigation is… less straightforward,” Dooku said. “You are Jango Fett, Mand’alor of the True Mandalorians, are you not?” Jango just nodded, not deigning to actually respond to that. “I see.” They turned, then, looking over the ships the Haat’ade had brought, surveying them all carefully before turning slightly towards one of the other Jetiise, one of the adults beside them, the Togruta.

“Mostly theta-class hyperdrives, unless these have all seen extensive modification,” the Jetii said, apparently answering Dooku’s unspoken question. “With these ships, there’s no possible way they could have been there and gotten here in the span of time we’re looking at, Master.”

Dooku nodded, turning back to Jango and the rest of the group right in front of him. The Jetii stared at Jango for a few beats, and then looked the rest of them over—pausing on Jaster. His shields were still up, and Jaster subtly reinforced them, making sure that they held as he felt the Jetii’s presence reaching out, brushing over him briefly before retreating.

Finally, Dooku looked back to Jango. “Since you do not know where Padawan Kenobi is, and you could not have been involved in the… other events we were ordered to investigate, I find myself in agreement with you,” the Jetii said. “It seems there is little you might be able to do to assist us in our investigations.”

“What ‘other events’ are you investigating that you thought would involve us?” Kal spoke up to ask, and Dooku’s mask of blank neutrality finally cracked, the frown that had wanted to appear crossing their face.

“The Republic Senate received evidence, encompassing holos, two-dimensional vids and pictures, and personal testimony, indicating that innocent civilians had been massacred by beings wearing Mandalorian armor,” Dooku said, and a bad feeling curdled in Jaster’s stomach, the ka’ra all but shouting a warning at him, and he felt a chill sweep over and through him. The Haat’ade shifted slightly around them in such a way that Jaster knew that they were reacting to that as well, no doubt chattering on their individual squad channels, since Jaster couldn’t hear any of it on the general or Command channels he’d been tied back into. “Their Governor personally claimed that the True Mandalorians were responsible for these attacks—he was quite specific.”

More pointed shifting met that pronouncement, the Haat’ade bristling at the accusation, and the atmosphere, the ka’ra, around them grew both heavy and sharp with their collective anger and indignation, the tension ratcheting up again. Dooku held up a hand.

“However, as my companion said: there is no way you could have gotten here from that location in the amount of time since the last attacks,” Dooku said. “Therefore, unless you replaced all of your vessels with models sporting far less efficient hyperdrives within the past two weeks, there is simply no way you could have been responsible for that slaughter.”

“Where?” Jango asked. Jaster could still read him well enough that he caught the slight wavering in his voice, and he most certainly felt the dread Jango was starting to radiate. Jaster started to frown, because—

Because it seemed like Jango already knew the answer.

Dooku’s gaze sharpened as they looked at Jango again, staring silently for a few too-long, drawn-out seconds. Apparently, they’d felt that, too. Finally, folding their hands into the sleeves of their cloak, the Jetii said, “Galidraan.”

The Haat’ade still encircling them and their Jetii visitors went very, very still, and Myles and Kal both let out quiet curses. Clearly, that location meant something to them.

“Then you’re half-right, Jetii,” Jango said. “We weren’t responsible for any massacre, and we weren’t on Galidraan.” After another charged pause, Jango sighed roughly and added, far more softly, “But we were meant to be.”

“I see,” Dooku said, and his eyes slid over to Jaster again. “Would I be correct in assuming that it was a… certain message you received that altered your plans?”

“Elek —yes,” Jango admitted. “But more importantly, at least to you… We can be of some ‘assistance’ in your investigation.”

“Can you indeed?” Dooku asked, not taking their eyes off of Jaster.

“We can,” Jango said, both sounding so grim and feeling it in the ka’ra, a heavy weight seeming to settle over him. That feeling finally recaptured Dooku’s attention and he tore his eyes away from Jaster at last.

Once he could see that he had Dooku’s full focus again, Jango said, “Those truly responsible for that massacre… It has to be Kyr’tsad —the Death Watch.”

The ka’ra swirled around them, as it always had when Kyr’tsad was mentioned, so heavy and sharp-edged, and Dooku’s eyes narrowed slightly. Jaster felt faintly ill, vaguely nauseated—he hadn’t even let himself consider, hadn’t allowed himself to speculate on what might have happened to and with Kyr’tsad in the last seven years. And once the Haat’ade had actually arrived, Jaster had been too pleased to see his ad’e, and so many of the verd’e he’d known before, alive and well, if that much older than they once were, to think about anything else—

“Perhaps,” Dooku said slowly, “we ought to have a more thorough conversation regarding these events. It would seem that we have much to discuss.”

Jango didn’t immediately respond, though he eventually nodded. Jaster wondered if someone had said something to him over a private channel, and what he might have missed.

“I can spare up to two hours for you,” Jango said. “But we’re beginning a campaign here tomorrow, and we still have preparations to make.”

“What campaign? What is your purpose here?” the Jetii’hibir finally spoke up to say. Dooku twitched like they’d wanted to turn towards the hibir, but stilled themself quickly.

“Padawan,” Dooku cut in, and the hibir looked down at the ground, chastened by the apparent rebuke. “Master Kiirso, would you be so kind as to accompany Padawan Vosa back to the others and relay what we have heard thus far to the other team?”

“Of course, Master,” the Togruta said. They bowed again before gesturing for the hibir to follow them; the hibir, apparently Vosa, shot a disgruntled look at Dooku’s back before sketching a much quicker, shallow bow to them and stomping off after the Togruta Jetii.

“This ‘other team’ of yours,” Kal said. “Are they on Galidraan now?”

“Very nearly,” Dooku said. “They will be landing in three hours.”

“If Kyr’tsad is still there,” Kal said very evenly, “then they’re walking into a trap.”

And that, of all things, actually made Dooku smile. “While the warning is appreciated, we know very well what to do in that case,” they said. That disconcerting smile grew ever-so-slightly wider, and then the Jetii added: “Spring the trap.” Kal scoffed, and Myles huffed, and Jaster felt his eyebrows tick upwards.

“Well, maybe we’ll get lucky,” Walon Vau spoke up to say, just as dry as he ever was, and the icon on Jaster’s HUD showed that he was using the Command channel, though he had, thankfully, kept his external speaker off. “If the Jetiise and Kyr’tsad face off and declare war, our problems can take care of each other. Won’t have much need to campaign against the Jetiise to have their ad’e taken away if they’re already gone, now will we?”

There were a few dark chuckles at that, but Jaster’s eyes just fell shut. Manda—if they had just been able to take care of Tor Vizsla and Kyr’tsad all those years ago, then none of this would be happening in the first place—

“Come, Jetiise,” Jango said, cutting off any further conversation and any more jibes amongst themselves about the Jetiise. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get back to more urgent matters.”

Dooku bowed their head in acceptance and Jango rather unceremoniously turned and stalked away, back towards the Bes’bev. Myles was quick to follow him—as was Vau, apparently unwilling to let the Jetiise out of his sight, with his loyal striil at his heels as it always had been—but Jaster hesitated. Kal knocked their shoulders together briefly in a silent question, nodding towards the ship, and Jaster…

He shook his head. “I’m not going to be of any use in this particular briefing,” he said. “I’ll get back to the Young, and help with the preparations. You all can catch me up later.”

Kal stared at him for a moment and then nodded sharply. “I’ll let Jango and Myles know.”

“Vor’e, vod.”

“Ba’gedet’ye,” Kal said. “Ret’.”

With that, Kal turned and followed the others into the ship. Sparing one last, lingering look towards them, trying hard not to think about Kyr’tsad, trying hard not to start speculating again, Jaster took a deep breath and turned his thoughts back to the ad’e waiting for them.

As he’d thought to himself so many other times in the past few months, he had a duty to these children, and a job to do. Jaster would just have to trust that Jango, Myles, and the rest of the Haat’ade could fend for themselves for the moment—just as they apparently had been for the last seven years.

Yan Dooku.

Despite how… cordial the Mandalorians were—after a fashion, in any case; still, the reception they had received was far more than they had hoped for—the Force was laden with a great deal of hostility and sharp, pointed anger. And it had not escaped Yan’s notice that the anger they were all feeling, to some degree or another, had spiked in the Force when he had asked after Padawan Kenobi.

The Mandalorians, and the Mand’alor himself, knew something more than they were saying.

But Yan was mindful of that hostility, and the obvious tension, and Mand’alor Fett seemed willing enough to play nicely with them, at least for now. If he was willing to give Yan even a fraction of the answers they had come for, Yan would take what he could get from him willingly.

After that, of course, the time to push would come.

The ships the Mandalorians had brought were spacious enough, but largely intended to serve as transports and dropships, and they sported only a reasonable armament on each. It was yet another sign that this was not an invasion force —though what their purpose actually was, what “campaign” they were beginning, Yan had yet to officially confirm.

Though he already knew that, too. Fett had confirmed that they had been rerouted from Galidraan after receiving “a certain message,” as Yan had said, and he knew very well what that message had been, and what it had said. Whatever program had been used to send that message out across the galaxy, it had caused the signal to ping between any shipboard transmitter, comms buoy, and HoloNet server it reached, trying to make its way to the Mandalore system. And the Jedi Order, largely through the Service Corps—the Exploration Corps in particular—was responsible for deploying and maintaining so many of those comms buoys.

One of the Corpsbeings had noticed the odd message first, and it had taken two weeks to travel through their ranks from there. That Corpsbeing sent it to their supervisor, who forwarded it to the Council governing the ExploCorps itself. Finally, from the ExploCorps Council, the message had been forwarded to the High Council of the Knights Corp.

Yan had quite literally just boarded the ship that was due to take their strike force to Galidraan when the call from the Council had come, ordering them to hold while they received new information and orders. The message in itself had been disturbing, of course, on several levels.

The first, that it had been recorded to look like it had come from Jaster Mereel… Well, many Jedi were familiar with the mystery that was Jaster Mereel, and the man’s fate. Though the Mandalorians had not been willing to reach out to the Jedi Order, they had sent the recordings showing what had happened to the Guardians of the Whills, and the Guardians had forwarded them to the Council themselves, hopeful that they might have been able to provide some insight. Yan had been fascinated by it, as had Jocasta and Sifo-Dyas, and the three of them had spent several months on a joint research project, searching through the Archives for any other examples of such things happening—only to come up empty. Beyond ancient fables with no true proof attached to them, they had been able to find nothing that matched what those recordings showed, the man’s body—armor and all, which was a distinct difference from the few tales Jedi did have of discorporation, Jedi surrendering themselves so wholly to the Force as to become truly One with it—simply vanishing into thin air.

It was quite interesting, therefore, that the message appeared to have come from Jaster Mereel. Whether someone had used his likeness for some nefarious purpose or whether he had truly been returned to the galaxy at this point in time… Both possibilities were intriguing.

And the Mandalorian standing just behind Fett, wearing armor that both matched the initial recording of Mereel’s death and subsequent disappearance and the more recent recording, that plea for aid on Melida/Daan… That, too, was intriguing.

But Yan’s mind had not, and was not, in fact, focused on that mystery. No, he had paid far more attention to the scene and setting described in that message, that call for help. The encoding on the message, marking where it had been sent from, did prove that it truly had come from Melida/Daan—and though that was a place Yan had never visited before, it was quite significant to him.

When Yan had returned from an extended mission in the Outer Rim with Komari, the Temple gossip mill had ensured that he was made aware of all that had happened in his absence: Qui-Gon had taken a Padawan again—only to lose yet another. It hadn’t taken Yan long to track down his own former-Master, demanding an explanation, refusing to accept second, third, and fourth-hand gossip when he was certain Yoda would know so much more—and he had. Yan heard about all of it, from the journey fraught with difficulties aboard the Monument on their way to Bandomeer, what happened on Bandomeer itself, the few missions the new pair had taken together after that, and then, finally, Melida/Daan.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, the boy’s name was. Claimed and lost before Yan, his Grandmaster, could ever even meet him—before he even knew of him.

“When return with only Master Tahl, Qui-Gon did,” Yoda had said, ears and eyes both downcast, shoulders hunched, “told us that left the Order, his Padawan had, and offer up his lightsaber, Qui-Gon did.”

“Why?” Yan had asked, and Yoda had let out a discontented little hmph.

“Too attached, he became, to a local girl,” Yoda said. “Or so Qui-Gon claimed, hmm?”

“You don’t believe that,” Yan had pressed, and Yoda had sighed.

“The truth, it felt of, in the Force,” Yoda admitted. “Believe it, Qui-Gon did. Sense it, the others did. No cause to argue it do I have.”

And then, once the missive from Melida/Daan had been discovered… Well. That did put those events in a rather different light.

Qui-Gon had said nothing in his admittedly brief report of violence against children on Melida/Daan—he had certainly failed to mention an entire army of child soldiers, a fully-fledged third faction in the previously two-way war made up entirely of younglings. Master Tahl had been able to tell them little for herself, too weak and injured, delirious with fever, by the time Qui-Gon had retrieved her to recall much of it. No, she had only remembered the Melida and the Daan with any clarity, and so not even her testimony had given the Council any immediate cause to worry about the situation on Melida/Daan.

It was a tragedy, of course. An entire civilization, an entire planet, so consumed by war and hatred that they were destroying themselves, on pace to wipe themselves out within the next two decades if they remained on that course. But they could not force the Melida and the Daan to make peace—they would not use force to compel them to stop. Their choices were tragic, yes, but they were their own, and one of the hardest lessons any Jedi had to learn was that they could do nothing to help those who did not wish to be helped.

That view had been shaken by that message—and given the reports from the scouts Yan had sent out when they first arrived here, the evidence they had managed to uncover in such a short span of time… That view had crumbled into dust, because delivered by Jaster Mereel or some imposter, the message had been right, and entirely honest: the Melida and the Daan had moved on to hunting and killing their own children, and all for the crime of attempting to end their war.

And the Grandpadawan Yan had never had the chance to meet, the Grandpadawan he had never even known of until he was already long gone, was somewhere on this planet, alone and deprived of his lightsaber.

Yan turned his thoughts back to the present moment as Fett waved them towards a table in the ship’s galley he had directed them to, and Yan slid into the bench, Adi settling down beside him. Fett did not immediately join them, instead turning to one of the Mandalorians who had followed them into the ship, one in gold armor; another, tall and clad entirely in black, with a frankly hideous and rather foul-smelling creature just beside them, went to lean against the wall, pointedly staring at them and resting their hands on their still-holstered blasters while the beast sat beside them, drooling onto their boots; the fourth, another who had been directly behind Fett, wearing mostly-blue armor, sat down on the other side of the table, staring at them.

Fett and the gold-armored Mandalorian presumably spoke to each other for a moment through their comms, given that Yan heard them make no sound at all—and then a burst of heavy anxiety-fear flared from Fett. Despite the sheer strength of those emotions, he marshaled them quickly, bringing himself back under control and tightening his mental shields. What had caused that, Yan had no idea, and though he was not about to ask, he tucked it away for later consideration.

Finally, Fett just nodded to the golden Mandalorian and moved to sit down at the table beside the blue Mandalorian while the gold-armored one went to lean against the other side of the hatch into the galley the black figure had chosen—and Yan wished that he had something better to call them all, but none of them had offered any names or titles to him. And none of them had moved to take off their helmets, though Yan was unsurprised.

“What do you know about Kyr’tsad —the Death Watch?” Fett said, and Yan hummed.

“Nothing of any consequence,” he admitted. Yan knew, of course, that the “New Mandalorians” were a faction of radical pacifists who enjoyed the favor and friendship of the Senate, and that there were two traditionalist factions who were viewed far more harshly by them: Fett’s True Mandalorians, and the Death Watch. But what the differences between them were, what those factions stood for, Yan hadn’t the faintest idea.

Fett huffed. “Background first, then,” he grunted. “Kyr’tsad is classified by both us, the Haat’ade —the True Mandalorians—and the Evaar’ade —the New Mandalorians, the pacifists your Republic likes so much—as a terrorist group. They are dar’manda’se —those who have strayed so far from the Way that they are no longer considered Mandalorians, and have lost their souls.”

“I see,” Yan said. “And what have they done to earn such titles and labels?”

“Let’s just say that I wasn’t surprised to learn that they’d slaughtered innocent civilians,” Fett said, and though Yan could not see his expression, he didn’t need to see it to know that Fett was grimacing. “That’s typical of them. Civilians, ad’e —children… They don’t seem to know the meaning of ‘non-combatants.’ Or ‘innocents.’ We have decades’ worth of evidence of their crimes, and that much, at least, I am willing to share with you.”

Yan tipped his head. “Thank you. That would be much appreciated,” he said. “You had said that you ‘were meant to be’ on Galidraan. What did you mean by that?”

“Their Governor wanted to hire us to put down an insurgency against him,” Fett said. “And ‘lek —yes, before you ask, I have copies of the written messages he sent us regarding that job and recordings of our conversations over comms. We had heard rumors that Kyr’tsad had been sighted on Galidraan recently, and so we’d planned to lower our usual fee in exchange for information about their whereabouts.”

“And then you received the message from Melida/Daan,” Adi murmured, and Fett nodded sharply to her.

“Elek. We declined that job in favor of coming here,” Fett said. “We never even visited Galidraan.”

“The conclusions you’ve drawn about our route based on our ships’ capabilities are all well and good,” the mostly-blue Mandalorian spoke up to add, “but our navicomputers will provide real proof. We’ll give you snapshots of the last two months’ worth of travel before you leave.”

“Again, much appreciated,” Yan said. “And I must say, you have been quite cooperative thus far.”

Fett made a noise that sounded somewhere between a scoff, a huff, and a snort, too garbled through his helmet’s vocorder to truly identify, and not a hint of his emotions made it through the shields he seemed to have reinforced. “‘The enemy of my enemy’ and all that,” he said. “Though I doubt we will ever be friends, I can see the use of turning you against Kyr’tsad. We would go ourselves to confront them, if we weren’t on an important and more immediately urgent campaign. But if we can point you in the right direction in the meantime…” Fett shrugged. “So much the better.”

“Would I be correct in assuming that this ‘urgent campaign’ also directly relates to the message that you were sent?” Adi asked, and Fett leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest.

“Sorry, Jetii,” Fett said, though he did not, in fact, sound apologetic in the slightest. “We’re professionals. We don’t discuss active operations.”

“I see,” Adi said, and she pulsed at Yan, a questioning feeling with no little undercurrent of impatience, and he knew what she was trying to communicate: if Fett would not divulge what they knew of Padawan Kenobi’s whereabouts, and the other children he was no doubt with, then it would be time for them to collect the evidence Fett and his blue-armored companion had offered them, to be passed on to the other half of their split strike force dispatched to Galidraan—and then they would have to leave. They had a search to conduct, of course; they had a missing Padawan to find, and so many other younglings besides.

Yan probed briefly at the Force, and then sent an impression, an order, of patience back to her. The Force remained clear: the Mandalorians had much, yet, to tell them. Whether or not they would… That remained to be seen—though it was still early days, proverbially speaking. They had some time, if not much—the Force was clear on that as well.

“So,” Fett said, “it seems to me as if we can help each other, Jetiise. I give you the evidence that will clear us beyond any doubt and tell you who you’re really after, and then you can go catch the culprits behind that ‘slaughter’ on Galidraan.”

“We will gladly accept your evidence and any intelligence offered to us,” Yan said, “though we will be passing the information along to the other half of our team, those who were already sent to Galidraan. Our party will remain here until Padawan Kenobi is found.”

“You abandoned an ad —a child —in a warzone for a year, or so I heard,” the black-armored Mandalorian spat, and the creature beside them reacted to his anger, standing up and staring with its dark, beady eyes at Yan and Adi, the faintest hint of a growl beginning to emanate from it. “A warzone full of adults actively trying to kill off children. What makes you think there’s anything left of your ‘missing Padawan’ to find?”

Adi’s presence flared with a tangled mass of indignation and upset, but she released it quickly into the Force, drawing in a slow, controlled breath to calm herself. Yan simply turned to stare into the Mandalorian’s visor as he answered.

“Force-sensitives, including and especially Jedi, are capable of forming bonds with one another that can tell us much about the person at the other end of that bond even over great distances,” Yan said. “Those who have bonds with Padawan Kenobi have not felt them break; therefore, he is still alive. Our official mission mandate was to question you regarding Galidraan, assuming that we were correct in believing that we would find you here after we saw that message for ourselves; to find Padawan Kenobi; and, should we be able to confirm the reports of senseless violence against children, to intervene.

“In the few hours we have been here thus far, that evidence has not been difficult to obtain,” Yan continued. “When we relay what we have found to the High Council, I have no doubt that we will have their blessing to take action. We may be here for some time, it seems. Due to the reason we have both come to Melida/Daan, the contents of that message and the apparent truth of it, it is only the logical conclusion to draw that we are here for largely the same purpose you are: to defend the children and end the war here at last. We can either stand in one another’s way, or we can communicate.”

“I don’t think that the ad’e here need your sort of care, Jetii,” the golden-armored Mandalorian said, words clipped, so obviously angry. “You knew damn well what you were doing when you abandoned one of your own in an active warzone.”

“We—” Adi started to say, but Yan cut her off.

“Yes,” he said, “and no. We were well aware that the Melida and the Daan are at war. We had not known, however, of the faction called ‘the Young.’ We did not learn of them until the same message that presumably informed you of their existence—and that means that we had not known of the danger he was in.”

“You still abandoned an ad in an active warzone,” the golden Mandalorian spat. “They were endangered either way. That’s negligence at best, and veering too close for comfort to true abuse.”

“I agree,” Yan said, turning to meet their visor as he had the other’s. “I have already made my opinion of the handling of this situation clear to the High Council, when I demanded to be dispatched here rather than Galidraan. And when Padawan Kenobi first came with his Master to Melida/Daan, I was on an extended mission in the Outer Rim with minimal contact with the Council. I had no knowledge of his situation until I returned to the Temple, and by then, he was already here and had been for some time.”

“And you still didn’t come for them,” the blue-armored Mandalorian said, and Yan sighed, shaking his head.

“No,” Yan said. “I did not like it, but I had none of the information that would have given me any grounds to attempt a retrieval. We had been told that he had left the Jedi Order, resigning when his Master departed. Melida/Daan was and is a known warzone, that is true, but we had little to no reason to believe that Padawan Kenobi was in any immediate danger. And we do not keep the unwilling—those who wish to leave the Jedi Order are free to do so at any time. We were initially told that he had chosen to leave the Order because he had become ‘too attached to a local girl.’ At first, we had no true evidence to disprove that assertion.”

“And once we did have reason to suspect that he, and other younglings, are actively endangered by the situation here,” Adi said, voice carefully even but with an undercurrent of durasteel, “we came immediately to search for him, and for these other children.”

“You—” the golden Mandalorian started to say, but Fett interrupted them.

“I have little to no reason to trust in any of you, and how you might see fit to intervene,” Fett said. “But whether you are allowed to act or not, whether your help is accepted or not, is not our choice. If the ad’e —the children—you have supposedly come to aid want your help, fine. We’ll work around each other. But if they refuse you…”

Yan’s eyes narrowed, quickly mulling that over. After the first failed attempt at mediation by the Jedi, and then Qui-Gon’s frankly heinous actions… He would not have been surprised to find that these “Young” wanted nothing to do with the Jedi.

But, he reminded himself, they could not help those who did not wish for their help. They could not, would not, impose their own will and desires upon others—no matter how much that grated. That was the path to the Dark Side.

And, Yan thought, the Young would have several hundred Mandalorian warriors at their backs—warriors who were quite capable, according to their reputation. That, at least, was something.

Finally, he tipped his head, ignoring Adi’s flare of discontent. “Agreed,” he said.

“Jate —good,” Fett grunted. “We’ll collect the data we promised you, and then I think it’s time you left, Jetiise.”

“As you say, Mand’alor,” Yan said. “Though I have two requests I would make of you, if you would hear them.” Fett grunted; Yan supposed that was the closest to an invitation he was going to get. “Should you encounter Padawan Kenobi while you are here, please tell him that we have come for him, and we would like to take him home to the Temple. I have also brought something for him that I’m certain he would very much appreciate having returned: his lightsaber.”

Fett grunted again, and Yan slowly reached for his datapad; despite the intentional telegraphing of his movements, the Mandalorians still tensed, the black-armored Mandalorian’s hold on the blaster they had still been resting their hand on tightened marginally, and the beast beside them growled somewhat louder, this time. Yan ignored them, feeling a certain swirling and tension in the Force, but no outright warnings as of yet, and instead pulled up the holo of his Grandpadawan.

“This is Padawan Kenobi,” he said. Fett and the blue-armored Mandalorian both leaned forward to better peer at it, and Yan allowed them time to study it, the last official holo taken of him in the creche before he left the Temple. “I will leave this holo with you to distribute, so that you might recognize him if and when you come across him.” Fett, again, simply grunted in reply, and Yan finally switched off the datapad. “As for the second request… We would appreciate the opportunity to present our offer of aid to the Young ourselves. Since it seems that you are already in contact with them, we would be much obliged if you would pass on that message for us as well.”

“Fine,” Fett said. “You finished now, Jetii?”

“Quite,” Yan agreed.

“Ori’jate,” Fett said, not bothering to translate himself, this time. He directed some sort of hand signs to the gold-armored Mandalorian, and then the black-armored Mandalorian. Both nodded tersely and slipped out of the galley, though the black-armored Mandalorian and the beast at their heels lingered in the doorway for a moment, that Mandalorian’s hand still resting on their blaster, before finally turning away and disappearing through the hatch. “They’ll be back shortly with the evidence we promised you.”

“Very good,” Adi said, managing to keep her voice even despite the unhappy buzzing undercurrent to her presence, displeased beyond words that Yan had agreed to allow the Young to decide for themselves whether or not to accept their assistance. “Again, you have our thanks and appreciation for your cooperation.” Fett huffed and didn’t verbally respond, simply folding his arms over his chest and staring at them from behind that blank visor.

And now… Well, the most important of Yan’s messages had been relayed, and several important questions answered, though there was yet one set of answers he lacked.

“Regarding that message itself,” Yan said slowly, and both Fett and his blue-armored companion stiffened, “I did have several questions, should you know the answers. The Order was made aware of what happened to Jaster Mereel on Korda 6, the Temple of the Kyber contacting us just after it happened to ask for any insight we might have been able to offer. Was it truly Jaster Mereel who recorded and sent that message? If it was, the implications of such a thing…”

“That’s none of your concern, Jetii,” Fett ground out. “And there’s a reason we spoke to the Guardians and not you Jetiise. You’ll do well to steer clear where you’re not wanted.”

“Point taken,” Yan conceded, tipping his head again. Fett didn’t quite relax, after that, and they spent a while sitting there in heavy silence.

Finally, the other two Mandalorians returned, holding a small stack of datapads each. As soon as they reentered the room, Fett leapt up from his seat, the blue-armored Mandalorian beside him following suit a beat later.

“Now, Jetiise,” Fett ground out, “here’s the intel you were promised. And that concludes our business.”

“It does,” Yan agreed as he rose. “For now.” That sparked the second impression he had sensed, sharp-hot-irritation leaking through his shields, but Yan simply bowed. “Mand’alor Fett.”

Fett, yet again, did not deign to respond to that. Instead, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, his blue-armored comrade only half a step behind him. Yan watched them go until the remaining two Mandalorians gestured for them to follow, leading them back out of the ship.

All told… That had gone far better than Yan had expected.

He still firmly believed that the Mandalorians knew more than they were disclosing regarding Padawan Kenobi—they seemed to know far more about his situation than made sense if they had truly never heard of or encountered him before. Though that could have been a set of details relayed to them by the other Young, Yan’s instincts and the Force both agreed: these Mandalorians knew him, and they had seen him here.

And they would be the key to finding him.

Jango.

The rational part of Jango’s mind, the part of him that could never truly stop analyzing and planning and strategizing, had understood Jaster’s decision to split off from their group.

It was a good call, of course, on multiple levels: as Jaster had apparently told Kal, he wouldn’t have been much help in that briefing with the Jetiise, having absolutely no idea what had happened in the last seven years, let alone the last few months; the ad’e were still their first priority, and the Young no doubt had their own preparations they had needed to make before the meetings and briefings that would come tomorrow, before they could truly begin the campaign to end the war here and put an end to the demagolka’se who threatened them; and beyond those considerations, the obvious interest of the Jetiise in Jaster, and what had happened to him… Well, it had been for the best that Jaster had chosen to slip away, to go back to the ad’e.

But a much larger part of Jango had begun to panic the instant Kal told him Jaster had left. He’d just gotten his buir back —what if he disappeared again? What if something happened while they were separated, an attack by those they called Elders, and Jaster really and truly died while they were apart? Jango knew that everyone died, eventually, but to think of that, to think of Jaster dying just after Jango had finally, impossibly, gotten him back…

Yet again, that had left Jango feeling like the lost, terrified adiik he’d been when Jaster had first adopted him.

He knew the Jetiise just had to have felt that overwhelming panicked-fear that had overtaken him, but they’d at least had the good sense not to comment on it or ask after it—or reach out to him in the ka’ra. Both Myles and Kal had been quick to reach out to him that way, providing steady support and helping to supplement his own shields, since he hadn’t been able to manage his usual beskar- clad bulwark around himself. That, at least, had helped to steady him enough for that unpleasantness with the Jetiise.

And once it was over… Jango had stormed out of the ship as quickly as he could without actually running, heading straight for Jaster’s Legacy, Myles just behind him. He wanted to go after Jaster, to find him, to set eyes on him again, to reach out and touch him, but—

But he just… needed a little time, first. Jango was more than simply an ad who had just had his buir make an impossible return from the dead—he was also the leader of his people. And the situation here on Melida/Daan was karked enough between the Elders, the Young, and the Jetiise without Jango worsening things by losing his head.

And those particular thoughts and considerations had Jango spiraling even further, because that was yet another layer of uncertainty in all of this. There were now, technically, two Mand’alor’e in the same place at the same time—and that just wouldn’t do. The Mand’alor was the sole ruler —there couldn’t be two of them. So what would happen now?

Jaster had seemed content to step back and let Jango handle things as he normally would have, so far—and that was an obvious good choice, at least for now. Jaster was still missing seven years’ worth of intel and background, and a lack of knowledge like that led to poor choices and got people killed. But… Well, once he’d caught up on everything that he’d missed in the last seven years, would Jaster retake the title? Would he insist on Jango continuing in the role?

Did Jango even want to?

“Jango,” Myles sighed, and he abruptly slammed back into his body. He hadn’t quite realized that he’d worked himself that close to a real, all-out panic attack, of the sort that he hadn’t had for years. At some point, once they’d gotten back into Jaster’s Legacy, Jango had started pacing around the cargo hold, and he stopped when Myles spoke, trying to focus on his breathing, which had gone choppy and short, instead of— everything else.

Myles moved closer to him, slowly reaching up to slip off Jango’s buy’ce, turning to set it atop one of the crates beside them before doing the same with his own. With that, he turned back to Jango, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him forward into a kov’nyn.

For a long moment, they just stayed there like that, neither of them speaking, and Jango closed his eyes. He did his best to focus on Myles’s breaths instead of his own, trying to match them, feeling his own growing slower and deeper as the seconds ticked by. Jango didn’t know how long they stood there, foreheads pressed together, doing nothing more than breathing, before the knot in his stomach and that pressure in his chest started to ease.

Squeezing the back of his neck gently, though making no move to pull away, Myles murmured, “Everything will be fine, Jango. Ori’haat. I know everything is… a bit of a mess right now, and that… it’s complicated, but we’ll figure it out.”

“It’s just… a lot,” Jango admitted. “The Young and everything happening to them would’ve been enough to… get to me on its own, but— Jaster… It’s good to have him back, and I am happy, but—” He paused, swallowing hard, trying to sort out how he actually felt enough to explain it, trying to pick apart the tangled mass of feelings that had lodged themselves in his gut and weighed on his chest. He was still elated, still so overjoyed, so amazed, of course. Somehow, the ka’ra, the Manda, had given Jaster back to him again, and he couldn’t be more grateful for that.

But Jango was also… afraid. He was afraid of losing him again, and for good this time. He was afraid that Jaster would just disappear for a second time—or worse, that he would have to hold his buir when he died all over again, and that it would be real, this time—final.

And now that Jaster was here… Jango couldn’t help but fear what his buir would think about… him. The Haat’ade. The choices Jango had made in those long years he’d been torn from them, the quality of his leadership. Shab, how many times over the last seven years had Jango thought to himself that Jaster would’ve done better? He was—

“Suvari,” Myles said. “It’s a good thing, but it’s… overwhelming.”

Jango let out a shaky sort of sigh and reached up to rest his hands on Myles’s shoulders, grateful to have been spared having to try to explain. But then, there was no need for that—not when Myles’s presence was still curled reassuringly around his own, still shoring up his shields and feeling every complicated, strong, messy emotion Jango was right along with him.

“Whatever happens, whatever decisions we all make,” Myles said, “he loves you, Jango. Above anything and everything else, he’s your buir, and he loves you. That’s the most important thing.”

That finally dispelled the worst of that knot in his stomach and most of the pressure in Jango’s chest, because Myles was right. Jango had felt it, when Jaster had cracked his shields to let Jango cling to him in the ka’ra the same way he had been physically, love and joy and a bittersweet sort of feeling, regretting everything he’d missed but so happy to be reunited at all— Jango had felt it.

Even if… Even if Jaster didn’t agree with… how he’d gone about leading the Haat’ade, even if he didn’t support the calls Jango had made—Jaster loved him, and that wasn’t going to change.

Taking another few deep, deliberate breaths, Jango tried to think through it all a little more calmly, this time. He would have to make a conscious effort to separate those relationships between himself and Jaster. They were ad and buir above all else, but they were also a pair of Mand’alor’e where their people could only have one. Those two relationships would require different approaches, different responses.

But above all else, nothing would change the fact that they were aliit —Jaster was still his buir.

“Jate’shya?” Myles murmured.

“‘Lek,” Jango agreed. “It’s still… a lot, but I think I can manage, now.”

“Jate,” Myles said, and squeezed his neck once more before gently tugging away. “Let’s take a few minutes and then… We’ll see if Kal knows where the Young actually are.”

“We’ll have to post sentries to make sure the Jetiise don’t follow us,” Jango said, calm enough, now, that slipping back into the right mindset for this, falling back into planning and preparation, was easier than it had been. “I’ll relay their offer to the Young, but they might not accept it. I don’t want to give away their position to the Jetiise until they decide what they want to do on that front.”

“Good call,” Myles agreed. “I’ll ping Kal and Walon.”

He started to move away, but Jango tightened his hold on Myles’s shoulders just enough to let him know he wanted him to stay put, if only for a moment. Myles smiled, and Jango smiled back.

“What would I do without you, Myles?” he said, reaching up with one hand, gently tangling it in Myles’s hair.

“Manda willing, you won’t have to find out,” he returned. “I’m not going anywhere, Jango. Ori’haat.”

This time, it was Jango who leaned in for a kov’nyn, though he kept it quick, drawing away after just a second. Myles was still smiling as he drew back, Jango dropping his hand. While Myles tapped at the commlink embedded in his kom’rk, no doubt messaging Kal and Walon about the patrols and making sure they kept an eye on the Jetiise before asking about the Young’s location (and, therefore, Jaster’s location), Jango took another moment to just… breathe.

This was still… a lot, but… Well, both as Mand’alor’e, and as aliit, they would… figure things out. And whatever happened, whatever might come next, it would all be worth it just to have Jaster back again.

Once Jango had truly calmed, he felt steady enough to face people who weren’t Myles, and he found that thinking was so much easier than it had been when he’d been busy panicking, of course. And then, a simple idea finally occurred to him.

They’d tied Jaster back into their comms channels. Though there weren’t long-range comms arrays orbiting Melida/Daan, they wouldn’t need them to reach Jaster, now. Jango, who had been ready to charge off and conduct a meticulous grid search until they found Jaster and the Young, felt more than a little silly for that, but also so relieved.

Jaster was within easy reach again—both over comms, and physically. He was here —even if he wasn’t physically here right now, not with Jango at that very moment, he was here in the more important sense, and that was… good. Wonderful, even.

Even if it was just over comms, it still settled something in Jango, soothed part of that fear he hadn’t truly been able to dispel (and likely wouldn’t, at least not in full, until he could set eyes and hands on his buir again), to hear his voice. He answered Jango’s call quickly, sounding rather cheerful.

“Jan’ika,” he said. “How did it go?”

“Well enough,” Jango said. “I’ll brief you in full when we can meet up. Tion’vaii?”

“Jate. We’re not far outside of the city, just down the road from your landing site. I’ll ping you with coordinates,” Jaster promised. “The Young are doing well enough with Silas and Rav here, but I do think it would be for the best if you can keep the initial group small. They’re still… skittish.”

“Suvari,” Jango said.

That was… understandable, even if Jango didn’t like thinking about why these ad’e were so “skittish” around adults. As promised, his HUD displayed the incoming message, the coordinates Jaster had sent, and he calmed even further when he realized how nearby Jaster actually was. Less than ten minutes of walking, two minutes if he used his sen’tra, and he would be back at Jaster’s side again. That was… good. He felt even more of his tension leave him, and Myles must have noticed, because he shot him another bright, pleased sort of smile. As he almost always did, Jango returned it reflexively, thoughtlessly, and then turned his attention back to Jaster.

“Coordinates received,” Jango confirmed. “We’ll be there in ten—we’ll head out on foot. I don’t want to draw the attention of the Jetiise and lead them right to the Young.”

“‘Lek,” Jaster agreed easily.

“I’ll bring Myles and Kal, for now,” Jango said. “And a few crates of supplies.”

“Ori’jate,” Jaster said. “Ret’, Jan’ika.”

“See you soon,” Jango said, because any variation on ret’urcye mhi, maybe we’ll meet again, would have sent him spiraling again. There was no maybe about it—he would see Jaster again in just a few minutes. He had to believe that.

With that, the call cut out, and Jango took another deep breath. Myles shot him a questioning sort of look; Jango nodded firmly, decisively, and that brought Myles’s smile right back.

“Let’s grab the supplies—two crates of rations and two of bacta and medicine, for now,” Jango said. “Then we’ll move out.”

To go meet Jaster, to see him again, Jango didn’t say. To go meet the rest of the Young, to start the real work of ending this war once and for all, he didn’t say. But he knew Myles heard it anyway, the familiar feeling of his bubbly-bright presence brushing against Jango’s once more before he withdrew, slipping his buy’ce back on.

Jango did the same, taking just one more moment to steady himself, to settle back into being Mand’alor Fett be’Haat Mando’ade. There would be time for Jango, ad be Jaster Mereel, later. But for now…

They had ad’e to look after and protect, and they had a war to win. The rest would have to wait—but they would face it together when it came, and that knowledge was more than enough for now.

The coordinates Jaster had sent led them to a farm of sorts. It was surprisingly well-hidden for how close it was to both the road and the city, the overgrown forests surrounding it helping to hide it from view and providing at least some protection. As soon as they’d picked their way through the dense trees and foliage and emerged into a field, a dilapidated, ramshackle farmhouse and barn just across the way, though… Jango stopped in his tracks, the others coming to a halt just beside him, just staring for a moment.

Ka’ra, but there were so many of them. Adiik’e, and even a few ikaad’e, were grouped together here and there in the fields, and Jango assumed that the movement he could faintly see in and around the buildings, flagged by his HUD for him, were even more of them. There had to be at least a hundred ad’e here.

Even a fair distance away, looking at the Young was… disturbing. They were all so small, so bony and pale, obviously malnourished, and more than a few were limping, all of them so filthy, and even from here, Jango could see more than a few obvious injuries, bruises and ad’e with their arms in slings…

And, perhaps even more disturbing than how they all looked was how quiet it was. Jango had never seen so many ad’e in one place and heard so little like this. Adiik’e were loud and boisterous and energetic—or, well. They were meant to be. But these children had been forced to learn that sort of silence to be able to hide, to avoid drawing attention lest they be discovered and attacked—

A little flash of light drew his attention, the familiar gleam of sunshine hitting beskar’gam, and Jango let out another whoosh of breath, wrestling the anger and horror the sight of these ad’e sparked back down. Instead, he focused on his sheer relief and joy, because that was Jaster heading towards them from the farmhouse, and Ben, Cerasi, and a dark-haired ad who hadn’t been part of the little group Jango had already met were right behind him. Clocking the nervous looks so many of the adiik’e kept darting at them, Jango quickly signaled for the others to hold as they waited for Jaster and the ad’e with him to come to them.

Jaster had put his buy’ce back on, and he didn’t make any move to take it off as he approached them, coming towards Jango first and pulling him in for a kov’nyn before repeating the gesture with Myles. Still just behind him, Ben fidgeted a bit, anxious-fear radiating so strongly from him that even Jango could feel it without having to concentrate on it, though Cerasi was just smiling faintly at them. The third ad, however, was scowling at them, eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Su’cuy,” Jaster greeted them. “You’ve met Ben and Cerasi already, and this is Mawat, another of the Young’s leaders.”

Jango nodded to the ad, grateful that he’d chosen to keep his own bucket on, not at all sure that he could’ve kept himself from making a face. Mawat couldn’t have been older than thirteen, and they were probably even younger than that, so hearing that they were one of the Young’s leaders was… Well, frankly, it was just as horrifying as the rest of what he’d seen and heard here so far.

“Jatne urcye, Mawat,” Jango said, voice coming out mercifully steady and calm. “Well met. I’m Jango, and this is Myles, and Kal.” He left off any official titles, both because of the uncertainty of it all, with both him and Jaster having a damn near equal claim to it, and because it tended to make ad’e nervous, knowing they were speaking to some sort of authority figure. That would hardly be helpful when they were still struggling to put them at ease with the rest of the Haat’ade. Mawat just nodded, still eyeing them all dubiously.

“How did it… Did you see…?” Ben asked, cutting themself off quickly. Even so, Jango knew what they were trying to ask after.

“A couple of Jetiise came to see us, ‘lek,” Jango confirmed. “It went well enough, though there are… several things we should discuss. Both with you, and with the rest of the Young.”

“Nield won’t be able to leave the tunnels just yet,” Cerasi said. “There’s been more movement from the Elders today, probably because of all of the ships landing here. I’m sure that made them nervous. But that means that someone has to stay with the others. We’ll have to catch him up later.”

“We can send messengers after,” Mawat said. “I don’t want to put anything off.”

“I agree,” Cerasi said.

“We should split up,” Kal said. “I can take the supplies and start distributing them for now—Rav and Silas can help me with that while you brief them on the situation with the Jetiise.”

“Ori’jate,” Jango said.

“Supplies?” Cerasi repeated, leaning to one side to peer around them at the crates hovering on their repulsors just behind them.

“We brought some medicine and rations for you all,” Myles said. “We’ll do a more thorough inventory later to see what we really have to work with for the rest of the campaign, but this should make a good start in getting you all back on your feet.”

“Thank you,” Cerasi said, a relieved sort of smile on their face. All three of them immediately shook their heads.

“We need no thanks for doing what is right, ad’ika,” Kal said. “Now, who can show me to those with the worst injuries and illnesses? We’d best start there, I think.”

Mawat whistled, and the effect was immediate, all of the Young looking over at them. “Rannei, Rella, Nevian!” Three of the ad’e jumped up from where they’d been sitting in the grass, handing off their project—a small animal they were skinning, by the looks of it—to three others who immediately moved in.

Not a one of them looked like they could’ve been over the age of ten, if that, and Jango had to breathe through another wave of horrified anger. He felt both Myles and Jaster leaning in closer to him in the ka’ra, no doubt having felt that, though they didn’t move physically; Ben just winced faintly, and Jango took another moment to shore up his shields again.

“These are our primary medics,” Mawat said as the three adiik’e came to stand beside them. “They brought medicine and food. Start with the worst injuries and see what they can do.”

“Okay, big brother!” one of the adiik’e said cheerfully. “C’mon, Mister. This way! Most of ‘em are in the house.” Kal spared a moment to nod to Jango, and then Jaster, before turning to follow the adiik’e, the crates following along behind him, controls synced to his kom’rk.

“We should find somewhere quieter to… talk,” Cerasi said to the rest of them, and Jango fought not to laugh, knowing it would’ve been a rough, ugly sort of noise. Somewhere quieter than this?

“The clearing?” Ben suggested, and Cerasi nodded.

“Alright,” she agreed. “This way.”

Cerasi and Ben turned away, though Mawat gestured for them to follow first, apparently unwilling to put their back to them—not that Jango could blame the ad for that. Jango started off after them, Myles’s presence beside him a reassurance and a comfort, as it always was—and only a beat later, Jaster fell in on his other side, leaning over to bump their bes’marbur’e together.

And with Myles on one side, Jaster on the other, and several of his people handling the most immediate needs of these ad’e… Well, Jango breathed that much easier, and he did his best to hold onto this calm.

Whatever was going to happen, whatever would come after this… They would deal with it when it came. At that moment, it was enough to have Jaster beside him, however impossibly, his aliit together again.

Ben.

It was such an utter relief to see Jango, Myles, and Kal, all of them standing upright, walking on their own, seemingly unharmed. Though Ben hadn’t lost so much faith in the Jedi that he thought they would just attack without asking any questions or making at least an attempt at diplomacy, given the historic relationship between Mandalorians and the Order…

Well, suffice to say that the worries he’d had before over what could happen if and when Jaster found out that he’d been a Jedi had come back to haunt him, paralleled in this situation. To know that it hadn’t come to a fight, that there hadn’t been a battle, was… good. Very good.

The rest of Ben’s fears had been subdued, at least for the most part. Though Jaster had taken it well, there had still been no guarantee as to how the rest of his people would feel about a former-Jedi Padawan in their midst. But the conversation they’d had about it earlier, brief as it had been, had gone a long way to easing those worries: Kal had been upset, even angry, but Jaster had explained when he’d returned to them ahead of the others that Kal had been angry because of what had happened to him, not because of what he was, what he had been; Myles and Jango had both been more startled than anything else, when they’d heard the truth.

“It’s just as I told you, Ben,” Jaster had said, and though he’d had his helmet on again, Ben had been able to hear the smile on his face and feel it in the Force. “They’re not going to hold that against you, not when you’re just an adiik. And besides, you never asked to be born ka’ra’tigaanla, and you were so young when you were given to the Jetii’tsad. They raised you, and no rational, reasonable being would hold it against you that you still consider the people who brought you up to be your family.”

And that had been… nice to hear, going a long way to soothing the worst of Ben’s fears. But even so, Jaster had explained that they’d told the other Haat’ade his story without giving either of his names—out of an attempt to give him a bit of privacy more than any real concerns about what would happen, how they would react, Jaster had said.

Cerasi leaned over, pressing their sides together, bringing him back to the present as she always tried to when she could tell that he’d gotten lost in his thoughts again. Ben shot her a smile and settled himself more comfortably on the ground, their little group arranging themselves in a circle in the clearing out back of the farmhouse, just out of earshot of the others, but not too far, and not too deep into the forest, either. If anything happened, if the Elders came, they could get back to the others quickly enough.

Jaster was, again, bracketed by Jango and Myles, and the three of them were facing the trio of Young: Ben, Cerasi, and Mawat. Once they’d all gotten comfortable, there was a little moment of tense, awkward silence, and Ben wondered if he should try to prompt them into beginning. But after a moment, Jango reluctantly pulled himself away from Jaster to sit up straighter, looking at the three of them.

“We’ll go over the situation with the Jetiise, first,” Jango said. “And after that, we’ll move on to the situation with… the Young.” They all nodded, and Jango nodded back. “Jate. The Jetiise came with a number of different objectives. One is largely irrelevant to you, nothing you all would need to concern yourselves with, involving a terrorist group from the Mandalore Sector we’ve had a long, bloody conflict with. They’re on the other side of the galaxy, now, and another group of Jetiise was sent to deal with them. So far away as we are here, there isn’t much any of us here can do about that now, though we did give the Jetiise intel that will be helpful to their investigation on that front.

“The second objective…” Jango trailed off, staring right at Ben, and he felt his stomach twist. He tried to keep himself still, not to squirm, and he tried to make sure his shields held, but the sharp burst of anxiety-distress he felt just had to have made it through—or maybe Jaster could just read him that well by now. Either way, he felt the now rather familiar touch of Jaster’s presence against his, just brushing up against him, inviting him to lean against him if he wanted to.

And oh, how Ben wanted to. His bond with Master Jinn had never been very strong, but Ben almost thought that the relationship between a Jedi Master and their Padawan was supposed to feel something like this, in the Force. Jaster was such a calm, controlled, steady presence, and he was so Light, and so respectful, always offering up those little touches, as if saying I’m here, if you want me to be. Any hesitation Ben might have felt over reaching back had faded so quickly, and he didn’t hesitate now, either. He reached back, letting himself lean into that steady support, and took a moment just to breathe before refocusing on Jango without pulling away from Jaster.

When he could tell that he had their attention again, Jango continued: “The Jetii I spoke to said that they came largely to find a ‘missing Padawan,’ and take you back to the Temple.” Ben started to frown, honestly confused by that—he wasn’t missing, nor was he a Padawan, not anymore. Master Jinn and, therefore, the Order had known where he was this entire time, and they had to know that he’d left. Master Jinn would have taken his lightsaber back to the Council and given it to them with word of his resignation.

But Jango didn’t pause again, and so Ben tried to put those thoughts from his mind in favor of listening to the rest of his recounting of what the Jedi had said.

“They claimed that they had no idea that the Young existed, no idea that ad’e were being hunted and killed by the adults here,” Jango said, and Ben’s frown grew a little deeper, because that made even less sense. The Young had helped Master Jinn and Ben rescue Master Tahl, and that was how Ben had met them. Master Jinn had known about the Young, and so it made no sense at all that none of the other Jedi wouldn’t have known about them.

“Though the Jetiise didn’t say as much outright, they heavily implied that they intercepted your message, and that was what had them taking a second look at the situation here.” Jango turned slightly towards Jaster, who hummed, but didn’t interrupt. “Once they heard about the Young, and the violence against ad’e occurring here, they came to find their ‘missing Padawan,’ and, if they were able to verify that the Young exist, and that what’s happening to you is real, to intervene on your behalves. The Jetiise didn’t say what evidence they found, but they made it sound as if they’re just waiting for the go-ahead from their leaders before taking further action.”

Mawat scoffed and Cerasi looked away, down at the grass, picking at a few blades. Ben felt himself frowning even harder.

“But that—” he said. “It… doesn’t make any sense. They had to have already known. My… Master Jinn and I met the Young together, and they helped us rescue Master Tahl. He knew what was happening here, and he said that if I stayed to help them, I would be disobeying Master Yoda’s direct orders—the Grand Master of the Order. They… They had to have known.”

“I can’t say one way or another,” Jango said. “The Jetii said that they were told that you chose to leave them because you were… ‘Too attached to a local girl,’ I think he said. I don’t know if they knew about the Young and just didn’t make that connection, or if they really didn’t know about any of it.”

Ben stared at Jango, feeling his pulse start to pick up, his heart pounding almost painfully in his chest, because—

“They thought I left because I was too attached to a girl?” he repeated, feeling almost dizzy, and starting to feel sick. Ben shook his head and covered his face with his hands, hunching in on himself, trying to breathe, but—

In a way, from a certain point of view… It was the truth, wasn’t it? Ben had stayed behind to help the Young, and it had been Cerasi who had sparked that decision. But… But the way Jango made it sound was…

Force. Force — Had they really believed that? Had they really believed, all this time, that Ben had abandoned the Order, his training, his family, for some fling, some girl he hardly knew? All he had ever wanted for as long as he could remember was to be a Jedi Knight, to serve the Force and the galaxy through the Jedi Order, and everyone just believed that he’d thrown it all away for an attachment?

Ben had stayed to save children who were being killed by their own parents and grandparents. And yes, he would admit that he loved Cerasi, but not— He didn’t love her that way, the way they made it sound —

Ben felt Jaster reaching for him more deliberately, then, his familiar-steady-rippling-warmth gently surrounding Ben, not trying to breach his shields, not trying to corner him, just… Well, it was almost like an embrace, and Ben couldn’t help but lean into it. He knew Jaster could feel the… the hurt, the anger, the sorrow he was feeling, and that Jango and Myles probably could, too, but he couldn’t seem to manage to bring his shields back up, to find his balance again.

Just as Ben felt Jaster around him in the Force, he felt Cerasi lean against him physically, grounding him, offering comfort, and Mawat followed a beat later, and Ben leaned into them, too. He tried to focus on them instead of himself, the feeling of Cerasi leaning up against him, one of her hands on his thigh, and Mawat’s hand on his back, and Jaster’s steady-bright-warmth around him in the Force.

Ben wasn’t sure how long they sat like that before he got himself back under control, how long it took before he felt like he could breathe again. Embarrassment overtook the swirl of other emotions then, and he knew he was blushing as he finally picked his head back up, dropping his hands, and he couldn’t quite look straight at any of the others.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You can… You can finish the rest.”

“It’s okay,” Jango said. “I’m sure this is… a lot.” Ben nodded, but didn’t say anything, not sure what he could or even should say, not sure how to explain what the Jedi had been to him, and how these lies —and what it implied about what they thought of him that those lies had been believed —made him feel.

After a few seconds, though, Jango just picked up his recounting again. “The Jetiise asked us to relay their ‘offer’ to you all,” he said. “They want to help you in your fight against the Elders. How they want to help, they didn’t say, though they did tell us that they wanted to speak to you directly about it. I’m not sure if they mean to fight for you or if they want to try negotiating with the Elders, but they did say that they want to help.”

Cerasi chuckled softly, a wry, rueful sort of sound, a soft, distant sort of sadness fluttering around her in the Force. “They tried that already,” she said. “To help. The first Jedi nearly died and the second… Well, they didn’t accomplish anything more than hurting another one of the Young, did they?”

“You should talk to them,” Ben immediately said. “You should at least see what they’re able to do to help. They… If they didn’t know, before, then… Well, I’m sure that they do mean well—”

“Do they?” Mawat said, a hard edge to his voice. “Because it sounds a lot like they just abandoned you, and this entire planet, all of the Young. They just wrote us all off, and now, suddenly, they decide they care?”

“If they really didn’t know—” Ben repeated, and Cerasi sighed and reached over to take one of his hands.

“I’m not sure how they couldn’t have known, Ben,” she said softly. “You said it yourself: your Master met us with you. He knew about us, and what we were trying to do, what we’re up against, what the Elders were doing and what they were going to do. How could none of the others have known?”

“I… I don’t know,” Ben said. “Unless… Unless Master Jinn lied to the Council, but— That shouldn’t be possible. They would be able to sense the lies—”

Unless… Unless Master Jinn had told the truth from a certain point of view.

Force, hadn’t Ben just thought to himself that saying he left the Order because he got “too attached to a local girl” was, technically, a sort of truth?

So maybe… Maybe the rest of the Order really hadn’t known. Maybe they hadn’t realized they were abandoning the Young to be killed with nothing more than determination and a failed Padawan to see them through it, until the Force had brought them Jaster, and the True Mandalorians.

But that… That made Ben feel worse, because… Well, that meant that…

Well.

“I think,” Ben said, his voice coming out softer than he’d meant it to, and his breath hitched, but he managed not to start crying, at least, “that you should at least talk to the Jedi. More help wouldn’t be… It wouldn’t be a bad thing. If they really do want to help, and they… They want to help in ways you can agree with, then… You should at least talk to them, and find out.”

“Ben…” Cerasi sighed again, and he shook his head, gently tugging his hand back from where it was still held in hers.

“I can’t—” his breath hitched again, and he cleared his throat, trying desperately not to actually look at any of them as he pushed himself to his feet. “I need to… I need… some time. E-excuse me.”

Without waiting for a response, Ben turned away and headed for the edge of the clearing, into the forest. He heard several of them calling out to him, voices overlapping, but he couldn’t, not then, he needed to be alone for a little while, because—

Because if Master Jinn had lied to the Council, if that was true, then… Then they’d all just believed that Ben had abandoned the Order, his duties, his ideals, and his future for some girl he barely knew, for some fling, some attachment.

He stumbled a little over a fallen branch, but he didn’t fall, and he didn’t stop. He kept going, deeper into the forest, towards his usual meditation spot, mostly on instinct, and his vision blurred—

Force, if the Jedi had just come for him sooner… How many of the Young might have been saved?

How many of the Young had died because the Jedi had been so ready and so willing to just… accept those lies? How many of the Young had been killed who might have been saved, if the Jedi had just come earlier?

And how many of them had been killed because the Jedi had been so ready to believe the worst of him?

How many of them had died because Ben’s own family hadn’t believed in him?

Jaster.

In the months Jaster had known Ben so far, the ad had proven to be incredibly resilient and steady. He hadn’t cried even once so far that Jaster had ever seen, not even when he and Cerasi had told him about the Young they’d lost so far, not even when Ben and Nield had had that spat and hadn’t spoken to each other for nearly two days, not even when several of the ikaad’e had gotten sick with terrible fevers and started crying for their mothers and fathers, not lucid enough to realize that those weren’t people they truly wanted to have around.

Watching and feeling him slowly fall apart as Jango spoke hurt, and Jaster ached to soothe that hurt. But Ben had asked for time, and so Jaster watched him go, and he stopped Cerasi from chasing him down, just shaking his head.

“I’ll give him twenty minutes at most, and then go after him,” Jaster said. “For now, I think we should… take a break. Why don’t you send runners to the other base? Let Nield and the rest of the Young know about the rest of the situation. If you’re going to make any decisions about the Jetiise, and their… offer, it would be best if Nield was here, too.”

Cerasi slowly nodded, though she didn’t look at him, still staring after Ben, her brow furrowed, frowning hard. “I… Yes. Alright,” she eventually said, and she finally turned to look at him, meeting his visor. “You’ll go after him?”

“I’ll give him the time he asked for,” Jaster insisted, “and if he hasn’t come back yet, then ‘lek —yes. I’ll go after him.”

“Okay,” Cerasi agreed, and then she turned to Jango. “Thank you for telling us.” He nodded a bit stiffly, and Cerasi tried for a smile, though it wasn’t very convincing. She picked herself up, Mawat going with her—and so did Myles.

“I’ll see what I can do to help the others with the supply distribution,” Myles said, and Jaster nodded. Jango hesitated for just a second, but eventually echoed the gesture. With that, Myles, Cerasi, and Mawat turned to head back towards the farm proper.

At last, Jaster had a moment alone with his ad —for the first time in months, to him, and the first time in seven years to Jango.

“Poor kid,” Jango murmured, looking out towards the edge of the little clearing where Ben had disappeared into the forest.

“He hasn’t had an easy time of it,” Jaster agreed. They lapsed into silence again for a few moments, Jango staring after Ben and Jaster studying Jango.

After another few too-long seconds, Jaster reached up to slip his buy’ce off, the motion drawing Jango’s attention back to him. Jaster smiled at him, and after another momentary hesitation, Jango followed suit. Still, neither of them said anything, just staring at each other.

Ka’ra, but it was so strange. In Jaster’s mind, Jango was still supposed to be fifteen, a brand new squad leader, not long past his verdgoten. And yet, here he was, unmistakably still Jango, but… changed. Older.

And it hadn’t even been a full day yet since they’d been reunited, but it felt like so much longer, with everything that had changed and all that had happened. But then, Jaster supposed his perception of time was—justifiably—a little skewed, now.

There were a few small scars on Jango’s face that hadn’t been there before, and Jaster wondered how he’d gotten them. He wondered how many close calls Jango had made it through to be able to be here in this moment (though he didn’t wonder if he’d had any at all; in their line of work, such things were rather a given), and Jaster felt another wave of sheer gratitude for the fact that they’d been brought back together again, nevermind the when and the where —he was just so pleased, so indescribably thankful that it had happened at all.

Still smiling, Jaster reached out to touch one of those small scars, a small line on the left side of his face, and Jango’s breath hitched when Jaster touched him, his eyes starting to turn suspiciously shiny. Jaster shifted until he could put a hand on the back of Jango’s neck, guiding him forward until their foreheads met in a kov’nyn, and Jango shuddered, though he didn’t start crying outright just yet.

“I… missed you, buir,” Jango finally said, his voice coming out soft and small. It was the most he’d sounded like the little eight-year-old adiik Jaster had first adopted in years, and so far from the grown ori’ramikad, the leader, the Mand’alor, he’d shown himself to be.

“I missed you too, Jan’ika,” he returned, neither of them moving away from each other. “Though to me, it only felt like a few months, that was still too long, in my opinion.”

“Seven karking years was definitely too long,” Jango said, a little thickly. “But I… I’m just glad I… That you…”

“So am I,” Jaster agreed when he trailed off, not needing him to finish that sentence to know what he’d meant. “You grew up without me—and ka’ra, how I wish I could’ve been there to see it, and been there for you. But I’m grateful we’re together again, now.”

“I never thought that— I thought I’d have to wait until I marched on to see you again,” Jango said, his voice cracking. “The last time I saw you, it was— I held you when you died, and then you just—”

“I know, ad’ika,” Jaster said. “I know. But I’m here, now. And I’m not planning on going anywhere, this time.”

“You’d better not,” Jango said. “I don’t think I could… do that again.”

“I don’t plan on it,” Jaster assured him again, “but you could, if you had to. Cuyi kotyc, Jango. You’ve been so strong, all this time. Manda, much as I hate knowing how much I’ve missed, I’m so thankful I got to have this at all, to see the man you’ve become. I’m so proud of you, Jan’ika.”

And that, at last, had Jango’s breath hitching again, and then the tears finally fell. Jaster shifted them so he could hold on better, Jango reaching around, finding the gaps in his beskar’gam to cling to his kute just as he always had when he’d been an adiik. The tears and the little hiccuping breaths already tugged at Jaster’s heart, but between that and what he could sense in the ka’ra, Jango’s shields crumbling as he lost control… That swirl of emotions, so tangled together and intertwined that it was hard for Jaster to sort through them all—gratitude and relief mixing with fear and anger and something else Jaster couldn’t quite identify—had his own eyes tearing up.

Jaster reached back in the ka’ra, letting Jango sink into him that way just as he was physically. There weren’t any more words needed just then: Jango needed to get it all out, and Jaster was content to sit here and hold him up in both senses until he was finished.

They would have time for the rest later; the title, his questions about what had happened these last seven years, his needling about why Jango and Myles had yet to say the riduurok —it could all wait.

For now—this was enough.

Eventually, after Jango had calmed and embarrassment had overtaken his upset, he’d claimed a need to go check in with the others, mostly as an excuse to escape, and to give Jaster a moment to go after Ben. Jaster hadn’t pushed; the Jango with him here and now might have been seven years older than the one he remembered, but Jaster still knew him, and he could read him well enough to know when he’d pushed enough.

There were still important things they needed to talk about, and sooner rather than later—the title, namely. Jaster wasn’t opposed to retaking it, nor was he opposed to stepping aside to let Jango and the Haat’ade continue on as they had been. Jaster had always known, deep in his bones, with a surety that told him that the feeling came from the ka’ra and not just parental sentiment, that Jango would succeed him. He’d never thought that he would live to see it, because generally speaking, Mand’alor’e were only replaced when they died, usually in battle, but it wouldn’t have been the first time in their history they’d had a retirement instead of a death leading to a succession; nor would it have been the first time a sitting Mand’alor had stepped aside for a predecessor who’d been thought dead and gone who had later turned back up in the galaxy (though it would be the first time that had been due to time travel, as far as Jaster knew). There was enough precedent either way that both paths were possible, both were open to them.

But either way, that wasn’t a choice for him to make alone, and whatever they all decided to do, they would have to figure it out together. Still, even if they all insisted on Jaster retaking the title, there was simply no way he would be willing to do so now, not when he was missing seven years’ worth of background, and certainly not when they were about to be in the thick of an important campaign. A lack of clear hierarchy on the battlefield ended in conflicting orders and got people killed, of course. Jaster made a mental note to make sure he spoke to Jango and the rest of the officers with them before they actually began their work in earnest tomorrow, and then he set those thoughts aside for now.

A glance at the chrono displayed on his HUD—now corrected to display the actual date, the correct local time, and the accurate local time in Keldabe back in Manda’lase, after he’d been synced back into the comms system used by the rest of the Haat’ade —showed that it had been nearly twenty minutes. Hopefully, that would be enough time for Ben to calm down, but not quite enough for him to start stewing over it. Nodding to himself, Jaster pushed himself up and started after Ben.

He found the ad not too far into the forest, seated on a mossy stone, his legs pulled up to his chest, hunched in on himself in a way that made Jaster’s back twinge sympathetically just to see it. Jaster reached out in the ka’ra as he approached, just a light little brush against him, warning him that he was nearby but not prying, not peering any deeper than the surface of Ben’s presence. He didn’t feel nearly so… turbulent as he had before, the swirl of emotions gone, replaced by a deep but steady sadness and hurt with the faintest hint of distant anger beneath them, and even just the barest brush against him, sensing that, made Jaster’s heart ache. He wondered if the ad would’ve taken the news better coming from him, but he hadn’t wanted to relay the little he’d known—no doubt that would only have inspired questions he wouldn’t have been able to answer; it was better, he thought, that Ben had heard all of it at once rather than piecemeal from two different sources.

Jaster didn’t immediately say anything, just went to stand close enough to catch Ben’s eye, gesturing at the large rock he was sitting on when Ben looked up. Ben hesitated, but eventually nodded, and Jaster sat beside him. For a little while, the two of them just stared out at the forest, hearing the distant calls of a pack of wolves, the rustling of leaves with the wind in the trees, and the faintest sound of running water from the stream nearby they used as one of their sources of fresh water.

Finally, Jaster decided Ben was calm and steady enough, and broke the silence first. “Me’vaar ti gar, Ben? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Ben murmured. Jaster just hummed, not truly believing that, and hopeful that if he just stayed quiet, Ben would eventually keep talking. Thankfully, he did: “The Jedi… They’re my family. They’re the only family I’ve ever really had, and… Well, hearing about what they thought, about Melida/Daan and the Young, what they thought about me, was…”

Ben trailed off, shaking his head, and when Jaster glanced over at him, he found Ben had squeezed his eyes shut. Still, he didn’t interrupt, feeling as though Ben had something more to add. Yet again, he was right.

“For as long as I can remember, all I’ve ever wanted was to be a Jedi Knight,” Ben said. “And so many of them knew that —or… I thought they did. But now, hearing how readily and how easily they were all willing to believe that I just… threw it all away for something so trivial as an attachment to a girl, I… They’re my family, but it’s… It’s like they didn’t even know me at all.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaster said. “I’m sure that has to hurt.” Ben hummed a little noise of agreement and then lapsed into silence again, reverting to staring out at the forest in front of them; yet again, Jaster just waited him out. This time, it took a few long minutes before he said anything else.

“I know Jango said that the Jedi told him that they want to take me back to the Temple, but I… I don’t know if I want to go back,” Ben said, the last bit rushed, as if he thought if he didn’t get the words out then and there, he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to say them at all.

And Jaster… Much as he really didn’t want to have to say this, he had to do what was best for Ben. What he wanted, what he was hoping for, didn’t matter—Ben did.

“I think,” Jaster said slowly, “that you should take your own advice, Ben. You should at least talk to the Jetiise. Even if you choose not to return, in the end, closure can’t hurt, and they might have some explanation Jango and the others couldn’t understand, not being Jetiise themselves. And besides… After you left, Jango told me that the Jetiise said they brought something they thought you would want returned to you: your kadau, your… ah, Jetii’kad? …the lasersword?”

That drew a bit of a chuckle out of Ben, still thick and wet, but a laugh nonetheless. “My lightsaber,” he said, and Jaster nodded. “I… Alright. I suppose I… I’ll talk to them. I can’t… I can’t promise anything else, either way, but I’ll… try talking to them.”

“Ori’jate. Even if it doesn’t change how you feel, and even if it hurts more in the short term, I think you would be glad for it later,” Jaster said. Ben just nodded, and Jaster decided to take a bit of a chance. “Have you thought about… what you would do, if you don’t go back to the Jetiise?”

Ben shrugged a bit jerkily, still staring off into the distance, not looking at Jaster. “I know the Young—especially Nield and Cerasi… They would be happy if I stayed with them. But I… I may not be a Jedi anymore, but I still listen to the Force, and… I’m not meant to stay here—not forever, anyway. I have a feeling that I… I might very well come back someday, but I’m not meant to stay here. But what I would actually do, where I would go, if I don’t go back to the Temple… I don’t know. But the Force provides. If… If that’s the choice I end up making, then… I’m sure it will show me some path.”

Jaster couldn’t help himself, startled into a laugh. Ben finally turned to him, blinking at him. He shook his head a bit in exasperation and then reached up to slip his buy’ce back off, turning until he could actually look at Ben. The ad darted a look over his face, lips twitching in a more genuine, more amused sort of smile, and Jaster guessed he had helmet hair again.

“I think the ka’ra, your Force, already did provide you with another path, ad’ika,” Jaster said, and Ben blinked at him. “I still have no idea how to explain what happened, or even what actually happened, beyond ‘the ka’ra.’ But what I do know is that it brought me to the Young—and straight to you. And I’m not meant to stay here, either.”

Ben blinked at him, his presence sparking with a something like fear tangling oddly with hope, brows furrowing lightly. “What are you saying?”

“If you do eventually choose not to return to the Jetiise, you’ve already said you don’t think you’re meant to stay here,” Jaster said. “I’d be more than glad to take you with me, when we leave—if that’s what you choose, in the end.”

He cracked his shields a little further, letting Ben feel his sincerity, the genuine desire and hope that Ben might choose to stay with him, with his aliit, with the Haat’ade. Ben’s eyes went a little wide, his breath catching.

“You want to… take me with you,” he repeated, as if he was having trouble understanding or believing it, and Jaster nodded. “To Mandalore.”

Jaster nodded again. “When all of this is over, if that’s what you decide you want, then ‘lek —yes.”

Ben blinked at him for another few moments, that edge of fear to his presence growing that much stronger, but accompanied by a conflicting sense of pleasure and that same hope. Jaster thought he could guess at the reason behind that fear, the worries the ad still had in the back of his mind over how Mando’ade would take to a former- Jeti’ika, but only time and exposure would show him that he had no real reason to be afraid of that. The Haat’ade, knowing even the little they did about his situation, were already heavily biased in his favor.

“…oh,” Ben breathed. “I… Thank you, Jaster. I… That’s…”

“I don’t need an answer now,” Jaster gently interrupted him. “Just… think about it, ‘lek? Talk to the Jetiise, first, and see how that goes, and what you might want to do from there. I just wanted you to know that it’s an option—I wanted you to know that you are wanted.”

Then, in a parallel to how that conversation with Jango had just gone, Ben teared up. Again, just like Jango, it was because he was so touched, so overwhelmed —if not in a bad way—by what Jaster had just told him. It seemed he had an unfortunate knack for that, though he couldn’t bring himself to regret his words in either instance. They were things that needed to be said, things both ad’e had needed to hear.

He wasn’t truly surprised when Ben looked away, sniffling softly. Jaster just reached out with another reassurance in the ka’ra, as he’d taken to doing, offering up all the warm-affection-pride-joy Ben had come to inspire in him as he’d gotten to know the ad, and that—again, unsurprisingly—pushed him over the edge, those tears actually starting to fall.

Jaster was surprised when, this time, Ben was the one who reached for him physically. He turned towards Jaster, leaning forward until he could tuck his face just so into his neck, just above his beskar’gam. Still, surprised as he was, he was a buir through and through, and it was instinct that had him gently wrapping his arms around Ben, one hand cupping the back of his head as—yet again, just like Jango—Ben reached out, finding the gaps in his beskar’gam to fist his kute, clinging to him.

There still weren’t any words needed for a moment like this—just comfort. And that was something Jaster knew well how to provide. Shifting ever-so-slightly until they were both settled more comfortably on their mossy stone perch, Ben half in his lap, Jaster just held him and hummed softly. He kept his shields down, letting Ben’s morass of overwhelming, clashing feelings wash over him, battering against him. All of that fear, the hurt, the anger, and that deep sorrow, so sharp and so heavy, pained Jaster to feel it, but he tried not to let that show.

All of that was, at least, tempered by sparks of relief and hope —and as the minutes ticked by, those feelings grew slowly but steadily stronger. Jaster started to smile, those particular emotions calling forth an answering hope in him.

But no matter what happened, no matter what choice Ben eventually made… They would face that when it came, and they would… figure things out. Ben was so strong, and he would be alright—Jaster intended to make sure of it.

Chapter Text

Jaster.

With the arrival of the Haat’ade, the Young had been given their first real reprieve since their part in the war had begun. The Haat’ade had secured a wide perimeter, providing a large buffer around the farm and a clear path between that and their initial landing zone, allowing the Young to call in the majority of their scouts, only a few staying on patrol, accompanying the Haat’ade to help them get their bearings, and show them the lay of the land. And they’d successfully gotten messengers to the other Young down in the catacombs, and Nield had sent back a reply that he would be joining them in the morning.

It had all the makings of a good, quiet night—something the ad’e desperately needed. Though Jaster could tell that the Haat’ade wanted to throw a party, their jubilation and pleasure and sheer joy just to have him back again heavy enough to be easily felt even with his shields reinforced some (and focusing on those emotions had helped them all to redirect themselves from the sheer rage they all felt on behalf of the Young—the ad’e didn’t need that from them, not now, and so they had pushed it away for the moment. Ad’e were observant, and these children were already wary of adults, and so all of them were mindful of the need to stay calm and steady around them and tried not to let that anger out, just as Jaster had since he’d first encountered the Young), they were mindful of the facts that they were just about to begin a campaign, and thus needed to stay sharp and conserve supplies, and—far more importantly—the ad’e needed the peace and quiet.

By the time Jaster made it back to the farm proper with Ben in tow, more of the Haat’ade had come. They’d kept the group relatively small, just a squad’s worth, and several of them had set up a firepit, cooking up something for the ad’e, who seemed to be drifting ever nearer to them, drawn in by the delicious smells. Several others were tending to some of the more seriously injured of the Young, and Jaster recognized two of them as baar’ur’e.

Out of habit, Jaster scanned over the group with more than his eyes, his sense of the ka’ra quickly leading him towards the person he was looking for. Jango was standing with a little group just outside of the farmhouse itself, Myles and Kal on either side of him, and Cerasi and Mawat in front of them. Jaster started to frown as he took in their postures, tense and standoffish, the ka’ra lightly swirling around them. Jaster thought they might well be arguing, though about what, he couldn’t even begin to guess.

“We should go check on them,” Ben said, either following his gaze or that feeling around the little group. Jaster hummed his agreement, squeezing lightly where he still had an arm thrown around Ben’s shoulders, pressing the ad into his side.

All five looked up as they approached, falling silent well before they were truly in earshot, since Jaster still had his buy’ce off, held under the arm that wasn’t around Ben, and couldn’t make use of the enhanced audials in it, and he was mostly-deaf besides, though his implanted hearing aids helped with that. Jango and Myles had both put their buy’ce’se back on, though Kal still had his off, too, and so his was the only smile Jaster could actually see as they neared them, though he could feel the flutters of relief-pleasure-joy-happiness from all three of them at the sight of him alone yet again.

“Me’vaar ti gar?” Jaster asked, coming to stand beside Cerasi. “Everything alright?” Several of them tried to answer at once, voices overlapping and answers conflicting.

“‘Lek,” Myles said.

“Nayc,” Jango answered at the same time.

“No,” Mawat said, the third voice in the chorus, apparently in agreement with Jango on that point. Jaster’s eyebrows rose as he looked over each of them, and Jango sighed, shaking his head.

Mawat huffed and folded their arms over their chest. “They don’t want to let us fight.”

“Ah,” Jaster sighed. And ‘lek, he had seen that coming already. Even before he’d realized that it was the Haat’ade who had heard that message and answered the call for help, Jaster had known that if and when any Mando’ade showed up on Melida/Daan, this argument would become inevitable.

The age of majority for Mando’ade was technically thirteen, their young considered adults in the most important ways after passing their verdgoten’e; after that, they were allowed to make larger decisions for themselves, like what trade or skill they wanted to spend their apprenticeship learning. But before that… Ad’e as young as eight were taken into the field, into battle, that much was true, but those engagements and missions were chosen very carefully, and it was always at least a one-to-one ratio of adults with the ad’e, and usually more like three adults to a single ad, at least that young. Jaster’s buir had taken him on his first assignment at eight, a simple bounty, and Jango had been eight when he’d become a blooded warrior with that Kyr’tsad attack on his maan’aliit and their farm. But Jango’s first engagement was certainly not the norm, and even then, he’d had Jaster and the rest of his squad looking after him.

Ideally, Jaster would’ve liked to have barred any of the Young who weren’t at least thirteen from the fighting from the start of his time here—but, had he done that, it would have left them with fewer than twenty of them to work with. And given that the Young weren’t content to simply defend themselves, determined to strike back and do their best to cripple the Elders’ ability and means to wage war on each other, and on them, to force an end to the conflict at last, that wouldn’t have been nearly enough. They needed patrols and sentries kept around the farmhouse and in the catacombs alike while others among their fighters left for those missions, and they needed enough fighters to go on those missions, and they needed runners and messengers who could go back and forth between the two groups of the Young, and they had to be capable of defending themselves.

There had simply been too much to be done and too many of them needed for Jaster to try to insist on that restrictive an age limit—not to mention that the ad’e would never have accepted that, and it only would have served to weaken their trust and faith in him. So, much as he’d hated to do it, Jaster had compromised with Cerasi, Nield, Mawat, and Ben, in the end. He’d tried for ten, first, but after Ben had managed to wrangle the little detail out of him that eight-year-old Mando’ade were allowed out in the field in certain circumstances, the others had pushed until Jaster caved, and that was what they had settled on.

It didn’t surprise him that the rest of the Haat’ade weren’t exactly fond of that themselves. Manda, every instinct Jaster had had been screaming at him from the very beginning that these were just ad’e, and many true adiik’e, and none of them should have been fighting at all. He’d had to set those feelings aside, both to preserve the Young’s trust in him and their willingness to work and compromise with him, and because of the practical considerations of the numbers they’d needed—but now that the Haat’ade were here in force…

“They didn’t like the compromise we agreed on, either,” Cerasi said.

“To be fair,” Jaster said, “neither do I. I understand it was necessary, but now that we have more help, so many trained verd’e…”

Mawat scowled at him, and then turned that scowl on Jango. “This is our planet,” he snapped. “We are the ones who’ve gotta live here, and we are the ones who’ve been fighting for it—”

“And as admirable as that is, as brave as you’ve all been,” Jango said, his voice tight, but carefully, deliberately even, “you never should have had to. You never should have been put in this position in the first place.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that we were, and we are,” Cerasi said, sounding more tired than anything else.

“You let anyone who’s already passed their… verdgoten?” Ben said, looking up at Jaster for confirmation that he’d gotten the word right, and he nodded despite the sinking feeling he had about where Ben was going with this. Ben nodded in return and then looked back to Jango, Myles, and Kal. “You let anyone who’s already passed their verdgoten make their own decision about whether or not to take part in any given battle, don’t you?”

Jaster felt a burst of realization from Cerasi, though she remained remarkably still and impassive physically. Still, that was enough to have him biting back a curse, knowing that she had just realized where Ben was going with this.

“‘Lek —yes,” Myles said. “Which they take at thirteen, and that’s at the youngest. It’s not uncommon to put it off until fourteen or even fifteen, though.”

Ben hummed. “And a verdgoten is some sort of challenge that proves that the person undertaking it is capable of protecting themselves and has learned basic survival skills, isn’t it?”

“‘Lek,” Myles said again, accompanied by yet another flare of understanding, this time accompanied by dread, coming from both Jango and Kal. They, too, had now realized what argument Ben was trying to make.

“Most of the Young have already met those criteria,” Ben said. He turned, looking towards one of the little clusters of ad’e loosely grouped around the firepit and the Haat’ade still hard at work on dinner for them all. This particular group included several eight-year-olds, and Jaster’s eyes fell shut, already knowing what Ben was about to say. “Delia is eight. Already, she’s seen three battles and killed at least six Elders that we’ve confirmed so far in self-defense, and probably more than that. Maari is nine; she’s small and stealthy, not to mention a natural with explosives. I lost count of how many bombs she’s snuck into the Elders’ positions to place, and I know she’s had to kill guards on her way in and out more than a few times. And Nevian is eight, and he—”

“Ad,” Kal sighed, interrupting him. “Ke’pare —stop. I understand the point you’re trying to make, but our point stands: none of you should ever have been put in positions where you were forced to do those things in the first place. Yes, Mando’ade begin training our ad’e young, but they’re never alone, not that young. They have trusted adult spotters with them the entire time—”

“And wouldn’t you all qualify as ‘adult spotters?’” Ben said. Kal opened his mouth to respond, a sharp burst of tangled, complicated, conflicting feelings flaring around him—fear, anger, and regret among them, though there was also a sense of admiration there, and though Jaster wished he didn’t understand that particular pastiche of emotions so well, it was a combination he’d felt more than a few times himself since he’d come to be with the Young. And Jaster knew this had to be doubly hard on Kal—after all, he’d been the Young, once upon a time, an ad abandoned to fight for their own survival in an active warzone. This had to hit close to home for him in particular.

But, after just a moment, Kal snapped his mouth shut again, shaking his head and reaching up to scrub a hand over his face, stopping himself from letting loose whatever retort he’d wanted to.

“You’re not going to be able to stop them all,” Jaster said, grim and matter-of-fact. “They’ll find their way to the fighting if they have a mind to, and it will be better for them to have orders to follow and eyes on them than to have them all sneak off to join the battles without our knowledge. I hate it as much as you do, but I know these ad’e well enough by now to guarantee that they won’t be convinced to stand down.”

Jango let out a little growl, anger-frustration turning the edges of his presence so sharp, but he reigned himself back in a moment later when Ben winced faintly.

“Anyone under ten will stay at base and take up defensive positions,” Jango said, and Jaster could tell that how flat his voice came out wasn’t all just due to his vocorder. “And anyone younger than thirteen will have one of the Haat’ade assigned to them as a spotter.”

“They won’t like that,” Mawat said.

“That’s essentially what Jaster’s been doing,” Cerasi said with a shrug. “It’ll just be one-on-one instead of him alone trying to look after a whole squad in the field.”

“Cerasi,” Mawat snapped. Cerasi just sighed, shaking her head, her shoulders slumping, that weariness around her growing heavier. Her familiar fire was still there, the determination and hope that had kept her and so many of the others going this way for so long, but it was dulled down a bit more than usual by exhaustion.

“I’m tired of losing people,” Cerasi said. “I’m tired of people dying, and especially the Young. We all have the right to fight for our home and the lives we want, I agree with that, but if there’s a way to let them do it while minimizing the risk of more of us being killed, we should take it.”

Mawat’s scowl grew that much deeper. “We’ll talk about it when Nield gets here tomorrow,” he said. Cerasi’s face tightened, but she just nodded mutely. With that, Mawat turned and stormed off, heading for the farmhouse and disappearing inside. They all watched him go, several long moments of awkward, tense, heavy silence descending on them.

“He doesn’t trust very easily,” Cerasi eventually said without turning back to them, as if she felt compelled to offer some explanation on his behalf. “Especially not adults.”

“Suvari —I understand,” Jango said, and the ka’ra around him was still swirling lightly, but he’d either calmed himself or reinforced his shields well enough that his own upset wasn’t quite so loud as it had been. “None of you are going to agree to letting us get you somewhere safe, away from the fighting, while we take care of this mess for you, are you?”

He sounded more resigned than angry; Cerasi finally turned to look at him, meeting his visor. “No.”

Jango sighed, and Kal swore quietly. Myles was too quiet and still, both physically and in the ka’ra, which was a sure sign that he was furious.

“I have to insist on our terms,” Jango said. “Those under ten stay away from the worst of it, holding fallback positions closer to base. And all of you who join us will have an assigned spotter.”

“If it was up to me alone, I would agree to that,” Cerasi said. “But like Mawat said: we’ll have to talk about it when Nield gets here tomorrow.”

Jango nodded stiffly. Cerasi tried for a smile, but the expression came out more like a weary grimace than the grin she’d been going for.

“Dinner, first,” Jaster said, “and then I think you should all take advantage of the extra help to get a good night’s rest. The Haat’ade can take the watch.”

“Yes, alright,” Cerasi sighed. “And tomorrow?”

“Once the others arrive, we’ll get all of you medical checks,” Jango said. “The baar’ur’e —the medics—were able to make a good start treating all of you, and they’ve already taken the worst cases back with them, but you all need more thorough check-ups. After that… We’ll talk about what you want to do, what our strategy will be for this campaign. Though we should hold off on making any final decisions until you talk to the Jetiise, to see what role, if any, you want to allow them to take in all of this.”

“Okay,” Cerasi agreed. “It’s a plan, then.” She turned to Ben, expression still tight, worry seeping into the ka’ra around her. “The messengers Nield sent back… He said he’ll talk to the Jedi, though he couldn’t promise anything else. Do you want to be there?”

“I think I have to be,” Ben said, and it didn’t escape Jaster’s notice that that wasn’t a yes. He would do what he felt he had to, even if he didn’t want to. Jaster knew Cerasi realized that as well, from the look she gave him, but she eventually just nodded.

“Alright,” she said. “I’ll go get the Littles for dinner.”

With that, Cerasi turned to follow after Mawat, heading straight for the farmhouse. Yet again, they all watched her go in silence until she disappeared through the door.

“The scouting parties we sent out earlier are ready for their reports,” Jango said, voice still a little flatter and rougher than it had been. “I should get back to the others for now.”

Jaster nodded, and Jango nodded back. He stared in silence again for a few beats—more, this time, at Ben than at Jaster. The ad, who hadn’t fully pulled away from Jaster throughout that conversation, sank a little more into Jaster’s side as if shrinking away from the blank gaze of Jango’s buy’ce.

“I think I’ll stay here, for now,” Kal said, prompting Jango to tear his gaze away from Jaster and Ben. “You two go on.”

“We’ll forward the written report summaries,” Jango promised. With one last, lingering look at Jaster, who just smiled reassuringly at him, Jango nodded again and turned to leave. Myles immediately followed, still so quiet, his shields up high, and moving a little stiffly. Jaster knew they tried to avoid more than light sparring while on a campaign, just in case, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he heard tomorrow that Myles went a few rounds with several of the other Haat’ade, trying to excise that anger he was obviously feeling.

A whistle sounded, then, the now-familiar signal that it was mealtime. Jaster squeezed Ben lightly and then pulled away, dropping his arm, and he nodded towards the firepit.

“Go on, Ben,” he said. “We’ll come around in a little while.”

Ben managed a smile for him, and he reached out to Jaster in the ka’ra a little more confidently, a touch more firmly, than he had before. He’d always seemed so hesitant to be the one to reach out first, though he’d also always accepted Jaster’s offers of comfort and support, whether that be through physical gestures or the ka’ra.

Jaster’s answering smile was more genuine, then, and easier. He pulsed a bit of warmth-reassurance towards Ben, who took just a beat to bask in it, soaking up those feelings. Darting another look at Kal, eyeing him consideringly, not quite warily, Ben took off towards the firepit and the offered food now being passed out to the ad’e.

“Now that we finally have a moment,” Kal said, drawing Jaster’s attention back to him, “we really should… talk.”

“‘Lek,” Jaster agreed. He clapped Kal’s shoulder and then nodded towards the forest and the clearing they’d used earlier. “We do have much to discuss.”

Kal.

Kal was well aware that some people found him… abrasive. Some thought he was cold, even harsh, and more than a few of the newer, younger recruits he’d helped to train said he had to be “unfeeling.” But oh, how far that was from the truth—and how much easier all of this would have been if he really was “unfeeling.” As it was, Kal was feeling far too much, right along with the rest of the Haat’ade.

When the Korda 6 job had come up, Kal had been on leave. Jaster had insisted on it, one of the many stints of personal leave Jaster had forced him to take to be with his family—just one of numerous attempts to “work on” his marriage. At the time, Kal had been grateful for that, because Ilippi had started talking about leaving again, and their fights had gotten more frequent and more vicious, and they all centered around Kal’s work.

But after he’d heard what happened there… Kal had regretted that he hadn’t been there more than anything. He regretted that he hadn’t been there for Jaster, to watch his back, to cover him as he always had before. And he’d regretted not being there for Jango in the immediate aftermath of Jaster’s death, not being there to support him when the title and leadership of their entire people was dropped on his head entirely too early. Shab, Jango had been so young, and it wasn’t like Jaster had been old. Though Kal had quietly agreed with Jaster when he’d confided in him that he just knew Jango would succeed him, they’d all thought that they would have more time.

Still, they were Mando’ade, and they were stubborn and resilient above all else. Though Montross’s betrayal and Jaster’s subsequent death had held the potential to destroy the Haat’ade, they’d made sure it hadn’t— Jango had made sure it hadn’t. Even as young as he had been then, he’d learned enough from Jaster and had good instincts of his own. The Haat’ade had followed him even so young as he had been because of his honor, courage, and the skill on the battlefield he’d shown even back then, and those traits had only grown over time. Jango had never quite had Jaster’s head for politics, but just like Jaster had, Jango knew when he needed to seek help—and they’d all made sure that sole ruler or not, Jango knew that he didn’t have to do any of it alone. They were his people, and they would and did follow him—but they also helped him.

Jango as Mand’alor be Haat Mando’ade had done well for himself and his people, and it hadn’t taken very long, all told, for the Haat’ade to settle into a new normal after Korda 6. They’d all been so hurt and so angry, of course, but they were Mando’ade, and their line of work meant that all of them had lost people violently before. They carried Jaster with them in memory, in the Codex, in the stories they told of him, and in their Remembrances, but they had also moved on under their new Mand’alor.

But Jango as Jaster’s ad… That had been harder on them all. Jango, mindful of his new title and the necessary burden of appearances, hadn’t let just anyone see it, but ka’ra, had he struggled after Jaster’s death. Losing a buir was always hard, but to have it happen that way, without even a body left to them to put to a proper pyre, and with it being the second time Jango had lost his aliit… Well, Kal had been one of the select few Jango had ever allowed to see him in his actual mourning, and in the first year or two after Jaster’s death, there had been more than a few nights when Jango hadn’t been able to sleep, and so neither had Kal, instead holding him as he cried—and then, in the morning, they would be back to their official lives, just Mand’alor and Haat’ad again.

Over the years, even that had gotten better. The passing of time always had a way of easing grief and other hurts, and eventually, Jango had been able to talk about Jaster, to tell stories about him and speculate on what he might’ve thought about various developments in Manda’lase and the galaxy at large, without tearing up. He never forgot his buir or what had happened to him, and Kal sometimes worried that Jango was a little too focused on getting his vengeance against Tor Vizsla, but he couldn’t argue with Jango’s claim that the best way to ensure the safety and future of their people was to put down Kyr’tsad once and for all.

Jango had been broken by Jaster’s death, ‘lek, but he’d picked himself up and pieced himself back together. He wasn’t quite the same as he had been before that, but such hardships had a way of doing that to people. Hels, Kal couldn’t even have claimed to be quite the same after Jaster’s death, either. But they’d all healed, and life had moved on.

Now, though… Here Jaster was again, right in front of them, solid and real and very much alive. And they were all ecstatic, of course they were—this was truly a gift from the ka’ra, from the Manda.

But, frankly, none of them really knew what to do.

Kal himself had been damn near giddy when he realized the truth of it all, when he’d realized that the message that had so enraged them all for having used Jaster Mereel against them was real, that it was him, somehow resurrected and flung through time and space to be returned to them at last. Still, though, Kal was a practical sort of man, and he was well used to being the one to bring the unpleasant but necessary topics and questions to the fore.

And right now, they had many of those on their hands.

Jaster, at least, seemed to be more willing to discuss those things and settle the most important matters than Jango was. Jango was still reeling from all of this—understandably so, between Jaster and the Young alike, but also an imbalance they couldn’t really afford, not in their Mand’alor. Kal would have to press the issue if he didn’t get his head on straight sooner than later, though he thought Myles had already started the work of steering him back in the right direction, back towards the steadiness they all needed. They could deal with all of the emotional consequences later, but there were far more important things to be dealt with first. They were all unimportant compared to the fate and future of their people—and the fates and futures of the ad’e they were now here to fight for.

One way or another, they would have to settle things soon.

Jaster led him away from the farm and into the forest a little ways to a clearing—not too far away, of course. They were still close enough that they would hear any shouting or blaster fire, and they would know to head back if there was some emergency. Jaster settled himself down in the grass, setting his bucket beside him, and Kal followed suit, pulling his own off. Jaster smiled, his eyes roving over Kal’s face, no doubt cataloging all of the changes seven years had wrought, and the smile turned a little bittersweet.

Kal studied him in return. He looked exactly the same as Kal remembered, and it still felt like he was looking at a ka’ra- damned ghost, a specter of the past come back to haunt them—but he wasn’t. However impossible, it was real — he was real, flesh and blood. He gave himself and Jaster a few minutes to just stare at each other; Kal, for his part, took those two minutes to work through the latest flashes of mingled elation and fear his reappearance had sparked, and Jaster took those two minutes to work through his amazement and pleasure and happiness and the sort of mourning he was doing, the grief that he held for all that he’d missed.

Neither of them had fully come to terms with everything when Kal decided it was time to move on—that would take a lot longer than just a few minutes, reconciling… all of this. But, as he’d just been thinking to himself, the more important matters truly wouldn’t, couldn’t, wait.

“It’s good to have you back,” Kal said, voice coming out just a bit rough, and Jaster’s smile turned more genuine again.

“It’s good to be back,” he said. “Though it only felt like a few months to me, that’s still longer than I’ve been separated from all of you in decades —and it was far too long.”

Kal laughed, an almost unpleasant sort of bark, and shook his head. “Trust me, vod, it was definitely too long,” he said.

“Jango said much the same,” Jaster said. “And that’s what you wanted to talk to me about, ‘lek? Jango, the Haat’ade, and the title.”

“‘Lek,” Kal agreed. “Jango hasn’t been willing to have this particular discussion yet, but it really shouldn’t wait. Knowing, at least, where you stand will help.”

Jaster shrugged easily. “Whatever we all decide to do, whatever happens, making unnecessary changes in the command structure right before starting a major campaign would be jare’la, bal dini’la. You’ve all spent the last seven years working together, under Jango, and there’s no reason that should change for this campaign.”

Kal nodded. He’d known Jaster would agree on that much, at least—he was far too practical and had far too much experience not to realize that.

But what really concerned him was what would come after this campaign.

“And, as I said,” Jaster continued without pausing, without giving Kal a real chance to respond, “it’s been seven years. I was able to get a brief summary of the most major galactic events in that time from Ben, but it didn’t include anything about Manda’lase. A Mand’alor who doesn’t know the state of their own people would make a very poor leader. I’m not opposed to retaking the title, but that wouldn’t be happening immediately after this campaign, either. It will take time for me to learn the lay of the land again. But I’m also not opposed to Jango continuing in the role—from what I can see and what I feel in the ka’ra, he’s done well.”

“He has,” Kal agreed. “And normally, I’d be pleased by your pragmatism, willing to take either path. But in this case… If you don’t have an opinion either way, that’s going to put the bulk of the decision on Jango. And I already know what he would choose. He would step aside for you in a heartbeat—even if it wasn’t the best course. In all honesty, I don’t even have an opinion—I’m not sure which decision is the right one. But I know there’s only one Jango would make, if it was left entirely up to him.”

Jaster’s smile slipped, starting to slide into a frown. “It’s his title, and it has been for years,” Jaster said. “‘Lek, of course I have a claim to it, but I don’t necessarily see a need to exercise that claim—not when he’s done so well at the helm. I can feel that, the rightness of it in the ka’ra —and I always knew he would succeed me, you know that. Not to mention the hard evidence I have of how many of you he’s kept alive all these years, and how many new verd’e have felt called to join the Haat’ade under his leadership.”

“He was too young,” Kal said bluntly. “‘Lek, he did very well, and he’s done right by all of us. But the way it happened, and how young he was… He knows he was too young, and that’s… haunted him ever since. It left him with doubts, even now.”

Jaster’s frown grew a little deeper. “I’ll have to talk to him,” he said. “Especially after I learn a little more, and have more knowledge to draw from and specific examples to cite. If he does try to defer to me, and that doubt is the only real reason, then I’m not going to accept.”

“Jate,” Kal said. “Though, as I said—I’m not sure which choice is the right one. I’m not even sure there is a ‘right choice’ in this situation—just… different paths. But I’m also not sure how we would choose, besides letting you work it out amongst yourselves.”

Jaster shrugged again. “Well, if all else fails, we can call a moot when we get back to Manda’lase,” he said. “Let our people make the choice.”

“I suppose there is that,” Kal agreed, starting to relax a bit now that the most important things were out there between them.

“How has Jango been?” Jaster asked.

“He’s better these days than he was before,” Kal said bluntly. “You know what it’s like to lose a buir, especially in battle, but to have lost you like that, without even a body… It was hard on him, and he didn’t have as much time and space to grieve as he really needed, taking the title at the same time. But he managed, and it got better. Time helped more than anything, but Myles also helped quite a bit.”

“And so did you, I’m sure,” Jaster said, and Kal huffed, starting to smile again himself. Jaster leaned forward, a certain glint in his eyes that made Kal want to groan without even knowing what he would say next. “But speaking of Myles… They haven’t said the riduurok yet. I was surprised—honestly, I’d given it three or four years at most before they did even back then.”

“Too much happened, and too much changed, all at once,” Kal said. “Between losing you and leading the Haat’ade, Jango was already overwhelmed. And, in all honesty, the fact that swearing the vows with Jango also suddenly came with the title of Be’Alor was… a lot for Myles. He’d known it would, someday, but he’d thought they would get a chance to just be riduur’e first, and then Jango would take the title. But the way it happened, and when it happened… They both needed time to find their footing again—though I don’t think it’ll be long, now.”

There was a bit of a strained, sad quality to Jaster’s smile, though he didn’t start frowning again, and he just nodded. They were both quiet for a beat longer, and then Jaster said, “Do you have any holos of them?”

Kal laughed. “Not as many as you always took, and not as many as I’m sure you’d like, but ‘lek,” he said. “I have a few. I’ll copy them for you.”

“Ori’jate,” Jaster said. “I’d like to at least see what I missed, not getting to see either of them grow up the way I’d hoped to. And how are your ad’e, and Ilippi?”

Kal sighed. “Ilippi and I are about the same as we always were,” he said. “And the arguments have only gotten more heated the closer Tor and Ijaat get to eight. She doesn’t want me taking them into the field.”

“Do they want to go with you?” Jaster asked, and Kal laughed—though yet again, it wasn’t a very nice sound, more like a bark. He paused, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“When she’s around to hear them, they either refuse to answer, or side with her,” Kal admitted. “But when it’s just us… Even I can’t tell if they’re just trying to give their buir’e the answers they think would please them, or if they just don’t feel like they can admit to her that they really want to go with me.”

Jaster sighed, that quiet sadness becoming more pronounced. “It’s always hard, marrying outside of the Creed,” he said. Kal knew he’d seen more than a few marriages within the Haat’ade with outsiders—and a vast majority of them ended in divorce. Few who weren’t Mando’ade truly understood what they were getting into, and the only marriages Kal and Jaster had ever seen really last with aruetiise were those who eventually converted and decided to walk the Way with their spouse, or those who were former-slaves. They understood things like duty and doing what was necessary, and that need to fight for what they believed in.

Ilippi was neither of those things, and though Kal was determined to do his best to make it work, both because he did love her, even with as stubborn and judgmental as she was, and for their ad’e… Even he had to admit that it wasn’t looking good for them.

“‘Lek,” Kal agreed. “Until we saw your message… Well, Jango had originally barred me from joining them on our next job, that contract on Galidraan, for much the same reason you always used to.”

“She started threatening to leave again?” Jaster asked, frowning outright again. Kal just sighed, but nodded. “She shouldn’t make threats she’s not prepared to follow through on—she shouldn’t say things she doesn’t mean, especially not about that.”

“I think she means it a little more every time she says it,” Kal admitted. “But enough about that—there were a few other things I wanted to talk to you about.”

Jaster nodded, all business again. “You did mention the Galidraan contract,” he said. “I heard Kyr’tsad was involved, and I know what the Jetiise said, but nothing else.”

“Then we’ll start there,” Kal said. Jaster nodded again, his attention becoming a more pointed, weighty sensation, as it always had during briefings, and Kal relaxed into it.

Jaster was a reasonable, pragmatic sort of person, and empathetic besides, Kal reminded himself. Whatever happened… Things would work out. Jango had done well with the role, done well for their people, for the last seven years—just as Jaster had before them. Though there could only be one Mand’alor, they’d both proven that either of them would be a good choice.

And, in the meantime, dealing with these… issues and this uncertainty was well worth it to have Jaster returned to them at last.

Shaking his head to clear it, setting those thoughts and considerations aside, Kal refocused on the briefing, and started in on the long process of catching Jaster up on the last seven years he’d missed.

Jango.

Leaving Jaster, even just for the night, letting his buir out of his sight, had been… hard. A large part of him was still so afraid, wondering if Jaster would be tossed through time and space again, snatched from him after he’d only just gotten him back, though Jango knew that fear in particular would only be eased by time.

And time was a luxury they didn’t have at the moment—not with the ad’e depending on them, not with a major campaign about to begin, not with the Jetiise here, not with everything they’d heard about what had really happened on Galidraan. There was simply too much to see to, too much to be done, to allow himself to cling to Jaster constantly the way he wanted to. Above all else, Jaster had taught him about duty and dedication, and Jango had too many important, vital duties to attend to, now.

Jango was still Mand’alor be Haat Mando’ade —if only for now—and that had to come before his place as Jaster’s ad.

So, much as he’d hated to do it, Jango had retreated back to the camp the Haat’ade had set up between their ships, in their landing zone, and he’d gone over the reports from the verd’e. The work had, at least, distracted him from those worries, those fears, though they always lurked at the back of his mind. Still, he’d managed a productive few hours that evening, taking stock of their supplies, looking over the aerial surveillance holos they’d been able to gather, listening to the recountings of the movements among the Jetiise and their targets, the Elders, alike. By the time Myles had bullied him into bedding down for the night, he and his officers had made a decent start on a plan of attack for this campaign.

(But once the distractions were gone, once Jango was left to the dark, quiet stillness of his bunk on Jaster’s Legacy… He’d found it so much harder to sleep than he usually did when they were planetside on campaign. His body was well trained enough to know he needed to take his rest where he could get it—most of the time, anyway. But he was still reeling from everything they’d learned in the last day —and ka’ra, he still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that it had only been one day —and so afraid that he would wake up tomorrow to find that this had all just been a dream, so afraid that he would wake up tomorrow and Jaster would just be gone again.

Real rest had been out of reach until Myles had woken up and realized that he’d never gotten to sleep. Only after that, when Myles had turned on a holo, keeping the volume low overall but just loud enough to give Jango something else to focus on, and only when Myles had then wrapped himself around Jango, had he been able to turn his brain off and slip into sleep.)

The next morning dawned bright and early, and Jango had blearily groped for his comm on the bedside table, looking over his messages as he always did first thing in the morning, and the messages there had gone a long way to bolstering his mood. According to Kal, who was already up (and when he ever slept, Jango had little to no idea, because it seemed that he got less rest than even Jango himself did, most of the time), the four leaders of the Young were already there—escorted by Jaster.

It hadn’t just been some sort of dream—Jaster was still here.

Jango wasn’t, generally speaking, much of a morning person, though he managed well enough when he had to. But with that sort of news, he pulled himself away from Myles and out of bed sooner than usual, not lingering as he often did when he had the chance to, and Myles just smiled at him and waved him off.

“Go on,” he said, not bothering to get out of bed just yet himself. “I’ll be right behind you—just save some caff for me, ‘lek?”

“Always,” Jango promised, leaning down to kiss him. He felt Myles smile into it, and Jango let himself linger for just a few seconds before pulling away, smiling at Myles, and then turning to leave.

Despite how early it still was, the camp around them was already abuzz with activity. The night shift had just come in from their patrols and watches, transitioning into the morning shift, and there were verd’e scattered throughout the camp hard at work on all of the various tasks required to keep a group of two hundred-odd Mando’ade fed, watered, and organized. Making his way through the camp, Jango got the usual calls of “‘Vaar’tur, ‘Alor” and lazy salutes in greeting, and they all knew him well enough not to be offended when he just nodded or grunted or waved a hand in answer, all of them knowing well by now that he was all but useless before caff.

Even with how crowded and busy the camp was already, finding Jaster and the ad’e was a simple enough task. They were near the center of camp, around one of the firepits, and aside from Kal, Rav, and Silas, the verd’e were giving them a rather wide berth, trying to set the ad’e at ease—none of them had missed the looks they kept darting at all of them, suspicious and wary and concerned.

Jaster caught sight of him first, turning to flash a broad grin at him, and the ad’e followed his gaze. Jango nodded and managed another smile, his own bucket under his arm, letting them see the expression. He usually preferred to keep it on during any official business, mostly to hide his own face—that was a habit he’d developed very quickly in the early days after Jaster’s death. Hiding his face—and, therefore, his age—tended to make their clients and enemies alike take him more seriously. But here and now, with these ad’e, Jango’s relative youth would actually help rather than hinder their cause, for once.

“Jate vaar’tur,” Jaster called when he came close enough to be heard without actually shouting.

“Vaar’tur, buir,” Jango returned. He started looking around for the nearest thermos of caff, but he needn’t have bothered; as soon as he was within reach, Rav shoved one of them at him, and he leaned over to bump shoulders with her in thanks. “Cerasi, Ben, Mawat—good to see you. And you must be Nield, ‘lek?”

He turned to study the unfamiliar ad, just as pale and thin as all of the others, with a shock of dark hair like Mawat’s. It seemed that the Daan all tended to have darker hair and the Melida were usually either redheaded or blonde, so Jango thought he could guess at which side this ad had come from.

Nield just nodded sharply, eyeing him critically.

“Jate —good,” Jango said. “We made quite a bit of progress last night, and we have a few possible approaches to go over. But, as I said yesterday, I think it’d be best to speak to the Jetiise, first, before settling on a plan of attack.”

Nield and Mawat’s faces both twisted in twin expressions of disgust mingled with anger, and the accompanying feelings were so strong that even Jango could feel it swirling around them in the ka’ra, even with as relatively weak as he was and how unfamiliar they were to him. Reflexively, Jango tightened his shields a bit further; Jaster slowly reached out to put a hand on the shoulders of the ad’e, trying to soothe and ground them.

“We’ll talk to them,” Nield spat. “Even if only to tell them to get the Hel off our planet.”

“Nield,” Cerasi sighed. Nield huffed, folding their arms over their chest, and they exchanged a dark look with Mawat.

“Your choice,” Jango grunted, shrugging one shoulder. Nield and Mawat both relaxed just a bit at his easy acceptance, though they were all still a little… tense, and suspicious—not that Jango could blame them. From what he’d gathered so far, the only safe, trusted adult they’d had around for a long, long time was Jaster, and a few months with a single adult wasn’t going to be enough to override the sorts of instincts, that knee-jerk fear and suspicion, they’d developed—not when it had kept them alive for so long. “But given that we need to speak to the Jetiise before we make any larger decisions on how to handle this campaign, we’ll have to do that sooner than later.”

“Yes,” Cerasi agreed. “Alright. The rest of the Young agreed to let us make that decision, so however this conversation goes, we won’t have to wait before we get to the rest of the planning.”

“Ori’jate,” Jango said, pausing to slam more than a bit of the caff. Mindful of his promise, he made himself slow down, saving a bit for Myles. “Our patrols reported that the Jetiise are mostly sticking to their own landing zone. They sent out a few scout pairs of their own, but they’ve mostly seemed interested in the Elders in the city rather than us, or the farm. We can make our way to them whenever you four are ready.”

“While you do that,” Rav said, “the baar’ur’e reported that they already treated the most serious injuries and illnesses, but they’d like to get everyone more thorough check-ups. We can either bring them here, or take our mobile medbay over towards the farm.”

“That would give away our position,” Nield grumbled. “The farm is our fallback point—I’d rather keep it as quiet as we can.”

“There’s another, larger clearing just on the other side of the river,” Cerasi said. “It’s bigger than the one right by the farm, large enough to land a ship in. We can have groups of the Young meet the, ah… barr-err-ee there.”

“Alright,” Rav agreed easily. “I’ll start coordinating that after breakfast.”

“Have you talked about our… conditions?” Kal asked, and that had both Nield and Mawat bristling again. Jango saw Jaster’s hands tighten on both of their shoulders just a bit before he consciously relaxed them.

“Yes,” Nield said, turning to scowl at Kal. “And we don’t like it, but… We understand.”

“Then you’ll agree to our terms, and keep anyone under ten in defensive fallback positions?” Kal asked, keeping his voice deliberately even and expression carefully neutral.

“Yes,” Cerasi said with a nod; Nield and Mawat just scowled again and looked away. Clearly, as they’d said, they still didn’t like it, but they’d agreed, and that was what really mattered.

“Ori’jate,” Jango said, relieved beyond words that they’d conceded that point. He wasn’t sure what he would’ve done if they’d pressed that issue—honor demanded they help the Young, and decency demanded that they not try to force their own wills upon them. The Young had had too many decisions made for them by adults already, and between that fact and the war they’d been fighting against those who should have been their caretakers and protectors… Their trust wasn’t going to come easily, and they couldn’t afford not to trust each other, fighting side-by-side. Mistrust between allies on the battlefield led to more deaths. But taking those who were that young into battle with them… Well, even with only the oldest joining them for the fighting ahead, that was already going to be hard on them, going against everything the Haat’ade stood for, everything they believed in, and their sense of honor.

As Jango had thought to himself more than a few times over by now, this whole situation was just… kriffed.

“For now,” Jaster said, smiling at Ben and Cerasi, first, and then Nield and Mawat, “breakfast, I think. After that, we’ll see about a proper timeline for the rest of the day.” The Young nodded their agreement, even Nield and Mawat seemingly more agreeable when suggestions came from Jaster.

Then Jaster turned to Jango, a familiar look on his face, one that so clearly said we need to talk. Fighting down a grimace of his own, Jango just nodded marginally as well.

“Alright then,” Kal said. “This way, ad’ike.” He began herding the ad’e away, and they went easily—though Ben also, yet again, paused for a moment, staring at Jaster as if searching for reassurance or comfort. Jaster smiled again and tipped his head towards Kal’s retreating back, and Ben nodded. After only another beat of hesitation, Ben turned to join the little group Kal was leading over towards the food line.

“I’ll go coordinate with the baar’ur’e,” Rav said. As she turned away, she deliberately bumped their shoulders together again, and Jango managed a smile for her.

With that, Jaster and Jango were left alone again.

Jango couldn’t quite help yet another flare of complicated feelings (and ka’ra, he was already tired of feeling things, and wished he could just… be adjusted to all of this, even though it had only been a day so far, and he knew that was unrealistic). The joy and relief were still there in full force, but the anxiety, the fear had come back. Seemingly incapable of wrestling that swirl of emotions back down, Jango instead reinforced his shields just the slightest bit, trying to keep that from reaching Jaster.

“Now that we have a moment,” Jaster said, “there are a few other things we really should talk about.”

Jango nodded. “‘Lek,” he agreed, unreasonably proud of how steady his voice came out. “Let’s head into—” He paused for a fraction of a second, stumbling slightly over the ship’s name, suddenly feeling so awkward calling it Jaster’s Legacy. “—the Legacy.”

But Jaster just laughed, shaking his head. “Of all the things to rename my ship, you picked the option that just has to be the most ironic, now,” he said, and that startled Jango into an answering laugh.

“If you’d have given it an actual name,” Jango said, feeling suddenly so much lighter for the familiar, well-trodden, playful argument between them, “then I wouldn’t have had to.”

Jaster huffed, still grinning so broadly, and shook his head. They both turned back towards the Legacy, and Jaster threw an arm over his shoulders as they fell in together. Jango, as he always had before, sank into his side reflexively, and though it felt different —of course it did, because the last time he’d seen Jaster, he’d been fifteen, and he’d only come up just over his buir’s shoulders, and now, they were nearly the same height—it also felt so right, and that helped to take the edge off of that oppressive anxiety he just couldn’t truly seem to shake.

Jaster was his buir, first and foremost, Jango reminded himself. Nothing would change that, and they would… be alright. They’d figure things out.

It was just the separate yet arguably more important relationship between them as Mand’alor’e that would be… harder to deal with. And those worries… Well, there was nothing to be done about that but face it, and see how things fell.

But regardless of who came out with the title at the end of all of this, regardless of how Jaster might feel about how and what he’d done in the last seven years it had been his, Jango had his buir back—and that still made everything else more than worth it.

Jaster.

Myles was just heading out of JAST-07—now apparently renamed Jaster’s Legacy, a truly ironic name, as he’d said—as they entered, and it was obvious that he’d only just woken up. He was mostly-covered already, strapped into his beskar’gam, but his hair was an untamed mess, sticking up this way and that, and he still had that bleary look in his eyes—neither of Jaster’s ad’e had ever been morning people, that much was certain. As soon as Myles caught sight of them, he lit up, his brilliant, boyish grin matched by the curl of happiness-pleasure around his presence, first at just the sight of Jaster, and then at Jango’s offering, ceding the rest of the thermos of caff to him. Thankfully, Myles seemed to be in much better spirits than he had the night before, after that… talk with the Young.

Myl’ika took it eagerly and leaned over to kiss Jango in thanks—only to freeze a beat later, a flush starting to darken his already pinker-than-pure-human skin. He darted a glance at Jaster, that pleased-bright feeling hanging around him starting to turn somewhat embarrassed, but Jaster just huffed a bit of a laugh.

“Vaar’tur, Myl’ika,” Jaster greeted him, and he didn’t stop himself from reaching out to ruffle his already mussed hair as he always had before. And just as he always had, Myles let out a disgruntled sort of squawk and ducked away, trying to smooth it down with one hand to no avail.

“Jaster,” Myles all but whined, drawing a stronger laugh out of him. Ka’ra, they both looked so much older, now—and of course they did, since it had been seven karking years —but not so deep down at all, they were both still the same boys Jaster remembered them to be. Grumbling softly to himself, Myles turned to Jango. “Lor’vram?”

Jango held up the boxed up food they’d grabbed off the line on their way over. “Rav made it today.”

“So you’ll bring me caff, but not food? I said I would be right behind you,” Myles did whine, and Jango laughed, shaking his head.

“You always say that,” Jango retorted. “And it’s only true maybe a third of the time, if I’m being generous. Better to leave it where it is than bring it to you and let it get cold before you finally manage to drag yourself out of bed.”

“It’s too early for such insults and slander,” Myles sniffed, but he was still grinning. “But fine, fine. I’ll go find my own breakfast, since you’re so unromantic, refusing to even bring me breakfast in bed—”

Jango rolled his eyes, and both of them seemed to forget for a moment that they had an audience, Jango pulling him in for another kiss, somewhat longer and deeper than the last. Eventually, though, they drew away, glancing at Jaster again, and both of them blushed, that time. Jaster just laughed again.

“Go on, Myl’ika,” he said. “We’ll come find you in a little while.”

Myles’s smile slipped, no doubt recognizing the request for a bit of privacy for what it was, and the reason for it. But he just nodded, leaned in for a kov’nyn with Jango, and then slipped away, leaving them alone. Jaster watched him go until Jango cleared his throat rather pointedly—and he was still a little flushed, amusingly enough. But, to be fair, Jaster probably would’ve reacted in much the same way if the situation were reversed, and his buir had been witness to any displays of affection like that.

Jango led them into the galley, and Jaster took in the state of the ship as they went. It was mostly the same, even now, though several of the systems and panels had been replaced, repaired and upgraded probably many times over in the last seven years. Still, it was familiar enough to Jaster to feel like home even now, and he found himself relaxing, though he hadn’t even realized he’d been somewhat tense until that moment.

They slid in on opposite sides of the little galley table, starting to pick at their food, a not quite awkward, but certainly… charged, sort of silence falling, neither of them knowing quite where to start. But, Jaster supposed, since he was the one to initiate this conversation, it’d have to be him—and he knew that even, perhaps especially, when it came to things like this, it was best to be blunt with Jango.

“I wanted to talk about the title,” Jaster said. “Clear the air, so to speak. At least for now.”

The effect was immediate, and Jaster could see it in the straightening of Jango’s shoulders, the sudden intense focus on Jango’s face, in his eyes, and he could feel it in the way Jango’s presence turned quiet-but-intently-focused. He was all business, now.

“I figured we would need to, before we properly begin here,” Jango agreed.

“Speaking of which,” Jaster said, “I think we both know how foolish it would be to make any changes in the command structure right before a major campaign. The Haat’ade are accustomed to and comfortable with you, not me. You’ve all spent seven years working together, and though more than a few of the verd’e I remember well are still here, there are many new faces, people I don’t know, those who’ve never worked with me before.”

Jango nodded his agreement, and as he’d said, Jaster knew those were things they both would’ve realized already for themselves. “And after that?”

“I’ve missed seven years,” Jaster said easily, deciding to start with the pragmatic, practical arguments, and save the… more emotional considerations for later. “Just as it would be jare’la to make any unnecessary changes right before a campaign, it would be beyond foolish to cede command to me when I’m lacking so much necessary detail on the larger situation. I have no idea what’s happened in Manda’lase in that time, no idea what the overall state of the galaxy looks like. Ben was able to give me a summary of the most major galactic events, but he was only able to tell me so much—and it certainly wasn’t enough. Not for this.”

“You’ll be caught up, eventually,” Jango said. “And after that…?”

“I’m not sure I want to take it back, Jango,” Jaster admitted, and Jango blinked at him, starting to frown, his fork freezing, no longer paying any attention to his food. “More than that, I’m not sure I would need to.”

“But—” Jango started to say, but cut himself off. He gave up on his food entirely for the moment, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms over his chest, studying Jaster, frowning slightly at him. He didn’t say whatever he’d been about to, and Jaster thought that might’ve been because it was a personal, emotional argument, and they both knew that didn’t have any place in a discussion like this. Later, they could talk about how they felt about all of it, but now wasn’t the time for that.

This was the time for the discussion that had to come between Mand’alor’e; there would be a chance for them to speak as aliit again later. But for now… Their people, and their futures, had to come first.

“It’s been seven years,” Jaster repeated. “I may not know all of the details yet, but as I’ve already pointed out, I recognize many of the verd’e you brought with you. You’ve kept so many of them alive, and together, and the sheer number of new faces, those who’ve felt called to join up in that time because of how you’ve led them… That’s compelling evidence of how you’ve done on its own. And, more than that… I can feel the… rightness of it, now. It wasn’t unexpected—I always knew you would take the title after me. From the moment you finally agreed to let me say the gai bal manda, I knew.”

Jango’s frown grew deeper, something flaring around him in the ka’ra, there and gone again too quickly for Jaster to identify it. “You never said.”

“You were eight then, Jango,” Jaster said, a wry little smile on his face. “And you were still so young by the time I… left. I hadn’t wanted to put that sort of pressure on you, or make you think that I would’ve been… disappointed if you decided you didn’t feel called to it. And I’d thought… I’d thought we would have more time. Now… I regret waiting—I wish I would have told you before.”

Jango stared at him for a few beats, something sparking around him in the ka’ra yet again, though Jaster still couldn’t quite identify it before Jango wrestled it back down. Still, from the way Jango’s eyes had gone suspiciously shiny, he thought he could guess without having to feel it.

“We have time, now,” Jango said, and Jaster smiled and nodded.

“‘Lek,” he agreed. “We have time.” Jaster paused to shrug again. “I’m not sure I know what the right answer is, Jango—and I agree with Kal, I think. I’m not sure there even is a ‘right answer’ in this situation—just different paths.”

Jango sighed, one corner of his mouth quirking in an almost-smile. “I should’ve known that Kal would have already cornered you.”

Jaster laughed. “You know how he is,” he said, and Jango groaned softly, drawing another laugh out of him. “So, we’re agreed that we’re not making any changes now, then.” Jango nodded. “Jate. And after this campaign… We’ll see how we feel, and what the ka’ra has to say about it, ‘lek?” That got him another silent nod, and Jaster nodded back before leaning forward, making more pointed eye contact with Jango. “But for the record… I meant what I said, Jango: I don’t think there’s any need for me to take back the title, not when you’ve done so well with it all these years. I think it’s more a matter of what we all want, what we feel called to do.”

After another beat of silence and hesitation, Jango just nodded again. Jaster could tell that he wasn’t truly convinced, that he was still somewhat worried —and he knew that the way this conversation had gone wouldn’t have necessarily helped all that much. Not when they had still left so much undecided.

But Jaster also knew that there were only two things that really would help with that: time and exposure. As Haat’ade, they’d only ever interacted when Jaster held the title. It would be a change, a rather large change, to reverse those positions, but Jaster thought it would help. He more than trusted Jango to make the right calls—he had faith in him. The ka’ra itself, the Manda, had assured him that Jango would succeed him, and it wouldn’t have felt so right if it hadn’t been meant to happen.

And once they had a campaign under their belt, one Jango led them in and Jaster followed… Then it would be a better time to see how they all felt.

In the meantime, though, the indecision, putting it off until after, was going to needle at Jango. Jaster knew that, but he wasn’t willing to rush the decision just for their comfort—not with something so important. This was about so much more than the two of them, after all: this was the future of their people.

And Jango knew that, too. He didn’t like it, but he just nodded again and tried for a smile that looked only mostly forced. “Alright,” he agreed.

“I suppose it’s time, then,” Jaster said. “We’ll finish our breakfast, and then… There are still several other conversations to be had, with both the Young and the Jetiise.”

“‘Lek,” Jango agreed. “The sooner we deal with the Jetiise, the sooner we can finish this."

Ben.

Ben was… nervous. More than that, if he was honest with himself—he was afraid.

What he was afraid of, he couldn’t have said. Perhaps he was afraid of his own reaction, once he saw other Jedi again, afraid that the anger that he’d managed to wrestle down to faint sparks in his chest would come back in full force once he set eyes on them; perhaps he was afraid of how the Jedi would react to him, their condemnations once they realized why he had truly left the Order, once they realized that he had abandoned their peacekeeping ideals to throw himself into a civil war and lead fellow children into battle; perhaps he was afraid of how things might go between the Mandalorians they were with and the Jedi they would soon meet.

Whatever the reason truly was, Ben didn’t know—he only knew that he was afraid. Though he supposed that made some sense, given that dull, distant anger he still recognized in himself, because fear led to anger, after all.

Jaster, as always, noticed, and addressed it in his own subtle way. He drifted closer to Ben as their group walked down the wide dirt road towards the landing zone the Jedi had secured and had yet to leave in force, and Jaster threw an arm around his shoulders again, gently pulling Ben in close to his side.

And even Kal Skirata, who had only just met him and barely knew him at all, leaned down to murmur to him, “We’re with you, lad,” before pulling away, towards Jango and Myles at the fore of the group. Jango and Myles, for their parts, had only given him lingering looks and silent, solemn nods, so quiet in the Force, so well-shielded, now, that Ben could barely feel anything more than close-present-life from either of them.

And despite the fear that still lingered at the back of his mind, inspired partly by the fact that these people were Mandalorians, and they were about to meet with a large group of Jedi… Ben had to admit that their support did… help.

They didn’t have very far to go before they reached the camp the Jedi had set up, just down the road from the True Mandalorians, but the walk felt simultaneously too short and agonizingly long. Ben wished he had more time before he had to face them again, but he also equally wished that he could just get it over with already.

All told, Ben, frankly, was tired of feeling things, so many conflicting emotions. He wished he had been able to truly release those feelings in meditation, but no matter how he tried, the peace and calm the Force afforded him when he let himself get lost in it never lasted long after he withdrew from its currents.

But there was nothing for it, Ben reminded himself. The Young needed to speak to the Jedi before they could make any final decisions on how they would approach the final steps in this campaign to end the war, before they could fully decide on what role the True Mandalorians would take, and what part, if any, the Jedi would be allowed to play. And Ben himself had promised Jaster that he would at least talk to the Jedi—however much he didn’t want to.

…only, he did want to. Ben desperately wanted to talk to them again, to see them again, to go home with his family again, but—

But home and family were suddenly concepts that seemed so much more… complicated than they had before Melida/Daan, before finding out what his family had thought of him and the consequences of those assumptions—

Ben was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t truly realize when they’d reached their destination, Jaster beside him steering him after the others as they veered off of the road towards another large field where the Jedi had landed their mid-sized passenger cruisers. And then—

There they were. There was a group of Jedi—Knights and Masters, some of whom Ben vaguely recognized, though none he knew very well on a personal level—standing beside the ships, looking over some projection an astromech was generating for them. Slowly, the Jedi turned as their group drew nearer, and the droid shut off its projector as the Jedi turned their full attention to them.

There was a heavy, charged silence as they approached, the gazes of the Jedi—both physically and in the Force, the nebulous but heavy weight of their presences reaching out towards all of them—tracking them all carefully as Jango, at the fore, stopped well out of reach of them, but within easy speaking distance so that none of them would have to shout.

Finally, another Jedi came down the open ramp of one of the ships, and Ben’s breath caught, because he knew who that was. Though they’d never met, though Ben had only even seen him in the Temple a handful of times in his entire life, even though they’d never spoken or otherwise interacted, even though Ben only knew him by reputation alone, Ben did know him.

Master Dooku’s eyes immediately found Ben, and he felt the Master’s presence reaching out towards him lightly before he turned his attention to Jango.

“Mand’alor Fett,” Master Dooku said with a bow. “I see that further thanks are in order; it seems you have relayed the messages I had delivered to you.” Jango just grunted, his hands twitching like he wanted to reach for his weapons, though he didn’t. Master Dooku looked over Cerasi, Nield, and Mawat, and then he looked at Jaster for a moment, and then—

Then, he turned to Ben.

“It is quite a relief to see you alive and relatively unharmed, Grandpadawan,” Master Dooku said, and Ben’s breath hitched again. Jaster seemingly reflexively tugged him a little closer, pressing him in that much tighter into his side.

“Master Dooku,” Ben said, and his voice came out steadier than he’d expected, given that his throat felt like sandpaper, raw and rough. “I’m not sure I can properly be called your ‘Grandpadawan’ anymore. Can I?”

Master Dooku hummed, his gaze sharpening. “I still claim Feemor as such,” he said. “And if I can claim him as a member of my Lineage, I can surely claim you as well.”

Feemor —that was a name he’d only ever heard once or twice before. He’d been Master Jinn’s first Padawan, taken on after Feemor’s first Master had been killed before his Knighting. Master Jinn had finished the last few years of his training, and when Feemor Ladas had been Knighted, Knight Jinn had been named Master Jinn.

And then Xanatos had Fallen, and Master Jinn had repudiated him—along with Feemor, who hadn’t even done anything wrong. That particular incident had been interesting enough gossip in the Temple to make it to the creche, and Ben had heard about it well before he’d ever met Master Jinn or Xanatos.

Ben couldn’t think of any response to that, but Master Dooku didn’t seem to need him to, instead turning back to the others.

“I would assume you are the leaders of the faction known as ‘the Young,’” he said, looking over Cerasi, Nield, and Mawat. Cerasi nodded; Nield and Mawat just stared back, half-glaring and all suspicion. Master Dooku didn’t seem offended, only nodding back before turning away, back towards the ships and the gaggle of Jedi beside them, all of them openly staring, watching as they spoke. “Master Kiirso, Knight Gallia: would you begin with our visitors?”

Ben knew those names, recognized them, and he recognized the people who stepped forward. Adi Gallia, a Tholothian Knight who many speculated would be on the Council someday, and Master Kiirso, a Togruta who had taken more than a few shifts in the creche when Ben had still been a Junior Initiate, and—

And he didn’t know how he felt about recognizing the people who had come to Melida/Daan. Part of him was relieved to have more trusted help for the Young—but another part of him didn’t trust them anymore, and he—

Ben didn’t know what to think, how to feel.

Something might have made it through his shields, or, again, perhaps Jaster could just read him well enough by then to know what he was thinking, because he squeezed just a bit tighter for a moment and sent him a little wave of warm-comfort-reassurance-support that had Ben letting out a soft whoosh of breath.

“Of course, Master,” Master Kiirso said, stepping forward with Knight Gallia.

“Thank you,” Master Dooku said, nodding to them, and then he turned back to Ben and Jaster. “In the meantime… We have much to discuss, Grandpadawan. Shall we?” That inspired a loud, uncomfortable buzzing in the others, the Mandalorians who’d come with them and Cerasi, Nield, and Mawat alike, all of them worried-tense-upset-unhappy. Master Dooku glanced at them briefly, adding, “We won’t go far.”

Ben stared at Master Dooku for a moment, studying him, trying to make a decision, trying to decide whether or not he could bring himself to… to trust.

“Do you want me to stay?” Jaster asked softly.

No, Ben wanted to say, because all of the Young, including Cerasi, Nield, and Mawat trusted and needed Jaster, not just him, and they would need him, his opinions and judgment, for the decisions and plans they were about to make, but—

What came out instead was an immediate “yes,” and Ben reminded himself that Jango, Myles, and Kal were there, too, and more than qualified to help guide the Young for this, and…

Maybe it would be alright, just this once, if he was… a little selfish.

“Alright,” Jaster agreed easily, and they both returned their attention to Master Dooku. He’d been watching them carefully, looking between the two of them, obviously studying and dissecting what he saw, and Ben shrank back a little from that sharp gaze.

“We will reconvene later,” Master Dooku said, and Master Kiirso and Knight Gallia both nodded again. “For now, Grandpadawan: if you would come with me, I have something for you.”

His lightsaber. Ben had hardly been able to believe it when Jaster had told him the Jedi had brought him his lightsaber—he wasn’t a Jedi anymore, and he’d turned in his blade with his resignation, and that they would be willing to give it back to him had been so… unfathomable, so inexplicable, but—

But now, hearing the promise, even so vague as it had been, from Master Dooku himself, Ben was able to muster his courage and nod. Master Dooku made some sort of face, something that might have been close to a smile, though it was really just the barest twitch of his lips, and then he turned away, back towards the ships, simply expecting them to follow.

With one look at the rest of the Young, for Ben, and a look towards the other True Mandalorians for Jaster, they slowly turned away, towards the ship, and Master Dooku’s retreating back.

Jaster.

They had only just gotten here—and already, Jaster had questions.

What was a “Grandpadawan?” Was it like a bu’ad, to the Jetiise? What were Dooku and Ben to each other? And who was Feemor, and what did they have to do with Ben’s situation?

He didn’t ask any of them—not yet, anyway. He was hopeful that he would have an opportunity in the coming conversation to bring it up, but he was also mindful of the real reason he was sticking so close to Ben. The ad needed steady support, not another round of questions, and so Jaster held his tongue, at least for now, and simply followed the Jetii into one of the ships, arm still firmly wrapped around Ben’s shoulders.

The Jetii led them to the galley of the ship they’d retreated to, waving a hand to invite them to sit. “Tea?” Dooku asked.

“Yes, please,” Ben answered immediately.

“Of course,” Dooku said. “I shall return momentarily.”

They turned and disappeared deeper into the galley, leaving them to settle themselves down. Jaster quickly moved to take the inside seat on the bench, making sure Ben felt like he had an easier path out, trying to prevent him from feeling cornered. Ben settled in beside him, sitting close enough that their shoulders brushed, and Jaster slowly, tentatively, put an arm around him; Ben, as he’d taken to doing, easily and instantly sank into his side.

As promised, it didn’t take long before Dooku returned, a little tea tray in hand with a kettle and three mugs. They set it down on the table in silence, and then poured for them all before moving to sit across from Ben, just staring at him. Jaster made no move to take his buy’ce off, not just yet.

“First things first,” Dooku said, and slowly, telegraphing their movements, they reached into an inside pocket of their cloak, pulling out a silver hilt. Ben perked up, sitting up that much straighter, his eyes going a little wide as he watched Dooku set it on the table between them, and then slide it over towards him. His kadau, Jaster realized.

But Ben made no move to take it, not yet. He stared at it for a moment and then looked away, towards his tea, wrapping both hands around his steaming mug.

“The Council unanimously agreed to allow me to return that to you,” Dooku said. “Given the new information we have regarding the situation here, your resignation has been overturned. You are, as yet, still considered a member of the Order.”

Ben winced faintly and didn’t look up at Dooku. “Thank you, Master,” he said, “but I… I’m not… I don’t know if I want to go back.”

Dooku hummed and nodded easily. “Your hesitance is understandable,” they said, and that was enough to make Ben’s eyes wander back up, and Jaster’s estimation of Dooku ticked up ever so slightly. “Considering all that has happened, and how long you were left here, the Order abandoning you to your fate… I can understand your reluctance.”

Ben nodded, a little bit of his own tension easing. “Then I’m not… I want to take it, but I’m… not sure I can,” he said, looking back down at the kadau still sitting so innocuously on the table between them.

“It is yours,” Dooku said simply, easily. “The Force led you to the crystal meant for you, and you constructed this ‘saber yourself. Whether you return to the Order or not, by all rights, it is yours. And I will admit that I would appreciate the reassurance of knowing that you have a proper weapon for the battles still to come here.”

Ben looked between Dooku and the kadau for a moment and then finally nodded again. Slowly, still so hesitantly, he reached out and picked it up. He turned it this way and that, just staring at it for a moment, and then he smiled. Jaster felt the ka’ra… pinging, for lack of a better word, between Ben and the kadau, and—

“Oh,” Jaster hummed, studying the kadau along with Ben, realizing what that had to mean, what was happening, and what this actually was. “There’s a kyber inside that kadau, isn’t there?”

Ben glanced at him and nodded, still smiling, and then returned his attention to his Jetii’kad; Dooku’s gaze pinned itself to Jaster, though he didn’t turn to look at the Jetii.

“Are you familiar with kyber crystals?” Dooku asked, and Jaster hummed, lifting one hand to make a so-so gesture.

“I spent some time on Jedha, at the Temple of the Kyber,” he said. “So, ‘lek, in a way, I am familiar with them. But they use and treat kyber… differently, there. They don’t tend to bond to just one person, the way the Guardians interact with them. I’ve never felt a kyber do that before, act so… inert until one specific person reaches out to it. It’s interesting.”

“I see,” Dooku said. The Jetii hesitated for a beat, and Jaster felt the ka’ra around him lightly swirling for a moment before he came to some decision. “You are Jaster Mereel, are you not?”

“‘Lek —yes.”

“I see,” Dooku repeated. “Though I do have more urgent business to discuss here and now, I did have several questions for you, if you would be amenable.”

“We’ll see, once our official business is finished,” Jaster hedged.

“Fair enough,” Dooku agreed, though a hint of curiosity was still fluttering around them in the ka’ra. Jaster got the sense that Dooku knew about his initial… disappearance—and Kal had shown him the buy’ce footage they’d compiled and saved from Korda 6, which had been… disturbing to watch, seeing it happen in the third person. He truly had looked dead, that much was certain, and then he’d just—winked out of existence, beskar’gam and all, leaving Jango sitting there holding empty air. Jaster had never heard of the ka’ra doing something like that before, and since their goran’e hadn’t, either, Kal had explained that they’d reached out to the Guardians on Jedha about it. Jaster wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that they had spoken to the Jetiise about it in turn.

But Dooku yet again proved that they had their priorities in order when they turned back to Ben, shelving the matter of Jaster’s disappearance and reappearance, for now. When Ben could tell that he had Dooku’s attention again, he shifted a bit, obviously uncomfortable, before steeling himself, taking a deep, slow breath.

“How is Master Tahl?” Ben asked. Jaster thought that was the other Jetii Ben and his Master had been sent to rescue.

“She is still in the care of the healers,” Dooku said. “She will live, though it is likely that she will never fully recover her eyesight. But even so, the Force will provide. It is kind of you to ask after her.”

Ben’s lips twitched in an almost-smile, though that faded quickly, and he looked away again, back down at the table between them. “Master, I… I heard that the Order thought I left because I was… ‘too attached to a local girl,’” he said. “Was that… true?”

“Yes,” Dooku said. “That was what Qui-Gon relayed to the High Council when he offered them your lightsaber and your resignation. With the additional information we now have, it is obvious that Qui-Gon told the truth ‘from a certain point of view.’ But until we had that additional knowledge, the final pieces to this puzzle… The Council felt the truth of it, and had no real cause to question it.”

Something prickly, part anger and part hurt, buzzed at the edges of Ben’s presence, then, and Jaster tightened his old on him a bit, just a bit of pressure to say I’m here, and he reached for him in the ka’ra. As he’d taken to doing, Ben leaned into him both physically and metaphysically, letting Jaster soothe those feelings, dulling them down. Dooku hummed, tilting their head as they looked between the two of them, no doubt having felt at least some of that.

“‘No real cause to question it,’” Ben repeated. “Knowing me wasn’t enough cause? Knowing that all I ever wanted was to be a Knight wasn’t enough cause to question it? They all just… believed it?”

“Not everyone,” Dooku said. “Those closest to you among your crechemates insisted that couldn’t be the truth. And Master Yoda himself did not believe it, either. He admitted as much to me when I made inquiries upon returning to the Temple and hearing about the Grandpadawan I had gained and lost before ever getting to meet you.”

“He didn’t believe it enough to do something about it,” Ben said, voice coming out quiet, that hurt cresting again.

“He was outnumbered,” Dooku sighed. “Qui-Gon believed what he reported to the High Council, and sensing that truth… Without further evidence to support any other conclusion, Yoda had little choice but to let the matter lie. He could go against the rest of the Council no more than you or I could without leaving the Order.”

Ben laughed, a rough, rueful sort of sound. “But that isn’t true,” Ben said. “Master Yoda can do as he pleases—he proved that when he had me reassigned to the AgriCorps on Bandomeer. I read through my own file after our mission to Phindar, and I saw that the orders hadn’t come from the Council of Reassignment, as they were supposed to —they came from Master Yoda. The Council of Reassignment had agreed with my own request: if I couldn’t find a Master and I aged out of the creche, I was supposed to go the EduCorps. Master Yoda did what he wanted, the rest of both Councils be damned, to make sure I was on that ship and on Bandomeer with Master Jinn. So if he could bend and even break the rules for that, then why not for this? Especially when this was so much more important.”

Dooku sighed again. “I don’t know,” they admitted. “Even after so many years, and as one of the few who has what could arguably be the best knowledge of and insight into Yoda, even I cannot fully understand how his mind works, and all that he sees and senses. He… forgets, I think, to see the individuals in any given situation, rather than the whole, fuller picture. After so many centuries as he has lived…” Dooku trailed off, shaking their head again. “Regardless, there are those of us who objected to the handling of your situation from the beginning—including myself, as soon as I learned of it.”

“But none of you did anything, either,” Ben said, looking back down to stare into his tea again.

“No, we did not. We had thought that you had chosen to leave, even if we had not believed the reason cited for it,” Dooku said. “And if it had been a true choice, had you not had your hand forced in such a way… It is a fine line the Jedi walk, young one, doing what is right without imposing our will upon others. In this case, we made the wrong choice. Nothing will change what has happened in the past, but know that all of us, including and especially the High Councilors, regret those decisions, and what you have suffered because of them. 

“I will understand if you cannot bring yourself to return to the Order after how we have failed you, but I have heard more than once, from others and now from yourself, that all you had ever wished for was to become a Jedi Knight,” Dooku continued. “Though you will not be able to return to an apprenticeship under Qui-Gon, there are others who wish to take over your training, and several of them have come with us. That path is yet open to you, should you choose it.”

Ben was quiet for a long moment, still staring down at his tea. He took a few deep, deliberate breaths, leaning a little more into Jaster’s presence, that same hurt and fear and anger around him in the ka’ra, joined by something almost like longing. As he focused on just breathing for a moment, Jaster offered up all of the warm-steadiness he could muster, and those feelings started to ease, leaving Ben feeling… tired and wary instead.

“Thank you, Master Dooku,” Ben said, looking back up. “I… I will think, and meditate, on it.”

“Of course,” the Jetii said with a little half-bow. “Now that we have cleared the air, as they say, we should return to the others. After we have decided our course, I’m certain we can find the time to discuss your… situation.” That was directed to Jaster, who just nodded. “But for now… There is still much to be done.”

By the time they’d finished with Dooku, reemerging from the ship to join Jango, Myles, Kal, and the Young sitting with several of the Jetiise in the grass in the shade provided by the ships, they seemed to have come to some agreement, speaking amongst themselves amicably enough. Jango and the others let out yet another little flare of relief when Jaster was back within their line of sight, and the ad’e buzzed with a protective-and-possessive sort of feeling at the sight of Ben. Jango tilted his head as he stared at Jaster, a silent question, and he nodded marginally.

That had gone… well enough, he thought. Dooku seemed sensible, reasonable, enough—however surprising that was, given that from what he’d gathered, Dooku had trained Ben’s Master, the man who had gotten them into this mess in the first place and then lied about it.

Which sparked another concern for Jaster. Seeing Ben back to the other ad’e and the Haat’ade just behind them, Jaster turned to Dooku rather than sitting himself.

“They can handle the planning, for now,” he said. “We can join them in a bit—for now… There were several other things I wanted to discuss with you.”

Dooku bowed their head in acceptance. “Very well,” they agreed. Jaster leaned down to squeeze Ben’s shoulder briefly as Cerasi and Nield pulled him down to sit between them, plastering themselves against his sides, and then turned away.

He didn’t go far, just led Dooku far enough away that they wouldn’t be overheard, but making sure they still had a line of sight to the group on the other side of the camp the Jetiise had set up around their ships, much as the Haat’ade had just down the road. Dooku tucked their hands into the sleeves of their cloak again, staring at Jaster with that same intensity they always seemed to have about them.

“Though I still wish for answers regarding your own situation,” Dooku said, “I sense that there were other matters you wished to speak of, first.”

“‘Lek —yes,” Jaster agreed. “First and foremost… You call Ben your ‘Grandpadawan.’”

Dooku tilted their head. “Ben,” they repeated, turning to glance over at the group, and Ben more specifically, before looking back to Jaster. “A nickname he has taken up, I imagine.” Jaster nodded, and Dooku nodded back. “I see. Yes, he is my Grandpadawan: the apprentice of my own former-apprentice.”

Jaster grunted, thinking that through. On the one hand, it spoke well of Dooku, in a way, that they had come to deal with this situation themself. Among Mando’ade, when someone committed this sort of wrong, the sort that would be made worse by that same person attempting to set it to rights, it was a senior Clan member’s duty to deal with it on their behalf. From what Jaster could tell, that was similar to what Dooku was doing here.

But, on the other hand… If they had managed to train Ben’s Master into becoming the sort of shabuir who abandoned adiik’e to fight and die in a war, and then lie about it, denying them proper help when it otherwise would have been available to them…

More than likely sensing the direction of Jaster’s thoughts, or at least the direction of his feelings, Dooku sighed. “Qui-Gon was not ready for another apprentice,” he said bluntly. “And I have not spoken to him myself in very nearly a decade.”

“Why?” Jaster asked.

“Qui-Gon has had two Padawans, before Padawan Kenobi,” Dooku said. “The first was Feemor; Qui-Gon was his second Master, taking him on after the first was killed in the line of duty before Feemor was Knighted. When Feemor was Knighted, Qui-Gon was given the rank and title of ‘Master,’ a Knight until that point. But Qui-Gon’s second Padawan, Xanatos… He Fell to the Dark Side and left the Order himself. They had been close before that, and Qui-Gon… did not take it well. He repudiated Xanatos—going before the High Council to proclaim that he was no longer his apprentice.” Jaster nodded at the clarification, and Dooku nodded back, his expression starting to twist into another frown. “But in that same meeting, Qui-Gon also repudiated Feemor, declaring that he ‘had not been responsible for raising any Padawan to Knighthood.’ His justification was that Feemor’s first Master had done all of the real work with him, and he could take none of the credit. He failed to consider how that would affect Feemor.

“I confronted him about that choice, hoping to convince him to apologize, and formally withdraw those statements,” Dooku ended with. “Qui-Gon refused, standing his ground. We haven’t spoken to one another since then.”

Jaster nodded again, mulling that over. It… spoke very poorly of Qui-Gon Jinn, he thought, but it did cast Dooku in a better light. They had tried to do their best by their bu’ad’e, and it wasn’t truly Dooku’s fault that Jinn had made such poor decisions. He was already grown, a full Jetii in his own right, and no longer bound to obey his old Master. Still, Dooku had tried to do what they could.

But that also brought up even more concerning questions.

“Suvari —I understand,” Jaster said slowly. “But that begs the question of why your people would let him take another hibir —student. It doesn’t sound as if he’s suited to caring for ad’e.”

Dooku’s lips pursed briefly, but they eventually just nodded again. “At this point in time, I agree,” they said. “He needed help and time to heal after Xanatos’s betrayal before taking another Padawan. It is his own fault that he did not seek that help, and he was not given the time he otherwise needed.”

“Because this ‘Yoda’ manipulated Ben and Jinn to push them together,” Jaster said. Though he didn’t know who this “Yoda” actually was, beyond one of their Councilors, the Grand Master of the Order, Ben had said, he had been able to gather that much.

“Indeed,” Dooku sighed, a little flare of weariness around his presence, barely able to be felt through his shields. “My own former-Master. He has always had something of a… soft spot for Qui-Gon. The last few years of Qui-Gon’s apprenticeship, he spent more time with Yoda than he did with me; only the fact that Yoda had been my own Master, the most senior member of my Lineage, stopped me from raising a formal objection before the Council over the matter. He believed that taking on another Padawan would be healing for Qui-Gon.”

“At the expense of the ad in question,” Jaster ground out.

“Yes,” Dooku agreed. “Though the entirety of the High Council erred rather grievously in this case, Yoda and Qui-Gon in particular have much to answer for. Yoda was forced to recuse himself in this matter, and he may even step down from the High Council himself, forced into retirement. Qui-Gon has been grounded in the Temple and ordered to the healers himself, though I suspect he will never take another apprentice. That may be for the best. As you said, though it may have healed him, it would do harm to the child placed in his care.”

Jaster nodded again and tentatively decided that he liked Dooku. Despite the fact that these were Dooku’s own Clan members they were talking about, from a Jetii standpoint, they hadn’t become defensive, hadn’t snapped to their defense when it wasn’t deserved. They seemed like a reasonable, level-headed, pragmatic sort of person with good intentions, at least.

Though Jaster’s opinion of the Jetii’tsad as an organization had still taken a serious blow after learning more about Ben’s situation… This, at least, was a Jetii Jaster could bring himself to work with.

“Suvari,” Jaster repeated. “That answers my questions, for the moment. We’ll have time for your questions later, once this is over. For now… Let’s go see what the Young have decided to do, and what part in all of this they’ll allow you to play.” Dooku tipped his head, and together, they started back towards the others.

One way or another… This war would be ending, soon, and the Young, all of the ad’e here on Melida/Daan, would be safe. Whether they had the help of the Jetiise or not, Jaster, and all of the Haat’ade, would see to that.