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ahsokasleftbicep · 4 years ago

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Name and Soul: Chapter 6

It's finally here! I am SO SO sorry for the delay. This weekend has been insane. But anyway, let's go.

@mqgriett @darkangel4121 @thelambandthewolffe @maulscrosshair @trash-dino-5000 @lightning-wolffe @killtherandomness @shadowwing1324 @sydnubabu @lafy-taffy @photowizard17

Crosshair x F! reader

Word Count: 2042

Warnings: SPOILERS for episode 6, Rampart being a *ahem* douchebag, super conflicted Crosshair, internal conflict, Tech being amazing, Wrecker kicking ass, there are a few curse words but nothing too bad, I think

“Y/N… Y/N!” Omega tugs on your hand.

You shake your head and look down at her. “Huh?... What?” The girl points at the makeshift target painted on the far wall.

“Good job, Omega! You’re getting there!” You ruffle her hair and she smiles. “How about you try again?”

Omega nods and readies herself with the Zygerrian bow. You look out the door and tune everything out. After you saw, well thought you saw him, you stood in the middle of the streets until someone bumped your shoulder. It couldn’t have been him. That’s impossible, he would be on Kamino. And he didn’t have any weapons besides his knife, he never brings only one weapon. And his eyes… It had to be him.

You refocus when Omega lets out a frustrated groan.

“But I’ve already hit the target three times.”

Echo rests his hand on her shoulder. “Out of 12. That’s luck, Omega, not skill.”

“He’s right.” You hop off the gambling table and nod at the target. “Soldiers need to be consistent and that comes with time.”

Omega tries again but misses, glaring at the Weequay and Ithorian. “I was doing better until those two showed up.”

Echo glances at you before looking back to Omega. “You have to learn to tune out distractions, which comes with practice.”

“Try again, Omega. You can do it.” You smiled at the girl and winced when she missed again.

“Not exactly a natural, is she.” Cid walks up and nudges Wrecker off of his seat. “Playtime’s over, I got a job for you.”

You all gather around the table, making yourselves comfortable. Omega reaches up to you and you pick her up so she can see.

“I assume you guys know what a tactical droid is?... They were the opera…”

“The operational brains of the Separatist military-” Tech butts in.

“Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.” This is my briefing, Goggles.”

Tech steps back offended while you and Echo try to muffle your laughter. Tech elbows you with a small smile before refocusing on Cid’s briefing. This is going to be a fun mission.

He was tired. God, he was so tired. Crosshair lied on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Despite his exhaustion, he had been trying to go to sleep for hours.

Why did I run? Why did I leave her there? Why did you go in the first place, you should’ve killed her. I love her. She betrayed the Empire, tried to kill you. I tried to kill her first.

Crosshair sat up from his bed and removed his necklace. He turned the ring over in his hand, looking at the engraving. O'r gai bal runi…

Y/N… I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.

“CT-9904, report to my office immediately.”

….“Yes, sir.”

“We’re approaching the decommissioning site. We can land at the dockyard and go in on foot.” Tech turns his head to look back before landing the ship.

You put on your helmet and look down at Omega. “You ready kid?”

“Definitely!” The girl runs ahead before Hunter holds her shoulder. You all crouch behind a wall. You raise your brow at Tech and poke his shoulder.

“What’s with the police droids? Cid never mentioned those.”

The man rolls his eyes and looks at his vambrace. “They operate on a rotating quadrant scan. If we time it correctly, they have a blind spot.”

“That’s our way in then.”

“Precisely.”

When the time is right, you make your way to the site, going up a ladder.

“It’s okay, Wrecker. Don’t look down, just like Skako Minor.” You glance down at the man and he nods.

“You say that like it’s easy, Y/N.”

You all enter the facility and huddle together.

“Wrecker, cover us up top.”

“But being the lookout was Crosshair’s job.”

“That’s why Y/N is going with you.” Hunter nods at you.

“Sounds good to me… C’mon big guy, let's get up there.”

This really could be going better. You dodge a few shots from the police droids, firing something back.

“Wrecker, Y/N. Get to the main control panel.” Echo’s voice comes through the comms

You and the man run up but stop when you reach the panel… on the other side of a river of molten droid parts. Lovely. Crosshair would’ve loved this.

“Echo, we can’t reach the platform. Unless you want us to fall into a molten river.”

“It’s the only way to reboot the whole facility. Figure it out!”

Wrecker looks at you, “That’s easy for you to say.” The man paces erratically and grips his head.

“Wrecker, we need to hurry. You can do this.” You stop the man and hold his shoulders. “I’ll cover you.”

The man groans and mumbles to himself.

“Wrecker, what are you waiting for?”

“Wrecker, you need to hurry!” A blaster shot flies over your head, and more police droids surround you both.

Wrecker jumps to a claw and swings to the platform, hitting his head in the process.

“Wrecker! Get the system online, we’re running out of time!” Police droids gather together, converging on your position. The man flips the switch before collapsing.

“Wrecker!” You fire off a few rounds and use the claw to get to the platform. “C’mon Wrecker! We gotta get out of here!”

You grab Wreckers blaster and fire at the closer droids. “Dammit, Wrecker!”

“H-Hunter, Y/N… I’m stuck on the conveyor. I need help.”

“I’m surrounded by police droids and Wrecker is incapacitated at the moment. Hunter?”

“I’ll get Omega. Just get down here as soon as you can.”

You fire off more rounds, then kneel down. “Wrecker… Wrecker! You couldn’t have hit your head that hard. C’mon.” You push his shoulder.

More droids converge and you move around the platform. Wrecker mumbles but you can’t make out anything. Good soldiers follow orders.

Good soldiers follow orders. Good soldiers follow orders. Good soldiers...good soldiers.

“CT-9904? A moment?” Rampart approached the grey-haired man, who placed a toothpick between his lips.

“Sir.”

“I believe we have gotten off on the wrong… foot.” Rampart stands, looking out the window. “You see, Private L/N and her skills will be very useful for my current project. I understand that your relationship with the soldier-”

Crosshair shoves the man against the window, holding the sharpened point of his toothpick at Rampart’s neck. “I am holding this right over your carotid artery. If I slip just enough, you will bleed out in minutes, possibly less. Now I don’t know who you think I was to that woman, but if you keep pushing it...” Crosshair presses his toothpick harder. “...then I suggest you watch your back.” Crosshair lets go of his collar and Rampart falls to the floor, gripping his neck. “Oh and Admiral. If you tell anyone about this, I’ll still have enough time to find you.” The sniper narrows his eyes and disappears down the hallway.

“Y/N, Wrecker, get down here now!”

“I’m working on it, Echo! Wrecker’s still-”

“We’re on our way.” The man grabs his weapon from you and nudges your shoulder.

“Oh, so glad you could join us! How was your beauty sleep?” You punch his shoulder. “We need to get to the others.”

The man walks up to a chain and crouches down. “You remember that mission on Tatooine?”

“How could I ever forget?” You smile and get up on Wrecker’s shoulders. “Let’s do some damage.”

Wrecker jumps down the chain, the two of you firing off. “Sorry, we took so long!”

“We got tired of you guys having all the fun!” Wrecker lands with you still on his shoulders. You hop off and start covering the rest of the group.

“Y/N!” Omega runs up next to you, a few smudges on her face.

“Omega! You got a little something on your cheek, nothing a rag and water can’t take care of.” You pat her on the head for a moment before returning more fire.

A moment later, old battle droids begin to stand up and fire on the police droids.

“Well, that’s new… I take it, that’s our cue to get the hell out of here.”

Tech runs next to you, “Yes, it is indeed.”

“Good shot, Omega!”

“Thank you! You and Echo were right about those distractions.”

“We’ve dealt with this our whole lives, you learn to forget about them over time.” You kneel behind her and provide cover. “Let’s get going… I’m starving.”

“You and me both!” Wrecker runs past you, knocking the remaining droids to the ground.

“Trace, right?”

“Yes! And you’re Y/N.” The girl smiles at you.

You place your hand on her shoulder. “Thank you for going back to Omega.”

“She’s a good kid… And a good shot.” Trace chuckles.

“Well, she’s getting there…”

“Y/N! Let’s go! I thought you were starving!” Omega sticks her head out of the ship, waving her arms.

“Okay, jeez. I’m coming!” You wave to the sisters and run to the ship, sitting in the cockpit. Omega comes up and tugs on your arm. “Y/N… Uhm, can you help me train for a bit?”

“Yeah sure, but no target practice. Let’s do strength instead! Then you need to rest, you’ve had a big day.”

“Okay! Now c’mon let’s go!” The girl grabs your hand and drags you to the back.

Crosshair stood in the shower, staring at his necklace. He hadn’t moved in minutes, just letting the water run down his body. He was thinking… about everything. Sleep is unknown to him, his brain won’t shut up. He won’t shut up.

You should’ve gone back for her. You should’ve killed her. I love her. No, you don’t. What do you know...You’re not me. I love Y/N, and I always will, I promised her. Ha, with what? That stupid necklace, that ring? You tried to kill her and you think she still loves you? You betrayed everything you promised. You don’t know Y/N like I do. She knows, they all do. She saw me that day, she knows that I’m still here. And she knows you’re here too. She’s not stupid. Oh, I’m sure. Just shut up and let me sleep, please. Hm, I’ll think about it. No, I don’t think I will.

“Y/N? Why are you up?” Tech walks into the cockpit, devoid of his eyewear.

“I- couldn’t sleep. Haven’t been since…”

“Since the day we left Kamino… Am I correct?”

“Yes… It’s so odd. It’s like I can feel him.”

“Crosshair?”

“Yes, it’s like I can feel his presence. Like when someone stands behind you, but you can feel them there before they speak. And I keep thinking I hear him, and I see things. Like nightmares...horrible nightmares.” Tears gather in your eyes and they fall down your cheeks. “I- I must be losing my mind, right?”

Tech places his hand on your shoulder and kneels in front of you. “Y/N, you are most definitely not going crazy. But what you’re experiencing does sound very strange. I know how much this… has affected you and I don’t- I don’t have all the answers. I do wish I did, but circumstances have prevented me from fully dedicating-”

“Tech, you’re rambling again.” You put your hand on his shoulder. “I know you are doing everything you can, and you have a great assistant.”

The man chuckles, “Apologies. Yes, Omega is a very nice assistant. She is quite intelligent.” Tech stands up and yawns, “I believe some sleep is necessary, for both of us.”

“I’ll go in a moment, I promise.”

“Very well, I would hate to drag you back.” Tech nods before heading back to his room.

You turn your head, looking out into hyperspace. Crosshair… I don’t know if you can hear me. I was looking at the stars… I miss you. Maybe you’re looking at the stars too if you can even see them, but I hope you are. They look so pretty tonight.

Crosshair turned his head to the window, looking through the clouds of Kamino. He finds a small opening in the clouds, revealing a dark, clear sky above. I found the stars… You’re right. They do look pretty….

I love you, Y/N.

… I love you, Crosshair.

#name and soul #clone trooper crosshair #crosshair x reader #the bad batch #omega tbb #tbb spoiliers #star wars #cid tbb #i am SO sorry that this is late #no joke #my weekend was so crazy #but i digress #if you want to be tagged in this story dm me

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morepeachyogurt · 4 years ago

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we are good people (and we've suffered enough)

word count- 2.5k Pairing- Temily

Summary- After Scratch, Tara and Emily run away to Italy to start a new life, ft. cats, cafes, and gardening. Based on this post, and this prompt.

Part 2 of my, maybe we’re from the same star, series, work is a standalone, part 1

read here on ao3

tw’s- very minor mentions of substances and ptsd

Things were never the same after Mr. Scratch. The two of them were filled with more trauma than they had room for in their hearts to still hold each other in. Nights were no longer filled with a movie and cuddling, or talking about philosophy but tense sentences, paranoia, and nightmares. Tara knew that something needed to change, anything to stop the monotony of desolation. But still, they went to work every day and drowned their sorrows in killers like that would bring back the part of her that died when Scratch took Emily. There are only so many times one can be held captive and wait for death before something inside them breaks.

One night they get wine drunk, Emily laying sidewise on their black couch, and Tara sitting on the table staring at the ceiling.

“I miss being young, god, that’s such a weird thing to say. I mean, I spent my youth hating it. Hated my mother, and all of our traveling, never could make friends. I hated that I never belonged, hated not being in control of my own life, and here I am 50 years old working for the government that I used to despise trying not to cry myself to sleep every night,” her voice takes on a bitter tone.

“We love in our old age the things we hated as children. Does that make us matured or foolish?”

“Both, I think.”

“What was your favorite place to live? I mean it sounds like hell to keep moving between places but there must have been someplace you loved, right,” Tara’s voice fills with a tang of desperation as she searches for a way to help her lover.

“Rome. The weather and the scenery,” her voice takes on a dreamy tone, “and the food! Man, the food is good, don’t tell Rossi but his carbonara tastes like Olive Garden compared to the real thing,” they both chuckled at that, knowing it would have sent Rossi in a fit if he were to hear that.

“That sounds really nice honey.”

“I miss it sometimes you know? I think about how gorgeous everything was. It feels like home in my distant memories.”

“Then let’s do it. Lets, go move to Rome. You aren’t happy here Emily, I know you say you are, but you do this job for our team, not the position now. I miss when you laughed,” both of them sobered up by now, knowing that it has taken a turn for the more serious.

“No, no we can’t. I, I can’t keep leaving this team and our friends. And, people need us. You love this job Tara I can’t take that away from you, not for me.”

“They’d understand Emily, they all love you so much. Yeah, I love this job, I won’t lie. But, I love you more, and I’m not happy if you aren’t. So let’s do it. Let’s fucking run away to Rome together and be happy .” The two sit in silence for a minute, the unanswered question still hanging in the air.

“Okay. Let’s do it. Maybe I’ll fulfill my long-lost dream to have a nice, big garden.”

The team took it surprisingly well, they’d all noticed a change in Emily in the months following Scratch and knew that Tara had Emily’s best interest at heart. Of course, they were sad to lose two of the best members of their team, but Emily was family, and family looks out for each other.

“I’m going to miss you my favorite dynamic duo and your guys’ jokes. Ugh, it’s going to be so quiet without you two lovely ladies,” her eyes are welling with unshed tears as she says goodbye to more of her family, “Send me things from Rome or I will install a virus in your phones,” they both laughed at Penelope’s antics and promised her that they’d send as much stuff as they could. The last two weeks of their stay in the United States were filled with mixed emotions. They were excited to start the next chapter of their lives together. Away from all the serial killers and monstrous people out there. They could finally live with a fraction of the naivety that most people carry. On the other hand, Tara only speaks minimal Italian, and now they’re going to be living in a brand-new country, surrounded by strangers. A fresh start, but one filled with anxiety.

“Okay 4:30 is way too early for a flight,” Emily grumbled as they made their way to the airport. The pair had woken up at three, knowing that Tara can’t sleep on planes they tried to go to bed early and were now making their way to the airport in the dead of morning.

“Wait, babe, look! It’s a full moon,” they pulled over just for a moment and got out of the car to sit on the hood. The silence between the two is peaceful, the wind was the only whisper in the air. Moonlight shone on Tara’s face and Emily knew that there was no sight in the world as beautiful as this. With the moon reflected in her eyes and a small simple ghosting on her lips. She’s home.

Security was a breeze, they are former FBI agents after all, and they made their way to their gate. Airports always have a certain air to them, a place where time seizes to exist yet completely runs the place. Their gate was quiet, filled with the tired murmuring of people excited to travel.

“Tara, honey, wake up we’re boarding.”

It was odd for the two of them to be flying commercial after all those years on private jets. It was nice to feel normal though, to fade in the background instead of being other . Human desire is both to be noticed and forgotten all at once.

Italy’s airport is very similar to the DC airport, it would seem like they never left. Outside was a whole different story, bustling crowds and hot air hits them as soon as they step outside the building. They had picked out a quaint apartment building a week prior. Yellow walls with a terrace looking out to an alley. The couple's belongings had been shipped and were waiting to be unpacked. Not right then though. Now, it was time to explore.

Hand in hand they walked leisurely down the narrow alley way of the small Italian town they are now calling their home. Vines and every other type of plant that could grow did. Hanging off banisters, and climbing up orange brick walls. The sunlight was close to blinding, and it hit Emily just right. The golden rays hitting her face and illuminating the ghost of the smile now appearing on Emily’s face. That smile told Tara all she needed to know about their decision. Emily catches her staring, “What are you looking at,” humor evident in her voice.

“You, I’m looking at you miss Emily Prentiss. You’re smiling again,” her words come out softer than she intended, but they convey her point.

Happy couples seem to fill the streets, old and new, young and old. The town may be old, but it was filled with a life that they had been lacking. They pass a quaint little bakery. Bread, cupcakes, and assorted pastries fill the windows. There're bookshelves on all the walls filled to the brim with different books. The walls are light blue and there are flowers everywhere. It looks like something from the movies.

“Un Piccolo Angolo di Paradiso,” Emily reads the name of the building in front of them, they’ve since stopped to admire the view in front of them. It reminds the two of them how Emily asked Tara out. With a cupcake and book who had ‘I know there’s plenty of sugar in that cupcake but it’d be even sweeter if you went out with me. Let me take you to dinner Tara? ’ written on the inside.

“As much as I love hearing you speak Italian, what does that mean? Something heaven?”

“Little Slice of Heaven.” It’s truly a perfect name for the place.

“Okay, now we have to go in,” they’re both smiling now. They push open the glass doors, greeted by the high-pitched ringing of a bell and the smell of freshly baked bread.

The woman at the counter finishes the greeting, “Benvenuti nel piccolo angolo di paradiso, cosa posso offrirvi, adorabili signore?” they blush at the compliment and Emily orders them both cupcakes and coffee. Tara busies herself with admiring the books. Some of them have the most beautiful covers she’s seen. She knows not to judge a book by its cover but sometimes the most beautiful things are just as gorgeous on the inside as out. Just like Emily. She buys a book, and they take their drink and desserts to go. They make their way to a waterfront and sit down on the stairs, side by side.

“Rome is just as beautiful as I remembered. I missed it. It really does feel like home, although, anywhere I’m with you is home,” at the end of her sentence, she turns to face Tara, a look of pure love shown clearly on her face. And for that, Tara just has to kiss her.

The next day they unpack their boxes of belongings into their apartment to help rid the homesickness. Paintings go up on the walls and furniture is placed with the best view in mind. After a couple of hours they’re done, their apartment a bit more homey than before. They crack open a bottle of wine, put on an album, and sit out on the terrace. They watch the sun set over the water, the sounds of big band music filter in as the soundtrack for their night. The sky painted yellow, orange, and pink in the way only nature can create. If nature were an artist they’d be in every museum and sold to the wealthy. Instead, they are for the masses, the beauty of nature is for all to enjoy, free of cost, for those who wish to escape and fly into the night sky.

“You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” Tara leans forward on the balcony, not taking her eyes off the view in front of her, even as the colors begin to fade the sky darkens.

“No, tell me, what?”

“I always wanted to open my own bakery. I know it’s stupid, me a baker. But, I don’t know making things, it feels so uncomplicated. Just me and the dough.”

“In this alternate universe, I’d be a gardener. You and your dough and me and my flowers against the world Tara. Wait a second. I think you and I are onto something my dear,” Emily’s joined Tara at the balcony, the two of them leaning against the railing.

“Actually? You’re serious? You want to do this.?”

“Yeah! Why not? We’ve got enough money in the bank for us to last a bit, you can work at Un Piccolo Angolo di Paradiso,” the Italian rolls of her tongue in a way that drives Tara nuts, “I’ll find a gardening place to work at. We’re in fucking Italy let’s make our dreams come true.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

Alessia, the owner of the bakery, is pleased to have another employee. Especially one that is actually interested and isn’t in high school. Tara learns the basics of bread and pastry making. She has some skill, she used to bake with her mother before she died, it had been awhile since she had been able to bake without bumming herself out. Now it’s a nice memory of her. Gone but not forgotten, as is the saying. Emily comes in every lunch break for whatever Tara’s whipped up and to get her caffeine fix. One of the things that she still keeps from her law enforcement days.

They aren’t perfect. A move across the country isn’t going to cure PTSD, she has good days, bad days, and worse days, but now they have the time to deal with it. There was never anytime to process things at the FBI. It was always, distract yourself and throw yourself into solving cases. Now they can slow dance in the kitchen and stay up until three am telling stories from college. They fill their days with the happiness that was once stolen from them and bathe in it like perfume.

True to their word, they send Penelope all sorts of things, books from the café, pressed flowers, trinkets from the small shops to adorn her desk. In return, she sends them pictures of Sergio.

“I miss Sergio, his little paws, and his ability to climb on top of anything.”

Emily finds a job at a nearby garden that sells flower arrangements and herbs to local restaurants. It’s convenient, more than they would have thought. Emily now gets to stop into the bakery on occasion to deliver herbs and has plenty of flowers to give her lover. She also sends a few bouquets back to DC. Hoping that the flowers can brighten up the office in a way that fluorescent lights never can.

On one of their late afternoon walks, they hear a rustling by a trash can.

“What’s that noise?”

“I don’t know, let’s go look, it almost sounds like an animal. Could be a mouse,” Emily suggests, absently reaching to where her gun used to rest on her hip. They open the bag to find three small kittens. Seemly abandoned in a corner.

“Oh god, they’re so cute. We have to keep them.” It’s not a question, Tara knows that Emily is thinking the same thing, their minds connected in the way people who love each other’s minds always are. They look up the nearest veterinarian to make sure that their new pets are okay to take home and healthy.

The vet is sterile and a stark reminder of all the hospitals they’ve spent time in. Tara squeezes her girlfriend’s hand to remind her that they are both safe .

“They look fairly health, a bit malnourished but that is to be expected in these circumstances,” the vet is an elderly man with a mustache as thick as his accent,

“I’ve give them the shots they need, for now, come back in few months and let me take another look. Ciao.”

The kittens are fast asleep by the time they make it home. They gently scoop the kittens out of the bag and into their arms and the couch.

“Okay, what are we naming these angels?” Emily’s voice is pitched up as she talks to the kitten in her arms.

“Well, I’ve always been a classics enthusiast, what if we name them Artemis and Apollo?”

“That’s adorable. Little tiny archery kitties, yes, isn’t that right!” she coos, “And I think I’ll name this one Carter.”

“I love it, and you. Come on, sit with me, you look tired,” Tara grabs Emily’s hand and pulls her onto the couch. They fall over a bit and Emily yelps in surprise. They put the old music back on, a sense of peaceful needs for their new lives. The two sit on the couch, Emily’s head in her girlfriend’s lap, a hand playing with her hair. Apollo climbs on Emily’s feet and lays down to rest.

“I love you, Tara,” she doesn’t respond, just lays a gentle kiss to the back of her head.

The world is big and scary but the two of them feel safe in each other's arms.

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#dkakakska I forgot to tag this now it won’t show up 💔💔#temily #Tara lewis #emily prentiss #criminal Minds #criminal minds fanfiction #temily fic #lucy's creations #mine!

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di-kut · 5 years ago

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Baar Bal Runi: Chapter One

Series Masterlist

Pairing: The Mandalorian x Reader

Words: 5k

Summary: (Body Swap AU) While helping the Mandalorian find the Child’s home planet you find yourselves in a difficult situation

Rating: canon typical threats of violence (no actual violence in this chapter folks), angst-ish, extreme tension

Tags: body swap, force sensitivity, a peppering of angst

A/N: Look guys, I won’t lie, it’s a body swap au. This started as absolute crack and somehow I’m 25k words in. It was meant to be funny but now it’s a lot of tension and angst (and fluff, I promise just, like, not yet?) I can’t pretend to make any explanations of this, I just wanted a body swap au and so here we are. s/o to @btillys who is really the ideas man of this fic and holds my single brain cell at all times.

“We should be there soon.”

The Mandalorian is standing at the bottom of the ladder. You hadn’t heard him come down. You lift yourself off the cot with your elbows. The hull is mostly dark, but the flashing of the lights reflects off his Beskar. You shut off the holopad in your hands and throw it down. He nods at it.

“Anything?”

You shake your head. “Nothing.”

“Get ready, Gotabor.” You feel the familiar weight of his gaze along the back of your shoulders. “We’ll come out of hyperspace soon.”

You push yourself up properly. Mando turns to leave in a soft kiss of Beskar against Beskar. His cape hits against the guard, the echo of his boots against the rungs of the ladder ring through the quiet hull. And then he’s gone. There is only the quiet hum of the engine, the control lights blinking in the darkness. You pass the empty carbonite chamber. Follow the Mandalorian up the ladder. Even from the outside of the cockpit you can hear the cooing of the child, the soft voice of the Mandalorian speaking to him in Mando’a. You slide quietly into the space, let the door close behind you.

The child coos from him cot happily and you offer him your hand without thinking. He offers you a brief wave of emotion, bright and happy, and you smile down at him. Rub the top of his head affectionately. Hyperspace is a blur of white all around you. It slips over the Mandalorian’s Beskar like ripples over water.

You settle yourself into the co-pilot chair. “Any idea what we’re looking at here?”

“Not really.” Mando switches one of the radar controls. “Uninhabited. Green.”

“Green?” You run a hand down your face. “Maker.”

The Mandalorian grunts. It’s his agreement grunt, you’ve grown to understand. You stare at the side of his helmet and he stares straight ahead, out into the tunnel of light all around you. Like he can see through it all, like he’s waiting. Maybe he can, you think. His hand flexes around the controls, tense, ready.

The feeling is like a shot to the chest. Mean, dark. Dread curls up under your ribcage, coiled and tight like a spring. Settles into your stomach so you feel it drop into the chair beneath you. You try not to think about it, try not to run through every hard-won inch in the search which has led you here, cruising through hyperspace in the Unknown Regions, but the paranoia is so sudden and so complete you can’t help it. It stops the air from getting to your lungs. You hadn’t even found it – the child’s planet. But it was a lead, a solid one, finally. And your every nerve ending felt like it was short circuiting.

The child lets out a cry from the crib behind you. You reach back for him blindly, unable to look away from Mando. The warrior tenses at the sound, tilts his helmet slightly, doesn’t look away from hyperspace.

“What’s wrong with him?” He asks.

“I-I’m not sure.” You turn and look at the kid. He grabs for your hand and you feel it. The alarm is so much worse buzzing through your connection, his emotions so much simpler, all encompassing. Only a child. “He’s scared.”

Another grunt. A different one this time. Determination. He turns back to the task of pulling out of hyperspace. You scoop the kid out of the crib and set him in your lap. Buckle the belt around you both and push your back hard against the chair. Brace for – something. You don’t know. You trust the Mandalorian, but something was wrong. You could feel it, the kid could feel it. You try to calm yourself, if only for the kid, knowing somehow, he could feel it. He hasn’t stopped his panicked cries. Mando’s hand grips the control, his arm tenses. You can feel buzzing in the tips of your fingers. There’s a jolt and –

You come out of hyperspace. It’s as smooth and even as ever, Mando easing you all into empty space with a control finely honed. You can see the planet some distance ahead. It was small. Green. Blurred slightly in the distance. You lean forward, strain against the belt to try and get a better look. Your hands are shaking. You sit back down and hold the child closer.

“You okay?” Mando asks softly.

Your sigh shakes, too. “Yeah.”

“The kid?” He turns and looks at you both.

“He’s just scared. I think.”

Mando twists his chair, and you feel him assessing you both. He turns back to the front. He flicks the controls, turns the ship over to manual, sets coordinates. He flips the radar to surface scanning and keeps the ship at a slow and steady cruise. The radar finally tunes, and a slow, paced beeping fills the silence.

You orbit until your legs are numb and your back and neck are sore with tension. The kid stops crying, but you can feel his restless squirming in your lap. The Mandalorian keeps you hovered right off surface, until finally he seems satisfied with something. The atmosphere of the planet is thick and murky, and the further the ship drops the harder it becomes to see. The Mandalorian flips a switch on his helmet, adjusts the radar again, blipping and slipping with urgency as you approach the surface. Eventually the fog is so thick all you can see is the shape of giant shadows towering just out of sight. The descent only makes the churning of your stomach grow worse. You have to close your eyes, count the stars behind your lids to distract yourself from the humming, crawling under your skin.

It feels an eternity later when you feel the ship touch down.

The air is wet outside the ship. Condensation slips down the walls of the hull, coat the ramp, makes the ship look as if it weathered a storm. It’s cold where you stand just shy of the ramp, the child back in his crib, and the Mandalorian. He’s found something of a clearing between the trees, bigger than the petrified ancient forest on Batuu, towering into nothing. Disappearing into mist. The trunks are so thick you can barely make out their curve. You’d pulled on your jacket, thick and lined with Synfleece. You can feel where the moisture is gathering on your cheeks and clinging in your hair. Mando’s armour is pebbled all over with beads of moisture, just like the ship. You can see his coarseweave getting heavy with it.

“Mando.”

He’s found something on his pauldron and is fiddling with it. Adjusting something. You can’t find enough room in your head to try and figure out what he’s fixing. He’s got one foot on the extended ramp. Extra rations in his pack. You feel sick.

“Mando, I don’t like this.”

He finally clicks whatever was bothering him into place. Gives his arm an experimental push back and forth. “It’s the only option we’ve got.”

“Something doesn’t feel right about this place.” You say. You know your protests are falling on deaf ears. “The kid doesn’t like it either.”

Mando heaves a heavy sigh.

“I don’t like it.”

“Gotabor.” He says it like a statement. The name doesn’t make you feel better. Gotabor. Engineer. You feel useless when the Mandalorian has to go out. On the ship you were good, you were helpful. But an engineer couldn’t fire a blaster like a Mandalorian could. Couldn’t fight. Hopefully this trip wouldn’t come to that. “Stay with the ship. Watch the kid.”

He turns to leave. Always the same, like this. The tight feeling in your chest sets your teeth on edge. One day you think he is going to walk down that ramp and you will never see him again. A friend, finally, after all the months with him, and you can’t imagine anything worse than never knowing. That you will be waiting on the Crest for him to come back and he’ll be dead somewhere. Alone. The panic already in you makes the feeling so much worse. You reach before he can step out, grab his pauldron without thinking, firm enough to stop him in his tracks. He turns back, slow.

“Mando.”

He’s staring at you and the hair along the back of your neck stands on end. You keep your hand on his shoulder, unsure what you’re asking of him. He sighs quietly and twists back further, lifts his other arm up and cups his gloved hand over yours where it rests against the Beskar. The armour is freezing in the cold air, and the leather of his glove is damp. You can feel the weight of his hand underneath it. Feel the warmth bleed through the glove until it reaches your skin. You stay like that, his steady presence so constant it becomes hard to imagine life without him. You stare up into the visor, hope you’ve found his eyes behind it, and realise you are hoping he understands. He squeezes you hand, once, twice. Releases it. And you know you have to let go.

“Watch the kid.”

He’s gone for two days. You shut off the engine after he leaves and keep the radar running on backup power so you can track his progress. You keep yourself busy, let the kid out of his crib, bounce him against your chest until he finally drifts into a restless sleep. You suspect the stress of the landing had gotten to him. You carry him with you to your own cot and lie down with the sleeping child against your heartbeat. Close your eyes. But you can feel whatever was causing the kid so much panic, feel it creeping up your arms and pinching at the back of your neck. Sleep doesn’t come. You lay there until you hear the blipping of the radar stop at what should have been early afternoon. The mist outside leaves everything shrouded in one shade of murky green-grey which makes the planet feel like a perpetual twilight. You tuck the kid in, check the fuel reserves and switch the engine power back on so you can change the radar over to long range. You watch his tiny dot blink and reappear. A single lifeform on an uninhabited planet.

You climb below deck while the kid sleeps. Busy yourself with rewiring the components around the hyperdrive which had been showing wear since before you stepped on the ship. The heat was starting to eat through the coverings, a job you never seemed to have time for. But now – you peel the coverings back, recoat them. Even bundle and tag groupings of wires. The feeling of unease doesn’t abate. You spend the night down there, listening to the blipping of the radar and working through the jobs you’d never had a chance to get to until you find you can’t force your hands to come into focus in front of your eyes. So you let yourself slide down further into the compartment beneath the flooring and hug your knees to your chest. You blankly inspect some relic of hardware plugged in at the ship’s engine and try to categorise the serial code on the edge of the product. Eventually you give in, vision blurring from nerves and exhaustion, and close your eyes.

You dream, colourful, terrifying dreams. The kid disappearing in front of your eyes. The Mandalorian dying somewhere. Alone. The stormtroopers which had boarded your ship from Coruscant finding you. Hundreds of ships like shooting stars plummeting across the skies. You wake shaking and covered in sweat.

The kid is crying weakly in his crib. You haul yourself back out from below deck, ignoring the twinging in your neck and find him. He’s still in your cot, swathed in blanket, hiccupping slightly between his snuffling. You lift him to your chest again and hold him up near your head like you’ve seen Mando do hundreds of times since coming aboard the Crest, hoping the familiar action might soothe him. But the child doesn’t lift his tiny hand to cradle your jaw, or touch your cheek, like you know he does with the Mandalorian, slipping his three fingers beneath the weight of his helmet for the little contact he can get beneath the Beskar. You try another tactic and lower your forehead to the child’s. But he twists his head sideways and dodges, lets out a louder and more petulant cry. It still hurts somewhere petty in your chest, but you shush him as best you can and let the child squeeze his tiny fingers around yours and rock him back and forth. Murmur empty comforts to him until he falls asleep, clutched tightly to your chest.

The second night passes. You don’t sleep at all.

When morning comes there is still no light from above, but you switch on the ship lights again from the cockpit. The blind you, at first, bouncing through the mist to create a wall of pale grey. You stare out, unsure how long you stay there trying to make out shapes in the dark, until suddenly you’ve had enough. The unease which had buried a dark home against your breast only grows. And Mando as stopped moving. He stopped sometime in the early evening the day before. His dot blipped stationary. He’d been making slow progress even before, moving slower and slower through the giant forest around you. You check his coordinates, switch the radar through a few different modes to try and get some idea of the lay of the land, and then you climb back into the hull.

The child is awake in his crib again. He watches you with wide eyes as you pull your rucksack from beneath your cot, pull out some of your personal items and replace them with the spare remote for the ship and the crib, and one of the Mandalorian’s blasters. You hesitate in front of the kid. You give his ear a gentle tweak, climb back up into the cockpit, twist his favourite toy off the lever for him. He’s quiet when you get back to the hull, wordlessly holds his hand out. You hand him the little durasteel ball. You kneel in front of him.

“We’re gonna’ go look for your dad now, little guy,” you tell him. “We’re gonna’ go bring him back.”

The child coos at you.

“Alright then. Let’s go.”

You seal the kid’s crib and lower the ramp. Switch on the hand torch you’d dug out from a compartment in the cockpit, shoved beneath the cleaning rags you knew the Mandalrian used to care for his Beskar every night. You’d turned the ship off, the headlights no longer lit the forest floor. The mist crawls down the back of your throat and joins panic already there, strangling you. Check the portable radar, orient yourself. You touch the child’s crib gently before setting off down the ramp.

It takes you until late in the afternoon to get close to him. The trees grow closer together the further from the ship you walk, the forest floor is even but for the tops of the giant roots of the ancient forest erupting from the mud. You move quickly, following the radar through the darkness and the silence. The hand torch splices through the mist ahead. You get used to picking a path through the trees quick enough, but it only makes you worry more. The Mandalorian is fast enough on his feet. It shouldn’t have taken him so long. You watch his little dot on the radar, but he doesn’t move.

You wonder how the Mandalorian even found it, when you finally see it. Almost walk right past it in the thickness of the fog and the trees and the oppressive darkness. But you realise the looming shape isn’t trees when it’s almost too late and stop dead. You check the radar and you know Mando is inside. He’s close. You stare up at the gaping mouth in front of you, some kind of rock formation instead of wood. The blipping of your radar is grating in the unnatural silence of the atmosphere, skipping up to an urgent pace the closer you get. Your heart matches it for speed. You swing the hand torch around, but it does nothing to penetrate the darkness in front of you. Your own ragged breathing blends with the beeping of the radar.

You stop with the tips of your boots are right at the threshold. The light of the torch shows nothing. There’s something ugly about the darkness of the cave, something twisted. You feel your throat tighten, the urge to throw up nudging in the back of your mouth. But Mando was somewhere in the cave. And his child has started letting out muffled cried from inside the crib. You reach a hand for the kid, touch against the damp surface of the sealed crib. The two of you wait there, willing your heart to slow, willing the crippling tightness in your chest to abate. The quiet of the cave is bleeding into your ears, muffling the world so it feels far away. Your heart doesn’t slow, and the fear doesn’t leave. The child keeps crying.

Stepping into the cave is like falling. Maybe you are actually falling. There’s just darkness and a screeching noise, like metal grinding against metal. The ringing in your ears won’t stop. You lose track of the kid, of yourself. Then your knee hits the ground hard and you yell and your hands catch you just in time. You can feel buzzing behind your eyes. The mechanical screeching stops.

Pieces of the world around you slot into place. The ringing in your ears is so intense it makes you nauseous, hasn’t helped with the feeling of adrenaline coursing through your system. Your eyes are closed. The ground is oddly warm beneath your hands. Something about this place was wrong.

When you’re finally sure you won’t fall you slowly blink your eyes open. Check behind you for the child. You go slack with relief when the hovering crib is still there, and when you strain your ears beyond the ringing you can hear his babble of noise. The ground is closer than you think it’s going to be, tiled with some pattern which swirls and twists along the ground over and over, on and on, and it makes your head hurt. For a brief moment you can’t remember why you are there. It’s light in the cave, lighter than outside, and the air dances past you clouds of murky grey dust. The room isn’t large, the walls are close, but the ceilings are so high they disappear into nothing. There is something lingering in the air, something musty and old. Undisturbed. You can hear dripping and it echoes all around you, louder and louder as every moment passes and the buzzing fades. But unlike the outside the air is dry and warm. You have dropped your torch. Your radar.

You clamber up slowly. You knee aches where it hit the ground. You turn, expecting to see out into darkness and forest, but there is only empty space stretching out behind you, more corridor of mosaic floor and endless ceiling. You stop for some time and stare blankly around. The walls are shelved, and the shelves are stacked with paper. Scrolls. Flat, long documents laid over every available inch. Spines of books. You turn, inch by inch, taking everything in. You wonder if they are written in any language you could understand. The thoughts float in and out again, but they’re distant and disconnected, like maybe they don’t actually belong to you. The dripping is clearer now, almost crystalline, musical. It sets your teeth on edge, but you aren’t sure why. It’s such a pretty sound. Drip. Drip. Drip.

The kid cries and you jump. You had forgotten he was with you. Drip. You reach out for the domed lid of his crib and the coolness of the surface connecting with your hand. It brings you back. You blink, and the swirls of dust through the air seem to drop slightly, the patterns they make as they twist through the light disappear and they are just dust again. The smell places in your mind, damp and mouldy. You remember your lost torch and radar. Drip. Why did you need the radar? You can’t think. Everything is scrambled. You flatten your hand against the kid’s crib and try to remember. You hear footsteps suddenly, so close they are right behind you. You swing around, heart in your mouth. Drip.

It’s like wadding through water. You stare blankly at the blur of your reflection in the gleaming Beskar. Thoughts slip and fall one by one, down through cracks you can’t feel into nothing. The helmet tilts slightly and catches the light. So familiar. Drip. Drip.

The Mandalorian.

You almost cry in relief. Finally things solidify. The forest. The ship. The child. Drip. It’s almost painful when logic returns. Frantic. Drip. You step forward to reach for him but he moves faster than you, before you can piece together what’s happening, and he has his blaster out. You freeze. You stare down the barrel of the gun, back at the Mandalorian. Drip. His armour catches the light, like a moving mirage, he blends in with the shape of the walls. His visor is black, glinting. You had never wished so badly to see his face. You raise your hands slowly. Drip. Drip.

“Mando…” You whisper.

He jerks. And then steps forward, suddenly feels impossibly bigger than he had only moments ago. Drip. Silence. Drip. You try to figure out how long he’s been in the caves alone but staring at the end of his blaster manages to makes it impossible. You didn’t recognise him, didn’t know him. You step back and he matches you forward. You move sideways, painfully slow. His helmet tilts again, the mirage of light glides with it, almost hypnotic. He’s never felt terrifying before. Your hands are shaking again. You step sideways, he steps forward and you wait for his head to follow the movement but instead –

Drip. He stops. Drip. Stares. Drip. His own reflection a blur on the durasteel surface. You feel the change in the air. Something shifts and slots between you both and you become unimportant. He turns his shoulders away from you and with it the blaster. Trains it on the sealed crib. Drip.

“Mando!” He steps forward again, and you see his finger tighten around the trigger. The leather of his glove creak as he grips the butt of the blaster. Drip. You don’t think, push yourself forward, duck under his shooting arm. “Mando, no! Stop!”

He shoves against you, doesn’t bother trying to fight you. You push back, and finally you have his attention again. The helmet snaps down and you hear a grunt as he is forced to readjust. You push your shoulder up against his shooting arm, desperate to keep it away from you. His other hand comes up and wraps around your arm, tight, so tight it hurts. You try shoving back against him, but it does nothing. Drip. Drip. Drip. The clang your fist makes against the Beskar bounces off the walls around you. You scrabble at his arm, trying to get a grip on him, find purchase. You feel the Mandalorian’s annoyance begin to seep through the air around you and he pushes his forearm across your chest to shove you back, to try and get you far enough away to shoot. Your fingers still scratch blindly, finally catch on something, and there’s a click and a hiss from behind you and –

The Mandalorian pushes you with his arm and you stumble back and he swing his blaster over to the source of the noise. The crib has opened. You go blank, unable to think, to comprehend. The child let’s out a wail, high and piercing in the quiet.

You lunge forward, shove against the Mandalorian’s shooting arm. But he doesn’t shoot. Instead he drops his blaster and you nearly buckle as he keels. You nearly go down too. The blaster clatters as it hits the floor. Somehow you get your arms under his, stop him from hitting the ground. The exhaustion and fear feel like laser fire running through your veins. You think he’s passed out but then he mumbles, something unintelligible. You push him back, up onto his feet, try to get him to balance. He slumps backwards this time and its harder to catch him like this. You get an arm around his back and your other grabs a handful of his damp cape. You feel the soles of your shoes slipping against the smooth ground. Drip. Drip. Drip.

“Mando.” You shake him. “Mando, you have to help me. I can’t hold you up. I can’t move you.” You shake him again. Feel your voice crack. “Please, Mando. Help. Me.”

There’s a groan and he stumbles, catches his footing. The lift of his weight off of you is a relief. You keep an arm around him until he’s upright, and even as you unwind your arm from his chest you keep the other hand wrapped tight in his cape. He’s shaking.

“Gotabor’ika,” He croaks.

You nearly sob. “We have to get out of here, Mando. Something is… is… it’s in the air or something Mando. Something’s wrong with this place.”

“The kid…” His voice grates through the modulator. Unused for days. “I wouldn’t, I would never – “

“I know. I know, Mando. Come on, we’re gonna’ get him home safe, remember? We have to go. We have to move.”

And, finally, he does. He ducks for his blaster and then he’s running. Closing the kid’s crib as he goes. You feel your pulse throbbing inside your skull and in your legs as you run with him, one hand still wrapped in his cape. The mechanical screeching starts again, so loud this time you feel the floor vibrate with it. Your teeth click together. You don’t remember coming so far into the cave, but it feels like forever once you start moving. The crib is with you both, hovering at Mando’s side as he moves. Somehow the sound of the water dripping is louder than everything else, and getting faster. Urgent. Drip. Drip. Dripdripdrip. The buzzing is so loud you want to scream. Sweat is dripping into your eyes, down your back, soaking through your shirt. You think that you will never get out, that you will be stuck in the cave forever, an unmoving dot on a radar until you fade out of existence. Breathing hurts. Your legs hurt. The buzzing was impossibly loud. Dripdripdripdripdripdripdrip.

And then the mouth of the cave is suddenly there. And you are falling through it, tripping over the Mandalorian as you fall out into the mist and the cold and the wet. Land on the wet forest floor. Let out a ragged gasp, torn with tears, roll over and retch up nothing onto the ground.

There’s a hand on your back, heavy and warm. Mando. He’s murmuring something, asking you something maybe. You hear the name he calls you mixed in with the words. You aren’t sure if it’s Basic or Mando’a. Then he pulls you up, puts you on your feet. He inspects your face, your chest, your arms. Looking for wounds. You can’t hear him over the ringing in your ears. He grabs your arm and turns and then you’re both trekking through the forest. The Mandalorian pulls you ahead through the mist and the darkness. You stumble blindly behind him.

You walk for hours. The sweat cools on your skin in the damp, cold air, until you’re shivering even in your thick jacket. You wait for the ringing in your ears to stop but it never does. You don’t hear the sound of the Mandalorian’s boots crunching through the undergrowth, or the cries of the kid, although you’re sure you should hear both. It’s like the world is slipping further and further away and trying to hold onto it is like watching sand slip between your fingers. The exhaustion presses against you, until you realise it’s not just exhaustion. Your skin feels too tight, itchy. It must be morning again, you think, but the darkness doesn’t lift. You don’t know how Mando sees but you let him lead you through the forest, hoping whatever he is using to navigate through the trees is taking you both back to the Crest. It’s all you can do to keep your eyes open and your feet moving. You can feel yourself dropping in and out of darkness.

“Come on,” he grunts in your ear. Close, you think. So close. The modulator hisses. “Almost there, Gotabor, come on. Stay with me.”

You feel your head loll. Things start coming in flashes. The ship, gleaming in the mist. The churning sound of the ramp lowering. The kid whimpering.

“I can’t lift you,” he says.

And you don’t know how you do it, but you manage to walk, one arm looped over his shoulders, up the ramp. The crib is still behind you. Blackness hovers at the edge of your vision. The Mandalorian gets you inside, only just far enough that he can close the ramp. He leans like he’s going to lower you, but you slip out of his grasp and hit the floor. Hard. You don’t feel anything, slump into the wall. He is standing above you, your vision is swaying. No. He is swaying.

“Sick,” you manage to get out.

The Mandalorian hits something and the ramp is lifting. He turns, gets to the ladder. He puts a hand out to grab the ladder and misses completely. Stumbles forward and just catches himself on the wall. You think he might fall. He doesn’t. You let yourself roll until you’re lying on the ground, let your forehead roll until it presses into the cool, hard floor of the ship. You wonder if you might die here, but this time the thought doesn’t bother you. You’re conscious long enough to feel the ship hum to life beneath you, and something clang and echo in the cockpit, before everything fades.

Gotabor: Engineer

Gotabor’ika: lit: little engineer. ‘ika suffix creates affectionate nickname when added to the end of noun.

Tag list: @btillys @vercopaanir

#this was meant to be a crack funny one off au and now here we are #its got chAPTERS #this is very TENSE #but it gets soft it does im just incapable of soft without tears #i haven't written anything in ages pls go easy on me everyone #if i get star wars lore wrong i am SORRY #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #reader insert #force sensitive reader #mandalorian fic #my fic #Baar Bal Runi #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin imagine #mandalorian imagine #self insert #body swap

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effdragonkiller · 4 years ago

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Jetii as an insult and why it might not be so bad.

I read this post by kaasknot last night and it literally consumed my brain.

It's an excellent examination of the linguistic quirk that differentiates Mando'ade from Jetii and why that might be.

Except, I had a seriously hard time dealing with the ramifications of Jetii being a slur. Because kaasknot was right, the vast majority of fanfiction that ships a Mando with a Jedi is going to be pulling their Mando'a from mandoa.org without any context. The implications it left for fandom were uncomfortable. So, I'm writing an argument why 'ner Jetii' as an endearment is okay. 1- I mean so long as you ignore that it's like calling your significant other by their political or religious affiliation. So, calling someone 'my Buddhist'.

1) The -ii suffix in Jetii is probably from the word aruetii, meaning traitor, foreigner, outsider. But instead of focusing on the definition as traitor, I would like to use it for outsider, because here's what I think: Mando'ade are a clan based people who have a habit of holding themselves distinct from the rest of the galaxy. This isn't rare, the Jedi do this as well, but consider the additional evidence of the civil war between the traditionalists and the New Mandalorians.

There's a lot of evidence that culturally, Mando'ade aren't good at seeing other perspectives. The New Mandalorians tend to look down on anyone who follows the old ways and the traditionalist tend to see the pacifists as having given up everything that made them Mando'ade. In fact, the adoption rite for Mando'ade is called the 'gai bal manda' which literally means the 'name and soul'. Implying that by not being Mando'ade that you don't have a soul.

That's some next level othering, right there. Not uncommon in human history; there is a large body of evidence that supports the fact that many tribes and clans in human history are only known by what other people call them. There own labels for themselves often something like ‘the people’. This is the same difference between Mandalorian and Mando'ade in canon. I don't think that there's any evidence to contradict the idea that the only people Mando'ade might refer to as 'the people of' are themselves.

2) kaasknot talked about how 'traat'ad' might be a less insulting term than Jetii, but I have some objections. 1- I think that the Jedi would be more uncomfortable being called the children of the force than being labelled an outsider. The Jedi are outsiders. They know, understand, and perpetuate their status as outsiders so that they can more effectively work as a neutral authority. But in Mando'a the 'traat' in 'traat'ad' comes from the same term used in special forces, squad, and army. The force denoting physical violence, and I think that Jedi, who hated being Generals and who praised those who could come to a non-violent solution, would shudder at being called 'traat'ad'. 2- Regardless of whether the -ii suffix is insulting or not, Jetii is closest to what the Jedi call themselves. There is more respect in trying to say the right word with the wrong accent than calling an entire group of people something else. A- Let's not even get into the fact that 'Egypt' is 110% the wrong name for the country with the ancient pyramids and why, in an era of being politically correct and emotionally inclusive, has it not been changed?!?

3) Language changes, and different words mean different things to different people. There are a lot of excellent examples of this in English. Chuffed, for example, means two completely contradictory things at the exact same time. And to be gay originally meant to be happy, merry, and joyful. It had nothing to do with sexual orientation the way it does now.

Linguistic drift happens in real languages. It's not even particularly rare. If Jetii was originally a slur against the Jedi formed from over a thousand years of conflict between Jedi and Mando'ade, that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

Additionally, context is also important, because while the Clone Troopers are raised with the Resol'nare as much as possible they aren't actually Mando'ade. They were created by Jango Fett as part of a plot against the Jedi by the Sith and were trained to revere the Jedi who would lead them into battle. That is an enormously different context than almost anyone else saying the term in canon.

So in summary, basically, if you want to use 'ner Jetii' as a term of endearment, go for it. Just, you know, maybe think about the fact that it's like calling someone 'my Buddhist'.

- In case you got this far, no I don't have footnotes or references. Yes, I know this is bad essay-form.

I made a lot of assumptions in this about canon or based on evidence from what is now the Legends universe and therefore no longer strictly canon... I don't really want to hear anything about it.

If you have made it all the way to the end and still haven't read kaasknot’s much more well written post on Jetii as an insult, it can be found here.

#mando'a #mandalorian culture #mando'ade culture #Eff's opinion #Eff thinks too much #Eff has opinions about everything

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sometimes-i-right · 4 years ago

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Was digging through my notes and found this discarded scene from Mand’alor bal Kaysh Vod’ika. Obi-Wan’s verd’goten was originally a single chapter featuring a hunt on Mandalore, but I scrapped that in favor of the Xanatos hunt published on AO3. Of course that decision was made after I had already written 3k words, so enjoy the scrapped scene after the break. (The original arc also involved a completely original mission where Obi-Wan crossed paths with Luminara and her master. I may use bits and pieces of that mission in a future arc.)

This chapter originally had another 500 or so words where Obi-Wan is adopted by a strill puppy. I think those words got deleted, since the only evidence is a pro/con list and the single “protect” emotion from the strill parent.

Obi-Wan wasn't sure what he expected Mandalore to look like, but it wasn't this. Large swathes of the southern hemisphere had been bombarded from space, leaving enormous puckered black scars across a golden desert. The desert was relatively new, or so Jango said, a result of the bombardment destroying the natural ecosystem and leaving the area uninhabitable without sophisticated environmental domes.

The northern hemisphere had been miraculously spared - and that alone had probably kept the planet capable of supporting humanoid life - leaving a glimpse of the Mandalore of old. Forests and mountains blanketed the area, making it difficult to carve out enough space for a single clan, let alone a city or proper landing pad.

Jango guided Jaster's Legacy in for a lopsided landing between an evergreen forest and the start of yet another mountain range, a feat Obi-Wan was glad he didn't have to perform. "Wayii," he exclaimed softly upon exiting the ship, eyebrows rising in awe at the way the Legacy was perched atop three boulders like a giant bird of prey.

"It just takes practice," Jango assured, voice modulator hiding most of the amusement Obi-Wan could feel from him. "Now, your verd'goten," he started and Obi-Wan snapped his attention over. "Traditionally, the two of us would disappear into the wilderness while the rest of Clan Fett tried to catch and defeat you. Seeing as that's not an option, we'll have to test your warrior skills another way."

Obi-Wan swallowed his nerves and nodded seriously.

"In these forests are a number of dangerous predators. Your task is to hunt a strill," he stated and Obi-Wan tilted his head in question. "They're an apex predator native to these forests. Highly intelligent, mammalian, with an unmistakable stench and six legs. Tend to pounce from high trees," he warned, grinning when Obi-Wan nervously glanced at the tree line.

Those were some very tall trees.

"I'll be with you to make sure you don't die, but this is your hunt," Jango finished. "Be sure to take whatever you need from the ship."

"I don't suppose there's a strill tracker?" Obi-Wan quipped before studying the forest. He had taken the basic survival courses all Initiates took. He had the Force. If things went to absolute bathashit, he had Jango.

He could do this.

He set off into the forest with a light pack, a single blaster, and a survival knife. He had contemplated grabbing more supplies - enough provisions for a week, more weapons, a full temporary shelter and bedroll - but had ultimately decided against it. This was a test. He wouldn't take the easy way out.

The forest was eerie and peaceful at the same time. Insects chirped and screamed all around him, blocking out the softer padding sounds of small prey animals and his own two feet. Branches snapped and shook from the breeze and various creatures going about their lives. The scent of pine and rotting foliage sat heavy in his lungs.

He trudged on.

The sun filtered through the sturdy veshok trees and warmed patches of undergrowth. Obi-Wan paused in one, absorbing the heat and breathing out his tension. Breathed in peace, and exhaled his uncertainty. Inhaled fresh air and exhaled his nerves.

He stretched out his senses.

Jango stopped fifty yards away, preternaturally still in the way all predators were. He was calm, patient, warm, but ready to spring into action at the slightest signal. His own senses - and likely his sensors - were on high alert, searching for any indication that Obi-Wan needed his help.

Obi-Wan would not need his help. Not for this. He would make Jango proud.

A rapid heartbeat and softly padding feet off to one side, a flicker of life just as wary and alert as Obi-Wan was. He brushed against that dim light, identifying it as a small herbivore. A prey animal, calculating in its own simple way whether it wanted to flee or continue munching the sweet vorpan berries.

Another flicker of life overhead, this one sleeping. A good thing, too, since there was an aura of danger and barely leashed violence tucked behind those brown wings. Obi-Wan would not put it past this particular creature to attack, and possibly kill, humans if it felt the desire. He sent a soft sleep suggestion to it and warily turned his attention elsewhere, though part of him kept it firmly in mind.

Something nudged his arm, and Obi-Wan's eyes snapped open. A cold black nose attached to a long triangular face nudged his arm again, and Obi-Wan huffed a soft laugh. He slowly, carefully reached up to pet the shatual's head and scratch the base of the wide antlers, gaze flickering over the herd that had decided to come meet him.

"Hello there," he greeted quietly, belatedly realizing he had been projecting peace into the Force in his attempts to keep the predator bird overhead asleep. No wonder the herd had come up to him. "You're a brave little fellow, aren't you?"

Jango shifted, and the shatual herd stiffened, heads all swiveling to stare at the Mandalorian. Obi-Wan jerked back to avoid getting clocked by his new friend's bony crown.

The largest shatual made a guttural sound, and Obi-Wan scrambled away as the herd abruptly fled.

A mix of exasperation, disbelief, and humor prompted Obi-Wan to turn, a bemused if chiding look on his face. "Thanks for that," he snarked, staring pointedly at the blaster Jango had drawn.

"This happen a lot?" Jango asked evenly as he stowed the weapon.

"Not generally. I think I was projecting and they got curious," Obi-Wan admitted. "We should move on. I think that's a shriek-hawk overhead, which means a strill wouldn't be welcome here."

There was a brief pause as Jango consulted his HUD. "Good eye," he confirmed.

Obi-Wan smiled as he wandered deeper into the woods, the Force guiding his steps.

They stalked through the forest for hours, Obi-Wan picking out what plants he thought were safe for foraging and Jango verifying their safety. Whether that was cheating, Obi-Wan didn't care to examine too closely. He knew how to test whether a plant was edible. Using Jango's knowledge simply kept the man from worrying at Obi-Wan's naturally small appetite.

There were no repeats of the shatual herd incident, though Obi-Wan may have used a small Force suggestion to lure a rabbit for latemeal. He only felt mildly guilty about using the Force in such a way as Jango helped him field dress and roast the animal.

Camp was a simple affair; a pile of dry leaves, a small fire, and a blanket to keep the morning dew off. Jango didn't even bother with the blanket, relying instead on his beskar'gam to keep him warm and dry. Part of Obi-Wan was jealous, the rest of him knew he would get his own suit soon.

The next day came bright and early, complete with Obi-Wan gasping from a half-forgotten nightmare and Jango groaning about a night on the hard ground. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and would have thrown a pillow if he had one; the ground was not that much harder than the shared blanket pile they were experimenting with on the Legacy.

They wandered onwards, Obi-Wan following the vague currents of the Force as best he could. It was difficult to tell where exactly he was meant to go. The Living Force had never been his strong suit, and the Force felt especially elusive in this old, scarred forest. This was a place teeming with life tempered by a looming expectation of danger; these were survivors, determined to eke out a living among the jagged rocks and scraggly trees and the heavy weight of death.

He shivered as he crested another boulder.

The vague feeling of alarm and the sound of rustling trees alerted him to animals fleeing something. He turned, stretching his senses out.

A breeze ruffled his hair, and Obi-Wan nearly gagged at the stench it carried. Like rotting meat and Vos's training tunics and unwashed bodies all mixed together. He hastily switched to breathing through his mouth, and nearly gagged again as he realized he could taste the stink.

He glanced back at Jango, a disgusted look on his face. 'Is that what I think it is?'

Amusement spiked, and Jango inclined his head. 'Yes.'

Obi-Wan scowled and crept towards the strill, drawing both his vibroblade and blaster. He reached out with the Force, recognizing a spark of animal intelligence just ahead, mind bright with happiness and victory at a successful kill.

The strill was just as ugly as it smelled. Short gray fur bristled across its flappy skin as it tore into the downed shatual. Its front four legs held the shatual in place as it systemically tore the beast into shreds, blood and viscera spreading from the corpse in a gory puddle.

Obi-Wan swallowed roughly and raised his blaster.

Something - the wind, maybe - alerted the predator of his presence as its head snapped up, snarling. The Force barely had time to flare in warning before the strill pounced, fangs and claws extended.

Obi-Wan shouted in surprise and thrust one hand out, catching the strill with the Force, pushing it back, and buying him precious seconds to scramble to his feet.

The strill snarled as it landed, prowling around him in a wide arc. Obi-Wan raised his blaster and aimed for the creature's center of mass, Force at the ready for any unexpected surprises. The Force trilled right as the strill leapt, and Obi-Wan twisted to one side, blaster landing a fiery score across the loose skin of the strill's underbelly.

He cursed under his breath. That would only make the animal angrier.

The strill snarled as it landed and immediately bounded up a nearby tree. Obi-Wan shifted closer to the shatual body, tracking the strill as it jumped from tree to tree around him.

He dove to one side as the strill fell almost on top of him, blaster snapping out three quick bolts. The strill whimpered as it landed, and Obi-Wan frowned as he realized he had only caught one of the six legs instead of the animal's vulnerable chest.

It would hurt, but it wouldn't incapacitate.

Apparently it hurt enough, as the strill picked up its injured leg and fled into the forest. Obi-Wan grit his teeth and followed, eyes scanning everywhere for disturbed foliage and blood.

Despite the injury, the strill was fast, quickly disappearing among the veshok trees. Obi-Wan reached out with the Force, searching for that combination of intelligence and anger/hurt/fear/hunger that was the strill among similar animal minds.

He scowled as he felt the strill escape to the edge of his awareness. If he were better with the Force - if he were a real Jedi - he would be able to feel it out from across the planet. He picked up the pace, using the Force to vault himself over a downed tree and enhance his speed.

But it was no good. The strill was clever and knew the forest better than Obi-Wan did. He drew to a stop, panting, as he recognized that his target had escaped.

As he caught his breath, he realized Jango was nowhere to be seen. He frowned, reaching out with the Force for the familiar presence, but only finding the relatively dull glimmers of animals instead. He reached for his commlink and paused.

He wasn't asking for help. He wouldn't. Not for this.

He could do this. Jango thought he could do this, so he could do this. He would not let Jango down.

He flipped a switch on the device allowing it to broadcast his location, and tucked it back in his belt pouch. Whether Jango needed the tracking signal or not, it settled something deep inside knowing Jango would absolutely be able to find him.

And if the strill did kill him, at least Jango would be able to find his corpse.

With that cheery thought, Obi-Wan carefully examined his surroundings. There, off to the side and high in the trees, were what looked like claw marks, and lower on the trunk were a few spatters of blood.

He followed those signs for some distance, trusting the Force to keep him mostly pointed in the right direction and his own eyes the rest of the way, and emerged in a small rocky clearing. He scoured the lichen covered rock for the telltale blood spots he had been following, and headed back into the forest.

As he came upon a small rocky clearing, he was forced to admit the strill was far more clever than he had given credit. He drew his knife, marked the false trail, and tried a different path.

The third time he entered the small rocky clearing, Jango was waiting for him.

"Not a word," Obi-Wan demanded, finally locating what he hoped was the real trail.

Jango didn't move, but he also didn't say a word, so Obi-Wan counted that as a win. He determinedly ignored whatever emotions Jango was bleeding into the Force.

The third path led him into the foothills of a mountain and down into a shallow stream. He scowled at the cheery water feature, just knowing the strill had used that to well and truly lose him.

"Do you have a plan?" Jango asked as he drew close.

Obi-Wan sighed, releasing his frustration to the Force, and took a seat on a conveniently flat rock. "We weren't taught more than basic tracking skills," Obi-Wan admitted, "but I did spend a lot of time hiding from and chasing down my friends in the creche. Whenever someone got really good at hiding, we could generally locate them if we meditated and really focused, so I'm going to give that a shot."

"Does that work for anyone?"

Obi-Wan shrugged. "The better you know who you're searching for, the easier it gets. I got a decent feel for the strill while we were fighting, so with some luck I should be able to find it. At least, I should, as long as it hasn't gone too far away," which they both knew was unlikely given the strill's injury.

Jango didn't have anything to say to that, so Obi-Wan closed his eyes and drew the Force around him. Energy swelled, and Obi-Wan concentrated, dragging his attention away from Jango's bright light to pick through the dimmer threads surrounding them.

His attention slid to a knot of threads vaguely resembling his target and a herd of shatuale. The strill-thread watched closely, its focus on the runt-thread at the back of the herd with the gimp leg, as the herd gathered at a sizeable bush. The runt dropped its head to gather some berries, and the strill pounced, air catching the gliding skin between its legs and depositing the predator's claws on the shatual's neck.

The shatuale-threads panicked, bolted, and fled, leaving the strill-thread and the dying shatual-thread behind but not forgotten. As Obi-Wan watched, the shatual-thread frayed and split, the pieces carried away on some indiscernible breeze to tangle themselves with the shatuale herd and the strill ripping strips out of an empty shell.

And those scattered threads suddenly contracted, bright and solid and demanding, dragging the herd and the strill-thread, now frayed in places, together. He watched as the mess of threads collided and tangled, forming some knotted mess he could hardly pick apart before it suddenly dispersed, leaving only a few frayed remains behind.

He frowned at the unhelpful vision. Something - the Force? - frowned right back.

He prodded at the frayed remains and felt a flash of very animal alarm/protect/hunt in return.

He kept that thread firmly in mind as he carefully eased himself from the Force.

"Find something?" Jango asked evenly, though after his latest deep meditation the man might as well have been screaming his worry, curiosity, and fascination to the galaxy for all he was masking the emotions.

"I think so," Obi-Wan answered, rising to his feet and nearly tumbling to the ground as his vision temporarily blacked out. "Whoa. How long was I out?"

"Four hours," Jango answered, stowing the blaster he had been cleaning. He fished a nutribar from one of his numerous pouches and threw it at Obi-Wan. "Eat and drink. The water is safe."

Obi-Wan scowled but obediently bit down on the dry bar before chasing it with water and venturing back into the forest. The strill-thread felt different outside that plane of deep meditation, but he had a direction to follow and he wasn't about to let it slip away again.

He almost wished he had waited to finish the nutribar before chasing the strill. His mouth felt sandy, and he hadn't thought to fill a canteen before leaving the stream behind.

The strill-thread remained steady in his mind, and he couldn't help the slight increase in pace as he caught the first pungent whiff of the beast. He cloaked himself in the Force as if he were hiding from Quin and approached slowly, senses straining for any sign the strill knew he was approaching.

He heard growling and an answering whuff just ahead. He ducked down, drawing his blaster and checking the Force. Jango was still several meters away, and it felt like the strill was distracted by a sizeable herd of angry shatuale.

Angry herbivores. That was not something he would have expected.

The lead shatual ducked its head, antlers pointed straight at the strill, and whuffed another warning. The strill growled and darted forwards, forward paws raised to slash.

Obi-Wan could only watch as the shatual charged, caught the strill in the points of its antlers, and tossed it aside like trash. The other shatuale dropped their heads and followed suit, hooves trampling the strill into the dirt. The lead shatual stopped long enough to study its target, whuffed and pawed at the ground, and tossed its head in victory as the strill whined pathetically.

He sat stunned for a moment, not sure what he was supposed to do as the shatuale proudly left the area. He was supposed to hunt the strill, but a herd of prey animals came and did the deed for him. Did it count if he tracked it, fought it, and ultimately didn't kill it?

But no, the poor animal wasn't dead yet.

He could feel the creature's pain, see how it struggled to breathe around a crushed ribcage. Its limbs were shattered in multiple locations, the grey fur already matted with blood where its thick skin had burst. The shatuale hadn't killed the strill, but there was no way the strill would survive much longer.

He felt a swell of pity for the thing as he approached. There was no way he could help it; even if he had enough bacta on him (which he definitely didn't), the creature would sooner kill him than let him approach.

He met the animal's gold eyes, unfocused and cloudy though they were, and tried to press peace and comfort on its mind. Something stirred and weakly nudged against his mind, leaving an impression of pain/sad/hungry.

The strill released a wet whine and blood burbled past its lips. Obi-Wan closed his eyes in mourning, pressed a suggestion to sleep on the rapidly weakening creature, and shot it clean between the eyes.

It really was a mercy this time.

He rose to his feet as he heard Jango approach. "I killed it, but a herd of shatuale did most of the work first," he blurted out, stowing his blaster.

Jango came to stop next to him, staring down at the corpse before turning his helmeted face towards him. "That's okay," Jango said. "I told you before, the verd'goten is traditionally a hunt between clan members. This was a test to see how advanced your survival and fighting skills were, and based on what I've seen, you're more than skilled enough." He smiled behind the helmet, one hand resting proudly on Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Congratulations, verd."

Verd. Soldier. Warrior.

Jango's smile became tender as he squeezed Obi-Wan's shoulder. "I'm proud of you, vod."

Obi-Wan beamed.

#My writing #mand'alor bal kaysh vod'ika #deleted scenes #disney princess obi-wan kenobi #endlessly amused jango fett #not fully edited #jango complained about sleeping on the ground to distract obi-wan from his nightmare

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jonathananubian · 4 years ago

Text

Cuun Tracinya [SWs Fanfic]

I’ll only be posting the first chapter here. The rest will be on AO3.

Synopsis: Kote was raised to believe the jedi were near gods of infinite power who only accepted the best of the best. But when he meets an injured soft eyed man with coppery hair and a sweet smile- he realizes that jedi are more fragile than he'd been led to believe.

Something about this man, his gentle sincerity, endless kindness, and fiery determination, calls out to him. Calls out to all of the vode. They were told they were created for the jedi. But Kote can't help but thinking that maybe... it was the jedi who were made for them.

Tags: Alien biology, Taung ancestry, obsessive and possessive behavior, dubious morality, clone culture and pack dynamics/hierarchy. Characters: Obi-wan, Cody, Rex, the 212th Pairings: Obi-wan/Cody, Obi-wan/Rex, Obi-wan/212th Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26782984/chapters/65336146

The first thing they learned as cadets was that they were made for the Jedi. All powerful and aloof beings that would find them wanting if they weren’t good enough, fast enough, strong enough, or smart enough. The second thing they learned was what happened to those who didn’t make the cut. The brothers who disappeared one cycle and never returned. The ones with the wrong color of hair or eyes, the ones who had trouble learning, the ones whose hands shook when they whispered late at night ‘I can’t do this anymore.’

Nothing but the best would do for the Jedi.

Rising through all of that was a near impossible task and yet some vode found solace in the struggle, in the challenge. Kote was one of them. Jango himself had named the future clone commander after a particularly nasty test called the Gauntlet. Kote had stood tall against the challengers and held his position at the top, never allowing a single vod or even trainer to unseat him. He was moved straight to the command track the next day.

As they grew they were introduced more and more to the idea of Jedi and what serving the Republic would be like. Soldiers, they were, and fighting was in their blood. But something struck Kote as odd. What he could find of the Jedi painted them not as war heroes but as some kind of peace keeper. He began to wonder why the Jedi, powerful beings of near limitless power with the ability to move things with their mind, would need an army. If one of them was worth an entire battalion… then why were there battalions to begin with?

The first time he saw a Jedi he knew immediately who and what they were. Brown robes, soaked from the rain, and pale skin that could barely be seen from under the wide hood. A thrill of anticipation ran through him. He had so many questions he wanted to ask, so many things he needed to know.

Then the hood came down and he froze. Copper locks, the likes of which he’d never seen before, and liquid blue eyes that made his heart speed in his chest. “Huh, Stewjoni. Don’t see that every day.” Two of the trainers had been doing a review of the troops, pitting them against each other in some sort of game to see how well they could think on the field. Both of them stopped to watch the Jedi as they passed. “Wonder how the Jetii manage to keep them away from all the slavers. Stewjoni are a rare breed.” Kote’s eyes followed the Jedi until they were out of sight- he needed to do research.

Stewjoni, it turns out, were a race of near-humans who were known for their high fertility and advanced adaptability. They could survive, and even thrive, almost anywhere. Them being a Jedi just made all the more sense to him now. And yet… the Jedi had looked so small next to the Kaminoans. There was something almost meek and gentle about them that made Kote frown in concern. He hoped he would be able to see them again and ask all the questions burning a hole in his mind.

Kote, and a large chunk of the command class, had never really put much stock in the Force or the Manda the trainers occasionally spoke about. So when he came across the Jedi again on his way to a class he was stunned still for a moment. The Jedi, who really needed a name, leaned against the white walls as if trying to keep themselves standing. Their cloak was gone and their uniform was soaked through, as if they’d decided to take a swim in the raging ocean below. Their hair was almost the color of blood and there was a bruise on their cheek. Kote started when he realized they were wounded.

“Sir!” The Jedi turned to look at him and fear crossed their face for a moment before it was hidden behind a blank mask. Kote knew that expression well and it shocked him to the core to see it one someone who was supposed to be his superior. “Let me help you to medical, Sir.” He said quietly, holding up his hands in a placating gesture often used on the more skittish of the young cadets. The Jedi gave him a small smile, trying to wave him off.

“Oh, no, I am perfectly fine. No need to see a medic. I’m only catching my breath.” They looked up at him, straightening, and Kote was surprised to find the Jedi was smaller than he was. Not by much, but it was enough. Funny, he’d never thought they would be smaller than he and his brothers. “Your, um, template?” The question was tentative, as if the Jedi wasn’t quite sure how to ask.

“The Prime.” Kote answered easily enough, liking the way the Jedi’s expression softened to appreciation.

“Ah, yes, thank you. The Prime, that is Jango, and I had a bit of a disagreement. I’m afraid my ship was utterly destroyed before he tossed me into the ocean.” There was a lightness to their voice, a hint of humor. It almost made him ignore the statement itself. Almost.

“The Prime did what!?” The Jedi shrank back slightly, as if worried about his reaction to the news. Honestly Kote was surprised he could read the nearly inexistent body language, especially with the loose clothing they were wearing. But there was something so expressive about their eyes, something that drew him in. “Sir, please at least let one of my medics check you over.” Knowing that the Jedi were supposedly mind readers he tried to force sincerity and concern into every single word. The Jedi shuddered slightly and licked his lips before slowly nodding. In relief Kote reached out and took the Jedi’s nearest arm, putting it over his neck and slipping an arm around the Jedi’s back to help him walk.

“This is completely unnecessary, you… ah.” Kote looked down at them when they faltered, finding the slight flush of their skin to be endearing. “I’m afraid I didn’t get your name.” Kote frowned slightly.

“Sorry, Sir. I am CC-2224.” There was a very pointed silence for a moment that he could almost feel. The hand over his shoulder clung even harder to his armor for a moment. “Or… you could call me Kote, if you prefer.” It was a risk, a gamble. There was no reason to believe a Jedi would care about something so simple as a name. Yet the relieved smile he received was enough to make his tense shoulders relax.

“Thank you for trusting me with your name, Kote.” The Jedi blinked for a moment, then frowned. “Is it Cody, or Glory? Like Darasuum Kote?” Hearing the Mando’a fall from their soft lips so easily made something light up inside him, something he couldn’t explain or control. He had to swallow hard past the sudden lump in his throat in order to reply.

“Bal kote, darasuum kote.” He murmured, feeling the tips of his ears burn.

“Suvarir. Kote it is.” They paused and a sheepish look crossed their face. “My name is Obi-wan Kenobi, He/Him, I am a Knight of the Jedi Order.” Kote tilted his head, wondering what that was in terms of rank. The Jedi were supposed to be their Generals, so he suspected it was something in that vein. He also didn’t miss how the Jedi had labeled himself as male, or at the very least using male terms. Kote would have to be sure to use them. Some of the trainers got particularly incensed when you messed up and called them by the wrong term.

As they walked further into Tipoca city every brother they passed quickly snapped to attention, trying desperately to hide the surprise and glee at finally seeing a Jedi in their midst before realizing that he was hurt. Even without looking Kote could just feel the sudden worry and concern, like a tangible sensation against his skin. Under his arm the Jedi shivered, although he couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or from the thoughts of his brothers around them. Eventually he sat them down in a common area and barked for a medic. The battalions had been assigned for half a year now, so everyone already knew their place. Where Kote went the rest of his battalion wasn’t far behind. So it wasn’t really a surprise when Stitch practically materialized next to them and began to fuss.

“Sir, what happened to you?” There was a hush as the clones waited to hear the Jedi speak. Kote already knew what his voice sounded like and even he was excited to hear that voice once again. The Jedi looked around at them wide eyed and politely cleared his throat.

“As I was telling Kote on the way here. I had a… disagreement with the Prime.” He glanced to Kote, as if trying to gauge whether he’d said it right. Kote gave him a small nod of acknowledgment and the Jedi continued. “We fought and my ship was destroyed. I ended up in the ocean, it was all quite unpleasant.” The hushed anticipation turned to awe. Even with their superior genetics none of them had ever been able to go toe to toe with the Prime. The fact that the Jedi didn’t have any broken limbs or was bleeding out all over the floor was impressive to say the least.

Stitch tugged at the Jedi’s clothes and got an annoyed look in response. The medic just scowled imperiously. “Sir, I can’t check you over properly unless you remove your… tops.” They weren’t quite sure what to call the loose cloth that covered the Jedi but it was obviously in the way. Seeing no objections, no one to back him up, the Jedi let out a sigh and finally complied. Kote tried not to stare at the pale scarred flesh, only focusing on the spreading yellow bruise over his right side. For the first time in his life he felt a small pang of jealousy as Stitch ran careful fingers over pale skin.

“Sir, you have at least three cracked ribs, multiple contusions, and a twisted ankle. I can administer a pain killer and some bacta, but that’s the best I can do at this time. I’m only a medic.” The Jedi smiled and shook his head.

“Really, there’s no need, I’ll be f-”

“What’s all this?” An unwanted voice called into the quiet moment of awe. Kote clenched his fists even as he straightened in response to a voice that he had been taught to obey. Sergeant Priest shoved past the troopers milling about. The man stopped once he could finally see the Jedi and his face contorted with disdain. “Jetii!” He hissed, reaching for his weapon.

Without a second thought three of the vode tackled the training sergeant to the floor. It didn’t matter if they were scared of him, it didn’t matter that he had a weapon and they had none, Priest had attempted to attack the Jedi. The Jedi who had been wounded in a previous fight and was sitting there amongst them, looking small and vulnerable. All of their instincts kicked in as the need to protect the Jedi took over.

“Get off of me!” The sergeant growled, trying to kick and punch the vode who were holding him down. The Jedi rose from the bench and moved closer to the struggling men. Kote wanted to reach out and stop him but found himself rooted to the spot when those blue eyes darkened to a stormy gray. Priest stopped moving and glared up at the Jedi. “You’re Kryze’s pet jetii, dar’manda whore!” He spat, face reddening with anger and strain. The Jedi stiffened in surprise before reaching out a hand and holding it above the sergeant’s face.

“Sleep.” Sergeant Priest shook his head vigorously, though his struggles were becoming weaker. “Go to sleep.” The Jedi wasn’t loud or even particularly forceful but there was something firm in his voice that felt unnatural, otherworldly. Priest’s eyes rolled back slightly before he slumped to the ground, unconscious. Whatever he’d done had rendered the man no longer a threat. The vode who had been holding onto him relaxed and slowly got up.

“Sir, we’ll see to it he’s locked up.” The Jedi smiled, though he wavered slightly on the spot.

“Thank you. I don’t want him to hurt anyone else.” There was a pause and a sigh. “I didn’t think that Jango Fett would allow Kyr’tsad anywhere near him, let alone allow someone like that to train his…” He shook his head almost sadly before he seemed to remember he had an audience.

Now that the danger was over there was more than one vod whose eyes were slowly trailing over his still unclothed chest and back. The Jedi’s face flushed beneath his beard and he shuffled nervously on his feet for a moment. “Sir, sit down and let me do my job. You need bacta. I’m worried about that sprain.” Thankfully Stitch was a persistent bastard of a vod and quickly hustled the Jedi back to the bench.

“Kote!” Turning he spied his favourite brother and smiled. Rex was a little winded, he’d probably run the entire way. Skidding to a stop next to him his brother opened his mouth to ask a question but stopped. His eyes had continued onward toward the odd splash of color in their midst and suddenly whatever his brother had meant to ask was gone to the void. Rex’s mouth hung open as he gaped at the half naked Jedi. Kote nudged him with an elbow and Rex shook for a moment, as if pulling himself out of a daydream.

“Is that-” Kote nodded.

‘Jedi. Mine. Get your own.’ It was only meant to be a playful jab, a throwaway joke, but something deep in his mind curled around the idea, clinging to it. The clones had been made for the Jedi, of course they would belong to them. But… why? Why did they need the clones if they were so powerful? He knew the Kaminoans were constantly lying, during testing, during class. Even the training sergeants disliked and distrusted the Kaminoans. So why should they blindly believe-

His brother responded by slapping him on the back of the head, which immediately broke through his thoughts. He glared at Rex, who gave him a cheeky smirk in return.

“Oh, hello there.” That soft voice called out to them. Rex turned to look at the Jedi and froze, expression carefully blank. Kote knew he was worried what the Jedi would think of him. After all the strict training and harsh testing Rex had been through, solely due to the color of his hair, he knew his brother was expecting to be found wanting. Even if he was one of the most talented vode.

“Sir.” Rex said, sanding at attention. The Jedi’s smile faltered slightly for a moment but it quickly returned.

“Who might you be?” Rex glanced at Kote, who signed a quick ‘designation,’ at him. His brother took a breath.

“CT-75-” The Jedi waved his hand in the air and Rex’s mouth shut with a snap.

“Oh, no, I… if you happen to have a name you prefer? I would be more than happy to use it.” Kote watched Rex as his brother digested the Jedi’s words before giving a slow, wary, nod.

“Rex.” The smile his brother received was one that Kote would be unable to forget as long as he lived. It was like seeing the sun for the first time.

“Oh thank the force! Please, if you all have names I would be honored to use them. None of this numbers business.” He faltered slightly, looking around. “Unless of course you prefer your numbers, in which case I will honor your decision and do my best to remember.” It was like a shock wave went through them. No one had ever told them they had a choice before.

“Thank you, Sir.” The Jedi looked up at him oddly, a slight frown on his lips.

“For what, Kote?” Stars, he could get used to hearing his name in that soft lilting voice.

“For using our names.” For giving them the choice to use them. A fierce look came over the Jedi and he stood, arms crossed over his chest.

“It’s what you all should have had from the beginning. You are all sentient beings with your own thoughts, feelings, and preferences. Each and every one of you shines differently in the force. You may look alike on the surface, Kote, but you are all unique.” A hush fell over them all as he spoke. There was a fire inside the Jedi that touched something within them, setting the tinder in their souls aflame.

“Sir.” Kote said, stepping closer and giving a proper salute. “We are at your command.” His, and no one else’s. Kote had already decided. This Jedi was his and he would kill anyone who tried to get in his way.

#star wars #fanfiction #Obi-Wan Kenobi #commander cody #captain rex #codexwan #212th attack battalion #alien biology #taung ancestry #obsessive behaviour #possessive behavior #clone culture #pack dynamics #pack hierarchy #darkfic #dubious morality

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yousoseelie · 4 years ago

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THE MANDALORIAN, EPISODE 6

IT’S TIME IT’S TIME IT’S MANDO’A TIME

I swear to god I will catch this shit up lmfao. Cut as usual!

THE MANDALORIAN, EPISODE 6

The Prisoner Te Mirci’t The Prisoner

Ran.

I’ll be fine. Ni ven’cuy jate. I will be good.

So, what’s the job? Tion’meg bora? What job?

The ship wasn’t part of the deal. Ner me’sen nu’cuy o’r koor. My ship isn’t in deal.

That was a long time ago. Ibac ru’cuy ori’chaaj’yc ruyot. That was very far history.

You tell me. Gar rejorhaa’i ni. You tell me.

That’s not saying much. Ibac nu’jorhaa’i osik. That not saying shit.

I thought you said you had four. Ni r’urmankala gar ru’jorhaa’i gar gana cuir? I believed you said you have four?

Xi’an.

Nice to see you, too. Jate haa’tayli gar balyc. Good seeing you too.

That’s a New Republic prison ship. Ibac cuy’ Evaar’la Tsad Droten mircin me’sen. That is New Republic cage ship.

Your man wasn’t taken by a rival syndicate. He was arrested. Gar jag nu’ru’hiibi de aru’ela chaavla tsad. Kaysh ru’alor’mirci. Your man was not taken by enemy criminal group. He was arrested.

That’s a max security transport and I’m not looking for that kinda heat. Ibac cuy’ ani’morut’yc juri’ad bal ni nu’copaani par mayen bid nadala ibac. That is total-secure carrier and I not want for anything as hot as that.

It’s not possible. Not even for the Crest. Nu draar ret’yc. Nu par Kyr’bes. No never possible. Not for Crest.

How can you trust it? Tion’goyust gar lise urmankala bic ruusaanyc? How (by what road) you able to believe it trustworthy?

I did what I had to. Ni ru’nari meg ni ru’enteyo. I did what I had to.

Yeah. Something like that. ‘Lek. Get’ibac. Yeah. Almost that.

I know the drill. Ni kar’tayli aka. I know mission.

I don’t like this. Ni paguu ibic. I dislike this.

There were only supposed to be droids on this ship. Ibic me’sen c’ento gana shi beskar’ade [o’r bic]. This ship should have only droids [on it].

Easy. Udesii. Relax.

Easy. Nobody has to get hurt here. Just calm down. Udesii. Naasade enteyo cuy’ kadala olar. Shi udesii. Relax. Nobody must be hurt here. Only calm down.

It’s a tracking beacon. Bic striili’naumiit’gota. It tracking-signal-device.

Hey. Listen to me. Ad. Ke’shushi ni. Son. Listen [to] me.

Hey, hey, hey. Listen to me, okay? Nayc, nayc nayc. Sushi gar bah ni, elek? No, no, no. Listen you to me, yes?

Look. Haa’tayli. See.

Hey. Put it down. Or’dinii. Diryci bic. Moron. Put it down.

Put it down. Ke’diryci bic. Put it down. [emphatic]

What’s your name? Tion gar gai? What your name?

Davan.

We’re not here for you. We’re here for a prisoner. Mhi nu’olar par gar. Mhi olar par mirci’t. We not here for you. We here for prisoner.

If you let us go about our job, you can walk away with your life. Meh gar duumi mhi nari cuun bora, gar lise kemi be’chaaj oyayc. If you allow us do our job, you able to walk away/far alive.

You realise what you’re gonna bring down on us? Gar suvari meg ven’bana jorcu gar nare? You understand what will happen because your actions?

We’re not killing anybody. You understand? Mhi nu’kyr’amu mayade. Gar suvari? We not kill anybody. You understand?

I can’t do that. Ni nu’lise nari ibac. I cannot do that.

Don’t. Nu’nari. Not do.

Qin.

They got what they deserved. Ni ru’dinui val tor. I gave them justice.

No questions asked. That’s the policy, right? Naasad tionase ru’dinui. Ibac bora’narser, elek? Not any questions given. That work-purpose, yes?

I did the job. Ni ru’nari koor. I did contract.

Just like the good old days. Shi as jate as ruug’la tuure. Only as good as old days.

I told you that was a bad idea. Ni ru’rejorhaa’i gar ibac dush dajun. I told you that bad plan.

NEW WORDS

alor’mircir -- to arrest, from alor ‘constable’ plus mircir ‘capture’ striili’naumiit’gota -- tracking beacon, lit. “tracking signal device” as distinct from striili’gota which I have used previously as “tracking fob/device”. The latter is ‘a thing which tracks’, the former I feel is ‘a thing which makes a signal to be tracked’. Alrighty, onward and upward! K’oyacyi!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #mando'a

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neillien · 4 years ago

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Sea-change | February 2018

Thursday May 20, 2021

Here then, some grief-worthy moments I have witnessed on this stretch of the beach.

Brighton Palace Pier

situated between the Marina to the East & the British Airways i360 observation tower to the West,

fact - almost half of Brighton's residents have not visited the pier.

In total - that's 85 miles of planking, raised above water, successfully avoided by footfall.

Question: is it down to the bucket-and- spade enthusiasts to listen to the pier's innermost-scaled-metal-thoughts, or me?

notebook, page 20: Seagulls chatter flying past weather-beaten bald heads: Adidas teenagers enticed into the fun arcade will still look bored; sugar spun candyflosses; barnacles painted to look like cherries on iced donuts; empty, sagging deckchairs; the ghost train - the mock Bavarian castle, tissue paper skeletons. Rosettes for the knobbliest knees.

Optimistic man in his sunglasses when predictably the sky threatens rain.

notebook, page 26; the addicting undercurrent; I call it, the blackened urinal - it swathes, metres away. I stood facing the horizon, my back to the city, and peed into the breathless water.

[two inedible types of seaweed : bladder wrack - knotted wrack].

Detritus: Brighton is no exception. There is often interesting detritus to be beachcombed.

notebook, page 27: Human salvage,

a single rotted foot

sheathed in a shoe sauntered in on the low-tide this morning. Makes me think about anonymity - and travel.

Don’t let anyone tell you the sea is anything

other than a fucking cemetery.

Mind your step …

the regularly shifting shingle shelves deeply here there everywhere

- each wave yielding a uniquely incised memory

- carved in a couple of hours from this current angle

- reshaped entirely by a new tide.

What godforsaken detriments will the white horses spit out next?

To whose eyes am I walking towards,

whose cleft palate meets my gaze; whispers turned against me? I refer to the notebook I carry specifically for occasions like these.

The written memorandum says, II AM PARANOID

I distrust my scribblings, my inarticulable feelings.

Sometimes seeing a stranger in my stride reminds me, 'those god loves always die young' - with my better half gone this half of me knows it will be a long protracted perish, unless by my own hand.

notebook, page 28: I made

these observations without

harming myself.

notebook, page 29: rainclouds shaped like boulders, as broad as houses,

our old house-cat Emmanuelle dwells somewhere

on the upper floors of that house-cloud. The house-cloud changes shape but the story of where Emmanuelle went when she got runover doesn't alter.

notebook, page 36: girl collects

hair, hair twined round seaweed,

is she pretending its unicorn mane or clasps full of old window’s hair.

notebook, page 37: little snatches of conversation breech my shielding bulwark, they come hurling at my ears, but like a gust of wind made by a speeding train, I hear nothing 'coherent' at that speed.

I'm going nowhere, although I near the end.

There is the rollercoaster

the crescendo of pleasure on the pier … it is popular with the thrill-seekers, I won't step foot in that fire, all I see is a twisted trail of oxidised metal

and overhanging wire

ready to cut your head off.

The wind brings intermittent screams closer, and closer.

Instead to put an ear to the floor of the English Channel, listen you'll hear sweet Bal-musettes, shipping in from Dieppe, a boat returning to Newhaven.

- "Hey 'inglese' do you smoke cigarette?"

Teller of good-fortune on dull days like these, I smoke cigarettes, yes.

Frenchmen abroad are so vigorous and unstinting, I've not had disappointing sex with one yet.

Nostalgically afterwards, I'll pour myself over the pages of a Jean Genet, feeling thorns produce from the stems of paranoia, withering the little rosebush that took it bareback, watered in hepatitis, chlamydia and gonorrhoea - potentially? That's slut-shaming yourself for you. I close the book of Lady of the flowers.

notebook, page 43: some things I saw on my stroll this afternoon :

an orange industrial* latex glove, a black industrial* latex glove. I've marked the word industrial with an asterisk because I think I was going to write something about pollution.

A young woman pecking away at a text message with her index finger - she doesn't see her dog fouling on the shingle [ I feel like going back and telling her to 'go & bag it' but life's to short to be a dick telling a dick how to conscientiously dog walk when seriously already they should know how].

A young man attempting to light his cigarette, against the

blustery sea breeze.

2 boys cocooned

In a single beach-towel

laughing

shivering

try to light a damp cigarette

I didn't see them take a dip.

I decide I want it to be a summer so I can comb my boyfriend’s wet hair after a swim, comb it down so that the seawater runs from the tangles, flattening out, wet rivulets down his suntanned back.

I miss the beach being an erotic adventure,

I only ever see, all these ugly corpses lying beside me

that corpse

especially,

laying where it wants me.

You'd know how to deal with crisis

I wish you were here to take care of it all and hang me quickly before I fall in the water.

#spilled ink #prose writing #poem of sorts

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diaryofageekgirl · 4 years ago

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Mostly for myself b/c I want to make sure I don’t lose this somehow, but here’s the literal two hour conversation that @i-miss-balthazar and I spent talking about Benny/Balthazar:

i-miss-balthazar You were the Kat from my quiz??? I had no idea you shipped those pairings! And also Madison helping Sam in purgatory would’ve been way more fitting!

diaryofageekgirl Yeah I do! I have plans to do a rewrite of seasons 8 & 9, but it'll be forever before I get to them -_- And I love Madison a whole lot and would have loved to see her in Purgatory!

^What I meant by the season rewrites is I would include those ships in them lol

i-miss-balthazar You would :0

I need to read it

Please tag me, I’m BEGGING

diaryofageekgirl When I get to writing it I will!

i-miss-balthazar Do you have any Benny/Balthazar head canons???

diaryofageekgirl I could also write you a Benny/Balthazar one shot.......on a completely unrelated note, when's your birthday? 👀

i-miss-balthazar April 28th and that would make my entire year oh my goodness there isn’t enough Benny/Balthazar content out there

diaryofageekgirl 👌

i-miss-balthazar I didn’t mean to ship them so much it kinda just happened

Maybe I just want them to feel loved 😂

diaryofageekgirl I see Benny as someone who's very openly affectionate, and Balthazar as being someone who craves affection but sort of hides behind a sarcastic front? So Benny just s l o w l y wears him down into accepting all this love and adoration and Bal pretending to hate it but is secretly melting

oh mood

i-miss-balthazar Oh my goodness my HEART 🥺 that’s the sweetest headcanon ever and I totally see it. Benny would give the best hugs, I think.Balthazar’s 100% a little spoon xD

diaryofageekgirl He's got big strong arms - great for hugging & being the big spoon 😉

i-miss-balthazar For some reason I feel like Benny is taller than he actually is? Like I looked it up and Ty Olsson is only 5’10, but I always thought he was like 6’3 😂

Have you ever written about them before that I could read???

diaryofageekgirl WAit, he's 5'10???????

i-miss-balthazar Almost 5’11 I forgot about the decimal

diaryofageekgirl No, I haven't written anything for them yet. I'm working on my finale fix-it right now, then depending on how long that takes I might be going straight into femslash february after that. But after that I will at some point

aaaaaaand I just came up with another timestamp for the mer!verse

selkie!benny & merrow!balthazar

i-miss-balthazar Y e s

I had to look up what those are but wow am I glad I did

It’s perfect

i-miss-balthazar I like the idea of Balthazar playing cool in public but when it’s just the two of them he’s an absolute suck for attention, like a cat 😂

In public: sarcasm is my main form of communication In private: please hold me 🥺

diaryofageekgirl Oh for sure, just like, flat up against Benny's back, arms over his shoulders like "pay attention to me" 😩

i-miss-balthazar What about pet names for each other???

diaryofageekgirl I mean, just imagine Benny's deep Cajun voice calling Bal "mon amour". OR "MON ANGE"

and bal would call him something totally sappy in enochian but then tell him it means "pain in the ass" or smth

i-miss-balthazar Balthazar stealing Benny’s tee shirts even though they’re way to big for him because they remind him of Benny

diaryofageekgirl yessssssss

i-miss-balthazar Benny has nightmares about pirating/purgatory so Balthazar visits his dreams to calm him down and make him happy again because he can’t stand seeing Benny upset

diaryofageekgirl They're a nightmare in the kitchen bc Benny worked as a chef for years and is very particular about how certain dishes are made but Bal just keeps Adding More Alcohol

i-miss-balthazar Benny: no, you need to boil the alcohol out to use this Balthazar: that takes away all the fun!

diaryofageekgirl Benny: If you put too much alcohol in it won't set properly! Balthazar: That sounds like a You problem

i-miss-balthazar An iss-YOU not an iss-ME!! *pours more in*

diaryofageekgirl 🤣🤣🤣

i-miss-balthazar Benny’s not a morning person, and because Balthazar doesn’t need sleep he’s a morning person by default. So Benny’s always tired and grumbly in the mornings while Balthazar’s carrying on as usual so Benny will just catch him by the waist as he’s walking by to pull him into a hug and rest his chin on his angel’s shoulder because he’s still tired and just wants snuggles

diaryofageekgirl And Bal tries to keep doing whatever he was doing before and Benny just reaches out behind him and forces him to set whatever it is down and physically puts Bal's arms around him 🥰

i-miss-balthazar Midnight sailing date 🥰

diaryofageekgirl Midnight sailing date out over bioluminescent algae bloom: https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/11.jpg

i-miss-balthazar It kinda looks like angel grace if you squint

diaryofageekgirl That's exactly what I thought! (Benny def brings them there bc it makes him think of Balthazar's grace)

i-miss-balthazar Since Balthazar’s an angel and doesn’t technically need his blood do you think Benny could use him as a food source so he wouldn’t have to worry about robbing blood banks/eating people

diaryofageekgirl yessssssss that's exactly what I think!!! And Benny's unsure about it at first, kinda scared to bite him bc he's so used to his bite killing or turning people but Bal convinces him and it's so much better than blood bags

i-miss-balthazar Plot twist Balthazar’s blood alcohol content gets Benny drunk😂

diaryofageekgirl there's a blood of Christ joke in there somewhere but I can't think of it 🤔

i-miss-balthazar And the wine is my blood -last supper or something I haven’t been to church in awhile 😂

diaryofageekgirl Do you think he'd ever get a bit of grace along with the blood?

i-miss-balthazar In theory, I could see it happening. what would that taste/feel like I wonder

diaryofageekgirl I imagine it would be a moment of absolute euphoria

i-miss-balthazar Benny’s grip on Balthazar would tighten sharply, and Balthazar would let out a soft gasp of surprise and delight at the sudden possessiveness because secretly he loves it when Benny gets like that

diaryofageekgirl 😍😍😍 And Benny gets all blushy and apologetic about it later and Balthazar is just like "Don't you dare apologize for that. In fact, do it more often."

i-miss-balthazar My goodness I need more Benny/Balthazar content they’re just so perfect and I love them

diaryofageekgirl You could always write some 👀👀👀 Be the change you want to see in the world 👀👀👀

i-miss-balthazar Mmm soft movie nights where they’re bundled in a soft blanket and Balthazar’s in Benny’s lap so Benny can idly play with his hair while they watch the show. Neither of them particularly care about the movies they just like the cuddles

diaryofageekgirl (If you did I would be so down to read it)

i-miss-balthazar I might have to. However I promised myself I’d finish writing the next chapter in my main wip before I started another project so I may need some time.

diaryofageekgirl that's fair. Let me know if you do end up writing something for them

i-miss-balthazar Absolutely!!!!

#kat chats #spn #benny lafitte #balthazar #benthazar #come.......join us in rarepair hell

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