I wrote this as a sequel to my only other Bo-Katan/The Armorer fic, Scorched Earth. Bo-Katan Week 2023 Day 6: Bo-Katan and The Armorer, but make it a touch unhinged. Mind the tags!!
Rating: E (NSFW, 18+)
Relationships: Bo-Katan Kryze/The Armorer
Tags (non-exhaustive): Author chose not to use archive warnings, rough sex, hate sex, dubious consent
Summary:
And, so, that is how it all begins. Burn the earth under your feet until it is scorched, until there is nothing left to stand on, and then move to rinse and repeat the process. Bo-Katan Kryze had always found it easy to burn things, and this is was no different. This time it just happened to be herself.
In which bad decisions are made, and Bo-Katan Kryze declares she is no songbird
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Scars of the Heart
Bo-Katan Week
Day 4: Scars
AO3 link here.
When a mission goes wrong, Bo-Katan worries she may lose the only person that matters to her.
“Get out of there now!” Bo-Katan shouted into her comm too late as the building crumbled with another deafening blast from the canon. She watched in helpless horror as the stone and glass shattered, feeling as if her soul was shattering along with it.
Korkie had been in that building, leading a dangerous rescue mission.
If she lost him…..
She shook her head, fighting back against the rush of panic, swearing under her breath as she forced herself to focus. Be calm. Her first impulse- to fling herself at the crumbled building and dig out her nephew with her bare hands- was foolish. The Imps were still around, looking for signs of life, waiting to blitz even more Mandalorians into star dust. She would do no one any good if she got herself killed in her foolishness.
Instead, she muttered icy calm instructions and commands into her commlink, forming a rescue mission for the rescue mission. When everything was put into place, she sat back on her heels to wait out the Imps. “Look after your boy,” she prayed to the sister who’s soul seemed still tied to hers. “I’m not ready to lose him.”
Bo-Katan sat in the med tent, exhaustion heavy on her bones, clutching Korkie’s hand. It was cool now, though the day before it had been hot to the touch as he spiked a fever, infection trying to spread as he fought his way back to the surface of consciousness.
He was a fighter and the medics were good, considering the camp’s limited resources, and the fever and infection had been wrangled into submission. But still Bo fretted over her nephew. The medics swore to her he would be fine. They said his brain just needed time to heal and reset. They swore the bleeding was under control and the swelling was going down and he would wake in time. The other things, the minor things, the broken bones and dislocated knee, those wouldn’t even slow him down once he was awake.
Bo tried to believe them, but her exhaustion was making her pessimistic. He was a fighter, sure. Kryze pumped through his veins just like it pumped through hers, and his mother’s and his grandfather. His heart was forged from beskar.
But sometimes even beskar cracked, and she was terrified this would be the fight he would not win.
“Come on, ad’ika,” she whispered, squeezing his hand, reaching instinctually to brush an unruly lock of his burnished gold hair away from his eyes. But she pulled her hand back quickly. His hair was gone, shaved to accommodate the medics desperate attempts to relieve the pressure on his brain. Now, in place of his hair was a bandage. She sighed. “Please come back to me.”
She laid her head on his bed, still holding his hand. She would close her eyes for a few minutes. Just rest them for a moment.
The next thing she knew, she felt a hand in her hair and heard a raspy, whispering voice. “Auntie?”
She sat up quickly, sleep leaving her disoriented. And there he was, awake, his blue eyes blessedly like his mother’s and not the father he hadn’t known, open and searching.
“Hi,” she said softly, squeezing the hand she still held. To her relief, he squeezed back, not as strong as he normally would be, but strong and alive and vital.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, his eyes casting about the room. “Is there water?” he rasped before she could answer the first question.
Bo looked around and found a jug and cups left nearby. She pulled her hand from his and poured him some, then offered it to him, holding the straw to his lips. He drank greedily before she pulled it away. “Careful. You’ve been out for a week.”
He scowled and she sent a little prayer of gratitude to the stars. If he was well enough to be grumpy, he was going to be ok.
“What happened?” he asked again, his voice sounding more like his own this time, though still barely more than a whisper.
“You were too brave for your own good and your rescue attempt got blown up by Imps,” she told him, offering him another small sip of water.
He furrowed his brow in confusion for a moment, and then a dawning recollection crossed his face, then pain. “Oh no. No, no-”
“Hang on,” she cut off his spiral of grief and guilt. “You did good, ad’ika. Everyone got out.”
“Really?”
She nodded, taking his hand again. “You had a feeling things were about to go bad, so you sent everyone down, to an old bomb shelter, instead of up, like I told you. We had to dig you all out, but you got them all out.”
He seemed to melt into the thin mattress with relief. Then another look of confusion crossed his face. “Then why am I here?”
She smiled a sad little smile. “Because you’re too much like your parents. They said you were behind the group, helping a couple of the kids. You got them through the door, shoved them through, but you were a second too late. You didn’t make it to the shelter.”
His face sagged a little. “Oh.”
She reached over and took his hand again, squeezing it. “Now that you’re awake, you’ll be ok. Your brain just got rattled around. Maybe it knocked some good sense into you.”
He laughed a tired little laugh. She pressed a call button- someone should probably look at him before he dozed back off. “Hopefully not too much. My total lack of sense got ten prisoners out.” He lifted his hand, touching the bandage, then smiled at her with a bit of the mischief she was not in any way ready to lose. “Is it going to scar?”
She laughed at their old, inside joke. When she’d met him, eight years earlier, the only scars he bore were the typical kid scars from scraped knees and elbows. He’d asked her that same question after Gar Saxon had hit him with a crushing fist in a moment Bo tried not to relive. These days, he carried the scars of a warrior, marks left from fighting an impossible enemy.
She squeezed his hand once more as a medic swept in. “Your hair will cover it,” she promised, and stepped aside.
She watched the medic tend to her nephew, asking him the types of questions you ask a head trauma patient. She took a deep steadying breath. He was going to be ok. “Thank you,” she whispered to his mother she felt still so near.
She had plenty of her own physical scars. They hardly mattered to her. The scars that did matter, though, were the unseen ones on her heart, from what, who, she had lost. If she lost Korkie, the weight of that scar would be too much for her to bear. He infuriated her to no end, and she knew he felt the same for her, but she loved him. He was her last bit of family, the only physical reminder she had of the sister she abandoned then betrayed, save a few trinkets here and there. His loss would break her, and she prayed that that would be a scar she would never have to carry.
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