Chapter Text
“Mand'alor!” Myles says, sharp with relief, as he slides down a steep incline of stone just beyond the valley’s edge. Mace has his eyes closed, but he can feel the pause, the flicker of caution and buried alarm that twists with sharp anger—
“Myles,” Jaster says, and Myles pauses at the tone. With a flicker of amusement, Jaster nudges, and Mace carefully straightens from where he was leaning against Jaster's shoulder, so tired he feels dizzy with it but willing to be moved.
There's a pause as Myles looks from Jaster to Mace, then over to where Echo is sitting with one arm around Leia, and then down to the pile of crystals in an old, broken clay pot that Jaster is handling like they're radioactive. Something flickers across his face, and after a long second he snorts.
“Do I even want to know?” he asks, dry.
“Not unless you want a good deal more grey hair,” Jaster says, amused. “Colt, can you have these sent up to Cody? The cruiser’s weapons system should be able to destroy them, but I don’t want to risk such an attempt while on the planet.”
“Yes, sir,” Colt says without hesitation, though the way he takes the pot is ginger. “Dangerous?”
“Don’t touch them, and don’t let anyone stay near them for more than an hour,” Mace says, and when Jaster turns to help him up, he takes the assistance gladly. “But otherwise, I believe they're safe enough to transport.”
Colt nods, then moves away, calling orders to some of his squad. One of the shuttles immediately starts its engines again, and Mace watches as the clones climb aboard, then take off, and—
It’s probably not right to say that the whole planet feels lighter, but Mace certainly does.
“Do you need a medic?” Rex asks, approaching carefully over the uneven ground with his helmet under one arm. “I've got Kix with me.”
Mace shakes his head, just as Jaster says, “It couldn’t hurt. Mace was injured.”
There's a pause, and Mace eyes Jaster as Jaster raises a pointed brow at him. Behind them, Leia snorts, unimpressed, and says, loud enough to carry, “They both need help. But not a doctor kind.”
“Leia,” Mace says on a sigh, and Leia sniffs, unrepentant.
Jaster chuckles, arm tightening just a little around Mace. “I believe we’ll be just fine once those things are gone,” he says, and Rex casts a glance towards where the shuttle disappeared, frowning faintly.
“Weapons?” he asks, concerned.
Mace inclines his head. “The plans for them,” he says. “The same weapon that destroyed the Jedi Temple on Ossus millennia ago. I’d thought they were lost, but clearly not thoroughly lost enough.”
It’s no wonder, given the Order’s history, that Tarre was willing to go to any length to keep those particular plans hidden. No wonder, given all the lives they took, the sun they destroyed, that the remnants of that weapon hidden in the data crystals would be Dark, the sort of thing fit to devour restraint and sense. Mace is entirely glad to see them gone.
Rex pauses, glancing over at Myles, and Myles looks back, just for a moment. Then, with a crooked smile that’s at least half relief, Myles tips his head and says, “I’ll go get Kix. Mand'alor, stay there. Arla is already on her way, and she’s bringing Jango—”
“What?” Jaster asks, alarmed. “Why—”
“Because she wants to meet her new stepfather,” Myles says, perfectly mild, and Mace hides his amusement. Catching it, Myles flicks him a glance, and then says, “And she wants to be here for any negotiations about Vader.”
Mace stops his next words, entirely caught off guard. “Negotiations?” he asks, concerned, and that concern only grows when Leia winces, sliding back like she’s going to hide behind Echo. “Leia Amidala, what precisely did you fail to tell me?”
Jaster, for his part, looks equally alarmed.
Rex puts up a hand, coughs into his fist in a way that’s absolutely hiding his laughter. “She and Luke led Darth Vader straight into our ambush, sir, with the help of the Sith deserter Maul and his…” He hesitates, like he’s trying to find the word.
Leia huffs. “You’ve met my mom,” she says disdainfully. “Maul is definitely the wife in this equation.”
Padmé. Somehow Mace finds himself entirely unsurprised that Padmé Amidala is involved in all of this. Anakin always followed orders from anyone he considered an authority, but Padmé has a recklessly calculating and independent streak she passed on to both of her children. He raises a brow at his padawan, and Leia rolls her eyes in return.
“Vader captured Mom, and Maul rescued her,” she says, only a little grudging. It’s mildly astonishing, given how she normally reacts to Sith. Mace assumes Maul endeared himself to her quite a lot in the course of whatever adventures they clearly had. “Maul couldn’t even beat that bastard in a fight, though. Countess Wren had to finish the job.”
“I hope Maul is all right, in that case,” Mace says, dry. “You told me you were fine. Do I need to doubt that?”
Leia very obviously doesn’t answer. “The weapon was more important,” she says. “And you were more important. If my Master dies I’ll probably have to go back to Ferus as my teacher, and he’s too twitchy.”
“You would make anyone twitchy,” Echo says, and Leia makes a sound of outrage and thumps him in the ribs. Echo jolts with a groan like he’s dying, doubling over, and for the first time in years, Mace has the pleasure of watching Leia's eyes go wide in panic over a boy.
“Echo,” she says, and grabs him, dragging him back. “I didn’t hit you that hard, I just—the medic—what—”
Jaster, braced next to Mace, is all but shaking with suppressed laughter. As is Echo, Mace notes, and raises a brow at Jaster. Jaster raises one right back, then helps him forward as Leia's concern turns to outrage.
“Is Vader dead, then?” Jaster asks.
Rex shakes his head, falling into step with them as Myles attempts to intervene before Leia can punch Echo. Again. “Captured,” he says. “Leia said he’d kidnapped some of your people, proposed ransoming him back to the Emperor for them. I wanted to hold off on orders before I sent any messages, though.”
The children. Mace breathes in, closing his eyes for just a moment. It will be up to Jaster, as the Mand'alor, but—the Order has been searching for their lost initiates for so long now, with no headway made. It’s never been Mace's way to give up, but the years have worn at him, just thinking what the children must be going through.
A hand touches his, slides over his knuckles, threads their fingers together. When Mace raises his head, Jaster meets his eyes, raises Mace's knuckles to his lips. The kiss is light, but there's an unmistakable promise in Jaster's gaze.
“Send the message,” he tells Rex without hesitation. “Mace, I assume you have a full accounting of all the children who were taken that we can use? I’ll give you my word the information will be deleted as soon as they're returned to you.”
Mace's throat feels tight, and he nods. Care for the Jedi as a whole from someone outside the Order is vanishingly rare, and—Jaster could ask for almost anything from Sidious, in the name of returning Anakin. That he’s giving up such leverage without pause, for the sake of the Jedi—
“Thank you, Jaster,” Mace says, quiet, and Jaster chuckles.
“I believe I owe you a wedding gift,” he says. “This is the first part of it.” A pause, deliberate, and he glances back at Myles as he climbs the hill behind them. “Myles, the Ryspeth system is still uninhabited, yes?”
Myles's eyes narrow, but he inclines his head, watching Jaster closely. “Yes, Mand'alor. It was too close to Hutt space until the borders were pushed back.”
Jaster hums. “I don’t believe Jedi will have any problem with the Hutts,” he says. “Draw up the paperwork to partition it, please. I intend to deed it to my husband as a sign of my devotion.”
Myles pauses, closing his eyes like he’s restraining twelve different things he wants to say. “Mand'alor, my honorable liege—”
“Jaster,” Mace says, equally concerned, “I trust you, but tying the Order to the Mandalorian Empire—”
“No ties,” Jaster says, quiet, and tightens his grip on Mace's hand. “A gift, Mace, with no strings or requirements of the Jedi. The sector borders Hutt space on two sides, Wild Space on another, and my Empire on only one side. You won't be surrounded, even if something changes in the future, and I won't restrict the Order’s passage through my lands. Nothing has to change, but I would like to make sure that my husband’s people have a safe haven should they need it.”
A safe haven. Somewhere he could have sent the Order after Anakin's massacres, somewhere safe without any outsiders, where threats can be faced as a people and not from scattered enclaves. Mace breathes in, breathes out, and—
A week ago, he would have thought it was a trap. Here and now, he knows it’s not.
“Marrying an actor and giving him huge swathes of your Empire?” he asks, just a little rough in his throat. “Mand'alor, you're going to be the subject of gossip for the rest of your natural life.”
Jaster chuckles, and when Mace leans in, he takes the soft kiss gladly, easily, fingertips pressed to Mace's skin.
“Let them talk,” he says, framing Mace's cheek with one hand. “I’ll just have to do something even more scandalous to distract them. Something like inviting Tarre Vizsla and his wife to my wedding ceremony, perhaps.”
Fay and Tarre, without the corruption, with a place should they want it and their hidden sect if they don’t. Mace smiles, can't help it, because there are more Jedi, all safe, and their stolen children are going to be returned. Because Jaster is a good man, despite all of Mace's doubts, and the Order’s future is more secure now than it has been in thousands of years. Because this is good, a sharply brilliant thing, and he can feel it in the Force, a shatterpoint where everything could break but didn’t.
“I look forward to it,” Mace says, and he’s smiling when Jaster kisses him again.