Archive of Our Own

‘ALLEGIANCE’ IMPERIAL LIGHT CRUISER, GALIDRAAN SYSTEM, OUTER RIM.

“Officer,” your lieutenant barks across the dimly lit hallway. You spin around and stand at attention right away. A stray strand of hair, dislodged from your bun strung tight at the back of your head, blows across your cheek as your superior whirls along the gray, metal floor, steps echoing throughout, and stops in front of you. His breath tickles your skin as he huffs in your face. “Conference room K-2,” he tells you. “Gideon wants a word with you.”

Inwardly cringing and feeling like a child being reprimanded by their disappointed father, you force out an acknowledgement — “Yes, sir” — and promptly turn on your heels to jog towards impending doom.

It’s not often that someone like you gets to meet the Moff. And ‘gets to’ is definitely the wrong choice of words, for usually it is anything but an honor; either you are being called to your execution or, very rarely, you get the assignment of a lifetime. The only time you’ve encountered him before was a few cycles ago at an assembly, stuck between two colleagues you barely knew in a crowd packed as tightly as a can of pickled Naboo sardines. It had been an execution, back then. You still bristle whenever the sound of a laser beam followed by the unmistakable thud of a lifeless body hitting the ground rings through your head.

The fine hair at your neck stands up. Taking one last breath as discreetly as possible, ignoring the stormtrooper guarding the room, you push open the door and step over the threshold. You’ve never been in this particular office, and as you look around you realize that it’s… almost empty, save for one comms officer in the far corner. He doesn’t pay you any mind, so you look around in confusion, looking for Gideon, or anyone. But you don’t have to wait long before the familiar and fear-inspiring voice calls out your name.

You turn to where it’s coming from and are greeted with the bright blue light of his projection, standing tall and proud. You step closer, locking your limbs and joints into place at full attention.

“I am tasking you with reconnaissance and, if possible, retrieval of an asset on the planet of Nevarro,” he tells you without further introduction.

“The bounty-hunter guild has rebuilt the town after the recent incident, and the Mandalorian we seek has… friends there. He will return to Nevarro in due time. The asset will be with him. All relevant intel will be made available to you before your transfer in three hours. You are to stay there on stand-by,” the disembodied, modulated voice of Moff Gideon’s facsimile roars through the room. “I cannot stress enough how valuable this asset is. He has slipped through my fingers once before, and it is not to happen again. Failure will not be tolerated. When the time comes, you know what to do.”

You nod, but before you can salute and verbally accept your assignment, the blue shimmer of the hologram extinguishes.

✧✧✧

NEVARRO, OUTER RIM.

The arid heat of a volcanic planet tends to seep into one’s skin no matter what one does. With lava constantly streaming underneath the ground, blowing clouds of scalding steam through the cracks in irregular, unpredictable intervals, your face has been covered in a thin sheen of perspiration mixed with dust ever since you arrived as a mechanic on this Maker-forsaken excuse of a planet one standard month ago.

Every day since, you’ve woken up at seven hundred hours in your too-small bed and gotten dressed before spending the rest of the day in Nevarro City’s shipyard, crawling through labyrinths of metal and wires and, more than once, settling your knees right atop a loose screw, biting into your fist to suppress a yelp of pure agony before it has a chance to echo through the ship’s hull.

All the while, you’ve been waiting, stealing glances up into the empty skies for any trace of the old, battered gunship you saw in your briefing material before burning it behind the locked fresher door of the transport ship that brought you here.

Nothing. Every new arrival is yet another worthless small starcraft requiring little more than basic post-flight maintenance. You’ve begun to think that this is some elaborate plan from the Empire to punish you for an assignment gone awry many rotations ago; cheaper than prison, more cruel, intended to fry your brain with heat and boredom while still leaving you hopeful for work just in case they would ever need you again.

Sometimes, Greef Karga comes by and asks if everything is alright. He seems nice enough, for being bounty-hunter scum. You make small talk every time he visits, and, because he’s one of the mark’s friends that Gideon mentioned, you rattle off your alter ego’s Empire-crafted personal history. Orphan, mechanic, alone.

It’s not too far off from the truth — you had been a mechanic for the Empire — and lying comes easily.

He likes you, more than the others. Sometimes, when he turns to leave and his gentle smile disappears, you feel a pang of guilt in your chest. But then, as you wipe the sweat and engine oil off your face, you remind yourself of the end goal, and the ache recedes. Usually, at least. Glory to the Empire, you think, except with every reiteration, it’s beginning to sound more and more hollow.

You’re sitting next to an old transport unit turned smuggler vessel, eyes closed and savoring the moment of nothingness, when the monotony of your assignment finally, finally comes to an end.

“Mando!”

Karga’s voice, from far away, booms across the airfield and you almost drop your canteen, precious drops of water spilling across the edge. Your eyes tear open and you blink against the onslaught of sunlight; you put up your hand as a shield against the brightness and stare across the plane, gaze settling on a silver figure walking up to Karga and his sheriff friend.

They’re here. Wheels begin to turn inside your head, cogs that are already slightly rusty from the past month’s disuse. Child. Recon. Retrieval. Hidden comm link and tracker in your bag at home. Empire.

Before you know it, Karga is looking over to you and pointing in your direction. You flush, this time not because of the heat, and your heartbeat quickens as the small group begins their trek towards you. Setting down your canteen and holopad, you take a deep, calming breath and meet them in the middle.

The Mandalorian is… menacing in his armor. Pure beskar, you’re aware; almost envious. The plastoid often used by the Empire is far less impressive. You gaze up at its wearer, but the deep, emotionless void of the visor in his helmet unsettles you; as if you can feel his stare boring through the helmet and into you. You rub your hands together as your heart leaps into your throat.

“Mando, this is my finest mechanic,” Karga introduces you. “Still new, but I’m already convinced her hands are magic.”

You can’t help but giggle nervously, a blush most likely already staining your cheeks, and only half of it is an act. 

“Oh, stop it, Karga,” you laugh, “all I’ve worked on so far are ships I’ve been crawling into since I was five years old.”

“And she’s too humble,” Karga says, throwing his arms up in the air in disbelief. One of his hands lands on your shoulder, and you ignore the warmth of fatherly affection that you’ve never known before spreading through your heart.

Embarrassed by being the center of attention, you look down at the egg-shaped crib floating next to the Mandalorian. The child within stares at you, then up at its father. The asset. You smile and wave, reaching out with two fingers to imitate a pet, not daring to actually touch. You’re about to pull away when the child recoils, and you jump.

“Oh, um,” you stammer. “I think he doesn’t like me.”

Stay calm, stay calm. You force a smile upon your face.

“Probably just shy,” the Mandalorian says, voice deep and gravelly and warm even through the modulator. It does little to assuage you, and an air of awkwardness spreads between you and the rest of the group. Karga squeezes your shoulder before dropping his hand.

“Mando’s Razor Crest over there needs a lot of care,” he points in the direction of the familiar gunship a few hundred steps away. It looks— rough. Some exterior panels are barely attached to the hull, and for some reason there is something that looks a lot like a fishing net strung across the interior. “Considering his… disinclination to droids, you will have to work alone.”

“Sure thing, sir,” you tell him, but all you can think about is the tracker in the bag underneath your bed and where the best place to hide it on the ship would be.

“Now, how many times do I have to tell you that you don’t need to sir me, girl?” Karga puts on a stern face, but it doesn’t quite work, smile lines appearing around his eyes.

“Sorry, s—” you stop yourself with a laugh. It’s one habit you can’t seem to shake, no matter how much you try. “I’ll, uh— I’ll get right to work on your ship, Man— Mando.”

You force yourself to look into the Mandalorian’s visor where you think his eyes are. “I’ll try to be done by tomorrow, if that’s early enough.”

He nods, and you bow in goodbye. Without another word and on weak legs, your smile instantly dropping from your face once turned away, you walk up to the ship. You don’t glance back.

✧

Din cannot wait to get off this forsaken rock, even now that the town is rebuilt. The dust here is relentless, settling into every crack in his armor; it would have worn away at his old durasteel shields like sandpaper. As he follows Karga and Dune down the main street, he only thinks of Corvus and the Jedi hiding there; soon, the child might be with his own kind again, as much as he doesn’t want to let him go. His mission will be completed at last. Din looks down at him and worries; it’s hard not to, somehow. The ship will be empty and cold and silent without the kid. Din barely remembers what it’s like to be alone, hurtling through space with nobody but himself to take care of.

It turns out to be a welcome distraction from the endless spiral of thoughts when Karga and Dune ask him to join them on a mission out somewhere in the mountains; some old Empire outpost that’s supposed to be mostly abandoned by now. He very reluctantly leaves the kid in the care of a droid, jumps into a speeder with Karga’s blue-skinned assistant — is that Mythrol? — and watches constellations of volcanic stone, as far as the eye can see, pass by.

Of course, it’s never that easy. Of course, the Empire had something up their sleeve and of course, their team was almost incinerated multiple times by an amount of stormtroopers and TIE fighters that greatly exceeded Dune’s initial estimate.

It’s only a day later, with the kid back by his side and a drink he won’t touch in front of him as he sits in a cantina booth with Karga and Dune and Mythrol, music too loud and the air around them thick like smog from smoke and steam, that he even remembers yesterday’s worries. A trace of adrenaline is still coursing through his veins — better than any alcohol — when the hairs at the back of his neck stand up and he gets the sense that somebody is watching him.

Karga catches sight of her first, before Din can find a way to scan the whole place without moving his head, and then there’s a fifth person joining them at their table. The mechanic from yesterday, Karga’s… wunderkind, is as shy as she was the first time; her grip on her glass is so tight the tips of her fingers are pale white even as she informs him that the ship should be functional again, free of fish nets and loose exterior panels.

There’s something off about the girl, something Din can’t quite place. Too jumpy around the kid whereas everyone else seems to instinctively gush; almost too respectful for someone who’s supposed to have grown up with no parents, from what Karga told him on their way to his office. Her clothes and hair too orderly, despite the dirt. The vacant stare of someone who’s just that bit out of place. Of course it could be nothing, but there’s— something.

“Where’d you learn to work on ships?” Din asks when there’s a lull in conversation. He’s aware it’s possibly the first time he’s ever addressed the girl, but hopes the question can be passed off as polite curiosity instead of what it really is: shameless probing for that something that is still eluding him.

“My uncle taught me,” she says after a beat of silence, “before he died. Since then, I’ve been jumping around anywhere that would take me. Usually I could find someone who was willing to teach me stuff.”

Her gaze lands on Karga, who, if the dim cantina lights aren’t tricking Din, blushes. A quick temperature scan confirms it. Bright red cheeks. Din huffs out a chuckle behind the beskar and hopes the modulator doesn’t pick it up.

“I really don’t think there’s anything left to teach you,” Karga tells the girl.

“Is he your son?” she asks, suddenly, pointing at the kid who babbles a quick batu? under everyone’s sudden scrutiny, and now she’s staring directly at Din. As if the visor is transparent, as if she knows exactly where his eyes are.

“He’s a foundling in my care,” he explains, hoping that’s the end of it, but of course it’s not. It never is, with the kid. Nobody Din has encountered so far has ever seen any creature like him, so maybe— maybe he shouldn’t be so grumpy about people’s interest. Except he really, really doesn’t want to share anything with this girl before he knows exactly who she is. Despite how innocent she’s trying to look with her chin perched atop her palm, dictionary definition of ‘harmlessly curious.’

Her eyes, then, shimmer with the glint of something else, something… seductive? Yes, her torso is positioned in a way that makes her chest come slightly forward, and yes, she’s tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, but surely—

“The kid saved my life once, did you know that?” Karga asks the girl, whose stare finally drifts away from Din towards the rest of the group. The tension dissipates and Din doesn’t move an inch.

She takes a sip from her drink. “Really?”

“We were in the middle of nowhere, camping at night, when suddenly these reptavians came down from the sky and started attacking us. They got me good, scratched my arm up badly. Their poison was going to kill me, but the kid, he— healed me, somehow. Right, Mando?”

Din reluctantly nods as he looks around the room; he doesn’t like Karga talking about the kid’s powers so openly. Not at all. But a quick scan shows no people closeby enough to eavesdrop. He relaxes slightly.

“I have to admit, I— I was about to betray them, sell out the kid to the Imps. But that moment, it changed everything for me.”

Din catches the way her grip tightens around her glass, liquid vibrating just slightly as her hands begin to shiver.

“You forgive me, though, little one, huh?” Karga continues as he rubs the child’s head behind his ears. He gets a soft, sleepy coo in response.

“How did he save you?” the girl asks. Her voice is rough around the edges now, more serious and almost sullen, and the glint in her eyes from earlier has vanished completely.

Karga gestures with three fingers, imitating the kid’s hand before playfully poking his cheek. “He has magic, of course. Maker, I can’t get enough of him.”

“Huh,” the girl says simply, and at this point, Din’s gaze hasn’t left her face in several minutes. Her heat signature is bright red when he scans for it; but her glass is only half-empty. Either she’s a lightweight, or there’s something making her very, very nervous. Something intangible is creeping across her face when suddenly, her eyes flick towards Din and their stares meet again, unknowingly to her. Her pupils are dilated, and for a split second, as she tucks another strand of hair behind her ear, a pang of attraction stabs Din in the gut.

It’s just intrigue, he tells himself, and shoves it aside.

Within minutes, Karga and Dune are stuck deep in a heated debate about something inconsequential and Mythrol is already snoring at the table when the girl gets up and greets the group goodnight. Din waits only half a minute before doing the same, feigning fatigue to make his way to the room Dune offered him for the night.

The cool night air makes the child shiver in his half-sleep, so Din closes the dome of the carriage. It’s mostly empty outside at this hour, the majority of Nevarro City’s residents either already asleep or still in the cantina he just left; so the quick movement of a body rushing towards the airfield is easy to spot. Din zooms in on her, recognizing the girl’s face, now panicked.

Staying close to the walls, he follows in her footsteps. The airfield is completely deserted, but Din still scans the area before taking careful steps up to his ship until the trace of footsteps ends. The ramp leading into the Razor Crest is down, although the light is off. Only the weak beams coming from the town illuminate the inside, casting long, deep shadows.

Din’s steps are quiet as he walks up into the ship. The girl’s back is turned toward him, and she’s bent down looking at something on the ground.

“What are you doing?”

His voice breaks through the silence. The girl jumps, and something small and metal drops to the floor beside her feet. It blinks, red and bright.

A tracker. Of course.

“You said you were done with the ship,” Din tells her. His hand hovers over the blaster at his hip as she turns slowly to face him.

“I—” the girl starts, mouth moving as if forming words, but no sound comes out. She glances down at the closed crib next to him, biting at the skin of her lips.

Din is gripping the blaster now. “Who sent you?”

The girl is scared, eyes wide and cheeks flushed crimson, but Din is entirely consumed by wrath. It anchors him, lets him ignore the fear bubbling up in his chest and her soft features and the way her hands are trembling.

“Tell me.”

He points his blaster at her and she instantly sets off to run towards the exit ramp, panic twisting her lips into a grimace. Stupid girl. The laser beam leaves his blaster less than a second later, hitting her square in the shoulder. She drops like a bag of sand on the metal floor, blood slowly oozing out into her grass-colored shirt, hair out of place and spilling out around her head, caked with fresh blood and dirt.

The wrath dissipates as he checks on the child in a moment of pure panic. He picks up the tracker from the floor and walks over to the girl’s body; shallow breaths make her upper body rise and fall slowly, but her face is empty. He tucks the tracker into one of the pockets of her pant leg.

“Your favorite mechanic is a spy, Karga,” Din tells Karga through his commlink as he kicks her off the ramp into the sand. “I have to leave.”

The ramp closes behind him and Din is already in the cockpit, punching in coordinates to Corvus. Sparing no further thought to the girl slowly bleeding out on the ground of the airfield, he’s entering the hyperlane within minutes.

✧✧✧

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS.

The cold air cuts into your skin and bones like a sharp knife. Smoke permeates your lungs, and despite spending the past few months in the ever-beating heart of the metropolis, slowly getting used to the perpetual, indistinguishable mix of smells, you still have to cough every now and then. It’s different than the dune winds carrying flecks of sand into your airways; this is dirt and grime and at some points, probably, dried blood mixed with steam.

Nevarro was a turning point. As you were bleeding out into the volcanic stone below your almost lifeless body and half-mindedly listening to the Razor Crest rumble to life and fly off into the skies, you already knew it was over. The assignment, your career, your life as you’d known it up until that point. You woke up in a sterile white room, surrounded by rough fabric and cuffed to the side of your bed. Yanking at your restraints, an ache shot through your arm into your shoulder so hard you yelped.

They let you go once you’d told Marshal Dune everything you know about the Empire and its plans and hierarchies. The disappointment on Karga’s face as he watched you step onto yet another transport ship still follows you everywhere, even now as you wander around alleyways and dimly lit streets, never really daring to come up to the top. As far as you know, the Empire thinks you’re dead. There’s no real reason for them to suspect your defection; you’d been an eager student, a prime tech officer on her way to becoming lieutenant.

And yet, you hide. You only talk to criminals and outcasts, make friends with a stray loth-cat that somehow found its way all the way to the very center of the galaxy. Do odd jobs, sometimes, where you fix the jammed trigger of someone’s rifle, or sew up some unlucky Rodian’s arm after a bout with a rogue droid.

Then, after weeks upon weeks of much of the same, there’s a new kind of uneasiness spreading among the low-life criminal network you’ve somehow found yourself in, hidden in plain sight. Whispers creep through the crowd, hushed and scared in a way none of them ever are.

A Mandalorian is here, they say. Out for revenge, some gather, where others turn mute, eyes flickering and scanning every alcove and doorframe. You don’t care why he’s here — your blood runs cold when the rumor reaches you, huddled in your too-thin coat with raindrops pattering down on your hood. It must be him. The scars on your shoulder, both entry and exit wounds still red around the edges, pulse in tune with your heartbeat.

You follow the whispers. Out of sick fascination or because of the traces of guilt still floating through your system, you don’t know. It’s like he’s pulling at your threads from afar, drawing you in without being aware of it. You only know that you must find him, just to see. Maybe you have to find him before he finds you. The whispers grow louder in the entertainment district and you wait there for days, stealing protein bars and foreign-looking fruits out of the back of a vendor’s truck.

Then, you catch a glimpse of shiny metal at the edge of your vision, pure beskar, a broad form sauntering through the streets. He draws attention among the grime of the underworld, but just from the way he walks as if he owns this part of town, it’s obvious to anyone who catches sight of him that he knows he’ll win any fight that comes his way. And nobody tries; the bravest of them stare at him and the little crib following him, while most avert their gaze, some scattering into the darkness.

As the Mandalorian rounds a corner, you pull up the hood over your head, keeping your face shrouded by shadows, and set yourself into motion.

✧

The hooded figure has been following him for the past hour, lurking in the darkness behind street vendors and sneaking past crates and corners along the graffitied walls of the underworld. Din has long abandoned his initial directive of finding traces of his Mandalorian covert from Nevarro, now strolling through the streets, circling the block and waiting for a chance to ensnare his new target.

Ducking into the threshold of a gate around the corner of a dimly-lit cantina, he waits. The kid’s carriage — Grogu, that’s his name now — floats nearby in the darkness. Further down the alley, the light becomes weaker until finally it ends at the wall, caging in anyone who dares to enter. From the shadows, Din watches as his follower steals a glance around, then another, before pushing past the loose wires hanging from a window and walking by his hiding place. The figure’s threadbare coat flutters in the breeze, revealing the form of a woman.

She slithers past him, and finally he draws his blaster and rounds the corner, emerging from the darkness like the menace he can be, and pushes her up against the wall. She reaches out in practiced self-defense, but her elbow doesn’t reach where it was supposed to hit his throat quite quick enough. His hand curls around her throat where he holds her at an arm’s length, gloved fingers digging into the side of her neck just enough to suggest the idea of death. He feels her breath hitch under his hand, pulse thudding quickly underneath her skin.

Slowly, with the barrel of his blaster skating along her temple, he pushes her hood back to reveal her face; and as the fabric falls to her shoulders and recognition hits, Din’s mind is eclipsed with the same wrath he’d felt on Nevarro when he shot her square through the heart — or so he thought. After glancing quickly to his side where Grogu’s crib is still floating, he looks back into her wide, terrified eyes and pushes the blaster up against the side of her head.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you again and make sure you die this time.”

“Wait!”

Her strained voice cuts through the thick smog of the city, and Din decides to give her a chance. Her chin is trembling, eyes wet with tears threatening to spill over any second. With his grip still tight on the hilt of his blaster, he drops it to his side and loosens his grip around her neck just slightly. Wordlessly, he waits for her to speak.

“I— I’m not with the Empire anymore.”

Din cocks his eyebrow behind the helmet. “And I’m supposed to trust you, why? You were following me. Very obviously, by the way.”

“You don’t have to trust me. But just— don’t kill me. Please.” Her entire body is shaking like a leaf in the wind, either from fear or from the cold, or both. “I heard a Mandalorian was here and got curious. It’s stupid, I know. I shouldn’t have followed you.”

A pause.

“You defected?”

“Well,” she says, dragging out each letter in a way that makes Din raise his blaster again to point it right back at her chest, “not officially, I… think they believe I’m dead.”

As if it could ever be that easy. Either the Empire is actively trying to track her down, which means they might be on his tail as well, or they’re more reckless than he’d given them credit for and actually just gave up. Or this is yet another trap. Would Gideon really be so arrogant, to send the same agent twice? Either way; his gut should be telling him to stun the girl and leave her behind one last time, but— there’s nothing. No faint voice in the back of his head, no thrill at the base of his spine.

Just a scared, malnourished woman attempting to circumvent basic laws of physics and disappear into the wall.

“Let’s hope they do,” Din says and re-holsters his weapon. He can practically feel the sigh of relief leaving her lungs. She thanks him with the faintest whisper he’s ever heard before huddling further into her coat to brace against the cool breeze wafting forcefully through the alleyway. 

“What are you doing here?”

The question passes his lips before he knows it. She was about to leave and slink past him, never to be seen again. Which would have been ideal. What is he doing?

“Trying to survive, I guess.” Din can barely hear the girl. The shadows across her sunken cheeks are most obvious now with a flash of neon light bursting into the alleyway from some passing speeder’s headlights.

“How’s that working out for you?”

It’s the kid. And his stupidly cute, large eyes staring up at them from the now-open crib. Smiling at her with his tiny, pointy teeth showing, as if she hadn’t been complicit in an attempt on his life just a few months prior. The girl only shrugs, but the corners of her mouth are turned down and tired.

“Dank farrik,” he curses, “you need to eat something.” Xi’an was right. He did turn soft. Unceremoniously, he pulls her with him by the arm, and that’s how they end up in a run-down cantina on a street corner with a suspicious lack of patrons. A bowl each of stew, ingredients of origin unknown, sits in front of both the girl and the kid — the latter’s already empty and licked clean to the point that you wouldn’t know it’s not washed. The thin sheen of grime sticking to the countertops and floors tells Din that the barkeep might not even bother and put it right back into the cupboard.

“I was removing the tracker, you know.” The girl, still halfway lost in thought, moves the colorless mush of stew around in her bowl before tentatively bringing the spoon up to her lips.

Din looks up from watching the child drift to sleep. “What?”

“When you caught me in your ship, back on Nevarro. I’d put in the tracker the night before, but… after we met again in the cantina, I— I decided to remove it.”

Din thinks on it for a second. “You still deserved that shot,” he shrugs.

“Fair enough, I guess.”

Silence, not uncomfortable, spreads between them. The girl’s cheeks are as red as that night on Nevarro, but now without a trace of fear on her face. Instead, the purple and blue lights from the bar dance across her skin, painting her in brightness and accentuating her cheekbones, the ridge of her nose. The expanse of her chest is flushed and covered in gooseflesh and some half-dried droplets of rain; the valleys of her collarbones are a play of light and shadow.

“Listen, you have every right to hate me,” the girl starts again, her hands raised in mock surrender. Din’s eyes snap up and land on her face, on that small, black beauty mark just to the left of her lips. “But— and I don’t know how you grew up, but the Empire was all I knew for my entire life. I grew up with them. Have you ever seen a reconditioning room?”

Din has heard of that process some Imperial stormtroopers have to go through, but doesn’t acknowledge the question with any more than a curt nod. The girl goes on without waiting for an answer.

“I was convinced that the Empire, or what’s left of it, was doing good. When I met you and the kid and heard about his… powers, that was the first time I saw anyone with the potential of this immense power right at their fingertips and completely unwilling to use it for whatever they could. It was… eye-opening. Made my whole inner moral compass turn upside down, actually.” She twirls one finger in the air. “I’m still— I’m learning, trying to make up my own mind. All I’m sure of is that everything I thought I knew was wrong and now I feel… lost.”

She drops her spoon in her bowl after taking one final bite, looking anywhere but Din as she sucks in a deep, nervous breath. Bo-Katan’s words echo through Din’s mind, then. Cult of religious zealots. The way she and her team took off their helmets so easily, betraying the Way as if it was nothing. The way it’s just him and the kid against the world now, and not much else matters more than them, together.

“I understand.”

At that, finally, she turns her gaze to him. She won’t know what he means or how much he relates, but she doesn’t have to. Din sees some tension leave her expression, and that’s enough.

Outside the cantina, a few minutes later, they’re standing too close together. Bright light breaks through the clouds down into the lower levels of the city, and he could count the freckles dotted on her cheeks if he wanted. He doesn’t, though. (It’s at least fourteen on her left cheek, before he stops.)

“You should get out of here,” Din tells her as he looks around, “make something of yourself. This place won’t be kind to you.”

She nods, clutching her coat closed against her chest to keep out the cold waft of air as he returns to the Crest without another word.

✧✧✧

ZARE SPACE STATION, ILEENIUM SYSTEM, OUTER RIM.

The guy in front of you, wild neon green hair and multiple thick, red scars criss-crossing all over his face, is full-blown panicking and thrashing on the cot as he wakes up from his drug-induced slumber, and you only barely escape a punch right in the nose.

“It’s okay, you’re safe,” you shout just a bit more loudly than his wordless yelling. His muscles strain against your grip where you’re holding down his arms together with the med droid, but the tendons in his neck relax just slightly.

“This is Zare Station. You got a blaster shot in your abdomen, but we fixed you up,” you tell the guy as calmly as you can manage. “Now, if you’re gonna keep moving around like that, your wound will reopen and I really don’t have time for that.”

Patient all bandaged up and sent away, you breathe a sigh of relief when the door slides shut behind you and you’re finally, momentarily alone in the hallway. The wall you’re leaning up against feels cold at your shoulder blades, easily sneaking through the thin fabric of your scrubs. You realize you’re in desperate need of a drag of a cigarette but push that craving aside for now.

It’s been easy enough to get used to this new life. It’s what you’ve always done, even before the Empire. Jumping from one place to the next comes naturally, whether that’s Imperial bases or this. You’ve lost sight of how long it’s been since you stepped on a random civil transport out of Coruscant and landed in the middle of a complex ring system orbiting D’Qar. The first thing you’d seen when you arrived at the space station was an ad from the local infirmary seeking nurses and anyone willing to help.

And now you’re here, trying to make something of yourself, just like the Mandalorian told you to. Trying to save yourself a spot in heaven, if it exists, and cancel out all the things you did back when— before. Stitching up blaster shot wounds, aligning broken bones, applying tinctures and creams and wiping away tears from crewmates who lost one of their own.

Nightmares torment you some nights, nights in which you wake with a whimper falling past your lips and a scream still echoing inside your head. Sometimes you remember nothing but quickly fading smoke, other times your old lieutenant’s face follows you around the rest of the day. Sometimes, though, you wake up thinking the sweat sticking to your skin and clothes is blood, raining down on you in streams of red.

The station itself is… not necessarily awful. Dingy, yes, and dirty most of the time. Most importantly, though, you haven’t seen a single flash of the white plastoid stormtrooper uniform since you’ve landed. You get a foreign-tasting tree nut protein bar every morning that’s only half bad, eating as you look out through the viewports at the endless expanse of space or watching the different stalls scattered around the station, and you learned pretty quickly that you actually kind of liked working as a nurse. The basics had been ingrained into you during your years at the Imperial academy, and the rest was easy enough to pick up. A jack-of-all-trades you’ve always been, but this— despite the questionable surroundings, it’s almost fulfilling enough to want to stay for longer. Unless something better comes along.

Plus, with the steady amount of visitors and patients turning up at your office and some of them being exceptionally easy on the eyes, you never really get to the point of feeling too lonely; by now, you’ve learned that your desk is at just the perfect height to be bent over, and that once the door is locked shut, the room is so soundproof you can moan as loud as you want as you’re coming on the cock of a man whose face you’ll most likely never see again.

Most of them get the job done. And yet— it happens more than once that your thoughts wander to the phantom touch of gloved hands squeezing your throat in the rain, the distant memory of warmth and metal pressed up against your skin; sometimes, you pull someone’s hand up towards your neck, or try to imitate it when you touch yourself at night, but it never feels right.

“You know, if you ever wanna get outta here… I could always use a medic on my crew.”

Later that day, the green-haired guy already forgotten, one of those men is sitting in your meager office, not even hiding the fact that he’s ogling your chest as you’re checking the infected laceration at his temple.

You roll your eyes, except you wouldn’t have said no to a quick tour around his ship if he had been just a little bit more creative. They all need a medic on their crew. You’ve been hearing this exact sentence at least twice a day ever since you got this job. Too many pilots who’ve spent too long without the touch of a woman, or anyone, so naturally the nurse patching them up with firm hands and a gentle enough smile must be waiting to be saved and stolen away into a life among the stars—

“I’ll keep that in mind, sweetheart.”

You’re not a monster, after all. Maybe that bit of hope will make his life just that little bit better as he goes on yet another supply run or whatever he does; and the scrap of paper with his call sign scrawled in black ink will simply land among all the others in your trash bin.

You don’t look into the guy’s eyes as you remind him to reapply the prescribed salve twice a day, or as you bid him goodbye. There is a pile of paperwork looming in your peripheral vision, threatening to fall off your desk at this point; but you’re lost in thought, again, distracted by the comings and goings of the robotics shop that’s right across from your window. Your gaze wanders across the hold of the station, at the new arrivals and the flurry of vendors waving their merchandise in the air, desperate for customers.

Something catches your attention, then. A second goes by where your brain places it, where recognition grows and—

“No.”

All air leaves your lungs as you jump up from where you’re sitting. Your patient, still gorgeous and nameless, says something behind you but your mind doesn’t process the words; it’s just noise, now. Everything is. Like tunnel vision, you can only focus on the heap of junk that is the Razor Crest, just… standing there. It’s not a common sight anymore, and in the last few months you’ve seen everything come and go. No, this— it’s special, it’s him, it must be him.

The ramp slowly descends.

He’s here, again. Was he following you? Did he decide to finish what he started?

You could hide somewhere, but your legs are moving before you can make them stop. You faintly hear someone asking if you’re alright, but answering them isn’t important right now. You take a right, then a left, then fifteen steps down a staircase, and then you’re running across the landing pads, bumping into more than one stray crate, until you’re standing at the bottom of the ramp of the very ship you once lay on the floor of, bleeding out and in pure agony.

A phantom pain stabs you in the shoulder. Your scrubs must be soaked with sweat from running, but you don’t care, because the Mandalorian is disembarking, limping and pressing his hand against his opposite arm, leaving traces of bloody footsteps as he walks, and—

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

His voice is strained and rough, laced with pain, and it booms across the short distance that’s still separating you. The visor is pointed directly at you. Neither of you move.

“How,” you ask with your breath coming out in short bursts, “did you know I’m here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” He’s almost growling. You notice his hand flexing by his side, right around the blaster strapped to his thigh. Several people in your vicinity are in a similar position, frozen where they stand with weapons at the ready and watching their little scene. You have half a mind to feel embarrassed.

“I’m working here. Are you following me?” You were sure you’d parted ways with some level of respect for one another, back on Coruscant. Maybe he changed his mind somewhere along the way, while you were doing exactly as he’d asked.

“Why the fuck would I be following you?”

He’s angry. As if he wants to understand why you’re bothering him with something so small and inconsequential that he’d already forgotten about it. Your own wrath slowly ebbs, replaced by fear.

“I don’t know, to— I don’t know.” You should have stayed in your office and avoided this mess. Your voice is low now, quiet. Meek. You hate it. Then, instantly, fear dissipates and turns into concern as he stumbles where he stands, before dropping to his knees right on the ground. You’re beside him in a heartbeat.

✧

Her touch is gentle in an unexpected way. Not that he’s ever imagined the feel of her hands. Din ignores others’ stares across the airfield, focuses instead on the pneumatic hiss of the Crest’s ramp pulling up, and the grip of the girl’s hands on his left bicep. Her fingers are curling around the armor’s edges, holding on tight so he won’t fall again. “Let me take care of you,” she’d said as he fell to his knees, and he’s too tired to protest.

Each step is torture, right until she makes him sit down on an actual gurney, and Din doesn’t even remember the last time he’s been in an halfway operating, honest-to-the-gods medical facility. “You’re a nurse now,” Din remarks. He looks at the pile of papers on her desk, the posters hung up on the wall. Almost homely, as if she’s been here for years, not mere months. He wonders how much of it is actually hers.

“And here I thought I could keep that a secret,” she quips. Din hopes she can feel his scathing stare through the beskar. “You told me to make something of myself, remember?”

Huh.

“What can’t you do? A mechanic and a nurse?” Din can’t help the trace of sarcasm that comes out.

“You wouldn’t imagine the things I can do,” she says, and there’s a smirk beginning to form in the corner of her mouth, sparkling in her eyes. “Learned it all at the academy. And besides, ships and people aren’t that different. One just requires a little more finesse.”

His next retort dies on his lips when a med droid comes alive across the room. “No droids,” he says.

“See,” she quips after giving him one of those looks that could fill novels and turning the droid back off, “you’re proving my theory right. You didn’t want droids to work on your ship, either.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and neither does she, for a long while. Instead, he resigns himself to watching her line up gauze and cauterizers and creams on the table next to the stretcher before cutting away some of the flight suit’s fabric around the graze on his arm, right in the crease of his elbow. And, really— it’s a testament to how truly, utterly horrendous he’s feeling that he lets the girl fix him instead of dealing with it himself, while wallowing in the Crest’s main hold, shaky hands leaving ragged scars across his own skin.

“Where’s the kid?” she finally asks, and with it she pulls him out of his pain-induced trance, instead tugging at the strings on his heart. Grogu’s absence is almost its own person, filling the room with each second of silence, and yet, against any reasonable logic, he’d hoped she wouldn’t acknowledge it. He doesn’t want to think about it, and yet it’s the only thing on his mind. The pain of watching him being taken away as he drifted off into drugged unconsciousness, barely enough strength to press a button on his vambrace; the sorrow of feeling nothing but powerless upon waking up to an empty ship. It’s all fresh, still, the guilt of it all.

“Ask your darling former employer.” He doesn’t mean for his voice to drop an octave or to be so audibly laced with pure resentment. The girl’s hands pause in mid-air where they’re about to place the last piece of tape around a surprisingly neat bandage.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s the only thing she says for a while. She works with intense focus and practiced hands, gently wiping away the last traces of dried blood along his upper arm. Once satisfied, she directs her attention at the chunk of leather and skin missing from the inside of his left boot, right above his ankle; she injects bacta right into the injury, and for a second Din remembers to be worried that she might be poisoning him, but it’s no more than a fleeting thought in the end.

It’s hypnotic, watching her. Calming. Din feels his heartbeat slow with each passing minute, and maybe it’s the bacta steadily infusing into his bloodstream. Maybe, though, it’s the being taken care of. She’s very close, her face right up against his leg; close enough so that he catches himself tracing the lines on her face with his eyes, counting the nicks and freckles on her skin again. He turns away then, closing off and instead focusing on the pain pulsing along his arm and foot.

Finally, her work is done, and Din opens his eyes again. “Do you know where they’re holding him?” she asks.

Din looked it up as soon as Cara had sent him the coordinates of where she and Karga suspect one of Moff Gideon’s hidden Imperial remnant bases to be. “Ilum,” he says. “In the Outer Reaches. Most likely.”

She nods. “I know it. Remote. Very snowy, I hear.”

“I’m already on the way there,” he tells her as she drops the small pile of medical supplies into a sonic sanitizer. “Just had to stop here for fuel.”

“And to get medical attention, I hope?”

Din rolls his eyes behind the visor and wordlessly shrugs his shoulders. The girl lets out an exasperated huff, and suddenly there’s a smile tugging at his lips. He lets it happen. It’s not like anyone can see.

She leads him out of the room and down the narrow hallway they came from earlier. Din follows her until she sits down on a bench in a semi-hidden alcove overlooking the space station’s entire landing zone; he sees some shops on the other side, and for a moment, they sit in silence watching people run back and forth.

“What’s your plan when you get to Ilum?” she asks after a minute or two, fingers mindlessly tugging at a loose thread on the side of her pants.

Din turns to face her. “No plan yet. Just get the kid.”

“Mh.”

A pause. Then—

“Remember how I didn’t officially defect?”

“...Yes.”

She raises one eyebrow and the line of her lips morphs into a smirk. “I still have all of my codes.”

Din slowly turns to look at her sitting on the bench next to him. Surely she’s not offering what he thinks she is— “Why would you help me?”

Finally, the girl rips out the thread she’s been playing with and her eyes glaze over as she stares out at something Din can’t see.

“The kid’s cute. Doesn’t deserve to be taken away.” Her hands are trembling ever so slightly where they lay folded in her lap. “Honestly, though? If I can get a chance to mess with the Empire, I’m taking it. It’s the least I can do.”

He’s almost proud of her. Almost. It’s too easy and he shouldn’t accept. The rational part of his brain knows that. The other part, though, the one that’s been louder lately than ever before, perks up.

“How do I know that I can trust you?” he asks. 

“They already have the kid. Why would they keep having me spy on you?”

Din doesn’t want to admit it, at least out loud, but she’s right. His plan is non-existent, pure desperation clouding his tactical thinking. Any number of things can go wrong at the base, even if, somehow, miraculously, he actually manages to find Grogu.

Wordlessly, he lets his head hang low between his shoulders, staring at a small dent in the floor next to his feet. “And your work here?”

She laughs, but it sounds almost empty. “They’ll take me back after if I want. It’s not like this place is swarming with any… rival nurses or something.”

Din waits for one more moment, for a revelation or a sign or something to change his mind and call this whole idea off before it comes to fruition, but there’s nothing. It’s his only option, and the ache in his chest, the piece of his heart that belongs to the kid, climbs up into his throat. Eventually, he nods.

A few hours later, the fuel tank is filled to the brim, the girl has packed her measly belongings into one small, pathetic shoulder bag just before stealing as many medical supplies as she can fit and leaving her boss wide-eyed and paralyzed with shock, and then Din is punching in the coordinates to Ilum with her sitting by his side, staring out into the blue light of hyperspace.

✧✧✧

ILUM, UNKNOWN REGIONS.

Where Nevarro was arid and hot and cloyingly dusty, Ilum is pure white, frozen over into one giant ball of ice floating through space. It almost blinds you as you enter realspace and make planetfall, growing larger and larger until you feel like you have to squeeze your eyes shut to keep your corneas from being permanently burnt.

“Fly as low as you can,” you remember to tell him, “more likely to trick the scanners.”

Mando dips down slowly until the bottom of his ship almost scrapes against the surface of the planet. You can barely distinguish the snowed-over ground from the light blue atmosphere above, and you squint to look for the base out on the horizon. Mando sees it first.

“It’s coming up,” he announces as the ship slows down. You drift towards a boulder on your right and land with a gentle thud on the ice.

It’s what finally dissipates the last traces of a restless sleep still leaving your brain in an opaque fog; and with it comes the reality of what you’re about to do, sinking in like a rock dropping into a pond. You spent the first leg of the hyperspace jump in the cockpit, staring at an old satellite image of Ilum. The base has changed since the image was taken, and you filled in the gaps from what you remember seeing once so many months ago in a conference room aboard the Allegiance. At the end, you had a loose plan laid out between the two of you, and you tried not to get intimidated by the overwhelming level of trust, from both sides, that is required for each step to work.

For the remaining time, you attempted to sleep, without much success, not only because of the lumpy jacket piled under your head in a makeshift pillow. Secretly, as Ilum and the Empire came closer, you started wondering why you’d agreed to this at all. You know the reason, of course, and ultimately the prospect of besting Gideon and his remnant cell trumps your fears of failure or, possibly, death. In the short time you finally did manage to drift off to sleep, it was with a trace of constant restlessness.

The Mandalorian seems to have changed his flight suit during your nap; there is no trace of any blaster shot wound at his elbow, and his armor looks spotless and clean where previously it had been painted with small dots of blood. You’re not the only one who spent the trip too restless to find any sleep.

Neither of you acknowledge the empty crib stashed away in the corner of the hold.

“How’s your leg?” you ask when he raises himself out of the pilot’s chair and you catch a glimpse of his torn-apart boot.

“Good enough.”

He’s not limping anymore, which is a good thing, at least. The nurse you have become in the previous months winces at the thought of him returning to battle so soon after an injury, but— you suppose that even a wounded Mandalorian can wreak havoc like no other. Especially if it concerns the child he so obviously cares for deeply; enough to enter the lion’s den with only a former Imperial traitor and a gun for help.

You smooth out the last few wrinkles in your Imperial officer’s uniform as you stare down at the once-familiar, now-foreign cloth adorning your body like a cage.

“Feeling right at home?” Mando asks, pulling you out of the self-pitying hole you’d begun to sink into, smirk apparent even with the helmet.

Ha, ha. You grimace in his general direction. “Fuck off.”

You like to imagine that the huff escaping from underneath the helmet stems from amusement rather than annoyance.

The Razor Crest’s engine powers down with a noise akin to a grumbling elder, and then, after a beat of silence where both you and Mando mentally go over the plan once more, you get up and descend into the main hold as the ship’s ramp lowers slowly into the snow.

“Thank you for trusting me,” you say, focusing on a barren little tree sticking out from the ice somewhere in the distance. Mando takes a second too long to answer.

“Don’t make me regret it.”

There’s no real animosity in the way he says it, and yet the words still sting. Except— then his hand lays on your forearm in something you can only guess is supposed to be reassurance. Warmth, in such stark contrast to the air billowing into the ship, travels through layers of leather and fabric until you can feel gooseflesh forming on your skin, thankfully hidden. You stare at where he’s touching you, at the dull orange color and the marks at the fingertips from daily use. You wonder what his hands look like, whether they’re calloused and rough or soft against all odds. There’s that phantom touch around your throat again, fingers digging into the back of your neck.

Mando drops his hand back to his side; he’s not looking at you. And then, with your fingers still tingling from his touch, you’re off.

The ground beneath your feet seems to groan with every step, as if the layers and layers of ice and snow are about to crumble into dust at any moment. It doesn’t help the way your heartbeat is already skyrocketing, blood coursing through your veins like a flash flood. There’s a lump in your throat you can’t really seem to get rid of, no matter how many times you try to swallow around it.

A wide, expansive structure is slowly growing bigger and bigger in front of you, until it eclipses everything else. Mando walks steadily in front of you, his frayed cape fluttering behind him with every tiny breeze. You try your best to step into the footprints he leaves behind; the fewer traces you leave, the better. Soon enough, the boulder that’s concealing the Crest blends seamlessly into the bright white background and you reach the tall, brick side wall that surrounds the compound.

“Alright,” Mando says, “you know what to do.”

With a nod and one last glance into the darkness of his visor, seeing nothing but your own worried expression, you round the corner and walk, head held high and expression stern, until you reach one of the many gates around the perimeter. It’s one of the more remote entry points with only one stormtrooper standing guard.

Despite your history with the Empire, you know very little of this particular base and its hierarchies; or whether an officer of your former rank approaching from this end is an event deserving of suspicion or more of an everyday occurrence.

As it turns out, it’s the former. With only an arm’s length left between you and the trooper, he raises his voice at you: “You’re not—” he begins, but before he can get a chance to finish his sentence or call for backup, you decide to profit off the element of surprise and punch him square in the face, leaving a red blemish spreading underneath the skin of your knuckles. You curse under your breath and shake your hand to try and soften the sting as the trooper, only half-conscious now, slides down with his back to the exterior wall, slowly reaching for the comlink at his shoulder.

Briskly, without thinking for too long, you take the blaster out of his grasp and shoot the unlucky soldier, a bright blue bolt of light hitting him in the abdomen. As the body slumps lifelessly to the floor and instinct fades, you’re suddenly glad that the weapon was set to stun, not kill.

You press a button on the bracelet around your wrist, concealed by the cuffs of your suit jacket. “Get the suit,” you whisper before stepping over the threshold and striding across a small path tamped into the ground. You have no idea if anyone can see you here, but you walk with purpose, as if you belong. You only glance around to scout out the place before reaching another door, this time unguarded.

A short, crackly static noise whirs in your right ear before you hear Mando’s voice — “Understood,” — and, holding your breath, push your old code cylinder into the receptacle set into the wall. The few seconds that it takes to read your data signature feel like hours. Hours of almost suffocating and a red light ominously blinking before turning green. Air leaves your lungs in one loud wheeze, and then the door falls open.

“I’m inside.”

So, they think you’re dead. Probably haven’t bothered with disabling your Imperial registration. Maybe they just forgot about you when you didn’t report back after Nevarro, tracker never leaving the town and eventually going dark. Maybe you weren’t as important as you thought, and another officer was better at their job. More devoted to the cause. The thought leaves a sour taste on your tongue, a mix of guilt and resentment. Before deciding whether that sentiment is directed at the Empire or yourself, you push the thought aside.

“Behind you.”

Mando sounds even more like a droid like this, voice tinny in your ear, but you can feel your pulse slow down at his words. Even when you turn another corner and almost run into a squad of troopers marching down the hallway, taking a deep breath makes calm wash over you.

“Reporting soon,” you tell him, barely moving your lips.

You barely have the time to look around, but after a few stolen glances you conclude that you don’t seem to be missing much. Dark steel everywhere, rows of closed doors and countless panels littering the walls. It looks the same as any Imperial base you’ve ever been to. Dark and dreadful and devoid of anything remarkable.

It only takes a few minutes of wandering around semi-aimlessly while trying to seem like you have somewhere important to be, peering into open doors and trying to evade the gaze of anyone ranked superior, until you find an open bay with rows upon rows of terminals. It’s mostly deserted, thankfully; after a quick scan to make sure, you walk up to the one furthest from the hallway, right at the back of the room.

With the bay and hallways behind it in your field of vision, you boot up the terminal and let it scan your face while you hold your breath, heartbeat momentarily suspended. It clears, and then the floorplans of the base and most everything you need is right at your fingertips.

“Alright,” you whisper just loud enough for the earpiece to pick it up, “I think I can lead you to him.”

✧

How stormtroopers do anything in this armor continues to be a complete mystery to Din. Where the beskar, currently stashed and hidden behind a rock just outside the gate, molds itself to his body to the point where he almost doesn’t feel it at all, the sharp edges of each piece of the trooper uniform seem to be designed to dig into as many parts of the wearer’s body as possible.

Even walking takes some getting used to, and he still feels like a newborn lamb just learning how to set one foot in front of the other when he enters the building. He can’t help but feel relief when the little lightbulb shines green and the door falls open.

“This base goes into the ground, Mando,” the girl’s voice sounds through the comlink. “Cell blocks are two levels below. Stairs are to your left, then at the second door to the right.”

After a quick glance around and finding that nobody is looking in his direction, he turns left.

“Tell me when you’re there.”

Without guidance, he quickly realizes he would get lost fast. Every hallway he enters looks exactly like the one before and the one after. The staircase is dark and ominous and completely empty all the way down. Each step echoes throughout and against the bare, permacrete walls.

“I must say,” Din whispers, “the security in this place is abysmal.”

“Well, there’s a reason the Rebels won last time.”

He smiles underneath the helmet and treks on. “I’m at level minus-two,” he tells her when he opens the door that leads out of the staircase. She tells him where to go at each corner, leading him further and further into the belly of the beast; so deep that for a moment he wonders if he’s walking into a trap he should’ve seen coming. Thinking of Grogu, he pushes the thought aside and instead focuses on remembering the way through the labyrinth for later.

“Gideon just walked by me,” the girl’s voice informs him when he crosses into a curious area that beams with the light of a thousand buttons and panels, “now’s the perfect time.” There’s a trace of panic in the tone of her voice, as if the sight of him has shaken her to her core, and Din almost allows the shock of the man actually being here to faze him, too. Strategically, he reminds himself that his presence essentially confirms that the child is here, too, and this time, his heart does skip a beat.

“Almost there,” Din tells her and walks on, never faltering in his steps.

“You should be coming up on the jail block shortly,” she says, “I just don’t know which cell.”

Din turns a corner and— he doesn’t need to be told where to find the kid. The wide hallway is lined with dozens of doors, with seemingly only a few cells occupied, various traitors and the like stuck behind thick, impenetrable bars. There is one door, however, that has a whole cluster of stormtroopers stationed in front, along with an officer wearing the same Imperial outfit that the girl had dug out of her storage.

“Found it,” Din murmurs when he’s still out of earshot of the enemy group, “lock it down.”

He waits near the hallway entrance as if he was assigned there, just a few more seconds of trying not to raise suspicion— until the security gate behind him closes and he activates the device hidden in his pocket, jamming all comm frequencies in the vicinity. His own earpiece lets out a short, piercing hum, but he doesn’t let it disorient him, instead approaching that fateful door further down. Everyone in front turns to face him, the commanding officer visibly confused; his expression quickly turns to shock, then rage, when Din stuns the first trooper in his way.

In a haze, he turns to pure instinct, letting decades of training and purpose flow through his limbs; almost calmly, he listens for incoming hits to dodge, turning each crouch into a chance to attack instead. At one point, a blazing heat shoots up from his elbow when he uses that arm to push someone to the floor, but he ignores it in favor of doubling down on his attack. The uniform still digs into his sides and every joint, and he yearns for the weight of the beskar spear in his hand, the power it gives and the fear it sets off in his opponent, but he manages without.

He only stops when he is surrounded by a pile of soldiers clad in white hard-shell armor in every direction, half a dozen unconscious bodies left in his wake. The only one left is the helmet-less officer, whose lips are trembling as he gazes up at Din, hand slowly creeping up the wall at his back to reach for a big, red button.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he says to the pathetic, frightened man at his feet, and decides to shoot him square in the chest anyway, not bothering to watch him fall.

Then, there is only silence and his own harsh breathing. The muscles in his ankle are screaming, but there is only one thing on his mind; he turns to the door, and a serene feeling fills him so close to the finish line. It shouldn’t, yet. But when he picks the lock and then, finally, sees the child again, in the flesh and awake and alive, it washes over him completely.

“Hey, buddy,” he says, and the expression on the kid’s face changes from fear to relief at the sound of his voice, one side of his tiny mouth quirking up in the beginnings of a tired smile. His wrists are cuffed with the smallest shackles Din has ever seen. He unlocks them with a key the girl told him to find tucked into the trooper uniform’s thigh guard, faltering only for a second, and then Grogu is finally free.

With the child in his arms, hood drawn over his small head and concealing his ears as well as possible, he presses a button on the panel recessed into the wall to open the gate before flicking the switch inside his pocket, allowing communications to resume. “I got him,” he says into the comlink in his ear. “Get out and to the ship now.”

After one last glance into the jail sector, he vanishes; gait steady and slow so as not to raise immediate suspicion, he retraces his route back to that back-door entrance, creeping through endless identical corridors. The child is small and easy to hide when someone passes, although Din is aware that it is only a question of time before someone finds the empty jail cell and alerts the rest of the base. The only thing he can do, now, is to get out before that happens, and to trust that the girl will follow him close behind.

It’s almost too good to be true, feeling the cold air from the outside creeping through the gaps in the armor. Without turning back, he runs down the little trail towards the outside walls until he reaches the rock that’s hiding his armor. The unconscious stormtrooper still lies bound where he was left, probably succumbing to frostbite at some point in the near future, but there is not an inch of sympathy within Din. He wills his hands to stop shaking as he pulls out his cape from the pile of armor and places Grogu in its nest, wrapping the tattered fabric tight around his cold, unmoving body. His eyes don’t leave him once as he tears off each piece of stormtrooper armor and throws it to the ground, quickly replacing it with his own, familiar beskar. As soon as his helmet slides into place with a pneumatic hiss, he grabs the kid and holds him close to his chest.

She’s taking too long to answer. When he calls her name again he is met with staticy, unnerving silence. Already in motion back towards his ship, he looks back at the brick wall fence, but there’s no trace of her or anyone else. 

He’s halfway there when the comlink comes alive in his ear, fear piercing through the connection.

“Mando—”

Then it stops. 

The next few minutes are a blur. Grogu rests lifelessly against his body as he activates the Rising Phoenix and glides through the air across the endless field of white until he reaches the boulder he’s hidden the Crest behind; he straps the kid into the co-pilot seat and takes off, each part of the Crest’s durasteel skeleton groaning with effort. He steers the ship back around to where he just came from, eyes flicking back and forth between Grogu and the planet before him, waiting for a sign of life, waiting for the compound to reappear, waiting for the girl to come running.

Din yanks off his glove and reaches out, just to feel the kid’s breathing on his skin. Just to make sure. First nothing, and his heart drops, but then— a slight huff, very slow, but real.

The base comes closer and closer, and there’s still no trace of anyone outside the walls besides the downed stormtrooper near the gate, still unconscious. Just when Din is about to land, he catches the unmistakable red flash of a blaster going off within the walls, right by that first door leading inside the building. From then on, the autopilot is switched on in his mind as well as the ship.

He lets the Crest hover above ground, jumps down the ladder into the hold, then off the ramp onto the icy surface. That’s when he sees her, running towards him and the ship in large strides, followed by a squad of stormtroopers pouring out from the gate just behind her.

Din ascends into the air and shoots. One trooper down, then two, and then— she falls face-down into the ice and they turn on him, instead. Three more troopers die before his feet hit the ground next to her. A pool of red stains the snow below, slowly creeping outwards from her middle. He doesn’t acknowledge the laser bolts hitting his armor with loud clashes in favor of kneeling beside her body, creating a momentary barrier. His head is ringing, and everything else turns silent.

Before panic kicks in she’s already in his arms, yet another lifeless body clutched at his chest.

It’s when the mechanical howls of twin ion engines cast through the air that Din finally reaches the Crest; another boost from the jetpack and the girl lies on the floor of the ship, arms and limbs limp by her side. A press of a button on a wall console and the ramp shuts close, the sound of blaster shots echoing through the hull. Then, Din is back in the cockpit, swiftly tilting the ship up, up, up— a TIE fighter appears to his left, and with a quick maneuver and a dull explosion, it goes up in flames. The Crest breaks through the atmosphere just when the on-board computer alerts him that the hyperdrive calculations are complete, and then— Ilum and the TIEs and the blood spilled on the planet surface disappear behind them, turning into one little blue line amongst a million.

He knows that somewhere on that planet, Moff Gideon is fuming right now, but he doesn’t have it in him to boast in victory or even to care at all. Din allows himself one second to breathe before loosening the straps on Grogu’s seat and holding him close as he descends back into the hold. The kid’s eyes are moving restlessly behind closed lids.

The girl, though— her face is completely slack as she’s lying still where he’d put her. When Din kneels on the hard ground next to her, drapes her over his knees and brushes his hand across her face, he leaves a trace of bright, crimson blood on her cheek. He reaches for the side of her neck, hoping for a pulse, and he finds one — slow and hard to miss, but, again, real.

“Stay with me,” he says to unhearing ears and tugs the girl’s cap from her head before throwing it across the hold. The Crest’s engine keeps whirring below as they soar through the skies, and that familiar hum is the only thing that keeps him from losing his mind.

✧✧✧

SORGAN, OUTER RIM.

So.

You’re bleeding out, again. On the floor of the Razor Crest. Again. Every once in a while, your eyes flutter open and you see the blur of hyperspace through the viewport. Then, there’s darkness and a dreamless sleep.

The next time you wake up, the darkness feels different. The engine’s hum underneath you is missing and you’re surrounded by something warm; slowly, you let the foreign fabric slip between your fingers. It’s a thick, coarse weave, draped all over you up to your neck. You don’t know how long you stay like that, focusing on the feel of the blanket instead of the full-body pain beginning to throb at the edge of consciousness. Almost as if it’s knocking, waiting to be let in.

The door whooshes open at the exact moment you try to sit up and fail spectacularly. You double over in pain, nerve endings finally screaming in agony, and clutch your hands at its source in your abdomen. You almost forget about the door, but then you open your eyes and notice the traces of light streaming into the tiny room you’re in. You’re surrounded by metal walls, no windows.

As soon as you remember to find out why the door opened, the silence is disturbed by the faint sound of… footsteps? Except they’re too quiet and small, almost like a cat—

You raise your head and big eyes surrounded by a familiar wrinkly, green face stare up at you. Suddenly, you remember how you got here, wherever ‘here’ is; memories of Ilum flood your mind, cold and stress and the feeling of your thighs burning with exertion as you run across the vast, icy emptiness. Sound of heavy blaster fire behind you, and then agony clouding everything as you fall to the ground. 

“Mando did it,” you say to the room and pull yourself back to the present. The child looks unharmed, even happy; his waddle looks almost chipper as he comes closer and pulls himself up towards your bed. You reach out to help, but another twinge of pain stabs you in the side. Instead, you watch as he crawls along the line of your legs and settles at your hip, right next to where your skin feels as if it’s going to burst into flames.

“I hope you forgive me for Nevarro,” you tell him and immediately feel stupid — you don’t even know if he can speak or understand what you’re saying. You look at his face and move your hand until it rests on his head, gently patting the top where it’s sprinkled with sparse, white hair. His ear wiggles against your skin and you brush along the upper edge, at which his tiny mouth spreads into a smile, eyes falling closed.

“He does forgive you.”

Mando’s voice startles you so much that your arm shoots away from the kid’s ear, as if you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar. He’s leaning against the doorframe, just watching.

“Fuck,” you curse under your breath as you bolt upright, “how long have you been standing there?”

You think you hear a chuckle. “Not too long.”

He stays there as you continue tickling behind the child’s ears. “We really need to stop getting shot at,” you tell him with a weak smile spreading on your lips.

“We do,” Mando agrees, and his voice comes out tired and strained through the modulator. But the tense line of his shoulders loosens slightly, and he pushes himself away from the doorway to step closer towards you. After a moment’s hesitation, he sits down on the edge of your bed. The kid climbs further up to make room, curling up next to your head.

“I didn’t think it would go that well,” you admit when the silence between you threatens to turn into awkwardness. You feel self-conscious, now, under his gaze. There’s no way for you to know how long you’ve been asleep. Your hair feels matted against your scalp, and the fabric of your uniform burns your skin.

Mando’s helmet tilts towards your stomach. “You call that ‘going well’?”

As he says it, the embers in your wound light up in a needless reminder. You wince.

“Well, before that. You got the kid, so. It worked out.” Aforementioned child lets out a quiet snore right into your ear. With each passing moment, he reminds you more and more of the stray loth-cat you kept secretly feeding when you were young.

“I came to check your bandages,” Mando says as he pulls a small medkit from his side and places it on the bed next to you. “That alright?”

You nod and pull the blanket to the side. It’s the first time you see it: Imperial gray soaked through with dried blood, now a murky dark brown. There’s a tear in the middle, singed by a laser blast that you still remember vividly. Slowly you peel away the remaining fabric to reveal a neat bandage; the center of it already shows little dots of red again. When Mando slowly removes the tape around the edge and strips away the gauze, there’s more blood slowly oozing out from a jagged point at the side of your waist. At least the laser bolt didn’t go clean through this time, you think. Only burnt off a chunk of your waist, which is— moderately better. He dabs at it with a little cotton ball from the medkit.

“I’ll have to use the cauterizer again.”

You wince at the thought, but he waits for your approval before proceeding. You nod.

“Where are we? How long have I been out?” you ask, and then a too-familiar zapping sound fills the room as Mando places the business end of the metal tube against your skin. You close your eyes and let it happen.

“Sorgan. We left Ilum a little over a day ago,” he tells you, “you should change if you can. Use the fresher. Maybe look for other places that need some bacta.”

Suddenly, you notice that he didn’t undress you at all. The only exposed part of you is your midriff as he’s working on it; the only pieces missing are your cap and the cufflinks at your wrists. A strange sensation overcomes you, then— something warm. Safe. You burrow deeper into your nest of a blanket.

“Probably won’t heal as well as if you’d have done it,” he says. He packs away the gauze and the gels and tapes, but his left hand doesn’t leave your skin. It shouldn’t work like this, you think. An oxymoron, the sight of an armor-clad warrior, famed across the galaxy, with his hands on you this way. With his helmet turned to look at the floor next to your bed, Mando absentmindedly caresses the skin around your wound as if searching for more tears and cuts, thumb brushing back and forth across the plane of your stomach. Almost reverently. He’s silent, and it’s like he’s completely unaware that he’s doing it, and you don’t want to say anything because you don’t want him to stop, and then, with your skin on fire and heart beating into your throat, you’re realizing that his hand spans almost completely across your entire abdomen, and—

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and the low, genuine baritone vibrating through his hand across your body sends your nerves aflame. Your eyes shoot upwards at his head from where the leather of his glove still slides over your skin. “I don’t think I could’ve done it without you.”

A smile spreads on your face, and you will your arm to move until your hand settles on top of his. You squeeze gently, because you can’t find the words you need. He seems to understand, and turns his hand around, palm-up, to grasp yours.

The child chirps happily next to your head and you both jump at the noise. Mando reaches out to grab him and you mourn for his touch as soon as it’s gone; you have to fight to suppress the urge to reach out for him again. Your bed feels cold and empty when he gets up and collects his things, the kid held tight to his chest. The sight makes your heart jump.

The fresher warms you up again, despite the water being lukewarm at best. Blood and sweat finally wash off and disappear down the drain, and when you come out, you almost feel like a new person. The only other spot you find is a scrape on your knee that’s already turning into a scab; the rest of you remains mysteriously unmarred. You find your bag beside your makeshift bed — looking around the rest of the ship you gather that this must be his quarters, and you don’t even want to begin thinking of where he slept while you took up his space — and pull the first-best shirt and pants you find over your head and legs.

Sorgan turns out to be beyond beautiful, from what you can see out of the small viewports and, as you slowly walk up to the source of natural light, the gate leading outside. There are actual birds chirping, and the trees scattered densely all around remind you of a dream you had once. While the blood may have been washed off, the memories and aches remain; they’re easier to ignore, though, with shades upon shades of green dominating your field of vision and the strangely familiar smell of pine wafting through the fresh, damp air.

“Why here?” you ask Mando when you find him sitting in the entrance to the ship, overlooking the little clearing the Razor Crest has settled into. His feet are dangling off the edge and he’s leaning back on his hands almost as if he’s soaking in the sun, if it weren’t for his armor. His jetpack, though, rests up against the interior wall. You realize you’ve never seen him relaxed. Off guard, as much as a Mandalorian can be.

He looks up at you as if he’d forgotten you were there, or as if he’d been lost in thought and you’d interrupted something important. Or perhaps he’d been falling asleep. You almost apologize.

“I’ve been here before to lie low,” he tells you, and you feel some relief when you hear no animosity. “It’s remote, and the trees provide some cover for the Crest.”

You sit down next to him on the cool metal floor, mirroring his position. You feel his gaze on you the entire time, joined by warm sun rays splaying across your skin.

“Do you know anyone here?” you ask, looking out across the forests. You wouldn’t be surprised if there is little to no civilization here, apart from the fauna you’re able to see from your shadowy perch.

“Someone took me in last time,” he says, and now he’s not looking at you anymore, instead turning back forward. You do the same, but not before noticing the way his fingers curl around the edge of the ramp.  The Mandalorian sounds almost pensive when he continues. “A woman and her daughter, in a small fishing village far from here. We were going to stay, but someone came for us, so—”

He trails off, not finishing his sentence. There’s no question as to who came for them — it can’t have been long before you were sent on that fateful mission on Nevarro — but the pang of guilt barely has a chance to rise to your throat; instead, it grows into a bitter sting in your chest, the whiplash of it almost leaving you dazed with confusion. A woman. There’s an image in your mind, then, conjured up against your will; she’s faceless and blurry, different from you in every way. The Mandalorian materializes next to her, and her hand reaches for his shoulder, resting there in a gesture of practiced, habitual intimacy.

Quickly, with a slight, barely discernible shake of your head, she evaporates into smoke. You wonder if that image holds any truth, or if it’s the darkness that often jabs its claws into your mind; it’s jealousy, you realize, completely baseless. He’s not yours, just someone you’ve crossed paths with, somehow. Except the ghost of his touch still lingers on your belly, and there are embers beginning to glow with warmth in your core, pulling at your chest and your ribs and and your fingertips.

You’re reeling from it, still, when a movement at the edge of your vision draws your attention, and you turn to your side where Mando seems to have come out of his own daze.

“Grogu— the kid, he liked it here,” Mando finally says, after the silence has grown thick with something intangible.

Grogu. You decide that the name fits him and focus on that instead of your heart pounding against your ribs. “Where is the little bug?” you ask. He hadn’t been anywhere on the ship that you could see.

Mando points to somewhere in the distance, and after a quick moment of searching, you see something small move around in the grass. He blends in perfectly among all the green, and, pushing everything else aside, a smile spreads on your face when you hear the faintest little squeal echo across the field of grass.

✧

Din Djarin is a horrible man. He’s painfully aware of it most of the time. He’s a bounty hunter who used to not shy away from freezing anyone and everyone into carbonite if he could get some credits out of it. Shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Now, though. Now, he’s sitting in the grass outside the Crest while Grogu plays catch with one very unlucky frog, and the memory of a wide expanse of smooth skin, marred only by a blaster wound on one side, swirls around in his mind. It’s been invading his thoughts for days, ever since she woke up. Ever since her hand fell on his with a gentle squeeze. Ever since he heard those tiny whimpers leave her lips as he spread bacta gel along the edges of her wound. In his head, her noises have since morphed into ones of pleasure instead; against his will, he’s conjured up an image of her mouth agape and eyes pressed closed, her face twisted in bliss instead of pain.

Din realizes his eyes are closed as well behind the helmet. He forces himself to open them just in time to catch Grogu swallowing a whole, live frog, and he shakes his head to try and disperse his thoughts.

Horrible.

It’s not the only reason he’s been on edge for the past few days; the thought of Grogu in tiny handcuffs, eyelids still heavy and his body limp from exhaustion is slowly replaced again by his usual, chipper, devilish self, but that first night on Sorgan, Din didn’t once shut his eyes longer than to blink. He’d done a cursory scan of his surroundings and found nothing apart from a couple of birds hiding among the branches and leaves; still, he’d locked down every entrance to the ship, wrapped the kid and the girl up in a thick blanket each after closing the latter’s shockingly large blaster wound spanning her waist, and sat on the floor by the bed remembering every step, every turn, every little moment on Ilum.

While Grogu woke up a few hours in, holding out his arms in a wordless request for affection and causing a secret tear to spill down Din’s cheek, the girl stayed eerily still. Only the movement of her chest, rising and falling slowly but steadily, was any indicator that she wasn’t— gone.

Ever since he had held her in his lap, blood flowing out of her middle and onto the cold, hard floor, something had shifted in Din’s mind — where, before, he would have been lying if he’d claimed there was no small spark every once in a while, an imperceptible little feeling in his gut whenever the light had shone on her figure in a certain way; now it’s much more than that, though still intangible. Her almost-sacrifice on Ilum, for his child, his clan, had brought about an almost fierce protectiveness clawing at him from within his chest.

Watching her stroll along the edge of the forest with Grogu on her tail, the line of her lips in a slight smile, makes that intangible something stir in the back of his mind.

Din zooms in on her — only to check if she’s alright, of course — and a deep blush, gracefully hidden from sight, creeps up his chest when he realizes that her shirt is about four sizes too big, flowing down her body well past her hips and almost falling off her one shoulder, almost like a dress. Which means — it must be his, fished out of his own clothes compartment next to her makeshift bed. He zooms back out immediately, as if caught, and looks anywhere but her.

Instead, he spends the rest of the day meditating, which, for him, entails the rigorous cleaning of his extensive armory; there’s something about the familiar routine of disassembling every weapon and putting each small puzzle piece back where it belongs that grounds him, that slows his heartbeat and empties his mind. It’s not until the suns are already at the edge of the horizon, one barely peeking out from behind the forest canopy, that Din is brought out of that well-practiced, well-needed trance, with a neat pile of blasters and rifles on the ground beside his feet.

“I brought food,” the girl says, and, for some reason he is unwilling to analyze further, seeing her face without a trace of worry and with Grogu in her arms, who’s chewing on a loose strand of her hair, does more to soothe his ever-active mind than the decades-old habit of maintaining his weapons. She holds up a nondescript bag. “Care for a little campfire?”

The child, of course, keens at her words, and even though it would be smarter to stay hidden, without any light to alert a stray passer-by, he can’t help but nod. Soon, warmth spreads across the clearing, golden firelight flickering and spilling across their makeshift camp, reflecting off his armor in warm hues and making the girl’s bright eyes glow whenever she glances his way. She changed at some point during the day, and while the sight of her in his shirt had been— something, he can’t complain, because now there’s a plain dress on her, hugging her at the waist and reaching only a few inches over her knees, exposing the rest of her legs.

Din doesn’t eat, as good as the fruits and leaves she brought look once grilled over the fire — or, in some cases, charred to bits. (The embarrassed laughter spilling past her lips after the third time a leafy green goes up in flames leaves him secretly wanting the fire to grow hotter faster, just for it to happen again. To hear that throaty, entirely encapsulating sound again.) The food doesn’t go to waste, at least, all of it finding its way into the child’s greedy mouth somehow.

“Were you alone before Grogu?” she asks once the food is gone. She’s not looking at him, instead poking at the smoldering embers with a stray tree branch.

“I was part of a Mandalorian covert on Nevarro, but during hunts I was alone, yes.”

“Must have gotten lonely out in deep space.”

Truthfully, Din had never allowed himself to think about it.

“It was fine,” he tells her, but even to him it’s obvious that it isn’t the whole truth. It was safe that way; nobody to protect, nobody to lose. Nobody to disappoint. “Did you have anyone?”

“Nobody that mattered.”

There’s a fleeting glimpse of her with someone else, someone with that charcoal-gray suit and empty eyes, someone who doesn’t see her the way Din is seeing her right now, relaxed and aglow. It almost makes him sick.

Her gaze from across the fire, heady and bathed in warmth, makes him suddenly very aware of every nerve ending in his body; the way his undershirt feels against his skin, the way his elbows dig into his knees. And the way the kid is leaning against his lower leg, sated and already fast asleep.

“I’ll be right back,” he promises as he picks up the sleeping child and walks — and it takes some effort to slow his pace to his usual one, to not hurry — towards the ship, laying him in his old crib and, making sure one last time that he’s breathing, closing the rounded dome above him. When he returns to the campfire, he almost stops short in his tracks at the sight of her that meets him there; nothing of note changed from a minute ago, and yet—

If he doesn’t choose the exact same position when Din sits back down on the ground, if the distance between him and the girl is now marginally smaller—

She smiles at him, content and warm. Her pupils are blown wide and black. Din’s eyes follow the long line of her legs, eternally grateful for the helmet hiding his expression, when he finds a scab on the side of her knee he hasn’t seen before. He only notices that he’s reaching out to gently brush over it when her leg jolts at first contact of leather against skin. He’s about to pull away, to put more distance between them, to be proper, when a voice in the back of his head tells him to stay put, to play it off as a nurse-like instinct to take care of his patient.

“What happened here?” he asks.

“I must have tripped on Ilum,” she explains, and silence spreads between them. His hand is still firm on her knee, fingers squeezing in an attempt at comfort.

“Your hand feels nice,” she mutters after a while that could have been half a minute or half an hour, voice low and barely carrying the short distance between them, and Din almost pulls it away by instinct, but then— perhaps it’s the warmth from the fire seeping into his soul, but something overcomes him, that horrible part of himself, and he tugs off his glove with one quick tug. It falls to the ground as he places his bare hand back on her knee, and his fingertips crackle at the contact. Gooseflesh spreads along her thigh.

He wants to kiss it. Kiss her, everywhere. As that thought invades, he does pull away, but the memory of the bare skin covering her stomach doesn’t move one bit from the forefront of his mind; until her hand covers his, fingers curling around his palm. She leads him back to her until his fingernails brush against a spot on her thigh, right above her knee, then further up; until his palm lies flat against her skin, his fingers almost instinctively sinking into the softness of her relaxed muscle, just to hold on.

The feeling of the inside of her thigh, skin more delicate than anything he’s felt before — it’s what finally tips him over, what makes blood rush in his ears and down to his groin. The girl is still circling his wrist with her hand, and it’s the only reason Din isn’t jumping up and excusing himself; she’s letting him do this. She — for some reason — wants this, wants his hands on her, the same hands that have killed hundreds, the hands that have shot her right through the shoulder.

Except— an errant thought comes to him, then, borne from the complete lack of intimacy in his life and the subsequent suspicion of anything remotely bordering on it, and he has to ask before he does something he’ll never forgive himself for. Because there must be something clouding her mind.

“Is this because of the painkillers? They’re strong—”

“I haven’t been taking them,” she interrupts.

Din’s grasp on her thigh tightens, and he can’t keep that disbelieving edge from creeping into his voice. “What?”

A solemn expression crosses the girl’s face, corners of her mouth quirking up into a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Some morbid form of self-punishment, I guess.”

Infuriating woman, he thinks, but then swallows the reprimand that was already on his lips, because— he’s no better, really.

It takes him a minute to come out of it, to make his body move the way he wants. His one hand follows the line of her arm, from her hand to her shoulder and down, hovering just slightly over her breast, then reaching towards the too-loose neckline and dragging it down over her shoulder. It exposes her smooth skin and the delicate shadows along her collarbone, but also— a scar, shaped round, almost healed but still very apparent, and his heart sinks. It’s his mark, he knows, from months and months ago, and before his eyes flashes the memory of her falling lifelessly to the same floor on which he had clung to her a few days ago. His fingertips trace along the jarred edges before he even consciously decides to move.

It’s a fickle thing, seeing the evidence of his wrath this up close. It’s something he has never done before; never made it a habit to stick around long enough to meet a former foe. If they survived at all. In the moment, it had been justified, pure instinct to protect his charge and to neutralize any potential threat — which she had been. Now, he sees the scarred skin and can only think about how beautiful it makes her look.

Survivor, he thinks. Cuyan.

He will regard the mark on her waist the same, he decides, once the skin closes up and turns into a criss-cross of thick scar tissue. He will trace along the edges the same as he’s doing now, hoping that his touch communicates his sentiment well enough.

If he gets the chance.

“I forgive you, too, you know,” she says, quiet enough so that the words linger only between him and her. “Even though I know that I deserved it.”

Din wants to kiss her words away. He would have done it, if he could; as close as they are already, it would only mean a quick bend of the neck down to reach her where she sits. Instead, his bare hand travels up her neck and past her trembling chin to catch her bottom lip with his thumb, stroking along the skin in something he hopes is close enough to a kiss that she understands.

She sucks in a barely audible gasp. Din almost drops his hand back to his side in sudden shock, at his mindless intrusion of her space— but there’s a glimmer behind her eyes, and it spurs him on enough to let him keep his hand on her face, shifting to cradle her cheek in his palm. His thumb now brushes over her jutting cheekbone, skin hot under his touch from the flickering flames and the blush creeping upwards from her chest.

“Mando,” she whispers, and there’s something urgent in her tone that instantly pulls him even closer, like a black hole eclipsing him. He tugs his cape out from where it’s hooked to his chest plate to spread it on the ground below, smoothing it out hurriedly before reaching behind the girl and placing his hand at the small of her back, fanning out his fingers to cover as much of her as possible. To touch as much as he can without outright enveloping her in a full-body embrace.

She arches into him, then, supple chest against his armor. Din lays her down with her back on the ground, slowly so as not to rattle her, and, selfishly, to bask in the sound of her voice, raspy little hitches of breath and moans when his other hand tucks itself into the back of her knee.

Suddenly, though, her tiny noises transform into a pained wince, and Din moves away within a heartbeat, kneeling beside her. She’s clutching the injured side of her waist, face twisted in a grimace. Din’s hand hovers uselessly above hers. “What happened?”

“Fuck, it’s— it’s okay, your armor just— dug into me a little.”

Din squeezes her hand tight as something twists inside his gut. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she repeats, and her expression is too warm, too kind, too— dangerous. Din feels as if he’s falling. He combs his fingers through her hair in another wordless apology.

And then he sits back on his heels and with a press of a button on his vambrace, his chest piece unlocks and comes off first. Carefully, he places it on the ground nearby, followed by his toolbelt. His gaze never leaves her, while hers flicks across his whole body; once the first shoulder plate falls away, her lips part just slightly, and it’s so close to that unholy fantasy from before that Din has to fumble with the pauldron on the other side, hands trembling with electricity coursing through his bloodstream.

He almost feels naked like this, despite how his clothes still cover most of his skin. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s taken his armor off in front of anyone; certainly never like this, slowly and with purpose. The girl is frozen where she lays on the threadbare cape, leaning up on her elbows. Her chest rises and falls in quick, panting breaths, and he wants to devour her. The vambraces come off, and then his thigh plates, and her eyes flick up to meet his behind the visor.

It’s foreign at first, to be with someone with only the few fabric layers of his shirt and her dress between them; but once he crawls back on top of her, one hand by her head and the other on her hip, he can feel her warmth, and her hand falls to his waist. It’s less foreign, then, and more exciting. A hitched breath escapes him, most likely audible through the modulator, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“I want—” she starts at the same moment that Din’s fingers dig just a little deeper into her hip bone, sinking into the soft flesh of the crease where her hip meets her thigh.

If it weren’t for the helmet, he would’ve bent down and placed his lips there, nibbled all along the line of her thigh, pressed kisses on the hem of her underwear.

“You want what?” he asks, and his voice is a wreck. He’s parched.

A flush creeps up her cheeks and the tip of her nose. “I—”

“Tell me,” he whispers into her ear.

She growls at that, and the noise sends another current of electricity right down his spine to his groin. “I want you inside of me.”

Din curses under his breath, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from tearing off his pants and pushing inside of her. “My fingers?” he asks, tense, and she can only nod. Her underwear is pushed to the side within seconds, because pulling it off would take too long, and Din needs to touch her, needs to feel how wet she is, how tight and warm and soft—

They both groan, voices harmonizing for a split second when the tip of Din’s middle finger edges along her outer lips, teasing just for a moment, and then it slips inside of her so, so easily, almost as if she was sucking him in.

She’s— soaked.

When he whispers her name in disbelief, her eyes fall open and she bites her lower lip, and the things Din would give up to be able to take it in between his teeth, lick along the slightly chapped skin, feel her breath fan out across his cheek. It’s dangerous. The girl grinds her hips to meet him, then, asking without saying a single word, and Din’s finger slides into her all the way, enveloping him in warm, sweet, wet.

In that moment, he notices how out of breath he truly is. Warmth creeps up his neck, blood rushes southwards and he’s hard, muscles tense and limbs humming with want.

“More,” she demands, and Din provides. Pushing another finger inside along the first, his thumb pushes against her clit with that tiny bit more pressure, and the girl’s head falls back, exposing her neck. Her thighs tremble just slightly, buzzing with pleasure, and the palm of Din’s other hand presses against his groin to relieve some pressure, because holy fuck, the sight alone could make him come—

“Mando,” she yelps, the word traveling all through the clearing. Her hand closes around his wrist, scrambling to get a hold. “Fuck me.”

White-hot light bursts behind his eyes. She whimpers at the loss when his fingers leave her and fall to open the first button of his pants. He watches as she tears her underwear down her legs and throws it to her side, discarded in the dirt. He doesn’t push his pants further down than absolutely necessary to pull out his cock, already leaking precome at the tip; then her hand is on him, and he must have missed the sight of her licking her palm, because it’s sinfully wet with spit. She spreads it over the head as it mixes with his own wetness, and he realizes that the little noises he’s hearing are coming from him.

His own touch, usually hurried and leaning towards too dry if he even gets the chance, doesn’t even begin to compare to this. Even the few rare encounters he’s had before, they pale. As he closes his eyes and his head falls back, he indulges in the feeling for a few more seconds, the drag of her smooth skin on his, pushing into the tight ring formed by her fingers. He could stay like this for hours, he thinks, pleasure rushing through his veins, but then he’s already too close.

Din grabs her by her wrists and pins them to the ground beside her hips. Then, the blinding heat behind his eyes disappears for a moment, and his heart sinks because it’s too rough — he’s about to apologize, about to cradle her cheek and slow down, but the moan escaping her tells him she didn’t mind at all. He does end up releasing one of her hands to reach up and touch her face, brushing his thumb along her cheek.

“Please,” she says, and Din is done for. Kneeling between her legs with her soft, supple thighs draped over his, he lines up his cock and pushes in, as slowly as he can — and he almost closes his eyes, except that means he would have missed seeing the way she falls back on the ground, flexing her one free hand in his cape. Inch by inch, he sinks into her, feels the ridges of her walls and her wetness until he’s in all the way and just stays there, letting her get used to the feeling of him. Letting his breathing slow, letting his hand spread along her abdomen and hold on.

At the first roll of his hips, pulling out slightly and pushing back in— the girl’s eyes fall open and his hold on her tightens. “Fuck,” he sighs, and he wants to sob it feels so good.

It’s slow, at first, with deep thrusts. Every time he bottoms out, he stays still for a second or two, just— basking in the sensation of her surrounding him completely, in her warmth and her soft legs wrapped around his waist.

“I’ve been— thinking about this,” she says through gritted teeth, “since Coruscant.”

The last syllable blends into a moan that echoes across the clearing, throaty and graceless but oh, so sweet coming from her. Those words, the memory of a dark alleyway and their bodies so close together — they make all inhibition fall away and he thrusts into her hard, one hand holding on to her shoulder to keep her in place.

Din halfheartedly thinks that he should keep her quiet, probably, in case there’s someone nearby; but for the last few days it’s only been animals and nothing else, so he soaks in her sounds instead, soaks in the sight of her soft skin alight with the warm glow from the campfire. It’s hard to resist the urge to tear off his helmet so that he can bury his face in the girl’s chest, nibble on her exposed collarbone, lick along her neck. He’s craving it, the taste of her, to feel her pulse beating against his lips; instead, he lets one hand disappear underneath the flimsy fabric of her dress, up until he reaches her breasts.

A broken gasp, half a groan, leaves her as Din’s thumb flicks over her nipple through the breast band, so he keeps it there for a while; torturously slow, in juxtaposition to the fast, rhythmic roll of his hips, he keeps stroking across the sensitive bud, making it harden and making her head throw back.

So transfixed by the slight bounce of her breasts with every one of his thrusts, he almost doesn’t notice the girl’s hand sneaking down along her waist to where they’re joined. Soon enough, though, he does, and sees her touching herself, two fingers rubbing against her clit in practiced, circular motions. The sight is so incredibly erotic, it makes heat pool in his lower belly, makes his rhythm falter for a second. Din reaches down to take over, to allow her to get lost in pleasure, but his hand is resolutely swatted away. It settles back on her hip instead.

Her cunt is so perfectly tight, as if she was made for Din. As she keeps dragging her fingers across her sex, she tightens around him every so often, little shockwaves of pleasure carrying over from her to him, sending waves of electric currents up and down his spine. She’s going to be the death of him. He’s sure.

“Mesh’la,” he groans, and he doesn’t even know where the Mando’a comes from, “Cuyan— I don’t want this to end.”

“Mando, I’m gonna— fuck—”

She stops breathing, mouth agape, and then she’s coming on his cock, hand falling away and landing atop his knee.

A few seconds pass, maybe minutes, maybe hours, and he fucks her through it, hips thrusting into her relentlessly, and he’s so close, but he wants to keep watching her like this forever, watch her twitch and grind against him, wants to stay nestled inside her and never leave—

She sucks in a breath and clutches at her chest. “Come in me, Mando, please,” she begs, and for a second, Din goes blind.

His grip on her hip and her jaw is probably a bit too tight at this point, but she nuzzles her cheek into his palm, and somehow, that’s what pushes him over the edge. The mixture of soft and rough, the way she trusts him, the way he trusts her. He comes inside her in thick bursts, every muscle in his body tensing up, every shaky breath turning into a low moan.

The warm light from the fire flickers in her eyes, and the smile playing on her lips drives him insane, makes his cock twitch even though it’s slowly softening where he’s still inside her. When Din loosens his grip on her hip, he sees marks in the shape of his fingers, and at the basest level within his chest, that darkness is baring its possessive teeth; he caresses the imprints, already fading, and thinks something he’s never thought before.

Mine.

He remembers to stay clear of her waist just in time before he falls forward, his helmet landing in the crook between her neck and shoulder. For a quick minute, they both do nothing but breathe, heavily and in desperate gasps. Then, her hand reaches up and her fingers curl around the back of his neck, digging into this cowl. She’s holding on tight, as if she wants to leave marks, too; playing with the fabric as if she’s about to tear it off, about to sink her teeth into his skin. He almost wants her to do it.

Yours.

✧✧✧

BHERIZ SECTOR, OUTER RIM.

“Razor Crest, prepare to be boarded.” The tinny voice from the speakers rings through the cockpit. It’s stilted Basic with a strong Huttese accent coming through, and the voice appears stressed despite the low-quality transmitter. “Or you’ll regret it.”

At first Mando told her he thought it was the Republic, a routine check. But, considering the fact that the other ship is currently throwing heavy fire at the Crest, he evidently was very wrong.

“Damn it— no way,” Mando grits into the comm before turning it off, in full battle-mode as he maneuvers through deep space and almost, almost hits the enemy. You steal a glance over at him from your vantage point in the co-pilot seat, clutching Grogu to your chest and jabbing at buttons in the on-board computer to block the pirates from gaining remote control access. All of his focus is on the radar and the scene in front of him; you wonder what he looks like under his helmet right now, whether his pupils are wide and black or if he’s not even breaking a sweat. 

“Cuyan, keep an eye on the shields while I deal with these—” he doesn’t even finish the sentence, keeping the expletive to himself; maybe because of the kid, maybe he’s too lost in the action. You’re just eternally thankful for the seatbelts holding you in place as he twists and turns around the pirate vessel.

“Shields are still at 70 percent,” you report, “but we don’t have enough fuel to enter hyperspace.”

Mando grunts in acknowledgement and very swiftly turns the ship around in a way that actually makes you yelp in surprise. The child almost escapes your vice grip and he squeals right into your ear, grabbing a handful of your hair. “Kid, no—”

In that same moment, with warning beeps and mechanical screeches coming from every direction within the cockpit, the Crest rumbles under your feet and the twin blaster cannons at the front release their might. Just as you’re pulling your hair out of Grogu’s surprisingly strong fingers, the enemy ship goes up in flames, a bright light and millions of red and green sparks illuminating the deep dark black around you. There’s manic laughter bubbling up in your lungs that you barely manage to suppress. This is pure chaos, and you feel alive.

“Who’s regretting it now?” Mando asks the disintegrated pirates, still high on adrenaline as all three of you track the explosion slowly unfolding before your eyes, and you can’t help but let a grin spread across your face.

It’s been one and a half standard months since Ilum, since you left Zare Station, and Mando has yet to ask you if you want to return. Sometimes, you catch his helmet stuck staring in your direction for a few seconds too long, eerily silent in a different way than usual; when you come out of the fresher with your hair still damp and messy, or when you triumphantly crawl out of the floor compartments with a smudge of engine grease smeared across your cheek.

That last one was two days after you’d left Sorgan and the first time he touched you since the campfire, brushing a gloved hand across your face and wiping the dirt away. You were the quiet one, then, and once the tension broke a few seconds later, he didn’t even bother dragging you to bed. Instead, he opted to press you face-first against the wall and unceremoniously push your pants down past your hips where he found you already dripping.

You very quickly found your voice again, but not many words.

When you think back to Zare, to Coruscant, to the half dozen stations you’d cycled through during your Imperial career, the memories are already hazy, as if they belong to someone else.

Grogu pulls you out of your thoughts with a strong tug on your earlobe and holds out his arms, reaching for Mando, who is currently punching in new coordinates to the nearest space station for a refuel. You loosen your seatbelt and hand the kid over, but not before pressing a hurried kiss on the tip of his ear.

Familiar leather gloves brush over your skin, and your heart jumps in your chest the same way it did the first time you’d felt it. This is home now, this ancient gunship, this unlikely duo, the too-small, unused cot that’s been replaced by a sleep mat in the main hold big enough to fit two people; the faded bruise on your right hip in the shape of Mando’s hand, the engine’s hum below as you drift through space.

It’s yours, and you’re not giving it up.