Title: How Anakin Became the Mand'alor by Accident (And Started a Jedi Temple, and Possibly a Cultural Revolution, Also by Accident)
Disclaimer: I own nothing at all that you recognise. If you recognise it from elsewhere, I don't own it.
Summary: See title above.
Notes: A few parts of this I'm borrowing from other fanfics. I have no idea which ones because I recently went on a fic-reading tear and I genuinely don't recall who wrote the story I don't know the titles of everything I've borrowed from. Exodus Flight by Youngest Thunderbird on AO3 is one of the primary inspirations, though. It is, in fact, the starting point. Also, I may have spent too much time reading Soft Wars, which this owes a debt to in terms of some aspects of characterisation, if not the actual details of the world. So, if you recall the title/author of something clearly taken from somewhere else, assume I took it from that.
Notes 2: Anakin managed to get his head on straight enough to not fall and the other Jedi brought video recorders to the fight in Palpatine's office, so when someone tried to claim Palpatine was assassinated in a bid for power the Jedi just pulled out the video of Palpatine declaring himself an evil nutjob and no one let the sycophants have control of the Republic. Just roll with it, okay?
Notes 3: I don't really care what the actual maps people have put together based on all the Star Wars media say, my headcanon is that Tatooine is on the border of Hutt space, because that makes my story work. So it is. I pay little attention to the finer details of canon in this fandom.
Notes 4: This is more crackfic. Please don't take this seriously.
It all started when the clones all locked themselves away from everyone in fear that the chips would accidentally be triggered. It takes a long time to remove tiny bits of metal and plastic from a brain via delicate surgery on a few million people. The Jedi and their friends and allies left what turned into millions of comm messages for all the clones. Nearly every clone had had at least one friend who was from the GAR or Jedi or in the senate or just a natborn from somewhere. All those friends sending repeated messages out to the clones gathered together and hiding on the star destroyers was a hefty backlog of data, but the clones studiously ignored it all because the medics were grimly working to get the chips out of everyone's heads.
The Jedi were certainly sending so many messages daily, all of which were being allowed to go to the voice message system.
Many of the Vode weren't looking just because they were afraid the Jedi would be angry and accusatory of them and would hate them for being the tools of the Chancellor to have the Jedi killed.
Only one Jedi sent exactly two messages and then stopped.
Anakin Skywalker was a former slave. He had always been uncomfortable with the Republic's slave army and was even more so upon finding out the existence of the control chips. He had sent one voice message to Rex upon hearing the men had sequestered themselves.
Hey Rex. I wanted you to know that whatever you want to do, I'll stand by you, and Pad- Senator Amidala will back you all the way. She's already talked to the Queen on Naboo, so if some of you want citizenship there, no matter what the senate says, you'll be a legal person on Naboo, and probably all their allies as well. Give me a call, would you?
When he didn't hear back, Anakin made an assumption. It was the wrong assumption, but then, Anakin had a few deep-seated insecurities about his self-worth that almost no one was aware of because he hid them so well behind his bluster and overwhelming confidence in the abilities he did feel secure in his mastery over.
The assumptions went as follows:
I apologise, Captain. I should have realised how unwelcome the overtures of a slaver would be to the recently freed. I should know better, as I recall how I felt when my former owner tried to act as though we had been family or friends, rather than slave and owner. I haven't been any better than a slaver to you and the others, have I? I am sorry for the assumption and I'm sorry if I put any pressure on you. The offer of citizenship on Naboo stands, but I won't bother you again. Good luck, Captain Rex, may the Force be with you.
The assumption that Rex didn't want to speak with him because he'd been little more than middle management for the slavery instituted by the Republic of the Vode reminded Anakin of something, though. It reminded him that he'd once wanted to free the slaves on Tatooine. It reminded him of missions to Zygerria and to make deals with Hutts for easy passage past Tatooine.
At one time Anakin had allowed himself to be talked out of trying to free the slaves on his home planet because the Republic couldn't afford the destabilisation, because how do you arrange this without leaving a power vacuum and because of all the things he hadn't known before.
Now Anakin knew how to run a military campaign. Now Anakin had a wife who had governed a planet and been part of the Galactic senate (until she went on maternity leave). Now Anakin had had the chance to look at the history of Tatooine as told from the outside in bare facts along with the histories passed along across the oral traditions he'd heard as a child growing up.
So, in the chaos of the fallout from the war, and given that he wasn't part of the Council, not for real, and given that none of his skills as a Jedi (ostensibly) fell into the categories that would be useful in reconstruction, Anakin slipped away, filing paperwork to leave the Order in the quietest way imaginable.
Then he went to see Padmé and their twins at Varykino. "I'm sorry it took me so long to get back," he said as they lay curled up on the bed together, Luke and Leia settled between them.
"I understand, Ani, I do," Padmé told him. "Are you sure about leaving the Jedi right now, though?"
He shook his head, smiling wryly as he let Leia wrap her tiny perfect fingers around the glove that covered his mechanical hand. "I don't actually have the skills that are needed for any of that," he said. "I know what I am, and I'm a terrible Jedi, Padmé. I'm a lightsabre and a pilot and not much else."
She shot him a dark look. "You are more than that, Ani, and I expect you not to badmouth yourself." Then she sighed, "But I'll admit your strengths aren't really best suited to the sort of negotiating and reconstruction going on." Luke burbled and she tickled him. "But you have some sort of plan right now, and it's not getting yourself hired as my personal pilot, is it?"
Anakin took a deep breath, then started. "I don't know if you remember, but a long time ago, the reason I wanted to be a Jedi was because I thought I could go back to Tatooine and free all the slaves. It didn't happen. Economics, political stability, can't upset the Hutts . . . blah blah blah," he waved a hand at her, and his wife laced her fingers through his, squeezing his hand gently. She knew better than anyone about the balance to be struck between keeping the peace in the greater galaxy and the fight for freedom and the rights of thinking beings. "But I think . . ." He looked at her searchingly, "I think I could do it now. Did you know that all the Hutt maps I've found agree that Tatooine is in Republic space, and all the Republic maps say it's in Hutt space? You go back far enough and it's actually completely unclaimed. No one has a claim on Tatooine. The oral tradition describing the way the planet was governed a few hundred years ago, before the Hutts settled in and never left, is still told. If we set up an uprising, with enough planning we could take it back."
They talked for hours, Padmé playing Devil's Advocate to make sure Anakin had thought through every facet of his plans.
A month later he left, first heading to talk to the Gungans and getting ahold of a few of their shield generators, and getting a fast and well-armed Nubian ship using monies Padmé dedicated to the cause from her mostly unused senator's salary.
As an aside, the accommodations, transport, food and even her clothing were actually provided by a combination of basic Senate perks of being a senator, and the fundamental necessities that came with the rituals of being a politician from Naboo. Padmé had very few needs that were not covered by the excessive luxuries covered by legislated provisions for being in the senate, so had a significant backlog of credits just waiting to be used on something. Supporting her husband in his quest to free a planet from slavery seemed a valid investment.
While Anakin was in transit from Naboo to Tatooine to start his plans, Obi-Wan had finally noticed (once he had escaped the repeated day-long Council meetings, constant negotiations with many, many planets, senators, politicians and businessmen and come up for air from repeatedly trying to contact Cody or anyone from the 212th who would agree to talk to him) that Anakin was missing. Then he discovered that Anakin's name was no longer on the rolls of active Jedi. Then he discovered that Anakin had put through the paperwork to leave the Jedi without notifying anyone.
Then he was mortified to discover that Anakin had so few friends among the Jedi that it was actually possible for almost no one to even notice he was missing.
And then he commed Senator Amidala to ask where his former padawan was.
Padmé felt that, despite how much Obi-Wan loved his former student and fellow Jedi, he was just enough of a believer in the status quo that he would probably show up to try to get Anakin to stop his plans. So she told him that she didn't know where Anakin was. Which was technically true, since she wasn't sure exactly where on Tatooine Anakin would be going, nor did she know what hyperlane route he'd taken to get there. So she didn't know where he was any more than she knew where Sabé was, though she knew that Sabé was out picking up nerf burgers for everyone at the stand down the way, but Sabé could still be walking, could be in line at the stand or could be in the elevator on the way back. See? She didn't know.
Obi-Wan had no other leads and headed back to the Jedi Temple to flail in panic over the fact that Anakin was missing and to deny that he was panicking.
Anakin landed on Tatooine, got in contact with his friend Kitster and began to talk revolution. It was a long-term plan that started with finding and deactivating everyone's slave chips, but leaving them in so that the slave masters would think they were still chipped and not free to run. Anakin settled himself in a home abandoned by a rich man who had once wanted to turn the Boonta Eve Classic into a massive annual tourist draw. The man had given up and abandoned the home, which Anakin was able to pick up for a song, then play the role of an idiot rich man with no sense and no morals.
He purchased slaves (who were promptly freed and spent more time learning how to shoot blasters out in the deserts and fly small fighters then doing any slave-type work around the home), he regularly arranged parties which allowed for a circulation of slaves through his home, letting Anakin's 'slaves' pass along messages to go to others, find and deactivate chips and generally get the word out.
It was in Jabba's fighting pits that Anakin found the Mandalorians. One Twi'lek man, two human women, a Zabrak woman, Kiffar twins - one male one female and a male Togruta. They had all been taken in by Mandalorian warrior clans as foundlings, and had then been subsequently lost in slave raids made because despite the Duchess Kryze's grim attempts to keep her system together, it still was in chaos around the edges.
Anakin got their names and their clans and then went to the Mandalore system. He did not contact the government. Instead he went straight to the families of the Mandalorian slaves.
"Rona Tess?" he asked, speaking to the woman the Kiffar pair had named their buir.
She looked him up and down. "Anakin Skywalker?" she queried. "What would bring the so-called Hero With No Fear to my doorstep?"
He held out the holo of the twins and dropped into the Mando'a he learned from Rex and the rest of the Vode, "Jenna and Nico said that you were their buir."
She snatched the picture from his hand with a gasp. "They're alright? They're . . . we never found them. We looked," her voice was not exactly pleading, but he could hear the undertones that she wanted it understood that the pair hadn't been abandoned. "We looked," she repeated, stepping back and allowing him into her home.
"They were captured by slavers and sold," Anakin told her. "I've come because they said that your clan still holds to a warrior's path, and we are planning to take Tatooine back from the slavers." She looked at him sharply, and he squared his shoulders and continued. "I plan to talk to the families of all six of the Mandalorians I've found. While Duchess Kryze may insist on the Mandalorian system being pacifist, I'm coming here not on a matter of the government but instead of families."
They talked into the night, Rona eventually insisting on more than merely calling up close family. The whole of the clan turned out and by the next morning the families of the other enslaved Mandalorians had been contacted.
When Anakin returned to Tatooine he was followed by some five clans of Mandalorians, arriving in ones and twos, in small groups on small ships, making their way into slave quarters where they helped to train slaves for both combat and the immediate aftermath of revolution, provide medical services and slowly mark out the assault plans.
By the time Luke and Leia were six months old Padmé had fully absented herself from the senate, handing her seat over to a successor and had joined Anakin on Tatooine. He frequently fretted about the twins, willing to drop everything if he so much as felt a twitch in the Force from the pair.
The Mandalorians approved of his near-religious parenting and equally approved of the fact that Padmé was as good with a blaster as any of them, and the way that Naboo officials had armour hidden in all that fashionable frippery.
"Why did you bring these dresses?" the Mandalorian armourer had asked in disgust as she watched Padmé and Sabé carefully picking through silks, satins, lace and delicate beading in a riot of colours.
Sabé made a noise of triumph. "Found it!" she said as she pulled out a set of power packs for blasters out of a compartment in the front of one dress. "I just couldn't recall if it was the knives we left or the power packs."
"No, I've got the knives here," Padmé said. "Remember? You had to wear this one so all your knives with the snake venom on the blades were in the sleeves."
Sabé nodded seriously. "Right, right. I think if we cannibalise the green silk and your yellow velvet we'll have the right balance on the cortoisis-armourweave."
"But the velvet is so hot," Padmé said. "And shouldn't it be blue and purple for family and loss?"
Sabé frowned. "Maybe the blue for family and then we can accent red for justice. I think there's a nice satin yellow bodice that was lined with durasteel. We need the yellow."
The armourer, who had been confused as to why she was there up until the conversation had shifted to discussing armourweave and durasteel lining stepped forward to heft one of the dresses in question and felt the dense protection that was hidden in the bodice. "Why do you need yellow?" she asked, suddenly intrigued.
"On Naboo," Padmé said, "Yellow is the colour of freedom. Green is for new beginnings."
The Mandalorian looked at Anakin Skywalker's wife with new eyes. For a Mandalorian the colours on the armour had symbolic meaning, and the Naboo women wore armour hidden in clothes where every coloured thread carried meaning. Anakin came home from a lengthy meeting about tactics to find his home filled with Mandalorians trading armour tips with his wife and her best friend. He just handed the white Republic armour he'd taken with him over to Padmé and let her go wild painting it and stayed with the twins. The Mandalorians made disgusted noises over the Republic-issued armour, but agreed that there wasn't time for him to learn to work in unfamiliar armour, instead doing their best to shore it up and teach Padmé how to paint armour. The armourers delightedly took on the Naboo techniques for making something appear to have no protection while hiding protection in it.
When it happened, the slave revolt hit hard and fast, the Hutts, major cities and mines all being struck at the same time by the combined forces of freed slaves and Mandalorian warriors working under once-again General Skywalker.
Padmé followed her husband out to the front lines, kitted out in that Naboo finery-based armour with Sabé at her side and Kitster following Sabé with stars in his eyes.
When the fighting was done, the Hutts were slain and the various slave owners had been either kicked off-planet, jailed or in some other way dealt with, Anakin handed the reins over to Padmé, who had studied the government-to-be carefully, comprised of local representatives, each of whom then voted on a planetary leader, something that was to be changed upon the death or retirement of the previous one, or if the local representatives in council developed serious objections to the current one. It was hardly perfect, but it wasn't a Hutt or a slaver and it was chosen by the people, so it was an improvement. It also meant the government infrastructure was set so that the business of governing could begin without the risk of outsiders taking it over again.
It was when the children were found that the Mandalorians really pounced. The numbers of children, chained and waiting to be sent on offworld had them both frothing at the mouth and eagerly adopting any child who admitted to having no parents.
Anakin, who knew very well about the frequent separations suffered by slaves from their children, didn't take much convincing to collect a small fleet made out of ships taken from slavers as well as the Mandalorian ships and go hunting for the slaves taken off-planet who had family back on Tatooine.
At first, no one noticed besides the slavers being attacked, boarded and summarily dealt with, their living cargo freed and returned to their homes or reunited with family, and of course the slaves themselves.
Then the Hutts noticed.
They hadn't realised it was a single collective, they just realised that there had been an increase of attacks on the slaver ships that supplied their needs. So, the various Hutts, who were not a coherent government or even a proper organisation, just a loose consortium of crime lords who happened to share a species, went on a tear of hiring slavers to make up for the losses in profit.
Suddenly there were reports of armoured Mandalorians everywhere in the galaxy as determined clans resurrected the old Supercommando Codex and threw themselves into putting a halt to slave trafficking.
The Jedi were aware of none of this, distracted as they were by trying to convince the Vode to contact them and say they were all right, and to convince the Senate to grant the clones equal rights. Certainly there was no one who was going to call the Jedi to stop Mandalorians from attacking slavers.
Assajj Ventress, however, had something of a personal interest in slavery and slave trafficking and she did approve conceptually of this idea of hunting slavers and putting a stop to it all. She had pulled herself out of the whole Jedi/Sith mess and worked as a bounty hunter these days, but she still carried her sabres and nearly reached for them when her tracing of the anti-slavery moves led her to a back-of-nowhere space station and Anakin Skywalker.
His eyes widened in surprise from his seat at a small table near the back of the bar she found him in. "Ventress? Look, I'm not here for anything to do with you. So, unless you've taken to selling children on the slave market we can just not have anything to do with each other."
She was intrigued. He'd calmed down considerably since the last time they'd seen each other. Admittedly, he'd been in an understandable tizzy over his apprentice being framed, but this was . . . counter to everything she'd ever seen of him. "I'm a bit surprised at you not trying to bring me to some sort of trumped-up justice, Skywalker," she told him, settling into a seat across from him at the table. "But I'm more intrigued by the fact that you seem to be in the middle of all these Mandalorians hunting slavers."
He eyed her a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. "When Master Jinn freed me on Tatooine, I wanted to be a Jedi so that I could come back and free all the slaves," he said bluntly. "That didn't happen when I was training and it really didn't happen during the way with all the deals that got cut with the Hutts and the Zygerrians." His blue eyes were flinty as he shot her a defiant look. "But that's all over now and I'm going to do whatever I can."
This . . . this was something she could work with. Skywalker had always been flamboyant anger and over-the-top gestures, but this cause that meant something to him steadied him in a way nothing else seemed to have managed, in Assajj's admittedly somewhat limited experience. "I can understand that," she commented. The hand signs that were common slave greetings came back to her so easily. His surprise was a little gratifying, as was his easy response in the same sign language. "People who've always been free don't always see it, do they?"
"No," Skywalker said, his lips a wry sort of twist. "I could never let it go the way they wanted, just hide it better. Though I always thought they were probably hiding things from themselves and pretending really hard they'd let it go." Then he shook his head. "I just don't know what we're going to do with all the Force sensitive children. They're too old for the Temple to accept them, most of the places I'd feel okay about leaving them wouldn't . . . they wouldn't treat them right."
"Are you thinking of training them yourself?" Assajj asked.
He sighed, running his hands through his hair in a frustrated gesture. "I am, somewhat, but I know perfectly well there are gaps in what I know because I started too late and practically only Obi-Wan was willing to try to fill in the gaps. And there are so many of them and I want to try to finish tracking down all these split-up families before doing anything else." He gave her a sardonic look. "Hey, if you're willing to stick with teaching basic Force techniques without going into the Dark side, you could drop by. Besides, I have an . . . experiment I've been looking into lately about lightsabres. I could use a second opinion from someone who isn't caught up in Jedi philosophy."
She blinked in surprise. "You actually mean that, Skywalker?"
He gestured a little and the Force bore down on her with all the weight he could place on it, and it was rather a lot. "You haven't been using the Dark recently and you seem genuine," the human told her. "And I've missed talking to an adult about the Force instead of trying to help a mixed bag of children cope."
Assajj tilted her head, curious. "You know, you'd have been a real terror during the war if you'd really brought all this to bear." She twitched the Force in his metaphorical grasp.
"I made the Jedi nervous," he said shrugging. "Too angry, too scared and too uncontrolled, so I kept from trying too many complicated things. That, and it wasn't until now when I've gone for weeks at a time without feeling watched and judged every time I meditated or tried to touch the Force that I've gotten a handle on some of those things Obi-Wan was always trying to teach me."
The Force pinged her, and Assajj looked up to see an armoured Mandalorian approaching. "Well, that looks like the person you'll be meeting. Thanks for the information, Skywalker."
"Maybe I'll see you around then, Ventress," he said, signing her a farewell. She nodded, signing back and walked past the Mandalorian, heading for where her ship was docked.
She went on her way, took a few bounties and then gave in to her curiosity. Assajj tracked him down to Tatooine where she found him at a glassmaker's, deep in meditation, wrapping the Force tightly around the small object the glassmaker was working on. She silently observed as the small glass cylinder was removed from the furnace. Skywalker had done something remarkable in the way he'd twined the Force into the glass.
It was then carefully pressed into a mould. Skywalker was meanwhile just as carefully removing the remnants of another mould from a different piece of glass. She stared, her jaw dropping open. "That feels like a kyber crystal."
He looked up at her, blinking in surprise. "Oh, hi. Yeah. I'm just seeing if this works, because it really should. I hate sand, but there's just something weird about Tatooine sand when you turn it into glass." He gestured around, and Assajj realised he was right. All the glass in the room vibrated with the Force in the same way a kyber crystal did.
Skywalker took the glass crystal that was humming just as strongly as the one he'd been meditating on when she arrived, and slotted it into a lightsabre hilt. It felt no different to her than any other lightsabre. "This should be interesting," she said and stepped into a better position to dive for cover if it exploded.
He made a face at her and then lit it. Well, for a given definition of lit. The blade that emerged wasn't the usual bright colour of a sabre. It was, somehow, a dark navy blue.
"Want to see how it works?" she plucked one of her sabres off her belt and gestured with it.
And that was how the former Jedi and former Sith got into a rather protracted spar on a Tatooine evening. That was also how the pair found themselves up to their necks in eager children, half of whom were Force sensitive, all of them asking questions about lightsabres, backflips, Force superpowers and whether they could learn that. The children also got into an argument about which was better, because Assajj had two, which was clearly better, but Anakin only needed one, which made him better, but Assajj's were more exciting-looking so she was clearly better, but Anakin's was more tasteful, but Assajj did more really cool moves but Anakin didn't need cool moves . . . also, boys were stinky and have cooties so Assajj was better, but girls were silly and had cooties so Anakin was better.
"I miss being able to apply that sort of logic," Assajj told him dryly.
"Well, out of feminine solidarity I'd have to side with you," Padmé said as she arrived with Luke and Leia, and Sabé a step behind her, "But then I'd be taking your part against Anakin and I have to live with him."
Anakin rolled his eyes. "I love you too, Angel." Then he proceeded to take both children to cuddle while he plonked down amidst the freed youngsters who were very enthusiastic about having their hero spending his evening with them.
There was a one hour period after the suns went down when it was still warm on the desert planet but was now cool enough for some excitement and Anakin did what he'd taken to doing whenever he was back on Tatooine. They had all the Force sensitive children in Mos Eisley where Anakin and Padmé were living, and Anakin gave the children lessons in self-control and the Force. Padmé sat next to Assajj, who was watching the lessons with some interest. "He's not a bad teacher," commented the bounty hunter, "But he tends to skip steps."
Padmé shrugged. "I don't know how much of that is because he started so late in learning and how much is that he's so talented that he just kind of jumps over the gaps, but Obi-Wan mentioned that kind of thing a time or two himself. Not that I know anything about using the Force."
Assajj made acerbic comments at Anakin, occasionally throwing in a word of help in the lessons. Then she left in her ship and picked up the message from the one Jedi she'd always found better than merely tolerable. Quinlan Vos was a Shadow, and as a Shadow he'd always been closer to the edge of darkness than anyone else. More than that, he was sardonic and sarcastic and didn't have that irritating edge of Coruscanti sophistication that always made Kenobi so aggravating.
That he was handsome and an excellent bed partner made him a very worthwhile contact. Well, if she was honest, he was more of a friend. With benefits. Exclusively. Long term.
When they were dressed again and sprawled out on the couch, Quin heaved a sigh. "You know, once I could never think of being anything but a Shadow, but now . . . I don't think I can anymore. I'm tired of it, but I'm also so tired of the Temple. It's strange, but after being out on the front lines so long, being away from the Temple for so long I feel . . . trapped."
Impulse made Assajj ask him, "How do you feel about training children in the Force?"
He blinked and then stared at her. "I didn't think we were genetically compatible that way," he said, reaching out a hand.
She slapped his hand, gently. "I'm not pregnant," the bounty hunter snapped. "But Skywalker's got a passel of Force-sensitive children who are former slaves and all of them too old to go to the Jedi, but strong enough that it makes more sense to give them some training rather than hoping a wandering darksider doesn't find them."
Quinlan stopped, staring into the middle distance, slowly blinking. "That . . ." he finally spoke, but trailed off searching for both words and a coherent thought on the matter. "That sounds interesting," he finally said.
One month later he had joined Anakin and the two of them wound up moving all the Force-sensitive children (and the families of those who had not been wholly orphaned) to Concord Dawn. Shortly thereafter several former Jedi Shadows joined them, all of them emotionally exhausted after the war, but also unable to face the stiffness of the Coruscant Jedi Temple. With most of the Shadows set up as crechemasters, Anakin stopped being nearly as worried and the former Shadows all enjoyed the far more straightforward and not morally dubious nature of the work. It was just as stressful, but it also involved children who were grateful, not having to lie to people and teaching Jedi philosophy in a way that they felt worked better for practical living outside the rarefied atmosphere of the Temple.
Anakin and his Mandalorian Allies were still hunting slavers, making a living off of appropriating the slavers' ships, money, non-sapient cargo and either using it themselves or selling things for the ready cash.
The first time Anakin was asked by an Outer Rim planetary government for his help in a peacekeeping capacity he called his allies in the Mandalorian Clans together to ask what they thought about taking it on. It was exactly the sort of thing the Jedi had done before the war, but it was also a good match for the skills of Mandalorian warriors.
There was a lot of discussion and the Clans left to think.
Anakin sent a message back to the government, telling them that he still needed time to consider it as he was no longer a Jedi and he wasn't in charge of the Mandalorians.
The Clans came back and Anakin found himself the surprised holder of the Darksabre.
"What?" he said, staring at the symbol of the Mand'alor. The Darksaber was making a very happy purring sound in the back of his mind and Anakin had to consciously keep himself from pulling it closer. Despite how frequently blasé he had been with Obi-Wan about his lightsabres over the years, Anakin did love the way it felt to have a sabre that was tuned to him in hand, and the Darksabre seemed to really like him.
The Clan 'alor who had handed the weapon over repeated himself. "We have discussed it among ourselves, Skywalker, and we believe that you should take the Darksabre as Mand'alor."
"But . . ." Anakin gaped at them. "I'm not . . . I'm not Mandalorian. And I didn't swear the Resol'nare either. And, I mean, there wasn't a Mand'alor to swear to, but the rest of it-"
Rona was still with him as well, and she put in her two credits. "Anakin. An'ika," she began. "You and your riduur both wear armour and wear it well. You fight for your people, you are training all these children to protect themselves, to understand your Force. You speak Mando'a as well as any of the Mando'ade. Everything you do here speaks to that. If you want to turn us to a peacekeeping force, we can accept that, Skywalker."
The whole conversation had been in Mando'a. Actually, Anakin spoke it almost exclusively when talking with the Mandalorians. They might have had a point? Somewhat?
"I . . . I have to talk to Padmé," Anakin said and had a lengthy conversation about accidentally becoming the leader of an entire culture with his wife.
She talked him into it, then found herself dragooned into being the power behind the Mand'alor because Anakin wasn't a bad leader of a military force, but wasn't quite as prepared to handle the issues of leadership that fell wholly outside a military setting.
The twins were two when an exceedingly irate Duchess Satine Kryze stormed up to Anakin's headquarters, past the tiny Jedi Temple being run by former Shadows, Ahsoka Tano, Assajj Ventress and a part-time Anakin Skywalker who had to spend his time administering to the Mandalorians running peacekeeping missions as well as all the other things that come with being a sort of interplanetary leader.
"Skywalker, I don't know what you're trying to pull here," the Duchess snapped, "But I have worked very hard at bringing peace to Mandalore and you will not ruin it by warmongering!"
Anakin did what he always did when this sort of thing came up, "Padmé!"
He never did find out what his wife did to talk Satine down, but Anakin just smiled at her, pathetically happy that she was willing to talk to the Duchess for him and a treaty was reached between the New Mandalorians and Anakin's Mando'ade. The Mandalore system would be co-administered between the two of them, effectively every settlement, city, region or other grouping would make a choice as to the primary legislative body they chose to answer to and be led by, and the two sides would agree to a certain set of laws that had to remain consistent between both sides throughout the whole system.
It was a weird patchwork, but it seemed to work. Satine also couldn't particularly object to the use of peacekeepers in places that needed them.
While Anakin was busy accidentally starting a Mandalorian Temple, accidentally making himself the Mand'alor and gradually dismantling the Hutt crime families as an accidental side-effect of halting the slave trade and peacekeeping in the Outer Rim, the Jedi and the Vode were having their own issues.
To begin with, there was soon a split right down the middle of the Jedi. The too-young-to-have-been-in-the-war, too-old-to-have-been-in-the-war and hyper-conservative mostly wanted things to go back the way they were immediately pre-war.
The ones who had been in the war or otherwise dealing centrally with the horror and fallout and difficulty of the war mostly wanted to fold the Vode into the temple in some way, or at least keep them close until they had reached some sort of genuine equal place in society as any other person. Many of them were interested in relaxing some of the most repressive strictures of Jedi philosophy and many of them were trying to resurrect common use of the old Code because it was felt to better reflect the hard realities so many had been forced to face in the war.
Obi-Wan and Master Koon were leading the fight in-Council to push for reforms while Yoda and Master Tiin were in the lead to push for things to go back as they had been. The philosophical deadlock of the Council meant that very little was getting done at all, with decisions repeatedly getting pushed back on many fronts.
Nearly every single Jedi Shadow had gone missing. They'd all left reassuring notes that they were fine and leaving of their own accord with all the appropriate security procedures and code words used to show the notes were genuine. Still, no one knew where they were. At least, no one at the Jedi Temple.
The Vode were similarly split. Some of them had seen the worst of the Jedi and the worst of the Republic. Fox and any clone commanders who'd had to deal with conservative Jedi who barely saw them as people pushed for the Vode to just pack up and find some unsettled Outer Rim planet that no one cared about, far from space lanes where they could settle in and lead their own lives.
Cody and Wolffe led those who had seen the best of the Jedi who wanted to just talk their own into coming with them or to find some other way to integrate.
Bly wasn't participating, but that was mostly because he and Aayla spent months waffling and wavering as they visited with Quinlan Vos on Concord Dawn, then went back to their respective people, then back to Concord Dawn, then participated in a few anti-slavery raids while Aayla was on a totally different mission that gave her enough leeway to be side-tracked. Also, they weren't telling anyone about it until they had nailed down what they wanted to do.
Rex wasn't participating because he and the rest of the 501st were trying to figure out where their general was, and whether they could find Ahsoka. The only problem with that was that it was a lot harder to be anonymous as a clone that everyone recognised the face of, so they were having less success than they'd like in the process. Still, Rex and his men wanted to find Anakin to reassure him that they absolutely did not think of him as a slaver and a good couple dozen of them wanted him to put in a good word for them with Padmé's former handmaidens who were all good with weapons, very attractive and those armoured outfits the Naboo wore were just so very attractive to the clones who were as armour-focused as any nat-born Mandalorian.
No one even considered the idea that Anakin Skywalker had become the Mand'alor.
They also didn't consider talking to people like Senators Organa or Mothma. That was why none of them realised the careful inroads the Mandalorians were making politically by bargaining for clear passage when hunting down slavers or slavery rings in the Core, or for the commercially-inclined members of the New Mandalorians to use the highly mobile Mando'ade peacekeeper/antislavery campaign ships to also move goods. I mean, if you're trekking all the way to the other side of the Outer Rim, you could either haul or protect goods while you're at it.
Then again, the old guard of the Senate was so busy with trying to reestablish the pre-war status quo, none of them really realised exactly how much of a hub and a power Mandalore was turning into now that the traditionalists had an authority to turn to that they trusted and the New Mandalorians could relax and focus on something other than just being ostentatiously pacifistic and not dying to Death Watch.
It took all that time for Bly to have a proper conversation with Rex about the two messages Rex had received while the clones were getting their chips out and for Rex to finally learn where Anakin was.
It then took exactly the amount of time it takes to get a permanently commandeered warship from Coruscant to Concord Dawn for Rex to show up with his senior staff at his back and confront Anakin and apologise for making his general ever think he was unwelcome.
With Anakin's support, they were warily allowed to join the community of more traditionalist Mando'ade. The fact that the clones were fluent in Mando'a, told great war stories and were just as interested in adopting children went a long way to winning over the traditionalists.
Sabé found herself besieged by clones who thought she was remarkably attractive for her abilities with knives, blasters and armour hidden in dresses. (Actually, as a side note, this began the very fruitful partnership of Mandalore and Naboo - the peaceful nature of Naboo with its complex culture being very attractive to the New Mandalorians and the skills of arms and armour of those who defended the monarchs of Naboo, as well as the Gungan fighting traditions, connecting with with the Mando'ade, which also Naboo natives to be highly sought-after romanticised partners to the Mandalorians as a whole).
Padmé and Anakin would have been besieged, but you didn't do that to riduur'e, your general or the Mand'alor.
Rumours moved from the old 501st out to the rest of the clones, and all of Fox's old Coruscant Guard showed up to swear fealty to the Mand'alor in exchange for getting the war they didn't get because they were so busy playing glorified security guards on Coruscant during the war. The Mando'ade doing runs on slavers soon came to like Fox's cranky, yet vicious, nature. Fox decided that if Cody and Wolffe's Generals had been even remotely like Skywalker he might actually have some sympathy for them. At least, he had that as an idle thought as he happily shot slavers in the face, adopted some kids and taught them how to shoot slavers in the face, take down criminals both with prejudice and how to do it with the care needed for them not to sue a government for violating their rights when they were carted to jail to await trial.
That made up Bly and Aayla's minds and they both permanently moved into the Temple on Concord Dawn, followed by their particular cohort of clones, many of whom shocked people by stating just how tired they were of fighting and then joining the New Mandalorians with a campaign to reintroduce the parts of Mandalorian culture that were non-violent into the pacifist society.
After much discussion, it was agreed that the Concord Dawn Temple would be a Mandalorian Jedi Temple. At that point the discussion began of how to keep the Jedi Temple from becoming a Mando stooge the way the Coruscant Temple had become an arm of the Republic Senate. After all, they were to be Jedi (albeit Jedi centred on the Outer Rim with strong family ties because they would be Mandalorian) and they should be following the will of the Force, not the will of politicians, unless of course those happened to dovetail.
Half the Mandalorian system turned out to collect the cadets and newly decanted off of Kamino, because whether Mando'ade or New Mandalorians, children were important. Shaak Ti and those who had been stationed on Kamino came along, Shaak taking one look at her choice between returning to the Temple and abandoning her charges or staying on Concord Dawn where she'd still be able to follow all those children she'd been helping and protecting and rather thought her choice had been made. She sighed and began to take up the process of teaching all those Force technique lessons being missed by the practically oriented teachers, who had been teaching the children how to wield lightsabres and the various skills needed for a Force-sensitive spy. Shaak set herself to filling in the gaps and making the others do so.
While many of the clones from other battalions were integrating into Corellia, Alderaan, Chandrila and other coreward planets, Cody and the 212th were staying together until Obi-Wan settled on what he wanted to do with himself, since he'd made it clear to Cody that he didn't want to lose contact with his men.
Obi-Wan was still panicking about losing Anakin because word of the actual name of the new Mand'alor still hadn't reached the Temple. Word had, however, reached them about a new schismatic Jedi Temple in the Mandalorian system and Master Plo Koon was sent to investigate.
He didn't come back, instead messaging his Wolfpack that they should really consider joining their brothers. They promptly joined everyone else on Concord Dawn and Plo sent his notice to the Coruscant Temple, telling them he was leaving and joining the schismatics. He settled in with Shaak to teach skills not centred on combat or Shadow work, took on several children in a near-padawan capacity and was quite happy as the Wolfpack settled down around the Mandalore system.
In fact, it wasn't until Duchess Kryze appeared at the Senate with with her new riduur, who was Bly and Aayla's former chief medic Attros Kryze (he had taken his riduur's surname), and the Mand'alor and his wife, that anyone found out where Anakin had been.
The Mandalore contingent were there to negotiate a reasonable set of tariffs and taxes for trade between the Republic and the Neutral Systems.
"Anakin!?" Obi-Wan gasped out. He had just gone another round with the Senate over getting the clones still in Republic space the same rights as other sentients. While there was a network of planets who had legislated within their own systems that the clones were to be treated as any other full sentient, it wasn't actually something that had been generally legislated for the Republic as a whole.
Anakin shot his old master and Cody a somewhat embarrassed look. "Hi, Obi-Wan."
"Where have you been?" Obi-Wan demanded. "And that armour . . ." He didn't say any more because the armour was not the wholly standard style of Mandalore, instead having some very draconic decorative additions. That had been at Anakin's insistence when the armourer had been making him armour. Anakin had wanted armour based on the old paintings of ancient Tatooine warriors, something the armourer had indulged him on, both for the challenge, and because the design of krayt dragon scales and head shape had been very attractive to those Mando'ade who like decorations of more than paint.
"Tatooine," Anakin answered. "Mandalore, Concord Dawn," he gestured vaguely in the air as he added, "Around."
Obi-Wan could only think of one possibility. "Did you start that new temple we've been hearing about?"
"Um. Well, Vos and Ahsoka said that I should be named honorary grandmaster, but I don't really have time for it," Anakin said, flushing. "I mean, right now it's being run by a committee, but Ventress and Aayla kind of butt heads all the time."
"Ventress!?" Obi-Wan chorused with Cody.
Padmé had arrived at Anakin's side. "She seems to have reformed," she informed the two men. "Now, Anakin, we have to go because you need to try to be impressive. Just . . . do your Hero With No Fear look and let me and Satine do the talking, Mand'alor."
Anakin let his wife pull him away. "Of course I'll let you do the talking. Since when have I ever thought I was good at talking? That's why you're actually in charge." He leaned back. "We'll be at the hotel across from 500 Republica," Anakin called back to Obi-Wan and Cody. "Come see us. Quin wanted me to try to talk you into being the official grandmaster of the Mandalorian Temple."
The two stared after Anakin, Padmé, Satine and Attros as they headed into the Senate hall. "I don't . . . how is Anakin Mand'alor?" Obi-Wan asked the world at large.
Cody was shaking his head. "I thought Rex was saying something else. I didn't think it happened the way he said," the former Commander Marshall of the GAR said, sounding baffled. "The messages he sent were a little . . . scattered."
Obi-Wan whipped around. "You knew Anakin was on Mandalore this whole time?" he demanded.
Cody shrugged helplessly. "I knew that Rex said that Bly told him the Mandalorians were accepting clones as part of either the New Mandalorian faction or the Mando'ade faction and Rex told me that some sort of peace or agreement had been brokered. I knew Rex said he'd found Gen - Skywalker and that they had been travelling a lot hunting down slavers."
Obi-Wan dragged his former second-in-command off in order to go over every message in detail, complaining that no one had told him his former padawan was fine and on Mandalore and had apparently become a warlord. Cody pointed out that Obi-Wan had been determinedly calm to the point that everyone assumed he already knew where Anakin was or he didn't care and he hadn't been trying to find out in any way that Cody could tell, he'd just been in a lot of Council meetings from dawn to dusk, except when he'd been in meetings with various Senate members trying to punch through a rights bill for the clones.
Cody didn't know about Obi-Wan sneaking out of the Temple in the middle of the night and plumbing the depths of the criminal underground for word of Anakin.
An afternoon of going over the details of all of the messages that Cody had received from clones on Mandalore, the odd report about things happening in the Mandalorian systems and information Obi-Wan added in from his kibitzing with criminals and information brokers gave them a reasonable picture of what was going on out there. It also told Cody that Obi-Wan was sneaking out when he was supposed to be sleeping and Cody started plotting about how to make Obi-Wan get some actual rest.
When they finally met up, Rex had joined them all and soon enough Rex, Cody and Attros got into a discussion about the clones emigrating to Concord Dawn and Obi-Wan was told the story of how Anakin had been dubbed the Mand'alor, "But Padmé and Satine are actually in charge," Anakin said. "I mostly just hunt slavers with whoever feels like it."
"And he tries to keep Fox from rampaging unnecessarily," Rex added. "I think being stuck on Coruscant during the war made him and the Guard a little crazy." The look on his face said that he thought it was more like a lot crazy, but he wasn't going to actually say it.
It took very little to convince Obi-Wan to pack up and leave with the 212th in tow. It took even less time for Cody to discover that if he put a child in Obi-Wan's lap, his Jedi would sit still long enough to fall asleep out of exhaustion. That was how the two wound up adopting several children, who were well aware that Buir Cody was using them to make Buir Obi get some rest, and Obi-Wan didn't realise he was in a relationship until three days after he realised that he'd absentmindedly made a marriage vow to Cody while discussing his taking up the position of Grandmaster of the Mandalorian Jedi Temple, "Yes, of course I'm staying with you, Cody. I'm always with you, and everything of mine is yours, and I could never ask you to raise the children as anything but warriors."
As Obi-Wan turned his back to put some datapads into his bag with his notes on the streamlining of the Jedi philosophies with the Mandalorian ones, Cody got a devilish grin on his face and said. "Then it's settled, Obi-Wan. Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde."
"As I said," Obi-Wan waved it off as he dashed out the door. Three days later they were at dinner with Anakin and Padmé when he snapped straight in his chair, eyes wide and said apropos of nothing, "Cody? Did we just get married three days ago?"
Cody giggled. "I was wondering when you'd notice, cyare."
"And you complained about me becoming Mand'alor by accident?" Anakin asked him while Padmé inquired of Cody what they wanted for a wedding reception.
And thus everything worked out happily ever after, by accident.