KEYnote: I apologize for this chapter and my utter lack of foreshadowing. I mean, some of it is there but I'm introducing characters who haven't been mentioned. In avoiding trauma scenes I skipped some of the ideas I had on the back burner.

Things, to remember; Hugo Demask (Darth Plagueis) is alive and most certainly not oblivious to Qui-Revan, the Jedi Council has made radical changes in the years that have passed since Obi-Wan woke up nearly six years ago, and I'm pulling Jedha characters from Rogue One. Obi-Wan is eighteen and Jango is about twenty-one.

P.S. Timeline? What timeline?

Chapter 21 - Child Prison

"I don't think this is a good idea."

"It's a child prison, and you are a child."

"I still feel like this is a bad idea."

"Apprentice, you are eighteen and in the ten years I've known you, you have walked directly into crossfire no less than fifteen times."

"That was different."

"How?"

"I had you."

Baze Malbus smiled down at the younger Guardian, "You still have me, Chirrut, and you have Tahl and her apprentice."

His blind apprentice glared in Baze's direction, "Who we are currently trying to rescue because they need rescuing?"

"They need a little assistance so they can fight for themselves. They should have visited us sometime in the last few years, it has been too long. She said she was travelling to us, but I know that much has gone wrong. Can't you hear it in the Force, what does it tell you?"

"Are you truly not being warned away from this place?" Chirrut asked with a frown.

"Can you not hear the calling?"

"I can, but this is a place of great sorrow, fear, anger and hopelessness. I don't want to go there."

"But what does the Force say?"

Chirrut sighed, "Why is it the one time you aren't advocating for caution it's because of her?"

"Because if it was just Tahl then I would leave her to her own devices, but I will not abandon her Padawan, your brother in the Force."

Chirrut sighed again, "Guess it's time to get captured."

oOo

Jango couldn't breathe.

And it was the best feeling.

Because it was his buir squeezing the air out of him as if it would take five armies to part them.

"Jan'ika," his buir said, finally giving him space.

Guilt turned in his stomach, "Buir, ni ceta."

Jaster hushed him, "No debt, Jan'ika. It was my fault. I should never trusted Montross and I shouldn't have had just a single guard on duty."

Jango wanted to protest that he didn't need a guard, but he was currently standing on a slave ship.

So, he kept his mouth shut.

Yes, he had once been the son of farmers, but he was the son of the Mand'alor now. He should have taken Jaster's fears for his safety more seriously.

Master Fay stood beside Kal, looking up at him with an amused smile.

Kal glowered at her amusement.

"Would it make you feel better to pat me down?" she asked.

"Yes, actually, it would," Kal grumbled.

She held out her arms.

Kal patted her down with impassionate professionalism. Aside from the bacta, food rations, and a small utility knife, she had no weapons.

"If you are a Jetii, why don't you have a lightsaber?" Myles asked.

"I gave it up when I left the Temple."

"So you're a pacifist."

She smiled, "I feel that description would be inaccurate, what perhaps is more truthful is that I go where the Ka'ra leads me and that I am creative."

"Creative," Jaster repeated drily.

"Very creative."

Jaster narrowed his eyes.

Her grin grew, "What would you have me, Mand'alor? I am one of Tarre Vizsla's foundlings."

Jaster blinked at her, "You were a Jetii youngling."

"Nothing is really stopping one from being both. Tar'Buir was a man with a large clan, he had the resources to adopt nearly as many foundlings as he liked."

"Aside from Obi-Wan, there are no records of any other Jetii foundlings."

She shrugged, "He was old when he sired Obi-Wan. Old even with Taung blood and the Force aiding him. He stopped adopting a century before lest he pass before his ade were grown.

"But the Jetiiese are different. To have a beloved Master or Buir means more to us to love them while they are with us than to fear their loss. It's part of why we are raised communally so that the passing of our caretakers does not take with it our childhoods.

"And, in truth, he didn't so much adopt our crecheling clan, it was more we adopted him. We adored him and Obi-Wan both."

"It is very odd to hear you speak of them as something other than legend," Jaster said.

Jango felt like he was watching a maar match as his gaze flicked between the two.

She shrugged, "I assure you that you would like it less to watch the years pass as I have. I chose a nomadic life to avoid watching a world die around me."

"Your species lives this long, have you no others?"

She shrugged, "It has less to do with my species than my connection to the Force. The Ka'ra is not done with me and it is the stars that will choose when my time has come. It is not for me to desire what is not."

Jaster shook his head, "That makes little to no sense."

"This is the Way."

He glared at her.

Jango bit back a laugh.

Myles had no such restraint.

oOo

Bevwen explained his plan and Obi-Wan had one request.

"Heal my master and we will free ourselves."

"If she wakes, then she will be cuffed with Force suppressants. Which given Obi'ika's reaction, I don't know that she would survive it," Bevwen said.

"Then loop the feed on the day you wake her up and I'll describe the plan," said the man who had introduced himself As Obi-Wan's uncle, Ba'vodu Mij Gilamar.

"I like him," Obi-Wan chirped.

Bevwen sighed.

Mij grinned, "I like you too, ad'ika."

Bevwen sighed again, but his heart warmed at the realization that soon he would be reunited with his vod'ika and they would have another member of the Gilamar House.

oOo

Hugo Demask, Darth Plagueis, had lost patience.

He considered patience to be one of his best traits. But something in the Force had changed.

A great disturbance.

Or more than one.

His plans for cloning and engineering a war were crumbling as the Jedi seemed to back down from taking on more risky missions.

Picking the Jedi off, dwindling their numbers had been the ambition of the Sith for centuries.

Yet the Jedi's awareness of their vulnerability jeopardized everything.

Luckily for Demask owned the banks, luckily for the Sith, the Jedi had publicly lashed out at the Mandalorians.

A fraction of Mandalorians who, ironically, were anti-violence and in the Republic's pocket.

The fallen Jedi's actions in killing the Duke's son had tilted the balance in the Sith's favour.

The Senate would be easy enough to turn against the Jedi for losing them remnants of the Mandalorian Empire, their beskar, and their position in the hyperlanes.

Mand'alor Mereel had no love for the Jedi or the Republic.

With both the Senate and the Mandalorians against the Order, Plagueis might just be able to crush them in a single blow.

oOo

Nield was not happy.

They were lying. The adults were lying.

He had advanced to Phase II with several of the other Young. Time had healed their physical wounds but not the mental ones.

Obi-Wan was dead.

And if he wasn't, then Nield needed to behave as if he were.

He loved Obi-Wan but he would not let the Elders use him to break the rest of them.

Nield having passed his tests, having done everything the Elders asked of them, began to make friends.

The training yards turned out to be the best place for communication. Under the guise of tackling one another, they shared small words, using the slave language that Obi-Wan had taught them. The Young were of course united.

The ones who had been adopted were as lost to them as Obi-Wan but that didn't matter.

There were nearly two hundred strong, and they plotted right beneath their watchers' noses.

But in truth, it was the Amatakka language that united them, a gift Obi-Wan had shared with them when the only future they knew was death.

They would all die free, either they would succeed in defeating their captors or be freed from them in death.

The Young had understood that reality all too well.

A few of the other children from further afield than Mandalore had been born in slavery and they latched onto the young's plotting with vigor.

Whereas the children who had been stolen from their families, families that had been largely slaughtered, had joined them too. Only the kids who were trying to be adopted kept out of the loop, and though they noticed something was up. They kept their noses down.

oOo

Obi-Wan was sincerely glad that Bevwen was not here to see this.

He was definitely certain the medic who seemed to want to adopt him would not appreciate his current plan.

They didn't start him off with Pre but one of the more senior prisoners, a Trandoshan.

A Trandoshan with a notable bloodlust and pre-inclined to hate Jedi.

They squared up in the ring.

Obi-Wan's strength seemed to come and go in waves, his only way to win was to be fast and brutal.

When the punch came, he allowed himself to fall with it. He got back up, only to be struck again.

His head rang but he kept getting up, and they kept striking him down.

He didn't see Bevwen that night.

The next night was the same, and the night after that.

On the fourth night, they put him up against Pre.

He didn't remember that night.

oOo

Pre hated this, hated that his father urged him to keep fighting.

But it wasn't really a fight.

Obi-Wan Kenobi. The real article in the flesh and blood.

How many nights had he spent imagining what a fellow son of Mand'alor must have felt.

Filling impossibly large boots with the knowledge that the only way he would wield the Darksaber was after his buir's death.

And here Pre was, kicking him.

Kicking the Lost Son into unconsciousness.

"Keep going, ad," his buir jeered on.

Pre was going to be sick.

He swallowed past the bile in his throat as he kicked the fallen boy.

"Harder," Tor said.

Pre would have given nearly anything to be anywhere else.

He kicked Obi-Wan harder, only, he kicked him in the thigh.

His buir only cared that his body jerked.

"What are you doing!?" a voice roared.

Pre jumped back, pushing himself away toward the wall.

Everyone save Tor backed away from the irate baar'ur.

"Teaching the boy how to fight," Tor said.

"Dishonour on you," Baar'ur Bevwen growled. "This is my son. Do you hear me!? Do you hear me, Tor!? He is my son. Mine! He is Obi-Wan Kenobi of House Gilamar. If you use this farce of training to beat another child—"

"You'll what, Gilemar?" Tor growled.

"Or you are going to find yourself short more than one Baar'ur, and that the Gorane will often follow our lead," Bevwen said as he gently lifted Obi-Wan into his arms.

Tor scoffed but dismissed him with a wave as if he was unaffected by a call of dishonour that could lose him his clan's support.

Bevwen did not need to be told twice.

"Get out," Tor snapped at everyone else, pointing at Pre, "Except you."

Pre flinched, but stayed as he was, gazing down as the room cleared.

When they were alone, Pre was not at shocked by the backhand.

It was okay though, it didn't hurt as much as kicking someone who he both respected and refused to fight back.

"Coward," Tor hissed at him. "Do you think I didn't see your hesitation? You cannot be weak, not unless you want to be replaced. Is that what you want, Pre'ika, to be replaced? Is it!?"

Pre had always desired his father's approval.

But just then, he saw his buir for what he was, a deranged man who desired nothing but others' pain and domination over others.

And the man he saw, he didn't want it to be his father.

He didn't want his buir to be someone he hated.

Tor slapped him again, "Are you listening to me?"

Pre hated him.

Hated that he had been removed from his squad and placed in this prison where their culture was used as a weapon to break other's into submission.

Pre wanted something more, being the son of the Mand'alor meant nothing if the Mand'alor was worth nothing.

Too bad he wasn't truly a member of the Integration program.

He had nowhere to go, no one who would trust him. Tor had ensured that he had no one to go to for help.

And even if he did manage to get away, get help, Tor would likely kill him for even attempting to leave.

It wouldn't be an easy death, that much, Pre was certain.

There was no one coming to save him, he was lost.

oOo

AN: Did you think I would stop with two sons? Thoughts, hippopotamus, or feedback?