Human Disaster Skywalker

Though privately he thinks it rather telling that despite the presence of another of those Core witches to attend his lord’s daughter, they had done little enough to earn their welcome. Surely, two beasts were better than one in warding off the hunters of the Watch, and yet somehow she had nearly been lost to them regardless. It is suspicious, to his reckoning of things.

And then later, when he sees him in the hall, the boy is so absorbed in his own mysterious ponderings that he very nearly collides with Bralor’s chest before he realizes his mistake and steps aside. He offers a tidy little apology, formed of the cut-glass syllables those Republic ponces so prize, and Bralor makes no effort to disguise his sigh of disgust as he pushes by. He will yield no ground to these foreigners, no, not even one square inch of corridor.

The next time, the little witch boy is wise enough to stand aside before Bralor comes within his measure. That almost makes him hesitate – it is the mark of a warrior to acknowledge such proximity – and yet, that small sympathy of thought is enough to drive his frustration even higher. No ground, he vows. If he is a warrior, then he is a meager one at that. Let him retreat. Let him surrender.

The master is a different story. Qui-Gon Jinn is not the kind to yield. Nor does he bend. He is like a mountain, stoic and upright even against all the blustering gales of Mandalorian wrath. He keeps his hands folded in his cloak, and his chin lifted, and he listens to all the demands and assertions the captains and clan leaders make of the Lady Duchess, and when they have shouted themselves hoarse, he leans forward to whisper in her ear and sets things his way.

She trusts him. For some reason he cannot quite fathom, but which he suspects may be a mixture of youth and the contaminating practices of too many years spent in the Core, the Lady trusts this Jetii. And so, he grits his teeth again.

She is, after all, the blood of Kryze, and there are too few Houses left, and too few swords to bring down another one. The Bralors have tied their fates to the Kryzes for centuries and he will not be the link which breaks the chain. He is stronger than that. Legacy, and family, and honour, are stronger than that. He is loyal. He is true. His nation, his House, his clan, and his hearth. His own feelings, his own heart – they come last. This is the way of the Mandalorian.

That isn’t to say he isn’t secretly gratified to witness the Lady flay the Jetii pup alive one morning as he is coming back from a perimeter check. They have spent three days on Concord Dawn, and most of those have been spent trying to establish communications with the few remaining colonies, or coordinate rationing. Instead of a troop of about one thousand, they now need to feed five. It’s absurd. An army marches on its stomach. At this rate, Bralor fears they’ll be forced to eat their own tail up to the neck. 

The Jetiise seem to be encouraging of this foolishness. At least, the pup is. Though his master tries to leash him, he has nonetheless been at the med-tent every dusk, touching faces and holding hands. By the time he can be pried away to his own bed, he is swaying on his feet while those he has tended are waking after days or weeks of stupor, asking for water and loved ones long dead. Bralor knows there is magic in this. He knows it is cowardice for a Mandalorian to seek death’s opposite. And yet…

He cannot quite resent the pup for it. Whatever it is that he’s done.

He is a soldier, but even he is not without mercy. The child, Kih’sol rests at his hip and stares up at him with solemn black eyes that are so unlike his own. None could mistake him as being of his blood. And yet, with every passing minute he is more and more of his heart. 

Fierfek.

And so, if the Jetii boy is foolish enough to draw her ire and her attention, then Bralor is not too proud to take advantage of the distraction. He can visit his boy and still bemoan the accomodations they’re making for the coward Vhetts without comment. And it is amusing to watch, besides.

There is nothing quite like the fury of a Mandalorian on the warpath.

He pays the pup back for his service on Hrthging. Idiot child. 

The buir, at least, has some sense to him. Whether or not his stern expression is a Jetii tactic, or some latent, lingering humanity breaking through the facade of solemn dignity, he couldn’t say. But at least Jinn takes the revelation of his boy’s idiocy with the appropriate level of disquiet.

“Nothing happened,” the Jetii pup insists, and Bralor nearly spits at his feet in outrage before he catches himself. To spit at the feet of another is an expression of great displeasure, but in Mandalorian culture, it is an expression reserved for one’s clan. Brothers spit between them to end sparring matches. Distant cousins spit to call off feuds. Parents spit at the feet of recalcitrant children. It says I think you’re foolish. It says I disapprove. It says By all the gods, old and dead, I want to rattle your teeth until they chatter right out of your skull, but – out of respect for the House that we keep to and the blood that we share and the name that we claim, I will let you live.

He shares none of that with this witch child. So he swallows it back and grinds his teeth instead. 

He looks at the pup, wide-eyed and thin-lipped. He can see the confusion and outrage of youth roiling beneath the surface, but he follows in the image of his master and controls himself, lifting his chin and raising his brow so that Bralor’s ire rolls right off him, like water tipped out of a pan.

Bralor feels the hollow rumble of his chest where his heart is beating futilely against his ribs.

“Sa buirse alori a verde, bid alor'ade alori adise,” he says. As the captain to his soldiers, so is the father to his son.

These Jetiise are all the same.

It’s a relief when they go – or, at least, it would be if they hadn’t taken the Duchess with them.

Months pass before he sees them again.

The ecstasy of Harswee is hard to believe after the devastation of the past several years. But there she is. The Lady of Kalevala. The Duchess. The Magician. The Mand’alor, Bralor whispers to himself. No one can hear him in the din of the crowd – he can hardly hear himself – but the name feels right upon his lips.

She wears her father’s armor well. 

He watches her in the sunset, and later in the rain, and in the high heat of noon. The sunlight spills like blood, the rain rattles against her beskar like bones, and midday sets fire to the heart of a warrior. She is making war with these speeches, though it is of a different kind, and he knows he would not have believed it possible if he did not see it for himself.

Ordo has joined them, and Breshig, and Harswee. They are not a paltry force of one thousand beggars, but a mighty union growing mightier by the day. Soon, he thinks, soon she will be unstoppable. Like a woman grown full with child, this Lady Duchess fattens with all of Mandalore. The mother of a new nation, he thinks. And everyone knows that a mother is the fiercest warrior of them all.

But if she is to be a mother, she must put girlhood behind her. Bralor fears she will not. 

The Jetii boy follows her still. He sees him, rail thin and as yielding as the river reed in the tide. He bends to her, and slips between shadows to hold her hand and touch her face. He even spies them kissing once. When he looks to the buir he sees that Jinn’s head is turned decidedly away. Golec, the insurrectionist from the sewers, merely sighs, and Eldar’s gaze lands anywhere but on that murky corner where his mistress stands. So it is to be a conspiracy then. It cannot end well, he knows, but just as he ever has, Bralor grits his teeth.

Then comes Tracyn. Then comes death. 

The buir has been wounded. He is told it might be fatal, and he stations his own soldiers at the bedside. Tracyn may be Mandalorian, but they have not fought and bled for his duchess. They have not killed for her. Not like this Jetii and his boy have. 

He dislikes the Jetiise as much as the next Mandalorian, but these two are different. That Master Jinn is a cunning strategist, as good as any Bralor ever saw. The Lady Kryze is much changed from when he saw her first, and he supposes that can be the result of no one else’s lessons but Jinn’s. After all, the Core soft girl could not have done what she has done. 

And the boy…Bralor knows he would protect her with his life.

They have given themselves to her, and she has given herself to Mandalore. It is the least he can do to guard their sleep – even from his own countrymen.

Then, one morning, he is pulled from his breakfast by the nervous clatter of beskar clad heels snapping to attention.

“What?” he demands, temper as short as ever. “What is it?”

The guard clears his throat, then offers a stammering apology. “Sorry sir, but we think – you’d better take a look.”

Bralor throws down his napkin, and rises to his feet with enough force and speed to set his table shaking. This had better be good.

It isn’t. 

He arrives at the medcenter in time to see the guardsman’s partner level their blaster pistol at one of the Tracyn porter medics. In his hand is an empty hypospray, and splayed across the slowly rising chest of the wounded master is the little pup, insensate.

“What is this?” he demands, breaking the stillness and drawing all eyes to him.

The porter grips the hypospray, and tilts his chin up, unintimidated. “Standard procedure,” he says. “For witches.”

“Right,” says Bralor. He points to the guard. “Tell me.”

“Thought he was coming in to minister to the old one, thought nothing of it. What do I know about medicine, right? But then I hear a little noise. Turn around. This one’s got the kid by the arm, and the kid’s fighting but not well. Another one of them came last night, too, but we didn’t think anything of it. Not until I saw for myself. He’s drugging him, sir. The Jetii boy. The little one.”

The revelation settles upon him so heavily that he feels he cannot move. It takes strength to inflate his lungs. Strength to turn his head to the porter, and unclench his jaw and speak. He can only get out one word. “Why?”

The porter does not repent. “He is dangerous,” he says. “The Jetii are not like us. Even the children can twist your mind, and control your thoughts. They’re monsters. And like any savage beast, they belong in a cage. That is what we are doing.”

He wants to throttle the man. Beasts and monsters! Bralor scoffs. Why, Jinn has never raised his voice let alone his hand, and the brat – the boy – there is such tenderness in him that even Majy Pel, the old god of night and slumber, would blush to be so humbled by his presence. By Obi-Wan. Perhaps he is Jetii, but he is also his Lady’s, and so he is also Mandalorian. To abuse him at all is treason. To poison him…it is on Bralor’s tongue to denounce the porter. Dar’manda, he thinks. Dar’manda, dar’manda, dar’manda!

But they are so close to victory. So close. And though he is not one for politicking and cunning treaties, he has learned what magic a gentle touch may work. It may soothe fears, and wipe tears, and hold back death whereas war can only summon it. Kih’sol does not like it when he yells. So he grits his teeth, and grabs the boy, and takes him to his duchess.

The last time he sees him, Obi-Wan is very nearly frantic. 

“Have you seen my master?” he asks. His hands are twisted together, and his feet dance as if blasterfire were biting at them. 

“Not since dawn,” Bralor says. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” says the boy, though his eyes dart up and down the hall, searching still. And Bralor thinks he sees the meaning in it.

He smirks, and shifts his weight to one hip, speaking slowly and indulgently. “Have you had a fight with the lady?”

“What?” Obi-Wan asks. There is the bite of surprise, but it is dulled by his evident anxiety. “No,” he says. “That is, I don’t – I haven’t – she was sleeping. When I left. I mean, that is –”

“I haven’t seen your master, boy,” says Bralor, putting him out of his misery despite how entertaining it is. “Though I’ve no doubt he has seen you. Go back to bed – whichever one it may be – and I’ll send him the other way if I see him. Keep him off your tail for a little longer, yes? A man needs a bit of privacy from his buir now and then.”

He gives him a smack on the shoulder as he would any other young soldier caught breaking curfew for a bit of youthful indiscretion. But the Jetii’s brow furrows like a philosopher and he sighs. 

“If you see him, tell him…tell him to wait. Tell him I had to ask. Tell him I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Bralor isn’t the deep thinker this kid is, but this strikes even him as odd. Before he can question him further, though, Obi-Wan tuts and shakes his head as if ridding himself of old cobwebs.

“Never mind,” he says. “Tell him I am looking for him.” 

And he smiles and walks it back as if it were never said, before turning toward the duchess’ rooms once more. He leaves Bralor more than a little confused. But the ways of the Jetiise are strange, and it has been a long week.

Later though…later when he sees his lady looking pale as death, her hands as twisted as Obi-Wan’s had been but cold and empty of all comfort, he thinks he ought to have said something more.  The Jetiise are gone – the master and his boy – and his duchess has been left bereft. He should have said something. He should have asked another question. He should have made another joke. He should ordered the boy to confess, to admit that he was leaving, and taking the heart of Mandalore with him.

He might say something still, he thinks. He might give her gentle words, murmurs of solace. An apology. A condolence. Anything.