Chapter Text
Sometimes Feemor thinks that he really should have become a Temple Guard instead, maybe even a crèchemaster like so many of his clan. Force, he could have even gone back to his birth planet, to tend to the forests like his parents before him.
He would revisit the thought now, had he the time. Being a wandering Jedi isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
“Kriffing sith hells !” Feemor gasps as he narrowly avoids losing an eye to a pointy tree branch.
He doesn’t have time to stop or slow down.
The Force had led him to this planet well over a tenday ago. More precisely, it had shown him a few paths he could follow, the faintest of tugs to where he could be needed, and this is the one that he chose with the roll of a die.
This whole time, he had done nothing but wander the planet. The Force did offer him a vague direction of where he would need to be, but that same sense was followed by a strong feeling of it not being time for him to go there quite yet. So it had caught Feemor unaware when, as he was crouching by a tree and examining a very colorful fungus that he was extremely tempted to try for dinner since the Force didn’t exactly scream about it being a bad idea, it was like someone had put a hand into his chest and yanked.
For all that the Force had been vague in directing him so far, it’s now practically pulling him by the hand like an overexcited child.
A strong, agitated, and very insistent child.
Tree bark scrapes grooves into the palms of Feemor’s gloves when he uses his grip on a trunk to swing himself in a new direction while conserving the breakneck momentum of his force-assisted sprint.
He leaps over the large trenches that cut through the landscape, bounces off grasping roots and thick trunks. Around him, the landscape bleeds from darkness to light to dark again as older trees give way to younger canopies then back again.
His chest feels tight, his breath comes in harsh pants barely timed to the beat of his feet against the dry dirt. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since the foreboding sense of ‘soon’ that has been bothering him for the past tenday has shattered into a ringing ‘right the kriff now’ .
Whatever the Force is leading him to, Feemor has a hunch it won’t be anything good. He suspects that the rumble that had sent him running to the Force’s call wasn’t distant thunder after all.
Over the pounding of his heart and his feet, he hears blasterfire.
The air is thick with smoke when Feemor crashes out of the treeline. The sharp tang of spilled starship fuel nearly makes his eyes water and the acrid aftertaste of tibana gas that follows an intense firefight almost forces him to cough. Only long years of practice have him wrestling his body forcefully - hah, Force-fully! Nevermind. Focus, Feemor - away from such reactions.
He has to keep moving.
To Feemor’s not quite human-standard senses, the smell of spilled blood and laserbolt-charred meat calls above the stench.
“Just for once,” he grinds out, addressing the energy between all things, “Can’t you lead me to something or someone nice?”
Complaining any more wastes too much breath and Feemor doesn’t dare risk slowing his stride.
In his mind's eye, faint lights wink out in the rolling smog of battle - the wounded and those still fighting both dying in the mud, choking on blood and blaster ash and the smoke from burning ships.
It pains Feemor to turn away. His mandate as a jedi calls for him to preserve life when able, but the Force tugs him away, insistent.
He skirts the edge of the forest. There, ahead, deeper in the trees. Blood, gas, and the roiling sense of fear-fury-fight , oddly muted where it isn’t blazing bright. It nags at something in his brain, a half-forgotten memory from his travels. He almost turns towards this separate fight but no, not here, not now.
The distant glow of fire, screams, and the stink of charred flesh carried on the wind.
The part of his brain that will never grow out of its past as the key persistence hunter of his birth planet makes his teeth itch and mouth water. He takes the urge to reach for the source of pain-desperation-pleasedon’tletmedie , to hunt, and turns it towards the tug of the Light instead.
There. Hurry, hurry, almost there.
This time the Force does tug him into the battlefield and away from the cover of the forest. The plume of smoke and dust carried by the wind shields him from being noticed, but so too does it shield the battlefield from him.
He navigates blind, trusting his steps to the Force as it calls and calls.
Over there, over here.
Anger, fear, determination.
Betrayal.
Feemor fights the urge to spit the taste of it from his mouth as shouts echo not far from him at all.
“Montross!”
Another gale kicks up. It tears at Feemor’s tabards and makes the belts and buckles of his spacer’s coat clatter. At last - at least - the image of the field before him clears.
A tank upon a ridge and a plain beneath littered with corpses, both those of Korda VI natives and-
Oh, the oddly muted presences make much more sense now. Mandalorians.
Only one remains alive, struggling desperately to stand. Pain and anguish leech into the air even through the beskar as the man fights against his own body not to greet his death kneeling and fails. Once again, his mangled knee gives out, sending him crashing down.
The kordans don’t care enough to watch. They turn away as the turrets mounted on the tank begin to glow.
The Force screams.
***** *****
Jaster shuts his eyes against the turret bolts.
He has failed. As alor, mand’alor, and ge’buir. He has failed his troops, his people, and Jango. This time, he knows in his heart that the coward Vizsla has won.
His death never comes.
The realization hits home with enough force to make his eyes open and the sight that greets him is not one that he would have ever expected.
A cloud of blue bolts outlines the silhouette of a man that stands before him like a living shield. Raised arms shake as they brace against the air. This close, Jaster can hear the deafening crackle of concentrated energy, can swear that he can even pick up the creak of protesting leatheris of his savior’s coat as he rolls his shoulders against the onslaught.
Then, the man shoves.
The bolts go flying back towards Vizsla’s tank.
Jaster can hear the impact but he doesn’t get to see it as the man whirls around to face him, sweeping a hand out towards Jaster and-
Jaster finds himself flying through the air. His helmet cracks against rock, pain blinding him for a moment before the impact jars the rest of his body and the agony from his mangled knee comes so sharp that he can’t even manage a scream.
K’atini. Endure. It's only pain.
By sheer force of will, he forces his head up. Mud, blood, and smoke greet him. He’s in one of the trenches. Blaster bolts dig into the ground high upon the bank before him. The sound of high-energy bolts impacting wet clay, the gurgling sizzle and pop of flashboiled moisture, is not unlike that of them burrowing their way through deep tissue.
Each bolt of light is like a flashbang to his pounding head. The HUD of his buy’ce glitches, so he rips it off. The way it jars his head leaves his surroundings spinning, his eyes watering, and his stomach ready to expel the rations he had for firstmeal.
He forces a breath in, even when he thinks that exhaling will have him choking back bile.
Prioritize, or’dinii. K’atini.
First, assess injuries. The fact that everything hurts complicates things a little bit. His ribs are sore from the rough crash-landing of his dropship, made all the worse by a lucky hit from one of the kordans who decided that brute force trumped blasterfire. At least of the four glancing blaster shots that were lucky to hit where his armor did not cover, three are just burns. The fourth already has red staining his kute, though whatever gouge it tore into the flesh of his arm must be mostly cauterized, since the stain isn’t that large despite all the movement jostling the injury.
Just trying to move his left foot has Jaster screaming behind his teeth. He yanks on his thigh to bend the leg when his muscles refuse to listen, then has to take a moment to breathe.
Behind him, blasterfire and shouts, the roar of jetpacks and flamethrowers, and a strange hiss-thrumm that he cannot place.
It’s not drawing any closer and that’s the only comfort Jaster has. He can’t fight and he can’t run. He can’t even stand, not yet.
He blindly upends one of the belt pouches, digs through the mess of damp shards to find the stim that hasn’t shattered. Jaster doesn’t even bother pulling on the fabric that the tank’s laserfire must have baked into his skin, just stabs it into his leg through the cloth.
The hit comes quickly, a sudden jolt of energy that makes the pain feel further away and sharpens his vision. Light stabs into his eyes, but his injuries feel like they’re vaguely happening to someone two steps to the left. Mij will kill him for using a stim when he clearly has a serious head injury, but at least Jaster will be alive to see it.
If he can get himself out of here.
He can get himself out of here.
Probably.
The trench wall he’s leaning against is slippery when Jaster tries to find enough purchase to push himself up. The muck sloughs away under his hands until at last he finds what might be either a root or a stone, he can’t quite tell, but it feels solid enough for him to grip.
Okay, on the count of three. One, two, th-
A figure lands in front of him with enough momentum to send a wave of mud splashing every which way.
Jaster would have scrambled back, had he anywhere to go. His one good leg slips in the muck and though his hand does reach for his blaster, the holster is empty. Only then does he realize that the figure crouching before him wears no blue armor.
Or any armor, for that matter.
With his vision swimming in and out of focus, it takes Jaster a couple of tries to take a good look at his savior. The man is tall, Jaster can tell even with both of them crouched in the dirt, and he has a stature to match. The sharp V cut of his overcoat, clearly echoing the shape of the orange tabards and tunics beneath, does wonders to highlight the breadth of his shoulders.
A verd, this one, and a handsome one at that. Golden hair hangs just barely long enough to begin curling at the ends. A brief flash of sunlight through the clouds above makes it glow like a halo.
The man is coated in sweat and mud and glancing carbon-burns. Blood stains one of his sleeves and another splatter trails from the corner of his jaw and then up over the bridge of his nose like macabre warpaint. The slowly drying red only makes the blue of his eyes stand out all the better when his pupils flash silver with reflected light.
Jaster had never believed in those stories of mando’ade who saw one another across a room or a battlefield, sometimes even on opposing sides, and knew at once that the other was who they would say the riduurok with. After all, it seems improbable, ill-thought-out, and even foolish to base a whole relationship on a feeling that is probably entirely due to adrenaline.
Jaster’s lucky he never said so out loud, because he’s pretty sure he has just fallen shebs-over-buy’ce in love.
“Oh, you’re like concussed- concussed,” the human incarnation of the ka’ra’s wrath says, amusement clear in his voice.
A warm hand comes up to Jaster’s cheek and he leans into it without thinking, though the grip only turns his head this way and that to check for injuries. Oddly enough, with each second, his vision swims less despite the movement.
“You’ll live.”
Jaster blinks as the hand leaves. The light hurts a little less. Everything, including collecting coherent thoughts, hurts a little less. The man - kriffing damned hells, that’s a jetii - looks a bit more tired than when he first crouched down before Jaster.
“Who?” Jaster manages.
“Your knight without shining armor,” the jetii replies breezily, “Come on up, we shouldn’t stay out in the open.”
He picks the buy’ce Jaster had left behind in the mud with care, brushing off the specks of dirt that have already begun to dry on the beskar. When it’s handed to him, Jaster takes it and clips it to his belt on automatic, then reaches for the hand extended to him.
He does not squeak when he isn’t as much helped up as simply lifted to his feet.
Jaster knows he’s on the shorter side of average. He's Concord Dawn born and raised, and none of them get all that tall, but he now feels it quite acutely since he finds that his head only comes up a tiny bit above the jetii ’s chin.
At least the height difference makes it easy for him to take the weight off of his injured leg when the jetii helps Jaster toss his arm over his shoulders. Jaster leans heavily into the man and tries to take a step - more of a hop than a step, really - then another, down the trench. Whatever the jetii did, at least he can once again feel his toes and twitch his ankle, but even the accidental attempt to take a step on the injured limb makes him bite down on a scream and a slew of curses.
He breathes through it. The pain ebbs away to a dull ache.
The jetii’s shoulders tense under Jaster’s hand. Jaster turns his head to look at him.
“Easy, now.” The jetii’s encouragement is quiet and strained with the agony Jaster no longer feels. He does not look at Jaster, eyes locked on some distant point, somehow tracking movement through the solid dirt. “It’s a good distance yet to the treeline.”
“I can manage,” Jaster argues. He’s not one of the fools who take pride in their own suffering, it just feels wrong to see someone take on his share.
The jetii already saved his life, Jaster owes him not to bring him future harm.
“I can see that,” the jetii replies, clearly missing the point on purpose. “Watch out for the rocks.”
The uneven ground threatens to send Jaster sprawling and it most certainly would have succeeded if his companion was any less careful, or any less capable of holding up the weight of a ori' ramikad in full kit with startling ease.
Jaster tightens his grip on the jetii’s shoulder, enough that he can feel the shape of a push-knife sewn into the padding there even through his gloves and the leatheris trim of the coat.
“Smart,” he says without quite meaning to.
The jetii hums, eyes snapping up to scan some far corner of the field behind them. “There’s plasma cutter in the other.”
“Smarter,” Jaster repeats.
The jetii’s laugh is barely louder than an exhale, but it’s a nice sound all the same.
“Let’s make sure I don’t need to use them, alright?”
***** *****
Feemor is somewhat surprised to find himself still alive.
He isn’t, exactly, an exceptional knight. In a (ex-)lineage of masters of some form or another, he has always found himself somewhat lackluster, learning bits and pieces of forms and mastering none.
Luckily, the sheer fear factor of an unexpected lightsaber going for your throat is quite effective all of its own.
It may also have something to do with the fact that Feemor, in a slightly impulsive and very stupid action he wasn’t even aware he could do, had sent the tank’s own blasts flying back at the gathered troops.
In the Force, all things are possible, especially with adrenaline there to help you forget your limits.
There is still a phantom ache in his arms even now, a physical echo of a much deeper force-exhaustion. He blocks it off as best he can and focuses on gathering the pain that saturates the air and all but drips from his companion, before he siphons it away.
It’s not an advisable thing to do. The healing classes that taught him the trick had horror stories aplenty about how bad of an idea it is to risk straining a wound further when your whole body is screaming at you to stop, but it’s not like there’s much choice. He could carry the man, but Feemor needs at least one arm free to wield his saber.
It’s likely that the survivors of the fight have already called for reinforcements. After all, Feemor had left quite a few of them, even when killing blows may have ended the fight much more easily.
Kindness and compassion is the core strength and weakness of any jedi. It's not kindness and compassion that had Feemor aiming to disable rather than kill, it was simple math.
One killed soldier is just that, one soldier taken out of the fight. An injured soldier takes out two - them, and whoever comes to the rescue.
Jedi fight to disarm and Feemor had taken a rather… etymological approach to that statement.
Feemor had aimed for gaps in the armor when he frantically deflected blasterfire or ducked under swinging fists and blades to slice with his saber. He aimed rocks and debris at helmets when plumes of flame forced him back.
Some of those gut wounds, he knows, will not have missed vital organs as he had intended. Some of those cuts will bleed out - a saber is hot enough to cauterize, but this doesn’t always hold up under pressure.
He had pulled men from the sky when they tried to attack from above and he jumped after them to slice through their jetpacks. Some hit the ground and lived. Some did not.
He had seen one fighter fall, arm gone, and watched as the impact broke the seal of scorched flesh and sent blood gushing out like a popped balloon.
A loud scream in the Force, at one point. Feemor had reached out towards the sound, felt his will wrap around the thing lying in the mud, pulled. Something metal had slapped into his palm and without much thought he had slipped it in the somwhat hidden gaps at the back of his coat, tucking the item behind his obi beneath.
Just in time, as he had to extend that arm again as another metal item came flying at him, though now without his prompting. He had recognized the ridges of a thermal detonator and returned it where it came from.
A rain of shrapnel followed, tailored to punch through what part of the body armor wouldn’t cover. A few dead, more mangled.
Yet the Force, weeping at the death and pain, had still told him he was right.
He had heard calls to regroup and retreat and at the first lull in the fighting, Feemor ran.
Now here he is, bloodied and bruised and soul-sick from the pain that still soaks the mud of the planet, half-supporting half-carrying a man that the Force told him to save for reasons it would never tell him.
He wants to throw up as if he could purge that feeling of correctness from his gut. He was right, it tells him, the man that he carries he was fated to meet.
Feemor tries to discreetly get a better look at him when the distant lights of lifeforms aren't drawing away his attention with each movement or flash of aggression. He doesn't get many opportunities. This stranger has been abandoned by his own, so Feemor is set to treat any and all living beings as enemy combatants unless told otherwise.
Still, he manages to steal a glance or two, when the man isn't watching him in turn and is instead focused on the uneven ground they're trying to traverse.
If not for the mud and blood, the mando could maybe be handsome in a plain sort of way some humans have - a sharp jaw, expressive brows, dark hair. Feemor is more curious about the tales hidden in the details - the at least twice-broken nose, that odd scar where cheekbone meets ear, the keen mind that even the haze of a concussion as well as quite impressive natural shields can't quite hide.
His vocation clearly calls for violence. His armor, for all that beskar resists the touch of the Force, sings with echoes of bloodshed and battle. Wardrums, the focused thrill of a hunt. Yet there's care there too, achingly deep, and dedication, drive. It tastes sweet on Feemor's tongue when he brushes against it in the Force and he nearly sneezes from the strength of it.
The man is surprisingly Light and the odd curl of it that focuses on Feemor serves as a great distraction from the distant pain that chokes the air.
He can't quite tell what it is. The steady mind proved itself to be quite well-wrapped in natural shielding after Feemor had done some rudimentary healing for the concussion. Now anything deeper than an overall assessment of emotion is hard to parse without an intrusion that would be extremely rude at the very least, but as long as the good-natured obedience lasts, Feemor will take it.
It's a reprieve from death and he leans against the man mentally as much as the Mando leans against him physically.
Like this, it's just a little bit easier to pretend to be steady and self-assured when he's feeling anything but. It keeps the light beside him from faltering, the tiniest of feedback loops of mutual comfort in this dark moment.
A little funny, considering the shared history between their people.
Oh stars, he'll have to tell the council about this, won't he?
The forest and the cover it offers can't come close fast enough.
***** *****
“You are efficient in a fight, for a peacekeeper.”
They have reached the forest at last. Jaster has never felt more thankful for trees. From the way that his companion relaxes minutely the tense line of his shoulders once they walk into the gloom beneath the canopy, Jaster would guess that he’s not the only one glad to be out of the open.
That’s the reason why he dares to speak up. He is not comfortable in the dark without his HUD to help him - his helmet is still clipped to his belt, growing heavier with each step - but the jetii is an oddly comforting presence. Jaster, against all that history should have taught him, trusts the quiet man. They have not spoken much, the jetii focused on scanning the horizon for things Jaster could not see and he was loath to disturb him.
Still, the thought had been nagging at him ever since they came across a death watch helmet - head still inside - lying in the dirt a good distance from where Tor’s ambush took place.
When he had seen it, his first thought was that he was very, very happy that the jetii had targeted the kyr’tsad and not Jaster’s troops. The second was that he almost regretted missing the firefight.
The third was that he really wished to ask the jetii to spar when Mij wouldn’t wring his neck for even considering it. He then promptly had to wrench his thoughts away from that because some of the musings that followed that particular idea probably shouldn’t even be considered in passing when one is pressed up against an empath and, if stories are to be believed, a mind-reader too.
The ache that persists despite whatever jetii osik the man is doing to keep at bay the worst of it serves as a wonderful distraction.
“I did have an advantage.” The jetii replies. He pauses, waves the hand not securely wrapped around Jaster’s waist behind them. The tracks that Jaster’s clumsy movement have left - upset dirt and misplaced leaf litter - disappear when an unnatural wind shifts the mulch and fallen branches. Then, the jetii begins walking them down a slightly clearer path. "They forgot the one thing that would have helped them."
"Oh?” Jaster tries to keep his tone light even when his leg gets jostled as the jetii helps him over a root reaching from the dirt. “What would that be?"
The jetii glances at him, face perfectly serious.
"A med-evac."
Laughing is a very bad idea with the state of Jaster’s ribs. He does so anyway.
He would swear that, for just a second, he hears a muted snort come from the jetii too.
The man directs him to stop at last. They had agreed somewhere along the walk that Jaster’s wounds could wait until they were somewhere safe enough to treat them. This deep into the woods, where the trees grow large and crooked, Jaster can’t even smell the smoke from the ruined battlefield.
“ Haar’chak !” Jaster can’t hold back when he doesn’t as much lean against a tree as just fall against it. It sends pain flashing across every injured part of his body, which might as well be the entirety of him by this point. “ I wish we had a med-evac.”
“Unfortunately, you have me instead.”
Jaster finds that he misses the warmth of the man as the jetii steps away.
“Considering I’m still alive, I consider myself quite fortunate.” Jaster huffs. “Vor entye. I owe you a debt.”
“There’s no debt at all.” The jetii echoes the mando’a answer, whether knowingly or not. His smile is kind, though Jaster only gets to see it for a moment before the man looks away, focused on rifling through the many pockets of his coat - and apparently even more hidden in the folds of his tunics beneath. “The Force was quite intent that I intervene.”
Oh.
“It was?” Manda, apparently the jetii magic wanted him alive for some reason. Or did it just want to kriff over Vizsla? The thought was almost funny, the stars themselves being annoyed by the kyr’tsad . “Did it also tell you to drag me out of that haran ?”
“It did.” The jetii replies. “Though I would have done so regardless. Backstabbing is not something I tolerate.”
Without ever looking up, he holds out a packet to Jaster, who takes it. Oh, bacta patches. That won’t take the sting out Montross’ actions, but it should at least help the injuries left behind. Jaster almost goes to tear the packaging open, before a chiding click of a tongue stops him.
He looks up to lock eyes with the jetii who raises one very, very judgemental eyebrow before he pointedly looks down at Jaster’s filthy gloves, then at the pack of sterile wipes that he’s holding out for Jaster to take too.
“Right.” Jaster is mand’alor, he should not be turning red because a handsome man is intently staring him down. He hopes the dark of the forest is enough to hide the heat that he feels rising to his face. “I’ll just-”
He tucks the packages under his arm, then tries to widen the burnt and bloodied rip of his kute on the bicep. The place is already dirty, might as well have better access before he cleans his hands.
Forcibly not paying attention to the jetii turns out to be a bad idea. Jaster nearly jolts out of his skin as pale fingers wrap around his hand and pull it away with startling care.
“Let me help.”
The jetii is close, far too close. Jaster freezes, eyes locked on the sharp cut of his profile while the man inspects the wound on Jaster’s arm, fingers featherlight. He’s clearly proficient at first aid, moving with the efficiency of long practice. He pauses, midway through applying the bacta patch, head tilting up slightly before he cocks it to the side, listening to something Jaster cannot hear. Bent down as the jetii has been this whole time, Jaster would only need to lean forward to give him a mirshmure’cya.
As it is, he instead nearly gets his teeth knocked out when the jetii jolts up, all ease gone as pushes Jaster to the side, something that nearly trips him before he manages to dig his shoulder into the treebark once more-
“Wha-?”
Jaster doesn’t even get to finish the question because there is a hand over his mouth, another holding back the arm Jaster lifts to fight him off, and any and all of Jaster’s struggles are rendered obsolete when the jetii bodily presses him into the tree. Jaster would probably have more luck trying to move the tree.
“Two in beskar.” the jetii murmurs, more a sigh than actual speech “Focused. Hunting.”
This close, Jaster can feel his breath ghost against his cheek, can see the way the pupils of his eyes blow out then narrow to nearly nothing as the jetii stares at some unknown point over Jaster’s shoulder and through the tree they’re pressed against.
Jaster flexes his jaw. Luckily, the jetii takes the hint and his hand slips down just enough to let Jaster speak.
“Can you check their colors?”
Those blue, blue eyes look at him for just a moment. They search his face for something. Whatever it is, the jetii must find it.
“Get ready to run,” He warns.
The wall of warmth that boxed Jaster in withdraws slightly. A warning look, then the jetii carefully takes a step to the side, then another. The hand that once gripped Jaster’s jaw now drifts down against his kar’ta beskar, pressing Jaster further into the cover the tree trunk provides. Without quite meaning to, Jaster finds himself still holding on to the jetii with the hand he doesn’t even remember curling over his hip, ready to pull him back from danger.
Jaster breathes in, out, tries not to feel so very vulnerable without a single weapon to his name. All he can do is watch as the jetii peers around the tree and into the woods, a faint crease forming between his brows as the man squints at something in the distance.
A moment later, he steps back into the shadow of the tree, looks back at Jaster once more.
“Green, red trim, and circle on the chest.”
Jaster almost collapses under the sudden rush of sheer relief. “Jango.”
“You trust him?”
“He’s my so- my ward.” He quickly corrects himself. “I trust him with my life.”
He has yet to say the gai bal manda to Jango. He had wanted the boy to make a name for himself without the pressure of being the mand’alor’s son - and thus de-facto heir - being laid onto his shoulders. He had pretended that it would keep Jango safe, but it’s clear now that Death Watch cares not for collateral. Jaster doesn’t know the final count of the dead, but he already knows it’s far too many.
Had Jaster died today, never officially acknowledging Jango as his child would have been one of his greatest regrets. He hopes that the kid will accept him as more than a mentor, even after his complete failure as leader in this campaign.
The jetii nods, glances as if to look through the tree. Checking on Jango's advance, probably. “What about the one with blue trim?”
Jaster’s mind jumps to the worst possible option, but before he can do something rash, the jetii adds, “Lighter green base, I think. Blue green?”
Not Montross, thank the ka’ra. Jaster wracks his brain. A couple of Jango’s grunts had painted their kits in quite similar colors. If Jango was alone with the verd, though… Jango would most likely keep the least experienced soldier safe, which left one option, the rookie, Silas.
“He’s safe too.”
This close, he can feel the tension leave the jetii. His forehead thunks against the wood just above Jaster’s shoulder, close enough that he can feel golden hair brush over his cheekbone.
“Thank the Force. This day has given me one too many heart attacks.” Whether it’s a shaky sigh or a quiet laugh that follows, Jaster cannot tell. The jetii looks back up quickly. “They're heading right for us.”
Jaster glances down at the buy’ce still clipped onto his belt. Likely, the tracker did not give out when the HUD did.
The jetii shifts, clearly ready to step out and away from cover, but Jaster tightens his grip to stop him. “Wait.”
He receives a raised eyebrow in clear question.
“They know me, they don’t know you. Let me go first.”
The jetii looks pointedly down, at Jaster's injured leg. Jaster stares back, trying his best to radiate what he hopes is self-assuredness.
Kal likes to call it Jaster being a bull-headed jarela di'kut, but to each their own opinion.
A moment later, the jetii nods. When he moves, it’s to step back only enough to allow Jaster to move past him. Jaster looks out into shaded woods and tries to pick out green and red armor among green foliage and brown-red tree trunks. He has no idea how the jetii ever managed. Force osik, probably.
There. Jaster nearly stumbles in his haste to move towards them. It’s Silas he spots first, the blue visor trim standing out in the shadows. Then, a second later -
“Jango! Ke’mot!”
The two armored figures jolt, blasters instantly raised towards the noise. They drop down just as quickly as Jango jolts forward, sprinting towards him, Silas close on his heels.
“Buir!”
“Alor!”
In his haste, Jaster does not watch his feet. His boot catches on a root and as the jolt of pain races up his injured leg he feels himself tipping forward -
Behind him, footsteps a little too fast for a standard humanoid.
In front of him, Jango and Silas both raise their blasters.
Muscle memory has Jaster twisting around as he falls. When he hits the ground, the impact against his back is enough to wind him. He looks up just in time to watch the jetii recoil right before the bolts impact the ground between him and Jaster.
One misses the jetii's hand by a hair's breadth, the same hand that was probably extended to catch Jaster.
The next bolts impact the tree the jetii ducks behind, sending scorched chips of wood flying into the air.
The jetii is out of Jango's and Silas' firing line, but not out of Jaster's sight.
Their eyes meet. Jaster sees worry there, before they flick away to stare through the tree at the source of the blaster bolts, then at Jaster once more.
Of all things, Jaster receives a smile.
“Stay safe,” the jetii mouths silently, then looks away entirely towards the deep woods. He shifts his feet.
Jaster has chased enough bounties to know when someone is bracing to run. He’s still catching his breath, so he barely manages, “Wait, don’t-”
The jetti glances back at him and for just a moment Jaster believes that he will stay. Then the man twitches, a shoulder coming up to shield his ear from a noise Jaster can’t hear.
The other arm rips something from behind the jetii’s back. He tosses it Jaster’s way - more of a flinch than a toss, really. Jaster catches it before he can even take a good look at what it is.
The movement, brief as it is, brings another hail of blasterfire that sends shards of bark raining down as it chips away at the jetii’s cover.
Another smile and then the man dives out of cover, blasterfire nipping at his heels.
He is gone in a blink, swallowed by the shadows of the forest.
Less than a minute later, Jango lands where his shots once did, worry in every armored fiber of his being. Jaster doesn’t spare him more than a glance.
His eyes are locked on the darksaber clutched in his hands.