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kalevalakryze · 2 years ago

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Take Me Back

For Bo-Katan Week Day 3: Bo-Katan & Satine Pairing: Bo-Katan Kryze & Satine Kryze Characters: Bo-Katan Kryze, Satine Kryze, Darth Maul, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Mythosaur Warnings: a pretty halfassed fight scene, my own horrid dialogue, time travel ��fix it’ that I had no idea how to end Notes: I hated everything else I wrote for today so I dug through my WIPS to find something else I could turn… and yeah, ending this was a LOT harder than I was expecting. I had no idea how to make them interact properly, and I think that’s pretty obvious, I am also still working on figuring out Satine’s character and how to portray her. Same with Maul, he just would not come to me at all. Second Note: I started overthinking this one, and deleted it, but with some revision I think I can like it. It's just one of those weeks, hating everything my brain is coming up with lmao Summary: "A family reunion," He drawled with a slow chuckle, shoulders shaking with the mirth in his voice. Bo-Katan looked to the figure that was Satine, letting all the pieces click in her head. Satine was about to die, but... something brought her here, to this moment. The Mythosaur signet on Bo-Katan's shoulder burned, through the metal and through the flight suit, as if it were branding its sigil into her skin from the outside. Word Count: 3758

Bo-Katan had been running after an Imperial when it happened, a stifling feeling of an increased electrical current, the smell of something burning, and then the floor was falling from under her feet. It took only a few seconds in this weird limbo she'd found herself in, though she had the feelings she'd been there for years. When she came out of the other side and the charge had dissipated, it was not to the sight of the collapsed Imperial corridor, but the old throne room in Sundari. Her shoulder hit the carpet first, beskar scraping against the floor and several voices calling out in confusion. The Niteowl skid for a few feet before her body came to a stop. Through aching muscles and joints, the redhead was able to push herself up in time to face down a dozen Shadow Collective's blasters, the sight of The Duchess Satine, clutching at her throat and struggling to take in deep breaths from where she'd been dropped, a startled looking Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the dar'jetti, Maul, holding the ignited Darksaber. "Maul," She growled from under her helmet, hands still pressed into the floor as her fingers flexed. Venom dripped thick from her tone, his orange yellow eyes studying her, before yellowed teeth pulled into a crooked smile. "A family reunion," He drawled with a slow chuckle, shoulders shaking with the mirth in his voice. Bo-Katan looked to the figure that was Satine, letting all the pieces click in her head. Satine was about to die, but... something brought her here, to this moment. The Mythosaur signet on Bo-Katan's shoulder burned, through the metal and through the flight suit, as if it were branding its sigil into her skin from the outside. "demagolka," She spat, reaching to smack the closest blaster to her face out of the way before rising to her feet, knees popping in protest as she focused her gaze on maul. She reached up to pull her helmet off, eyes narrowing into slits as she stared hard at the dar'jetti who took enough away, before she could realize what any of it meant to her.

She could feel several sets of eyes on her, and could even hear Rook’s voice amongst the others. The last time she’d seen all of them, she hadn’t even been twenty, now, she was pushing forty-four, and looked every bit of it too. The redhead inhaled slow through her nose. It was her anger that had spurred some of her worst decisions, and she’d needed to be quick and clean.

She also needed to find out what her purpose was here, but with the pulling feeling in her gut towards her ori’vod, she could put just enough pieces together.

Maul studied her with a sharp gaze, curiosity peaking as he took slow, deliberate steps closer. Her shoulders squared and her chin raised as she stared at him, keeping herself aware of the tip of the dark saber’s burning blade, and the dozen blasters readied on her form.

Bo-Katan kept herself level with him, a refusal to back down, she wouldn’t, couldn’t with so much on the line. “You wouldn’t turn down a challenge, would you?” Bo spoke at last, weight shifting between her feet. Murmurs broke out around them. The Shadow Collective followed Maul because he had won his challenge against Pre. Of course, Pre had the dark saber, and Maul had his dual bladed saber, whereas all she had were the weapons she’d taken on her person to hunt Imperials.

The smile that pulled onto his lips was dangerous, surely talking himself into a guaranteed win. And how great would it be, to make the Duchess Satine suffer, before killing her and making Kenobi suffer more? “It would be my pleasure to accept,” His words were slow and honeyed, like a Strill that scented a wounded animal.

He began circling, so Bo-Katan did the same, though she halted once she stood in front of Satine. Hopefully, Kenobi could whip something together to free himself and get to her, while she kept Maul occupied.

Maul moved like a bolt of lightning, the dark saber swinging towards her as if it was weightless. There was a brief moment where raw fuel dumped from her jetpack before her thrusters engaged and she was shooting into the air, avoiding the edge of the blade and raining fire where she was as the dumped fuel ignited.

She landed behind him, managing to turn and jam her elbow into the small of his back before he could swing around to meet her. The shove of the force was enough to knock her back, knee pads scraping and sparking against the metal floor as she slid once more. The momentum of her slide gave her the ability to get her foot up behind her when she’d halted, which gave her the footing she needed to avoid the arc of the dark saber as it cut through the air from where she’d been standing.

In the corner of her eye, she caught Kenobi inching his way across the throne room, towards Satine, who was still struggling to catch her breath and trying to get moving herself, while being entirely focused on the fight in front of her.

Maul stopped pressing his attack, opting to resume the circling as he gazed at her like a puzzle he needed to figure out. “You know something,” His head tilted to the side, for a moment, she could feel his fear.

Ahsoka had taught her once how to close her mind off to a powerful Jetti, she just had to remember how to apply it, now that she was in a world where they were a threat once more. “I know a lot of things,” Her brow twitched as she tried to remember all of the stories Ahsoka had shared with her.

“I know about your master,” His footsteps paused and his lip twitched. “I know about your brother,” Grief and anger flared in his eyes tenfold. “I know about what’s coming, too,”

She knew the clones that she would bring to Mandalore would turn on the Jetti and her own people, knew that Maul had escaped Ahsoka after they’d apprehended him, and she knew that the galaxy would fall into ruin, that the planet she was standing on would be destroyed time and time again, and that she would somehow live to see its reformation.

“Then you know what must be done?”

“I know that this,” Her arm spread across the throne room, to the horned helmets of the shadow collective, and to the man helping her dead sister to her feet. “Is nothing. You can’t stop him,” A small frown tugged at her lips as she thought back to a conversation with Ahsoka. “You can’t stop what’s coming, as much as I can stop what happened,” But maybe that wasn’t true, she was standing here, where two decades prior, she’d been newly reformed and trying to do good, where she’d faced the death of her sister, and tried to make up for her parts.

“I can’t stop myself from leaving,” Her head turned to Satine, “Just like you can’t stop your mother from giving you away,” Maul’s breaths were coming in deep, each exhale a growl in the air. “But there is something I can stop, and that’s you.”

The force wrapped around her throat like an old friend. When her feet lifted off the floor, she did not kick to find the surface, though her hands did raise to meet the invisible power that was pressing in and restricting her breathing. Yellow-green eyes did not leave the red-rimmed yellow of the Sith’s, even as black spots began dancing in her vision.

Her fist squeezed the moment she heard commotion in the background and the ignition of a lightsaber. The grappling wire winded inside of her gauntlet shot out, causing Maul to drop her to the ground in order to deflect the speeding hook at the end.

She’d hit the ground hard, but it hadn’t been her first time falling, she was sure it wouldn’t be her last. Something metallic skidded across the ground, before she could think, her hand was wrapping around the hilt of a lightsaber, and the blue blade was springing to life in time to counter the reality altering darkness of Maul’s stolen saber.

Their eyes met over the spark of the blades. Hers, a vision of determination, his, a sick and twisted amusement of a man playing with his toys. Her grip shifted as she pressed forward, the dark saber sliding against the blue of Kenobi’s blade. Once she’d broken their standoff, she turned to catch his next swing low near her leg. The next shot glanced off her chest plate, searing through the paint, before swinging harmlessly to the side.

The tip of her borrowed blade cut through just the edge of his prosthetic leg, though the sound of hydraulics hissing as pressurized air escaped the mechanics was unmistakable. A smirk pulled onto strained lips at the twist of his face when his weight was forced to shift, leaving him unbalanced. “You can’t defeat me,” He snarled in a poisonous tone, teeth bared as he changed his grip along the rectangular hilt of the darksaber.

“I’m not supposed to,” Bo agreed as she stepped back, creating more distance between herself and the dar’jetti, while also putting her back to Satine, who had picked up the battle-scarred helmet she’d dropped on the floor just minutes prior. “That’s not why I was sent back,” She said without hesitancy. She would never be the one to kill Maul, even if the desire to spill his blood had still kept her awake most nights.

And maybe his future would change, without The Duchess Satine’s death on his hands, maybe all of theirs would, with Satine saved, without Obi-Wan having to face her death, without Bo-Katan trying to figure out how to stand on her own for the first time, to see a leader who wanted change without having to die for it.

The next time Maul pushed an offensive, his damaged leg scraping against the polished stone floor, Bo-Katan shoved herself back, out of his reach. Kenobi’s saber deactivated as she propelled herself between the two ghosts. “Grab on,” She snapped to them both, kicking off the ground to aid in the propulsion of three times the normal weight. They wouldn’t get far, but if her memory served her right, the Niteowls would be waiting outside to press an attack that would have come too late.

Glass shattered around them as they broke the barrier, red and yellow plasma being traded across the breaking battlefield. In her periphials, Bo-Katan could note herself, to some uncanny degree, who was staring down the trio through her rangefinder.

Bo’s head turned to the side, towards Satine as they shot through the air so no one would need to see her face. Her helmet was still tucked in Satine’s grasp, the paint pressing against her abdomen, hiding it from view of the Niteowls around them.

They landed heavily on one of the manufactured platforms, where Bo once again felt the harsh reality of what these jumps were doing to her aging knees. Her ass hit the durasteel hard once she released Obi-Wan and Satine, a hand immediately running through her hair as she took the moments reprieve to look at the world Mandalore used to be around her.

“It’s been so long,” Her voice was barely audible over the sounds of blaster fire and explosions detonating around them. Satine stood before her, weight shifting between her feet as she studied the helmet in her hands. The familiar smell of an electric charge singed her nostrils once more, and fearing their separation, Bo-Katan forced herself to her feet, reaching to grasp Satine’s arm with a mild hesitancy, partially afraid that this would be the moment she woke up. “Satine, I…” She had never thought about what to say to her Ori’vod if given the chance, because it would have been impossible.

“Bo,” Satine’s voice was gentle, despite the thick tension and anxiety strung in the simple single syllable. Bo-Katan hated how her name on Satine’s tongue made her want to drop.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Bo blurted, though her lips pulled in a smile where the nostalgia would only make sense for her, for Satine, these words were spoken mere hours ago, not decades. “But she’s also my ori’vod, and I’m sorry I took that from you,”

The acrid burning smell grew more potent as Satine reached out. Gentle hands caressed a rough face, which Bo-Katan readily leaned into. “I tried so hard… to be nothing like you, I tried so hard that I lost who I was,” Her nose crinkled, brows forming a knot as she turned her eyes downcast. “I think I figured it out now, I’m not you, and I’m not Pre… but I’m something,” A sorrowful smile as the feeling of the floor lifted.

This time, instead of meeting hard ground on the other side, Bo-Katan felt water on all sides, completely submerged. Holding her hand, however, was Satine Kryze, out of place with the Mand’alor’s helmet on her head, the light clicked on and shifting over their new terrain.

Air bubbles escaped Bo-Katan’s mouth as oxygen became a sought after necessity, though she found that no matter how hard she kicked her legs, she could not move.

“There are events that cannot be changed, but there can be allowances,” A deep voice boomed, reverberating more through her skull than the underwater cavern around her. Bo’s legs stopped kicking in the water as her headlamp illuminated the dark yellow and seaweed green of the Mythosaur’s giant iris, aimed right at the sisters. “There is much to learn, and much more to prepare for, this is all I can give you,”

This time, the electric charge manifested itself as a current in the water, one that singed and burned, but propelled the two women to the surface of the Living Waters. Bo hit the ground first, sopping body dragging mud up her side as she struggled for air once more. A weight smashed into her chest, emerging from the water shortly after herself. The lip of her own helmet smacked into her head, earning a sharp expletive from the sputtering redhead.

The Kryze sisters lay like that for some time, chests heaving through ragged breaths. Satine was small on her chest, smaller than Bo-Katan could ever remember her Ori’vod, though, she did do a lot of growing since her death.

“Satine?” Bo croaked out at last, urging the woman to sit up and remove the helmet with a quiet hiss. The helmet was passed over and forgotten as she caught sight of the understandably overwhelmed sight of her sister sitting across from her.

“What was that?” The first words out of Satine’s mouth had laughter barking past Bo-Katan’s lips, frame shaking as she hunched over herself.

“That’s it?” Bo questioned once the laughter died down, a smile still on her lips. She felt happier, at least, more so than she had even after earning the respect of their combined people, and reinstating Mandalore.

“There are many things to question, that just so happens to be the first of them all,” Satine huffed as she crossed her arms over her chest. The confusion and anger was understandable, Satine was meant to die, all those years ago, and now here she was, three hours out of the Mandalorian prison cell, mere miles from its old location amongst the ruins, two decades later.

“That…” Bo paused, resting her elbow on her knee as she gazed into the water nearby. “That would be a Mythosaur, the Mythosaur? I’ve only seen the one down there…”

“Mythosaur,” Satine’s brows furrowed in a way similar to Bo-Katan’s, a knuckle forming between her brows as her nose scrunched up. “I thought the living waters were shallow?”

“The… well, the bombs really opened it up, there were caverns below,”

Bo-Katan was cut off immediately. “Bombs?”

Shifting in her place, Bo rose to her feet once more, despite the many protests from every part of her body that had been thrown around. “This isn’t the best place to talk about it… I... can I take you back to my place?”

With hesitance, Satine agreed to follow the strange version of Bo-Katan. “Just… put my helmet back on, ignore the comms… if anyone asks, you’re a foundling- Just until we figure this out,”

They only ran into The Armorer on their way to her home, and while the blacksmith was curious and hesitant, she did not question Bo-Katan’s statement on her new foundling, only nodding her head at the promises to explain later, before the pair was back on their way to the surface level homes.

Satine’s head moved around the landscape with something akin to awe, though, Bo-Katan wouldn’t be surprised if mortification was more of a leading emotion. “Where are we?”

“Mandalore’s been through a lot,” Bo-Katan returned with a somber look as they passed recently rebuilt city streets. New domes in much smaller sizes dotted the surface to protect the rebuilding cities from the warring storms outside.

They stepped inside of the small cabin that Bo-Katan called home to be instantly greeted by the sewer drake that Bo-Katan had grown to call her foundling. Akaan threw himself at Bo, who stumbled under the weight as she wrapped her arms around him. “Hey! Di’kut! Down!” She called, even though a smile pulled at her lips and laughter filled the small living space as a forked tongue swiped across her cheek.

When Akaan calmed, Bo-Katan lowered him to the ground, where he pranced and sniffed around the surprisingly calm stature of Satine. He didn’t seem on alert by her presence, but the lack of snacks and excited attention bored him enough to have him trotting back to the bedroom in the back. “That was Akaan… The rest of his species isn’t as friendly, but he’s harmless.”

There was an awkwardness between them as Bo-Katan’s helmet was once more removed from Satine’s head, where she could see the intent gaze of the woman searching for answers. “I’m going to grab a drink, do you need a drink? I have some Tihaar left over,” She turned quickly for the small corner that made up the kitchen, just a small propane burner and a bucket of water, with shelves full of different ingredients and items (mostly bacta, she kept it all over the place these days) strewn in no particular order. Two mostly clean glasses were poured as the redhead busied herself under Satine’s gaze.

“Bo,” Satine finally broke the nervous energy that was her little (older? Bigger?) sister. “What happened to Mandalore?” The pair finally sat at the rickety small table in the space, Bo pushing aside data pads and gear to clear away some room.

“I told you, I messed up,” Bo’s posture in her seat was defeated and open, her gaze refused to look away from the golden liquid in her glass. ”Mandalore fell, I led our people to ruin. Maul… he killed you, it’s what I just,” A pause and an empty hand gesture. “Stopped.” The glass was raised to her lips, though instead of drinking, she spoke against the cool material. “I asked the republic for help, to lay Siege on Mandalore and stop Maul… It worked for maybe an hour, then, the Republic fell…”

Finally, she drank, throwing back the burning liquid in one gulp. She still did not look at Satine, as she turned the glass in her hands and tried to avoid the urge to break it. “The Empire rose from the ashes of the Republic, Korkie was killed, I surrendered… I was betrayed, Mandalore was destroyed,” Her voice was thick with emotion as she tried to find the fastest way to sum everything up. “I went into isolation on Kalevala, a good friend dragged me out. Our home was bombed too… I accidentally joined a cult,” Both women feigned smiles at that. “Turns out they weren’t as bad as I thought… Turns out I wasn’t as bad as they thought,” Still a point up for discussion, in her view, but if they wanted to follow her after everything, she wouldn’t disappoint, not again.

“The dark saber was destroyed, Mandalore was reunited… There’s no more civil war, not between ourselves anymore… We’re still fighting back the Empire and what remains after their Battle Stations were destroyed, but... we’re thriving again?”

“Wow,” Satine blinked at the information given, her hand reaching out to rest on Bo-Katan’s knee (When did her leg start bouncing? She had no idea, though it stilled under her touch immediately). “There is surely much more detail than you are giving me now, though?”

Bo nodded her head as she reached to refill her glass. “There is… Though I… will need time to tell you the whole story.”

“We have that now, it seems,” Blue eyes looked around the small home, at the trinkets that Bo had only started to recently acquire from the foundlings and apprentices she’d given insight to. “I’m not sure what to say,”

“I know now how hard things were for you, for trying to keep Mandalore alive, and I’m sorry I made it harder. I’ll never understand the pacifistic ideals you wanted, because I am good at war, but… there was a lot I managed to learn from just the idea of you…” Bo set her glass on the table so she could rest her hand over top of Satine’s. “I can’t take back what I’ve done, and I can’t stand on the same points as you and say I can understand, but... Maybe with this chance I can show you,” What she would show Satine? That was a list she did not know. She would show her the Great Forge, the training arenas, the new galaxy as a whole. She would show her Din Djarin’s home on Nevarro, and the lives of Mandalorians all across the world, and she would show her that she was trying to keep growing from the Death Watch Terrorist she’d last known of her.

“I look forward to it,” Satine cut through the racing of her thoughts once more as her hand squeezed Bo’s. The redhead relaxed, partially, before realization dawned. “The Children of the Watch are going to be upset, I’m calling Ahsoka, and… probably Ursa,”

#bo katan kryze #satine kryze #the mandalorian #darth maul #obi-wan kenobi #he's clueless #and just kind of there #bo katan week #bkw 2023

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