Chapter Text
The Royal Palace was one of the most striking buildings in Sundari. Though it had been heavily damaged during the civil war, now, almost two decades later, Satine Kryze had fully restored it to its former glory.
Living there was much like living in an ancient castle: the high ceilings, the glass murals, blue-tinted, tall windows, majestic torches, and guards in traditional armor patrolling the corridors. A perfect marriage of timeless elegance and Mandalorian minimalism.
In the eastern wing of the palace, Duchess Satine Kryze had her living quarters. Here, there was a small, personal library, a study, an office, a vast living room for entertaining private guests, two luxurious bathrooms, one guestroom, a modern kitchen, one big master bedroom, and of course, a large wardrobe to store all the big costumes she wore at the parliament and at official functions.
Like any other day, Satine stood up, wrapping herself in a long, teal-colored morning gown and a pair of matching slippers before padding out of the bedroom. The chrono on the wall panel read exactly 0600 hours, and thus it was time to begin the day.
“I might work from home today,” Satine thought to herself as she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the window.
Bright-blonde hair with slight curls that reached to her shoulders, green eyes, a diamond-shaped face with a narrow jaw and chin, a long nose and prominent, wide cheekbones that made her look regal.
However, as memorable as her face was, without her extravagant headpieces and dresses, few would immediately recognize her as the Duchess of Mandalore. It gave her a sense of anonymity; she could stroll the streets of Sundari in plain clothes, and nobody would look twice at her.
Perhaps she could treat herself with a visit to the new park in the southern sector today?
“Good morning, Lady Kryze,” her silvery protocol greeted her as she stepped into her spotless kitchen. “I have prepared breakfast for you. Will you take it on the terrace? It's such pleasant weather today.”
“Why not?” Satine replied, allowing herself a small, rare grin. Yes, it was pleasant weather; it always was because Sundari was living under a dome in a desert where sandstorms were rare and short-lived.
Her private terrace was white, paved with tiles and banisters made of white marble imported from Chandrila. Her chairs and glass table had been crafted by artisan glassblowers on Naboo, and the gold-lined porcelain set was a gift from the Tarkin family after closing a lucrative deal between Seswenna Ordnance Works and MandaloreMotors to develop a new, protective alloy for coating starship hulls.
The terrace doors were framed by large, blue-tinted ceramic pots with rare species of evergreen shrubs that once grew in Mandalore’s forests before the ecosystem collapsed.
As she stepped out in the morning sun, Satine brushed her fingers against the foliage, a reminder of what Mandalore once had been, and a silent promise to do everything in her power to bring it back to its former lush glory.
Satine drank her morning tea while gazing out over the desert. For being in the middle of a city, it was always quiet in Sundari. Just the distant noise from the sparse traffic… and the occasional explosions from Mandalorians trying out rockets and Maker knows what else they did out in the dunes...
Her airborne surveillance droids kept the paparazzi and unwanted guests away, and even though she was both a noble lady and a high-profile politician, Satine could have her breakfast outside in peace.
It was a luxury that barely existed on Coruscant or Hosnian Prime, where the rich and influential were hunted down by the press like rare big game for the juiciest snapshots.
As soon as she swept her finger over the sensor that unlocked her holopad, she was immediately met by a feed of news from the Core Worlds. Padme Amidala, former Queen of Naboo and its current Senator, was in the headlines as usual. On the HNE alone, there were… twelve articles and twenty news clips about her and her alleged relationship with the banker Rush Clovis.
Ironically, the gossip press found her personal relationships and love life far more interesting than her political ambitions, and Satine let out a sigh. She had been suffering through the same treatment for years, and now, as a single, childless career woman in her early thirties, the local media had become even more ruthless.
The ideal for a Mandalorian woman was to find a suitable man to marry, preferably early, and have a brood of kids to raise together with said man into warriors.
It was a tradition born from centuries of war, designed to keep Mandalore's armies filled with warriors. To Satine, however, it was a relic that demanded women sacrifice their futures to an endless cycle of violence.
“But I’ll show them,” she murmured to herself. “I’ll show them there are other ways to lead... other ways to serve Mandalore than simply birthing its soldiers.”
After dismissing the mindless entertainment news, a holoclip with Count Dooku’s speech popped up, and his cold, deeply convinced gaze was enough to almost give her cold shivers down her spine.
"The Jedi Order has become nothing more than the armed guard of a dying empire, enforcing the will of the stagnant bureaucrats in the Galactic Senate. The Confederacy of Independent Systems wants full liberation from this anomaly of a system that feeds upon its own children….”
It had gone fast, she noticed. It was just a few weeks since the news dropped that the former Jedi Master had taken the title of the leader of the Separatists, and more and more systems joined every day.
“Today, we can confirm that the Kooriva, led by Passel Argente, has pledged to pull their entire sector out of the Republic and join the CIS…”.
Satine took another sip of tea and a bite from her coarse grain bread as she watched Passel declare why Kooriva was better off with the CIS, followed by a political analyst on Hosnian Prime who explained that Tibrin and Murkhana also were likely to join the Separatists before the week was over.”
Next came a clip featuring her Prime Minister, Almec, who had been to Coruscant for a charity event. The reporter had caught him outside the terminal in the Republica 500 area, just when he was about to step onto a cruiser to take him back to Mandalore.
“My thoughts? Seeing an established world in the Mid Rim walk away from the Republic proves that Dooku's movement isn't just an Outer Rim "barbarian" rebellion,” Almec said, looking stone-faced into the camera. “It shows the secession wave is creeping closer into the heart of the galaxy, and this needs to be taken more seriously by the Senate.”
Yes, although Satine tried to keep Mandalore as independent and self-sufficient as she could, this would eventually start to affect them too. She wasn’t too worried about the imports, though, but the more cornered the Republic would feel, the more likely they were to try to drag Mandalore into this mess….
Shutting down the news, Satine started to go through the messages in her inbox. It was all messages from the city council, a few requests from diplomats in the nearby system, some charity requests, and a request from yet another journalist…
No message from Bo today either.
It’s been three months since she last heard from her sister, and the lump in Satine’s stomach grew heavier with every passing day.
How could she be so utterly stupid to join the Death Watch?
It’s been five years since she left, and Satine still hasn’t come to peace with it. With Jango Fett as the Mand’alor, all clans were turned against them, and Bo’s activities were a thorn in his side. As pragmatic as he was, Bo joining ranks with the Death Watch hadn’t exactly helped Satine’s relationship with him; as much as she hated it, she needed Fett.
Or at least, she didn’t need him as an enemy; it would complicate her already-strained quest to usher Mandalore into a new, more civilized age.
“How am I supposed to convince these narrow-minded men of a better way when I can’t even convince my own sister…?” she murmured to herself as she opened up the last economic report for the system.
The state of the economy was… acceptable. They weren’t thriving, weren’t struggling. After decades of civil war, rebuilding the war-torn capital had cost astronomical sums, and finally, almost twenty years later, the debt had been fully paid and Mandalore as a system could move forward. But Satine wanted more than just comfortable survival: she wanted a better future for the system her family had governed for generations.
Mandalore was warm, and there was plenty of water under the surface. That created a perfect opportunity for more vertical, hypopondrical greenhouses. The ones they had spread out over the city were enough to sustain the needs of its citizens but not more than that.
She flickered over to the state finances. The graphs were as depressing as usual; mercenary services stood for over 40% of their total income, mining 27%, technology exports 7%. Tourism… was 0.6%, and most of those were only interested in the history of Mandalore’s warriors and its bloody history.
Sundari had one museum.
One, and it was all dedicated to the design and development of their iconic beskar armors.
Satine swallowed down a big gulp of her tea as she turned to the next page in the report.
Concordia’s economy was completely based on mining, Concorde Dawn on farming, and the agricultural system there was hopelessly old-fashioned and ineffective. The little surplus in harvests was exported to Sundari, but that was it.
No surplus to speak of.
And Kalevala…. just some tourism, some small-scale farms and vineyards.
“Well, that isn’t going to change anytime soon purely by wishful thinking,” Satine murmured.
She closed the report with a quiet sigh and rose from the table, collecting her porcelain cup and plate. There was still an entire day ahead of her: meetings with the city council, diplomatic correspondence, another endless stack of economic proposals, and most likely at least one journalist attempting to turn her personal life into public entertainment.
Just as she reached the glass doors leading back into the palace, her protocol droid approached with a small portable transmission module held carefully in its metallic hands.
“Duchess Kryze,” the droid announced. “You have received an active priority transmission through the secured Jedi diplomatic frequency.”
Satine stopped.
The Jedi?
That was highly unusual; she hadn’t heard from the Jedi Order in years. She was about to tell MU-87 that she would take it later in her office when she had dressed properly, but the small blue indicator light on the module was already blinking.
For a brief moment, she simply stared at it, tea cup and plate still in one hand. Then she set it back down on the table. If it was through a secure channel, it was surely something more urgent than a request for charity balls or an education project.
“Accept the transmission,” Satine said as she sat down, straightening out the morning gown. It wasn’t optimal, but on a grainy transmission from across the galaxy, it would look like a silky tunic, and nobody would know she was still in pyjamas and slippers underneath.
The droid placed the module in front of her at the table. Within a second, it hummed to life, and the familiar blue shimmer of a hologram began to form.
The sound came through before the image.
“Good morning, Duchess. Thank you for receiving the transmission on such short notice.”
Satine’s heart skipped a beat. She knew that voice, even though it had been over a decade since she heard it the last time.
It was him, it really was.
Obi-Wan Kenobi.
On the table, the small holographic image of a man took form. Another man than the one she once knew: he was no longer the slightly clumsy, intensely devoted, hopelessly boyish young man in a crop cut with a long padawan-braid over his shoulder.
Now, Obi-Wan was well past thirty; his hair had grown longer, the gangly form gone, and he had a well-kept, full beard, and even though a flickering hologram, Satine could see a heaviness in his eyes that wasn’t here before. He must have been through a lot, and she could only imagine the loss he must have felt over losing Qui-Gon Jinn during the siege of Naboo…
By the stars, how would she address him now?
It felt so... odd. Their farewell in the ruins had been heartfelt, yet restrained, and... muted. Two young people bound by the voluntary shackles of their duty. In that very moment, Satine had been so close to asking him to stay and help him rebuild Mandalore with her. But she couldn’t — being a Jedi was a sacred calling and she didn’t want him to give up on his dreams for her sake.
“Master Kenobi,” she replied with a small nod. “It is... unusual to receive a direct priority frequency from the Jedi High Council. To what do I owe the honor?"
Obi-Wan shifted his weight a little, and his formal posture softened slightly.
“It’s been a long time, Satine.”
She felt a surge of bittersweet nostalgia. Hearing her name from his lips immediately pulled her back to their youth: sleeping in cold caves, abandoned houses, and ruins while fleeing assassins, and… falling in love.
A Jedi and a Mandalorian pacifist. What an unlikely and impossible love story.
Doomed to fail from the start.
During the long nights on the run, they sat on the floor in front of a portable heater in the dark, sharing stories from their lives. Obi-Wan had told her about how he initially had failed to become a Padawan. No Jedi Knight had been willing to take him on, and he had been placed in the Jedi Service Corps and sent to Bandomeer for an agricultural project.
By a stroke of luck, the Force, or perhaps Master Yoda’s planning, his path had once again crossed with Qui-Gon there. From that day, it became a struggle for Obi-Wan to convince the Knight to take him on as an apprentice, and he didn’t succeed until they had faced death together on Telos.
“Indeed it has,” she offered him. “What can I do for you?”
Obi-Wan’s gaze flickered. Had he expected her to be softer, more sentimental? If so, he didn’t show it, but there was something that flickered in his eyes that told her seeing her again affected him more than he wanted to let on.
“We are fully aware of your wish to remain a neutral system, but these are dire times for the Republic, and therefore, I’m afraid I must ask you a favor on behalf of the Republic,” he said, and suddenly his facial expression had turned into a blank canvas, as if they were just two diplomats with no personal history at all.
“And what kind of favor might that be?”
“The tension between the Republic and the CIS has put us in an unfortunate situation. We wish to avoid an armed conflict, and by doing so, we also want to make sure Dooku doesn’t seek military support from Mandalore."
Satine felt her fingers tighten around the armrests of her chair. He’d been far more direct than she’d expected him to be in such a sensitive, delicate matter. Having lost over three thousand systems to the coalition of independent systems was a deeply serious matter that had harmed both the public’s trust in the Republic’s power to care for its members and democracy in general as well.
That, in combination with the long economic recession in the core worlds, had put both the Senate and the Jedi Order under a lot of pressure.
Enough to make them come to me to ask for aid, Satine mused to herself. How unusual, I never thought the day would come. Certainly they expect me to say yes without qualms after offering me protection after the civil war…. and to play on my heartstrings, they send Obi-Wan with the request as well.
“As I’m certain you know, I only hold a fraction of the power here,” Satine admitted, keeping her voice neutral. “My coalition is one of many, and we’re a small minority that was another path for Mandalore. Jango Fett is still Mand’alor, the patriarch of the clans, and has been so for almost two decades. It’s him they listen to.”
According to the stories, he had pursued Tor Vizsla’s vessel through space, launched himself into the void with nothing but his jetpack, and crippled the ship before boarding it through the damaged hull as it spiraled uncontrollably toward destruction.
Then, before the wreckage had even settled on the surface of Corellia, he had found Vizsla and killed him with his bare hands.
To Satine, it sounded far too spectacular to be true. However, the leaders of the other clans were beyond impressed with Fett’s skill as a warrior, and in true Mandalorian fashion, he became a patriarch under whose leadership they all united, something Mandalore hadn’t seen for centuries.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan looked a bit perplexed, as if he had forgotten how things still worked on Mandalore. “I assume to take the power, one must challenge this man in battle?”
“So it is, and since he is a…” Satine sighed softly. “...exceptional warrior, there has yet to be a clan leader capable of defeating him.”
A few had been brave enough to try over the years, of course.
But there was something about the man that made him almost impossible to overcome. Jango Fett was notoriously strong, fast, intelligent, and possessed of an almost unnatural physical ability. For more than two decades, he had maintained the peak performance of an unaltered human being, a feat that few others could match.
“Fascinating,” Obi-Wan said, his expression thoughtful. “I would very much like to meet this Jango Fett.”
The way he said it, Satine almost thought he was discussing a historical figure rather than a living man. As if Fett was simply another point of interest on Mandalore, like the Living Waters or the ancient mythosaur bones preserved in the museum on Kalevala.
“Unfortunately, he is largely absent from Sundari,” she explained. “Though you might know his wife, a woman named Komari Vosa? She is rumored to have been a Jedi once.”
“Oh…” Obi-Wan’s eyes widened slightly.
Yes, he recognized the name; Satine could tell.
“Vosa…,” he continued with a thoughtful gaze on his face. “Now that you say it, I do. Not personally, but I do know who she is. She caused quite a scandal when she left.”
Satine wasn’t even the slightest surprised. Komari was an unpleasant, theatrical, slightly manical woman who enjoyed mind games and caused social disruption for fun whenever she showed up at official functions and events.
'My, my. It’s almost tragic, watching you try this hard, Satine. Rebuilding the palace, importing vintage furniture and fabrics from Aeterno and Chandrila, all to impress the same diplomats that view your beloved Mandalore as nothing but a beskar-filled… eyesore.'
“On another note… Count Dooku was her Master when she was a Jedi, though,” Obi-Wan revealed after a beat.
The information hit Satine like a bucket of cold water. It was true that she had been a Jedi then, but the pupil of the Separatist leader too?
Though Vosa held no official power or posts, she was far too close to the Mand’alor for Satine to let such an influence go undealt with. Would Fett listen to her if she suggested he would side with her old Master instead of the Republic, did she have that kind of influence over him?
Satine hadn’t the slightest idea how their relationship worked. They seemed like an utterly bizarre match, and Fett and Vosa were rarely ever seen together in public, but they lived together, and she was said to be the mother to all his children, so they were treated as a married couple.
“You fear she might try to convince Fett into siding with the CIS?” Satine said.
“It could be possible.”
“Would you oppose an official visit?” Obi-Wan asked after a moment. “The Council has had some concerns regarding Vosa and her current position for quite a while. Given her history, and her proximity to the Mand’alor, they believe it would be wise to better understand where her loyalties currently lie.”
A visit?
Satine was so surprised she almost lost her composure.
A meeting over transmission was one thing. A carefully worded diplomatic conversation where both sides could maintain distance and formality was something she was entirely comfortable with. But him coming to Mandalore, seeing him face to face after all these years…?
“Of course not,” she managed. “Mandalore welcomes diplomatic visitors. However, I must admit I am not sure how much cooperation you can expect from Vosa.”
He studied her expression carefully. “You do not believe she would welcome Jedi presence?”
Satine sighed softly. “She is a… difficult person.”
“I have had some experience with difficult people over the years; it’s one of my specialties...,” Obi-Wan said.
Satine thought she could hear the faintest hint of amusement enter his voice, and for a moment, he suddenly seemed more like the man she remembered him to be.
“...I will also be bringing a Padawan with me.”
“Your Padawan?” Satine asked.
“No. Master Plo Koon’s,” Obi-Wan said. “Padawan Tano. She is months away from her trials, and I thought this could be a good learning opportunity for her. An unusual, slightly more difficult diplomatic mission… There is always something new to learn.”
“I see,” she replied, catching herself from slipping into a smile. “She is welcome too, of course.”
“Then I shall inform the Council that Mandalore is willing to receive us,” Obi-Wan said.
“Please do. You will be welcomed as honored guests,” Satine replied, feeling uncharacteristically unsure of what to say next.
A silence then settled between them.
There had once been a time when silence between them felt effortless. Comfortable, even. Now it was merely unfamiliar. Like both of them were waiting for the other to bridge the distance that years had created.
Unfortunately, if there was one thing that had not changed between them, it was their unwillingness to step out of line. Instead, they remained silent, just looking at each other for what must have been a few seconds, but felt like hours.
“Until then, Duchess,” Obi-Wan finally said with a soft bow.
“Safe travels, Master Kenobi.”
The hologram shimmered once before dissolving into blue static. A heartbeat later, the portable transmitter emitted a soft chime and disappeared. Satine sank back onto the chair, letting out a deep exhale. She could hear Obi-Wan’s voice chime in her ears, and it still felt a bit unreal that he actually had meant to come to Mandalore in person.
“Shall I add a reception for Master Kenobi and Padawan Tano to your schedule?” MU-87 asked, pulling her back to the present.
“Please do,” Satine said. “I will handle the reception myself, but this is not a state visit. Master Kenobi is an old friend of mine and will be treated as such.”
Considering Mandalore’s mostly violent history with the Jedi Order, it was better to handle things more… discreetly. Not that any of the clan leaders would outright protest if they heard of a Jedi walking the streets of Sundari, but it was better to make it a personal visit, rather than an official one, at least until Satine had heard what Fett had to say about the proposition.
She did not doubt that Obi-Wan expected her to have far more influence over Fett than she actually possessed. The Republic saw Mandalore through her because she was the only clan leader who served as a diplomat and remained permanently in Sundari, while Jango and the others and the others were scattered across the galaxy on different contracts.
“Can you try to get hold of the Mand’alor?” Satine asked. “I’d rather speak with him about this in private as soon as he comes back from…. wherever he is now.”
“The True Mandalorians are currently stationed on Ord Mantell. Their contract is scheduled to end within a week, and their representative at the parliament has confirmed this as late as yesterday.”
“Good, let him know it’s urgent.”