Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jango came awake with a little gasp of air, eyes going wide and frantic as he realized Obi-Wan was pulling on his arm, the tiny boy trying to get off the bed from under him, and he just knew , that Obi-Wan wasn’t trying to get to the bathroom this time. He was too little to be out and about by himself, not if either of them wanted to feel safe about it, but the way Obi-Wan’s normally uncaring noises were turned to a silent level as he tried to sneak around their own room. “Ob’ika, what’s wrong?”

Obi-Wan looked at him, eyes big and shiny in that way that said he was currently listening to the manda right now, faulty wires on the collar shorting out again. They had been lucky the masters hadn’t yet realized he’d sometimes get full minutes of time where he could feel the force, or they would have fixed it by now. His little lower lip trembled, before stiffening up into determination. “It’s time. It’s time to go, Buir. We have to leave now, while they aren’t looking.”

Jango sat up- with a gasp, this one less quiet and entirely more real, and the same panic that gripped him in his head came back for those few seconds before he realized the little warm body in his side was the same one he always had there when waking. The past six months, anyways.

Myles looked at him so guilty it was palpable, and Jango let out a less worried sigh, more fond this time, as he looked at the medic. “What’s wrong, My?”

Myles thought that over for a second before sighing himself, looking annoyed. “Your buir needs to conduct an incident interview, of what happened between kidnap and now. You and I know he doesn’t want to, but, incident reports run a stable galaxy, n’ all that.”

Jango snorted. “Frankly, if he was willing to wait any longer, I’d probably start worrying he thinks I couldn’t handle it.”

Myles leaned against the side of the bed, pressing a button on the side of it to raise the upper half, just enough to hand Jango a lidded cup, both of them keeping a wary eye on the ad between them. Obi-Wan had more than panicked the staff of the medical bay with the seizure he’d had the moment his collar was fully off for the first time in seven months, but Jango’s quiet explanation of his force abilities giving him visions that looked like seizures, had brought Myles’s teacher as the better baar’ur to care for him, and Obi-Wan had been tired enough to nearly pass out after that. 

“We think you can handle it well enough, it’s more recounting how you came to have an ad, that I think worries him. Your buir’s more perceptive than most.”

Jango looked away after getting down probably too much water, and cringed. “Not a tough assumption, My.”

Myles made a sad noise. “I hoped you’d correct that, but. Well. Do you need help up?”

Jango shook his head after thinking about it. “Just help me swap out for a pillow, he’s a bit clingy. Just keep an eye on him, he might not panic, but, I don’t know, we’ve never been safe enough for him to before.”

Myles nodded, moving to grab a spare pillow that he and Jango helped move under the child’s little chest, not disturbing him much as Jango just pulled the medical blanket back over his little back, doubled over so it would feel heavy against him. Obi-Wan liked lots of blankets and being on his stomach. He’s not too much more complicated than that. Can sleep just about anywhere otherwise. 

***

The post mission report area for this specific ship, was a meeting room Jaster had taken over for the day. They had multiple people in need of submitting reports, but very few who needed actual incident report interviews, so likely, it was more because this ship, his ship when he’s out with his squadrons, was familiar to Jango, and that meeting room was actually the ship’s rec room. Which meant Jaster was setting out a pot of shig at the meeting table, pulling out two chairs at the long table to sit caddy corner from each other, and a small tray with a single portion of tiingilar and uj cake, the odd size of each portion meant Jango was likely on a post-captivity diet. 

It’s not that he was starved while he was out. Not with the work the masters had him doing at first, and then, later, the preference of the owners that allowed him regular access to Obi-Wan, but because of a lot of the mental issues with food that can come after captivity. He could have been conditioned to eat till the plate was empty, even if that made him sick, which would be just as bad. 

He didn’t think he had any issues with it, but the fact that buir wasn’t giving him the option to figure it out right away, is probably a good thing. He tried not to look apprehensive as he took the seat across from Jaster, who moved to turn on the holotable’s recording center, knowing that it was, unfortunately, necessary. Myles was right, and stable governments don’t run by letting their people not report incidents. In fact, it was one of the reasons that the Mandalore sector had such comprehensive deprogramming and post-captivity programs. They took careful notes of all incidents and let that guide the healing process. 

Jaster smiled at him, eyes wet and shiny, and the frown lines looked deeper in his forehead than they used to be, but the man’s smile was a little manic, like he almost wasn’t even sure this was real. Myles said they had only had the chance to sleep so long, because Jaster had sat by Jango and Obi-Wan’s bedside for almost two hours, getting through as much paperwork as he could there, before he’d had to leave again. 

“Hi, Buir.”

Jaster was just staring at him for a long time, long enough that Jango started to blush as he realized that’s how he’d look at his ad’ika if he lost him for eight months. Jaster finally leaned in, pulling Jango into a soft hug, Jango not in his armor, and Jaster without his upper armor, and it was a different level of care than Jango could have comprehend feeling for your almost grown child even just a year ago. He pressed his head to Jaster’s neck, breathing it in for a long time. 

Jaster finally sat back with a smile, laughing at himself and leaning back over to press the reset button on the recording unit. He came back with the pot of shig and started pouring out two mugs. “So, my youngest ad, but apparently not the youngest in the family anymore, huh?” He poured a bit of silver milk into the mug after, and held it out. 

Jango smiled, pulling the hot mug into his hands, sighing at the cinnamon scent and heat. Jaster smiled at the look and sat back with his own. “Yeah, um, not quite the youngest anymore. But, you might not know this, he’s sixteen.”

Jaster’s mug came back to his lap with a thoughtful look on his face. “Sixteen? That tiny little thing can’t be mid-pubescent, he’s prepubescent, Myoina checked him herself after his seizure.”

Jango nodded. “Yeah. Stewjoni. They grow at half the rate of baseline humans. They can get up to four hundred with good health. I think that’s why they played with genetics to begin with.”

Jaster hummed a moment, before pulling out his pad with a sigh. “I’ll have to tell Myoina before she flays me for keeping important patient information to myself.”

“One can’t fault you for self preservation.”

Jaster snorted, sending off a missive and putting the pad back down. “Okay, time for the iffy bits, but… you should eat first. It’s been a while.”

Jango nodded, setting down the shig -his favorite blend and milk ratio, just like he liked it- and pulled forward the tray of food. It tasted so much like home he wanted to cry like a child. But that was for later. Not in a place where he’s being recorded. “Are you recording me because it pisses off Almec when you don’t keep interviews informal?”

Jaster didn’t look away from him once. “That’s a good enough reason, but mine is a bit more sentimental. I just want more holos of you and your ori’vod.”

Jango might cry. He refused to if he could get away with it. “Is she back on Mandalore?”

Jaster nodded. “Hmm, she’s trying to steal Adonai’s daughters. She’s very fond of them. Little Ob’ika might end up with a cousin if Adonai doesn’t convince her she can’t poach them.”

Jango snorted. “She doesn’t even have anything in common with Satine.”

“No, she’s just very fond of her. She’s been clingy since… she ended up clinging to Arla a bit. She missed you. She needed someone to argue with.”

Jango missed her too, but he wasn’t saying that near a holo recorder. That’s blackmail material right there. “I keep telling her there’s a reason she doesn’t fit in with the New Mandalorians. They’re too passive. Even verbally, they try to play around an issue, she needs to be a True Mandalorian warrior. A lawyer, I think would fit her.”

“You might convince her. Adonai is just grateful she’s stopped sulking now. She needs better role models.”

When Jango was done with the meal, he sat back again with the mug of shig once more, feeling the tiniest bit of apprehension at the coming conversation. “Okay, what’s first? Timeline?”

Jaster sat back to mirror him, a little smile on his face. “Yes. What happened that ended with you getting captured and sold?”

Jango nodded. “Right. So we got a mission on a planet, Galidraan, but you were cautious after Montrose… betrayed us.”

“Yes.”

“So, my squadron and I went alone. Not to complete or even accept the contract, but to figure out if it was a trap.”

“And it was?”

“Yes. I think… only a few of us got caught up in it.”

“And you were the only one with an unknown location after a month.”

Jango swallowed. “Yeah. Well. Death Watch were on planet.”

“So were the Jetii, but they came after the fact.”

“They… what?”

Jaster nodded. “Yeah. Afterwards a small group of adult Jetii showed up, led by a man named Dooku. He helped us recover the rest of your squadron. I don’t know what Death Watch did to manage it, but they got the senate to override procedure to try and send them to wipe us out, and only failed because I didn’t fall for the trap. They opened up a suit with the senate and it triggered an avalanche of senatorial changes. You’ll end up hearing a lot of that when we get back, since a lot of them are rather… decent…”

Jango squinted at the man, before pulling a disgusted face. “They offered to let you in their archives as reparations, didn’t they?”

Jaster’s grin was sly. “Something like that. Again, you’ll hear about it later. This isn’t the time for it now.”

Jango sighed, nodding. “Alright. Okay, so I was taken off by manda knows who, because I was combative and so they drugged me for the trip. I do know, I woke up in a spice refinery freighter.”

Jaster nodded. “The same one docked outside the plant you were being held in?”

“Yeah. I was on the ship for a solid two months before we were back at the plant. At that point they realized I was more technically adept than others, got me out into the facility to do technical repairs. It was about two weeks later that I met Obi-Wan.”

Jaster nodded. “He was in the facility too? What use did a spice refinery have with a child slave?”

Jango looked off at a corner of the room for a long few moments, trying to put it into words. “He… he’s Stewjoni. It means he grows half as fast as you and I do… he… he’ll…” His jaw set on a hard line, and grit it out, “he’ll fit a preferential pedophiles age range for twice as long as a baseline human.”

Jaster blinked a few times, swallowing against the tightness in his throat. “…oh. His… his owner?”

“The two women who ran the facility. Married, acted as any lesbian couple, till they got a little too much in their own spice stock and after a certain point, they stopped much caring. They had a preferred age range, and Obi-Wan was about to enter it. Stewjoni babes sell… higher.”

Jaster nodded. “Right. I saw the footage from when you got Obi-Wan out of the main apartment.”

It had been rather bloody. Jango had been rather bloody by the end of it. “When I first met Obi-Wan, he was running off from them again. He’s smart, he knows a lot about tech and the collar he wore, so he’d been working away at one of the inseams of it. Sometimes it would short out for maybe… a minute? At most? I was planning to have him figure out how to pop it off the moment they seemed like they’d ask him to do more than watch… they knew a Mandalorian could be trusted to keep him alive where they didn’t care enough to, that they only needed to hold the bomb on his neck above our heads to keep me in line.”

Jaster frowned. “Why did they involve you in the first place? I just assumed one of them wanted you, or maybe someone they knew…”

Jango considered if that would have been a better situation, or worse. Probably worse. “They. Um. Obi-Wan found me while the collar was faulty once. Manda speaks, says I’ll help him, he searched me out. In a facility of spicers and slavers, not hard to find someone in the force when they… I don’t know, Mandalorians just exude ‘child protector’ in the manda, I guess.”

Jaster, much stronger in the force than him, nodded. “They damn well do, ner ad. Must have had low shields from being around so much spice.”

“Yeah. It was like… it was hard to think most of the time. After they found out Obi-Wan liked me, the plan was to use me as his anchor, so they could get him to relax near them. They weren’t exactly stable enough to keep up the pretense themselves. I assume they might have passed for normal at some point, but spice really kriffs up a brain. The only reason I didn’t coach Obi-Wan into how to pop the collar lock as soon as it went faulty the next chance, was the kid cared too much about the other slaves in the facility to risk our escape getting them killed.”

Jaster frowned. “Admirable, but stupid. Self preservation isn’t selfish.”

Jango thought about that for a moment, before putting his mug down and shifting in the seat. He’d pace, but the recording unit only reached so far, and he had gotten used to being sedentary in the past few months. “He… I’m not telling you this to put the blame on them. I… don’t know how Obi-Wan came to be sold. But I do know… that before he was sold, he was a Jetii initiate on Coruscant. You should call your contact at the temple to tell them we want to open an investigation into an ad of theirs that went missing.”

Jaster had to close his eyes for a moment, feeling sick. “Do you know if he knows if he was in the temple when he was taken, or outside of it?”

Jango shrugged. “We can have the ad’ika mir’baar’ur talk to him. I was never really stable enough to… I wasn’t around the spice as much after they took me as Obi-Wan’s caretaker, not enough that I couldn’t keep it out if I tried, but sometimes they sort of, threatened me, into doing it with them. It’s a shock they managed to run an empire for it, since they couldn’t stay away from it enough to function normally.” 

Before Jaster could reply, already sending a missive to Myoina to get the ad an appointment with a mir’baar’ur, there was a knock at the door, and neither of them had the chance to accept or deny entry before it slid open, and the little one in question came through the door, wearing an oversized blanket in a way that had Myles holding the trailing end of it so Obi-Wan wasn’t tripping over it. “Sorry, Alor, he’s rather insistent on seeing his buir. I’m not exactly interested in causing him distress.”

Jango had his hands held out for Obi-Wan already, pulling the tiny boy -sixteen, but barely the size of a seven year old yet- into his arms and curing the blanket around his little back as Obi-Wan made himself comfortable in the crook of his arms. Ob’ika sighed in exhaustion, making himself comfortable between his buir’s arms, ignoring the others around them. Everyone on the ship seemed friendly, happy to see them, but Obi-Wan just wanted Buir. 

He looked up when his ba’buir -the one Buir called Buir- started asking the man to get him something from the canteen, and frowned. “No, please.” He turned around, starting to paw at Jango’s chest, making a frustrated huff when he realized Buir was wearing a shirt that didn’t open at the front. How was that supposed to be useful to him? He glared up at Myles behind Buir’s shoulder -Ba’vadu, Buir said he should call him- who was explaining what the charts said Obi-Wan should eat, and when, and rolled his eyes, ducking back down so he could start shoving Buir’s shirt up from the bottom. 

Jango froze in his seat, looking at Jaster with pleading eyes and back to the recording unit, and Jaster stood up fast, pressing a button on the unit. “Visual cut, ad. What’s wrong?”

Jango swallowed, not exactly embarrassed, and definitely not ashamed, but maybe nervous? He helped Obi-Wan get the shirt up over his chest, pulling the blanket up so it was draped mostly over the ad and over Jango’s shoulder, and turned to look at a shocked Myles. “Can you get me a shirt with ties, or buttons? And some bread for Ob’ika, I guess. He doesn’t want many solids, but he likes bread and butter.” Obi-Wan had latched onto his left peck now, settling down into him with a soft sigh of contentment at the familiar routine.

Myles took a moment to shake off the shock, literally, before getting back to himself. “Yeah, yeah alright. I’m gonna need to talk to Myoina about this, so she can give me a better meal plan. I’ll be back in a bit.”

The man kept glancing back curiously the whole time, and Jango couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t exactly an archetype for paternal instinct. He wasn’t one of the verd’e that regularly picked up ade or had ever even shown that he could breastfeed before now. Obi-Wan had been the first. 

Obi-Wan had known him for three weeks before the pressure and leaking had grown too much. Jango could only thank the manda the masters had been more interested than disgusted in him when they’d first found out. Obi-Wan had taken to it so instinctively, like a ik’aad who’s been doing this forever. It had been their bonding time. Jango had never denied the ad, and he rather hoped he never had to. 

Jango looked up at Jaster, nervous, and his stomach relaxed at the sight of Jaster’s soft look at them, as if he was melting a little, and gave a cautious smile. Jaster smiled back, leaning in to press a firm kiss to Jango’s temple, something that had made him blush and pull away months ago, but he leaned into it now. “Very good, ner ad’ika, a very good buir for gar ik’aad.”

Obi-Wan lifted his head just long enough to sniff, and give his ba’buir a frown. “Nayc ik’aad?”

Jango pressed a similar kiss to Obi-Wan’s forehead, humming as the foundling leaned into it. “Ner ik’aad.”

Obi-Wan sighed, wriggling around so he could switch sides on Jango’s chest. “Gar ik’aad, ret.”

Jango laughed, helping the ad readjust himself into a comfortable position, wriggling contentedly as he got back to work on the other side. Jango just sighed, pleased to relieve some of the pressure. He just hoped the ad didn’t want to give this comfort up too soon. It was their special bonding time. 

Chapter Text

There was a tension in the master’s apartments this afternoon, and Jango hid Obi-Wan behind his leg as they peaked out from around the kitchen corner. Anilise and Mary, those were their masters. 

They had worse issues than being preferential pedophiles sometimes, but Anilise holding a broken beer bottle to Mary’s neck while their eyes, wide and angry with too much spice, were typically what kept them busy and uncaring of their pricy little slave being taken care of while the trashed living room was host to a myriad of coworkers egging Anilise on to cut her wife. 

Jango couldn’t even remember what they had been fighting about for the past day, just that neither of them had been sober for twenty hours and it was all he could do to keep Obi-Wan safe and out of their clutches. Obi-Wan’s collar had a spacial limit outside the apartment, unable to go far from the remote when they leave, and Jango wasn’t much interested in venturing out without him. Mary had the remote in a lock box on her dresser, and Jango couldn’t get past the lock on their bedroom to try and pick it yet. 

He rolled his eyes when Anilise inevitably decided not to kill Mary, and tossed the broken bottle aside, pushing her into the couch in a feverish kiss instead, both of them ignoring the cheers and hollers from the equally trashed guests around them. He backed up into the kitchen again, Obi-Wan equally annoyed at the display, and set about making a platter of sandwiches. If they wanted to get back to their room, they’d have to cross the living room, and it was better to distract them all with food than risk them demanding the two of them stay and join them. 

Obi-Wan kept himself plastered to Jango’s left hip, cuddled softly into the clean but rough fabric there. He’d flinched at the texture in the beginning, but the little one had overall decided it was a good place to hide. -

“Jango?” Jango flinched a little, hand tightening on the edge of the cot he was sitting at, blinking a few times in concern from the lapse, and looked back to Myoina. 

She was Myles’s ba’vadu, and his teacher now that he was past his studies and into the practical field of medicine. She was an older woman, over half a century, but like a lot of near humans, she didn’t look nearly as old as baseline humans at this point. She boasted at being in her prime still, which meant they couldn’t get her out of the field for anything, but she knew what she was doing. 

She had a tray sitting next to her on the bed across from his, still stuck in medical since the reveal that Obi-Wan hadn’t been interested in actual food, since that was a concerning development. She propped herself up against that bed, and gave him a soft look. “Don’t worry, the mind slips will get better the longer you’re away from the spice now. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about now, actually.”

“The spice?”

“Yeah. I was going to say I’m concerned with trace amounts possibly getting to Obi-Wan while breastfeeding, that’s why I needed to check the composition of your milk. Turns out, you’re even further from baseline than we thought. Your body knows how to filter certain drugs from getting into the milk. Not all, but it’s sort of a safety measure from contamination.”

Jango raised an eyebrow. “Oh? That’s… good.”

“Yeah. But even if you didn’t have that measure, Obi-Wan still has a higher spice count in his system than you do.”

Jango felt a bit ill. “Um. Yeah. He wouldn’t eat many solids while we were there either. They started giving him supplements early on, before they started… I mean when we first got there they cared a bit more? Wanted to make sure he didn’t starve himself to death. I think they were giving him spice in something, since I made most of his food and they wanted to keep him docile. I didn’t stop giving him the supplements since I knew I wasn’t producing enough on my own.”

Myoina nodded. “Yeah. His withdrawal needs are being taken care of, we have him on a more comprehensive supplemental plan. Like you, we aren’t going to let him suffer, but he’s likely going to change a bit. Mentally. It’ll be like coming out of a fog.”

Jango considered that for a moment. “I wonder if he’ll start talking more. Some days he chatter my ear off, love it, but next day he’s quiet and dreamy again.”

Myoina considered that for a moment. “Maybe that will be a blessing, in the end? Maybe coming to terms with all that happened there won’t be as hard because it’ll have the memory imprint of a bad dream. And the one thing that stays will be the person that took care of him through it. Leave behind the bad in the fog, move forward with a new family.”

Jango smiled a little. “I hope.”

Myoina smiled back, pulling up the tray again and lifting off a lid. There was a lot of snack looking items on the tray, as well as a pump. “Now. Next order of business is entirely up to you, Jango. Would you like to boost the milk production? You admitted yourself, it’s not enough to sustain him, but he’s not eating enough solid food for our liking either. So, easiest task first, see if he’ll take more milk? But that’s entirely up to you.”

Jango looked down at his chest with a little frown. “I mean… I’m still male. Would that hurt more because I don’t have much room in my chest?”

She gave a so-so gesture with one hand. “There are various ways that can be handled. If you’re worried about pain, it won’t effect you. The pressure builds over about… two weeks? Then the body adapts to more space. This is the first boost though. A natural boost, by changing your diet, we can get your body to naturally produce more, and more often. It won’t make much change in your physically, just a look of slight swelling in the chest. You can effectively double your production with the right diet and pumping, or just getting Obi-Wan to suckle at the right times. The next step, if needed, which is unlikely here, would be a hormone booster that would make more. How often does Obi-Wan feed this way?”

Jango considered that for a moment. “Before bed, a bit after waking, maybe a couple times a day if he feels comfortable enough?”

She nodded. “That seems like a stable amount to stimulate production. If you’re okay with it, I’d like to put you a different diet. A lot of the foods you’re used to, nothing processed, a bit less spice and higher herbs. Oats, I think your first meal of the day should be oats. These,” she held up three packaged circles from the tray, and a few other packaged snacks, “these are all formulated for breast milk production, cookies and snacks. Smaller meals, more snacks.”

Jango nodded, looking a bit sad at the lesser spices, but, breast milk did translate a lot of what you ate, and Obi-Wan was rather sensitive to most things. “So, as clean of a diet as I can get, get him to suckle more often, and less time between my own meals?”

Myoina nodded, handing over one of the packaged cookies, giving him an encouraging look. He unwrapped it, pleased to note it was some sort of oat cookie. He could do that.

***

Obi-Wan liked the nice new Mandalorians. This one reached out to him in the force like a crèche master reaching for the littles to soothe and get to know them. Obi-Wan rather liked that, and it hadn’t taken more than an hour of sitting across the room with a data pad, playing an assessment placement game, before he really started to stop tracking Jaster Mereel’s force signature. 

Ba’Buir was nice. There was an area in the rec room, where there were soft mats like they kept in the kids gym at the temple, and Jaster had laughed when Obi-Wan asked, saying Mandalorians liked to spar about as much as anyone. He had put a couple pillows on the floor near one of the corners of the room, letting Obi-Wan arrange them and his stolen medical blanket to his liking, till Obi-Wan had made a nice nesting area the furthest from the door he could get. It felt safer that way. Ba’Buir didn’t even try to join him, sitting on a couch across the room, but still far from the door like Obi-Wan was, and in Obi-Wan’s line of sight, and pulled a pile of flimsiwork into his lap so he could work through ‘the bureaucracy of running a functioning government’, and had let Obi-Wan ignore him just the same. 

They were in their own little worlds for a while, but Jaster’s nice force signature didn’t leave the edge of Obi-Wan’s shield where it was leaning, making sure he knew he was being watched by a caregiver. The data pad had been explained to Obi-Wan before it was handed over. It was a game, but every level was supposed to test his accuracy in different areas of study. It was actually very useful, because back in the temple, when the masters have to do his yearly assessments to figure out what classes he would fit in, they had to do it subject by subject till they knew his new schedule. He didn’t grow the same as his agemates, so he had to get retested yearly. On Stewjon proper, they did medical assessments and knew how to figure out the growth rate of children and fit them into groups that would last their whole childhood. They had too many age ranges to fit people into there, but Obi-Wan got his first testing done before he went missing from Coruscant, and he didn’t know what growth rate he had. 

He didn’t really remember where he was before he got taken, but they had advertised him as Stewjoni before they sold him, so maybe they took him from outside the testing center? That would probably explain them not knowing he was a Jedi initiate. 

Obi-Wan sat up with a sigh, standing up so he could stretch out. He’s been sitting criss-cross for too long, and now his legs hurt a little. He knew the crèche masters would tell him to take a walk after sitting still so long. He looked over at Ba’Buir, who was nice enough not to stare, but his force signature was still attentive and focused on him. He studied the man for a long minute, before deciding he was innocent enough, and got a little bit closer, till he was at the side of the couch, out of reach of Jaster, but close enough to look at his buir’s buir a little closer. 

Buir was doing tests with the medics, they said they needed full assessments after everything he went through, compared to before. They had given Obi-Wan most of his checkup while he’d been asleep, and he was kinda happy about it. He didn’t like the idea of being so closely watched while he wasn’t feeling good the other day. 

“How long till we get… to your home?”

Jaster put his pad down, an open space at the edge of the couch that he kept empty in case Obi-Wan wanted to sit there, but he didn’t force the child or even mention it. He looked at the chrono on his vambrace. “Eighteen hours. It’s your home now too, Ob’ika.”

Obi-Wan nodded. He’d probably wake up in time to get there, he guessed. His fiddly little fingers explored the edge of the beat up couch arm, playing with frayed strings coming off of it, and looking off to the door of the room. “What if I go back to the temple? Or another planet? Or, or, if I find a wandering jeiah to take me as a padawan?”

Jaster nodded. “Oh yes, of course. Your buir isn’t the heir to the Mand’alor’s title, that honor belongs to your ba’vadu Arla, but he’s a true born Mandalorian, raised in the Mandalorian way. Whether you take our creed or not, you’ve both chosen each other as family, and I have no doubt he’d raise you right like one, because it’s what he knows and believes to be the right path. Would you let him raise you in the Mandalorian way?”

Obi-Wan’s little fingers stopped picking at the frayed edges, and he seemed to genuinely consider that. “I’m not sure I could hold a leader above the force. Would you ask me to break Jedi code just because my family follows a different one?”

Jaster grinned. Oh, a little negotiator, he loved this ad. “Of course not. Why can’t the Manda be your alor? The Kara guides our people, those are the souls of past Mand’alors. They joined the Manda in death, and guide our decisions to be the best we can. Our people, our leader. They are still our leader, even past life.”

Obi-Wan frowned a little, and it was a long minute before he spoke again. “So it’s not just our leader. I don’t have to choose one over all. I know that’s what the Jedi code means. I can’t choose one over the galaxy. If I can’t do that, I guess I can’t be a Jedi knight.”

“That’s true. But do you think you could let us raise you as Mandalorian till you know that answer?”

Obi-Wan nodded. “I trust Buir to know what’s good for me. But I also want to talk to the masters-“ his little face flinched, and Jaster let his presence soothe over the hurt that unexpected pain came from, before Obi-Wan swallowed nervously, and continued on. “I want to talk to the jeiah. But Buir is my Buir, and I know he wants good for me.”

Jaster nodded. “Then Mandalore is your home too, just as it’s his. We don’t inherit our parent’s culture, but to participate in it is to be a part of the whole. Even when separated.”

Obi-Wan gave a tired little sigh, and climbed up onto the couch next to Jaster, letting himself relax into the cushions till he was leaning against Ba’Buir’s side. He liked Jaster, he made it seem like the future was safe. Like it wasn’t just Jango cushioning the blows, but like Ba’Buir could make them stop coming. 

A hand rested carefully on his head, and Obi-Wan relaxed further into the soothing motion as it smoothed over his messy hair. 

Obi-Wan let him pet at him for a while, soothing him into a sleepy dazed state. It was long minutes later, when Obi-Wan was all but napping against the man’s side -his soft side, since Jaster didn’t seem to like his Beskar on his upper half while relaxing, which Obi-Wan could understand- when the door opened again. 

It was like a switch flipped of what had happened a few hours ago, where instead of Obi-Wan seeking Jango out to nurse, it was the other way around now. Jango sat on his heels next to the couch, leaning in to nuzzle his nose along Obi-Wan’s cheek till he was giggling and trying to push his buir away. Ba’Buir just laughed at both of them, giving Jango’s hair a pet as well. 

“Hey there, bubba, it’s not naptime yet.”

Obi-Wan whined a little, one of his hands coming to push at Jango’s forehead. “I’m not sleeping, Ba’Buir feels comfy and made me tired.”

Jango, ignoring all the careful rules of structure around his little bu’ad -and the ache in his heart when he heard the title Ba’Buir was going to follow him for years, he can just feel it- and reached out, pulling the child right off the couch and into his lap. Obi-Wan hummed contentedly, nuzzling at Jango’s chest before he made a contented sigh. “It’s not naptime yet? But you’re cuddling.”

Jango gave Jaster a little grin, making Jaster’s heart swell even more at the sure look on Jango’s face, the first sure look he’d seen in nearly nine months from his ad. He had to hold himself back, Jango was a buir in his own right now, he couldn’t coddle him around the Jetii foundling, but he knew Obi-Wan probably sensed the need anyways. 

“I know I know. It’s still not naptime, Ob’ika. I need to talk to you a little about what me and Baar’ur Myoina went over a bit ago.”

Obi-Wan looked suspicious for a moment, before settling down in the crook of Jango’s arm, staring up at Jango with big trusting eyes. “Important?”

“Yeah. Myoina thinks you aren’t getting enough nutrients.”

Obi-Wan looked away, and Jaster knew , he just knew this little ad was stubborn as any Mandalorian. Jaster hoped Jango had a good idea to get around that one. “I don’t want to eat more. Makes me sick.”

Jaster wondered if the child had a lot of allergies he didn’t know about, or maybe the food the slavers gave him was drugged. He typed up a quick message on the pad for Myoina to set up an appointment with an allergist on Manda’yaim along with his first foundling checkup.

“I know, bub, you don’t have to tell me that. This isn’t about more solids. Myoina thinks we can boost my milk production for you. It’ll be better than anything else I’ve had for you, since we’ll have a nutritionist working with us.”

Obi-Wan looked back at him, suspicious again, like he thought that might be a trap, and Jango held his gaze. Obi-Wan’s little lower lip jutting out in a pout, started to tremble, till Jango leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, rocking him a little till Obi-Wan relaxed and sagged again. “Won’t need more solids?”

“…I still think you can handle some solids, Ob’ika. You like bread and noodles, we can just add some basic ingredients that won’t bother your tummy. But you might gain a little weight and feel better.”

Obi-Wan finally replied favorably, looking big eyed and eager. “How’s that work?”

Jango paused a little, as if not sure if he was crossing a boundary or not, and finally went for it. “Well, you’ll need to nurse more often, bubba. It’ll convince my body it’s not producing enough for you, and make more. Myoina is giving me a new diet plan that’ll make production higher. Oats, mostly.”

Obi-Wan considered that. “I like oats.”

“Yeah. The ones with bananas, easy on your tummy.”

Jaster wanted to watch them forever. His ad was all grown up at only twenty two, adopting his own ade and willing to change his own life to fit them in. 

Frankly, that was one issue a lot of Mandalorians had with adopting, is that it’s not a slow change into a new life like a pregnancy will get you ready for, it’s usually not planned at all, it’s jumping right into the deep end, and having to accept that your life will change with their new addition. A lot of people took a bit too long to figure that part out, thinking ade are flexible enough that they will fit in, instead of realizing you have to flex too. 

Jango and Arla had been little hellions in the beginning, terrorizing Jaster’s crew and aliit alike till he had them settled enough with their own schooling and chores. You don’t get to help mold that little person’s personality, watching it become, like you do with an ik’aad, you need to get to know who they are already. 

Obi-Wan was pawing at Jango’s shirt ties, obviously on board with the idea of less food being forced on him, more comfort from the person he likes most, and Jaster moved his stack of flimsiwork so he could go to the other end of the couch, letting Jango tuck themselves into the other end. Jaster realized what was different than a few hours ago, and got up to steal the heavy medical blanket back from Obi-Wan’s nest, tucking it around the ad in a way that made both him and Jango relax, obviously both easier under covers. 

Jango was a pretty good buir for Obi-Wan, pretty much wholly dedicated to the child in his arms, something that Obi-Wan, who grew up in a crèche clan, had probably never experienced before. Obi-Wan seemed to thrive under the attention of one person alone, eyes falling half lidded as he got to the task at hand, tiny little hands kneading the bottom of Jango’s left peck with that instinctual movement ik’aad tended to know. 

Jaster didn’t know if it was Obi-Wan’s rough past few days, overuse of the force in their escape from the facility, or just that the medics were right and he was practically starving himself, but Jango’s declaration that it wasn’t naptime yet, might have been a premature one. Obi-Wan made it through giving both sides some good attention before he lost himself to another nap. 

Jaster tried to be a little covert when he took a picture. 

Chapter Text

Jango knew what it meant when he was sent out of the apartments. Obi-Wan told him not to worry about it, that he learned about sexuality and such in health class at the temple. That it wasn’t as traumatic to watch, and they hadn’t touched him yet. He said they spoke to him like a true little boy in those times, enforcing the ‘call us Mommy and Mama’ rule and talking down to him like they didn’t do when Jango was sent out. 

He knew they didn’t trust him, that they sent him away because his Mandalorian instincts might kick in during their playtime with Obi-Wan and he would take his chance to finally kill him while their bedroom door was accessible, where he could pick the lock to their safe that kept Obi-Wan's remote without tripping the alarms for the security teams. 

Obi-Wan would have these glimpses while the collar faltered. Never true visions, and sometimes his mind was so unused to the glimpses in the manda that they gave him seizures from overloading. That’s all a seizure really was, in the end, an overloading mindscape. He was so little and so unused to the manda in those moments, his little body took the damage. 

But those were when he tightened down even further. ‘It’s not time yet. It’ll happen soon. If we move too fast others die. Almost all of them die.’

Obi-Wan was nothing if not a bleeding heart, and Jango didn’t know any of the other slaves, but he wanted so bad for them to get the chance and get out. He’d be angry if someone else’s blunder put his ad’s head on the chopping block because they were impatient. He thought of it that way, and his hand stilled. 

Anilise and Mary were so drugged out most days, it was more like working around them to keep Obi-Wan alive and well cared for without getting their attention, and they rarely thought to include them in their games when they did. 

He wasn’t forced to leave the apartment often, but it made his blood boil. 

Obi-Wan was sweeter like this. Jango wasn’t producing so much yet, but he could already feel the pressure in his chest like he was refilling faster, and it was only a few hours before planetfall. Obi-Wan was determined to stick to their schedule outside of sleeping. Jango had insisted they don’t interrupt their sleep because if this worked out, one day Jango would have to, and he needed Obi-Wan to sleep more. Obi-Wan had always been a restless sleeper. 

He didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, placidly told Jango he could handle what the masters did with him since he’s already learned about that in health class. It was no wonder Jango was constantly fussing at him. He was trying to turn a ghost like ad into an actual functioning little person. It was tougher than it sounded. 

The foundling center baar’ur’s we’re going to throw a fit at the state of him. They’d be lucky if no one demanded Obi-Wan be admitted for immediate treatment and medication, but Jaster had already said he’d make sure that didn’t happen. Obi-Wan needed a diet that wouldn’t hurt his tummy, and even if that included liquid diet like breast milk and pediasure type drinks for the next month, so be it. Jango wasn’t willing to let the ad out of his sight, and Obi-Wan would panic at being held in a medical center, especially if they tried to restrict his movement. It would bring back too many bad memories. 

No no, Jaster had already assured them, he would force them to give over his immediate care to Myoina if they needed a baar’ur on call, and he’d make sure they had a quiet but open place to stay in. 

Jaster was considering restricting the Mand’alor’s training grounds for a while, just till Obi-Wan got used to being around more adults, but he also wasn’t sure if that was going too far. 

Obi-Wan was half snoozing against his chest, wrapped in his claimed blanket and half propped up on a random couch pillow Jaster had stuffed under his soft head when Jango suddenly needed both arms to read through reports of what he’s been missing in their sector since he had disappeared. 

“Altia said she had to spay three of the new strill pups back home? Was there something wrong with them?”

Arla had chosen a trusted animal carer when they had rebuilt the farm on Concord Dawn, saying that they could keep raising strill even if they weren’t on the planet themselves, and Jango had been shocked to realized it hurt just a little less when they chose to go back nowadays. Altia was amazing with the pups, and had helped another farmer get a station in the nearby woods for the fruit tree groves. The area was actually becoming a proper ranch again. 

“Three of them were born with genetic issues, they won’t harm the strill, but they’re passed down to kids. She noticed it when she realized they wouldn’t feed properly, got them genetic screening. We wouldn’t have even known if she wasn’t paranoid.”

“It’s not paranoia if you’re right.”

They both looked down to the quiet spoken ad in Jango’s lap, who seemed to be coming out of a sleepy post-feeding haze, and looked around with interest. “Strill? Can I see?”

Jango handed him the pad with updates on the strill farm, and Obi-Wan only barely seemed to squint at the Mando’a writing, before taking the pad and seeming to devour the pictures. “Do you like strill?”

Obi-Wan shrugged. “I’ve never seen one in person. They don’t have any at the temple. I like ack-pups and massiffs, though. So I guess I like the genus.”

Jango leaned his head on his baby genius’s messy hair, noting the way Obi-Wan seemed pleased with the extra weight, and poked a finger to the corner of the page for settings. “You can change the language characters, so you can recognize the words. We’ll get you proper classes for the characters later.”

Jaster seemed interested as the ad did so, eagerly scrolling back up so he could read the thorough report on the newest litter Altia had put together. “You didn’t give him character lessons?”

Obi-Wan shook his head a little, nearly dislodging his buir. “I couldn’t focus enough for the characters. I think I know the words as well as Buir does now.”

Jango looked so proud of his ad’ika. 

“Why do you have a strill farm?”

“Well, before my ori’vod and I got adopted, our buire owned a farm. They had some strill pups, but in the past ten years, strill have been having issues with breeding. So we got a verd’e who really loves strills the training to work with breeding them. She works with the vets on Concord Dawn to figure out what makes it hard to breed them, and why it’s only been recent that it’s become hard.”

Obi-Wan considered that for a minute. “Can I have a strill pup? One of the ones she had to sterilize?”

Jango genuinely considered that for a moment, looking down at his little one before Jaster chuckled. “Of course you can, Ob’ika, but you’ll have to take the time to meet and bond with one first.”

Obi-Wan’s little lips set to a determined pout. “I can bond with puppies.”

Jango sat with the little boy, swaying him back and forth a bit. It was tough to keep the ad from running around like a loon all the time, considering he was struggling with the ability to balance keeping him healthy with good muscles that don’t go sore from sitting too much, with the fact that his ad was near starvation at all times. 

Honestly, if the masters had been less spiced up and more able to actually get the child to eat, Jango doubts they would have let him near the ad long enough to form the bond they had now. He couldn’t deny his foundling a strill, but would it be worth it knowing damn well his ad’ika would be running after the pet like any other child with a strill would? Well, according to the knowing look Jaster was giving him now, it would be worth it. Maybe a happier little boy would eat more, care a little less about his fears and anxieties. 

“I’m gonna put you in a box, and just keep setting puppies inside of it.” Obi-Wan was giving his ‘overexcited’ giggles, the ones they just came out as huffs of laugher and skin searching while he tried to calm himself down. Jango almost wondered if the Jedi had taught him how to control those giggles, not exactly a bad thing. They were particularly cute, and the ad didn’t have to worry about being too loud and gaining too much attention, but that little rush of excited nerves ade got went to a productive way to calm himself down instead of running about and screeching. 

Jango wanted to be mad at the habit, but he could see the child honestly preferred it, as opposed to the overexcited flush that would spread over his face when he couldn’t handle it from being tickled too much. Being tickled means they were alone enough not to worry, and ended in cuddles on Jango’s chest where he would nap with the ad after wearing him out like that. 

Jaster seemed to notice the little noises the foundling made, but unlike Jango’s unsurity, seemed entirely amused by it. Maybe it was just how some children laughed when overwhelmed? Maybe Obi-Wan preferred that over being loud? Jango curled him up against his chest for a minute, before signing, picking the boy up, and putting him on the floor of the rec room they’ve taken over. “Alright, you need to get some of that energy out, do you want exercises, or can you figure out a game for yourself?”

Frankly, it actually wasn’t time for the run around to get the energy out, since they normally tried to wait as long as possible after feeding to do that. The less energy you use after eating, the better your body stores everything it just got for emergencies. Very rarely did it flush the extra out. 

But also, Jango had the feeling they were going to meet at least Arla, if not also Satine and Adonai and who knows who else on the landing platform, and Jango didn’t want to have to worry about a panic attack on top of that. Oh the panic would still be there, but the more exhausted Obi-Wan was, the least likely he was to show it. 

Obi-Wan stood on the ground, frown turning into a pout, before he gave a full body sigh, and said, “I’ll do my katas.”

Jango ushered him off with a pat to his head and a grin. Jaster seemed interested in watching the ad while Jango sent Myles a few comms asking about what liquid boosters they had on board so he could put Obi-Wan in a sleepy food coma before they landed. 

Myles’s reply was enthusiastic and a little bit ranty, going over the pros and cons of different types, before Jango interrupted the tenth option to ask what he could mix with decaf tea and put in a cup with a straw. The replies to that had been more exacting and Jango finally settled on a very bland vanilla substitute that tasted a bit like a milkshake, and the option of naturally decaf red tea, saying that was the darkest tea they had without. Yes, that’ll do quite well. The best tea they’d had in the spicers facility was herbal stuff given as… reward… for Obi-Wan being a good boy on their special nights, so Jango had heard many a bored rant about Obi-Wan’s favorite teas, his hatred of caff, and a ranking of what teas he’d like that go with what meals. 

It had always been entertaining, and he hoped the vanilla didn’t turn the child sour to finally getting red, it was not something he needed to repeat with Myles. While he was sure it likely wasn’t the best tea ever, considering the low amount of tea drinkers in Mandalorian society meant they really only kept it on board for the few that liked it or people that might end up on board, rooibos was still in Obi-Wan’s top three. 

Jango sent another message saying to put in some cinnamon when he finally made it in a couple hours. 

***

Jaster was telling Obi-Wan a rousing story about the first Mythosaur’s bones being turned to beskar by the moon gods, when the time finally came for them to be fifteen minutes from landing. Obi-Wan had finished his latest feeding, plus the cinnamon vanilla tea mixture, which Obi-Wan had enjoyed suitably well, so Jango had planned to stock up on the highest grade of rooibos he could find in the markets. 

But there was something else in the mixture too, something that actually wasn’t a bad idea, just a bit tricksy and all. Myles had mixed a crushed Benadryl into the lot of it. Not much, but for a child, enough to have him yawning and fighting to keep his eyes open through Jaster’s story. It wasn’t a bad idea, considering Obi-Wan tended to sniffle a bit whenever he had something new. It’s why he’d agreed so fast when Jaster told him they’d set up an appointment tomorrow morning for Ob’ika to get his allergies checked, since it couldn’t just be a picky boy, not if he’s getting sniffles too. Myoina said certain drugs could make allergies worse temporarily, or permanently, but typically about half the allergies the spice had made him sensitive to should be completely non-existent after a year off the spice. 

But, if nothing, it was a good sign that this little situation hadn’t completely messed up his life, just unimaginable trauma and all that for the most part. When Jango had asked why these side effects of spice weren’t talked about more, Myoina had given him a very frank look, and said most spiceheads didn’t really care about the finer pleasures of a diet you have to put some thought into, which made a shocking amount of sense. 

Obi-Wan let out the tiniest little whine, one hand fisted in Jaster’s armor buckle at his side, and the other one rubbing his left eye. Jango swooped in as Jaster let the story stop for now, picking his ad up and cuddling him up against his chest. Jaster grabbed the beloved heavy blanket Obi-Wan kept at all times, and helped Jango arrange it so it was doubled up and harder to see Ob’ika’s shape fully. 

If Jaster wasn’t the one in armor out of the two of them, he’d likely be taking the child up instead of allowing Obi-Wan back to his buir. Jango knew Obi-Wan would be napping in his ba’buirs arms before the week was up, at the rate Jaster was determined to endear himself to the ad’ika. Jaster was rather successful, too. He was putting all that foreknowledge from two troublesome ade before his first bu’ad, and several vod’ade, as well as what Jango considered cheating with using the manda, and creating a solid bond with the ad already. It was working, but Jaster had previous experience. 

Oddly, Obi-Wan was both physically and mentally, the youngest child that’s ended up in Jaster’s life in this way. The few verd’e’s biological children in their lives didn’t tend to stray too far from their parents most of the time, not long enough for them to end up the Mand’alor’s little shadow like the rest tended to become. 

Jango gently bounced the child, trying to ease him down to sleep before they got off the ship. It would help to keep him calm while he had to deal with being watched upon their release. He didn’t do well with being watched. 

Jaster gave him a little smile, before holding up a pad with four profiles on the screen. There were pictures and Jaster had typed out a large ‘Confirmed Jedi Coming To See Him Arriving First’ at the top. Under a picture of a dark blue skinned twi’lek with her headtails covered in thin scarves was a label that said ‘Vokra Che, Jeiah Healer’. Another was a dark brown patterned wookie, with the label ‘Crèche Jeiah Mytakkoa raised Obi-Wan’s clan’. The next picture was a humanoid with long brown hair pulled back, only about as old as Jaster himself, but Jango doubted that, since his label said ‘Jeiah Kroran, Stewjoni childrens mir’baar’ur’, so he was at least twice as old as Jaster for sure. And a last picture of a wrinkled green old… cat looking thing? Jango didn’t know what species that was. Apparently, neither did Jaster, because it was labeled ‘Jedi Grandmaster Yoda, unknown species, speaks weird’. 

Jango let out a soft snort, but felt a hot bloom of fondness in his chest. Jaster had tried all sorts of different methods for quick learning for Jango and Arla so they could figure out who was who in their new lives at court with him, but this was the method that stuck with Jango. Fastest way to get names and allegiances with a proper profile if you clicked on any of the images. Arla was good with names and faces just based off a description, but Jango had fumbled one too many times with what came easier to his force sensitive ori’vod. Jaster said the force sort of placed names to people in a way you just knew, so that was completely useless to Jango. 

He made a sign behind Obi-Wan’s back, not wanting to disturb him. ‘ETA?’

‘Two days, earliest, just confirmed from proximity.’ Jaster signed back to him. 

Jango gave him a confirmation and allowed Jaster to shove the pad in Jango’s bag before they headed out.

Jango wasn’t wearing his armor. Jaster hadn’t mentioned it yet, so Jango hadn’t yet asked out of hope, and not wanting to inflict more grief on his ad, but he was hoping that meant they had recovered it. But right now, walking down the corridors as they finally touched down, Obi-Wan snuffling into his neck, Jango felt like the vulnerable verd’e being closed in on by the ranks to protect him. He focused on Obi-Wan to pretend they were protecting his ad. 

They were in the hanger at the palace when the ramp lowered, Jaster heading out immediately, and it took Jango several long seconds of remembering to breathe when he saw Arla waiting for them, helmet at her hip while she looked at him with big eyes like their buir’s had been. Jango forgot to keep moving, and it took a nudge from Myles’s boot on his before he started down the ramp after Jas’Buir, the rest following. 

Arla was only holding back from throwing herself at Jango by the ad pressed to his chest and her armor being too hard to shove against an ad as vulnerable as they said her vod’ad was. 

Satine, on the other hand, was still holding the pretense of being a New Mandalorian, and darted out from behind the first heir, nearly flinging herself at Jango. Obi-Wan let out a squeaky huff at the collision, but no worse for it, squirming till the girl let off pressure. “Ori’vod, I missed you.”

Jango grinned at the girl, feeling a fond heat in his chest at the sight of her, the same as it had been since he’d been ten and had a four year old Satine Kryze placed in his arms by a busy parent who’d noticed him looking bored in a corner. She didn’t pout at him as much these days, but her lower lip jutted out in the cutest way now, looking between Jango and the bundle of blankets. “I know you did, Sat’ika. Have you heard about my Obi-Wan? He’s the same age as you.”

Satine gave him an incredulous look, before darting around to his back, pulling back the blankets to see the boy. Jango was distracted from whatever interaction the two of them were going to have by Arla’s approach. “Su cuy’gar, vod’ika.”

Her hair looked out of place like she’d been pulling at it, and her cheeks were pale. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Jango reached for her arm, tugging the woman in so he could press their foreheads together. She let out a weak noise, carefully, more carefully than Satine had, pulled him into her arms, breathing out a long sigh. He almost broke down then and there. 

Thankfully, the goofball behind him took care of that need. “Ori’vod, he’s just a baby . He’s not the same age as me!”

Obi-Wan let out a tired squeak in reply, and Jango could feel his little arm moving around so he could reach out to her, and Jango wondered had Obi-Wan just shoved her, when her offended squawk came out. “Not a baby , I’m sixteen!”

Satine pouted harder when Jango turned to look at her. “He’s little.”

“He’s Stewjoni, Sat’ika. They grow up slower.”

“So I’m right , he’s just a baby!”

“Not a baby, I’m bigger!”

“Not by much!”

“Am so!”

“Not!”

Arla put a hand to her lips as the two of them started arguing, and Jango’s eyes filled with completely different tears this time. Satine had been his little brat since the day Jaster had asked him to watch her so she’d stop tripping her buir as they tried to get through the palace, and here she was, arguing with his ad’ika. He was obsessed with them. Arla huffed again, leaning into his side with a soft whisper. “She’s been so upset since you got taken. This is the most I’ve heard her talk in public in a while.”

Jango turned to look at the two of them over his shoulder, both of them still arguing about Obi-Wan’s size and how cute he was, Satine at least half pouting that she wasn’t his littlest and cutest ad anymore. 

“Sat’ika, be nice. He’s your new… vod’ika, I guess.”

Satine let out a sigh so deep, like she couldn’t handle the inconvenience, and reached out to poke Obi-Wan in his little gaunt cheek. “Why’s he so small?”

She already knew what species he was, so Jango could only assume she was talking about the lack of baby fat a child his size should have. Jango have a sad frown. “He’s just not good at eating, yet. He’ll get bigger soon.”

“I guess he has to see the foundling doctors now.”

Jango nodded, looking over at Arla. “Well… just a short visit. He needs a nap, so I think just a check in to get a few supplies and he’ll come back for a full checkup later.”

“He needs a nap? He doesn’t quite look that little.”

Jango snorted. “Well, some kids grow out of naps faster than others. He doesn’t have the extra weight needed for it. Do you want to come back to our quarters, Sat’ika?”

“Yes, please.”

The walk to the heart of the palace where the Mand’alor’s aliit kept their quarters, was fairly empty, save for a few staff that were giving him borderline relieved looks at his return, and interest at the ad snoozing over his right shoulder. 

“Most of the verd’e are out so they can either give you space, or helping out the other freed from the facility you came from. Their ships landed a few hours ago, and Arla’vod says they’ll need to reopen the integration facilities on the edge of Keldabe territory to hold them all till they’re well enough to leave.”

Satine chattered on about the comings and goings of Keldabe, why she was avoiding Sundari right now -her aunts were visiting and they were fairly extremist in their pacifistic views- what Bo-Katan and Adonai were up to -working out a plan for the newly freed slaves to have what they needed, and stuck in a class Bo’ika couldn’t get out of at the moment, since it was keeping her from being loud and scaring the ‘new baby’- and all expectations she had now that Jango was back, which mainly included demands of a gift for all the stress it’s caused her, and being allowed to have a sleepover with Obi-Wan, who was holding her hand in his sleep, contrary to their earlier arguments. 

They were going to be the best of friends in under a week. Or at each other’s throats for the rest of their lives. The foundling baar’ur’s looked reprimanding that they weren’t handing over the ad immediately, but gave Arla a crate of supplies and told Jango to come back with him no later than tomorrow so he could get a full checkup. So both of them could, really. 

Jango’s breath caught in his throat, back in his bedroom in their quarters, looking at his armor, ready and polished, even newly painted in his customary blues and golds, but a new style, Arla’s touches familiar and careful over the armor like they had always been. Jango had never turned her down for a repaint before, and she liked changing up his and Jaster’s designs occasionally, just never their colours. 

Until now. His gold, normally against the colour code as he’d considered it a simply deeper shade of yellow for remembrance for their buire, was sitting with lines of dark green around it, careful strokes that framed the colour and made Jango’s eyes water. 

Protecting. That’s how he got Obi-Wan. Protection. He could tell it was the newest colour in the set, and he took a moment to swallow, before turning to look at the bed, where Satine was curled around Obi-Wan’s little side, watching him in wonder as she ran fingers up and down his little spine, soothing him down to sleep. She looked awake but her eyes were blown big, too much caff in her system. Arla had broken off to her room while he’d been inspecting his new armor painting, and came back without any of her own, wearing soft sweats and her kute shirt, looking hopeful. 

Jango just smiled at her, tilting his head in a silent assent for her to join the ad on the bed, and as she curled up to Obi-Wan’s other side, pressing her lips to the crown of his head, Jango sat on the armchair in the corner of the room, watching over the three of them. 

He pulled out a datapad from his bag, deciding to get a head start on the files from the Jedi coming to see their wayward ad’ika. He’s heard about the ad’s crèche jeiah and the Order’s Grandmaster while him and Obi-Wan were still in that facility, and he was looking forward to seeing if they really held up as caretakers. 

Chapter Text

Jango remembered the first time Obi-Wan had found him. His collar was glitching that day, and he’d managed to slip the guards their masters kept. 

Jango was kneeling on the floor of a hallway, fixing a wiring system just past the vent, no direct guards around him, but guards at the end of the hallways, one of whom jumped as an errant little boy came barreling down the hallway, skidding right into Jango’s body, looking back with a little whimper at shouts of his name, and tried to burrow into Jango’s arms. 

“Hello there, ad’ika, are you alright?”

The ad looked up at him with big blown eyes, before his little face went from fear to awe. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Jango couldn’t help the little spark of amusement. There was almost nothing to find amusing these days. 

“Pretty. Like sparkles in your skin.”

There was an angry shout from the direction the ad had come from, and a pissed female master came around the corner. “You brat, I said don’t run off-“

Obi-Wan liked his buir’s shiny armor. He thought Buir looked good in blue. 

The kute had ties at the sides, so they could be pulled apart for feedings, but Jango was wearing some weird compression thing around his chest. Obi-Wan didn’t like it. He’d growled at it, blood pressure low with sleep and patience lower with bad nutrition and improper calming techniques. Obi-Wan was always a little annoyed before his first feeding. “Is this?”

Jango laughed, helping unhook the pressure garment for him, parting it with a wince. Myoina had sent along a crate of medical supplies and children’s clothes and foods when Jaster had made his way back to the living space, and the notes had said the garment would be worn for no longer than two weeks at a time, with at least two months between uses that long. “It’s a pressure top. It’s helping stimulate my glands so they make more milk for you.”

Obi-Wan grunted in ascent, curling up just right so he could get at Jango’s left nipple, always the left one first. He was a predictable ad’ika. He had his own special little rituals, and there were sure to be shake ups in the next few weeks. This was the first time Jango had to control his breathing to not let out a little hiss at the sensitive feeling of pressure at the tip, before he was able to control it. Obi-Wan’s big eyes looked up at him in concern, but he didn’t unlatch. Good, because Jango wouldn’t be doing anything anytime soon to cause him the price of greatly needed nutrition. 

“It’s okay, Ob’ika, it’s just that when your body starts making more milk, the pressure goes up. It takes a few days, sometimes a week or two, to feel less pressure. It’s just sensitive.”

Obi-Wan unlatched long enough to give a little nod. “I won’t let teeth near it.”

Jango smiled softly, running his hand through Obi-Wan’s hair. “I know you won’t, bubba.”

Before Obi-Wan could get back to it, he let out a cautious noise, flexing one tiny little hand against Jango’s sternum. “No kneading?”

Jango shook his head, guiding that tiny little hand back to where Obi-Wan would give his little kneading pushes while feeding. “Kneading is good, Ob’ika, it helps. You might just not be able to do it as firmly for a couple weeks.”

Obi-Wan let out a confirming noise, tucking back into Jango’s chest. 

Jango glanced over at the pad he’d been reading through major system news headlines till Obi-Wan had woken up and decided it was time to feed again. The practically pathetic amount Jango had pumped that morning, after his own short rest, being the most awake of the people in their quarters, had gone into a flat packed bag in the freezer unit in the kitchen, where Jaster had made a considering noise, saying they could add it to Obi-Wan’s tea or mix with sugar and vanilla for ice cream for him. 

That was. The weirdest conversation he’s had with his buir in a while, especially since Adonai had been sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of spiced caff, and absently said his cousin’s riduur had called herself a ‘super producer’ and had turned her extra into butter, which had been used by all the ade up to twenty in their clan. 

Not that it’s bad for adults, but some clans got pretty big, and ade get first choice at those sorts of things. 

Jango had never been so red faced in the same room as his buir and his buir’s closest evaar’ade advisor, a man Jango had grown to call ba’vodu over the years, discussing what a good thing it would be if they could get Jango to produce enough to supplement a real diet for his ad. 

Jango had quickly stolen Bo-Katan’s sleeping form off the couch in the living room, and brought her back to the nest he’d created in his own room with his vod’e and ad, putting the ten year old between her ori’vod and Obi-Wan, before Jango had swapped placed with a chuckling Arla so he could sleep while she kept watch this time. Obi-Wan had immediately drifted so he was collapsed over Jango’s chest like they preferred to sleep together, and Jango had taken his rest then, happy his sister knew the benefit of keeping watch. 

And now, Jango relaxing back in the living room armchair, pretending to ignore Bo-Katan peeking out from behind Jango’s shoulder so she could see the new family ad, head cocked to the side like a curious tooka while Obi-Wan got comfortable. 

Jaster was sitting in the kitchen with Satine and Arla, ignoring their argument in favor of his own morning news while Adonai concentrated on making sure they all had actual food to eat. Jango wondered if Adonai had actually been staying in his quarters in the palace more since Jango got taken, if Adonai had taken over making sure Arla and Jaster didn’t starve. 

Has that always been his position in their aliit? Considering even Arla, who had a much more ample chest than Jango for sure, and Jaster, who gravitated towards ade, often stealing them from guardians who weren’t paying enough attention for as long as it took Jaster to win said ade over, and yet, Jango was still the first and currently only one of them to lactate, he’s wondering if that had always been his priority. 

Making sure his aliit didn’t starve. 

Jango’s fairly sure the majority of Obi-Wan’s eating issues were a mixture of spice induced allergies and anxiety. The little one ate least often when the masters fought. 

A little hand reached around Jango’s shoulder, and poked Obi-Wan in the cheek, probably the same way Satine had the other day, making Jango snort while Obi-Wan’s big eyes shifted to glare at her for a moment. “He’s little. I like his pretty hair.”

Jango glanced back at her, biting back a grin. “You have pretty hair too, Bo’ika.”

She gave a pleased little noise, and started climbing the back of the chair till she was sitting on the back, over his shoulder like a parrot. Amazing. He hoped she didn’t fall on them, since that would hurt Obi-Wan. “Buir says he’s little because he wasn’t taken care of well before. How long have you had him?”

“About six months now. I wasn’t making enough milk there since the conditions weren’t great, but he doesn’t like solids much.”

Bo-Katan nodded sagely, all the intelligence of a child. “He’ll get bigger now. Are you gonna try and make more milk? Like ba’vodu when she said she wasn’t making enough? Her riduur had to start pumping and taking pills so she could make some too. She ended up making way more than any one baby would need, though.”

That must be the ‘super producer’ Adonai had been talking about before. “I’m going to try, Bo’ika.”

Jango was trying to figure out if suddenly becoming a super producer would be a good thing, or hilariously wrong in all ways. If it worked he’d have to learn to make butter for sure. Or ice cream. The articles he’d read that morning said it was best to use it before six months. He was kind of dizzy at the idea that he could produce enough for Obi-Wan that it ever became a worry at all. 

He reached a hand up, running a thumb over Obi-Wan’s sleep mused eyebrows, which tended to get wild since he slept on his tummy. Obi-Wan looked up at him, eyes big and sleepy, but waking up a little bit at a time. Bo-Katan giggled, climbing down from her spot over Jango’s shoulder. “He’s got pretty eyes.” 

She darted off for the kitchen, eagerly asking Adonai what was for breakfast as she joined the chaos. Satine was loudly starting to ask Adonai about what Coruscant was like, since she hadn’t been sent to schooling there with her cousins when their auntie had demanded proper schooling for the girls. Jango had never been happier that Adonai couldn’t besmirch his riduur’s memory by doing such a thing, but maybe Satine could have a little visit there with her new vod’ika one day. 

***

The foundling center had sent two baar’ur’e, one for a general checkup for foundling records, and one mir’baar’ur for a mental health check. Jaster had gotten several others himself, including allergy and tummy baar’ur’e, so they could figure out what’s safe for Obi-Wan to eat. Obi-Wan was bored most of the way through the tests, and Jango foresaw another round of allergy meds in his future from the amount of general skin pricks they were going to have to do on his back later. They normally used an arm, but it was easier when someone has more allergies, and is little enough not to hold back with scratching. They needed more space to cover. 

Jango grunted when a frazzled looking baar’ur -likely one of the ones that’s been in rotation for the near thousand freed slaves they brought back- shoved a tub of medicated lotion into his hands. “We have the result, please put this one his back before he steals something he shouldn’t to scratch.”

She wasn’t exactly wrong, Obi-Wan was valiantly trying to get his little clipped fingernails at his back where the pricks had started. His back was littered with itchy dots in between uneffected but still ‘someone stabbed me there’ spaces. Jango snorted at his little flailing limbs, feeling an ache in his chest that wasn’t from needing to express his milk for once, as he watched the ad’s little skinny body. 

The baar’ur’e hadn’t blamed him for Obi-Wan’s skinny half-starved state, one of them even going so far as to tell him his milk was likely what kept the child going this far, but Jango still felt like a failure. Upon seeing that in his eyes, the baar’ur had briefly left the room, before another replaced her, a fairly young Gen’Dai, but older than most of the planet’s population, and had put a hand to Jango’s shoulder. “All buir’e who deserve their ade, feel like failures to see them in pain. No one can predict the future, not even Jetiise, we move forward no matter what. The future is fluid and your determination to see your ad have the best in life is what matters from here on out. There is no failure when given impossible choices, only shame brought on by lies.”

The Gen’Dai had looked at Obi-Wan, and given him a softly spoken prayer in Dai’Bendu, that Obi-Wan had replied to as if on rote, almost seeming to calm that feral gleam in the ad’s eyes, and asked the Gen’Dai how many years he’d had to believe in betterment, instead of non-interference. Over a thousand, and the Gen’Dai had been found and raised by Mandalorians to believe in community and helping those in need. A lucky one, for a Gen’Dai, and Jango hadn’t known his ad knew a single thing about the species to know the differences. Though his ad sure did love to spend time buried in the books Jaster would hand him, maybe he did the same in the temple archives, especially since he is as able to pick and choose his classes more than other students. 

The baar’ur had given him a pad on male baseline lactation and how Jango could develop more before needing medical intervention. It had been thorough, and less embarrassing than Adonai’s reminisce of his vod’e and their struggles to give milk before a riduur turned out to be perfect for it. 

Jango was a bit more focused this time, and moved forward with a basin of water by the bedside table, and climbed into the cot with the ad, coaxing him back onto his belly with a little clicking noise while he manhandled him. Obi-Wan got to his tummy and sunk into the pillow he’d been given to lay on, making cranky noises. “It’s okay, bubba, Buir will take care of it for you, you don’t need to scratch.”

Obi-Wan made muffled little noises of sadness, as if he was so very abused, and Jango couldn’t help the little smiles he gave him. Getting Obi-Wan cleaned of any ick from the test seemed to make the ad sag into the pillow with happy sighs, and Jango was particularly thorough with the lotion, wanting to reduce the swelling that had come up and make the ad stop trying to twist around to scratch it. 

He let the ad snooze against the pillow, running his fingers through his baby soft hair while they waited for test results. Jango was starting to panic the longer they were out of captivity and Obi-Wan still wasn’t healthy. Jaster had sat him down the night before when Jango was sitting guard over his vod and ad, using that stupid physiology degree he got to help run a government, and telling him that his expectations of Obi-Wan suddenly being a healthy little boy after their time as slaves, just wasn’t going to happen. 

Obi-Wan slept in fits. He used to nap during the day, but whenever they were in the room with someone else, his sleep was light, easily woken, and his naps had turned to snoozing, which frankly just made his exhaustion worse. Honestly, the only reason Obi-Wan had gotten to sleep the night before was because Satine latched onto his back like a teddy bear and the pressure made Obi-Wan calm down. His allergies were going to be addressed for the first time, and a lot of them would eventually clear up without the spice attacking his immune system, but now Jango was wondering what on that fated list they’d give him Obi-Wan was allergic to that Jango had been giving too much to him. 

The galaxy was wide. If he was allergic to wheat, they could use root or imported breads. If it was tomatoes, well, Jango would no longer have to fight with Arla about if tomatoes belong in their favorite stew anymore, that’s a win for him. If it’s bananas, Obi-Wan would lose his favorite snack, but the galaxy was full of fruit and one of them had to be a good replacement now that they were out of captivity and had more of a choice-

He needed to calm down. Everything wasn’t going to magically be happy and healthy. His little boy loved and trusted him, that’s the part that won’t change, but Obi-Wan will get care. Jaster can even help with soothing him in the force, like he loved to do with sensitive children under his care. Arla had hated the man before he’d started meditating with her in the mornings, and he was a hard man to hate at all, but she had gone soft at his help when building up both her and Jango’s shields. 

That’s it. That’s the key here. He wasn’t alone anymore. He was going to start a list, and add things to it as he thought of them, and shove that list at Jaster and tell him ‘good ba’buir’e figure ossik out for their ade’ and take a three year nap. With his ad. 

Jango sighed, putting down the pad he’d been vacantly staring at, and moved to lay down on his side on the edge of the bed, armorless because Obi-Wan had complained about how hard the thigh plates were, and Jaster had said some buir’e got fitted for padding they could keep in a diaper bag, and sent them off to the clan armorer immediately. 

The clan armorer that Jango had an appointment with later in the day, to bring in his new foundling and talk. Jaster had specified that Jango was not going to be asked specifics about being in captivity, and it was never part of regular reporting to talk about anything traumatic. But they might ask Obi-Wan what he remembered about being taken. 

Jango leaned in, pressing his forehead to Obi-Wan’s as his ad turned to look at him in curiosity, eyes big and a little amused. They were tucked into the furthest corner of the small infirmary, and the three patient room was clear of others, considering their statuses and Obi-Wan’s specific issues. The baar’ur’e that had come in today were all force sensitive, or like Jango, had impressively controlled shields, and other slaves and injured people famously did not. Obi-Wan had twitched at every movement, before Jango had shoved the medical bed up against a wall, as tight to the corner as he could get it, and sat between Obi-Wan’s head and anyone else coming into the room. 

A baar’ur came in, four separate pads in their hands, giving them over one at a time. “This is his list of allergies, including what he can safely eat, some pills to get to abate side effects of things he might not be able to avoid, what absolutely not to risk no matter what, and what we suspect might be five allergies that probably won’t go away when his system’s been flushed.” That had only been a single pad. Jango blanched, wondering what else there was. “This is a list of medications we’d like to give him, what they do, and some research on them so you can be informed. We will not start him on anything until we’ve conferred with Jedi Healer Che-“

“Healer Che? Healer Che is coming? Is she bringing her apprentice?”

The two of them looked at the ad, and Jango was a little surprised, considering Obi-Wan had only previously hissed in the presence of this specific baar’ur, but that might have just been because she had been giving the sample pricks. They frowned, thinking about it. “They might have mentioned a student. Wouldn’t that be for sure, if she was coming?”

Obi-Wan shrugged, sitting up, but not showing off his skinny little body because he brought the pillow up with him. “Bant has two jeiah. She has an archivist jeiah, and a healer jeiah. She only got her healer jeiah a few years ago, since they didn’t know she’d be good with medical. She’s the best ever. I hope she comes.”

Jango’s eyes went soft, and so did the baar’ur’s. “Your crèche vod, Ob’ika?”

Obi-Wan nodded big. “Yeah! I haven’t seen her in forever, I want to see her.”

The baar’ur’s eyes were shiny. “I hope she comes, Ob’ika. Hey, you might know a bit about this next pad, what do you know about your gender?”

Obi-Wan squinted while Jango took the pad, looking very curious. “I know it takes three weeks minimum for Stewjoni to change which of their genitals is used, and up to a year to complete full gender swaps completely, but after three doses of the first changing hormones, or a full month of the medicinal tea, the body starts completing the changes on it’s own.”

The baar’ur smiled, while Jango’s head spun. He didn’t know there were any humanoids that could complete a full gender swap without continuous hormone treatment, or even just change which genitals they have most prominent. He knew, of course, that Obi-Wan had both sets of the humanoid variants, since he’s been taking care of the ad for a half a year now, but that was interesting to know. “Very good, Ob’ika. That’s the basic gist of what happens there. Your buirs pad has all the exact info and how it all happens. You won’t need to know how it works yourself till a year before puberty, in case you want to start early, but you’re over a decade away from that.”

Obi-Wan nodded, looking like it didn’t much concern him, which was exactly true at the moment. “And the last one?”

They smiled again. “That’s a list of your temple records that the masters sent with documents and some test results. I think it was your council’s way of saying they fully recognize your adoption. It’s also got a list of contacts and who they are, people you likely know from the temple.”

Obi-Wan smiled, looking pleased. He also looked a little manic. The allergy tests and resulting medicines were sapping all the energy out of his little body. The baar’ur pulled out one last thing, and Obi-Wan looked immediately scared. Not quite panicked like Jango was used to, but Obi-Wan still reached out for him with those skinny arms, lower lip trembling as he whined. “Please no, no I’ll be good, I don’t want that.”

The baar’ur looked sad. “I know, your healer Che told me you don’t like hypos, I’m so sorry about that. Just three little pinches and you’ll be all set to go. You need them.”

Jango scooped the ad into his arms, letting Obi-Wan hide in his neck, while gesturing to the baar’ur to get at his bicep while Jango held it in place. Obi-Wan started to cry, but he didn’t pull at Jango enough to bruise or cause issues with the hypos. Jango had been told what they would be before the medical appointment. 

One was the first of Obi-Wan’s inoculations to the system, one that would have to get up to three doses over the next week and a half, and another was an all inclusive supplemental for his diet. The last was also for his diet, a treatment that will convince his body to take as much nutrients from whatever he was fed for about a week. It was used to help gain weight for starved ade that came to them, and a weekly dose for a couple months could add a world of healthy padding for little bodies to survive. 

They were the three the baar’ur knew they wouldn’t need to ask his healer Che about, since they were necessary for health and being in the system. Jango wanted Obi-Wan chubby enough to pinch his little cheeks. As is, Obi-Wan was one tummy flu away from being skeletal, and Jango was stressed out over it. Obi-Wan was a little one, just an ad, he could handle bland tubers and unspiced meats for a while if it’d get his little body to add on pounds. 

Jango leaned in, pressing little kisses to the crown of Obi-Wan’s head, giving soft little hums. “I know, bubbas, it’s a very hard life for a Jango and an Ob’ika.”

Obi-Wan pouted his way through the rest of the appointment while Jango and the horrible evil rude baar’ur talked about things above him, as if they had his needs in mind after that horrible betrayal they’d just shown. Obi-Wan was lucky he was alive after that one. They’d just ganged up on him with those hypos like monsters!

He was complaining to Ba’Buir when they saw him next. He was a buir, he’d be able to ground Jango for his cruelty. He curled up closer to Jango’s neck, whining a little when Jango put more lotion on his back before putting him back in a shirt, before calming down when he realized it was actually a wool sweater. Oh that was comfortable. He closed his eyes, fingers clinging back into Jango’s nice blue kute, and decided he felt a bit like he had when they had landed, sleepy and relaxed, and closed his eyes for a little nap. 

Chapter Text

There was a time that Jango would have picked a fight with someone for just looking at an ad the way the masters did. Anilise was usually too strung out on whatever she’d had most recently to bother with much more than looking. Mary, on the other hand, was often more clear headed than her partner. She liked touching his thighs and curling him into her lap when she was more lucid. 

Anilise liked putting Obi-Wan in little dresses. Obi-Wan was more upset by those days than the ones where they made him watch. They almost solely put him in what they considered ‘girls’ clothing, and that wasn’t the part his ad had an issue with, it was the other feminization. Baby girl. She, her, daughter. They tended to put too much of that shit on him and he’d start to get tense. 

He said it was a mixture of them disregarding his preferences, though as a slave bought for their sexual enjoyment, that wasn’t the worst of it, but mostly, it was the way they felt towards him in the kara. The glimpses of their intentions he’d get when the collar faltered almost made him want to ask for them to get him a new one. One that would blind him to their feelings completely. 

Obi-Wan said the worst of it wasn’t the tiny little dresses and high socks that made them scoop him up into their laps, hands on his thighs and talking about how pretty he was going to be when they got him comfortable with being their baby girl. How they’d have to have medicinal teas on hand to start the transformation when he started to get closer to puberty. 

Jango was only held back by knowing who held the remote for Obi-Wan’s bomb collar, and that he still needed to get that remote before he could make a move against them. 

Jango sat in the heart of Jaster’s great-ba’vodu’s forge, a man that still lived as he wasn’t aging at the same rate as the rest of his generation, but had given the title of Mereel head armorer to his adopted ade. Three of them, in fact. 

This was just the main forge. It was where official meetings were held so they could compile the clan histories in a single compendium without arguing about details. Their buir used the forge for the newest members of the clan, and he insisted on making their first pieces himself. Jekki kept her textile machines here, but that was more of a lack of space in her home forge than anything. He heard Nasins was going to be renovating her home forge soon as a solstice gift. 

Jango paused while ba’vodu Russi, the eldest of Nasins’s adopted daughters, put out a tea setting. It was particularly ceremonial, but never used that way. The armorer held out two small tins to him with a raised brow, looking elegant in a way Jango never would. She had always been a formidable woman, absolutely nothing like the sephi man that had adopted her, who was chasing Obi-Wan around the other end of the shop. They were still waiting for her vod’e to get there before a meeting. 

Jango looked at the tins for a moment, noting they were one of ba’vodu Nasins’s work, which meant he had no idea what was inside, before sighing and popping the top off either, and smelling. “Tea? For us or the ad?”

Russi pulled up the lid on the small tray, revealing breads and a few fruits Jango knew were on Obi-Wan’s safe list, making him smile at the softening look on her face. “We’ve been told he has tummy issues. Your buir sent a list of what we know he can have so far. I believe that was a polite way of asking us to assure he has snacks available at all times?”

Jango nodded, not even able to roll his eyes. “Yes. I’ve struggled so much to get him to eat.”

Russi’s nod to the two tea containers. “And what does he like best?”

Jango huffed a little. “I could give you an essay on what tea he likes and why, but I’ll narrow it down for you; whatever has the least caffeine in it. I don’t want anything to stunt his growth, and the records we’ve gotten from temple healers said he’ll get energy abound when he’s out of the starvation zone. They said he’s not one for sitting still.”

Russi smiled, putting one container aside, before prepping the teapot with the other. She glanced to where Nasins had managed to capture the ad, and was holding up different swatches of leather, different colours and textures for the ad to choose from. It was Nasins’s favorite part of giving a new set of armor. He liked customizing and giving people the ability to choose even the littlest details. Obi-Wan was snug against his chest plate, looking pleased as he considered the different options, mostly the lighter colours. “I think he’s already got a bit of that energy back, just feeling safer, don’t you think?”

Jango nodded. “Yeah. He does. Will he… can he ever have a traditional armor?”

A hard set, he means, but Russi was already looking thoughtful by the time Jango had thought to clarify, so he let her think. “Your ori’vod uses a higher beskar percentage than your buir, but your buir says that even he feels like there’s too much beskar in his own set. Too much force blocking blinds one. Your ori’vod doesn’t notice it because her usage of the force depends on feeling calm and meditating, which isn’t something she wants in battle. Even Jedi rarely get that in battle… forgive me that ramble. I mean to say that we need the right alloy. I suspect we should test multiple alloy types as we come up with them. Aunni will love the chance for a new project like that.” Aunni, of course, was one of Russi’s triplet vod’e, the other being Jekki. 

Jango nodded, thinking about something for a minute. “I could use a mir’baar’ur. I feel… guilty. I was told in the clinic that’s… normal…” he clenched his jaw. He wanted to say something that would have gotten him a smack, which he knew because it made no sense. He didn’t even know Obi-Wan before they were together. Russi’s eyes closed, and she gave a slow nod. 

“Of course you would. And you know why? It’s because you care so much about him. It’s misplaced guilt. A buir’s love versus the need to never let something bad happen to them, and the knowledge that it already has. A lot of adopted buir’e go through it. Even still, I have one I think you’d connect well with. I’ll send you his info later.”

Jekki came rushing in, late with Aunni behind her, carrying several totes of material and anything they’ll need for measurements. This was going to be fun. Obi-Wan would get to experience the whirlwind of his new ba’vodu manhandling him. 

Jango genuinely hoped Obi-Wan’s force senses were good enough that this wouldn’t trigger him. 

But first, the compendium. 

***

Jango hadn’t wanted to delve into the details of their stay at the spice factory, and Russi had kept her sisters from overstepping when she noticed a dazed look in his eyes, starting to check out from the conversation as he shut down at a question about the masters they had. She gave a firm shake of her head, tone soft. “The mir’baar’ur will keep us apprised if Jango and Obi-Wan agree to add their account of their time. That is for them to decide.”

Russi was the voice of reason most of the time. She was the story keeper. She loved her fine detail work she did, but her strength was keeping their histories. Jango thinks Jaster spent too long at her side as a child, that it’s where he got the history obsession from. 

Their buir was, affectionately termed, a silly man. He had silly whims and silly loves. He knew his stories and would sit to speak with all children, ones from his clan or not, to tell them about their history and culture. He just liked using funny voices and tickling littluns as well. Russi was much the same, but more stoic in her accounting of their culture. Jekki and Aunni were almost entirely wrapped up in their work for the clan. Aunni was nearly genius levels with her beskar knowledge, and Jekki was trying to bring armorweave fashion into a modern setting that either praised full armor, or none at all. She wanted to bridge that gap in a new way. 

Their family was a credit to the Mereel clan. 

Jekki seemed to jump at the chance to get little Obi-Wan’s opinions on his options for armor and daily fashion, and Jango went to supervise while Russi and Aunni spoke about what they thought his future concerns should be, what they wanted to talk to the Jedi about when they got here. 

Obi-Wan was cuddled up against Nasins, looking at her with big eyes. Before she could get to the questions, Obi-Wan looked between her and Nasins. “Are you also sephi? I didn’t see it at first.”

Jekki blinked, and Nasins gave a strong laugh, holding the little one close. “She is, young foundling. Well, her father was.”

Jekki’s cheeks went the slightest shade of pink, but she was giving Obi-Wan a fond smile while Jango moved to pull up one of Nasins’s floor pillows. This area of the shop was relaxed, because it was where Nasins liked to tell his stories and hold lessons for the littluns. “My father, both my fathers,” that made Nasins smile broadly, “was sephi. My mother was a near human from a world without last names. So it didn’t change our naming scheme. Do you know any sephi back in the Jedi Order?”

Obi-Wan nodded excitedly, sitting up against Nasins chest. He was freshly fed and Jango was nearly cooing at the healthy flush to his cheeks for once, instead of the pallor he typically took on if something didn’t agree with him. Jango was beyond pleased. “My searcher ! She was sephi, she pulled me out of the ice waters.”

“Master Fay, bubbas?”

Obi-Wan nodded, eyed up Jango’s unarmored body, before giving Nasins a sad look. Nasins knew exactly what that look was. If he didn’t remove his chest plate he’d lose his little cuddle buddy. A shameful situation he was suddenly in. Jango looked at his watch, noting they were still another hour out till Obi-Wan’s next feeding, so he gave the armorer an encouraging look. Nasins sighed, as if it was a great sacrifice, and unbuckled his chest plate, finding a much more cuddly boy in place of the Beskar. Obi-Wan went quiet for a minute, ear shoved over Nasins chest, listening to his heartbeat with lidded eyes, before he seemed settled again. 

“My searcher, Jeiah Fay, is a wandering Jedi. She doesn’t live in the temple. She hasn’t gone back to the temple for years, because she just follows the will of the force. It tells her where to go, and she finds people to help there. I know there are others, but I haven’t met everyone in the order, of course.”

Jekki gave a soft smile to the boy. “How old is Jeiah Fay? I’m almost eighty-seven. My buir is a hundred and fifty-two.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Jeiah Fay is over a millennium and a half.”

The three of them blinked, and Jekki turned after a minute of quiet confusion, to look at her twins. “Russi, how old can sephi get?”

Russi and Aunni tuned into their conversation, looking interested. “The oldest sephi I’ve ever heard of was five-hundred.”

Jekki looked back to the foundling. “Are you sure Jeiah Fay is over one-thousand five-hundred?”

Obi-Wan nodded. “Yes. Healer Che says her ability to self heal is so powerful, she’s stopped her ability to age entirely. She can only be killed or die if she’s very sick. When I started asking why my crèche mates were chosen as apprentices and I still have to take naps, they put me in some healing classes to talk about how different species age. Jeiah Fay was a primary example of how one can become immortal in the force. Another was a Jeiah Leuin, he was killed in battle at over a hundred, and chose to be reborn instantly. He retained all memories and mastery of the force even as a child.”

Jekki had never seen Russi create a new compendium entry so fast before. Honestly, Jango hasn’t heard his little one talk this clearly about something he was excited for, in far too long. 

Jaster and Russi were going to steal his ad’ika, they were going to steal him for their nefarious and nerdy purposes. 

Thankfully, Jekki was able to head that one off before they could really get into it, managing to redirect Obi-Wan to her and Nasins. 

“Ob’ika, I was wondering what Jedi clothing customs you know?”

Obi-Wan looked at her with interest, and Russi now knew enough to see that meant he knew something, and she was already starting a new compendium entry for this new topic. “I know that initiates are supposed to wear only the lightest colours. After you’ve been chosen as an apprentice you have a different formal option in beiges and tans, but otherwise you can wear whatever outside of formals. As a jeiah you can wear anything but are expected to wear tabards formally.”

“So initiates have the lightest colours. Is that to represent purity?”

Obi-Wan shrugged. “Maybe at one point? It seems like it would have been that at one point. I’ve never heard it that way. Initiate whites are the formal robes. You wear everything pale to white head to toe, but outside of that we can pick any colours as long as they’re very pale.”

Jekki make a humming noise, nodding as she passed through her notes. “So I have an idea. I was thinking we could replace your traditional leggings and a layer of your undershirt with a kute. You can have as many colours as you want for a kute, but we’ll keep them pale for you.”

Obi-Wan took the data pad when she handed it over, looking at the full body kute with interest. Obi-Wan rather liked being warm, he might enjoy it. The little one hummed. “Can I have gloves and a higher neck on it too?”

Jekki snorted. This was probably the quickest a foundling has taken to the kute idea in a while, much less wanting to go further. “We can do that. They’ll all be separate pieces. The bottoms and tops connect with small magnets, and the gloves would be separate too.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes went squinty and he seemed beyond pleased, humming turning into a low purr at the idea. “Please, yes!”

“That’s good kiddo, what colours do you want?”

“Pale blue? And yellow! And orange? But I guess one in white for formals.”

Jekki made some notes, before holding out a hand to him. “Can I take a picture of your skin? So I don’t get a bad colour that washes you out?”

Obi-Wan let her without issue, and Jango relaxed a bit. His ad’s force abilities were working fine if he was this relaxed around an adult woman he didn’t know well.

“On top of this inner kute, we were thinking a lighter material of your initiate tabards, and boots. That way we can add leather armor to begin with, going up in weight and material over time?”

Obi-Wan gave a happy little purr again, nodding, and Jekki made note of it. Jango had the feeling she’d be using armorweave with everything. Jango heard they were using a new bamboo fiber for inner weaves to deflect knife cuts for inner clothes. Bamboo silk was light enough to get him used to extra leather weight, soft enough not to irritate soft skin. 

Jekki produced a few holostills of styles, and finally handed over the result to Obi-Wan to check over. “It looks a lot like my temple clothes would.”

Jekki nodded. “Yes. We don’t want to take away that culture you grew up with, we’re adding our own, and now, your own, to supplement. There is no need to take away simple comforts that do no harm, and I think letting you dress like you always have, with Mandalorian upgrades to it, will help you fit in with the other ade and foundlings around your age. Culture is important to both our people.”

Obi-Wan looked like he might cry a little, but nodded anyways, giving a brave little sniffle and cuddling back with Nasins again, who gave him a soft squeeze, helping him center himself for a bit. 

They let him get that calm he needed, Jango realizing the ad was using their force signatures like Buir and Arla did, so he could anchor himself in the moment and calm down. When he felt calm enough, he was sent off to Russi and Aunni so he could chatter on about the goings on of a tiny Jedi’s life, giving his knowledge to the compendium of their clan history. 

Russi would find a way to spin it into an elegant story about how Obi-Wan lived in the temple, what he observed of those around him and the stories they told their small ones. She would manage to make a mostly unrelated topic into the story of Obi-Wan and his place in their galaxy before he came here. It was a nice habit she passed down to Jaster, the idea that all knowledge is good knowledge to keep for the future, and you never knew where you’d find the answer to your crisis in a random book in the archives. 

Nerds. And he just adopted a little nerd himself. He loved them all. 

He let Nasins pull him into a conversation about what armor he wanted to start Obi-Wan with, and at what point of his health the medics would clear him as healthy enough to stand these upgrades. They’d start with powerful armorweave first, and get him healthy before moving forward like that. 

Jango felt a little less like he was drowning. Community truly was the heart of child rearing. 

Chapter Text

It took every muscle in his body not to attack, and the only reason he could push through and succeeded was the little one sleepily attached to his chest. 

The woman was one of the masters friends. She seemed very interested in Jango, had given offers to buy him before, which often amused the horrible women that kept them. Anilise had laughed one night after she had left, mostly at the look on Jango’s face. 

“Oh baby, sweet man, you’d slit any of our throats the moment you didn’t have Obi-Wan’s life as incentive not to. I’m not stupid, but I’m almost tempted to sell you to her just for a bit of amusement. I wonder if she could keep you longer than a day without dying.”

Mary snorted, rolling her eyes. “You know damn well we can’t, Ana, our waif would starve within a week without her keeper.”

Obi-Wan gave that little twitch against his chest, hating being called a girl, she, her, that wasn’t him and just because his species could change what they presented as, the women refused to see that he couldn’t be molded into their perfect little girl. 

They didn’t really let on about that sort of thing, even Obi-Wan understanding the masters had limits to their delusions, that he could only deny being a girl so often before they got rid of him. They were very firm that they didn’t want a boy. 

Obi-Wan was snoozing against Jango’s chest while Jango looked through order forms in the living room of his quarters. Arla had taken the request for Jango needing a new cape to mean he wanted a new wardrobe. While it would be nice to have some new clothes, he hadn’t admitted he wanted a new cape that was longer and heavier, so he could use it as a blanket to hide little Obi-Wan when he needed to feed in public. 

It wasn’t abnormal in their culture, it’s just something that made him twitch to think about, honestly. Jaster came over to sit nearby, and Jango set the catalog down. Jaster opened up the pads with the original info he’d given Jango about the Jetii coming to see them, and then a secondary one. “You might want to read up on what we’ve talked with the jetiise before they get here tomorrow.”

Jango looked somewhere interested as he took the pad, noting that it seemed to be a whole list of people his buir had spoken to, what agreements they were working to finalize, and even a group of jetiise that would be coming to live on Manda’yaim while helping restore planet functionality. “They want to help us? With the dral’han damages?”

Jaster nodded. “They seem to have an entire corps dedicated to restoring planets, and with us being outside the republic, they don’t need senate permission if we ask them for help.”

Jango twitched a little at that. Jaster was known to go on rants about why they couldn’t join the republic, that they were too strong of a warrior culture, the senate wouldn’t just accept them. They would leash them. A lot like they did the Jetiise. Was Jaster trying to reach out a hand to help them out of that leash? 

He looked down at the snoozing little jetii in his arms, and melted a little. They could help them. Just because the jetii could cause damage, didn’t mean they deserved that leash. They didn’t even have a homeworld, as far as Jango knew. They probably had culturally significant worlds, but none they were allowed to live on and claim as their own. Being with his ad’ika, Jango realize they really did have a lot in common, but both their cultures were melting pots for warriors to live a way of life that honored the ancestors and kept others safe. 

And there they were, unable to really form and grow their own culture because of the hold the senate had on them. 

Obi-Wan snuffled against his chest, looking up with sleepy worry, before turning to look at Jaster. Jaster smiled at him all soft and nice, holding out a hand. “Hello, bu’ad, your buir needs to look through some files for me so he can get ready for tomorrow when your jetii aliit get here. Would you like to join me for some meditation?”

Obi-Wan gave a smile back, turning to give Jango a questioning look, before wandering off after him when Jaster led him off. 

Jaster paused though. “Jan’ika, my contact in the Jetii council, Jeiah Sifo-Dyas, mentioned that often… well, he mentioned there might be a few stowaways on their arriving ship tomorrow. So there might be a few more, or just some others arriving on their own.”

Obi-Wan, sleepy eyed as he was, perked up at that. “Maybe Quin?”

Jango snorted. He had heard a lot about Obi-Wan’s most troublesome ori’vod, especially since Obi-Wan was one of his favorite littles to drag off into adventures and pranks. It seemed the Jedi really formed tight bonds, if an eighteen year old padawan was still playing with his small child sized buddy. “I’m sure we could send him a very disappointed message that he’s not here to greet you, if he doesn’t show up soon.”

Obi-Wan smiled a little. “Our bond has felt like gold sparkles since I got my collar off! He’s getting closer, I think.”

Jango shook his head in amusement. Obi-Wan was a bit less exact in his explanations of the force than Jaster or Arla were, but he had an amusing way of explaining things. He watched them wander off to the area Jaster and Arla meditated in, a rounded alcove with a curtained off window to a courtyard outside. It was late for the curtains to be fully open right now, but Jaster dimmed the lights in the alcove and opened them up anyways, making Obi-Wan wander to plaster himself to the window and look out. Jango didn’t blame him, the city dome was beautiful at night.

***

Obi-Wan thought they city was a little bit terrifying. They had to stay in a dome so they could survive here. Maybe the AgriCorps would help fix that. But the shielding and stars mixed together in a lovely look, and the area of the courtyard they faced now, was a garden with flowers and food plants. Obi-Wan was a cosmic force user, but the plants were beautiful. They made him think of the jungle garden back at the temple. They had different gardens for different biomes, but the jungle garden was especially nice. He could climb trees there, and the ground was soft with low leafy plants. 

There was a mental brush against his shields, his very very weak shields, and he turned to look at Jaster in wonder. Ba’buir ran a planet. He united people because they believed he had good vision of what their people should do. They chose him, and Buir believed in him so much. Buir liked to lay in bed with him, when Obi-Wan was too buzzy to sleep from the weird food the masters gave him, when he was cranky and upset and hadn’t slept in so long but couldn’t sleep because his little heart was racing. Jango would lay next to him while he tried, rubbing his back while he told him about how him and ba’vodu met ba’buir, how ba’buir had been writing the codex when they met him. How they believed in him because he did what was right for their people. 

He was good. He had to be good if Buir loved him so much. 

He came over, moving so he could crawl into the man’s lap where he sat lotus style on a soft meditation pillow. Jaster seemed genuinely shocked, when instead of the little one going back to sleep as he’d just been dozing with Jango, he dropped right into meditation with Jaster, sitting with his little hands on top of Jaster’s, and legs over Jaster’s crossed one’s. 

It was actually very impressive, how Obi-Wan leaned their force presences together, using it as a sort of rope to slide down into his own meditation. 

Can you help me, Ba’Buir? My shields are thin.

A wave of warming ascent came at him, and absolute love at the term. Jaster’s presence was rubbing against his like a pleased tooka for a moment, before they turned inwards to help Obi-Wan build thickness in his shield walls.

Jaster always imagined his shields like wax dipping, but if you could metal-dip instead. So a thin wall that slowly gets thicker on both sides as you dipped it into molten beskar over and over. Jango, as a non-force sensitive, had stolen the idea for the most part, but less stealing, and more of just borrowing the concept because it was easier for someone else to teach their technique, than to make his own. 

Arla’s shield building method was a lot like her crafting method. She liked to paint, she could do it on anything, and she liked to sew, but in a way that highlighted a flaw instead of making it invisible. She would pour beskar into cracks, cover the area with sealant, and paint over the area in a mixture of colours and graffiti. Minus the beskar in cracks, it was a lot like some of her more chaotic paint canvases, especially since she liked a little texture in her paint on canvas. 

Obi-Wan, had a shield building method that Jaster genuinely wondered if it was normal for Jetii, but Jaster had never seen it himself. It looked like a jungle.

If he were to paint a picture of Obi-Wan’s shields, it would be quite interesting. He might actually ask Arla to paint it for him one day, if she saw it. 

Mytakkoa taught me layers like her homeworld kashyyyk. Layers upon layers till you can’t cut or stand on, instability as a cradle. Obi-Wan spoke quite poetically in his thoughts. It was nice. 

I’ve heard of shields too upright to climb, too slick to get a hold of. I don’t think they would hold up to attack as easily as ones that are too dangerous to enter. 

That’s how you keep those out. You use the scary emotions to keep the nice emotions and good thoughts safe. 

Jaster wasn’t quite corporeal in this form, he was more of a ball of light than a person, and Obi-Wan was a smaller, bluer ball to Jaster’s red. 

Building back Obi-Wan’s shields to an acceptable level, was more maintenance, than building. He really had a self sustaining ecosystem around his true self. The bad thoughts and emotions went into what looked like a compost pile. The compose fertilized a system of grass and small plants. Those plants supported fauna, like bees and venomous insects, which acted as the first layer of defense against intrusion. Jaster considered them a sort of counter-attack, that even if you make it back out, the venom would do it’s work so you wouldn’t be able to invade anyone else anytime soon. The bees pollinated to keep the flower and tree systems alive, trees that kept dangerous little critters in them, and the further you went into the system, the more dangerous fauna and flora you’d find. 

Jaster was just glad he had little Ob’ika to keep an eye on him, as the mindscape was thick and easy to lose yourself in. They watered the ground and fed the sad looking creatures that had gone so long without, planting seeds where crops had died, and relocating a few beehives. 

It was more exhausting and yet, far more rewarding than his own shields had ever been. Jaster felt a little out of place for having such a boring shield. Maybe he should take up painting it, like Arla did hers. Or at least make the inside he had to look at a little more interesting. 

Obi-Wan had given a mental giggle at that, and tossed out a few ideas, like putting in a mental library, or games. It sounded like fun to figure out how to do that, anyways. Jaster wasn’t sure he had the mind training to store while books behind his shields, but if he did, well, his historic research could get a bit easier. 

Ob’ika’s mental giggles followed him as he floated along beside the ad, helping the little glowing orb up into a tree so the little one could start cutting little bits into a thick stem. The ad was absolutely amazing, and Jaster could only wonder at the actual vastness of his horticultural knowledge to know what trees were healthiest to do tree grafting on. 

I’ve been working on trees like this for almost five years now. I have twelve grafted trees that grow fifteen different fruits around my mind center. These trees are healthy because I protect them so much. 

Do you keep specific emotions in them?

Yes. This one is love. It feels like Buir at his best, when his eyes get shiny and he refuses to put me down. I think this one is my strongest graft. 

Jaster took a long minute to think about that, watching the little boy actually work, even in his fuzzy lightform. Why are grafts stronger? To strengthen the ecosystem you’ve built?

It’s part of that. Jeiah Koa says I have strong connections to the cosmic force, that learning to shield like this for me, is self sustaining, because I already know how everything works. 

Everything, huh?

Yes. It’s what connects all living beings in the universe. The ability to see that energy and how it flows, that’s what gives me the power to sustain my own ecosystem. I only have to learn the parts I want to consciously cultivate. 

Jaster was struck still for a moment. That was… infinitely terrifying. Knowing the ins and outs of all things but still experiencing the horrors the galaxy inflicts on you… 

I know. It’s scary. I have Buir, and he makes me feel safe. His love is complete, encompassing. The Jeiah Will probably call it overbearing, codependent, but I think that’s null since I’ve already learned non-attachment. This tree is Buir, it’s his love and I learned tree grafting when I was eleven. I know that even if I lost him, he’ll never be apart from me.

Jaster gave the ad a fuzzy glowing hand down from the tree, and stepped back just to look at it for a long moment. Even if you had to choose between Jango and the galaxy?

Yes. That’s what non-attachment is. You never choose one over a whole. This connection will mean he can come find me, even past death. It’s a very strong tree. I want to grow it as big as the village trees of Kashyyyk, so big you can fit entire buildings inside, but I know that would probably be to much strain. 

Jaster knelt to look at him closer, and he could see big grey eyes blinking at him past the glow, as if he could really perceive a body in the ball of light, and he had to smile at him. No matter what you do with this connection, I’m glad you both have it. And I hope I can take some of this lesson to heart, myself. 

There was a brush against them in the force, one that made Jaster grin. Your ba’vodu Arla wants to join us. Would you like to let her see your garden, gar cyar’ika?

Obi-Wan seemed to bounce in place, excited. Yes! She can meet us in the front, she can help water plants and spread fertilizer while I get the trees back to life. It’s not that hard, since grafting isn’t very hard, it’s honestly just how I pass energy into them to strengthen. 

So all I need to do is pay my shields some energy expending attention to strengthen them? Like when I metal dip them?

Yes! Just have to think of what you want out of it. You have to make these pieces yourself, to build on them. 

Right. If Jaster had the skill and midichlorian count to do that, he could make that library Obi-Wan mentioned. Maybe he could build the library around his shields, a maze so it’s harder to find himself. 

Obi-Wan hummed in thought. If you do that, you can focus on remembering books a bit at a time, till you have the shelves, the books that slip past your inner shields would be hard to ever forget. 

A lovely thought. 

At the garden edge, Obi-Wan seemed to make a face of concentration, making Jaster curious, till Jaster suddenly realized he was in his own mind again, feeling a bit jarred. When he looked up, he was still in Obi-Wan’s garden, but a little ways over, were the tall thick walls of his inner shield, but to the other side, was a graffiti and beskar covered wall with Arla as another orb of light, this one a light purple, looking back at them. 

Jaster had never actually seen his shields in comparison to Arla’s before, but it was interesting. His were very plain, like a stone fortress. Hers, looked like an old building that’s been patched time and time again. 

Arla’s orb looked around for a minute, a sense of awe about her. She stepped back so she could stand near Jaster, looking at their shields with more of that awe. Oh, that is lovely.

Jaster shrugged as he noticed the girl watching his shield carefully. Mine’s a bit plain, I know.

She turned and he could feel her grin, before she touched the back of her hand flippantly against his bicep in a bap. It’s not plain, we can feel the strength in it. It’s just boring . Like you.

Obi-Wan was joining his eldest child in giggling at him, letting the woman come over to curl around him in a squeezie greeting. I told him he should put a library outside of it! Or games! Make it a maze! Someone invading his mind should spend so long in that maze it becomes a level of shielding itself. 

Jaster gestured to the overgrown jungle garden around them. Much like how your gardens take their toll on those who come through, I assume? It’s layers upon layers they have to get through, with their own dangers. 

Arla looked up shocked, as if just realizing that she wasn’t just seeing a garden, but Obi-Wan’s shielding itself. Oh, Ob’ika, this is incredible. How do you add so much in one place?

Obi-Wan swayed into her, feeling pleased. It’s an ecosystem shield. Jeiah taught me because I’ll live so much longer than other humans, she says I have more time to cultivate and grow it. It starts to sustain itself after tending stability points around my true mind. 

Arla smiled at him, soft and gentle, like she knew exactly what Jango saw in the boy. More than just a random child that was given to his care, this boy had something special about him. Something they didn’t see much of on Mandalore. It’s beautiful, gar vod’ad. 

Obi-Wan gave the tiniest bashful flash. Can you help us tend to the stability points? I’ve got a lot of dead plants to tend to or fix. 

Of course, Ob’ika, I’m honored you’d ask. 

***

When they came out of meditation, Jango had dragged over an armchair, where he was perched like a dysfunctional cat, tapping his fingers against his cheek as he leaned against his right palm. He was watching them all with a somewhat tired and bored expression, which meant he was likely picking up their relaxed thoughts. 

He blinked when they were back to themselves, before giving up a little grin when Obi-Wan looked over at him with lidded eyes, an arm reaching for him from the depths of Jaster’s lap. Jango reached in, pulling the little one onto his hip and swaying him for a moment. “Should we go get Bo-Katan to come cuddle with you? It’s about bedtime, but Buir needs to have some boring grown up talks first.”

Obi-Wan grumbled a little, but nodded, leaning against Jango’s shoulder as he was led out to find his new ori’vod. Overall, it was actually one of the easiest ways Jango had seen to get him to sleep in a while. 

Good job, Ba’Buir. 

Chapter Text

There was a certain something odd about being put in fancy little dresses that Obi-Wan might have actually chosen for himself in another lifetime. 

Not that he wanted to be a girl, like the masters wanted him to be, but because his sub-species had a sense of fluid gender that meant even those who had beards and prominent penile functions, people with large muscles and loud and masculine attitudes; even they could be found just as easily in heels and dresses as they could in tuxes and loafers. 

It was an issue that stemmed from Obi-Wan’s issue with them calling him babygirl and she and ‘almost perfect’ when they had reason to see him undressed. As if that concept weren’t bad enough as a whole. 

It was the way they talked about removing or downsizing his prominent parts, refusing to accept that he didn’t want to be a girl, talking about how he should just calm down and accept it all because it’s not like he had a choice to begin with. That that life wasn’t his to claim and he needed to know his place. 

He could have been happy in a pretty pink dress and long hair before. He doesn’t know how many years it’ll take before he could accept that now. 

Obi-Wan snuffled a little in his sleep as Jango got him settled down, but before he could gently get him on his tummy, Satine was pulling over a pillow, shoving it against his side and helping Jango turn him over, before she was shoving a couple of blankets against the bottom of the pillow so she could toss an arm over his little back, bunched up blankets between her legs and head on the pillow next to his little belly. Jango snorted at the way she’d just wedged herself into the most comfortable spot she could against the new littlun. She was like that, at times. 

Bo-Katan, on the other hand, had grumbled at having to go to bed at all, but understood the new ad’ika didn’t sleep well alone, and if Satine was coming too, she wouldn’t be left behind. She let Jango help her out of her slippers and into a pair of shorts and a tee shirt, all the grumbling of an ad that didn’t need to be in bed this early, but didn’t let it get loud, and she must have been mostly for show, considering Obi-Wan didn’t even twitch at her emotions. 

Admittedly, Bo had this look of overtired about her that came from an overfull schedule. Either she was running off with the ade after her classes for too long again, or she needed a schedule check. He gave a questioning hum, genstering to her conduit aid, and Bo-Katan bit her lip for a moment, before nodding, letting him disentangle her hearing circuit for her. She was tired and just wanted a few hours of no sound and sleep. Sometimes it was such a bother to have to hear all the time. Ba’vodu Jaster and Buir had noticed that, and they’d say her down a while back, talking about how she didn’t have to hear all the time, that sometimes it just felt like adding a new sense, instead of fixing one, and that could get overwhelming. Actually that might be why she looked so grumpy. 

Her little shoulders slumped in exhaustion as Jango finished untangling her wires, using the brush he tended to attack Satine with when she was in his sight to untangle her bob, and Bo-Katan gave him a hug and sign for thanks. Jango ushered her off to bed with the other two and left. 

Maybe he should try sleeping in Arla’s room tonight, that they needed to see if him and Obi-Wan could get disentangled from dependence on each other being around to sleep, but that could also be bad if Obi-Wan woke up tense about not having him near. It would be a bad way to start the day he might be seeing his family again for the first time in nearly a year. 

No, he’d come back sometime after his talk with Buir and Arla, crash on the sectional him and Arla had shoved in front of his armchair last night to extend the bed, and consider if he should maybe actually ask about find an adult sized room for him. Jaster had offered a few times over the years to get them all in a new set of quarters with rooms that weren’t meant for protecting little ones like he’d settled on when they first moved into the palace, but Jaster and Arla had never seen an issue with slightly smaller rooms before. 

He could be having a room the size of a living room with enough space for multiple full sized beds and space for his little one to slowly graduate to an ori’ad bed instead of tucked into Jango’s size like an ad’ika too little to be trusted on their own. 

He’d have to think about it. Maybe it was a good idea, maybe being in an apartment with newer cleaner space would feel naked to a little kara touched. Maybe this was Obi-Wan’s best bet for now. Maybe the girls might drag him over for their own sleepovers so Obi-Wan could get used to someone new. 

He spread a blanket along Satine’s back and over her legs, knowing it settled her better on colder nights, and they had his bedroom’s temp a bit lower in deference to the extra bodies. She snuggled against Obi-Wan’s side, settling down at the warmth, and Jango left them all to it. 

Jango found his buir and ori’vod in the kitchen, looking generally happy as Arla made shig and Jaster pulled things out of the deep freeze, making up a pan with what would be thawed sweetbreads for breakfast tomorrow morning. They both just looked so damn happy . 

Adonai was still in a meeting with his verd’e, he’d happily passed Bo-Katan’s sleepy clinging off to Jango when he’d come to get the girls to keep Obi-Wan company. 

Jango say at the table with a heavy sigh, feeling exhausted for absolutely no reason. Jaster zeroed in on him, putting the chest pump in front of him at the table, which made Jango realize he had about twenty minutes till the next pump time. Jango was handed a mug of shig, and Jaster leaned in to briefly press their foreheads together. “What’s wrong, ner ad?”

Jango sighed again, a little less heavy and lighter in his chest. “It just hit me that I don’t know what to do with myself when Ob’ika isn’t glued to my side.”

Arla snorted, coming to press her own forehead to his before sitting across from Jaster, on Jango’s other side. “You didn’t really let him out of your sight before, did you?”

Jango shook his head. “The only time he was out of my sight was when the masters demanded alone time with him. Damn lucky of them not to be foolish enough to let me see what they did to him those times.”

Jaster hummed a little. “So, bedtime together, bathtime together?”

Jango made an uncomfortable little face, nose scrunching up in that way that used to make Arla tickle him silly as an ad just to see it. She didn’t even realize how much she missed that scrunch. “Bedtime together, it was really the only way for both of us to be comfortable enough to sleep. He needs a force presence beside him, and I was the safety net. But… the room we slept in had its own bathroom. At first I thought that was too good to really be true. Till I found the camera pointed at the bathtub. It wasn’t anywhere else, just at the bathtub.”

Jaster and Arla looked just as unhappy with that. Arla moved to nudge Jango’s leg with her foot. “They didn’t require him to… do things? Or for you to do things?”

Jango shrugged. “I usually did a sonic, it wasn’t even because of the camera, it was mainly that they didn’t keep a shower curtain so we couldn’t pull it, always ended up with water to mop up after, it was more annoyance than anything. Obi-Wan, on the other hand, was required to have a daily bath. I don’t think they were filming those videos for themselves .”

Arla frowned. “What were they doing with them? Leverage? Passing them to friends?”

Jango shrugged. “I’ve… I… did you know that some pedophile rings won’t let you indulge unless you have something to contribute? I have a lot of theories about what it could have been, but that one makes the most sense. The masters weren’t attracted to me, and they don’t seem to like males at all. They said as soon as he physically hit eight, it would be time to give him the meds that change what gender you’ll start presenting as. That wasn’t the worst part, they also talked about castration if he… if he got too big. You know they didn’t even use masc pronouns for him, they called him a girl and used femme pronouns and put him in little dresses. The only reason his hair isn’t long anymore is because last month he got a hold of the kitchen scissors while they weren’t looking and I pretended I was cooking so he could chop most of it off. I just-“ Jango was breathing hard, hand shaking when Jaster pulled it into his, the bigger, warmer hand covering his. Jango took a minute to calm down, but when he was breathing a little better, Arla shoved her chair up against his so she could hug him from behind. 

Jango pretended his lip wasn’t trembling for a minute, and realized Jaster’s other hand was in his hair, petting against the scalp soothingly. “It’s okay. He’s with us, the youngest little alor’ade in the palace, protected by guards and parents and loved ones. No one is going to touch him if he doesn’t consent, no one will film him when he’s vulnerable, he will choose his own pronouns and presentation, and no one will… his body is his to do what he wants with it, no one will remove anything against his will. He’s safer here than there, and his protective Jetii caregivers will arrive soon to help him too.”

Jango had to wipe up a few tears, sniffling till Jaster handed him a napkin to blow his nose, but he felt better than he had in a long time. Safer, surely. His ad’ika was safe here. 

“They put so much thought into getting the perfect baby girl that would fit their preferences for so long. Just fucked up that being called a girl is a trigger for him now. It’s a level of forethought that hurts me more, the planning and waiting and trying to train him. I don’t know if there are videos of us, out there in the galaxy, giving him baths and trying to soothe his anxious little mind. Videos that gross shabuir are touching themselves to. Picturing themselves as me or wanting me to touch other places.”

Arla let out a little cooing noise against his face, rocking a little. He was still halfway stuffed into her lap, wanted to complain about it but he couldn’t bring himself to dislike anything about it. “We can put a word out to some undercover verd’e and slicers, see if anything crops up around the systems. Innocent or not, we know anyone who has a copy didn’t get it for good reasons.”

Jango nodded with a little hum, eyes finally coming up to Jaster again. “Buir, why have you been in contact with the Jetii? We never got the chance to talk about that.”

Jaster blinked a few times, before giving a little smile. “They’ve been trying to distance themselves from the senate since Galidraan, said that was the worst trap the senate has willfully tried to put them in, but they needed proof first, which was why I tried to keep in contact at first. The senate hasn’t been handling them well, and it hurts because as I always say, we are both martial cultures and I know fully well the senate only attacks us because they can’t figure out how to leash us like they do the Jetii.”

Jango’s eyes finally lit up a little, full body starting to perk up again. “Do they want to leave the republic fully?”

Jaster gave a little shrug. “They… it might be their only option to get out from under the senate, Jan’ika. I told them of the unused manda temples we have in the system, one on Mandalore proper only a few hours flight from here, that might have belonged to Tarre Vizsla even. They said they can’t promise to fill them, but if we’re willing to put up with them, they can put AgriCorps and ExplorCorps teams in the temples to help regrow the wastes.”

Jango considered that for a moment, sitting up enough that he dislodged Arla, who sat back, pleased he wasn’t crying anymore. She couldn’t stand to see her Jan’ika, the baby of her family, hurt. “So if they manage to get Jetii teams into a temple, say, here, or even the old manda temple on Concord Dawn-?”

Jaster grinned a little. “I thought you might like that. The manda temple on Concord Dawn is old, a bit small, but I’ve been informed that the ExplorCorps would adore getting to restore a place like that. If Obi-Wan had classes to go to here and there, he truly could continue being a jetii and have his family nearby. And if we have to go to Coruscant, well, Little Keldabe is only a two hour flight from the temple.”

Jango’s lower lip was trembling again, for a completely different reason this time. He looked away, embarrassed and annoyed with himself for all these emotions. Seems like he’s been nothing but angst and love in turns since he first said the gai bal manda less than a month after he met his perfect ad’ika. Jaster was the one to smush him into a hug this time, humming happily at the fact that he could hold his ad again. Blood didn’t matter a single bit, this was his ad, his youngest, a boy he’d raised since eight. He’d missed him so much. 

“I really could stay close without choosing between cultures.”

“You really can. I talked to Jeiah Yoda about it, before he even knew you had Ob’ika, he said he’s sent classes of younglings to other temples so they could help restore them and partake in new cultures. A couple hundred years ago he sent a very promising clan to Tenoo, they helped restore a small temple there and became an integral part of the community. He said they could send other padawans and younglings to the temple they choose in the Mandalore system, that those children might become just as ingrained in our culture.”

Jango pulled back with a little grin. “Ner ad’ika will be jetti’mando’ade. The first in over a millenia.”

Jaster nodded. “I know. The only mistake I truly think Tarre ever made, was choosing between cultures, instead of pulling them together. He was a great man, we could have all been one great martial community together.”

Arla snorted, pulling the cooler mug of shig off the table to press it into Jango’s hands. He still loved it, hot or cool. “I bet if the jetii had joined us then, we’d still have flowering jungles and probably wouldn’t have had to deal with Death Watch.”

Jaster grinned back. “Oh; that would have been lovely. I guess it’s not for us right yet, but it’s hopeful, at the least. Yoda says he’d like to bring clans of younglings to new temples again. From what I gathered, Tenoo was likely the last one he did it with. They have a lovely temple now, actually. I’ve seen images on the holonet and such, and a flourishing village around it. Lots of trees and flowers.”

Jango considered that. What would the temple on Concord Dawn be like if they opened it back up? Would the students travel the villages by boat like most did? Would they have little boathouses so the ade could wander about? The rivers on Concord pool Dawn were everywhere. Even on the farms edge. It why they had farmed there, a large area of land for crops and animals with groves behind it for fruit. But Jango remembered the rivers the most. Long boats and big ones that stay in lakes. 

They’d have to wait for the Jetii to get here so Jaster could ask his million and a half questions. Jango’s would likely be answered then. 

He sighed, leaning into his buir and ori’vod, relaxed for the first time in a while. He hadn’t even realized how terrified he’d been that the jetii would demand their student back. Of course they would, Obi-Wan was a perfect ad, they’d be stupid to toss him aside now. But, the anxiety of having to choose between going with Obi-Wan to Coruscant and leaving his family, or staying there and leaving his ad… that hadn’t even been an option. He would have gone, and likely suffered for it. 

Buir would make sure he didn’t have to choose. 

***

Obi-Wan was happily sleeping in Jango’s nice bed, Satine holding him around the waist and Bo-Katan fully starfished on the other side of it. Jango’s panic had nearly reached him in the force, but with the girls on either side and Jango’s aliit soothing him in the kitchen, he hadn’t been disturbed more than a mental poke. 

He was dreaming of a grassy field in front of an old temple. It was a small temple, nothing like the main Jedi temple, that could house nearly a million people at capacity, but this one could probably hold a few thousand. There were rivers that ran all over the field, a few small but most massive enough for bridges and boats to be needed. It was green and nice and there was grass under his fingers, feeling like the sparkles of the universe were tickling his hands. 

It was a nice place. He could feel it’s heart glowing, and it felt like pieces of his new aliit floated in the air. It was more home than most things he’d felt in visions. 

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan didn’t like bathtime. He liked cuddling in bed with Buir, and even though Buir was always gentle and didn’t get soap in his eyes, he still didn’t like bathtime. The bathtub felt like prickly eyes in the force, and it wasn’t the good way that made you think the force was watching after you. 

Buir made sure to cuddle him closer after bathtime, snuggling him in his fluffy towel as Buir let him dry off at his own pace. It was the perfect time to give sleepy sleepy cuddles and get keldabe kisses. He liked those moments more. 

Jango had woken up to Obi-Wan tucked into his side, even though he’d fallen asleep on the sectional in front of his bedroom armchair. It wasn’t even uncomfortable, there was a reason Jaster had picked it out, and it was entirely because he believed a home should be comfortable enough to relax and feel safe in. 

Which meant Jango had passed out on that couch more times than he could count. And so it was comfortable. But even still, Jango was across the room on the sectional and Obi-Wan would have had to wake up, realize Buir wasn’t there, and get across the room to come pass out in his side instead. 

Which made a lot more sense to think about when Jango sat up and realized Satine had Bo-Katan in a straight jacket hold on the bed, and Bo-Katan, verbose little brat that she was, looked entirely comfortable in it. Yeah, it was like Satine to cling and argue and fuss about everything, but it was like Bo-Katan to bite and run if she didn’t like something, so it was probably perfectly comfortable to the two of them if they weren’t trying to fight about it. 

He sighed, moving the blankets so he was swaddling Obi-Wan just a little tighter, a good way to keep him asleep, and moved out from under him. He had a few things to talk to Buir and Arla about before it was time to get the kids up. Like, how to keep Obi-Wan’s anxiety down when Jango knew he wanted to get up and move restlessly. It wasn’t the worst idea, but it would end in his little heart rate going up till he’s whining and trying to bite people when they help. He needed something peaceful, maybe a little messy. 

Messy can be cleaned up after. High little heart rates that make you itchy and bitey sort of just end in more anxiety and fear and maybe the inability to handle anything at all today. 

That’s not ideal when Obi-Wan had a lot of much wanted family coming in. He’d end up techy and uncooperative and unwilling to cuddle. And Jango had the feeling he’d want a snuggle from a lot of them. He was a very tactile little boy when he was comfortable with someone. 

Obi-Wan grizzled a bit till Jango gave him a few soft pets to his hair, tightening the edge of the blanket around Obi-Wan’s arms, and the boy was back out. Jango grinned. What a tooka. 

Out in the living room Jaster and Adonai were already up with Arla. They were arguing over the best landing spot for the Jetii, and Arla was quietly cursing at a pan of burnt eggs, scraping it out into the sink as quietly as she could, giving little glances back to make sure Jaster was still occupied in the karyai. Jango grinned, but didn’t loudly announce that he smelled something burning like he would have a year ago. Mainly because he had to be an adult, a buir, and getting his kid settled for the morning took precedence. 

He sided up to her at the counter, nudging her away from the pan. “Whip some more eggs, I’ve got this. I’ll even cook them so my ad has something to eat this morning.”

She grumbled but moved to get a package out of the fridge, before giving a mental look to the list of safe foods the baar’ur had given them, moving to grab some other basic ingredients that could be a safe humanoid breakfast. Thankfully, Satine and Bo-Katan weren’t picky with basic foods, and spices could be added after for the adults that felt like it. “What do I owe you for this honor , vod?”

Jango smiled, but it felt a little shy. “Can you take the morning to take care of the kids? All three if you can, I want them to make a messy craft corner.” He scrubbed a piece of near charcoal off the bottom of the pan, and finished the rinse, putting it back on the burner to heat off the water. “I know it’s messy, but I really do promise you, the Jetii don’t need all this pomp and circumstance when they get here. We have very nice rooms for them, and that’s more than they typically get in most places they go to and are perfectly fine with. I… need to get him into a good mood, because I sort of want to get him into a bath after.”

Arla frowned. “Why a bath?”

Jango shrugged. “He’s little. I don’t think he’s taking long enough when he does a sonic for himself, and I know the warm water relaxes him. He just… he’s nervous about it. I will ask, but if not I’m willing to get in the sonic with him. I just. Little boys don’t always clean properly and I don’t think he is. Too nervous to.”

Arla nodded. That made perfect sense, they were still bathed by their buire when they were his age. “He likes messy crafts?”

Jango nodded. “He liked finger painting back in the crèche. He talked about it being his favorite along with sculpting, both of those are pretty messy. He said his friends would take him to the art rooms to paint when he was sad about something, when they started getting old enough to sort of babysit, I mean.”

Arla quirked a little smile. “I know he thinks of them as siblings, but that would be interesting, I guess.”

Jango shrugged. “He said it wasn’t the first and won’t be the last time they had a species that didn’t grow the same.”

“Okay. Yeah I can pull out the non-toxic paints and let the kids have craft time in the morning. Ba’vodu Jekki said she’d be here sometime this morning. She has a first outfit ready for him. Some basic kutes in white and armorweave outer tunics, little wee boots that she sent me a picture of. They match his hair, absolutely copikla. She wanted to get a post-outfit measurement to see where his leathers will start when he gets them.”

Nasins would be the leather maker for his foundling’s first set, simply because the man wanted to, of course. “Can you message her to come before lunch? We should get him changed around then.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You want him to eat lunch in those bright whites? Without wearing his food?”

“Well, they do it in the temple. I can’t imagine the Jetii or him being too upset by it. Either way, he’s not a messy eater and the ade have to learn to keep tidy at some point, I assume.”

“I guess so.”

Getting a real, unburnt breakfast ready was faster with Jango at the stove, but Arla nearly missed the next point of Jango’s morning plans. She had just assumed Jango needed to get some stuff done now that he was back in Keldabe. “We have to move out.”

Arla paused, taking a few seconds to think before she went back to making toast. “Oh? We do?”

Jango looked at her carefully for about as long as Arla’s pause, before his shoulders relaxed, and he gave her a relieved smile. “Yeah. We do. My room is too small for even just me and Ob’ika, he needs room to grow away from me, not be squished together still. I’m not going to force him out though, so we need a bigger room. The quarters a few halls away, they’re bigger family quarters. Jaster chose these ones because we didn’t trust him enough back then to sleep in a karyai with him. I think that would be perfect though. Enough for our own rooms but a big enough karyai to sleep together like he needs. I want to look at those, vet them and look for issues so we can start getting moved out immediately while Ob’ika is distracted with his aliit.”

“Okay. Sounds like a fun hunt. Who are you recruiting for moving help? I assume you might need to stay with Ob’ika?”

Jango grimaced. “Yeah. I actually feel a little bad about that. You know I don’t like demanding work without helping. I just don’t think Ob’ika is ready to be separated, even if distracted. Not longer than an hour or so like had happened on the way home. That had been a contained ship, nowhere for me to go, no danger to sense.”

“His shields are a lot better after last night.”

“Yeah. But still. I’ve sent a message to my crew and Silas. Silas and Myles will know how we want things arranged, Arian will know what extras to get to fill the gaps. You… you’re okay with going with us? I know Buir will if we both go, but, I don’t want you uncomfortable.”

Arla shrugged. “I’m fine pretty much anywhere. We can convince Adonai to move to the same hall so we can keep the girls with us when Obi-Wan needs extra bodies around. No more kicking you out of your own bed because of space issues.”

Jango snorted. That wouldn’t keep Obi-Wan from wandering back to his favorite spot. Sleeping and eating, it seemed, Jango’s chest was his favorite. His ad was soothingly predictable. 

There was a little thump on his leg, and Jango looked down to see Obi-Wan, eyes still shut and looking like he was sleeping still, attached to his leg. He went back to making eggs, deciding to give the ad a few minutes before he demanded attention. Obi-Wan took a small snooze against his leg, only actually opening his eyes when Jaster and Adonai came in, Adonai giving a little coo at the ad curled around Jango’s leg while Jaster nudged Jango from the stove to finish breakfast for him. 

Adonai was giving Obi-Wan soft hair pets, which was nice of him, and predictable with him trying to become the favored ba’vodu. Adonai gave a few good natured tuts, crouching down so he could pull Obi-Wan off Jango’s leg, mostly so Jango could move to the karyai, back to the armchair Obi-Wan liked to nurse with him at. Adonai came out with a big grin on his face, trying to snuggle into Obi-Wan’s neck while the ad made grumbles, blood sugar low with sleepiness. It was so cute. Adonai sat the boy in Jango’s lap, letting Obi-Wan position himself as he wanted, already pulling at Jango’s shirt ties. 

“Is it different for Stewjoni to still be sucking fingers at this age?”

Jango hummed, helping get Obi-Wan settled with a pillow to lean against, feeling a twinge of relief at the feeling of pressure already reducing. The meal boosts were starting to work, and Myoina had warned him he’d feel tighter before his body adapted to the pressure, growing his chest a bit more. 

“He didn’t start that till he started properly feeding. Sometimes feeding in bed helped him calm down, after a while he just swapped to sucking fingers. More convenient. He only does it when sleeping, I’m sure it’s fine.”

Obi-Wan glanced up at them from his spot at Jango’s chest, cuddling further into Jango’s stomach but not mentioning anything about it. He thought it was probably okay. He hadn’t lost any baby teeth yet, and that would be unusual for a baseline human, but for a Stewjoni child with his growth factor… whatever that turned out to be, that is, it would take another year, maybe two before he started. 

Obi-Wan was fine with that, Quin had said his mouth itched the whole time he was getting his adult teeth, and the mind healers had to talk with Obi-Wan a lot about why biting people is mean. But, skin feels better than teethers. It’s why it was so nice and warm to nurse from Buir. He was nice and made Obi-Wan feel like hugs and snuggles all the time. 

Ba’vodu Adonai leaned in, giving Obi-Wan nice head pets for a minute, making Obi-Wan hum, blinking slow as he felt more warm force hugs all around him. It was nice. He really liked the people here. 

***

Obi-Wan liked the way paint felt. 

Buir was gone, and it was just Obi-Wan and the girls and Adonai right now, but Adonai was focused on his data pad, and the girls were all good girls, Obi-Wan could tell. They didn’t send those upsetting adult-sexual feelings towards him like the masters did. The masters had always looked at him like he was just shy of perfect for touching. They had tried, in the beginning, of course, but they hadn’t liked his outward parts, and Obi-Wan had cried when they tried his inward parts. They said he just wasn’t old enough to feel good about it yet, and he’d accept he wanted it soon enough. 

Buir had probably been a big enough distraction that they had stalled their plans to get him in a surgery suite to remove the parts they didn’t like, mostly because they were interested in how calm and soft it made Obi-Wan when he was better fed and coddled by a proper adult. 

Obi-Wan liked the way paint felt on his fingertips. Bo-Katan was using markers and thick paper, making what looked like armor designs. She was very good at it. Satine had a set of pastel pencils, which were sort of interesting, but it’s less touchy. Ba’vodu Arla had a big canvas in front of her, and seemed to be making designs that looked like her shield walls in her mind. It was very messy. 

Obi-Wan was reaching for a new colour to add to his piece when he realized all his fingers were messy, he frowned. 

Arla looked over, and Obi-Wan wondered if she was keeping an eye on him in the force maybe. He knew Jaster could, but Ba’Buir was also strong enough in the force that he could form his own bonds instead of getting a mind healer to help, so he’s a lot stronger there. Obi-Wan had been able to feel his force presence, but he hadn’t really felt Arla’s outside of their meditation. 

“You need a clean up, tooka cub?”

Obi-Wan smiled shyly. He felt warmhappylovethisboysweetheart feelings when she said that, even though tooka cub was a bit babyish, but Buir called him bubbas, and that was a bit babyish too. Maybe that was a family thing from their first family. Ba’buir called him Ob’ika, which was a less personalized version of a nickname, almost feeling more formal in the force and its intention. Nicknames were something more intertwined with love and care. Like when Quin and Bant called him Obes.

He held his hands out with an attempt at looking cheeky, like when Siri left a paint print on another Padawan and gave them an oops look back in the temple. He might come off a bit more shy than that, since he didn’t know Ba’vodu Arla enough to mess around with her like that, and he wasn’t sure padawans on crèche duty who wore pain stains like a badge of honor, would be the same as a Mando that might have to change her kute from it. Kutes were more thin than Jedi robes. 

She just grinned back at him, putting down her pallet so she could grab the washcloth sitting next to a bowl of water on the coffee table. Mandalorians were more conservative with resources, even water at times, so Obi-Wan had wondered what the bowl had been for. This made sense. “Come on, cub, let’s get you washed up a little and back to painting.”

***

Obi-Wan had been scrubbed clean and wrapped up in a big fluffy towel when Ba’vodu Jekki got there with his new clothes. She’d talked with him about designs and weave patterns after he’d selected a pattern that looked closest to the Jedi initiate robes. He liked those robes, and was excited to be in them again, even if they would be made of new material. 

This was made by his aliit, a ba’vodu in his new clan, an armorer that wanted to make him comfortable and well cared for. She would be one of the adults to help guide him, he knew that much. 

He knew enough about the future to know his best chance to be the best Jedi he could be, started here, with family, in this system. Master Yoda always sighed real big like he was ruining all his fun when Obi-Wan got those feelings. Bad feelings, good feelings, knowing senses that he was meant to do something. 

Jeiah Windu would laugh, mostly because Obi-Wan’s senses tended to lessen the pressure in his head. They’d figured out that Obi-Wan didn’t have shatterpoints like Jeiah Windu, but the man had taken a liking to him over the years. If Obi-Wan had been baseline human, he’d be more than old enough to be a padawan now, and Mace might have taken him as one. He came back to talk with Obi-Wan sometimes. It was nice. 

Obi-Wan was wearing a towel so big and fluffy, that it curled over his head like a hood. It was comfortable. 

Ba’vodu Jekki had knocked on the bathroom door, saying from the other side that she had Obi-Wan’s first set of robes for when he was ready to test them. 

Obi-Wan’s tummy fluttered a little. They were getting closer and closer to when his Jedi family were going to arrive. Buir said it would be around an hour and a half after lunch time, which meant he had till then to… wait? His tummy felt fluttery and it was sort of weird. He was excited and scared and nervous and happy. Jeiah Che would demand she get to check him over which would be upsetting because he didn’t like the healers that poked and prodded and gave him shots . 

But his big sister Bant might be with her. She might be there and ready to cuddle him and give him kisses and love. Maybe someone else he knew. Jeiah Kroran had never really interacted much with Obi-Wan outside of teaching him about their species and homeworld, but Obi-Wan trusted him. He kept Stewjoni candy in his office and let Obi-Wan come to him whenever one of Obi-Wan’s friends hit another milestone and it was making Obi-Wan nervous about them leaving him behind while he’s still got naptime with the little ones. 

Jeiah Mytakkoa, who’s often called Master Koa as little ones tended to shorten the name for her, was amazing, and Obi-Wan couldn’t wait to snuggle into her big Wookiee arms and feel relieved she was there to be a familiar face. When the crèche had realized a Stewjoni child would be in the crèche so much longer, they had adjusted her next clan as most of the near humans or similar had left for corps or to be apprenticed. His clan had a lot of similarly long lived students in it now. Little initiate Grogu was only a few years old now, but Obi-Wan missed him so much. 

And Jeiah Yoda would pretend to be upset, scolding him while his force presence felt like a hug the whole time. Yoda was nice and loved his students no matter how many times Obi-Wan was found biting another kid. Usually Bruck. Bruck had a good skin texture for biting. 

But what if they didn’t like his new aliit? Jedi and Mandalorians didn’t always get along. But he knew Buir would try his best, because he loved Obi-Wan that much, and maybe the rest would follow along, because they loved Jango, he was sure. 

Obi-Wan looked over at Jango, who was already looking back to him. “I can tell her to leave the clothes so we can get you dressed alone.”

Obi-Wan slowly shook his head. “No, she’s good. I can feel it.”

Jango was about to ask if Obi-Wan was sure, so Obi-Wan made sure to pour extra cute at him. Jango gave a long suffering sigh. “Alright.” He payed. “Can Ba’Vodu help cut your hair, bubbas?”

Obi-Wan considered that for a moment. His last haircut had been about a month before they’d been rescued. They did it every couple of months, but never above Obi-Wan’s ears. The masters had wanted him to grow it out, so every couple of months Jango would ‘look the other way’ while Obi-Wan managed to get a hold of the kitchen scissors. 

Which meant his current haircut was very similar to Bo-Katan’s in both colour and length, but if her hairdresser had possibly been intoxicated while doing it. 

He nodded, giving a shy look. “Can I put on a shirt and underclothes first?”

Jango nodded, reaching over to unlock the door for Jekki to come in. “I need to go get him an old shirt and some underclothes. Can you help get his hair neatened up? I could but you have a most similar hair texture.”

Obi-Wan looked at Jekki, who seemed to have a soft smile for him. “Of course. Just neatened or given a more… boyish, cut?”

“Boy cut, please! I want the boy cut.”

Jekki nodded, setting down the wrapped parcel of Obi-Wan’s new clothes, moving to look under the cabinet for a set of electric clippers. “I can do that, sweetpea.”

Jango headed out to get some underclothes and an old shirt for him, mostly so Jekki wasn’t picking hair pieces out of his nice new white clothes after, but Obi-Wan seemed entranced in the options Jekki was giving him for length and cut style. Honestly, Jango trusted her enough to pick out a style. She was good with that sort of thing. She never judged what a person preferred, but she always knew how to compliment a look. It’s probably why she was so successful in bringing back armorweave fashion for those that have issues, personal or otherwise, with hard armor. 

He had to grab an old tunic of Arla’s, considering how little Obi-Wan was, but Jango watched what Jekki did for Obi-Wan’s cut, knowing he might have to do it regularly from now on. Obi-Wan didn’t seem upset by the clippers at least, even if he initially pouted at the noise, but oddly enough, had let out a rumbly little purr at the feeling of it against his scalp. Jango had stolen a pair of scissors from Arla’s room while getting an old tunic of hers, so they had to cut down the length before Jekki could swap over. 

“Do you like it?” Obi-Wan had fully pushed past Jango’s hand as he tried to get a better look in the mirror when they were done, making happy little noises at the new length and style. It looks very boyish. Obi-Wan looked back at Jango excitedly, pointing at the mirror. Jango laughed. “Yeah, bubbas, that’s you! I think we can assume you like it.”

The initiate white clothing Jekki pulled out was soft, thick, and had a silky texture that looked like waves on the outer robes that made Obi-Wan purr again at the feeling. He liked that. The little burnt red boots made a nice look to the outfit, and Jango and Jekki had given him ample praise about how nice he looked. Obi-Wan knew it, he was very cute in his temple garb. He had been told how cute he was since he was three, how could he be called anything but cute. 

Jango had such a modest little guy. 

Right, they were all set for the most part, now Jango just had to keep him entertained for another few hours till he saw his family again.