Chapter Text
His sleep had not been anywhere near restful, and so it was with groggy hands that he answered the comm. He also felt underdressed in only his flight suit as Silas’s helmet greeted him, looking somehow more solemn than Obi-Wan had ever seen before.
He supposed that he deserved that.
They stared at each other for several tense moments before Obi-Wan sighed and shrugged, "For whatever it is worth, I am sorry for deceiving you."
The blankness of the buy'ce was unyielding. But after another beat of silence, Silas nodded.
Obi-Wan didn't try to offer anything else. It was a shame, as he genuinely had enjoyed the Mandalorian's company, protectiveness notwithstanding.
"I'm staying with Jango."
Silas's voice startled him, though the statement itself didn't. Obi-Wan did not have the man's loyalty, and Jango did. It was as simple as that.
So he nodded, "I wish you well in the endeavor."
The call ended with little else said.
It was clear that whatever goodwill Obi-Wan might have earned by his own virtue beyond having Jango's face was far outweighed by the sin of being a Jedi. He tried not to take that personally.
More importantly, he now needed to figure out how to explain Silas's absence.
When he brought the issue to Walon Vau, the man groaned an, "of course," and set himself to the task. Obi-Wan wasn't privy to all of the details, but soon there was a memo in every relevant HUD that Silas had been dispatched to Sundari to replace the jetiise as a bodyguard for Satine Kryze on the Mand'alor's orders.
And without Silas, who had eaten every meal with him and patiently answered his questions and kept the other Mandalorians at bay, Obi-Wan became keenly aware of how extraneous he was to the normal operations of the Haat'ade.
The was a sinking feeling in his chest that spread into his unsteady hands as he was herded from meeting to training to meeting with little respite and fewer explanations.
He thought he had been paying attention to the goings on, but so much of it had been lost on him without context. Occasionally Walon thought to fill in the gaps for him, but it was always with an air of inconvenience. It did not invite further queries.
The sensation ballooned into a tightness that settled into every muscle. Only when he felt his hands instinctively twitch towards his holsters did he understand.
He felt trapped, and worse, he was certain that the situation was one entirely of his own making, one with consequences too dire for him to falter. Was it any wonder that he had the sudden sense of helplessness?
This was what Jango had been running from, he knew.
The times that Obi-Wan slept in full armor went from a few days of the week to always, after that.
Jango didn't know why he was surprised that Silas refused to go back to the Haat'ade. Probably because staying was a terrible idea, but that had never stopped either of them before.
Within the first few days, it caused some problems.
An extra body in the travel plans shouldn't be that upsetting, but by the reactions he got—it was like he'd shot someone. An aide that he'd never bothered to remember the name of had been angry enough to be a little searing in the Force.
Then there was introducing Kryze, after Kenobi messaged about the Mando'ad's new "assignment."
Seeing her clasp his vod's forearm with a sharp smile reminded him that Adonai had favored using a bes'bev any time he'd had to fight. He'd had the same smile right before a spar.
"I look forward to working with you," she said.
"Likewise," Silas replied.
Mistrust settled like a fine mist in the Force around her, "I appreciate that the Mand'alor is taking my safety so seriously."
He glanced nervously at Jango and gave a stiff, "Of course, can't be too careful with Kyr'tsad out there."
Not that she was happy about it, though.
She pulled him aside in one of the few seconds she wasn't surrounded by aides with reports to hiss, "I can't believe you told him about Obi-Wan! If he tells the wrong person—"
"It wasn't on purpose," he interrupted, annoyed, "And he's not telling anyone, either. You might not like him, but Silas is a good verd. You're going to have to trust that."
Her lips thinned in frustration, but she nodded and glided back to her duties anyway.
Satine's attitude towards Silas stayed frosty but professional. But, it also meant that Jango didn't have to be at every single meeting anymore. He counted his victories where he could.
Silas was still stiff around Jinn, not that Jango was really relaxed either, and their group drew odd looks as they silently ate first meal together. Two jetiise and an ori'ramikad sounded more like the start of a bad joke than anything else.
As Jango pushed the last few bites around his bowl, Jinn set his tray aside and cleared his throat.
"With the terms of her ascension set and with the principal perpetrators of the bombing identified and handed over to local law enforcement…" he paused, mouth thinning, "The Council has determined that our mission here has concluded. Anything more would be outside of our mandate."
Jango held himself very still, not looking up yet. "The jetii'tsad knows about…?" he trailed off, feeling grim.
"No."
Good. His hands clenched at the possibility of more jetiise.
"They'll want to speak with us when we return."
That had Jango jerking his head up, glaring, "I'm not going that deep into hostile territory."
Beside him, Silas flinched and glared, too, but stayed silent.
Jinn sighed, "Ideally, Obi-Wan would join us so that you both could be examined to determine what caused your…anomaly." Jango thought the man was trying to sound delicate about it, maybe for his own discomfort, maybe for Silas's sake, but it made him bristle more than soothe.
He wasn't a wild striil, and he didn't need sur'narir dar'rishla like one.
"But instead the di'kut is running around as Mand'alor," he bit out.
He didn't know the man well enough to tell if it was laughter or embarrassment when Jinn pressed his lips together, "That he is."
"And they can't come here because it'd be war," he said, resigned.
"Nor can we stay, for similar reasons," Jinn added apologetically.
Here, Silas protested, "You could just lie low while you tried to figure out what happened! If you leave now, the trail might go cold if there's something to find."
The jetii gave them a long, considering look. He tilted his head, like he was listening for something. Jango felt it too, pressing tight against his skin like he'd been in the sun for too long. Suppressing the urge to shake out his limbs at the sensation, he huffed and crossed his arms.
Finally, Jinn nodded, "We will need Jedi expertise before the end, but you make a good point, Silas the Mandalorian. We should bring whatever information that we can."
His vod seemed to sag in relief.
Jango rubbed at his forehead, "The aarayaim it happened at won't be of much help when none of us can read it."
"Well," Silas blinked at him like he'd missed the obvious, "We just need a goran."
…Right. Because Jango always found gorane so helpful. He scoffed, "They won't part with their secrets for a pair of jetiise."
Silas squinted at him, like they'd forgotten how frustrating Jango was, and the look made him bristle. Then with a shake of their head, "They would for the Mand'alor."
Jango groaned. Great. Another call with Kenobi.
“I do not know how you managed to get the Mand’alor’s support,” Cera hissed, “But you are deluded if you think it means that House Kryze will be at your beck and call.”
Returning to Sundari should have been a welcome relief, but instead it brought more headaches. One of which being the constant correspondence that had flooded her official comm lines. She flicked off the angry message from her ba’vodu and lightly rubbed the space between her brows.
Truthfully, she had not expected any assistance from House Kryze.
Yet, despite her lack of surprise, it still sent a shuddering feeling through her chest. She had separated from her previous family years ago, but not her House. Even on Coruscant, there had been others that she’d kept in contact with, cousins and mentors who she’d occasionally messaged. They could not help her, now.
While she wasn’t officially being cut off and declared Naas’ad, the threat of it was clear if she didn't taabi tomyc.
She’d contemplated whether it would be prudent to simply declare allegiance to House Fett instead, but ultimately decided that she didn’t want to give her dar’buir the satisfaction of driving her away from her rightful home.
Goran Tayla had promised that they would determine the next Alor Kryze, but they had not provided any timeline in the interim. Satine would need to figure out the verd’goten on her own.
The largest obstacle was the armor.
Truthfully, it was unheard of for a Mando’ad to plan their own verd’goten, but she no longer had a buir, or even a bajuir to stand as a hailvur. But even more serious than that was the lack of beskar.
Had she been able to determine her own path, Satine would have never worn the heavy plating again. When Y’laara had held the beskar’gam hostage, refused to complete Satine’s verd’goten unless she chose them over Ad’bu… she had made her choice, and since then had accepted that she would never be a warrior.
Now, that choice had been cast aside. Even with the best of intentions, Satine could not easily accept the path that had been forged by Obi-Wan. He did not understand what he had asked of her. It must have seemed so simple to him, that she just needed to pretend long enough to do a ceremony. But it was not so cut and dry as that.
He wouldn’t understand the tradition, nor the context of the request.
But she did. Satine knew perfectly well that this was not about being accepted as Jur’alor. This was meant to be a humiliation, in more ways than one. Although, it wasn’t just a matter of pride.
If she passed, it would be speculated that the hunt was too easy, if she could weather it with so little training. If she did not, they would say that it was all the better, as someone in power could not be so weak.
And that was just the traditionalists. By accepting the verd’goten as a condition, she alienated a large portion of the Evaar’ade that had refused to do their own on principle. Already, many of their publications were calling her weak-spined for giving in to the traditionalist demands rather than standing up for what was right. She was beginning to wonder if they were correct.
Since she had refused her first verd’goten, Satine had taken solace in the knowledge that she had made the better choice, that killing anything for the sake of a ritual was unnecessary bloodshed. Frankly, she did not have the stomach to kill, even when she was being hunted, herself.
She could not dwell on it, now.
It was a bitter pill that sat beneath her tongue. She would not forgive Obi-Wan for it, either.
Satine could not back out now, either. To go back on her word would be far worse, in the public mind, than any other choice she made.
Which left the matter of beskar’gam.
Asking Y’laara now for the set that had once been meant for Satine would be a mistake.
No, if it had to be done, there was only one set of armor that she could accept wearing, and right now it rested with Goran Tayla to be prepared for the kote kyr'am.
She squinted at the datapad in her hand, trying to parse some sort of timeline from her schedule.
Obviously, she couldn't take the beskar'gam until after the ceremony, at least not the buy'ce, technically, but as long as the goran didn't deem it kadala, then she could begin getting it fitted that same day.
Satine asked one of her aides, Balac, to extend her stay in Kalevala long enough to include it.
A throat cleared behind her, and she raised an eyebrow in question as she looked over her shoulder, placing the pad back down on her desk.
Silas, who hadn't said more than a handful of words to her since their initial introduction, surprised her by saying, "You need to buy training armor, first."
She frowned, "It seems wasteful to purchase a full set just to replace it in a few months time."
The helmet remained expressionless, but his shoulders raised as he explained, "You need to build muscle to wear the heavy armor. That's part of why they don't think you can do it, it takes a lot of time to have the stamina for real beskar."
Her eyes searched him for a long moment. His armor gave nothing more away, but she didn't think he was trying to deceive her. Not if his faction agreed to be something like tomade.
Turning back to Balac, she nodded, "Training armor, then, from one of the local guildmembers, not a dral'goran. A ge'goran."
"A bold statement, Jur'alor," Balac smiled, "I like it."
Satine answered with her own, then glanced at Silas again, "Alright, since it seems like you know so much, what else?"
"Me'ven?"
She rolled her eyes, "Other than training armor, what else will I need to do? The holonet can only provide so much when Mando'ade chronically hate to write down anything that even remotely connects to Te Yust. What else will I need to acquire to be ready for my verd'goten?"
"Well…"
He had just finished running drills with the traat'aliit when Jango called.
They'd been having trouble without Silas, who had specialized in long range and strategy. Obi-Wan himself had more experience as a tactician than he would care to admit, but his somewhat novice grasp of the broad view required for strategy was weakened further by his lack of familiarity with Mandalorian largescale resources and capabilities.
Bo-Katan Kryze loudly deciding to take up the gap in the numbers left by Jango's second, much to the rest of the squad's amusement, did not mean that her integration was seamless. Silas's boots were just too large to fill.
He murmured these concerns to Kal after a particularly messy drill that left them all tagged by the simulation, but all he got was a gruff, "Then you shouldn't have sent Silas to Kryze without talking to anyone else, first."
So clearly, he was not in the man's good graces at the moment. It didn't stop Kal from training him, but there was a roughness to it that wasn't there before the alii'aliit.
All this weighed on his mind as he answered Jango's call on his internal comms, staring through the training dummies painted in kyr'tsad sigils across the mats from him.
As always, the other man didn't mince his words, "Kenobi. I need you to convince a goran to take Jinn and I to the aarayaim so we can figure out what the kriff happened."
He sighed in exasperation and drawled, "Yes, hello to you, too, it's nice to know that you're well. How am I? Quite content to hear the melodic tones of your voice, of course."
Jango snorted, "It's your voicebox, di'kut. How soon can you get to Sundari? Now that we openly allied with her at the alii'aliit, it won't be the Dral'han if you do."
Obi-Wan squinted, "The Dral'han..?" Then he blinked in understanding, "Ah, it's an expression. Yes, alright, I'll talk to Vau about it."
He stood and stretched as Jango grunted an affirmative, "I'll be waiting," then hung up.
"Always so charming," he rolled his eyes. Then he jumped as a voice spoke up behind him.
"Gar kama talyc?" Kal's voice had an edge to it that Obi-Wan couldn't hope to decipher, much less when compounded with the unfamiliar words.
Unsure, he simply shrugged.
"That was who you were originally flying to meet, wasn't it?"
Obi-Wan tensed, "Well that's—how—?"
They waved a hand, dissmisive. "You left your speakers on. Didn't hear them, though, if that's something you're worried about."
"Oh. Apologies, then, I—"
"They asking you to urcye?"
His shoulders sagged, resigned. "Elek, Kal. I have to… There are some obligations that can't be avoided, I'm afraid."
Skirata stared at him for a long time before he asked in a steely voice, "They are Mando'ad?"
Obi-Wan imagined how Jango would respond to that question and huffed a laugh. "Oh yes, exceedingly."
A beat, then a nod, "You'll still be in the sector?"
"They're currently in Sundari, so yes."
"Evaar'ad?"
He snorted, "Not last time I checked, no."
Kal crossed his arms, seeming to be thinking something over by the tilt of his head. Then he nodded, "That can be arranged, but you're taking your squad with you. You can't be running around without proper backup anymore."
Obi-Wan tried not to groan as he thought of all the possible complications. "Very well," he agreed reluctantly.
"And I don't like that Vau knows them but I don't. I've tried to be understanding—you've always been one protective shabuir when you let someone get close—but I'm not your enemy here, ad'ika. I need you to keep me in the loop."
He wrinkled his nose, "I know, but I'm sorry, Kal. It's not quite my call to make."
"You're the Mand'alor, I'm pretty sure you're the one who gets to make every call," the other man chuckled.
"Absolutely not," he shook his head vigorously, "I've already earned more than enough of his ire lately, and I would like to continue being in possession of all of my limbs for the foreseeable future."
Kal fully laughed at that, "Then you're smarter than I ever was, kid. Maybe you'll be alright." He clapped Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Come on, let's go figure out the details."
Obi-Wan followed, a pressure building between his eyes with every step.
Silas sprawled on his couch as Jango stretched and prepared to meditate. Recently, instead of the blasted jetii techniques that Jinn had tried to coach into him and that this body seemed to sink into, he'd taken to reciting the litany of his aliite that marched on.
It calmed and focused his mind the way Jinn always described. Silas found it comforting, too, and usually joined him.
"Why haven't you trained her?" Silas broke their routine by asking.
"She doesn't want my help, and she's already got a steady arm," he grunted, folding deeper into the stretch and letting the floor muffle words.
"You need more than good aim to pass a verd'goten. You know that."
Jango switched to the other leg before he replied, "I doubt hers will be anything like ours. We were bat'yust oriramikade."
His vod exhaled harshly, frustrated, "You and—" he abruptly stopped.
Jango shot him a questioning look.
He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "You and Kenobi agreed to support her. But you haven't actually aided her in any real way, more than just words. If she fails—"
"She won't," Jango said, firm.
"And I'm telling you that without more training, she absolutely will," Silas argued, "Ba'jur bal beskar'gam, Jango, you know that. Ibic Te Yust."
He glared, "Ke hokaani'sik, that doesn't mean I have to be the one to teach her. She's got a whole faction of people who would jump at the chance to be her hailvur."
"I don't think she does." He rushed his words when Jango raised an eyebrow at him, "I had to be the one to tell her to get training armor, vod. She was going to go straight into wearing Adonai's beskar. No hailvur worth their blaster would've let her do that."
Jango made a short noise of agreement before folding into his meditation pose. He closed his eyes, "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not actually Mando-looking enough to train her right now."
"Maybe not officially," Silas half-agreed.
He took a deep breath and tried to find that feeling where his memory felt sharpest. "You do it." The words surprised him even as they fell out, "I'm not going to have time once Kenobi gets here. If she's that desperate, you've got all the qualifications."
Silas's silence felt skeptical, but after a few seconds he agreed to at least make the offer.
With a sigh of relief, he finally started his litany for the night, "Ambu Fett. J’mee Fett. Arla Fett. Jaster Mereel…"
The morning before Kenobi was scheduled to land, Jinn knocked on his door, packed bag in hand.
They stared at each other for a beat before Jango deadpanned, "You're going back to Coruscanta."
He had the nerve to look sheepish as he inclined his head in a light nod, "The Council will not let me delay my return any longer. You, however…" Jinn leveled him with a solemn look, "It is not the first time my padawan has forced the issue and resigned from the Order. I will take comfort in knowing that this time, it will be a ruse."
Jango stared at him with wide eyes, because…wayii, he didn't even know what to say to that.
That bracing wind of Jinn's presence rushed around them.
"Daieno bika, Jango Fett," the giant of a man smiled down at him, "And, please try to keep my wayward padawan out of too much trouble, if you can. I vowed to see him Knighted, and I don't plan on making myself into a liar."
Jango felt something catch in his throat as he sensed the thread that had always been a connection to Jinn in the Force gently unravel. Without it, the air seemed much more still.
He managed to croak, "Ti jate'kara, Qui-Gon Jinn."
The jetii bowed. "You have my comm number, when the time is right. Eno Dai veshah keelel mellu im tamah foh veshah keelel," and whatever the words were, the Force pressed against him like an embrace, then Jinn turned to go, "and ret'urcye mhi."