Chapter Text
Some aspects of Mandalorian culture, like the language, the Kaminoans allowed as a consolation prize to the template and trainers of their army. Others, they allowed because they simply had no recourse to stop them. While they never indulged the ridiculous names, cracking down on them would have been a waste of resources.
Some parts of the culture, though, were allowed because they were useful. Desirable, even.
“A soulmate outside your clan,” Jango said, “is worth less than the flash of their teeth. Mandalorians keep their karking helmets on in front of anyone they aren’t prepared to match with, and if you match with someone on the opposite side of a battlefield, you shoot that shabuir dead.”
The lesson stuck.
--
In the mines on Bandomeer, they kept the slaves in muzzles. Soulmates were a liability. They offered people connections and gave them hope.
--
There were many ways to avoid an undesirable or unexpected soulmate match. Masks were one. They didn’t need to cover your whole face. The mouth would do, for most humanoids. The eyes, for some. Many Twi’leks swore by binding their lekku to avoid an undesirable match. A true smile for them, they said, included the subtle indication of a lek that most humans wouldn’t even notice.
On Naboo they practiced a method of match-avoidance that was both simpler and more difficult. The Queen and her handmaidens trained religiously. They had some of the best Sabacc faces in the galaxy. They could smile, seeming as genuine as the dawn, without ever matching with anyone at all.
--
A true smile. That was all it took to know your soulmate. You had to see them smile out of joy, whatever that meant for their species. What a soulmate was to you after that was your business. Some were lovers, some were friends, and some were both, over the course of a lifetime together.
The first of Obi-Wan’s friends to meet a soulmate was Quinlan Vos. He rescued a sweet little girl and told her stupid jokes and made funny faces, and when she smiled for the first time, he knew that she would be his family for as long as they lived.
--
Satine Kryze wore a delicate lace veil, patterned with arabesques, that barely disguised her mouth. It was her testament to a culture that, she said, could not be honoured exclusively through war.
“It’s enough,” she told Obi-Wan, who was surprised she kept it after months on the run as it became increasingly worn and dirty. “I won’t match with anyone I don’t want to.”
Eight months in, she took it off and folded it on her lap, and when Obi-Wan told her a stupid joke she hid her smile in his shoulder. They weren’t soulmates, there was no match, but he treasured that covert smile, and she treasured in turn the smile she knew to be his sincere one, turning the corners of his eyes.
--
The Kaminoans had given them strict orders to keep their helmets on as often as possible, had encouraged Jango to promote the practice further, but there were limits to what they could achieve. The average sentient met 1.8 soulmates in their lifetime, a number that increased proportionally for longer-lived species, but even for species with lifespans of less than sixty years, the average rarely dropped below 1. In periods of peak Mandalorian conservatism and civil war, where many died young, the average was never lower than 0.6.
The Kaminoans, with their strictures, could not decrease it below 0.098, but at least the majority of those matches were intra-clone. They had very nearly succeeded in avoiding the possibility of matches between clones and trainers, and the handful of clone-Kaminoan matches had been summarily and satisfactorily dealt with.
When the Jedi at last presented themselves to claim their purchase, all the sensible authorities were sure that they had achieved an historic success in eliminating the pernicious problem of martial soulmates.
--
Padmé explained it to Anakin, once, only shortly before they discovered that they were soulmates.
“There’s no trick to the Nabooian method,” she said, as they walked through the humid gardens, “people always assume there is, that we alter our faces in some way to create a delineation between a false smile and a real one.”
“You don’t?”
“Of course not. How could we? There’s only one difference between a true smile and a false one, and all we have to do is fix that.”
Most people said a true smile for humans could be best identified by the eyes. “Do you freeze your eyebrows or something?”
Padmé laughed at him, high and bright, and the smile was so clear in her eyes. “No, dummy. Come on, think, what’s the one thing that all species' versions of true smiles share?”
“Just tell me.”
“Sincerity,” she said. “That’s all there is. We train, rigorously, to hold the idea in our minds that our soulmate won’t see us. Masks, goggles, lek bindings, forehead freezing, they’re all shortcuts to the same thing, and they teach the person that they can’t match like that. Because they believe they can’t offer a true smile, the soulmate can’t see it. It’s the choice, to open yourself up, to be bold with your heart, that lets a match happen.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. I’m trying to learn to let go of that now, sometimes, but… it’s hard to forget that my face is a shield, to re-teach myself how to open my heart in front of other people.”
“It’s not right that they make you do that. You have a right to find your soulmate. At least people who wear masks can take them off.”
“Maybe, but at least this way I know the truth. It’s my will that matters. I chose to learn for the good of Naboo, and now that I have… a little room for myself, I’m going to start choosing the other way.”
“Well, if you want someone to start practicing your smiles with, I, uh, can probably find the time?”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
--
To the clones, the world of the GAR seemed the most enormous and unbounded sphere of possibility. There were worlds beyond their imagining, green and yellow and duracrete-grey, and there were people beyond their imagining too. So many of them bared their faces freely, or else covered them only a little, daring fate with bright makeup and flimsy lekku-bindings that should not have had the capacity to prevent a soulmate match.
For a time, General Koon seemed like one of the more reasonable ones, with his mouth closely covered, but, one day they met the other General Koon, who wore a tight gold band around her forehead against soulmate matches, and realized that he was going completely bare.
“But this can’t be his real smile,” whispered Sinker, “he was born in an environment for his own people. This is a mask for him like scuba gear is a mask for us.”
“Zip it,” Wolffe snapped, but it was too late.
“Of course it’s my real smile,” the General said, looking amused. “For many Kel Dor, what you say is true. They rarely leave Dorin, and see their masks when they do as an inconvenience that separates them from their true selves, as you might feel wearing a gas mask for a time. These things are a matter of personal belief, culture and faith, and for Sha and I, who were raised in the Jedi temple, we have faith that those who love us can see our joy as we are, with the masks we need to survive and share that joy with them.”
“I see, sir,” Wolffe said.
Knowingly, the General advised them, “your helmets are as strong a defence as you choose them to be, but no stronger than that. There are a thousand ways to ‘see’ your soulmate, in infrared or ultrasonic vision, and with cybernetics or touch, and I have heard tell of soulmates who have found each other in each of them. So too are there a hundred stories of people seeing their soulmates’ joy in spite of everything some people might believe prevent it, makeup or masks, bands or brands.
“You do not need to remove your helmets to be seen, if you believe you can be.”
--
The clones already knew that, of course, if you asked the right person. They weren’t always believed by their brothers, but they knew. Echo knew damn well he hadn’t broken the helmet rules, but they hadn’t ever mattered. His four soulmates, every single one of whom knew without him removing it, fucked up the Kaminoans’ statistics so badly one particularly emotionally invested scientist got blackout drunk when she heard.
By that point, of course, the Jedi were there, and when Shaak Ti raised a drink that night, it was for a very different reason.
--
Obi-Wan Kenobi first matched with a soulmate far, far later than the rest of his friends, at the age of twenty-seven, when Anakin muttered a petty remark a little too loud under his breath about a passing senator.
The first thing Anakin said was, “I knew you thought I was funny!” And the second thing he said, corresponding grin fading, was, “I’ve never seen your real smile?”
The years after Qui-Gon’s death had not been kind to Obi-Wan’s heart. His smile was not entirely sincere again when he said, “well, you have now,” but it was a work in progress. These things often are. In the years that followed, Anakin saw more of his true smile than any other did.
--
“You don’t take your helmets off in front of your brothers either, do you?”
Cody held himself very still and scanned the woods around them. The General had his lightsaber drawn but unlit at Cody’s six. They hadn’t seen any droids in well over an hour of walking from the crash-site, but you never knew.
“No, Sir. Not when we can avoid it.”
“A significant cultural difference between you and many Mandalorians. Enemy soulmates are of course discouraged, but friends, brothers-in-arms… That’s the heart of Mandalore, some would say.”
“We’re not Mandalorian, Sir.”
“I imagine,” said the General, “that is a matter of some debate.”
“Not a lot of time for debate in war.”
“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever lied to my face, Cody.”
--
The effect of the General’s words on Wolffe’s brothers was slow at first, but it grew. The 104th had already been above-average in their number of soulmates-per-person, at 0.24, but by the end of the month, they hit 0.35, and the number of clones with non-clone soulmates had gone from zero to five.
Wolffe himself was the fifth, much to his own consternation, when two of the boys matched as soulmates in front of everyone. Their delight was infectious, and he met the General’s gaze and discovered his own happiness reflected in it.
Neither of them said anything, to avoid spoiling the moment, but they knew.
--
Bly ditched his bucket when he’d been away from Kamino for all of twenty minutes. He was a romantic, at heart, and he’d always wanted a soulmate, no matter what the Prime had to say about it.
His General bound her lekku with a variety of multicoloured ribbons, but it wasn’t the same as the helmets, really.
“Too many people want a Twi’lek soulmate because they imagine it would give them the right to own us,” she said. “When I trust someone enough to allow that possibility, I can always take them off. Or maybe I never will. I have a soulmate as a brother. That’s more than enough.”
It was a bit like what the Prime said, only not at all. It wasn’t about sides, about enemies and allies. It was about happiness, only allowing for the possibility of a soulmate who would treat you well, and about agency, only accepting a soulmate when you wanted one. She never blinked at Bly’s refusal to wear his own helmet.
When, after a few months together, she started sitting in on the 337th’s post-battle sessions, lekku unbound, it was only a matter of minutes before Bly learned exactly who his soulmate was.
--
Aayla hadn’t asked for Quinlan, would never have matched with him if they hadn’t met in such horrible circumstances, but she wouldn’t have traded him for the world. If she’d never found another soulmate, she would have counted her life a good one. Many people only had one, after all, or never matched with anyone, by their own will or that of the Force. But then there was Bly, and this time, the match was a joy she chose.
--
Clones talked to each other, of course. The 104th ran a cross-mission with the 95th, and their soulmate incidence rate jumped too. Master Ilmarina Ther, who at the age of ninety-three had unilaterally appointed herself as the GAR’s official statistician, holocalled Plo Koon to ask him for an explanation. The 95th provided air support to the 337th, who had previously held the title for the highest rate of soulmate matches in the GAR, and who quickly reclaimed their title from the 104th after the meeting. According to Master Ther’s data, the rate of new matches did subside after a time, but, as she pointed out, that could easily be explained by the fact that clones weren’t meeting new people to match with particularly often.
The 104th went back to Coruscant, doubled their number of clones with non-clone soulmates in just sixteen days, and caused every hell to break loose.
--
It was all well and good for the clones to discover that they could abide by the rules without compromising their ability to find soulmates when they were almost entirely surrounded by other clones. The organization of the GAR created a barrier between them and the average citizen of the Republic.
This was not, however, the situation of the Coruscant Guard, who interacted with by far the largest pool of people of any group of clones. Three months after the beginning of the incident, the average member of the Coruscant Guard who had been on Coruscant for over a month had 1.3 soulmates. If not for the continual rotation of personnel, they likely would have hit and surpassed the galactic average long ago. Some of them took up new methods to prevent soulmate matches, good luck charms that gave them the willpower to affirm their own lack of desire, but most didn’t. They didn’t want to.
“And you don’t need to,” Padmé said. She had taken to explaining what were, strictly speaking, Naboo state secrets to any of the clones she thought might be interested. “It’s your will that matters, nothing else.”
Most of Coruscant did not take these developments with as much aplomb as Padmé, who in addition to her covert lessons had politely sent written congratulations to each of the three clones who had found their soulmates in staffers from Naboo. The top gossip columns on Coruscant ran headlines like ‘Clone Soulmate Menace’ and ‘My Soulmate isn’t a Person?!?’
Bail Organa sighed, threw the magazine out, and called his secretary to ask for a bulk printing of Non-Republic Citizenship Applications, for distribution to the rest of his staff.
--
General Skywalker never wore any kind of covering or mask. At first, Rex thought it was a Jedi thing, because General Kenobi didn’t either. In the end Ahsoka, who had a pack of bright blue star-shaped stickers she affixed in various patterns across her face, explained it.
“Jedi can do whatever. Some Jedi think that you’re supposed to avoid matching by just being a good enough Jedi, but we all know that’s dumb. The Force determines soulmates, so why should we avoid them? Lots of councilors have soulmates, like Master Obi-Wan has Skyguy, but most of them wear some kind of guard too, like Master Windu’s half-mask or Master Ti’s veil. Or they wear them in situations where it’s important.”
“So how come the Generals never do?”
“I dunno. They’re weirdos, I guess.”
--
Obi-Wan had inherited a belief, by virtue of Qui-Gon Jinn, that a Jedi should be open enough, in connection enough with the Force, that their soul would go where it needed to. Even if he struggled to live with enough true joy for that to work, he tried to believe it.
--
Anakin had never seen his mother with her face bare until the day she died. It was bad business to risk someone else having a claim on your slaves.
--
The wave hit the 212th and the 501st weeks apart, on opposite sides of the galaxy, and their reactions were opposite.
Anakin, who had never really understood the helmets but had been pressed into tolerating them as a cultural practice, reached an unparalleled, apoplectic fury at the revelation that many clones in fact wanted soulmates desperately, and had been told they were not entitled to them. Things were broken, there was yelling. Rex still didn’t understand why his general was so kriffing weird, but by the end of it he was closer to knowing than he had been.
Some members of the 501st started to match soulmates with their helmets on. Some of them started to take their helmets off. Echo said “I told you so!” very loudly, and Fives said “well yeah, obviously.” He had never doubted Echo’s version of their match-story. In fact, he remembered perfectly the first time he’d seen Echo’s bare face, years after their match. Hevy had always been sure they must have seen Echo smile sometime before, but Fives had never doubted.
Rex, who had no soulmate, but was entirely for the pursuit, gave blanket permission for the troopers to choose whatever course they wanted, and when a natborn officer made some remarks about clones pretending to be people with soulmates, Anakin got a month’s probation for breaking his nose, and Plo Koon looked entirely too pleased in the call with the council to reprimand him.
Systems away, the 212th boiled quietly. General Kenobi said nothing, but he was as pensive as ever, and it began to grate on Cody’s nerves. They both knew what was happening, but the karking general wouldn’t karking say anything.
“This isn’t my face,” Cody said, one night. He would have denied, if asked, that these words were more for his own benefit than General Kenobi’s.
“It doesn’t have to be,” said the General. “Plo knows the difference between his face and his breathing apparatus, and he still knows that the assistive tech doesn’t change the sincerity in any way. For Ahsoka, a few stickers or streaks of eyeliner are enough to make her unrecognizable to a soulmate because she believes in them, but Pantorans and Zabrak tattoo their entire faces and it’s a complete nonissue.”
“But it’s not my face,” Cody reiterated, rather pointlessly.
“Then it’s not,” agreed the General. And then, a minute or so later, “I was too depressed to smile in front of Anakin for years. We didn’t know we were soulmates.”
“You’ve told me.”
The General, with sincerity and not at all a smile, asked, “helmet or not, when was the last time you gave someone a true smile?”
“I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Sir.”
--
Some people thought that brands, or other mutilations of the face, were enough to stop soulmates for life. They weren’t, of course, unless the person believed it.
Asajj Ventress branded her own cheek, when she was sixteen years old, so no one could ever lay a claim to her.
--
Ahsoka bought her stickers in bulk every time they were on Coruscant, and drew the stars on with eyeliner when she ran out. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a soulmate – she did, someday – she just wasn’t quite ready for one yet.
Also, they looked cute. She loved it when the 501st started adding little stars to their armour to match her.
--
Mace Windu was not wearing his usual mask, possibly because he was happy to be seen smiling by any member of the Jedi Council – all of whom would have been worthy soulmates, and one of whom was already his soulmate – and possibly because he did not think he would be donning a smile for the course of the meeting.
“I take full responsibility, of course,” said Plo Koon, with no hint of contrition. He was still wearing the purple dye that the Kel Dor use to honour new soulmate matches for the first year or so.
“I’m afraid I have to disagree,” said Kit Fisto, “that doesn’t leave nearly enough credit for the rest of us.”
Shaak Ti was grinning beneath her veil. “No, loath as I am to admit it, Plo takes this one. I’ve been working at this for over a year, and I’ve never managed results like this. What are we up to now, across the GAR? 0.5? From less than one in ten clones having a soulmate to this?”
At the mention of the Kaminoans’ figure, Depa Billaba made a rather rude gesture of dismissal.
Mace picked up his datapad. “The Senatorial Subcommittee for Basic Decency–”
“Lovely name,” said Depa, “very illustrative.”
“–Requests an immediate investigation into the sharp rise in disorderly, unsanitary, and undisciplined behaviour by units in the GAR.”
“Units,” Shaak echoed, with distaste.
“Etcetera,” Mace finished, setting the datapad down. “Does anyone have anything to say to the Senatorial Subcommittee for Basic Decency?”
Luminara Unduli asked, “can you send them each a copy of the Pijal Convention for the Rights of Non-Citizen Sentients?”
“I think that might come across as slightly passive aggressive.”
“Then no, I don’t.”
“The business of Jedi, it is not, to meddle with matters of soulmates.”
Nobody living in the temple knew if Master Yoda had soulmates or not. Statistically, at his age, he could easily have had and lost dozens. Master T’ra Saa had, and sometimes she spoke of them still, each one lovingly carved into her ancient bark. Yoda, though, was too private to say anything of the sort.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had been priding himself on his silence, said, “and most certainly it is not the business of a coven of supercilious senators.”
Adi Gallia, who was formerly the Jedi envoy to the Senate, and still enjoyed the right to guide Jedi policy towards the senate, said, “if I may, Mace?”
He motioned for her to take the floor, with not some small relief.
“We can all be agreed,” Adi said, “the Senate – and, in fact, this council – have absolutely no right to dictate how individuals do or do not pursue their own soulmates. Requiring the wearing of helmets was perhaps excusable, though it should have been required by everyone serving, regardless of birth, but requiring the exclusive belief in helmets as inhibitors of soulmate connections is neither permissible nor, in fact, plausible. The Senate sometimes needs a soft hand, but this is not one of those times. The entire senate is not united behind this ridiculous policy, and we have no reason to entertain the drivel put forward by this segment of it.
“Unfortunately, given our current position, the Jedi Order is now more closely linked to the Senate than ever before. This is a weakness, but, from a certain point of view, this is also a strength. I move to utilize that strength.”
“Meaning?”
“We won’t enforce whatever they put forward,” Adi said, “In fact, we won’t fight at all unless they guarantee the clones the right to pursue and refuse soulmate bonds as every citizen of the Republic may. What are they going to do? Replace us? With what officer corps? The navy is stretched flimsi-thin as it is. With what loyalty from the troopers?”
“You could lose us the war.”
“Or we could win it,” Obi-Wan pointed out, “and win it by deserving to, rather than by giving in to that which this order stands against.”
Adi’s proposal to offer the senate a bald refusal passed unanimously.
--
“It’s lovely,” Padmé said, passing Bail his file back, “and I do hope it would help to change the tone on the conversation about clone soulmates and the Jedi response.”
“But?”
“You would need someone to actually give the interview. I can speak to Sabé, of course, see if she would be willing, but–”
Bail was grinning, and he wasn’t Padmé’s soulmate, but she was sure that if he was, this smile would have told her. “Didn’t I say? I’ll be giving the interview myself.”
--
Fox had only come to thank Senator Organa for fighting the good fight. Protecting the Coruscant Guard was his responsibility, even as it grew harder and harder, his exhaustion overwhelming him, slowly stealing his ability of fight and even tiny slivers of time. Every file that passed through the Alderaanian Senator’s office made that fight a little easier, as they stood up not only for the clones who had found soulmates in their delegation, or with other Alderaanian citizens, but also for those whose senate representatives couldn’t or wouldn’t fight for them.
Bail had offered him a glass of wine, they talked, and in some ways the delight of Bail’s true smile, which broke across his whole face like dawn’s rose tendrils in the sky over Aldera, was no surprise at all.
--
Barriss Offee sat on the edge of her bed and fumed as she scrolled through the news from Coruscant. It was the first time Luminara had ever sent her to her room, and, less than a year from her knighthood, the punishment seared flesh like a lightsaber.
Gree rapped his knuckles twice on the metal of the door, instead of using the chime, as had become his habit. Barriss set the news down and leaned over to the bedside table to press the button to open it. Her lightsaber, tossed down in annoyance, gleamed with the temptation for violence. Unfortunately, the things Barriss hated weren’t things a person could hit.
Gree said, “I thought you understood, about the helmets.”
They’d talked about it, about never bearing yourself for a soulmate. Barriss had always assumed they were on the same page, but now she felt sick thinking about it.
“So did I.”
“We all have rules we have to live by.”
The Force dripped, like sticky sweat, down Barriss’s back. This was all so wrong. “Don’t compare my culture to your slavers.”
“And what is clone culture, if not this?”
“I don’t know,” Barriss told him, “But I’ll tell you this for free; people have been telling me my entire life that I could have a soulmate match if I wanted one. I’ve heard Master Plo’s argument a hundred times, from well-meaning idiots and ill-meaning assholes. Not one of those arguments has ever changed the way my tattoos work for me, because I’ve always understood what they mean. I understood when I chose them. The fact that Mirialans, collectively, help define that meaning doesn’t make it any less mine. The fact that just telling people they weren’t prisoners to their helmets has liberated so many is telling enough.”
Gree sat on the bed beside her. “Maybe so, but I’m not sure that’s for you to say, Commander.”
Maybe, but she wasn’t sure he’d understood her any more than she’d understood him, in their conversations about this. “For Mirialans– and, I’m given to understand, for Mandalorians – the right to choose against having soulmates is of deep cultural importance. I think it’s one of the best things about us, that we see individuals as worthy entirely for themselves, not because of their capacity to connect with others. But the choice is key. It is the un-choice of most soulmate matches that we reject.
“Someone took this thing I believe in, more than nearly anything, and turned it into a weapon. And they used that weapon on people I love. That makes me sick to my stomach.”
Gree held his hand out, and squeezed Barriss’s tight, when she placed it in his. “It doesn’t have to be a weapon against us, I think. We’re not on Kamino, anymore. We are – our culture is – whatever we choose to make of it.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad we have someone like you fighting on our side.”
Barriss could hardly believe in this war anymore, found it increasingly difficult to believe in the Jedi, and was even struggling to find comfort in the values she loved most, but this, at least, she could believe in.
--
“I’m afraid we simply can’t go on like this, my boy. Of course the Jedi was right in his argument that these masks are a construct – I’m sure Senator Amidala has explained as much to you – but you’ve seen the suffering this war causes. People need generals like you in the field, protecting them.”
“Of course, Chancellor,” Anakin agreed, but his mind was elsewhere. It was in the desert with Shmi, and un-learning Naboo training with Padmé, and seeing Obi-Wan’s true smile two years after meeting him.
Anakin said, “if soldiers aren’t allowed to have soulmates among their own, what makes them any different than slaves? Isn’t the right to soulmates what defines a person?”
“I’m afraid that’s more a question for philosophers than for men of action like you and I.”
In a way it was a question for philosophers, of course. Barriss Offee was a philosopher; she had come to an entirely different answer than Anakin about what constituted a person, and would have found his definition childish and amatonormative. Anakin was not a philosopher, but what he had observed was not, it must be acknowledged, a matter purely of philosophy. In a strictly legal sense, in hundreds of Republic cultures, the presence of soulmates was key to defining sentience and personhood. To deny such a right was a very grave matter indeed.
Anakin nodded, but Palpatine could not shake the feeling that he had lost his attention.