Family Reunion

Looking around, Corvan saw siblings—grown, obviously—and former friends around the camp.  The looks that they gave him though weren’t the sort of welcoming, friendly expressions one would expect directed at a long lost loved one.  He proceeded slowly, feeling more eyes on him as he walked further into the camp like some sort of prey animal wandering dumbly into a nest of predators.

Those who didn’t have their faces covered were the most menacing.  Siblings he had rough-housed with a few years ago looked ready to shiv him without a second thought, even when he had taken his buy’ce off so that they might recognize him.  It wasn’t his fault that he had been separated from them for so long.  A raid gone bad had severed him from the Sharn Clan when he was fifteen, forcing him to wander aimlessly around the galaxy until he settled on Thyferra—and made enough trouble there for the local, corrupt authorities to eventually drive him off.  The kriffing giant bounty on his head had been another motivation to get offworld as fast as possible.  Corvan knew how to cheat death, but he didn’t want to tempt fate with the amount of bounty hunters who were salivating to turn him in for the prize Breen was offering.  

Things had snowballed after that.  He’d adopted Kit on a whim, then found himself forcibly adopted by the surly old Nagai who already had more than enough children and grandchildren to keep track of.  Corvan still made it a point to keep looking for his family, insisting that they were looking for him as hard as he was now that he had a means of transportation--albeit, an unreliable one--and an even more unreliable income to finance his endeavors.  Admittedly, he had lost hope after a while early on and thought to live out the rest of his life on Thyferra until his troublemaking made that impossible, but Strak claiming to be his new father was the fuel he had needed to get back to looking for his own family, even when the old man didn’t seem to like that notion very much.  It made sense.  He saw himself as Corvan’s father now—for some deranged reason—and probably didn’t like the idea of him pushing the old man away and seeking out his original family.

They’d argued about it before Corvan set out when he caught wind of a clan with the same sigil and fighting techniques as his own, Strak showing an ugly side that rarely came out unless it had to do with his marks or Imperials.  

“Boy, I am telling you for the last shabla time that you need to leave them be.”

“You’re not my buir.  Don’t you tell me what to do, Old Man.  I’ll be out of what’s left of your hair soon enough.”

“Son--”

“I’m not your son!  Usenye, shabuire!”

Strak had backed down after that, even when Corvan thought he’d be raring for a fight.  He’d looked more concerned than angry, probably, he thought, because he was losing another one of his countless adopted children.  Not like Strak needed him around anyways; The Old Man had more than enough children and grandchildren bearing his clan’s name.

That fire from that fight he had carried around in his chest felt more like a small, dying log.  Corvan didn’t have any doubts when he managed to trace the Sharn Clan to the small, snowy moon, but he was starting to have them now with the cool reception that they were giving him.  He wanted to be in the right, but everything about how his family was reacting to his sudden return screamed for him to turn around and leave as fast as possible.  Why he wasn’t doing that was another mystery as he forged on through the neat mess of tents towards where he saw the recognizable beskar’gam of his parents in a tight cluster with what looked like Narmunov and another sibling that had been ten or eleven when he’d last seen them.

“Uh, hey,” he said, forcing a grin as they all turned to look at him.

The glower he got from Nov was enough to make his blood run cold.  He suppressed a shiver, still waiting for someone to crack a smile, a look of relief, run at him and hug him, anything other than stand there stiffly and regard him as though he were a piece of rotting meat.  His mother turned to face him fully, arms crossed, expression as chilly as their surroundings.  His father still kept his body positioned away from him, only looking at Corvan out of the corners of his slatted eyes with a small sneer.

“So you made it back,” Velean drawled.

She didn’t sound in the least bit surprised, or happy for that matter.  Corvan lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

“It only took thirteen years,” he replied with a weak laugh, then quickly sobered up as it didn’t appear as if humor was helping his situation.  If someone would only grin, he might feel a little less anxious.  “Look, I know things went bad back then.  I should have listened instead of going off on my own.  It was stupid.  I was trying to impress you”--his eyes lingered on his mother before shifting to a point over her shoulder, then back down to the dirty snow--”Took me long enough to learn my lesson, right?  I never stopped trying to find you—all of you.  I would have kept at it but it gets expensive traveling around when you’re a mediocre mercenary, and no one takes fifteen-year-old mercs seriously.  I went back to your last location but you’d all banged out without a trace, and then the ship crashed…”

He was rambling.  He shook his head, lifting his eyes so he wasn’t talking to their dirty boots.

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I didn’t listen back then when you gave me orders that I should have--”

“Corvan, stop,” Velean snapped.

Corvan stiffened as he stared back at his mother, then slowly let his gaze move over to Garik and the two siblings flanking his parents.  If anything, they looked more hostile.  His brows furrowed as he settled his attention on his mother.

“What?”

Garik seemed ready to speak but Velean stopped him, lifting her hand.  He let out the breath that would have been used on words through his nose with a snort, creating a puff of vapor.

“Corvan,” she said calmly. “We left you.”

That was the last thing he had expected in response.  Corvan felt his insides shrivel up on themselves.  He wanted to ask “why?” but no words came out.  It was as if someone had socked him in the solar plexus and left him gasping.  Velean continued, ignoring her son’s apparent shock as she folded her arms again.

“You were straying, and you gave us no indication that you would get back on track.  Vizsla gave us the choice of culling you or abandoning you.  I wanted to see if you would seek us out again and act like a true member of Death Watch…”

As her voice trailed off, Corvan saw her eyes roam over him coldly.  He felt thirteen years old again, scolded for breaking down and panicking after his first kill.

“…However you strayed further, so we made it a point not to make contact with you when we tracked you to Thyferra.”

Another verbal punch that left him winded and lightheaded.  They had known where he was and ignored him, leaving him to believe that they were still actively trying to find him.

“Wait, what do you mean--you found me?  And you didn’t--?  But I-I’m back now…”

That should at least count for something, shouldn’t it?  Velean canted her head to the side, fingers tapping on her gauntlets.

“So you are.  Now leave if you prefer to remain alive.  We don’t have room in this clan for shabla disappointments.”

There were several emotions competing for his attention as he tried to navigate what was going on.  Shock, anger, betrayal, they all came and mingled together in an indiscernible ball in his chest.  Anger beat itself to the front of the pack.

“Hang on—“

Corvan took a step forward and Nov drew his blaster, only a few seconds behind Garik who already had his knife in hand.  Corvan halted, not even reaching for one of his weapons he had tucked away on himself.  Velean remained impassive.

“That’s your first and last warning, Corvan.  Go.”

He looked at the faces that were turned towards him, faces he had grown up around who he thought that he could count on.  Just like that, they were ready to put a round or a blade through him.  He couldn’t muster up a good rebuttal.  His mother was right.  He’d noticed some friction between himself and his parents before he’d been lost—no, not lost, abandoned—and how they didn’t like him picking apart Death Watch doctrine.  This must have been the last straw.  

It was harsh, but at the very least, they hadn’t shot him on the spot.  Corvan took a step backwards, waiting and hoping for someone to stick up for him.  No one did.  He wanted to say something, maybe an insult to get a rise out of them, but nothing was forthcoming.  He clamped his jaw shut, clenching his teeth together.  He turned, retracing his steps through the camp and feeling the glares all around.  He wanted to be furious, but he couldn’t muster up the energy for that.  He was simply numb.  

Every footstep he made, he expected a blaster to go off, burning pain and blackness.  Maybe someone would knife him instead to make things interesting.  No one did either as he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and forced himself to keep walking like some sort of droid in need of an oil bath.

Corvan found himself staring at the controls of his small starfighter, somehow having made it to the ship and climbed up into the cockpit.  He didn’t know how much time had passed during the trek.  He didn’t bother to check a chrono.  His mind was still a haze as he tried to parse together what had happened.  He watched his hands fly over controls as he ran a pre-flight checklist, and was in space moments later.  The thought occurred to him to flip the ship around and strafe the campsite he had left, though knowing the Sharn Clan, they would have gun emplacements hidden in some of those tents, and they would be sure to blast him to shrapnel before he could even snap off two shots.  Corvan ground his teeth together while he resisted swinging the yoke down to the moon, veering the starfighter away to open space and aggressively punching in the coordinates that would take him back to where Strak said he would be.  Back to where he would have to admit the old man had been right.

---

Tronn watched as the starfighter descended out of the clear sky, kicking up dust and dirt as it landed on the clearing.  He and the boy had agreed to meet up here, as it was a little safer than going straight to the Strak Homestead or a busy spaceport.  Frankly, he was surprised that the kid had returned at all given how insistent he was about leaving.  Anyone from a family of Mandalorians would be welcomed back with open arms if one of their own had been lost.  Tronn did it all the time with his own wayward children anyways.

The kid cut the starfighter’s sublight engines, the craft settling heavily on the buglike appendages that supported it above the ground as the hatch to the cockpit began to draw back.  The first thing Tronn noticed was Gazer’s posture.  It wasn’t one that indicated he was returning from a happy reunion to say farewell to the old merc in person.  He looked defeated, his buy’ce in one hand and his normally clear eyes clouded and lost as he dropped down from the starfighter.  Tronn watched, hands on his hips, as Gazer tramped away from the craft.

“What happened?”

Gazer walked right past him before stopping a few paces and turning on his heels.  Tronn was so used to the smiling, albeit sarcastic face that he was taken off his guard by the look of deep hurt and anger.

“They’re Death Watch, Tronn,” he spat.  Gazer hardly ever addressed Tronn by his first name, ergo, the kid was really upset. “They said I wasn’t up to par with what they wanted and they left me.  They didn’t lose me, they kriffin left me behind.”

Tronn’s lips thinned with a tight shake of the head.  He’d had his suspicions, but he didn’t want to voice them out loud when the kid kept singing praises about his old clan.  So those were the folks who raised this kid?  In some respects, it made sense.  It explained some of his wild behavior and that unnerving deadly accuracy when he put his mind to it.  Those kinds were strict when it came to the kids they raised too.  Tronn had heard stories of kids being killed during training exercises gone wrong in order for them to be “toughened up.”  It was sick.  Tronn eyed Gazer as the young man remained rooted in place, seething with his eyes turned upon the ground.

“They say anything else?”

Gazer squinted.  Tronn knew that tactic all too well.  He had seen his own children perform it when they tried to keep themselves from crying.  Gazer hurled his buy’ce against the dirt, causing it to bounce across the rocks before it settled.

“They said if they didn’t leave me then they were supposed to kill me.  Vizsla's orders."

Tronn took a step forward, his brow furrowing.

“Death Watch is harsh, kid--”

“No osik.”

His folks having sent him packing again also meant that they didn’t see anything in him worth salvaging to try to indoctrinate him back into their radical ways.  It was a relief, even if they royally borked the kid up for the rest of his life.  Tronn closed the gap between them and yanked Gazer into a tight embrace.  He heard a sharp catch in the kid’s breath before his breathing grew ragged.  Tronn held to him tight, hearing that fury seep out through tears as the kid shook.  Gazer’s arms slowly came up to cling to Tronn.

“I got you, ad,” Tronn whispered. “When I said that I was adopting you, I wasn’t kidding around.  Those folks don’t know what they’re missing out on having a son like you.”