Such a long wait! I'm so sorry. Life is getting very busy for me at the moment (finishing uni, applying for Big Adult jobs) so I have decided that from here on out we'll aim for a chapter each Sunday. I just don't think I'll be able to write more than one a week anymore. Having a consistent routine should be nicer for me and also for you guys!

To make it up to you - I've written a nice big chapter spanning several months in the early Clone Wars. I hope you enjoy xx

War was change, phenomenal change, everywhere he turned. Change where there shouldn't be any. Change happening faster than he could arrest it.

"I frankly don't know what you're thinking," Obi Wan scolded the Jedi Council.

He no longer had to behave for Anakin's sake and had rapidly developed a reckless streak.

"He's barely a Knight, he's learning to be a General… The last thing he needs is a Padawan."

Yoda harrumphed his disagreement.

"Learns best through others, Knight Skywalker does. Always nurturing to the younglings, he has been."

Obi Wan scoffed.

"That much is obvious, Masters. Anakin is the most nurturing, compassionate Jedi that has ever walked these halls. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea."

The Council members looked at him as though he had said something bizarre and incomprehensible.

"He would love his Padawan and give them everything," Obi Wan conceded. "But think about this, Masters: all that he has done since joining this Order has been for others. For his mother, for the memory of Master Qui Gon, for me. It is time that he turns his focus to himself… to his path in the Force."

Yoda raised a brow.

"Speaking from experience, are you, Obi Wan?"

Obi Wan sighed.

"It was an honour to train Anakin. But none of us can deny that those first years were very difficult. I had a Padawan in my care but I did not yet know myself."

"And why this talk of Anakin's path?" Windu pressed. "Are you suggesting that it may lie outside our Order?"

Obi Wan grimaced.

"I don't mean to suggest anything, Master Windu. Although…"

He'd be in so much trouble. But someone had to say it.

"Anakin came to this Order with a dream to free the slaves. And that's hardly what this war is in aid of, is it?"

Windu chuckled.

"You've been listening to your old friend the Duchess of Mandalore, Obi Wan."

Obi Wan shrugged.

"Honestly, Masters… I don't know who to listen to anymore."

Windu narrowed his eyes.

"You are a general in this army, Kenobi. Loyalty is paramount."

Obi Wan gave a weary sigh. On Mandalore, his riduur spoke to him with icy restraint and his son did not speak to him at all.

"I think you have failed to appreciate, Master Windu, exactly how deep my loyalty to this Order runs."

"An issue of loyalty, this is not," Yoda concurred.

The issue of loyalty might have been resolved but the feeling in the room did not warm, and they reached no agreement on Anakin taking a padawan. There had been talk, whispers, of an invitation to join the Council's ranks after Anakin's knighting. But somehow the offer never came.

War was quiet on Mandalore. No bombs fell, no droids marched. But there was no flimsi on the Academy desks on Korkie's first day of the school year. They imported their flimsi from Radhii, apparently – or used to. His teacher said that there were plans to begin to produce flimsi locally, in Enceri. But for a little while longer they would use their holo-pads alone.

There may have been no bombs, but Korkie didn't like war one bit. His mother spent a whole two days and two nights awake brokering new fuel deals to replace those lost with their declaration of neutrality. Harshika worried day and night about her family on Arantara. His father visited with intentions to make peace but it always ended in an argument. Korkie was sent to school with escort from the Royal Guard, for no reason other than his father "had a bad feeling about all this." And there weren't any Nubian plums in the palace kitchens.

"Why won't they send us plums anymore?" Korkie asked. "Aren't we still friends with Naboo?"

He and his mother were eating breakfast together – an increasingly rare privilege. Satine rubbed at her forehead wearily.

"The decision has not come from Naboo. It is a decision of the whole Republic to increase trade tariffs against neutral systems. And with the tariffs we can't afford the plums anymore, dearest."

"We shouldn't be punished for being neutral," Korkie grumbled.

His mother sighed. Korkie was growing bigger and stronger every day but his mother almost seemed to be shrinking. Her shoulders looked so narrow.

"And yet we are, Korkie'ad."

She drew herself up a little taller and fixed him with a steadying gaze.

"But we won't apologise and we won't condone war. Nothing is worth that."

When Korkie was young he had thought his mother invincible. Her hair was the silver-gold of the stars and her crown impossibly heavy. Her word was gospel and her authority absolute. He had believed her to be the most powerful autocrat in the galaxy.

She still spoke with a beskar tongue and Clan Kryze elegance but the show wasn't quite so convincing, anymore.

War dragged on – and on and on and on. Each day brought new trials and it was not long until Obi Wan barely knew who he was anymore. In truth he had lived a double-life for years, hiding his son from the Council, but it was nothing compared to how he lived now. Now, he was the General of 212th and the riduur of a pacifist. (At least, he hoped that he would remain the riduur of a pacifist; his visits to Mandalore these days were more daunting than marching towards the droid army.) He tried to keep the two lives separate as much as he knew how. He tried to avoid thinking about what a walking contradiction he was. But it wasn't always tenable. Least of all on Christophsis, when confronted with a traitor amongst his soldiers.

"It's the Jedi who keep my brothers enslaved," Slick snarled. "We do your bidding. We serve at your whim."

Rex berated him in return. Something about putting his brothers at risk. But Obi Wan was barely listening. He could only think of Satine.

"You're too blind to see it. But I was striking a blow for all clones!" Slick maintained.

Obi Wan breathed heavily and tried to keep his calm. Anakin and Rex could handle this. He needed… space. Something. He walked away. Thousands of battle droids were on their way but he couldn't handle that right now.

There was a strange anger in him. He never wanted to be angry. He never meant to be angry. Was he truly angry with Satine, for inspiring his soldiers to hope for freedom? No. He was angry because he was confused. He was angry at himself.

Before this war he had been a father, a teacher, a peacekeeper. And what was he now? A soldier. A slaver? A father, still – but hated, absent. By the stars.

"You alright, General?"

Cody was looking at him with concern.

I am barely averting a panic attack, Cody.

"I'm alright," he managed.

Cody shrugged.

"That was hard for me to watch, too."

Obi Wan nodded slowly. Already it seemed easier to breathe, with a friend by his side.

"The rest of us don't think like Slick, General," Cody reassured him. "We're proud to fight for you."

Another nod. Obi Wan could not yet find words. Cody's words were entirely earnest; he felt it easily in the Force. But the words did not sit right with him. Why, exactly, should the clones be proud to fight for him? Why should they be proud to fight at all?

Because they were programmed to, in their carefully designed DNA. Because every day of their childhood they had trained for it. Because they had always known they would. Because they couldn't see any other future for themselves.

"It's all very complex, Cody," Obi Wan murmured.

Satine wouldn't have said so. Satine would have said, plain and simple, that it was unacceptable to lead these men to war. But if it weren't him it would be someone else. And he cared, didn't he? He cared and did all he could for them. The Galactic Court would never free them. Perhaps this was the best, in reality, that could be done.

"Maybe," Cody conceded. "But the battle goes on, General."

Obi Wan sighed and steeled himself. The droids were coming.

"Indeed it does, Commander."

War was an endless cycle. Battle, losses, victory. Battle, losses, victory. Victory always came, eventually. And with victory came a mess hall full of brothers with extra drink allowances, and a weary General rubbing his beard and grimacing at the noise as he sipped from his own drink.

"You all need some sort of project, some sort of hobby, to keep you occupied between battles," the General was groaning in the face of Longshot's ceaseless attempts to outwit him with his card tricks. "I can't keep up with your infernal industriousness."

"What do you suggest, General?" Gregor enquired.

General Kenobi tossed back the last of his drink.

"Meditation. In silence."

The brothers howled their disapproval at the suggestion and the mess hall loudened further as men threw out suggestions of their own.

"How about dejarik?"

"Boring."

"Grav-ball?"

"Dangerous," Kenobi muttered.

"Limmie?"

"More dangerous still."

"Greenputt?"

"Boring."

"Musical instruments?"

"Too loud for our elderly General, I suspect."

The General in question nodded his vigorous agreement.

"We could learn a language," Boil suggested. "Make sure our brains still work."

"The General can teach us Mando'a!" Trapper agreed, in excitement.

General Kenobi's brows shot up.

"How did you know that I-"

Trapper flushed.

"My apologies, General. Only that I overheard you on a comm-call and I don't really speak the language but I thought it might have been-"

"Mando'a," Kenobi finished with a sigh.

Cody, who had been watching the back and forth in silence, raised his brows in amusement.

"That's not a Jedi language, General," he remarked.

General Kenobi shrugged.

"A year-long mission to Mandalore in my youth," he offered, by way of explanation.

"New Mandalorian Revolution?"

"Yes."

He had the clamorous attentions of the troops upon him once more.

"So you know the Duchess who's going to court for us?" Waxer asked.

The General made a quiet noise of assent.

"I was her protector."

Cody snorted.

"She doesn't strike me as easy to protect."

"No," the General agreed, with a faint smile. "She has endlessly divisive opinions and refuses to compromise. I have many times lamented that she seems to enjoy having a target upon her back."

There was a quiet fondness in the way that he spoke of her. Cody was confident of who Trapper had overheard the General conversing with.

"If she gave us citizenship, General, you know we'd still fight for you," Cody told him. "I don't think she needs to be doing what she's doing. But I can see that she's good."

"Ferociously good," General Kenobi affirmed.

Bitterness, admiration, love in his eyes. Cody felt a rush of fondness for his General. The war was in its early days still but he was beginning to know him so well.

"Do you still-"

The moment had become too much for the Jedi, perhaps. He looked away from Cody and raised his voice, his expression pained.

"Can someone get me another karking drink?"

Wartime was bleak and colourless save for a singular bright spark: Anakin's youthful Padawan. Obi Wan stood by what he had said to the Jedi Council – the time was wrong, certainly, for Anakin to adopt a learner – but he would not pretend that Ahsoka Tano was anything other than a gift.

Travelling now in a trio rather than a pair, Obi Wan had been delegated to the rear passenger seat, but little else had changed. A familiar nausea was building up in his gut as they prepared to land – crash-land – on Felucia. The Order's suggestion that having a Padawan would make Anakin less foolhardy were not holding up, at least in the aviation sphere. Obi Wan strapped his gas mask to his face and hoped that he would not vomit.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Anakin asked his former Master with a grin.

"Almost certainly not," Obi Wan gritted out.

Ahsoka's scowl was somehow visible despite the gas mask.

"How come every time you fly, we crash?" she demanded.

Anakin shrugged off the insult lightly.

"It's not my fault, it's the ship."

Ahsoka shook her head in formidable disapproval.

"He always blames the ship."

A point Obi Wan had argued a thousand times before. Obi Wan returned her gaze with fervent gratitude.

"Your Padawan is wise, Anakin."

"My Padawan is snippy."

"And my Master costs Republican taxpayers thousands in ship damage!"

Any further argument was cut short by their colossal impact as they finally hurtled into the ground. Obi Wan's thoughts and composure returned to him and he extricated himself from the ship, lending a hand to Ahsoka.

He couldn't help but laugh quietly at himself, as he pulled her to her feet. Another member of the family. Another person he'd give his life for.

By the stars. Life wasn't getting any simpler.

War was no good for love. Satine strode across the hangar towards the plain-clothes Jedi embarking from his ship and could not explain what she felt as she looked at him. She didn't like fighting any more than Obi Wan did but it was hard not to, living on different sides of a galactic war.

"No, there will not be a Republican medical centre built in Mandalorian space," she announced, before Obi Wan had the chance to raise the issue. "Because you know as well as anyone, Obi Wan, that medical centres get attacked, and I will not make my system a warzone."

Obi Wan raised a brow.

"It's good to see you too," he remarked blandly.

Satine grimaced.

"Sorry," she conceded, and embraced him.

It was a brief embrace, the embrace of an old friend, not a lover. Stars, they hadn't slept together since… Well, not for months. Not since this blasted war started in earnest.

"If you wish to talk about the medical station, I feel obliged to tell you that the Chancellor will probably declare Mandalore an enemy of the Republic," Obi Wan sighed as they approached the palace together.

"He already has," Satine muttered. "He set up financial barriers to Mandalorian trade with the Republic months ago."

"The tariffs would be lifted if the medical station were approved."

"I'd prefer tariffs over a war in my airspace."

They walked onwards in their silent stalemate.

"Is Korkie in bed already?"

"I'm afraid so."

"I don't suppose he'd want to see me anyway," Obi Wan muttered.

Satine squeezed his hand in apology. She had known Obi Wan before fatherhood, when the Order was his only family and only meaning – she could understand, better than her son could, why he had not left.

"It's a difficult time," she reasoned. "A lot of change. He'll find it easier eventually."

Obi Wan nodded but could not find a smile.

"You look like you need some tihaar," Satine remarked.

"Always."

They had loved each other so hard and so long that even with this enormous war between them, she could take some comfort in sitting down on the couch in her study with him and sharing a drink.

"I suppose you've heard the rumours that you're building a Separatist army?" Obi Wan ventured, tucking his legs to his chest.

Satine endeavoured not to scull the entirety of her glass.

"Rather amusing that they would suggest such a thing of sworn pacifist."

In all honesty, she did not find it amusing in the slightest. It was a dangerous rumour.

"There's no sense in anything that happens in that Senate these days," Obi Wan muttered grimly. "The Force is… clouded. The Jedi can't see straight; we can't understand it. And I fear that no one else is able to think clearly either."

Satine frowned with confusion.

"The Force is clouded? By what? A severe weather system?"

Obi Wan shook his head, solemn in the face of her facetiousness.

"The Dark Side."

Satine abandoned her restraint and finished her drink.

"How cheerful."

"Indeed."

Satine chewed on her lip thoughtfully.

"It just makes me sad," she told him, plaintively.

There was no one else on this whole blasted planet, in this whole blasted galaxy, who she could be vulnerable in front of like this.

"That we've ended up here," she elaborated. "It would make my father so sad to know that Mandalore is being entangled in this blasted war."

Obi Wan nodded.

"I ask myself often what Qui Gon would think of all of this. I wonder if he'd be able to see through it."

He pulled at a loose thread on his pants pensively.

"He would see something, I think. But I don't know what he would see."

"He always somehow knew something we didn't," Satine murmured in fond agreement, then paused. "I wonder what your parents – your real parents – hoped for you."

Obi Wan raised his brows and was silent for a few contemplative moments. They had never spoken of his biological parents before.

"I don't know what they hoped for me," he answered eventually. "I know very little about them, except that they were small-scale farmers on Stewjon."

He gave a heavy sigh.

"Presumably, it's the same story galaxy-wide. They were poor and wanted something bigger, something better for me."

Satine thought of Shmi Skywalker and the enormous sacrifice she had made. She thought of the many hundreds of Jedi and of hundreds of childless parents the galaxy over.

"This galaxy would be happier if we stopped measuring lives by the magnitude of their achievements," she declared sorrowfully. "If we just focused on being good to the people who loved us."

Obi Wan shook his head.

"But who then would bring peace to Mandalore?" he asked. "Or protect its runaway Duchess?"

And she wished she had an answer to that question but there was none. The responsibility was theirs and neither would run from it. Obi Wan reached out, sensing her sadness, and ran his thumb along the back of her hand.

"It won't always be this hard."

Satine shook her head.

"It might be. It might be harder."

Obi Wan nodded mutely and finished his tihaar.

"I wish you weren't always right, dearest."

War had taken Anakin to much previously inconceivable territory – hundreds men with identical faces all calling him General, the enormous towers of crystal crumbling on Christophsis, a Togrutan youngling with the nerve to call him Skyguy – but a barely-sentient Obi Wan vomiting fluorescent orange into his toilet might have taken the cake. Anakin leaned against the bathroom doorframe and folded his arms to appraise the scene.

"Aren't we supposed to be using our leave to relax and recuperate?" he asked.

Obi Wan grimaced.

"I was trying to-"

Another spattering of orange.

"-relax."

Anakin nodded slowly. War was ugly and scary; he knew that. He was having nightmares of faceless Sith and jumping at loud noises and trying to help his fourteen-standard Padawan navigate the same trauma. But he hadn't stopped to consider that his old Master might be struggling with it too. He ducked out of the bathroom and filled a glass of water, then returned and knelt beside his mentor.

"Here you are, Master. I'm sorry you've been stressed."

Obi Wan drank from the glass slowly, deliberately – in the way that one does, when drunk and uncoordinated – then flushed the toilet and laid on his back on the tiles, eyes closed, arms spread wide.

"Thank you, Anakin."

Anakin watched him with faint concern.

"Are you sure you're not going to vomit again?"

"I'm done vomiting."

"Will we get you to bed, then?"

Obi Wan shook his head imperceptibly.

"Too dizzy."

Anakin sighed and rose to his feet to gather some blankets that could be brought into the bathroom. Obi Wan's voice rang out unexpectedly through the apartment.

"Let me tell you, Anakin, that if you only learn one thing from me it ought to be this."

Anakin stood over the weary Knight. His eyes were still closed and his body still.

"I've learned hundreds of things from you, Obi Wan," Anakin protested.

But Obi Wan did not listen to him.

"Never devote yourself to more than one cause," he declared. "You ought to have one meaning in your life and no more than that. If you try, you will fail."

Kriff's sakes. What was Anakin supposed to say to that? Because yes, everything was a mess in Obi Wan's life, and was only going to get worse – Mandalore seemed to be getting blamed for everything these days, including a terrorist attack on a Republican cruiser, and the Senate spoke each day with increasing urgency about Republican intervention on Mandalore. There was no good way to fix any of it.

And yes, Anakin was feeling the strain too, already, of being away from his wife and having to pretend he wasn't always thinking of her, but there didn't seem to be any way to fix that either. What good could come from a drunken rant on the bathroom floor?

"Good thing that there is no try," Anakin quipped.

At this, Obi Wan deigned to open his eyes, scowling at his former Padawan.

"Don't be juvenile, Anakin. This is important advice."

Anakin snorted in mirth, dumping a blanket over Obi Wan's supine frame.

"Juvenile? I'm not the one who spent the evening alone getting drunk on Sunrisers."

"Alone? I knew you'd come visit me," Obi Wan countered smugly.

Anakin grumbled his disapproval.

"Maybe you should take some leave," he suggested. "Given you're so miserable. Stars – you could quit if you wanted to."

"This is my home," Obi Wan mumbled. "And my student needs guidance."

"Guidance?" Anakin scoffed. "I'm a Knight, for kriff's sakes. I have my own karking Padawan. I'm sober and you're not. When will you accept that I've grown up?"

Obi Wan managed a smirk despite his semi-conscious state.

"Never."

Anakin groaned with exasperation.

"Never?"

"I love you too much," Obi Wan declared solemnly.

"Kriff's sakes…"

But Anakin could not help but soften. He folded the second blanket and placed it under Obi Wan's head.

"You have a lot of problems, you know that Master?"

"Indeed I do," Obi Wan agreed. "Hence my important advice to you. But you weren't listening."

The feeling in the Force between them was warmer now.

"You are so obnoxious when you're drunk," Anakin snickered.

"But I will sleep peacefully," Obi Wan countered serenely.

"Until you wake up dehydrated."

Anakin refilled the glass of water and placed it by Obi Wan's head. He would try, somehow, despite this stupid war, to take better care of his former Master.

"Sleep well, okay? I'll see you in the morning."

"Don't tell Ahsoka I'm unwell."

Anakin smirked.

"By which you mean drunk?"

"Don't tell Ahsoka I'm drunk."

Anakin sighed but could not help but smile.

"I'll let her figure it out tomorrow, Master, when you're hungover in our planning meeting."

War forced compromise, and Satine hated nothing more than compromise. But there was little else to do in the face of what had become deafening Senate pressure: accusations of Separatist allegiance, of acts of terrorism against the Republic, of the manufacture of battle droids. A towering pile of bantha-shit, in short. She detested the Republic and the Separatists equally, the beskar-armoured figure was presumably Death Watch, and much to Satine's frustration her economy could barely manufacture its own medical droids, let alone battle droids.

But Obi Wan, Anakin and Padme had all made the effort to personally warn her of the sincerity of Republican threats. She had made a bigger enemy than she had perhaps realised in the Chancellor Palpatine. An invasion was not entirely off the cards. And so, for peace, she would compromise.

"If you insist upon an investigation," Satine drawled wearily, "then send Kenobi."

She'd have rather argued her case in the Senate in front of Palpatine than here before the Jedi Council. Where was she supposed to look in this stupid circular room? She hadn't trained in combat in years but was still uneasy turning her back on a Jedi. They stared at her in the most unnerving way.

Master Windu finally spoke up.

"We had originally planned to send-"

"Kenobi is the only Jedi I will permit upon Mandalorian soil," Satine clarified firmly.

The Jedi watched her in more blank silence. It was infuriating. Of all the things Satine had detested about Obi Wan when she first met him all those years ago – his smirk, his stupid Jedi jargon, the weapon he carried at his belt – it was his silence that had irked her the most.

"Well?" she demanded.

"I would argue it is more prudent to send a Jedi with whom the Duchess does not share such a close personal relationship. The investigation may be compromised by a conflict of interest."

Windu was addressing Master Yoda, not her. As Obi Wan had warned her, he was insufferably rude.

"Close personal relationship?" Satine retorted. "There is no conflict of interest here. My reasoning is simply this: better an enemy I know that one I don't."

Satine was entirely Force-blind but endeavoured then, although it was presumably futile, to shield her thoughts in the way that Obi Wan had taught her son to do.

"Appropriate for the mission, Kenobi is," Yoda decreed eventually. "Satisfied, the Chancellor will be, by his investigation."

So even the green monster knew that the investigation was a farce. Satine would have crowed her victory but in this strange environment held her tongue.

"It is decided, then?" she pressed.

"You are free to leave, Duchess Kryze," Windu managed.

He seemed to be holding back some complaint that he would no doubt raise with his Council after her departure.

"Inform Kenobi, we will," Yoda added, with a faint smile. "Most pleased, he will be, to remake your acquaintance."

He was all but laughing at her. He presumably knew it all.

"Many thanks, Master Yoda," she conceded, with a bow.

"The time is now, Mando'ade."

A Concordian hailstorm drummed against the metal roof over their heads.

"The Duchess's foolishness has been exposed. The people understand now that placing faith in the Republic was a mistake. And while she is back-pedalling, scrambling to put food on Mandalorian tables – now is the time to strike."

Bo-Katan nodded her agreement, bored. This was her blasted argument; this was what she'd spent weeks telling Pre.

"The people have doubts in their government. But we need more than simple doubt. We need fear. Fear that a pacifist government cannot guarantee their safety."

History repeated itself. Bo-Katan's father had always liked to say that. There had been hundreds of coups and civil wars on Mandalore. A pacifist government could not defend itself from violence, so violence was the way, just as it had been the way in the years of civil war that felled her father's regime.

They would do better for Mandalore than the Old Guard ever had – truly, they would. But for now, the tactics would be the same. And Bo-Katan knew that her sister would never forgive her that.

"It is time for a campaign of terror," Pre vowed. "It is time for glass to shatter in Sundari."

For glass to shatter. For unarmoured bodies to tear and crumple.

"In the coming days we will strike. And the people of Mandalore will know that the Duchess Kryze is not strong enough."

"Oya!"

The chorus amongst the armoured warriors rang strong. Their time had come.

War is miserable. Palpatine and Vizsla are the worst. We all need friends like Anakin, Ahsoka and Cody.

I'm sorry if I've tried to tackle too much here - next chapter will be more focused. As you can no doubt tell I've not watched the Clone Wars itself for a great many years and I have no intentions to abide strictly by its quotes or timelines (yay for AU privilege!), although I will certainly be playing off some major events.

Speaking of which, next chapter will be rather different from the original 'Mandalore Plot' episode. Vizsla has dirtier plans. Bo-Katan will be taking a more prominent role. And our favourite little family will have to band together.

Thanks so much for all your support. I've been thinking of my beautiful readers all week pushing myself to get this chapter done!

Much love,

S.