I'm all bloody knuckles, longing for home.

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────────Garden Song, Phoebe Bridgers

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────────Garden Song, Phoebe Bridgers











       

        Del Kryze was born into a world of peace and came out of it as a weapon of war. Del was born into a planet torn apart from the inside out by war and it had only just begun to sew itself back together by the pacifist movement of Dutchess Satine Kryze. Once, children of Mandalore were bread for violence and brutality—bred to become warriors and bow to no man—but at the turning of the tides of the war that had torn the planet apart from the inside out, Madalore is ready for a new era; one of peace. Del's birth was meant to be the symbol of a new age; a child that was born in the pink dawn of peace. Del was a child bred for peace until they were ultimately sent to fight in a war. They were ten when the war began and thirteen when it ended. They watched as the Jedi became war generals and commanded legions of clones at the behest of the Galactic Republic and the Jedi splintered away from everything that they once stood for. Children were taught to take things apart rather than put things back together. Lightsabers were once meant as a last resort, but Del had forgotten how light their hand felt without the weight of the sword wrapped in their fingers.

Del never really saw the end of the war. They were forced to live with the aftermath and they soon learn that only the dead truly see the end of the war—those lucky enough to survive have to live with the consequences of their actions. The war took everything from them; their mother, their father, their childhood, their friends, their master, and the only home they had ever really known. They are forced to lose themself in order to save themself and in the wreckage of it all, they ask themself: Who am I now? Even before the end of the war; Del had always been stuck in that position between their duties as a Mandalorian and their duties as a Jedi—as their mother's child, should they follow in their mother's pacifistic footsteps in order to bring peace and lay down the weapon that had been molded to their hand, or as a Jedi, should they encourage peace with a steel fist and iron lungs, or should they follow in the footsteps of the Mandalorians who came before them and use any means necessary to protect their homeworld and their people? As a Jedi, they are expected to forgo all attachments, but as a Mandalorian, they are taught that loyalty and solidarity are the way. Del once sought to find the middle ground between the two—it had been done before, so surely it could be done again—but you cannot keep the peace by forcing it with a clenched fist.

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