iii.
THE FAULTLESS
✶
"I know that what I am is
clouded, refractory, partial."
—Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
Two rotations later, Fallon found herself wedged in the corner of the "leisure space" of the Faultless, a pathetically tiny square of metal that in actuality, functioned as the waystation between the cockpit above and the escape pod to the left. The Faultless was a diplomatic starship, though Fallon had decided the moment she stepped foot in it that if the craft had arrived on Planet Fallon, attempting to effectuate diplomacy, she would have first laughed, then taken offence, and then declared war. And contrary to its name, the Faultless was indeed full of faults, its greatest offender being the way its walls—both interior and exterior—shook and shuddered like a leaf in the wind.
Considering they were in open space, the one place where there shouldn't be any wind, it was vaguely concerning.
Furthermore, the walls emitted a low, incessant hum that drilled a hole into the back of Fallon's head, sending a whining pain up her neck to the base of her skull. The ship pre-dated the war by at least half of Fallon's lifetime, so she couldn't say she was surprised at the state of it. Still, she had hoped for more when Kil knocked at her door, informing her of their latest assignment. The girl had been excited at first: she and Kil were a perfect team, a working unit. She loved to watch him come alive on the battlefield, where he shed the rounded corners of his self-imposed confinements and became the general that Separatist armies feared. Then, she had learned that Nadya was accompanying them.
(She had deflated a little as the words left Kil's lips. Yes, Nadya had an uncanny habit of being the pin pricked to someone else's balloon, but that wasn't the reason Fallon felt uncomfortable. She couldn't place it.)
As if on cue, the hatch to the cockpit swung open and Nadya came climbing down the ladder, cloaks draped over her forearm, her braid whipping against the back of her neck. Nadya had spent the majority of their time aboard pacing the "leisure space" like an animal starved, content with carving the soles of her shoes into the Faultless' floor. Gloved hands twisted like chains behind her back, she had passed Fallon about a dozen times, rust-red brows knit together.
Nadya was indomitable: there was no other word that Fallon could use to describe her that did her justice. Intimidation incarnate, she stood tall, almost as tall as Chrysaor, and she was striking. Every inch of her face exuded a concussive kind of beauty—the beauty of an infallible battle plan, of the sharpened edge of a ritual blade—that did well to subdue those who questioned her ability (or her intent.) All she had to do was flash that vulpine smile, and all unbelievers would be stunned, silenced. Granted, there weren't many who dared doubt her these days: the prodigal daughter of the Order had risen through the ranks, earning the respect of almost every superior she encountered. To speak ill of her was to spew heresy. Nadya didn't care whether people liked her or not—the Order isn't a popularity contest, Kryze—but she hated to be questioned, and challenged any and all scepticism with her vicious intellect and razor-sharp tongue, wicking away all uncertainties with her broad shoulders and lioness gaze.
She was the most prepared for the Trials out of all her Mandalorian peers. Fallon had heard the whispers that likened Nadya to the nascent Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, the youngest padawan to have ever passed the Trials. Having seen them fight side by side, Fallon could understand the comparison: both were fuelled by palpable aggression, expressed in the savage strike of a lightsabre and the incendiary glower directed at everyone and no one as their masters reined them in for discipline. Fallon didn't know Anakin well enough to understand why he barely had to touch the surface of his anger to ignite the gasoline in his bloodstream, why the trigger for his temper was barely a hair's width, but she knew Nadya.
And she knew the girl's first master, General Alula, the Mikkian with skin as blue as the sea and a voice as rough as waves in a storm. She had been harsh, but it was just the way she showed her strength, never faltering, never backing down. Fallon imagined Alula was how Nadya had learned to soften her rough edges; how she'd mastered the art of wearing herself down so that people wouldn't be torn to shreds upon them.
Then came Palus. Nearly an entire cycle later, the image of Nadya stalking back through the wetlands of Palus with Alula slumped over one shoulder still haunted her. For a long while, it had been burned into the pitch-black void Fallon saw when she closed her eyes.
Even now, if she let her mind roam, the picture would take shape; it appeared in freezeframes, little pockets of reluctantly preserved time.
Fallon steps off the ship, heavy droplets of warm rain rolling down her shoulders, her lightsabre already activated to ward off the sulphur-coloured sky. The clone battalion waits at the mouth of the ship, a ship much bigger than the Faultless, and Hiro breathes sharply by her side. She can taste the stagnant air of the marshy wasteland on her tongue as it fills her lungs, the air that screams something died here, something's dying here, you'll die here. She moves forward and the marsh parts for her, tepid water clawing through her shoes. Hiro follows, a cacophony of sloshing and Mando'a expletives as she struggles to stay silent in unfamiliar terrain. (Fallon is sure she can remember Master Gallia calling them back, ordering them to wait. But they don't. In every reality, every recount, they don't wait. They never do.)
They call their lost friend's name, Nadya, Nadya, Nadya, and Fallon feels estranged from her own body, her fingers too balmy, her limbs too much like a corpse's to be her own. The battalion should have been here days ago, but the Council held them back: it was a mistake, Fallon realises as she treads over water-bloated bodies, unearthing the broken forms of lost soldiers. Is Nadya one of them? she asks herself as she helps up Hiro, who's fallen into a peat of warm water and decomposing limbs. The bodies that rise to the surface are further decayed, with wetland birds making easy pickings of their remains, stripping away skin and flesh at their leisure. Even Hiro, anaesthesia in the form of a teenage girl, forces herself to avert her gaze.
Fallon always remembers the fear, the sallow faces and rotting eyes that look up at her blankly.
And she remembers the relief as she sees a figure in the distance, shrouded in low-hanging mist, hunchbacked and lumbering. Fallon sprints, repelling the rain with pure determination, legs carrying her faster than they ever had before, and she loses Hiro in periphery, the dark-haired girl disappearing into the green.
Fallon runs, and runs, and runs, and she reaches Nadya as she falls to her knees, exhausted. Defeated.
There's a splash that douses her, but Fallon ignores it, leaping forward to wrap her arms around Nadya. And then she looks back at the disturbed water, and the breath she takes feels like the entire atmosphere has entered her lungs all at once, bursting every single cell, every single fibre of her being. Then it's ripped away from her, sucked mercilessly into a black hole.
General Alula rises in the water, eyes rolled back into her skull, her tendrils a mottled-green as they float around her face. A blaster shot marks her neck with the black spot of death and Fallon peers over, her arms still wound tightly around Nadya's shoulders. Her knuckles whiten. She can see right through to the murky soil beneath, the Mikkian's open flesh a keyhole into the depths of Palus.
When Hiro finally catches up, and she helps Fallon heave Alula over her shoulders, it takes every ounce of strength she has to force herself not to recoil. The General is cold to the touch. She's been dead for a day.
It was the only time Fallon had ever seen Nadya cry. And it could've just been the rain.
Now Nadya was saddled with Alek Stalav, a newly-minted Knight hailing from Scipio, the planet-shaped hotbed of the Banking Clan's intergalactic empire. Raven-haired and made memorable by the canary-yellow tattoos tracing his temple that marked him as Scipian, Alek seemed decent enough to Fallon. She held an inherent respect towards all members of the Order, whether superior to her in rank or otherwise, but there was also an undeniable softness about him, a sense of inner peace the permeated the surface of his existence and shone through all orifices.
But he was almost fully disliked by Nadya, for reasons Fallon couldn't grasp. Once, she and Hiro had asked her; Nadya's response was vague, though Fallon had been surprised she even bothered to answer in the first place.
Maybe it's irrational, was all she had said, like it was a challenge, like she dared them to doubt her. But neither Fallon nor Hiro had ever known Nadya to be irrational; if anything, she was nothing but rational. And so, they believed her.
Nadya made another trip around the room, passing over Fallon's legs pointedly. In an enclosed space like this, she was like a caged beast, confined but awaiting the escape she knew would be inevitable.
In the first hour of their flight, Fallon simply observed, her gaze flickering up from her tablet screen every so often to watch Nadya, always catching the blur of her hair or the dark skin of her shoulder—never her face, never her eyes.
Eventually, she gave up, figuring that whatever was on Nadya's mind would be revealed when they arrived on Jalid, and instead retreated into the lines of Mando'a waiting for her on her tablet. She'd spent the last few hours before boarding scouring the Temple library, poring through data banks and archives for every last iota of information on the ice planet—with Chrysaor in orbit, fielding Madam Nu's questions for her with a bright smile while she loaded the content onto her device. (He was helpful like that. Fallon didn't like to be bothered while she was researching; she wanted only to be surrounded by facts, figures, holograms, ancient civilisations and their long-lost heroes. Everything and anything she could get her hands on.)
What her inquiry had procured was exactly what she needed—wanted—to know. Located in the Ilum star system and one of six planets, Jalid was fortunate enough to have a crust, mantle and core richly saturated with Kyber crystals. The vast majority of trade in the cosmos operated with the use of Galactic credits; however, Kyber crystals were their own currency, one of the very few commodities with a universally dedicated black market. They were sought-out by all—from pirates looking to make big money by selling the crystals as a power source to the Jedi Order themselves, whose lightsabres were all powered by a Kyber core. Unless you happened to have access to a Republic mine on a planet like Ilum or Jalid, it would be near-impossible to get your hands on a crystal. Thus, planets with such resources were constantly targeted by raids, perpetrated by all kinds of attackers—most commonly skeleton crews specially trained to enter, exit, and somehow extract the crystals in between, but sometimes whole fleets of pirates.
That was where Fallon, Kil and Nadya came in. With Ilum being the Order's primary source of Kyber crystals—and where the first stage of the younglings' lightsabre-constructing ritual began—the planet was heavily guarded. Jalid, however, was paid much less attention, with only one Republic base built into its icy surface: with reports that this singular base was under attack, coupled with the distinct lack of communication between Jalid and Coruscant, the three Jedi had been sent ahead to determine whether reinforcements were necessary. (Hence, the choice of the Faultless as their vessel. There was nothing remotely threatening about the old, nearly-obsolete starship—in fact, in the Unknown Regions, it fit in quite nicely. Only the damaged and derelict ended up here.)
"Fal, you'll need your robe." Nadya's voice cut through Fallon's focus. She looked up from her screen abruptly, the fluorescent blue lines of their native language swimming across her vision. She blinked until all she could see was Nadya's expectant stare.
"My what?" Her question elicited a wince from Nadya, who looked at Fallon like she was stupid.
"Your robe." Nadya tossed a heap of fabric at the girl, before moving to lean against the escape-pod door. She crossed her arms, offering Fallon an arched eyebrow. "Jalid is an ice planet. It'll be cold." She was methodical in everything, even her speech, her sentences and phrases substituting for steps. One after the other.
Fallon stowed away her tablet—well, she placed it in the space between her back and the corner of the wall—and rose, cracking her knuckles. Like twigs snapping, the noise filled the silence, a silence Nadya apparently couldn't stand, because she took barely thirty seconds before speaking again: "How's the shoulder?"
Fallon opened her mouth to speak. Nadya wasn't cruel, but she wasn't known for showing concern for her fellow Jedi either—not conventionally, at least. It was always her back pressed against yours as enemies circled you, flanked you on all sides. A hand briskly offered to help you up after you fell and retracted the moment you were on your feet. A gentle word when you were at your most vulnerable, but not so much as a peep otherwise. "It's—"
"Will it slow us down?"
Fallon blinked. Us, like they were a team. Us, like Fallon was the weak link, the dead weight. She was at a loss of words for a moment, mouth open wide enough to catch not just flies, but a small rodent. "No, Nadya. It won't." She knew better than to take it personally, but it still irritated her, needling her good mood with annoyance. She glared down at the floor as she picked up her robe—dark and thick, its inner lining and hem stitched with fur—and slipped it around her shoulders.
"Good." Nadya said, nonplussed. If she detected the frustration in Fallon's tone, she didn't let on. Fallon wouldn't be surprised if it had gone right over her head—Nadya had long since cut herself adrift from the chore of caring about others. She was a closed casket, entombed by an absence of feeling. If anyone, Nadya was the Jedi soldier Satine should be worried about, not Fallon. "The cold will make it worse. Be mindful of that."
Fallon admired Nadya, as brutally ambitious as she was. The only attachments she had left were her Mandalorian peers, and Fallon imagined the thread keeping them tied together to be as thin as spider's silk; no knife would be necessary for Nadya to be able to cut Fallon, Hiro, or Chrysaor loose. A gentle breeze would just about do it.
"I will."
Fallon hated thinking about it: the thought of letting go was like acid, corroding every inch of skin, muscle, bone until she was nothing. In a way, she believed to her core that she was nothing without the others, without Kil, Hiro, Chrys. Even Nadya. And she hated that even more, the idea that she was anything but self-made, anything but independent, but was somehow expected to be. How could the Order expect her to grow close to her master, then have her end their relationship without so much as a second glance when he had served his purpose? When she had served hers? She hated it, and she was by no means the hateful kind.
Something hot rose in her chest, in her throat. She recognised it instantly. Vicious. Volcanic.
Violent, if she let it be.
It was unadulterated spite, the same spite that sent her after the droids on Phindar, the same spite that had her revelling in the way Chrysaor writhed in her grasp.
Fallon forced it down, made it small. Stepped toward the ladder and began to climb. "I'll talk to Kil," she said, as Nadya pinned her with an appraising look, "and see how close we are. We should be in the Ilum system by now."
The girl nodded. Fallon pushed open the hatch and pulled herself up, into the cockpit and out of Nadya's sight.
✶
The ship's dissatisfied hum seemed to sharpen as Fallon dropped down into the passenger seat, drawing her knees up to her chin and shifting her head to face Kil. There was a comfortable silence between them—there always had been—that was nearly tangible. If she reached out and tugged on the space between them, she wouldn't be surprised to find a blanket, soft and familiar, in her hands. One that felt like Mandalore. Like home.
"Fal'ika." Kil's eyes were fixed on the void before them—a black canvas embellished with far-away stars and small specks of blue that Fallon assumed to be the sextet of planets that comprised the Ilum system. "Is everything alright?"
The bitter lump in the pit of Fallon's stomach dissolved the moment her name left his lips; Kil was corrosive in the gentle way, like waves against a cliff, washing away the sharp edges, smoothing them down with what felt like centuries of patience. Often, Fallon felt lost at sea, and whether she was drowning in her renegade thoughts or trapped in a swirling storm of anger and confusion, he could always call her back to shore. Stop the cyclone in its tracks and bring her home, safe and sound.
"Everything's fine, master." Fallon fiddled with her padawan braid. Often, when she let her hair out she would tuck the braid beneath it, but when it was tied up—like it was today, corded tightly in a bun at the top of her head—the hallmark of her status was stranded, and thus, practically asking to be fidgeted with. "Just looking forward to being on assignment, is all."
Kil tore his gaze away from his task and turned to look at his padawan. The blinking lights of the cockpit console caught on the silver in his hair, colouring it blue, red, green. "There's no weakness in emotion, Fal."
"It seems like it, sometimes."
"Explain it to me."
Fallon lifted a brow. "I don't know if I can put it into words, master."
"Try to." Maybe it was the low light, or maybe Fallon was just tired, but his expression was unreadable. The lines on his face made shapes she couldn't understand. "Many wars throughout history could've been won with words, not weapons."
"Sometimes, they're the same thing."
"Sometimes." Kil ran a hand through his hair. "Go on, talk. Try. No more stalling."
Fallon laughed quietly. "Fine, fine." She paused, eyes fluttering shut as she tried to think, as she searched for the right words. Did they even exist? Did she even know what she wanted to say? "I..."
Kil looked at her expectantly.
"I have concerns, master." Fallon opened one eye. They were approaching Jalid faster than she'd expected, but she still had a few minutes before she had to be invulnerable again. "About myself." And the others, she wanted to say. The forbidden territory I've crossed with them. Towards them. "I know I'm not ready for the trials—not by a million parsecs. I know that I have a long way to go. But I'm scared, Kil. I really, truly am."
"Of?"
Fallon exhaled sharply. "I'm scared that when the time comes, I won't be able to let go of..." She trailed off, cleared her throat, and tried again. "And if I can't let go, I'll let you—and myself—down." She didn't need to mention names for Kil to know exactly who she meant. Everyone in the Order knew who she meant.
The Mandalorian four: each colloquially nicknamed "Mando" through hushed whispers between the cliques of other padawans, the basis of their identities were dictated entirely by the place they were born. Fallon, of the political family Kryze, was assumed to be more pacifist than not due to her aunt's relentless campaign for neutrality, and thus was considered hypocritical whenever she was engaged in combat, even if Satine's beliefs had never been Fallon's own. Hiro, born in the noble house Wren, was known solely as the "silent one" because she didn't fit the stereotype of the vitriolic, guns-a-blazing Mandalorian soldier. (She would have been shunned even if she did.) Nadya, pigeonholed by her detached nature and callous ambition, was apparently resembling her bloodthirsty ancestors a little too closely for anyone's liking.
The only one who seemed to have escaped the onslaught of cultural assumptions and expectations—and the pressure of an unsolicited, genocidal self-fulfilling prophecy—was Chrysaor.
Fallon suspected it had something to do with the façade he wore, the one that encompassed every atom of his paradisiacal being. The façade so perfectly-crafted that one would only realise its existence if they ran their fingers down his sides, found the well-sewn seams and ripped it free. Of course, he had the natural advantage of being beautiful, but so did Hiro: electing to live without a mask, she was still the subject of waspish rumours and untruths.
It didn't matter. There was still that question, hanging heavy in the air, just begging to be asked:
Who are you to call yourself a peacekeeper? Who are you to use your hands to help, when your ancestors' are stained with blood?
She supposed that was the reason why she and the others, over the years, had formed their own protectorate. It would remain unspoken, but they were desperate to prove everyone wrong: to be seen as Jedi first and foremost, for everything else they were or could be to bleed into the background, to become as inconsequential to others as a fly buzzing in their ear.
"It's just that I've come so far, Kil. Not just under your tutelage—" Fallon smiled small, "—but in the Order."
"If you don't pass, it doesn't mean you'll be cast out, Fal. No one will see you any differently."
"I'll see myself differently." She stared at the console. "I appreciate your kind words, master. It encourages me. But there are some things I don't believe I will ever be able to master—to make my own."
"And those things would be?"
Fallon paused, looking up at Kil. His gaze cut into her, like the sterile light of an operating theatre, like a scalpel. Each second he kept eye contact was another slash, another slice, another look inside at her organs, at her anatomy, at the way she worked or the way she didn't. She would do anything for that blanket right now. "You remember the Royal Palace in Sundari?"
"Of course."
"It's like one of the windows in the throne room. They let so much light in." She chewed her lip, as if it would help her not to stumble over her words. "Say that the light is what the Jedi way forbids. Say that letting it touch me, even for a moment, makes me weak." Fallon gestured vaguely with her hand, as if to shield her eyes from some imaginary light. "In whatever way. It burns me, swallows me whole, makes me tired."
Kil nodded.
"So I board up the window. I take what I have in myself, I take it in my hands, and I try to block out the light. But it finds a way to stream in, even if I cover the glass from floor to ceiling. It sneaks in through those minuscule gaps between boards, through eyes in the wood, through secret corners that are too small to reach, or to properly cover. It eats at my blockade—it eats at me." Fallon scrunched her nose. Her bun tugged too tightly on her hair. "And that isn't good. But—"
A beat. Two. All of a sudden all she could see, feel, was Chrysaor, his arm slung comfortably around her shoulder, his fingertips dancing across her skin. She felt her cheeks go red and was instantly—and insanely—glad for the darkness. "But—maybe I want to be warm. Maybe I want to see the sun. Maybe I want to burn."
She let a silence roll over them like an evening fog. Kil averted his gaze for a moment and then looked back at her. His eyes had lost their dissecting sheen.
After what felt like forever, he spoke, repeating his words from before: "There's no weakness in emotion, Fal'ika. There's no weakness in feelings, either. They're natural."
"They feel anything but."
Kil's expression became unreadable again, unknowable. Like an unmarked grave. "I suppose they are wrong, in a sense. But they're not always something you can control. Do you think you should be condemned for something you can't control? Do you think you should condemn yourself?"
"I think I'm biased, master."
Kil laughed. "Fair enough, my child. I think you have always been so fixated on being one thing, becoming one thing, to the best of your ability—a Jedi Knight. And you are well on your way," he gave her a proud smile, "but you need to understand that there are mistakes to be made along your chosen path. And you are not a failure if you make them. Us Mandalorians know mistakes better than any other."
"I don't—"
"—It's like a scar. You are injured, and it hurts... but it eventually heals. You remember how it was made and train yourself to be better next time so that it may never happen again." Kil flicked a glance to the primary shields: the Faultless was piercing Jalid's atmosphere, cutting through cloud cover and crystallised fog. "And you have the scar to remind yourself. Don't you?"
Fallon had been lost in thought. She snapped to attention, nodding her head with forced vigour. "Yes."
"Like your shoulder."
She winced. "Yes."
Kil smiled. "I know how attached you are to your peers—especially Padawan Wren and Padawan Rook. Do not feel guilty for it. Do not let yourself feel weak. Just remember that when the time comes, you will have to walk away."
Fallon stared at the frost that had started to gather at the edges of the shield. "I just... I can't imagine my life without them."
"They'll still be in your life—you know that." Kil rose and adjusted his robes, "Just not in the way they are now."
Fallon laughed hollowly, as if his words were any comfort to her. For a moment there, she thought he would solve everything, with a platitude perhaps and a customary kind smile, but they had merely gone full circle. He had told her what she already knew.
What they all knew.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes, master."
"Good." He placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled down at her. She supposed it was meant to be warm, comforting, but bathed in the ice-blue halo of Jalid's atmosphere, in the metal husk of the Faultless' cockpit, it was anything but. "Take Padawan Saxon and prepare to disembark. Think on what we've both said; consult with her, if you must." His features settled into neutrality as he turned to the console, hands moving expertly to pilot the starship to a smooth landing. Fallon could already feel the gentle slope of their descent. "She is astute as she is abrasive."
"I will." Fallon stood, her robes sitting heavy on her shoulders. "Th—"
Fallon was cut off by the sudden shaking of the ship: in an instant both teacher and student snapped their heads to face the world outside, gears shifted and safety switched off.
From what Fallon could gather and assume—from both her pre-existing knowledge and the information she'd found in the Temple archives—Jalid was a world of white. Like ink staining both sides of a page, the crystals that hung beneath the surface of Jalid also punctured the snowy terrain above, some reaching high enough to cleave open the clouds.
But as Fallon stepped closer to the front shield, as her eyes struggled to focus on the sight before her, she couldn't see the planet her tablet had shown her just minutes before.
All she could see was fire.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
this chapter is very exposition-y and i apologise for that 🥶🥶🥶 the next few will have lots of action and focus more on chrysaor and hiro (because even though fal is close with all three of her fellow mandalorian padawans, nadya is more of a mentor/older sister than a friend.) i know this is a lux bonteri fic but he doesn't actually appear for a few more chapters... sorry in advance.
please don't be a silent reader!! i'd love to hear your thoughts!! on chrys, fal and kil especially! 🥺 i'm like ... trying to establish that most people seem to have a general distrust against mandalorians (since they used to be devout jedi hunters) and that it reflects somewhat on how my four children are treated within the order. i'll elaborate on it in later chapters when it becomes more important.