Our penultimate chapter! Apologies for the slowness. This one needed a rewrite, and I've had a shocker with exams.
The Mandalorian and Jedi met on the balcony on what would be their final night together. If anyone were awake in the bedroom behind the glass doors they were untroubled. They stood innocently and wordlessly apart as they watched the golden lights of the city. The weary, broken city, brought to peace. Music spilled from a nearby apartment and into the streets. Satine hugged a blanket around her shoulders, and wished that he would say that he would stay but knew that he would not. Obi Wan saw visions of his children dancing and laughing before him, and wondered if whether in another galaxy, he could live that joy.
"We never finished our dance, in Bralsin," he voiced, eventually. "I never did see what a magnificent dancer you claim to be."
"I claim to be?" Satine repeated, with a snort.
Obi Wan shrugged fairly.
"I'll believe it when I see it."
Their bodies fitted together so naturally.
"Your hands are cold."
"So are yours."
They could have been in the galaxy's most exquisite ballroom, under Sundari's snow-dusted dome and the brilliant sprawl of stars. The music echoed in the empty streets. Obi Wan didn't need to speak Mando'a to know that it was a love song. As it finished, he ran his hands through her hair to hold her face and kissed her for the last time. His hands remained in her hair as he looked at her, memorising her. There was nothing to say.
Inside the bedroom behind them, Mariella woke from a nightmare in which she travelled the galaxy and returned to Halmad, where all of those that she had left behind walked lifelessly, blood seeping from their unhealing wounds. Upon waking, she welcomed the distraction of the moonlit figures on the balcony as she waited for her thundering heart rate to slowly ease. It was a clear and peaceful night. The almost-Duchess and almost-Jedi were standing stock-still, facing each other with their hands interlaced. Mariella knew them both well enough to guess that neither would demand sacrifice from the other.
Mariella was hardly a romantic, but she did feel sad for them, almost overwhelmingly so, in that moment. She cried quietly as she drifted back into sleep, perhaps because of her nightmare, or perhaps because neither of them would cry, and someone ought to.
Qui Gon and Obi Wan rose early in the morning, as was their custom. They trained in the trampled gardens behind the palace, Qui Gon paying careful attention to his Padawan lest he attempt to overexert himself in the early days of his recovery, as young Jedi always did.
But Obi Wan showed no such brashness. He flowed gently with the Force around them. And when the time came to be still and meditate, Qui Gon sat behind his Padawan, and unravelled his learner's braid and set about plaiting it once more. Another year. An extraordinary year. New trials and new learning. And by some extraordinary miracle, they were still together.
Qui Gon tied the braid with a precious crimson thread, and basked in his Padawan's stillness.
Satine had not yet attempted to utilise the shower in Sundari's palace, and found that at first, it spat out dirty water, and although it eventually ran clean, the water remained icy. She was unable to stifle a yelp as she forced herself underneath it, closing her eyes and gasping as the water ran over her head and face. She had not been in water this cold since the lake outside of Enceri, when she had Obi Wan had determinedly submerged themselves and washed away every last trace of blood and dust from the bombing. There was nothing so offensive to cleanse herself of today, but she supposed that it was a sensible morning upon which to gird her heart of steel.
After listening with some amusement to the young monarch's spluttering and gasping – the heating must have failed, as they had feared – Mariella beheld Satine, wrapped tightly in her towel and shivering.
"You know, I'm thinking that perhaps I'll just skip a shower today," she observed drily.
"I should have decided to be crowned with greasy hair," Satine agreed fervently.
Mariella threw her a second towel, which Satine managed to wrap around her wet hair despite her vigorously shaking hands.
"Warm up," she instructed bluntly. "We have to get you dressed. We're already behind schedule, apparently," she added, eyeing the notes that Almec had given her.
"Yes, Aunty Mariella," Satine acquiesced, with a grin.
"Aunty Mariella?" she echoed, amused. "You know I'm not the maternal type."
"But you are good at telling me what to do," Satine remarked.
The young women laughed as Mariella unwittingly proved the point, pressing a pile of garments into Satine's hands.
"Whatever. Get dressed."
Aunty Mariella. She'd had nieces and nephews on Halmad; she had buttoned their coats for school. And today she stood a world away from home, in her new home, and it was not a school coat that she buttoned but a dress of exquisite lace in royal Clan Kryze blue – a long line of buttons along a monarch's still-shivering spine. The galaxy was a strange and wonderful place.
She secured the final button at the nape of Satine's neck.
"You're ready."
Satine turned, and unwound the towel from her head. Her damp curls fell to hang above her shoulders. She was impossibly regal.
"I can almost feel them with me, you know," Satine mused, taking the heavy folds of the skirt into her hands.
Wearing her mother's dress and her father's shield at her arm.
Mariella nodded thoughtfully.
"You look like them, too," she told her earnestly. "You look like the Mand'alor."
Satine gave a smile of tentative disbelief.
"Mariella-"
"Shoes on," Mariella instructed sharply, checking the timesheet.
There was some joy, she conceded, in being an Aunty Mariella.
"Time to go."
At the Lady Satine's insistence – "We cannot pretend, Minister, that without them I would be here at all" – the two Jedi were to act as her chosen protectors one last time. They waited with Almec by the double doors of the master bedroom, hands clasped formally at their chests. There had been great stress, on Almec's part, to secure for the Jedi Padawan a set of freshly tailored Jedi robes, but there was no trace of their hasty preparation visible in calm countenance of the pair. They waited with an immaculate stillness that Almec could admire. Throughout the palace, the sick and vulnerable had presented themselves as neatly as possible, and stood, or sat, to the best of their ability, poised to behold this historic spectacle.
The doors opened precisely on time; Almec was greatly impressed by the young handmaiden's diligence. The Lady Satine emerged with a tentative smile, alight with anticipation. She was exquisitely beautiful. Almec could not help but feel a profound sadness alongside his joy. He had seen her mother, a dear friend, in this dress. The dress that Satine, for years, had refused to wear. He knew then that they should never have asked her. That she had been meant, always, for something greater.
But as surely as the past was wrong, this moment could only be right. She was her planet's radiant bride. And this would be the greatest and the purest union into which she would ever enter.
Obi Wan's breath caught as he saw her. He let it pause, and then welcomed it back. There was no need to fight. Satine was resplendent with light and with her destiny; the truth of it sang in the Force all around him. He had let go. He was free, now, to bask in her light, in this moment, as they moved at processional pace to the palace's main balcony, from which she would be viewed by thousands of observers packed into Sundari's main street.
The moment should have been entirely hers. She was Mand'alor, autocratic ruler of an ancient and imposing people, leader not only by her blood but by the war that she had waged against violence, by the love that she had won from her people. It should have been hers alone. But she turned, before striding onto the balcony, and directed her close gaze at him, only him. She gave him a small but radiant smile.
We won.
The victory was hers and it was theirs and it was divine.
Victory amongst the sadness.
I cannot believe we're so close to the end! Next chapter will be our last. It is time to say goodbye.
xx - S.