Chapter Text
There’s something unbelievably disappointing about waking up in a place where you know you didn’t fall asleep. Especially when that place where you awaken is a place you more or less recognize, but never believed to be real. Such was my thinking as I was rudely dropped on my feet from a dead sleep, disoriented and confused as to why I was suddenly in the middle of sand dunes and surrounded by weird lizard-men that spoke an even weirder guttural language I couldn’t make heads or tails of. It wasn’t until they dragged me to their hide-out – which was previously hidden by a large sand dune – that I began to recognize where I was and assumed I was still dreaming. That’s always the first thought in the movies, right? It feels a little cliché when you think about it, but the reality of facing something you always believed to be fictional trends towards at least initial disbelief.
That notion died all too quickly, and I was surprised at how swiftly I adapted to this new reality. I didn’t know how I got there, or why I was there at all, but I determined I was going to make the best of it. And when I stared into those deep, innocent eyes of the Child for the first time, I knew that if nothing else, I could give myself a reason. I would do everything in my power to set things right. There would be little to no room for weakness when the time came, as I knew it would, so I would have to fake my way to confidence.
It was surprisingly easy to feign subservience to the lizard-men. They spoke little to no Basic, and obviously I didn’t know whatever language they spoke, but we managed well enough with charades and pseudo sign language. More or less, so long as I made it look like I was busy doing things to care for the Child, they mostly left me alone.
Bounty Hunters trying to blast down the hideout became a frequent occurrence so as to become almost normal. The mercenary lizard-men would simply lock me away with the Child until the threat had either left or was killed. Luckily for me, the kid liked me pretty well. I’m not sure how much of what I said he actually understood, but I think he got used to reading my tone of voice, maybe skimming off my thoughts.
Truth be told, I was startled beyond reason the first time I saw him manipulate the Force. He had wanted a toy – a little wood carving of something I didn’t recognize – and I simply wasn’t getting to it fast enough because my hands were full with other things at the time. Witnessing a small, wooden toy suddenly hover off the floor before zooming into his out-stretched hand was very close to what I imagined a demon-possession must look like in person. Thankfully, I was able to adjust quickly, especially since I was already very fond of the boy before we had ever met.
Two weeks into my stay with the Child in the mercenary camp – the last three days of which were surprisingly quiet and void of bounty hunters – the Mandalorian and the IG Bounty Droid finally arrived. I had been in the middle of preparing lunch for the Child when the attack began. I thought nothing of it, at first, since the kitchen area was fairly removed from all the fighting, and the noise was something I had become accustomed to. But as the noise steadily got louder the closer the fighting got, the more I realized that the time had come. The Child was going to be taken, and I was determined to go with him – if I could only convince the Mandalorian that I was an asset worth keeping.
And so I loitered in the kitchen a touch longer, setting everything for the Child’s lunch onto a tray and carefully making my way over to the protected section of the bunker where I knew he had been resting in the curious pod before it all began. I was just in time to witness the end of the first moment between the Child and the Mandalorian, his hand whipping away from the Child and onto a blaster, ready to shoot, before I could blink.
I gasped, frozen in the doorway as I got my first full look at the Mandalorian. His armor gleamed in the sun, and truthfully, he was much… larger in person than I had ever thought to compare. Really, he towered over me, and he looked like a giant compared to the Child that looked on at the two of us. Still, I was not… totally afraid of the man. I knew he had a good heart, a troubled past, and a noble and loyal outlook to life that only came with wisdom. He was intimidating as hell, but he wasn’t scary to me.
“Soup!” I announced weakly, albeit quickly. He cocked his head to the side, no doubt assessing me and my potential threat level. I carried on, “For the Little One. He should be hungry right about now…” The Mandalorian seemed to consider this for a moment, then stepped aside with an open-handed welcoming gesture to the Child, blaster now holstered though he kept a hand resting on it. A threat if ever there was one, and not too subtle either.
I nodded quickly, smiling timidly at first to the stranger, before a genuine smile came to my lips at the boy’s gentle coos. He gurgled happily at the sight of me approaching, and became much more animated once he saw the food bowl in my hands. “Hey there, love,” I murmured. “Time to eat!” I handed over the bowl to the tyke with a soft snort. “Looks like you’re finally getting out of this cesspool…” While the baby slurped away, I turned to look at the Mandalorian. “Sir, if you’re going to be taking this Child away, I would ask that I go with you too – at least until you get to wherever you’re going. He’s just a baby, and will need a lot of attention and care. I swear, I will not be a burden.”
The Mandalorian seemed to consider it for a moment. I watched as the tension built and bled, built and bled, from his shoulders. “Do you have anywhere else to go?” he rasped.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end at the sound of his voice, even despite the vocoder. A blush painted my cheeks crimson, and not for the first time, I wondered just how much color the Mandalorian was able to see through the visor of his helm. I shook my head, and simply said, “No.” Any more of an explanation, about who I was, where I came from, how I got there, got choked up in my throat. He wouldn’t want to know all that right away. He wasn’t a talkative person, and he likely had blabbermouths as bounties all the time. I didn’t need to bare my life story to him yet.
He sighed. It was the most resigned sound I had heard in a long while. “Fine. But know that if you get in my way of this job, there are no second chances.” He deliberately let his fingers linger a moment longer on the blaster at his hip before he relaxed.
I nodded deeply, my gaze never wavering from the helmet. “I understand.” I glanced around the space and made quick note. When I looked back to the Mandalorian, I asked, “May I pack some things for him? There isn’t much, but it should be enough to help keep him occupied.” At his (reluctant? resigned?) nod, I got to my feet and immediately grabbed the knapsack I had found within the first few days of my stay out of the far corner. I checked it briefly to make sure my prize and sole possessions beyond the light, breezy clothes on my back were tucked away at the bottom of the bag: A leather-bound notebook with real paper, and some sort of attached writing utensil. I had no idea if someone had been missing the little book after I found and claimed it, but there was no indicators that there had been a previous owner anywhere, and now all the lizard-men were dead.
Brushing aside my melancholy thoughts, I gathered up as many of the Child’s toys as I could find – all of which were simple and made of wood, depicting some kind of animal or another that I couldn’t identify or recognize. Perhaps they were keepsakes from his true home? There was no one left to tell, for sure, even if there was a way to translate. Thankfully, I had the foresight earlier to keep the toys in one centralized area before preparing lunch, so the packing took only a few minutes to make sure everything was situated in such a way that the toys wouldn’t dig into my back while walking.
That all done, I turned to the Mandalorian with a timid smile. “Uhm, sir? What shall I call you?”
He tilted his head to the side, and I had the feeling that this time he wasn’t looking at me specifically, and more so considering what to say. “Mando is fine,” he decided with a short nod.
“Mando…” I let it linger, as though I were tasting it. He shifted uncomfortably. “Okay, Mando. Thank you. I’m ready.”
Another nod, and we were off. I discarded the bowl used for the Child’s lunch on the ground as we left the compound, pointedly not looking at any of the carcasses in the dirt as I quickly set down the bowl and rushed after both Bounty Hunter and precious pod. If I weren’t ready before, I was doubly so now. Resolutely, I ignored the painful reality and formerly soothing routine to venture into the unknown. After all, there’s only so much the screen can show when telling a story…