Chapter Text
The morning sun stood high over the domed city of Sundari, Mandalore’s capital.
In the northern sector, Komari Vosa cracked an eye open as a stripe of bright light found its way through a gap between the blackout curtains.
The messy sheets were like a warm cocoon wrapped around her near-naked body; like the unapologetic lady she was, Komari slept in nothing but a transparent lace thong and perfume. With a soft moan, she shifted between the sheets.
They were fineweave percale, from Alderaan. High thread count. It felt almost indulgent in a place like Sundari, and it was one of the few luxuries Komari stubbornly allowed herself.
She closed her eyes, burying her face in the pillow, trying to summon that pleasant feeling of knowing you could sleep another two hours.
Sadly, today was one of those days when it was far easier said than done. The bed was low and wide, comfortable enough, but far too big for one person. Without her ever-absent husband to curl up to, or coax into morning sex so she could start the day sated and pleased, it felt almost pointless to remain in bed for another hour.
Komari turned again, pulling the dusk-blue sheet over her head before she flicked on her datapad. Still halfway asleep, she started scrolling through the local news on the HoloNet.
Gossip about the Kryze girls, as usual: the scandal of Bo-Katan joining the Kyr’tsad, the Death Watch, whether her pacifist sister Satine had a new secret lover or not, and the eternal debate of who was truly the father of Korkie Kryze?
The evil rumors never ceased in the tabloids.
Most journalists on Mandalore feared Jango’s wrath enough to keep them from writing too scandalous pieces about Komari herself, but if they could, they would happily have dragged her through the gutter.
Local news came next, and just like last month, the focus was on the debate over the Sundari II project. Ever since the last civil war had ended, the ruling clans and coalitions had argued over the restoration of the planet. Most wanted to see the planet return to its former glory, but the sum would be astronomical, and Mandalore was not a wealthy system.
“We could well enough fund the construction of another city if we exported some of the beskar…”
“Do you propose we sell our very souls too…?”
Ah, beskar. Mandalorian steel. It was more expensive than any other metal, and it could resist both blaster bolts and lightsabers. It was also the solid, sacred lifeblood of the Mandalorians, and selling it would not only be political suicide, it might as well be enough to cause a new civil war.
With that, the debate had reached something of a stalemate. Satine and her coalition, Nu Mando’ade, the New Mandalorians, lacked both funds and support for her vision.
As it was now, Mandalore made most of its credits from its mercenary armies, Jango's Haat Mando'ade included, and where the money lay, so did the power, no matter if the morally superior Duchess liked it, or not.
Komari herself didn't care about Mandalore.
At all.
To her, it was a dry, toxic wasteland that her husband had been forced to care about as an unpleasant, unwanted gift after the Civil War ended. If the Maker would appear out of thin air one day and turn Mandalore to ashes with a snap of its fingers, she couldn't care less. If anything, it would be a relief; then they could move to a more pleasant and culturally civilized planet, like Umbara.
Still, she could sympathize with Satine's wish to create a more refined, modern society.
Komari tossed the datapad aside, glancing up at the chrono on the wallpanel displaying meteorological data in faint Aurebesh.
Twenty-three degrees outside with an air humidity of thirty-six percent.
With a soft sigh, she rose from the bed and padded over to the wardrobe. Jango’s pet snake lay curled like spring around a piece of wood in its wall-embedded terrarium, looking at her with its slitted eyes, hissing with its black, forked tongue as she passed by.
”Watch it, or you might end up in a casserole one day,” she muttered back.
All the wardrobes were built into the walls, squared and aligned like everything else in the bedroom. A windowsill with five thorny succulents in grey ceramic pots. Light panels integrated in the ceiling, mimicking daylight with surprising accuracy. The ceiling above her head was pale grey, with clean, straight lines, all austerity that made her feel like she was waking up in a morgue every morning.
Komari nudged the drawer with her finger, and it opened up without a sound.
She shrugged on a dark blue spider silk robe, long enough to brush the cold, grey floor. Not bothering to dress properly just yet, she tied the thin sash around her waist and pulled away the heavy, thick curtains, letting the sunlight seep through the panoramic blue-tinted windows, drenching the room in light.
The cleaning droid swept over the floor with a low, drowsy hum as she padded to the closet bathroom.
Eyes still heavy from sleep, Komari stopped in front of the bathroom mirror and shook her long, platinum blonde hair free from the scrunchie. Back in her younger days, she'd been light blonde, but with all the stress that followed being kicked out of the Jedi Order, the warm tones had given way to a premature bone white color.
Though she was a natural beauty, even Komari had a strict skincare routine. Cleanser, toner, serum, eye cream, moisturizer… she went through it all like a ritual tea ceremony.
Once she was done, she leaned a bit closer to the mirror, inspecting her complexion. A little subtle redness from yesterday’s chemical peeling remained, but that was to be expected. It was nothing makeup couldn’t hide, and under a base layer of concealer, sun protection, rouge, it became as good as invisible. Even when she was alone at home, Komari always put on makeup and styled her hair.
Beauty was power in more than one way, after all.
She pushed open one of the drawers under the sink and dug into her impressive collection of shiny, metallic eyeshadow and rouge palettes.
Midnight blue, frozen winter plum, amaranth masquerade, and galactic blue.
As much as Komari preferred the darker, heavier shades, lighter tones were a must if she were to be seen on the streets of the sun-drenched capital during daytime.
”Grey then,” she murmured to herself, dotting the soft brush over the shade ’Space dust’.
Komari took her time, sculpting a makeup look that emphasized her sharp cheekbones and fine features, finishing by framing her lips with a lip pencil and lipstick in ‘Mauve Nude.’
Satisfied, she closed the palette. It softly clicked back together, and Komari put it down with the rest of her beauty treasures from the Core Worlds. One last look in the mirror, a final minor correction of the rouge, and a finishing layer of mascara to make her rather pale lashes black and dramatic.
With that, she was ready to face yet another lonely, quiet day.
At least until Boba woke up.
If there was one thing Jango Fett loved, aside from his kids, war and danger, it was minimalism.
Functionalism.
Muted colors.
Perfectly folded shirts that he never had to iron or starch.
He hated clutter, anything too colorful, and saw no charm in home decorations or art. Not even family holos. Everything that could be stowed and out of sight was. Other than that, their apartment looked like pretty much any other Mandalorian family with multiple kids: wide, open spaces, grey-white walls, dark granite floors.
Easy to keep clean, child safe, and devoid of any personality and soul.
She toyed with the thought of hiring a decedent interior designer from Cantonica to cover the walls with dark tapestries, purple, heavy curtains with tassels, crystal vases with exotic orchids, chandeliers, an antique sofa in crushed velvet, and a full-size mirror over the bed so she could watch Jango fuck her senseless when he finally was home…
…if he returned home blind, that was because she had a feeling he would either get a stroke or divorce her on the spot for that kind of betrayal.
Komari sighed softly as she flopped down onto the sofa, stretching out her long legs. By pure routine, she flicked on the holocaster and tuned in the HNN. Crisis, corruption, drugs, economic recession. Same old as usual there too. Minute by minute, her eyes grew heavier with sleep, and the urge to crawl back under the sheets strengthened with every pointless headline.
She almost jerked back to alertness when the drowsy news anchor’s voice was suddenly replaced by fast-beat music and commercials: casinos, tooth-bleaching paste, cosmetic enchantments, and weight-loss drugs for every human-adjacent species.
"You deserve a smile as brilliant as Chronium!"
Leaning her chin in her hand, Komari switched to the HNE’s loop of gossip and talk shows. Today, a Pantoran and a Zeltron were speculating on the private lives of the Core Worlds’ rich and famous: public darling Senator Amidala and banker Rush Clovis’ ill-hidden affair, and the intergalactic power couple Brea and Bail Organa’s latest failed fertility treatment cycle.
”…her lab-grown womb was implanted last year, and they had hoped to be able to conceive by now, but the embryo failed to fasten…”
”…adoption is hard these days; it’s the preferred way to have children in many societies. There aren’t enough orphans to go around for all prospective parents, and few want to adopt troubled teenagers.”
”Yes, sadly, this is the reality on both Hosnian Prime, Corellia, and Coruscant.”
Switching to Galactic City Local News just in time to catch the headline in neon: Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi had secured a spot on the Jedi Council after his work on Devon IV. Komari unconsciously gritted her teeth as she watched Kenobi look humble, yet annoyingly smug in front of the Senate building, praising an aid project he’d just left in the Jedi Service Corps’ hands.
"Naturally, the Jedi Order is relieved that the conflict was resolved without violence. I must say that…”
It could have been her.... It should have been her.
Old humiliations and personal failures gnawed at her ego like vicious termites as she recalled the redhead from her time in the temple. Kenobi was only a year older than her, and Komari remembered him as an average Padawan, not particularly talented in anything…. unlike Komari herself, who had been exceptionally talented and was believed to have a prosperous career in front of her. Ever since she became a Padawan at twelve, she’d been marinated in all those countless promises about a bright future with the Jedi Order.
But she had been cursed by the Maker, and played her hand of cards poorly. Worse than that. If she were to be honest, Komari had thrown her cards into the fire just to get a reaction out of her once-so-beloved Master… and that was how Komari Vosa, once the rising star of the Jedi Order, ended up like a housewife on Mandalore.
Birthing the next generations of Haat Mando’ade warriors like a prized broodmare.
Raise warriors… bla bla, sometimes it felt like that was all there was to them, the Mandalorians.
”The auretiise doesn’t understand,” Jango used to say, as if it explained it all.
Yes, you obviously had to be born into this kind of craziness to truly appreciate it, Komari supposed. Brainwashed from birth by the likes of Kal Skirata and other Mandalorian extremists.
She switched to the weather channel that looped satellite images of local weather in the nearby systems. Light rain on Kalevala, clouded skies on Concorde Dawn, same on Concordia, and bright sun over Sundari’s deserts.
A door opened behind her in the corridor, followed by a strange noise. Komari perked up, looking over her shoulder. Was it Boba, or the droid that had got stuck in the corner again…?
From the shadows, a stocky female figure emerged, and Komari sank back onto the sofa. She had almost forgotten their new, permanent houseguest: Jango’s older sister and Komari’s sister-in-law.
Arla Fett.
Raped and abused to insanity by the Death Watch, Viszla, and his men. After developing some kind of trauma binding, Arla became an assassin for her tormentors for years, until one day she got caught on Coruscant and was judged mentally unfit for prison. Instead, she was sent to the Valorum Medical Center, where she spent years until one of Jango’s information brokers discovered she was indeed the sister he had long thought dead.
Komari had almost choked on her wine when Arla showed up on their doorstep one evening like a living dead in an ill-fitting white jumpsuit, flanked by caretakers and fully armored Mandalorians.
Jango usually had a plan for most things in life, but he was fully unprepared to handle a sister who functioned on coping mechanisms entirely unlike his own.
After a week or so, it became painfully evident that Arla was traumatized to the very core, suffering from severe, chronic somatic angst. Despite their best combined efforts, she spent most of her days lying in bed, letting the waves of old terror ripple through her.
”My, my, aren’t you up early today…?” Komari said as Arla sank down on the sofa.
Arla was clad in a pale blue, long-sleeved nightgown that reached her knees. It fit loosely on her frame, looking more like medical garb than anything else. Her unwashed golden blond hair fell straight to her shoulders, grey eyes pale enough that Komari wondered if they were even related by blood. Arla looked far more like herself than Jango, with his far darker complexion, brown eyes, and thick, curly black hair.
”The day cycle is different here than on Coruscant,” Arla murmured, eyes dead, skin grayish. ”It’s hard to fall asleep.”
”We should try to go out a bit today,” Komari said. ”Some daylight will do you good.”
A stroll through the domed city of Sundari, gazing out over the endless desert wasteland outside the dome.
What a dream it was…
The Mandalore system was a functional ruin. As tight-knit as the Mandos might look to an outsider at first glance, their history was paved with conflict. A dozen factions had been at war for as long as anyone could remember, and it was their wars that had transformed Mandalore's lush forests into barren, toxic wastelands. Arla and Jango’s homeworld was no better off; half the planet had been turned to dust, its axis and rotation forever altered.
Arla murmured something inaudible as her gaze fixated on the holocaster projection.
She needed to shower; that was non-negotiable, Komari decided. She couldn’t parade the sister of the great Mand’alor through Sundari looking like she hadn’t bathed in weeks. Her hair was like an oily rag, and the smell of unwashed clothes clung to her as if she’d slept in the older boys’ unwashed training gear.
”You will shower today, Arla…,” Komari said, pushing herself up into a seated position, ”…and wash your hair.”
”I don’t think I need that,” the older woman murmured.
'Yes, you will,' Komari thought, summoning her powers. A small nudge of the Force, that was all it took to convince a mind as scrambled as Arla’s.
”You will clean up after breakfast,” she added, softening her voice, pitching it slightly higher above her natural, deep, velvety tone.
Arla murmured something incoherently again, turning her head slowly to meet Komari’s gaze with those blank, uncomprehending eyes. Was it the medication, or her habitual state? Komari couldn’t tell.
Oh, you poor thing. What am I going to do with you when lobotomy is off the table…?
It had probably been unwise to remove her from the clinic on Coruscant, but Jango wanted her with him… which in practice meant dropping her into Komari’s lap, because he had an army to run and three rowdy teen boys to look after.
"I'll make some tea," Komari said as she rose from the sofa and padded into the kitchen. She switched on the electric kettle and the water boiled within seconds.
Komari shifted through the collection of teas in the anonymous metal jars lining the cupboard, sliding past Jango’s nasty, bitter herbal blends until she found what she was looking for: the black citrus infusion from Ryloth she bought on the black market last week, tucked away like a secret.
With the still steaming cups in hand, she returned to the living room, setting one in front of Arla, who hadn’t moved, and keeping one for herself. They sat side by side on the sofa, watching as the weather channel showed drone footage over Mandalore‘s deserts.
Eventually, MU-12, their household droid, rose from its charging station and began preparing breakfast like clockwork. It moved with smooth artificial precision, scooping grains and pouring water into a pot for porridge.
Komari left Arla in front of the weather channel and slipped into the kitchen.
She sat down at the table, using the Force to assemble breakfast for herself: low-fat yoghurt sprinkled with dried starfruit and a pinch of dehydrated black grapefruit. Spirulina juice mixed with jogan fruit. Dark rye bread with green herbal spread.
A moment later, Arla joined her, staring at the plate MU-12 had prepared as if she had never seen food before.
“Morning,” Boba yawned as he wandered into the kitchen, his raven-black curls tousled from sleep, still clad in his grey pyjamas.
Boba Fett was eight. Still too young to join his older brothers and Jango on campaigns. Some Mandalorians started their children’s training far earlier, but Jango insisted his youngest have a normal childhood.
At least as much of a normal childhood as a man like him could provide.... There was something almost compulsive in the way Jango tried to pass on every scrap of lethal knowledge he possessed, as if he feared the day would come when one of his sons might need it and he wouldn’t be there to teach them.
Some of his Mandalorians had aruetti wives who fretted over raising children into warriors at such a young age, but Komari didn’t. Not after growing up in the Jedi Order, where children gifted with Force sensitivity were torn from their parents as toddlers and then raised in the Temple and indoctrinated for years for a chance of maybe becoming a Jedi Knight.
In hindsight, it seemed almost cruel.
The Mandalorian way, by contrast, might be harsh, but at least you weren’t discarded by your own, and the galaxy was a harsh, unforgiving place. That was just how it was, and the sooner you accepted the truth, the easier your life became.
"What do we get for lunch?" Boba asked, his bright voice cutting through her train of thought.
"Catfish salad," MU-12 replied.
"Fish, again...?"
With most of its ecosystems destroyed, Mandalore mostlyrelied on imports to sustain its population. Grains and meat from Concorde Dawn. But they had hypopondric greens and mushrooms grown in the dark caves under the city. Fish too. Mandalore was a desert, but there was a lot of water under the surface.
Arla sat and poked at her food under Boba’s watchful eyes. He was still struggling to make peace with the fact that he now had an aunt, and it didn’t help that said aunt needed a heavy cocktail of diverse medications just to crawl out of bed.
Whatever Jango hoped to achieve with Arla, Komari didn’t know.
The epicrisis had called her “unstable.”
Komari had just shrugged at it; how bad could it be?
Her last psychological evaluation at the Temple had been almost identical, minus the excessive trauma. Aggressive. Impatient but exceptionally talented. “Mental instabilities,” highlighted in red, whatever that meant. To Komari, it had seemed more like a cryptic insult than anything else.
Boba kept looking at Arla with the curiosity so typical of children, no doubt a hundred questions swirling in his head. Jango had likely told him not to drown her in questions, maybe afraid of what the memories would do to her.
Jango seldom talked about the past, but Komari knew they had been grain farmers on Concorde Dawn, the Fett family. Lived in a rural area in the countryside, a bit away from the nearest village. A simple wooden house surrounded by endless fields of golden rye and maize. Long rusty water pipes, dusty narrow roads, and cicadas singing in the twilight.
Komari had been there once, out of sheer curiosity.
Alone, of course.
Jango had never returned. He was nothing but a brave man, but facing his own, old, bone-deep traumas was too much, even for Jango Fett.
“… when is dad coming back?” Boba muttered, looking out of the panoramic window like the Haat Mando’ae’s fleet of Meteor-class Q-carriers would break through the clouds any second.
The eternal question. Boba still struggled a bit to understand that military campaigns were not a date X to date Y occurrences. At the moment, Jango and their older boys were on Ord Mantell, where a gang war had blossomed up and threatened to overthrow the local government.
The kind of conflict that was worth hiring an army of professional soldiers for.
“As long as it takes to stabilize the situation on Ord Mantell,” Komari replied over the edge of her cup, “Another month, maybe.”
After breakfast, it was time to start with the day's duties. Komari waved a hand, and the used cutlery and plates lifted, clinking lightly as they floated toward the dishwasher. One flick, and everything was stacked neatly inside.
Once the kitchen was clean, she returned to the bedroom, laying a soft, pale-blue knit dress across the bed while picking out new underwear for the day.
The dress was casual by Komari's standards, modest almost, even if it was short enough to hike dangerously high when she bent. She adjusted her bra, attaching an extra strap to keep her breasts from spilling out of the wide cut, before shrugging into the dress.
With her palms, she smoothed the fabric over her chest, checking that nothing beneath showed too much and that the push-up effect gave her the dramatic hourglass shape that always turned heads on the street.
Komari Vosa was no shy wallflower, and she made sure everybody else knew that, too.
With Arla placed in front of the holocaster, Komari made sure Boba did his homework while she took some time for leisure reading.
"Why do I even have to learn this...?" Boba sighed as he struggled with scribbling down example phrases in huttese.
"Because power and credits are often intertwined, and the Hutt families have been blessed with both," Komari said. "I'm sure you will have the unpleasant honor of dealing with them when you're an adult."
She'd met plenty of hutts as a Jedi. Most of them were overgrown, greedy slugs. Not beneath killing their own kind for credits, and huttese was a foul, ugly language best suited to curses.
Reflecting the hutt species perfectly, in other words.
"But I'm going to be a soldier..." the boy said, giving her a tired look like she didn't understand a thing.
"A mercenary soldier," Komari corrected, carefully flipping a page of her paper book. "Half of the job is negotiation to secure a lucrative contract, and you want to know your employer as well as the enemy. Knowing their culture and languages will aid you in that. Besides, half of the galaxy speaks Huttese."
Boba huffed as he returned to his homework. His frown deepened as he continued, scribbling down the quirky signs with a slim stylus on his datapad.
Jee nrom nal shaddah.
I am from Nal Shaddah.
Pa bu saloooh?
Where is the cantina?
He gnawed at inside of his cheek, leaning his tilted head onto his hand. Aurebesh was clean and symmetric, easy to write, while the signs of huttese were more like ink blotches formed into signs with a pencil, like watercolors.
"...yours doesn’t look any better," he said after a while, peeking over the table at Komari's book, eyebrows knitting in genuine curiosity. "What language is that?"
It was Sith.
Ancient Sith. The language of the native inhabitants of planets Ziost and Korriban. Refined and evolved by the second generation of Dark Jedi after they diverged from the Jedi Order. A clean, elegant script. Used by the old Sith Order, several thousand years before Darth Bane coined the rule of two.
One of Komari Vosa's many secret talents.
A blackmarket find, a neat bargain for seven credits. The book had called to her through the Force, a subtle whisper, just like one of those old fairytales where a child found a magical book at the beginning of a great adventure. It was the notes of an old Sith, Darth Zannah, Bane's last apprentice.
"A very old language," she replied evenly. "A woman named Zannah wrote this almost a millennium ago."
She took a sip of her spirulina juice, eyes sweeping over Darth Zannah's elegant handwriting. It was almost romantic, a forgotten art, and Komari couldn't imagine a more pleasant way to learn the things about the Force that the Jedi Order had never been willing to teach.
An hour turned into two, and Komari decided it was time to move on with the day’s schedule: make Arla clean up, put on fresh clothes, and take a little stroll through the city. Surely, she could manage that at least? She put her teacup down and padded back to Arla in the living room. She hadn’t moved an inch, still staring at the holocaster as if she’d been put into a trance.
“Come on,” Komari murmured, her tone soft but firm. “It's time to clean up.”
Arla’s eyes flicked to hers, hesitant.
“Don’t think about it too much. Just… let me help," Komari said as she guided her down the short corridor, past the kitchen, the sunlight still pooling along the floor, until they reached the bathroom.
“Come on now,” she coaxed, opening the door. “You’ll thank me later.”
The main bathroom was a dream in industrial grey and chrome, the cold floors like the rest of the house. A deep bathtub in speckled grey stone. Light grey mats.
“Nothing bad is going to happen. It’s just you and me here.”
Arla stripped off her clothes and sank like a sack of sand into the tub, her clothes a sad lump on the tiled, spotless floor, while she curled up like a sacred child. Komari felt her heart sink at the sight, and she felt an odd sense of being out on thin ice. She'd been one of the best Padawans of her time, but her talent had always been fighting, not healing.
“...there you go, you can use this for everything,” she said, placing the plastic bottle with shower gel in the older woman’s hands as she turned on the water.
The boys' four-in-one shower gel would have to do, Komari decided. Waxing or shaving... No, she wouldn’t even mention it. Different people had different standards. Arla might smell like a man and have hairy legs, but at least she would be clean.
Small victories and all that.
“You’re going to stay?” Arla murmured.
“Yes.”
Maker forbid Arla would try to strangle herself with the water hose or something...
She sank to the floor, back against the wall, legs stretching until her toes brushed the carved stone of the bathtub. Her gaze drifted downward, and she noticed the black glittery polish on her toes was starting to chip.
With the aid of the Force, Komari slid a drawer open and levitated a bottle of nail polish. Arla sucked in a sharp breath as the glass spun gently through the air and landed in Komari’s outstretched hand. The cork twisted free with a soft pop, releasing a faint scent of chemicals and synthetic pigments.
“It’s like magic, isn’t it?” Komari murmured, tilting her head slightly as she swept the brush across her nails in careful, perfect strokes. The glitter caught the bathroom light, scattering in tiny sparks across her toes.
“You’re... a Jedi,” Arla said, her gaze unreadable, as if the realization struck her for the first time.
“I was a Jedi,” Komari corrected her with a sharp gaze. “Long ago.”
“Was?”
“It’s an occupation… a title, a religion,” she said, keeping the necessary cognitive distance from her own past. “There are plenty of people in the galaxy who can use the Force without being Jedi.”
Jedi weren’t popular among the Mandos. Far from it. Too many long and bloody conflicts in the past. She’d lost count of how many times she’d been referred to as “Jedi Whore," in whispers behind her back over the years.
“He never said how you met,” Arla murmured, sinking deeper into the tub until the water reached her nose.
No, of course he hadn’t. Jango never dwelled on the past, and frankly, the story was… kind of embarrassing for both of them.
"It's not a very interesting story," Komari smoothly lied.
She had been eighteen, with the Jedi Trials looming in front of her back then. Stronger in the Force than most adult knights. Proficient in both Jar’Kai and Soresu, and firmly expecting to be knighted before twenty.
And Jango… he had been twenty-three when she met him at Galidraan, already a seasoned soldier.
Commander of the Haat Mando’ade, the True Mandalorians, Jaster Meerel's protege and successor.
Komari didn’t even like him at first. He was so helplessly boring; uncultivated, and uncooperative. Too young, and too short for her taste, not even six feet tall. He wasn't unattractive, though. Far from it; Jango had dark, piercing eyes that lit up like gold in the bright sun, warm, bronze brown skin, and he was incredibly fit. Broad-shouldered and very manly despite his youth, too.
If something would drive her stoic Master mad, maybe jealous even, it would be having an affair with him. The thought had been thrilling, tempting, and it had seemed like the perfect plan to her younger self. Finally, a way for her Master to notice her, to see that she wasn’t a child anymore.
In hindsight, it was an absolutely unhinged, stupid idea.
But then again, Komari Vosa had always been the kind of girl who liked to play with fire. Too unafraid, too headstrong and reckless for her own good.
So, she decided to seduce Jango, as aggressively as her personal act suggested she would.
It didn't work very well. Jango wasn’t impressed with her; he thought she was loud, arrogant, and rude. Very Jedi, he’d said it like it was an invective. But… he was also a young man filled with testosterone and a frontal cortex that was yet to be fully developed.
Eventually, Jango gave in when she snuck up on him naked in the shower blocks, under the premise that sex was all there would be, and he didn’t want to get roped into whatever scheme she was running.
Yeah, he’d been a bit naive back then…
It was supposed to be a one-time thing. But he was good in bed; attentive, full of fire, and to her delight, both rougher and more experienced than the young knights she had experimented with in the after-hours at the training dojo at the Temple when her Master was off-planet.
Once the line was crossed, it became easier to do it again. Eventually, it all got out of hand, and Komari lost count of how many times they’d had sex.
When her Master found out, he didn’t get jealous as she had hoped. If anything, he was disappointed and disgusted with her behaviour.
“How do you expect to function as a Knight when you can’t even control yourself, Komari…? This is beneath you!”
A couple of weeks after leaving Galidraan, Komari got another unpleasant surprise. Ending up pregnant because she’d neglected to get a new contraceptive implant was just the tip of the iceberg that finally got the Jedi Council to lose their patience with her.
Praxis dictated that female Jedi use implants or cycle blockers, regardless of whether they were sexually active. Anything with hormones, though, made Komari’s already unstable mood far worse, and she’d relied on herbal contraceptives from Moltok… which weren’t nearly as reliable as she’d been promised.
She could have had an abortion, agreed to be transferred to the Jedi Service Corps, or made amends. The most rational choice, by far. But in the end, her broken heart was aching to be loved, and a child would love her unconditionally, regardless of all her mistakes and chaotic nature.
Besides, she was not the one to beg. Never. Her Master and the Jedi Council had turned their back to her, and she was boiling with rage and wounded pride.
I'll be fine. I don't need any of them.
As a Jedi, she had far more formal education than the average galactic citizen, and Komari was talented in far more fields than fencing; she wasn't too worried for the future. The galaxy was full of single parents, and nobody on Coruscant would bat an eye unless they had known her past as a Jedi.
It seemed like a good plan.
Until someone, perhaps her Master, had the indecency to tell Jango he was the father of her unborn child. In true Mandalorian spirit, Jango contacted her and explained that he had to raise the child; otherwise, he would become a dead man.
"... it would turn me into dar'manda, doomed for eternity. I can't allow that."
Komari barely understood a thing about what he was talking about. It was some kind of dishonor among the Mandalorians, a sacred duty, she got that at least. She didn't know what she had expected from him, but what she got was disappointing. Almost on the verge of being humiliating.
Her, her, a necessary duty…?
It hurt far more than it should.
And somewhere under the calm surface, she could tell Jango was annoyed as well. Disappointed. Maybe in both of them. He had probably planned to marry a proper Mandalorian girl, or any nice, predictable, dependable girl that could be seamlessly integrated into his rigid lifestyle.
He didn’t want her, and she didn’t want him either.
She could enjoy him as a lover, but as a boyfriend, a partner, a husband?
Her rational mind said no, but she could at least use him for temporary... comfort.
Arla rested her head back and gazed up at the ceiling, seemingly lost in her own inner world again, and Komari leaned back against the cool tile wall, letting the bitter memories fade away in favor of the present.
She missed Jango.
Komari still didn't like to admit it, especially not out loud, but she did. He didn't talk much, but it had never bothered her; she could read him through the Force, feel the steady rhythm of him without a single syllable. It was company enough for her.
The mornings and the late evenings were the worst.
The bed felt empty and cold without him. No firm, warm body to press up against, nobody to whisper her fantasies to, and nobody to share the morning shower with. She wasn't a clingy person per se, but Komari had a high libido and didn't miss a chance to wrap herself around him like a coiled serpent, slipping her hands under his loose linen skirts, tracing the hard curves of his muscles and the uneven edges of all his old scars and wounds.
He had thickened slightly with the years, but was still impeccably well-trained, strong, and solid. Komari liked him far better that way; she'd always preferred men who were older, and there was something about him that was almost magnetic with his mere presence in the most primal way.
With a soft sigh, Komari clenched her thighs together. Her period was over for this month, and the ovulation phase was maybe a day or two away, making her body ache with longing. If it continued like this, she might have to bury her face in one of his shirts and pretend it smelled of him instead of fabric softener.
Her body remembered him so well and readied itself unconsciously, like that feeling of bitterness one might feel on the tongue just by thinking of sharp citrus fruit.
Neither of them was the type to like slow, gentle lovemaking in bed while looking each other in the eyes. They both wanted sex that set nerves on fire, muscles taut and straining, every sense alive like in a battle. For Komari, it was the edge, the delicious moment when control and surrender blurred together that she craved, and Jango needed someone who could match his intensity.
Driving him wild had become a private sport she never tired of. Jango wasn't... quite as eager as she was, especially not during the day, but he gave in far more often than not. Being bent over the washing machine and fucked until tears prickled at the corner of her eyes while the kids were out playing was such a pleasant addition to her otherwise so uneventful life.
If Komari closed her eyes, she could still feel his hands roaming over her body, hear the ghost of his voice; a warm rasp, each syllable measured and deliberate, carrying a quiet authority that made her shiver from within as he pulled up her sweater dress over her hips and yanked down her thong.
He lined up and pressed into her with hard thrust that stole the air from her lungs.
A choked gasp escaped her lips as his left hand clamped down on her hip, holding her steady. His right hand spanned over the front of her neck, pressing against her skin. The pressure was firm but didn’t cut off her air, and it was more than enough to send a dizzying wave of sensation through her, a rush of adrenaline and heady, inherent fear that made her vision blur at the edges.
Komari could feel the muscles in his arms, thighs, and back working as he drove into her. The punishing rhythm, the deep stretch, the feel of his body claiming hers... It was like her mind went blank in those moments.
Everything else evaporated, all old wounds, betrayals, angst, and failures until there was nothing but their bodies, the feeling of him inside her.
She supposed it was one of the most fascinating paradoxes of being human: in that moment of simulated violence and absolute submission, she can feel safer and more powerful than she ever did holding a lightsaber. An mental mirage where she didn't have to be Komari Vosa, the fallen, failed Jedi, mother, or wife. In that moment, she could just be a body.
Feeling, breathing, and completely, blissfully free.
Komari swallowed, forcing the heat from her thoughts back down. Now was not the time to sit and get herself worked up. When the night came, she could tend to her more private… needs.
She cleared her throat.
“When you’re done, we’ll get you fresh clothes...,” Komari said, “...and then we’ll go out a little.”
“Where to?” Arla asked, lifting her head just enough to meet her gaze.
“Just out a little,” she repeated, keeping her voice soft but firm. “I have to pick up some clothes and fix my nails. nothing more. Can you do that?”
Arla hesitated for a fraction of a breath, then gave the faintest nod. “I… I think so. But…” Her voice wavered. “…what if someone from the Kyr’tsad comes? I can’t… fight like I used to. Not anymore.”
Oh.
Komari blinked. She hadn't thought about that.
There was still bad blood between the remnants of Kyr’tsad and the Haat Mando’ade. Fifteen years ago, Jango had killed their old leader, Tor Viszla, on Correlia, avenging their parents. Viszla’s remains still lay in some meadow, unceremoniously buried. His heir, Pre Vizla, she never remembered if he was Tor’s a son or nephew, had yet to claim vengeance.
And if today was the day he decided to try...?
“Let them come,” Komari said, shrugging softly. “I’ll make him and his little friends regret the day they were born.”