Chapter Text
Osha is six years old when the scar appears out of nowhere.
Given its placement on her back, she doesn’t notice it, not until Mama is helping her and Mae in the bath one day and lets out a horrified gasp. Fear saturates Osha’s small body because it’s such a strong reaction, and when she turns to look, Mama is crying, her hand covering her mouth.
But Mama composes herself quickly.
After, she sits Osha and Mae down and explains what soulmates are. How they share marks on their bodies. She emphasizes that simply because the Thread has tied Osha to some other person doesn’t mean anything needs to come of it, that Osha can still choose whether or not to pull the Thread, to decide the outcome of her future.
At six years old, the concepts of future and forever are vague, practically meaningless. Osha can’t fathom why someone would want a soulmate; she already has a twin. Mae is her other half. She doesn’t need anyone else.
Qimir has known he has a soulmate since he was sixteen, when the otherwise unexplainable little scars start to appear. Either his soulmate is some kind of troublemaker or extremely clumsy, because there are dozens of them at any given time. But they all fade quickly, and Vernestra tells him that means his soulmate is probably very young; children heal more easily than adults or even teenagers.
The idea is fairly repugnant. What sixteen-year-old wants to be shackled to a youngling? But Qimir is a Jedi, and Jedi are not allowed attachments anyway, so it doesn’t truly matter.
Of course, he doesn’t remain a Jedi for much longer.
When Vernestra lashes him with her lightwip and leaves him for dead two years later, he has just enough—or perhaps just too little—presence of mind to feel sorry for his soulmate. Even through the vicious, raging torrent of agony, his back split open and pouring blood, he can’t help thinking no child should have to bear such a scar. At least he can be thankful the pain doesn’t transmit.
Someday the child will become an adult and realize that scar is the only one they share. That their soulmate died long before they had the opportunity to meet.
For the first time, he feels a little sorry about it, not meeting his soulmate. But it is one small regret in a sea of fear and anger, and soon the pain chases away his ability to think.
Since Osha can’t see the scar, it should be easy to forget about, and her soulmate along with it. And yet, the knowledge clings to her like a second shadow; sometimes present but barely perceptible, other times stretching long toward the horizon and beckoning her to follow.
As the days turn into weeks, and months, and years, her curiosity and restlessness grow. Not just about the idea of her soulmate, but with life on Brendok, life in the Coven, always the same, day in and day out. Mae is somehow perfectly content, ready to perform the Ascension even without knowing what it means. But Osha lives with a perpetual itch under her skin, a craving for something she cannot name, and yet knows she will not find here.
And then the Jedi arrive.
Osha feels their appearance like a tear in the fabric of her world, a rend in the cloth that’s been keeping her shrouded, and now she can finally, finally see the rest of the galaxy beyond. There is so much out there she simply cannot fathom, but she knows, unquestioningly, that she wants what the Jedi offer—adventure, the company of other children, perhaps even the opportunity to find her soulmate, if only to better understand what a soulmate is and why someone might want one.
The fire changes everything.
Osha becomes a Jedi, as she’d wished. But anger and sadness poison her heart, make it impossible to find the inner peace Sol is constantly instructing her to strive for. Still, she throws herself into her training because if she doesn’t, then her entire family is dead for nothing.
But she simply can’t let go.
Eventually her inability to overcome her grief proves too much. She tells herself it’s her choice. That she’s leaving because she knows the Order is not the right fit for her.
But if she didn’t belong in the Coven, and she doesn’t belong in the Order, Osha fears she will never belong anywhere.
Facing the wide-open galaxy, unmoored and unbound, Osha has never felt more alone.
Against all odds, Qimir survives Vernestra’s killing blow. But he’s always been a fighter.
He forges a new life for himself, one without the strict rules and regulations of the Order. He builds a new lightsaber, crafts false identities to hide behind, focuses on growing his power now that he no longer must heed the Jedi’s limitations.
It is sometimes lonely.
At least he has his freedom. His freedom and the promise of his soulmate, out there somewhere, the idea so much more compelling on the other side of death’s door.
He starts to look for her. (He’s not opposed to a male or nonbinary or other gendered soulmate, he just knows somehow deep in his bones that she is, in fact, a she.) Vernestra said she was a child, when he was sixteen, likely a decade younger than Qimir or more. But perhaps she was wrong—Vernestra was wrong about so many things.
But years pass without any sign of her. The galaxy is so, so vast, and it’s not like he has anything by which to identify her. Nor can he go around asking every female sentient if she bears a massive scar on her back. He takes lovers as often as it’s safe to do so, both because he enjoys it, but also in hopes that somehow one of them will end up being her.
They never are.
By the time he reaches thirty-four, Qimir has given up on locating her, whoever she is. He turns his attention instead to finding a pupil. Someone to share in his knowledge and his power because surely there are other young Force users who don’t fit the Jedi mold, who could benefit from the lessons he learned so brutally.
And then the tattoo appears.
Of course, he thinks as he considers the meaningless black marks that seem most likely the result of a young adult’s drunken night out. Of course he’s burdened with a soulmate who would get such a tattoo in such a place, practically confirming Vernestra was right about her youth after all.
Perhaps it’s for the best that it’s looking less and less likely they’ll ever meet.
He takes to wearing shirts with sleeves even when he’d rather not—he can’t let anyone see any distinguishing marks, not when keeping his identity protected is so important.
And then he encounters Mae Aniseya, a hellcat of a girl in desperate need of training. With that to focus on, it’s easier to push the idea of his soulmate aside.
Life as a meknek is a bizarre combination of long stretches of monotony interrupted by brief periods of exhilaration when Osha is out working on the hull of a ship. Out there, surrounded by the vastness of space, she almost feels like being alone is not such a bad thing.
But then it’s right back to disappearing in a crowded mess hall, her fellow mekneks talking over her—often literally, she’s the smallest of the crew by far.
She does her best to cover her raw edges in a blanket of wit. To remind herself that she chose to leave Brendok, chose to leave the Order.
With every passing day, she feels her connection to the Force, to the Thread, fade.
The best part of being a meknek are the days and nights off the ship, where they can disappear into new worlds. Despite all she’s been through, Osha hasn’t lost her love of exploration. The galaxy is too big and too beautiful not to appreciate its many facets and features, each place so unique and yet somehow also the same—everywhere she goes, people are still people.
And somewhere out there among them is her soulmate.
It’s all she has left in her otherwise tedious, meaningless life—the idea of her soulmate.
If only she knew how to find them.
One night when they’re off the ship, the rest of the crew drags her into a tattoo shop. On her own, Osha would never consider getting something inked into her skin. But she’s a little drunk, and a little sad, desperate to feel for even a moment like she belongs. So, she agrees to the procedure and picks a design at random.
A part of Osha hopes it will help her soulmate find her.
But the tattoo changes nothing.
Two years later, Yord Fandar walks back into her life.
Qimir feels the girl’s strength in the Force the moment she enters the apothecary, but it surprises him a little to see Mae’s face looking back at him. No, not quite Mae’s face. This one is softer, doe-like and gentle to Mae’s feline grace. And yet, Osha—for it can be no one other than Osha—shares a deep, aching sadness with her twin.
But that is where the similarities end.
Her appearance—the fact she’s alive at all—is a wrench in his plans. And yet, he can’t help feeling intrigued, even drawn to her. The immense power simmering under the surface calls to him in a way no other sentient being ever has.
For a moment, he lets the façade slip, just to see how she’ll react. When she pulls the blaster on him, he feels like grinning, wonders if perhaps he’s training the wrong twin. But he quickly slips back into character because the Jedi are approaching. He gives them the answers they want; gives them more than he would have before meeting Osha because, despite the complications it presents to his training with Mae, he’s fascinated.
It will be good for Mae to have the additional challenge of their pursuit.
When he next encounters Osha in the forest of Khofar, it’s as if someone has unlocked the shackles from her connection to the Force. No longer simply strong, she blazes with power. There in the sensory deprivation of the cortosis helmet, with only the Force to guide him, she is tremendous, radiant, exquisite, even if she doesn’t yet know it.
She is also terrified, but he hardly blames her for that. He designed this appearance to be terrifying.
Moving Osha aside to keep her safe, he focuses on eliminating the threat of the Jedi because he cannot allow them to capture Mae and take her back to Coruscant. She knows too much, even without knowing his true face, his true name. Mae is a disappointment and a liability, and yet part of him regrets that she has to die. He’d been fond of her, in his own way. And of course, there is the fact that Osha will suffer her sister’s loss, although he’s not sure why he cares, why the thought even occurs to him.
He focuses on pursuing Mae until he’s unmasked. At that point he has no choice but to kill the remaining Jedi, even the padawan who he would otherwise have tried to leave untouched. And then he finds himself on his knees before Sol.
Qimir does not fear death. His life has little purpose other than survival, especially after his Acolyte’s betrayal. But when Osha stops her former Master from slashing open his throat, he feels the Force shift and sigh.
And then she pulls the little trick with her droid, and he narrowly avoids killing her in his instinctual reaction to having someone touch his back before the umbramoths are upon him. The creatures are an annoyance more than an actual threat, but he has to give the girl credit. She’s clever, resourceful.
In the time it takes him to fight off the umbramoths, the situation on the Khofar forest floor changes dramatically. Jedi Sol is gone, and so too Qimir’s wayward pupil. But even though he senses that she’s incapacitated, he feels the call of Osha’s Force signature through the forest.
He wonders what could possibly have prompted Mae to abandon her sister like this, for the Jedi to have deserted his former pupil.
Collecting his scattered things, he makes his way to where Osha lays. Someone has stripped off the ridiculous civilian robes the Jedi had dressed her in—as if she isn’t the most powerful among them—leaving her in leggings and a thin tank top, a gash in the fabric exposing the wound on her side.
He does what he can to seal off the injury. It isn’t healing, that skill is beyond him as someone who wields both the light and dark sides of the Force, but at least it’s something.
And then she rolls over, presenting her bicep to his gaze. Qimir’s breath catches at the sight of the tattoo—the same tattoo that’s been on his own arm for the last two years.
Suddenly, everything makes sense.