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The ship’s galley is stuffed, nowadays, with four beings crammed in for meals and discussions, two of whom have the proportions of adult male human variant… or even more so, in my case.
The ship is no longer “the ship,” at that, with names and their corresponding transponder codes that I can switch whenever I need or wish it, albeit with some work. It’s now “Torchlight,” after one of my few remaining childhood memories of “helping” my father hold a torch aloft to light our way in the dark.
“Helpful to avoid friendly fire,” “Helpful to know that Mand’alor is present,” and “Helpful for the historians later on to note for posterity’s sake” are some of the strongest reasons that drove this change.
And, incidentally or not, those points were spoken by the children first, although Jaster’s and Tor’s folks also contributed a lot in the decision.
And, lately, since that unplanned truce gathering between Jaster’s and Tor’s folks to be exact, “the children” include Pre, by the urging of Jango and Obi – if for different reasons – and by the timid agreement of Pre… themself? Himself? Well, Basic – and its embedded concepts – is still very much a foreign language for them, so I am inclined to let them explore to their heart’s content before deciding on any specific gender.
I am disinclined to let things lie when it might mean trouble, though, especially in this still-volatile stage of Mandalore’s hoped-for unification that is my new, accidental mission.
Such as now.
The three troublemakers are staring expectantly at me over their untouched bowls of porridge.
The children who are different from each other in nearly all the ways that matter, which is always most apparent when they are all gathered together and united in one thing or another like this: True Mandalorian, Jedi, Death Watch; black hair, red, blond; brown eyes, greenish stormy blue, blue; tanned skin, light, pale…; young adult, young adolescent, prepubescent….
I sigh, fold my arms in front of my chest on top of the table and stare back.
Well, unexpectedly, Jango caves in first.
“Can we visit the farm today? Together?”
Guilt forms in my chest and sluffs down to pool heavily in my gut, just so.
I sigh again, and let my arms fall away to the side similarly.
Jango’s request is all too understandable, and reminds me that I have been neglecting those that should be my most important focus, according to the Mandalorians. How not? After the ambush, however well-meaning it was on the True Mandalorian side if with their own ulterior motive, I rarely had time for anything but for putting out proverbial – and some literal – fires unrelated to the children.
We travelled together to Concord Dawn as our original heading had been, but that’s all. Afterwards, I was immediately embroiled in “audiences” with members of both factions plus the neutral-leaning clans, who were curious or had grievances they wanted to air.
How Jango and Obi made me adopt Pre was one of those – highly flammable – topics of discussion.
And, all the while, Jango was left alone to watch over and entertain Obi and Pre, also guard them from all-comers who wanted a chunk of either of them.
We still met for breakfast like this and sometimes a little bit before bed, especially when we’re travelling together to various planets, moons, starstations and colonies belonging to the Mandalorians, but I am painfully aware that it’s not enough.
And, now that I have been made aware of this oversight, I refuse to shirk my responsibility to these children – my children – for the “greater good.” Not when Master Yaddle allowed me my “holiday” because of them. Not when the tour has just ended, too, and we are travelling back to Concord Dawn anyway.
*
The farm is… worse than what little Jango told me in bits and pieces while he was grieving his first family.
It is… to be expected, I suppose. Nobody else has taken up caring for this place, after all.
Which is no doubt partly or wholly because, as Jaster once told me in confidence, Tor’s faction hunted down and killed anyone named Fett or caught sheltering them after little Jango had blown up his tank.
But still, the sight and feel of the abandonment packs a powerful punch, and for a long time the four of us just stare, frozen on the ramp of the ship, with Jango leading slightly ahead.
Weed now grows rampant in the fields that Jango said used to grow grains. The orchards lining the horizon from where we stand, likewise, look more like a single, scraggly forest.
It doesn’t get better, sadly, once we at last unfreeze – triggered by Jango’s small, sharp, choked intake of breath, though he refuses my offer of comfort – and start to come down the ramp to explore.
The open irrigation system nearest the ship looks and smells more like a muddy, mostly stagnant river and its tributaries than anything sentient-made. But the large pond behind the farmhouse, round which the skeletal remains of the outbuildings stand, trumps it.
And, the more devastation we find, the worse Jango’s presence feels.
Until, the moment he steps foot on the back porch of the broken-down, abandoned-looking, half-burnt farmhouse, his presence breaks open, spewing grief-loss-pain -fury.
He whirls round and snipes at Pre, “This is what your father did.”
Pre shrinks away in response, apparently in reflex, but then they stiffen up their back and seem about to retaliate.
Before they can open their mouth, though, I give Jango a purposefully mild look and say in my mildest tone, “No, I didn’t do this. And, from my calculation, Pre wasn’t even conceived yet at that point. Also, don’t you have a saying about judging the person for themself instead of who their parent is?”
It’s discomfiting, claiming myself as a parent for the first time, in this fraught setting at that. It’s not my intention to ignore what Tor and a handful of his people did to the Fetts and their land, too. But the grief in Jango’s emotional bomb gives me plenty of clue that he doesn’t really mean it, that he just wants to lash out at the softest target, and… well, it won’t do. Not if I can help it, and I can in this case, because he is my child, as much as Pre is.
Jango yells out in impotent fury, in response, and strikes out at me, but I am ready. Blind anger makes him sloppy, and grief only compounds it, so it’s easy to dodge, duck, and occasionally catch his punches and kicks.
He rests against my chest, in the end, sobbing his eyes out, and my own eyes are none too dry.
It’s hard not to empathise with him. Not here. Not when something deep in me whispers – not for the first time – that I experienced a similar loss to his, just less explosively.
And, at the same time, I am glad that it happens here and now. emotions like this can fester, can poison anyone, and the Dark lies at the end of it.
I am even gladder that, after a pause, Obi tentatively approaches us and adds his own hug into the mix, followed more gingerly and reluctantly by Pre.
Conventional family is not the Jedi way – at least not the modern one, and not among the KnightCorps specifically – but it is the Mandalorian way. And, for better or for worse, I am both, now, and this feels right.
*
It’s poetic justice in motion, to have individuals who identify themselves as Death Watch help restore the Fett farm in its entirety – buildings, irrigation system, fields and all. Even Jango thinks so. However, at the same time, the lad also feels violated, letting so many of them tramp up and down the farm with seeming impunity.
“None of them were involved with what happened,” I remind him for the umpteenth time to his umpteenth complaint, while we once more happen – or perhaps “happen” – to be relatively alone, battling with the overgrown orchards. “I did a background check, you did a background check, Pre did a background check, even Obi did it, and all of them passed it all. And it’s not just Death Watch here. We even found a few of your birth clan.”
It’s hard not to be exasperated with him at this point. But still, I carefully, carefully put no emphasis on any of my words, and make pretty sure that those self-same words are not rote-sounding even after so many repetitions.
It’s just my luck that Jango seems to make up for his lost adolescent years now, although he himself does not seem to realise it.
It really does not help that, at the same time, I somehow keep looking round for a particular pair of huge, hulking, sharp-clawed six-legged droids that I instinctively view as farmhands and family and playmates, and feel childishly crushed when I of course do not find them.
It also does not help that, outside of this little bubble, a handful of Tor’s closest clanmates keep trying to assert some opinion and power on Pre in various ways, including by trying to adopt me, and this insane move inspires others to stake their bid on me.
And, in the middle of all that, in this very Mandalorian setting, I still have to teach Obi how to be a Jedi.
*
Space and time for private seated meditation is in very, very, very short supply, nowadays.
I have to eek some for Obi, and sometimes it means I have none for myself.
And, the longer I go without, the more miserable I am, both to myself and others.
This reminds me unpleasantly of one of my more intense undercover missions, especially the three-year cold war the Shadow Corps had with the Hutt Council I participated in some time ago. I can only hope that this will not take another three years to settle!
Well, and try harder to set aside more meditation time for Obi and myself, of course. Because not a few of Jaster’s folks have begun to wonder if the power has gotten into my head and poisoned it, while Tor’s have begun to relax instead. All because I have grown more snappish, more exacting, and less tolerant of loud emotions even of the positive kind.
My latest attempt is simply to leave a note on the kitchen counter tripling as dining and cu’bikad tables in the farmhouse, addressed to my trio of charges and other tagalongs, signed with my full name and title and Force-signature. Quite foolish and reckless, I know, especially for a Shadow like me… or perhaps like I was, since it is a physical, removable, storable evidence of my identity. But desperation often spawns these things, and… well, apparently, I am not exempt from it, despite my long, long decade and a half of being a Shadow.
However, now that I have sequestered myself away among the last patch of yet-untended orchard, I find my thoughts drifting towards my many, many charges and long, long to-do list instead of calming down for a traditional meditation.
Investigating the strange lightsabre belted to my side opposite my own, for one. Which Death Watch practically worship. Which is still blank as if kyberless.
Or is its heart not kyber in truth?
Or is the beskar casing preventing anyone from communicating with the kyber inside?
Oh, I have never communed with a non-kyber crystal or even a non-crystal before! Never really tried to extend my Force-sense past a beskar barrier, too, despite my long acquaintance with Jaster and his folks. Is it different, indeed? Is it as hard as rumours claim?
I perk up, unclip the sabre from my belt, and stare at its boxy beskar hilt with interest.
Should I meditate with whatever is in the heart of this blade?
Well, why not? I’m already here and can’t seem to meditate the traditional way. This might just be the shortcut I need.
So, a little tentatively at first, I extend a tendril of my own presence towards the hilt lying on my palm, wrap it round the sleek, slippery, solid presence of that conundrum in the Force, and let myself wallow in the sensation without a set limit.
Unexpectedly, we… mingle, after a while. Our edges blur into each other, and it allows me to explore the barrier in greater detail and depth.
It is also what allows me to find the practically invisible latch that will unravel the barrier.
And unravel it does, once I tweak the latch.
Only for something to strike at me, right after.
I blank out.
Force. My head hurts!
`Stop it!` I rail at my attacker, and instinctively push back.
And it retreats.
…Startled?
Huh.
It’s not something, then, but someone.
`Who are you?` I inquire, pained and grumpy and frazzled and totally fed-up. And, quite unlike a Jedi master, I make it known to the offender.
Their subsequent shameful apology mollifies me, tones it down a little, but… not by much, though now I do wish to curb it, and do my best to achieve it.
Damn, I do need that meditation.
And, perhaps to be expected, whoever-they-are latches onto that thought.
`Jedi?` they ask back, wary and wounded and hopeful and so, so young.
I huff out a sigh… and now I can feel it and everything else once more, apparently, no longer numbed by the strike. Praise the Force!
`Jedi,` I confirm, then persist, `You?`
A sense of blank loss is their answer, at first. Then they tangibly, painstakingly gather their sense of self bit by bit and, savouring the concept for themself at the same time, venture out, `Jedi. But Kar’ad, too. Mando’ad? And… and Milaða.`
They do not lie. They cannot lie, not at this state. But… `Kar’ad. Why is it familiar? Milaða, too.`
Apparently, it’s my turn to lose myself and try to piece back what I may have lost, for the other gives me a strong nudge after a while, curious and worried and tired and demanding and grumpy for the lack of attention.
I blink, and forcefully refocus myself in the here-and-now, make my eyes search for the deconstructed pieces of the strange sabre. For its heart, specifically. For – maybe – the body of this strange Jedi.
And, there, nesting amidst a tangle of plates and parts and wires on a bed of fallen leaves and knobby roots in front of my cross-legged seated self, lies a small, black-as-the-void lump of crystal with specs of shimmering beskar caught in it like stars in space.
`There you are,` I think, as I reach out a hand to pluck it off the ground.
Well, maybe, I should have… prepared more, or not do that, for my erstwhile attacker’s presence is suddenly so close to mine, like an octopus plastered all round a stone.
A big octopus round a small stone, to be exact.
I yelp and flail.
they yelp and flail.
And we end up tangled in each other. Kriff.
Not that the said erstwhile attacker does not like it, surprisingly, after a period of… adjustment.
In fact, after some more flailing, they seek more contact, and I end up gaining another Force-bond.
The third strongest I have ever had in my life, even, though I somehow cannot rememberr with whom I had the first and second ones.
`Do you have a name you’d like me to call you?` I ask, resignedly.
They… do not answer. Not for a while. Busy revelling in our new closeness, apparently, like a nautalan crècheling at last swimming about in their favourite pond after a while away from it. But, with some prodding, like to a distracted crècheling indeed, and after some more self-gathering and thought on their part, they hum, `Té. But to you only. To others, I am Tar… or better yet, Tarre. Tarre Vizsla.`
Numbing shock drenches me like scaldingly icy water in a Tatooine high noon, just so.
`TARRE VIZSLA!!!`
The named being yowls in surprised pain and protest and pokes at me hard in retaliation.
`Ah, apologies, Master Vizsla. It’s just… surprising. I didn’t think – I thought…,` I splutter.
`You thought it is only a crystal, or I am a crystal,` they grumble, with an undertone of bitterness and old trauma creeping back in.
I send them my wordless rueful acknowledgement and wincing apology.
Well, and curiosity, too, but I do not pursue it, given that last part.
Still, they catch it, and acknowledge it, and murmur even as they burrow closer, deeper into my psyche, like a crècheling seeking a comforting cuddle, `I remember little of what happened – what caused me to be trapped here. I do not wish to remember more. But I must… must I not?`
Unspoken is the request to support them, hold them as they dig into the trauma.
And, given that task, uncertainty and unsureness creep into me like a trail of advancing acid across an unlucky being’s unprotected skin.
I have my own traumas – what if any of them got triggered by what Master Vizsla will be reliving? I am yet unbalanced, at that, given the lack of meditation time. And we are totally alone here – nobody will be able to help us, should we trigger each other’s traumas.
In the end, I advise the curiously young-feeling master to postpone this endeavour, citing all the above reasons.
Thankfully, they agree with my assessment.
Unfortunately, they insist to lie as close as possible against my skin, hence no more boxy lightsabre hanging down my left hip. Which necessitates a ready explanation about it that will satisfy stubborn Mandos, in addition to one about why meditation is important for any Force-user.
Kark.
*
Obi is very, very curious about my new necklace’s pendant.
And whatever makes him curious, Pre is also curious about it. Always. Because they claim that Obi is their long-lost elder sibling by blood Bre, and, “I heard that siblings always do things together. It is wy I came along with Bre when they fetched me, actually.”
And, of course, Jango refuses to be left out.
And, “naturally,” what fixates all three alor’ad’e is worth investigating by everyone else. Especially as they, unlike my – unlike Jango, Obi and Pre – notice that the “Darksabre” is no longer visibly displayed at my side.
And, newly waken and still traumatised as they are, Master Vizsla is freaked out by all the attention.
Given all that, and since I haven’t found a digestible explanation for it – in general Mandalorian standard, that is – it’s for once a Force-given boon to have to deal with the bureaucrats and diplomats of the New Mandalorian government, who collectively feel threatened by the resurgence of the “Old Mandalorians,” although it usually reminds me unpleasantly of the worst elements of the Republic Senate.
I have to de-dust my “Upper-Coruscanti” diplomatic skills for the occasion, but it’s worth the effort, really, especially since many of these peacocks care more of indirectly deriding my “necklace” than gawking at it, and most of my vow-bound ducklings look down on them too much to nose about my person when I am on a diplomatic visit to places like Sundari and Kalevala. I just have to deal with Jango, Obi, Pre, and a handful of guards whom both Jaster’s and Tor’s folks insist I need to surround myself with, and it’s… doable.
*
As preoccupied as I am in battling with words with the New Mandalorians, I – again – have little time for Jango, Obi and Pre, let alone Master Vizsla. Thankfully, the latter is content on just snuggling right beside me in the Force, as they examine their own self and meditate. However, the formers are… not so.
It begins with Pre, surprisingly, although they are usually the quietest of the three. “Let’s spar, Fee’bu. Aren’t you going to examine my skills, at least? I’m sure I’ve improved!” they whinge, tentative and trepidatious but also eager, as we have our breakfast along with the guards doubling as advisors in our shared quarters in “the palace of the Duke of Mandalore” in Sundari.
“Maybe I should learn too, Master?” Obi jumps in, emphasising the title, his lethally pleading attention trained on me. “Hand-to-hand combat skill seems… prudent.”
`Prudent, indeed,` I think to myself, wincing inwardly, remembering his stint in slavery. `But maybe it’s not really outright hand-to-hand combat skill that he needs to reassure himself on his freedom?`
I prod at him about it. Carefully. But Jango bulldozes over it instead, claiming that any power-backed skills would be what could free Obi from any altercation.
“Maybe,” Obi shoots back, nettled and unsettled. “But then others would die because the overseers retaliated on them. Or I could die because I misjudged my strength and other elements in the situation. And I wouldn’t be able to free anyone anyway in either scenario.”
“Who cares?” Jango huffs. “You are safe. Your family is safe. What more do you need?”
Obi purses his lips, his storm-coloured eyes gone stormier by pent-up emotions that also swirl agitatedly in the Force. “I care,” he quietly says, and I just as quietly echo the sentiment.
And, privately, I think, `This is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? The difference between Mandalorians and Jedi, after so many similarities?`
After all, as Jedi, we are called to help brighten the galaxy, not merely ourselves, though in the last millennium so many of even our people have limited it to select sections of the Republic.
Jango remembers his roots, too, it seems, for the older male agitatedly snaps, Concordian dialect abruptly thick in his words, “You are now a Kar’ad, Ob’i, not a Jedaii.”
“I’m a padawan, too, remember?” Obi snaps back, hurt and defiant. “You were there! You accepted me when we were in the cage!”
I let go of my multitensil, my appetite now thoroughly destroyed. Pre, seated to my left, has done it before me.
To their other side, Silas is not eating, either, but because he is too busy spectating.
And he is not the only one.
`Another point of difference between Mandalorians and Jedi,` I muse to myself, wry and tired and more than a little bitter.
Master Vizsla, apparently resurfacing from a meditation session that I try not to envy them for, hums in rueful agreement, and it… doesn’t help. No. it just rings hollow in our shared mindscape.
And they notice it.
Lucky me, instead of harping about it, they quietly suggest, `Maybe, instead of jumping right to hand-to-hand combat, you could teach your children how to escape bonds and cages?`
There is some pretty traumatic experience behind it, I can taste it: a pretty old one, from when they were far younger than this, and it’s an implication that I would rather never touch upon. So I just… go with the flow.
It’s a good idea to learn, anyway. Even for a New mandalorian, in case our training session draws in spectators.
*
Surprisingly, contrary to what they like to talk about, the New Mandalorians are unnerved when they find that I “used to be” a Jedi, when I reward Obi’s excellent attention in my impromptu training session with an open-handed run of all the commonly available lightsabre forms.
The kith and kin of the Duke of Mandalore and his council members, that is, seeing that I and my entourage are housed in the palace in Sundari for this particular visit and spend much of our time there.
“But – but – but – but – but Jedi are supposed to be good!” one of the spectators – the only daughter of the Duke, visiting on holiday from Coruscant Academy, a child a couple of years older than Obi is – puts voice to it after a while, as Obi coaches Pre and a very reluctant Jango in the katas.
“And what is your definition of ‘good’, verd’ika?” I reply, just as I would any youngling in the temple.
She lets out a protesting yelp on the appelation that has just slipped past my lips, and I inwardly wince, curse to myself, wonder.
Because it’s been quite a while since I heard that used to call someone else in my hearing, so it should have not been top of my mind when I was addressing someone now. And I remember that “verd’ika” is synonymous with “young one,” but why do this child take offence to it? The age of adulthood on Coruscant is eighteen, and she, like her people, insists to be treated according to Core sensibilities.
Before I manage to come to a decision whether to ignore, apologise for or gently confront her about it, however, Obi glibly pipes in, “What do you think the lightsabre is for, then?”
The girl snarls. Not pacifistic at all, I would say but not. And then, blindly, she hurls back, “So it’s true, then? You’re all the Republic’s attack beasts?”
Not a new accusation, this, but hurtful nonetheless, and more than a smidge true in sadly more than one occasion, what happened on Galidraan included.
Which is most likely why Jango has stopped moving and is boring into the side of my head with his eyes alone.
Kriff. Kark. Fierfek. Dang farik. Karabast. Haar’chaak. – I am not a diplomat!
*
Verbally sparring with a New Mandalorian child while fending off Jango’s needling was very, very tiring, if amusingly ironic given the previous use of the venue.
Watching my padawan inserting himself into the spar and replacing me in verbally sparring with the said New Mandalorian child and Jango after a while was even more tiring, though, unbelievably.
Well, gratifying, too, and saddening. After all, if life were kinder to Obi, he would have been a consular’s padawan with that quick, sharp, silver tongue of his, not… me.
Aggrevating, above all, when he and Master Vizsla noticed that thought and conspired to give me chastising pokes in the Force. What an abuse of the bonds!
And, now, after I have excused myself and my party from this impromptu debate stage and thought we will manage to escape back to our quarters presently, the New Mandalorian child – Satine Kryze, daughter of Adonai Kryze, the topmost leader of the faction I have been trying to ironically make peace with – demands that she be allowed to go home with us. Because, “I need to see for myself if what you said is just so much empty words or not.”
Oh, nobody likes that, least of all me.
I would rather not suffer a second three-way explanation-debate-placation, though, especially so soon after the first one, so I choose the – hopefully! – least flammable topic as a weapon to warn her away: “We are farmers, verd’ika. We live as farmers do, whenever we are home.”
And she does stutter in her conviction.
Which offends Jango, the owner of the farm and the reason we live as farmers whenever we are back home.
Oh, Force, it is a second round, indeed.
*
Satine Kryze, I learn, is a Mandalorian indeed despite her loud claims of pacifism.
She loves fighting, for one, and words is her chosen weapon.
Stubborn, for two, and this stubbornness is what makes her rally herself and persist to come home with us, in the end.
Even when Jango tauntingly tells her that this is planting season – hence why we end the visit before reaching anything – and everyone home participates in the planting.
Even when she is indeed required to help seed the soil nearly the moment we arrive back home, seeing as she cannot operate the tilling machines, and the only one left – driven by Jango – is ancient and has no seeding capability.
Even when, at the end of the day, she finds that all in the household sleep together in the kar’yai in the farmhouse, including her.
It is admirable even as it is ironic and sometimes frustrating.
Right now, for instance.
Everyone is already asleep or on the verge of it, including me, but she, lying to my right separated only by a fast-asleep Pre, still scrapes enough grit to whisper, “You’re an outsider. Why did they choose you to lead them?”
The answer is easy: “I don’t know.” But it happens to be the same question I have been asking if only to myself, so it ends up haunting me, keeping me away from the slumberland for a long, long time.
*
Fineries have no place in a farmland, especially during planting or harvesting season. Upper Coruscant courtesies, likewise.
And somehow, Satine accepts these facts more readily than playing as a child – or even an adult!
`Perhaps she would prefer a less physical game?` Tarre – well, they allowed me to call them “Master Vizsla” only until we were once more settled back home, at the end of the visit to Sundari – offers when Satine once more vociferously refuses to play tag with the children brigade employed for this planting season. `My eldest sibling would hide away when pestered for such activities by anyone, and Amma said they were like that since they were in the womb.`
A part of me is intrigued with the personal – and perhaps Jedi? – history they share, while another one still ponders on the best way to get Satine to exercise and socialise without making it a burden for her.
The biggest part, however, is stuck on the appelation they have just used.
It’s familiar. Too familiar.
But, before I can ask about it, Tarre intercepts me, their presence churning with something, `Give me back my body, and we can talk about it. Things like that are better with a visual display, in any case.`
`Bribery and threats ought to be beneath you, Master,` I snort, but grudgingly comply.
`You know so few masters, then? The lords are worse,` they laugh, and I perk up once more.
Only when night falls deep, sleepless but buoyant with the success of persuading Satine to join me and my original tagalongs in a late-afternoon stroll, capped with a picnic dinner in one of the gazebos strewn strategically out between the fields, do I realise that Tarre has successfully and thoroughly diverted my attention.
What a slippery being. No wonder they became a mand’alor this young, then. If Jango could learn from them, he might retake his title with more success one day. I am here only as a placeholder, after all.
And, to achieve that and my promised explanation, I need to somehow retrieve Tarre Vizsla’s body from… wherever it is.
*
“We might as well search for my sister while we are at it,” Jango snorts skeptically and a smidge bitterly when I tentatively announce the idea during breakfast.
“I never heard or read that a soul can live on without a body without joining the Force. Or maybe Master Vizsla wants his body put to pyre?” Obi offers just as tentatively, then laments, “Did you see Master Vizsla’s ghost, Master? Is it because you won his sabre from its previous bearer? I can’t communicate with him, then? I’ve got so many questions!”
I shake my head. “Master Vizsla is a they,” I try to explain, and carefully not think of Jango’s sibling. For now. I just can’t handle yet another task at this point in time!
“They are somehow attached to the crystal of the sabre,” I plod on, although I myself know and understand little, when the children perk up attentively, and Obi even stops eating. “They were… defensive, at first, when I found out, when I dismantled the sabre to check why it was so silent. But we have come to a… mutuallly beneficial coexistence, since then.”
“Mutually beneficial coexistence,” Satine repeats, her tone somehow both judgemental and flummoxed.
I shrug. “We share a Force-bond with each other. They–.”
“Force-bond!” Obi squeaks, apparently too flabbergasted to be as polite as he usually is.
I shrug again, and note how Jango is becoming tenser and tenser, as always when anything Jedi is brought up.
`Get us all to a mind-healer,` my beleaguered mind suggests. But, as with the other mentions of mind-healing in relation to me and my loved ones, my very soul somehow flinches at it, and echoes an old wound roughly dealt.
Well, in that case, I just… have to confront Jango about it. Myself.
Yet another task to tackle, then. Kark.
*
The harvest time of fruit trees and bushes rarely coincides with the planting and harvesting seasons of grains and roots as well as the picking time of flowers and leaves, also the seeding and harvesting times of fishes and fowls. Jango and his newfound birth kin tell me so. The other farmers, likewise.
`I know that already,` some whisp of memory retorts, and i… ignore it. For now.
Instead, I invite Jango on yet another two-man fruit-harvesting mission, shortly after the last grain planting was finished, this time to comb through the varos orchard.
But, apparently, it’s not just me that remembers what went on in the last one, for he immediately shoots at me the moment we literally put our feet on the soil of the orchard, “What do you want to talk about now, Fee’bu?”
I give him a look.
He does not budge.
I look away.
He scoffs and refuses to separate, even after he has received the folded wheeled basket I pass along to him from the back of our speeder.
I sigh.
He looks expectantly at me.
“Work first,” I mutter, and proceed to do just that. But that bull-headed smartarse attitude draws a helplessly fond smile out of me, anyway, and Jango knows it.
He silently prreens, and I have to rush away to even have a hope of concealing my chuckles.
And it… helps. Surprisingly, it helps. I feel lighter; Jango, likewise.
By midday, we lie sprawled side by side and half on top of each other on a picnic blanket spread between the large, knobby roots of two old varos trees, under the dappled canopy of their starlike leaves. The detritus of lunch, including some varos rinds and cores, is yet to be cleaned up. Sated and slaked, we silently agree to just laze about for a little while, welcoming the varos-scented, greenery-scented breeze that sometimes wafts by.
We silently agree to have that talk now, too. And, like earlier, Jango jumps in first, that reckless bull.
“What did you want to talk about, Fee’bu?”
For good measure, perhaps also thinking that I would eel away from this conversation once more, he turns to his side and deliberately flings a leg and an arm across my front.
Well, two can play this game.
We end up cuddling like a pair of amorous lovers… and the topic I would like to broach indeed reflects the intimacy, if neither romantically nor sexually.
“Do you remember, when you were little, you clung to me even before Jaster introduced me to you. You acted like you were meeting me for the first time, after that, but it was far different when I found you lurking among those sandberry bushes. Why?”
Oh, we never talked about it before. It was our secret, by yet another unspoken consensus. But nobody else is here now, anyway, and I do need to know why – Satine’s question just broke my reluctance to do something about it. Besides, I could use this as a bridge to remind him that I am a Jedi, that one of his siblings is one, and–
“You felt like kin. Smelt like it, too. You still do.”
–Oh.
Feeling and scent – it speaks of something biological, especially given that we had never met before that long-ago hot, humid day on Tatooine.
Added to all the inexplicable glimpses I have been haunted by ever since I reunited with him in that horrible slave warehouse, it makes for a picture I am not sure I can stomach.
It generates barbed questions that a large part of me always tries to shy away from, as well, namely: What was omitted from my file at the temple? What was omitted from my early-childhood memories?
Why have I always instinctively shied away from mind-healing?
“Fee’bu?” Jango prods, as I suddenly find it hard to regulate my breathing.
I shake my head, but draw him closer when he seeks to detangle our limbs. No no no, he is my only anchor right now, as I have to block Obi and Tarre away from this turmoil.
“Please don’t,” I manage after three wet inhales of unsteady breath, full of the smell of his sweat and sun-kissed hair. “Not yet.”
He freezes.
I breathe.
I keep breathing. Keep scrambling to patch all the cracks that begin to form. Keep gearing up for… something.
Something that wallops me and ruins all my patch job in one go, when Jango half-heartedly grumbles after a beat, their Concordian dialect once more thick in their tongue and now added to by… something else, “Fee’bu felt it too, right? So now what? Fee’bu wants to be called Býma? Cause Ruu’bu is my amma, though they didn’t want to be called Amma, cause it reminded them that their amma was killed by kin, however accidentally. No need to be circumspect about it, really. I will even ask Ob’i and Pre’i if they want to do the same.”
I feel flayed open, raw and throbbing. Even Jango can feel it, judging by how he twitches and now tries to get away.
But I can’t stop, can’t let him go, can’t even repatch my mind.
Three more bodies are thrown into the mix, however long after, and I can’t even make myself stop breaking apart to deal with the intrusion.
*
Satine brings us dinner.
It’s surprising.
It should not be surprising. Because surprise means I do not think her capable of it in any way, or caring enough to do it, while she apparently is.
I cannot address it, though. At least not just yet. It’s all I can do to mechanically stuff my mouth with things and chew and swallow, especially since my stomach is being rebellious and wishes to get it all back out again.
In any case, once we are all sated and slaked, Jango – whom Obi has been sending quelling looks periodically throughout dinner – bursts out, “What happened, Fee’bu?”
And that is the main menu, isn’t it? Set and served on a silver platter alongside unaddressed emotional and mental turmoil, a generous heap of heavy and barbed questions, and–
`Hey, stop it. Just tell them as if you were reciting a report,` Tarre interjects, once more hauling me out of the jagged, scorching vicinity of the mental hole I have apparently fallen into again.
Prompted so, I close my eyes, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale again, and all the while arrange all the things that have been haunting and hounding me into some semblance of coherence, fit for a report to the High Council – just the points, just the facts, free of any barbs and baggage.
Making my lips and tongue and vocal cord work to verbally deliver the thing needs even more effort. But the lack of sight and the rapt attention of the audience help a lot in pretending that I am talking to the High Council. So, with minimal stutter if without any tone or life, it all comes out – the glimpses of a childhood I never quite remembered before we set foot on this farm, the familiar knowledge and terms, the soul-deep aversion to mind-healing, and the fact that lately it has been both worse and better than ever, exacerbated by the dearth of meditation time and true rest.
Total silence is the first reaction the report garners. Even our surroundings follow suit, it seems.
And then, quietly, hesitantly, Obi pipes up, “You got amnesia then, Master?”
“Caused by jetiise,” Jango snarls lowly before I can reply.
And, damningly, Obi doesn’t seek to contradict him, reflexively or not.
He shifts about until he can burrow into my arms, instead, and earnestly floods my mind with `I’m here – we’re here – you’re safe – we’re safe – we can get past this together.`
The job of a guardian, taken up by the child. Ha. What a pitiful specimen of a guardian I am.
Still, the need to relieve Obi off that burden is what at last gives me the strength to continue, to clarify: “Maybe, or maybe not. Just one, I think, even if it’s true. Or a few. Probably with the permission of the pertinent councils. Maybe…. Maybe I needed it? And they just… went overboard. We likely will never know. I have no intention of going back to Coruscant any time soon, or be in contact with anyone but Master Yaddle. And I don’t know how I can bring it up to her. I’d rather recover as much as I can and… go on.”
“But what if there are others who suffer from such… such travesty?” Satine chokes out, sounding and feeling horrified and disbelieving and numb.
Well, put that way….
“I will talk to her some time soon, then,” I decide. “But please don’t tell anyone. Not yet at least. Not until we have all the facts, and preferably until measures have been taken so this won’t happen again to anyone.”
Oh, none of the children like that. But this is my life and my decision, and I remind them so.
*
Some of the varos trees are too tall and in too dense a clump to be harvested with the help of a hoverboard, or even a crooked stick with a basket tied to it. I noted it during my time harvesting the readily accessible trees and branches with Jango and seek to rectify the matter as soon as possible. By enlisting the help of the tallest individuals I know and can get a hold of to act as boosters for lighter people to climb up or just go pick the fruits.
Why? Because I once did. I was once one of those fruit pickers, if far less fruitful with my endeavours. I remember. I remember. I rode on the back of home-love-safe-care-cosy, smelt their scent and sweat and sun-kissed skin, heard them singing with a deep voice that reverberated pleasantly along my front, felt their muscles shift and bunch and stretch beneath my body and outstretched arms as they did tasks round the farm – our farm, not this farm, though they are similar.
And now I find myself pairing up with Jango.
Jango who killed six Jedi or maybe more with his bare hands.
But Jango is also my child.
I look at him, into him, and offer my shoulders for perchase to pick the high-hanging fruits.