One day early! We take the little wins as they come. Enjoy an action-packed chapter :)
Satine had extinguished more spot fires and jumped through more hoops in this last year of leadership that perhaps all of the previous years combined. And it seemed to be the pinnacle of this galaxy's bantha-shit practical jokes that she would now have to contend with her riduur, who she would love until the day she died but who was effectively her political enemy at present, bowing before her in his General's uniform in court, here to investigate her for being a Separatist.
"After all these years, Duchess, you are as beautiful as ever."
Di'kut bastard, trying to flatter her. But Satine felt an unfamiliar sensation as Almec visibly cringed beside her; she felt, for the first time in perhaps months now, like she would laugh.
"Whereas I must confess I rather preferred you cleanshaven in your youth," Satine replied coolly. "But you didn't come all the way to Mandalore to flirt, Master Kenobi."
"No, Duchess."
"In fact," she went on, her tone sharpening, "I believe you came here to accuse me of treachery."
Obi Wan shrugged.
"Investigate you for treachery, if we are to be pedantic, Duchess. I am not your accuser."
Satine hummed her agreement.
"My accuser is rather too busy lording over his new dictatorship to pay me a visit, I imagine."
Obi Wan cocked a brow. His tone was half-disapproving and half-amused.
"And you wonder why the Republic fears your disfavour."
"I have no doubt that the Republic senses my disfavour," Satine countered. "The rumour of droid factories, however, I find a little far-fetched."
Obi Wan conceded the point with an elegant shrug.
"Truly, Duchess, I do not expect to find any. But I hope that my investigation will do something to repair relations between Mandalore and the Republic."
Satine smirked.
"Bold aspirations, Negotiator."
She rose to stand.
"I must warn you that I am no less stubborn than I was when we first knew each other."
She walked down the stairs from the throne and took his arm. They fitted together so naturally. They had fumbled with each other when they were young in this city.
"I suspected as much, my Lady."
"I am going to take our investigator through a walk in Peace Park," Satine informed the waiting Almec over her shoulder. "Perhaps with his keen Jetii gaze he will find this elusive, mystical droid factory that the Republic is so frightened of."
And they walked in disciplined silence across the enormous throne room and out of the Palace.
"You can't go around calling me beautiful in public," she reprimanded him as they strode out into the sunshine. "My public image will suffer."
"You are surely not to blame for the ravings of a mad Jedi," Obi Wan reasoned.
Satine shrugged.
"So you accept that you've gone mad, then? I knew the war would do this to you. Anakin told me about the Sunrisers incident."
Obi Wan scowled.
"Traitor."
"He was looking after you. He called me and told me to be nicer to you."
Obi Wan sighed with a reluctant smile.
"Of course he did."
"You know I still love you. But when we are fighting for completely different causes-"
He squeezed her hand and cut her off.
"I still love you too. Even though I think your approach to this war has been all but suicidal."
They fell into silent, but more comfortable disagreement than they had enjoyed in a very long time. Obi Wan's gaze turned to their surroundings, scanning everything from the garden beds to the tops of the towers.
"I don't suppose you've ever really had the chance to see Sundari like this," Satine mused.
"Only from your bedroom window, my dear."
He looked at the city and shook his head in wonderment.
"When I last walked over this ground… they were still closing over the graves."
The stones lining the pathway on which they walked were each etched with the name of a casualty of the Old Guard reign and its horrible year of famine in Sundari.
"I've perhaps never quite paused to appreciate the beautiful city you've built, Satine."
Satine nodded, drawing herself up tall and strong against a wave of sadness.
"Everything I do, Obi Wan, everything the Republic loathes me for… I do it to protect this way of life."
Obi Wan squeezed her hand once more but said nothing.
Bo-Katan sat amongst Death Watch soldiers crowded into the briefing room and wondered why it was Pre Vizsla there at the front of the room and not her. It had been all well and good to pledge herself to his leadership when she was sixteen-standard and homeless for the second time in two years, but she had thought she'd be past it by now. The bastard was more stubborn and smarter than she'd given him credit for. And she was hardly his prized Lieutenant anymore. Things had been uneasy between them ever since her visit to Sundari.
The clock ticked and ticked and hit midday. Radio Sundari reported a sunny day and the introduction of temporary meat rations in the urban centre. A Jedi had arrived this morning to investigate Republican claims of a military droid factory on Mandalore. Local children were preparing for the spring equinox parade.
"Good thing the Jedi's here," someone remarked. "They can run and tell their Republic that violence is out of control on Mandalore."
"And here we were thinking we would have to install an artificial enemy on Mandalore to bring the people to arms," Vizsla mused. "The Grand Army may yet do it for us."
"One step at a time, di'kuts," Bo-Katan grumbled.
Five minutes past midday. The waiting soldiers leaned forward, elbowing each other for position in their excitement.
"Good afternoon Sundari, you're with Talea Khar reporting live from Peace Park, where the Republican investigator to Mandalore has first been sighted. The Republic has sent a Jedi Knight identified today as Obi Wan Kenobi, who with his late Master Qui Gon Jinn was the Duchess Satine Kryze's protector during the years of the New Mandalorian Re-"
A deafening crash, and screams.
"Talea Khar, reporting breaking news live from Peace Park where a detonator has destroyed the park's central monument."
Bo-Katan had to credit the journalist's devotion to her job. Her voice was panting but determined.
"The Duchess Kryze is within sight. She was knocked from her feet but has righted herself and appears uninjured. There were perhaps thirty civilians in the vicinity of the explosion who have been thrown backwards and and are still on the ground. The extent of their injuries is not yet clear, nor is the origin of this-"
Another crash.
Bo-Katan's heart just about stopped in her chest. She shot her gaze at Pre.
"There was only supposed to be-"
"Talea Khar, live from Sundari with breaking news. A second detonator has exploded, this time in the Sundari Academy. This explosion appears larger. The bomb has destroyed the first floor of the building on the eastern side and the second and third storeys are in a precarious position. The Sundari Academy is attended by over six hundred pupils."
For the first time, the reporter's voice truly shook.
"To repeat, for listeners just joining us on Sundari Radio, there is breaking news of two explosions in central Sundari at the centre of Peace Park and the Sundari Academy. There is terrorism in Sundari today for the first time since the Civil War of-"
Bo-Katan pounded an armoured fist on the table.
"What the fuck, Pre?"
Her fellow soldiers had fallen into shocked silence. Bo-Katan slammed her fist against the table again. She didn't care if she broke all the bones in her kriffing arm.
"Since when did we have secret plans within Death Watch, Pre?" she demanded. "Since when did Death Watch kill children?
"I make all my decisions, Lieutenant, to serve the best interests of the group," Pre uttered, with the disgusting composure of a politician. "The attack at the Academy today will frighten the people of Sundari in a way that no other act of terror will. And in the interests of the group, Lieutenant, it was best to conceal this plan from those who might not be trusted to see it through."
Bo-Katan had perhaps never been so angry in her entire life. She could barely fit her tongue around her words.
"Damn right I wouldn't have let you see it through!" she roared. "Soldiers don't kill children, Pre!"
"Our people protect their children at all costs, Lieutenant," Vizsla rephrased calmly. "This will lead them to embrace new leadership."
Bo-Katan rose to her feet. The soldiers parted from around her.
"Then I am embracing new leadership right here on Concordia," she spat out.
She tore her Lieutenant's badge from her armour and slammed it onto the table.
"I'm not standing for this, Pre. Your time's up."
"That's the Academy, Obi Wan!"
He knew it before she said it. He felt it. Korkie's surge of fear, of warning – and then nothing. His feet were already fumbling in the direction of the school.
"I'll get him, Satine."
She ran with him across the park. She shouldn't have been running. She'd hit her head with the impact of the blast. But there was hardly time to argue.
"Just wait for me outside the building," he managed, between panting breaths. "I'll bring him to you."
They had reached the Academy now. The air was full with the crying of children. It was all so terribly loud in the Force. He needed to find Korkie. How was he to find Korkie? Satine moved to shoulder her way past him. Obi Wan grabbed her by the arms and stopped her.
"Satine, it's too dangerous. The building is collapsing."
Tears were running down her face, drawing silver tracks in the grime of the bomb blasts. Stars. He had seen her face like this before, as the bombs rained on Enceri. And he had hoped he would never, ever again-
"I'm not staying out here. There's not a kriffing chance, Obi Wan."
She had not changed. Obi Wan grabbed her by the arm and brought her with him.
"Stay close. Stay right with me, alright?"
He dragged her closer still as they advanced through the blown-open wall and into the dusty classrooms.
"I'm not having the roof fall on you. Not when we have a more important task at hand, alright?"
Satine did not seem to hear him. She overtook him and ran ahead. She was stepping over the bodies of children. It was a scene from a nightmare.
"His classroom is normally on the second floor."
He snatched her back before she could charge into a dense cloud of smoke.
"Star's sakes, Satine!"
He grabbed her by the shoulders and brought his face close to hers.
"I can't rescue you both, alright?"
He tore two strips from his tunics and doused them in a pool of water that had collected where a sink, or perhaps a water fountain, had been blown apart.
"For your mouth, alright? And I swear by the Force if you let go of my hand-"
She brought the wet cloth obediently to her face and dragged him onwards.
Through the smoke and up the crumbling stairs. Past the crying of other parents' children. Obi Wan shifted a pile of rubble with the Force to extinguish the flames. He reached and reached and reached out with the Force. But he could not find him.
"Here!"
Satine rounded a corner and there he was. Their golden boy sprawled upon his back – the same way he sprawled to sleep, with his arms open as though challenging the universe to fight him – with blood in his hair. He had been struck by a piece of the semi-collapsed ceiling.
"He's breathing," Obi Wan murmured, a hand on his chest.
"And a good pulse," Satine affirmed, one hand on his neck and another on wiping the hair from his forehead.
All her frenzied energy had quietened now.
"I'll take him out, Obi Wan, and get him medical care. The other children-"
"I'll take care of them."
Finally, they were fighting the same battle, kneeling side by side.
"Can you lift him?" Obi Wan asked, realising the flaw in the plan.
"Give me a hand getting him up."
Obi Wan draped their son's ever-lengthening frame over his mother's shoulders. She bowed under his weight but stood steady.
"Don't you drop him, now."
"Hilarious, Obi Wan."
They offered each other dusty smiles and parted.
Satine knelt on the grass outside the Academy beside her son as the paramedics descended upon him with oxygen and needles. Obi Wan had brought child after child out from the building and was now leading the emergency workers in constructing a hasty scaffold to prevent the complete collapse of the upper storeys.
She could never have done that. She could never have walked away from her wounded child, no matter how many others needed her.
Despite all Satine had deplored of the Jedi Code, she was glad that her riduur was a Jedi Knight.
"Shouldn't we go outside, Pre?"
Pre Vizsla was standing on their large briefing table, darksabre in his grip.
"The leader chooses the location of the duel, not the challenger," he reminded her, seemingly bored. "I don't suppose you studied any true Mandalorian tradition in your childhood, Lieutenant Kryze."
"I'll fight you here if you want," Bo-Katan agreed coolly, stepping onto the table herself.
She would have far preferred to fight him outside, where she could use her jetpack and blasters. Of course, Pre would have an advantage hand-to-hand in this small space, with a crush of spectators all around them. But she was the challenger and it was not her call to make.
"When she falls," Pre drawled lazily at the watching crowd, "you are to push her back into the arena."
A solid wall of beskar armour all around them. Her friends and comrades had become her cage. Bo-Katan jammed on her helmet.
She had no kriffing chance. Not in here, not like this.
Bo-Katan thought inexplicably of her parents who had died before her. Of her sister who was surrounded by enemies. Of her nephew who did not yet know the misery he had inherited. The many tragedies of the Clan Kryze.
She'd never been proud of her heritage but she knew she belonged with them. Courageous, selfless and stupid. She was Clan Kryze through and through.
Satine had long suspected she was the luckiest person in the galaxy – she should have died at least a hundred times during the Civil War – and she knew today that it was true. For Korkie's skull was fractured but the impact had missed the large arteries and the bleed was small and contained. He needed no neurosurgery. He would have a scar the size of the one on his mother's hip. According to the medics, all he needed was some support and some time. Satine held Korkie's hand, comfortingly warm still, while Obi Wan stood ostensibly on guard in the doorway, his arms folded tightly across his chest.
They waited for a terrible hour of silence as the endless tide of medics came and went and pretended they were not his parents.
"He's beginning to wake up," Obi Wan reported tersely. "Do you need to give him more sedation for neuroprotection? Or can we let him wake?"
The nurse looked at the Jedi in alarm. He had spoken Mando'a.
"You think he's waking up?" she repeated.
She checked the monitor, flashed a light at his pupils.
"I'll get the doctor."
They were left briefly and blessedly alone.
"You can sense him?" Satine asked.
Obi Wan crossed the room. He laid one hand on Korkie's head and the other on Satine's shoulder.
"Yes. He feels… he feels alright."
With a comforting squeeze of her shoulder Obi Wan stepped back again. A troop of medics strode into the room and began a discussion of the numbers of the monitor and the settings of the ventilator.
"He's going to-"
Obi Wan's warning came too late; Korkie began to cough and splutter against the tube in his throat. The medics crowded around him.
"Steady now, Prince Korkaran, you're safe in hospital and the tube is in your mouth to help you breathe."
Korkie struggled further, his grip tight on Satine's wrist. He looked at her with desperate gaze.
"Korkie, dearest-"
"Can't you take it out?" Obi Wan asked, stepping forward despite himself. "He wants to-"
The apparent leader amongst the medic hastily donned some gloves.
"He's oxygenating well. He's alert enough to protect the airway. We can extubate."
The tube was gently withdrawn from Korkie's throat. Korkie coughed his airway clear and spoke, with scratchy voice but grim determination, to his parents.
"Someone has to go to Concordia. Ba'vodu Bo is in trouble."
Wise young Korkie. I hope you enjoyed the dramas here. Things are starting to change on Mandalore.
Let me know your thoughts! I'm getting very excited about the journeys opening up here. Let me know who you want to hear more from/what you want to see. What do you think will happen with Bo-Katan?
Thanks so much for being stellar readers.
xx - S.