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Mace hides a sigh.
"What are you doing?" He asks his children, who are all over the kitchen and covered in flour.
"We're bakin a cake!" Peeler tells him. "Gonna give it to der force-osik to say danku for bwinin us back."
"You're baking a cake for the force?"
"Yep!"
"We're wewwy fankful." Wooley tells him. "Dis is much better. Makin tins better. Bein happy. Less dyin."
"An less hurtin." Waxer adds.
"An less bein shot at." Boil agrees.
"Less dwoids tryna kill us."
"Less siffs."
"S wewwy nice." Peeler sums up. "So we're bein nice back."
"And how are you going to give the cake to the force?" Mace asks. All of his years of study suggest that the force is a universal fundamental with an inconvenient lack of hands, or mouth.
"Force-osik is in evvyone an evvythin." Peeler tells him with the air of someone imparting great wisdom. "So givin cake to evvyone and evvythin is same as givin cake to the force-osik."
And yes, Mace can see the path they took with that logic.
"Givin cake to statues and frogs and Jedis and baby Jedis, -" Waxer rattles off excitedly.
"Lots of force-osik in Jedis!" Wooley chimes in.
"- and tapestries and Boil'ika and -"
"- and the mouse dwoids!"
"- an maybe Master Duckoo if he's bein good and not siffin."
Mace is going to melt from cuteness. He has the best children.
Cody looks sideways at him, which is impressive, considering the actual direction he's looking in is mostly up.
"Now evvy time weird force-osik happens, they'll be feedin it cake. All suddenwly appears wiv cake an make everywon eat it." He scrunches up his face in a scowl. "Genewal gets turned into tubie by siff artinfact - dere bein cake. Genewal gets turned into cat by siff artinfact - cake. Goin back in time from siff artinfact - cake. Siff artinfact readin your mind - cake. Siff artinfact bein trufe serum - cake. Siff artinfact putting you in someone elses body - cake."
How many Sith artefacts had his children encountered? And why in the force were Sith making artefacts that did these things?
"Nanimals tinkin Genewal is their tubie" Cody continues without pausing for breath, " - cake. Genewal holding ship together instead of sploding - cake. Dead people bein bwue ghosts - cake. Time loops - cake. Eldwich horrors - cake. Stoopid misterious planets wiv extra force-osik and people made of force-osik - cake." Cody stops to pant for breath. "There'll be so much cake." He mutters darkly. "Not nenough ningredients in galaxy." He looks pointedly up at Mace again. "Takes hours after a natterpoint before you're feelin well enough to eats cake."
"That just gives them more time to bake it." Mace reasons. His children make really good cake. Cody just looks at him in judgemental silence, as if he can't believe Mace's naivety.
"Cod'ika?" Obi-wan asks, "Can you be askin the force to tell Master Sifo where Master Nantillys is? Tell it dat if he needs to be learnin excitin tins, he needs to be learnin dem wivout hurtin. Hurtin is bad. Hurtin younglins wewwy bad. We're goin to go wescue him when we knowin where he is. And der force is helpin us or I'm bein wewwy cross wiv it."
Mace slants him a glance.
"Force likes dem." Obi-wan explains happily. "Dey made it cake."
That is ... not how that works.
... Is it?
Sifo is standing at his door.
"We need to expel Dark Woman from the order." He says before the door has even finished opening. "And somehow prevent her from ever taking another Padawan. And probably jail her. If we can find a jail that will hold her."
"You know where dey are?" Obi-wan says, popping up from somewhere like the Galaxy's cutest padawan-in-a-box.
Mace wakes up from his shatterpoint induced nap to the smell of baking. He studies the dark haired Padawan stood in the middle of his children, looking a little lost. He's far too thin and too pale and covered in scars, some of which are clearly recognisable as lightsaber burns. Artery is hovering around his legs with a scanner, muttering darkly under his breath. Wooley has wrapped his arms around the Padawan's waist and is clinging on like a limpet.
Mace releases a wash of furious helpless rage into the force. There's nothing he could have done to help his children given that they didn't exist, but this he could have done something about if he'd known.
"Dark Woman?" He asks Cody quietly, because she's noticeably absent from this gathering.
Cody's face says everything.
"Dead."
Mace nods. It's not the solution he would have chosen, but it's clean, efficient, and not something he's going to condemn.
"We're going to need mind healers." Mace notes. From what he'd overheard, his own children seemed to spend most of their appointments teaching the mind healers new clapping games. They were having fun with it though, so he let them be.
Cody shrugs. "Shrink'ika is knowin ferappy."
"Not havin to be strong." Shrink is telling the Padawan, with hands on his hips and a no nonsense scowl. "Can be as strong or as not strong as you wantin. Anyone sayin diffwent is wong and can kwiff off."
This is not the method Mace's mind healers usually take with him.
"We lookin after you wevver you're bein strong or not." Waxer tells the Padawan.
Boil nods along. "You're ours now."
Obi-wan nods sagely.
"It's nevitable." He says. "Dey der best ever, but once dey deciding to look after you, you bein looked after. Deres no scapin. But s nice. We lookin after you, you lookin after us. S balance. Everyone lookin after everyone."
"Not needin to be payin." Cody adds. "We'll look after you nenyway, even if you not lookin after us back."
"Ours now." Boil adds.
"No take-backsies." Wooley says, peering up at him with a grin.
The Padawan's pale grey eyes land on Mace's chin, not making eye contact. Mace just shrugs.
"They very skilfully manipulated me into becoming their adult supervision." He says, voice dry even as he releases fondness-amusement-warmth into the force for the Padawan to feel. Obi-wan snickers, and Mace darts him a glare, amusement twitching at the corner of his lips. "If you want to escape them," Mace tells the Padawan, "then I'm not the best person to ask for advice."
Mace watches as Sifo crouches in front of the Padawan.
"The force gifts me visions of the future. When we found you, that changed how the future will unfold. But I still have the memories of how the future used to be."
"You remember all the bad things." The Padawan says, voice scratchy and hoarse. "I'm sorry."
Oh. Mace absolutely understands Obi-wan's need to find and adopt this one. He absolutely agrees with Boil. He's theirs now.
"I see good things now as well." Sifo says gently. "But importantly, I remember seeing the techniques Dark Woman was trying to teach you." Sifo swallows. "I swear I will never hurt you. I will not teach you in the same way she did. But if you wanted to, I think that between us we could work out how to do them. You don't have to decide now, or even for another twenty years. And you can change your mind at any time."
The Padawan looks up, a glimmer of something like humour or ... mischief ... in his eyes. Oh no.
"They did seem useful." He rasps.
Sifo smiles, slow and trouble.
Mace hides his head in his hands.
"What skills, exactly?" He asks through his fingers, suspicious, and dreading the answer. Vos is already teaching Obi-wan to cloak himself in shadows, he doesn't need -
"Phasing through solid objects." Sifo says, radiating unrepentant glee. "Teleportation. Flight."
Mace whimpers.
The Padawan smiles, shy and sly.
Maybe he can recruit Cody and his nice, normal, non-force-sensitive children who can't turn invisible and teleport and walk through walls to help corral the others.
"We's not havin names wen we decanwed." Waxer tells the Padawan. "Havin searal nummers."
"Cos we wewen't people." Boil says darkly.
"But we are people." Cody says with a shrug. "Nuffins changin dat."
"Made ourselves people." Boil agrees. "Made ourselves names."
"Somtiwmes we gives names to eachovver." Wooley says. "S a gift."
"Sometimes we name ourselfs. Cos we knowin who we are."
"Sometimes we take a name." Cody says.
"You deservin a name, cos you're person too."
"We can giftin you a name if you want."
"If you not knowin or wantin to choose."
"I hava book!" Wooley pipes up, thunking a massive datapad down on the table. "S got loadsa names in!"
"Choosin...your...baby....name." Cody reads off the pad.
"Wool'ika!" Boil hisses "s not a baby! S an ori'vod!"
"He's a cadet!" Wooley hisses back.
"So're you!"
"Oh."
"Jon." Jon says, before the whispered argument can start back up again. "My name is Jon Antilles."