Saga - OT Meet the Aliit |OTP Country/City Mouse Challenge | Kaz/Wren

Title: Meet the Aliit
Author: Raissa Baiard
Characters: Wren Ordo (OC). Kazuda Xiono, Bellona Ordo (OC), Maximus Ordo (OC), Sabine Wren Ordo, Hamato Xiono, Suzume Xiono (OC), Hana Xiono (OC)
Genre: Humor, light romance
Canonicity: AU in the Marzra-verse continuity
Timeframe: OT, 28 ABY
Synopsis: Kazuda Xiono is the son of a wealthy senator from Hosnian Prime; Mandalorian Wren Ordo is the daughter of a clan leader living on the Outer Rim. The two clicked while they were on a mission with her Jedi cousin, Ronen, but will their differences keep them from becoming more than friends?

Thanks to @Findswoman for beta-reading


Kaz

The Auspicious, a SoroSuub Petite Opu-Yacht belonging to Senator Hamato Xiono of Hosnian Prime, looked decidedly out of place among the Aka’jor class shuttles and Kom’rk transports docked at the Candera Spaceport on the Mandalorian world of Ordo. While all MandalMotors’s ships were impeccably engineered, they had a certain martial practicality of design that contrasted with the sleekly rounded contours and ostentatious gold finish of the Opu-Yacht.

Inside, in the smallest of the ship’s three staterooms, Kazuda Xiono frowned at himself in the mirror. He folded the collar of his green nerf-hide racer’s jacket down, then flipped it back up, trying to decide which way said “dashing pilot” better. Up, he decided, was slightly more dashing. He wished his father had let him get a holster for the second-hand Blurrg holdout blaster that the Squib scavenger Humookanookoopwaha Flhaskhalhoosa found for him on Korriban—not just because he thought it would go a long way towards making him look dashing, but also because he wanted to show his friend Wren Ordo that he’d been keeping up with the marksmanship skills she taught him on Korriban.

But Father disapproved of weapons. He hadn’t even wanted Kaz to keep the blaster until Mother pointed out that it would be a point in Kaz’s favor if he already had some weapons training before he began at the New Republic Military Academy. Whereupon Father had reluctantly agreed, but sighed and harrumphed, insisting that Kaz had to keep it secured whenever it was in the house. Kaz supposed he understood that; he knew there was no point in protesting that when he’d been on Korriban, he’d kept the Blurrg hidden in his boot or his tunic (and that really had made him feel like a dangerous secret agent) and managed not to shoot himself or anyone else in the apartment.

Kaz was checking out his hair, resisting the temptation to run his fingers through it again, when the door to his cabin slid open and his sister, Hana, came in without waiting for an invitation.

“Aww, look at my little brother, getting himself all dressed up for his girlfriend,” she crooned in a sing-song voice. “Don’t worry, Kazuda. You look adorable as usual.” She smirked and patted him on the head, flattening his carefully styled sweep.

Kaz stifled a sigh. He didn’t want to be adorable. “Adorable” was for small, fuzzy baby animals, and that was definitely not the look he was going for here. Being cute and harmless seemed unlikely to impress a Mandalorian girl. He wanted to look daring, dashing… maybe even a little dangerous.

“She’s not… she’s not my girlfriend,” he informed Hana, as he fluffed his hair back into shape. Not officially or anything. Not yet. Kaz mentally crossed his fingers. He was pretty sure he hadn’t just imagined the sparks between him and Wren during their marksmanship lessons, and he thought something might have come of them except that their mission had ended before it could.

Before they’d gone back to their homeworlds, though, Wren had given him her comm frequency with firm instructions to “call me, ad’ika”. Kaz hadn’t been able to comm her nearly as much as he would have liked, and their calls always seemed a little awkward and way too short to say everything he wanted to.

But at least he was going to be able to see her again before he started basic training. Her family had invited his to visit them on Ordo, and somehow, even though the Mandalorian Sector wasn’t really on the way to Lothal, his father had agreed to stop there before taking Kaz to the Academy. Kaz thought Father’s acquiescence had a lot to do with the fact that Wren’s mother was a famous artist, so famous that even Hana—whose taste in art ran to cartoon pittins and mookas with enormous eyes—had a print of one of her paintings.

Hana ignored Kaz’s protests as usual. She tossed the holo-books that he’d been reading—The Total Nerf-herder’s Guide to Small Blasters and Conversational Mando’a for Beginners—onto the floor, made herself comfortable on his grav lounger, and gave him a once-over, eyes narrowed speculatively. “You know, you’ve been full of surprises lately, Kazuda. Running off to Korriban because you thought you could help on a Jedi mission, coming back with a Mandalorian girlfriend, switching your Academy application from Hosnian Prime to Lothal…”

She said “full of surprises” like it was a contagious disease, and Kaz couldn’t decide whether Hana was truly aghast at his unorthodox behavior or secretly delighted at the scandal of it all. He wondered if it made the gossip more or less interesting that he actually had helped Ronen on his mission, and had even gotten a couple letters of recommendation from Ronen, the Jedi Council, and General Hera Syndulla herself to add to his file at the Academy. “I told you, she’s not my…”

“Girlfriend. Right.” Hana leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, and smiled cattily. “Why else would you want to go to the Academy on some backrocket Outer Rim world instead of staying in the Core? A world where this what’s-her-name—Bird?—conveniently has family? She’ll probably be happy to have an excuse to visit them. Have you seen this place? Ugh, this planet is a dirtball! And this is the capital? It’s not even worth calling a city!”

“Her name is Wren. And I changed my application because Jedi Syndulla-Jarrus… wait—we’re docked? Already?!”

“Fifteen minutes ago. You must have had your head up in the clouds with your little Birdie if you didn’t...Kazuda! Where are you going?!” she called as he bolted out of the cabin.

Kaz didn’t bother to answer as he tore down the main corridor. The Ordo family would be here any minute and he had to catch GeeVee before they arrived. GV-5 was Father’s footman droid; he served as Hamato’s protocol droid, personal assistant, and bodyguard. And GeeVee would be greeting their visitors, performing his usual security protocols, which meant he’d be asking them…

“Will you please remove your weapons before entering?” came the impeccably modulated tones of the footman droid from the foyer.

That.

———

Wren

“You’re cooking dinner? Since when do you cook?” Bellona Ordo asked, peering over her younger sister’s shoulder at the simmering pot of tiingilar on the cooktop.

“I cook,” Wren informed her. And she could cook a lot better if Bellona would get out of the kitchen and mind her own business. It was a delicate operation to get the balance of spices in tiingilar right, so that none of them overpowered the others. Wren tasted the sauce. It needed more catabar and a hint more kessinnamon to act as counterpoints to the spicy pepper oil. She dashed a bit of each spice into the bubbling stew and sampled it again. Better, but it still needed something. Maybe a little durmic? Perfect! “I cooked all the time when we were on Korriban.” Maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but since the five of them had taken turns, she’d cooked at least once a week. She knew what she was doing, thanks, and she didn’t need any help from Bellona, even if her sister was the talented, creative one.

“Okay, but tiingilar? Don’t you think that’s a bit much for aruetiise?” Bellona crinkled her nose doubtfully, which of course made her look even more adorable. Bellona was also the pretty one, which hardly seemed fair to Wren. Shouldn’t there have been something left for her to claim besides just being the younger sister?

“No, I don’t,” Wren retorted. “This is just Mom’s Life Day recipe, and anyway, Kaz likes my tiingilar.” She couldn’t keep a hint of pride out of her voice, not just because he liked her cooking, but because she’d never seen anyone who wasn’t a Mandalorian pack away tiingilar like Kaz had, not even Uncle Zeb.

“Oh, he does, does he?” Bellona’s perfectly painted lips curved into a knowing smile.

Wren scowled into the stew pot and gave its contents a fierce stir. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Cooking dinner, freshly polished armor…” She tapped Wren’s left pauldron, which had indeed been polished—twice—that morning and buffed down until it was glossy. It would never be as shiny as Bellona’s electric blue beskar’gam, but that was because it had gotten some hard wear on Korriban. Bellona’s smile grew even more annoyingly mischievous. “I see where this is going!”

So what if it was? Bellona had had her share of friends, boyfriends and admirers. Why couldn’t Wren have one, too? (Even if she wasn’t exactly which category Kaz fell into right now. She knew which one she wanted it to be, though.) Wren clutched her spoon like a weapon, and was ready to snap off another retort when the kitchen door slid open.

“Bellona, stop teasing your sister.”

Sometimes it surprised Wren when Mom took her side. Everything about Sabine Wren Ordo, from her multi-colored hair (currently pink-violet with a few purple and teal streaks) to her custom painted beskar’gam (still sporting the phoenix-starbird logo she’d created for the Spectres), said “artist”, and everything about Bellona said “I’m just like Mom”. Meanwhile, everything about Wren said…blah, but at least she’d inherited her mother’s ability to make tiingilar. Mom wafted the scent to her nose and inhaled deeply, then took a spoonful from the pot and savored it, all with the same considering expression that she wore when assessing her latest painting. “Mmmm.” She nodded approvingly. “Turn the heat down and let it simmer. It should be just right by the time we get back.”

“We’re leaving? Right now?” Wren’s stomach lurched. She wasn’t ready yet! She had to check her beskar’gam and make sure Bellona hadn’t smudged it up. To check her hair—not that it did anything other than what it felt like doing, but she ought to make sure it looked sort of good, at least. She needed to make sure the uj’alayi had enough syrup. That the parwan flatcakes weren’t getting too hard in the warmer. She needed to…

“Come on; your dad’s pulling the speeder around.” Mom smiled and laid a hand on her shoulder and steered her toward the door. She kissed the top of Wren’s head, and whispered, “Don’t worry. You and Kaz fought together on Korriban; you’re ori’vode now. You can do this.”

Wren nodded and drew herself up. She was a Mandalorian, an Ordo, and she would not shame her clan by acting like some timid little pittin because she was nervous over a guy. She’d done her best with the dinner preparations; fussing over them now wouldn’t accomplish anything. But she still glanced at herself in the mirror by the door and tried to smooth it into some sort of order before she climbed into the speeder.

The trip to Candera seemed both longer and shorter than usual. On the one hand, staring out the window at the rolling fields of meal grain and bas nera gave Wren time to think about what her mother had said. Mom was right; after everything that had happened on Korriban she and Kaz were definitely ori’vode—true comrades, the best of friends—and nothing could change that. So why was she getting so worked up about seeing him again? And she realized that it wasn’t the thought of seeing Kaz that was making her nervous—or at least not just the thought of seeing him. It was the fact that his stuffy senator dad and her famous artist mom and her too-perfect older sister and everyone were going to be there watching them, and the last thing she needed was an audience while she was trying to figure out how to move from ori’vode to ori’shya vode—more than friends—with Kaz.

But it seemed like no sooner had she decided this than they pulled up to the spaceport. Wren tried to avoid meeting Bellona’s twinkling eyes and gleeful smirk as they headed to Docking Bay Number Two (Bay One was permanently reserved for the Ordos’ shuttle, the Phoenix). Her dad let out a low whistle at the sight of the ship there, though Wren thought it looked like nothing so much as a big, gold bar of soap. “A SoroSuub Opu-yacht—there’s some serious credits here,” he remarked, tapping the flashy hull as he made his way up the gangway.

Behind him, Mom frowned a bit. “Max, it’s not polite to comment on how much things cost.“ Wren thought that was kind of silly, because no one had a ship like that unless they wanted people to notice how much it cost, and from way Dad crooked an eyebrow at Mom, it seemed he agreed.

Before things could turn into a debate on etiquette and protocol, the ship’s hatch opened with a quiet whoosh. A sleek droid whose burnished bronzium skin rivaled the ship’s exterior for metallic ostentation stepped forward with a punctilious little half bow.

“Greetings, honored guests,” he intoned with a cultured Core accent. “I am GeeVee-Five, personal assistant to Senator Hamato Xiono, and I welcome you on his behalf. Please come in.”

As the droid gestured for them to enter, Wren noticed two things. First, all of his joints were fully articulated—elbows, wrists, even fingers—and a droid with that level of sophistication probably cost more than their family’s speeder. The second was that although he looked like an ordinary protocol droid, there were some sort of blasters built into its forearms—tastefully camouflaged, of course, but there if you knew what you were looking for, and that was definitely not standard for a protocol droid.

When she stepped into the foyer on the other side of the hatch, Wren felt like she’d walked into the lobby of some swanky hotel on Coruscant. The walls of the semicircular chamber were paneled in some rich, dark wood with bronzium trim that matched GeeVee-Five’s coloring. No doubt Mom and Bellona were admiring the artistic-ness of it all, but all Wren could think was how could Kaz—her Kaz, who’d lived in a junk-filled apartment on the bad side of Dreshdae and worn whatever pieces of second-hand clothing he could find in the pitiful marketplace for weeks without a word of complaint—how could he come from someplace like this?

She was so lost in thought that she nearly missed it when the unctuous protocol/bodyguard droid said something really unthinkable: “Will you please remove your weapons before entering?”
--------
Notes:
MandalMotors; the names Aka’jor and Kom’rk translate as “mission carrier” and “gauntlet”

Kaz’s family, other than his father, are my creation, though he does mention his mother and “the rest of the family”. And though we never get to see his home, Agent Tierney tells Tam Ryvora that Kaz comes from “one of the wealthiest families on Hosnian Prime”.

While there is a Mandalorian world called Ordo, there’s very little information about it, so I named its capital city after its most famous son, Mand’alor the Preserver, Canderous Ordo.

Kessinnamon, catabar and durmic are all cooking spices in the GFFA.

 

Loved the contrasting family interactions but reciprocal anticipation+nervousness because nopers, Wren is not his girlfriend -- not for lack of wishing. Happy to see this post-Korriban situation - gives me a strong sense of relief that they came out unscathed although I know the mission will unfold with lots of

 

Aww, well, thanks! I’m glad you’re enjoying the story so far, and glad that you like Wren and Kaz together. They’ve kind of taken over; Wren feels that every challenge prompt needs to involve her, and she’s bringing Kaz with her wherever she goes! Part of what makes them fun are those differences between them—their families, their lifestyles. The Xiono’s yacht is indeed done in Art Deco style (or more specifically, a subset of it called Streamline Moderne. So if you imagine it looking like something out of a 1930’s film, with lots of chrome and chunky curves, that’s pretty much spot on. And yes, aesthetics are probably the least of the differences; Senator Xiono takes his security a little seriously—which makes a lot more sense on Hosnian Prime or Coruscant than it does on a casual visit to the Outer Rim

Older sisters can be so much fun! The sisters themselves are a little bit different in their teasing; there’s a certain warmth to Bellona’s knowing smiles that’s absent from Hana’s “OMF, you’re interested in a Mando?!” comments. Wren doesn’t see it, because at least in her mind, everyone, including her family, compares her to Bellona and finds her wanting. She doesn’t realize how much she’s like Sabine, who had a definite dramatic streak at Wren’s age, and who, as you point out, also had her uncertainties figuring out how to deal with matters of the heart. The prospect of having the whole family present for their reunion has to be a little daunting for both teens.

I found a recipe for tiingilar in the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge cookbook, and it is delicious, sort of a curry, though I admit, I cut down on the spices. Mine is probably even milder than Sabine’s aruetii version (but hey, my kid eats it, so I’ll that that over Mando purity)

And thank you so much for your encouragement on this story and your enthusiasm for Wren and Kaz

Yep, though their families and environments are different, their feelings are the same. Nope, not his girlfriend—and not for lack of wishing on either of their parts! You knew I wouldn’t let anything too horrible happen to Ro and his team —though there’s still plenty of action to come!

 

Thanks to @Findswoman for encouragement and beta-reading
———
Part 2

Wren

Remove their weapons?

While it wasn’t quite sacrilegious to ask a Mando to give up their weapons, it was pretty karking rude—something that no one who knew the first thing about Mandalorian culture would do. Resol’nare, the central tenets of Mandalorian life, dictated that they defend themselves, their clan, and the Mand’alor at all times. And though it wasn’t like Wren thought they would need to defend themselves from Kaz’s family (she doubted that even the droid with his hidden weaponry was a match for a Mando), it just felt wrong to hand over her WESTARs to the Senator’s glossily smarmy mechanical assistant.

The door on the opposite side of the foyer swished open, and Kaz skidded into the room and crashed into GeeVee-Five. The droid’s optical sensors momentarily flickered from blue-white to a petulant shade of yellow, and he made a tsking sound somewhere in the depths of his vocabulator. but Kaz seemed not to notice—or maybe just didn’t mind. He patted the droid on the shoulder, even though he’d been the one who’d nearly been knocked off his feet, and grinned as he stepped around him. “Hey, Wren! Um, wait… I mean...soo COO-ee gar!”

“Su’cuy gar!” Wren felt her own lips tug up into an answering grin. She’d forgotten how infectious his smile was, the way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled, how good that green leather racer’s jacket looked on him (it fit him so much better than the cast-offs he’d worn on Korriban). She struggled to keep her expression within acceptably friendly parameters instead of letting it go full-on gallaze-eyed moony idiot the way it wanted to. Wren was not about to give Bellona the satisfaction of seeing her act like a total moof-milker, not when her sister was already wearing an “aww-isn ’t-that-sweet” smirk. And, secretly, Wren thought that even though his accent was a little off—okay, pretty bad—it really was kind of sweet that Kaz had learned a little Mando’a for them. (For her? A girl could hope, right?)

“So, um, I’ll take it from here,” Kaz told the protocol droid, holding one hand out to Wren and gesturing back towards the door with the other. “Come on in; I’ll show you around.

GeeVee’s eyes flashed again, this time a warning orange. “I’m sorry, Master Kazuda,” he said, and though his words were polite, there was a ring of durasteel to them. “But they have not removed their weapons yet.” GeeVee stepped back in front of Kaz and spread his hands, a move which, probably not coincidentally, revealed the blasters built into his forearms. “I must insist…”

Kaz maneuvered his way around GeeVee. “Aw, c’mon, GeeVee… That’s not really necessary. They’re our friends; they’re not going to…”

“Senator Xiono’s orders regarding the security of this vessel are quite specific,” the droid’s tone and the flat red light in its eyes were distinctly cold now. “And they may not be altered by a junior member of the household.”


Kaz flushed slightly and Wren’s fingers twitched towards her basters. She itched to pull them, but shooting a senator’s bodyguard droid, no matter how insolent it was, was likely to lead to a Diplomatic Incident and she wouldn’t do that to Kaz. So—emotions but peace, or whatever that Jedi mantra that Ronen always quoted was. Wren took a deep breath that was not quite as calming as would have liked and reached for her WESTARs, not to shoot the droid but to surrender them to him.

The foyer door swished open again, and Suzume Xiono glided in. Kaz’s mother was a tall, willowy woman. Her lustrous dark hair was done up in an intricate coiffure with strings of golden beads looped in among her tresses, and she wore a soft, fluttery gray dress with pale flowers on it. “Don’t be pedantic, GeeVee,” she told the droid, tapping his chest plate with one finger, her perfectly lacquered fingernail clicking against it. “Kazuda’s right—the Ordos are our guests, not some random visitors, and we owe them our hospitality.” Her lips curved up into what might almost have been a playful smile.”I hope I have enough seniority to override Hamato’s protocol.”

“Of course, Mistress Suzume.” GeeVee gave her a somewhat perfunctory half-bow, and Wren thought he sounded rather sulky that Mistress Xiono had spoiled the fun of relieving them of their blasters.

Suzume dismissed him with a small wave of her hand, and turned her attention to her guests with a brilliant smile. “Sabine, Maximus—so good to see you again!” she said, clasping each of their hands in turn. “And it’s wonderful to see you, too, Wren; we’ve heard so much about you!.”

Wren felt a slow flush of heat warm her cheeks. They’d heard a lot about her—which meant Kaz had told them a lot about her. Which was good, right? Because they were ori’vode and he would have told them—what? That she’d taught him how to shoot? That they were friends? That he liked her? That she was—okay, not pretty, but brave, maybe? Brave would be good. She’d take brave. Or fierce. Or cool. Or even just nice, bland aruetii word that it was. She ventured a glance at Kaz from the corner of her eye, to find that he was sneaking a look at her, too. He started, his cheeks turning a shade brighter crimson when he realized she’d caught him looking, and he hastily glanced away. From the faint sororal snicker behind her, Wren was afraid her face was just as red.

Busy pondering all the possible things, from the innocuous to the mortifying, that Kaz might have told his family, Wren only half-listened as Mom told Suzume how happy they were to see her again, and introduced Bellona. The round of nice-to-meet-yous were followed by the inevitable oohs and aahs over Bellona’s jewelry and her flashy electric blue beskar’gam. And finally Suzume invited them for some “light refreshments”—whatever that meant—before dinner.

The feeling of being in a luxury hotel continued in the yacht’s main corridor. The walls were paneled in the same rich wood and bronzium trim. The passage was lit by frosted transparisteel scones and there was real, honest-to-goodness carpeting on the floor, plush enough that the heels of Wren’s boots sank into it. She was glad she’d spent the extra time polishing her beskar’gam (and wished she’d spent more time on her boots, because the Force knew what kind of dirt she was tracking on this expensive carpet). She lagged behind the rest of her family. Even with her armor double-polished and as shiny as she could possibly get it, Wren felt small, grubby and plain amid all this grandeur—and this was just the hallway.

Kaz looked back to see her lingering, and slowed his pace to fall in step beside her. His shoulder brushed against hers even though the corridor wasn’t particularly narrow. “Hey, I’m...um, I’m sorry about that whole ‘remove your weapons’ thing.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “Father’s kind of...strict about security sometimes.”

“No problem,” Wren answered, shrugging a little. She supposed “strict” was one word for it. “Paranoid” and “overbearing” would work, too. She didn’t know what Hamato Xiono thought he had to worry about; her parents were both decorated heroes of the Rebellion and it wasn’t like anyone else on Ordo knew, much less cared, that the senator from Hosnian Prime was here. But Xiono struck her as a bit of an ori’jagyc, the kind of person who wasn’t just convinced of his own importance, but had to convince you as well. Kaz must have taken after his mother, who seemed pretty much like a normal mom, despite the fanciful hairdo and fluttery dress.

“And here we are,” Suzume said as the ornate wood-and-bronzium latticed door at the end of the hall slid open. “Please come in and make yourself comfortable; GeeVee will be along with the refreshments shortly.” She waved them inside.

Whoever had designed the Auspicious’s common area had gone to great lengths to keep it from looking like a ship’s common room. There were no communication arrays or instrument panels; those were apparently not something any of the Xionos needed to concern themselves with. Instead of the usual dejarik table and jump couch, there was a low, circular caf table of bronzium and transparisteel and an overstuffed sofa upholstered in rich, dark red velvoid. A thickset, middle-aged man wearing a dark blue tunic with burgundy over tunic edged in gold sat at one end of it. “You remember Hamato,” Suzume said, taking a seat next to him. “And this is our daughter, Hana.”

The young woman seated at the other end of the sofa rose. Her pouty lips were bismuth pink and three, tiny, glittery pink ovals were stenciled beneath each eye. Her glossy black hair fell past her shoulders, and her bangs had, bizarrely enough, been cut on a sharp diagonal from mid-forehead on the right side to ear-length on the left. And her dress—wayii, her dress! The high-waisted top was the same nauseating pink as her lipstick, the short skirt was sky-blue with embroidered, heart-shaped pockets, and smack in the middle of her chest, as if it was her personal sigil, was the image of a holo-toon pittin with impossibly large eyes. Wren wondered for a moment if Hana had mistakenly bought a dress intended for a much younger girl, but except for the ridiculously short skirt, it wasn’t actually too small. Was this sort of impractical...floof really what girls wore in the Core worlds?

Her eyes lit up as they fell on Bellona. “Oooh!” she squealed. “I love your…” she waved her hands in a vague fluttering gesture that encompassed her beskar’gam from pauldrons to ankle guards. “You’re Bird, right? I have to say, you’re not at all what I expected when I heard Kazuda’s girlfr—”

“Ah, ha ha... Actually…” Kaz broke in with a desperate little chuckle. “Actually, Hana, this... this is Wren.” He laid a hand on her left pauldron and drew her forward.

“Oh. Well.” Hana’s eyes flicked over Wren, and from the look that she gave her, Wren figured that a.) she was exactly what Hana had expected, and b.) that wasn’t really a compliment.

Bellona stepped into the strained silence.” I’m Wren’s sister, Bellona,” she said, offering her hand to the other girl. “Nice to meet you.”

Hana glanced between them, then looked back at Wren quizzically. “So how come your...armor isn’t pretty like hers?”

For a second Wren wished that GeeVee had taken her blasters, because then she wouldn’t be itching to pull them and shove them up Hana’s nose. Did every single person she met have to compare her to her older sister? She got it; she really did. Bellona was pretty and fabulous and glamorous and all the things that Wren wasn’t and would never be. She didn’t need the reminder, thanks, especially not today and not in front of Kaz.

“Every Mandalorian’s beskar’gam is different,” she explained before Bellona could take it upon herself to launch into a discourse on the art of beskar’gam, complete with the meaning of sigils and color symbolism. “It’s a reflection of who we are. I like mine like this. You don’t need to be pretty in combat.” Hana looked faintly nauseated at the word “combat”, but what exactly did she think armor was for? No matter if it was sparkly and electric blue like Bellona’s or plain brown like hers, beskar’gam was there to protect you. And in that respect, Wren’s functioned very well. It had saved her more than once on Korriban.

“I like it, too; It, um, it suits you,” Kaz offered before his sister could comment.

There was a small, diffident noise—the electronic simulation of someone politely clearing their throat—as GeeVee approached bearing a large tray of appetizers and a stack of delicate plates. The droid, now apparently a model domestic servant since he was no longer trying to separate perfectly respectable Mandos from their blasters, set his tray down on the caf table with a bow.

“Ooh, hey—thanks, GeeVee!” Kaz, predictably, was the first to dig in. He started loading up a plate, then paused, put several pieces on another plate and handed it to Wren with a smile.

She took it with a little thrill of pleasure (So thoughtful! So gentlemanly!) that was short-lived when she saw what was on it.

Sulyet.

Wren had only had the little bits of raw fish rolled up with tikit grain and seaweed once before, when Senator Xiono had dragged her and Ronen to lunch before they’d left Garel for Korriban aboard his freighter. She hadn’t been impressed with it. In her opinion, the only reason you should ever eat raw fish and seaweed was if you were stuck on a primitive planet with no survival gear and the only alternative was starvation. And then only until you could make a decent fire starter. Each tiny morsel of sulyet was barely a mouthful, and it didn’t even look like food, really. Food wasn’t meant to be geometrically precise and artistically designed. It was supposed to taste good and be filling.

“May I get you any beverages, sir, misses?”

Kaz stopped stacking sulyet on his own plate. “I’ll have a blurrgfire, GeeVee. Wait, make it two—right, Wren?”

“Oh no!” Hana wailed. “Don’t tell me Kazuda’s got you drinking those disgusting things, too! Get her a cliff dweller instead.” She patted Wren’s hand as if she was a small child. “Trust me, you’ll thank me for this!”

Part of Wren wanted to inform Mistress Pink Pittin that she was capable of ordering her own drink and she rather liked blurrgfires, thanks, while part of her warned that maybe she shouldn’t offend Kaz’s sister over something as insignificant as a drink. Which was probably the part of her that had actually listened to Ronen the Responsible Jedi (and she had, no matter what he thought). In this case, she decided it was probably right. No sense in making enemies if she didn’t have to. Emotion yet whatever… Now if she could only find a way to get rid of the sulyet—

GeeVee interrupted her thoughts with another oh-so-polite simulated cough.”Your drink, miss.” He handed her a glass.

The liquid was pink, and garnished with something that looked like a small tree, except that it was also, inexplicably, pink. Wren frowned, wondering if she was supposed to take the mini-sapling out of her drink or just drink around it. Finally, she nudged it aside and took a tentative sip.

It was sweet. And creamy and fruity. And really sweet. And fizzy, and did she mention sweet? Why wasn’t she surprised that this was the kind of thing that Hana, with her too-cute, violently pink, big-eyed cartoon pittin dress, liked? She noticed Hana watching and faked a smile. Her “mmm!” lacked any real conviction, but Hana gave her a self-satisfied Loth-cat smile and went back to discussing jewelry with Bellona.

Wren sank down onto the overstuffed sofa and set her plate and drink on the caf table, pushing the pink concoction as far away from her as she could. She was not going to risk spilling the stuff on the red crushed-velvoid upholstery. And she was definitely not going to drink it. She’d be buzzing like a humming peeper if she drank something with that much sugar in it...if she didn’t lose her lunch first.

She stuffed down a very un-Mandalorian sigh. What was she doing here? She didn’t belong in this swanky penthouse of a spaceship, nibbling raw fish and sipping cloying drinks. Bellona and Hana were chatting easily. Her mother, Suzume and Senator Xiono were having a discussion, probably about art. Dad wasn’t saying much, but he looked relaxed. So what was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she be more like Mom and Bellona—beautiful, poised and perfect? Why was she such a besom at stuff like this? She was going to mess up and shame her clan somehow, she just knew it. And even worse, Kaz would be there to see it, and he’d know what a clod she really was.

The sofa’s plush velvoid cushion shifted as Kaz sat down next to her, a plate laden with sulyet in one hand and a dark crimson blurrgfire in the other. “Hey, are you okay?” he asked, frowning. “You haven’t touched your sulyet.”

“I… I’m saving room for dinner.” There, that was one of those “acceptable in polite society” kind of lies, wasn’t it? Maybe she’d learned something about diplomacy from her Jedi cousins after all. She forced a smile onto her face, and nudged Kaz with her shoulder. “And don’t you fill up on this stuff, either. I made tiingilar, and I’m counting on you eating at least three servings like last time.”

“Tiingilar? Awesome!” he exclaimed around a mouthful of sulyet. “I kind of missed your tiingilar. You know, it’s crazy but...I miss our apartment on Korriban sometimes. Being part of our team—Ro, Noemi, Humoo…” Kaz leaned a little closer to her, tipping his head towards hers. “But I… I missed you most of all, Wren.”

Her heart thudded hard. This, it seemed to say. This is why you’re here. Because whatever fancy trappings were around him, Kaz was still Kaz. Her ori’vod, the one she’d lived with and worked with, fought with and fought for on Korriban. He hadn’t changed in the time they’d been apart.

She let her hand stray towards his. “I missed you, too.”
—————

Notes:
Kaz and Wren’s drinks are among those served at Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge (“Star Wars Land”). A blurrgfire is lemonade, pomegranate juice, and habanero-lime juice, while the cliff dweller contains citrus juices, coconut cream, hibiscus-grenadine, and Ginger Ale.

 

Wren's opinions of the family yacht and Kaz's sister had me chuckling. Hanna, Wren believes, is just like everyone else an unabashed Bellona fan.

Kaz is such a darling making sure she's not feeling discombobulated by the whole atmosphere. She is relieved he hasn't changed, has never become full of himself.

 

gg

 

So, hooray! I finally finished this story, thanks to @Findswoman 's WIP Month Challenge! The final chapter is incoming, but first to catch up on some long delayed responses!

Wren has definite opinions Kaz's family and their ultra-luxury ship are so far from what Wren is used to, how could she not feel a little out of place? Bellona, with her eye for design and flair for fashion, is more Hana's type. Wren's not entirely wrong to feel a bit shut out by her, though of course not everyone loves Bellona best--Kaz, for instance. He does pick up on Wren's unease and tries to help her feel more at home; he is the same caring friend she knew on Korriban.

Yep, Suzume is one of the good ones; she's sort of the level-headed counterbalance to her husband's bombast. I see her as the kind of person who knows all the correct etiquette, but cares more about putting her guests at ease than following all the forms. Hana, on the other hand...yes, she's got some of her father's ori'jagyc-ness More than a little, I'd say. And thank you, I'm glad that you enjoyed all the details; researching the decor gave me a chance to look at some fantastic 1930s Streamline Moderna art and architecture. The clothing, particularly Hana's dress and Suzume's hairstyle, owe a lot to the Sim versions of the Xiono family that I created. (I love making Sims of my characters; it really is a great way to visualize them). And you're right that Wren is not nearly as much of a besom as she thinks she is, but she's at that age where she doesn't yet feel confident in herself and it's hard to see her own good qualities, even when others do.

Oh, I had to give them some time together I'm not quite as opposed to sushi as Wren, though I will never chow down on it like Kaz (ok, nobody chows on it like him!) Kaz really does have a good heart; he may be awkward in a lot of ways, but he is a good person who cares deeply about others. And you can see Kaz's reaction to Mando culture coming right up!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it--as a former librarian, I do enjoy digging into the research and finding cool details on the Wook or other sources, and Mandalorian culture is one of the most fully realized in the GFFA, so I particularly enjoy researching it. Yep, Kaz and Wren both have the same anxieties--and hopes--as the other; teenage insecurities over "does the person I like like me?" being pretty much universal Thanks for reading!

 

Thanks to @Findswoman for beta reading


Part 3
Kaz

Kaz ate when he was nervous.

Which was not to say that he didn’t eat when he wasn’t nervous, but when he was he really couldn’t help himself. So even though he’d meant to lay off the sulyet after Wren told him she’d made tiingilar for dinner, somehow he managed to consume half the platter by the time they left for the Ordos’ house.

The Ordos’ speeder was a bulky, boxy blaster-metal gray behemoth the size of a hover-truck, which rather surprised Kaz. MandalMotors produced some the Galaxy’s finest high-end performance speeders, and while admittedly, Kaz still didn’t understand the hierarchy of clans and houses within Mandalorian culture (even after reading the pertinent chapter of the Lonely Galaxy Guide to the Mandalore System and Its Worlds twice), he understood that being head of Clan Ordo made Wren’s dad...something pretty important. And he would have thought that someone who held that much prestige would have been driving a LUX-7 or a Shatual class speeder, not something that looked like a giant crate on repulsors.

“Is that a troop transport?” Hana asked in a stage whisper that was more stage than whisper.

“Close—it’s a MandalMotors Ori’tsad,” Maximus Ordo replied with a chuckle, having heard Hana’s impertinent aside, as he’d no doubt been meant to. He thumped the vehicle’s side affectionately and opened the side access panel with a sweeping gesture of one gauntleted hand. ”Built on a transport base, but now the speeder of choice for families who need to take three kids and an e-web repeating blaster to mesh’geroya practice.”

Inside the speeder’s cavernous hold were three rows of bench seats, the kind that could be folded down to make room for cargo, plus a generous baggage compartment that was currently half stacked with various boxes, containers and satchels. Kaz slid into the back row, hoping if he and Wren sat there, they’d have a few minutes away from his sister’s smirks and his father’s constant sharp-eyed appraisals. Wren was so lucky that her family was normal— other than the armor and all the weapons, and all that. And...“Wait… You’d take an e-web to sports practice?”

“Depends on what clan the referee is from, Maximus answered with a disconcerting grin.

“He’s… he’s, uh, kidding, right?” Kaz asked Wren as she slid into the speeder next to him.

She considered it. “Mostly. I think he’d make an exception for Clan Saxon, though.”

“Oh…” Kaz gulped. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Wren’s father. The first time they’d met on Lothal after he and Wren had returned from their mission with Ronen, Noemi and Humoo, Maximus had thumped Kaz on the shoulder so hard Kaz thought it was some sort of Mando martial arts move until he noticed that he did the same thing to Ronen and Noemi, who both seemed totally unfazed by it (“Hey, Uncle Max…”). So though Maximus seemed friendly enough in a weird Mandalorian kind of way, there was still something about him. Maybe it was the fact that his nose was crooked and there was a scar over his right eye. Or the way his thick, heavy armor plates gave him a sort of old-school, barbarian vibe. Like, he could easily dispatch you with any of a dozen weapons, but he’d be just as happy to do it with his bare hands.

All those jokes about overprotective dads pulling blasters on their daughter’s boyfriend (Sort of boyfriend? Maybe boyfriend? Hopefully?) seemed particularly un-funny when the dad in question had three blasters holstered on his belt and a long knife strapped to his boot. And the jokes were even less funny when your prospective girlfriend’s mother and sister were similarly armed. (Wren was armed too, of course, but Kaz figured she’d already have shot him by now, if she were so inclined.)

Once everyone had piled into the speeder—Kaz and Wren in the back, the older sisters in the middle row, the mothers up front, and Father sitting next to Maximus in the driver’s cockpit— Maximus took them on a tour of Candera.

As a planetary capital, Candera was quaint and rustic when judged by Coreworld standards. It wasn’t even as large as some of the smaller neighborhoods of the world-spanning ecumenopolises on Coruscant and Hosnian Prime. Candera’s buildings were predominantly constructed of red-gold stone, rough-hewn and weathered with age. Most were no more than four or five stories tall, and they were arranged in orderly, regimented blocks. Without the towering transparisteel skyscrapers of Coruscant or the sweeping pourstone facades of Hosnian Prime, Candera had a curiously open feel to Kaz, even in the busiest sectors.

Kaz listened to Wren’s running commentary as her father pointed out the city’s points of interests: the capitol building (“Most boring field trip ever”), the Candera Center for the Arts (“Mom’s pet project—it’s got the largest collection of her work in one place anywhere in the Galaxy”), the Archaic Arsenal (“Now that’s a museum! They even have the rally master’s lance from Mand’alor the Preserver’s Onderon campaign!”) and Clan Ordo’s netra’gal brewery (“Whatever Clans Rook and Kast say, ours is the best ale in the system.”).

Beyond Candera, the road narrowed and wound its lazy way through fields of a golden grain that Maximus called bas’neral. The grain rippled in the evening breeze and even though the scenery was the same klick after klick, Kaz found the way the land just rolled on and on and on strangely attractive. He’d never seen this much open land—this much open sky—-anywhere before. You could get lost out there in all those fields with only the odd stand of trees as landmarks.

The fields gave way to shaggy, tufty prairie grass which subtly transformed into a wide, rolling lawn dotted with ornamental tufts of the same shaggy grass clustered around small outcroppings of red-gold rocks with boulders ranging from tooka-sized to the size of a small eopie. The road meandered past them and up to a sprawling stone house.

“This is Clan Ordo’s Stronghold,” Wren said, an unmistakable note of pride in her voice.

“Wow…” When Wren had mentioned the Clan Ordo Stronghold before, Kaz had pictured a kind of anachronistic fortress, some looming edifice complete with guard towers moats--the whole bit. However, the actual house wasn’t that much bigger than a moderately large villa on Hosnian Prime. Some of Father’s business and political associates’ homes were enormous showplaces with sleek, curved duracrete walls and floor-to-ceiling transparisteel windows set off with gleaming chrome accents. But the Ordo Stronghold, with its thick walls, made of the same red-gold stone that had predominated in Candera, and its low, sloping tiled roof had strong vertical and horizontal lines that gave it a feeling of solidity and permanence. “Stronghold” seemed a good name for it after all, Kaz reflected as he climbed out of the Ori’tsad behind Wren

He followed her and the rest of their families up the colonnaded walkway and through the massive arched entry and its door of dark, heavy polished wood. Inside, the walls were plaster, trimmed with the same dark wood. The late afternoon sunlight filtered in through tall, narrow stained glass windows with green and gold parallelograms in an abstract design that suggested ears of grain. The same geometric patterns were repeated in the carpet that ran the length of a very long hallway.

Kaz felt as if he’d stepped into the Coruscant Museum of History’s Old Republic wing. Swords, spears and various other pointy implements that he assumed were archaic Mando weapons hung on the walls, interspersed with portraits of Ordo ancestors, always in beskar’gam, sometimes helmeted, too. He only half listened as Maximus explained the historical significance of this or that weapon and Sabine pointed out the artistic merits of the portraits. He was more concerned with practical matters: was he walking too close to Wren? Not close enough? If he brushed her hand ever-so-slightly with his, would she pull away? Would she let him hold her hand? Was he going to trip on this nice and obviously very expensive rug—and how stupid would he look if he did?

He was so preoccupied with these pressing issues that he very nearly ran into Hana when the group stopped at the end of the hall and Wren’s mother said, “Here we are; sit anywhere you like. Wren and I will have dinner out in just a few minutes.” She ushered her guests into a dining room whose size and barrel-vaulted ceiling would have made it an excellent hangar for an X-wing or other small craft. The table was big enough to seat an entire squadron; the Ordos and Xionos barely took up half the available seats.

Kaz slid into the tall, straight backed chair next to his mother’s and across from Hana’s. It wasn’t quite uncomfortable, but it definitely enforced good posture, and while he was tall—a bit over two meters—the chair’s slatted back loomed behind him. It was nothing like the curving, low backed chairs with their plush nerf-suede cushions in their dining room at home on Hosnian Prime. Nothing about the Ordos’ home, with its rigid geometric lines and weapons-as-decor aesthetic, was anything like what he was used to. He squirmed a little in seat, trying to find a marginally less awkward position. A girl like Wren had to have her pick of awesome Mando guys who could shoot a flea off a gundark from fifty meters. Why would she ever want some pathetic Coreworld guy who was so soft he couldn’t handle Mandalorian furniture? Kaz slumped a bit and swallowed a sigh. Somehow the differences between Hosnian Prime and Ordo had seemed a lot less significant when he and Wren were living on Korriban in the tiny apartment with its mismatched furnishings.

And then dinner was served, and the aroma of tiingilar drove all the self-pitying thoughts from Kaz’s mind.

“Please help yourself,” Sabine told them as she and Wren set out plates of flatbread, bowls of steamed grain and the centerpiece, an enormous stoneware casserole dish of tiingilar. “Wren has been cooking all day.”

“Really? How thoughtful of you, Wren! I can’t wait to try it!” Suzume said, beaming, and Hamato gave a nod of approval at this seemingly unexpected show of domesticity. His parents might have been surprised that an armor-clad Mando girl who excelled at demolitions and marksmanship could also cook, but Kaz knew better. They’d all taken turns cooking on Korriban, and while Kaz felt his stir-fried noodles and veg-pro had been a respectable offering, Wren’s tiingilar had been awesome—the perfect balance of savory and spicy, with just a hint of sweetness, the exact ratio of meat to vegetable to sauce… His mouth was watering by the time the serving dish made its way to him; he hoped he wasn’t actually drooling as he ladled a large serving onto his plate.

Kaz took a bite and was instantly transported in rapture. “Oh yeah, this…” he said, his mouth still half full of stew. “This is…” No, words couldn’t describe how good Wren’s tiingilar was. Sheer culinary bliss. He took another hearty mouthful.

And then he realized that he was the only member of his family who seemed to be enjoying it. Mother was nibbling around the edges of her tiingilar, eating mostly flatbread and grains. Father’s face was slightly flushed; he coughed into his napkin several times. Hana chugged her water, gulping down the last of it with a gasp.

Wren had noticed, too. She was pushing her own food miserably around her plate with an expression that suggested the addition of live grenades would actually improve this dinner party. “I guess I should have warned you that my family doesn’t like spicy food as much as I do,” he said. “Which is too bad, because this is incredible. More for us, right?” Kaz reached over and squeezed her hand. Was that too forward? Maybe, but Wren really looked like she could use some encouragement right now. He’d worry about Hana’s etiquette lectures later.

“Right.” She gave him a little half-smile and squeezed his hand back.

“So, Bird…” Hana began, once she’d stopped panting and her face had returned almost to its usual color.

“Wren…” Kaz reminded her under his breath.

“Yes, of course, Wren,” Hana replied, with a hint of don’t correct me, little brother in her voice. “Your mother paints and Bellona makes jewelry. What kind of art do you make?”

Kaz winced. Hana didn’t know it, of course, but she’d picked probably the worst conversational opener she could have chosen. When they’d been on Korriban, Wren had confided in him that she hated how everyone assumed she was artistic “when I couldn’t draw a stick figure if the entire Mandalore System depended on it,” and even more than that, she hated being compared to her older sister (a feeling he could relate to, since he couldn’t seem to do anything right next to Hana, at least in their father’s eyes).

“I don’t do art,” Wren answered stiffly, spearing a chunk of topato from her tiingilar so hard Kaz wondered if she was imagining that it was Hana. “That whole...art thing sort of skipped me.”

“Oh. What do you do then?” Hana nudged at her tiingilar with a piece of flatbread. “Besides cooking.”

Wren’s fingers spasmed around her fork and she stabbed another topato; neither it nor its fellow already impaled on the tines would be going anywhere anytime soon. “I play mesh’geroya—limmie,” she clarified at Hana’s blank look. “And get’shuk. And I train for the marksmanship competitions at the Clan Meet on Mandalore next year. Mom and Dad both hold records in the 25 meter blaster pistol; I want to be able to match them.”

“That’s...interesting,” Hana repeated, and here “interesting” clearly meant “completely unfathomable”. Limmie was hugely popular on the Outer Rim, but not much played in the Core Worlds, especially not by the fashion- and etiquette-conscious girls in Hana’s circle. And marksmanship training... a girl who was into shooting blasters went beyond unusual and straight into the realm of bizarre. Hana scrutinized Wren for a moment as if she was some strange and not terribly attractive specimen of wildlife, and then turned to Bellona, who was seated at her left. “Have you ever done any work with pearls or just gemstones? There’s a supplier on Hosnian Prime who has the most exquisite veda pearls and I think they’d look smashing in a setting like your earrings...”

Hana continued to chat with Bellona about jewelry, while Hamato quizzed Sabine about her paintings and her exhibitions on Coruscant. Maximus asked Kaz about the flight academy and his plans after graduation, and Suzume asked Wren about her school and what her plans were—the sort of questions adults seemed contractually required to ask teens and for which “I don’t exactly know right now” never seemed to be an acceptable answer, even if it was true. And Kaz, even though he wanted to come up with some snappy conversational gambit that would impress Wren, ate. Because a.) the tiingilar was just that good and b.) he ate when he was nervous.

When it became apparent Kaz was the only one of their guests interested in seconds (or even in finishing firsts), Sabine offered to give Hamato and Suzume a tour of her studio, and suggested, to Wren’s obvious relief, that Wren and Bellona go ahead and serve dessert to Kaz and Hana on the veranda.

“Oh, Kazuda…” Hana sighed, once Wren and her sister had left to get the cake and tea. “What were you thinking?!”

“What?” What now? Because he really didn’t think a little thing like squeezing Wren’s hand at dinner was enough to deserve the “my little brother is an incorrigible moof-milker with no sense of propriety” sigh and eye-roll combo she was giving him.

She heaved another sigh at his obtuseness. “There are all kinds of lovely, eligible girls at the Hosniana Academy who would be so much more appropriate for you. But, no—you just had to run off on a wild-hoojib chase to Korriban and find yourself some backrocket Rimmer! And this Bird—!”

“Her name is Wren!” And she wasn’t a backrocket Rimmer, either. As for all those girls at Hosniana, maybe they were appropriate—whatever that meant!—but none of them were the slightest bit interested in him. And none of them were half as interesting, as awesome, as lovely as Wren!

“Whatever!” Hana flipped a hand dismissively. “The point is she’s just so—uncivilized!”

“That...that’s not true! I mean, look at this place!” Uncivilized people hardly lived in beautiful manors full of art set on rolling estates with lush landscaping. “And she made us a fabulous dinner and—”

“No? What else would you call someone who wears armor and whose hobby is shooting things?”

“Umm...a Mandalorian…?” Kaz suggested, because as far as he could tell, that covered pretty much all of them.

Hana shook her head and tsk-ed. “Why couldn’t you find someone a little more sophisticated—someone more like Bellona?”

A crash came from behind them with the sound of breaking crockery.

Wren stood in the doorway. A tray with several broken mugs and the remains of a fat speckled pottery teapot lay in a puddle of dark liquid at her feet. She stared at Hana, her mouth open in shock, but instead of the Mando Glare of Death Kaz would have expected her to unleash on Hana, Wren looked like she’d been slapped, splotches of color blooming high on her cheeks. “Really?!” she choked out. “Just...just really?!” She kicked the tray out of her way, sending tea splattering, pushed past Kaz and sprinted out across the lawn like a gallaze fleeing a sand panther.

“Wren!” Kaz called after her, to no avail. How much of that had she heard? His heart sank; surely she wouldn’t think he thought she was unsophisticated or uncivilized? Because he didn’t, not at all! Would that matter, though? Would she even want to be around him if she thought his family was a bunch of snooty Core-worlders who looked down on anyone who lived on the Rim? The kind of snobs who thought all Mandalorians were barbaric? He rounded on Hana. “What...what was that?!” he spluttered. “How could you say… You…ooh….” Kaz trailed off with a huff of disgust.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Go after her,” Bellona said, stepping carefully over the tray. “I’ll take care of things here.”Something about the set of her mouth and the glint in her eyes made Kaz think she wasn’t just talking about the mess of broken mugs and spilled tea.

He looked out across the vast lawn and the scrubby wooded area beyond it. He wanted to go to her and apologize for his sister, to try and salvage whatever chance he still had with Wren, but… “I don’t even know where she could be.”

Bellona smiled. “That’s all right. I know exactly where Wren is.”

***
Wren

Wren hunched miserably in her old treehouse; she’d built it in the branches of the biggest galek tree when she was seven years old. It had always been her refuge against bossy sisters, art projects and other sundry annoyances—a place where she could recharge and decompress and just be herself. But now it felt like a coward’s retreat. How could she have run off like that? How could she even call herself a Mandalorian when she’d let that besom Hana insult her? When all she could manage in defense of her honor was “just really”?

It hurt, though; it would have hurt less if Hana had settled things like a Mando and just punched her in the face. Her words still rang in Wren’s ears—someone sophisticated, someone like Bellona… Of course that was what Kaz wanted. Why wouldn’t he want someone like Bellona— someone sophisticated who could make chitchat and nibble light refreshments in the fanciest of settings? Someone who was bold and beautiful and fabulous and all the things a bland, boring, stupid coward like Wren would never be. A sob escaped her and she dropped her head into her hands.

“Wren? Are you in there?”

“Kaz?!” Her head jerked up at the sound of his voice below. She peered out of the treehouse and her heart thudded when she saw him standing there. “What are you doing here?”

“Bellona told me you’d be here. I need to tell you—”

Bellona… Of course. “No, I get it,” she said before he could continue. Because if Kaz told her he wanted someone like Bellona, her heart was going to shatter into shrapnel, and then she’d break down and cry in front of him and she’d have to stay here in her treehouse forever in shame. “Bellona’s perfect and sophisticated and I’m not—“

“Wait, what?!” Kaz exclaimed, shaking his head. “That’s not—“

“—and I’ll never be like her—“

“I don’t—“

“—because I’m just boring and blah and completely—“

“Awesome!”

“What?” Wren could not have possibly heard that right. Kaz couldn’t have meant that she, Wren Ordo of the plain brown beskar’gam, plain dark hair, plain gray eyes—plain dull everything—least creative person in the Mandalore System, biggest and most unsophisticated besom on the planet Ordo, was awesome. Particularly not when compared to her older sister, who was, in fact, superlative in every possible way.

But Kaz was nodding earnestly. “Yeah…Wren, I…I think you’re awesome,” he called up to her. “I thought so from the first time we met. You’re brave and cool and smart and… awesome. Which... I already said… heh.”

Wren’s heart pounded. This was some sort of dream, right? Because no one ever said things like that about her. Especially not guys. Double especially not guys as incredible as Kaz. “But… I’m not like my sister. I’m not fashionable or sophisticated like the girls from the Core…”

“No, you’re not like any girl I know, and...I like that. I like you. And… I was wondering if you would like to go out some time?” Kaz ran a hand over his hair and smiled sheepishly, his cheeks flushing slightly pink. “Maybe? With me?”

So...wait…. Wren struggled to process what had just happened over the incessant thudding of her heart and the fluttering of her stomach. Her ori’vod, Kauzuda Xiono—tall, handsome, brave, fun, awesome Kaz—had just just asked her out. This was either a dream or the best day of her life. ”When?” Wren blurted. Because if this was a dream, maybe they could get to the part where they went out before she woke up.

“Ummm...now? I mean, I guess we can’t really go out, but like for a walk or something?”

“That would be great.” Wren climbed down from the treehouse feeling as if she could fly down like the bird of her sigil. When she reached the bottom, Kaz held his hand out to her with a smile, and his hand was warm and solid in hers, undeniably real. And it was better than any dream to be here hand-in-hand with him; he was her ori’vod and that was all that mattered. Whatever Hana or anyone else thought, they were the same as much as they were different. Even the differences were good, because they were part of what made him Kaz and her Wren, too. She wouldn’t want him to be any other way.

She squeezed his hand, “Come on, let’s go back to the Stronghold and get some of the uj’alayi. We can make it a picnic. The cake is really good, if I say so myself.”

Kaz’s eyes lit up at that prospect. “Awesome!”

Wren smiled. “Awesome,” she agreed. Just like you.
___

If you’d like to know what happens next, The Word for Kiss is Mureyca (written for the MMM KISS challenge) immediately follows the events of this story and serves as a sort of epilogue.

——

Notes:

MandalMotors, the LUX series and Shatual class speeders are canon, but the Ori’tsad is my own invention. The name translates to “brigade”, and it’s my attempt at a Mando family SUV

The Archaic Arsenal is canon; all other locations on Ordo are fanon.

The Clan Ordo Stronghold is based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana-Thomas House. (Since the Clan Wren Stronghold is his Fallingwater in Spaaace).

 

How fantastic that you were able to wrap this WIP up! And what a SUPER DUPER WRAP it is! Hana is just too infuriating for words! Kaz has every right to be outraged. Yay for Bellona who as we know from "A Different Look" is fully in her sister's corner.

The Kaz/Wren scene at the end was as yummy as I could hope.

 

I read this fic aaaaages ago and I've been promising to myself that I'd come and leave a review for at least a year. Took me long enough, but here I am at long last!

I love every single word of this. You went all out on the "country mouse, city mouse" theme here, and what makes it even more interesting is that both Kaz and Wren belong to the aristocracy of their respective cultures – it's just that their cultures have very different ideas of what aristocracy means. At the same time, they're just such, well, teenagers, and they each have some issues to work through about their families and in particular their sisters – although Bellona may be an annoyingly perfect older sister, but she still has Wren's back, whereas Hana... well, let's just say that I'm not giving up hope that you'll write some day the conversation Bellona has with her after Wren has to flee in tears.

I laughed out loud at the various mishaps: the droid wanting Mandos to surrender their weapons , the sulyet, the ultra-sweet drink suggested by Miss Pink Pittin , the tiingilar being too spicy for the Hamatos... However, again, what made this extra-special was how you described both Kaz and Wren as feeling that one or another of these elements makes them come across as inadequate, and how they are worried about fitting in both in their own family and in each other's family. I know from other stories you wrote about them that ultimately all's well that ends well, but I still want Hana to get her just desserts