Chapter Text
Mace Windu has two hands.
Two hands that are actively shaking from the after effects of sith lightning.
He’s not on Coruscant… He's not on Coruscant .
Instead, Mace Windu, The Master of the Jedi Order is in the middle of a forest and he has no clue what planet he’s on. He would also appreciate it if his head would stop throbbing as spikes of pain splinter through his brain.
Mace finally, shakily pulls himself to a standing position and slowly takes in his surroundings. Trying to get a better grasp as to where he is and where he should start walking to find some civilization.
He reaches out to the force with a question pressing, projecting outward and junts off his pain, fear, and worry out into the force. All he gets back as an answer is a distinct feeling of amusem*nt and comfort. Much like the creche masters would give an amused and indulgent smile and a slightly humiliating pat on the head to initiates with silly fears. As they are cheerfully reassured that it ‘passes with time’.
An annoyed huff escapes him, “If you don’t wish to give me any answers, can you at least point me to where I need to go?” the force lightly giggles in response and wraps around him with loving warmth. Then in the next moment it pulls away and starts tugging him in a random direction.
He follows, what else is he supposed to do?
Mace gets all of ten steps and a vicious electric aftereffect of the lightning tears through him. Lighting up his nerve endings with harsh, zapping pinpricks and debilitating him to the point that Mace has to tightly grip onto one of the trees.
Mace finally gets back enough wherewithal to feel the force wrap around him, cushioning and supporting him. He forcefully blinks his eyes, willing the black specks out of his vision as he slowly lets go of his grip on the tree. The force lightly brushes against him with a silent apology, he sends back his acceptance and the sense that there is nothing to forgive.
Tuning back into his physical body senses as he starts moving and equally relying on his force senses, very quickly informs Mace that there is a blaster fight happening. In fact, it sounds like a full-blown battle. He pauses upon hearing something massive and slow moving making its way towards the battle. The force continues to insistently tug at him wanting him to go-change-save him-new beginnings-trust . Mace very quickly gets a move on, not feeling in the mood to have the force literally pull him off of his feet in its desperation to get him moving .
What he comes upon is quite frankly a muddy, chaotically confusing, ruthlessly violent bloodbath. An intense battle between two different mandalorian groups, one in blue and silver and the other group in a myriad of different colors. The force almost violently tugs him towards the group with different colors.
The very group that is clearly pinned down and quickly losing the battle. A soul-deep and exasperated sigh leaves him - he pushes his ire away into a box labeled LATER - as he quickly starts mentally pulling up battle plans to change the tide. It takes him all of a minute to come up with and scrap thirty different plans. Due to him forgetting that Commander Ponds and Lightning Squadron aren’t with him. Until he finally gets to a plan that will work… potentially. It certainly won’t make the mandalorian side's situation he’s wanting to help any worse.
He takes a moment to breathe and pull on the still peace and calm of an untouched lake as he grips his lightsaber. Time seems to freeze as he
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From one breath to the next he’s across the battlefield and taking out the massive ion tank before it can even get a shot off. Mace springboards off the tank right up to where a handful of the blue and silver mandalorians are using their jetpacks to try and get a better vantage point.
In a single smooth move, Mace slices through one of the jetpacks and he grapples midair with a different mandalorian. He slams his hand down on the jetpack, ignoring how the heat of it burns his skin and reaches with the force and crumples the mechanism. Then he’s letting go, slamming his foot into the mando’s chest and launching himself at the next one. Force pushing the previous mando into a different one and smoothly turning his attention to the one he’s collided with as other two plummet to the ground.
Sharp pain blooms on his right side where the mando has stabbed him with a vibroblade. Mace impatiently punts the feeling off into the force as he twists and in a clean move relieves the mando of their head. He gets himself space as he rapidly falls towards the hard ground and very roughly slows and catches himself with the force. Carefully holding the side with the blade still lodged within it.
He senses the mandalorians he’s actively helping finally gain ground and reach his position. Everything quickly becomes a blur after that, dodging, parrying, redirecting blaster bolts and slugshots that would have either severely damaged or killed both him and the mandalorians. Then from one moment to the next, the force screams out in his still throbbing head. Mace moves before he’s even fully aware of the action he’s taking. Stopping a blaster bolt from slamming into the back of the neck of the mandalorian with the red cape from one of his own and swiftly relieving the traitor of his forearms.
At this point, many of the blue and silver mandalorians have very swiftly retreated and all that's left are the ones covering the retreat. The traitor stumbles backward and lands on his shebs into the blood and mud.
“ Montross !” Mace barely twitches at the name being viciously spat out through the crackle of the buy’ce belonging to the red-caped mandalorian. “ Aruetii ! How long were you planning this?” The red-caped mandalorian stalks towards the traitor like a nexu on the hunt.
Mace lets his eyes slowly scan around as the rest of the mandalorians with the red-caped leader start to take care of the dead. The quiet hiss of his saber turning off makes a good number of them twitch as he puts it back on his belt. He calmly rips off two large pieces from his cloak and ties one around his torso, just above where the vibroknife is sticking out.
He stays silent as he watches the leader call for some of his men to take this ‘Montross’ away. Not that Mace really catches much of the language, but he gets enough of it to make a strong enough guess. Wrapping his hand around the hilt of the vibroknife, he pauses and slowly breathes in; pulling the force tightly around himself for strength, he quickly rips the blade out as cleaning as it went in. Mace ignores the shocked mutterings of the mandalorians and quickly rips one third of the strip off and folds it. He presses it tightly against the gaping wound and proceeds to use the larger part of the strip and the helping hand of the force to tie it tightly in place.
He just gets done with that when he’s wracked with another after effect of sith lightning. It shreds his shields as it shreds his body's nerve endings. Through sheer spite and strength of will he doesn’t scream out like he’d like and instead a grunt of pain escapes him as his knees give out. Mace could almost taste the sith lightning that seems to be locked within his very veins as his whole body convulses.
His ears ring sharply and loudly as his head goes from throbbing to trying to set itself on fire as it splits apart. Mace is aware enough to hear muffled voices and feel himself being moved, but other than that every single sense is a blur of pain. As the force drowns him in its depths and what’s left of his obliterated shields get washed away by the waves.
Even the pain becomes incredibly distant as the force gently croons to him as it wraps him in its warm healing embrace. Mace gently floats within the ocean of infinity, klicks away from the surface and completely at peace. He vaguely feels his body tingling with pins and needles and muffled yelling. Mace gets the sense that he should be more alarmed than he is at the moment and yet…
He’s tired, past tired and to a level of exhaustion he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to pull himself out of. He’s been tired since Qui-Gon came back to the temple, leaving his thirteen-year-old padawan in a warzone with parents actively hunting, torturing, and killing their own children. That tired feeling just spread as the years went on into his bones and to the depths of his soul. When the war hit, he was already checked out. Yet, he gave more of himself than he thought he had left and kept giving more.
As he knew many others did the same.
Mace knows intellectually that he’s slipping away, but with the force wrapped around him and carefully leading him deeper into the ocean, he willingly follows. There’s nothing left; the jedi order has fallen and his men are nothing more than flesh droids. He knows that his padawans, his daughters are bound to be dead. Mace takes in one more deep, pained, struggling breath and slowly lets it out on a quiet sigh of release.
And he
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