Chapter Text
Montross is the mole, the betrayer. For months now, his buir had suspected that something was wrong, that someone was leaking information from the inside, though the signs had all been subtle and there had never been any solid proof.
Jango doesn’t know if the Mand’alor ever suspected his second, or if it hurt too much to consider the thought of that close a betrayal. Montross didn’t like him, he’d known that for ages and Jango had certainly returned the sentiment, but he’d thought that was a matter between them, nothing of any great importance. You didn’t have to like every member of your clan equally, to want to protect them, to see the whole grow healthy and strong. At the very least, to honor the call of the Mand’alor.
None of the shouting he can hear now comes from Jaster.
Don’t freeze. Act.
He’s hovering above the ambush, looking for targets, but there’s smoke everywhere, and another grenade kicks up, and another, clouds of thick dust that swirl in the wake of the gunship and Jango knows how to deal with those at least - start with the biggest threats and work his way down - even though his buir hates this maneuver and where is he, why is there no call for the Haat Mando’ade to regroup, only static and bursts of meaningless sound - and Jango drops from above, a smooth dive like a hunting bird of prey. An error in judgement at what’s nearly free-fall could cost him in pieces, even wearing beskar, but Jango’s aim is perfect, sweeping through the open archway of the gunship’s vulnerable belly, taking out the gunner even as he drops a charge, and the whole craft goes up in a blazing fireball as Jango lifts back up into the sky.
A moment of triumph, but it's his last. He feels a bolt land like a punch against his shoulder, spinning him around, a voice roaring across the comm that might be Myles - and where’s his buir, where’s the Mand’alor - but before he can move or even think there’s a second explosion, much closer, that knocks Jango out of the sky entirely. He tries to recover, spinning out of control, the sounds across the comms all blurring into a roar in his ears, blaster bolts so thick in the air that the sky looks like a worn wall, covered in layers of old declarations.
A scream. The rumble of a structure on the ground, something already half-collapsed finally giving way completely. Jango roars, trying to right himself, his pack only half-firing, wanting nothing more than something to shoot.
He doesn’t even feel the pain, when his head slams hard into a building, or the unyielding earth. Only chaos, and then darkness.
—————
The sharp slap snaps him awake - he’s cold, already stripped of his beskar’gam, and Jango buries the shock, the hurt of the loss down deep - whoever’s got him, they’ll mock him with that. An easy humiliation, and he can’t afford to let it show. No fear, no shame, not for whatever’s left of the rest of his life.
A bag is over his head, the roar of excited voices when it’s pulled away and Jango blinks at the sudden sharpness of the light, struggles against the hands that hold him fast - he’s struck again, a warning to keep still, hard enough that the whole world wavers, a dozen injuries protesting the new pain.
The distant sky is the color of cold permacrete, opaque and unending, and nothing Jango can see tells him where he is, how far away from the battle he’d been in. No other prisoners, only him, standing on a small outcrop that passes for a stage, surrounded by a jeering crowd of the enemy of enemies, the Death Watch.
“Let us celebrate, victors all, in the final destruction of the refuse that called itself the Haat Mando’ade.”
Jango jerks, turns at the voice, dread and anger rushing through him, mixing and ready to explode. In the wall of the common room, there’d been a blurry printout of a bad photo someone had tacked to the wall, to use as target practice. Jaster had taken it down, once Jango had joined them.
It didn’t look much like the man anymore, anyway. He wasn’t supposed to look like anything - he was supposed to be dead. It should have been justice, for Jango’s first, lost family - but even from the start, there had been rumors, growing whispers almost as soon as they’d left Concord Dawn. The Kyr’tsad refusing to let go, to believe their leader could have been bested by an ad. He thinks Jaster had tried to shield him from some of them, perhaps even from the possibility before him now.
“All except one.”
Tor Vizsla, scarred and jagged and very much alive. Jango’s hand flexes, desperately wishing he had even a single grenade.
He’s dragged forward to a great cheer from the assembled masses, the first time he’s seen so many of the enemy outside of a battle, and their faces smear a bit when he tries to focus on them - he must have been hit harder than he thought. Jango tries to steady himself, glares back up at a face he’s seen too often in his nightmares. Jaster would sit with him, on the worst of those nights, neither of them talking, until the quiet had shifted from sorrow to something like peace.
“Hut’uun.” Jango snarls. “What does it feel like to think you’ve won, only when other men fight their battles for you, and they have to lie for any chance at victory?”
Tor’s second in command - Pre, he thinks - moves forward threateningly, and there’s a knife in his hand - and maybe that’s all for the best. Jango knows his buir is prone to... incautious decisions in the wrong moments, when it’s his own people on the line - and of course he wants to be saved, doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to die, but he won’t be a hostage, be used like that against his clan. He won’t.
“Nothing even in your pathetic Resol’nare forbids skill and cunning.” Tor leers. “What better proof of the failure of the so-called Mand’alor, than that there is no confidence among even his most trusted men? This loyalty of yours was wasted on such a pathetic di’kut of a leader. In my benevolence, and since there is nothing else left for you now, I will give you the opportunity to rectify that mistake.”
“Coward and liar and butcher.” Jango growls, wondering if he could taunt the other Vizsla into attacking him, could get the blade away, even for a moment. He would only need a moment.
“Mereel got your family killed, ad, not me.” Tor says, with a sickening sort of pity. “I wasn’t the one who found you first. Casualties of war - they died shielding a man who hid behind them, because he lacked the strength to stand on his own.” A pauldron hits the ground, the markings painfully familiar - nearly the same as Jango’s own, so recently won. “What a pittance of time their lives paid for.”
The sweep of the beskar plate is slightly wider, his buir broad-shouldered - enough to carry an entire empire on if he had to, he’d laughed. He always seemed to find something to smile about, though Jango had never seen him as proud or as happy as he’d been on the day he’d presented Jango with his own beskar’gam. The celebration had lasted all night, with Jaster as unceasingly bright as the sun.
No rallying cries from the Mand’alor, before Jango had gone down. He can’t be certain he’d heard any of the clan, no order to regroup or retreat. He tries to push away the heavy weight pressing down on him, what it means if Vizsla isn’t lying. If he’s just lost another family to the Death Watch.
“I… you…."
Jango can’t kill any of his enemies here, can’t wrest himself free to escape or make a final stand or, in the end, do anything at all except bow his head and mutter into the dirt, cowering in dishonor and grief and defeat.
“What’s that, hut’uun?” Tor laughs, and his men laugh with him. “Speak up.”
Jango can’t do anything, except wait for the great leader of the fearsome Death Watch, the glorious Kyr’tsad who isn’t wearing his helmet to lean over just that little bit further, to get within range and then he does his best to headbutt the bastard’s kriffing nose through the back of his kriffing skull. Jango hears the snap of bone, laughs and laughs until a punch to his gut drives the breath from him, until another blow drives him to his knees, keeps laughing in his mind, thinks his buir would be laughing too.
Being kicked to death to the sound of Tor Vizsla’s howls of fury and pain is not at all the worst end Jango could have made for himself.
—————
It’s quiet for a long time, before Jango realizes that he’s been sitting in the quiet, that he’s breathing in and out, that he’s still alive enough to manage it.
Alive enough to notice the consequences of what he’d done, as well. Every movement from breathing to blinking brings pain with it - a good deal of him tacky with dried blood, everything bruised and a few more things possibly fractured - but Jango doesn’t regret a thing. Wherever Vizsla is, he’s still feeling it too.
Tor Vizsla. Alive. Triumphant. The thought sits with him for a long, long while.
He’s been bound tightly to a chair in the back of a large canvas tent, half-stretched over the wreckage of a building. The lighting is poor, though that he can see at all suggests that he’s been out at least enough hours to drag the sun back up. Anything around him that isn’t rubble is scrap. A makeshift torture chamber, though that just leaves more room for imagination.
Jango knows how torture works, of course. His buir had made sure to prepare him for the possibility, among so many others, knowledge always the best armor against cruelty.
Well, besides beskar, and a good blaster. And a flamethrower. Jaster had said, chuckling. The memory twists in him now - he knows it had always bothered his buir more than he’d admit, to walk through the worst outcomes, to think about possible situations where Jango or any of his people might end up hurt. Where no one might get to him soon enough.
Torture isn’t just about the pain, but the mind games as well - that Jango won’t be able to anticipate when it’s coming, for how long or how bad. The long spans of boredom in between whatever it is they’re going to do can be just as dangerous, if he lets himself worry too much about what might happen, if he starts torturing himself in his own head first.
No way to measure how long passes, any outside noises muffled to anonymity from where he’s sitting. It’s not exactly his strong suit, being patient, but he knows this is going to be the easiest part of whatever’s on its way, and so Jango tries to empty his mind of the worries, the irritation of the sticky, dried blood on his skin, the creak and shift in his ribs when he twists the wrong way. He keeps his mind on better memories - the motions of training, of cleaning his weapons, the weight of his armor - and he will get that back, even if the how hasn’t presented itself yet.
He finally falls into a slight, half-awake stupor - exhausted and battered - but immediately snaps to attention, as the flap opens on the far side of the makeshift space, and he feels that slight flicker of hope, of confidence in his own strength gutter like a flame in a high wind. His expression doesn’t change - Jango won’t let it - but there’s nothing in his favor at the sight of dark robes and yellow eyes.
Dar’jetii.
—————
He’s afraid, a thick, chill dread slowly seeping through him. He’s afraid, and he shouldn’t be even if it doesn’t show, because Jango knows it’s like a feast for the creature in front of him, blood in the water. If he’d had his beskar, there’d be some small protection, but bound where he is the dar’jetii can dig the thoughts right out of his head, make him betray his clan, his buir and everything he holds dear, and it doesn’t matter how much he fights back, he can’t fight back, not against this.
Pale gold eyes watch him quietly, but there’s no sneering malice, no delighted calculation. If anything, he looks… tired. Preoccupied. As if Jango is more of a trial to pass than a helpless prisoner to toy with.
Jango spits at him anyway, the moment he’s in range. Defiant for as long as his mind is his own - but the dar’jetii barely has to dodge, leans just slightly to the side before crouching down, looking into Jango’s eyes. Still no anger, not even a hint of offense.
“How badly did they hurt you? Concussion?”
He flinches away from the hand that comes up, considers biting at it - but the dar’jetii barely touches him, and Jango suddenly feels a gentle surge of - strength, stability, a little of the pain of his many injuries easing off. Instead of clouding his mind, his thoughts feel quicker and sharper.
“It’s terribly rude to do this without a proper introduction, I know, but I doubt we have much time.”
The accent is well off-world, more than refined enough to be from Kalevalan, and if the New Mandalorians and the Kyr’tsad had somehow agreed to an alliance - no, but that’s insane, and there are no Mandalorian jetii, not for ages. Even if this one more likely hails from Coruscanta - what the kark is he doing here now, and working on behalf of Clan Vizsla?
It isn’t until the cup of water appears that Jango realizes how long it’s been since he’s had a drop, and when the dar’jetii sips first Jango thinks this must be the start of the torture - but those pale eyes meet his again, and he realizes it’s only supposed to be proof the water isn’t drugged or poisoned. Who knows if anything can even poison a jetii - but as the cup hits his lips, Jango realizes he’s willing to take the risk.
“Easy, easy.” He’s patient, lets Jango drain the whole of it in slow careful sips so that he won’t choke, and doesn’t demand or even ask a single question as payment. Softening him up, perhaps. Waiting until his guard is down to strike. If he thinks that the kindness will buy him anything, he’s going to be terribly disappointed. Unfortunately, no matter how long Jango stalls, he’s still stuck here, with no way free in sight.
The tent is shadowed, the light uneven, and it’s only now with the closer look that Jango realizes the dar’jetii isn’t nearly as old as he’d first thought - old enough for the verd’goten, but not many years past that. Younger than Jango is, too young for this. He’d heard the jetii were all cold, vain and distant creatures at best - but this… boy looks like he’s been on the same battlefield as the rest of them, ginger hair tied up in a messy tail, a scrape on his jaw, bruises on his hands, dark shadows under eyes that occasionally shift to a painfully familiar, thousand-yard stare that Jango’s seen on many of his clan.
“So, you’re the child of Jaster Mereel.” The dar’jetii doesn’t look particularly happy about it.
“I am the verburyc ad be Mand’alor, Alor be Aliit Mereel, Alor be Haat Mando’ade. The Al'Ori'Ramikade.” Jango snarls, and then the grief hits him fresh, remembering Tor Vizsla’s sneering pride, his delight in announcing the utter destruction of his clan. It can’t be true. It can’t be, can it? At least Montross wasn’t at that celebration, hadn’t even been mentioned - hopefully he had paid the price for his treachery.
“He’s not dead.” Jango startles - maybe the dar’jetii didn’t have to do anything at all, to get into his head. Maybe he’d been there all along. If so, he doesn’t seem to notice Jango’s surprise. “I heard them talking. Tor Vizsla was… rather unhappy with the situation. I don’t know about the rest of your clan, but at least your father - I think he escaped, for now. They’re not going to tell you, in the hopes that it’ll make you break faster.”
Jango’s heart is beskar, untouchable, and even if it wasn’t he’d never roll over for them, not after all they’ve done. The dar’jetii are liars, even among their own kind, and perhaps this is nothing more than that, giving him false hope so it can be taken away again at the cruelest possible moment.
“He had my buir’s armor.” Jango says, quietly, and hates the slight waver he can’t completely hold at bay.
“He had a pauldron, battle-scarred and easily repainted to his advantage.” The calm, cultured voice observes, as if it’s obvious because really, it is for anyone who wasn’t exhausted, recently beaten and left with the promise of worse to come - and Jango feels all that unfounded fear, the uncertainty he’s been carrying since the ambush, since the reveal of who was truly behind it easing off, allowing him to breathe. Tor Viszla’s alive. Which only means that Jango can have the honor of killing him a second time. “All of this is about you now, making you doubt and using that doubt to take down Mereel. If you need a truth, believe in that one.”
Whoever this boy is, Jango thinks, he’s a kriffing terrible interrogator.
A flicker from near the front of the tent, a slight shift of the shadows.
“You shouldn’t be in here.” The dar’jetii calls softly over his shoulder. A child steps forward, seemingly out of nowhere - bare feet, skin perhaps a shade darker than his own, and careful eyes that watch him unblinkingly beneath a fringe of dark hair. Old eyes, that Jango has seen in so many ade in this war.
“Are they going to kill him?” He doesn’t like how thin the adiik is, or the way she holds herself, toes tucked in, one arm holding the other against her body, as if to present a smaller target.
“I don’t know.” His supposed torturer’s voice is kind, even gentler than before. The longer this goes on, the less Jango understands. “Not today, I don’t think.”
“He’s loud.” Dark eyes stare at him, accusingly. The dar’jetii swings a hand behind him without looking, grasps the child’s fingers with his own, a gentle squeeze of support.
“We’ll meditate later. I’ll show you what to do. Go now. Don’t let anyone see you leave.”
Jango swears he doesn’t blink, couldn’t miss it if the tent flap opened, but one moment the girl is there and then she’s gone.
“It’s a Force trick.” The dar’jetii says softly. “I don’t even think she knows how she’s doing it. It doesn’t seem like the best idea to train her out of it, though. All things considered.”
“So the jetii child-stealers are now Kyr’tsad child-stealers?” Jango growls. “How many ade are you holding prisoner here, demagolka?
“Too many.” A flicker in those gold eyes, distant lightning, the first sign of anger he’s seen yet. “Zai Kaine is the man in charge of this camp. If you push him too hard, make him too angry, he’ll forget his orders. He’ll do things they don’t want done to you, not yet. Clan Vizsla wants you alive, for now. It would be in your best interest not to provoke him.”
Jango bites back the instant retort, just where the karking dar’jetii can shove his kriffing advice - because it was advice. Not a threat, or an order. Just an observation, from an enemy that has yet to so much as raise his voice.
“What are the dar’jetiise doing here?” Jango says, frowning, thinking over the rumors he’s heard, the tangled, incomprehensible complexity of their plots and plans. “Are you trying to kill Vizsla?”
A soft, mirthless laugh, and a few strands of lank, ginger hair slip free from the loose tie. “It wouldn’t matter much if I did. Tor dies, and Pre steps up. Pre dies, and the next Vizsla in line advances, and the next, and everyone is furious that an off-worlder thinks he has the right to interfere in the business of Mandalore. The Kyr’tsad would gain more support and sympathy, for the pains they suffered from the terrible, meddling Jedi.” A wry, weary smile. “It seems rather unlikely this is going to end with me playing the hero.”
So what the kriff are you doing here? Jango wants to ask, but the other man turns away, a moment before Jango can hear heavy bootsteps headed in their direction.
“Scream.” The dar’jetii says, raising a hand, his thumb against Jango’s temple, fingertips across his hairline. Jango startles, sucks a breath in - but there’s no pain, no sense of any dark power at all.
“What-“
“If I’m trying to torture you, it’d be better if you screamed.”
He was sent here to take information, but he hasn’t, and he isn’t, and for some reason no one else knows that. If Jango wants to keep it that way, he’d better play along. He does his best to howl between clenched teeth, pretends to fight, to struggle the way he thought he would have to, and when that hand falls away he pants in the aftermath, tries to take the measure of this new Vizsla, the man he’s been warned he shouldn’t provoke. He looks like every other Death Watch Jango hasn’t had the privilege of killing yet - cruel, vicious and proud of it.
“He’s shielded, somehow.” The dar’jetii lies, feigning weariness. Is he dar’jetii? It doesn’t seem right, not anymore. “I don’t know who could have possibly trained him, but I can’t-“
He cuts off suddenly with a sharp choked noise, and drops to the floor, back arched and limbs spasming painfully. Jango can guess the reason, even before he sees the small device being slipped back into Zai’s pocket - the remote for a subdermal slave chip, a ‘corrective’ measure for the rebellious or troublesome - and he steps over the jetii’s twitching body as if he isn’t there at all.
Jango is going to kill this man. It was going to happen anyway, but now he’ll make sure to pay attention when it does.
No questions, no warning, Zai just hits him across the face, once and again and again. Stops as if waiting for Jango to say something, to react or retaliate. He doubts the man would dodge as easily as the jetii had, if he spat at him. Jango isn’t afraid of escalating, of the punishment, even getting this man to kill him so Tor Vizsla can’t - it would be a satisfying death, to frustrate him like that. But his buir might still be alive, his clan might have survived the ambush and Jango is obligated to live for them, for any opportunity at victory, as long as he can. Out of the corner of his eye, he can still see the jetii still writhing in pain - the sooner this Zai is done with him, the sooner he might stop torturing what no longer seems to be the Death Watch’s newest pet.
Zai’s hand is in his hair, yanking his head back with a cruel smile. “You think you matter? Clanless. Dar’manda. You think we haven’t broken far better than you?” A slap. “Braver than you?” A second slap. “I’m going to laugh, ad, the day you swear your loyalty to the Kyr’tsad. The day you kneel like the whelp you are, to the true Mand’alor.”
The only monument to your memory will be the pile of Strill shit they bury you under. Jango thinks calmly, staring straight ahead. He can feel the tension trembling in the air - Zai wants him to speak, to challenge, displeased when he refuses to offer an easy escalation.
“Don’t think that silence will be enough to save you. I’m allowed to take my time with you. We’re only getting started, and there’s so far to go from here.” The only misstep, Jango’s only mistake - Zai turns, all his pent-up frustration into a fierce kick at the jetii’s chest on his way out of the tent. At least he had to stop the chip to do it, although in the aftermath there’s no sign of movement, the figure on the floor alarmingly still.
Not a jailor, or a torturer. A prisoner of war, just like Jango himself. But if Clan Mereel is still alive, they’ll be looking for him. Who’s looking for this boy?
“Jetii?” He calls softly, to what he hopes is more than a body laying at his feet. Impossible in the dim light, to see if he’s even breathing. He hopes the ad’ika doesn’t come back in, doesn’t have to witness this.
“Kenobi.” The word is weak, whispered to the dirt, and the jetii takes a long moment to roll slowly onto his back. “Obi-Wan Kenobi. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
He blinks up at the ceiling, one hand coming to press against his neck, the other against what is - hopefully - only a new bruise on his chest, and he smiles. It’s a weary, tattered thing - not madness, but the small, quiet joy of long endurance, a strength tested and tested and still solid… and mandokarla through and through. The thought comes without warning, from nowhere - but it’s hard for Jango to see any flaw in it. He is stronger now, because this Obi-Wan took the hit in his place.
“Help us, jetii.” He whispers, soft but urgent. “You can’t have any loyalty to these demagolkase. Ally with the Haat Mando’ade.”
At the very kriffing least, they could pull that chip out of him.
A weak sound of amusement. “You know, there are four factions in this valley alone who claim to be some form of Haat Mando’ade. Plus the Duchess’ claim. And her sister’s counter-claim. And at least three entirely different branches of the Kyr’tsad. All of you, so certain you’re the rightful rulers. Ready to burn your whole system down, to prove how worthy you are.”
Slowly, carefully, Obi-Wan gets to his feet, moving like an old man. Jango’s had a bolt of electricity glance off him once - he’d felt it down to the bone, for hours after. “I’ll try to get you out, if I can, but right now the guards are everywhere. You’d be dead before you were three steps out the door.”
With no armor, no weapons and no idea where he is, it seems likely. For the moment, Jango is less concerned with his own well-being. “How long have you been here?”
Another of those wry smiles. “Long enough.” Obi-Wan finally seems to notice a little of Jango’s baffled dismay, and shrugs. “The Force says this is where I should be.”
Jango considers that for a moment. “The Force sounds like a di’kut shabuir.”
Obi-Wan laughs, a short, sharp bark that seems to surprise even him.