Chapter Text
Chapter 1
There is very little natural light on this side of the planet. When the sun comes up, every 50 hours or so, it will peek across the buildings like a timid animal for 15 minutes and then slip back down as though it doesn’t like what it sees. To compensate, artificial light is everywhere, laying along the ground on either side of the packed-tar street and hanging on crisscrossed wires above it. They hang off the buildings and shine out of the windows like searchlights. It gives the whole city a seedy, fluorescent glow that keeps the secrets of the peaceful homebody as well as the violent criminal.
You’re looking out your window now. It’s open, the cool night air battling against the warmth of your small room and it’s the perfect mix between safety and freedom to make you feel nothing at all. Your room is ten stories up from the ground, but still only half the height of the building, and around you, other similar structures tower even higher. Pastel and yellowed lights pour out of all of them, and the moving shadows they create give life to the city in a way they couldn’t under the light of the sun.
Mentally, you’re drifting. Trying to think of nothing at all as you sit and watch. Whether it’s a different moment now than when you first sat down, or the same one, is unimportant. What’s important is that you’re gone. Scattered in pieces across the galaxy. These pieces of you are free and that’s all that matters. Time is gone, but you know there will come a moment when the door across the room from the window will open. A figure will enter, the bed will move, and the ceiling will blur. It would hurt if you had a body, but you are nothing and you will feel nothing. You are the stars, blocked and distorted by the city lights below. There, always present, but unseen, unknowable and unconcerned with all that goes on below them.
The door does open and a figure does enter. You look over from your place at the window. Even after all the time you spent to drift far away, you still feel a tiny pang knowing you have to leave the cool comfort of the window seat and replace it with the constricting warmth of the bed. Before the thought can do any real damage, you imagine it as a physical object, a spiky ball that you quickly lock away in a box and then push that box away to the back of your mind where it can’t hurt you. You are above and away from all the things that can hurt you.
As you climb down from the window sill and fall on to the bed, the stranger in your room fiddles with a box by the door. The set-up is simple enough so you don’t offer any instruction. An amount of time is chosen, the cost, in credits, is specified and once the credits are paid the door to the room is locked and whatever happens after that…happens.
Instead of falling in to the trap of wondering what might happen, you let your mind wander. The figure is wearing head-to-toe armor. A Mandalorian’s. An oddity. Probably stolen. On his back is a disruptor rifle, over-sized and so covered in dirt and dust the only flecks of silver to peek through are on the trigger. He’s brought some type of luggage with him. A hovering pod about three feet long, shaped like an egg and pushed in to the corner of the room for safe-keeping. It’s sealed up tight with a small keypad on front. There’s no point worrying about what’s inside it. If it was something awful and that something awful was going to be used then that would happen, nothing could stop it from happening, and in some other time it had already happened and you were already through with it, sitting on your window sill with the cool air again.
The swish of the door lock engaging tells you that he’s paid to management’s satisfaction, and now you are one step closer to being alone again. Instead of opening the pod, the armored figure sits down on the side of the bed and lets out what sounds like a sigh. You let you loose body roll over in to the depression his makes until you’re almost touching, but he makes no move to reach out so you just stare at your reflection in the polished helmet. You are thousands of parsecs away watching the snow fall in the yard of your childhood home. It’s a game you like to play. In this game you only get to be safe and happy at home if you can make the girl on the bed say and do the right things. If the girl on the bed says and does all the right things, then no one will disturb her in her mind-home, but if she says the wrong thing, misses a cue or drifts too far away, then…things happen. Usually painful things that make management yell about loosing business, and the doctors hired to fix the things cluck their tongues disapprovingly.
It’s okay though. You know all the rules to this game now, and those things almost never happen anymore. In one side of your mind you are watching the snow and with the other you ask out loud, “How are you feeling tonight?” A default sentence. You can think of dozens of them without concentrating too hard.
“I’m fine.” A pause. If he asks it back then he’s a talker and you’ll have to pull more sentences out of your foggy mind. You hope he doesn’t. “I’m going to keep my armor on.”
You feel the same small surprise as when you first saw the armor. Perhaps he was a real Mandalorian after all. After your own parent’s deaths, and in your early days here, you had thought about these stories a lot. When things got so bad you thought you couldn’t stand it anymore, you dreamed that they would come and take you away. That they would train you in the ways of the warrior and teach you how to kill disgusting men instead of fuck them, but as you got older, they never came and eventually you gave up on dreaming about it altogether.
On the surface you are still playing the game though so you say, “Sure thing baby, whatever you want.”
“Just keep your hands on the bed.” Easy. You dig your hands in to the comforter below you. You were already sweating a little and letting your legs fall open feels nice. You’re not wearing much, but the heat pumped in to the room is always too high. There are no controls for it. It just is what it is like everything else that happens here. You close your eyes and the artificial light becomes like the sun, shining through your eyelids and bathing you in warmth that is easier to take than the cloying air of the heater.
Your feelings are distant, you’re lost in a happy dream, seeing your childhood as though it was happening right now, but not so distant that you aren’t aware of his gloved hands on you. They start at your knees and then glide up past your thighs to grab the waistband of your silk shorts, and he pulls them off in one swift motion. It’s obvious you’re weightless to him, one moment you’re on your back, hands at your sides and eyes closed, and the next he’s flipped you over on to your stomach. Your hands have to come up to your head, so you can rest your weight on your forearms, and keep from suffocating against the pillow as he pulls your hips up.
He doesn’t bother removing your top. It’s also silk and in this new angle it falls down your back and up past your breasts anyways. He stops touching you and you can hear him undoing the clasps on his belt and stripping off whatever armor he needs to to accomplish what he wants. The pillow below you smells like flowers, none grow here of course so like everything else on this planet the smell is artificial, but it's still comforting. You’re smelling the flowers and keeping your hands on the bed and he doesn’t seem to need anything else from you. You don’t want to have to feel what comes next, shouldn’t have to, but thoughts like that only leave you bitter, and that only makes you sad. It’s better to feel nothing at all.
Instead of what you were expecting though, the next time he touches you it’s with his bare finger. He’s not being coy or teasing you or anything else you would have to pretend to giggle or squirm at. He just presses it against your pussy firmly and pushes it in to you. The noises are second nature, waiting to be pulled out of your throat as though you’ve been conditioned to make them. And you have of course. They may not teach shooting here, but they do teach you how to moan and sigh and curse like you’re having a good time. You draw in a breath to moan, but before you can let it out, the hand that’s not inside you comes from nowhere, grabs your hair, and pushes your face down in the pillow with enough force it becomes difficult to breathe. He shushes you in the same baritone he used when he told you to keep your hands on the bed.
“Try to stay quiet.” Another easy request. Maybe the Mandalorian did hear your prayers, but instead of coming to spirit you away, they sent one of their own to make it easier on you just for one night.
His hand disappears from the back of your head before lack of air becomes a problem, and with his other hand he slides another finger in to you while you lift your head to breathe as quietly as you can. There’s no discomfort, no demands you can’t easily meet. You let your head fall on to the pillow again and will yourself to be quiet as his fingers continue their steady movement inside of you. You go back to the snow, back to the frozen lake and the birds that would fly overhead in flocks. Separated from your room, the city and the horrible fluorescent lights, what he’s doing begins to feel good. Your knees and elbows are aching, and the profound discomfort of being exposed like this to another stranger night after night can never be fully pushed out of your mind, but he’s moving slowly and curling his fingers. When his fingers sink all the way in to you, his thumb presses against your other hole and makes you feel something unusual in your stomach. Maybe if he hadn’t told you to be quiet not all of your moans would be for show.
It isn’t bad, it’s okay, and time slips away from you easily even though you know what’s coming next will be more demanding than his fingers. For a little while at least there’s no sounds in the room but his breathing. It should sound more mechanical coming out of his helmet, but there’s a hitching, human quality that can’t be completely covered by the metal. Eventually there’s new sounds. His steady rhythm works on your body and now you can both hear the wet sounds of his fingers as they slide in to you, and there’s also the soft slapping sound of his other hand against his skin as he pleasures himself.
Following cues known only to himself, he pulls his fingers out and flips you over again like you’re just another feather pillow on the bed. You realize that you’ve let yourself become too comfortable. Let your mind focus too much on the way he was making you feel, and now you’re really here, present, laying with your legs spread and no where to go. You feel like you’re seeing him for the first time. Up close he looks at least six feet tall even on his knees, and his armor, an oddity before, looks so real now. Solid, silver and covered in angles and hard edges that are all designed for combat. His helmet is overwhelming this close. The black glass looks down at you expressionlessly, and in the fabric between his chest plate and shoulder has a crusted, dark stain on it that you can’t help but think is blood.
As if sensing your fear and wanting to confirm it, his hand moves so fast toward your face you’re certain he’s going to strike you. You flinch back instinctively, but know better than to take your hands off the bed after he told you explicitly not to. The blow you’re expecting never lands, and after a moment you cautiously open one of your eyes to peek at what he’s doing. Instead of a fist, his hand is open and cupped next to your head. Without his glove you can see that his skin is brown and his hand is shaped just like yours only larger and calloused.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says and the second he speaks you feel more relaxed. His voice softens the armor in a way his movements don’t. That, combined with his bare hand and continued panting, remind you he’s human. “I just want you to spit.”
You look at his cupped palm and then back up towards his face, and feel yourself breaking out in to a smile. It’s from relief, not amusement, but it still feels good and you lean over and spit for him without embarrassment.
“Thank you.” He says, and it would have been sweet but he’s rubbing your spit over his dick and you’re getting your first look at it. The gentle stretch of his fingers now seems like a joke. His own fist is barely covering half the length and it’s obvious how hard he is; leaking on to his fingers and if he wasn’t so big you would have thought the spit was unnecessary. “Are you ready?”
It’s a question you’re only allowed to give one answer to, but you nod for his benefit anyways. He wraps one of his arms under your waist and pulls your hips up. His other hand presses in to the bed near your head, and now his helmet is so close you can hear his labored breathing through the modulator and, much quieter, you can hear it unfiltered huffing out from the space under the helmet.
He presses against you, but the angle is wrong and instead of his dick, his chest armor presses against your breasts all cold steel and hard edges. It makes you gasp. Right next to your ear the Mandalorian swears harshly and does his best to readjust, but then the leg guard is pressing in to your thigh painfully and you can’t help the whimper that escapes you. He moves to try another position, but you can’t imagine how that’s going to help.
“Wait,” you say quietly, still mindful of the rules, but his whole body goes still when he hears your voice. “Let me help.” You tentatively lift your hand off the covers, it feels cramped after holding on so tightly, and you’re ready to put it back down if he gets angry.
“Okay.” The helmet tips down in a nod, so you reach between his chest plate and your stomach until your hand finds his dick. It’s still slick and hard, and the second your hand wraps around it he lets out a deep groan louder than any noise either of you had made yet. As soon as he makes the noise, he looks over his shoulder towards the back of the room reflexively but there’s nothing there. He waits, completely still, for another moment and then turns back to you pressing his hips in to your fist. You squeeze your hand, not because you have to, but because you want to see if you can make him make that sound again. Instead, he swears and thrusts his hips forward again harder this time. Your wrist feels like paper against his muscles and the weight of his armor. The hand supporting your hips hasn’t wavered this whole time, and when you lift your legs up to wrap around him, he holds you up effortlessly.
This time when he leans his his body into yours, you guide him to the right place. You use your fingers to spread yourself, and when it lines up right and he’s finally in you both gasp. He doesn’t even attempt to go slow as you do your best to adjust, but judging by the way he’s gasping and pressing his helmet in to your shoulder, he can’t help it. You pull your hand out from between you and he takes advantage of the new space to push all the way in. The pressure of his helmet against you is hard enough to hurt, but constant enough to lessen the discomfort, and the sounds he’s making right next to your ear are more than worth it. You’re starting to feel a connection to this awkward Mandalorian and his over-sized armor that’s clearly come in the way of him doing this very often.
His thrusts are hard and there’s little rhythm to them. Every time he pulls out a little he immediately slams back in, so deep you want to make noise, any noise, but you remember that blood stain and stop yourself. You bring the hand that had touched him up to cover your mouth. His thigh armor is digging in to your legs so you spread them wider, trying to fit all of his bulky form between them. The new angle is magic. You feel it and you know he feels it too. He’s groaning again, just as loud as the first time, but he doesn’t stop and he doesn’t turn around again. He just keeps thrusting in to you oblivious of anything else. It's too much, too fast, and every time he fills you there’s a sharp, urgent pain that makes your eyes water, but he doesn’t slow down and there’s no hope of pushing him off you. You don’t even know if you would if you could. Instead you do your best to relax, to spread your legs even wider and angle your hips until you feel him push in to you deeper, until his cock is pressing against the inside of you like it belongs there. His thrusts are slamming your bed in to the wall. You can feel your headboard banging against the thick steel, but you can barely hear it over the noise he’s making. Grunts and gasps and strings of words in languages you don’t understand.
He doesn’t last much longer, letting out one last achingly vulnerable cry before you can feel him coming inside you. For a moment everything in the room is still. You can feel the hand holding your hips finally start to tremble, and he pulls out much slower than he pushed in, gently lowering you back on to the bed.
It’s done now. It had been different, a little sweeter, than usual, but it was done now. He would wash in the restroom, gather his things and then leave, and you can go back to your window. Back to watching and separating. You aren’t ready to move yet, so you look through the window from your vantage on the bed and listen to him re-buckle his belts and lift his rifle from where he had leaned it against the wall. He doesn’t even bother washing up. Then you hear him open the pod he brought with him and feel your body tense. You had forgotten about the pod and its unknown contents, and you suddenly realize how foolish you were to think this was over.
Your expectations are vague and a little fearful, it might be whips or chains or something worse. He’s not speaking though, and the suspense becomes too much to bear so you sit up. Nothing in the world could have prepared you for what you see. For a second your mind can’t comprehend what your eyes are showing it, and you just stare unable to make sense of it.
The Mandalorian is standing over the cradle, because now that the pod is open that’s clearly what it is, he’s holding out his hand, once again covered by his glove, and from inside the cradle a tiny green hand is reaching out to him too. The longer you look the easier it is to comprehend what you’re seeing. There’s a creature inside, tiny and bundled in blankets, it isn’t from any species you recognize. It has ears twice as large as its head, which is dominated by two, round eyes that stare at the Mandalorian intently.
A foundling, you think, he brought a foundling here and left them in the corner of the room while the two of you did your business like it was another one of his rifles. The scene becomes more surreal as the baby reaches out both hands and coos, and the Mandalorian sighs, lifting it out of the crib to cradle in his arms.
After a minute or two of fussing over it, he finally turns to look back at you. The baby follows his gaze and now they’re both looking at you, and you have no idea what they’re seeing in your face but unadulterated surprise seems the most likely. After a few moments of silence, the Mandalorian says,
“Can you watch him for a few hours? I have to go do a job.” It’s nonsense. You try to play the words over again in your head but you’re still too shocked to understand them, let alone answer. When your silence doesn’t break, he adds, “I’ll give you credits for the door lock. Four hours should be long enough.”
You slowly getting over your surprise and catching up; picking out the important parts and putting them in order: a child, watch him, a job, credits for the door lock. You nod and hear yourself say, “Yes I can watch them.” The truth is you want to watch them. Now that your eyes have met theirs, you want to hold them and comfort them and if you’re very lucky have them reach out to you the same way they reached out to the Mandalorian. You’re almost certain it’s relief you can see in the shift of his shoulder pauldrons as you hold out your arms for the child.
“Thank you.” He says while he hands the small bundle over. The child looks up at him and makes another small noise. “I know,” he says, “but you’ll be safe here and I’ll be back soon.” There’s no indication of whether the child understands him or not, but it doesn’t coo again and it settles in to your arms without a fuss as the Mandalorian reaches in to a pocket mostly obscured by his chest plate and pulls out a small pouch. He turns the bag over on the edge of the bed and a handful of imperial credits fall out.
“Lock the door as soon as I leave. Four hours will be plenty. Don’t answer the door for anyone but me. Do you understand?” He sounds serious so you tear your eyes away from the baby who is looking up at you sleepily, it’s big round eyes fighting to stay open, and look up at him and nod.
“Yes, I understand. Four hours. Don’t answer the door for anyone but you.” He looks at the two of you for a moment like he’s going to say more, but then turns silently to the door, unlocks it from the keypad, and exits with a swish of his cloak. You stand up as soon as he’s gone and, with the child in one arm, you select the time and feed the credits in to the box with the other. The door lock engages and the two of you are left alone with nothing but hope that the armored man will return.
In all the years since you lost your parents in the docking bay accident and, without any other guardians to take you in, were sold to the current management here, you’ve never once been left alone with the door locked. You’re not technically alone now, but the child in your arms is as non-threatening a being as they come. It’s reaching out now and pressing its tiny hands to the blue folds of your silk shirt then watching intently as it pulls away and the fabric ripples and shines in the light above you.
Suddenly it hits you that you still aren’t wearing pants and there’s a child in your arms and even in the uncomfortable heat of the room you can feel a slight chill of the Mandalorian’s cum running down and drying against your thighs. The rush of everything you’re feeling is overwhelming and for the first time it’s mostly good: the safety of the door lock, the relief of the pod containing something sweet and pure instead of dangerous and cruel, the gentle tug you feel in your heart looking down at the child and having it look up at you. It’s a far cry from your usual days spent waiting and fucking, waiting and fucking.
First, you set the child down on the bed and it practically disappears in to the feathery pillows and blankets. You push everything on to the bed together until it makes a round nest around the kid and you ask it to please stay put. It doesn’t answer but it does close its eyes and sink down and smack its lips sleepily, which seems like a good sign. You open the smaller door that leads to the bathroom and leave it open while you pull your shirt off and clean your body under the warm spray of the refresher. You can’t go more than a few seconds without glancing out at the baby to make sure it’s okay, but it doesn’t move except to turn its head and look out at the lights reflecting off the window like you had been when you were laying there. Once you’re clean and the warm air has dried everything but the thickest part of your hair, you step out of the bathroom and kneel by the bed where a compartment in its frame hides your clothes. The contents have been jostled by the recent activity on the bed, but they’re brought in by a droid once a week while the soiled ones are taken away so you didn’t choose any of them yourself and you don’t much care what happens to them.
The baby has maneuvered itself over the blanket nest and is looking down at you over the side of the bed.
“What do you think?” You ask, and its ears twitch a little at the sound of your voice. “How about this?” The item on top is a red dress that looks like it would barely cover the curve of your butt and it’s made of a stiff, scaly material that was almost certainly pulled off of a creature that had been alive at some point. You hold it out to the kid but they don’t react so you toss it aside where it joins your silk shorts on the floor. The two of you do this ritual a few more times until the pile on the floor is larger than what’s left in the drawer. The child peeks and leans over the bed every time you reach to grab something new like it’s excited to see what’s going to come next, and the plush carpet feels nice on your bare legs, and the safety of the door lock has temporarily blocked out an anxiety you hadn’t realized was plaguing you so intensely until it was gone. The experience is better than anything that's happened to you in the past ten years. As soon as you think that, your mind reminds you that this is going to end and you whip around so suddenly the baby makes a startled noise and pulls back from the edge of the bed. The box by the door reads 3:24 and you feel your chest loosen. That’s enough time, it has to be enough time, you can fit a lifetime of happy memories like this one in to 3 hours and 24 minutes. Then, when you need to go somewhere else, to escape this room and whatever is happening to the young woman inside it, you can think of this and drift away.
The child is looking down at you more timidly than before and the slight droop of its ears makes it seem like it’s sharing in your sad thoughts, so you reach in to the drawer and pull out a piece you’ve been saving because you know it will catch their eye. It’s a singlet, tank top on top and shorts on the bottom, and it’s made from a sheer, gauzy fabric that’s covered in golden metallic flakes so it catches and reflects the light in a thousand different directions. The reaction is immediate. The kid’s eyes grow wide and light up, and they reach their tiny hands out to touch it. You let them run their hands over it for several minutes before pulling it away and sliding it up your legs, pulling the thin straps over your shoulders. You do a spin and the child giggles with delight. It’s pure bliss.
The only item left in the drawer now is a pink, feathered boa. You pull it out and toss it up in to the air and you both watch it drift back down. Between the feathers and the fabric, you’re wearing the kid is entranced. The two of you sit on the bed and play for an eternity. The feathers become a snake in your hands, then a bird, you tell stories and the child watches it all like they've been trapped without entertainment as long as you have. Eventually they start to fidget and look around the room more often. The door timer now reads 1:41 and you have no idea what you’re going to do when the Mandalorian comes back and leaves you all alone again, but you also have no idea what you would do if he doesn’t come back. You’ve never had so much as a pet and you’re feeling the first pangs of uncertainty trying to think of what to do next.
You have no idea what their species is, let alone what they might eat, but there’s a tray of your leftover food on a little table in the far side of the room by the pod the child came in on, and you grab it and bring it over in case there’s anything the little guy wanted. It was the right thing to do apparently, because the second you bring it over, they start picking through it and eventually settle on several slices of meat. They swallow the pieces whole. You are waiting tensely for a moment to see if they start coughing or choking or a hundred other things that might happen, but nothing does. Your worry is rewarded with a contented smile and large yawn. It’s too much to bear, but you bear it. With no clear idea that you’re going to, you scoop the child in your arms and carry it over to your window spot. Together the two of you watch the night go on, and for once, you’re not alone in your isolation.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been sitting here; it could never be enough. The child’s breathing becomes steady as they fall asleep in your arms, and the tiny but persuasive thought that you won’t survive giving the child back enters your mind. That the heartbreak of it will kill you, and if it doesn’t, perhaps the Mandalorian will do it for you. If you ask nicely.
The door timer reads 0:24 when a knock comes. It’s firm and demands an answer. You don’t delay, don’t even consider delaying, the thought is too tempting. You wouldn’t be able to resist and don’t want to find out what the armored man would do if you try and run out the clock. There’s a view screen function on the door, and you open it up half-hoping that it won’t be him, that you’ll get just a little more time, but of course it is him. It’s not like you’re expecting other guests when outside the room it must be clearly indicated that the door is locked.
The armor looks no less intimidating through the screen and you disengage the door lock before he has to knock again. The door slides open while you step back so he can come in, as soon as he does the door slides closed behind him. He looks more tense than when he left you, and there’s a tear in his padded tunic just below the left pauldron that you don’t think was there before. He holds out his hands for the child, and you have to hold back tears as you give them a tiny kiss on the head and pass them back over. He places the kid gently in the cradle and closes it up.
“Thank you.” He says while pushing a button hidden in the armor on his wrist and some mechanism in the pod whirs to life. It’s easier now that they aren’t in your arms anymore. It makes the last few hours feel like a dream. The memories are still there though, and as soon as the Mandalorian leaves, you’ll be able to sit at your window and think of them. Until the next customer comes along of course.
The Mandalorian isn’t leaving though. He’s looking down at you like he’s considering having another round before he leaves this planet for better places. You fold your arms across your chest and try to remember what it was like to have something to hold.
“Do you like it here?” He says suddenly. As though the two of you had been having a conversation and not just staring at each other silently. A bizarre man who asks such bizarre questions. The answer is obvious to you but you don’t dare say it out loud. Complaining is not tolerated by management, so you just gesture around the room and ask:
“Would you?” His helmet slowly swivels around as he takes in the space. Then, more deliberately, he shakes it.
“No.”
“Well, I have my window so it’s not all bad.” This time when you gesture his helmet doesn’t follow; it stays fixed on you. The view-screens on the visor are completely black from this side and give no indication of what he’s feeling. Maybe he was sent here by management to evaluate you. Maybe you were failing.
“I…” he pauses and looks at the pod before turning back to you. “I could use some help. With the kid.”
“You mean, you want to leave him with me again?”
“No. I need someone to travel with me.” You feel your heart start beating faster as though it’s picked up on something you haven’t. “I can’t pay you much right now, but I can give you lodgings and food and a cut of every job I take.”
It’s the greatest thing you’ve ever heard, traveling through space with this man and his child. You feel yourself choking up, and the tears that didn’t spill when you handed the child over are coming now. It’s unbelievable cruel of him, perhaps the cruelest thing a customer has ever done to you, to offer something like that when you both know you can’t accept.
“I can’t leave. You know I can’t leave.” You shake your head sadly; unable to stop crying now that you’ve gotten started.
“What?” His voice is much sharper this time, and the change in tone, even through the voice modulator, shocks you. Your arms grow even tighter around your chest and you look down unable to meet the gaze of the helmet anymore. The next time he speaks his tone is flat again. “The man outside. He told me everyone here was free to do as they wished.” He brings his hand up and gestures towards the exit. “The door’s unlocked.”
It’s not fair to say something like that. How could he, with his armor and his blasters and his adopted family, ever understand? You want to tell him how they taught you stories when you were younger of all the terrible, incomprehensible things that would happen to you if you stepped outside; of all the things that they would do to you if you tried to escape. Mostly you want to tell him about the time a guard caught you roaming the halls and had knocked you down with his fist and then rammed his boot in to you again and again while you screamed and begged him to stop. Your dinner had never arrived, and you had just been looking for some food, but they made sure that was the last time you ever left your room unaccompanied. You want to tell him all of this, but you know you won’t be able to, not through the tears and the shame because you’ve always known the door was unlocked but you’re too weak and too afraid to leave, so instead you just shake your head trying to convey how sorry, how frightened you are. The proximity of the door begins to feel overwhelming and you back away towards the safety of the window.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He sighs and looks down at the cradle. “You should come with us. I can take care of you.”
When he says “Us” a surprising feeling of courage flares up in you. If you left with them then you could see the child again; hold them and care for them; watch them grow. The longing to see those eyes looking back up at you is so strong.
“Can I really?” You ask as you wipe the tears of your face and take a few deep breaths, trying to make yourself look steadier than you feel. You have no idea what you look like: crying, stressed from this conversation, and terrified that he’s lying and this new feeling of hope will be shattered.
“Yes,” He says. “Just follow me and stay-” Before he can tell you where to stay, the door to your room swishes up. Standing in the opening is a guard you recognize. You don’t know his name, but when he’s bored or business is slow, he’ll come in and use you to pass the time. He never pays, but sometimes, regardless of how you behave, he’ll back-hand you before he leaves and for the next few days your face will bruise and smart.
You flinch when you see him and try to retreat further in to the room, but the Mandalorian, so much faster than you, grabs your arm and pushes you behind him next to the pod so he’s standing between you, the child and the door.
“Hey!” The guard barks. He’s paid to intimidate when it’s necessary, and for good reason. Even behind the Mandalorian you can see his bulky frame taking up the doorway. “No pay, no play. You gotta put the money in if you want the time.”
The Mandalorian doesn’t answer at first, but from this vantage point you see can his hand reach behind his back and grab the stock of his rifle. The rest of his body stays so still; if you hadn’t been right behind him you might not have noticed. “You lied,” he says once he has his gun in hand.
Just like when you first saw the child in its cradle, your mind is taking in images too fast and strange to process them at first. You see the Mandalorian swing his rifle around on its shoulder strap in one fluid motion and hear it fire, but you can’t seem to connect that to the sudden disappearance of the guard who, just moments ago, you could see in the edges of the door-frame, much less comprehend why the room suddenly smells like acrid smoke and tiny red and black flakes, like the glitter on your clothes, are floating down as though they had come from some previously-unknown contraption in the ceiling.
Before you have a chance to orient yourself, a braying alarm goes off in the hallway outside your room. You’ve heard it before a few times, but somehow the thought that you’re the reason it’s going off now is so frightening it makes your bladder want to loosen.
“Dank farrik.” The Mandalorian swears and grabs you by the wrist. He keeps his oversized rifle cradled in his other arm awkwardly. “Time to go.”
You’re grateful for his grip on your arm as he pulls you out in to the hallway. As much as you’re desperate to leave, there’s also a wordless panic building inside of you, and all it wants to do is retreat back in to the safety of the room. The man who’s either saving you or kidnapping you looks to the right and then the left of the hallway like he can’t decide which way to go. Both ways are lined with doors identical to yours, and already heads of all shapes and species are poking out of them to see what the commotion is.
“What’s the best way out of here?” He’s looking at you, but you shake your head helplessly.
“I don’t know. I’ve never left.”
Whether it’s random or based on some intuition, he pulls you both to the right; shoving past the people leaving the rooms and standing around in confusion as the pod follows along behind you both. At the end of the hallway is a stone flight of steps flanked by riveted steel walls. As the three of you make you way down them to the next floor, you notice how different the texture is on your bare feet to the plush carpet you’re used to. You’re terrified you’ll stumble, but the firm grip on your wrist helps keep you upright. At the bottom of the steps you round a corner and come to another flight, and then down this one to another. Despite the noise and confusion on each of the floors you pass, you’re almost at street level, and as far away from your room as you’ve ever been since you were brought here, before you’re stopped.
It’s another guard, this one armed with a blaster, but you barely get a look at them before you hear a shot fire and he disappears just like the last one; replaced by the same stinky confetti. Your mind finally offers up an explanation for what happened, but it is too much, and some automatic defense system in your subconscious shuts it down before you get more than a glimpse.
You’re already moving again anyways, thick metal armor in front and precious pod behind, and in your head the anxious desire to return to your room hasn’t abated at all, but after the next flight of steps you finally come to the main floor. The long, uniform hallways are replaced by an open room, currently in chaos. Several droids and guards are running around, and some of the people in the room are customers adding to the confusion by yelling at the droids to watch where they’re going and at no one in particular to turn that damn alarm off.
To your left is a large steel door with a keypad, but standing between you and it is an armed droid, and when the Mandalorian approaches, it holds up the gun and tells him to halt. He speeds up a little instead, dragging you with him, and with a quickness you’re starting to expect, jams his gun in to the droid center-mass. The whole thing lights up with blue sparks and then the droid crumples to the ground. The Mandalorian drops his rifle so it’s hanging off his shoulder again without looking at the attention he is drawing from the rest of the room, and he uses his free hand to press the release switch on the door. Once the three of you are outside and the door shuts, he pulls out his blaster and fires at the keypad on this side of the door reducing it to a mess of wires and sparks. The sound of the alarm is finally gone and the silence in its place is an entirely new thing to deal with.
Being outside is nothing like you expected it to be. You thought freedom would be like a release, the beautiful comfort of your window only magnified, but it’s nothing like that. Instead of filling your lungs, the the cold night air gets stuck in your throat. That, and the sudden release from the four walls you’ve been trapped in for so long, creates a panic inside you that dwarfs everything you’ve felt so far. The Mandalorian is oblivious to your thoughts, pulling you along again, further and further from your room, and the lights on the street are illuminating the way, but compared to the fluorescents of your room, everything is so dark. Your eyes can’t distinguish between physical objects and the shadows they cast making you feel like you’re going to run in to something with every step forward.
It’s all bearable until you round a corner into a long alley you’ve never seen before. You’re well beyond the places you can see from your window, and the irrational fear that this place can’t exist, and if you go any further you won’t exist, has you struggling against the Mandalorian’s grip and digging your bare feet in to the ground as much as you can. He stops and turns around but doesn’t let go.
“I’m so sorry,” you say. “We have to go back. Please, they’re going to get so angry. They’re going to punish me.” You bring you other hand up to his wrist like that’s going to help you pull free, but even as you do the pod behind you bumps in to your back. Lightly, but deliberately, like it’s trying to push you forward.
“No one’s going to hurt you,” He says, and it’s easier to believe him with the gentle pressure of the child behind you. You stop struggling, but the Mandalorian doesn’t start moving forward again. He’s looking down at the hand you have on his wrist. “What is that?” He asks. You follow his gaze and feel your brows crease.
“It’s my bracelet, but I’ve never seen it do that before.” The bracelet is an interconnected ring of spheres that had been put on to you when you were first purchased. Only management is able to connect to whatever information is stored inside, and you know from experience it is connected to an implant in your wrist that makes it impossibly painful to remove. It’s flashing red and beeping now so quietly you hadn’t noticed before. The Mandalorian presses a button on his helmet while he looks at it and says,
“It’s emitting a short-range tracking beacon. Here.”
“No, don’t!” But you’re too late, and his hand’s already there sliding it off your wrist. It doesn’t even get to your palm before blue sparks start to crackle and an electronic pain shoots up your arm making you cry out involuntarily. Your legs buckle under you and leave you in a kneeling position with your hands still being held over your head. He’s swearing and apologizing and pushing the bracelet back on to your wrist, but all you feel is grateful he hasn’t let go of your hand. If he had, and the bracelet had come all the way off, you think the pain might have actually killed you. You would feel bad about all the trouble you were causing him if there was any part of your body that wasn’t feeling bad enough already.
“We need to get back to my ship. Can you move?” It doesn’t feel possible to keep going, but you want to say yes, want ignore the pain in your arms and your feet and stand up, be strong and follow him if there is really no way you are ever going back to your room, and most of all you don’t want to let the baby go. You so desperately just want to be enough for them so you grip his wrist with the strength you have left and pull yourself back up. Compared to the Mandalorian, your trembling body must look like a joke, but once you’re standing you know you’ll be able to walk and you nod at him. You can feel yourself smiling despite everything with an irrational sense of pride. “Good. We need to keep moving.”
And you do. Down the alley, around corners, and past establishments where the smell of food and the sounds of rowdy patrons pour out. The Mandalorian never slows or stops to get his bearings, just pulls you and the pod along behind him until the city buildings thin out and then fall away behind you. Now, you’re in an open expanse. Every twenty feet or so the hulking figure of a ship stands out in the gloomy night. Your feet squelch through the mud that’s replaced the tar this far out, and for the first time the Mandalorian starts checking over his shoulder every so often but doesn’t stop. Eventually you come right up to a ship that must be his, because he lets go of your hand and pushes a button on his wrist that makes a long, metal ramp extend down.
After your long trek through the city, the inside of the ship is paradise. The space is cool and dark, like you had always wished your room was, and the walls are so close and tight you start to feel the panic of being outside recede as soon as he closes the hatch and the three of you are safe inside. He opens the pod and you feel another wave of relief when you see the child. They’re awake again, wide eyed and holding their hands out for the Mandalorian who scoops them up immediately. He motions you up the ladder and your hands are trembling and your feet are slick with mud, but he’s waiting with the kid below and you manage to make it to the top without slipping.
You’re in the cock-pit, settled in to the co-pilots chair with the child’s perfect weight in your lap. Both of you are watching as the Mandalorian flips switches and brings the ship to life when you hear an electronically amplified voice coming from outside. You can tell the voice belongs to a droid, and it’s telling him that laws are being broken and he must turn the ship off and surrender the stolen goods to avoid arrest. You’re the stolen goods of course, but before you can wonder if he’s going to comply, he presses a lever on the dash forward and the ship lurches slightly as it starts to lift off. And if he tilts the controls just so to ram into the droid as you leave, you can only hold that thought in your head for a later time when you hopefully have the strength of mind to process all of this.
Through the front windows, like a dream, you can see the stars finally, and they are just like you remember them and also so much better than any of the pictures in your mind. The child sits in your arms, a precious treasure, and behind you the planet where you’ve been held prisoner since you were a child yourself recedes in to the black.