Chapter Text
There’s blood dripping hot and wet around his feet, a planet suffocating beneath him, and no memory anywhere he can grasp it of just how he came to be here.
Kad breathes, shallow because anything else hurts too much, shallow because the metal and ozone reek of this place could gag him if he breathed deeper. Below him, tumbling down into endless darkness, metal girders and the edges of half-visible buildings spin as his vision wavers, and Kad curls his fingers around the twisted metal through his chest, not sure what happened, what put him here, suspended over fathomless darkness and a bottomless drop like bait hung from a meat hook, but—
He needs to get away. He needs to hide, because whatever put him here is going to come back.
A ragged sound wrenches free of his throat as he tries to drag himself forward, clutching at the tangle of beams around himself, but the spear of metal he’s been impaled on is hooked at the end, deliberately bent back on itself. Kad scrabbles at it, trying to make numb fingers grip, but he can't even get a hand around the twist of it, let alone bend it back, and after a long second he slumps, out of breath entirely, his heart beating alarmingly loud in his ears.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. The time stretches strangely, fluid and sticky all at once, and Kad’s head spins with every inhale, slides towards darkness with every exhale. It’s like the pit below him is rising up to swallow him, and that tide of fear beats, beats, beats in his chest, too quick, too thin as the blood drips.
There's nothing in his memory. Nothing at all except his own name, like Kad was born in this moment, in this place, in this pain, and there was never anything before it. That feels wrong, though, as if there should be an absence, a hole left by something removed—
The world drips to darkness, and when the light rises again, there are voices, distant and echoing up from below.
Rescue, Kad thinks, and then, with a flare of instinct that bites, danger. He forces his head up, biting back the sound of agony that wants to tear free from his throat. Catches metal, hands clumsy, slipping, failing as he tries to drag himself deeper into the shadows, tries to fold his body up so that no one can see him. His muscles won't work, watery, weak, and he scrabbles for purchase, for any kind of cover. The vulnerability burns, hot as a sun, and for the first time he feels an absence, a lack, something he wants to reach for even if he doesn’t know what it is, where to find it.
His bare feet slip on sharp metal edges that cut deep, and he gasps for breath through the pain but wedges them there, pushes. Not enough purchase to pull himself off the spear that’s bent and twisted through his chest, but—he’s at least a little more hidden, won't be seen.
The voices are closer now, beneath him, at the very edge of the yawning blackness, and Kad forces himself to stillness, braced, ready for something he doesn’t know. The fear is rising again, though, a panic fit to overwhelm, and he closes his eyes, tries to control it, tries to beat it back. Fear serves a purpose, gives strength on a battlefield, but here and now it’s gutting. He’s terrified, and he can't even put a name to why, or of what.
He's coming back, Kad thinks, and only after a moment does it register. He’s coming back, and Kad couldn’t say who, but—
The very idea of his return rouses a sharp, metallic terror that slashes its way through Kad's chest, wraps around his lungs like fingers around his throat. He can't let himself been seen. He has to hide. He has to get away—
And then there’s a shout, alarmed, close. “Commander,” a man says, urgent, and heavy boots sound on the metal, so close they ring in Kad's head. “Commander! Blood! And it looks like it’s fresh!”
Horror surges, and Kad struggles, tries to push himself back further into the devouring darkness that rises from the suffocating planet. His hands slip on blood-wet metal, though, and his feet slide, and he jerks with a ragged cry as his full body weight drags against the bar through his chest. All he can think about through the high, beating pain is the fact that he’s been caught, found—
Bright lights, tumbling over him, and someone swears, far too close. Kad hisses at the searing brilliance after too long in the dark, wrenches away from hands that grab him, try to lift him. The pain drags hitching cries out of his throat as he’s moved, and he grabs—
Something hard beneath his hands, slick and cold, familiar.
Kad blinks the spots from his vision enough to focus, and the sight of armor beneath his cheek is almost jarring, but…a relief. It eases something, and he presses a bloody hand to it, to pure shining white and an edge of red like fresh blood. An image of a sword hilt, heavy black leather kama, thigh holsters, the strap of a long blaster slung across a chest. Armor, Kad thinks, and it shivers through him, so familiar it feels like a part of himself.
“Easy,” a rough voice says in his ear, and the man holding him up turns his head, the black visor of his helmet catching the light. White and red, like the rest of his armor, Kad thinks, closing his eyes again. Like blood and bone. Almost soothing, pressed so close to him.
“Sir—” another man starts, sharp with worry.
“Just get him down,” the commander orders. “Spindle is on his way.”
“Spindle would say not to move him—”
“He’s already moving himself,” the commander says. “Get that cutter beam going, now.”
The words fade out, the meaning behind them distant and vague in Kad's ears. Most of his focus, what’s left of it, is on the armor, the commander. He’s being held up by one man, braced on the struts below him with nothing but the impossible drop on every side, and—it would take a fearless man to climb up here, with no way to catch himself. He has both arms wrapped around Kad's waist, bracing him, holding him so that his boy’s weight isn't dragging down against the metal bar, and Kad breathes out, hot and burning in his too-tight lungs, whirling flame and incandescent stardust.
“Armor,” he manages, and there's a pause, a huff against his ear that stirs his hair.
“All Mandalorians wear armor,” the commander says, and it settles like a truth, like something Kad has always known and just needed put into words.
Mandalorians, he thinks, and there’s the smell of burning metal in his nose, more men in armor working, moving around them even as Kad loses his grip on consciousness again. Mandalorians. He should have realized.
And then, sharper, deeper, carved into the very marrow of his bones and inscribed into his soul, he thinks mine and knows it’s true in that same, vicious, hungry way.
When the world slides back, everything is quiet and bright.
Kad opens his eyes to blinding whiteness and gleaming silver metal, the muted hum of machines, the half-muffled beeping of something at the edge of his hearing. There are voices beyond this large, echoing room, bodies moving, and the planet is still suffocated and straining, like a great sedated beast twitching and straining to throw off its stupor.
The planet, he thinks, and lets his eyes slide closed again, because keeping them open is making his head ache. His blood was dripping down towards it, and he wonders how long it will take the drops to fall all the way to the surface. It feels hungry, this world, uneasy and ravenous, shrinking back from the noise and the press like a starving beast scenting raw meat at last. Wanting, but fearing that wanting, and Kad breathes, breathes deep and slow to calm it, wants to urge it forward.
Devouring a thing is absorbing it, taking it, using it to grow and advance. There's no need to fear a hunger, no matter how immense. No one alive has ever gained something they wanted without taking it from someone else.
And then, like a prickle of awareness down his spine, Kad feels the cold stillness of a dead body in the next room over.
Startled, Kad pushes up, slowly and painfully as torn muscle pulls. Up on one elbow, gaze sliding over the curtains around him, the rows of empty beds he can see through a gap in the cloth, the bacta tanks, the other curtained-off makeshift rooms that hide the handful of wounded. Then upright, swinging his legs down from the bed with a grimace, one hand pressed to his chest, but—
Through a doorway that leads into another white, sterile room, he can see the dead man. A still body on a metal table, a white sheet pulled up over him to hide his face. Something about him is strange, and Kad frowns, trying to pick out what it is. A death in battle, he thinks, but—while that’s right, it’s also off. Just enough that it irks. Died fighting, but. Dead of an injury, but.
And then, loud on the tile, there are heavy steps, approaching quickly. Kad raises his head, and the sound of armored bodies moving is reassuringly familiar, even in this strange place. A door slides open, and a voice reaches Kad's ears mid-sentence.
“—thought they were going to wait until karking Kamino, what the hell happened to reeducation—”
Grief-born, that anger, Kad thinks, and stays still, eyes narrowed, as the commander from before stalks across the wide room, moving quickly. There's another man with him, armor the same bone-white and blood-red, and a man with medic patches on his spaulder and the chest-plate.
“They were supposed to, the paperwork had gone through, but the Kaminoans said they reviewed his files and the rate of failure was too high for reeducation,” the medic says, his voice cracking faintly on the last word. “I tried to stop them, sir, I swear, but you were with the Chancellor and I couldn’t—”
“We know, Spindle,” the man in mostly red armor soothes, touching his vambrace, though Kad can feel the anger that twists through him. They pass into the other room, and the commander comes to a sharp, almost jarring halt in front of the table, his breath hitching like static over the helmet speakers. He stares down at the dead man, and Kad can taste the fury that writhes through the air, metallic on this tongue like spilled blood.
“Kriff,” the second man says, and he reaches up, hauling his helmet off. Bleached-blond curls fall free, and he shoves them back from his pale face, eyes locked on the white sheet. “Stone.”
It’s a plea, a denial. The commander doesn’t move, but the medic takes a half-step forward to stand at the second man’s shoulder, removing his helmet as well.
“I ran to get you, Commander,” the medic says, and his voice breaks. “But by the time I got back—”
The commander still isn't moving, doesn’t remove his own helmet, doesn’t twitch even as the second man reaches for the medic, wraps an arm around him in comfort. His shoulders are tight, his spine ramrod straight, and after a long second he says, perfectly flat, “I received orders to promote Thire to fill the gap in the command ranks.”
“Fox,” the second man starts, and that’s a plea too.
“Thire's got experience. He’ll make a good commander,” Fox says mechanically, still so flat it grates on Kad's ears. A leader’s grief, he thinks, but—like the dead man, there's something strange about it. Something off.
“Fox,” the second man says again. “Fox, stop.”
“You know he’s qualified, Thorn,” Fox says, and a harsh edge breaks through the flatness, surfaces just briefly before he clamps down on it again. “And he’s got a high success rate on missions. And General Yoda he can comm if—”
A crack, and the rest of the sentence shatters into pieces in his mouth, lost to a hitching, ragged breath.
A high success or failure rate, Kad thinks, eyes narrowing, and glances at the dead man again. He’s a soldier killed by his own overseers, then, most likely. Not quite an enemy, but—not an ally, either. That’s the strangeness. Stone was fighting, and he was killed by an enemy, but it was an ally, too.
Something curls down Kad's spine, cold anger, some thread of indignation, that current of mine he can't fight. His, as familiar as the armor and the sound of boots marching, uncontestable—
Lights flicker all around the room, and the curtains around him stir, then settle. Kad pauses, startled, and turns his head, but there's no window open to let in a breeze, no sign of anything wrong.
When he looks back, Spindle is keying the door to the rear room closed, and Kad's last glimpse of Fox is one quick sliver of a face, of white-streaked hair, of raging fury before the door slides all the way shut.
The curtains slide back while Kad is sprawled out in the uncomfortable bed, eyes closed as he tries to gather any edge of memory left in his maddeningly empty skull.
He opens his eyes, a little surprised by the sudden bustle of movement as a soldier enters the sectioned-off space, but the man doesn’t look over at him, doesn’t even pause as he goes right to the readout beside the bed, checking it over and then flipping to another screen. He seems distracted, attention elsewhere even as he makes notes on a pad, and Kad sits up with a flicker of amusement, curling a leg beneath himself as he cocks his head. Entirely caught up in his own thoughts, he thinks, and says, “Good morning.”
There’s a twitch, a wrench. One of the medic’s hands snaps down towards his thigh holsters even as he yelps, and he throws himself back, hits the curtain. It gives just as there’s a shout, and Spindle lunges for the second medic only to pull up short as the fabric-wrapped form hits the ground with a clatter, his eyes locked right on Kad.
“You—you're awake?” he asks, and it sounds entirely bewildered.
Kad glances from the medic fighting his way free of the curtain to Spindle, one brow rising. “Am I not meant to be?” he asks.
There's a second of disbelief, and Spindle looks at the other medic, who looks back, equally bewildered. “No, not really,” Spindle says after a moment, and approaches with quick steps. “Mouse, are you all right?”
“Fine, sir,” the other medic says, and pushes to his feet, wavers. He glances from the readout on the wall to Kad and back, and says, confused, “Sir, the readings—”
Spindle glances over, pauses. After a long second, his gaze slides back to Kad, considering, and he says, “It looks like they froze sometime last night.”
“What?” Mouse steps closer, reaches out to touch the screen, and curses. “I didn’t even notice, and we just replaced this one—”
“It’s fine, Sergeant,” Spindle says, and he approaches Kad with quick steps, reaching for a handheld scanner. “Sir, you were found in the aftermath of an attack down below the Senate district. How are you feeling?”
Kad pauses, and—the sound of dripping blood echoes in his ears, scattering towards the distant, choked-off earth. Some edge of that terrible fear rises, tangled up with the feeling that he’s being hunted, stalked through the shadows even with all the bright light around him, and he raises his head, resisting the urge to bare his teeth. Meets Spindle’s eyes, and asks, “Did you find who did that to me?”
Spindle shakes his head, reaching out to tug Kad's loose gown down slightly and check his chest as he frowns. “You were alone, and there was no one else in the area. The massiffs couldn’t pick up anything except your scent, either.” Without looking over, he says, “Mouse, go comm the commander. He should know the witness is awake.”
“Yes, sir,” Mouse says quickly, and pulls the torn curtain up with him, folding it out of the way and then moving back towards the main part of the medical bay at a trot. Kad glances after him, then lets his gaze slide towards the rear room.
The door is closed, the red light of the engaged lock bright in the lowered lights, but Kad can feel that the dead man is still there.
“Sir?” Spindle asks, and when Kad glances back at him, Spindle is watching him with concern on his face. “Do you know what you are? All the readings I'm getting are…strange. You're not a baseline Human, right?”
Kad blinks. “What I am,” he repeats, and—it should be an easy question. It feels like the answer is on the tip of his tongue, ready to be spoken, but when he goes to open his mouth it’s vanished. Unsettling, almost jarring, like running up against some sort of invisible tether, and he wavers, hands curling into fists against the edge of the bed.
“I don’t remember,” he says, the words rough in his throat, and—he knew that. He did. But to hit that strange empty place when he reaches for an answer to even the most basic question feels gutting.
Spindle’s frown deepens, and he steps closer, reaches out. Kad tenses, but manages not to jerk back as Spindle tips his head up, leans close to look into his eyes. He pulls a penlight from one of his belt pouches, flashing it into one of Kad's eyes, then the other, and says, “I didn’t see any signs of a concussion when we put you in the bacta tank, but I’ll admit I was more focused on the hole in your chest. But…the tank should have taken care of any swelling in your brain, even if you’re not Human. Any amnesia should have fixed itself. Can you remember anything?”
Kad shakes his head, pulling away from Spindle’s grip. “Nothing beyond my own name,” he says. Having Spindle so close makes his skin prickle, even though there’s an ease to bodies in armor. His, but—not in the same way as the commander. Not so easy in the claiming of them, even if that claim is still there.
Spindle hums, frown thoughtful as he rocks back on his heels. “That’s not entirely true, though,” he says. “You remember Basic, and you seem to know what everything around you is. You're not having any problems with motor function, it seems, and you're speaking just fine. But you don’t remember anything about yourself otherwise? What about the people who attacked you?”
“Lieutenant?” a sharp voice asks, and Kad looks up, gaze drawn as if by a magnet to where the commander—where Fox—is just striding across the floor, helmet on, armor polished despite the clear signs of wear.
“Amnesia, Commander,” Spindle says promptly, turning to meet him, and something passes between them, a look Kad can see but not read. “He was awake when Mouse came through to check readings.”
“I thought you said the chances of him waking up were miniscule,” Fox says, and Kad can hear the thread of suspicion in his voice.
Spindle winces faintly, like he hadn’t planned to reveal that to Kad. “I was assuming he was full Human, but he might be a mix. The biometrics I'm getting are…very off.”
Fox grunts, coming to a halt, his kama swaying around his thighs. “Whoever strung you up got you in the head, too?” he asks Kad.
Kad reaches up to touch his skull, and—his chest hurts, but not his head. There's no trace of pain there. “If they did,” he says, “it was hard enough to make me forget them shoving a metal bar through my chest and then bending it. That would have to be hard as hell.”
A pause, and Fox’s head tips, just slightly. Kad can feel the weight of his gaze, the heaviness of his full attention, like Kad just surprised him. “Your accent,” he says after a moment. “It’s Mandalorian.”
“It is?” Spindle asks, startled, jerking his gaze up from his pad, but Kad can't spare him so much as a glance.
The name resonates, like something Kad already knew and just had to be reminded of. That’s what he is. Mandalorian.
“Mandalorian,” he echoes, and breathes out. Reaches for what that means, but—it’s like grabbing at sand. All the pieces of knowing that should come with recognition slip through his fingers, and it’s maddening. Kad makes a low sound of anger, ducking his head and scrubbing a hand over his face, but it doesn’t help. There's just emptiness in his head, a void about to swallow him whole. “I—yes, I am.”
A huff, satisfied, and Fox steps closer, watching Kad narrowly. “You recognized our armor, too,” he says. “And that accent—it’s the same one most of the trainers had.” He pauses, and then, carefully, like the language is still mostly unfamiliar, he asks in Mando’a, “You can understand?”
Kad blinks, then snorts. “Your accent is as pretty as a bantha’s ass,” he says, and Spindle makes a sound like a crack of laughter before he snaps a hand up to cover his mouth.
Fox scoffs, folding his arms over his chest. “Not like the trainers ever taught us Mando’a,” he says scornfully. “We picked up what we could.”
Trainers. Kad pauses, the wording striking him, and frowns, leaning back. “Why would a Mandalorian not know Mando’a?” he asks.
“Because we’re not born into being Mandos,” Fox says, blunt, sharp around the edges like a challenge. “But we got the training, and our template was Mando, so we’re Mandalorian, no matter what the trainers wanted to believe.”
That’s a claiming, Kad thinks, interested. Defiance, as sharp as a bared blade, and he leans back on the bed, considering Fox. Someone told him he wasn’t Mandalorian, and Fox took it as a personal insult.
“I'm hardly going to be able to test your credentials,” he says, faintly dry. “I’ll take your word for it, Commander.”
The title fits easily in his mouth, comes readily. A thing well-suited for Fox, in the same way that the armor suits him. Very much a soldier, Kad thinks. His, that means. Just as much as the armor, the claimed heritage.
Something eases in the straight line of Fox’s spine, like he was expecting a fight, but he doesn’t linger on it. “If we’re done wasting time, I've got a band of psychos running around under the Senate to catch. They strung you up, but you can't remember anything about them? At all?”
Kad shakes his head. “My memory starts when I woke up there,” he says.
A pause, considering, and then Fox says, like he’s testing, “You don’t seem overly worried about why you got strung up.”
Is that odd? Kad can't tell, and doesn’t have any frame of reference for how he’s supposed to respond. He tips one shoulder in a shrug, and after a second without an answer, Fox sighs. “Great. No answers from you, then. Spindle, can you fix his head?”
“I’ll try,” Spindle offers, and when Fox gives him a look, he raises his hands. “Brains are already tricky, sir. And if he’s a mix of species, I'm not going to be able to predict how anything will work on him. It’s all trial and error.”
“He looks Human,” Fox says, something close to an accusation.
Spindle shakes his head. “Once you start mixing too many Near-Human and non-Human species in with Human genes, the results are just…random. Traits could present in a million different ways. For all I know, he’s having an allergic reaction to the bacta and that’s what’s giving him amnesia. I have to test to know.”
Fox’s breath is annoyed, but resigned. “All right, keep me updated. Don’t let him leave until we have something about the attack.” He slants a glance at Kad again, and asks, “What are we calling you?”
“Kad,” he says, and—there’s something else on the tip of his tongue, but like before, when he opens his mouth, the words are gone. He makes a sound of frustration, shoving his hair back out of his face, and says, “My armor—”
Fox pauses, like the question caught him off guard. “There was no armor,” he says. “We cleared a two-block radius with massiffs, and no one found any personal items.”
Something slides, knife-edged, across Kad's nerves. “That’s wrong,” he says, sharp, and—rage. That’s what that emotion is, boiling up to the surface, roiling vicious and deadly right beneath the surface of his skin. “I had armor with me. I was wearing armor. I wouldn’t have left it behind. It has to be there.”
“You got beaten up and left for dead,” Fox says, flat. “Odds are whoever tried to kill you stole your armor, too. Was it valuable? Beskar?”
No. Not beskar. More valuable than that, Kad knows. Soul-steel, a piece of him, carved out of his own flesh and bone, forged in the heart of a fire that could never be put out and tempered in his own blood. He knows his armor, even if he doesn’t know himself.
Someone took it, he thinks, and fury boils over, washes like prickling static over everything. The lights flicker, and Spindle jolts, steps back. But—
It doesn’t matter. Someone stole what they should never even have touched.
“They stole it?” Kad demands, rising to his feet, and sparks leap and crackle across one of the screens on the wall. Somewhere close by, something crashes, slides, and Fox tenses, but he doesn’t move, faces Kad squarely.
“Unless you hid it somewhere before they could, and we didn’t find it,” he says, plain. “My boys are looking for them right now, though. If we find them, we can find your armor. But we’re going to need your help.”
“You don’t understand,” Kad says, biting, and it takes effort not to curl his hands into fists. “I need to get it back. It matters more than anything. I—without it, I can't—”
“I'm Mandalorian, too,” Fox says, impatient. “I know what armor means—”
“Not like this!” Kad snaps, and the lights flare, so bright for a bare instant that they're blinding. Something is roiling, building with Kad's anger, and he snarls, takes a step forward as something cracks—
In the back room, shut behind a locked door, the dead man starts to scream.