Geonosis.

I am ten years old. As I write this, I am ten years old.

And an orphan.

Imagine that you love someone.

The best, most important person you ever know. Or ever will know. And you don't know, and you never will, why you love them so much. Only that you love them. It's funny like that. To unconditionally throw yourself at the personal altar, in gratitude and forgiveness. Because if they love you back then it is forgiveness. For all the stupid human things you do and have done. They love you anyway. Despite your flaws.

You are not perfect. You have made mistakes.

They love you, and they accept that you're imperfect.

Boba, Dad says to me one day, out in the rain, you are perfect. Perfect for me. Perfect for this life.

Life, Dad?

It's a good life, Bob'ika. Good enough.

A good life.

The kind you have where, when someone loves you despite your flaws and your stupid kid hubris. And you wouldn't know what it's like to have that love for them, or even begin to repay it, because you're a kid and kids don't know that kind of stuff. And they shouldn't have to.

Starting today. I know. It becomes my mission to know, and to repay.

What he did for me.

I think I have to grow up today.

And I can keep the love for him in my heart. And one day, far down the road, rebuild the love for Manda'yaim, too. Maybe.

It starts with Dad. It ended there too. With a Jedi and a lightsaber, and my father dead on the ground.

I buried him on Geonosis. The headstone read a simple 'JF'.

I love you, Dad.


Coruscant.

Haven't written in a couple years. Dug this out in fact from under the dash on Slave I. Hmm.

Mood: thoughtful.

I killed a clone today. Or more precisely, I killed a clone that served Windu.

You know Windu. The one that chopped my dad's head off and stared after the corpse like he wanted to throw it over the fence to the neighbourhood barves. The kind of pond scum that delights in killing men because he's determined he's better than them.

It takes pride like that to do it. To kill someone.

To lord your power over someone, even. Something as mere as that.

You have to not feel it.

You have to believe that you are everything and they are nothing, and they should die for that. For the inconvenience of existing. For this you kill them. You chop their head off and your blood boils with the heat of it. The storm clouds gather, you do what you're trained to do, and that's all there is.

I think that's why I hate them.

Clones, I mean.

There's probably more to it. But then explanations are untidy things. Behemoths beings use to justify meagre lives so they can look themselves in the mirror. They are so easy to come by and so easy to manufacture from nothingness.

But I remember their little comments. I know what they thought of me. Dad trained me as well as any of them. I know what they said when Dad and I started walking the other way. Skirata and his little gang of cronies. Pretenders, the lot of them. Fake little Mando'ade.

You like that, Kal'buir? Using your own language against you. Well. Dad had it before you. Used it better. You co-opted it to get through this ridiculous Clone War. All those versions of Dad out there dying. And dying, of all the things, for Jedi.

Clones fighting for the Jedi. Warrior monks replete in their decrepitude and double standards.

In some ways I pity them. A whole lot of ways, actually. Fighting droids and Grievous isn't a career; much less one anyone would willingly seek.

They're bred for it. Because someone in charge decided that cloned humans are more creative than droids, and humans have the space for terror and foul deeds that droids don't. A human will look you in the eye and cry with you and tell you he's sorry as he kills you.

Droids think in patterns, however advanced they get, however sophisticated you make their randomisers. It doesn't matter. They still live in geometry. They still have parameters.

Humans don't. Mando'ade less so.

Messy. Untidy. Greedy, stupid, savage little apes.

Fierfek.

Mood: depressed.

I lapse into the tongue of the Old Country when I get this way.

I know what they thought of me. Bob'ika the favourite. Bob'ika the normal one.

The problem with a normal life: people hate you for it.

They live tiny little lives. Button-down existences. Tiny corners, easy convenience. They think they have a Good Handle On It.

And one day you figure out you're not normal. No one's normal. That there's always going to be something off. Some little bit of osik that eats at you.

Makes you work.

So you think you can be free.

It probably shouldn't have been this way.

I am eleven years old. I know nothing of the universe, but I posture to more than I let on.

The clone I—Aurra—killed today named himself Ponds. He answered to Windu, like Cody does to Kenobi. And Rex to Skywalker.

I know that much.

Because I know them. The clones. My brothers, apparently.

Jetiise.

The Death Watch and I agree on this: for a thousand years the Mandalorians, my father's people, Jaster's people, fought against the Jedi with honour and distinction. They even bowed to work with them sometimes.

Working for them?

No.

Allies, sure, and for that our bank accounts will be forever grateful. But slaves.

Never.

Jetiise. Right.

Dad taught me that much.

He taught me things you'll never know.

That's why you're dead, Pond'ika.

You stood up to be counted with the aruetiise. Of my father, but not with him. Not with Jango, and not with Jaster. You lost your legacy when you fell in line behind Windu, murdering scum that he is. And you tried to reclaim it by glorifying Mandalore because that's what kriffing Kal'buir told you to do. And you think you're Mando'ade. True Mandalorians.

You're scum.

Pond'ika: not of the RCs, but with them. As bad as Skirata and the rest: tin-soldiers who thought they owned the culture.
My father was Mand'alor. Leader of you all. He killed Jedi with his bare hands. He disassembled the Bando Gora, he avenged Jaster's death, he fed Gardulla the Hutt to her own krayt dragon, he fought and suffered and lost at Galidraan, and came out a better man. And because of him, the galaxy's at its knees.

It's my legacy, Pondi'ka. Mine.

Not yours.

I'm sitting in a Republic prison tabbing this out on some flimsi, Bossk and a vocorded Duros sitting next to me giving desolate looks to everyone else.

Jetiise.

I think. And I plan. And I wonder what Windu is doing. If he can see how he's going to die.

Everyone does, you know.

Everyone dies.

It's the only true and lasting justice.


Years since writing. Someday I suppose I'll compile all this. Some handsome edition no one will read. If I live that long.

If.

Three years since last writing. Three-ish?

I met a girl today. One of the universe's unexpected ways to tell you happy birthday.

Three years.

Long time to wait.

Her name is Sintas.

Sin. For short.

She's—

Sintas.

I want to say it more.


Continued...