Finally, an explanation as to how Keelath did manage to father those kids. It worked surprisingly well given Mako’s canon backstory from SWTOR.
Author’s Note
They carefully avoided each others’ eyes as they boarded the transport down to the planet’s surface. Kellaro sat next to Vette (or, perhaps it would be better said, that Vette sat next to Kellaro), with the rest of his crew ranged out to the other side of him. Brant felt his brother’s piercing eyes land on him for all of one moment, then Kellaro was turning to casually chat with a Cathar beside him. Vette simply didn’t look at him at all.
And he didn’t look at them. He sat on the end, closest to the door, pulling in his feet anytime another passenger passed. Lana came in, took in the tense atmosphere, touched his knee, then settled a seat away.
The restraints came down, the lights went dim, and the pilots of the transport chattered to each other over the open radio comms. Kellaro shifted, nervous as any leader responsible for so many men but without actual control in the situation, then there was a lurch, and they were leaving the docking bay into space. Brant lifted his head to peer out the one viewport in the center of the ceiling. They were upside down — though they were weightless now in their straps, so it didn’t feel so — orbiting the green planet of Odessen. The transport lazily spun about, giving him a brief view of the Republic frigate and its attending starfighters, then one of the pilots started the transport’s engines. The ship flipped on its belly, and he saw only stars and then fire as they crossed into the planet’s atmosphere.
A shaking and shuddering ran down the ship as Odessen’s gravity snared them, offset by the transport’s engines blazing just hot enough to keep them from going into outright freefall. The engines only came on in full once they passed through the cloud layer, and a green pine forest opened up below them. The transport flew over the trees, still bleeding off momentum, the pilots now speaking with some hidden communication tower that had hailed them.
Over a mountain, down a narrow canyon, then into a broad river valley, and there was the Alliance base — HQ, as Vette and Kellaro called it. Brant squinted, but as the transport leveled out to dock, he could only see a few communication antenna off the nearest mountain, not the base itself.
The transport’s legs groaned as they left their housings and the ship gave another jolt as it settled down onto them. Kellaro called out a half-teasing criticism of the harsh landing to the pilots; one of the other troopers laughed. There was a hiss and some faint steam around the door’s lining as the cabin adjusted to the planet’s pressure, then it was opening, and Brant squinted through the sudden broad daylight on his face.
He waited for the others to pass before loosening his own bindings; his eyes still took a long time to adjust and he didn’t relish being the first out onto the landing pad, even though Odessen was supposedly safe quarters. Lana waited for him, giving him a smile, though her thoughts were clearly elsewhere. Kellaro was barking out commands, as his troopers hurried to grab their gear and then assemble in a line out on the landing.
A small envoy was coming to meet them: an eclectic bunch variably wearing wearing Force-user robes, Mandalorian armor, Imperial uniforms, and even one woman in pilot leggings. Kellaro stalked up and down his line of troopers, making sure all were in order, timing it just so he had reached the end of the formation and was turning to salute at the same time the envoy reached them. Brant tugged his hood low to block the bright sun — as well as any casual recognition — and Lana guided him towards the side of the line, bidding he wait to be acknowledged.
A Mandalorian stepped to the front of the envoy, returned Kellaro’s salute, then similarly began inspecting his line. He exchanged words with a few of them, including Vette, who stood at the opposite end from Brant. The lady pilot-in-leggings ran out from behind him, throwing her arms around Kellaro, who broke his solemn expression long enough to laugh and hug her back.
Brant’s stomach flipped in recognition as Kellaro’s arms went down at something the Mandalorian said, and he could see his mother’s round brown face beaming over Kellaro’s shoulder.
So that would make the Mandalorian… The man swung back Brant’s away, giving Lana a nod and a greeting first, and then the Commander was standing squarely up front of Brant, barely an inch taller, but the beskar armor made his figure more imposing.
And Brant: he didn’t know what to do.
Kellaro dismissed his troops with a bark, and the rest of the envoy similarly dispersed, one Bothan trotting up into the transport to speak to the pilots. His mother quietly came up beside Keel’ath and put an arm through the Commander’s, squinting under Brant’s hood. Lana discreetly stepped on Brant’s foot, but he couldn’t move.
The Commander finally dipped his head and tugged off his T-visored helmet. Underneath it was the pale, deeply scarred face and the long plaited hair, glowing gold-white in the sunlight, that Brant had seen in his vision, all those years ago on Korriban. Only the eyes had he inherited from his father’s side: a bright blue, with an internal shine that seemed to make them glow in the dark.
“Uh.” Brant meant to say something, but no words came out. His mother broke first, taking a step closer and clasping her hands nervously as she ducked her head to see his face. Brant turned her way, and she reached up to touch first one cheek, then his other. Then he was bending low, their foreheads pressed together, and her arms were as tight around him as his were around her.
Someone touched his shoulder — he wasn’t sure if it was Lana or the Commander, nor did he care. Arms covered in hard beskar armor enveloped them both, and he smelled machine oil, and something like vanilla, and his memories were leaping hard and fast up from the pit he had shoved them into: the waste pit on Korriban where a piece of him had died. He certainly didn’t want to revive that old pain, nor to break down and cry here and now of places, but he was.
But it was okay, because so were they.
He glimpsed Lana standing respectfully off to the side, her hands folded but her smile fond. Kellaro joined her a second later, slowing out of a run as if he wasn’t sure whether he needed to intervene. Then his face softened and he smiled, too. Brant pointedly ignored them, turned his head into his father’s breastplate – oddly smaller now that he was so much older, but no less familiar, no less familial.
“I’ve missed you so much…”
“Welcome home.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
“Come to stay…?”
“Don’t you ever leave–”
“Not ever.”
“I love you.”
“I’m so sorry…”
“Its going go be alright.”
“Never going to let you go…”
“I love you so much.”
Their words mixed together and Brant couldn’t be sure afterwards who had said what, but the sentiment was the same between all of them, and the talk was just so many meaningless sounds.
Finally his father broke from the huddle first, receiving his helmet back from Lana, though he didn’t put it on. His smile had the look of kings.
“Welcome,” he said, “to Odessen. We have so much to talk about.”
Despite what Commander Keel’ath had said, talking was secondary. Mako had sprung at the chance for a proper party, and she had eagerly grabbed Brant’s hand and dragged him to the base’s little cantina. The place was clearly a military barracks and so the decorations were sparse, but someone had hung up some brightly colored Mando helmets with lights glowing out of their visors in different colors, the one called Vik had rigged a cannon to let out a burst of confetti poppers, and Keel’ath was obliged to make a short speech and toast with a bottle of whiskey. The Mandos and even some of Kellaro’s troopers obligingly shot their blasters into the air at the end of it like fireworks.
Through it all, Brant sat near the back, feeling very embarrassed but unquestionably pleased. He only once metaphorically stepped into the limelight, when someone forced a Mandalorian helmet over his head from behind and started banging on it like a drum while reciting words of welcome and brotherhood. Once Brant had gotten it and himself straightened out (he managed not to skewer the offending drummer), he looked up to Keel’ath, who was saying that, after all, Brant had been born a Mandalorian first, one of the clan, and everything else came second.
Brant hadn’t known how to respond, beyond a very polite “thank you”. He considered himself Sith first, deep inside, but the helmet was clearly his, made for a Mando specially, and he hugged it in his lap for the rest of the evening.
The rest of the night was a blur of names and faces, some he recognized, like Torian’s, but also quite a few he didn’t, each coming up to congratulate him and pound his back like an overenthusiastic forge-smith. He drank a lot of whiskey, and that kept him calm, or calm enough, when normally he would have felt obliged to answer all the rough and tumble play with a lightsaber fight. He had a feeling he would be regretting a lot of the jokes he made in the morning as it was, along with all the shot glasses he had put away.
Lana was absent after the first round of drinks, but Brant knew she had never really been the partying sort and didn’t worry. Vette somehow found her way onto his arm, though it was late enough in the night that Brant wasn’t quite sure it was really her. Whoever it had been, an hour or two after midnight, the Commander had suddenly pinched his arm and whisked him off to a suite deeper in the base, with a single bed he slumped into without much consciousness — even before he fell asleep.
The morning came without too much pain, though Brant still lurked in his darkened room until well past lunchtime. A Mandalorian he didn’t know came by with orders to get him out of bed and to see that he got some food and drink into him, and the Mando had happily obliged. Brant felt too queasy to resist, and the man was nice enough to not comment when he threw up what was left of his dinner onto the Mando’s boots. He was told his father was busy in military meetings, something to do with Kellaro’s expedition, and that he was free to wander as he willed until the Commander could see him, which would be some time around 1900 hours.
Then the Mando left. It was mid-afternoon when Brant finally began to feel normal again, and, putting on a fresh pair of leggings and a tunic, still holding his new helmet against his ribs, Brant explored the base. Quite a few of the inhabitants greeted him as Kellaro, and Brant saw no reason to disabuse them of the notion, though a few made crude remarks about his shorter hair and lack of a moustache. He started to wonder irritably just where Kellaro had gotten off to, and Vette too, when he turned the corner and ran into them both sitting at a table going over some kind of schematics.
He had not spoken with them properly since the fight in the frigate, and Brant stopped awkwardly. They clearly felt the same way, Vette shuffling the schematics out of sight and Kellaro only slowly meeting his eyes.
Vette was the first to break the tense silence. “Well, good morning, sleepy head. Is Tatooine well-irrigated yet?”
Kellaro looked confused, but Brant found himself smiling at the old joke. “I just got done drying it all out again actually,” he told her.
Kellaro crossed his arms, and Vette, perhaps in respect to him, didn’t pursue the line of teasing. Instead Kellaro nodded at the helmet. “Like it?” he asked.
Brant shrugged and set it out on the table for them to see. “I guess.”
Kellaro ran a finger along the visor, then up over the smooth crown. “It’s one of the new Systech Savant models. They ironed out all the bugs with the comms unit; I heard they had a lot of trouble with the internal antenna in the older models.” He bit his lip, suddenly awkward. “I… guess all you need to is get a few battle-scars on it, and you’ll be all set.”
“Easy enough to do,” Brant muttered.
“You know a lot about those things,” said Vette. “Did you pick it out for him?”
Brant got the feeling she was asking more for him than for herself, but Kellaro only shrugged, looking away. “I thought the smoother top would work better with your hood, but Mom did a lot of the internal wiring, and, well, Torian handled most everything else. Every helmet is made special for the Mando,” he said, turning to Vette. “Dad’s still wearing the same old thing he was given by the Mand’alor, when he was inducted into the brotherhood himself.”
“How many Mand’alors ago was that?” Vette quipped with a grin. “Your dad is so old, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was here before the galaxy!”
Kellaro snorted, then pushed the helmet back Brant’s way. “Well, whatever. It’s yours, now. I still have mine, but Republic dress code doesn’t let me wear it most of the time.”
Brant grunted in return and picked up the helmet, holding it as possessively as before.
Another awkward silence reigned. Kellaro picked at the table a few minutes before saying, “Dad said he wanted to talk to you today, if you’re feeling up for it. Said he’d be waiting at the Overlook.”
“The what?”
“Up there.” Kellaro pointed over his head. When Brant continued to look skeptical, he smirked slightly and said, “There’s a path. I’ll show you.”
“I’ve got work to do,” said Vette quickly, looking away.
It was oddly evasive. Brant swallowed to cover his grimace. “Right. See you.”
“See you…”
Kellaro nodded, and Brant followed him as Vette headed for the opposite door.
The path Kellaro took him on wended its way to the outside of the base, the setting sun’s light slanting in through the windows. “You can take the lift, or that way is stairs,” said Kellaro, pausing outside a couple sets of double doors. As Brant passed him, he just stood there, like he wanted to say something.
Brant growled and turned to him. “Just spit it out.”
Kellaro sighed and fidgetted. “So… you good?”
Brant raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”
“You know… are you good? Is everything… all right?”
“Yeah.” Brant shuffled to one foot awkwardly. “…you good?”
“Yeah,” Kellaro answered too quickly.
Neither twin said anything, Kellaro looking at the ceiling, and Brant scowling out the window. A green Twi’lek passed them, a probe droid hovering at her shoulder and beeping out a report, and it reminded Brant of their argument. Once she was out of earshot, he rounded on Kellaro.
“Look. I never abused her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“It’s not.” But Kellaro relaxed as if that had been exactly what he was thinking, and Brant scowled at him.
“We were never lovers or anything else like that, either. Just friends.”
“Friends? Or something else?” Kellaro grit his teeth.
Brant scowled again, but he didn’t hold it. The old memories were still too uncomfortable. He looked at his feet. “She was also my slave, in the beginning.”
Kellaro took a deep breath. “I know how the Sith treat their slaves.”
Brant snapped his gaze back up. “Oh? I thought I was a Mandalorian now.”
“Well… yes, but…”
“Spit it out!”
“Boys!” came a deeper voice, and both of them jumped and swung around. Commander Keel’ath had just stepped out of the lift and was looking between the two of them. He hadn’t brought his battered helmet, and the orange light made him look oddly old, turning his hair red as if it had started as a blank white canvas. Once he had gotten their attention, Keel’ath put a hand on his hips and leaned on one foot, the stance casual but also faintly disapproving.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I… was just coming to meet you,” said Brant.
“And… I… was just showing him the way,” said Kellaro.
Keel’ath looked at both of them doubtfully. “Come with me. Both of you.”
The brothers glared at each other as Keel’ath gestured them back into the lift. The Commander looped one of the ceiling straps around his hand and keyed in a destination on the number pad next to the door. The lift gave a jerk and then started rising smoothly, past scaffolding and then through a long line of windows, where they could see the forests of Odessen spread out before them.
“How did you find this place?” Brant asked.
“We picked the planet because it was neutral in the Force, or so Lana told me,” answered Keel’ath. “If we were going to have both Jedi and Sith working together, we didn’t need the ambient energy of our HQ distracting them.”
“So there are both Jedi and Sith here,” said Brant.
“Yes.”
They didn’t speak again until the lift reached the top of the cliff, and Keel’ath stepped out ahead of them. The hill the base had been built into was really a mesa, the rocky cliffs ringing its crest a yellow-gray. Markings on the pavement indicated a landing pad, but there was no ship there right now; a few antenna and power supplies were humming away in another corner, under radiation shields.
Keel’ath walked along the outside railing and down some stairs over the edge of the cliff. The path soon turned to natural rock, and a few trees sprouted here and there, clinging to the cliffside. They soon reached a waterfall, barely a foot across, but the noise filled their ears even so. The path continued on the other side beyond the column of water, but Keel’ath turned off of it there, taking a seat under one of the scraggly pine trees.
“Where does this trail lead to?” asked Brant.
“Eh, along the bluffs, then down into the forest eventually. It was here long before we arrived. Theron thinks it leads to some shrine, but I’ve never been able to find it. The trail peters out once it meets the trees, down there.” Keel’ath pointed.
“Only a Jedi would be able to find that thing again,” said Kellaro. He had also taken a seat under the trees, near his father, back straight and legs crossed like he would meditate.
“Or a Sith,” said Keel’ath, glancing at Brant. “Few people come here, and the waterfall jams most signals. It’s a good place to have a private talk. So good I’m always having to chase off random lovers.”
“If so few people come here, how many random lovers can you really get?” grumbled Brant. He grudgingly found a rock to sit on, close enough to the water he could have stuck a hand into it. The spray was damping his hair to his scalp. “So you wanted to talk,” he said finally.
“Yes,” said Keel’ath. “Mostly to you, but also to Kellaro. It’s reached my ears you’ve been in conflict. Kellaro carries rank in the Alliance, and you will too, if you still want it once you recover. I do not need to remind you we cannot have any infighting if we are to win this war.”
Kellaro and Brant shot each other a look, then awkwardly looked in opposite directions.
“So,” said Keel’ath, watching them. “Do you want to tell me what it’s all about?”
Brant said nothing. Kellaro fidgeted. Keel’ath was about to speak again when Kellaro said suddenly, “It’s my fault.” When both Keel’ath and Brant looked at him, he self-consciously pressed his knees together and hugged them. “I’ve been suspicious of him because he’s an Imperial, Dad.”
“We were all Imperials once,” said Keel’ath.
“And I’m still an Imperial,” Brant growled. “So what does that make the rest of you?”
“Don’t you dare say traitor,” Kellaro muttered.
Keel’ath grunted. “To be clear, I was something else before I served the Empire, so I don’t really consider myself an Imperial or part of the Republic. I wouldn’t even consider myself one of the Mandalorians, though they are an honorable people that I am glad to have the friendship of.”
“Then what are you?” snarled Brant.
Keel’ath shrugged, not taken in by his fury. “A people who no longer exist. That’s a long story though, and not worth the discussion now. What I need to know from you, Brant, is if you can work with the Republic, and with Jedi, for they, too, serve this Alliance. They will be your brothers-in-arms as much as any Mandalorian or Sith Lord.”
“Sith Lords never work together happily,” said Brant. “As for the Mandalorians…”
Kellaro was glaring at him. Brant subsided into silence, looked down at his helmet.
“I know it is difficult for you,” said Keel’ath. “The last time you laid eyes on me, you were only a boy, and you were taken from your mother without much explanation as to what was meant to be your future.”
Brant jerked his eyes up to the Commander. “What do you mean, ‘meant to be’? I wasn’t a fool, you know, when they came for me. I knew I would never see her again. She had given me up to be Sith.”
Keel’ath sighed, and Kellaro shifted uncomfortably, glancing at his father. “No,” said Keel’ath. “She gave you up because it was the law for any Force-sensitive child to be relinquished to the Sith, and they would have killed all three of you if she had disobeyed. She also thought you might have had a marginally better life that way, instead of nearly starving with her and Kellaro on Tatooine. If I had been around, things would have been different.”
“You’re saying she was not going to break the law unless you were there?” snapped Brant.
“She was breaking it already,” said Keel’ath flatly. “You had been marked since you three years old, child. They only came for you after I was put away and couldn’t stop them.”
Brant swallowed. “I… see. I didn’t know that.”
Keel’ath nodded, easing off. “We told neither of you, because we did not want to create strife between you. It is still a mystery to me, frankly. One twin senses the Force, but the other does not? Where in the galaxy has that ever happened before? Although I suppose the way you came into this world was not exactly normal, either…”
“I know,” said Brant. “You… you never wanted me. You only ever wanted Kellaro.”
Kellaro straightened at that. “That’s not true!” he cried. “Dad? Tell him that’s not true!”
Keel’ath shrugged. “Not exactly. Brant, Kellaro has heard all this, since he was old enough to understand by the time we found each other, after I escaped the carbonite.”
“Go on…” Brant crossed his arms.
“The two of you are not of my blood, or not fully so. I am too much of a machine now to father children, frankly. Some of your genes are mine, but most of you is out of Mako, an old strain of cloning experiments the SIS had been doing on her family long before I met her. Your lives were their gift to us, after some favors pulled and accounts settled.” He put a hand on Kellaro’s shoulder, then one on Brant’s knee, since Brant was sitting too high for the former. “It’s true we only meant to have one. The other — and we don’t know which one of you it was in truth — was a surprise, but no less a gift, the day you were born.”
The light was changing, dying as the sun slipped down behind the trees as a giant red orb. Brant couldn’t look directly at it without leaving a spot in his eyes, but he looked in its general direction, not wanting to see his father or brother’s expressions after this revelation.
Keel’ath kept speaking. “Though my connection to the Force is not what it once was, I truly believe this was meant to be. You were meant to be here, my son, a part of this family just as Kellaro is.”
Brant looked down at his hands. “Your connection to the Force, huh? So would you have trained me, if you hadn’t been captured?”
“Perhaps to begin with. I do not know exactly what I would have done once you entered adolescence, for your power would have far outstripped my own by then. Our family does have an old tradition of using the Force, but it is not the Jedi way or the Sith way. I do not like Jedi for various reasons, but if I had had to choose between those two orders, I would have rather you had been schooled in the Light Side, not the Dark.”
“But I wasn’t. I was made Sith, and that was what was meant to happen, or so you believe.”
Keel’ath shrugged. “What is more important now is what you do from here on out. Will you be part of this family and serve the Alliance? Or will you go back to the Sith? Mind you, Lana still does not know who attacked you or why you ended up in the carbonite. It could be whoever it is is still hunting you, hampered by the same defenses that hide us from the Eternal Empire.”
“Is that a threat against me leaving?”
Keel’ath shook his head. “Only to remind you that neither path is easy nor safe.”
They sat in silence, then. Kellaro picked up several pine needles from the ground and began braiding them together, and Brant turned his head to watch the last of the sunlight, reflected oddly against the cliff face through the water. Keel’ath sat straight and as unmoving as a stone, not speaking, letting them come to their own conclusions.
“My crew is likely dead,” said Brant finally. “And with the Emperor gone, there is no one I would serve among the Sith.” He bowed his head. “So… I will serve you… my lord.”
“Father or Commander will do, Brant. I have not been a lord in centuries.”
Kellaro looked up, faintly surprised, but Brant met his father’s eyes, blue on blue. “Then I lend my strength to yours, Father, so that we may become dominant in the Force.”
Kellaro winced, but Keel’ath held the gaze, slowly nodding. “I will accept that oath.”
Kellaro sighed, sitting back against a tree trunk. Keel’ath broke from Brant’s gaze, giving Kellaro another slap on the shoulder before standing up, slow, as if it hurt, and stretched his limbs one by one. “I expect you two to work together from now on,” he said. “Any more fighting and it will be treated as a disciplinary measure. Kellaro, he will be a part of your crew for now, as he learns the ropes. Treat him as you would any accompanying Jedi, for he will report directly to…” He paused, thinking. “…we’ll make it Senya. Brant, I expect you to make your first report to her within the week. I’m giving you some time off to fully recover, but I suggest you spend most of it training in the Enclave and getting to know your fellow Force-users. Kellaro will introduce you and show you to your new quarters.”
“Yes, sir,” the twins echoed, then they looked at each other. It wasn’t quite a glare, but it wasn’t entirely friendly, either. Keel’ath noted it, but he said nothing, as he began the walk back up to the Overlook and then back down into the base. Some things you couldn’t teach children, and they had to find out on their own; it seemed unity was one of them.