Eyo! Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday, I got busy and I forgot. Fortunately I remembered today! So here we are-

The war raged on. Like a deadly wildfire, it consumed Mandalore, crackling, licking, devouring. In its wake were ruined forests. Poisoned water. Burned farmlands, with more destroyed everyday.

Thousands of tons of bombs were cast down into the earth until there was so much dust in the atmosphere it was perpetually gray, and what little crops were planeted would not grow. The people starved, and still the war went on.

In time, Satine and Be'in joined the main body of the army. She was given command of a unit, much to her father's fury, but it was important that they see her. That they know she would be beside them, no matter the circumstance. They had spent too long only hearing the whispers of her work.

Satine began to understand, at last, some of the traditions of her people. It was easier to face ranks upon ranks of enemies stretching farther than the mind could bare when you and your fellow soldiers chanted together. You did not feel your stomach growl when you told tales of exploits of the battle. It raised morale to praise those who killed the most, to celebrate the conquering of the enemies' heros, to place their armor on a stand for all to see. But it was also easy to see how easily they could be twisted into darker things.

The nights were cold, the drinking water ashy, the meals stale and cheap from offworld. Satine's armor grew loose on her body. Be'in offered her his food, but she scolded him until he was bright red all over to be sure he wouldn't try it again. He was tying his robes tighter these days. He grew a beard to hide the gaunt lines of his face. Their bones rubbed together when they curled together at night for warmth. There was no night when he did not roughly shake her awake to wake her from her nightmares. And still the war raged on.

Be'in began to show his skill in battle. Usually he was beside her, defending her, as he insisted was his place. But high command began to request that he lead a company.

Be'in hadn't wanted to. He'd outright refused for a time.

But in the last battle, after he had single handed orchestrated a retreat when most of the commanders had barely known which way was up, well, Satine had asked him personally. "Be the leader my people need." She told her. "And not the bodyguard I need."

He'd relented. He always did.

The tent was chilly the morning of his first debriefing and Satine's cheeks were pink and sore as she gazed over the table with her general. She had no talent at tactics, and so had assigned them elsewhere.

General Kar-Danta, pointed down towards the holographic map hovering above the table.

"They're better equipped than us, but with the support from the south we outnumber them. With help from the city, that should be enough to hold them back. Their weakest points are here, and here." She nodded to Be'in. "I want you to take your troops and charge down the left hill to break them in there. Portia's squad will follow to widen the gap. It's there the supporters inside the city will begin their assault all around the city. Kol's group will bring in air support."

Be'in's eyes were like beskar. A hardy metal that could never break, never even loosen. It took and absorbed it into itself. Heating up, buzzing with unused kinetic energy, perhaps, but never breaking. Never slowing.

Satine hated it when he was like this. She missed their sparkle when he would reflect back upon her and they could work together. Not simply absorb it into himself.

"Alor." Satine stiffened as the general referred to her. "You will be ready with a second wave at the top of the hill, should any of the groups need support. Do not engage unless strictly necessary. Questions?"

She nodded stiffly. She would have prefered to be leading her people, not directing a second wave. But they had already had this argument many times, it would be unseemly to do it in public again.

A few people crowded around the table raised their hands. Clarifications were made, additional details were given.

Be'in watched it all silently with his gray eyes. His hand rested on his chin, occasionally stroking his so called beard. It was barely more than a little rusty colored stubble.

Satine wasn't quite sure what she thought about it yet. It certainly made him look much older. But she had not yet decided if it was better than his usual look.

"-with luck, the city should be ours by nightfall."

And what a wonder that would be. Keldabe was the center of New Mando'ade philosophy, and as such was a main target of the Traditionalists. There had been several unsuccessful attempts to take the city over the past eights months, wasting a truly astounding number of resources in the process. This latest attempt had lasted five weeks, and it looked like they might succeed at last if it was not broken soon.

Satine's father had managed to hold them out this long while they collected supporters. But he could not conjure food out of thin air, and it would be much more difficult to win back the city if it was occupied.

It seemed strange, to finally be coming to the city she had been elected to rule.

"-very well." General Kar-Danta clapped her chest. "Kili cuun ade draar kar'taylir akaan." May our children never know war.

They all clapped their hands against their own chests, affirming the creed of the New Mando'ade.

The air outside was hot, and muggy. The sun had not yet risen to burn away the water that had collected during the night. It's glow illuminated the gray sky. Satine watched it for a moment, it was no wonder that her people had once believed the sky a great fabric canopy the fire goddess shone a light through to light their way.

Be'in brushed by her. Without quite knowing why, her hand shot out and clasped his. He froze, and turned to face her. He always did. "Your grace?"

"Be'in." She said quietly. Her mouth fumbled for a moment, unable to decide which word to begin with.

She reached up and fingered a string of aburn hair poking out from under the cap. He still wore the damn thing all the time, and his hair had grown long enough it poked out like a little crown around his head.

"I'll cut your hair when you get back." Satine said. She kissed his cheek quickly and nodded that he could go.

But he didn't. He continued to stare at her with those hard gray eyes. "Stay safe, your grace." He said. His head bobbed and he turned away into the crowd.

Satine watched the empty spot where he had been. Something inside of her feeling sick and twisted.

"Alor?" A wry voice said behind her. The general. Satine turned and bowed her own head. Technically, Satine outranked her, as the elected leader of the people. But she was not above showing respect for those that did the real work.

The general paused by Satine, leaning her helmet against her hips. "Be'in. That's an old term of affection."

"I thought it appropriate." Satine murmured.

General Kar-Danta chuckled. "You were always a master of mixing the old and new." She smirked, her eyes turning sharp. "A Jetii and a Mando'ad. Riduur." Partners.

"Allies." Satine corrected.

She could practically feel the general's gaze slide over to rest on her. "Allies." She purred. "Of course."

The attack on the city was a slaughter for both sides. The New Mando'ade outnumbered them, but the Traditionalists had control of more ports than the New Mando'ade and were thus better fed and better equipped. But the city inside also rained down support, and so the Traditionalists had to work on two fronts. Eventually the siege rippled and broke, but the Traditionalists fought to the death. Progress was slow.

The gunfire was so loud Satine had to turn up the noise canceling in her helmet though she was nearly a kilometer from the conflict. Bodies formed specks that were left behind on the conflict.

Satine wondered if Bo-Katan was among them. If she was even at the siege at all, or on another planet. She would fight to the death. Satine knew that. She might never know if she died here.

The tide had just turned in their direction when the sound of the horn filled the air. Satine's eyes widened. Usually the Traditionalists did not call a retreat until they were nearly all captured or killed. Perhaps they were finally learning to value those they threw into battle to die.

They fell back, and the New Mando'ade pushed forwards, swarming through the abandoned camps and around the walls of the city until they were fleeing before them, running away to the horizon where their support would take them away.

Satine pressed her lips together and felt sicker and sicker. Something was wrong. They'd given up the city far too quickly. Had their general been a coward? Had they decided the city was not worth the effort?

For a moment, she considered comming the general to discuss it. Or even sending in her own troops though they had the battle well in hand by now.

A dull roar filled the air. Satine glanced up. Two shining ships rocketed across the sky, ripping through the air faster than the speed of sound.

She realized what was happening just moments before it became reality.

"Te Hettyc." She whispered, her mouth as dry as the desert.

Time slowed to a stop. The ships crawled over the city while she watched in horror. Her mind raced forwards, forward, down the line of time. She could almost see her future. Her telling the story of this day to her children, of the horror and devastation was wrought. She could see her children telling their children, and then their grandchildren. Never letting the pain die, simply passing it from generation to generation.

She watched two dots fall from the ships to the center of the city. They crawled downwards, as if sinking in water. Slow, slowly. But never slow enough.

The dots disappeared among the shining buildings. An eternal moment of silence.

The roar that filled the air was deafening. The noise cancelation in her helmet briefly tried to compensate before multifunctioning, and a sharp ringing speared through her head.

She watched, stupidly, as the city of Keldabe was consumed by a growing ball of flames. A shockwave pushed ahead, blowing away the dust, shattering the windows. Cleaning the buildings, creating holes for the flames to slip inside, destroying the buildings from the inside out.

The shockwave rippled across across the ground. For a moment, the sandy hills that surrounded Keldabe became like the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. It hit Satine like the hand from a goddess, nearly throwing her off her speeder.

The ball of flames burned itself out when it reached the edges of the city. But it had done enough. No one would have the city of Keldabe now. Six million people had lived in that city. Now six million were dead, flattened, by the force of the bomb. A field of rubble and ashes where there had once been hope and dreams for the future.

There was nothing but the sound of the occasional building collapsing, or the wind.

Then came the wailing. The screaming. The cries that clung to the wind, hoping that it would carry them to someone who cared. Someone who could help.

Satine did not do anything. None of them did. If they moved to help, the horrors before them would become real. And it seemed none of them could bear to think that.

It wasn't real. It couldn't be. Keldabe was too important for anyone to destroy. It was the capital of Mandalore! It was the center of their people, their culture.

But the Traditionalists had shown very little care for any of those things.

The slow, dream like appearance was rapidly fading now. A cold terrible sort of desperation overcame her. They would never be enough to save everyone from this devastation. They could never be enough. But there were so many they could save if they tried.

Slowly, Satine raised her hand. It was shaking. She pressed the comm button on her helmet. There was only static. She ripped off her helmet and pointed it towards the city. "Shaadlar!" She screeched as loud as her lungs would allow. Move!

Her soldiers snapped to life, and they began speeding towards the city.

As far ahead as Satine had seen when those bombs had fallen, suddenly her mind seemed incapable of thinking beyond what was in front of her. There was no war. No city full of the dead. No army of thousands, each one needing rescuing and care. There was her foot, and a step and then another. There was rubble to be moved. There was a wound to be bound. There were words of comfort. There was a cold corpse in her arms. But never the whole of the tragedy. She could not bear to think of the whole tragedy.

Smoke and dust floated along in the air. Even the filters in her helmet could not clean it all. She constantly tasted it on her tongue. She swallowed it down and down until she felt like throwing up

At first time they made the half hour trek to their camp nearly a dozen people died. Satine ordered the camp closer to the city. They moved it to the top of the hill overlooking the city. They dared not come closer, for fear of rubble and radiation.

There were an uncountable number of trips. Up the hill to the bursting medical tents. Down the hill again for more survivors. Up again to call for help in removing rubble.

To make more space for patients, Satine often walked. Her legs burned with the fire of the sun. Her feet slid under the sandy ground. She struggled either way. Going up she could hardly gain enough traction to climb, going down she struggled not to fall and break her neck.

After a time, Satine felt she was always climbing that hill. That no matter how smooth and flat the group before her was she was either sliding into oblivion or struggling to move forward at all. There was no end to the burning of her legs and the pain in her chest. Even the sky seemed an extension of that hill, just the same as the gray sand beneath her feet.

After a time, she dimly realized her father was dead. There were no survivors from inside the city. The very walls that had protected them during the siege had contained the flames inside to burn them all alive.

Her mind screamed and wailed and cried. But her body seemed quite separate from its theatrics. It continued working while Satine mourned inside.

The goddess had removed the sun and hidden it away. The sky was gray with ash and dust, and so it would be today and tomorrow, and who knew how much longer, perhaps forever. There was no sky. Only the hill she walked up and down again.

She was sick of war, of the way her people worshiped it, threw themselves into it until everything they were, and everything they gave to their children. The beskar that hung on Satine's body, the tongue of the Mando'a that flowed from her lips, her blaster, her family's stories, it all was the fire. It licked and ate everything in its wake. It had destroyed this city as much as any bomb had.

So far removed was her mind from her eyes it took three trips to a temporary medical tent to recognize Master Qui-Gon.

He was ordering a few young people around. They were so, so young, with wide fearful eyes and pale faces. They pounced on the orders of the Jedi, clinging to their fragile stability.

Satine snatched the Jedi's arm, holding it tight. Master Qui-Gon turned to look at her, his face gentle.

"Yes, Duchess?"

"I'm not a Duchess." She muttered.

"You are now." He said, he set a hand on her shoulder. "Do you need something?"

"No." She said quickly. "Not when there are so many others- it's just- Be'in. Where is he? Do you know?"

A light seemed to dim in his eyes, and she saw the worry for his apprentice in every wrinkle of his face. She knew then, that Be'in was no pity case, no duty he half heartedly carried out. He was his son.

"He was very near the blast. He was sent to the experienced healers for surgery an hour ago."

Satine's throat felt like a rag someone twisted around and around to squeeze out the water. She nodded.

She didn't dare stop her work to go see him, not now. Not when there was still so much to do. But the thought of him haunted her in work. Caught in the explosion of that blast. Crushed under the rubble. Trapped with the rest of his men. Waiting for rescue with the rest of them.

And she had sent him. She had asked him personally to go and he had done because she had begged him to. He had given in because he always did for her.

Be'in. Be'in. Forgive me. Don't leave me. I never should have sent you away. Don't march away. I love you. Stay. Stay.

The work continued through the night and into the dark morning. The dust was so thick it dulled the sunlight. It hardly mattered anyways. She had to focus on the ground, to walk among the crumbling rubble or the struggle up the hill just one last time. And then once more. And then again.

Around what should have been noon, Satine forced herself to eat rations, throwing up half of it in the process, and continued her work.

It was the evening after the explosion when they finally slowed their efforts. When most of the people they found were dead. When the worst of the wounds had been treated, sometimes with success, sometimes without.

Master Jinn found her that time. She was trying to help organize a mess tent somewhere around evening.

"When was the last time you ate?" He demanded.

"A few hours ago." She murmured.

"And drank?"

She lifted her water pouch on her waist.

"And slept?"

Her head was too clouded to lie. "Before the- the battle."

"Go to bed Duchess."

He said so firmly it overpowered the voice in her mind that said she could never rest again until the war was over. She nearly wept with relief.

There were still some speeders going between the new camp and the old one. Satine hitched a ride on one and promptly fell asleep in the back. They had to shake her awake so they could load it up with the rations they were supposed to be taking back.

She walked slowly back to her tent, her very own tent, just for herself when there were hundreds crammed into a space meant for fifty.

When she arrived she stared stupidly at the door. It was right there, right in front of her. But it seemed at the top of that hill that had no end. How could she be at the top, at the end now?

She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Her eyes blinked rapidly, trying to see in the darkness. To see in a strangers tent. A tent that housed, just this morning, someone that had never seen a city destroyed. Who had seen all hope ripped from them in a single breath. Someone who hadn't known the fire goddess laughed and cast down balls of fire wantonly.

There was a folding table that doubled as a desk in one corner. A crate that she used for storage and a chair. A cot.

A figure in the cot.

The figure was Be'in.

His pale skin burned red, yes. His right leg wrapped in bleeding bandages up to his torso. His head was nearly bald, leaving only bits of burnt hair and red skin. But it was him. He was there. And he was breathing. His blue blue eyes were sparkling, and suddenly Satine stood at the top of the hill with a wide blue sky forever and beyond her and nothing beneath her feet.

She hadn't killed him.

"Your grace." Be'in gasped, scrambling to push himself up. "Your grace, your-" he coughed, "-you're alright, aren't you?"

She nodded. Of course she was. Why wouldn't she be?

"Be'in." She croaked. She swallowed and tried again. "Be'in I-"

There were no words for the feeling in her heart. For the endless joy she felt in just seeing him there, seeing him up on his arms. Alive. Her love was alive.

Wordlessly, she ran to him, dropping on her knees to press her helmet against his forehead. She held it there for an age, perhaps a thousand years, her lungs shuddering with every breath.

"Satine." Be'in grasped the sides of her helmet and lifted it slowly to reveal her face streaked with tears. He dropped the helmet beside him and set his hand on her cheek. Satine caught it and pressed her face against it, luxuriating in the rough callouses of his palms.

"I thought you were dead." She whispered. She had not allowed herself the hope of him surviving that surgery.

"I nearly was. I called out for Master Qui-Gon through the force and, well, there he was. He helped me out. Made sure I got to a surgeon." He somehow had the energy to look annoyed. "I think he's been following us."

Satine sniffed and kissed the palm of his hand. "I'm glad he did."

"I just wonder what he was thinking." Be'in muttered. "Maybe he thought it would be a learning experience for me?"

"We can think on it later." Satine decided. She leaned down and kissed the corner of his mouth. "You need rest."

"I've been resting all day." His face scrunched like a child's, nearly cracking the rubbery half of his face. "I'm bored."

She laughed. It almost seemed to rip her sore throat in half, but it felt good. "Be'in!"

"It's true." He sunk lower into the cot and winced. He set his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut. His lips thinned until they were almost nonexistent, stretching his burnt skin tight.

"Be'in."

He cracked one eye open and forced a smile on his face. "After they put me here to make more space I've been sleeping and laying and sleeping. There's someone that stops by every hour to so to give me a drink or medication but really if they wanted me to live they should have given me a reason. I might just die of boredom."

"Well we can't have that." Satine murmured. She began unstrapping her beskar'gam. She was supposed to clean and care for her it every time she took it off, but it didn't seem important, or to even belong in the beautiful open world Be'in had created for her.

She carefully curled into the cot next to him and draped her arm just above his bandage. Her head rested on his shoulder.

"Bored now?"

He laid still, frozen. Then his hand came up and clasped her arm. "Not at all." He said. His head fell on top of hers.

"Good."

He swallowed. Then muttered, "I lost your hat. Qui-Gon took it off to check for injuries. I suppose it was already mostly burnt but-"

Satine pressed a finger to his lips. "Rest, Be'in. I will knit you another."

"... alright."

He shifted a little, and then they laid together, silently. The rise and fall of his chest slowed, and Satine luxuriated in the melody of his breath, and the beat of his heart. Thus soothed, her eyes drifted shut and they were both asleep.

I've tried to remain within the bounds of canon in this story, with some legends mixed in for spice. The destruction of Keldabe was especially intriguing to me, it's only mentioned offhand within the Wiki article with no details. Well, I smelled meat.
Honestly, I really wish I had to the time to turn this into a full story, rather than six snippets, because I would have loved to make this even MORE devastating. We would have spent way more time getting attached to the city, maybe meeting some of Satine's friends and political allies, and detailing how this is very firmly the place Satine considers home. Ah well. Maybe someday.