#Jango is strangely honest (it's a side effect of being a ghost)

[notthestarwar]

Snippet from: what the living do

Obi Wan speaks to ghost Jango about loss, fatherhood, and what the hell lies between him and Cody.

Obi Wan feels his brow wrinkle as he tilts his head again. He is so very close.

Curiosity distracts from his anger for a moment as he has a realisation.

"Did you name any of the other clones?" He asks.

Jango's spine is ramrod straight. He is as still as prey caught in the gaze of a hunter. He swallows. "Only Boba. "

Which Obi Wan had known, so why did he ask?

He is so close, he can feel the displacement of air. He can see the blurred shape of it just outside his line of sight.

He waits.

Jango frowns down at his hands. "The thing about babies is they don't really do a lot. There's a whole lot of waiting."

The look on his face is almost earnest. He is giving Obi Wan this look like he wants to convince the both of them of something.

"The clones though, they'd made them so they grew twice as fast. I wanted to be good, for Boba. I'd messed up so many times before, this I wanted to do right."

Obi Wan frowns slightly trying to understand the link...

Jango's eyes have faded in to something distant.

"I wanted to be the kind of Buir Jaster was. I don't remember my first Buire, they died before I was old enough to make any kind of judgement, so I don't know if they were something I'd want to be or not. But I knew Jaster and Jaster was the kind of parent any parent wants to be."

"I imagine my first Buire were good parents, cause I was broken up when they died, I missed them like it was something tangible. Even now, I feel it. The day I lost them, the part of my heart that had always loved them turned to stone, frozen in time and I've carried that ever since. They must have been good, to have had that impact. But I won't ever really know."

"It's a funny thing. Standing there holding your kid, a little person that's completely dependent on you."

"I looked in to his face, that first day and I just realised that I had no idea how to do it. I was a grown man, older than my Buire ever got to be, but he grabbed my finger and he held on so tight and in that moment I just knew I wanted better for him than the man I was in that moment, I wanted to be better for him and I had no clue where to start."

"I hadn't had a parent since I was 15. But stood there, in that room, I suddenly felt like I needed one. I needed someone to tell me how they did it. I wanted to be able to ask them, any of them, Jaster, my Buire on Concord Dawn; but I couldn't because they weren't there. I spent more years living without a parent than I ever did with even one, what kind of parent would that make me."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "That isn't very Mandalorian of me you know."

"We have this saying 'Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaas'la.' No-one cares who your father was, only what kind of father you'll be."

"My whole life, i'd had this idea that you don't need a parent to be a parent. That once you have a kid, you just have to love them and you'll be what they need, you'd be a good parent just from that love. But suddenly, it seemed like a lie."

"It shouldn't have mattered to me, but it did, it mattered more than I ever wanted it to. I just felt lost. Even though I knew I shouldn't."

"I stood with him in my arms and I just had this foggy image of who Jaster had been for me. This indistinct feeling of who my first Buire had been to me. I wanted to give him everything."

Jango fell quiet.

He swallowed. "I knew that if i wanted to be a good Buir, I would need to learn and I wanted to do it fast, before Boba started forming memories."

Continuing with a frown."I didn't want Boba to know that I hadn't been ready. It wasn’t like he was a surprise, I should have been ready, I should have prepared better, but here he was and I hadn't. His first day in the Galaxy and i'd already failed him."

"If you want to learn something well, the best way is to have a good teacher. Jaster was like that, he taught me so much; to fight, to politik, to lead. He taught me histories, he loved history, and he taught me Maths and languages; anything he knew, he taught me and he did it well."

"But Jaster was gone, and there weren't any parents left in my life to teach me, so I needed to teach myself. That wasn't a problem in itself. I've been alone a long time, if I want to know something, I need to work on it myself."

" I've always been good at teaching myself. If I decide to learn something? Then I'll learn to do it well. There is no alternative. I don't go in with half my shebs. I commit."

"It is difficult to get good at something without practice. Especially if you are self taught. Practice, that is the cornerstone of competence."

No.

"They'd said the clones wouldn't think like people but once they got to about 2 you could tell that they were close enough. It was pretty strange, them all looking like me and it wasn't just that, i'd been told they didn't think like people but you wouldn't know it to see them, they were all so much like me. Some of them, even more so than the rest."

Were Jango a better man, were this a different story, this might have been a turning point.

He saw himself in those children and maybe in another life, to another Jango, that might have been the start of something. He might have realised that the Clones were people, he might have realised that like all people, they deserved compassion. They deserved anything else. He might have done anything, to improve things for them.

This isn't that story.

"There was this one little clone, in the CC class, and he really reminded me of myself. I know they're all clones but this one in particular, just had something about him. So I took over some of his training. "

No

Obi Wan knows the end of this story, he has always known the end of this story. That doesn't make it easier to hear. It makes it harder. There is no hope hearing this story in reverse.

There is no redemption for Jango Fett. Not in this story. Any chance for that had passed long before Obi Wan ever met him.

"It's difficult seeing someone day in day out, talking to them, having that kind of closeness, without having a name to call them by. It feels weird, using a number. A code. it's strange but, it turned my gut a little bit, to call him by a code. So I picked a name for him. "

He wants to put his hand over Jango's mouth. Like if he can stop him saying it, it won't be real.

He is beginning to see this thing between Cody and Jango for what it is. He wants to undo it. Make it unreal. He can see it like a shot put, dropped from a height and cold in his gut. He can't stop it. It's already happened.

"You named him." He said numbly.

Jango gave a slight nod. "Kote."