Chapter Text
Jango had his rifle slung over his back, peering through the waving stalks of the rye fields. He kept hearing rustling that was louder than just the borcatu scavenging. Jango thought it might be one of Arla’s friends who’d come to visit, and was waiting until she could sneak out of the house.
The heavy treaded prints in the soft earth made him reevaluate. He took his rifle down, just in case, resting the stock against his side. Solid footsteps approached from behind, and Jango spun, his grip on the forestock tightening.
He relaxed as he recognized his father, who looked slightly more somber than usual, though he offered him a small smile.
“What’s that, buir?” Jango asked, peering up at his father as he strode deeper into the fields, basket tucked underneath an arm. “Are you gonna follow the bootprints?”
His father paused and reached down to ruffle his hair slightly. “Already did, ad’ika. It’s just some food, there's a beggar in the fields.”
Jango wrinkled his nose as his hair was mussed up and went to go follow. “A beggar? Who? Are they from around here? It’s not one of Arla’s friends, is it? Why don’t you just invite them into the house?”
He laughed. “So many questions. Go do your chores and then you can ask me all the questions you want.”
“What chores?” He asked innocently. Maybe if neither of them remembered, Jango could go play. Or spy on the beggar.
“Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the harvester, Jan’ika?” Buir raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure that’s been your chore all season.”
“I don’t know about that-”
“Harvester, Jango. Don’t make me tell you again.” He said, voice tinged with amusement, as he continued to follow the bootprints deeper into the rye.
Jango pouted, dissapointed, but trudged off to fix the stupid havester, again. It just wasn’t fair, he had to do all the boring stuff, and Arla got to go hunting , and soon she was going to get her own set of beskar’gam, and Jango had to wait five whole years! He got to the harvester and kicked the treads in a huff.
Now he was annoyed, and his foot hurt too.
Jango pulled the strap of his rifle over his head and leaned it up against the tread casing closest to him.
He sat down with a huff, and leaned over to pull the toolbox closer to him. He grabbed out a screwdriver, and pried off the circuitry cover. It was never the engine having problems, it was always the circuits. The dust got in between the cracks in the panels and coated the copper. Jango kept telling his buire that they needed to just get it sealed properly but what did he know? He was eight. Didn't mean it wasn’t his job to fix the harvester.
The sun was beating down hard, and he reached up to wipe his brow. His eyes caught movement in the reflection of the window and the harvester, and his stomach sunk as a high pitched noise whirred behind his ear.
“Hey kid.”
He spun around, dropping the screwdriver and bolts he was holding. A tall, pale man with stringy black hair stood between him and the fields, a man with the worst receding hairline he’d ever seen, and someone with their buy'ce firmly on.
The man grinned, a sickly sort of smile that promised nothing good would happen. “Show me your hands.”
Jango knew he wasn’t a journeyman, Buir would have said something if they were coming to visit. And plus, his beskar’gam was painted red and black. Jango didn’t think holding eight year olds at gun point was particularly just or bringing much honor to a parent, but some people had weird families. So he held his hands up, proud that he was only trembling a little. “What do you want?”
“We’re looking for some bad men,” Greasy hair said, as Receding hairline jammed the blaster rifle in Jango's face. “Have you seen any strangers around?”
“Other than you?” He asked, glancing at the rifle mere feet away from him that he couldn’t get to.
Receding’s lip curled back. “Smart kid. Let’s just shoot him and move on.”
Greasy leaned right into Jango's face, a gloved finger touching the tip of his nose. His eyes glittered with malice, “I will let him kill you. I won’t even feel bad about it. Now tell me, kid. Seen any other strangers?”
“My dad- He gave a beggar some food. Um, he wouldn’t let me go see, or anything, I had to go fix the harvester. But, uh, he wore boots! Soldiers boots, I think.” He stuttered out.
Greasy stood back, straightening up. His scowl deepened even more. “Jaster,”
“So what now? Do I shoot the kid?” Receding asked.
Jango squeezed his eyes shut as the blaster whirred, louder and higher pitched this time.
“No, now we make sure he gets back home.” Greasy waved forward Buyce, who grabbed Jango's arms tightly, and began dragging him through the field toward the homestead.
-----
Arla stared at the counter, chin resting in her hand. “So why can’t I go out with Bidu and Aydosa? We’re not gonna go see boys or anything.”
Her mom snorted, and set down the knife she was sharpening. “Honey, you and boys is one of the things I’m least worried about. And I know you kids don’t do anything with spice. Now alcohol is a different story.”
“Thats not me, promise.”
“I know it’s not, I’m just teasing honey. I saw your father grab a bottle for that basket he was carrying out to the fields, don’t you worry. No, the problem is you three go and try to sharpshoot out by the dam, and one of the Juajors’ strills keeps bringing back the shells instead of game like he’s supposed to.”
Arla groaned and let her head drop down onto the varnished wood. “Aw come on. It’s the only fun thing to do around here anyways.”
She reached over and ruffled her blonde curls. “It’s good to practice your marksmanship, yes, but we’re farmers Arl’ika. That sort of thing is for soldiers.”
“Dad took over with the Journeymen, why can’t I do something like that?” She complained. “I don’t like farming.”
“Which is why I send you hunting. I’m not a farmer either, Arla, but the mercenary life really takes a toll on you. Especially the knees. If you ever get into that line of work, padded knee guards. You’ll thank me.” She turned back to the piles of knives, and picked her whetstone back up. Sure, you could do it with a sonic, but everyone in town knew that the best way to do it was by hand.
And Arla’s mom was the best around with a whetstone and some diamond dust.
“I still don’t want to farm.” She wrinkled her nose. “I finished all my chores anyways, if I promise not to go shoot out at the dam can I go hang out with my friends? Please?”
“Mm, maybe later. Help me with these first, you need to know how to handle a kad at some point, and while these knives may not be that close, you’ll at least know how to handle a bladed edge.”
“Fine.” She muttered, picking up a wicked looking cleaver, and the kal’choruk closest to her from the bowl of water, beginning to angle it against the knife.
It was a quiet sort of repetition, just the rasp of metal, the occasional break to re-wet the stones, and the quiet sound of the wind rustling.
Arla’s mother froze at some point, and silently set down the paring knife she was holding, a finger against her lips urging Arla to stay quiet. She walked over and put on her boots, leaning against the wall and pressing her ear to the door.
Slipping the whetstone into her pocket for later, Arla was about to ask what was going on when she heard people shouting, and the sound of a blaster bolt.
She flinched slightly when her mother rushed to the rifle hanging above the doorframe, effortlessly hiking it down and loading it with practiced ease, the movements of someone who’d done it a thousand times. Something bad was happening outside, and that's when she focused on the words being said.
“Where’s Jaster Mereel?” Someone snarled in a deep, grating voice.
“I haven’t seen him since he was exiled-” And the door opened and suddenly her buir was stepping onto the porch silently, shotgun at the ready, and Arla dashed out after her, bare feet against the weathered floorboards. “- I’m the journeyman protector here, I’m the law.”
“No, this is the law.” Deep voice said, long stringy black hair hanging around his face. “Answer the fucking question or your kid’ll be wearing your brains.”
Someone in full beskad had Jango by the hair, pushing him right next to the loaded blaster, and her father's bloody and beaten face.
Arla saw her mother take aim and shoot the man directly in the visor. “Drop my child!” She shouted, readying the rifle to shoot again.
“Jango, run!” Her father shouted at the same time her mother yelled at her. “Arla, go!”
“Buir- what’s going on?” She cried out, scared and confused and somebody was dead and oh they were all gonna die and-
“Arla run. Grab Jan’ika, run and don’t look back!” She roared, planting herself in a defensive stance as Arla took off through the chaos, following Jango’s path through the rye fields.
She sprinted as fast as she could, quickly catching up to her brother, and ignored the way her feet ached as she raced away, away, away .
And then a beskar clad arm grabbed Jango by the wrist, and she knew they were dead. It was either this or the fire she smelled burning a trail behind them.
“You kids alright?” They asked, releasing Jango now that he wasn’t going to charge full speed into them, dented gray beskar with red trim. “I’m sorry to break it to you, but I don’t think your folks made it out of this one. You need to come with us if you don’t want to march alongside them.”
Jango turned back and looked at the field tearily, blazing as flames jumped and pulsed, climbing high and travelling far quicker than it seemed was possible, leaving nothing but charred ground in their wake. He reached out, and grabbed Arla’s hand, clutching it like a lifeline.
“Jango-”
“- Yeah.” He whispered, barely audible over the roar of flames.
One of the people called back towards the man with the red, “It’s burning too fast! We’re fucked, Jaster!”
Jango dropped Arla’s hand, and turned to the armored mandalorians. “This way! I know a way out!”
“Lead the way kid!” One of the others yelled at him, her voice strained as the smoke began to overwhelm them.
Jango tore off, the others following after him, and Arla found herself firmly in the middle of a pack of strangers, barely able to see her brother through the haze.
Jango was trying his best to unscrew the hatch on the irrigation tube, and the man, Mereel, took over for him, easily opening it up.
“Are you crazy?” Someone scoffed. “We’ll be boiled alive.”
“Shut up Montross,” The woman next to him scolded. “It’s a grassfire, they burn high. This kid just saved our sorry asses, try to be positive.”
Montross grumbled, and watched the woman climb into the hatch, as Mereel lifted Jango down with her help. He turned to look at Arla. “If we get boiled alive, I’m blaming the two of you.”
“It’s that or burn alive, pick your poison.” She crossed her arms, trying not to show how bad she was shaking.
He snorted slightly, watching the others enter the irrigation pipe. “Well, at least I can see the fire coming. Get in the tube kid, I always take up the rear.”
She walked over to the hatch, and swung herself down into the almost cavernous internal maintenance portion of the pipe, the moment where she dropped without touching anything spiking her adrenaline. Arla landed, calf deep in water, stumbling a little. At least her feet didn’t feel like they were blistering anymore. One of the mandalorians, offered a hand to steady her, which she accepted gratefully. The tube shrunk significantly after just a few feet, they’d have to crawl their way out.
Montross landed right behind her, and he groaned. “Why couldn’t it have been walkable the whole way?”
The mandalorian who she was holding on to let out a sigh. “Stop being a baby Montross, you’re whining.”
He sputtered, “I am not- ” and paused “Osik. I am whining. Damn.”
Arla ducked her head, biting her lip so she wouldn’t let out the giggles that were threatening to escape. She didn’t know if it was actually funny, or if she was just hysterical. Maybe a bit of both.
From far down the tube, a snapped command of “Taabir!” echoed back to them.
Montross sighed. “I’m going to give Jaster the biggest ‘I told you so’ I swear. Alright, get moving, I really don’t want to be boiled.”
Arla rolled her eyes and crossed to the offshoot tube that Jango had picked, the one that dumped out above the old dry creekbed, ducking her head down as she started crawling after the others.
----
Jango was pulled out by the man he’d been following, who seemed to be the leader, blinking sharply against the daylight as his eyes readjusted. He stumbled out of the opened grate, finding the best footing he could on the boulder it was set into.
“You doing okay kid?” Mereel asked,walking towards the edge of the dropoff. “I’ll go down first, and catch you if you fall.”
“I can climb, I’m not a baby.” He protested.
“I’m sure you can, but the rocks here are really loose. I’ve seen enough verd slip and eat shit- Er, I mean fall and hurt themselves-”
“I know what shit means.” Jango huffed.
“Okay, good.” The man breathed out in a huff. “It’s hard enough to censor myself around the ad’ike when we’re on base, I just can’t compartmentalize that when I’m in the field.” Mereel began picking his way down to the ground.
Jango admitted that it probably would be better to go after him. Just so he didn’t slip and eat shit. “What’s compartmentalize mean?”
“It’s when you try and put your thoughts in different places, like compartments.” He explained, dropping a handhold as it crumbled under his fingers.
“Oh. Okay, thanks.” He nodded, and went back to focusing on getting down.
More and more of the other mandalorians were trickling out of the irrigation pipe alongside the water. And by the time Jango had made it down to the bottom, he saw Arla. He let out a shaky sniffle and sat down on a boulder, and waited for her. He didn’t know what to do, and Arla always had ideas.
Arla was helped down by someone in green and orange armor, and seemed to be talking to someone in blue and brushed gray armor. As soon as she saw him, she dashed across, pushing people aside until she got to him.
Jango was on his feet before he even noticed it, collapsing into her arms and sobbing into her shirt. “Arla- Arla I thought I was gonna be alone- our buire- Arla, ori’vod, What are we gonna do?”
She buried her face in his hair, and he could feel the way she was trembling. “I don’t know, I don’t know Jan’ika, we’ll figure it out, together, promise.”
He nodded, and just clung to her desperately, “Sorry, ‘m getting your shirt all snotty.”
“It’s okay, Jango. It’s the least of my worries, Promise.” She whispered, and Jango looked around at their surroundings.
Mereel was addressing the group across the clearing, “We’ll make camp here till sundown. Clean your weapons and try not to get pneumonia.”
The man in the blue armor who was talking with Arla earlier grimaced as he poured water out of his helmet, hair plastered to his forehead.
“We need to find Vizsla, they’ll have to resupply at some point.” One of the mandalorians sighed. “Soon, seeing as they’re burning the fields.”
Jango looked up at the sky, plumes of sickly gray smoke rising from the direction of the house. Buir had been so proud of getting those crops to grow too. He pulled away from Arla, and sat back on the boulder. “I can take you to town. They’ve got power cells, and food, and stuff. That’s where’d I go.”
“Do you know how to use a blaster?”
“Yeah. Kinda. Arla’s better than I am.”
“You’re fine with a blaster Jan’ika. I’m better with a rifle.” She sighed, wringing out her sopping curls, eyes red from unshed tears.
Mereel nodded. “The kids come with us. Settle in, we’re gonna be here for a few hours.”
-----
It was terrifying, Arla decided. It was terrifying to have everything you’d ever know stripped and taken from you, your entire life ripped away, and to be put in a group of strangers purely because these strangers just so happened to be the reason why things had just crumbled around you.
And, she thought to herself, it really sucked that she hadn’t grabbed a pair of boots on her way out. Or a jacket, which only dawned on her as the sun began to slip down the horizon. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, glancing over at Jango, who was talking animatedly with Mereel, drawing on the ground with a stick.
They’d talked, quietly and hushed between themselves, and agreed that since Arla was older, she'd hang back and watch everyone. If anything even slightly fishy happened, they'd cut and run.
So Jango was with the Mand’alor, plotting how to get into town, and what to do once they got there.
She folded her knees to her chest, and scanned the clearing, glancing warily at Montross, who was leaned up against a tree, doing… something . He looked up and made eye contact with her, and started to walk across towards her.
Arla had been right next to him the entire time they crawled towards safety, and was treated to a far more in depth crash course in swear words than any of her classmates had ever provided. If nothing else, she could now at least make a lot of people want to wash her mouth out with soap.
“Here.” He held something out to her, a bundle of cloth.
She took it carefully, and squinted at him. Montrosses gloves were gone, and strips were torn from the hem of his padded shirt. She realized as she looked at the bundle, that the colors matched. She started trying to unravel them. “What is it?”
“Shoes.” He shrugged, gesturing to her bare feet. “If we’re going into battle, I’m not letting some kid slow us down just because she steps on glass or something.”
“I’m thirteen.” Arla muttered.
“Are you? I don’t see any beskar’gam.” He snorted. “Just put on the shoes, cause otherwise I sacrificed my nice gloves for nothing.”
She put one on, and had to grudgingly admit that they were pretty cleverly made, with a bowline knot sewn into the ankle of the shoe, so she could tighten it as much or little as she needed. And even the stitching was relatively neat and orderly. “Okay, this is better than I would think you could pull off.”
His face scrunched up, the perfect picture of disbelief. “You’ve known me for less than three hours and you’ve already decided what I can and can’t do?”
“All you did was swear and curse the Mand’alor’s father for being friends with your mother.”
“It’s their fault that I’m stuck with Jaster, covering his sorry ass.” He nodded serenely. “I could have done something useful instead. Like become a cook.”
“You can cook?”
“Oh manda, no. I burn water.” Montoss grinned. “But I think charring pots would be more useful than watching his six.”
"Doesn't mean you can sew." She huffed, tying them both securely. "You have the look of someone who's. Y'know. Ori'buyce, kih'kovid.
He glared at her. "You're annoying. I did something nice for you, and you start trying to bully me? Didn't you ever learn to respect your elders?"
Arla grinned. "Okay grandpa."
Montross made a choked noise. "You little -."
One of the other Haat Mando'ade smacked the back of his head. "Stop upsetting the kids. They're going through some shit."
Montross waved them off. "Alright alright, jeez. You don't have to remind them of it, Valyn."
Arla managed a weak smile, trying to ignore the feeling of tears prickling.
He looked at her, and she saw a flash of panic in his expression. "Osik, kid, I know. I know this is the worst day of your life, but you have to hold it together. Just for a little bit. Just until we can get everyone somewhere safe. And then you can shatter and put yourself back together. Okay?"
She scrubbed the back of her hand furiously at her eyes. "Yeah. Yeah. I can do that. Mando'karla, right?"
"Elek." He offered, something quiet and reassuring in his tone. "Hey. You know how to handle a rifle, right?"
"Y-yeah." She nodded, hating the way her voice broke. "Yeah I used to get game for dinner. Nothing big though. And me and my friends would go try and knock things over."
"Ever tried sniping?"
"Not really, no."
He grinned. "Wanna give it a shot?"