When Kira opens her eyes, she is not in her room, laying on her mat. Instead, she is in a dark, damp chamber with wisps of the Force flowing around her in white, swirling mist. The air is thick with tension and uncertainty. She lets in a deep, soothing breath and closes her eyes in an attempt to clear her mind.
When her iced eyes reopen, the mist has faded revealing a road to which she stood in the middle. Two paths lay before her.
On the left, the darkness fades to the familiar halls of the Jedi Temple, the home she has known all her life but they now lay empty and cold. Kira begins moving towards the Temple, walking through those familiar halls. As she walks, she hears whispers and fleeting shadows of her fellow Jedi. Their faces turned away in disgust as she passed.
Failure. She hears. Liar.
Hunter.
Killer.
Scum.
All words the Jedi had long since associated with the warrior people of Mandalore. The words shake Kira but she continues on.
Not one of us.
She should be sent to the Agri-Corpes.
I can't believe she failed her master like that.
The whispers of her fellow Jedi fill her ears, tears burn in her eyes as she continues on, trying to ignore the words that burn her.
Before long, she comes to the Council Chamber. The doors open with a whoosh, in the center stands the tall, dark-skinned Mace Windu with his back to her, his hand clasped around his opposite wrist behind his back. His dark cloak around his shoulders, but not over his head.
"Master," Kira called out, her voice trembling more than she expected. "I need your guidance."
Mace turns his head to the side but does not face her. His expression was stern and unreadable, in a way that was beyond his typical disappointment in her failing a sparring match. This was a disappointment so great she felt her heart burn with failure.
"You have strayed too far from the Jedi path," He said, finally turning to face her fully. Your attachments have clouded your judgment."
"Mace-"
"Do not deny it, Girl." He cut her off, his voice deep and stern, pointing an accusing finger in her face, "Your attachments to your heritage, your Mandalorian blood. I know. I have always known."
"How?" She asks, "Tell me."
Mace folds his arms across his chest. "No." He said. "Knowing as much as you have has already corrupted you this much. We do not keep the histories of our Jedi a secret unless their histories are forbidden."
"What are you saying?" She asked.
"You would not have been allowed if they had known." He said. "No one truly knows, only me and now you."
Kira's head shook with confusion. "I do not understand, Mace." She cried. "You have to make me understand."
There was a long silence as Mace seemed to battle the words that threatened to fall from his lips. "There was only one way and I had to make that choice for you."
Kira's mouth pursed into a line as tears welled up in her eyes, the words were too vague and the frustration too great.
"How can I be both?" She pleads in frustrated cries with a fist to her heart as she stumbles her way to stand before him. "I don't know everything, I don't know how I came to be with the Jedi but I know that my blood is of Mandalore but the blood of a Jedi also runs through my veins. I need to know, Mace. I have to know."
Mace's dark eyes stared into her, seeming to look right into her very soul. "You must choose, Padawan." He said, his voice cold. "You cannot serve two masters, Your fear of failure already marks your path before you have taken your first step. You must let this go and choose."
"Master-," She began before deciding the title was too formal. "Mace," Kira pleads, falling to her knees before him as tears finally spilt down her cheeks into flowing rivers. "I can be both, I am a Jedi. I am a Mandalorian. Please, show me how."
"Choose." He says again before the room begins to flicker, the walls grew holes of black and mist before they began to fade. Kira's eyes stared up to Mace's before he, too, soon vanished.
Before she knows it, she is back to the middle of the two-way road. Kira wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand before letting in a shaky breath and a sniffle. Kira gathered her feet underneath her before bidding herself to stand. To move forward.
To the right she went. The darkened chamber soon filled with the rugged landscape of Mandalore, although not the town of Keldabe, rather a homestead. One with several domed, half underground houses laid out in a circle around a central fire. Pastures behind the houses were full of tall grasses to one end and a dense temperate forest to the other.
The fire burned with a spike of some kind of meat hanging above, the smell was nearly intoxicating on a stomach that hadn't yet had its breakfast. Several people wandered about the homestead going about various chores, tanning hides, tending the fire, the sound of beskar being forged clanked in the distance.
Surrounding the fire were three familiar faces, that of Kal Skirata, Jango Fett and of course, her father, Jense Kenvor.
As Kira made her way towards them, she gained scowls of distrusting Mandalorians as she passed. She hears the word jet'ii, aruetii and dar'manda being spat in hushed whispers. While Kira does not yet speak the language, she knows the meaning of these words. Jet'ii. Jedi. The very word a curse for mandalorians, whose entire history has been fighting against the Force-weilding sorcerers, aruetii, outsider. Not one of us. Not mandalorian and dar'manda, one who has lost their mandalorian identity and soul.
Jango had called her that once and she had spent every night after the conversation thinking about it.
Kira came to stand before the three mandalorian men. Kal Skirata, while not very tall, stood with the very essence of what Kira had always imagined a mandalorian warrior to possess, confident, capable, stubborn.
Jango Fett, who's very inner being was one hidden behind a very large, cold, stone wall. The darkness in his eyes was not only because of their near-black color, but of the darkness he had seen and likely caused.
Jense Kenvor, who's black hair and ice eyes he had passed down to his long lost child. Who stood, hesitant, distrusting, skeptical as she neared them. While the evidence was right before his eyes, he couldn't- or rather wouldn't- allow himself to believe in the hope that his child may have survived the long years since his world had fallen apart.
"Who are you?" Jango asks, a hint of deviousness in those cold, dark eyes. While she had only seen his face once, under the cover of night, she could recognize those piercing eyes anywhere. "Mandalorian, or Jedi?"
"I am both." Kira states, standing tall. She would prove Mace wrong, she would be both, she could be both.
Jango shakes his head, the devious look never leaving his eyes. "You cannot be both," He says. "You will always be an outsider, a half-breed. Dar'manda."
"You said the mandalorians dont care about who you are, anyone could be mandalorian if they had the right stuff." Kira countered.
Jango chuckled. "Not for you," He said. "Not for Jedi."
"You will never be fully trusted by either side so long as you practice the Jedi ways here," Kal said. "or the mandalorian ways there."
"You cannot walk in both lives," Jense said, his eyes never fully reaching hers. "Release your Jedi ways and you may walk in the Way of the Mandalore. Hold onto them and you will burn in the fires that have burned our planet a thousand times over."
Kira's jaw clenches tightly as the weight of their judgements weigh upon her shoulders, the sting of isolation pressing on her. "But I can find a way."
The homestead begins to vanish as the Jedi Temple had before and once again, Kira was back in the center of the road, the paths before her began to vanish soon after and she is left in a void of darkness. The absolute silence began to eat at her as the weight of her predicament settled in her heart. How could she choose just one path to follow? How could she choose both when either side could not coexist?
The clicking of boots behind her jolted her out of her own thoughts, spinning around, her hand immediately reaching for her lightsabers.
Before her a darkened, twisted version of herself marched forward, a wicked grin on her dull, chapped lips. The light in her eyes had darkened to what Kira could only describe as an evil yellow. The once vibrant, piercing blue was no longer.
The Dark Kira scans over her, her eyes seeming to glide over every part of her. "Who are you?" She asks in a sneer, her voice scratchy and rough. "A Jedi? A Mandalorian? Ha! Neither." She growls as she begins to circle Kira like a nexu to prey.
Kira's hand shot to her lightsabers, her grip on the weapons tightened until her knuckles turned white as her eyes followed the dark version of herself.
"You are nothing, you don't belong anywhere. Mace has already replaced you, and Jense won't believe you are his child. You are nothing, nothing to those you care oh so much about, you are a failure waiting to happen." She sneers in Kira's ear. "No one will accept you, no one will guide you, you will be alone. You will die alone."
Kira's nose curls in anger, "You don't know that." She growls.
The Dark Kira laughs as she finishes her circle to stand at Kira's front once more. "How do you think I became this?" She asks motioning to herself. She wore a black set of Mandalorian armor, draped in various hanging pieces of cloth, ripped and torn throughout. A blaster fire burn mark on the chest piece where her heart would lay beneath. Various other battle marks riddled the armor as well as a lightsaber burn across her thigh piece.
Kira ignited her lightsaber, her bright golden blade, humming to life. "I will succeed where you have failed." She said, her voice full of determination.
The Dark Kira's mouth formed another vicious smile. "You think you can balance both? You will only end up alone and worst of all, you will be Mace Windu's biggest disappointment. He will never utter your name as he will Little Depa Billaba's, for she is his truest victory. He will forget you, not only that, he will pretend you had never existed. He will never attach his name to the little Mandalorian scum he trained and watched fail over and over and over."
The words hit Kira's heart like a knife and felt the familiar surge of fear breaking its way into her mind, picking at the walls like the miners on Ryloth. Mace was her weakest spot, she was certain he always would be so long as she lived. How could she walk the Way of the Mandalore without forsaking him? Would he truly cast her aside so easily when she could barely make a step without thinking of how Mace would think of any choice she made.
Then a wave of calm rushed over her, it was as if Mace's presence had covered her, guarding her from the terrors of her mind.
'Remember your training.' His voice echoes in her ear.
Of course, how easily it was to fall into a pit of self wallowing, of fear, of despair. How easily ones mind falls but sometimes, all one needs is a little light.
Kira begins to remember her training, the long years she spent under Master Windu's guidance, and draws upon it. He would not abandon her, not like this. Then a surge of strength joins the welling confidence inside, the strength Kira could only describe as the Mandalorian blood within her, her heritage, her lineage, her lost culture flooding through her.
"I am not alone, I will never be alone. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me," She said staring into scorched, hateful yellow eyes. The Force is with me and my heritage gives me strength. I will find my own path, I will not let fear dictate my destiny. Come what may, I am Jedi and I am Mandalore."
With that, she lunges forward, facing her dark self in a fierce duel. Each strike is a battle against her own doubts and fears. Finally, with a decisive blow, she strikes the dark figure through the chest. The Dark Kira groans as she grips the hilt of the lightsaber that pierces through her abdomen, her eyes meet Kira's before she dissolves into mist, leaving Kira standing alone.
As the vision fades, Kira's mind comes back into her own body where she is dripping in sweat. Seated on a cushion in the center of a room across from Master Yoda. Her breathing is ragged as if her physical body had been the one to face the visions she had seen.
She had gone into the darkened chamber alone and scared. The battle raging inside her heart and her mind had slowly faded until a calm flowing breeze of peace floated through her. She had gone and emerged victorious. She had faced her greatest fear, disappointment, rejection, abandonment, loneliness, and came out on the other side of it stronger. She knows the path ahead will not be easy but she has let go of the fear. Come what may, Kira was born a mandalorian and for that she would do what she could to learn of her history, of her forgotten culture, of her family. Kira was trained and raised as a Jedi, she would do what she could to make the galaxy a better place, to be a guardian of peace and justice. She could do both, she had to do both.
"Done well, you have," Yoda's voice said, quietly, calmly. "In yourself, you must trust, in the Force you must trust. Find your way, you will."
Kira's lips tug into a smile with a newfound sense of purpose and acceptance within herself. Kira was ready to forge her way forward, one step at a time, one day at a time. She was Kiratta Kenvor, she would find a way to bridge the two paths her life has shown and find a way.