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Chapter Text

When Rex got home and saw there was a message for him from a Keldabe trace-code on the home bulletin, he didn’t think much of it. The Mandalore Security Forces regularly tried their recruitment spiel out on him, and their attempts at nabbing someone with actual combat experience were beginning to get more desperate, especially since the Evaar Mando’ade had started edging out into the wastes of the Glass with their infernal biodomes, against all reason and good sense. 

Rex couldn’t be bothered with them. He stripped out of his outdoor armour in the vhekadyai and left the little house droids to deal with the powder fine patina of ash and dust that inevitably collected on the Glass, and then donned his indoor set and went about his business. 

Since it was still early afternoon when he’d finished his latest oya’karir, he opted to go and make his report to the Mand’alor first and worry about the paperwork later. His crisp march step took him to the Aloryai.

“Su cuy’gar, Rex,” Jaster was seated behind his massive desk, bracketed by pillars of datapads and flimsi. “I take it you were successful? The Hamita Clan just sent a message of thanks for your prompt action.”

“Yes, Mand’alor,” Rex still found himself wrongfooted by praise from Jaster Mereel, even after seventeen years in his service. “The threat was dealt with.” Even Rex could tell that was stilted, and gamely fought to keep a dark flush from his neck, heartily wishing he’d risked keeping his bucket on. The ka’ra take his soul, he always seemed to fumble for any semblance of paklalat around the Mand’alor. He couldn’t help it. The man was a legend. Rex might hero worship him just a little.

Something slightly rueful passed over Jaster’s face, as it often did with Rex’s thrice-cursed awkwardness around him. “What manner of thing was killing their livestock?”

“A dhu’striil,” Rex gamely climbed for firmer ground. “A big one. It had been taken by the dhujari a while ago. There were many insects and rawls absorbed into it’s body, and at least one retnaasa.” Rex winced at the memory of that triangular head jutting out of the bloated mess of fused flesh, teeth gaping madly, tongue like a red tentacle, as if the misshapen, white eyed, decaying strill head hadn’t already been bad enough. “It would have taken months to form, given it’s size and strength. ”

Jaster looked grave. “It must have amassed enough little lives to risk trying to feed on the Hamita’s livestock to stay sated; there’d be precious little else that would be enough to satisfy it out there. It was a shame the Hamitas did not spot the pattern immediately. They lost more than a dozen banthas and a handful of iviintaab as well. They have genetic samples in storage, of course, but it will take a while for the breeding programs to replace what they’ve lost. Winter will come before they can hope to recoup.”

“I offered them a good price on what hides they still had,” Rex told him. “And a premium price for meat cuts. I thought we would use it all easily enough, and that would give them surplus to get extra grains and produce from Kalevala and Concord Dawn.”

The lines on Jaster’s face eased. “Excellent initiative, ad. Give the figures you quoted to the Almoners, they can pad them out and give them a proper tender for the contract. I daresay we’ll get them through the winter if Alor Gert’han agrees. She’s a proud sort, but push comes to shove, she leans to being practical about things. Did she request to have a Ramiaran permanently assigned to her holdings?”

“No, sir,” Rex replied. “But… it might be on her mind. When I went back to the holdings and reported that it was a dhu’striil, she and the rest of the Clan seemed shocked it was something that bad. They seemed to be expecting a feral massiff or maybe a pair of kadeede. They weren’t expecting something as cunning as a dhu’striil. I think the only thing that kept the monster from nabbing one of the children was the fact that it was starving, and went for easier prey first. It wasn’t easy to run it to ground in the canyons and caves out there either. But I’m not going to flatter myself that this was ended without casualties due to my skill. It was sheer dumb luck,” he was grim at the thought. 

“Hm,” Jaster was equally sober. “The ara’novor? Were they sound?”

“Completely stable, and I checked the four of them around the ranch,” Rex shrugged. “There hasn't been a Ramiaran permanently on the Hamita grounds since Toki’oh Hamita marched on three winters ago. It’s possible that they could do with some maintenance, but the Hamita Alor wasn’t quite ready to commit to housing someone full time.”

“That will likely change,” Jaster sat back and steepled his hands over his still impressively trim armoured torso. “There’s little we can do in the meantime, since we cannot force a Ramiaran onto their Clan House without so much as a by-your-leave. Still, the fact that a d hu’striil was able to form and rampage so deep within a stable ara’novor is… troubling. Bah,” he flicked his hands. “We won’t solve it tonight. Rest, eat, make merry with your vod. I’ll have the recording transcript sent to your dropbox; make what additions you think necessary and then add it to the House Codex.”

“Elek, Alor,” Rex saluted.

“Oh, before you go,” Jaster held up a finger. “I noticed you had a message from Keldabe on the communal comm? What’s that about?” If it had been on Rex’s personal comm Jaster would never have been so gauche as to ask. Calls that came in on the communal comm usually affected the whole House, though, so Rex wasn’t surprised at the question. It was not mere prurient curiosity at work; House business was one of Jaster’s primary concerns, especially since House Mereel and it’s sprawling, multi-building complex was one of the last strongholds of the Haat Mando'ade.

Rex shrugged. “The Security Force regularly tries their pitch. They’re about due.”

“It’s a well paying job,” Jaster raised an eyebrow.

“I guess for all the tooth grinding I’d likely have to do dealing with the New Mandolorians treating me like I’m a superstition, the least they could do is cover dental,” Rex muttered, not quite low enough.

That netted him a crack of laughter from his Mand’alor, so at least Rex wasn’t a dead loss on interacting with the man. “Fair enough. It doesn’t have to be a long term contact, you know. Half a year of consultancy fees would be worth about five years of local bounty rewards.”

Rex blinked. “Are you saying I ought to take the job, sir?”

“I’m saying it’s an opportunity. And a lucrative one.”

Rex fumbled for a response. He hadn’t been expecting this. “I make more than enough with local rewards and some joint runs with the others, sir. What would I even do with that sort of money?”

Jaster seemed amused. “Whatever one does with vast amounts of credits I suppose. Invest. Spend. Accommodation is free here, of course, but you could, I suppose, buy-in to the eya’ika ori’kir’maniraal. The latest eyayah be te shonar will be ready to adopt in less than a year from now, and Jango assures me this will be the last wave. The kaminii contract is just about completed, I doubt whether their rates will get cheaper if we have to renegotiate, especially with how hard we took them to task for their unauthorised experiments.”

Oh. Rex tried not to hunch his shoulders and look defensive. “I don’t know, sir. I don’t think I’m really in a position to adopt right now. I mostly work alone out on the Glass. I don’t know that I’d have the time to give children the attention they deserve from a parent.”

“Hence, taking up consultancy work, which would keep you close to the House,” Jaster pointed out gently. 

“I’m not much of a homebody, sir,” Rex protested. “Or a desk jockey. I like to hunt. I’m good at it.”

“No one is disputing that, least of all me. It’s not like you’d have to stop hunting,” Jaster refuted. “I’m certainly not suggesting you retire from it.”

“Sir, with due respect,” Rex said slowly and carefully. “What are you suggesting?”

Jaster searched his face. There was a compassion in his gaze that Rex was wary of. “You have served this House faithfully for seventeen years, Rex’ika. Seventeen years. You’re one of the finest Ramikad , as well as being one of our most powerful Ramiaran. Once upon a time you were keen to travel the universe. You took as many bounties as Jango did, you fought on the front lines of the Ori’Dral’Haran that surged on Geonosis and were a small but vital part of the forces that turned back the tide and helped repair the broken Tra’novor that ensure the Madness was kept at bay during the war. Once upon a time you had no interest in taking little jobs out in the Glass. You wanted the galaxy. But for the last three years you’ve chosen to be here as part of the Aliiaran’tsad.”

“I didn’t realise being a member of the House Guard had become a position of such dishonour,” Rex tried and failed to keep the stiffness out of his voice.

Jaster held up a hand. “Udesii, adi’ka. I would never demean the Aliiaran’tsad in such a way, nor you for being one. It is a vital and important part of life here. My concern is not that the job is beneath you, only that you are settling into a role you do not want. You put so much work and effort, and suffered so much, to be allowed to join the ranks of our highest and best soldiers. And while I know a warrior might at some point, after much strife and risk, decide they wish for a calmer life and take an easier posting, the amount of hunts you are going on without rest in between suggest to me that this is not yet your heart’s desire.”

Rex looked away. “I’m not unhappy with my work.”

“Life, Rex’ika,” Jaster said gently. “Is about more than just work. Many of your brothers have come home to the House. They’ve done their travels, they’ve tasted their thrills, they’ve had their adventures but wildness has lost its sweetness. They have come to other things, better things, that make them happy. Adopting the echoes coming from Kamino is one such way. I remember very distinctly that you were talking - with great enthusiasm - about perhaps adopting a pair of young kadin’adike from the newest batches to dote on and to raise. That wasn’t much over three years ago. You were incredibly passionate about it then.”

Things changed, Rex thought, the landscape of his life had changed. But he bit back the words. Jaster wasn’t nagging him; he was trying to be a good Mand’alor. He cared that Rex was happy, that he wasn’t sitting here in the House after such a record of glory and slowly dying of boredom because he was too stubborn to admit he’d taken a blow to his soul and needed help. It only stung because there was a sand grain of truth lodged deep in the heart of it, endlessly irritating the tissues of his conscience.

Jaster was looking at his face searchingly. Rex wondered what he saw. “I wouldn’t want to see such a bright spark as what I saw in you snuffed out, Rex’ika. I would like us to try to reignite it if we can. If battle does not spark your happiness, or engage your interest, then you must grow in other ways. Adopting, teaching the new generation, might be what you need to regain a measure of your old shereshoy.”

Rex locked his spine to keep from fidgeting guiltily, because it wasn’t like the ghost of the idea hadn’t haunted him before. “I don’t know that I could handle kids as I am. I’ve been a bachelor way too long now. I’m too set in my ways. I’m reliably informed I’m something of a curmudgeon. Children deserve better than that. Children are the future. I’m the past.”

Jaster shook his head. “While you live and breathe, you are here and now, Rex’ika,” he admonished gently. “It’s never too late to learn something new. As a Ramiaran’e, as a Mando’ade you should strive to do that all the days of your life. That’s the only way we know what is ourselves and what is the Wandering Madness, for the Madness never changes. Arasuum gotal’ur kyr’am. Do you agree?”

Stagnation begets death. Rex sighed. “‘Lek, Alor,” he said, mostly because he had no argument against the charges levied against him.

“I am going to help you with this, Rex.” Jaster straightened on his chair, the set of his shoulders becoming more formal. “I am going to lay upon you an enteyoryc. Not from your Mand’alor to his Ramiaran’e, but from a ba’buir to his ad.”

Rex blinked. A Forsworn Obligation? An enteyoryc be aliit, a familial obligation, no less? Amongst their people that could be, in some senses, more binding than the Mand’alor himself giving an order. “What is my duty, sir?”

“That within sol’simir bal sol’tuur you will complete a ritual of cin vhetin be te kar’taylir, and begin some new phase of your life. I don’t make restrictions of what it is,” Jaster held up a hand forestalling Rex’s shocked protest. “It doesn’t have to be adoption. It could be anything. Get a degree. Take up a hobby. Learn to knit. Apprentice yourself to a goran. Start a garden. Join a club. Build a personalised speeder. I don’t care. But whatever it is, I need you to demonstrate you are willing to integrate some new thing into your life. Something that isn’t hunt after hunt after hunt.”

Rex opened his mouth.

“It’s for your own good, Rex’ika,” Jaster added. 

The gentleness of the tone was deflating. “Elek, ba’buir,” he folded with as much grace as he could muster.

Jaster sighed. “It’s not a penance, adi’ka. And it isn’t pass or fail. If you really can’t manage inside of that time, we’ll think of something else. I don’t want you to be the best, Rex,” he said softly. “I want you to be happy. I know when Cody finally said the riduurok and adopted his brood and the rest of your old team drifted into new roles, you were left at loose ends. I don’t like to see you so lonely, so convinced you need to always be on the outside.”

“I’ve never felt excluded,” Rex retorted, but the risposte was feeble and he knew it. No one had excluded him, least of all Cody. Rex had excluded himself and he knew it.

He wondered if Cody had put the word in Jaster’s ear. He was the Marshal Commander for the entire Mereel Aliit, wherever they were, and a good candidate for the next Mand’alor if Jango decided he just couldn’t live with the politics, which was likely. Rex wouldn’t put it past him. He knew Cody was worried.

Jaster, not surprisingly, saw right through him. He was kind enough to call him out on it. “I’m glad of it. But I still think you should try this, Rex’ika. Most of us grow past the thrill of the hunt and the allure of the fight. When we do, that’s when we get to discover all the other parts of us, the better parts of us, just waiting to be given space. We should cherish and celebrate the chance, especially for those of us who never get the chance.”

Rex felt an old sadness well up inside of him as he thought of Keeli and so many others who fought to the end and then marched away into the stars. Jaster was right. They had to have something that wasn’t a fight. Even Rex, who only wanted to fight from the moment he could walk. “I accept your terms ba’buir. I give you my word. I will fulfil the enteyoryc be aliit and complete the cin vhetin be te kar’taylir, jat’ca’nara sol simir bal sol’tuur. Haat, ijaa, haa’it.”

Jaster smiled. “I know you will make us all proud, ve’vut’ika.”

The old childhood nickname should not make him feel like he was flying into the atmosphere. It should not at all. He was a Ramiaran, fully grown. 

It did, kark it. Rex felt his skin darkening.

“Uh… thank you,” Rex mumbled, and beat a strategic retreat.

*

Rex’s quarters were the same ones he’s been assigned to over fifteen years ago; single occupancy standard Ramiaran’e suite. The Ramiaran’s did tend to get bigger singles, though Rex had always kind of wondered what strange logic had dictated it. They were usually too busy to enjoy the space, except for the ability to flop down on the larger-than-standard bed and drop headlong into exhausted oblivion.

Nevertheless, over the last decade and a half Rex had managed to eke out a little personal haven. There were figurines and little bits of art he’d found, there were technical specs and gun racks on the walls, there was the big holoprojector and the bookshelves and the kitchen stocked up with Rex’s preferences, since unlike some people (coughCodycough) he knew how to cook. The furniture it had once had was long gone, replaced with mismatched odds and ends that Rex had found throughout his travels, picked for comfort over aesthetic. He was particularly proud of the big, comfy couch he’d literally gotten for free on Polis Massa, since they’d been throwing it out. Waste of a good couch - all it needed was some re-leathering and polish and it was legitimately the most comfortable couch in the House. He knew this, because he’d had to fight off the pack of grabby bastards that were his fellow vod to keep them from stealing it.

The room fit him like a goran fitted vambrace. He liked it.

He collapsed on his sinfully comfortable couch. It was actually a long L shape, so it could be angled either towards the holoprojector or towards the round window in one of the walls - a very rare thing in the fortress that was the House. The Ramiaran’e did tend to get rooms with windows because anything trying to break in that way would soon find themselves - briefly - in a world of trouble. 

Rex stared out over the vista that was the Glass.

The Glass was the result of the Dral’Han from a thousand years before. The aruetiise in the Core called it the Excision, as if Mandalore was some gangrenous limb that had to be amputated. 

Mandalorians saw it far less clinically. Most of their planet was a wasteland, riddled with mazes of canyons, caverns and craters from the bombs dropped from high orbit. The impacts had been so devastating that they literally disrupted the makeup of the planet’s crust, cracking open oceans of magma deep underneath. It turned the earth into molten, toxic hell.

For years, for centuries, the planet had been all but uninhabitable, spewing such ash and dust in the air that the sun was blotted out, causing an endless, cold age of winter. Where the bombs had been concentrated that process had turned the roiling magma and sand and whatever else that hungry cataclysm had devoured to… well, glass. If a being went out into the wastes and dug down into the dry, lifeless dirt and ash dunes they would eventually find a layer of warped and pitted glass. There were sheets of it out there, intact, as big as lakes. Thus, the wasteland was named the Glass. It was a cold, storm swept, disaster hammered place, where the people who lived here choked on the dust and tried to grow something back out of the mess. 

But that wasn’t even the big problem.

The problem was the same problem everywhere - the dhujari.  

It had many names throughout the galaxy; the Wasting, the Madness, the Evil, The Destroyer, the Dark. No one knew where it came from. The theory was it was some being from some other reality altogether. The Madness - dhujari - was a consciousness without a body, almost. Or a virus without DNA. It could infect all living things, making them a part of a massive hive mind, whose only goal was to add more and more minds to itself until it had taken over everything. The simpler the mind the easier it found to overwhelm it, although the dhujari was hungry for sentient minds above all. Sentient minds were creative, resourceful, imaginative. The dhujari wasn’t, at least not by itself. It wanted those things, because they made it more powerful, made it easier to spread. 

It could also twist whatever it took over so badly that it could fuse creatures together into chimaera monsters, swelling them in size and giving them all manner of weapons. It was a monster maker, and the monsters liked people. The melted together creatures often turned into twisted, tortured, half rotting versions of themselves - sometimes it would even overtake a corpse. About the only thing one could do for anything taken that was still alive was to put them out of their misery. And it had to be done quickly; the dhujari was a telepathic hivemind and it would be trying everything, applying every possible pressure, to force a host to accept it. The weak willed, the wrathful, people who weren’t thinking clearly, were at so much more risk. They were vulnerable to such pressure. 

Still, nature provides. With the advent of the dhujari thousands of years ago came beings that had been blessed with the tools to fight it. Children born with supernatural gifts, who could fight whatever monsters the Madness made. Every planet had their own names for these. In the Core they were called Jedi. 

The Mandalorians had some ancient grudges against the Core. They called them the Ramiaran’e. 

The Wardens.

Not only did these special people have gifts they could use to fight the Madness, they also had the unique ability to channel energies into ara’novor - Wards, that they could erect that kept the dhujari from even being able to enter this reality that it craved so much. They didn’t know very much about it, but they had at least figured out that it seeped into this reality through cracks - cracks left by pain and suffering, places of great violence and death. Given that the galaxy was graveyard upon battlefield upon graveyard, it was impossible to simply defeat it in battle or eradicate it. They simply put up ward after ward, maintained and watched, and carved out what peace they could from there.

After a thousand years of effort most places were barely touched by it. Mandalore was not so fortunate.The Yaim’ara’novor - the wards over the planet - had been shattered irrevocably in the Dral’Han. And where wards broke, strife followed. And where strife spread, so too did the Madness. They eked out some fragile safe place, but the dhujari would surge. They rebuilt and started again, and it would surge again. The walls between realities were already too thin here, laced with cracks. It was so bad it had infected the entire system.

It was an endless cycle of rage and tears, with what scattered, stubborn remnants on Mando’ade that remained trying desperately to repair the shattered pieces. It didn’t help that even without the dhujari, Mandalore space was filled with schisms as everyone argued over the best way to deal with the threat. The New Mandolorians wanted to keep people inside biodomes, safe from it. The Death Watch wanted to use the Ramiaran’e to restore old dreams of conquest and glory, and bring order to a chaotic galaxy and thus give it no quarter with which to enter. Only the Haat Mando’ade - the True Mandolorians, had tried to keep the old oaths and work to eradicate the Madness as it was. The factions went to war with one another, stirred up by the gleeful, hungry dhujari, and they already didn’t have the bodies to waste. Caught between conflicts and on the front lines regardless of the enemy, the Ramiaran’e were well on their way to extinction in Mandalore space thirty years ago.

Then the Plot of Galidraan wiped out almost all the rest. The handful who escaped were scattered, all but a few of their strongholds overrun, looted and burned. The Glass began encroaching on the more fertile lands, erasing all the gains they had made, and there wasn’t enough Ramiaran’e left to hope to stop it.

That was why Rex existed. That was why all of his brothers existed.

You couldn’t guarantee the birth of a kadin’ade - a child blessed with a kabepaz that would help them fight the dhujari. They did and could happen spontaneously, and they also ran through bloodlines, but only erratically. Generations could be skipped and the passing of whatever genes made a kabepaz could be indirect and recessive. It didn’t help that so many bloodlines had been wiped out of existence thanks to the civil war and Galidraan both. They had no more wells to draw from, no chance to fill the gaps left in the massacres.

Not even the Mandolorian penchant for adoption would help them. About the only thing that was consistently true of kadin’ade was this - they were always multiple births. Statistically that meant twins. And triplets and so forth, of course, but unless the parent in question was a member of a species known for multiple births, the phenomenon was actually quite rare. And with fertility rates on Manda’yaim and the rest of the sector already unnaturally low because of environmental poisoning and warfare, there was just no way to increase the likelihood of kadin’ade, and therefore no chance of shoring up the numbers of Ramiaran’e.

So Jango Fett had, essentially, cheated. Without leave from his parent - the Mand’alor - he’d fled out into the stars looking for a solution, and had found one on Kamino. They were outside of Republic Space and therefore outside of Republic laws. The Kaminoans were cloners. Jango had offered his own genes for cloning a whole new generation of Ramiaran’e. The Fetts had a very strong expression of the necessary genes to activate a kabepaz. The Kaminoans had the technology to isolate those genes and to ensure that all the embryos would split into twins, and the facilities to grow them. 

Thus, the Vod’e were made. For thirteen years they’d been made in secret, trained on Kamino to use their kapepaz in battle. And then Jango had taken a job that ended up, through a complex chain of events, to leading a Jedi right into the heart of Kamino and then the secrets all came spilling out.

Oh, the hue and cry it had created. 

The New Mandolorians had howled that Jango’s actions had permanently damaged their entry into the Republic because they now had bunches of illegal sentient tissue walking around that were barred from Republic space. 

The Death Watch had all howled that this was their chance for conquest and had promptly started to double down on claiming the title of the ruling party of Mandalore so they could take custody of the clones, and had started another violent offensive. 

The Republic all howled that this was going to turn into invasion attempt into the Core and had promptly sided with the New Mandolorians in declaring everyone not a New Mandolorian to be a terrorist and therefore should be eradicated as a threat to a stable galactic order, further widening the chasms between the factions.

Jaster himself was furious at Jango for making such a momentous decision without considering the ramifications. Embargos were enacted. Trade was stopped. People starved. He also wasn’t very happy about the fact that Jango had paid for this new army by doing some egregiously hinky osik with some egregiously hinky demagolka. He was also incandescent that Jango had left a bunch of children - his children, no less - to be trained and indoctrinated as child soldiers. To him, that made the Haat Mando’ade little better than the Kyr’tsad. 

But the Kyr’tsad couldn’t gain a foothold against the New Mandalorians with the Republic Security Forces backing them, the New Mandolorians couldn’t disarm the Kyr’tsad because they refused to break their vow of pacifism, neither side quite dared to try removing the Haat Mando’ade from the board because Jango Fett had made it quite clear that if anything happened to Jaster or the Mereel complex or any of their protectorates, the first target his army of clones would be firing at was at the other two factions and for all the Kyr’tsad went to every pain to try to kidnap kadin’ade to indoctrinate, and the Evaar Mando’ade to preach using their kabepaz for creating rather than destroying, both sides had but a handful of precious gifted each - far less than a hundred on either side.

Jango had thousands. And they were all trained to fight, they all had strong kabepaz. If they wanted it to be a Gifted war, Jango had them beat on every level. 

And no one could destroy the clones at the source on Kamino, because no one could find the damn place.

The Jedi, bizarrely enough, became the Haat Mando’ade’s greatest ally in this. They knew where Kamino was. They kept their mouths shut and backed up their silence by citing ancient laws of their Order. The Ward locations had to remain a secret - the Madness had thousands of ears. Their laws stated they could not interfere in other Gifted people’s wards or reveal their location without explicit permission from the Ward Makers, which the Haat Mando’ade, they knew, would never give a Jedi. Thus, they wrestled a stalemate from the jaws of defeat. 

For years, no one breathed and no one blinked. 

But then the Dark Surge happened and… well, everyone had to work together or everyone would have either been a part of the dhujari hive mind or good and dead. The dhujari went after the Galactic Barriers. It was the biggest Surge they’d seen since the Sith Wars. If it had taken them, then no one would have been safe. They all went to war together, because the alternative was worse. Three years of fighting as a mostly united front had helped them get along, settled the tension into an uneasy truce by the end.

Rex wasn’t sure he’d call current political relations good, exactly. The major players were still all glaring at each other and Mandalore still had to deal with it’s grudge-holding factions. But there had been an unexpected allyship forged between the Jedi and the Vod’e and, since they were the ones actually fighting the dhujari and none of the politicians could do squat about it - and given that it was discovered that their Chancellor was actively helping the enemy and the Vod’e and the Jedi had been the ones to stop him -  they were all stuck resentfully and grudgingly allowing the status quo to continue.

For seventeen years, it had been that. 

It was, Rex thought, probably as close to peace as anyone who was tasked with fighting the dhujari was going to get.

Rex looked out over the vista through his window. It was a harsh, brutal, deadly place, the Glass. Everything in it was out to kill, including the people living there. Their ade, even the clones, could only come here after they turned five years old, simply because they had to go through slow, painful respiratory and gene therapies to their lungs could even survive the particulate riddled air without turning into choking bags filled with cancerous dust. They figured that one out when the first new clone babies had been shipped to the House and then had to be promptly shipped back to Kamino, their little lips and fingernails blue within hours. It took a very special catch to survive here. It took a miracle - or the lunatic stubbornness of the average Mando’ade - to thrive. 

But it was home, had always been home, to Rex. It had been more a home to him in the first minute he’d stepped on it as a gangly and already battle-scarred seventeen year old than fourteen something years in the white sterility of Kamino’s training grounds had ever been. He liked it right now, in moments like these, just at that special time where the sun set just so, and the sky became a riot of colours - reds, pinks, oranges, purples - and the light glinted off the Glass itself, refracting and sparkling like rainbow hued water, jagged stone teeth changing colour with the sky while, just at the edges, the helmet of the stars slowly descended. It was breathtaking. The night would bring dangers, and the day bring troubles, but right at this moment Rex wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

And he looked over his big empty couch and admitted to himself he really wanted someone to share it with.

His wandering eye roved around the room. There were gaps everywhere he looked. A few missing stills, some empty hooks on the weapons wall, storage space for armour plates and toolkits that weren’t used. Spaces where there had been none before. A person would have to know the room to see them, they were that subtle. To Rex they were gaping holes. They’d been there, hovering in the corners, for three years now.

Since Bacara had left. 

Jaster had been right. He had wanted to adopt. He’d wanted a lot of things. But then Bacara had decided that domesticity didn’t suit him, or maybe just that Rex wasn’t someone he felt like becoming domestic for, and had left to join the new taskforce the Jedi had put together to deal with the Kyr’tsad problem as their terroristic campaigns spread outside Mandalorian space. 

Rex could find it in himself to hope Bacara was happy in what he was doing, and wise enough to the contours of his character to know that he probably was. He hadn’t left much happiness behind him when he left, but three years on the pain was not nearly so sharp and the anger not nearly so bitter. Rex had accepted it, had gotten rid of the worst reminders, and got on with the job in front of him. Just because he’d never gotten to have that last conversation didn’t mean he couldn’t have closure. 

Hold on…

He hadn’t gotten rid of everything, had he?

Rex got up abruptly and went to his storage room. It was a little haphazard in there since he was running late for the annual clean out, but it wasn’t a complete disaster. Boxes and bags were hauled out as he went for the under-floor racks. He popped one of the vacuum seal lids and… yes, there we go. He grabbed a data rod and a flimsi file from the box.

He stuck the datarod in his holoprojector slot and opened the file. It was marked Project Fett Clone Tally Data List in both Aubesh Basic and the weird script the Kaminoans had used.

The file was row after row of letters and numbers. Rex ran his fingers over two numbers he remembered highlighting four years ago. 

CT-5384. CT-5385.

Twins, of course. They were conceived four years ago. They’d be part of the very last batch of eya’ika - their little echoes - that would be made on Kamino. Their last eyayah teh te shonar. Echoes from the Waves. Soon they’d be up for adoption. Soon they’d all be shipped here to go to school and get new families and… and get to be more than just experiments in a tube. There wouldn’t be a war for them to fight, even. They wouldn’t be forced to use their kabepaz for combat the way that Rex and his generation had. Not if they didn’t want to.

And if they did, then, naturally, they’d have to be trained by their parents.

Rex looked at the view on the holoprojector. It was a slow moving, sweeping shot of row after row after row of growth tubes each having a number designation flash up as the scanner moved past, each tube containing two - sometimes three or four - tiny occupants. The visual stopped at a pre-programmed point, in this case, showing numbers CT-5384 and his twin, CT-5385.

Rex looked at them for a while. They wouldn’t look like that now, of course. They’d be four now. They’d be walking and talking. They’d be doing some kind of… pre education programs with the Jedi Crechemasters or the Mando’ade ikaaba’jiese on Kamino, he guessed. Something like that. Jango had at least had the sense to stop the accelerated ageing nonsense after the Nulls, Alphas and CC’s, although that had meant a lot of the Vod’e had gone into the Clone Wars constantly having to upgrade armour due to growth spurts. Cody’s generation had been one of the last with it, and they’d stopped it halfway through. Rex had aged naturally, at least until the war came. Everyone ages in a war, clone and natborn alike, on the inside at the very least. 

For the first time in three years, Rex looked at those little tubies and let himself dream a little. He could clear out the store room and put in some pod beds. It wouldn’t be permanent, but it would give them time to get assigned a bigger suite. There were so many people coming to the Mereel Complex now that there was an actual waiting list for room reassignments. He could imagine himself in one of those big, sprawling, multilevel family suites like Cody had now. Making firstmeal for more than one. Holding little hands on the way to the schoolroom. Sitting on the couch and watching holoreel of the dumb old comedies he’d collected. Teaching how to hold a blaster, and a knife, how to fight and survive and protect your own, and why it all matters. 

He was smart enough to know fantasy painted everything in a rosy glow. Cody had adopted ten year old quadruplets after Ninety-Nine had passed, and it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. He knew raising ade was hard, thankless work. He’d have to give up a lot to do it properly.

Still, it may not be an uj-festival, Rex decided, but it was doable, it was possible. 

What the hell was he waiting for? It’s not like Bacara was suddenly going to pop up to help, and Rex was pretty sure he wouldn’t accept it anyway.

He looked at the numbers in the file again. Calm down, he told himself. This was a big decision. He shouldn’t make it in the heat of the moment. He should prepare, plan, budget. He had to sort out the practicalities. He’d like to think that three years of war and another seventeen of hunting and fighting had at least knocked a little bit of his impulsiveness out of him. He was too old, and the children too precious, to just go with his gut. He had to use his head.

Plus, there was no guarantee those two were even still available to adopt. It had been three years, there were plenty of pre-adoption permits filed. There was every chance these two already had a loving home waiting. And if so… well, Rex would just have to accept that. There might be others still waiting. Or, possibly, a cooler head would prevail and he’d pick something less wildly ambitious to complete his cin vhetin be te kar’taylir. Rex was well aware his impulse control when it came to challenges wasn’t the best.

He snorted at himself, closed the file and removed the data rod. He was already getting a bit ahead of himself. Before he climbed the mountain, he might want to try a few steps up the hill first.

Starting with his messages. He checked the time. It was twilight out here on the Glass but it’d still be work hours in Keldabe. Maybe he could return the Security Forces call and… just hear them out. It would be a start, and he could always hang up.

He might need a little sedative for this. He went to get a bottle of gal from his cooler, popped the cap and sculled a third in one go. 

Then he activated his home comm and programmed the trace code into it. He waited while the blue pixels swirled, waiting for the call to connect.

“Hello, Department Of Social Services, Keldabe. This is Min-vee Khul’Zaza.” The Bothan who answered looked wrung out and exhausted. “How can I help you?”

Rex blinked. “Uh… my apologies, I think I inputted the wrong code,” he frowned as he checked it. Impossible. He’d downloaded the trace-code from the House comm logs. “I’m returning a call that our logs say came from this trace code…”

The Bothan, Mx Min-vee, squinted at him. “Oh, you’re Rex Eyavhett, of the House Mereel?”

“Yes?” The answer was slightly uncertain. It still felt weird to have a surname. Almost none of the clones ever used the damn thing. “I mean, yes, yes I am,” he amended firmly. “I’m sorry, what department did you say you worked for?”

“Social Services,” Mx Min-vee was moving their four hands in and out of the projection field, stacks of datapads going back and forth, back and forth. Rex got the impression that they, like Jaster, were more or less drowning in them. “Specifically Child Protection and Restoration Services. I’m calling you about… aha! Here we go. I’m calling you about Trekari Domino. Do you remember her?”

Rex took a minute to place the name. Trekari… wait. “I knew a Kari Domino, about ten years ago? She was part of a chaakemir’tsad on Concord Dawn.”

Mx Min-Vee frowned. “An entertainment troupe? It says here she had a Beroya Guild licence.”

“Yeah, a lot of travelling players have those,” Rex shrugged. “Theatre work is seasonal, at least when you’re part of a travelling troupe. People don’t come out to see shows in winter. They take hunts and other odd jobs in the off season.”

“Huh. I learn something new every day,” Mx Min-Vee said absently. 

“I’m sorry, but what is this about?’ Rex asked, baffled. “I haven’t seen or spoken to Kari in a decade.”

“I’m sorry to inform you that she has marched away, Ser Eyavhett,” Mx Min-vee informed him soberly. “About six months ago. I apologise it took so long to contact you, but we’re short staffed and the Kalevala Social Service Department isn’t networked with our system. We were only informed of the situation when the Kalevalan Juvenile Court put in a request for a record and it took us a while to process it because we’re just so backlogged.”

“I’m… sorry to hear that,” Rex said slowly. He was sorry, in an undirected sort of way. His relationship with Kari Domino hadn’t been much more than the result of mutual loneliness and lust on both sides. Neither of them had asked for or wanted anything more. Rex had barely thought of her the second he’d left Concord Dawn behind. “I’m sorry, I’m still a little confused. Are you trying to tell me I’m named in her estate or something?” That would be… bizarre. 

“In a sense, Ser Eyavhett, in a sense,” Mx Min-vee. “I’m calling about her children, Fives Domino and Echo Domino.”

“Yes? What about them?” Rex took a thoughtful mouthful of gal.  

“She named you as the genetic father on their birth certificate.”

Rex choked as the gal went down the wrong pipe. “I’m sorry?” he coughed.

Mx Min-vee raised an unimpressed furry brow ridge. “You’re listed as the father of her children, Ser Eyavhett.”

Silence. Then Rex had to laugh, long and hard. “That’s impossible,” he got out between chuckles. “Flat out impossible.” By the Force, Kari, what the haran kind of trouble did you get into? He wondered wildly. You’d have to be desperate or stupid to name a Fett clone as a genetic buir.  

“You’re on the record…” Mx Min-Vee frowned at his flippancy.

“No, you don’t understand, Mx Min-Vee,” Rex shook his head. “I don’t know if the name tipped you off, but I’m a Fett clone. Fett clones are sterile. They can’t possibly be mine.”

Min-Vee looked at him. Looked down at the datapad. Looked back at him. “Have you ever had that actually tested?” She asked slowly.

“Me personally? No,” Rex took another mouthful. “There’s no need. We were genetically engineered that way. And if it hadn’t taken, trust me, I’d have a lot of ju’ade by now.”

Mx Min-Vee hesitated. “I’m not sure how to tell you this, Ser Eyavhett, but life is full of million to one chances that come due and… I’m pretty certain this is one of them.”

“What makes you so sure?” Rex asked, drinking again. This whole thing was even more ridiculous than he’d thought.

“Because I’m looking at their stills,” Mx Min-Vee replied. “And let me tell you, Ser, if you’re not related, it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

The image of the Bothan dissolved and reformed into two images; holostills uploaded side by side.

The holoprojector fizzed and nearly shorted out as gal sprayed everywhere.

Those were some very familiar looking faces. 

*

Rex’s boots rang a stacco beat as he sprinted haran bent for plastoid down the winding warren that was the main House complex. His mind was a spiralling chant of oh force oh force oh force oh force of force with a backing vocals of what the kriff what the kriff what the kriff what the kriff what the kriff.

He burst into the aloryai, no crisp march step, no textbook salute, half his armour off and looking wildly dini’la around the eyes. The occupants all looked at him with varying states of surprise and concern. There was Jaster, still behind his desk late into the evening. There was Cody, there was Obi-Wan too, blinking at him slowly.

“Rex?” Cody was here. Right, Cody was here, that was great, awesome, Cody fixes everything, it’s fine. Mind you he was currently staring at Rex like he was a spooked iviintaab which didn’t help. “What is it? What’s wrong.”

Rex saw Jaster rise to his feet. He’d come here meaning to ask for advice. But his inner soldier surged forth on the wave of adrenaline and what came out was a slightly high pitched reporting-to-superiors voice. “Alor, I come to report I have successfully completed the ritual cin vhetin be te kar’taylir as levied upon me by the vow of enteyoryc be aliit. Haat. Ijaa. Haa’it.”

Jaster’s jaw dropped open. “In an hour and a half?”

“Rex, breathe,” Cody’s big hands closed on Rex’s shoulders. “Just breathe for me, okay? What are you talking about?”

Obi-Wan’s lips moved as he translated. “‘You have started anew with the knowledge of your heart.” He looked at Rex shrewdly. “You have learned something that has changed your heart and made it anew. Something exceptionally big.”

Bless Obi-Wan. He knew exactly how to make people talk, even when they were a scattered, hot mess. “Yes,” Rex choked out. “That.”

“What, vod’ika?” Cody stared at him.

“I have sons, ori’vod,” Rex could feel himself trembling. “I have sons.”

************************************************

Glossary: