17: you knew! I seem to be so cruel it has become predictable.

This chapter we are going to FIX THINGS. Slowly. A little bit.

Chapter 33: Side by Side

Korkie picked up his comms on the sixth kriffing try. He did not transmit any visual. His voice was flat and lifeless.

"Yeah?"

Kawlan leaned into the comms in some futile bid to be closer to him.

"Korkie, it's Kawlan. I've got Cere with me. We're on our way to Yaga Minor."

He pushed on before the young man could protest.

"We want to be with you again, Korkie. You've taken on too much all on your own-"

"I've left Yaga Minor," the crackling voice declared. "Don't bother."

And there fell a terrible, heavy silence. Kawlan knew what it meant. It could only mean one thing.

"Korkie, I'm so sorry."

"I'm fine."

"Let us look after you," Cere suggested. "Please. Just for a little while."

"No thanks."

"Korkie-"

"It was your Padawan who killed him, Cere, if you care to know."

A flare of anger in his voice, followed by a deranged sort of half-laugh.

"Survived the explosions then got killed because I came to check on him. Un-kriffing-believable, I know."

Kawlan bowed his head with the revelation, with a new punch to his gut. He had seen the death of Relya, a stranger to him, wound Korkie so deeply. Seen the death of Mace tear him apart. And now…

"Korkie-"

"Will you at least see Kawlan?" Cere pleaded. "I can understand if you don't want to see me, Korkie. I can."

There was such a raw grief in her own voice. Kawlan hadn't known she'd had a Padawan.

"But we don't want you suffering alone," she insisted.

"Are you worried I'm going to spiral into the Dark Side?" Korkie asked, as though faintly amused. "Because it's probably too late, Cere. I wounded Trilla in anger. I tried to kill her. I think she might have survived. I don't know. I might have kriffing killed her."

Cere took a steadying breath.

"You are more than one moment of anger, Korkie. There is life beyond this pain. If you let us-"

"Yeah. Thanks. I know."

A juddering sigh.

"Look, I'm alright, really. But I'm just… I'm done."

A sniffle against pressing tears.

"I'm really done with getting people hurt," Korkie went on, voice tight. "I'm only going to work alone from now on. Proper alone. I appreciate that you want to look after me, but… I can't."

Kawlan grimaced.

"Korkie, you're the founder of the Hidden Path. We need you. We-"

"I'm dead weight, Kawlan. It's nice of you to pretend otherwise. But you're all doing a great job without me."

"Come to Tanalorr," Cere pleaded. "Rest there. You won't be hurt and neither will anyone else."

A humourless bark of laughter.

"I have enough nightmares without the Force-augmentation, Cere."

"The community on Tanalorr can help you, Korkie. Kix is there. Let us-"

"You're both terribly kind," Korkie interrupted. "But I really am done. I mean it. I'm sorry."

And the line crackled and died. Cere and Kawlan shared a look of panic.

"What do we do?" Kawlan asked. "We have to find him. Could you track him? We can't leave him alone in that state. Who else can we call?"

He was blabbering like an idiot. Korkie Kryze had saved his life and who was he if he couldn't return the favour?

Cere rubbed at her forehead, eyes closed.

"He took that newborn from Arkanis to the Queen Organa of Alderaan," she mused. "He trusts them. And the House of Organa is powerful. Building the framework of a rebellion already. They'll be well-connected. Perhaps they…"

She opened her eyes, fixed Kawlan with determined optimism.

"Bail will help," she resolved. "I'll call him now. He'll be more use than you or I."

Trilla couldn't quite explain what gave her the nerve to present herself to her Master on Nur once more, except to say that surviving a wound that had killed off one ovary and metres of her gut had done something for her sense of resilience. She knelt before him and rose, when permitted by the subtle nod of his head, to her feet. There was a sweet, aching pain above her right hip. The droid had warned that the reconstruction of her abdominal and lumbar musculature had been suboptimal.

She lifted her shirt with black-gloved fingers, showed him the crater-like wound where what was left of her bowel had been brought to the surface.

"I have brought out the darkness in him, Master."

Sidious tutted, shook his head.

"Better still had you brought him here to me."

Trilla acknowledged her failure with a nod and a half-bow.

"Yes, Master. When I have recovered-"

"I think you've had quite enough chances, no?"

Sidious seemed almost amused by her proposition.

"I have found another who eagerly seeks his chance at claiming the bounty on the young prince's head."

For a fleeting moment of confusion, Trilla thought she saw Korkie Kryze himself emerge from the shadows behind the throne. But the paintwork on the Mandalorian armour was not of Kryze blue, but Fett green.

"A Force-blind?" Trilla remarked, with rising laughter that stabbed deep in her gut. "This will be a spectacle."

The bolt of lightning struck her and knocked her from her feet.

"I told you to return to me, Second Sister, when you had proven your worth with a valuable scalp."

Trilla pressed herself effortfully upright once more. Pain didn't seem to wound her, anymore, in the way it once had.

"I have set it all in motion, Master," she vowed. "You will soon see."

Korkie didn't know where to go, anymore. Didn't know which battles to fight. So it was fortunate, really, all things considered, that the battles seemed to find him. The young warrior in Fett armour ambushed him when he was shopping around for black-market sleeping pills on Jazbina and even amidst all the blaster fire and rocket darts, Korkie was pleased to see him.

"You've done the armour up beautifully," he remarked, in Mando'a. "I can't tell you how good it is to see-"

"Don't try to speak to me in your dead language."

Korkie leapt clear of the searing flames Boba Fett had cast at him.

"Your father never taught you?"

"Why should he have?" Boba challenged. "My father taught me the languages of commerce."

Basic and Huttese, presumably, for the Fett brand of commerce. Korkie quietened the flames with the Force and deflected a blaster bolt into Boba's beskar-capped boot.

"No Mando'a at all?"

"Mandalore started dying with your grandfather," Boba declared. "And it is long dead now."

His whipcord met Korkie's wrist and yanked Korkie in close.

"I don't care for your lost home."

Korkie severed the whipcord with his lightsaber, but not before Boba landed a crushing kick to his chest and knocked the wind from him.

"It was your father's home once," Korkie managed.

Boba barked out a laugh.

"The Mandalore that raised my father could not be more distant from the system your mother ruined."

Korkie met his vibroblade with his lightsaber and gasped with the pain in his ribs. It had been a good kick. A very solid kick.

"I'll admit I'm not well-versed in Concord Dawn's dialect," Korkie wheezed. "But we can start with Sundari-standard and from there-"

Another kick and the ribs were definitely broken. Korkie had distanced himself from the Force since his slip to darkness in combat with Trilla Suduri. But he needed it now. He gave Boba a shove and watched him sprawl, denting his jetpack as he tumbled. Korkie dodged the next rocket dart and guided the toppling scaffolding of a nearby building to form a sort of barrier between them.

"We'll start our lessons in Mando'a some other time," he called out, and leapt onto a passing grav-cab.

Korkie did a quick survey of his belt and pockets – two 'sabers, two blasters, even the blister pack of sleeping tablets. Only three but it would do. There wouldn't be much time for sleeping in any case. He'd heard that the Sixth Brother was active in this corner of the galaxy and the battles had a way of finding him.

Korkie hadn't stuffed up this badly since Corellia. He laid on his back in the cell with his weary feet propped up against the wall and his beskar helmet resting upon his chest. The Sixth Brother wasn't even kriffing talented. But Korkie's arm had never healed right after the fight on Yaga Minor and his ribs ached like hell. He would rest a few minutes more, he decided, then lure one of the idiot stormtroopers over and get himself out. The recruits were getting stupider, he thought, as the years went by.

There was a warm presence in the Force somewhere. Korkie allowed himself to focus upon it as he drifted into meditation. He'd bitten off more than he could chew, recently, he conceded. He'd escaped Boba only to follow the Sixth Brother from Mon Cala to Thabeska and now to Raada and he'd never stopped to let the rib fractures Boba had given him heal properly. He would rest until the nighttime, perhaps. There was no real rush to escape. The Sixth Brother wouldn't get anything useful from him. Korkie didn't even know anything useful anymore. He'd lost track of the Hidden Path.

He wished he'd not run out of sleeping tablets. The hallway outside of his cell was busy with the chirping of commlinks, overlapping voices and the thunking of combat boots.

Close. Then closer. The hissing of his door.

"Korkie Kryze! About kriffing time."

That voice. Korkie knew that voice. He scrambled to his feet so quickly that his head spun and his vision dimmed.

"Ahsoka?"

"Don't go fainting now."

The Togruta's arms, stronger now than he had ever known them, were beneath his own, propping him upright.

"What the kriff did you do to yourself, vod'ika?"

"Nothing much," Korkie mumbled, rubbing at his eyes as his vision continued to dip and slide. "The odd mission here and there, nothing outrageous…"

Ahsoka dragged him from the cell.

"I don't know what metric you've been using, Korkie, but in my books, this is outrageous."

There was the sound of blaster fire and Ahsoka returned the fire with shots of her own. She pressed a 'saber into his hand and clipped the other weapons onto his belt.

"You had a whole kriffing armoury of confiscated shit in their office," she observed. "I knew they'd captured a Mandalorian right away."

Korkie deigned, wearily, to lift Siri Tachi's blade and help out. The Darksaber could stay on his belt. He wasn't strong enough to lift it today.

"And what happened to your lightsaber?" he asked.

"I buried it when I was feeling miserable a few years ago," she admitted, not faltering for a moment in her perfect shots. "Got some new kyber crystals from the Sixth Brother, though. So I might make some new blades yet."

Korkie nodded approvingly as he sliced his 'saber through an access port to halt the movement of the approaching troops in the elevator above them.

"Much more civilised than a blaster."

Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

"I notice you have two on your belt."

"For emergencies."

"I see."

Ahsoka, with Force-augmented strength, kicked through a window and they charged out of the Sixth Brother's prison and onto the exposed tarmac. A-wings were swooping overhead, dropping detonators onto the Imperial compound. Korkie whirled to behold the spectacle.

"What in the hells is all this, Ahsoka?" he asked. "Real, organised rebellion?"

She grinned.

"You bet."

She waved down a ship, which landed before them with an almighty clunk. The descending ramp revealed Bail Organa. Korkie gaped.

"You went and kriffing did it, Bail!"

The Senator smiled.

"As I promised you I would, Korkie."

"I hope you're not neglecting the poor baby."

"The Princess Ariarne is very well, I assure you. Almost walking now."

Ahsoka was already halfway up the ramp at Bail's side.

"Come on, Korkie."

Korkie stood stock still and beheld the mighty ship. Organised rebellion.

A family. A home. One mission. One purpose.

Another family to break. Another family to fail.

"I've got my own ship over there," Korkie managed, dry-mouthed. "I…"

But his protest died upon his lips. Ahsoka looked at him imploringly and he could say no to anyone in this galaxy but her.

"Okay. I guess."

She laid a comforting hand between his shoulders and they boarded side by side.

"By the stars, Korkie…"

Ahsoka was smiling strangely at him as they sat, knees tucked to their chests, upon the sill of the enormous porthole, watching the endlessness of space unfold before them. Bail Organa and his crew had refused any sort of help in piloting the ship and sent them to rest. Korkie had been awake for what felt like days but there was no question of sleep in this moment.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You've grown so much! I can't believe it."

Korkie groaned.

"That does tend to happen, Ahsoka, as years pass."

"You've even lost your accent," she pressed.

He sighed, conceded a beat of laughter.

"And a whole lot more besides," he admitted.

She shook her head as though in disbelief, grinning at him still.

"And you've become so damned beautiful," she blurted.

Despite it all, Korkie felt a flush in his cheeks.

"You were always going to become beautiful like your parents," she mused. "But for kriff's sakes! You've become completely gorgeous."

Korkie leaned back against the wall and shared in her smile.

"Well, when I was twelve-standard and completely ungorgeous and you came to Mandalore for the first time," he offered, "you were the most stunning person I'd ever met."

He beheld her bright eyes, the glow in her cheeks.

"You probably still are, if I'm honest."

"Flirt," she reprimanded him.

"Says the person who called me so damned beautiful."

She gave an evasive shrug and fixed him with critical gaze.

"What's this I've heard about you becoming entirely like the Jedi of old?" she challenged.

Korkie gave a snort of disparagement.

"Not sure where you heard that. I've no sense of inner peace."

Ahsoka gave a wry smile and clarified.

"Your Hidden Path friends called Bail and dobbed you in. I've heard you've had a few rough years and foresworn all attachments."

Korkie groaned and rubbed at his eyes.

"A few rough years?" he repeated, appalled.

It seemed the understatement of the karking century.

"It's easier being on the move, in any case," he muttered. "I make my own rules. I don't hurt anyone and I don't let anyone down."

"And what do you achieve?" she challenged.

"A growing collection of broken bones and a dependence on sleeping tablets," he admitted.

Ahsoka abandoned her levity and leaned forward, laying a consoling hand upon his knee.

"I was lost too, you know."

He tried to muster some sort of smile for her. She could not have been lost so irretrievably as he had been. She could never have been half the colossal failure that he was.

"Barriss and I travelled together for a time. But we split paths. Couldn't agree on where we should be and what we should be doing. And Bail's been trying to recruit me for a whole standard year but I only caved when he told me he needed help finding you."

She gave his leg a squeeze.

"You don't have to be afraid anymore. You never could let me down, you know."

Korkie gave a miserable beat of laughter.

"You don't know what I'm like these days. I've let everyone down, Ahsoka. Everyone. And I've fought in anger and known darkness and-"

"All I see in you is light, Korkie," she told him.

Her voice was as solemn as he'd ever heard her.

"I don't know what happened and I don't really care," she went on. "I see you now. I feel you here with me. And I know that you will always do your best for me, just as I'll always do my best for you."

She mustered a brave smile.

"It'll be dangerous and things will go wrong. But that's alright. I'd still be honoured to have fought beside you in the galaxy's greatest revolution."

Korkie closed his eyes, let his head rest against the cool glass.

"This is what I had wanted," he admitted. "I wanted to make a true difference. Bring down the Emperor. Not all this street-fighting bantha-shit."

A sadness rose in Ahsoka's eyes.

"You can't do it by yourself."

"Don't I know it."

He took her hand in his own, then. Stars. He had grown so much and yet he still loved her like a child.

"I was too dizzy to tell you when you first found me in that cell, Ahsoka. But seeing you again…"

His mouth was dry and his voice hoarse.

"It was the best thing that's happened to me in a really long time."

She nodded, her own voice reduced to a whisper.

"Me too, Korkie."

The Force seemed to hold its breath around them. He clasped her hand in both of his own. Their shins touched and then their lips. A slow, cautious kiss, as each explored the taste and the feeling of the other. There was a strange peace settling over them, as they drew slowly apart.

"That was…"

Ahsoka searched for words, found a faint smile.

"That wasn't quite right, was it?"

"I think…"

Korkie found a self-deprecating grin of his own.

"I think I love you too much to kiss you."

Ahsoka laughed at him. It was perhaps the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard.

"You only kiss people who you don't love?" she challenged.

Korkie thought of Mahdi and his throat swelled tight.

"No, not quite. I just meant that I… I adore you, Ahsoka. I worship you. I-"

"Oh, shut up."

"And I think my preference really is for men."

"Oh."

Ahsoka abandoned her feigned offence and brightened.

"Good for you."

Korkie sighed.

"No. It's not good for me. In fact, it's terrible for me."

Ahsoka arched a brow.

"Is there someone I need to beat up for you?"

"Ah, no."

And Korkie just wanted to hear her laugh again, but all of their levity had died.

"No, he, um…"

He brought his hand to his chest as though he might be able to reach that clenching pain.

"He died, actually."

The colour drained from Ahsoka's face and he hurried to console her.

"It's okay, sorry. I mean, we hadn't spent all that much time together, really, but it was all my fault, what happened to him, so-"

His voice broke over the words. Stars. He thought he'd cried enough in this lifetime.

"Oh shit, Korkie."

If he hadn't been crying, he would have laughed. Temple-trained Ahsoka Tano fumbling for words of tenderness.

"Kriff, I'm so sorry, Korkie. Hey. Hey, it's okay. Shh. I've got you."

She was holding him in her arms, soothing him, as her clumsiness gave way to a tenderness that perhaps neither of them had thought her capable of. She held her head to his chest and his mind was filled with the beating of her heart.

"We're going to look after each other from now on, okay?" she soothed. "It's okay. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. But we're going to be okay. I've got you."

He held her tight and he knew that he loved her. He didn't want to kiss her. But he truly, truly, loved her to all of the stars and back. He loved so her incredibly hard.

Hera gunned down the last TIE fighter – listing already, and yet still spitefully shooting at them – and set her radio comms to seek for the frequency of the wounded ship. She and her crew had stumbled into the conflict by accident, which Hera supposed was exactly what her father had been anticipating when he had warned her in no uncertain terms not to take a shortcut through Mandalorian space. But she'd been right, then, when she'd told him that she was sure she could handle whatever she found in the broken system. And as far as shortcuts went, it really would save her a lot of fuel.

"That looked like heavy damage," Hera observed, her finger pressed on the broadcast button. "In need of any mechanical support?"

The response crackled back from the unmarked ship.

"Might be a little beyond repair, I fear," a female voice replied. "We'll wait for back-up to come give us a tow. Can't thank you enough for helping out in the dogfight."

Hera was already scrambling for her toolkit.

"Haven't met many ships I can't fix. Permission to board?"

She realised, with a breath of laughter, that she'd forgotten to introduce herself.

"Hera Syndulla, Free Ryloth Movement."

"Ruma Skott, travelling under Bo-Katan Kryze. You can-"

There was the noise of distant protest and argument in Mando'a.

"You can board," Ruma repeated. "You saved our shebs. We owe you some hospitality."

"We don't really have anything to give you," Ruma sighed, working through the ship's small inventory. "Except perhaps this-"

She motioned at a bottle of tihaar.

"-but it looks like you might be too young for that."

"It'll keep," Sewlen suggested. "Take it, young Hera. You can open it to celebrate a future lifeday."

"Don't listen to her," Bo-Katan warned. "I appreciate you've done your best, Sewlen, but it…"

After years of careful rationing, drinking only small allowances of the spirit on sombre occasions – except, of course, the occasion on which the Empire had committed a secondary wave of genocide on Kalevala, and Sewlen and Bo-Katan had been so miserable they'd taken several extravagant swigs each and ended up sobbing in each other's arms – they had finished the bottle of tihaar that had survived in Sewlen's medi-kit from the night Mandalore was destroyed. Sewlen's new bottle of space-brewed tihaar was not tihaar at all. If Bo-Katan were honest, it was an abomination. But Sewlen was her best friend and she couldn't quite bring herself to tell the whole truth.

"It has all the potency of real tihaar," Bo-Katan decided. "And then perhaps a little more. I wouldn't recommend it for a first drink, Syndulla."

The teenage Twi'lek laughed.

"You really don't have to give me anything. I'll gladly fix ships for free. It's my hobby."

"This ship would have been blown to pieces if it hadn't been for you and your crew," Bo-Katan admitted.

They'd attempted a raid on an Imperial freighter bringing goods to the hut'uune who had colonised Kalevala and found themselves reckoning with what felt like half the local Imperial navy.

"It's the least we could do," Hera told them. "Your nephew saved my life and my father's when the Emperor came to Ryloth."

And Bo-Katan's heart seemed to stop in her chest.

"My nephew?"

Hera nodded.

"Korkie, right?"

Bo-Katan reached across the table and grabbed Hera's forearm a little more firmly than she'd intended; the young Twi'lek yelped in pain. But Bo-Katan didn't even have the sense of mind to apologise.

"You've seen Korkie?" she pressed.

Hera frowned.

"You haven't seen Korkie?"

Sewlen came over and uncurled Bo-Katan's fingers from Hera's arm. They were stained grey from the engine grease upon Hera's jumpsuit.

"When did you see him, Hera?"

The surgeon's voice was low and quiet but Bo-Katan knew her well enough to know that her heart, too, was rioting in her chest.

"Four years ago, when the Free Ryloth Movement attempted an assassination of the Emperor. He flew with us. Crashed on Ryloth. Fought Grievous."

"And then?"

"Left with Mace Windu and some clones, I think. Something about a Hidden Path. Helping Force-sensitives escape execution."

Bo-Katan felt the colour drain from her face.

"The Empire killed Mace Windu nearly two years ago."

Ruma shook her head, placed a comforting hand on Bo-Katan's shoulder.

"They would have publicised if they had-"

But Bo-Katan shrugged off the hand and rose to her feet. She paced the ship's hold, packing her weapons back onto her armour.

"When did you last hear from him?" Hera asked.

A sort of deranged laugh escaped Bo-Katan's lips.

"When did I last hear from him? The day the Emperor came to Mandalore."

"I don't think he knew you'd survived," Hera offered.

"Well, I'd certainly hope-"

Bo-Katan arrested her speech before she could snap at the earnest young Twi'lek.

"My apologies, Hera. But I think we'd best get moving."

Hera obliged, standing and collecting her toolbox.

"Are you sure you don't want-"

"She doesn't want the tihaar, kriff's sakes, Ruma."

"Just hold on a moment, before I go, I think…"

Hera had opened her toolbox on the table and was rifling through drawers and compartments.

"I never threw it out, just in case…"

She pulled out a grease-stained bit of flimsi.

"Here."

Bo-Katan unfolded the flimsi and it was all she could do not to kriffing cry, right there, in front of everyone. She knew that handwriting. She'd sat beside him as he did his homework at the kitchen table. Admired the way he'd sketched his graphs.

You've got your mother's brains, she'd told him, a hundred times.

"Korkie made this," she breathed.

"A map," Hera explained. "Of the routes of his path. I suppose they could have all changed, now. But I guess it's…"

"Something," Bo-Katan agreed. "It's something."

She'd had glimpses of optimism before. The sighting on Corellia. The back of a blonde head glimpsed in a crowd. She'd guarded her heart furiously against such optimism.

A map from four years ago wasn't going to bring him back to her. Did nothing to promise his survival.

But it was a piece of him, she supposed, and she did not have any other. She folded the map into a small square and tucked it into her armour. She would keep it close.

Ahsoka is back and my heart is a little bit mended. They are too cute. Platonic love is love too.

I hope you enjoyed the cameos in this chapter - I particularly had fun with Boba and Korkie's mini Trainspotting phase.

Next chapter, Ahsoka and Korkie begin their lives in the rebellion and Bo-Katan goes looking for her lost nephew. We get another brief cameo from a character you've been asking after, 17.

xx - S.