Impostor Syndrome
Obi-Wan was getting very sick of Mandalore.
He was sure he would have liked it better under different circumstances. The language was beautiful, even if the idioms themselves were… less so, and the cuisine was as delicious as it was painful. He liked Satine far more than he probably should have. He might even be able to get past the ubiquity of blasters, if they weren’t shot at him so often. But that was precisely the problem.
Obi-Wan felt a familiar prick of warning from the Force and ducked beneath a sudden streak of blaster fire, Force shoving Satine from the path of a second and wincing when the stool she’d been perched on toppled to the floor, sending her sprawling. He’d be getting an earful about that later. He hauled her to her feet and the pair of them burst through the window of the cantina they’d been eating dinner in, knowing from experience that Death Watch would have commandos at every conventional exit.
Satine pressed close to his back as he shoved his way through the busy street outside, forgoing blending in as a hunting cry went up behind them and Death Watch opened fire, heedless of the crowd. Satine refused to wear armor, and Obi-Wan relied on his agility and maneuverability to win fights, so they were a lot more likely to be killed by a blaster than anyone else around them. This particular dome city was a traditionalist holdout, so most of the passerby were fortunately wearing beskar. Less fortunate was the fact that they hated Jedi, so Obi-Wan had to forgo using his lightsaber unless absolutely necessary.
Mandalorians were a shoot first, ask questions later sort of people, and many of the people around them were doing just that in retaliation. Traditionalists didn’t hate Death Watch any less than they hated Jedi. Obi-Wan grabbed Satine’s hand and the pair of them pelted down the street, their path quickly clearing as Mandalorians scrambled for the best vantage points for a firefight. The rooftops would quickly become more crowded than the street, at this rate—every other person they passed was wearing a jetpack, and more than a few had taken off. A pair of them whizzed past overhead, grappling in midair.
“Over here!” Satine yelled, swerving into a narrow side street, blaster fire narrowly missing her head and scorching the wall behind her. Obi-Wan cursed but followed, his hood slipping down from his speed and baring his distinctive ginger padawan cut. He could only hope they’d be able to find a proper hiding spot, or at least a more open area, before—
Two Mandalorians descended from above, landing heavily in front of them and behind them, effectively cutting off their escape. They’d been neatly caught, like shrill monkeys in a trap.
Obi-Wan yanked Satine into an alcove and planted himself in front of her, resigning himself to yet again revealing himself as a Jedi and subsequently being hunted for sport for at least the next 48 hours. He reached into his spacer jacket for his concealed saber.
It wasn’t there.
The Death Watch commandos advanced on them, jeering as he frantically searched for it. They liked to play with their food; it had gotten them out of more than one tight jam in the past. Of course, they were still doomed if he had no way to defend them; Satine’s stunner was useless against beskar, and even if she had allowed him to set it to kill, which she never would, it wouldn’t work much better.
Then a streak of dull, dirty metal full body tackled the two commandos, beskar screeching as they went down in a heap. Satine cried out, and Obi-Wan threw himself into the fray, pinning one beneath him and yanking off their helmet so that he could concuss them with it as the newcomer gave the second commando a vicious beatdown. The fact that their opponent was wearing higher-quality beskar didn’t faze them; they just found gaps in the armor to exploit and bent limbs the wrong way until they audibly snapped. Once they stopped, a full minute later, their opponent lay groaning beside the commando Obi-Wan had knocked out without even attempting to stand up.
Obi-Wan turned to look at their rescuer, taking in the piecemeal armor, a patchwork of durasteel and beskar that looked like it had been scavenged from a battlefield, only to find them staring back.
“Hello, there,” he said cautiously.
The stranger laughed. Even through the vocoder, it was a cracked, broken thing. Obi-Wan could sense the swell of some sharp-edged, burning hot emotion, but it was stifled before he could recognize it, as if the stranger had practice, training, even—or had gone through something that made psychic shielding a necessity.
The stranger reached for their belt, and before Obi-Wan could react, they were holding out a familiar silver hilt.
“You dropped this.”
Obi-Wan was proud of the diplomatic poker face Qui-Gon had drummed into him, but he couldn’t help himself. He gaped. Lightsabers were worth tens of thousands of credits on the black market, and that wasn’t even considering the fact that a Mandalorian was willingly arming a Jedi.
Satine thumped him on the back, hissing, “Grab it before he changes his mind!”
Obi-Wan took it, conscious of the fact that the pommel was pointed towards himself. If he turned it on, it would skewer the man in front of them, but there was no fear in his posture or in the Force, no wariness. Obi-Wan couldn’t quite tell what he was sensing from their rescuer, but there was a lot of it, all focused entirely on him.
“Who are you?” Satine demanded, once Obi-Wan had reclaimed his saber. She might have disdained violence, but she obviously felt safer with a warrior and a weapon between herself and the newcomer.
“No one you need to concern yourself with, Duchess,” he said, and Obi-Wan couldn’t see his eyes, but he could tell he hadn’t so much as glanced Satine’s way.
“I’m just the heiress. My father is the Duke,” Satine said, though her hand grabbed Obi-Wan’s. They hadn’t heard from Qui-Gon, or Satine’s family, since they’d been separated weeks ago, and the Mandalorian sector was extremely politically unstable. Obi-Wan and his master had been dispatched to calm things down, but so far they hadn’t managed anything of the sort.
That finally caught his attention. “Is that so,” he said mildly, helmet tilting just slightly toward Satine before swiveling back to Obi-Wan. “And that would make you a padawan, yeah?”
Obi-Wan tensed. Most people, even on Coruscant, had very little knowledge of the Order’s internal structures. This man might have asked a question, but it was rhetorical. There was no curiosity in the Force, only certainty, and a swell of something underneath that was steadily building behind beskar mental shields.
“That’s none of your concern.”
“It is when you can’t even hold on to your own weapon,” the man countered. “That’s a bad habit. You need to work on that.”
Mortified, Obi-Wan felt his ears burn. He felt like a fresh initiate being scolded for recklessness, not a Jedi facing off against an ancestral enemy. He wondered, in the back of his mind, what Satine must think of him at the moment.
“Let me help you,” he said, stepping closer. Obi-Wan had to struggle not to back away, conscious of Satine peeking over his shoulder. “I won’t harm you or your heiress.”
“Who are you?” Obi-Wan asked. The man hadn’t deigned to answer Satine earlier, but something told Obi-Wan that he might get a clearer answer.
The man paused, then reached up to remove his helmet. His dark hair was cropped short, his face clean shaven, eyes amber and intent. “Do you recognize me?”
“No. Should I?”
He sighed. “It’s probably for the best that you don’t. I have a ship, down at the stockyards. I can take you to Kalevala, or wherever you need to go.”
“Can you take me to Sundari?” Satine cut in.
“...If that’s what Obi-Wan thinks is best.”
He didn’t—he thought the man must be untrustworthy, even if his strange desire to help Obi-Wan was crystal clear—but he doubted Satine would listen. The stranger calling her Duchess must have caused her to fear for her father’s life, her family’s lives. “I’m her guard, not her keeper, as she often tells me. I go where she goes, not the other way around.”
Their rescuer frowned, but didn’t argue, though Obi-Wan could tell he wanted to. “Understood. Let’s get you out of here.”
Obi-Wan put his hood back up and followed the stranger back into the crowded main street, which was still loud but no longer sounded like a warzone. The fight must be over. He was careful to keep his eyes on the stranger’s blatantly unguarded back, thrown by the man’s irrational trust in him. It was no wonder Satine had been so quick to believe him—he was risking everything to help them, evidently with nothing to gain. He barely seemed to care about Satine at all, which meant he wasn’t affiliated with either side of the current political conflict, either. And while the traditionalists were too scattered to be a true faction anymore, weakened as they were by Death Watch and Galidraan, there was no way the stranger could be one of them—not if he let a Jedi live.
And then one of the milling passersby grabbed Satine and put a blaster to her skull.
Obi-Wan went to ignite his saber, only for the stranger to grab his hand. “Don’t,” he whispered. “You light that thing up, they’ll kill her.”
The crowd surrounding them no longer looked quite so disorganized. They were all traditionalists; the Death Watch commandos had all either fled or died.
“Mand’alor,” someone said, and the stranger’s hand tightened around Obi-Wan’s own. Obi-Wan whipped his head around, but they weren’t talking to Satine, or some yet-unnoticed Death Watch commando. They were speaking to the man beside him.
He bent close to Obi-Wan’s ear. “If you make a move, Kryze dies. If you do as I say, she’ll be fine. Do you understand?”
The bottom dropped out of Obi-Wan’s stomach. “Yes.”
“Good,” the Mand’alor said, the hand not holding his reaching up to grab his shoulder, as if to reassure him. “I know you… love her. Maybe more than you love being a Jedi. I don’t want to hurt you, even by hurting her, so I won’t unless I have to. I promise.”
Obi-Wan fought to keep his breathing steady. How had the Mand’alor fooled him so thoroughly, seen through him so easily? How had he put a name to the thoughts and feelings that Obi-Wan himself was still in denial about? He couldn’t be a Force user, but how else could he know so much about Obi-Wan?
“Mand’alor Fett,” the traditionalist from before said impatiently.
Satine gasped. “Jango Fett? It can’t be. You died.”
Fett glanced at her. “Well, you’re not wrong.” A curious scar curled at his temple, almost as if his helmet had broken at the visor—but that couldn’t happen with beskar. “She’s to be treated well. We’ll use her as a bargaining chip to get those damn Kalevalan aruetiise off our planet—it’s not like they’re Mando enough to fight. And then we’ll wipe out the rest of Death Watch ourselves.”
“OYA,” the entire street, the entire domed city, thundered, pride and bloodthirst and loyalty swelling so deeply that Obi-Wan almost felt like he was floating in it. And then Fett’s eyes were on Obi-Wan’s again, and he felt a little bit like he’d been caught in a riptide, pulling him under.
A hand touched his cheek, almost tentative. “Obi-Wan, I’m going to make things better. I’ll make it all up to you. Please let me. I won’t kill any Jedi this time.”
Galidraan, Obi-Wan thought, he must mean Galidraan.
“If we’re together,” Fett said, hand sliding beneath his hood and to the back of his neck, “We can fix things. You can feel it, right?”
The Force whispered in his ears, a million words too faint to make out, but it was pushing him, slowly and inexorably, toward the man in front of him.
It wasn’t until later that he thought to wonder why Fett knew his name.