Ezekiel and Ruby
The Starshine came out of hyperspace and was immediately hailed. They didn't need to be. Deep down Satele Shan knew the message that was about to be relayed, even if she had yet to hear the exact words used to compose the message. And when the message came she still couldn't say she heard every word enough to be able to repeat the message, but there was no ever forgetting the tone of the voice that carried the message across the vacuum of space between the Republic space station over Tython and the Starshine herself.
There was fear. And it made Satele smile.
"They're anxious. Good."
Tython wasn't Coruscant. It wasn't a safe Republic world. If you wanted to thrive on the planet of Tython, you needed to be a Force Sensitive that was as smart as you were a survivalist. Whatever reason the Force called her to Tython in the first place, it felt to Satele Shan as if the soft underbelly of the Jedi Order could use some toughening up. The actual message?
"Master Shan, welcome back, the Jedi Council requests your presence at the Jedi Temple. The planet is in Threat Condition 3. The Council believes a Dark Side user has made their way to the planet's surface.""Dark Side user?"
Brye asked the obvious question. Satele didn't see a Sith fleet outside the Starshine. "Tython does more than call to Jedi, Brye. The Force may have led me to the planet, but I knew eventually someone in the Dark Side would want to step foot on the planet, to see where we all come from. Let us hope this Dark Side user doesn't have a single clue about what's hidden and lost to time on our new home."
That, Satele told herself,
would be most upsetting."We'll get to the Orbital Station and then you can head down to Tython," as much as she felt Tython and it's maelstrom, she believed in her fellow Jedi's capacity to deal with it. To not lean on her. If nothing else she knew Kyla would be at the front and center of it. Kyla didn't need her on the ground getting in the way. How many times had Kyla told her to shut up and sit down like a Grand Master is supposed to? Satele had lost count.
The Orbital Station had her focus for now. Jace was there. She could feel his presence like a current of warm air across a frigid expanse. Inviting, disarming, and comforting. Naturally the sensation made every mental and emotional defense Satele had instantly rise to full alert. That connection and it's anxiety aside, there was another presence that Satele felt. A connection that she never stopped feeling, even if he had turned his back on it in the anger of immaturity from youth. That's what Satele typically blamed it on, at least.
Are you even ready for this kind of truth?"Whew."
Satele's head turned slowly after the sound and sigh, her eyes finding Brye blinking at her. "Nevermind," her brows furrowed, her tone turning stricter and more the Master to the Padawan than usual, "make sure you dock the ship correctly and clean up your bunk area this time. Not sure how long we'll be planetside this time." To the Padawan's credit she simply narrowed her eyes at Satele and moved out of the cockpit.
Small mercies. Satele couldn't explain her emotions right now. What they had found in Revan's vault had been one revelation after another. There was enough information for her to chase down leads for years.
To say nothing of all the armor and war droids Grim and Roana had gotten their hands on.
And yet...as the Starshine began it's final approach to the Orbital Station amidst a sea of Jedi starfighters and the Republic fleet stationed around the Station the Jedi Grand Master just stared into space. Even as the Starshine noisly came into docking position and was secured by the Station itself, Satele still wasn't sure if she was ready to step out of the ship and onto that docking ring or not. When she did it was as if she was floating out of the ship. A heavy sigh of relief left her body the moment she stepped off the Starshine and did not see Jace.
Smart. Let me approach.Not that it took her long to find. The Supreme Commander of Republic Forces was in the Ops Center of the Station, a hive of Republic activity. Most of it freaking out about the high alert called for Tython, and the poor non Force Sensitives trying to come to terms with what was happening. One young human officer with brown hair, freckles, and thin features was trying to explain the weather situation on Tython to Jace. The rapidly deteriorating weather situation, the officer called it. It was a trigger that stepped Satele Shan forward, the Jedi Grand Master announcing her presence with a correction: "It's not just the weather, Lieutenant, it's the presence of a Dark Side force user. Not Sith," the last two words spoken with the kind of tone that made it clear it was knowledge given to her by some of that Jedi mysticism, not hard intelligence a Republic officer could analyze and convey.
She didn't blame him for frowning at it, but Satele was already looking up at the man who had been standing over the young Lieutenant's station in Ops. Bright eyed and apprehensive, Satele nodded, not really knowing what else to do. "Supreme Commander."
Some commanders were the eye of the storm, the calming influence at the heart of things, no matter what chaos was around them, a whirling hurricane of underlings and reports around them, but stoic in their nature. Jace was not. Even like this, at the nerve centre of the station, standing mostly still while receiving reports, Jace was as much a part of the action as anyone. Havoc Squad had not been named such for their cool heads. His mind raced to take in every detail, assign it a proper place, make each incoming report a part of the solution. His eyes took on an ‘almost’ manic quality when like this when the man who had born for action was forced to respond rather than take to the fight himself. He’d never forgive whichever corrupt politician had landed him the role as Supreme Commander.
There was one presence which managed to break through the intensity of his focus and desire for action. He lacked force sensitivity of his own, but there were some beings you could ‘feel’ when they did not wish to hide from you. He’d met, and slain, plenty of Sith like that. Fewer Jedi, but one he had more experience with than any other. It was impossible to not feel her approach and the memories not to return, some painful, many not, all rushing together at once. Even as they had grown older and their bond reforged, they had never spent enough time together to make it ‘normal.’ Some part of him hoped it never would be.
“Grandmaster.” He just about managed her formal title, but when he finally allowed himself to note her approach, not wishing to drop his countless trains of thought until he had preserved them for later, he almost lost it. Once, Jace Malcom could have been considered handsome, in fact, age had done little to harm such a thing, certainly a face that would have graduated into the territory of those men who benefit from a little salt and peppering. The war had changed that, the scars which dominated a full half of his face distorted his appearance. They might never have been fixed fully, but certainly, more could have been done at the time, but it had been war, and Captain Jace Malcom could not justify the expense when more were dying around him. Satele, on the other hand, looked almost the same as when they had first met, true, some of the youthful determination had been replaced with wisdom, and battle hard marked her in odd places, but it was like looking back through time. She could have been the very same girl leaping into battle from the forests of Alderaan.
There were a few other memories from Alderaan as well that surfaced at the sight of her, but he buried those for now, instead turning his attention to the Lieutenant. Recent developments within the Republic and its military had fostered a certain distrust for the Jedi as a whole, and he was not surprised to note the man’s incredulous nature. He had been in that position before.
“Factor that into the report, get to it, Lieutenant,” Jace spoke briskly, before taking a step away from the station, allowing them a few steps of space, which, given the general preoccupied nature of everyone currently around them, was about as much privacy as they had ever hoped for.
“Satele.” It always felt better to say her name. Even his usual matter-of-fact tone crumbled into emotion at that, and the half of his face not partially slowed by its own scarring turned up into a small smile.
He was, as always, too focused on his current objective--or in this case his current focus. Satele cleared her throat quietly, slipped an arm around his nearest arm to her, and proceeding to walk out of the Ops Center with him. They were paying attention, she could tell, and it wasn’t something she could blame them for either: even Jedi would eavesdrop if two Masters just happened to be having a chat a few feet away.
This was even different. This was the Republic Supreme Commander and the Jedi Grand Master having a chat. Satele couldn’t think of anyone, be it Republic, Jedi, Sith, Hutt, anyone, that wouldn’t want to be a fly on THAT wall. And as long as Satele had waited for this moment...she wasn’t about to share it.
“You know, Grand Master is an honorific that is unnecessary. You can just as correctly address me as Master Shan, Jedi Master, Master Jedi…” Her voice trailed as her blue eyes slowly snuck up the height of him to get a peek at his face. When she found his eyes already waiting for the stolen glance, her lips broke out in the tiny smirk.
She’d just been teasing him. Like old times. Then the smirk died almost immediately, as the presence came from the back of her mind to the forefront. She didn’t just step out of the room on Jace’s arm aimlessly. She knew where she was going, she knew where was headed, obvious when she just kept walking out the door and turned to the right, headed somewhere.
“My Padawan and I made it to Dxun. Nasty little jungle moon. I went to ask Grim--you remember Grim, the Mandalorian that fought those Neo-Crusaders who’d gone mad on Rhen Var? I mean, I know you and I remember Rhen Var very differently, but…”
Her lips grinned for only a few beats of her heart. “I went to meet Grim, to get some understanding of the internal politics of the Mandalorians.” She didn’t need to look up to feel the look he was giving her. A look that made her snort in defiance. “I know, I know, but I trusted Grim. Whenever he tried to kill me, he didn’t hide it. And when he tried to help me, he never let me forget it. It worked. It turns out...do you remember when I forwarded that warning the Sith Empire sent to me about a clan of Sith that worshipped Darth Revan as some sort of Force God?”
She
felt him tense. Mainly because his arm was so unusually large for a human, his muscles so...big, and when he tensed they just bulged and…
Focus, Satele. Another small clearing of her throat, and Satele remembered what she was talking about. “Revanites, they call themselves. They found out about our trip. They got to Grim’s clan and told them if they delivered me to them, that they would give the location of some ancient vault of Revan’s that they were just certain had Mandalorian armor in it.”
Satele pulled on the giant man’s arm to get him to turn left. Of course she had to use the Force to even budge the hulking commando.
No wonder he had been able to push Malgus back so far. But after Jace got a little smirk from making her use the Force to budge him, he just went willingly.
He liked teasing her right back. Satele pretended not to notice. “I can’t remember, ten Sith? Plus Mandalorians? We found Grim on the road to his village, some Revanite Sith had been chasing him...he came to warn me. Broke his leg when they tossed him from the speeder. Padawan and I dealt with the Sith on the road, but the ten or so Sith and the Mandalorians waiting for us at his village...I made the Padawan return to the ship and wait for me. I was able to turn the Mandalorians by pointing out any vault of Revan would need me to open it, most likely, if the Revanites wanted me that badly. I promised to give them anything of theirs I found in any vault. So we fought the Sith, I killed so many, Jace. I’ve done it before...but the moment they said his name…”
This time, even Jace would feel a squeeze from Satele’s arm. That NAME. That name always, always caused a reaction in her. And it was never good. “Revan. I stopped trying to preserve life, I was just killing so they didn’t kill me. I’m so tired of the darkness that name invokes…”
She sighed, but the story had to continue, “I got the location of the vault from the leader of the Revanites. My Padawan was taken by a Sith Imperial hunting the Revanites, it seemed, back at my ship. So I broke off with the Revanites and ran. I’ve never moved that fast before.”
She stopped in her tracks and tilted her head up to look him in the eyes. “Not even on Alderaan. I was too late, so I told the Mandalorians to help me get my Padawan back or the deal was off. Not very Jedi, but Grim seemed amused by the ruthless negotiation tactic. It’s never good making Grim happy. We got the Padawan back...Grim said if I didn’t become Revan that the Republic was lost. That without me going to that place, the Republic couldn’t beat the Sith Empire.”
Her eyes fell from his. She sighed again, and shrugged, sadly, before looking back to his pretty eyes. “We went to the Vault, Jace. It was real. What I saw, what I learned….not to mention the amount of Mandalorian armour, and their DROIDS. Grim and Roana, the one who had convinced the rest of the clan to break with his leadership in the first place, they both agreed to take what they could and tell every Mandalorian they knew who did this for them. And who could open the vault to get the rest of it out...there was A LOT. When had he been on Manaan for that long? On the bottom of that ocean? You’re not even legally allowed DOWN THERE, how did he…? Anyway.”
She’d been talking fast. Fast as he’d ever heard her talk. But there was a lot to tell, and she was more nervous than she’d been in she couldn’t remember how long. Afterall their son was on the other side of the door she stopped at, in the conference room it led to, and she was about to have to introduce them.
“I missed you.”
“You need people around you that aren’t Mandalorians talking to you about Revan.” Jace could keep up with her even at the worst of times, not that he ever matched her pace, but as fast as she was putting out information, he was taking it in. Still, when he finally got a word in, that was what he spoke to her. “They’re a broken people that still can’t believe they lost their last great attempt at bringing down the Republic, of course, they worship your ancestor that lead that fight, rather than admit the Republic and the Jedi defeated them.” Despite the fact much of Havoc Squad’s particular skill-set and Sith-hunting equipment had been modelled of the Mandalorians, Jace’s view of them, particularly their almost cult-like beliefs, sat poorly with the man. Just another group of murderers that wished to bring down the Republic.
Jace had always known that the Jedi were complicated, mystical in a way that seemed at odds with the rest of the Republic. He’d, of course, endured a crash course in this when he’d made the hopeless ‘descsion’ to fall for someone tied to the bloodline of Revan. For years he had hoped she might finally take up the mantle in full, that they might take the fight to the Sith Empire and finally win the war, but now that she felt pressed to do so, he couldn’t bring himself to feel any sense of victory in this. “You might be Revan’s ‘heir’ or whatever it is they’re calling you now, but you’re also Satele Shan, don’t let others, even if they’re long dead, decide how you do this.”
As her tone finally slowed, and she turned to him, he resisted perhaps a full moment, before his arms wrapped around her. She had always felt small in his arms, almost delicate. Hard to believe, if he hadn’t seen it himself, the amount of power contained within her frame. He pulled her into the embrace, one arm around her back, the other hand sitting just below her waist, and she was entirely engulfed in him. For just a moment, his lips brushed over her’s, and he murmured
“I missed you t-”
Then the door opened
…
Theron didn’t like this.
He didn’t like being back near Tython, what was worse, was being stranded above it. He knew the Order feared what would happen if he was brought back to the planet, as they feared whatever happened when those without the force interacted with Tython’s unique connection to the force. Nevermind he had been there before, lived among them.
The truth of it was, Theron had fooled them all. Even his mother, that, or she had simply allowed the lie to persist. It was true, he wasn’t force sensitive in the sense that the Jedi would traditionally evaluate, but nor was he the first of his bloodline to lack any kind of touch with the Force. He could feel and observe it in ways that he had found unlike both those with no ability and the Jedi and Sith he had encountered. Tython didn’t react to him because he was ‘nothing’ in the force, not lacking in sensitivity, but a blank observer, no ability to manipulate it himself but not blind either.
He had been told to wait, but he’d barely followed instructions when he had been inclined to do so by order protocol, let alone now. He had ‘behaved’ thus far out of some lasting respect and care for Master Zho, the closest he’d had to any true parent. Patience was a virtue he didn’t feel like exhibiting right now.
He paced about the room for a few further minutes, regarding his surroundings. As far as prisons went, he’d had worse. Already he had been in training for the Republic SIS and a year’s worth of that alone had him used to circumstance well beyond the realm of comfort. Still, it wasn’t a great feeling. Several times he stepped before the exit, testing to see if the automatic entryway would respond to his motion. Each time it did not.
There were no perceptible signs of his surveillance, but that didn’t mean there weren’t eyes on him. His own feeling, however, was that despite his clear position as someone ‘somebody’ important wished to see, that the Station had more important things going on to keep him under constant attention, so long as he was fast. His hands stroked over the wall until he found the almost imperceptible indent of a panel. It didn’t take long to improvise the tools required from his surroundings and what he had been left with, prying open the wall to look at the circuitry beneath. Now it was just a matter of trial and error.
A few minutes and a fair few shocks later, and he finally had it. Theron paused to take account of what he was doing. He had been placed here by the order, but he was on a Republic station. What amounted to no small amount of vandalism might jeopardise the nineteen-year-old’s current position the SIS program. His thoughts kept coming back to that first point though. The Order had put him here. He was done with taking orders from Jedi.
There was a final charged jolt of electrical current before the doors finally slid open.
On the other side was his mother.
And a man.
The man was Supreme Commander Malcom.
The usually active Theron could only stand there as Jace rather rapidly turned to face the sudden arrival, standing in the sabotaged doorway. The pair looked at each other for what felt like an eternity but was probably little more than a moment.
Theron resembled Satele. There was no getting around it, to the point people who had no idea of his heritage had commented on it as if he were some sort of Celebrity Lookalike. Obviously, age had lessened the effect, but it was still there. There was one exception, his eyes. Theron’s eyes were a brown so bright they were almost closer to yellow. It had been perceived as something of a bad omen from the notoriously superstitious Jedi. After all, yellow eyes were a mark of the Sith, and Satele’s eyes were a crisp light blue. A ‘true’ Jedi colour if there ever was one.
Jace’s features had little in common with Theron. He was shaped and built in a manner that humans had once seen as ‘island’ peoples, strong, with a dark tan and almost boxy. As Theron looked him in the eye though, the same yellow-brown gaze met his own.
Maybe it was purely shock, maybe it was partly due to the literal shocks he had just experienced, but Theron collapsed.
…
Jace was moving before the young man could hit the ground, arms reaching out before Theron could strike the metal surface, pulling him into an embrace that was, for the moment, purely to prevent any damage.
“It’s alright, I’ve got you son.” It was a phrase Jace had spoken many times before, and as he spoke it, it began without any deeper meaning. It was the tone with which he had addressed many a struggling trooper, be they in training or injured on the field ‘Stand easy there, son.’ A tone of endearment but hardly a rare one. By the time he actually spoke the word, it meant more, the father slightly slower to come to the same conclusion, but still managing within the scope of a few moments.
Satele had told him some time before. It had broken them yet further at the time, another wedge of grief and pain. TIme hadn’t truly healed that wound, but understanding had been reached between them. A son they could have never raised, not fairly, not with the duties they both had. None of that mattered as Jace held him for the first time. His entire galaxy, for just a moment, became that broken doorway and the teenager that hadn’t quite managed to keep his cool.
It lasted for a longer space of time than either of them would have anticipated, even after Theron returned to his wits. Slowly they stood, and by the time they were back on their feet, they broke off the physical proximity. The years of separation came flooding back. Theron’s attention turned to his mother.
“Not bad, Mother, I always thought the nerfherder theory was a little unlikely.”
Satele Shan stared. What she felt inside was going to stay inside, locked away and frozen behind a facade of Jedi stoicism. Deep she was glad they both knew, but she was also endlessly sad about it. About how this branch of life grew and twisted in directions she had never hoped for. Life had a funny way of doing what it wanted, and how it wanted.
Not even the blood of Revan could stop that.
She waited until they both had a moment to process before she ensured the door behind them was locked. “Revan is alive. I heard him, I felt him. I don’t know how or where, but what he gave me was a warning about the Sith Emperor. Right now my theory is that he went to find that dark mysterious force and found the Emperor and the Sith long before they returned to plague the Galaxy again. I will need help find out for sure.”
Theron watched as understanding dawned over Jace, and immediately understood how his bond with his mother made sense. He took in that information, the information that Satele had not gathered them out of the desire to finally have father and son meet, but instead that she had a purpose for them both. He took in that information and was immediately thinking, planning. He watched the strategy drown out the pain which flooded in.
He, the son who had spent his entire life dealing with such feelings and let downs, was not so quick to let it slide. His eyes watched Satele with exasperation, waiting for there to be more, even if he already knew there was not.
“I’m going to guess there’s some sort of biological lock on most of these things, so, you need a fellow ‘blood of Revan’ to investigate just in case they come up against one of those.” Theron spoke with naked contempt. “Jedi and their prophecies, maybe one day you’ll do something without it having been written down for you, or whispered to you in a dream. You know what the rest of us do when that happens? We wake up.” Theron could feel Jace tensing across from him. He didn’t envy the man’s position, but he also wasn’t entirely sympathetic. In one way or another, both of the people in this room had abandoned him to his life. They’d had more important things to deal with than their own son.
“What is it you need, Satele, so I can get off this station and start doing it?” There was no ‘mother’ now, she’d had her moment, and she’d blown it.
“Grow up.”
The tone came like a lightsaber ignition in darkness; sudden, startling, and with vicious intent. When she turned her head to follow her words to her son, they were large. They were angrier than he’d ever seen them.
“Or did you not spend enough time in the Order to understand the threat of attachment? Would you just like to see me fall to the Dark Side so you could see the death of the Galactic Republic? You’ll have to forgive my sudden loss of patience, SON, I had assumed when you enlisted to serve the Republic you were actually ready to serve something more than yourself. We are losing this war.”
She said it as if the war never ended, and it was precisely how she saw it, it was only a matter of time in her heart and mind until the fighting started again and the Republic desperately needed to find a way to turn the tide. And she just kept going, louder.
“We will die, Theron. We will all of us DIE. Do you understand that? Does that that register? DO YOU GET IT?!”
The wave of anger washed over Theron. It was difficult to ‘not’ be intimidated by Satele Shan when she was like this. He corrected the thought, that would imply it was a common sight. That, in turn, implied it was at all common for him to have seen her at all. For all he knew, she snapped like this every other week. Somehow, he doubted that. He felt her anger more than he saw it, but, as much as it took him a moment to recover, he’d dealt with the galaxy for long enough to not let it hold him in silence.
“Do you hear yourself, mother? You truly believe that your fall would mean so much that the Republic would fall? You’ve been spending too much time with cultists.” Theron’s voice was quiet in the face of her anger, but he was no less enraged then her. “Yes, you are correct, I serve the Republic. Not you.”
Jace, on the other hand, was both physically, and metaphorically, stuck between two people he’d really rather not have been at each other’s throats less than a few minutes after their conversation had begun. He’d avoided envisioning how this might have gone down, he’d known it would never have been an entirely happy moment, but it stung all the same. Eventually he decided to try and take a few steps towards the quieter of the two, approaching Theron before he could carry on down this path of conflict, but instead, his son’s eyes merely turned to him.
“Do not, do not try and father me now.” Theron snapped, and something of his mother’s overt rage bled into his cold tone. “You could have tried harder. I know she didn’t tell you, but you could have ‘tried’ … You don’t get to try now. You let her throw me away because of a bad dream.” Theron’s voice quivered as he finished his words, taking a few steps away from Jace. He saw the hurt flash through the giant man’s stony features, but for now, he didn’t care. A moment later and Theron had turned, heading for the door.
“I think I’ll skip the invite on the next family reunion… Send me the information, I’ll be on it as soon as they let me off this damn station.”
