Work Text:
Bo-Katan is confused. She’s been confused for a very long time, truth be told.
She couldn’t understand why exactly it was decided she and Satine shouldn’t go on a run together, but it was, and thus she didn’t see her sister for more than a year.
Terrible.
But now she’s on her way to Sundari, where, apparently, her sister and her Jedi protectors are, finally home after the political situation of their crazy planetary system was somehow settled. It’s still crazy, she knows, and she saw terrible things written and said about her sister on the HoloNet, but the most important fractions agreed to have a ceasefire, and thus, the war stopped.
In theory.
In practice, it will last some more, she knows. The Mandalorians are just like this. Nothing can and nothing ever will change that.
Bo-Katan sits up in her seat, seeing the first glimpses of the dome that’s hovering over and around their capital city. She’s almost home. A few minutes more and she will see her sister again.
She’s a little nervous. Mainly, because she doesn’t know what she should expect. Before Satine left, they had been at odds more and more often. She supposes it’s just fair, they’re siblings after all, and it shouldn’t seem weird to hate your sister sometimes.
She just hopes Satine may’ve got a little smarter during her absence. Maybe less stubborn with her stupid views. Well, not all her views were stupid… But some of them were so ridiculous that Bo-Katan at times laughed in her face upon hearing them. It always pissed Satine off and provoked her to enter the defensive mode. Defensive Satine was the worst to bear. Truly annoying.
So Bo-Katan hopes Satine has changed for the better.
The freighter touches the landing pad at the back of Sundari Palace – the building looks a mess. There are pieces of scaffold here and there, the renovation and expanding of the building being in works at the same time. It causes the scene to look raw and unfriendly. Uninhabited, almost.
Bo-Katan eyes the view with a disgusted scowl. She hates renovations and the mess it always creates. She hopes it ends very soon, and if she is to take a guess, it will. Satine’s coronation must be just around the corner, probably just after all are finished to have guests over here.
One of the guards approaches her. Bows curtly and makes eye contact.
“Lady Bo-Katan,” he greets, and she greets him back.
She doesn’t like her title. She thinks it doesn’t suit the Mandalorians. The Duke or the Duchess she could accept, but a Lady? Why? Ladies are… ladylike. Soft. Pretty. Great hostesses. Regal.
She’s a Mandalorian through and through. She fights. She’s not very girly for a teenager her age, she thinks. She has manners, of course. But maybe not those fitting a Lady. So this title really suits her like a pink saddle fits a bantha.
“The Duchess told me to take you to her right away. She wants to talk with you, privately.”
“Aren’t the Jetiise with her?” Bo-Katan asks curiously. “Aren’t they supposed to not leave her side until dismissed?”
“Well, the Duchess did dismiss them,” he answers simply. “And now she’s awaiting you.”
Bo-Katan hums. “Alright then. Lead the way.”
They don’t talk on their way through the long corridors. Bo-Katan looks at the big windows with displeasure – it all seems so unsafe, so easy for their enemies or terrorists to break in and hurt someone. But Satine wanted those windows, especially the stained ones, in her more peaceful Sundari. Bo-Katan still thinks it’s dumb, but her sister’s the boss, not her.
They don’t pass many people. She sees some aides, some construction workers in dirty clothes, some droids. But there are no Jetiise in sight. Weird. But knowing those wizards, despite her not seeing them, they for sure know damn well where she is. Freaks.
Bo-Katan is dying to know what that year was like. She has to force Satine into telling her all the details, and all about them. They learned about the Jedi during their education. Their relations with those weirdos are a part of their history and their culture, especially the military one. But it’s still just old tales and dated stories. Satine was forced to live with them for months. She must have so much to say about it all.
The guard in front of her stops.
Bo-Katan looks at the big door, she recognises it. The private wing of the Palace. They walk through the door. Satine’s apartment is on the left, Bo-Katan’s on the right, and their parents’ is opposite the door. The Kryzes first moved there eight years ago. Satine and her spent half their childhood there. She has some fond memories, even if the apartment feels colder and so much emptier with both their parents dead.
Bo-Katan breathes shakily. It’s still a sore topic for her, though so long has passed since they were killed. She’s still mourning. It will take time to come to terms with all that. Her separation from her older sister was another blow. Maybe it will be easier now, when they’re in it together. She won’t feel so alone anymore.
“She’s in her rooms,” the guard says. “I’ll leave you now.”
“Vor entye,” she says, and he bows his head, then retreats.
Bo-Katan doesn’t waste any time. She rushes towards the door on the left, clicks on the screen next to it to let Satine know she’s there, and then she puts her hand to the reader. As it recognises her palm, it opens.
Before she sees Satine, she’s engulfed in a big hug. Big and strong. Her breath catches in her throat and she gasps, a little shocked by the emotional welcome she has just received. She can’t even move her arms to hug her sister back, so she just pats the closest part of Satine’s body, which seems to be her hips.
“I missed you so much, Bo’ika.”
Bo-Katan’s brain crashes. Satine’s voice sounds a little more mature, but that’s not what weirds her out. Her accent seems different, more polished, more… core-like.
“I missed you too, Sat’ika,” she says back, eager to hear more of her sister’s voice. “Tell me everything.”
Satine laughs, the sound a little raspy but still undeniably her. She pulls back, and it’s the first time Bo-Katan can look at her. Her hair is longer. Much longer. And curlier. Wavier, rather. But it was pin-straight when Satine left, and now it has some waves to it the closer it is to the tips. Her face is a little slimmer, her features sharper. Her skin is a little more tanned, which, ironically, makes her eyes pop more.
She looks different but the same. It’s crazy how much can change in a year, even if the changes are rather subtle.
“Where should I start?” she says, and smiles, looking away.
Bo-Katan narrows her eyes. Now, this is very un-Satine-like. And her accent definitely changed. It will take some time to get used to this new sound of her sister’s voice.
“Well, tell me about the Jetiise,” Bo-Katan offers. “How awful was that? It must’ve been torture for you!”
Satine gives her a weird look. One Bo-Katan’s not accustomed to. One she’s never seen before. Something is off, she can tell. Especially as the seconds drag on, and her sister’s still silent.
“Well?” Bo-Katan says, a little impatient. “You gotta have so much to say! Start somewhere! How weird are they? How freaky? Did they ever talk to you? Did they respect you? Were they good to you?”
“They were very good to me,” she answers, and maybe Bo-Katan imagines it, but she thinks she sees her sister blush. “They weren’t bad at all. They’re decent people. They treated me with respect and–”
“They better!” Bo-Katan interrupts and then scoffs. “It was their kriffing job to do so.”
“Bo-Katan,” Satine says. She shakes her head, takes her hand and leads her towards the sofa in the middle of the room. “Let’s sit. I have to tell you something and I ask you to let me speak. No. Interruptions.”
Bo-Katan frowns. Satine sounds pretty serious, it’s making her nervous a tiny bit. “I don’t like this tone. What happened?”
“A lot,” Satine sighs. “Let me start with a small request. Please, be civil towards Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.”
A red eyebrow shoots up. “First names? You’re all on a first-name basis?”
Her sister looks annoyed for a moment. “Well, we’ve been on the run for more than a year. Of course, we’re on a first-name basis. What were you thinking?”
“Even with the arrogant one?”
Satine huffs. “He’s not arrogant.”
Bo-Katan snorts.
Satine rolls her eyes. “Alright. He is. A little bit. But he’s not that bad. He just made a very, very bad first impression.”
“He was being a total di’kut,” Bo-Katan corrects her. “He disrespected you right away.”
The blonde purses her lips. Then sighs. Then folds her hands in her lap. Then looks up, eyes pleading.
“Let me speak now. No interruptions.”
Bo-Katan nods. Alright. She will listen. She will be a good little sister. She promises. Though she doesn’t tell Satine that.
“I…” Satine stops. “It seems… Over that year… It happened so that–” she stops, frustrated. “I have developed… Some feelings…”
“Dislike? Disgust? Distrust?” Bo-Katan offers helpfully. “Loathing?”
“Loving, rather. I have just told you they were good to me, are you even listening?”
Silence.
“Loving?” Bo-Katan repeats eventually. “For whom?”
Satine looks into her eyes. “Well. I told you they were very good to me. It so happened that… I’ve fallen in love with one of them. With Obi-Wan.”
One. Two. Three–
Bo-Katan stands up suddenly and starts pacing.
Her sister fell in love with a Jedi?! She – a Mandalorian– fell in love with their greatest enemy? With one of those freaks ? Oh, Bo-Katan had a bad feeling once she found out the Jedi were sent to aid them, and she was damn right!
What if– but what if… If they–
“Bo–”
“They bewitched you!” she accuses, angry. “They must’ve done some dark Jetii magic on you! Mind tricks! You’re not yourself, Satine. You’re saying such bantha shit. It’s not like you. What have they done to you?”
Satine blinks, shocked. “What? Have you lost your mind–”
“Have I lost my mind?!” she shouts. “You’ve just said you’re in love with a Jedi but it’s me who lost her mind?!”
“Bo-Katan!”
“It’s ridiculous!” she exclaims, blood rushing in her ears. “You’re Mando, Satine! Mando ! He’s a Jetii! You couldn’t have– It’s not– He did it to you!”
“Did what?” Satine asks, her voice also rising. “What did he do to me?”
“He– he– he brainwashed you!” she spats. “Because you would never do something like that if you were fully conscious. He used you!”
Satine laughs. “It’s not like I could control who I fall in love with–”
“You can’t be in love with a Jetii!” Bo-Katan hisses. “Be for real! He’s a freak ! His kind was murdering our ancestors for centuries. He’s our enemy! You should hate them! Hate him!”
“I don’t,” she says, more calmly.
Silence.
Bo-Katan stares at her older sister, eyes wide.
It can’t be happening. It just can’t. She’s just imagining things, surely. Satine can’t–
“Bo’ika,” Satine says, gently. “He’s not… I also had thought they were terrible. But I spent more than a year with them, and they turned out so different than I had ever imagined. They’re caring, and have high morals and–”
“You really lost your mind,” Bo-Katan says, disbelieving. “His Jetii witchcraft worked on you just great. Shabuir. He bewitched you, you’re not even aware you’re a victim…”
“I’m not a victim. Stop it!” her sister says angrily. “Maybe one day you’ll be mature enough to realise you cannot control these things fully. He showed me his heart, and I gave him mine–”
“Did he take you to bed, too?” Bo-Katan hisses, waiting. Satine’s gaze drops for a moment. But it’s an answer enough. Bo-Katan laughs bitterly. “And he made you his whore.”
Satine glares at her. “You have no right calling me that!” she snaps. “I’m not a whore for loving someone who loves me back.”
“Does he?” she whispers. “Will he stay with you? Will he marry you?” Satine’s silent. Bo-Katan huffs. “He used you. Jetiise can’t have families, we both know that. He played some trick on you, fucked you, and now he’ll leave you. And you’ll forever be a bitch for laying in bed with him. A Dar’manda.”
With a disgusted scowl, Bo-Katan turns around and rushes out of the room, and then out of the apartment. She’s feeling sick. Disgusted.
How could she–
Satine disrespected their ancestors, their culture, their history. And she did it all under some Jetii spell she fell for. Pathetic. Heinous.
She can’t– she won’t– she needs to go away. And Bo-Katan does.
Arm up and–
A shot strikes the armoured man and he falls to the ground, dead.
Satine turns around and Bo-Katan sees her face from such a small distance for the first time in years.
“Death Watch,” her older sister gasps, and Bo-Katan inhales deeply, then removes her helmet. The change in Satine’s whole demeanour is striking. She looks almost relieved. “Oh… It’s been a long time.”
It was, indeed.
Korkie starts explaining their whole situation while Bo-Katan cannot take her eyes off Satine. The last time she talked to her was when they had fought. She had said terrible things to her. Some she came to regret over the years. They are almost eighteen years older now, and more mature. Neither are teenagers anymore. Her rebellious phase passed years ago.
She still doesn’t agree with many views of her sister. She still thinks many of her political decisions are trash, and some are insulting to their nation. But she doesn’t want to see her sister dead. Not anytime soon, anyway, and with the mess Vizsla and Maul have created recently…
“Why are you helping now?” Satine asks, her voice holding some reservation, but just as demanding as Satine has ever been when they were young.
“The enemy of my enemy… is my friend.”
Satine’s eyebrows pinch together momentarily. Bo-Katan had learned ages ago that it was a show of her disappointment. She can’t say if she’s surprised or not. Satine has always been a fool who had too much faith in people, and that’s never changed, it seems.
“There was a time when we weren’t enemies,” Satine says with some nostalgia. “Perhaps that time has come again.”
Yep. Her sister’s still a fool.
“Come on, let’s go,” the former Duchess encourages their trio, and they move.
Korkie gets ahead of them, ever so cautious as he leads them down the corridor. Satine lingers behind him, and casts a cautious glance at Bo-Katan, looking over her shoulder, eyes curious.
Bo-Katan tilts her head. Her helmet covers her face which is a good thing, otherwise the eye contact they have just made would be awkward.
“We have to get you off-planet for now,” she informs her sister, deciding it’s better to make the situation as clear as possible. “Have you got any idea where you may go?”
Satine looks away. “I may have someone to call for help.”
Probably a colleague she made in the world of politics.
“Can you trust them?” Bo-Katan asks curiously.
A politician could turn her down or betray her if it benefitted them. In the present situation, this seems like a real possibility.
“With my life.”
Satine says it with such ease that Bo-Katan immediately becomes suspicious. Her sister’s Mandalorian supporters are dead, imprisoned or hiding, so unless she reaches one of those, it isn’t any of them. Who, then?
“Do I know them?”
Satine turns her head to look at her. Her eyes are searching, glancing all over Bo-Katan’s helmet, finally settling at her line of vision. “You would if your stubbornness and prejudice didn’t get in the way all those years ago.”
Bo-Katan freezes, stopping in her tracks. “You cannot be serious.”
Satine stops as well. “I know he’ll help me. He never left me in need.”
Bo-Katan snorts. “Except when he left you alone and– knocked up,” she whispers the last part, hisses rather. Korkie is quite ahead of them, but it won’t hurt to be careful. As far as she knows, he doesn’t know his true parentage yet.
Which is ridiculous. But the majority of Satine’s life decisions are ridiculous. That’s why she ended up in this situation, just a brush away from death.
Satine whirls around. Her glare is sharp, as is her inhale. “Why are you suddenly so interested in my well-being? Just yesterday, you wanted to kill me. Well, I cannot even be sure you don’t want to see me dead still.”
Bo-Katan rolls her eyes, even if her sister can’t see it. “I never wanted to have you killed–”
Satine laughs. “No, it was just an accident that you ended up climbing up the ranks in a terrorist organisation that’s still actively planning on executing me!”
Bo-Katan inhales sharply, ready to fight.
“Aunties,” Korkie calls out of them. “Hurry up, we can’t just stand here!”
They both start walking again.
Bo-Katan speeds up her steps and falls into step to her sister’s left.
Satine holds her chin high in that haughty way of hers that has always made her look cold and unfriendly.
“You may not believe me, but I want you to live,” Bo-Katan tells her. “For your son, for you, for m– Mandalore.”
She almost says me. She stops herself. Satine wouldn’t believe her anyway.
Her sister glances at her out of the corner of her eye. A few seconds pass. “Obi-Wan will help me, I know it,” she says eventually. “He’ll come if I call him. All you need to do is get me a working communicator and get me somewhere where the signal’s good.”
“How can you be so sure? He left you once, he may do it again.”
Satine sighs tiredly. “I never told him I was pregnant. I didn’t know it at the time of his departure, and I didn’t do it later. I couldn’t.”
“What?”
That– Bo-Katan didn’t know. She has always assumed the Jetii freak just left her sister, running away from his responsibilities, hiding behind that ridiculous Code of theirs. This… This new information changes some things. Not much, to be honest, but just a little.
She may hate him a tiny bit less.
“He would’ve stayed had he known,” Satine says, looking at her with a faint, sad smile. “He’s far too righteous not to. But even if I had known about Korkie all those years ago, I couldn’t have… He was a Jedi. It’s his whole life. How could I take it away from him? He would’ve come to hate me.”
Bo-Katan keeps eye contact for a few seconds and comes to a sudden realisation that shocks her to the core, though it probably shouldn’t have.
“Stars… You do really love him still.”
“I have never stopped,” Satine says and looks ahead of her again. “Tragic, is it not?”
Bo-Katan doesn’t say anything to that. She has, quite simply, no words to share. So many years, and her sister’s still holding a torch for some idiotic fool she met half her life ago. A Jetii, of all creatures. Their enemy, someone who should be off limits.
How is she even supposed to defend her sister when she does bantha shit like this all the time?
“Magic,” she murmurs, disbelieving.
“Hm?” Satine leans towards her to hear her better.
“He really used some Jetti magic on you,” she says, a little bit louder. “Most people would fall out of love after such a long time, but you’re still head over heels in love with him, even if you can never have him. I have no other explanation than witchcraft.”
And it doesn’t even come out of her mouth as disgusted. More like… Surprised. Puzzled. Confused. Yes, definitely confused. Bo-Katan’s confused as hell, which seems to be the norm in all her interactions with her older sister, even after so many years with no contact.
“Bo…” Satine starts, and she recognises the defensive mode when she hears one.
She raises her hand and silences her. “Kriff it, I’m joking.”
A pale eyebrow goes up.
“No, really,” she assures. “I know I had reacted very badly the first time around, but I was sixteen then! And– really, Satine, a Jetii ? Did you really have to fall for one of them?”
“As if I ever had a choice,” Satine scoffs. “It seems I do not have control over anything, let alone over my feelings.”
Well. This, at least, tracks.
“We have to try, I suppose,” Bo-Katan admits, though not with much enthusiasm. “If he can keep you safe and sound again, your plan’s worth trying.”
“He can, and he will.”
Bo-Katan’s lips curl upward involuntarily. “Shall I get you some birth control this time?” she whispers. “Or are you willing to finally give dear Korkie a sibling or two? You know, ba’buir was one of the twins, so there’s a chance–”
“Don’t be a bitch, Bo-Katan,” Satine hisses. Her cheeks get a little pink, and Bo-Katan smirks. “My feelings may be unchanged, but I am not as thoughtless as I once was.”
Debatable.
“Never say never,” she says nonchalantly. “You’ll see him and he won’t need that magic of his to make you drop all the clothes for him. Happened before, will happen again.”
Satine glares at her.
Bo-Katan almost laughs. Annoying her older sister has always been so easy, it has never changed, which she finds quite unexpectedly rather soothing.
“I gather you don’t find me brainwashed by him anymore, then.”
“No. Just hopeless.”
Satine snorts.
For a brief moment, Bo-Katan feels the urge to apologise to her sister for what she said when they last saw each other. This moment seems as good as any, she even opens her mouth, ready to start.
But then they hear shots from somewhere close, and then heavy footsteps and shouting.
“Run!” Bo-Katan tells her older sister, and they both hurry just behind Korkie, to reach the rest of the group that’s awaiting them outside.
She’ll apologise to Satine later when everything’s settled and they don’t have people trying to kill them hunting them down. They’ll have time to just talk, to just be. Then, she’ll apologise, and maybe they’ll mend. She’d really like that. She missed her sister, despite all.
Yes. They’ll have a chance to talk in a safer and more private place soon.
Everything will be okay.