Chapter Text
Part I
One day, he was simply gone.
Jango Fett, the lost Mand’alor, had once again disappeared in to the night.
There was no trace.
Gone, and with him? Almost 100 Mando'ade. No trace of any of them, barely anything linking them together.
But Jango Fett? This was a Mand'alor that had been lost to them once before. They'd thought him dead, gone. No man looked for him, no-one awaited his return, and then, Jango Fett had returned to the galaxy.
Would he return to them once more? Could he?
They say he's dead, but they have said that before. Myles did not look for him last time, he will not make that mistake again. Once, Myles had believed that his Mand’alor was dead. Once, he had sworn fealty to Jango Fett and had not seen that through. He had allowed the shine of the crown to overtake him.
In the past, Myles had been less than their Alor deserved, he had abandoned him to slavers and had stolen his throne. Their people paid for that. They will not do so again.
It had been years since Jango had disappeared. Gone, along with almost 100 other Mando’ade. 100 men and women and their king, vanished, It was the thing of storytales.
But had they not once told a tale of a king thought lost who'd returned when his people needed him? Jango had been lost before and he'd returned to them. This was a man who'd already lived the impossible, he'd already shown that he could come back to them, and he would do so once again.
Myles was sure of it, he would make sure of it.
There was no trace of any of them, which, in Myles’ eyes was suspicious in itself. They were well known, they had enemies, who would kill them and then not take credit?
Was it supposed to be more believable that there was a serial killer out there killing Mando’s? Hiding the evidence?
Barely anything linked them together, but Myles just knew they were connected. This was all connected.
Some of them knew Jango, some did not. There were other non Mando hunters missing too, but only a small number. Nothing as significant as this. The problem was, Myles was struggling to get anyone to see that significance in the first place.
Some of them had worked jobs with Jango, but that was less than conclusive, Jango didn’t even like half of the missing, why would he take them with him?
They were all renowned warriors but then, they’re Mandolorian for Kark’s sake. Fighting prowess distinguished the missing no more than the fact they all happened to be bipedal.
The facts were clear. They were all missing and it was Myles duty to find them, to right a wrong and bring them back. Myles had been here once before and then? His devotion to his Mand’alor was feeble.
He would not make the same mistake again.
Jango was lost; once again; and finally, Myles had a chance to right the wrongs of the past.
He's pacing again.
He is well aware that they call him an eccentric, at best. He rarely makes it back to his clan compound these days and even when he does, he barely leaves his ship. Landing within the compound walls and sleeping on the familiar surface of his worn bunk rather than bothering with his neglected room in the living quarters he once called his home.
His ship is his home now.
The rest can wait until his mission is complete.
The output of his investigations litter the wall of the ship. Here he can not forget, here he will not forget the importance of what he has set out to do, the necessity. Strings drape over the printouts and projected images linking them all together.
He can't just walk away from his ship because to do that would be to walk away from his mission. He can't walk away from any of this, it wouldn't be right.
As he paces, the holo throws strange shadows around the room. He pays it no attention. He leaves it on because he has a duty to Mandalore, to his people, he needs to know what they face, its important that he keep an eye on the news, but he can't let it distract them either because he knows how he will save them. He knows how ultimately, all of this kark on the holo will be resolved. He will bring his peoples leader back to them. Jango will solve this, Myles only has to find him.
On the holo, Satine Kryze steps forward to make a speech.
"Mandalore needs food. We need to be flexible if we are to survive."
Myles tunes her out.
Silas sighs. "Myles you can't carry on like this. How much longer will you keep at this?" He asks. "He's gone. For real this time. You are chasing a dead man. Jango would want you to carry on with your life. "
"Jango would want a life!" Myles bursts.
Silas just sighs again, sounding sad. "Of course he would Myles. Wouldn't they all. But it's happened. There's no changing the past."
They'd been the survivors of their generation of the Haat'Mandoade. Silas, Jango and him, the three of them. Of course they hadn't known Jango had survived at first. Him and Silas? They've been here before. Myles barely needed convincing that time.
That was a wrong Myles could never right. No matter how many times he saved Jango, brought him back, the reality would always be that when he'd really been needed, he hadn't been there.
It's all well and good that Silas has found peace. He's found a family and a partner and he has found it in himself to move on. But that isn't an option for Myles, that's never been an option.
He has a mark against his name that he can never clear. He handed over his destiny the day he made the decision that put it there. The rest of Myles' life serves only as an opportunity to make amends, he can't go back, he can't move forward.
"I'm not you Silas!" He tells his friend, frustrated. "I can't just say the vow, adopt a few ade, settle. Not while he's out there. I can't settle until I've found him. "
"Myles at this rate you'll never get that. You're running out of time Vod! How much longer will you put off your life?" Silas says.
Myles shakes his head. "I'm not putting off anything! I don't have a life. It's not mine anymore. It's his, its always been his."
He's just about to turn the corner when he hears them.
Two Mandoade, chatting as they walk about the compound. One of them has their helmet off, he can hear her voice echo off the walls.
"You want Myles to lead us?" She sounds doubtful. "Myles?" She repeats. "Are we talking about the same Myles here?" She asks in disbelief. "Because the Myles I know puts his foot in it with everyone he meets. You want our planetary leader to be a man who manages to insult Mandolorians? Imagine what he'd do to any non Mando representative. We'd starve."
The other is older, her voice more weathered, even through her vocoder. "We don't need a smooth talker to lead our people, what do you think civil servants are for? The Mand'alor needs to be someone willing to defend our people that's likable enough for us to follow. That's it."
"He upsets everyone with those psycho-jumble analytical takedowns. He's hardly a people person, I don't think he even registers that he's doing it. You think a man like that can lead us?" The first protests.
The second is less than swayed. "Sure comes across as harsh and blunt but who cares. He's a good guy, he doesn't mean anything by it. "
He's frozen in place.
"He's far too honest and has far too few people skills, that'd never work. He could never be Mand'alor." The first mando'ade continues.
"Our people don't care for diplomacy." The second scoffs. "He has no people skills, so what? Not everyone can be Jaster Mereel. They want Mand'alor who's competent, fearsome and who they know has their backs. He ticks all the boxes." She huffs. "He did it once before. He's fully capable of leading us and people would be happy to follow him. Better myles than karking Viszla."
"He did it once before?" The shock in her voice is evident even from this distance. Even when he wants to tune out the whole thing, walk away. "He did it before?! When?"
"After Jango disappeared the first time. He led the Haat. Might have even succeeded in uniting the clans if Jango didn't roll back in and pluck the crown right off his head again."
That's enough, Myles steps in.
"You know that isn't what happened." He says. "I had no right to the throne." He stares at her, through his visor. "I failed him." His voice breaking slightly, he's pretty sure the vocoder disguises it but he feels it all the same. "I should have looked for him, instead I stepped right in to his shoes and did a piss poor job."
The older Mando tilts her head.
"Don't look at me like that." He spits, disgusted with himself. "I got half our people killed." Why is she avoiding what they all know? Myles was no great leader. He was a fake and then he was a failure. They deserved better. They all deserved better. "When Jango returned, I returned to him what was his, what always was his."
"You had no right to give that to him." She hisses, surprising them all. "You took nothing. We chose you. We wanted you. We were at war. People karking die."
The first, younger Mando just watches in disbelief, unsure of what exactly has been unleashed here.
The others anger seems to be mounting now she's begun. Tapping some old line of tempered fury.
"It's not like Jango hadn't done worse! If that was the problem with your rule then neither of you had any right. Why hand it back to a man who'd got even more of us killed?"
He can feel her gaze piercing him through two layers of beskar.
"No, you let your loyalty to Jango outweigh your duty to your people, just like you are doing now." Her attack is brutal and ill-reasoned. He was loyal to Jango because Jango was the best thing for their people. His loyalty to their people and to Jango came from the same well. "He didn't want us." She bites. "You gave up the title so you could give it back to a man that never wanted it. Fuck uniting the clans he couldn't even bother to hold on to the ones he had."
"He left us to rot and then he wandered off to do another disappearing act." She spits.
"Call him by his true name, that which the people gave him." She challenges Myles. "Mand'alor the lost."
In the past, Myles allowed his hubris to deceive him, to mislead their people. Rather than checking the facts for himself, he allowed himself to be swayed in to believing that Jango didn’t need him anymore.
Myles was responsible for the haste in which Jango’s death had been put to record. Thanks to him, no-one looked.
Had he not allowed his vanity to blind him, he might have realised that Jango lived.
In a different galaxy, Myles might have sought out the facts before he allowed the matter of Jango Fett’s death to be settled, before declaring him gone, before succeeding him. He might have sought out knowledge of his Alor’s fate and in doing so, might have found him. Instead, he let his own desires blind him to what his duty truly asked of him.
In that galaxy, Myles did not take the crown because their rightful leader was there to wear it.
Jango would have led their people to glory. Instead, in this galaxy, Myles had been remiss in his duty, negligent. Jango Fett was forgotten so that Myles might take his place. his people had been led to their deaths by a leader undeserving of their loyalty. He had been less than their people deserved.
Myles did not have it in him to be the leader his people deserved, he knew that now. He should have always known this.
Jango might have led them to glory but in his place, Myles only led them to death.
"Ruusan said you'd..." Silas trails off, coming to a stop. He's staring at the wall or well walls that make up Myles' mission map. There's a few minutes worth of silence as Silas, his helmet tucked under one arm, stands in space as his eyes rapidly take in the walls of the ship.
Myles is parked up at the back of the main clan building. He's been here a week or so, clearly long enough for word to get back to Silas.
He hasn't seen his friend in a while. He's been too caught up with his latest lead. He thinks that he heard somewhere that Silas just adopted a new Ade? He'll have a dozen at this rate. So his friend has been busy too, its not just Myles.
Silas has let himself on to the ship, striding in like he still lives here. Like it's the days just after Jango was taken that first time, and he and Silas think they are the last survivors of Galidraan still. Spending their days picking up whatever job they can find to try and scrabble together enough money so that, at some far off point in the future they might finally be able to choose jobs again rather than taking whatever they can find. Spending their nights huddled together for warmth on board a ship that's barely holding itself together.
Finally, Silas sucks in a sharp breath. "This is really something, Myles."
Myles doesn't say anything.
"You know I thought you might come meet her? I know you knew. There's a part of me that finds it hard to believe that there's a world in which I have a kid and you choose not to be there as I welcome her in to my clan."
Myles doesn't look at him. "I'm going to bring him back Silas. For you, for all of us."
"Nobody asked you to do that Myles. Nobody asked you to give over your life, trying to find someone who can not be found. He's gone Myles. You are Obsessed with finding a man who is long dead."
"You don't understand."
"No I don't. I loved my friend Myles. But he's gone. He's been gone a long time."
"I loved Jango and maybe there was a time when I thought I'd give anything just to have another minute or two with him but I know now that's not true. Cause I wouldn't give this Myles. I wouldn't exchange you for the slip of a possibility that Jango might be out there. If I have to choose between you being in my life and the slim scrap of a chance that I could possibly see him again? I'd choose you. You are here Myles, so why can't you be here?"
The silence that hangs between them is stifling.
Myles slices through it, its presence unbearable.
"I left him for dead once before and I was mistaken. I can't do that again. He deserved better. He deserves better."
Silas is looking at the web mapped out on the wall again, shaking his head. "None of this even makes any sense. Who are these people? Jango I understand. Those of them you knew? I get it. It's hard to accept they are gone. But some of these people are Death Watch. You are tracking down their missing now too?"
"Where does this end Myles? Where can it possibly end?"
"I find him." Myles says simply.
"Or you'll die trying right?"
Myles looks at Silas, irritated. "That won't happen. I'm close. I can feel it. Soon, I'll bring him back and then we can be together again. He'll sort out all this crap with that Dar’manda..."
"Oh so you are watching the news then? You do know this is happening, you are just choosing to ignore it." Silas looked annoyed. "They are speaking basic in all the schools Myles. Armour has become synonymous with being armed and she isn't standing for either. If you do ever find him, there might not be a manda'yaim to come back to."
"This is why it's more important than ever that I-"
"Mandalore doesn't need Jango, Myles! It needs someone willing to lead. Our people will follow you, you know this, you just don't want to admit it. Is that what this is really about? You don't want to step up so you are desperately trying to find an alternative? There is no alternative Myles. You lead our people out of this or no-one does. There's no one else they'll follow. You can fix this, but only if you stop this stupid pointless osik. There's no karking point Myles! He's gone! He isn't coming back!"
Myles is staring at the wall. "I told you, it won't be long now. We will fix this. But I have to finish this first. I know that there is a link"
"Myles, Bounty hunters go missing, so do Mercenaries. It’s a dangerous job, you know this."
"But 100 of them? At the same time as our Mand’alor?"
"You have no proof! All you know is that they missed check-ins around the same time. You’ve found evidence of something, the impact of that Dar’manda’s policies. Rising intolerance in the galaxy towards traditional Mando’s. But that is it." Silas exhales. "Thanks to her, their jobs were more dangerous and ultimately, they paid for that. That's it. That's the link."
He turns pleading eyes on his friend. "You can make a difference Myles. Your people need you. Stop wasting time trying to find a dead man. Jango is gone but he doesn’t have to be forgotten. You can be his legacy, you can finish what he started. Unite the clans, stand as Mand’alor, we will follow you."
"And you'd be wrong to do so. I've lead our people to death once before. That you'd let me do it again is insanity. Jango is a better man than I, he is our peoples rightful leader, I never should have taken that from him, he will lead them better than I ever would"
Myles stands firm.
"My clan swore an oath to serve his Buir and then, Jango himself. I did not look for him once, I will not abandon him again."