Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The new ship feels foreign. Sterile. Empty.

Din Djarin had known every cable, every wire, every fuse inside the Razor Crest - better even than the back of his own hand. Every scrape, creak and groan of the engine was his background music; the thunder of its guns his chorus. 

And now it’s gone, replaced by this newer, shinier model, and its smooth, oiled silence.

He hates it.

It’s fast, yes, the controls are responsive enough, and it’s spacious - he has a room instead of just a bunk, a bed instead of a cot. But the pilot’s seat feels hard and awkward, not molded to his body like the one on the Crest , and the control column is cold in his gloved hands. 

The untouched plastic and metal of the levers seem to mock him. 

It’s too big for just one person. There’s room for a gunner - a gunner , as if he needs someone to point and fire for him. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, especially not when faced with a defeated Bo-Katan Kryze - which was somehow scarier than Bo-Katan angry - and the Mandalorian would rather be seen dead than piloting a scudding TIE fighter, his only other choice on the Imperial cruiser.

So this is it. Mando'a made, at least, the Kom'rk class starfighter is his, along with the skies again. He is free to fly where he will, do what he wants, whenever he wants, and all he can think about is how much he wishes it was the Crest.

Maybe it’s not the ship. Maybe it’s what it reminds him of whenever he turns around. Whenever he glances behind him in the cockpit.

Behind the pilot’s chair, there are two passenger seats, just like on the Crest . Unlike the Crest , these ones are empty, and they always will be.

Din takes something small and round out of the pouch at his belt. The sphere is scored by carbon, brittle, but not melted. He turns it over in his fingers as he has done a hundred, thousand times, picturing a pair of wide, brown eyes, bat-wing ears and a green, wrinkled forehead. 

He tucks the sphere away and shakes his head roughly to clear it. There’s no use dwelling. What’s done is done - and for the best. 

For the child, anyway.

The Mandalorian is alone. There was a time when that suited him. When he had been the master of his own fate, making his way through the universe without care or consideration for any other being. All he had cared about was the next job, the next hunt, the next payday. 

But then a being had entered his life and upended everything. A small, vulnerable, impossibly powerful being. A mission.  A quest. A burden. 

He would give everything to have that burden back. Had given everything. Including the burden itself.

Din sighs. His thoughts are drifting again, along with his course. He adjusts it with a nudge of the controls. The ship responds instantly, soaring quickly, quietly through space, and beneath the silver helmet, he scowls.

He is alone.

A master of his own fate.

Just how he likes it. 

And he feels as empty as the ship itself.

---

At one point, Din considers returning to Sorgan.

After all, why not? He’s already taken off his helmet more than once. He’s not even sure he’s a Mandalorian anymore - not sure he’s fit to wear the Beskar. What was it Mayfeld had said? The rules change when you get desperate . He was more right than he knew at the time.

First, he broke the Code of a bounty hunter: Don’t ask questions . The steps between that and Don’t take off your helmet in front of another living being seem small now. 

He remembers Omera’s long, delicate fingers, fingers calloused from working hard her whole life, fingers that wrapped around a blaster rifle so easily, fingers on the face of his helmet. So close yet so far away, all that lay between them an impenetrable layer of Beskar - and his Creed, in tatters now. (Or is it?) 

Why shouldn’t he go back and let her finish what she started?

Din feels the weight of the darksaber hanging from his hip and remembers why. 

Bo-Katan’s face when he tried to give it to her. Moff Gideon, captured, powerless - laughing. The promise of power, of Mandalore; things he does not, would never want.

Din Djarin isn’t sure what he is, what he wants. He’s not sure that he ever will.

He doesn’t go to Sorgan. He sails on through a sea of stars, alone.

A clan of one.

---

One of the engines is on fire.

See, if it was the Crest , that asteroid field would have posed no problem. He would have been able to maneuver the gunship easily between rocks and debris without even needing to see. But the ship is too big, the wings too long and unwieldy, so his spatial awareness is off as he dodges and weaves chunks of metal and space detritus. A lump of which, a chunk of rock about the size of his helmet, strikes one of the engines.

It’s enough to make it choke, sputter and die in a spectacular shower of spark and flame that’s quickly snuffed out by the vacuum of space. The explosion sends the ship lurching, the inertial dampeners taking a moment to compensate, nearly throwing the craft into an asteroid almost as big as the ship itself. Swearing, Din wrestles with the pitch and yaw and narrowly avoids becoming a crater or a cloud of debris himself.

The engine fails to restart no matter how many flimsy plastic switches he flips. He slams a gloved fist onto the control panel, which doesn’t work either. 

At half power, the ship limps on. He manages to clear the asteroid field without any more close calls, and finally has time to address the dozen warning lights that have popped up. Yes, he knows engine one is out, but there’s a host of sub-systems that are going down one after the other. It’s a cascade failure that would never have happened on the Crest .

Who is he kidding? By now, on the Crest , the other engine probably would’ve gone as well.

At least the nav computer is still working. He manages to locate a nearby populated system with a spaceport on an out-of-the-way planet. Anywhere further and he won’t be able to make it before his supplies run out.

It’s dangerously close to former Imp territory. The New Republic has a tenuous grip on the Outer Rim, but as Moff Gideon had proven, Imp reach extended further than anyone truly knew. The Mandalorian is taking a risk, albeit a necessary one.

He glances over his shoulder at the empty seat. He has no one to protect now, nobody to worry about except himself.

Why should he care about risk?

He turns back to the unfamiliar controls and lays in the course.

---

Din Djarin has barely a fistful of credits to his name. Fortunately, it’s enough to cover the hangar fee and some of the repairs, but he’s going to have to take another job if he wants to be able to leave this Force-forsaken planet; little more than an expanse of wind-carved rock formations, quarries and a smattering of cities that have sprung up in the craters, Garel is not somewhere the Mandalorian would visit out of choice.

Din picks one of the less busy cities, but not the quietest, so that the appearance of a Mandalorian might be remarked upon but should, with any luck, be mostly ignored. This side of the Outer Rim around the trade routes and liberated worlds see a fair few travelers with repurposed Imp ships. 

The hangar boss doesn’t remark on it, but the short Rybet’s tongue never stops flicking rapidly out of its reptilian mouth while speaking to the Mandalorian, nervously tasting the air. Nevertheless, he directs Din to the nearest cantina where he might find some work. Guild or not, didn’t matter, so long as it paid enough to get his ship refueled and resupplied enough to leave the sector.

Where he goes from there is anyone’s guess. 

The spaceport city is bustling even during this planet’s version of night. The sky is a dull, greyish purple, and the wind whistles through the narrow streets, kicking up dust and trash and sending the Mandalorian’s cloak flapping over his shoulder.

He leaves the spear and the darksaber on the ship. No point in attracting any more unwanted attention.

The cantina is typical for one of its size, the air inside close and warm. Almost every table is taken by a variety of species, and several sets of eyes - sometimes multiple belonging to the same person - turn towards the Beskar-clad newcomer as he makes his way inside. Conversations lull before starting up again at a louder, more unnatural volume as he passes. His presence has caused a stir, but he doesn’t mind. His armor is a walking advertisement of his capabilities. With any luck, a job will come to him rather than the other way around.

The bar is manned - and Din uses the term loosely - by a droid that looks well past its prime.  It turns towards him, creaking and juddering as he finds a clear spot to lean against the counter in front of it. 

“What. Can. Igetyou,” it says, its vocal unit stuttering just as badly as its limbs. 

“Know of any work going here?”

“What. Can. Igetyou,” the droid repeats. Din sighs. Of all the cantinas on this world, he walks into the one run by a broken-ass droid.

“Smiley there isn’t gonna be able to help you,” a voice says from over his shoulder. He glances across at the swarthy human it belongs to. He looks like a worker or a miner of some description, his clothes heavy with rock dust, a pair of goggles pushed up on a dirt-smudged forehead. “He just takes the drink orders. Badly, I might add,” the man continues, holding up a half-empty cup with a grimace. “This tastes like engine oil, Smiley.”

“What. Can. I-” the droid begins, and halts when the miner throws the cup at it. It bounces off its pockmarked metal forehead. No wonder it’s so broken, if this is how the patrons treat it.

“You’re a Mandalorian, right?” the man continues as he turns back to Din, who nods once. “Bounty hunter?”

“Something like that.”

“Might be I know a guy who has a job for one of your talents,” the miner continues. The Mandalorian waits. “Not many bounties goin’ here, but there’s this fella who needs some cargo moved.”

“I’m not a courier.”

“You want the job or not?” The man scowls, baring browned teeth. “That’s what I thought. Guy hangs out near Quarry Six. Ask for Relem Signas.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks.” Din pushes off the bar and turns to leave.

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, Smiley! Get me another drink. Not that swill from before. Somethin’ with some real kick.”

“What. Can. Igetyou,” Din hears as he steps through the doorway, followed by the impact of what sounds like a fist on metal, and a crash. He stops and turns. The droid Smiley has fallen against the side of the bar, and the miner stands, fist raised, as it judders back to its feet. Nobody else in the cantina seems to care.

“Hey,” he says. “Leave it alone.”

“What’d you say?”

“Otherwise, who’s going to get you your drink?” With that, the Mandalorian is gone, striding away down the windswept street.

---

The carbonite pod is old, its repulsorlift deactivated, lying face-up on a table in the dimly lit room. Its surface is covered in a thick layer of dust, interrupted only by a few pawprints. The small grey Tooka presumably responsible sits on its edge, licking itself lazily, but when it sees the Mandalorian approach its hackles raise and it arches its back with a hiss.

“Here it is,” Relem Signas says as he waves the cat away. With a growl and a swish of its tail, stirring up dust, it jumps off and retreats under the table. “Found it in a storage facility I ‘inherited’ from one of my old business partners some months back. Don’t know how long it’s been there. My partner wasn’t known for keeping records.”

“Your friend at the cantina said this was a cargo run,” Din says as he looks over said ‘cargo’. With all the dust, he can’t tell who - or what - the carbonite contains. He begins brushing it off with a gloved hand, glad for the helmet as clouds of it rise to obscure his vision.

“It is. No chain code, no tracker on it. I just want to get rid of it.” Signas is an old man, maybe sixty or seventy in human years, with greying hair and a craggy, lined face that reminds Din of the rock formations common on the planet. It turns out he’s not just a ‘guy who hangs out near Quarry Six’ - he’s the owner. Wouldn’t know it from looking at him; he wears the same coveralls as his workers, albeit covered in considerably less rock dust. 

“Why?”

“Untracked carbonite pod turning up in one of my buildings? Word could get out. Make it seem like I’m running something illicit here. Bad for business.” Signas shakes his head. “There’s a carbonite-processing plant on Lothal, next system over. I know a guy. Just need you to dump it there.”

“That’s it?” Din frowns beneath the helmet. He’s not even sure if the pay will cover the fuel, if the job’s that easy.

“That’s it,” Signas confirms, watching him. He’s almost finished clearing the dust away from what feels like a head. He looks down.

The woman was frozen while her face was turned to the side. Her hair has fallen across her face, mostly obscuring her features, but he can just about make out a delicate chin pressed into her shoulder, her lips compressed into a grim line.

She looks young. Pretty.

“I don’t do trafficking jobs,” the Mandalorian says at once, his modulated voice hardening.  The cargo run, the pod, the job itself, why Signas sent his employee out to find a willing stranger to do it - it’s all starting to make a lot more sense now.

“I told you,” the mine boss says, his own tone even, maintaining eye contact with the visor. “I don’t know where it’s from, I just found it. Got nothing to do with whatever - whoever she is. But I can’t be seen associated with something like this.”

His suspicions confirmed, Din shakes his head. “If I get caught by a New Republic patrol with an unmarked, uncoded carbonite pod…” He doesn't want to risk his goodwill with Marshal Dune. Not again. 

“You’re a bounty hunter, aren’t you?” Signas interrupts. “Want to pretend everything you do is completely above-board? Don’t make me laugh.” The old man’s wrinkled face creases in a nasty smile, and Din sees the shrewd glint in his eyes. Not just some harmless mining magnate - as if any magnate is harmless. But there's something this one isn't telling him. Still...

Signas must sense his hesitation. He withdraws a pouch from the front of his coveralls. “Your pay will outweigh the risk.” He hands it over. Its contents clink as Din weighs it in his hand.

“That’s half,” the mining boss tells him. “You'll receive the rest on delivery to the carbonite plant.”

The Mandalorian looks inside the pouch. It’s too much. Far too much for a simple transport job.

He has a bad feeling about this.

He looks down at the frozen girl. The Tooka cat has jumped up on the pod again and lies curled next to her shoulder. She looks almost peaceful but for the serious, fearful line of her mouth.

“Give me the coordinates to the facility," Din Djarin says, and he pockets the credits.

To hell with the risk.

Chapter Text

The Mandalorian is surprised Signas’s workers manage to get the carbonite pod onto the ship intact.

In the light, the unit looks even older than he initially thought. The sides are scored and corroded - in some places, even scorched with what look like blaster hits. Miraculously, they managed to get the repulsors working; it hovers half a meter off the ground, wobbling worryingly, as the two miners guide it up the ramp and into the Gauntlet’s hold.

Din still has trouble thinking of it as his ship. He thinks maybe he’ll sell it, get something - not better, but at the very least, more comfortable. But that will come later. After this so-called easy job.

The two workers get the unit upright and secured to one of the mag-locks set into the bulkhead. One of them nods to the Mandalorian respectfully; the other has already turned his back, scurrying from the ship as if he’s being chased. Din recognizes the one who nodded as the miner from the bar. The one who attacked Smiley.

“You. Wait,” Mando calls, and the man stops, turning around very slowly to face him. Shoulders hunched. Defensive.

Din reaches into the pouch on his belt and flicks a credit chip towards the miner. He catches it automatically, stares at it as if he’s never seen one before.

“Go get yourself a drink, on me,” the Mandalorian says. “And fix up that droid.”

The miner nods quickly and then practically sprints down the ramp and out of the ship. 

Din wonders what Signas told them, and then decides he doesn’t care. He shakes his head as he seals the ship and then, finally, turns to examine the carbonite pod. His new cargo.

Now upright and mostly free of dust, he can see its occupant clearly. A woman, slender-waisted, her head turned aside, her hands neatly folded on her stomach as if she’s just laid down to sleep. Din is not used to seeing a bounty- a person in carbonite looking so peaceful. 

He examines her for any hints to her identity. Her clothes are simple, nondescript; more modest than he might expect to see on a trafficked slave, for example. Her hair is long, spilling across her face and down her neck and collar. It’s not until his gaze reaches her hands that he pauses. They are criss-crossed with faint scars, visible even through the layer of carbonite. 

Just as Signas said, there is no chain code, no identifying information in the unit’s small onboard computer at all. It’s as if it’s been wiped manually. All Mando can find is the manufacturing date of the carbonite pod itself: 30 BBY. Roughy forty years ago. It’s not unheard of for units of that age to still be in circulation, but in this condition? It should have been scrapped years ago.

Din steps up close to the pod and its mysterious occupant. She sleeps, frowning beneath the curtain of her hair. 

“Who are you?” he wonders aloud, and of course, he gets no answer. It’s probably for the best. The last time he asked questions on a job...Well. He doesn’t want to think about that right now.

Without even realizing, though, Din finds himself with the silver sphere in hand, rolling it between his fingers as he makes his way up to the cockpit. It offers no answers either, nor comfort; just makes him long for a time when all he had to worry about was the fate of a small green child the entire galaxy seemed to be looking for.

Things had been simpler then. 

At least he’d known what to do. More or less. 

He settles into the hard, uncomfortable pilot’s seat and primes the engines. The Rybet’s repairs seem solid enough - the ship lifts up from the landing pad with no trouble. The fuel reserves are low; it seems there was a leak in the tank that’s since been patched. It’s enough to get him where he’s going. For now.

Din enters in the coordinates for the system Signas gave him and sits back. On half power, to conserve fuel, it’s going to take a couple of days. A couple of days and a simple drop-off for considerably more than a fistful of credits...It seems too good to be true. Too easy.

Later, Din Djarin will curse himself for how right he was without even knowing it.

---

The ship malfunctions halfway into the journey.

Mando is just starting to relax, dozing off in his chair, his helmet lolling forward to rest against his chest. Then the whole craft lurches, nearly throwing him from his seat, and he jerks up with a start, blinking the blurriness from his vision as through the visor he sees yet another array of blinking red lights.

“Dank farrik!” he swears, glancing out the viewport just as one of the Imp engines - the same one that took a rock earlier - sputters and dies. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem; that is, until the other two engines do the same.

“Son of a mudscupper!” The swearing continues as he wrestles with the instrumentation, trying to reroute power, find the source of the malfunction and make sure nothing else blows up. Fortunately, the failures seem contained to the engines and nav systems and not, say, life support.

Until he sees one tiny, all important light flickering on and off on one of the panels.

“Shit.” It’s the carbonite unit. The power surge - or whatever the hell it was, damn that Rybet and his shoddy repairs - has shorted it out. 

He takes the ladder down to the hold three rungs at a time, dropping the last ten to land on his feet on the deck below. The carbonite pod is hissing, sputtering, surrounded by smoke; he runs through it to slam his fingers into the control panel, trying to reroute its systems to draw more power from the ship, but it’s too late.

The built-in life support readout blinks one single word: CRITICAL. 

It’s defrost or die.

The failsafe system cuts in before Din can make that decision, though, and he steps back as the whole pod shudders, the hissing growing to a roar. The girl inside the carbonite begins to glow, from dark grey to bright red, and then finally, as steam envelops her, the metal boils away.

Din isn’t fast enough. She falls like a domino to the deck, hitting hard. 

As the pod continues to billow white clouds and wheeze mechanically, he waves his way through and kneels at her side. He expects the worst, and as the steam clears, he finds her there on the deck - soaked to the bone, wrung-out, shaking like a leaf.

But alive.

Her whole body shudders and she begins to cough and choke, drawing in great, gasping breaths. Her hair hangs in wet tendrils over her face as she lies face-down, and she tries to push herself up on her hands and knees only to pitch forward again with a terrible groan.

Din hesitates, his hand out, hovering over her for a moment before he places it on her shoulder. Even through the glove he can feel that she’s freezing, ice-cold. She doesn’t immediately react to the touch, and she’s stopped coughing, but she’s still shivering violently. He’s not sure if she’s still conscious.

After a second’s thought, he reaches up to tug his cloak from his neck. He swings it around the girl’s shoulders, wrapping her small, shaking body in the dark cloth. A slender, scarred hand reaches out and curls around its edge, drawing the cloak tight.

“Can you hear me?” he asks. Slowly, she lifts her head.

She’s older than she looked in the carbonite - maybe mid-twenties, thirty at the most. Her skin might be olive, but right now it’s washed out, almost grey, her lips pale and trembling. There’s a scar right at the corner of her mouth, little more than a silver indentation bisecting her lips. Apart from the scar, her features are almost delicate, but there’s a defiant set to her jaw Din finds oddly familiar. Dark circles shadow her even darker eyes, eyes that seem to look right through him.

“Wh-where am I?” Her voice is little more than a whisper, with the trace of an accent he can’t place just yet.

“A ship,” he answers shortly. “My ship. Can you stand?”

“It’s c-c-cold,” she says, teeth chattering, shaking her head. The long dark hair sticks to her cheek, her neck, with residual moisture.

Din places his hands under her arms, and she flinches, shrinking back. “Don’t touch me!” He sees a muscle in her jaw jump as she clenches her teeth against the trembling. 

“Easy. I’m not going to hurt you.” It feels like he’s trying to calm a wild Blurrg. “I’m trying to help.”

“Oh yeah?” She scoffs, but this time, she doesn’t shake him off as he stands and draws her up after him. She’s surprisingly solid despite her slender build - under the cloak and her soaking clothes, she must be all wiry muscle. Right now, though, her legs can barely support her own weight - she’s leaning heavily into him, even as she lifts her head and scowls.

“If you’re trying to help me, why am I blind?” 

It’s then Din realizes why it seems she’s looking straight through him - because she is. Her dark eyes are unfocused, tracking nothing, confirmed when he curls an arm around her waist to support her as he waves his other hand in front of her face. Zero reaction.

Hibernation sickness. It’s to be expected, and no doubt her sight will return in time, but right now he needs her to trust him. And the blindness isn’t going to help.

“It’s the carbonite,” he says, trying for calm, but he’s never been good at soothing. At least, not until Grogu. He adopts the same tone he used to use when trying to calm or encourage the kid. “You’ll be fine in a few hours.”

He pulls her arm over his shoulders. Fortunately, she doesn’t resist as he leads her mostly-limp body towards the ladder.

“Who are you?”

Din considers. Shrugs. “A Mandalorian.” 

He catches her staring at him - or more accurately, in his direction - out of the corner of his visor.

“What’s a Mandalorian?”

Well. He’s not even sure where to start with a question like that. In fact, after everything, he’s not even sure he can answer. But as Din opens his mouth beneath the helmet, the girl opens hers too - and promptly empties the contents of her stomach all over him and on the deck below.

He almost drops her, but he manages - just - to keep his grip around her waist so she doesn’t slide to the deck as she continues to gag and wretch. 

Din stands there, the shiny Beskar plate on his chest now covered in watery vomit and bile, and sighs.

So much for an easy job, he thinks.

Chapter Text

When she wakes for the second time, all she feels is confusion.

She doesn’t immediately recall where she is or why. The bed beneath her is thin and hard and she’s wrapped in a cloak that smells strange and everything is dark, terribly dark, a darkness that persists even when she opens her eyes. At first she thinks the lights are off and then she remembers - No. I can’t see - and then it all comes flooding back.

Blasted into consciousness, unfrozen, the world turned upside-down. The horrible, paralyzing, pins-and-needles sensation throughout her whole body, seizing her lungs and making it hard to breathe. The lead weight of her limbs failing to respond to the most basic of commands, leaving her flopping like a wet fish on the deck. The bone-chilling cold making every muscle spasm and contract with a feeling like being stabbed with icicles in every nerve. 

Then, through the fog, the stranger’s hand on her shoulder.

She remembers him helping her up. Filtered words through what sounded like a vocoder. The hard edges of something metal against her ribs. Her stomach roiling, and then not much else. 

Until now.

She still has his cloak wrapped around her, and that’s fine; she feels on the edge of another fit of shivering even as she gathers her strength to sit up, drawing the fabric tight around her shoulders. It smells like leather, oil and metal with the faint traces of cordite. 

The room she’s in feels close and cramped, and the air around her has the plastic tang of fresh O2 filters. A ship, like he said, but she can’t hear or feel the hum of an engine - they’re not moving. Landed, maybe? She has no idea.

Slowly, achingly, she swings her numb legs over the side of the bed and stands. Her feet buckle beneath her and she drops to her knees heavily, letting out a yelp as sharp pain shoots from her patella through her tibia and earths in her hip. It erases some of the numbness, though, which is good; she holds onto the pain even as she fights to get one foot and then the other planted beneath her, rising slowly to stand with the aid of the edge of the bed behind her.

At last, she’s on her feet. Swaying slightly, feeling sick, but standing. It’s something.

Her hand trails the bulkhead as she reaches out for guidance, blindly groping her way forward. She finds the doorway, its hatch open, and steps forward with her fingers outstretched.

They meet a wall of cold, hard metal and she stops. The wall is...moving slightly?

“You’re awake.”

She steps back in surprise, almost losing her footing. A strong, gloved, familiar hand closes around her bicep, keeping her upright. The - what did he call himself? - Mandalorian .

Widening her eyes as if she might be able to see something - anything - of her savior, captor, whatever he is, she peers in the direction of his voice. He’s definitely taller than her, and the metal must be armor. The modulated voice sounds like it’s coming from beneath a helmet, she thinks. 

Trooper ? The word emerges from the fog in her brain, and along with it a stab of fear, of anger - but she doesn’t remember what it means .

“How do you feel?” The voice is deep, his tone neutral. Disinterested, even. But he’s still holding her arm, not too tightly but not loosely, either.

“Like hell frozen over.” The sound of her own voice seems as unfamiliar as everything else. “Sorry about...throwing up on you,” she adds, and nothing happens in the darkness of her visionless world for a moment, but she feels as if the stranger is looking her over. 

“It’s fine,” he says at last. “I’ve seen it before. Hibernation sickness.”

She nods as if she understands, but she doesn’t. In fact, she’s beginning to realize something, and it’s not a good realization; her mind keeps brushing against it and then backing away, as if it can’t quite actualize the thought just yet. But it’s coming, like a blast of carbonite to the face.

“You still can’t see?” he asks. She shakes her head. The Mandalorian stranger tugs on her arm gently, and she lets him guide her into what feels like a slightly larger room. Her sore knees butt up against something, a seat or a crate, and he pushes her to sit down. She does, without much resistance at all - as if she could offer any.

She hears a soft, inflected sigh from beneath the stranger’s helmet. 

“This complicates things,” he says, almost under his breath, mostly to himself. She cocks her head in his direction.

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter. What’s your name?”

And there it is. Her mind seizes like her limbs did, and where there should be an answer there’s just...Nothing.

Utter blankness. 

Darkness.

She opens and closes her mouth, once, but says nothing. She feels the stranger watching her.

“Well?”

She doesn’t want to tell him, as if voicing it might make it real: She has no idea who she is .

“I, uh - first, what happened to me?” she asks instead, hoping the deflection goes unnoticed. It doesn’t, but he answers just the same.

“You were frozen in carbonite.”

“I know that - Why did you unfreeze me?”

“I didn’t.” She hears the creak of leather, the clink of metal, feels the displacement of air as he moves. “Ship malfunctioned. A power surge. Engines, nav systems, hyperdrive - it’s all down. We’re adrift.”

“Why?”

“If I knew that, we’d be moving already. I’ve been trying to fix the engines while you were out.”

“How long?”

“Six hours.”

She rubs her eyes, expecting the burst of phosphenes like crinkled carbon mesh across her retinas. Nothing happens. It’s like her brain is completely disconnected from her eyes. From her memories, too. She feels weak, frustrated, helpless; nothing is cooperating, not her body or her mind. 

She feels utterly, terribly alone.

“Where are you from?” She feels the seat next to her dip as the Mandalorian’s weight settles beside her. From what she can tell, he’s maybe an arm’s-length away. Looking at her. She wonders what he sees, what she looks like; she doesn’t even know that much.

“Is this an interrogation?” she asks, glancing over at him. Or at the dark space she thinks he might be occupying.

“Should it be?” The implied menace in his voice doesn’t go unnoticed. He’s dangerous, she realizes, this stranger - it radiates off him in waves, the suggestion of coiled violence, waiting to strike. Or maybe that’s just a symptom of her overactive imagination latching onto any stimulus it can find. She has nothing visual to go from, so she’s painting a picture of him in her head: Tall, armor-clad, darkness where a face should be. Is he armed, she wonders? Her fingers itch for the comforting weight of a blaster, and she wonders how she knows what one might feel like.

All she can do is wonder. But she decides to wonder some things aloud. Answers - any answers at all - might help, she thinks.

She hopes.

“You tell me,” she says. “How did you end up with a girl frozen in carbonite in your cargo hold?”

“Just a job.” His tone is casual, but the feeling of being watched closely never goes away. “I was supposed to take the pod - you - to a carbonite processing plant in a neighboring system.” She hears the rasp of metal on fabric as he shakes his head. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You don’t know anything else about me?”

“Is this an interrogation?” She can’t be sure, but she thinks the modulated voice sounds amused , throwing her own words back at her. 

“No. I’m just trying to understand, that’s all,” she answers carefully. She needs to know more, without letting on that she knows exactly nothing at all. It seems impossible. “What are you, anyway? Do you have a name, or do I just call you ‘the Mandalorian’?” It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

 There’s a disturbance in the air as he rises to his feet, and then the feeling of him looming over her.

“Mando.” At first, she thinks that’s all she’s going to get, but he speaks again. “I’m a bounty hunter.”

She feels cold, but this time, the sensation starts in her chest and spreads outwards. Her fingers flex against the edges of the cloak pulled tight around her shoulders, and she fights the sudden, bone-deep instinct telling her to run . Where would she run to, anyway? How ? She can’t even see .

“Am I a bounty, then, Mando?” she asks, having to clear her throat to hide the quaver in her voice. She’s fairly certain he notices it anyway. He’s right in front of her, close enough to touch, and she’s suddenly glad she can’t see - she’s sure that if she could, she would be far more afraid.

“I’m not sure yet.” With that, he turns and walks away, his boots light on the deck. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“I’m going to keep working on the engines. Stay here,” he tells her - as if she’ll be exploring any time soon. She bites back the acidic comment on the tip of her tongue and nods instead.

After a moment, the sound of his footsteps fade, leaving her in darkness. Alone. 

Chapter Text

So.

She’s blind, doesn’t remember anything, and she’s stuck on a ship with a bounty hunter she knows only slightly more about than herself.

It seems like an impossible situation to get her bearings in, but there’s a streak of stubbornness in her that tells her she’s going to try, regardless. The thought of stting there without doing anything, feeling sorry for herself, makes her hackles rise. It doesn’t feel like something she would do normally. So she doesn’t.

Sure, she may not be able to look around, but at least she can try to take inventory of herself first - so once Mando is gone, that’s what she does.

His cloak discarded, she starts with her clothes. The tunic she wears is simple, without adornment, made of some rough-spun fabric that rasps between her fingertips. Beneath that, breeches of soft, durable cloth, her pockets depressingly empty of anything but lint. No belt, no holster, no weapons whatsoever - unhelpful, but unsurprising. She wonders if the Mandalorian took anything off her while she was unconscious, but she’s not sure if she’ll get an answer if she asks.

When she gets to her boots, she feels it. There’s something digging into her calf muscle she didn’t notice before. She tugs off the boot and the object clatters to the deck - muttering a swear, she slides from the seat and gropes around blindly on hands-and-knees before her fingers close around the likely culprit.

Sitting back on her haunches, she turns it over in her fingers. It feels jagged, asymmetrical, and hard, an object about the size and length of two of her digits pressed together. It’s not metal or plastic - a rock, maybe? But no, it’s not porous enough, and its surface is smooth, almost polished. A crystal.

She lays it flat across her palm. It feels warm, she realizes, about the same temperature as her skin, and...familiar. But no matter how hard she wills it, her frustratingly blank mind offers up no clue, no hint as to what it is or where it came from.

No answers. No revelations. Just more questions.

At the thought, a laugh bubbles up within her, escaping before she can muffle it. She’s such a mystery to herself that it seems suddenly absurd. Trapped on a ship, adrift with a bounty hunter who knows about as much as she does, with only a rock in her boot to her name. Which she doesn’t even know. 

Exhausted already, she drags herself back up onto the seat and slides her foot back into her boot. The crystal goes into her pocket. She tries not to think for a moment; it’s easy, given how tired she is. Her body moves on its own, drawing her legs up to sit cross-legged, her palms resting on her aching knees. She closes her eyes, as if it makes any difference at all, but to her surprise it does, enabling her to focus less on what surrounds her and more on...something else.

She concentrates, and it’s right there, on the edge of perception, a sense like a missing limb - something she knows; something she’s forgotten, like everything else. She reaches for it, searching in the dark for an echo she can feel rather than hear.

Her awareness expands, like a pebble dropped into a pond, ripples spreading across its surface in concentric waves. She can hear the soft whirr of the O2 scrubbers, the faint hum of the ship’s power systems. They drift in an aimless circle, listless, a single speck of life in the overwhelmingly oppressive emptiness of the void beyond, the vacuum which seems to stretch on into infinity.

Yet, if she probes more - looks closer - there’s something, something more , an energy, almost...a force -

The thrusters sputter into life. Inside the ship, all is still thanks to the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity, but somehow she can feel the movement as they arrest their directionless spin and surge forward towards the distant stars.

THUNK. The nearby sound startles her out of her reverie, and she almost slips from the chair, catching herself on its edge as she looks - fruitlessly - for the source. It feels almost like waking up after a long sleep; she’s a little disoriented, dizzy even, as she comes back to herself.

The Mandalorian is back; the thunk was his boots landing on the deck from the ladder, she assumes. The air shifts as he moves towards her, and again she feels his gaze on her from beneath the helmet. She tries not to shrink back; visibly, at least. 

“We’re moving again,” she says before he gets a chance to speak. She senses it as he stops, and although that strange awareness is fading now, she can imagine it as he tilts his head and stares at her for a moment before he speaks. Even his presence is intimidating. 

“Fixed the thrusters,” he confirms. “And got the nav computer running. I set a course for the nearest station. It could take a while to get there.”

She nods, reaching up to rub her forehead. Her head hurts now; it feels like a band of tension squeezing her temples, and the ache in her bones is immense. 

“Here.” For a moment, she was concentrating too much on her own aches and pains; she didn’t realize Mando was moving around. He’s in front of her again, pressing something into her hand - a bottle of some liquid or other. It’s then she realizes how thirsty she is, how hungry, her stomach a yawning pit of emptiness as vast as the void beyond the hull of the ship. She forgets the muted fear, the exhaustion, at least for the moment.

“You should rehydrate. Take it slow and-” But she’s already opened the bottle and is knocking back the liquid inside, heedless of what it actually is, before he can even finish. It turns out to be just water, but it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted. 

She hears Mando take a step back, just in case, as she guzzles the entire bottle.

“Thank you,” she says when she finishes, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand with a deep, relieved sigh. When it becomes apparent she isn’t about to throw up on him again, he hands her something else - a brick of something brittle and tough. She’s a little more cautious with this, lifting it to her nose and inhaling. It’s a bland, not-quite-savoury, not-quite-sweet scent.

“Protein brick,” Mando says. “It doesn’t taste great, but it’ll keep you alive.”

She breaks off a small piece and sticks it in her mouth, chewing slowly. It turns into a granular kind of sludge on her tongue that’s hard to swallow, but she does anyway, grateful. It feels like she hasn’t eaten in years.

“You gonna tell me your name yet?” he asks as he watches her eat. Maybe he thought he’d catch her off guard, show her a bit of kindness before fishing for answers again. She frowns at the thought, taking a deliberately large bite of the protein bar and turning her head in the opposite direction instead of answering.

She hears him sigh.

“Fine,” he says. “I guess after I get this ship repaired,  I’ll have to take you to that carbonite facility and see what they say about you.”

She swallows quickly, anxiety prickling beneath her breastbone. More anxiety. “You’re just going to hand me over, just like that?” She’s not sure why she’s surprised. Probably because he seems so curious about her. More curious than a bounty hunter should be, she thinks. In fact, she’s surprised he hasn’t repaired the carbonite pod and refrozen her already.

A thought she’s definitely not going to vocalize, in case it gives him ideas.

“That was the job,” he’s saying, and now he’s aloof. Deliberately, she’s sure. Trying to get a reaction out of her.

It works. “Was,” she repeats. “You said me waking up complicates things. Are you even going to get paid if you deliver me already unfrozen to this facility you’re talking about?”

He’s silent, and she feels triumphant for a moment. She resumes eating, taking another large bite. Still so hungry.

“You don’t remember who you are, do you?”

The protein sludge feels thick in her throat. She swallows slowly, trying not to choke or make any other outward reaction. Her chin drops, and she feels long tendrils of her hair slide forward over her face, hiding her expression from view. She’s grateful, feeling the Mandalorian’s gaze on her, so intense it makes her want to curl up into herself and hide.

“Dank farrik.” He swears, then sighs again. She’s not sure if he’s angry at her - or himself. It sounds like the latter. After a moment, he steps forward, and she feels his hand under her elbow. His gloves feel rough on her skin. “Come on. You should get some rest.”

“And then what?” she asks as she lets him lead her across the deck. He doesn’t reply immediately, navigating her through the door of the sleeping quarters and directing her to the bed. She sits on its edge gingerly, feeling the crystal in her pocket digging into her hip.

“We’ll see.”

“ I won’t,” she points out, and she hears a strange sound - it takes her a moment to realize it’s a chuckle, filtered through the vocal unit of Mando’s helmet into a staticky buzz that lifts the hairs on the back of her neck. 

“Refresher bay is just behind you. I’ll be in the cockpit.” With that, he’s gone again, leaving her wondering - so many things, she doesn’t even know where to start.

She lies back on the bed and closes her eyes, searching for that calm in the vastness. This time, it eludes her, and the whirling maelstrom of her thoughts is all she has for company.

---

Din Djarin should have known this so-called ‘easy job’ would go sideways from the start.

It had all the classic hallmarks of shadiness. An unmarked, untracked carbonite pod with an unidentified girl found under mysterious circumstances in the back of some mining storage facility; the boss wanting to get rid of it as quickly as possible, throwing credits around like candy; and one of his cronies looking for someone unscrupulous enough to take the job. The Mandalorian had just shown up at the right time, under the exact right circumstances to make taking the job less of a choice and more a necessity. 

He should have run more diagnostics on the carbonite unit before accepting it. He should have demanded a backup, a contingency of some sort. He should have asked for more information on the girl, on where the pod came from. But, of course, he had a whole lot more should haves than he, well, should. He’d taken the job without a second thought - to hell with the risk - and now he’s stuck on a broken ship, adrift with an unwanted passenger he has no idea what to do with.

If he turns up at the carbonite processing plant with an empty pod and a live human, he doubts there’s going to be payment for his services. Plus, he’s not sure what they’ll do with her after the fact. Normally he wouldn't care, wouldn’t ask - but the questions, the doubts had begun creeping in like water seeping through cracks in his armour even before the pod malfunctioned and spat her out.

Who is she ?

Ironically, Din realizes she has about as much of an idea of the answer to that question as he does. She doesn't remember who she is. In fact, he doubts if she remembers anything at all.

Her clumsy attempts to probe what he knows notwithstanding, she’s innocent in all this. 

He pictures a pair of wide, brown eyes and bat-wing ears, and sighs.

His hands slip on the wires he’s holding, and he swears as they almost touch, sparks alighting on his glove; he pats them out hurriedly before they ignite. The Mandalorian sits back, glaring into the open panel in the wall. So far, he’s had no luck trying to bypass the propulsion and power systems to get the hyperdrive back online; it’s a miracle he managed to get them moving under thruster power alone. The systems in this ship are so convoluted he’s actually surprised he even managed to find what cables go where in the first place.

Life support is stable, at least, and they have enough water and rations to last several weeks. Din hopes they won’t have to use it. 

He gets up and stretches out the kinks in his neck, his shoulders. He’s not sure how long he’s been up here working elbow-deep in the ship’s guts, but his own is protesting: He needs to eat. He swings himself down the ladder into the common area, which houses a small kitchenette space, a stiff plastic seat, a weapons locker that is far too empty for his tastes, and the hatches leading to the refresher bay and the sleeping quarters respectively. 

He can see through the open hatch of the latter that the girl is asleep again, curled on her side on the bed. He leaves her be as he helps himself to some water and a protein slab, sitting with his back turned as he lifts his helmet up enough to eat.

The protein bar is little more than bland, tasteless dried fodder, but it’s filling enough. Din chews slowly, keeping his helmet balanced with his thumb and forefinger at the bridge of his nose. 

“How are the repairs going?”

He almost drops the helmet and the bar, but he has the presence of mind to discard only the latter while pulling the former quickly back down over his face. He turns towards the girl, who stands there, staring in his direction, eyes unfocused. Of course she can’t see, but the Creed - the Creed he’s broken time and time again - is still so deeply ingrained within him that he feels immediate shame for letting his guard down so easily.

“I thought you were asleep.” He can’t keep the accusatory tone from his voice. The girl notices and frowns, taking a step back.

“I was,” she says. “But I heard you out here and woke up. Am I a prisoner? Supposed to stay confined to that room?” Her jaw squares defiantly. 

Din looks her over. He can see her a little better now without the cloak, and while her frame isn’t particularly impressive, she’s light enough on her feet to have moved without him hearing her, and he can see the outline of the lean muscle of her bare biceps when she crosses her arms.

Her tunic is a muted gray, her pants a faded black, and her boots look worn and well-traveled. No insignia or identifying features of any kind, though. Her hair’s a stringy mess, hanging over one side of her face. It’s very long, reaching all the way down her waist. Din thinks of Omera’s dark, wavy hair, wondering what it would feel like under his fingers, and quickly shakes his head to clear it of the strange, errant thought.

“No,” he answers at last, when he realizes the girl is still waiting for him to speak. “Unless you do something that makes it necessary.”

“Like what?” Her head tilts, like a curious Tooka.

Beneath the helmet, he smirks thinly. “Looking for ideas?”

She stares at him - towards him - as if she’s trying to figure out whether he’s serious or not. He can’t read her expression. “You’re worried about what I might do?” she asks, softly, and he realizes - she’s afraid of him.

Well of course she is , he thinks, suddenly cross with himself. Blind, trapped on a ship with a strange bounty hunter, herself a total stranger as well. In her shoes, he might feel similarly.

He rises to his feet and he watches as she detects the movement and steps back. He can see the delicate skin over her throat move as she swallows heavily. 

“I won’t hurt you,” he says, trying for the low, soothing voice he would once use on the child when he became upset. “You have my word.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Bounty Hunter Mando, if I don’t take you at your word just yet,” she replies, more resigned than bristling. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” he reminds her. “For all I know you could be lying about your memory.”

She definitely bristles at that, scoffing openly. “Why would I lie about that?”

“You tell me.”

She squares her jaw again. He finds the expression strangely...endearing. It reminds him of how the child would lower his ears and widen his eyes pleadingly whenever he wanted something he wasn’t allowed to have.

“Relax,” he says after a moment, rolling his eyes beneath the helmet. “We’re going to be stuck here together for a while,” as much as it pains him to say it, “So we’re going to have to try to get along.” 

He can see her considering this. She looks down, biting her lip, and a swathe of hair slides forward to cover her face, hiding her expression from view. When she looks up again, she doesn’t bother to brush the hair away; he supposes it doesn’t matter since she can’t see, but it annoys him for some reason.

“And you promise not to harm me -  in any way?”

He forgets himself a moment and just nods, then remembers she can’t see it. He adds, in his gentlest, most reassuring voice - which probably isn’t very when filtered by the vocoder: “I promise.”

She nods, too, then lets out a breath. After a moment, she shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “Great. Well, I’m, uh, gonna go and - Go back to sleep, I guess.” She turns away, her slim shoulders hunched protectively as if she’s expecting an attack any second.

“Goodnight,” Din offers instead.

She pauses, glancing over her shoulder. “Goodnight,” she says, and then she disappears from view, leaving the Mandalorian wondering about her even moreso than before.

Chapter Text

The city stretches on as far as the eye can see, spires reaching for the sky like they’re trying to escape the horizon itself. The roar of noise is muted up here, far above the surface, more like the faint rush of ocean eddies than the tumultuous scream of the storm.

The storm rages on, even now. The city dissolves, replaced by an endless expanse of grey sand that glimmers silver in the light from the two moons high above. The sea below is a deep green, usually flat and tranquil, but as the wind howls, the emerald waves are tossed into a seething froth that foams and spits on the surface. 

The water is warm, dragging her down, down, down into the depths, where her lungs fill with metal and she sinks to the bottom where all that is left is darkness.

--

She wakes shaking, sucking deep, shuddering breaths into lungs that have forgotten what it feels like to draw air. She opens her eyes expecting to see a city or a beach - but instead it’s only grey, stifling darkness, a darkness that seems even more oppressive and unwelcoming than before.

Once again, she is left with only questions, the answers as elusive as her sight. 

She sighs heavily, sitting up to drag her fingers through her hair. It doesn’t do much to smooth the long locks, but she manages to get the worst of the knots out, and it helps steady her shaking hands. 

It’s been - a day, perhaps? Two? She has spent much of her time sleeping, fitful, often waking gasping in a cold sweat, unfamiliar images haunting her. The dreams are so vivid that she often expects to feel sand or duracrete underneath her feet, but it’s always just the coldness of the ship’s decking. 

The Mandalorian spends most of his time in the cockpit or the bowels of the ship. He emerges to give her food or water, but doesn’t say much, and he never stays around long enough for her to ask him questions. Every time she opens her mouth, he’s gone.

Moving around is becoming easier. Where once even getting to her feet tired her out enough to warrant a rest afterward, she’s able to get up and walk about a little before the exhaustion kicks in. She begins to map the space around her slowly, counting how many paces from one bulkhead to the other, feeling the walls with outstretched hands, cataloguing the area. This deck comprises the small living space, a kitchenette, and a sealed hatch that leads to the hold. At the other end there’s a ladder to the cockpit, where she can occasionally hear the Mandalorian working amongst the clink of tools and the crackle of electrics.

She knows without needing to ask that he hasn’t managed to fix the hyperdrive. The ship is still crawling along at the same hobbled pace. She’s glad - it gives her time to recover, to think, to try to remember something, anything . But no matter how hard she tries, there’s just that infuriating, persistent darkness, like a fog hanging over her mind. The dreams are the only thing she has - and in a way, they’re worse, because it all feels so familiar; the knowledge is at the tip of her brain, but every time she reaches for it, it’s gone, like sand through her fingers.

Stopping in the middle of her twentieth or thirtieth lap around the interior of the ship, she grits her teeth and lashes out, slamming a fist into the bulkhead beside her. It’s not a hard hit at all; in fact, it hurts her hand more than it damages the wall - but almost at the same time, the entire ship shudders and jumps as if struck. It throws her sideways, and she loses her footing and goes down sprawling onto the deck, her shoulder taking the brunt of the impact.

“Agh!”  She yells out as the bolt of pain shoots through her arm. The ship has already righted itself, the inertial dampeners compensating for the disruption. She rolls onto her knees, clutching her bicep. Funny - all she can remember now are swearwords.

Boots clatter down the ladder, making no effort not to be heard. “Hey. You okay?” the deep, modulated voice asks, and without waiting for an answer, he’s got his hand on her uninjured arm, helping her to her feet.

She tries to shrink back, but Mando has a solid grip on her bicep. “Fine,” she mutters, ducking her head and hiding behind the curtain of her hair. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in her chest whenever he gets too close, an instinct telling her to get away. The instinct of prey being cornered by a predator, she thinks, and she feels ashamed, railing against it - forcing herself to lift her chin resolutely. “I’m fine,” she repeats, a little more firmly.

She feels Mando looking her over. After a beat, he’s evidently satisfied, for he lets her go and steps back. 

“What happened?” she asks, annoyed at how shaky her voice sounds. She blames it on the fall. Her shoulder aches, but the joint glides smoothly when she rotates it experimentally. 

“Another power surge,” Mando says. “My fault. I’m not used to this ship. It’s wired worse than a Jawa sandcrawler.”

“I thought this was your ship?” Maybe she should have tempered the accusatory tone in her voice, but that doesn’t occur to her until after she’s said it. 

Mando doesn’t sound bothered, though. “It is now. My old ship was destroyed.” Although...is that a hint of melancholy she can hear in his voice with the last word? Sadness, even? 

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. It feels like the right thing to say. 

Mando is silent for a while - for so long she almost thinks he’s up and left again. But then the clipped syllables sound out, amplified through the helm’s vocal unit: “Thank you."

She hesitates, because this is the first time in days he’s said more than three words to her. She doesn’t want to let this opportunity to question him go to waste - but at the same time, she’s afraid. Of him. Of what she might find out.

Of what she might never discover.

“Are we any closer to the spaceport?” She settles on, folding her arms.

“About forty hours closer,” he answers. “Out of three weeks. You do the math.”

“There’s no other ships out there? No space stations, nothing?”

“No. I was taking a back route away from any major trading runs. There's nothing out here except us.”

Her eyelids flutter briefly. She knows it’s true - she remembers that strange other sense, the aloneness she felt, floating out in the void. 

“Where...Where did you find me, anyway?” She forces herself to ask. “What planet?”

“Kepler IV. Mining planet in the Outer Rim.” The name strikes no chords, rings no bells in her hazy mind. “Any idea why a girl like you would be found in a storage facility on a planet like that?”

“A girl like me?” She frowns. “What does that mean?” 

She detects movement from Mando that might be a shrug. “I thought you were a slave at first,” he explains casually. “But slavers don’t usually bother moving their property in carbonite. Runs the risk of damaging the goods.”

“I am not - property !” she hisses, feeling a burst of anger rise within her, as sharp and immediate as the pain in her shoulder had been. “Or goods to be bought and sold. I’m -” She stops short, because she doesn’t know what she is. But, at the very least, she knows she’s not a slave. It doesn’t feel right; her gut instinct tells her there’s more. 

Or maybe that’s just hope.

“I don’t know what I am,” she admits finally, deflating. The anger is replaced by fatigue, both mental and physical, creeping back in like tendrils of smoke through her lungs, her pores. She hangs her head again.

“Does anyone?” It’s an oddly philosophical question to come from a bounty hunter. She cocks her head at him. Then he says something even more unexpected: “Don’t worry. We’ll find out where you’re from, kid.”

“‘ Kid’ ?” There’s a pause, in which the Mandalorian seems to realize what he’s said. A slip of the tongue, maybe - and a strange one. She’s fairly certain she’s not young enough to be called kid by anyone, unless the Mandalorian is very old, but he doesn’t strike her as such. 

“Sorry. You just...remind me of someone else,” he mutters after the strained, strange moment. Is it just her, or is he suddenly uncomfortable?

“First I’m a slave, now I’m a kid,” she says, unable to keep from sounding irate. “Make up your mind.”

“Forget it.” His boots track away across the deck. She hesitates again.

“Wait.”

He stops. “What?”

“Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“That you’ll help me find out who I am. Where I’m from.”

Again that silence in which could be anything: A disdainful tilt of the helmet, a dismissive shrug or gesture, a shift in posture that might tell her what he’s going to do or say. In the absence of anything visual, she reaches out in the darkness and feels…

Emptiness. A terrible, yawning pit of emptiness, and a longing as deep as the emptiness itself. It’s awful, and she recoils from it, wondering how any one being can carry that around without buckling or collapsing inward with the weight of it.

“Yeah,” says Mando softly. Then, as he turns and climbs the ladder, she feels something else:

Hope.

--

The girl needs his help.

Once, that would’ve been enough to make Din Djarin turn tail and run as fast as he could. He never liked being needed, never knew what it was like to be wanted, either - so he avoided both. For three decades he has been alone, with only himself to worry about.

That all changed the moment a tiny creature in a pod reached out to him.

Now, he knows he should drop the girl off at the nearest spaceport - or better yet, take her to the carbonite plant and collect the rest of his pay, if he can. She’s trouble; it doesn’t take a Mandalorian to sense that. But there’s something about her...something about those wide, dark eyes...that makes him hesitate. That makes him promise things. Things he shouldn’t promise.

By Creed, it is in your care.

This is the Way.

“This is the Way,” he murmurs to himself as he stares at the open panel in front of him. He’s been sitting on the deck, half the ship’s hyperdrive interface system spread out around him for half an hour. He’s made no progress. With the Hyperdrive, at least.

There’s a sound behind him and he whips around, his hand going to the blaster at his belt without any conscious thought. Meanwhile, half of him expects to see two pointy ears poke up from the ladder-well. Instead it’s the girl, her hands the first thing visible as they grope across the floor, making sure it’s clear before she pulls herself up and over.

She stands, one hand outstretched. 

Mando rises to his feet. He knows she can’t see him, but she seems to be able to hear the smallest of movements, for she turns to face him before he’s even said anything. If she wasn’t blind before the carbonite, she’s adapted remarkably well, he thinks.

“What are you doing up here?” he asks her.

“I know I can’t exactly help with repairs,” she begins, somewhat haltingly, “But - well. You said it yourself. We’re going to be stuck here a while so we might as well learn to get along.”

He stares at her for a moment, at the thin, wan smile she offers. Maybe she’s not quite as afraid of him as he thought. Or she’s pushing through her fear in an effort to make her situation more tolerable. Either way, he can’t blame her. It’s admirable, almost. 

And ...the smallest part of him adds, the part awoken by his time with Grogu... And it wouldn’t hurt not to be alone for a little while.

“Take a seat. Don’t touch anything,” he tells her. She raises her eyebrows and waves a hand as if to say - ‘How’? He sighs and stands up, taking her by the wrist, guiding her to one of the passenger chairs. She sits slowly, and as he withdraws, pulls her feet up to sit cross-legged.

“Get your feet off the seat,” he says sternly.

“Okay, okay,” the girl capitulates, uncrossing her ankles and stretching her legs out deliberately. “It’s just...not the most comfortable.”

Privately, Din agrees, but aloud he says: “You can go back downstairs if you want.”

“No, I’m good.”

Even though she can’t see, he gets the feeling she’s watching him somehow as he kneels back down among the wiry guts of the ship’s systems. Her silence is almost...pointed.

He tries to ignore her, to work, but after five minutes or so, he looks up with a growl. “What?”

She blinks in his general direction. “I didn’t say anything.” Her expression is too innocent. He sighs and sits back on his haunches.

“But you want to. Out with it.”

“It’s just…” She hesitates, twisting long, slender fingers together. Her leg begins to bounce, her knee jiggling up and down with a nervous tic. Din resists the odd urge to put a hand on her thigh to stop it. “I’m going to need a name. Not just ‘girl’ or…’kid’.” Her mouth twists a little.

Din shrugs. “I’m not good at names.”

She gives him a look that says ‘ Obviously ’, but she keeps that thought to herself. Wisely. “I still need one.”

He thinks for a moment. “ Ad’ika ,” he says.

“Is that Mandalorian? What does that mean?”

“Mando’a,” he corrects. “It means... little one.”

“That’s even worse!” She declares at once. Glad for the helmet and her lack of sight, the Mandalorian smirks, hidden, at her reaction. 

“How about…’Kit’la’?”

She frowns at him, her dark brows knitting above the darker eyes, creating a little furrow that he’s begun to find...endearing. “Do I want to know what that one means?"

“There was a Tooka who left pawprints on your carbonite pod, back on Kepler IV. You remind me of it. All hiss and no bite.” He turns back to the wires and circuitry, ignoring the way she gapes at him.

“Okay,” he hears her say after a moment. Behind the visor, he quirks a brow, and tilts his head to look at her again. Her jaw is set, resolute. “Fine. Kit’la it is.”

Din’s not sure, but she seems a little more cheerful as she sits and watches - rather, listens - to him rummage around with the power converters, wires and modules. There’s less of a dark cloud hanging over her, and he finds himself...not glad for the company, because that would be admitting he disliked being alone. He...accepts it, more easily than he might have, before.

When his neck and shoulders begin to ache and he’s still made no progress with the ship’s stubborn power systems, Mando closes up the floor panel and puts away the hyperspanners. It’s not until he stands up that he realizes the newly-named Kit’la has gone very still and quiet. He frowns as he looks over at her, watching for the rise and fall of her chest - and is relieved when he hears her soft, deep breathing above the hum of the ship’s systems.

She’s fallen asleep, arms folded, her head lolling to rest on her shoulder.

Resigned, Din tugs off his recently-reclaimed cloak and drapes it over her. She mumbles in her sleep and turns slightly, pulling her knees up to her chest, her boots on the seat. Again.

He doesn’t wake her. Instead, he settles in the pilot’s chair, staring out the viewport at the stars, and he waits.

Chapter Text

“Morning, Mando.”

The girl Din Djarin has named Kit’la seems less afraid of him now. It is a double-edged sword - by the end of his second week trapped on the Kom’rk with her, he has spent more time in her presence than not. 

She is not like the Child. He doesn’t have to worry about her messing with buttons or knobs or switches, or eating anything she shouldn’t, but he does have to be careful not to leave things lying about for her to trip on. She moves around carefully, and she’s learned the interior of the ship more quickly than he’d expect, but once or twice she’s tripped over a hyperspanner or a length of cabling he’s left out and he can’t help but feel guilty. So he is sure to tidy up after himself during repairs.

As for the repairs themselves...he hasn't actually managed to repair anything. He’s worked tirelessly, forgoing sleep and food to try and fix the hyperdrive, but he knows it’s a lost cause: The vortex stabilizer is bust, and there's no way to fix it without putting up at a spaceport. Still, he tries, mostly out of habit.

Mando looks up from the open floor panel as Kit’la appears in the doorway, yawning. She has a plate in her hand, formless protein goop of varying colors decorating its surface. She feels her way across the bridge, and he has to snatch a few bolts and a welding tool from her path before she trips over them. She makes it all the way to the pilot’s chair and sets the plate down on the edge of  one of the control panels. 

“Brought you some breakfast,” she says, heading back to settle in the passenger seat and pulling her knees up into the cross-legged position she favours.

“It’s 1400,” Din informs her.

“I bet you haven’t eaten yet. That makes it breakfast.”

He can’t argue with her there.

“I found some deconstituted vegetable matter to go with the protein,” she continues, taking his silence as assent. “Hopefully I, uh, reconstituted it correctly.”

Din glances at the stuff on the plate. It wobbles without being touched. “Looks, uh…” He’s just glad he can’t smell it from beneath the helmet. “Good. Looks good. Thank you.” 

She nods with a thin smile in his direction. Din rises to his feet, wiping the oil and engine grease from his gloves onto his cloak. He takes his seat, glancing over at the girl.

When she isn’t with him on the bridge, Kit’la spends most of her time in the common area, often just sitting with her eyes closed, as she does now. Other times he’s caught her pacing, counting the steps from one bulkhead to the other. She has never complained about their situation, not once, but occasionally he’ll get a glimpse of her expression out of the corner of his visor and she looks...sad. Terribly sad. 

As much as he’s lost, he can’t imagine what it’s like to have lost all of his past, as well.

“Should I leave you to eat?” she asks him, interrupting his thoughts. “I know you don’t ever take that thing off.”

He assumes by ‘that thing’ she means the helmet. He hasn’t told her what it means to be a Mandalorian, but she’s never asked - he supposes it doesn’t matter quite as much to her, since she can’t see him, anyway. But with her words, Din considers another possibility: The girl is being respectful .

“It’s fine,” he says, since he has no intention of eating the gloop - not yet, anyway. He sets the plate aside. “Have you eaten?”

“Not that hungry today.”

“You should eat,” he admonishes. “You’re still recovering from the hibernation sickness.”

“I feel fine,” Kit’la shrugs. “Apart from not being able to see or remember anything, I mean. I feel great.”

Behind the visor, Din frowns. He knows he shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t care; she’s little more than a stowaway, a spanner in the works, an unplanned passenger he still has no idea what to do with once he gets the hyperdrive fixed and the skies are once again open to him. But...

“You still don’t remember anything at all?” he asks. He hasn’t pushed her, hasn’t really asked since the first few days after she woke up. Signas wasn’t sure how long she'd been frozen, so it might just be taking her a little longer to recover.

“There are flashes...in my dreams,” she begins, slow and thoughtful. “A beach. A city. I don’t think it’s the same place…” He lets her talk, watching as she rises to her feet. “I’m not even sure they are places, but they feel real enough - The warmth of the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair…” She begins pacing back and forth, and Mando winces as he spots a hyperspanner he forgot to pick up. He gets up to grab it, but to his surprise, Kit’la steps nimbly over it as if she already knew it was there.

She stops pacing and turns to face him. Her eyes are dark, unfathomable beneath the fringe of her lashes. “I’m sorry, Mando, I just - I feel like I’m stumbling along, alone in the dark. I know it’s not your fault, but...I wish I’d never been unfrozen in the first place.” 

Din isn’t sure what to say to that at first. He’s never been good when faced with raw emotion, preferring instead to ignore it. But he can’t help but feel…

Responsible.

“You’re not alone.” She looks as surprised as he is when he says it. “I said I’d help you, didn’t I?”

She bites her lip, the bottom of the scar disappearing beneath her teeth. Her chin dips in a nod.

“So don't worry.” Hesitant, he reaches out to touch her shoulder. She is hard and tense beneath his gloved hand. He pats her arm awkwardly. "A Mandalorian always keeps his word.” He’s not sure how yet- or even how much of a Mandalorian he is any more - but she doesn't need to hear that now.

At first, he thinks Kit’la is going to shrug him off and turn away, but she doesn’t. Instead, she gives him a grateful nod and, after a second, a smile. Din likes her smile, he decides, uneven as it is with the scar. 

“Sorry,” she says then. “I didn’t mean to say all that.” 

He shrugs. “It’s fine. I mean, I can still try to fix the carbonite pod if you really want…”

She laughs. Din thinks maybe it’s the first time he’s heard the sound, throaty and soft. 

His hand is still on her shoulder. He clears his throat and lets it drop to his side. For a moment, there’s a strange expression on her face - an echo of the fear he saw those first few days, but before he can ask, the cockpit flares to life with light and sound; alarms blare and warning lights blink a frantic red-white staccato, reflecting off his helmet.

“What the-” He’s interrupted as the ship jolts violently, sending them both stumbling. He staggers back and hits the bulkhead, the breath knocked from his lungs. Kit’la falls, unable to see to right herself, hitting her head hard on the edge of the control panel. But she gets up, grabbing onto the back of the passenger seat to steady herself. 

Alarms blare loudly from the readouts. Din fights his way across the shaking deck to the pilot’s chair. This is worse than last time, he thinks, dread settling in his gut as he consults the computers. 

“Another power surge?” From behind him, Kit'la's voice is muddy, but she’s still conscious. He doesn’t have time to check on her. 

“Secondary thruster,” Mando says, busy flicking switches, trying to reroute power. They’ve picked up spin and the inertial dampeners are struggling to keep up. He grabs the joystick, trying to even out their course, compensate for the sudden change in velocity. The ship fights him, and he strains, grunting with the effort - until finally, the primary thruster screaming in protest, they pull out of it and the craft grinds to a halt, hanging suspended in space, still.

Din lets go of the stick and turns to the nav computer, the propulsion readouts. The plate of food the girl brought him lies forgotten on the deck, its contents splattered every which-way. He can’t help but feel a little relieved he doesn’t have to eat it, at least.

 “Dank farrik,” he declares as he scans the screen. “Damn it.”

“What is it?” Kit’la’s managed to get in her seat, but she looks pale. It’s then he notices the blood on her face, trickling from a cut on her forehead.  

“One of the thrusters is dead. You’re hurt,” he adds, gesturing to her head. She reaches up to touch the cut and winces as her fingers come away bloody.

“‘M fine,” she mutters. “It’s just a scratch. The ship?”

Din consults the readouts again. There are no more alarms which is, somehow, more alarming than before, when all of them were screaming at him. “No structural damage. Life support’s stable. But it looks like it’s going to take us a whole lot longer to get where we were going.”

“How much longer?”

He jabs at the nav computer with a gloved hand. Sighs.

“Traveling by sublight, with a single thruster...Twice the original journey time.”

Kit’la is surprisingly eloquent as she sums up the situation with a single word:

“Fuck.”

---

Her head hurts. 

Kit’la - for that is her name now, in the absence of any other - winces as she presses the gauze the Mandalorian gave her to her temple. The cut is deeper than she thought, but she’s trying not to let on, gritting her teeth against the pain. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything, busy going through the contents of the medkit as he crouches on the deck in front of her.

Rather than seeing to the ship, Mando insists on tending to her first, despite her assurances that she is fine. She really just wants to go and lie down, but he makes her stay put with a strong hand on her shoulder. 

“Hold still,” he tells her, and she’s surprised by his gentleness as he moves her hand aside. “Looks like the bleeding’s stopped.” He begins to wipe dried blood from her cheek with a damp cloth.

For a bounty hunter, he’s capable of a surprising amount of kindness, she thinks - not for the first time. In fact, over the last few days, he’s certainly proven himself the antithesis of the man she thought he was. He’s quiet, yes, and menacing - definitely - but beneath the armor, beneath all that power, is something else entirely.

She has noticed him going without food, eating maybe half as much as she does. She worries, mostly  out of self-preservation - after all, without him she’d be even more adrift out here, in a broken ship she can’t see, lost in a galaxy she doesn’t know. But a part of her, a larger part than she’d care to admit, worries about him.

Maybe it’s thanks to her strange other sense, which often creeps up on her when she least expects it. Sometimes she’ll get a burst of emotion that she knows is not her own - frustration, loneliness, loss. Or maybe it is; she isn’t sure. Other times, it’s just the sensation of where things are, letting her avoid a tool carelessly discarded on the bridge, dodge around the Mandalorian himself as he walks past her, or simply to get out of bed and put her boots on without needing to grope around in the dark. It’s disorienting sometimes, but other times it’s comforting, like having a guiding hand on her shoulder.

She wishes she’d had that hand when she went careening into the control panel.

Maybe she’s woozy from the hit to the head, or maybe she just never had much sensibility to begin with, but Kit’la finds herself reaching out a hand, quite without her own conscious thought. Her fingertips meet cold metal. Mando freezes, his own hand going still, the cloth warming against her temple.

She traces the smooth lines of his helmet slowly, committing each curve to memory, forming a picture in her mind. At the same time, she feels something from him - anxiety; no, apprehension, and something like curiosity. 

He doesn’t stop her, even as her fingers find the edge of the visor. She trails her fingertips along where his eyes would be, down the bridge of his nose, towards his mouth. There he stops her with his hands firm on her wrists.

“What are you doing?” He doesn’t sound angry. Just confused, maybe.

“Looking at you,” she answers with a wan smile. “Or close enough to it.”

He shakes his head. Clears his throat. “Maybe you hit your head harder than I thought.”

She chuckles weakly, and winces as it sends a throb of pain through her skull. Then she feels his glove on her chin - his hand is so much larger than hers, large enough that his palm and fingers can span the entirety of her jaw, which he does, holding her still. “Don’t move,” he tells her, his voice low through the vocabulator, and this time she listens, forgetting even to breathe for a moment as his other hand sticks a dressing over the cut on her temple.

“There,” he says, and she finally draws breath again when he lets her go. She pictures the helmet tilting as he admires his handiwork. “Should be fine now. But you better not go to sleep for awhile, in case you have a concussion.”

“Thank you, Dr. Mando,” she says, not entirely ungratefully. She doesn’t have the heart or the strength to resist the hand under her elbow as she gets to her feet. “Really, though. Thank you.” For everything, she thinks but doesn't say.

“You’re welcome.” A beat passes. He lets her go. “I’m going to see if I can fix the main thruster.”

“Let me know if I can help?” 

“Sure.”

Kit’la feels him watching her as she makes her way to the couch in the common room, forcing herself to sit rather than lie down. She slumps back against the stiff curve of its back, letting her head fall to rest against its edge, and closes her eyes, trying to ignore the throbbing in her head and the strange, alien ache in her chest.

Chapter Text

Two months.

Din isn’t sure how he made it two weeks, let alone how they’re going to make it two months adrift in this ship, with its too-large wings and engines prone to failure every five seconds.

They have enough rations - just. With the vegetable matter Kit’la found, the protein bricks and some powdered broth, they can just about stretch it. The water is recycled, although to conserve power there might be a few cold showers in the near future.

And of course, the failed thruster is about as fixable as the hyperdrive. He doesn’t know whether to blame the Rybet’s shoddy repairs on Kepler IV or the ship itself - Mandalorian-engineered or not, it doesn’t hold a candle to the Razor Crest , which took so much more of a beating than this one has and still flew . 

Thinking about the Crest just makes him think about the Child, and if he wasn’t in a bad mood before, he is now. 

He tries not to let it show, for Kit’la’s sake. He watches her closely for worsening signs of concussion the first day, but when all she reports is a little dizziness and is able to hold down a meal, he lets her sleep. But he stays close by, leaning against the doorway of the sleeping quarters a while with his arms crossed, listening to the deep, even sound of her breathing until he’s satisfied she’s safe.

Whether he likes it or not, she’s in his care now, at least for the next couple of months. After that? 

He tries not to think about it. For now.

Din recalls the look on her face as she touched his helmet. At first, he had worried she was going to try and remove it - but she didn’t. She only brushed her fingers along the Beskar as if learning the shape of it by touch, and in her eyes was an expression of wonder that made something small and unfamiliar stir in the cold space beneath his breastplate.

Afterwards, he doesn’t mention it, and Kit’la doesn’t ask. He’s grateful for that, at least. 

They take it in turns to use the sleeping quarters, and the other sleeps on the hard couch or, in Mando’s case, in his chair on the bridge. Sometimes, in the middle of the ship’s night, the girl will nudge him awake and insist he head below to bed. No amount of groggy protests will assuage her, and she insists she can’t sleep anyway - he wonders if it’s the dreams. And so he acquiesces, closing the hatch behind him, taking off his helmet and falling face-first into the thin mattress that smells like her, and he sleeps.

Kit’la respects his need for privacy, and she doesn’t ask about the helmet again. Because of this, perhaps, he finds himself relaxing around her - as he once did with the Child - and one morning, they share breakfast together, Din balancing his helmet between thumb and forefinger as he eats the formless vegetable and protein glop. 

It helps that she can’t see; it soothes the Mandalorian voice inside that screams the Creed at him during every waking moment. It’s quieter now, anyway, although by rights he should not be wearing the helmet at all any more. 

He tries not to think about that, either.

After he’s finished his meager plate, he pulls his helmet back down and sits back. Without realizing it, he finds himself drawing the silver gear knob sphere from its place nestled beneath his bandolier; he turns it over between his fingers absently, gazing at nothing, thinking of nothing. Or trying to. The metal is cold even through the leather of his glove, and he sighs.

“What’s wrong?” Kit’la’s voice intrudes on his thoughts, and he glances over at her. She sits cross-legged on the floor, leaning back on her hands, having finished her breakfast as well. The wound next to her eyebrow is healing well; held together by healing tape, it may not even leave a scar.

“Nothing.” He tucks the sphere away and spreads his legs, stretching out. 

“You sure? You’re brooding more than usual.” Kit’la gets up, climbing onto the seat next to him, drawing her knees to her chest. Din hasn’t been this close to her in a while - not since patching her head up - and he shifts a little uncomfortably, but fortunately she doesn’t notice.

“I don’t... brood .”

“Mm-hm, and I’m a Wookiee,” Kit’la says, and she laughs that throaty laugh again, all husky and soft. “You brood visibly . I’m blind and even I can see it.”

Din just grunts. Hoping in vain that by ignoring her, she will give up and go away. She doesn’t, of course.

“Do you want to talk?”

“No.”

“Not about what’s bothering you,” she continues, undeterred, “About anything. It might help take your mind off it. Come on, Mando. How about...What’s your favourite planet you’ve ever visited?”

He sighs, resigned. He could just get up and head onto the bridge, maybe even lock the hatch behind him...But he doesn’t want to. Not really. He tells himself it’s not worth it, but actually, he just doesn’t have it in him. Not any more. 

“Sorgan,” he answers, before he’s even had time to think about it.

“What was it like?”

“It was...a backwater skug hole in the middle of nowhere.” He begins to talk and it gets easier with every word, so he continues despite himself. “No space port, no cities to speak of. Just krill farmers and forests, marshes. We spent a couple weeks there some time back and it was…”

“Peaceful?” He looks at her as she says it. Her chin rests on her knees, her eyes closed. He never noticed before, but her olive skin is dotted with faint freckles across the junction of her nose and cheekbones. Her hair is loose, falling across her face, hiding the scar on her lips from view.

“Yeah.” He thinks of Omera, of her open, honest gaze, her strong hands, her gentle touch. He dreams about her sometimes, and he wakes up aching every time, swearing never again, never again .

Din reaches out and brushes the hair from Kit’la’s face, tucking it behind her ear. She opens her eyes in surprise, but says nothing.

“It was...nice there,” he says slowly, his voice low and quiet through the vocabulator. “But nice never lasts. Not for people like me.”

To his surprise, she doesn’t disagree with him. She doesn’t tell him that it doesn’t have to be that way, that it’s his choice, that he could go back if he wanted. 

Instead, she says, “We all have a path we’re meant to walk. Sometimes we get to hold onto happiness for a little while. Other times we walk hand in hand with loss. The trick is balance.”

“Balance?” He’s never heard her talk like this - her voice is different, somehow; gentler, wiser. 

She nods. “Emotion, yet peace. Chaos, yet harmony. Everything that -” Kit'la stops suddenly, trailing off with a frown, and shakes her head as if waking herself from a dream. She lifts a hand, pressing against the healing cut on her temple, wincing. 

Din frowns. “You okay?”

“I...I don’t know,” she murmurs. “What was I saying?”

He tilts his head as he peers at her through the visor. She looks confused, restless as she lets down her legs and rises to her feet slowly.  “Something about peace and harmony, I think.”  

“Hmm…” She paces in front of him, back and forth for a moment, before stopping suddenly. “Sorry. I’m not feeling so good. I think that vegetable goop didn’t agree with me. I’m going to hit the head.”

“Okay,” Din agrees, a little confused himself, his own brooding forgotten. He watches her retreat to the refresher, closing the hatch behind her. 

He stands up, staring after her, and not for the first time, he wonders. And he worries.

---

Kit’la hunches over the sink, breathing hard. Her stomach is churning, true enough, but it’s not from the food. Her head is pounding and there are spots of light dancing across her nonexistent vision - the first thing she’s seen for weeks, but she wishes it wasn’t because it’s making her want to vomit.

And those words echo in her head. Words which, as she spoke them, felt totally alien and completely familiar at the same time. Words that seemed to come from someone else.

She takes several deep breaths, letting each one out slowly. What was it she’d said? Emotion, yet peace . She tries to find that peace, to calm the thundering of her heart, the throbbing in her head. 

She feels something hard digging into her from her pocket and remembers the crystal. It’s warm to the touch when she takes it out, and she clutches it tight in her palm, pressing her fist to her chest. Something in her makes her stop, makes her listen, reaching out for that other sense, and where it is usually a whirling maelstrom, all she hears now is a soft, gentle hum.

Almost like...a song.

Slowly, she feels the sensation of roiling, swirling chaos fade, receding from her mind. The crystal molds to her palm, the same temperature as her skin, feeling like an extension of herself, something living, awakened. And then it fades, along with the other sense, leaving her...not weak, but worn, fragile, sated.

The song fades as if it was never there. Slowly, she slides the crystal back into her pocket. Whatever the reason, she feels...better.

She turns on the tap to splash her face with water, cupping her palms and lifting a few mouthfuls to her lips. Her hands are still shaking and her legs feel numb and tingly, not unlike they had upon first emerging from the carbonite, but she’s calm, for a given value of calm. 

Tucking her hair back behind her ears, she takes another deep lungful of recycled air before opening the hatch. She steps out and-

-collides solidly with the Mandalorian’s armor-clad chest, hard enough to send him toppling to the deck, and her along with him.

He hits with the resounding clang of Beskar on metal, and with her following his trajectory, Kit’la lands heavily on top of him. She grunts in pain as her knees hit the deck on either side of his waist, her chin striking one of his pauldrons. 

“Dank farrik- ”

“Son of a-”

“Sorry, I was-”

“What the hell d’you-”

They both stop and lie there, panting for a moment; Kit’la rubs her chin, groaning, and Mando grabs her hips as he struggles to rise.

Hissing in pain, Kit’la waits for the feeling to return to her legs as she braces her hands on his pauldrons. He manages to sit up, and she tilts her chin up to glare in the direction of his helmet. “What the hell were you doing? Were you standing out there listening ?!”

“I was worried!” he protests, sounding distressed. “You looked pale, I thought you might collapse or something-”

“So you were eavesdropping on me?! I suppose you watch me sleep, too?”

“I - “ Mando cuts himself off and Kit’la scoffs in disgust. It’s then that their position strikes her in all its compromising ingloriousness: She, straddling his hips, him with his hands wrapped around hers - and neither of them showing any sign of moving.

Either Mando hasn’t noticed or he’s choosing to ignore it. “Are you okay?” he asks, strangely soft through the vocabulator, and she’s simultaneously stunned and thrilled when she feels one of his hands leave her hip and ghost up her back, gently, too gently.

Suddenly, she doesn’t want to move.

“I’m fine,” she murmurs, ashamed at how breathy her voice sounds all of a sudden. Her legs feel weak and for an entirely different reason now. His other hand rises as well and though he doesn’t have as good a grip on her now, and she could very easily stand up, she doesn’t, choosing instead to just...wait.

Then she feels his hand firm on her chin, her jaw, curling around the side of her face, while the fingers of the other brushes her temple, over the fading wound beneath the meditape. She realizes then she’s holding her breath, and while letting it out slowly, she pictures the helmet as it tilts, his eyes behind the visor watching her.

Fear coils in her gut. No, not fear; something else, something she’s been hesitant to give a name to until now. It’s not quite the feeling of cornered prey waiting for the predator to strike, but it’s close: Expectation. Anticipation.

Excitement.

“What are you doing?” she asks, breathless, as if she’s been sprinting a marathon. 

“Looking at you.” Mando sounds the same as he always does, but there’s a note of - awe in his voice, almost. Deference. And he’s not entirely unaware of their position, if what she feels between her legs is any indication - that is definitely not his blaster.

His fingers leave her jaw and trail down her neck and she shudders as the rough leather drags across her skin. “Mando,” she whispers, leaning into the shiver that travels from her scalp all the way down her spine when his hand travels to the back of her head and fists in her hair. He uses his grip to pull her closer, and she feels the cool, smooth surface of the helm pressed to her forehead. 

“ Mesh’la, ” he murmurs, the deep roughness in his voice like warm velvet through the vocabulator. She doesn't know what it means, but it makes her sigh and lean into him nonetheless.

And then he lets her go.

She’s confused at first, her brain unable to keep up with what’s happening when he gently eases her from his lap and rises to his feet. He lifts her with him, and when her legs don’t seem to want to cooperate, he leans her against the bulkhead and steps back.

“You sure you’re not hurt?” he asks, as if he wasn’t just pawing at her like a horny teenager at the back of a holotheatre. She’s too shellshocked to do much more than shake her head.

“Good.” She thinks Mando’s just going to just turn away and leave her, but he astonishes her - yet again - by reaching out to touch her cheek. So briefly she’s not sure if she imagined it or not. 

“You should rest,” he says, as if nothing has happened, and then he’s gone with a swish of his cloak, leaving her weak-kneed and staring blindly in his wake.

Chapter Text

Din Djarin does not usually allow himself moments of indulgence or emotion. 

They’ve occurred more and more over the past few months - with Omera, with Cara, even with Greef Karga, and of course, with the Child. He is not sure what that says about him; perhaps he is becoming weak, forgetting who and what he is, his Creed. 

Or perhaps he is simply learning what that Creed truly means to him.

Either way, he thinks he may have gone a step too far with the girl he has named Kit’la. He can probably blame it away on hitting his head too hard when he fell, but there on the deck he’d experienced a moment - a moment in which he had wanted things, things he has never wanted before.

And that scared him. Enough that he’d pulled away, both physically and mentally. It’s uncharted territory - experiencing a feeling, however fleeting, he knows he should not have for anything or anyone outside his clan. He doesn’t know what to feel, what to think, what to do. 

So he does nothing. Kit’la seems content not to mention it, although she gives him a somewhat wider berth in the next few days. She comes up to the cockpit less, and doesn’t go out of her way to engage him in conversation, although several times he catches her just staring in his direction - although that may mean nothing, given that she can’t actually see him.

Sometimes, though, he feels as if she does.

He wonders about her. The way she moves has not escaped his notice, as if she is almost entirely aware of her environment without needing to see it now. It goes beyond just learning the number of steps from bulkhead to bulkhead; she seems to possess instincts that go deeper than sight or sound or touch. 

He’s only ever seen two people move the way she does. 

Din tries not to dwell on that particular possibility. It doesn’t seem likely, for one, and for another,  he wouldn’t know what to do about it if it was. 

So things continue much as they have been as the Kom’rk crawls through space under the power of one solitary sublight engine which, thankfully, experiences no further malfunctions.

As for the ship’s other systems, though…

Kit’la notices it first, since she isn’t covered in armor. She enters the bridge for the first time in days which would be enough to draw Din’s attention on its own, but he also notices straightaway that she is rubbing her arms, shivering as she stands there awkwardly in the hatchway. 

“Did you lower the temps? I don’t know if I’m having carbonite flashbacks, but I woke up really cold this morning.”

“It’s 1500,” Mando tells her. Kit’la seems to keep her own schedule, and morning for her can be anywhere from noon to night. By now though, she ignores his jibes about it.

“It’s freezing ,” she shoots back. “I swear it’s not just my imagination.”

Din consults the life support readout. Ambient temperature reads a reasonable 27° C. “Looks fine to me.” 

“Are you kidding me?” Kit’la gets up and stomps over to him. Surprised, he swivels his chair slightly to face her. “Here. Give me your hand.”

The Mandalorian hesitates, staring at her outstretched hand. He’s never been one for touching, and he’s done far too much of it lately. He still remembers the feel of her hips under his palms, her jaw and neck beneath his fingers. He remembers wanting to take the gloves off to feel her, skin to skin. He remembers trying not to want things like that, because of the very particular discomfort it caused.

Still, when she keeps standing there, fingers twitching impatiently, he gives in and places his gloved fingers in her palm. Her skin is ice cold even through the leather of his gloves. 

“See?”

“I’ll run a diagnostic,” he says, taking back his hand. Now that he notices it, though - his breath is starting to fog up the inside of his visor more than it should. Frowning, he flicks at the hats and switches, pressing a couple of buttons to get the ship to check the status of the life support systems.

“Hmm. Yeah, part of the heating coil’s down. Looks like it was a redundant system drawing heat from the engines. Minimal engine power, heat’s starting to go.” His neck aches in anticipation of being elbow-deep in the guts of the ship again. “Gotta reroute it.” 

Din stands, turning to see Kit’la hunched over, shivering from head to toe. Her lips are turning blue. Of course she’s more susceptible to the cold after the hibernation sickness, he thinks, cursing himself. She shouldn’t be, not after three weeks, but everything about her goes against what he expects - why should this be any different?

“Damn it. Should get you warm first.” Her teeth are chattering and her skin is ice-cold when he places his hands on her shoulders. “Come on.” 

First he tugs off his cloak - he thinks maybe she should just keep it at this point - and wraps her in it before steering her out of the bridge, back through the common area and to the sleeping quarters. The temperature drop is even more noticeable in this part of the ship; he can almost see Kit’la’s breath hanging as white clouds in the air.

Din strips the blankets from the bed and tucks them around her as she sits on the edge of the mattress. It doesn’t seem to be helping. She’s drowsy, listless, and she sounds slurred when she speaks.

“‘M okay, actually,” she mumbles, the syllables bleeding into one another. “Not feeling it so much now.” Her hands fumble at the edges of the blanket, unable to keep a firm grip.

Din hesitates. As much as he doesn’t want to be touching her so soon after that odd moment outside the refresher, it looks like it’s going to be necessary - if he doesn’t want her to get hypothermia.

He tries rubbing her arms vigorously through the layers of blanket and cloak, which only serves to flop her around like a rag doll. “Kit’la. Kit’la . Stay awake,” he says loudly, and her eyelids flutter once or twice, her pale lips moving silently. 

Shit.

He’s not sure if there’s a space heater in the ship - he doesn’t recall seeing one in the inventory he took upon first taking possession of it. Which leaves only one other source of heat aboard:

Him.

Resigned but determined, Din takes off his gloves, tossing them next to the bed and trying desperately not to think about what he’s doing. His pauldrons follow, then his bandolier, vest, cuirass and belt, leaving him feeling naked in just his long-sleeve armorweave shirt, pants, thigh guards and boots - overdressed for most, but for a Mandalorian, he might as well be completely nude.  But he doesn’t have time to feel shame or guilt or anything much other than urgency; even he can feel the cold seeping in now.

Kit’la is semi-conscious, lying on her side by the time Din unwraps her from the blankets and slides under them with her. He pauses only a moment longer before he touches her, placing one hand on her bare upper arm and drawing her much smaller body closer to his.

Without the gloves in the way, she feels even colder, almost like a corpse. He tries not to think about that, or about how smooth her skin is, or anything else as he rubs back and forth, trying to force some of his own warmth into her via friction. Her head is pressed into his chest, her hands curled between them. He takes them in his own and squeezes.

“Come on,” he mutters when she fails to respond. “Kit’la. You’re stronger than this.”

He can feel her pulse beneath his thumbs, weak but present. And then, after several excruciating heartbeats, she finally stirs.

“Kriffing right,” she mumbles. “Mando…?”

He lets out a relieved breath beneath the helm, and clutches her hands tight, as if by keeping hold it might prevent her slipping away again. “Thought I’d lost you for a minute.”

“Not - not getting rid of me that easy,” Kit’la says haltingly, her jaw still trembling a little. Her hands feel a little less freezing now, so he finally moves his to her back, massaging his palms in slow circles to get the blood circulating in her veins. “What’re you doing?”

“Getting you warm again. Didn’t have a heating unit to hand,” he replies, hoping he sounds casual, innocent. She’s gone tense beneath his hands and not from the cold. Slowly, though, he feels her relax, her flesh warming under his ministrations. 

“Thanks,” she whispers. “You didn’t have to - to do this.”

“It was either this or you turn into an icicle before I get to fix the ship.”

“Mando, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but your ship is incredibly broken,” she mutters. He coughs out a short laugh. 

“I know.”

She’s quiet for a moment, but she nestles closer, tucking her head in against his neck, her face pressed to his cowl. He can feel her breath through the thick fabric, her voice slightly muffled. “Are you...You’re not wearing your armor?”

“Beskar is cold,” he explains stiffly. He doesn’t want her to mention it, or talk about that moment on the deck when they fell together. He wants to wrap his arms around her and pull her closer while ignoring the fact that he’s doing so. He wants to pretend this moment isn’t happening and, at the same time, live in it for as long as possible.

This is the most human contact he’s had in a while; maybe ever. And even though it came from a place of necessity, of survival, it feels…

Good .

He doesn’t want to think about the implications of that. Necessity and enjoyment are two very, very different things, and this is blending both in a very... messy way. He’s having trouble separating the two.

Everybody’s got their lines they don’t cross until things get messy .

“You’re not cold,” Kit’la murmurs, her body waking to his touch. She shifts slightly and he moves with her, letting her thread one of her legs in between his. His fingertips flex against her shoulderblades as this presses his groin quite firmly up against her hip. He hopes fervently that she doesn’t notice his growing and entirely inappropriate physical response. 

“Had a few more layers than you,” he says, trying to distract himself and keep his voice even at the same time. “And my blood isn’t fifty percent carbonite.”

“Ha ha,” she utters weakly. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

Mando nods. Then asks: “But why, this time?”

“Acting like I don’t exist for days, and then saving my life - again - like this. It’s actually quite rude.”

He chuckles at that, the sound a modulated buzz through his helmet’s speaker. “You’d rather I let you freeze to death?”

“And keep the rest of my pride? Maybe.” She slides an arm under his and around his body, shifting hers against him. He fights a stutter in his breath as that presses her hip more firmly against him - and him, harder against her.

She can’t possibly not notice his hard-on, but she says nothing. Din is not sure if he’s grateful or frustrated.

He is a Mandalorian, he reminds himself. He has been stabbed, shot, crushed, shocked, frozen, blown up and beaten down more times than he can count - but this , of all things, is threatening to undo his nerves of durasteel entirely.

“Sorry,” he mutters, not sure if he’s apologizing for ignoring her or for - this . She sighs, her breath warm against his covered neck.

“You’re just lucky I like you.” 

“Feeling’s mutual.” 

“I can tell,” she says, and it’s his turn to tense a little as the implication of that hits him: she knows . She chuckles a little, and he feels heat entirely unrelated to their shared body warmth flood his face. “It’s fine,” she tells him. “Actually, it’s quite nice to know you’re not entirely made of Beskar under that armor.”

"Nice,” he repeats stiffly. “Right.”

He feels her body start to shiver against his. It’s a good sign, much better than that disconcerting stillness. His hand leaves her back to resume rubbing her arm, dragging the roughness of his palm from her shoulder to her wrist and back again. Slowly, the shuddering fades, and her body temperature begins to feel less icy and more lukewarm. 

They stay like that for a while, quiet, mostly peaceful. Din is almost able to forget about what her proximity is doing to him. Almost. His body, however, continues to notice: the erection seems determined not to go away on its own. He thinks he’ll be able to ignore it for a while, though, as long as Kit’la doesn’t start wriggling again.

“Mando?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.” Her voice is quiet, faint, trailing off into a sigh. It takes him a moment to realize it, but there’s no mistaking: She’s fallen asleep.

Din sighs quietly to himself. 

It’s quite possibly one of the hardest - no, most difficult things he’s had to do, but he manages it somehow, sliding out from Kit’la’s grip and letting her roll onto her back.  She sleeps peacefully now, the color back in her cheeks, her hair spread around her like a dark halo. He makes sure she’s covered with the layers of cloak and blankets before he stands and slowly straps on his armor. “This is the Way,” he murmurs to himself, over and over, until the tightness in his pants recedes and his own too-hot body temperature returns to normal. There’s no time for a cold shower right now, although…maybe later.

When he can think coherently again, he glances back at the slumbering Kit’la. Before he pulls on his gloves, he reaches out, brushing his bare fingers against the smooth skin of her cheek.

One last moment of weakness.

“Sleep well, mesh’la ,” he murmurs, and then he straightens up, puts on his gloves, and goes to fix this damn ship. 

Chapter Text

Kit’la wakes slowly, shrouded in warmth. If anything, it’s too warm; the layers are stifling and wrapped around her tight, so that she has to thrash and fight to get them off, lying in a damp mess on the bed for a moment once she’s free. 

At first, she doesn’t recall the morning, waking up to a ship that felt like a refrigeration unit - but then recent memory starts to creep in, making her blush from her scalp to her boots as all the tactile details come flooding back.

The Mandalorian. The Mandalorian’s arms wrapped around her, his naked hands on her skin, touching her , setting her freezing nerve endings on fire. She remembers in exquisite detail his solid, muscled body pressed against hers, the hard plane of his chest free of Beskar, the armored plate of his thigh in between hers. The feel of his erection pressed firmly against her hip, telling her exactly how affected he was. 

If she hadn’t been so drowsy from the early stages of hypothermia, she would have enjoyed it a whole lot more. As it is, it’s going to be difficult being in the same space as him without blushing.

She steels herself before stepping out of the sleeping quarters. If anything, the ship feels hotter than before - or maybe that’s just the memories.

She steps onto the bridge, hearing the soft creak of leather and clink of metal that signifies Mando’s presence. She feels herself flush immediately and ducks her head, glad for the concealing curtain of her hair.

“Good. You’re awake,” he says, and he sounds perfectly normal, even, unaffected - of course he does. “How are you feeling? Any numbness, tingling anywhere?”

“Not any more,” she half-mutters, her blush deepening as she pictures Mando tilting the helmet at her questioningly. She drops into the passenger seat across from him. She takes a moment to clear her throat and try to find some form of composure. “I’m fine. Tired, but fine. Did you fix the heating coils, or whatever?” She's starting to lose track of the things wrong with this ship.

“Yes. And I found something else.” He presses something into her hand; a device, it seems, although it feels like it’s been crushed as if by the impact of a heavy boot. “Tracker in the hold. Looks like Signas didn’t take me at my word to get you to the carbonite facility. Wouldn’t be surprised if his workers sabotaged the ship, to give them more of a chance to catch up with us.”

She turns the broken tracker over in her hand. A heavy feeling has settled in her chest like a lump of carbonite where her heart should be. All thoughts of those warm, stolen moments with Mando are gone, replaced with cold dread. “What do they want?”

“Could be they’re operating independently and want the commission for the job for themselves, rather than letting it go to an offworlder. Or Signas never really wanted you to get to the carbonite plant at all - he just wanted you gone.”

Her fists clench at her sides. She tempers the rising anger with the knowledge that if she ever encounters this Signas, he will not walk away from the encounter under his own power. 

“Anything on radar?” It’s times like this, with a different kind of adrenaline surging through her veins, that she longs for the feel of a blaster in one hand and a - sword, or something, in the other. Her fingers itch for the joystick of a fighter. She can almost hear the sounds of battle, like a half-remembered song.

“Not for the last couple hours while you’ve been asleep.” A couple of hours ? It felt like five minutes. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a proximity sensor that’ll go off as soon as any ship enters range.”

“You mean the proximity sensor that’s about to go off in a few seconds?” She’s not sure how she knows, just that she can feel it. And sure enough, it’s less than ten seconds before it happens - the alarms blare to life, warnings pinging all over the Kom'rk ’s panels.

“How did you-” She feels Mando staring at her, but he doesn’t have time to call out her suspiciously astute timing. She hears the pilot’s seat creak with his weight as he spins it towards the readouts.

“Three ships. One gunner-runner, looks like a smuggling craft, and two fighters.” There’s the frantic click and flick of switches. “We have weapons and deflectors...but with only one thruster, we’re not gonna be able to outmaneuver them.”

He doesn’t need to say it out loud. She knows: They’re cornered.

The comm unit crackles to life with an unfamiliar, menacing voice. “Guardian. Disengage your engine. You are being boarded.” 

“Who are you?” Mando demands on a growl. “Did Signas send you?”

“ I repeat, disengage your engine and prepare to be boarded - or we will destroy your ship.”

The silence in the bridge is deafening. Kit’la feels sweat slide down the side of her face, her neck. 

The sound of Mando powering down the one remaining engine is the worst sound she’s ever heard.

Suddenly, she feels him crouching in front of her, his hands on her shoulders, squeezing tight. “Kit’la,” he begins, voice low and intense. “Listen to me. I want you to go into the sleeping berth and lock the hatch. You don’t come out, no matter what you hear. Do you understand?”

“But-”

“ Do you understand ?” His hands squeeze her shoulders hard, almost desperately. She swallows past the lump in her throat and nods.

“Good.” He lets her go, but to her, it seems reluctant. Then, his hand on her face as she rises to her feet - soft, gentle despite the roughness of the leather, his fingers stroke her jaw briefly, too briefly. “I won’t let them take you. I promise.”

“I know.” Kit’la smiles at him weakly. But there’s no more time for words - the ship jumps and shudders with a clang that reverberates through the deck; the enemy has latched onto them.

Kit’la thinks she should feel weak with fear, or trembling, or something - but she isn’t. She’s not trying to be strong, or brave, but the fear she expects just isn’t there. It’s like she knows she’s safe, and not just because of Mando’s words.

“Go,” he says, and she nods, retracing her path through the hatch and towards the sleeping quarters.

---

The darksaber is heavy on his belt, the spear a comforting weight at his shoulder, his blaster a familiar shape in his hand. Din approaches the hatch to the hold slowly, glancing once over at the closed sleeping compartment, where beyond, Kit’la waits for him.

He will not let them hurt her. 

His fingers flex around the grip of his blaster as he presses his back against the bulkhead next to the hatch. He hears nothing, has heard nothing since the docking clamps of the enemy ship latched onto the Kom’rk. The pirates are waiting to flush him out.

It’s a decision they won’t live to regret.

He reaches out to touch the access panel, and the hatch slides open. Nothing happens; the hold beyond is silent, empty save for the old carbonite pod and crates of supplies. Din inches out for a glance and when there’s no answering blaster fire, he steps out into a sliding crouch that brings him into cover behind a stack of crates.

“You’re outnumbered, Mandalorian!” The voice is the same one from the transmission - a deep, threatening snarl. “Lay down your weapons and we might let you live out the rest of your days mining scrap-rock!”

Signas’s men, then. Din isn’t surprised - something had felt off about him from the start.

So much for the rest of his pay.

He lifts his helmet an inch or two above the crates, spotting two men flanking the entry hatch and a third behind before a hail of blaster bolts slam into the crate, the bulkhead above him, showering his shoulders in sparks. He crouches back down, counting the shots, picking his moment. 

He only needs one.

It comes in a break in fire as the pirates advance further into the hold. It’s all he needs. He leans out, taking a knee, aims and fires almost in the same movement - one, two, three times. 

Three shots. Three yells of pain. But only two bodies hit the deck, with the last pirate still standing, swearing and returning fire.

“You’ll pay for that, Mando!”

He waits for another pause in fire to peer around the edge of the crate which is, by now, smoldering. The pirate has advanced, huddling behind the old carbonite pod. 

Din shakes his head. When will these half-rate, chuff-sucking di’kut s ever learn?

He aims his vambrace at the unit’s control panel and activates the grapple line. It hits, and the pod spews steam into the marauder’s face. He yells out in surprise, staggering back, giving Mando a clean shot.

He takes it. 

The bandit hits the deck, the hole in his jacket smoking. Din waits a moment to ensure he’s not going to get up, then he makes his way over, nudging him with his boot and rolling him onto his back with a rough kick. The scruffy head lolls, and the acrid smell of burnt flesh gets stronger, detectable even through the helmet’s filters.

The pirate is a dirty, bedraggled man wearing clothes similar to the miners of Kepler IV. The main difference is the weapons. Oh, and the hole in his chest. The other two are more or less the same.

Even though these miner-turned-marauders are dead, it doesn’t mean they’re out of the woods yet. Din peers through the open hatch at the ship beyond. It’s only a matter of time before their friends start trying to contact them.

Blaster at the ready, the Mandalorian boards the enemy ship.

Chapter Text

Kit’la huddles in the sleeping berth, listening with her ear pressed to the closed hatch.

It’s been too silent for too long since the first bursts of blaster fire. It’s probably been no more than ten minutes, but she’s already restless, agitated - she wants to do something , even as Mando’s words echo in her head.

You don’t come out, no matter what you hear .

Then she hears it - the clunk of the docking clamps releasing the ship, which trembles briefly as its captor frees it. She lets out a breath, waiting, waiting - And nothing happens.

Mando doesn’t come back to let her out. Pirates don’t storm in to take her captive. Nothing happens at all.

She closes her eyes and reaches out for her other sense. The more she does it, the easier it is, and this time takes almost no effort at all. Her world comes into focus around her - the ship, the stars beyond, the faint pulse of life nearby. Whether it’s Mando or not, she can’t tell. But she can tell she’s not alone.

“Kriff this,” Kit’la declares aloud. Her questing hand finds the access panel and the hatch unlocks and slides open. She steps out, instinct guiding her steps forward.

The air in the common room is still, but she can detect the faint hint of ozone coming from the direction of the hold. She advances forward in the darkness, a hand outstretched to meet the open doorway. The smell is stronger here. Blaster fire, from the battle she heard before.

She steps inside and inhales slowly. Beneath the ozone, there’s something else, another scent that’s even more acrid; a metal tang that lingers in her sinuses.

Blood.

“Mando?” she calls, suddenly uncertain. There’s someone else here. If only she could see -

She senses it an instant before it happens; a blur of movement headed straight for her. She turns to run but it’s too late; there are hands on her arms, unfamiliar hands that grab hard enough to bruise, yanking her backwards. The smell of blood is stronger now. 

“There you are, girlie,” a voice growls in her ear. It’s one of the bandits. He stinks of sweat and carbon and blood, a stench that chokes her, freezing her throat with fear. “Looks like I’ll be gettin’ paid after all!”

Where is Mando? How did this pirate get past him? Is he dead? The questions swirl around Kit’la’s panicking mind, and she yells out, flailing to try and dislodge the iron grip.

The marauder yanks on her hair and backhands her across the face, hard. Kit’la grunts, falling to her knees on the deck, her head ringing. She can taste copper in her own mouth now. Spots dance in the blackness of her vision and echoes whisper in her ears.

Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.

Death...

She feels the calm settle over her like a shroud. She is not the storm, she is the rolling bank of dark clouds as it approaches. She is not the water, she is the wave as it crests towards the shore. She is not blind - she can feel her surroundings, the outline of shapes and colours bright in her mind’s eye.

The bandit isn’t expecting her to fight back, so he’s caught off balance when she grabs his ankle. It’s a simple matter of weight distribution, throwing herself back into his knees and pulling forwards, and he falls to his back on the deck with a loud thud. He cries out in pain and rage, and again she feels his hand grab for her hair, but she’s too fast - she twists away from him and springs swiftly to her feet.

He drags himself up by the wall, and she can feel his glare, his fury. Kit’la grins, spreading her footing, and spits blood on the deck at his feet.

He comes for her with a terrible bellow. She plants her feet and she angles her body into a half-crouch, so that her shoulder absorbs the brunt of the impact, and she uses the pirate’s own momentum against him, sending him flipping over her and slamming to the deck again.

“You little bitch!” he yells, scrabbling at her ankles. She dances away, and again the pirate gets to his feet, spitting and swearing. He’s wounded, losing blood, getting slower. This time, when he comes for her, it’s with a right hook towards her face that she easily dodges, stepping into the swing and grabbing his elbow, spinning to send him careening towards the bulkhead with the force of his own blow.

He impacts with a sick crunch and bounces off, howling, and finally, he reaches for his blaster. 

This fight needs to end. Quickly.

Kit’la launches herself at the bandit before he can turn and level the gun, latching onto his back, her arm around his neck. He staggers and claws at her wrist, sputtering, and she squeezes as hard as she can, feeling his larynx compress in her grip. He’s choking, gasping for air, his eyes bulging, dirty fingernails dragging deep marks into her skin. The blaster clatters to the deck, but she keeps squeezing, as hard as she can, and he falls to his knees. She feels it when he slips unconscious, slumping forward onto his face. 

And then, finally, he is still.

Kit’la lets him go slowly, blood running down her face, her arm as she slumps backwards onto the floor. The strength leaves her as quickly as it had appeared, trickling away like water through the cracks in a glass. She is beyond exhausted; her arm is stinging, her face aches, she can already feel her jaw swelling, and the wound on her temple has opened again.

Despite it all, she has never felt more alive.

Eventually, she gathers enough awareness to reach out and grab his fallen blaster from the deck. It’s slick with blood - Kit’la isn’t sure if it’s hers, or the pirate’s.

She’s not sure how long she’s been sitting there when the ship suddenly shudders, and she hears the loud clank of the docking clamps latching on again. She knows she won’t be able to put up much of a fight this time; she’s too tired, and it took too much from her. Even the blaster feels too heavy, her hands trembling when she lifts it, the barrel weaving as she levels it at the hatch. 

But she won’t go down without a fight.

The airlock slides open. Her first bolt goes wide, reflecting off the edge. The intruder ducks, rolling forward, and she fires blindly, screaming out her defiance, until-

A familiar hand grabs hers, pushing the blaster away. “Kit’la! Stop - it’s me!” The voice cuts through the fury and the fear, and she gasps, the gun falling from suddenly numb fingers. She reaches out, grabbing onto his vambraces, his pauldrons, smearing blood on the shiny Beskar surface.

“Mando,” she sobs with relief. He pulls her into his arms, holding her close, tucking her head beneath the helmet, his fingers in her hair.

“I told you to stay put ,” he says, sounding out of breath, ragged. But not angry. Afraid, maybe. Worried.

“I know,” she whispers. “But I was - I couldn’t stay in there. What happened? Where’d you go?”

Mando lifts her into his arms as if she weighs nothing at all, and she’s too tired to protest. “I borrowed their ship to go take care of their friends. We’re okay.” She senses his helm turn as he surveys the remains of her attacker. “Looks like that one was just playing dead.”

“Is it over?” Kit’la wants to pass out, to retreat from the pain and the shock, but it’s too strong. She feels the helmet nod above her, and she lets herself relax a little, letting out a breath and closing her eyes as he carries her back through the ship.

A moment later, Mando sets her down on the hard plastic couch in the common area. His fingers are gentle as he tugs on her arm, bidding her to extend it so he can take a closer look.

“That dustsucking piece of osik didn’t hurt you anywhere else?” he asks. She shrugs slightly, then reaches up to indicate the side of her face, where he hit her.

“Not much. He was wounded when he attacked me. I think that helped.”

Mando’s gloved fingers touch her jaw and she winces. Her tongue probes the inside of her cheek, where it’s cut from the force of the blow; it seems to have stopped bleeding but she can still taste blood, sharp and stinging in her mouth. 

“If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him again,” Mando growls - the ice in his voice chills her to her bones.

“He’s...dead?” she murmurs, feeling even colder. She thought he’d just passed out.

“Yeah. Looks like you crushed his windpipe.” 

Kit’la sits in stunned silence as Mando breaks out the medkit and cleans the blood from her face, her arm, dressing her wounds. She feels numb, barely noticing as he cleans out the gouges in her skin. He’s impossibly gentle, tender as he wraps the bandages around her arm and secures them.

“There. All patched up,” he tells her. She nods, staring into black space. Mando squeezes her hands, and she stirs a little, blinking a few times as if to clear her nonexistent vision.

“Did you get the others?” she asks. “The fighter craft?”

“Yes. They weren’t expecting their bigger friend to turn on them.” He sounds darkly amused - or maybe just bitter the fight didn’t last as long as he’d hoped. “Good news is, we have a ship with a hyperdrive now.”

“Oh.” Instead of feeling relieved, like she knew she should, she feels...apprehension. Dread, even. These half-dozen weeks adrift with the Mandalorian had not been as unbearable as either of them pretended, and to think of it ending…

“Bad news is, I took some damage during the battle,” he continues, and her trepidation wavers. “Might take a while to repair it.  But we’re in no hurry.” He touches her cheek lightly, with two fingers, and she feels her tired eyelids flutter.

“Oh,” she says again, less heavily this time. “Good. I don’t feel up to any hyperjumps right now.”

“I better go clean up,” he says after a moment, and she feels a sense of loss when his hand falls away from her face. She wants to grab it and throw herself into his arms, but that’s irrational, just the shock talking; an emotional response from the aftermath of the fight. Or, at least, that’s what she tells herself.

Even though she knows it’s not true.

“Okay,” she whispers, managing a nod and the ghost of a smile. She feels Mando hesitate there in front of her, and she pictures the visor tilting, uncertain how to comfort her.

“Kit’la.”

“Mm?”

“You did good.”

And with that, he’s gone, his footsteps light across the deck. She closes her eyes, fighting the urge to vomit. Instead, she jams her thumbs against her eyeballs, rubbing hard. It doesn’t help.

Serenity and harmony suddenly seem further away than ever.

Chapter Text

The corpse of the pirate stares upwards, eyes blank and bulging, tongue hanging out, face purple. Kit’la did a number on him, Din thinks as he grabs the body under the arms and drags it across the deck, towards the airlock.

He makes sure to take the credits and weapons from the rest of the corpses before spacing them too, trying not to dwell on the haunted look on Kit’la’s face. It was a stupid mistake, failing to check if his downed enemies were actually dead, and she was the one who’d paid for it.

He’d almost lost her. Once again, his arrogance had almost led him to squander the one thing he’d come to value more than he ever thought he could.

First the Child, then Kit’la. He could not bear it if she was taken from him too.

Din glances towards the docked pirate vessel. The hyperdrive aboard it is fully functional. He’s not quite sure why he lied to Kit’la, and he rationalizes it by telling himself she needs time to rest, to recover. But the reality of the situation is simply that the Mandalorian, for the first time in his life, has no plan, no idea what to do next, except for one thing. 

Protect the girl.

She is where he left her in the common room when he rejoins her, sitting on the couch, curled into herself and staring into space, her clothes still covered in blood. He crouches down in front of her and takes her hands. She flinches slightly, refocusing, her dark, blank eyes fixing on a point between him and her that he can’t see.

Who is she, that she can take down a man twice her size with only a few bruises to show for it? It’s a question he’s not sure he’ll ever have the answer to, and now is not the time to press her on it. Not like this.

“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she whispers. “He was pulling his blaster - I didn’t have a choice…”

“Trust me, you've done the galaxy a favor by getting rid of that piece of scum. Don’t lose any sleep over it.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again,” she replies bitterly. “All I can feel and smell is blood.”

“You need to get in the refresher. Come on. Stand up.”

She does so slowly, letting Mando lead her across the deck. She’s so distracted by her own thoughts that she doesn’t complain when he urges her to raise her arms to lift her tunic over her head. Kneeling in front of her, Din taps her feet, and she lifts one at a time for him to tug off her boots. 

There’s droplets of blood on her pants, staining the grey fabric black in places. He peels them off her, his touch swift, businesslike all the while, and he only looks at her bare skin to make sure she’s not hurt anywhere else.

Hurt because of him.

She stands there in her smalls, and Din is surprised to see old scars on her chest, her back, the skin raised and dark in stripes, some as short as a finger and others as long as his arm. She’s been through wars, this girl, even if she doesn’t remember them - which makes her shock at having taken one man’s life stand out all the more.

“I’ll wash your clothes,” he tells her, nudging her towards the shower unit. “Go on. Try to keep your arm out of the water.”

She nods, and the hatch slides shut. A moment later he hears running water. Nodding to himself, the Mandalorian takes her shirt and pants to soak in the kitchenette’s sink.

It’s when he’s wringing out her pants that he finds it - a sharp, solid lump in one of the pockets. Frowning, he dips his fingers in, withdrawing the jagged object. It looks like a crystal, multi-faceted, about the size of one of his middle digits. It’s mostly a muted, off-white colour, but deep in its lattice it glows a faint, faded blue.

He doubts she got it off the pirate. Which begs the question - what is it, and why did she hide it from him?

It’s not as if he hasn’t lied to her too, he thinks, remembering the hyperdrive. He resolves to leave it for now. He will ask her about it when the troubled look leaves her eyes, when she is more herself.

So Din sets the crystal aside and drapes her shirt and pants over the back of the couch to dry, along with his own gloves. It’s getting harder and harder to wash the blood off; he’ll need a new pair soon.

The water from the ‘fresher bay shuts off, but the girl fails to emerge. After a few minutes, Mando taps on the hatch with a bare knuckle. “Kit’la?”

He hears the soft sound of sobbing, and he forgets all about the crystal at once. He worries only for her.

It’s a quick series of button presses to override the lock. The hatch slides open and he steps inside, finding her sitting huddled against the wall of the shower stall, soaking wet, her knees pulled up to her chest. He hesitates, then crouches down in front of her, his hands hovering awkwardly before he settles one on her knee.

Din has never comforted a crying woman before, nor has he ever wanted to. It’s strange. And it’s even stranger to see Kit’la cry.

He doesn’t like it.

Her shoulders shake, soft sobs wracking her body. She’s trying so hard to keep it in that it looks painful. The Mandalorian feels a mix of rage and helplessness - he doesn’t know what to do to make it better. The perpetrators are already dead. There’s nobody to kill, no revenge to be had. It’s all he’s ever known for comfort.

“Hey,” he says, patting her knee. Still she doesn’t lift her head. He sighs, trying to keep his voice soft through the vocabulator. “Look at me.”

That gets a response - a thin, broken chuckle from beyond the wet tendrils of hair. “I can’t. Did you forget?” But then she finally raises her head, and he brushes away the strands of hair stuck to her face. Her cheeks are flushed and blotchy, her dark eyes red-rimmed, her jaw still swollen.

She’s beautiful.

Mando curls his hand around the unmarked side of her face, and she presses her lips together as she leans in to the touch. She’s stopped sobbing, at the very least. 

“You did what you had to do,” he tells her. Her smile is rueful, bitter.

“That’s not why I’m upset.”

His thumb brushes a stray tear from her cheekbone. “No?”

“No. I’m upset because I enjoyed it.”

That sounds too familiar. He can understand.

It pours from him in a rush - his guilt, his remorse, his shame. “It’s my fault. I should've checked that bandit was dead - I shouldn’t have left you alone.” He swallows around the lump in his throat, glad for the vocabulator to even out his tone. 

“Don’t say that,” Kit’la insists vehemently. She lowers her knees, eliminating the barrier between them, and reaches out to place a hand on his armored shoulder. She’s still wearing her smalls, but he averts his eyes anyway. “It’s not your fault.”

“I’m responsible for your safety. You-”

“I chose to leave the quarters. If I hadn’t, you would’ve returned and shot that damned bandit again yourself. You can’t take responsibility for my agency, Mando. I won’t let you.”

He reaches up and tangles his fingers in her hair. So strong, so stubborn, so sweet. She won’t even let him feel guilty. 

Din draws Kit’la towards him before he realizes what he’s doing, kneeling on the damp shower floor as he pulls her into his lap. He wraps his arms around her, the embrace made awkward by the layers of Beskar covering him and the moisture on her skin, so that she slips against the metal for a moment, but then she’s wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight.

He’s not sure, then, who’s comforting who.

His helmet fits perfectly into the space between her neck and shoulder, and there he rests his chin, one of his hands lightly, tentatively stroking her back; he feels her sigh, melting into him.

Din kneels there for a while, just holding her. And it’s strange, for in her arms, he feels no shame, no guilt, no remorse. His conscience is quieted by the presence of her body, the feel of her heart beating so close to his.

Kit’la is the first to speak, after a few minutes have passed - or it could have been an hour, eternity, not long enough. “Can I ask you something?” 

It’s a silly question, he thinks. She could ask him anything in that moment and he would answer. 

“Yes,” he says anyway, flushing slightly at the break in his voice. He’s glad for the helmet’s filter, for he can blame it on that. 

“What does mesh’la mean?”

Din chuckles. Of all the things he expected her to ask, that wasn’t on the list. He pulls back slightly, enough to see her face, and lifts a hand between them. He touches her mouth, her bottom lip with his thumb. Tracing the scar at its corner. 

“Beautiful,” he says simply.

Her smile comes as a relief. There’s weariness in it, though, and her eyes are shadowed in dark, purple-tinged circles. 

“Mando...I’m tired.”

“I know, sweet girl.” Her soft intake of breath doesn’t go unnoticed. And although Din would be perfectly content to stay there like this forever, he knows he must be more responsible than that. So, wrapping one arm around her and using the other to brace against the wall, he climbs to his feet, taking her with him. She locks her ankles at the small of his back and he grunts slightly, glad for the mask of his helmet to hide his expression. 

He carries her to the sleeping quarters and lowers her small body down onto the bed. When he moves to rise, to drape a blanket over her, she grabs his bicep and holds on tight.

“Stay?” 

Her unseeing eyes are dark Krill pools at midnight, the bottom of a cup of hot spotchka, the coals at the base of a crackling fire, the open expanse between the stars; comfort he’s refused to allow himself for so long. And, standing above her, Din hesitates. 

“Please.”

He takes her hand in his own and squeezes softly, lifting it from his arm. The disappointment on her face is plain, tempered by acceptance. She says nothing - only nods, letting go and sinking back down. She rolls onto her side away from him, closing her eyes. 

And that - her quiet acquiescence, untempered by protest, by argument or reason, wholehearted in its totality - is what makes the last thread of Din’s frayed, worn self-control snap.

He removes his vambraces first, his eyes on her back. He sees her shoulders tense at the soft sound of metal on metal, but she doesn’t move, not even when he takes off his bandolier, his belt, and lifts his cuirass over his head. 

The helmet stays on. For now.

The pauldrons and thigh plates join the growing pile of armor carefully laid aside with soft clink s. Din feels light, lighter than he’s felt in a very long time, as he braces a knee on the bed. He does not touch the girl, not even as he lays down on his back next to her; she’s less than an inch away, and he can feel the heat from her skin, so much warmer than he remembers. 

Eventually, she shifts, turning over towards him. Beneath the helmet, Din closes his eyes. He feels the edge of the blanket drift over him, and then the touch of the girl’s hand, gentle and tentative on his chest. The line of her body molds to the side of his and she pillows her head on his shoulder, tucked beneath the edge of his helmet as if she was made to fit there.

He curls his arm around her, his hand at rest on her waist. His fingers stroke the raised edge of an old scar and Kit’la edges closer, draping a knee over his thigh. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs against his collar. Her breathing gradually evens into the slow, deep rhythm of sleep, and the tension melts from her muscles, leaving her a warm, soft weight in his arms.

“No, cyar’ika ,” he whispers, barely audible through the vocoder. “Thank you .”

Chapter Text

Din Djarin is usually quick to wake - he’s trained his body to slumber lightly, to be roused by the slightest sound or movement. He is capable of shifting from fast asleep to aiming down the sights of his blaster in less time than it would take most to open their eyes. 

His mornings do not consist of the slow, languid stretch of rested limbs, the faded taste of yesterday on a fuzzy tongue, but the instant beginnings of threat assessment, the valuation of his situation measured on a knife’s-edge.

Except today.

Today, Din stirs to the awareness of the girl’s soft, lean body half-draped over his, flesh warm and yielding to his touch as his calloused palm drags across her skin. It is a sensation so alien that his mind struggles to make sense of it at first, failing to categorize the heavy warmth in the pit of his stomach, so at odds with the flight-or-flight instinct he has grown used to nursing like a friend in the darkest of moments. This - this is all light and feather-softness, a softness that makes his chest hurt, the taste of salt in the back of his throat.

It’s quiet, and he savors it, the only sound from the soft hum of the O2 scrubbers, the faint buzz of the engine, and the girl’s breath sweet and slow against his neck. The whole ship feels half-asleep in a strange kind of twilight where nothing is as he is used to, all the hard lines melted to soft edges.

It feels unfamiliar, not meant for him, like a moment stolen from outside the continuity of his regular life. A dream in between the moments of violence and blood. He has never been able to enjoy moments like this, always too focused on the next fight, the next monster, the next mission. 

But what is there now except this moment - and time?

The Mandalorian drifts, somewhere between wakefulness and rest, where there is no danger, no haste - just the silence of the ship and the girl’s warm body against his.

Kit’la is the first to move, shifting against him, and Din feels her knee lift, the soft flesh of her inner thigh crossing his hips. The sensation in his stomach quickly translates into a familiar ache in his groin and he shifts a little as well, reaching down to adjust himself, wanting to extend this fragile moment as long as he can, away from any sense of urgency - including the physical.

Unfortunately, the movement also nudges Kit’la into awareness. She yawns, her spine bowing as the stretch moves through her body, pushing her hips against the side of his. Mando sets his teeth, his fingers curling around the crook of her knee, thumb pressing into the thick tendon at the junction of the joint.

“Morning.” Her voice is thick, hoarse with sleep, but it’s never sounded better to him - more enticing. He wants to hear that voice making all sorts of sounds for him -

He cuts off the thought abruptly, and clears his throat in some vain hope it will provide him with some composure.  “Good morning.” He’s not sure if it worked.

“Not going to tell me it’s some time in the afternoon?” She doesn’t seem inclined to move, which is simultaneously just fine with him and the most torturous decision she could make. It doesn’t help that his hand is still latched firmly on her knee, he supposes.

“I haven’t checked.”

“Oh.” She stretches again, and finally seems to notice the source of his discomfort. Her breath catches in her throat, but she doesn’t pull away. If anything, Din thinks she tries to nestle closer.

He has always been the master of his own body, never allowing mere physiological response to dictate his actions. But after the last few emotionally fraught hours, the comfort he’s found in her arms - he is tired of pretending otherwise.

Evidently, she feels the same, if the way she slides a hand up his chest and presses her nose against his neck is any indication.

“Are you still tired?” he asks her, his low baritone rough through the vocabulator. A shiver travels through Kit’la’s body and, pressed so tightly to his, Din can feel it too.

“No.”

“Good.” 

He surges up and over her, using his grip on her knee to tip her onto her back beneath him, and she falls with a soft exhalation of surprise and - he thinks - delight. He makes room for his body between her knees, and to him it seems she’s all too eager to oblige, parting her legs for him at once as he plants his knees on the mattress between them.

Din lifts his head to take in her expression - her eyes are open, points of colour spreading across her cheekbones, lips rosy and parted. His gaze travels down her body, almost entirely bared to him, only her breastband and her underwear hiding anything from his view.

Her chest is heaving already, her breasts rising and falling beneath the bandeau, the outline of her nipples pebbled and stiffening beneath the thin cloth. Her skin is paler than that of her arms, the dimpled roads of old stretch marks or scars mapping her ribs; he travels them with gentle fingertips, watching as gooseflesh rises in the wake of his touch.

The sound she makes is music to the agony between his legs, a broken gasp that has him pushing his hips urgently into the cradle of hers. She arches her back at the heavy press of his clothed erection against her mound, and this time, her gasp is more of a moan. He wants - no, he needs to touch her mouth; his fingertips are almost trembling when they make contact with her bottom lip, tracing the shape of the scar there. When she parts her lips wider and he presses two fingers in to touch the points of her teeth, he can’t help the growl that escapes his throat.

Her mouth is hot, wet and slick, and when he detects the flicker of her tongue against his fingertips he has to close his eyes for a second or two to keep himself grounded, tethered to the moment. 

Din gathers saliva from the pad of her tongue, stroking lightly with two fingers. Kit’la closes her lips around them and sucks filthily, and that makes him clench his other hand into a fist and press it into the mattress next to her head, a grunt torn from his chest as even more blood surges toward his stiffening dick.

He can see the glimmer of mischief in Kit’la’s eyes. “You-” he begins, and she grins around his fingers, wild and feral. 

She knows exactly what she is doing to him, and he doesn’t mind at all.

He withdraws his digits from her mouth then, dragging them in a wet trail down her chest and tugging aside the covering over one of her breasts. The areola is a dark brown, the skin puckering to his touch, begging for his mouth, but this one last temptation he resists. Instead, he circles his moist fingertip around her perked nipple, watching as she whimpers and squirms in response; exactly what he wanted. With his other hand he palms the other, still-covered breast, and when he begins to roll and pinch the tissue-thin flesh of her nipple between thumb and forefinger through the fabric, the girl hisses sharply between her teeth - he chases her reactions, wanting to drown in the soft sighs and murmurs, the flutter of her eyelashes and the flush in her skin, and forget all else.

To that end, his hands wander away from her chest, one sliding down her stomach to the apex of her hips. He has to lift his away to give himself more room to work, but the way Kit’la squirms and murmurs beneath him is just as electrifying as direct pressure on his cock.

He thumbs her through the thin fabric of her underwear, tracing the damp seam of her cunt in wonder; he voices his surprise, a soft, disbelieving - “I did this to you?” -  answered only by her whimper. He rumbles his approval, sweeping his fingers back and forth until she goes from damp to soaking and he can’t stand it any more; he feels like a man in a desert crawling towards the oasis, needing to quench his thirst.

Din curls his fingers into the hem of her panties and drags them down with one sweep all the way to her knees, baring her to the cooler, recycled air. Kit’la lifts her legs and kicks the insignificant scrap of clothing away, and then his hands are on her thighs, spreading her open for him.

Her folds glisten in the low light through the open hatch, and he longs to bury his mouth there and drink his fill. Instead he sweeps his fingers through the gathering moisture of her slit, and the way she mewls and shudders below him is sinful. He finds her clit puffy and wanting, brushing just his fingertips across the swollen button of flesh and up, through her soft, dark curls. She swears under her breath, cursing him, and he chuckles, returning to where she wants him, his touch firmer this time. She turns her head and presses her scarred knuckles to her mouth, stifling another sweet sound.

His free hand closes around her wrist, pulling hers away. “No,” he says. “I want to hear you.”

“F-fuck , Mando, I-”

Her cunt accepts his finger easily, sinking in up to the first knuckle, and a look of delicious shock interrupts her, slackens her jaw and draws a breathy moan from deep in her chest. He commits the sound to memory, along with the glazed look in her eyes, the tremble in her thighs as he wriggles a second finger in to join the first, his thick, long digits working into the snug sheath of her.

She’s tighter, wetter, hotter than he could have ever imagined; her walls clench around the intrusion even as her hips lift to accept his fingers further. The heel of his palm slots perfectly against her pussy to stimulate her clit, and there he stays for a moment, holding her in his hand, consumed by this and this alone.

“Please,” she says then, and Din thinks he’s never heard anything so wonderful in his life as the girl, his Kit’la, begging him to fuck her with his hand.

And so he does, crooking his fingers as he withdraws them, dragging over every ridge inside her and plunging back in as her hips jerk and lift to urge him on. When he seats the pad of his thumb against her clitoris she cries out and closes her eyes, her brow creased with concentration, her thighs trembling and threatening to close around his wrist. He moves his free hand to her knee and presses down, keeping her spread and open for him.

When her hands close around his forearm, he lets her hang onto him, lets her feel the muscles and tendons flex beneath her palm as he fucks her with his fingers. Sweat has gathered on her brow, her sternum; her bared breast heaves with the force of her panting breaths and he knows she is close. 

His fingers never stop moving, in and out, steady and slow but deep, and when he feels her begin to tremble he thrusts in and holds there, drawing tight, meticulous circles against her throbbing clit.

“Come on,” he rumbles, dark and insistent, “Come for me, mesh’la.”

His words are all she needs to pull the trigger on her release - she gasps once and stills utterly, and then her orgasm ripples through her; he feels it around his fingers as her walls shudder and pulse around them, her thighs as they tense and tremble, her spine as it arches up from the thin mattress -it’s in her eyes as they fly open and seek his, unseeingly, through the visor.

When it’s over, she slumps back onto the bed, limp and weak and panting. He massages her inside and out through the aftershocks until it becomes too much and she tugs at his wrist, oversensitized and whimpering. Withdrawing, he watches the glistening line of her slick joined to her cunt from his fingers stretch and separate like a shimmering thread of gossamer silk.

Din reaches up and lifts the helmet. Her taste positively explodes on his tongue when he slides his fingers into his mouth, sharp and tangy and sweet all at once, and he closes his eyes as he laves her fluids from the moist digits. He groans from deep within his chest, becoming aware again of the insistent throb of his cock still trapped in his pants.

When he feels her small, firm hands at his waist his eyes fly open; he can’t see past the rim of his raised helmet, and he lowers it hastily to look down at her.

The girl is flushed, panting still, and her eyes glisten with promise, but still she hesitates as her fingers brush his waistband. “Can I touch you?” she asks, her voice small, as if she’s expecting him to say no.

As if he could say no to that.

He nods, forgetting she can’t see - but she senses it anyway, for a moment later she has the fastenings of his pants open and has worked her hand inside. He nearly forgets to breathe when her fingers wrap around his aching length and draw him out; he has to close his eyes and clench his teeth to resist the urge to just grab her.

Her touch is delicate, tender as she strokes him, and he finally opens his eyes and looks down again to see her smiling up at him, glowing, supine, perfect . To see her with his cock in her scar-crossed hand, his skin dark against her palm with the flush of blood, weeping pre-come from the tip, seems indecent somehow, lewd - and it makes him even harder. 

Her fingers close around the thick of him, thumb and forefinger barely meeting around the base, and Din curls both his hands into tight fists as he tries in vain to hold onto what remains of his self-control. When she leans forward and presses a kiss to the flushed head of his cock, he feels his heart stop, and his hips jerk forward involuntarily, bumping him against her skin and dragging a line of moisture across her cheek.

She giggles, an oddly girlish sound, as his face burns and his cock throbs, and he opens his mouth to apologize or to scold her - he’s not sure which - but he forgets how to speak when she turns her head and her lips wrap entirely around his dick. It's a tight fit, her lips stretched around him, but it's - he's -

Molten. Drowning. The drag of her tongue from his weeping slit around the head of his cock threatens to destroy him.  “You - ugh - you don’t have - have to - “ he manages haltingly, cut off by a heavy grunt as her clever tongue traces a path from his frenulum and along the pulsing vein along the underside of his dick, taking him in further.

And then, devastatingly, she lets him go and pulls back. 

“I want to,” she whispers, dark eyes sinful as she licks her lips. “Actually, I want you somewhere else, but I thought it might be a little selfish to ask-”

“Fuck ,” he swears, as defeated by her words as he is by her mouth. He wants to punish her, to worship her. To that end, Din sits back on his heels and reaches out, taking her by a shoulder and a hip, hauling her up and into his lap. Her hand leaves him, but he doesn’t mind, for a second later he’s grabbing her thighs and holding her over him, muttering broken, filthy things as the drenched cleft of her entrance drags her slick across the underside of his cock. 

“Ask me,” he growls, and he feels her shudder and the breath catch in her throat. Her hands find his shoulders, holding on tight, and her thighs tremble in his grip.

“Ask ,” he repeats, moving her so that the head of his cock bumps against her swollen, oversensitive clit. Her next breath is little more than a half-interrupted hiccup of air, and it almost breaks him.

Then her tiny, scarred hands move to the back of his helmet, and she pulls him to her, resting her forehead against his metal one. Her eyes are open, shadowed and sweet.

“Please, Mando.”

Din groans, letting her drenched folds slide the length of him once, twice, before he lets go of her shoulder to reach in between them. He keeps hold of her hip as he lines himself up with her soaked entrance, and then he pulls her down onto him. 

He only manages to get the head of his cock to squeeze inside her impossibly tight pussy before they’re both gasping. Kit’la trembles around him, her blunt nails scratching against the back of the Beskar helm. She’s murmuring high-pitched little oh, oh s that do nothing for his almost non-existent self-control; he clutches her hip hard enough to bruise the shape of his fingers into her skin, forcing himself to hold there, to wait until he’s sure she can take it.

It’s not long before the wordless noises fade, replaced by: “Yes, please, please -  “ And that’s all he needs to hear. Din lets go of himself as he thrusts up with his hips and works her down over him at the same time. He slides home all at once, nestling deep inside her until she’s stretched all the way open around him and her pelvis is flush to his.

She is all wet heat and velvet softness and he is hard, unforgiving steel, but she swallows him whole as if he is made to nestle there forever, drowning in the embrace of her body, and he never wants to come up for air.

He has never felt so all-consumed by this, a physical act that should not be making his chest ache and his mouth go dry and his heart pound so hard beneath his ribs - but it is, and he doesn’t care. 

Din stays there a moment, adjusting to the feel of her and letting her adjust to the stretch of him. Kit’la has moved her face away, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, taking in long, slow, calming breaths. He forces himself to loosen his grip on her hip, soothing her with a sweep of his palm down her back.

“Sweet girl,” he whispers. “Gar’ner, jii bal ratin.” He has not spoken Mando’a since the covert, and yet the words flow from him like water. She is his. 

He palms the back of her neck, sliding his fingers into her hair. “Are you alright, cyar’ika?” he asks, breathless. And for once, he just doesn’t give a shit how wrecked he sounds even through the vocabulator.

“Yes,” she gasps, and he can at least take solace in the fact she sounds just as affected as he. “Although if you don’t start moving, Mando, I’m gonna-”

He doesn’t find out what she intends to do, for he’s all too eager to oblige. He lifts his hips, grinding rather than thrusting into her, and her voice stutters then fails entirely, dissolving to a moan. Pleased by this, Din takes both her hips - gentler than before - and uses the leverage of his grip to lift her with the next movement, dragging her up and then down the length of his cock.

Her knees press into his sides as she groans, the sound full-bodied and speaking to the deepest parts of him. He answers with another shift of his cock into her, the friction spooling up his spine and earthing somewhere in the back of his neck. 

“Faster,” she urges on a gasp, and Din closes his eyes, feeling sweat forming underneath the helmet, sticking his hair to his forehead. He’s burning up already and he’s barely been inside her ten minutes.

“I’m not - not gonna last,” he tells her, even as he begins rolling his hips in earnest, lifting up into her at a pace that has his thighs burning and his chest heaving. Kit’la clings to him, her hands on his shoulders, holding on so tight her nails bite half-moon crescents into his skin even through the tough fabric of his shirt.

She turns her head to his neck, biting down on the thick fabric of his cowl, muffling a cry. When her teeth release the cloth, leaving it wet with her saliva, sweat and what he suspects are tears, she gasps three desperate words: “Neither am I .” Her movements have lost regularity, seized by little starts and jolts.

“Sh- shit, ” Din hisses when he feels it - the squeeze of her pussy around his cock, even more incredible than when he felt it around his fingers. He moves his hands around to the flesh of her ass for greater leverage, pulling her down onto him as deep as he can go. She bucks against him, and her spine arches away, until it’s only his grip holding hips pinned to his; he opens his eyes and watches fuzzily the long line of her neck, her sternum, the flex in her abdominal muscles as her mouth opens on soundless, formless noises of agonizing pleasure.

When it’s over, she’s as limp as a ragdoll, but her inner walls still pulse around him and he’s close, so close - “Kit , I c- I can’t -” he starts to say and she pulls herself up and close to him again, still shaking. Exhausted as she is, she grabs for his shoulders and clutches him tight, inside and out.

 “Come for me,” she breathes, moving her hips in little circles, urging him on.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Din utters brokenly, feeling his dick pulse in response. He wastes no time - he pushes her back, lowering her onto the mattress as gently as he can manage. Her legs hook around his waist, her heels pressing into the small of his back, and he jams his helmet into the bed beside her head as he thrusts into her once, twice, three times, and that’s all it takes - he barely has the presence of mind to pull out, wrapping his hand around his pulsing cock as his release hits him, spreading out from his groin, drawing his balls up tight to the base of his shaft. 

He spends, pulsing, shooting thick ropes of pearly fluid over his fingers, her stomach, gasping and shuddering above her, his vision turning white and a ringing in his ears like the aftermath of an explosion, blanking his perception for a few almost unbearably intense moments.

When it’s over, all he can hear is the panting of his breath, the thunder of his heart beating in his chest. Or maybe it’s hers. He can’t tell.

Small, soft hands touch his, his shoulders, the side of his helm. He hasn’t dared open his eyes yet, afraid somehow that if he does, none of this will turn out to be real. 

It felt too good to be real.

“Are you alright?” Kit’la’s soft voice brings Din back to himself, an echo of the words he spoke earlier. He laughs, a deep, fractured sound, letting go to plant his hands on either side of her head and take his weight.  Finally, he manages to open his eyes and look down at her, taking in the sight of her flushed body painted with his come. 

He shudders. What was the question? Oh. Is he alright. Even he’s not sure.

“Uh...huh,” is all he can offer, barely more than an exhalation. He watches as she reaches down and drags an experimental fingertip through the mess on her stomach - and beneath the helmet, his jaw drops in astonishment as she brings her coated fingertip to her lips and sucks it into her mouth.

It’s almost enough to make him come again.

“You’re - kandosii’la, mesh’la; gar cuyir ky'rem'ner-” Din mutters, still unable to express himself in Basic alone. Kit’la grins, blushing, understanding the meaning if not the words. He shakes his head in wonderment, too stunned to do much else.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He can’t bring himself to bristle at her smugness. In fact, he can’t even hold himself up over her any longer - he feels as if the strength has left him along with the sizable amount of come he’s deposited on the girl’s skin. Grunting with effort, he rolls onto his back next to her, his chest rising and falling as he fights to regain some semblance of self, of awareness.

After a moment, he reaches out and over the side of the bed for his cloak - the edge of which he uses gently to clean up his mess, dragging the rough-spun fabric carefully across Kit’la’s skin.

“I didn’t hurt you?” he asks when he’s done, tossing the cloak back to the floor. He’ll wash it later.

“Don’t flatter yourself too much, Mando,” she replies teasingly, stretching out her legs and sighing deeply, contentedly.

“Din .”

“What?”

“My name. Din Djarin.” He’s not sure why he says it - he’s never actually told anyone his name, not freely. It was taken from him, like so many other things, but he feels a form of power in giving it willingly, on his own terms. It feels - more organic, somehow. Natural. Right .

“Oh?” Kit’la lapses into surprised silence for a moment, and then she smiles at him, almost - shyly? “Oh. It’s...it’s good to meet you, Din.”

He reaches out, touching her cheek. She closes her eyes as he traces his fingers carefully around her swollen jaw and down her neck, resting against her fluttering pulse. He feels her throat bob as she swallows.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

 “Hmm.” She presses her lips together for a moment, thinking. “Well... I might be walking funny for a few days...But I’m fine. Really. It was - ” She hesitates, and he watches her expression with concern right up until she smiles again, beatific, “ - wonderful.”

“Oh.” It’s his turn to feel a little smug. He props himself up on an elbow, looking down at her, just taking her in. Eventually, she seems to sense his stare, raising her eyebrows and returning it as best she can, although she ends up bestowing the look mainly upon his left shoulder.

“What is it?”

“I’m trying to decide if you’re real or not.”

She laughs, a light, carefree sound he’s unused to but instantly decides he likes, and she reaches out to pinch his arm lightly through the fabric of his armorweave shirt. “There. Real enough for you?”

“Mm. Going to need more proof than that.”

She laughs again and shakes her head. “Let me know if you find it. I’m just gonna...Just gonna close m’eyes for a minute.” She does, sighing deeply. He watches her a moment longer before he’s sure she’s fallen asleep. 

Mando fastens his pants and sits up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He stares over at the pile of armor set neatly aside in the alcove in the wall. He almost feels... reluctant to put it back on, when before even the thought of taking it off would have filled him with apprehension.

He’s blurred the line of his Creed so much he can’t even see it any more, and he’s tired, so very tired. Does it matter, really matter, if he decides not to put it back on again? If he decides to find some quiet planet somewhere and settle down with the girl with no memory and no sight, and forget the path that led him there?

He looks at his armor, which offers no answer. It feels like a shell, empty without him in it - and he is still empty without it. 

Although, maybe, just maybe...not as empty as before.

Din stands and begins to put his armor back on, piece by piece. It feels heavier than usual, somehow, the weight less of a comfort and more a burden as the cuirass settles over his chest. Then he glances over his shoulder at Kit’la’s sleeping form - at least, he thought she was asleep. But when he looks, her eyes are open, fixed on his visor. 

“Din,” she says, and the sound of his name on her lips again makes him shiver. “What do we do now?”

He thinks for a moment. Shrugs. “I guess we take the smuggling vessel - once I’ve fixed the hyperdrive - and find a vortex stabilizer someplace. Bring it back and fix the Kom’rk . After that?” He shrugs. “Depends.”

“Hmm.” She runs a hand through her hair, smoothing it back from her forehead. “Okay.”

“You’ll come with me?” He’s not sure why he phrases it as a question, but he remembers what Kit’la said about her agency . She seems to appreciate it - she reaches towards him, and he meets her halfway, her scar-scoured hand eclipsed by his gloved one.

He already misses the touch of her skin.

“Of course,” she says. Then she glances down pointedly, at her naked, sweat-damp body. “Although I better get dressed first.”

Din can’t help but smile a little, hidden. He lets go of her hand and stands, locating her underwear hanging off the edge of a lighting sconce. He hands it to her and she shimmies it up over her legs. “I’ll get your clothes.” She nods, and he steps quietly from the room, marveling at how relaxed his muscles feel despite the exertion. How quiet his conscience is, even though he knows it should be screaming at him for letting his guard down.

He’ll worry about that later.

Din retrieves the girl’s pants and tunic from the common room. They’re still a bit damp, but the blood is gone. 

It’s as he picks up her pants that he remembers, quite belatedly, the crystal. It’s still lying on the kitchenette bench, glowing a steady, uninterrupted blue. Is it just his imagination, or has it gotten brighter?

He brings it with him, but hands Kit’la her clothes first. She mumbles her thanks, waiting a moment as if expecting Mando to leave - when he doesn’t, she sighs theatrically, but without any real venom, and turns away to pull her tunic over her head without saying anything. She stands to wriggle into her pants, making a face as she smooths her palms over the damp fabric - and pausing as she feels her pockets. Her empty pockets.

“Looking for this?” He holds up the crystal, even though he knows she can’t see it. Her gaze seems to fix on it anyway, a frown knotting her brow. “Found it in your pocket when I was washing your clothes earlier. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she says, looking a little contrite, but not overly so. She doesn’t do the thing where she lets her head drop and covers her face with her hair, at least. “I found it not long after I woke up, and I forgot all about it.” 

Her explanation is natural enough, but he watches her closely as she tugs her hair from her collar and shakes it out over her back. “Sorry I didn’t show you earlier. I was going to, but, well...things happened.” She gestures expansively, as if to take everything in - him, the bed, the ship.

She’s not wrong. And, despite himself, he trusts her. 

Besides, he can’t take it from her, Din realizes. Not when everything else has been.

“Do you know what it is?” she asks, when he says nothing. She looks worried, unable to gauge his reaction by his silence. “I can’t see it, so…”

“Crystal of some kind. Never seen anything like it before. Pretty, though.” He holds it out to her, brushing it against her arm to let her know she can have it back. He sees her relax visibly, and her smile is relieved as she takes it. 

“Hang on to it,” he tells her. “Who knows, it might be worth something.”

“You’re such a - a bounty hunter, sometimes,” she huffs, rolling her eyes, but her tone is teasing. He tilts his head.

“Really? When did you figure that out?”

She sticks her tongue out at him and grins. He’s never seen her so - for lack of a better word - happy . He’s used to her thousand-yard stare, her quiet thoughtfulness, but now he’s getting to know the dimple that forms in her cheek when she smiles and it’s like she’s a whole new person. 

One he likes.

“You hungry?”  he asks. “I’ll make you something before I head over to that pirate scow.”

“I could eat.” 

Even though he knows the girl doesn’t need guidance to move around the Kom’rk any longer, he touches the back of her shoulder anyway to steer her out of the sleeping quarters. She doesn’t object. In fact, she lingers too close to him for too long - and the Mandalorian doesn’t mind at all.

“Hey, Din?” she asks a few minutes later as she sits with her legs crossed beneath her and waits while he reconstitutes a plate of gloop for her. He sets it in front of her and raises his eyebrows slightly at her expression. She looks hesitant, twisting her fingers together, biting her lip. 

“What?”

“I-” For a moment it looks like she’s going to ask him something, but then she shakes her head instead and looks down. “Thanks.” 

He nods. Touches her shoulder, her unmarred cheek. She looks up through the fringe of her lashes and presses her lips together into a smile.

“You’re welcome, cyar’ika.”

She catches his hand before he can walk away. “You going to tell me what that one means?”

Beneath the helmet, he smiles. “Not yet,” he says, and slips from her grip.

His steps are lighter than he’s used to as he retreats across the deck.

Chapter Text

The inside of the pirates’ ship smells like wet bantha, and it’s more cramped than a womp rat’s den. There’s not even room for Kit’la to put her feet up on the control panel. She’s shoved into a tiny seat behind Mando - behind Din - her knees pressed to the back of the pilot’s chair as he flicks switches and presses buttons.

It’s not the most comfortable, especially when she is still sore from...before. Her stomach muscles burn and her thighs twinge, the fading ache of satisfaction reminding her exactly what they spent yesterday morning doing. She doesn’t regret it - on the contrary; she hasn’t been able to rid herself of the stupid smile on her face since it happened.

He told her his name . She’s still having trouble comprehending it. To her, he is Mando , an unknowable tower of Beskar strength. She’s been allowed a peek under the armor - both literally and metaphorically- and what she found was everything she couldn’t have expected and all she could ever hope for at once. 

His warmth and gentleness, the way he held her; she could spend hours dwelling on it, replaying every touch, every sensation of his skin, his body against and inside hers. Just thinking about it makes heat rise in her cheeks, driving her to distraction. She bites the inside of her lip and digs her fingers into her bandaged arm, the prickle of pain bringing back the memory of the fight that caused the wound, and then she wishes she was thinking about Din again instead.

Din Djarin. The Mandalorian. He never speaks much about himself, yet she feels as if she knows him better than she knows herself . 

She certainly knows him better now - in the purest, most base sense of the word.

She knows the sound of his gasps, his groans in her ear filtered through the vocabulator; she knows the flex and press of his fingers; she knows the roll of his hips and the wrecked stutter in his voice as he-

“Okay. We’re ready to jump,” he says suddenly in that very same voice, much smoother and more even than the thick, honeyed baritone in her memory. Kit’la jumps a little as well, returning her thoughts to her present situation, jammed into the tiny cockpit behind him. Now is not the time to be daydreaming, although to be fair, she hasn’t been able to stop since it happened.

She knows she should feel guilty. She should wonder if she had a family before, one she doesn’t remember betraying. A husband or a wife, children.  

Deep down, though, she knows that Din is the closest thing she has to family now.

“You ready?” he asks, and she nods. “Here we go. Entering hyperspace in three...two...one.”

The ship lurches around them, and then there’s a feeling like being scrunched up and stretched out all at once. It sets Kit’la’s teeth on edge, ice pressed to an exposed nerve, an immediate headache squeezing her temples. 

It subsides soon enough, and she lets go of the lungful of air she had been holding. It takes conscious effort to relax her tensed muscles one by one. 

“Should be there in a few hours,” Mando says, and of course he sounds completely normal - this is probably like a trip down to the corner tapcaf for him.

“You never told me exactly where we’re going,” she points out, hoping it’ll distract her from the feeling like her internal organs want to crawl out through her eyesockets. She tells herself she’s happy he got the hyperdrive working, that she’s glad not to be stuck on the Kom’rk for another two weeks, but that would be a lie. She would much rather be floating unhurried through space, eating textureless gloop and passing the time in bed with the Mandalorian - but she knows that’s unrealistic, wishful thinking at best, deluded at worst.

Still, she can’t help but remember the tenderness of his touch and think that maybe, just maybe, a part of him might have wanted to stay longer with her, too.

She hears his chair creak as he swivels sideways as much as he can, and imagines the tilt of his helmet as he looks at her.

 “Only place I could think of with a spaceport where we might find the parts we need. Tatooine. I know a mechanic there.”

“Oh.” Of course the name means nothing to her, but she’s curious, nonetheless. “What’s it like?”

“It’s...a desert planet. Little more than a sandpit full of space fleas. The space port’s populated by mercenaries, bounty hunters and smugglers - a whole bunch of undesirables.” Din sounds like he could be talking about the weather, not an incredibly dangerous fringe planet he’s taking her to in a shot-up pirate ship. 

Nonetheless, Kit’la smiles, teasing. “You fit in well there?”

The sound Din makes from underneath the helmet is half-dismissive, half-derisive. “I don’t ‘fit in’ anywhere.”

“No?” She pulls her feet up, pressing the soles of her boots together as she lets her knees fall open, letting her hands rest atop them. “There’s no planet with cities full of other Mandalorians, a sea of shiny helmets?”

It occurs to her that maybe she should have asked these questions before she slept with him, but he had been so... closed-off before. Now, she feels can ask without the risk of an icy silence.

“Not any more.” His voice is quiet, unexpectedly heavy. She feels the grief, the regret rolling off him in waves, so strong that she wishes immediately that she hadn’t asked. She ducks her head.

“I’m sorry.”

He reaches out, and she feels his gloved hand on her knee just next to hers. “Sometimes you have to walk hand-in-hand with loss,” he says, an echo of her words from weeks ago - what feels like years, now. 

They sit like that for a moment, sharing the silence. 

“How are you feeling?” Mando’s voice is cautious, but it doesn’t fail to send a shiver through her, regardless. She’s glad for the sweep of her hair hiding her blush from his view.

“Fine. Good. A little sore, but I’ll live.”

“Let me see.”

Kit’la gapes at him. “What?” But then he’s touching her arm and unwinding the bandage, and she feels her heartbeat ramp down again in simultaneous relief and disappointment. Oh , she thinks, that’s what he meant.

“It’s been a little itchy, but it’s fine, really,” she insists as he examines her skin. 

“Fine?” he repeats, and she catches something in his voice - surprise? Wonder? “These were deep scratches. They’re barely scabs now.” The rough leather of his gloves traces the marks, and she pulls her arm back to feel for herself. True enough, the deep rents in her skin are now just faint, scabbed-over lines as if they were weeks old, not days.

“Huh,” she says. “Weird.”

“Yes,” Din agrees. “You are.” But there’s an edge in his voice, a question she doesn’t recognize, and she doesn’t like it. It makes her uncomfortable, because she knows it’s a question she can’t answer even if she wanted to.

Suddenly, a part of her is afraid.

She shrugs, sheepish, nervous. “Maybe it was just your exceptional first aid skills.”

“Maybe.” But he sounds preoccupied as he turns away, back to the controls of the ship. Regardless of any questions, it seems that Din isn’t keen to pursue the subject right now. 

She’s relieved.

After some time passes and she begins to grow stiff in the seat, Kit’la unbuckles her safety belt and stands, stretching her arms above her head and bumping against the canopy. She takes a single step forward - which is all the cramped space allows - and leans against Din’s chair, reaching out pressing a hand to the transparisteel window. It’s cold against her palm.

“What are you doing?”

“Just...looking,” she sighs. It’s all just...blank, grey-black nothingness. Sure, she can sense more than that, but it’s not the same as being able to see . “What’s it like out there?”

Mando is quiet for a moment, considering. His strong, quiet baritone is soothing when he speaks. “Streaks of light in the darkness. Stars, I guess. Colors. Blue, purple, white, black.”

“I dream about colors sometimes. Green seas, golden skies. Not sure if it’s someplace I’ve been or just my imagination.” Kit’la moves to turn away, and then she feels Din’s hand on her hip. She’s sore there, too, the faint ache of bruises forming beneath her skin, but she doesn’t mind at all when his fingers latch on and squeeze comfortingly.

“Might be a doctor on Tatooine that can take a look at you. Worst case scenario, I’ll get you some bacta for your eyes.”

She finds his metal-clad shoulder, then the softer space between his pauldron and his neck. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes,” he says. “I do.”

She looks at him - at the space where she thinks he is, anyway - for a long moment. “Din - ” she starts to say, but then he’s rising to his feet in front of her, eclipsing her much smaller form. But she doesn’t feel afraid when he takes her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing her lips.

“Kit,” he says - and is there a note of hesitancy in his voice? “I need to know something.”

“Anything,” she offers, without even needing to think about it. Even the fear from before is gone, swallowed by the reassurance of his immense presence.

“Do you...do you regret it?” She knows at once what he means, just like she knows at once what her answer is.

“No. I don't."

“Good. That’s….That’s good.” He seems - nervous? Self--conscious? Words she’d never associate with the Mandalorian normally, but she would bet actual credits he’s blushing under that helmet. 

She remembers the feel of it slick with sweat under her palms, pulling him to her, whispering filthy demands, and bites her lips to distract herself from the decidedly inappropriate thoughts. 

But Mando, Din is pulling her close, leaning down to rest his helmed forehead against hers for a moment. She closes her eyes and feels the coolness of the metal, the sound of his breath without the warmth that should accompany it, hidden from her by the barrier of Beskar. 

She doesn’t wonder what he looks like under the helm. For someone without sight, looks don’t matter very much - but feelings do. She wonders what his lips would feel like under her fingers, under her own mouth; she longs for something as simple as being able to kiss his cheek. 

To that end, she turns her head, pressing her lips to the smooth concave curve on one side of the helm, over where his cheekbone should be. Din stills, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s just felt. Or not felt, in this case. His breath pauses, and for a moment Kit’la thinks he’s going to pull away, but to her utter relief, he doesn’t. Instead, he reaches out,  wrapping his hand around the back of her head, his fingers tangling in the long waves of her hair.

“Do you regret it?” she whispers, because it needs to be asked. The guilt he carries is immense, she doesn’t need to be sighted to see that. 

To her surprise, his answer is as quick as hers was, if not quicker, and more vehement at that. “No,” he says firmly, his fingers tightening in her hair.  “Not for a second.” 

He seems reluctant to let go, as if the memory of touching her makes him want to continue.

“Would you do it again?” she asks, curious, feeling as if she’s treading a tightrope or the thin scree of rock at the edge of a cliff, stone crumbling like dust beneath her toes and tumbling to the depths below, her bones aching to follow.

His hand travels around the front of her neck, cupping her pulse, far more delicate than she could ever expect him to be. His thumb presses into the V of flesh beneath her chin, and just the lightest squeeze from his fingers has her head tilting back for him, baring her throat.

“No,” Din says simply. “I would do more .”

The shiver that passes through her body at his words is a physical thing that leaves her mouth dry and her knees weak. He shouldn’t be able to do this to her with just a touch and a handful of words, especially not after she’s seen what he can do to her with his body, but the effect is just as marked as if she’s naked before him, being palmed and pressed in all the ways he seems to know, instinctually, that she likes. 

“What’s stopping you?” she asks, heat blooming invariably in her cheeks, in her chest, between her legs.

She feels the helmet tilt, his unknowable eyes taking her in. And she hears the smile in his voice when he speaks.

“There’s not enough room in here.”

And then he lets her go. Kit’la slumps back, reaching out with a hand on the passenger’s chair to steady herself - she’s almost panting, and he barely touched her. It’d be embarrassing if she didn’t enjoy it so damn much.

“You’re a tease,” she tells him as she hears him settle back into his seat.

“You should get some rest,” he says simply. “There’s a bunk on the deck below.”

“Right.” Bastard , she thinks, fondly.

“Need help finding it?”

Utter bastard , she adds with a little more venom. “No, I think I’ll be fine.” She turns and feels her way to the cockpit hatch. Pauses with her hand on the frame and turns her chin to her shoulder. “Probably not enough room in there, either.”

His chuckle follows her down the ladder, and she can’t help but smile.     

Chapter Text

Tatooine. Little more than a ball of dust and sand orbiting two scorching suns. Quite possibly one of the most forsaken places in the Outer Rim.

And yet, Din Djarin seems to keep ending up here. What does that say about him?

Well, right now it says he needs somewhere out-of-the-way, with a mechanic whose favor he’s already curried. If he’s to get the components to fix the Kom’rk Guardian , it’s not going to be cheap, and the first half of the purse from Signas is not going to cover everything he needs unless he does some creative negotiations.

It means he’s probably going to have to take another job.

The Mandalorian r eally hopes he won’t have to go after another Krayt dragon.

This ship, an old military-surplus BTL model, wouldn’t be so bad if it was just him, but it’s not big enough for two people. Plus, he’s pretty sure Bo-Katan would be pissed if he just abandoned her old ship out floating in the middle of nowhere. It isn’t a bad ship, it just - it isn’t the Razor Crest . But nor is this. It’s just older, and dirtier, and reminds him a little more of home.

Home. As if he has one, now. Maybe that’s why he can relate to Kit’la - like her, he’s lost everything. Almost everything.

He remembers how she looked in carbonite, a silver countenance set in stone. He wonders what would have happened if the ship had never malfunctioned, if the pod had never spat her out. 

He decides he’s glad he’ll never have to find that out.

She has wormed her way into his life, into his cold Beskar heart, without even trying. This time it’s a pair of dark, unseeing eyes instead of wide brown ones, olive scar-crossed skin instead of green, a different kind of longing that has eked through the cracks in his armor, filling the wound left by the Child’s absence. Not completely, but enough to stem the bleeding, the roiling anger and rage at an unfair galaxy that takes and takes and takes from him, endlessly, without recompense or apology.

He feels he has a small chance to hold onto something, now, even though he doesn’t know what it is or what it means.

Her memories, her sight, the way she moves without needing either, like there’s an instinct that runs deeper than blood - and the speed with which her wounds heal; all part of an equation that adds up to an answer he’s not ready to face yet, because it may mean letting her go, too. 

The hyperspace window closes, and the pirate vessel shakes its way back into realspace. The blue-purple blur of the stars stills to white dots floating in the black, and there hangs Tatooine, an orange blob spinning slowly through space.

He hears the girl, his Kit’la, climbing up the ladder behind him. She drops into the passenger’s seat with a yawn, and he turns to look at her, rumpled and red-eyed from sleep. She smiles as if she can see him looking, and beneath the visor, he smiles back as if she can see that, too.

“We’re here.”

“I know. I felt the ship leave hyperspace.” She yawns again and lifts her arms above her head. He watches the hemmed edge of her tunic ride up, revealing a sliver of skin, and looks away quickly. Now isn’t the time to be thinking about that, or the feel of her neck beneath his fingers. 

He wishes he’d spent longer pretending to ‘fix’ the hyperdrive, but he hadn’t wanted to raise suspicions or draw it out, make it more painful. The galaxy doesn’t stop spinning for two people, or even one. Din Djarin knows this better than most. Its dangers are many, numerous and unexpected, and he’ll do anything in his power to make sure he is prepared - and able to protect the girl.

He’s failed to protect those he cares about more times than he can count. He won’t fail again.

The BTL judders and jumps as it enters the atmosphere, burning air licking at the hull with their velocity. Kit’la braces herself with one hand on the bulkhead and the other on the panel in front of her. They descend further, into clear, orange skies, and Din scans the horizon, the white-brown hodge-podge of structures of Mos Eisley coming into view. He urges the engines on. 

Hangar Three-Five is unoccupied, no other customers today, but the voice on the other end of the comm is none too pleased when a pirate craft approaches and requests to land.

“Just you get outta here, you good-for-nothin’ rock-scuppers-"

Mando reaches out and flicks on the communicator. “Peli, it’s me.”

There’s a pause full of staticky crackle. Then: “Mando? What in the Force are you doin’ in a clunker like that? Even worse than your usual bucket of bolts!”

He tries not to bristle at that. “Coming in to land.”

The ship lands inelegantly on spindly, corroded landing gear. Din wonders when the last time this ship was maintained. If the interior was anything to go by, not for twenty years or so, and he suspects the exterior will be even worse. It makes the Crest after his stop-off on that glacier planet look like a luxury cruiser in comparison.

“Was that your mechanic?” Kit’la asks as he lowers the external ramp and gets to his feet. “She didn’t sound too friendly.”

“Don’t worry,” he reassures her, remembering the way Peli doted on the Child, the way she spoke to the frog lady. The engineer had a rough exterior but a heart of gold. No, something warmer and more useful than gold, the Mandalorian decides. “She’s a little too friendly sometimes.”

He’s not sure how he’s going to explain the Child’s absence. He just hopes, in vain, that she won’t ask.

He descends the ramp with Kit’la, his hand on the inside of her elbow. She stares upward blindly at the sky, breathing in the fresh air deep, smiling at the feel of the unforgiving suns on her skin. He forgets - this is the first time in her living memory that she’s ever been on solid ground. 

He wonders what that feels like.

“Mando!” He hears the mechanic’s bubbly voice before he sees her, followed quickly by the chattering of her droids. “Long time, no see, you big tin-can! ‘Bout time you came to visit.” 

The frizzy-haired engineer approaches, wiping engine grease on her coveralls. She stops when she spots Kit’la, her mouth opening and closing once or twice before she finds more words for it. “And who’s this? Don’t tell me - is this mommy ?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Kit’la begins, but Din cuts her off with a soft squeeze on her arm.

“Peli, this is Kit’la. She’s...a friend.”

“She’s prettier than I expected,” Peli muses, looking her up and down. “Not green at all.”

“No,” he sighs, “She’s not-”

“Oh,” Peli says, narrowing her eyes a little. “Another stray? What’d you do to this one? Nevermind that - did you find the other Mandos? And where is our favorite little guy, anyway?” 

He can’t avoid the direct question. He lets his helmet drop, staring at the sand beneath their boots. Admitting it aloud is like reliving it. Like he’s looking into Grogu’s eyes and saying goodbye all over again. 

“He’s...gone,” he grinds out, with difficulty. It feels like he’s dragging the words out of his heart itself. “Back with his own people.”

Peli’s reaction is not what he expects. He expects anger, accusations, harsh words. He doesn’t expect the way her expression contorts. And he definitely doesn’t expect it when she steps forward and hugs him.

He stands there stiffly, unsure what to do for a moment, before putting a hand on her arm and pushing her back gently. Are those tears in her eyes?

“It’s always hard letting our children go,” she sniffs. “But we all have to do it sooner or later. You did good, Mando, I’m sure. “

“...Thank you,” he says slowly. His breastplate suddenly feels like it’s fastened too tight, making it hard to breathe. He clears his throat, glancing over at Kit’la, who has a stunned expression on her face. 

He can’t blame her, really.

“You have a kid?” 

“It’s a long story.”

“You didn’t tell her about the little womp rat?”  Peli looks horrified, and so does the girl, staring blankly at the middle distance with her mouth slightly open.

“Your kid is a womp rat?”

“Look, can we just…” Mando sighs. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. “I need a vortex stabilizer for a Kom’rk-class fighter. Mine’s out floating twelve parsecs away.”

“What happened to the Razor Crest?” Peli stares at his helmet as if she can see his expression fall beneath it. “Oh, no. Her, too? You’ve been through it, haven't you, Mando? Come on, you better come sit down. I still have some Krayt jerky if you want-”

“I’m fine,” he interjects, a little more harshly than he intended. He draws in a breath and lets it out slowly. “I just need the stabilizer. I can pay.”

Peli Motto looks from him to Kit’la to the ship and back again, then she shrugs. Her DUM-droids are already crawling all over, peeking into panels and generally making a nuisance of themselves. “Be careful, boys! That pile o’ scrap looks like it’s gonna fall apart any moment!” the engineer calls. “I’ll keep ‘em busy polishing the rust til we get you sorted,” she adds to Mando with a conspiratorial nudge. “Free of charge.”

“Thanks,” he deadpans.

She leads them into the hangar and to her control room, which is as cluttered with junk as the landing bay itself. She sweeps some components off a seat in front of her console and sits, long-nailed fingers tapping at the keyboard. “Let’s see here. Kom’rk. MandalMotors, right? Not gonna be easy to find something like that.”

“See what you can find.” He reaches into the pouch at his belt and withdraws most of the credits from inside. “Here.”

Peli looks at him and then at the credits for a moment then shakes her head, hair bouncing, and waves it away. “I don’t even know if I can get you one yet,” she says. “Hold onto your credits. For now," she adds, a glint of her usual shrewdness in her eye.

Slowly, Mando nods and puts the credits back. Next to him, Kit’la finds his hand with hers and squeezes slightly. 

“Here we go. A scrapyard over in Mos Espa might have something. I can send the droids-”

“No,” he says. “I’ll go. Give me the coordinates.” For a moment, the mechanic looks like she’s about to argue, but she’s heard that tone in the Mandalorian’s voice before. She sighs and taps a few keys. He lifts his arm, touching the controls on his vambrace as his holo-display receives the coordinates. The mechanic spins in the chair to face them. 

“There. It’s a dangerous area, though, so - be careful?” He nods. “Before you go - sure you don’t want to stay for a meal?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Kit’la interjects, shooting Din a look, as best she can anyway. “I haven’t had anything except processed protein and vegetable gloop for weeks.”

He sighs. “Okay,” he says after a moment. “You stay here. I’ll go rent a speader and head to Mos Espa.” He feels like the women have stopped listening to him, though; Peli has turned away from him already.

“All right, dear, you just come with me,” she’s saying to Kit’la as she gets up. The girl follows as best she can, hitting her shin on a discarded pile of scrap. “Be careful, these droids ain’t the best at cleaning up after themselves.”

“She, uh, she can’t see,” Din says, trying to keep his voice low, but of course Kit’la hears him.

“Di- Mando! I’m perfectly capable-”

“You’re blind,” he tells her firmly even as she protests, glaring. “And you can trust Peli. I do.”

“Aw, thanks, Mando,” the mechanic says, sounding genuinely touched for a moment. Then it’s back to fussing over the girl. “You poor thing! It’s okay. Knew a blind fella once, didn’t stop him from whorin’ and drinkin’ as much as he could down at the cantina. Used to play a mean hand of Sabacc, too. Definitely cheating, but he had his work cut out for him ‘cause everyone could see the bumps on the cards. Anyway, you just come with me and we’ll get you sorted, all right?”

Kit’la’s expression is desperate as she cranes her neck over her shoulder to glare back towards the Mandalorian. He resists the urge to laugh as they head inside.

“I’ll be back for you,” he says, but they’re already gone. He adjusts the spear on his back next to the Rising Phoenix, makes sure the darksaber is attached firmly to his belt, and turns to leave the hangar.

Chapter Text

Kit’la sits across from the mechanic, Peli Motto, chewing a mouthful of what she’s told is Krayt dragon jerky but could be Bantha meat for all she cares. It’s the most delicious thing she’s ever tasted, but given the fact that all she can remember tasting is concentrated protein bricks and vegetable gloop, that’s not too surprising.

She wasn’t sure what to make of the other woman at first. She seems hard, no-nonsense, with an exterior like durasteel, but there’s an edge of kindness there that she doesn’t expect. It reminds her a great deal of Din Djarin himself.

If he trusts her, then Kit’la does, too.

When she’s done eating, she finally speaks up to ask the burning question that’s been on her mind ever since she met the engineer.

“So...Mando has a kid?”

Then Peli tells her the story. The parts of it she knows, anyway. She tells her about the Mandalorian showing up on her doorstep in his beaten-up ship, about finding the tiny green critter inside, about the other bounty hunter. She tells her about Mando’s ignominious return, seeking others of his kind so that he could find the child’s people. She tells her about her surprise at seeing him again with  a blind woman instead of a child in tow.

“Personally, I think he’s a sucker for lost causes,” the mechanic concludes conversationally. “No offense.”

“Why’s that?” Kit’la chases another piece of krayt jerky around on her plate, popping it into her mouth.  Trying to pretend she’s not hanging off every word. Din’s never spoken about his history, recent or not, and this is...certainly not what she expected.

At the same time, it explains a lot. His fierce overprotectiveness. His moody silences. The way he touches her sometimes, as if he’s afraid she’s going to disappear at any moment if he doesn’t hang on. He’s a man who’s lost so much - she never knew exactly how much until now.

“He wouldn’t be a Mandalorian without a mission, would he?” Peli’s saying. “He needs someone to protect. And he needs someone to protect him .”

“From what?”

“What else, sweetheart?” Her voice is kind. “From himself.”

Kit shakes her head, smiling wryly. “I wouldn’t try telling him that.”

Peli chuckles, a warm, bubbly sound, one that Kit finds comforting, especially coupled with a full belly and a comfortable place to sit. She could stay here a while, she thinks.

“So, what’s your story?” the woman asks. “Never thought I’d see the day Mando brought a girlfriend along on his adventures.”

She almost chokes. “He’s not - I’m not -”

She can practically sense Peli’s dubious look. “Honey, please . You can’t see the way he looks at you. I mean, I can’t, either, but he’s always watchin’ you. Always close to you. Never thought I’d see the day the Mandalorian let someone who wasn’t his kid hold his hand.”

“Right,” Kit mutters, feeling her face burning. “Well, it’s a long story for me, too.”

Peli pushes another plate of dragon jerky into her hands. “Go on,” she says. “We got time.”

She hesitates a moment, remembering Din’s words - You can trust Peli. I do.  

She hesitates before she begins. It’s strange, talking to someone who isn’t the Mandalorian. She’s not used to it. “I don’t actually remember. Anything, I mean. I was frozen in carbonite when Mando picked me up. The ship malfunctioned and the pod with it. I woke up cold, blind and without a clue who I am or where I’m from.”

So far, she hasn’t shed a tear - not about that. But here, talking to Peli about it, she feels a burning prickling at the corners of her eyes.

Suddenly Kit’la feels her hand, rough and wam, on hers. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she says, “you’ll find yourself eventually. And that big shiny fella of yours will help. You’ll see.”

“I hope so,” Kit’la replies, smiling wryly. “Being blind is a real bummer.” 

“So you could see before the carbonite, then?” Kit’la nods as she shoves more jerky into her mouth. Her stomach is full to bursting but she doesn’t care, she could keep eating this stuff all day . “You must’ve been frozen a while, then, for it to do such a number on you.”

“How am I to know?” She shrugs. “Could’ve been five days, could’ve been five years as far as I’m concerned.”

“Hmmm.” Peli sounds thoughtful, but it’s hard to tell without being able to see her - without knowing the audible clues to pinpoint her mood, her thoughts. She just doesn’t know her well enough yet to gauge her reactions. Kit considers reaching out with her feelings, with that other sense, but somehow she feels like that would be...rude.

“So, this child of his,” she asks instead. “You said he was little and...green?”

“Mm-hm. Adopted, I figure. I guess he must’ve found his family.”

“I never pictured Mando as a father.” But it makes sense. His protective instincts, she thinks. It makes her smile. 

“Eh, he was new to it when I first met ‘im. But he got the hang of it eventually.”

“What else do you know about him?” She finishes off the last of the jerky and Peli takes the plate from her. She’s not sure, but she thinks she can feel the lift of her eyebrows, her incredulous look. 

“No more than you do and maybe even a little less, if I figure right,” she says. “What do you know about him?”

She considers a moment. “I know he’s dangerous,” she says, “Ruthless, even. Has no qualms about killing. Not sure if he can fathom why others have qualms. But he’s....kind. He took care of me when he really - he didn’t need to. Shouldn’t have.” She reaches up absently, brushing her fingertips across her bottom lip. 

“Are ya afraid of him?”

Kit’la thinks about it for a moment. “Yes,” she says. “But not for me. I’m more afraid for the people who cross him.”

“Sounds about right.” Peli sighs. “When I first saw you - all timid and skinny as a starvin’ womp rat - I wondered, but it seems like you’ve got your head screwed on right. I think you’ll give him a run for his credits.”

Kit’la frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Peli laughs and pats her upper arm conspiratorially. “You’ll find out. So will he, I expect.”

She hears the woman stand and move around her control room, puttering about. “How about a round of Sabacc while we wait for the big buckethead to get back?”

“I can’t see,” Kit’la reminds her gently.

“We’ll use the blind man’s cards.”

“And give you an unfair advantage?” She smiles. “I don’t think so.”

“Aw, well, it was worth a try…”

---

The hours pass easily in Peli’s company. After the initial uncertainty, Kit finds her quite easy to talk to. Easier than Din, anyway. She can ask her questions without being met with silence more than forty percent of the time. Granted, the answers don’t always make sense to her, but it’s interesting hearing about life on Tatooine, watching travelers come and go, learning snippets of their stories. It’s like Peli is a part of the wider universe without ever needing to step a foot off solid ground.

It seems a lonely life, though, with only droids for company. Kit’la wonders if Peli had a partner or children - especially after what she said to Din about his - but it doesn’t seem right to ask. She doesn’t know her that well yet.

The suns wane and the heat subsides, rising off the sand in waves, giving way to the suggestion of a night-time chill seeping in through the open door that has Kit’la shivering a little. Peli notices almost at once - she must have been a mother once for her instincts to be so strong.

“You don’t have a jacket? You’ll catch your death of cold in that get-up,” the woman fusses at the shake of her head. “Wait here. I’ll see if I have a spare set of coveralls for you.”

“You don’t have to do that-” Kit’la protests, but Peli is already gone. She waits awkwardly, rubbing her upper arms as gooseflesh rises on her skin. She tries not to remember too vividly the last time she had been so cold as to huddle for warmth with the Mandalorian.

She wonders if he’s safe. He’s been gone for hours, but going by what Peli’s said - in between ranting about how he destroyed her old speeder - the trip from Mos Eisley to Mos Espa is a long one. Kit’la knows she doesn’t have to worry about him, but she does regardless, unable to shake the growing feeling that something is wrong ... 

She stands slowly, frowning, concentrating on the feeling; a sense of impending danger, licking at the corners of her awareness, like a shadow at the very periphery of vision - if she had it. No, this is a different sense than the physical, one she’s becoming more and more attuned to. One that scares her. 

It’s a sense of surety, of the fundamental rules of the universe, as certain as water is wet and fire is hot. There is no questioning it. 

The Mandalorian is in danger.

She doesn’t think. She acts, moving on an instinct that circumvents the need to see where she is going, replacing it with the ability to feel instead. She steps over the mess scattered throughout Peli Motto’s office, heads out through the hangar and past a very confused R-series droid.

She doesn’t stop when she hears the engineer’s voice calling after her. “Hey, Kit -where are you goin’? You're supposed to stay here! You - you can't see!"

She doesn’t need to see to know exactly where she is going. 

She just hopes she'll get there in time. 

Chapter Text

The scrapyard is run by an elderly Toydarian who seems nervous, shifty; but then all Toydarians seem like that. Regardless, the negotiations proceed reasonably smoothly, the usual give-and-take Din is used to - it’s like gambling, and the Mandalorian has a better poker face than most. 

Sure enough, he soon leaves the proud owner of a replacement vortex stabilizer and hyperdrive motivator, delivery due to Hangar Three-Five in Mos Eisley by tomorrow, his credits pouch a whole lot lighter - but not as light as he’d expected. 

While counting out the credits, the Toydarian had spotted the saber on Mando’s hip. Suddenly, he’d decided to lower the price - “ As a show of good faith, eh? ”. Din wasn’t about to argue or question it. A darksaber discount is still a discount. 

He first becomes aware of someone - or some ones - following him on his arrival back in Mos Eisley, after he drops off the borrowed speeder. The suns are already dipping towards the horizon, the orange sky fading to violet, sparse street-lamps lighting his path. His pursuers stay well back, hiding in twilit shadows, so that whenever he turns, there’s nothing in the periphery of his visor. But he knows when he’s being watched, and he can feel when he’s being followed. 

Maybe the Toydarian’s looking to recoup his losses, he thinks. Nothing happens, though, no thugs immediately jump from the shadows as he heads back towards Hangar Three-Five.

Still, he doubles back and loops around, ducking through narrow alleys and dark streets to try and lose them. Whoever they are, if they’re following a Mandalorian they have to be either suicidal or dangerous, or just plain dangerously suicidal. 

They’re closer now, and the streets are darker, the bustle of pedestrians reduced to a trickle of no-gooders here and there that give him and his Beskar a wide berth.

His pursuers are just waiting for the right moment, the right place to strike. He doesn’t plan to give it to them.

At least, he didn’t .

He doesn’t know Mos Eisley as well as he would like, or he might not have taken the last right-turn into an alley that dead-ends into a dark space behind a defunct cantina, filled to the brim with trash. Mando turns slowly, his hands loose and limber at his sides ready for fight - or flight.

He knows which one he’d prefer.

They emerge from the shadows, figures in dirty coveralls, dark cloaks or piecemeal armor, no two of them the same. The only thing that’s the same is the expression on their dirt-smeared faces: Hunger. Avarice. Cruelty. It’s an expression he’s seen a thousand times, on men that soon lie cooling in the sand.

“What do you want?” he asks, his filtered voice betraying no hint of emotion except, perhaps, impatience. 

“You killed our friends,” one of the dark figures says, trying for menacing but sounding asthmatic instead. “You could say we’re after a bit of good, ol’-fashioned revenge .”

“There’s nothing good about revenge,” the Mandalorian tells him. “I know .”

There are six he can count in the mouth of the alleyway, more crowding in behind that he can’t. He considers asking which friends they claim he killed, but he has half a guess forming already. Their clothes might not be uniform, but the rock-dust staining them is .

Kepler IV. Signas’s men. Again . How many did he have ? Surely the mining magnate wouldn’t go to such lengths to follow Mando all the way across the galaxy to recoup one lost asset?

Unless Signas stood to gain fair more on delivery than the Mandalorian had been paid in the first place.

He hesitates. If he activates the Phoenix, he’ll be able to escape easily, but with that comes a chance that the thugs might still track him to Bay Three-Five, to Peli, and to Kit - and that is unacceptable to him. No, he needs to deal with this threat here and now.

And then he’s going to go back to Kepler, hang Signas up by his ankles and hold his vibroknife to his throat until he answers all of his questions - and hers .

“Well?” Mando asks, lowering his hand to his side, fingers flexing next to his blaster. “Who wants to join your friends first?”

The men draw their weapons, a hodge-podge collection of rifles and blasters, and form up in an uncoordinated attack that Mando has little trouble fending off. He draws his own blaster, getting off two shots that take down the men closest to him before they can even aim down their sights. When the others do, Mando takes only one glancing bolt to his shoulder pauldron, another to his chestplate before he ducks behind a dumpster that smells even worse than it looks but provides adequate shielding to the barrage of blaster-fire.

A firefight in an enclosed space is not ideal. Worst case scenario, he’ll jet up to the rooftop and take pot-shots at them once he has the high ground. Then-

A door behind him opens, one he hadn’t noticed half-buried by trash and detritus. Six more men come piling out, nullifying his cover, and Mando swears and pegs one with a shot to the leg, sending him to one knee howling. The others are advancing down the alleyway, sure they have him pinned. 

Mando activates the Rising Phoenix. The jetpack propels him up quickly, too quickly for the thugs to get a bead on him; he lands on a rooftop with a full view of the alley - and his enemies - below.

He takes down another three before a fourth cries “There! He’s up there!” and they begin to fire back. There’s no cover up here, so he has to duck and weave through the stray bolts as best he can; copping more than a few to the chestplate - for miners, these thugs have good aim. He wishes he had his Amban repeater; after seeing a few of their friends disintegrated, they might think twice and give up the fight.

There have to be at least a dozen left. Three of the swiftest men are scaling the dumpster, climbing up after him for a closer shot. The next barrage slams into his sternum one after the other, forcing him back a few steps - he turns and runs across the rooftop, putting distance between himself and his attackers. 

He won’t rely on the spear or the saber until the very last moment. Until there’s no other choice left.

That’s when he hears a commotion coming from the mouth of the alley. The six men remaining there have scattered, firing randomly up at Mando on the rooftop, but two of them have turned away, addressing something else going on that he can’t quite see in the darkness of the street.

He lifts a hand, activating the thermal imager with a touch to the side of his helm. It plunges his visor into a flickering landscape of blue and purple and six bright yellow-red heat signatures where the thugs gather. Just beyond them, in the shadows, stands a seventh figure - much smaller, but burning just as bright.

Mando shoots another miner trying to climb the roof, ignoring his scream as he slips and plunges into the trash below. He’s too busy trying to hear what’s going on below. 

He activates the audio enhancer in his helmet and hears her voice at once. It sends a chill through him.

“-along. Now. And you won’t be hurt.” It’’s Kit’la’s voice. What is she doing here? How did she find him? And, most importantly, is she insane , trying to take on six well-armed ex-miners-turned-pirate-thugs on her own ?

They evidently think the same, if the leader’s reply is anything to go by. 

“Who says we’re the ones gonna get hurt? We’ve got our quarry pinned down, little girl . Now move along before you get hurt-” The yellow blobs blur, and there’s a choking, gurgling noise. One blob falls, and the others stand around and stare in astonishment as the smaller figure stands - and waits.

“What’s it going to be, gentlemen?”

They descend on her the same time the bandits on the roof get to Din. He had been so distracted by what was going on below that he hadn’t noticed the three thugs climb onto the roof from the opposite side of the alley and flank him. 

One of the men is a head taller than him with a shoulder-span like a Devaronian. He comes at him without a blaster but with a metal pipe instead, growling as he swings it at the Mandalorian’s head. The blow is glancing, but enough to make his helmet ring; he dodges under the next swing and kicks out hard into his knee, hearing a satisfying crunch that has the goon screeching in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

Another grabs him by the back, but Mando uses his grip and the momentum of a spin to buck him off and towards the edge of the roof. The man falls, shouting. The last one is firing wildly, trying to get a clear shot as his enemy weaves through the battle; he can’t believe his eyes when the Mandalorian just gets up, taking shot after shot to the chest, letting them bounce off as he walks closer and closer and - 

He takes the blaster in one gloved hand and breaks it in half.

“ Run ,” the helmet advises. This bandit, the most intelligent of the lot, takes his advice. 

Mando wastes no time in retracing his steps, a quick press on his vambrace activates the Phoenix and deposits him on the ground below at the mouth of the alley. Here, he can see without the need for thermal imagery, and what he sees stops him in his tracks.

Kit’la dances between her attackers with her eyes closed, each movement executed with a grace of savagery he’s not seen in her before or since. The men are shooting blasters at her point blank that she seems to dodge at a hair’s breadth, but with such certainty that she’s whirling around them and stepping in to attack before they can react.

She lands a devastating blow of her elbow beneath one’s ear, and the thug goes down without a sound. She mounts the next one like he’s a bantha, climbing his back as he fumbles to aim behind his head. He yells and spins the both of them around frantically, trying to throw her off, and he’s facing his friends when Kit’la grabs his chin and the top of his head and twists until the bones give and his neck breaks with a sickening crack that Din can hear from a dozen paces away.

She plucks the blaster from his belt before he falls and shoots a third bandit between his eyes. 

Finally regaining his senses, Din draws his own blaster to down the fourth and the fifth. The sixth takes one look at the carnage - at the remains of twelve men, all dead or dying in the wake of these two warriors - and whimpers, wets himself and turns to run.

Kit’la’s hand shoots out, her slender, scarred fingers gripping nothing. But the man stops as if running into a wall, and Din stares as he reaches up and begins to claw at his throat, choking, gasping for air.

“Kit!” he yells. “Let him go.”

She opens her eyes, and they meet his visor, wide and dark and somehow unfamiliar. He isn’t sure if she can see him, sense him, whatever - so he reaches out and lays a hand on her arm. “Let him go,” he repeats, slow and calming. 

“Din,” she whispers, and there’s real anguish in her voice. “I can’t-”

The explosion tosses them both aside like rag dolls. They are blown backwards, hitting the wall of the alley hard; the impact is mostly absorbed by Din’s armor and helmet, but Kit’la goes down like a rag doll. 

The stinking smell of burning trash permeates even the helmet’s filter; thick, acrid black smoke billowing over them. Slowly, coughing and aching, Din climbs to his feet, trying to see where the bomb came from, but he catches only the suggestion of fleeing feet across the rooftops above.

“Kit’la,” he coughs, gagging a little at the smell. He crouches by her body, so much smaller when she’s unconscious. She’s breathing, albeit shallowly, nicks and cuts on her skin from debris from the explosion. No obvious breakages or wounds - that is, until Din reaches around the back of her head and his gloves come back bloody. “Shit.”

He lifts her up, takes one final look at the burning trash-heap and the thugs caught in it, and turns and walks away with the girl cradled gently in his arms.

Chapter Text

 CORUSCANT // A LONG TIME AGO

Her head hurts.

Her head hurts, and her eyes sting, burning beneath her lids as she squeezes them shut against the encroaching threat of consciousness. She knows she doesn’t want to be awake, doesn’t want to face what waits when she opens her eyes. She tries to push awareness back down, but it's like trying to swallow back tears while drowning in an ocean, and the harsh anchor of pain quickly drags her back towards the surface.

“Are you awake?” The voice swims into her periphery, sounding muffled, far away. She groans in response, her aching head sending a bolt of pain from her skull all the way down her spine.

She knows she has to face it, no matter how much it hurts. When that knowledge becomes too much, she tries to open her eyes - but the brightness of the room hurts even more than keeping them closed; she slams her lids shut again and just hopes the voice will go away. 

It doesn’t.

“Open your eyes.”

She does. Slower, this time. The room swims into focus, blurry and bright; it is all stark, sterilized blankness, coupled with an antiseptic smell filling her nostrils. The bed beneath her is hard, the sheets stiff and functional, a color somewhere between beige and off-white that doesn’t hurt to look at. That’s where she fixes her lidded gaze first, on one of her bandaged hands as it rests at her side. 

It feels like it belongs to someone else. Her whole body feels as if it belongs to someone else, a puppet pulled by unknown strings, piloted by a stranger. 

“Do you remember what happened?” The voice takes on details. A warm scratchiness, its gentleness familiar, sparking shame as deep-seated as any instinct. She turns her head away, pressing her cheek against the starchy surface of the pillow.

“I...I failed.” Her own voice is hoarse, strange to her own ears. Like she’s speaking the words without subitizing them, bypassing her brain entirely. Her mouth hurts as she speaks, and she lifts her hand to touch it, finding another dressing at the corner of her mouth, spanning a deep cut that stings when she moves her lips.  

“Yes. But you lived,” says the other voice. A woman’s. She is tall, robed, her hair shot through with silver. More familiar than her own reflection. “That’s more than some who have undergone the Trials can say.”

“I didn’t even make it halfway,” she says, too tired to cry, too sore to sob. “The Trial of Flesh-”

“-is as gruelling as the Trial of Spirit, for it tests our willingness to risk the body, which is the very shelter of the soul. There is no shame in wishing to preserve it.”

Slowly, she lifts her bandaged hands. Beneath the wrappings she can feel her fingers, numb and tingling with a thick coating of bacta gel. “My saber was destroyed, then?”

“Yes. But I saved this for you.” The woman holds something out in the palm of her hand - she struggles to bring it into focus, and stifles a gasp when she does. The kyber crystal is a dull off-white, almost matching the infirmary bed sheets, but it’s intact. The woman drops it into her bandaged palm, and for the first time since she woke, she feels a tear slide down her cheek.

“I can’t hear its song any more,” she realizes aloud, wishing she had lost a limb instead, for this is much worse. Staring down at the crystal, its surface dull, mundane, it could be any cheap rock off-cutting. 

“Give it time, Padawan. You will find it once more, and it will light your way again, in the darkest of times.”

“You don’t have to call me that any more, Master,” she says as she looks up, into the kind, blue eyes. “I’m no longer a Jedi.”

“Not in name. But in spirit, you will always be one with the Force.”

She swallows the lump in her throat and nods. She doesn’t know what it means - what any of it means - but from her, she will accept it.

“What will become of me now?”

“That, my former apprentice, is entirely up to you. The path you walk is yours. The way forward may be dark, and difficult, and it may sometimes seem impossible - but it will always be your choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. When you wake up.” The elder Jedi turns, her robes brushing the white from the floor, giving way to grey with each step. She watches, unable to speak, to move as the room around her fades, the brightness giving way to a silvery twilight that reaches out to embrace her, to pillow her sore limbs in the warmth of oblivion. Her eyelids flutter, but she clings to the vision, to the memory, to the soft, reassuring voice as she whispers:

"Wake up.”

---

AGRICORP OUTPOST // 5 YEARS LATER 

“Wake up!”

There’s an annoying fly buzzing in her ear. She groans, trying to bat it away, but her limbs feel as if they’re made of magnetised ore, too heavy to lift.

“Come on, please  -  please wake up!”

The buzzing grows louder, resolving into words. She groans again - that is even worse than a fly. A fly, she can ignore; words try to weasel themselves into her consciousness, forcing her to pay attention to their meaning.

“Please! You must wake up!”

Her body finally responds to her commands. She pulls the threadbare blanket up over her head and rolls over. The stone slab she sleeps on offers no give, but it’s warm from the heat from her body and she still does not want to get up.

“Go away!” she calls to the voice, the annoying fly. She hears the door open, creaking on its rusted hinges, and groans. 

“We’re being attacked - Protector Octavea, you must get up!”

That gets her attention. She pulls the blanket off her head and sits up. The woman standing at the foot of her bed - girl, really - looks scared; her unruly mop of chin-length hair hanging half over her eyes, wide and terrified beneath it.

She knows that look. She’s had that look, before. Long before all this. Before the early mornings and late nights and stone floors against her knees; before the sweat on her brow, the blood on her fingers. Before the endless days spent training in towering spires of transparisteel, only to fall and fail again and again. She had traded in that fear for attrition and the certainty that she would never, ever be good enough, no matter how hard she tried.

She had fulfilled that prophecy herself, in the end.

She gets to her feet, grabbing her cloak from the chair shoved up against the desk, her room’s only other furnishing. On its worn wooden surface lies her blaster in its holster on her belt. She fastens it around her waist and hesitates before grabbing the other object lying on the plain wooden surface. The crystal, its surface still and clouded. She tucks it away in her pocket, regardless.

“Is it the raiders again?”

“I think so. They killed the initiates working in the moon-moss fields, but they haven’t reached the settlement yet.”

“Kriff. How many attackers?"

"I don't know. Forty, fifty..." Shit. She feels her stomach fall. The group of pirates in the forest had never been a problem up until now, but they had estimated their numbers at a dozen, maybe less. This tiny moss-farm has six guards supplied by the Service Corp, her included, and not all of them Force-abled. There's no way they can stand up to an enemy three times their number.

She draws a breath, forcing herself to stay calm. "Are the other Padawans safe?”

“They’re inside. The other Protectors told me to fetch you-”

"Go join the others."

“But-”

“Go. Quickly!”

The girl scurries away. She draws her blaster, trying to quell the trembling in her hands. This isn't what she trained for, but this is her path now - as dark and difficult as it may seem. 

She strides out of her room and towards the fields and the sound of battle without looking back.

---

Her back is a map of pain, of boiling fire as the cuts from the electric lashes ooze through the rents in her tunic. She tries to preserve her strength as she huddles in the corner of the raider’s tent, pain squeezing tears from the corners of her eyes, her vision blurry with it.

The raiders, a mix of Klatooinian and Weequay soldiers, had overwhelmed the smaller Jedi force with ease. Even with half a dozen well-trained and some Force-abled guards, they hadn't stood a chance. Once the guards were killed, the remainder- mostly farmers and the rest of the initiates - had been dragged away, placed in tents separate from each other, cuffed so they couldn't use their powers to escape.

Her included.

With shaking hands bound together by a pair of energy cuffs, she works at her pocket until she can withdraw her kyber crystal using two fingers, blood smearing the matte surface. It’s still the same, off-white color, the color of bone, and it is silent as she presses it to her lips and recites the words of the Code to herself, over and over.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

There is no death, there is the Force.

“Shut up, Jedi kung ! Stop your whimpering!” The strike is expected, but it still hurts, and she cries out as the electro-whip paints another line of fire across her spine. The raider with the whip laughs cruelly, walking away as she twitches and whimpers on the floor.

The girl - the Padawan from before, the one who came to warn her - lies in a puddle of blood nearby, no longer moving. She can no longer sense the warmth of life from her. She is not the first to have succumbed to her wounds, and from the looks of things, she won’t be the last.

Slowly, she closes her eyes, wanting nothing more than to give in to the warm embrace of oblivion. There is no death. There is only the Force, she tells herself - but even the Force is gone, her connection to it long since faded, muted when she needs it the most. She cannot reach out in fear, in rage and anger.

Can she?

She concentrates. There - at the edge of awareness - the feather-light brush of something bigger than herself, an energy she can feel that suffuses her, fills her up from her toes to her scalp, one that feeds on her loss, her grief, her fury. She sees her bandaged hands, never to hold a lightsaber again. She sees the Padawan, her eyes wide and frightened. Her body lying cooling mere feet away. And she feels the power.

Give in, a voice that both is and isn't her own murmurs to her, soft, enticing. Give in to your anger.

She clenches her fists. The cuffs creak. Another voice intrudes, this one much more familiar, but further away, like hearing words whispered through a storm.

The path before you is yours and yours alone. It must be your choice.

"I - can't -"

It's too much. She lets go, slumping to the hard-packed ground, panting, her head ringing, the rush of the ocean in her ears.

She's not sure how long she lies there, weak, berating herself, drifting in and out of consciousness. The raider with the whip drags away the body of the Padawan, leaving her alone for a time. She lets herself float, not thinking, trying not to feel.

Eventually, when awareness starts to become sharper, when the cuts in her back start to sting and become impossible to ignore, she rolls to her side and forces her knees below herself to sit. Distantly, she can hear shouting. The raider camp is full of it; raucous yelling and laughter, the screams of their captives, young Jedi initiates like she was once, full of life and hope - no more.

This time, the shouting does not subside; it only gets louder, moving towards the tent instead of away. There are screams, too, but not of the young victims. These are deeper screams, rent by surprise, by unexpected pain.

The flap of the tent bursts in, and the raider hollers a battle-cry, raising his whip and his blaster at once. He is struck down before he can attack with either. His head rolls, sizzling, to land at her knees, and she stares at it, uncomprehending; at the still-smoking stump of his neck as his body hits the ground. Then, slowly, she looks up.

A figure stands before her, shrouded in gray, hood pulled up and over to obscure its face. In one hand, it holds a blaster rifle, and in the other, a lit saber, casting a glimmering yellow glow over the wounds glistening on her skin. After a moment, it slings the blaster over its shoulder by the strap and holds out a gloved hand. The cuffs release from around her wrists and clank to the ground, powering down with a soft hum.

"Who are you?" she asks, her voice a dry croak, her tongue failing to moisten her bloody lips. “Are you a Jedi?” Somehow, she knows the answer even before the figure shakes its head.

"That's not important right now. Come with me, Padawan." The gloved hand extends again, towards her, fingers outstretched.

She only hesitates for a moment before she reaches out and takes it.

"My name is Tavi."

Chapter Text

The girl looks so frail, so small stretched out on the hospital bed, monitoring equipment announcing her vitals to the room in a series of soft beeps. She's been unconscious for a few hours now. A med droid stands nearby, occasionally adjusting the flow of medication through the drip in her arm, its presence suffered reluctantly by the room’s other occupant.

The Mandalorian has refused treatment thus far, although his head hurts and his ribs ache - one or two are definitely cracked, if not broken. But the sharp pang whenever he inhales grounds him, forces him not to spiral too deeply into self-reproach and contrition. 

He still does not know how Kit’la found him in the maze of streets and alleyways. Peli Motto offered little explanation; just that she “ up and left without a word - like she was sleepwalkin’ or somethin’.” 

Deep down, though, Din knows the truth; a truth he’s been unwilling to face for some time. A truth he had been forced to look upon when Kit’la fought as if possessed by some unseen force. A truth he had seen when she stood, hand outstretched, crushing the very life force out of that man.

She, like the Child, is a Jedi. Which means that soon he will lose her, too.

He looks down at her body on the bed, quiet, peaceful. She looks just as she did before he met her, cast in the chrome of the carbonite. He almost wishes that she had remained there.

Almost.

“What are you giving her?” he asks the med droid as it pushes another dose of something into the tubing attached to the cuff on her arm. It seems unperturbed by his presence.

“Bacta booster. This will continue to repair the damage to her brain.”

“You mean her central processing unit?”

The med droid turns and regards him with blank eye monitors. “Please repeat the question.”

“Never mind.” Mando looks around for a chair, finds none and settles on the ground instead, leaning his back up against the wall. This is supposedly the best hospital Mos Eisley has to offer - according to Peli, at least - but to him, it looks worn and outdated. The walls are sandstone, the floors little better, and the equipment, including the med droid, is old and well-used. For any other facility that might be a badge of honor, but in an infirmary, it just makes Din wonder about sanitization. Or lack thereof.

Still, Kit’la is stable, breathing, alive. If unconscious.

Din lets his head fall back, his helmet resting against the rough rock behind him. At some point, he closes his eyes; not quite asleep, not quite dozing, he waits until he hears the door open and the doctor enters to check on his patient. 

Instantly awake, Din rises to his feet, approaching the side of the bed. Kit’la sleeps still, the steady beeping of the monitors unchanged.

“Mr. Mandalorian,” the doctor greets without looking up from the digital chart as he examines her vitals in real-time. He does hunch his shoulders a little bit when Mando circles around him to peer over his arm at the readouts.

“How is she?’

The doctor clears his throat and moves away without trying to make it too obvious he’s doing so. “She sustained a hairline skull fracture. Could have been worse. There was some intracranial bleeding and swelling but that seems to be going down now.” The doctor peers over the top of the screen at his patient. “The bacta spray worked a treat. The damage to her visual cortex should see swift improvement as well.”

Din blinks as he processes this. “Wait. You mean - when she wakes up, she’ll be able to see?”

“Oh, mostly,” the doctor shrugs, waggling a hand noncommittally. “Maybe not as clearly as you or I, but the bacta should have repaired that particular problem as well as the crack in her head.”

Mando lets out a breath. He’s not sure he believes him, but it’s better news than he expected. “She...she lost her memory. Will the bacta fix that, too?”

The physician shrugs again, looking unsurprised. “I don’t know. Carbonite freezing tends to affect the connections between the brain cells-”

“What?” Mando straightens in surprise, wincing as the movement pulls at his aching ribs. “I never said anything about carbonite.”

The doctor gives him a deprecatory look. “I’m a doctor,” he explains, as if to a child; Mando bristles but still listens, begrudging. “I’ve seen the effects long-term carbonite freezing can have on the body, and this is a textbook case. The loss of sight, the memory-”

“Long term…” Din repeats, remembering the state of her carbonite pod. He had assumed it was just an old unit, used and reused until it fell apart, but what if -  “ How long term?” he demands to know, stepping forward towards the somewhat unsettled doctor again.

“It’s hard to say without more precise equipment, but...twenty years at the least, forty at the most - she could tell us, if she remembered. Unfortunately memory loss is a common side-effect from the few long term cases I’ve seen.”

Din swallows, stunned by all this. He’s not sure what to think, to feel.

On the one hand, Kit’la is going to be okay , and his relief is immeasurable - but on the other, she’s quite possibly a space wizard with unknowable powers, she might be getting her sight back, and she’s also probably around sixty years old.

He feels as if he took a harder hit to the head, himself. He rubs his helmet, checking for dents.

“Okay. I don’t need to know the details. Just tell me: Will she get her memory back? Yes or no ?”

The physician shakes his head. “Like I said, I have no idea. I'm a doctor, not a fortune-teller. To be honest, it’s remarkable she remembers how to walk and talk at the same time without drooling. She may remember something - or nothing at all. Only time will tell."

Mando stares at him through the mask of the visor. The doctor coughs, shifting from foot to foot, suddenly nervous again.

“You could let nature take its course and see how she goes,” he says, then leans in a little, dropping the volume of his voice, “Or you could speed things up a bit with some e-bacta.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Din favours him a continued eyeless stare. “E-bacta? Isn’t that illegal?” 

“I think the technical term is ‘unapproved for general use’,” he replies, then tries for a conspiratorial look. “Mr. Mando, you are a bounty hunter who just killed over a dozen pirates and nobody in this town cares. Illegal drugs are the least of your problems. It’s up to you, naturally. I’d recommend a course of six shots over a three-week period. Here’s your price.”

Mando looks at the screen the man holds out for him for only a second. “Increase the vials to nine and throw in some healing gel and I won’t tell the New Republic marshals what you’re doing here.”

The doctor is aghast. “You’re blackmailing me?”

“I think the technical term is ‘extorting’, but yeah. I am.”

“I should toss you and the girl out right now-” the physician begins, shaking with anger and fear. Mando looks at him dispassionately as his knuckles whiten around the edge of the chart.

“You won’t,” he says.

“And why not?”

Suddenly, he has a tower of Beskar filling his vision, towering over him. The helmet looms inches away, no way to tell what snarl of rage or hideous manifestation of anger could be hiding beneath it. “Because if you do, I'll kill you.”

Din leans back, watches the doctor tremble and sputter for a moment, his gaze dancing between the Mandalorian and the unconscious girl on the bed and the extremely unhelpful med droid.

“Fine,” he says at last, shoving the chart into Mando’s chest as he storms towards the door. “But after this, I never want to see you in my hospital again!” The med droid follows, clanking slightly.

“Good,” the Mandalorian says, mostly to himself. “Not planning on needing to come back.”

He glances down at the girl on the bed. She hasn’t so much as twitched, lying quietly save for the sound of her deep, even breaths. When he looks closer, he can see her eyes moving beneath the lids. He’s no doctor, but he thinks that’s a good sign.

He reads her chart, partly to pass the time until she wakes, partly to make sure the injuries aren’t any worse than what the doctor stated. At first glance, everything seems fine, but there’s more there than Din expected.

From what he can make out of the medical jargon, the scars on her back are far newer than that of her hands. The chart suggests evidence of bacta-assisted healing on the latter but not the former.

It raises more questions than answers. Din wonders, with a sick feeling in his stomach, if the scars are the result of some form of Jedi training. He thinks of the Child, trusting brown eyes looking over a shoulder as he’s carried away to an unknown future. The screen creaks and threatens to crack in his suddenly too-tight grip, and he forces himself to put down the chart.

On the bed, the girl stirs.

Her eyelids flutter as if she’s struggling against a great weight to open them. Din hesitates, his first instinct to reach for her hand - but instead he just watches, and waits. 

A moment later, her wide, dark eyes open and fix on his visor.

“Kit?” he asks cautiously, stepping closer. She blinks, drawing a breath, a crease forming between her brows as she shrinks back from him. “Kit’la?”

“Din?” She sounds muddy, confused, and her eyes are unfocused. Or are they? “What - where am I?”

“A hospital in Mos Eisley. Peli’s recommendation. Decor’s not much to look at but I hear the food is great.”

She doesn’t laugh. She swallows, looking up at him. No, not just looking - seeing .

He draws a breath, forcing himself to ask.

“Can you...You can see me?” 

Her hand lifts, and he watches it as her fingers loom closer, brushing the side of his helm. For a moment, he closes his eyes, imagining the touch not on the cold metal but on the warmth of his cheek. Just for a moment.

“You’re shinier than I expected,” she says, her voice nearer a whisper than not, but a hint of her spark has returned, coloring her tone with a smile. Her lips are pale as the scarred corner lifts.  He clears his throat uncomfortably as her fingers trace the concave line next to his visor, and reaches up - at last -  to take her hand, his glove eclipsing her scarred olive skin.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Her eyes cloud with something he doesn’t recognize, drifting away from him. “No,” she says. He pictures the anguish on her face as she stretched out her hand, squeezing - and for the first time, he doesn’t believe her.

He lets go of her hand, and her expression is confused as he steps back.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“You killed six men,” he says flatly. “Maybe a seventh. I didn’t stick around to see what happened to him.”

She stiffens, her whole body tight with sudden tension. Her gaze retreats from him, turning inward, and she lifts her hands, looking at them without seeing them.

“I knew you were in trouble,” she says slowly. “I just remember... knowing that. Knowing that I needed to find you. The rest is all a blur.”

“Is it?” She looks up at him again, frowning at what she finds - or doesn’t find - in the reflection of his helmet.

“You think I’m lying?”

“I don’t think you’re telling the whole truth.”

The girl recoils as if struck. He feels guilt as he looks at her, her face turned away from him, lips pressed together, her eyes narrowed against a gathering of moisture at their corners. But he forges on, regardless, because he needs to.

“Are you a Jedi?” he asks. It’s a question he can no longer dance around and pretend isn’t important, because it is. More important than...than how he feels about her. 

Some part of him asks why ?. He doesn’t have an answer.

Either way, she doesn’t seem surprised. She shakes her head slowly, looking up at him again. Her jaw is set, defiant. An echo of the Kit’la he knows. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Should I?”

“Yes. I have no reason to lie.”

“Besides the fact that the Jedi and Mandalorians are ancient enemies?”

“I’m not your enemy, Din,” she says, sounding worn and tired. “I’m just - me.”

“And who are you?”

She opens her mouth to speak when the door whooshes open, and the doctor enters flanked by two men - guards, by the look of them, armed with blasters and mean expressions. Mando draws his own blaster but keeps it lowered to his side as the doctor shoves a bag at him. He takes it and looks inside. Sitting on top of a bundle of Kit’la’s old clothes are nine hypoinjectors and a couple of packets of bacta gel.

“Your supplies,” the physician says, and then looks at Kit’la. “Good - now that she’s awake, you can take her and go.” He disconnects the cuff from her arm and moves to help her to her feet, but Din intercepts quickly. The guards bristle but at a gesture from the doctor they keep their weapons lowered, allowing the Mandalorian to loop Kit’s arms over his shoulders and help her slide her legs out of the bed.

She protests weakly, but her system is still too full of the drugs for her to move entirely under her own power. Her bare feet slip and stumble on the stone floor, and Din ends up half-carrying, half-dragging her from the hospital, bag clutched under his arm. Without looking back.

One step at a time, Din thinks to himself. They just need to make it back to Hangar Three-Five and then...then he’ll decide what to do with her.

And himself.

Chapter Text

“What did you do to piss that guy off?” 

The girl hangs from his shoulder as they make their way down the shadowy Mos Eisley street. Lit by a lamp here and there, it’s mostly dark, and this edge of the city is far away enough from the bustle and hubbub of the markets that it’s quiet - but not the same sinister quiet of the alley full of trash.

“Let’s just say I had to do some...aggressive negotiating,” Mando answers shortly, keeping an eye on their surroundings for any potential pursuers. They seem to be in the clear. This time.

“You’re good at that,” Kit mutters. Her steps are getting steadier, more confident until finally she lets go of his shoulder. “I can walk.”

The bacta is working, he thinks as he watches her stand unaided next to him. She still reaches out an arm, her fingers running across the nearest wall out of habit. She looks around in wonder, taking everything in as if she’s never seen it before.

Of course, she hasn’t.

She stops by a street lamp, staring up into the light as it weaves a golden glow through her hair. The thin hospital gown she wears is almost translucent, but she barely seems to notice. She watches fat moths play, bumping into the bulb with soft fizzing sounds, and Din Djarin’s heart aches as she smiles. 

Or maybe it’s just his sore ribs.

“Come on. Let’s keep moving,” he says, reaching out to take her by the shoulder. She shrugs him off, and normally he wouldn’t care - but the way she avoids looking at him, the defensive hunch to her shoulders sets his teeth on edge.

They trudge back to Peli’s hangar in silence. The mechanic is waiting for them, sitting near the BTL with a rifle across her knees, her DUM-droids jumping up to alert her of their presence as they step towards her.

“Oh, thank the Force!” she exclaims as she spots Kit’la, and it’s her she bustles over to, taking her face in her hands and looking her up and down for signs of damage. “When Mando brought you back here bleeding from your noggin’, I thought you were done for!”

“I’m fine, Peli,” Kit’la says, smiling as she pats the older woman’s shoulder. Technically, Din supposes they might even be the same age - the thought makes his head spin.

“She get a clean bill of health? Old Doc Bones fix her up okay?” Peli asks the Mandalorian, who shrugs.

“Fixed her head and her eyes, but his bedside manner left something to be desired.”

“I told you his was the best hospital in Mos Eisley - Don’t tell me you waved a gun in his face,” the mechanic frowns sternly at him, letting go of Kit to put her hands on her hips.

“No. I just threatened to kill him.”

“You-” she begins, then sighs and throws up her hands in defeat. “Should’ve known. Gonna have to pay him extra next time I need a burn fixed or a bone set. Damned Mandalorians.” She looks at the both of them, taking in Kit’la’s swaying and the soot and dirt-smeared state of Mando’s armor. “Well, you can’t stay in that garbage scow tonight. You’ve both been through the wringer. I’ll put you up for the night.”

“That’s not necessary-” Mando begins, but Kit interrupts.

“Thank you, Peli. We appreciate it.” She glares sideways at Din, who shrugs. “See? He appreciates it.”

“C’mon, then.”

Peli leads them into what amounts to little more than a storage area stacked with crates of components in various states of repair or disrepair, but there’s space on the floor. “You can stay here,” she says to Mando. “Kit can take my bunk.”

“Oh, I couldn’t-”

“You’re still healing. I won’t hear any arguments,” the engineer insists, pointing a finger at her.

“Neither will I,” Din chimes in, and against both of them, she stands no chance. She sighs, deflating a little. 

“Fine. I don’t suppose you got my clothes back from the doctor before you tried to throttle him?”

Mando rummages in the bag he was given and hands them over. Kit’la nods, but stops short of thanking him. She hesitates for a moment, her eyes on his visor, before she turns to follow Peli. 

Din surveys the space around him. One exit, leading into Peli’s control room then into the hangar proper. Defensible. He shuts the door - it only locks from the outside. No point. He debates dragging a crate in front of it but decides against it, just in case something happens and he needs to rush out with his blaster drawn.

He spreads his cloak across the floor and takes off the Rising Phoenix, setting it down within arm’s-reach, along with the spear, his belt, his blaster and the darksaber. He hesitates a moment longer, glancing back at the door before he removes his helmet.

His clothes, his armor all stink of blood and smoke, a smell which comes into sharp relief without the barrier of the helmet’s filters. At least the scent of burning trash has faded. He strips the armor off piece by piece, setting it aside in a careful pile. He has to sit down on the edge of a crate, fighting through the pain lancing through his side in order to lift his shirt over his head.

His left side is a mottled mess of red-purple bruises, almost black in places. He touches his ribs gingerly, wincing as agony shoots through him. He forces himself to probe harder, feeling through the swelling for the misshapen lumps of broken bones. Two busted that he can feel - nowhere near the worst he’s had, but the pain still makes him dizzy.

Din reaches for the bag of medical supplies Doc Bones gave him, tearing open a pack of bacta gel with his teeth. The blue goo is cool and soothing at first as he spreads it over his skin, but the tingle and sting of cellular repair burns as the substance sinks in.

Groaning a little, he sinks onto the floor and lies back on his cloak. With the pain of knitting bones stabbing him in the side, sleep proves elusive. He lies there, picturing Kit’la’s face turned away from him, her gaze distant.

He feels like she’s slipping away from him before his very eyes and there’s nothing he can do about it.

On that thought, he drifts off into a fitful, dreamless slumber, two pairs of dark eyes haunting him.

---

Kit follows Peli into a small room, barely more than an alcove, stuffed to the brim with blueprints and tools. It looks like just another extension of her workspace, but there’s an order to it that she can almost see if she concentrates, speaking to a shrewd, busy mind. 

Kit’la is still too unused to be seeing at all that her depth perception is all off - she bumps into a shelf, knocking a collection of spanners onto the floor; she yelps and jumps back, apologizing profusely.

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Peli assures her. “Look, just sit down, will ya? You’re making me dizzy, standing there swaying like a polta-bean pole.” She gestures to the bunk, which looks surprisingly inviting and neat with several folded, hand-knitted blankets. Kit sinks down onto its surface gingerly, glad to find it softer than the mattress on the Kom’rk.

“Thank you,” she says. She’s not sure if it’s the remnants of the drugs in her system, the confrontation with the Mandalorian or the lingering ache in her head and eyes, but before she can stop it, tears are slipping down her cheeks, hot and stinging.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Peli says, kneeling in front of her and reaching up to wipe the moisture from her cheek with a callous-roughtened hand. “No need to thank me. I’m just...doin’ my part. I felt it as soon as I saw you, y’know. You’re special.”

“I’m not,” she sniffs. “I don’t want to be.”

“None of us do,” the older woman tells her. “But we’re all a part of somethin’ bigger, whether we like it or not.” She squeezes her shoulder, and Kit’la is reminded of a warm, soft voice from long ago, a whisper in her memory. She offers a small, wavering smile.

“Thanks, Peli.”

“Don’t mention it. Now - give me those clothes. They smell like the bottom of a bantha pen.” Kit nods, pausing only to take the crystal from her trouser-pocket before she hands the worn garments over. 

“What’s that?”

“It’s a...good-luck charm,” she explains haltingly. “Something to light up the darkness.” 

“Well, you keep that close, then,” the mechanic says, rising to her feet. “I’ll let you get some rest. These’ll be clean and dry by the time you wake up.”

Kit nods again, waiting until she’s gone and the door closes behind her before she curls up on her side on the bunk. She wraps her hands tightly around the softly glowing crystal. It offers no comfort besides its warmth in her cupped palms. She slips it under the pillow and closes her eyes.

She feels lightheaded, and the ache in her temples has yet to subside. Her eyes hurt, and as wonderful as it is to be able to see again, it’s blurry, hard to keep in focus, like the few scraps of memories blowing round in her rattled brain. It’s too much all at once, and she yearns for the simplicity of oblivion, of ignorance, of waking up knowing nothing but the deep, rough voice of the Mandalorian and the reassurance of his arms.

She’s lost that, and instead gained - what? A past full of pain and failure, of struggle and suffering that she can’t even fully comprehend?

Octavea, she remembers. Tavea. Tavi. My name is Tavi. It doesn’t sound like her or feel like her. It was like watching a holo of someone else. Stolen moments from a stranger’s life, seen through her own eyes. She can no more relate to the young, failed apprentice in the infirmary wrapped in bandages than she can to the wounded, broken woman bleeding in the raider’s tent. She is somehow both but neither, connected yet apart from herself.

It’s slipping away from her already, fading like a dream in the first moments of consciousness. The memories blend together, melting into a singular symphony of pain and loss.

She wishes she remembered none of it. She wishes she remembered more.

She spends hours trying to sleep, lying in Peli’s comfortable bed, but it’s like her bacta-infused brain is unable to rest. Eventually she gets up, wrapping one of the blankets around herself, and wanders from the room. Everything wobbles and tilts, her world spinning on its axis, and it’s easier to just close her eyes and feel her way around like before, guided only by her instincts.

She comes up against a door, reaching out to slide it open, and steps inside. It’s not the door to the outer bay, though - no, she’s inside a bigger room, dark and silent but for the soft sound of snoring.

Kit opens her eyes. It’s pitch black, reminding her of her old, sightless world, one she almost longs to return to. She can feel the space around her - it’s almost too easy now - and the reassuring warmth of a well-known presence; the source of the snoring. She steps towards it, light on her bare feet, dodging around crates and boxes, getting closer and closer until -

The Mandalorian surges to his feet all at once, going from prostrate and sleeping to upright and awake with almost no transition in between. He grabs her by the throat and pushes her up against a stack of crates, and she gasps as her shoulders impact the hard plastic wall, rattling the heavy containers. 

In the darkness, he stares at her, and her eyes fail to adjust, night-blind and searching for the glint of reflected light on his armor. There is nothing.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice roughened by sleep and - something else. He sounds unfamiliar in a way she can’t define. His bare hand loosens on her throat and finally lets go after too long, not long enough, but he doesn’t step away.

“I don’t know,” she says breathlessly. “I just...I didn’t want to be alone.”

“Go back to bed,” he tells her. He moves to turn away, but she surprises herself when she reaches out to grab his shoulder. It’s even more of a shock when she realizes it’s bare , her fingers closing over warm, muscled flesh instead of cold Beskar.

She doesn’t let go. “No,” she says, and he stops. “I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.”

“About what?” he asks, and then she realizes why he sounds different - he hasn’t got his helmet on, either. It’s the first time she’s heard his raw, unfiltered voice, and there’s something softer and rougher about it at the same time, something that lifts the hair on the back of her neck, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on the fact. She needs to get through to him. 

She needs to tell him the truth.

“You know what. You think I’ve been lying to you.” She forces it out, having to concentrate not to stumble over her own words. “You think I’m some kind of - of evil space wizard and I’m here to tell you I’m not, I-

“Kit’la-” He tries to interrupt, but it’s too late. The dam has burst and the words are rushing out of her.

“-I remembered something while I was unconscious, but I’m not what you think I am, and I need you to know that, I need you to know that before you get rid of me.”

“Get rid of you?” Din sounds...furious; she’s never heard him so angry before, not even when he fights. He rounds on her, crowding her up against the crates again, and if she wasn’t so terrified she might have been able to marvel at the feel of his warm breath on her face, the feel of his skin beneath her fingers, but instead all she can do is cower. “Get rid of you? Are you insane?”

“I-”

“I have not protected you all this time just to let you go,” he growls, and she is ashamed by the visceral response his voice and proximity prompts in her, the feeling that manifests itself as a fluttering in the pit of her stomach and a weakness in her knees. “Jedi or not, I have meant every word that I have ever said to you.”

“I don’t understand...”

“Dank farrik, Kit’la, I won’t lose you, too.” He hisses the words from between clenched teeth, so close she can almost see the outline of his face in the gloom. “I already had to give up the foundling and I will not allow you to be taken from me - not by a kriffing Jedi, not by scum-sucking pirates, not by anyone. You’re mine. ” He stops, panting, and she feels his sudden guilt, his hesitation, his worry that he’s gone too far.

She reaches up, and he stills utterly when she touches the side of his face, as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t wearing the helmet. But he doesn’t pull away. He stays there, still and silent, as her fingers trail over his cheek, across his jaw, patchy stubble scratchy beneath her fingertips, and it’s a moment before she remembers to breathe.

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” she whispers. “I want to stay with you.”

His exhalation of breath is a broken stutter that pools warmth against her forehead. Before she can react, he reaches out, wrapping his arms around her, and pulls her to him; she is crushed against the heat of his chest, feeling his strength and resolve crumble as she returns the embrace.

He pulls back, and there’s a moment of maybes, of better-nots and shouldn’ts, before inevitability wins out and they crash together like asteroids colliding in the darkness of space. His lips meet hers and it’s awkward, and messy, neither of them finding the right angle to keep their noses and teeth from clashing - but it is, at the same time, utterly perfect.

They find their rhythm when Din curls his hand around the back of her head and holds her still, tilting his chin to slot his lips flush to hers. The drag of his tongue begging permission to enter her mouth almost sends her to her knees. She parts her lips to allow him access and he seems almost surprised - shy at first, the tip of his tongue a flicker across the edge of her teeth until she meets it with hers and then, then he is widening his jaw and surging into her mouth with vigor.

Din tastes like the bite of metal and the bright tang of oxygen, like cordite and the blaze of the particles in the center of a dying star. There are breaks in the kiss only to breathe, and he’s tugging her bottom lip between his teeth, his stubble rasping against her chin even as she gasps in great lungfuls. He is like a man dying of thirst trying to drown himself in her; he consumes her and she, him.

Kit’la wants to touch his face, to run her fingers through his hair, trace the shell of his ear and the arch of his eyebrow, but she doesn’t dare; she doesn’t want to scare him off. As if that would even be possible. His hands are all over her, grabbing and groping everywhere he can reach, and she is putty in his fingers, soft and pliable and melting between the hardness of his body and the crates behind her.

Din growls into her mouth when he palms her ass and realizes she’s wearing nothing beneath the thin hospital gown, and the thrust of his tongue matches the shove of his hips up against her stomach. Without the belt Kit can clearly feel how hard he is already and it makes her dizzy with arousal. She groans, her mouth wet with their combined saliva and her cunt almost as damp - just from this.

It only serves to make her braver, and she lets her hands rest against his chest; there are scars outside the edges of where his breastplate would be, but she has no time to map them as he reaches around to grab her ass and lifts her with a grunt of effort. Her legs circle his waist automatically, and he hisses in pain as her knee brushes his side, but he doesn’t stop. Instead he grinds up into her and she feels her face flush at the stain she’s sure to leave on the front of his pants. He doesn’t seem to care - he rolls his hips against her like he’s trying to fuck her right through the fabric. 

He kisses her again as if he’s trying to suck the very air from her lungs, and suffocating has never felt so good. He licks his way into her mouth and she is powerless, replete with the feel of him. She needs him like she needs to breathe. 

After only a moment - or maybe it’s hours - of kissing him, of drinking him in, she drags her fingers down his chest and over the lean muscles of his abdomen which jump beneath her touch. She feels his fingers dig into her ass as she works the button and zip of his pants open. His cock springs free almost without effort.

He needs no further encouragement. Nudging his hips forward, Din notches the weeping head of his cock against her entrance and waits only for the answering arch of her spine before he presses forward and begins to split her open. She is already wet enough that it is a smooth, sweet slide home. 

It was incomparable the first time and it is transcendent now. It’s as if she can feel every pulsing vein, every velvet inch of his cock sliding into her. It’s too fast for her to savor and too slow for her to relish all at once, and she doesn’t mind one bit.

He uses his grip on her rear and presses her shoulders into the crates for leverage, pulling back and thrusting into her to the hilt again, and then again. His pubic bone compresses her clitoris with each thrust and it’s enough to make her whimper brokenly, her lips sliding away from his and across his cheek. He releases a burst of air against her neck, and there Din buries his mouth, his stubble rubbing the sensitive skin raw as the points of his teeth scrape her pulse.

Her fingers are in his hair before she even realizes it, but he doesn’t stop her - his only sound is a broken groan against her neck as Kit’la grabs handfuls of the thick locks. Distantly, in the part of her brain that can still think, she wonders what color it is, and then decides she really doesn’t care.

The Mandalorian fucks her like his life depends on the fluttering squeeze of her pussy around him and she’s eager to oblige, her legs tight around his waist. Her grip tightens on his hair in tandem with the clench of her inner walls, and she whimpers his name in a desperate refrain - half-warning, half-begging. He speeds the snap of his hips, grunting into her neck, bruising his grip into her skin. 

Kit’la clutches him to her as her orgasm hits with the inevitability of a storm, thighs trembling, toes curling, back arching; it sets her marrow afire and her nerves aflame, searing through her with the force of an inferno and leaves her as ash and dust in its wake.

Din mumbles in broken Mando’a against her sweat-slicked skin, chest heaving against hers, words equally sweet and filthy, and she draws him close and deep into her as he pins her hips to the crates behind her with one final thrust and comes, gasping. Even through the seismic shocks earthing in her bones she feels him pulse and jerk inside her, liquid warmth filling her every hollow and edge until she’s completely, utterly full up with him. 

Finally they still, gasping together. Kit doesn’t realize her eyes were closed until she opens them again, and spots dance in her vision, the darkness of the room swimming in her focus.

Din is the first to move, loosening his grip on her ass and lifting his head. She releases his hair, gently, hoping she hadn’t pulled too hard. He rests his forehead to hers for a moment and she feels wetness on her face - she’s not sure if it’s her tears or sweat, or his.

“Gar’ner , cyare,” he murmurs, and she strokes his temples, his jaw. She feels the muscles clench beneath her fingers. “My Kit’la.”

“Tavi,” she whispers. She feels, rather than sees him raise his eyebrows. “My name was Tavi.”

He’s silent for a moment, then he presses his lips to the corner of hers, over the scar. “Nice to meet you, Tavi,” he rumbles, and her answer is a tired, fond chuckle

He lets her legs down slowly, and she frowns at the rush of fluid that leaves her and stains her thighs. She stands and presses them together, wanting to keep every particle of him inside her for as long as possible.

Kit feels unsteady on her feet as she stands, leaning into his broad chest for support; Din holds her shoulders, strokes her back, resting his chin on the top of her head.

“I should go...clean up,” she says after a moment, when she feels as if she can move under her own power again. But, to her surprise, the Mandalorian’s grip on her tightens.

“I thought you wanted to stay.”

“Yes, but…” She trails off. But what?  “Yes.”

The floor covered with just Mando’s cloak shouldn’t be as comfortable as it is. Stretching out with him next to her, they could have been lying on bare stone and she wouldn’t care. It is perfect.

Din is the one to pull her close - he turns on his side and loops an arm over her waist, resting his head on her chest. Her heart feels full to bursting as she curls her arm around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair. He sighs deeply, the tension leaving his limbs as he nuzzles her neck with the strong line of his nose, presses his lips to her collarbone.

She drifts, at peace, her mind blissfully blank, her body aching in all the best ways. She’s almost asleep when the buzz of Din’s voice against her neck makes her stir.

“It means beloved.”

“What?” She wonders if she dreamed it, but he speaks again, sounding sleepy and content, perhaps for the first time since she’s met him.

“Cyare. It means beloved.”

In the dark, Kit smiles, and turns her face away so she doesn't get his hair damp with her tears.

Chapter Text

The scars on her hands have long since faded from angry red to faint, pink lines that criss-cross her knuckles and fingers with no discernible pattern. They turn white when she clenches her fists, spider-webs woven across her hands from memories of pain and failure.

She closes her eyes and tries again. The Force flows around her, a nearly tangible thing, so close she can almost reach out and touch it - but it is as if her mind itself recoils when she tries, cringing back, afraid.

Eventually, she opens her eyes and looks at the gray-robed figure sitting across from her in the grass. Every day they come here, to this peaceful grove among the yellow grass under a pink sun, and every day she tries what should be as easy as breathing:lifting the crystal with her mind. And yet, every day she fails.

She feels as if she is missing a part of herself. It’s like she has lost a leg and has been told to walk unaided without it.

It took weeks to recover from the injuries she sustained from her capture, both physical and spiritual, and still she does not feel whole yet. Her back still aches sometimes, when the weather turns to storms and thunder. And the Force continues to elude her. 

“I can’t do it,” she says, feeling an exhaustion that goes deeper than the scars, deeper than her flesh, deeper than her bones.

The gray-robed figure tilts her head. “Nothing is impossible if you try.”

“I am trying. It’s just not working. My emotions are getting in the way.”

“You are too quick to accept failure, Padawan.” The gray Jedi is a woman, far taller than she, only a few years her senior. Yet she speaks with the wisdom of ages that reminds her far too much of her old master. Her heart pangs. 

“I told you. I’m not a Padawan any more. I failed the Trials, too.”

“No. The only thing you failed was understanding that your path to the Force lies not through forgetting emotion, but embracing it,” the woman explains patiently, not for the first time. Tavi shakes her head, leaning back on her hands in the grass, fighting down frustration.

“That’s not true. I spent years learning to temper my feelings, my emotions, in order to strengthen my connection to the Force. It’s the first line of the Jedi code! There is no emotion, there is peace .”

“There is no peace without passion to create,” the woman counters with a challenging eyebrow raised. “Without emotion, we would be without focus, without heart. Emotion is what drives us. To suppress it is not to control it. We must accept it. It is the core of who we are.”

“Who you are?” Tavi repeats, shaking her head. She still doesn’t know. Doesn’t even know what planet this is, what system. After the gray-robed Force users whisked her away from the raiders’ camp, her recollection is a blur - the inside of a ship, a base, the room where she spent most of her time healing. Different voices, different faces, all shrouded in gray. Then, this woman, leading her to this grove every day before dawn to meditate, bringing her back just after dusk. “I don’t even know what you are. Who are you?”

“I suppose it’s time you knew.” The woman stands, pacing slowly before her, hands clasped beneath the long sleeves of her robe. “We are a people who believe that there is more to the Force than merely a light side or a dark side. We believe that in order to be complete, a Jedi must walk the line between both.”

“There is no line,” Tavi interrupts, astonished. “It’s not possible to straddle some imaginary boundary between the two. To touch the dark side is to be consumed by it! You’re not Jedi at all.”

“You must forget everything you know to be true, Tavi, and feel the truth within you. That is the first step to accepting who you are.”

“And who am I?” she challenges, shaking her head. She wants to get up, to run, to never look back. But she no longer knows where to go. She hasn’t for some time. She remembers her master’s words, what seem like a lifetime ago: The path you walk is yours to choose . But how is she to choose when she doesn’t even know where that path leads any more?

“That’s for you to decide.” 

“Me? I don’t understand!” She surges to her feet, throwing up her hands. “I'm tired of this. I’m tired of failing; of not being good enough! I’m tired of not knowing what is expected of me! I’ve had enough, do you hear me? Enough!” She stops, panting; the sudden surge of emotion has drained her remaining energy reserves utterly.

But strangely, she feels...lighter somehow. As if the weight of frustration has been lifted from her shoulders simply by giving voice to it. Accepting it.

She expects disappointment, scolding, but to her astonishment the woman smiles. “Excellent. You’ve taken the first step. Perhaps now, you can begin to understand.” She draws a deep breath and turns to face her, looking her in the eye to ask her one simple question:

 “What do you want, Tavi?”

“What do I want?” she repeats, slowly, quietly. With a shock of surprise, she realizes that nobody has ever asked her that before. Not once.

What surprises her more, however, is that she already knows the answer.

“I want to never feel helpless, ever again.””

“Good. Then you’re ready.” The woman nods, and holds out her hand. Nestled in its center is her old kyber crystal. It’s still faded, dormant. “Take it. Use the Force - and your feelings.”

She closes her eyes and reaches out. Not with her hands, but with her mind, her emotions. Letting awareness flow, not just around her, but through her. Letting her frustration melt away into determination. Resolution. Certainty . Not ignoring it, but embracing it.

The crystal lifts from the Gray Jedi’s palm and floats to land in hers. It is warm to the touch.

“One day, you will wield a saber again. When you hear its song, you will know you’re ready.” When she opens her eyes, it’s to see her smile. “For now, let’s start again. It’s time to relearn everything you thought you knew.”

Slowly, Tavi nods. “I'm ready,” she says.

“Good. Now wake up. ”

---

Tavi wakes with a start, opening her eyes to darkness and a heavy weight on her chest. For a moment, she panics, before the recollections filter through her jumbled mind. Memories slot into place in chronological order, pushing back the reminder of years ago and replacing it with the remembrance of yesterday. She relaxes slowly, breathing in deep the scent of sweat and skin - belonging both to her and to the body draped over her.

Din Djarin snores softly, his face pressed to her breast, the thin fabric of her hospital gown slightly damp from his saliva. He lies half over her, his arm tight around her waist, one leg tangled with hers, making it impossible to move much more than her arms. One is looped around him, her hand resting on his bare shoulder; she moves it to the back of his head, stroking his hair which feels damp and heavy with perspiration. 

The dream lingers, the smell of grass and the feel of the open sky, directly proportional to this closed-in, dusty space in the semi-darkness. It feels for a moment as if she’s in two places at once; as if she’s two people at once, both of them floundering and searching for their identity at two different ends of a spectrum. It settles quickly, the ache of satisfaction in her limbs weighing her down, pressing all her worries into a soft, snug space where she feels, for perhaps the first time in her life, safe .

Tavi lies there for a while, enjoying the stillness and the quiet, broken only by Din’s rumbling exhalations against her chest. His helmet must have filtered out the sound the last time she slept beside him, she thinks with amusement. The knowledge that the Mandalorian snores is one she’ll take gladly to her grave.

She can see a little better than last night, the light filtering in from under the closed door painting the shadows a burnt umber. The pain in her head and eyes is sharper, though; the bacta has no doubt worn off by now. It makes her doubly unwilling to move, to stir the sleeping man nuzzled against her breast as if he belongs there.

He ends up stirring on his own, smacking his lips and yawning in such a human way that it makes her smile. It’s strange to see him like this, stripped of his armor and the pretense that he is nothing more than a tower of Beskar and violence. She has glimpsed him through the cracks many times, but it is such a raw, exposed moment that she feels honor-bound to look away from his face when he lifts his head.

“Good morning,” he says, and his voice is like honey over sandpaper, scouring away all her rough edges. Tavi turns her head, directing her gaze at a nearby pile of crates, and clears her throat.

“Good morning.”

“What’s wrong?” Evidently, he’s noticed the very deliberate way with which she’s not looking at him.

“Your, uh, your Mandalorian thing,” she explains hastily, wondering if he’s forgotten - can he forget? “You haven’t put your helmet back on. Should I close my eyes, or-?”

“No.” The blur of his head shakes back and forth in the corner of her vision. “It’s fine. You can look.”

Nervously, she does. His face is defined by soft shadows and sharp angles. The strong line of his jaw is dusted with patchy stubble, stubble she felt scraping her skin mere hours before. Then there's the aquiline bridge of his nose, a nose she remembers feeling pressed to her neck as he clutched her tight. And his mouth - well, she would be hard-pressed to forget that. As she watches, his tongue darts out to wet his dry lips, and she swallows heavily. There’s a crease formed between his brows, and he looks almost as nervous as she.

“Hi,” she says, her voice small. 

“Hi.” 

There’s a silence between them that stretches into awkwardness, and Tavi finds her gaze wandering down his neck, lingering on his collarbones, his shoulders. Din clears his throat, and she flicks her attention back up to his face.

“I’m - sorry, about last night,” he says slowly, frowning. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

“You didn’t,” she rushes to say, reaching up on instinct to touch his cheek. He stills like he did before, looking like a cornered animal not knowing what to do next, and she lets her hand drop - until he grabs it with his own and presses her palm flat to the side of his face. 

“I’m just not used to - to this,” he explains, with a firmer press of his hand over hers. “But I meant what I said.”

She nods, not trusting herself to speak. She strokes his jaw, and his eyes drift closed.

“You’re not what I expected,” she admits after a second or two, and Din opens his eyes again, an incomplete smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know,” she muses. “Another helmet, maybe?” That smile flickers again for a second. “I guess I just never really thought about it since I couldn't, well, see.”

“I picked a good time to take the helmet off.” Din chuckles, and the sound earths itself in the pit of her stomach and lifts the hairs on the back of her neck. “Should’ve done this a long time ago.” She becomes aware of his other hand drifting up her side, the fabric of her gown bunching beneath his fingers, and she swallows again.

“So...you’re not going to get into trouble for showing me your face?” She forces herself to ask. She looks over at the helmet, resting neatly atop the pile of his armor, the visor dark and silent.

“By Creed, I should never be allowed to put it back on again,” Din says, following her gaze. Despite his shrug, his tone is heavy, and he looks away quickly. 

Tavi shakes her head vehemently. “By Creed or by Code, we are given only a small measure of our own truth. It should be up to us to decide on the rest.”  

He looks at her for a while, his dark brown eyes searching her face as if seeing her for the very first time. At first she thinks he’s angry, but she can't sense that from him. All she senses is a weariness. A weariness she knows very well. A weariness on the very edge of acceptance.

“Yes,” he says at last, and then he leans down to kiss her.

It’s different, kissing him in the morning instead of the middle of the night. More tangible, somehow. He tastes like the echo of yesterday and the promise of tomorrow, and it electrifies her, prompts her to pull him closer with a hand on his shoulder and a knee urging at the side of his hip.

The Mandalorian rolls on top of her, taking up the space between her legs, bracing himself on his forearms as he tilts his head and urges her to part her lips at the press of his. She does, and the sweet-sour taste of morning breath on their fuzzy tongues mingle as they touch, but it’s by no means unpleasant. They kiss it away with vigor, heads tilted in a dance that’s by now practiced just enough not to have teeth or noses clashing this time. 

It makes it too easy to get carried away, to lose herself in the taste of him, the messy way Din consumes her mouth just as desperate as it had been the night before. Tavi can feel his need as if it’s her own, a burning, almost physical thing driving him onwards, driving her onwards.

“Sweet girl, my cyare,” he whispers in breaks in the kiss, as his lips drag across her cheek. “Need you.”

To hear the Mandalorian - the indomitable bounty hunter covered head to toe in Beskar steel, no weapon too difficult for him to master, no foe to difficult for him to dominate- whispering sweet words in her ear and telling her that he needs her...It's almost too much. It makes her weak with want.

She wants nothing more than to tangle her body with his again, because after all: peace, without passion, is atrophy.

He kisses her cheek, her chin, her neck. The rasp of his stubble is a delicious counterpoint to the softness of his lips and it makes her shiver. 

The hospital gown rides even further up, and she can feel the evidence of last night’s indiscretions sticky on her inner thighs. She hasn’t even had time to clean up, and she thinks maybe once he realizes that, Din will stop long enough for her to visit the latrine, but the possessive growl he utters as he reaches down and swipes his fingers through her sticky folds goes straight to her aching core.

She parts her legs as far as they will go and bites a whimper into her knuckles as Din wastes no time working two fingers into her wet pussy. The moist sounds they make as he draws them back and then plunges forward is sinful. “Still so full of me,” Din murmurs in her ear, utterly overcome by it. He’s practically shaking. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I'm safe,” she assures him quietly, stroking the side of his head. The revelation makes him stiffen, both inside and out, and she feels the hard length of his cock twitching against her inner thigh. "And if we're being perfectly honest with one another - I want you to do it again.” 

He growls into her neck, teeth and tongue seeking, latching onto the sensitive space beneath her ear. It sends a shiver from her spine all the way down to her clenching cunt.

Din wastes no more time positioning himself at her entrance, the blunt head of his cock leaking already. She is still so wet, still so full of his come that it is much easier this time for him to press forward and split her open, his passage aided by the mix of their fluids as he slides all the way in on one delicious thrust. She whispers in his ear, soft little yeses of encouragement that makes him twitch and shudder against her, inside her. Din drags lips and teeth up and over her chin before finding her mouth again, open and gasping. 

He presses his knees into the floor as he thrusts into her, one hand planted beside her head to take his weight. The organic noises generated by their coupling might at any other time be embarrassing, but right now it just spurs him on. Tavi wraps her legs around his waist, hooking her ankles at the small of his back for some leverage to lift and roll her body against his. 

Din lets his other hand wander, to squeeze at her breasts through the thin fabric of the gown, pinching and rolling her nipples as they stiffen to his touch. She cries out softly as the lightning-bolt sharpness of sensation earths in the building tension in her cunt. He grunts into her mouth as she trembles beneath him, and he squeezes his hand lower, between their bodies, seeking the swollen bundle of nerves at the apex of their join.

Tavi cries out again and Din muffles it with his mouth, kissing her moans away as he rubs tight little circles into her clit, and she’s astonished at how quickly she comes undone for him - her orgasm is upon her without her even realizing it was building that quickly. Trembling, it moves through her in an undulating wave, her inner walls contracting around his cock with a surge of sticky moisture at the base of his groin.

Din moves through it, chasing his own release. Still gasping and twitching, Tavi strokes his hair and tightens her thighs around his waist, whispering in his ear words of encouragement, of enticement, of approval. “Yes, Din, that’s it; come for me, please - Just let go -"

Under the power of her words, Din can’t help it. He comes with a gasp, his cock throbbing in the grip of her cunt, spending pulse after pulse of his seed inside her. When he stills, she’s stroking the back of his head and murmuring his name into his ear, soft and comforting, aftershocks still making her muscles twitch and her nerves jump with phantom signals.

She feels utterly full and sated, in every sense of the word. In fact, she would be quite happy to drift off to sleep again right here and now with the Mandalorian still inside her. He seems just as reluctant to move, panting lightly against her neck, most of his weight supported by his elbows on either side of her head and his hips still connected to hers.

“We should probably get up,” she says eventually. Din’s chuckle is utterly broken, stuttered haltingly against her neck. 

“I’m not sure I can move. You’ve destroyed me, cyare.”

“And you, me,” she smiles, running her fingers through his unkempt hair, making it stick up every which-way. “But we can’t stay here forever. As much as I want to.” She wonders if he understands just how badly she wants to remain in this moment, and opens her mouth to tell him so, but then Din lifts his head and his deep brown eyes are knowing as he looks down at her, cupping her chin with his wide hand.

“I do too,” he says, his low, unfiltered baritone going straight through her and making her inner walls flutter around his softening cock. It doesn’t go unnoticed, for a smirk appears at the corner of his mouth. “Forever would be nice.”

“Guess we have to settle for ‘later’?” It’s a question she has been afraid to ask - but now, framed in the context of banter, the brown eyes grow serious as he looks down at her. Then, they soften, and he palms her cheek.

“There will be a lot of opportunities for later. I promise, “ he says, and she bites her lip to keep from clenching too hard at the tone in his voice. 

He leans down to press a comparatively chaste kiss to her mouth as he withdraws his hips. The hospital gown is now fairly ruined with the amount of bodily fluids it’s had on it - better than Peli’s blanket, though. Tavi remembers the engineer’s promise to have her clothes washed and dried by the morning, and her face colours a little when she realizes Peli probably would have found her bunk empty already.

“I’m gonna hit the fresher and check in with Peli,” she says, sitting up and drawing the blanket back around herself. Din sits up as well, slowly. After a moment, and with a hint of reluctance, he reaches for his armor pile and begins to put it all back on, piece by piece. His eyes stay on her the whole time.

“We can talk after?” she asks. “There’s…I’m sure we both have questions..”

“Yes,” he confirms with a tight nod. “We’ll talk after.” But then he grabs her by the hand before she can stand to leave the room and places a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “You’re still my Kit’la,” he tells her in the low voice that makes her knees weak and her stomach shiver, every time.

“I know,” she smiles. “I'm glad."

He lets her go with a smirk, and she tries very hard not to look back as she picks her way back to the door and opens it. Nevertheless, she catches the expression on his face as she turns to shut the door behind her, and it warms her heart.

It’s the first time she’s ever seen Din Djarin truly smile. 

Chapter Text

Din Djarin takes his time putting his armor back on.

His ribs are stiff, mottled with faded yellow bruises thanks to the bacta gel, but it no longer hurts to inhale fully. Nevertheless, the lingering soreness makes pulling his shirt and cuirass over his head a little more cumbersome than usual, and he pauses to catch his breath afterward. He sits, staring at the closed door, letting his thoughts wander.

Tavi. Kit’la. It’s still odd thinking of her as anything except Kit’la, but he respects her memory. What little of it she must have regained, at least. Whoever she is, she is the only - one of the only people in the galaxy to know his true name, his true face. He should find that fact horrifying. He should want to run, leave her behind and hyperjump far from here, never to look back. 

But the Mandalorian has never been the sort to listen to shoulds.

In fact, he finds he’s listening more and more to what he wants . He wanted to tell her his name. He wanted to show her his face. And he sure as hell wanted her last night. This morning. Every minute of every day to come.

And he’ll do anything to make that possible.

Rising to his feet, Mando finishes strapping on the rest of the armor. Last to go on is his helmet, pulled into place over his head, his sight polarized by the visor, the dim room brightening before him.

He thinks he’s given Tavi enough time to clean up. After a minute or two of deliberation, consideration and ending in frustration at his inability to remain alone, he goes in search of her. 

He finds her in Peli’s control room, sitting perched on the edge of a control panel, deep in discussion with the older woman. When Din draws close enough to hear them, his Beskar bulk eclipsing the doorway, they both stop, look up, and laugh.

Underneath the helmet, he feels his face flush, embarrassed without actually knowing why . “What’s going on?”

“Oh, nothin’, nothin’,” Peli chuckles, waving him off. Tavi hides her smile behind a hand clutching a dented metal mug. “Just swappin’ war stories, is all-”

“ War stories?”

“-’bout time you joined us, anyhow. Breakfast? I mean, it’s lunch, technically. You two spent a lot of time...asleep.” The mehanic’s gaze is knowing, and Tavi ducks her head, her blush a whole lot more obvious. “Anyway, I got some hot spotchka fresh off a shipment from some Krill farmin’ planet.”

Din stiffens. “No. Thank you.” He watches the girl swirl the liquid around in her mug and raise her eyebrows at him over the rim as if to say Don’t be rude. He sighs. “...Okay. Fine.” 

“Comin’ right up.” Peli bustles from the room.

He and the girl look at each other awkwardly for a moment. 

“So-”

“I-”

They both start speaking at once, then stop. Tavi sighs, setting her mug aside. It’s then he notices she’s wearing one of Peli’s coveralls over her tunic - they’re of a height, and it fits her surprisingly well. He tries not to stare, then decides she probably can’t tell underneath the visor, so he does it anyway.

“Go on, then. Ask,” she says, folding her arms.

“Ask what?” He tilts his head at her. He honestly doesn’t know where to start.

“You-” She’s interrupted by Peli’s return, holding another mug of spotchka. She takes one look at Tavi’s face, then Mando’s blank visor, their standoffish body language, and her mouth forms a small ‘o’ of surprise.

“I’m just...gonna leave this here for you,” she says, setting the mug on the panel near the Mandalorian. “I’ll go wait for those parts you’re expectin’.”

Mando nods. Peli retreats, backing out, her eyes flicking between the both of them. He waits until she’s gone, out of hearing range, and has stopped peering in above the lip of the windowsill.

“I’m not going to interrogate you,” he tells the girl. He forces himself to drop his arms to his sides, trying to appear non-threatening. Fully armored, naturally looming much taller over her, it doesn’t work very well.

Nevertheless, she seems surprised, her eyebrows lifting again. “You said you had questions.”

“I do. But I’m not going to ask them if it’s going to make you uncomfortable.”

Her expression crumbles, from wary guardedness to open warmth. “Oh, Din,” she murmurs. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“You got yourself frozen in carbonite for twenty years,” he points out - and then instantly wishes he hadn’t.

She doesn’t know. He can see it in her face, in the way her dark eyes widen, in the way the color drains from her cheeks. She reaches out, bracing a hand on the edge of a screen. “Twenty...years?”

He has to tell her. She has to know. He forces himself to keep talking. “Or thirty. The doctor told me while you were under. It’s why...why there was so much damage to your brain. Your sight, your memory.” He gestures to her face with a gloved hand. She stares at it.

For a moment, he thinks she’s going to cry, but then she draws in a breath and lifts her head, and the shiny film gathering in the corners of her eyes is blinked away forcefully. “That makes sense. I guess.”

“Are you angry?” He can’t tell, but he can tell that he doesn’t want her to be. 

Tavi considers. “I don’t know. Numb, I think.” She’s silent for a while, staring down at her hands. Opening and closing her fingers, watching the silvery threads of her scars expand and contract with her skin. 

Din wonders if he should leave her alone. He really doesn’t want to. But he feels like he’s intruding on something, so he turns slowly and heads for the doorway.

“Wait.” He stops short at the sound of her voice and glances over his shoulder. “Will you tell me...about the foundling?”

He turns back to her, blinking beneath the helmet. He’s surprised, surprised enough to be silent for a moment or two, but it’s even more surprising when he finds it easy to speak. The regret that usually compresses his throat, chokes his words into nothingness is there still, but he can force himself past it under the gentle address of her dark gaze.

“...I protected him, for a time,” he begins. “And he protected me. He was a bounty, at first, but I broke the Hunters’ code. I helped him. And while I always knew I would have to...have to say goodbye, give him over to the Jedi to train him, it didn’t make it any easier when the time came.” He realizes his voice is wavering, even through the vocabulator, and he swallows and clears his throat to even it out. “He was like a son to me.”

Din looks up. He’s surprised to see a tear on Tavi’s cheek. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. 

He shrugs. “It’s not your fault.”

“The Jedi will take care of him,” she says then, a firmer tone entering her voice. “If he is strong enough.”

He recalls Grogu’s power. Moving things with his mind. Withstanding impossible forces of nature. Healing the wounded. “I would be more worried about the Jedi not being strong enough to train him.”

Tavi chuckles. “He sounds just like his father.”

Din drops his chin to his chest, looking down at the object he has withdrawn from his bandolier without even realizing it. The control knob is no longer charred, hours spent being rolled between his fingers smoothing its surface back to a silver sheen. “He was.”

He feels Tavi’s hand on his arm then and lifts his gaze. She’s by his side now, looking up at him. “I was a Padawan,” she says softly. “The Jedi trained me when I was a child. But they always said my path lay elsewhere. I guess they were right. I was a teenager when they kicked me out.” 

Blinking in surprise, Din tilts his head curiously. “They kicked you out?” he wonders aloud. “What else do you remember?”

Tavi shrugs, looking down at the control sphere. She doesn’t ask about it. “Not a lot. Flashes, mostly. Faces, places, people. Sometimes names. They’d all be old now, I suppose, or dead.” 

“Is there anywhere in particular you remember that we could go? A planet, a home…?”

“My home isn’t out there,” she replies, and when her dark eyes meet his visor, she smiles. “Not any more.”

Din lifts his hand, brushing the backs of his gloved knuckles over her jaw. The swelling is gone now, only the slightest hint of a bruise remains, and that’s without bacta. He marvels at her ability to heal so quickly. She is resilient, in every sense of the word. 

“How’s your head?” he asks gently, guessing the time for talking about memories has passed. For now. He places the sphere back in his belt.

“Hurts.” She shrugs. “Kind of getting used to it, to be honest.”

“That doctor gave me several doses of e-bacta. It should continue the healing process.” 

“Will it…” She hesitates. “Will it make me remember more?”

Din shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. I think that might be up to you.”

After a moment, she nods, biting her lip. “Okay then.”

“Hey, Mando!” Peli’s voice drifts in from the hangar. “Your delivery’s here! Hope you don’t mind I signed for it. The droids’re loadin’ it up now.”

Mando nods, and turns to Tavi. “I think you should stay here while I go repair the Kom’rk ,” he tells her. She looks ready to argue straight away. “I won’t risk you taking another knock to the head out there.”

“You just said you have a bunch of bacta,” she protests, sticking out her bottom lip. Din fights the urge to laugh.

“You need to stay put for it to work. Doctor’s orders.”

“More like Mando’s orders,” she grumbles. Then sighs. “Fine. How long will you be gone?”

He does a couple of mental calculations. “A few hours there by hyperjump, a day or two to fix the drive, then a few hours back. Maybe three days, max.

“Well, it’s not like I can stop you or tell you not to go,” Tavi shrugs. “Just promise me you’ll come back in one piece.”

He takes her face in both hands and presses his helm to her forehead. “I promise, cyare .”

Her smile is the one he likes, the one that deepens the dimple in her cheek. He traces it with his thumb, wishing he could press one last kiss to her lips before he goes. But that was a sacred moment in time, permissible only in the half-light just after waking, and it has passed now. He settles for the touch of his gloved fingers on her bottom lip, just for a second, before he pulls away.

“Din?”

He pauses one last time, his hand on the doorway. His eyes on her face, over his shoulder.

“May the Force be with you.”

“Maybe you’ll teach me what that means when I get back,” he says, returning her smile, unseen beneath the helmet, before he walks away.

Chapter Text

Soon after Din’s departure, Tavi finds herself restless, anxious. She is the scared, nervous Kit’la of old again - she feels untethered, uncertain what to do with herself, what to feel. She's not sure if it's his absence or the weight of decades she can't remember dragging her down, disconnecting her from the current moment. It's not until Peli brings her back to herself with some well-placed harsh words that she begins to push past it.

“Stop pinin’, girl! It’s unattractive.” The mechanic exclaims eventually, wiping her hands on a rag as she looks up from the components she had been working on and rolls her eyes. “You’ve gotta distract yourself. Here, now you can see, maybe you can be helpful around the place and earn your keep, hm? How are you with power converters?”

And so begins her impromptu apprenticeship. She learns more about ships and droids from Peli in days than she thinks she ever learned while she was in the Order - not that she can remember much of that . Just those few memories, crystallized like holograms taking up bandwidth in her brain. They repeat each night, replaying in hyper-realistic detail, from the smells to the sounds to the sensations - and always, without fail, the pain.

Peli says nothing when she wakes crying. She just strokes her hair and presses a hot mug of spotchka or tea into her hand, and lets her sob on her shoulder until it passes. Tavi feels ashamed, thinking that the woman might assume she is crying over Mando.

He takes longer than three days. And though Peli says it’s good, because she can have the extra pair of hands on for longer, she can tell that the engineer is worried too.

“Is Mando ever on time?” Tavi asks her once, rhetorically, and Peli shakes her head.

“Never. Always has a surprise in tow when he gets back, too. Don't worry about him, kiddo - he can take care of himself." And yet, she still sounds worried.

On the first night, Tavi is cleaning up the workshop when she finds it. A discarded power emitter. It still works, though it’s too low-powered now to be useful for any engine or droid. Nevertheless, she picks it up, asks Peli if she can keep it. “For a project,” she says, although she’s not sure what that project is yet.

She collects other bits and pieces over the next couple of days. Peli sets up a cot for her in the storage room, where the Mandalorian once slept, and she accepts the space gladly. After long hours spent toiling in the hot Tatooine sun, she is glad for somewhere dark and quiet to retreat.

The headaches are getting worse, but she ignores the e-bacta shoved away under the cot. She’s not sure, yet, if she can handle any more memories.

The third night, the night of the Mandalorian’s expected return, she paces the empty hangar bay. Although she was the one who told Peli not to worry, she is kept awake by it, by the same feeling of restlessness that plagued her the first day without him. Peli brings her a mug of tea after a couple of hours, as she stares up at the stars and begins to shiver in the cold night air.

“Go inside,” the older woman tells her kindly. “Get some rest. You’re not goin’ to conjure him out of thin air just by wishin’.”

“I know.” Tavi sighs, accepting the tea gratefully. “Thanks, Peli.”

After that, the days pass quickly. She builds her collection of trinkets, helps the mechanic with repairs, ignores the headaches and weathers the bad dreams. Before she knows it, a week has passed, and still no sign of the Mandalorian.

“Do you think he’s coming back?” she asks, when it becomes too much to bear not to.

Peli looks up from her computer. She seems to hesitate before she answers, as if weighing up the pros and cons of honesty. “I don’t know,” she admits eventually. “But I think so. He cares about you. Not many people I can say that about.”

“Right.” Tavi returns to the old Gonk droid she was trying to fix, and tries not to think about it. Again.

When she sits and meditates at night, reaching out through the Force, she can’t feel him. But neither can she feel that terrible sense of foreboding that tells her something has gone wrong. She feels that he’s safe, for a given value of safe, but she’s not sure if that’s worse. If he’s safe, if he’s okay, why hasn’t he come back to me?  She wonders but doesn’t say it, because it sounds petulant, like a girl in one of Peli’s bad romance holos. 

So she passes the time, and she waits.

One night, as sleep eludes her, the promise of nightmares outweighing the lure of rest, Tavi sits on her cot with her collection of trinkets spread out before her. She’s borrowed a couple of Peli’s hand tools, even though she doesn’t rightly know what she’s doing with them.

Eventually, she picks up a small hand-welder and a magnetic coil, turning them over and over in her scarred fingers. A strange feeling tells her that if she takes a piece here and fits it there - a component, a piece of metal housing - it will begin to take shape. So she does, and it does. Slowly.

Over the next few nights, in her free time, she continues to fit the pieces together, not really thinking about what she’s doing. But gradually, something begins to form by her hands, guided by a sense of something outside herself, something that tells her how it will all fit together. Even though she doesn't know what it is or what it will do.

It ends up looking like a half-hollow tube, its casing made out of metal offcuts found here or there in the workshop. It’s not elegant, not functional. In fact, it looks like a piece of junk.

For some reason, although it hasn't taken much actual physical effort, she feels exhausted. It’s been two weeks and there’s still no sign of Din Djarin. And all she has to show for it are calluses on her fingers, grease stains on her knees and a project that’s turned out to be junk.

She tosses it under her cot in frustration, wincing as a headache pounds a familiar staccato in her temples. Her vision is better these days, but her eyes still hurt, and when the headaches get bad everything blurs, melting together like butter on a plate of Krayt jerky.

She tries to sleep, but a whispering at the edge of her awareness keeps her awake. It’s a familiar sensation, like a tickle at the edge of her auditory nerves, formless words and feelings commingling into a kind of music.

It’s coming from her pocket. A soft hum, a buzzing. A distant, half-remembered song.

Slowly, Tavi reaches into her pocket and withdraws the warm, glowing kyber crystal. Where at its core it was once blue, the light has now spread out from that single seed into an orange corona, extending into the spectrum of a solid yellow glow.

Its music has never before been so insistent, so pervasive. In its harmony are the echo of words. And suddenly, she knows what all her labor was for.

When you hear its song, you will know you’re ready.

With trembling fingers, she reaches down and picks up the housing from beneath the cot. Then she holds up the crystal in one hand, turns the misshapen tube over in the other. There’s a space inside, a stabilizer lattice she constructed without knowing for certain what it would hold.

Well, now she knows.

The kyber crystal clicks into place. Tavi closes the casing. The saber lies dormant in her palm, and then her thumb presses the activator, and it springs to life with a whoosh and a buzz so achingly familiar her very bones resonate with it.

The lightsaber casts a golden glow over the room, yellow light flickering off the surfaces of crates, the dusty wall, the ceiling, Tavi’s face as tears blur her vision. It thrums and crackles as she moves it back and forth. It’s not entirely stable yet - she still needs to make some adjustments to the power emitter - but it works . And it’s hers.

“Hey, Kit! You still awake?” She only has a moment’s warning before Peli barges through the door, stopping short as she sees the girl on the cot with the lightsaber. It deactivates with a whoosh and she shoves it behind her back, but it’s too late. The engineer has already seen it.

“What in the - how the - is that what I think it is?!”

“Would you believe me if I said no?” Tavi tries, sheepish. She thinks maybe she should be afraid, but she isn’t. Not of Peli. 

“That’s a - that’s a Jedi weapon!” Peli glances behind her as if expecting someone other than her droids to overhear, then lowers her voice. “You can’t be goin’ around waving that thing about. How’d you get it? Did Mando give it to you?”

“I made it.”

“You made it?” Peli looks as if she’s about to pass out from the shock. She leans heavily against the doorway. “And I’ve had you elbow-deep in droid guts and broken converters! Force help me!”

“It’s fine, Peli, really,” Tavi assures her, rising to her feet. To her dismay, the mechanic shrinks back - not afraid of her, exactly, but definitely wary. Warier. “I’m no Jedi. At least, not anymore.”

“I had a feelin’, y’know. A feelin’ you were special. Didn’t I say?” Peli shakes her head slowly, seeming to relax a little. “You just be careful, all right? Mando told me to look after you.”

Tavi bristles. “I don’t - I can take care of myself.”

“Really? That why you wake up screamin’ in the middle of the night?” She looks away, and the older woman sighs. “Listen, kiddo, I can’t pretend to know the half of what you’ve been through. But it’s not always weakness to accept help.”

Tavi draws a breath. When she looks up to meet the older woman's eyes again, she forces a grateful smile. Because she's not wrong. She knows it, but it doesn't make it any easier to admit - she tries, anyway. “Guess I learned that from him." And, after a moment: "Thank you, Peli.”

“You’re welcome.” She looks at her for a second, then at the lightsaber, then shrugs. “Make sure you’re up early tomorrow. We got a new coolant pump to install on a cargo hauler headed for the Core.” And then she’s gone, as if all this is normal, as if it’s all fine, as if everything is as it should be.

Tavi sits down heavily on her cot and looks at the lightsaber again. Everything isn’t fine, but she’s beginning to feel as if it could be. Eventually.

Chapter Text

Tavi hangs upside-down, her knees hooked over a wing strut as she solders the hull panel of the ship. Her braid hangs straight down, its sway distracting one of the DUM-droids as it works on the engine below her. 

“Quit that, dum-dum!” The droid stops batting at her hair, scuttling off with a rusty squeak. Shaking her head, Tavi adjusts the goggles over her eyes and resumes the weld.

Her beads are getting smoother. It’s improvement enough that after a month, Peli now trusts her to work on a hull on her own, unsupervised. There’s something therapeutic about patching a ship this way, like putting the pieces of a jigsaw back together. It’s maybe her favourite part of the job. She can get lost in it, in the heat of the flame and the bubble and hiss of durasteel. It requires a steady hand, and fortunately, hers no longer shake quite so much as they did three and a half weeks ago.

To her surprise - and gratitude - the memories have dissipated somewhat. The nightmares fade, replaced by a warm, comforting darkness. Sometimes, in that darkness, she thinks she can hear a deep, modulated voice, feel the reassuring weight of arms around her - but it’s fleeting, and she pushes it away as much as she had the pain.

Her connection to the Force has grown stronger. It was as if her time in carbonite removed her from its flow, throwing her out of sync, and now she is once again in step with the unending dance of the universe around her. She is a part of it again, instead of just apart.

It’s simple enough to regulate her own blood flow, for example, so that she doesn’t pass out from hanging upside-down for too long. 

To fall without landing. To see without looking. To know without asking. 

The only thing that truly eludes her now is herself .

After a while, Tavi switches off the welder and examines her handiwork, head tilted in thought. It looks fine, and when she lays a hand flat against the hull she can’t sense any flow of air at the edges of the panel, but Peli has taught her always to check and double-check her work. It could be the difference between smooth sailing and explosive decompression, after all, and although she trusts in the Force, arrogance is a trait that has led to the downfall of many Jedi.

They are all gone now, if what Peli says is to be believed. The mechanic has been around a while, seen many travelers come and go, heard many tales. She was there for the fall of the Empire, the rise of the New Republic. All things that sound completely unfamiliar to Tavi. The galaxy has changed too much, and she with it.

She tries not to dwell on it; tries not to think about how at best, at least twenty years have passed since her last memory from her old life. Those people whose names she can’t remember are probably all dead by now. 

It makes it easier not wanting to remember.

“Hey, dummy, can you grab me the pressure differentializer?” She calls down to the droids, holding out her free hand. She hears no answering beep, but the handle of a tool lands in the palm of her glove. “Thanks.” She lifts it up and finds herself looking at a hyperspanner. “Seriously? We’ve been over this before, dum-dum. Pressure differentializer. It’s the one with the little-” 

She looks down - technically, up, given her current orientation - as she chides the little robot, but instead of a single sensor-eye staring at her, she sees a T-shaped visor. A shiny, metal helmet. And her own shocked expression, reflected back at her in Beskar.

Her knees weaken, slipping from the strut she’s hanging from, and she falls. The Mandalorian steps forward to try to catch her, but before he can, she extends her hand automatically and reaches out for the Force.

Her plunge is arrested half a foot off the ground. Tavi floats, upside-down, eyes shut. When she opens them, regarding the hard, packed sand mere inches from her face, she lets out a breath and orients her body downward, rotating so she can get her feet beneath her. Slowly, she stands, rising to face the Mandalorian as he stares at her, his expression invisible beneath the helmet, but she can feel the surprise radiating off him. 

She doesn't care how surprised he is; it’s nothing compared to hers.

She throws the welder at his head, and then the spanner. They hit with dual clangs but bounce off harmlessly, landing in the dirt. 

“You son of a bantha! You - worrt-faced, melon-sucking dung worm - you worthless piece of druk , you - you - !” She trails off, running out of breath before she runs out of insults, chest heaving, fists clenched at her sides.

He tilts his head in that excruciatingly familiar way, like it’s been days instead of a month . “Sorry. I couldn’t find the pressure differentializer.”

The DUM-droids have scattered, showing surprisingly good sense, but Peli emerges when she hears the commotion. She raises her eyebrows as she spots Mando, her own reaction comparatively tame in contrast to Tavi’s. “Well, well, well, look who decided to show up. You gotta lot of nerve, waltzing in after weeks of no word! Thought you were dead. Where’d you park?” 

“It was close a couple of times. Hangar Ninety-Four.” Even though they’re hidden beneath the visor, Tavi can tell Mando’s eyes are still on her as he speaks. She turns away from him, setting down her tools, pulling off her gloves and tucking them in her belt so she can reach up and lift the goggles onto her forehead. 

He looks the same. His cloak is a little more tattered, maybe, but it’s him . She’s not sure why she expected anything different. She didn’t expect him at all . 

The initial anger has faded, replaced by relief. She can feel the sweat trickling down her temples, her neck, staining the underarms of her coveralls.  This is not how she pictured their grand reunion.

Not that she pictured it to begin with.

“Oh, they’ll charge you an arm and a leg over at Ninety-Four! I think Tav’s done with the repairs on this hunk o’junk, we’ll get it out of here to clear you some space,” Peli is saying chattily, but then she seems to notice the tension for the first time, looking between the girl and the Mando. “I’ll get it sorted. You two just, uh, stay here and catch up. Where are those damn droids?” She mutters to herself as she wanders back to the control room and, to Tavi’s relief, she closes the door behind her.

Din looks at her. She looks back, crossing her arms. Wishing she didn’t smell like engine oil and sweat.

He clears his throat. “How are you?”

She snorts. “Really? A month, and that’s what you come up with?” She shakes her head. “I’m fine. Is that what you want to hear? Happy and healthy, doing just great. How are you ?”

He sighs through the modulator; heavily, tiredly. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner. I wanted to, but I got a lead. Something I had to chase down.”

“And what’s that?”

“Relem Signas. The man who had you in carbonite.”

She’s silent, staring at him. Of everything he could have said, she wasn’t expecting that . She turns away, and he follows her as she wanders into the shade, sinking down onto the edge of a crate. Din leans against the wall nearby. She tries not to look at him, because she can already feel her anger fading, her resolve crumbling in the face of his faceless stare.

She looks at her hands, instead. “What happened?”

“I went back to Kepler IV looking for him.” The visor tracks away from her, towards the ship she was repairing. “Found him pretty easily. Dead. His entire warehouse, his mining op, every single one of his men - wiped out.”

Tavi feels her blood go cold. She swallows, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Who killed him?”

“From the looks of it? Imps.” Imperials. Tavi feels as if she can’t breathe, forcing herself to take a deep lungful of dusty air as she listens to Mando talk.

“I tracked them to the carbonite facility I was originally meant to deliver you to. Turned out to be an old Imperial base. Cleaned out. Databanks wiped. A squad or two of Stormtroopers left behind, some TIE fighters, but...” He shrugs. “Dead end.”

“And that took you three weeks? You couldn’t contact me, send a message, a holo, anything to let me know you hadn’t just - up and left me here?” She gets to her feet, jabbing an accusatory finger in his direction, her voice rising, but she doesn’t care. The anger isn’t for him, not really, but it’s where she directs it. 

“You didn’t think that maybe I’d want to find this Signas guy, too? That I might want to find out what happened to me ?”

The anger is for her. For her loose ends, the frayed knot of her life still flapping untethered in the breeze. She may never know, now, how she ended up in the carbonite. She may never remember. 

“I’m sorry.” For some reason, his apologies, the sheepish tilt to his helmet is doing nothing to help. She should be grateful for a repentant Mandalorian, returned to her safe at last. But she is still so caught up in the surge of her own emotions that she can’t see beyond them yet.

She remembers the soft voice of the Gray Sentinel, her hooded eyes, her gentle smile. She remembers her words.

We must accept our emotions. They are the core of who we are.

Well, hers is definitely not doing her any favors right now.

“I...” Tavi tries to speak, but her throat feels compressed with the weight of words, her chest tight and unyielding to the effort of her breath. Her head is pounding, and she can feel moisture pricking at the corner of her eyes. She closes them to try to will it away. 

“Just...Go get your ship,” she manages to get out. She needs a moment, a moment to think . “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Kit... Tavi-”

“Go.” When she opens her eyes, he looks at her for a moment longer, hesitating. Then he pushes off the wall, slowly, the tattered remnants of his cloak trailing behind him as he retreats from the hangar, his steps heavy.

Tavi slumps back, and even though she’s been trying not to cry, she doesn’t feel it as a failure when the tears come.

If anything, it’s a relief.

Chapter Text

The Kom’rk Guardian has been put through its paces. It settles heavily on its chassis in Docking Bay Three-Five, creaking as its foils lift into the landing position. The Mandalorian feels as if he knows the ship better now, having been through more than a few battles with her in the last few weeks, but it’s still not the Crest.

And it certainly hadn’t felt anything like home without Kit’la aboard.

Seeing her hanging from that ship, Din had felt something in his chest seize and burn, a flame brighter than that of her welder flaring beneath his sternum. And all he had been able to offer was a hyperspanner and a half-assed apology.

He can’t blame her for being angry. Not really. He would be, too. But he doesn’t know how to explain to her that in the spaces between battles, in the darkness of the void, he had thought only of surviving in order to return to her side.

After the Child, after Grogu, Din never thought anything would matter to him as much ever again. He is...glad he’s been proven wrong.

Tavi is nowhere to be seen when he makes his way down the ramp. Peli is waiting though, with her hands on her hips and a disapproving stare.

“I might need some repairs,” he says, handing her a pouch of credits. She gives him a disgusted look. “What? That won’t cover it?”

“The docking fees and the ship? Sure. The girl? Not even close.”

He sighs, reaching into his belt again. Peli stops him with a shake of her head. “Not what I meant. She’s hurtin’, Mando. Thought you left her for good. But she’s tough, so I think she almost came to terms with it. You tell me which is worse, when the man in question-” She stops, looks him over briefly, reconsiders, “-when the Mando in question walks back in like nothin’ happened?”

Din doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. 

Peli sighs and shakes her head. “Damned if I know why, but I’ll be an Eopie’s uncle if that girl isn’t in love with you.”

He feels something in the atrophied, broken parts of his soul shift, and beneath the helmet, Din fights to inhale for a moment, forcing air through his vocal chords, the shake evened out by the vocabulator. “I’ll talk to her,” he says, at last.

“Good. Never pegged you for a coward.” His hackles rise under Peli’s unfriendly stare, but she softens again with an arch of her hairless brow. “I assume you had good reasons.”

Din reaches up to rub the back of his neck through the cowl. Contrite. It’s not a feeling he’s overly familiar with, nor particularly fond of. “I tried to explain, but I think I just made it worse.”

“You need to stop underestimatin’ her, Mando,” the mechanic replies, shaking her head. “She’s smart. She picked up the work here like she was made for it. Hell, I wouldn’t mind keepin’ her on, but I get the feelin’ you need her as much as she needs you.”

Again, he says nothing.

Peli Motto sighs. "Mando. She's not your child. You don't need to protect her like it." 

He looks away from her. The mechanic sighs again. “Go on. She’s in her room.”

He nods. Takes a few steps. Stops for a second to look back at Peli.

“Thank you.” Then he resumes walking. 

The older woman’s voice stops him in the doorway. “One other piece of advice?” He turns, and regards her as she stands there with her arms crossed, a half-smile on her face. He shrugs acquiescence, waiting.

“Try not to break her heart again.”

---

Din Djarin finds his girl in the storage room. It’s different from his memory, less dusty, the crates more organized, stacked neatly against the wall to make room for her living space. 

She sits on a cot, having peeled her coveralls down to tie the arms around her waist. Sweat glistens on her collarbones, darkens the neck of the tank she wears beneath. She has been working hard.

He thinks there’s a little more definition to her arms, her muscles outlined by shadows cast across her olive skin, which has been darkened by exposure to the Tatooine suns. She looks...better. Less drawn. The deep, haunted circles are gone from beneath her eyes, and her freckles stand out darker across the bridge of her nose, her cheekbones. He aches to touch her face, to feel her skin beneath his fingers, an urge only amplified by his last memories of being in this room.

She doesn’t need to look to sense his presence, of course, but Din feels as if she’s deliberately keeping her back to him. He leans a hip against the doorway, folding his hands in front of him as he watches her. Waiting for her to either speak or kick him out - or both.

“What do you want?” she asks. More than anything, she just sounds tired. He can understand that. He feels as if he hasn’t slept at all for three weeks. 

“To talk.” Not that he’s ever been good at talking. It’s not one of his skills.

Tavi still doesn’t look at him. That never used to bother him, but it’s too deliberate to ignore. “About what?” she asks.

“About why I left you here.”

She stands with a shake of her head, flicking her braid over her shoulder. Still keeping her back to him, she crosses to a workbench shoved against the wall. On it sits a few of what he assumes are her belongings. A wooden hair brush with bristles made out of bantha whiskers. A tin cup. A lit lamp. A few scattered tools and components.

“Does it matter?” she asks, picking up what looks like a patchwork tube of metal with a strap of brown leather wound around it for a grip. She turns it over in her hands, still not looking at him. 

It’s getting on his already frayed nerves. He can’t handle all this... space between them. The physical space, the space between words, where emotions he can’t hope to understand simmer and bubble beneath the surface. There is no bullet, no blaster bolt that can fix this;  it’s not a battle to the finish, a race, a flight. There is no defensible position, no cover to hide behind. Just the deep, yawning distance between the two of them that seems to stretch on forever. 

Din steps inside the room finally, letting the door side shut behind him. It plunges the space into semi-darkness lit only by the lamp on Tavi’s workbench. He tries to close some of that distance, but she still feels far away. 

“Of course it matters,” he begins, unable to keep the frustration from escaping into his tone. He wonders if this is what it feels like to speak to him. Like talking to the back of someone’s head. “Hey. Look at me.”

Her shoulders tense, but she stays where she is, staring down at the thing in her hands.

“Look at me , Kit.”

She does then, finally, glancing over her shoulder at him. Closer to her now, he can see that her eyes are red-rimmed. She’s been crying. Because of him . The leather of his glove creaks as he clenches his fist at his side.

“I was afraid.” It takes Din a moment to realize the words are his. They sound unfamiliar through the modulator, and Tavi is staring at him as if she doesn’t recognize him.

“Why?” she whispers, turning fully to face him. He’s not sure who steps forward first, but suddenly, she’s an arm’s-length away. The pale, flickering light glistens in her sweat-damp hair. 

Din draws a deep breath. It rushes out of him, every word he wanted to say before he left. Probably the most he’s said since before he left.

“I was afraid you’d get hurt, that I’d lose you, that it would be my fault. Again. And I was afraid...I was afraid I might find something that would make you want to leave. And that would be worse.”

He expects her to protest, to shake her head at his words, refute each of them before he even finishes speaking. Instead, she just stares at him. Then she asks: “How would that be worse?”

The great and terrible Mandalorian, withering under the force of a woman’s gaze. She is so much shorter than him, but in that moment, under the power of her stare, he feels...Small. He has to force himself not to look away. 

“Because….Once you figure out I can’t protect you, you won’t need me any more.”

She’s silent a moment, seemingly aghast, searching for words. “You...you think if I knew I had a choice, I would leave? You think I’d only stay for your protection? To use you as a shield?” She shakes her head, utterly incredulous, in disbelief. “It’s been three weeks, Din. I’m still here, aren’t I? I waited. For you.”

The dim light throws the angles of her face into sharp relief, the thin cleft of the scar at the corner of her mouth, the lines of her cheekbones, the shadows of her eyes. And when he looks at her, Din Djarin does not see only a Jedi in need of protection, an escort. Just as that was not all he saw when he looked at the Child.

He saw someone he loved. 

“I should have brought you with me,” he breathes, lifting a hand, and her eyelids flutter when the tips of his glove brush her cheek. “I...I shouldn’t have left you here.”

Tavi nods. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have.” 

Din knows he should be gentle, and perhaps in another universe he is, but in this one the way he reaches out and crushes her to him is inevitable, predetermined. She is all tension coiled tight, but with his arm around her waist, a hand to the back of her head to hold her cheek against his Beskar breastplate, he feels it leave her in a rush of breath. 

He is not sure when - or if - he will be able to let her go.

So he doesn’t. Instead, he reaches up, feeling Tavi still against him as he gets a thumb beneath the rim of his helmet and lifts it away. He sets it aside on her workbench and looks down, finally, to meet her eyes.

This time, she’s not shy. He knows he should be uncomfortable with the way her gaze searches his face; he knows he should be ashamed and disgraced and wrong - but against everything he believes, there is what he feels , and it does not feel wrong.

“I missed you,” he says, his raw, unfiltered voice rougher without the vocabulator when he is trying for softness. But Tavi doesn’t flinch. Instead, she reaches up, and Din pulls his bottom lip back tight against his teeth to still the tremble as her fingers land on his chin.

“I missed you too,” she says. 

Kissing her is like the moment after a fight when the foe lies defeated and the adrenaline of triumph sings in his veins; it is the comfortable chair in a quiet cockpit as the stars slide by; it is a freshly-oiled blaster in his belt; it is the shine of pure Beskar in his hands. It is like coming home.

Her nose bumps into his and it takes a moment to find the perfect angle to fit their lips together but once they do, he wastes no time in begging entrance to her mouth. She opens, breathless and needy for him, and he lifts a hand to the back of her head, curling her braid around his fist for leverage as he touches her tongue with his.

She tastes like sweat and smells like ozone and oil, a scent he inhales greedily, because it is hers. He devours her mouth desperately, hungrily, and she gasps beneath the onslaught, her eyes closed and her fingers tucked in the front of his bandolier for balance. His tongue swipes long, slow stripes against her bottom lip, licks into her mouth, drinking her in.

After a moment, Din walks her backwards, his grip on her mouth and her hair his guiding force, and he stops when the workbench meets the small of her back. He grabs her hips in both hands; she squeaks against his chin as he lifts and sets her down on the edge. Objects fall and clatter like metal rain, nuts and bolts and screws pinging off the floor and bouncing every which-way. Din ignores them, crowding into the space between Tavi’s spreading knees. He drags his mouth away, trailing his lips messily across her jaw and neck, flattening his tongue against her salty-sweet skin to taste her pulse.

“Fuck,” she swears softly as he crowds into her, grinding the swelling bulge in his pants against her. He half-expects her to tell him to stop, to push him away, but he should know her better by now. Instead, she arches into him and gasps, “Din, I need you . ”

The phrase makes him stutter and stop, panting against her neck, but his hand is still tight on her hair. He pulls lightly, making her arch her neck back, baring her throat even further to him. “Say it again,” he growls, his lips moving over her larynx as it bobs with her heavy swallow.

“I - I need you.”

He lets go, kissing away her protest, to pull off his gloves one by one. She is soft and yielding as he touches her, unwinding the coveralls from her waist, dragging them down her legs. He releases her mouth only to kneel in front of her, and she watches him down the length of her own body with equal parts curiosity and eagerness as he tugs off her boots and lets her coveralls fall to the floor. His fingers wander up her bare calves, and she begins to shiver when he turns his head and presses a kiss to the inside of her knee. 

“Din-”

“Can you be quiet for me?” he murmurs against her skin, stubble scratching a path along the inside seam of her thigh. He feels her shudder, looks up to see her nod, her eyes big, awed, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Or feeling.

Her abdomen is tensed when he flattens a hand against her stomach, pushing her torso back and pulling her hips forward with his other hand. He’s wanted to do this for so long that he feels like he’s shaking with it, but the stripe he licks across the taut tendon leading to her groin is firm enough.

Tavi lets out a muffled whimper, and he glances up to see her pressing her fingers against her own mouth to stifle her sounds. Kriff, he hasn’t even done anything yet and she looks ready to explode. The thought that he has done this - he has reduced her to this creature of whimpering want with barely any effort - fills him with a distinctly male pride and something else, something softer that warms his cheeks and the back of his neck.

Her underwear is damp already, the heady scent of her flooding Din’s senses as he dips his head and nuzzles his nose against her through the thin fabric. Her hips jump but she makes no sound. “Good girl,” he murmurs against her, his lips brushing the swell of her folds through the fabric. She hisses something that might be a curse or veneration - he can’t tell. Either way, it spurs him on.

Hooking a thumb into the side of her underwear, he tugs it out of the way, baring her to him. Her slit glistens in the dim light, the flesh pink and puffy, and he feels his mouth fill with saliva at the sight, his pants tightening to the point of discomfort. He ignores the latter, leaning forward to ghost a breath across her weeping cunt, and just that makes her tense, another sound choked off and muffled into her hand.

“This - your version of an apology?” she mumbles through her fingers when he does it again. He chuckles, grabbing one of her legs and throwing it over his shoulder. She hisses at the touch of the cool Beskar against her warm flesh. He soothes her with his free hand rubbing the length of her inner thigh, the skin silk-soft beneath his calloused fingers.

Din doesn’t give her time to ask, to beg, to plead; leaning forward, he presses a kiss flush to her dampened folds, unable to resist darting his tongue out to taste her as she squirms and holds a moan tight in her chest for him.

By the Creed, she tastes even better than he remembers, a sweet-sharp tang that floods his senses utterly with her . He growls against her cunt as he feels her shake above him, dragging his tongue up then down through her folds again and again, lapping her up, making his face and chin messy with her slick.

His nose nudges her clitoris, and he knows by the way she stops breathing and the tension in her legs, the one he holds over his shoulder going tight with it, that she’s getting close. As much as he doesn’t want to rush this, as much as he wants to drink his fill for hours on end, he also wants - desperately - to feel her come apart for him from just the press of his lips and tongue.

To that end, he trails the point of his tongue up again, nosing the heady musk of her curls, and flicks it over the swollen bundle of her clit, making her whole body jerk. He does it again, and she keens , a sound from her chest more than her throat, small and choked-off and beautiful. 

He missed that sound.

Din takes his time to find it, that spot that makes her toes curl and her back arch, and when he does the hand that isn’t pressed to her own mouth Tavi fists in his hair; he grunts a little but finds he doesn’t mind one bit when she arches her hips into his face and holds him there, his mouth dragging her orgasm from her trembling body.

She gasps and twitches erratically through it, and it takes him a second to realize she’s murmuring his name under her breath. “Din, fuck, Din, yes, Force, yes- ” and then it stops, dissolving into wordless, quiet sobs and panting.

He massages her hip, her thigh, tonguing her twitching entrance lazily, gathering her slick and spreading it up and over her oversensitive, swollen clit. Tavi grunts and tugs at his hair, her knees threatening to close around his head, before he takes the hint and eases back, pulling her underwear back into place. She relaxes as he presses deep, wet kisses into the flesh of her thighs instead.

“Apology accepted,” she murmurs eventually, weak and boneless, and he chuckles into her skin.

When he stands, she pulls him close and fumbles at his belt - but he stops her with a gentle hand on her wrist. “Later,” he says softly. “Just wanted to take care of you.”

“You did,” she sighs. “You do.” She turns her head and kisses him, deep and slow, tonguing her own taste from his mouth. It makes him shiver and reconsider not taking her here and now. “So good to me,” she whispers, in between presses of her flushed lips. “You ever going to let me take care of you ?”

The shudder that moves through him is bone-deep, her words reaching into a place he didn’t even know existed , for a Mandalorian is not vulnerable, he does not need help, he does not need anything. 

Until now.

“Come with me,” he says, the words that have been on the tip of his tongue since he met her. “Stay with me. Kar’ta’ner juaan daraasum, cyare.”

“Yes,” she breathes, without hesitation. “If you’ll have me. If you want me.”

“I thought that was obvious,” he says, cupping her jaw, her throat. Her flushed skin flushes darker, and she laughs huskily. He leans his forehead against hers and drinks in her smile.

“Okay,” she sighs deeply, sounding spent, satisfied. “Let me get dressed before I changed my mind.”

Din steps back from her, letting go - reluctantly. Tavi slides off the edge of the workbench, but before she picks up her coveralls, she turns instead to regard his helmet, laid neatly aside next to the strange handmade hilt.

She picks up the helmet gently, reverently. Normally, anyone else touching his armor would make Din feel...on edge, wrong , but right now he is calm. At peace with this. With her.

“Here.” He ducks his head so she can reach easier. Tavi slides the helmet home, the hiss as it clicks into place over his head a familiar, comforting sound. 

She strokes the side of it as gently, as fondly as if it was his face. “There,” she says. “Much more handsome.”

It takes him a second to process that. Placing his hands on his hips, Din frowns at her through the visor as she bends to dress. “Hey- ”

“Relax,” she grins when she straightens, zipping up the coveralls, “I’m teasing.” She steps into her boots, then leans up on her toes to press a kiss to the side of his helm. He catches her by the waist and tugs her close before she can move away. She’s unsteady on her feet still, laughing as she trips and falls into him.

 “I missed this,” she says as she looks up into his visor. He touches her face. 

“So did I.”

“If you ever leave me behind again, I’ll kill you,” she adds, her voice warm, fond. He’s never enjoyed hearing a direct threat against his life more.

“I believe you,” he says, trailing a finger down the line of her jaw. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Let’s hope.” 

She slips from his arms surprisingly easily and flits away across the room before he can say anything more. He watches her open the door and then, like a dream, she is gone, only the lingering scent of her in his nostrils and the taste of her on his tongue reminding her that she is blessedly, wonderfully real.

Chapter Text

The repairs and maintenance to the Kom’rk don’t take long, and soon Din Djarin waits, arms crossed, at the bottom of the boarding ramp while Tavi says her goodbyes. 

With a small bag hoisted over her shoulder, she stands with Peli, the droids lined up next to them. Din watches with a tinge of guilt as the two women embrace, the mechanic a little teary-eyed when she hugs the girl tight. They’ve grown close during her time here. Peli seems to have a thing for the strays he brings back.

Take care of her, or else. she had said to him while the girl was gathering her things. And let her take care of herself.

He waits as they talk, as Peli puts a hand on Tavi’s cheek, says something that makes her duck her head the way she usually does when she wants to cover her face with her hair, the way she can’t now that it is bound up in the braid. From here, Din can’t hear what they’re saying without activating his audio enhancer, but that would feel too much like intruding.

However, when they both turn to look at him and laugh - again - he’s tempted.

Tavi even says goodbye to the astromech and the DUM-droids, waving to the soulless little buckets of bolts and rust before turning and walking towards the ship, wiping at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. She joins him with her head bowed, not meeting his visor. 

Din hesitates. Not for the first time, he wonders if he’s doing the right thing. His path, wherever it leads, is one dogged by danger and fraught with peril on all sides. But he gets the feeling that whatever path Tavi was on before they met was just as treacherous. 

Not to mention, he’s pretty sure that if he keeps trying to protect her against her will, she really is going to try to kill him. And she might have a decent chance - at the very least - to dent his armor a little.

“You ready?” he asks her, and she nods. Din turns, lifting a gloved hand in farewell to Peli, who rolls her eyes in return, but he thinks he catches the edge of a smile. 

The Mandalorian and the Jedi make their way up the ramp, side-by-side. 

Tavi stops not two feet inside the ship, looking around as if seeing it for the very first time. Din has to remind herself that she is. “What do you think?” he asks, and she pauses for a moment, considering her answer.

“It’s bigger than I expected. But smaller at the same time. It’s hard to explain.” She sets her bag down on the sofa, her gaze raking the bulkheads, the hatches, the ceiling. “Everything feels different when you can’t see it.”

“Well, you can now.” Din motions for her to follow him to the bridge. She’s close on his heels, and when he glances over his shoulder, he sees her trailing her fingers over the bulkhead just as she used to. She doesn’t seem to realize she’s doing it. He decides not to draw attention to it, finding himself smiling somewhat to himself beneath his helm.

He settles into the pilot’s seat and begins the pre-ignition sequence. The engines rumble to life as Tavi takes the passenger seat to his right. No warning lights, no alarms sound; the ship lifts smoothly off the ground, the landing array retracting into its underbelly, foils extending.

G-forces shove them back into their seats as he pushes on the throttle, lifting the Kom’rk through the upper atmosphere. He hears Tavi gasp behind him as they break through the sparse cloud cover and soar towards the stars.

“It’s beautiful.”

Din looks back at her. The mix of sunlight and starlight plays across her face, in her eyes.

“Yeah. It is.” He looks away to concentrate on steering the ship, his hand tight on the throttle.

“Where are we going?” She asks while he runs the calculations for the jump to hyperspace. 

“Kepler IV. I thought maybe if we retrace my steps, we might find something. Together.” Din glances back at her again to gauge her reaction. He's not sure if he should expect a protest or not. 

Her eyes are hesitant, and she bites her lip, thinking. Then, finally, she nods. He returns the gesture, a little relieved - although he wouldn't admit it if pressed - before returning his attention to the nav computer. There’s barely a lurch as the ship accelerates to the speed of light and the stars blur into blue streaks outside the canopy. 

Din leans back, and the pilot’s chair creaks with his weight. He’s getting used to it. The ship feels more familiar around him now, and with Tavi’s presence, everything feels more...the way it should feel. 

This is the Way.

It’s like the universe has pivoted somehow, righting itself on its axis, where everything before that was skewed and wrong is now right . He has a working ship, his girl by his side, and nobody is trying to kill him at the present moment - as rare and unusual as that is, it’s welcome for now. It’s almost as if he can finally breathe after weeks of being unable to fully expand his lungs. It’s almost as if he can relax ...

Din starts awake, blinking in fuzzy disorientation for a moment. He’s not used to just dozing off without giving himself permission. He’s never that comfortable, that untroubled. It is jarring in its unfamiliarity.

“You’re awake,” says a voice near his ear. He jumps again. He thinks for a moment that he must be going soft, getting old, but it’s just Tavi, leaning against the edge of the control panel. She’s let out her hair, and it flows down her shoulders in a river of waves that glow blue-black in the blurred starlight. He can’t have been sleeping for long - they’re still in hyperspace.

“I wasn’t asleep,” he says. With the helmet, how can she tell?

“You were snoring.”

Dank Farrik.

“I don’t snore,” he grumbles, tapping at a screen to check their ETA. Still a couple of hours out. 

“You do, actually. Like a dewback.” Tavi grins as he looks up at her. He knows she can’t see him frown, but he does anyway. “It’s okay,” she assures him. “I like it.”

“You like snoring dewbacks?”

“I like this snoring dewback.” She taps his helmet with a fingertip, generating a hollow metallic sound. He catches her wrist and rises to his feet, looming over her much smaller form. He remembers a time when such an action might make her shrink back, uncertain if she’s gone too far - but now he sees the glimmer of challenge in her eyes, and it excites him.

“So...I've been wondering," she begins, and he tilts his head. "You really went up against an entire Imperial troop and a squadron of fighters?” Not what he expected her to ask. She reaches out with her uncaptured hand and traces a finger down the centre of his breastplate. “Why?”

“For you,” he says, as if the answer is perfectly obvious. It is to him, but perhaps not to her. She does not have a Mandalorian’s concept of protection, of honor, of clan . 

“I could have helped, you know.”

Although Din remembers very well how she fought in the alleyway on Mos Eisley, he’s still slightly incredulous. “With what? You can’t punch a Stormtrooper to death.” He reconsiders. “I mean, you probably could, but it’d take too long before the next one shot you.”

Her eyes flicker briefly. She slips from his grasp, stepping back towards the hatch. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

He follows, wondering if perhaps Peli has given her a blaster. He wouldn’t put it past her to make sure Tavi's properly able to defend herself. The fact that he hasn’t thought of that until now is a considerable source of chagrin to the Mandalorian, in fact.

They emerge into the common area, and Tavi goes straight for her discarded bag. She rummages around inside it for a few moments before she pulls out an object Din’s seen before - the handmade hilt he’d spotted on her workbench.

“What’s that?” he asks, folding his arms across his chest.

“It’s easier to show you than explain,” she replies. “Ready?”

He indicates so with a shrug of acquiescence. Tavi draws a deep breath, holding the metal tube out in front of herself but angled away from him, as if pointing a spear. Her grip isn’t right though, it’s more like she’s holding -

A sword.

It flares to life between them, a brilliant yellow glow that turns the silver-grey bulkheads golden. The humming buzz echoes in the open space, thrumming on a frequency that sets Din’s teeth on edge.

“Where did you get that?” he asks, calmly, but the two steps back he’s taken make his position clear.

“I made it.”

He lets out a breath through the modulator, which turns it into a rush of crackling static. “You...really are a Jedi.”

“Was,” Tavi corrects, spinning the hilt in her hand in a practiced move that swishes the buzzing laser sword through the air between them. “I told you before. I was kicked out of the Jedi Initiate program. But I was still Force-sensitive, so they had to keep an eye on me.” She lowers the gently droning blade. After a moment, it withdraws into the hilt as she deactivates it. Her face seems tireder without the yellow glow, and she looks older, somehow. 

She crosses to the sofa and sinks down, resting the hilt on her thigh. Din joins her, his eyes on her face. 

“What do you remember?” he asks. 

Tavi draws in a deep breath. “Not much. No real details, just - bits and pieces. They...They sent me to a backwater planet to protect a bunch of younger initiates and moss farmers.” Her mouth twists with derision. “It felt like punishment. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. I wasn’t very strong, nor important, or even particularly useful as a guard, but it was honest work, and even though I resented the Padawans, I still did it. Until...” She trails off, and the distance grows in her eyes.

“What happened?” Din prompts, as gently as he dares.

“We were attacked,” she continues slowly. “Raiders, four or five times our number. We didn’t stand a chance.” She draws a sudden, shuddering breath. “Luckily, a local cell of Sentinels in the town nearby heard about what happened and came to rescue us. What was left of us. “

“Sentinels?”

“Jedi who...operated slightly outside of the Council’s influence. I don’t remember the details, but...They were kind to me. They took me in, trained me. It’s all a blank after that. I don’t know how long I was with them before I was frozen.” 

Din watches her sit in silence for a moment, staring at the saber hilt. At her hands. “I’m sorry,” he says, because there doesn’t seem to be much else to say.

“It’s not your fault,” Tavi replies gently. She shakes her head as if to clear it. “Anyway. Now that I have a lightsaber, I’m slightly less than helpless.” Her smile is thin and it doesn’t reach the rest of her face.

“I’d say you’re even less helpless than you think. Look at this.” He tugs the darksaber from his belt, holding out the hilt to her. He sees her eyes widen, recognition or something similar sparking there. 

“Where did you get that?” She reaches out to take it from him, and he hesitates only a second before laying the dark hilt in her palm.

“I won it.”

“What on Hoth did you wager against this?” she asks, aghast.

“No,” he rolls his eyes, hidden, “In battle. I won it in battle.”

“That makes more sense,” Tavi nods, turning the hilt over in her fingers. She hasn’t activated the blade yet, he notes. “This is an ancient blade. And it must be important, because even I remember that much about it. Do you know how to wield it?”

“It’s a sword, right?” Din shrugs. “It can’t be that hard.”

“You-” Tavi cuts herself off with a laugh. “Oh no. There are forms you have to learn to be effective with a lightsaber. Certain moves. You don’t know any of that?”

“Do you?”

“I do,” she confirms with a nod. Standing up, she holds the hilt out to him and smiles. This time, it touches her eyes.

“Come on. Let me show you.”

Chapter Text

The cargo hold offers the most open space. Enough that they can stand a meter or two apart and still have room to move. Aside from a crate or two, there’s just the looming shadow of Tavi’s old carbonite pod, secured against the bulkhead. 

Din notices the way she deliberately avoids looking at it, positioning herself so that it’s behind her shoulder, outside of her line of sight. She binds her hair back first, fingers swiftly knotting it back into its braid, then takes what he loosely interprets as a defensive stance, one leg behind her, the other forward, bent slightly at the knee, the lightsaber held out in front of her in both hands. He does his best to copy her, though it feels awkward, unnatural. Not at all like a blaster or his spear.

“Good,” she says with a nod. “We’ll concentrate on footwork first, then try running through a few maneuvers with the sabers on. Now follow me.”

Together they move, a dance that becomes easier with each step she shows him. At first Din is heavy, awkward, but she’s patient as she indicates where to place his feet in response to the shift of hers. She shows him how to favor short, quick jabs over grand sweeps, how to follow the balance of attack, retreat, attack over and over. 

He finds himself getting surprisingly tired, his forehead and underarms dampening with perspiration beneath his armor. Tavi is quick, almost too quick for him to follow, and he gets the feeling she’s holding back; she’s barely broken a sweat. But she’s grinning, a wild glint in her eyes. She’s definitely enjoying herself.

“All right. Let’s run through it with these on.” Her saber punches through the air with a flickering neon buzz as it activates. Din hesitates for a moment before he activates his, remembering its light reflected in Moff Gideon’s eyes, in Bo-Katan’s. He shakes it away, thumbing the switch, and the black blade springs to life between them.

To Tavi’s credit, she only hesitates slightly at the sight of it, at the pure darkness crackling with white light at the edges of the void. Then she spins her golden blade out in front of her, down and then up again in a kind of flourishing salute, and nods, flicking her free hand at him in a come-hither gesture. 

He steps forward like she showed him, extending the saber in a quick, tight thrust, and she counters with a parry that makes the blades crackle with a sound like muted thunder as they meet. Her face is serious now, expression set in the flickering light, her lips pulled tight to her teeth with concentration. 

Din retreats, and they circle around one another. He tests her with a feint, but she’s too practiced to fall for it. “You really do know what you’re doing,” he observes, his breath a little heavy around the words. Adrenaline fizzes in his veins as his body loosens into the new motions, his muscle-memory taking over. She has the advantage of training, however, and this strikes him as an art that relies more on knowledge than on power.

“I used to be pretty good at this.” This time, she is the one to lunge at him with a quick swipe aimed at his shoulder, and he barely knocks it away, stepping back as she advances. “I was a lot younger and more nimble, though.”

“Would’ve liked to see it,” he says, looking for an opening as her saber weaves in front of her face, its glow a golden fire in her dark eyes. The darksaber shudders and whines as he holds it between them, mimicking her movements. 

Her teeth flash at him. “You wouldn’t have been able to keep up with me, old man.”

“Technically,” he says, spinning the darksaber around behind him to shift his grip, the way she showed him, “You’re older than me.”

“Semantics.” 

Although it’s not an action she’s shown him, Din spins and strikes, keeping his movements precisely controlled so as to not accidentally hit her should she fail to parry in time. She does, of course, and their blades strike with a flash, locking and then parting again as she withdraws.

“Good,” she says, stepping back. Her breath is coming a little quicker now. “Showy, but good. Guess I know your weak spot.”

It’s hard to hold back, to stick to the tight, controlled steps she demonstrated, when all he wants to do is unleash, show her the true power of a Mandalorian. In more ways than one. He lunges forward with a modulated snarl.

They clash, part, clash again, and the hold fills with the sound of the hum of the sabers and the sizzle as they collide. Din growls beneath the helmet, and Tavi’s chest heaves under her coveralls, her braid flickering across her shoulders as they find a balance between attacking and retreating. He’s not sure if she’s holding back now, but each time either of them penetrates the other’s defense, they’re quick to break away, leading to a stalemate that soon has them both panting as they circle each other, slower than before.

Maybe it’s the thrill of adrenaline in his blood. Maybe it’s the wild look in Tavi’s eyes, the way she moves, each motion flowing elegantly into the next, savage in its conviction. But Din thinks that she’s never looked more beautiful.

“I have to say,” she begins, holding her saber with both hands, keeping it high and tight to her body to fend off any strikes, “I’d hate to face you in real battle.”

“Likewise,” the Mandalorian replies. “You-'' But he’s concentrating too much on talking and not on keeping his elbows up like she showed him. She spots the opening as the tip of the darksaber dips, an opportunity to strike, and she takes it. 

Stepping forward faster than he could have believed possible, she lashes out into the space he’s left open. He brings his arm up to try to intercept her, and the lightsaber impacts the metal of his Beskar gauntlet, showering them both in sparks. She’s not deterred; she swings again, and Din swears as the darksaber is torn from his grip and goes flying, retracting into the hilt with an angry-sounding hiss.

His fingers sting, and his glove is smoking, but everything seems to be intact. Din flexes his hand experimentally as he stands, sweating. 

“Did I hurt you?” Tavi asks, and when he looks up, her face is flushed, a thin sheen of perspiration on her brow, her neck, flyaway hairs that have escaped from her braid sticking to her skin. But her eyes are shining and there’s the echo of victory in the curve of her mouth.

“I’m fine,” he says, examining his vambrace. Not so much as a mark. “A light sword can’t cut through Beskar steel.” 

“Lightsaber,” she corrects, moving closer. Her eyes still glint with that fierceness he glimpsed earlier. Her knuckles are white on the hilt, scars thin on the stretched skin. 

She is a far more impressive warrior than he ever gave her credit for. The way she moves, with utter certainty, each step fluent in its simplicity. The coiled strength in her limbs translated into the sweep of the blade; disciplined, carefully measured, powerful. It’s ingrained into her bones, her being, and he has never seen her look so free as she does now.

“Do you yield?” she asks as she inches closer, her gaze sweeping him in a question, a challenge. 

“I don’t think so,” he says, moving to keep her in front of him, in his sights. This turns out to be a mistake, for he soon feels the weight of the bulkhead against his back as she advances. She’s backed him into a wall. A rookie mistake. 

She twirls her saber almost showily, behind her shoulder and then back around, without even needing to look. The way she handles the weapon is...impressive. He thinks he might be able to disarm her if she gets close enough, maybe grab her wrist and twist her arm behind her back, but does he want to do that? 

Din’s not sure.

At some point - he’s not sure when - the idea of giving her the upper hand became...appealing. 

Her foot nudges against the fallen darksaber, and she kicks it away across the deck with a clatter. “Sure you won’t reconsider?” she asks, and there’s an almost playful note beneath the serious cast to her expression. 

“I’m still armed,” Din points out, gesturing to his belt, the blaster in its holster by his hip. She’s within arm’s reach now, and he could easily draw the gun, reach out and subdue her, but he doesn’t. Instead, he lets her lean in and slide the blaster from his holster, tossing it in the same direction as the saber. 

“There,” she says, and as he watches, her tongue darts out to moisten her lips, her gaze flickering over him as the yellow saber wavers. Din’s suddenly very, very aware of her proximity, of the warmth rising from her skin.

“Still got flash charges in my belt,” he points out. He stays still, his arms at his sides, but his breath catches somewhere in the vicinity of his chest as she extends a hand again. Her eyes stay fixed to his visor as she finds the release on his belt buckle, and it sags around his hips before she tugs it away from around his body.

“Anything else?”

“Knife,” he says, aware of the expansion of breath in his own lungs, the increase in his heart rate that is not due to the fight. “In my boot.” He swallows heavily when she kneels, and although she’s the one on her knees in front of him now, she is the one with all the power over him in that moment - and he doesn’t mind one bit.

The sudden silence, the absence of the hum from the lightsaber almost goes unnoticed, as it does when she sets the hilt carefully aside at his feet. Her hands, so small and delicate, so strong, are travelling up his legs, from his knees and up and over his thigh-guards, but Din imagines he can feel the press of her palms even through the Beskar.

He’s already half-hard from the combination of adrenaline and arousal. Something about it, something about the confident glint in her eyes and the surety of her movements, speaks to a part of him he hadn’t been aware of before. A part that wants to fuck her as much as he wanted to fight.

Evidently, she’s on the same page, if the way she palms him through his pants is any indication. She’s not shy, either, caressing his length while his cock swells even further under her ministrations. It takes all his self control to stay still, to let her dexterous fingers explore him through the too-thick fabric. A grunt escapes him, and the dimple in her cheek deepens as she presses her lips together to hide a grin.

“To the victor go the spoils,” Tavi murmurs, the huskiness in her voice doing nothing to reduce the needy ache growing in his belly, in his groin as she strokes him.

The sound of his button and zipper parting is like music to his ears, and Din releases a heavy, modulated sigh, letting his head fall back against the wall with a metallic sound as she frees his cock from his underwear. Her fingers curl around his length, sure and strong, her hand warm and impossibly soft.

His fists clench at his sides as she tightens her grip and draws him through her fist, long and slow, from root to tip. He breathes through his nose, biting his lip beneath the helm, leaning into it.

It’s strangely liberating, allowing someone else to have this kind of power over him; to let her make him feel good. It’s not something he’s ever permitted anyone else more than once, and even then only briefly, and certainly not anything like this. Never anything like the warm feeling he gets beneath his breastbone whenever he looks at her. 

Her mouth is inches from his cock, and he looks down to watch, dazed, as she pumps him in front of her face a few times. His cock twitches, the head dark and flushed with blood as her thumb spreads the growing bead of moisture at the tip, and Din grits his teeth against the full-body shudder that she pulls from him.

It’s devastating when she leans in, when he feels the press of her lips against the head of his cock, soul-wracking when she wraps her lips around him. She’s only ever done this for him once before and for nowhere near long enough; his reaction is just as strong, if not stronger.

“Fffuh- fuck,” he utters as she draws him further into her mouth, her lips stretching around the thick of him. It’s warm and wet and all-encompassing, and the press of her tongue against the underside of his dick feels unfathomably good. 

“Mesh’la - ” Din cuts himself off with another grunt, reaching out to wind her braid around his hand, just for something to hold onto, something to earth himself as she takes him apart with her clever little mouth.

Tavi gets maybe halfway down his shaft before the tip bumps against the back of her throat, which feels good in and of itself. When she pulls back, swirls her tongue around him and begins to suck, though, it’s something close to heavenly.

Her hand wraps around his base, stroking what her lips and tongue can’t reach. She is far too good at this, and he tells her so in a rough whisper through the vocabulator.

Din, Mando, has never been much of a talker, but he can’t seem to stop himself right now. Words fall from his lips, bypassing his brain entirely, a jumble of Mando’a and Basic endearments and filth that he might be ashamed of under any other circumstance. “Feels so good - look so, unh, so beautiful, cyare, so pretty with my cock in your mouth - ”

Evidently, Tavi likes that, if the answering bob of her head and the swirl of her tongue is any indication. Din trails off with another inarticulate noise as the tip of her tongue follows the thick vein on the underside of his cock and her fingers spread her saliva all over him as she draws back.

His fist tightens in her braid and he thrusts his hips forward involuntarily; she makes a gagging sound as he hits the back of her throat. He’s about to let go and apologize when she suddenly takes her hand away, widens her jaw and adjusts her angle to take him in deeper, swallowing him down all the way - he feels the muscles of her throat relax and gasps convulsively as her nose brushes the wiry curls at the base of his cock and her forehead presses into his padded stomach.

“Ah, shit, Tavi - my little Kit - yes,” Din mutters haltingly, heat surging through his cock, spreading from his groin, drawing his balls up high and tight. He begins to rock his hips back and forth, and she keeps her jaw open wide and her tongue moving, the inside of her mouth molten, slick - perfect. 

“Sweet girl - not gonna last,” Din manages warningly, and when he feels the tension growing dangerously towards its peak, he grunts and pulls at her hair, tugging her off him. His cock slips from her mouth with a wet, obscene sound, and she falls back on her haunches, drawing deep breaths and panting almost as much as he is.

“Do you yield?” she asks from the floor, her teeth flashing at him in a wild grin. Her lips are red and swollen, her nose running a little. She’s never looked more beautiful.

Din growls and reaches down, pulling her up by a shoulder. He lets go of her hair only to spin her around, switching their positions as he presses her into the bulkhead. He reaches around her, gloved fingers fumbling at the zipper of her coveralls for a moment before yanking it down all the way in one rough movement. But she’s just as eager, shrugging it off her shoulders, her arms, wriggling it down over her hips as Din shucks his gloves and reaches for the hem of her underwear, yanking it down to her knees.

Her back arches as he palms her hips and pulls her back against him, his cock trapped between her ass and his stomach. He doesn’t give it to her straight away even as she wriggles against him; instead, he reaches round to card his fingers gently through her soft curls, fingers seeking with pinpoint precision the swollen flesh of her clitoris.

“Din-” The way she moans his name is almost enough to make him come there and then, pressed between their bodies, but he grits his teeth as he rubs meticulous, tight circles into the hood of her clit. She’s so aroused just from having him in her mouth, which amazes him, her slick gathering on the pads of his fingers as he trades them for his thumb, pressing into the bundle of nerves while he seeks out her entrance with fore- and middle-fingers.

He sinks into her up to the second knuckle with barely any effort, and she moans and braces her hands flat on the bulkhead, shuddering in his arms. “Make me feel so good,” he growls as he presses his helmet into the back of her shoulder, “Now it’s my turn.”

Tavi murmurs inarticulate sounds as he fucks her with his fingers, drawing them out before plunging them back in again and again, gaining a little ground each time. She’s impossibly hot, impossibly wet, impossibly tight inside, and he can feel her inner walls flex and squeeze with each plunge of his digits. He keeps his thumb circling her clit with a steady pressure, drinking in her gasps.

“So strong,” he mutters, overcome by it, by her. “So beautiful. Do you know what you do to me, mesh’la?” He grinds his hips against her, the length of his cock dragging through the cleft of her ass, and she just shivers and presses down around his fingers. “I was this hard just watching you fight.” She whimpers, her thighs clenching around his hand, her walls fluttering around his fingers. She’s so close he can almost taste it.

“I yield,” he whispers through the modulator, and he feels her clench, inside and out, as she comes. His hand grows slippery with it, and he keeps his fingers and thumb moving against her as her muscles ripple, her clitoris pulses and her body jerks, his other arm wrapped tight around her waist.

Eventually, she grows limp, twitching and panting. One of her hands slips from the wall to paw gently at his, and he withdraws the fingers from between her legs, stroking her oversensitive clit just once on the way out, smirking as she jumps in his arms. He lets her come down and relax, even as his cock throbs between them. He can ignore it.

However, Tavi doesn’t intend to let him. She reaches back for his hip, and he blinks once in surprise as she lifts hers - and groans when she lets him slide into the hot, damp space between her thighs, her puffy folds dragging her slick over the length of his cock.

“Tavi-”

“Need you,” she murmurs, and his arms tighten around her. She must know what that simple phrase does to him by now, after the hangar bay. Of course she does, and he’s powerless to resist, releasing a soft grunt as he shifts to nudge the aching head of his cock against the slick hollow of her entrance.

Din knows he won’t last long, so he tries to draw it out, sliding in slow, stretching her open inch by aching  inch, but all that means is he can feel every velvet twitch and ridged ripple of her around him. He’s clenching his teeth and panting by the time his hips are flush to her ass, his fingers pressing into her hip, a fist planted for support against the wall next to her head.

Distantly, he registers the hoarseness of Tavi’s breath, her soft little whimpers, the way her thighs tremble as she holds herself up on tiptoes for him. Din forces himself to move, more of a grind than a thrust as he rolls his hips into hers, but it’s still enough to make electricity crackle in his oversensitive nerves.

“Don’t stop,” she chokes out, and he utters a broken chuckle into the modulator, letting go of the bulkhead to slide his hand down the front of her body, cupping her breast tightly through her sweat-soaked tank top. 

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Din says, and Tavi swears at him as he tweaks her nipple, moans breathlessly when his hand trails lower, practically sobs as his fingers find her clitoris again. He can feel the surge of wetness against his fingertips as he fucks into her, short shallow thrusts that press him into new places inside her, and he wants nothing more than to fill her to the brim with him until she’s dripping with it, saturated with him, claimed - but he needs to feel her come again first.

It doesn't take long. “Oh, Gods,” she pants, chest heaving, “Force - I can’t - Din - '' She comes on the exhalation of his name, keening it loud enough to echo in the hold, filling his senses with her as her spasming pussy squeezes his cock unfathomably tight. He holds it there inside her, as deep as he can go, his thigh plates biting into the backs of her legs, and answers with a groan of his own as his orgasm follows on the heels of hers. 

It washes through him in a flash-flood of liquefying heat, spreading out from his groin, speeding up his spine and earthing in his scalp and tingling fingertips. Din groans, broken and bruising, as he swells and throbs his release into her, and he’s not sure if the surge of stickiness at the base of his groin is more him or her . It’s impossible to tell.

After it passes, leaving them both a twitching mess, Din rests his helmeted forehead against the back of her neck as Tavi slumps against the wall, and they both concentrate just on breathing for the moment, on being. He forces himself to loosen his hold on her hip, tugging his hand from the soaked space between her legs, but he doesn’t let her go, instead spreading the broad press of his fingers over her stomach, holding her to him.

“To the victor go the spoils,” he murmurs after what could be a minute, or an hour.

Her chuckle is a buzz of breath that fills the space beneath his breastplate, and the weight of her head leaning back against his shoulder, her body loosening in his arms, is precious.

“Next time, maybe I’ll let you win,” she whispers, and underneath the helmet, Din grins.

Chapter Text

“I wish I had met you a long time ago.”

Din Djarin strokes the girl’s damp hair as she rests her head on his lap. The pillow of his Beskar motun’bur can’t be that comfortable, but she doesn’t seem to mind. After their sparring session and (separate) showers, she is quiet, tired, but she’s been smiling since they parted. He thinks he even heard her humming in the refresher.

Although he might not admit it, the Mandalorian is also tired. Their session took it out of him - in more ways than one - but there’s no time to sleep before they arrive at Kepler IV. He permits himself only these few small moments to rest. 

These moments, he values the most.

“Why’s that?” she asks, opening her eyes to look up at him. He hasn’t bothered to put his gloves back on yet, and they rest on the bolted-down table in front of the couch, next to their sabers. Din reaches out, tracing a fingertip underneath her mouth, in the divot of her chin.

“You could have trained him.”

“Who?” Tavi yawns, shifting. She’s put on a new pair of coveralls, and as he watches, she plays with the zip over her navel, sliding it up and then down again. It’s very distracting, but he sticks to his train of thought.

“Grogu.”

“Grogu?” She must be comfortable. Her eyes are fluttering, but they snap open with his next words.

“The foundling.” He lets his gaze drift from hers, tracking over the bulkheads without really taking any of it in. “He was a Jedi, too. I spent a long time looking for his kind to find someone to train him.”

Tavi is silent for a few moments. When he looks back down, her expression is twisted with a mixture of sadness and regret.

“I’m sorry, Din,” she says softly. “I couldn’t have trained him. I was never a very good Jedi.”

“Based on what I saw before, I think you’re wrong,” he tells her. Granted, he’s only ever met two Jedi, but she fights almost as fiercely as they had. “Your skill in combat-”

“There’s more to it than that,” she protests, exasperation creeping into her voice as she rises to sit, turning away from him. He senses he’s said something wrong, but he’s not sure what or why. “Saber mastery is barely a drop in the ocean. And I certainly don’t remember enough now to share any knowledge of the Force.”

“You use it, though,” he points out. “I’ve seen you. Moving things with your mind. Sensing things.”

She nods, sighing as she looks down at her scarred hands. “Yes,” she concedes, “but a lot of it is...I don’t know, instinctual. I feel it, I don’t know it. Not really. In the moment, everything is easy, but if I try to think too much about how I did something…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like asking me to teach someone how to breathe, or how to think.”

Din stares at her for a moment, at the crease in her brow, the shadows that have returned to haunt the circles of her eyes. “I understand,” he says, even though he really doesn't.

“I’m glad.” She meets his visor then, offering a wan smile. “I would’ve liked to meet him, though, if he was anything like you.”

“He was…” Din thinks about it a moment. “Irksome. Incorrigible. Always getting into trouble.”

Her brow quirks. “Exactly like you, then.”

“A lot smaller,” he counters. Takes a breath before he continues. “I...He was the only thing I cared about. After I gave him up, I wasn’t sure I would care about anything ever again. Could care.” He lifts a hand, laying it on her shoulder, rubbing his thumb back and forth there. “I’m glad I was wrong.”

Tavi turns her chin, pressing her lips all-too-briefly against his knuckles. “Me too.” She tilts her head. “Can I ask you something?”

Din shrugs. “Go ahead.”

“You never told me where you’re from."                                  

“Nevarro,” he answers shortly. “A settlement in the middle of a volcanic wasteland.”

“Are there other Mandalorians there?” She brings her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them, looking at him through a few stray strands of dark hair that have drifted over her eyes. 

He glances away. “Not any more.” 

“I’m sorry,” Tavi says as the silence stretches a little too long between them. “I didn’t mean to bring up...anything you didn’t want to think about.”

He shrugs again, leaning back, trying to relax as the tension translates to his muscles. “Mandalorians are a nomadic people. We never stay in one place for long. This is the Way.”

“That sounds...nice.” It’s not what he expected Tavi to say, and Din looks at her as her eyes become distant, unfocused. “Traveling, I mean. Never being tied down or beholden to anyone or anything. No obligations. Nobody looking to you to be a paragon of peace and justice in the galaxy.” 

She sounds...not bitter, exactly, but full of regret, of unmet expectations, of disappointment in herself. Din can relate. “Is that what it was like for the Jedi?” he asks. He wants to reach out, to touch her again, but he hesitates to.

“You have your Creed, and the Jedi have their Code,” Tavi says with a tired sigh. “Yours is a way of living, but ours was a way not to live. Don’t have attachments. Don’t care too much. Don’t show too much emotion.” She looks down at her hands, like she often does when she’s thinking, remembering. “In a way, I was...relieved when I failed the trials. When I didn’t have to become a Knight after all. But I still wasn’t free, not really.”

They aren’t so different from one another, Din thinks. Both bound by traditions and culture. Both...failures.

To take off his helmet in front of a living being meant forsaking his soul, the possibility of an afterlife, and he had done it without a second’s thought for the Child, for the Girl. She had given up her very memories themselves. For what, he wonders? 

She sniffs and turns away from him. Is she crying?

“Kit-” he begins, touching her shoulder. She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, and when she glances back at him, it’s not tears he sees, but a bright streak of crimson on her face, on her fingers.

“You’re bleeding,” Din observes, and Tavi looks down at her hand in surprise. “Your nose.” It flows from her nostrils, a trickle that stains her teeth red as she grimaces.

“Probably just...blood pressure,” she mumbles, but she looks pale beneath the blood. Din is on his feet at once, looking for her bag. 

“Pinch your nose. Head back. Do you have any e-bacta left?” He asks as he finds it on the floor in the sleeping compartment. Tavi protests, trying to get to her feet, but she’s weak, listing to the side, leaning heavily against the sofa. 

“Wait, Din, I-” But he’s already found it. Every single hypo-syringe he left her with.

“You haven’t been taking it. Why haven’t you been taking it?!” Din is unable to keep the growl from his voice, hissing the words from between clenched teeth as he stalks back to her side. She shrinks before his rage, although it’s not directed at her - not really. It’s directed at himself. 

Yet again, he’s failed to take care of her properly. Yet again, he has nobody but himself to blame.

He places a hand at her shoulder, forcing himself to be gentle as he urges her onto the couch again. “Sit.” She goes down easily, her wince hidden by the hand keeping her nostrils squeezed shut.

“I didn’t want to remember,” she mutters, her voice slightly tinny. “Besides, I was fine. Apart from the headaches and the nightmares.”

“Foolish girl,” he says, shaking his head. “You have brain damage. You don’t just walk that off.” Unless you’re a Mandalorian, of course. But her injuries go deeper than just a crack in her skull.

He reaches out, brushing her hair from her neck with one hand, holding the hypo up in the other. “Hold still.”

“Din, wait - please.” He pauses, withdrawing the syringe from her skin. Her bottom lip is trembling, and she’s fighting to keep her breathing under control. “What if I - what if I remember something that - that changes me?”

“Like what?” He tilts his head. Trying for patience, understanding, even though he could never truly hope to comprehend what it’s like in her head.

“I don’t know. That’s just it. Force help me, Din, I’m kriffing scared.”

There are tears now, mixing with the blood, and the panic in Tavi’s eyes gives the Mandalorian pause. Heedless of the blood, he reaches out and draws her close, feeling her shoulders shake with silent sobs beneath his hand. 

“Don’t worry, cyare,” he murmurs, his voice soft through the vocabulator. “Whatever happens, I’ll be here.” He pulls back to meet her, visor-to-eyes. “I promised to protect you, didn’t I?”

She sniffs, swallowing spit and tears and blood. “Yes.”

“Then let me protect you.”

Tavi looks at him, pale and shaking, and at last, she nods.

"Tilt your head back.”

She hesitates for only a moment longer before doing as she’s told, baring the smooth column of her neck to him. As gently as he can Din presses the syringe to it and pushes the plunger. The needle bites into her skin, emptying the e-bacta into her bloodstream, and she doesn’t so much as wince. 

Tossing the empty hypo, he steadies her, easing her to rest against the back of the sofa. The bleeding slows to a trickle by the time she lowers her hand, her head lolling listlessly on her shoulder. Her eyelids flutter, consciousness a clear effort as the drug does its work. He can see her fighting it, effort etched in the lines on her brow.

“Close your eyes, mesh’la,” he murmurs, touching her face. “Rest."

At last, her eyelashes come to rest against the freckled span of her cheeks, and she sighs, the tension leaving her body as she slips into unconsciousness.

Din spends a moment measuring her breathing, the beat of her heart before he lifts her into his arms and carries her to the sleeping berth. She’s never felt so light, so small, so helpless - although, even as he lays her limp form down on the mattress and steps back, he knows she’s anything but. 

He can only hope she’ll stay that way.

Chapter Text

The ocean roils, emerald-green froth foaming to grey as it churns on the surface. The sky is a mirror to the turbulent waters, an inverted bank of purple-black clouds that collide and burst with thunder, neon lightning igniting them from within with bursts of bright color.

The wind is intense, kicking up clouds of particulate and spray, and standing on the shore feels like being in the centre of a biting whirlwind, with the stinging slap of the sea fighting back.

Tavi stands buffeted by salt and sand, near-blind with the violence of it. She holds up a hand to cover her eyes but all she can see is blood. Blood flowing from the cuts in her hands, from her nose, from her eyes, obscuring her vision and making her choke on the all-pervasive taste of copper and darkness.

She wakes next on her knees, hands bound, her back on fire with stripes of pure agony. The dirt floor is bloody, the body of the young Padawan is bloody, milky eyes staring upward.

“You have to go forward, not back,” a voice whispers. It takes her a second to realize it’s her own. She looks up, up into her own dark eyes that stare down at her from beneath a grey hood. The yellow lightsaber crackles at her side, its golden glow reaching down into her, shining through the fractured cracks in her soul. 

“I don’t understand,” she sobs, through blood and snot and tears. “Tell me what you want from me!”

The gray figure steps forward, and the light shifts. It’s no longer her face, but her first Master’s, kind eyes disapproving, disappointed.

“The answers you seek are not here, Padawan. They never were.”

“Then why is this all I remember?” Her hands clench into fists, blood oozing out from between her fingers. 

“You allowed yourself to be defined by these moments. You must move past them. Your path did not end here.” The Gray Jedi speaks now, the saber tight in one hand, blaster in the other. 

She looks up. “What happened to me, Sentinel?” Her demand is more of a whisper. “What happened to you? They tell me the Jedi are all gone now. Gone, like we never existed. Is that what I am now? A ghost?”

“The universe is balance, Tavi. You must find yours just the same.” The robes brush the ground as she turns, and Tavi rises to her feet to reach out, but she trips and falls, and she keeps falling, falling, falling…

---

The pain is gone now, replaced by the soft brush of the long, yellow grass, the gentle touch of fingers on her cheek. This feels more solid, more like a memory, less like the jumble of her own subconscious trying to make itself heard. 

“Do you feel it?” 

Tavi sits up as the hand moves away, watching as the woman stands, her robes painted a purple-blue by the setting light from the pink sun. 

“Feel what?” she asks her, twirling a strand of grass around her finger.

“A disturbance in the Force. Everything is shifting. Unrest is brewing all across the galaxy.” She sighs. “We will be leaving this place soon.”

Tavi frowns as she looks around, the soft breeze stirring the grass and lifting her hair from her shoulders. It has been a year now, and she has never before felt so at home in a place, with a people. Not even at the Temple on Coruscant.

The Gray Jedi are passionate, they are temperate, and they are kind; a kindness Tavi has not known in her life until now. They understand the space in between the light and dark, the space in between perfect and failure , where all else that she is resides. 

“Must we? This system is almost stabilized. With our support in the major spaceports, we might-”

“Remember, my dear Tavi, that it is not always about the extent of our success, but the degree with which we prevented a disaster,” the Gray Jedi reminds her. “We must move on. There are others out there that need our help.”

“I know,” Tavi sighs, because she does . It has never been her fate to stay in one place for too long. It has always felt...wrong, like she was meant for other things, things with greater reach. The Gray Sentinel had drawn it out of her, like plucking at a loose thread, unraveling the tight knots of her more traditional Jedi training. She does not regret it.

“I’m ready, Vae,” she says as she rises to her feet, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “You know I am.”

“You haven’t yet rebuilt your lightsaber,” Sentinel Vae points out, and Tavi drops her hand, her gaze. The crystal remains dormant, inert, nestled in her pocket where it has been ever since her new Master returned it to her. But it sings no longer.

“...No.”

“You may take my shoto.” The Gray Jedi turns and offers her a hilt narrower than Tavi is used to, slightly curved to fit the hand. She hesitates for only a moment before taking it. “And a blaster, I think. You will not be helpless.” The soft fingers touch her chin, but are gone before she can intercept them.

“When do we leave?”

Vae smiles. “Yesterday.”

---

Tavi gasps awake. There is a pounding in her temples, welcoming her to consciousness with a staccato beat of pain drumming in her head and behind her eyes. 

It takes a minute for full awareness to set in, and even then, she’s not sure where or when she is straight away. For a moment, everything blurs together. Her memory, her sight, even her feelings. It’s all hopelessly tangled in her head, impossible to unravel, to make sense of immediately.

Then she hears a gruff, modulated voice murmur her name nearby, and familiarity warms a place in her heart reserved only for him. The Mandalorian hovers by her bedside, a looming column of shining Beskar steel that hurts to look at.

And she remembers.

“Tavi?” 

“Hey.” Her voice is hoarse, and it feels like her mouth is full of wool, drying up her throat, her words lost in the fuzz. She rolls her tongue around against her teeth and cheeks, tasting the faded iron tang of blood. When she touches her face, though, it’s clean.

“How long…?”

“Only a couple of hours,” Din says. The thin mattress dips as it takes his weight. “We’re docked on Kepler IV.” She feels his gloved fingers brush hair from her face, and for a moment it blends with the recollection of other, more slender fingers doing the same. “Who’s Vae?”

Yellow grass. A pink sun. A hooded figure, dressed all in gray. 

“Vae?” 

“You were saying it in your sleep.”

Fuck. Tavi squeezes her eyes shut against the sting, the ache of emptiness in the pit of her stomach. Loss. This is what she didn’t want to remember, this is what she feared.

“A memory,” she says when she opens her eyes, and she shakes her head to clear it. She pushes a hand beneath her and sits up slowly, mindful of the way the world tilts when she does. 

“Want to talk about it?” She’s surprised, even now, that Din is asking - so gently, she’s sure his face beneath the Beskar is creased, lined with worry. She wants to reassure him, to tell him that she’s okay, but the words won’t come.

“No,” she says. “Not, not yet.”

He just nods. Accepts it. Doesn’t push. Stands and moves away. 

“Wait.” He stops, and she thinks she can see the line of his shoulders tense beneath his pauldrons. 

“The Jedi who trained me...her name was Vae.” Her lips suddenly feel weak, and she pulls them in tight against the tremble of emotion, flattening them against her teeth. “She’s probably dead now.”

Din turns his helmet to his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. There is...There is purpose in death.” She draws a breath, finding calm in the flow of the Force, in its constant.

She swings her legs out in front of her and stands from the bed, and the Mandalorian is back by her side in an instant as she stumbles, catching her with an arm around her waist. 

“Take it easy,” he says, leaning her against the wall. “You need time.”

“No,” she tells him, “No, we have to go find Signas, his records, we have to-”

“Kepler isn’t going anywhere,” Din replies, and he places his hands on her shoulders and squeezes. “And neither are you. Not yet, anyway.”

Her fingers curl at the edges of his breastplate, and she leans in to rest her forehead against his chest for a moment. “You’re right. I know you’re right.” She sighs. Looks up after a moment. “Help me out? I don’t want to lie in bed all day.”

Din eyes her through the visor for a moment and then nods, looping an arm around her shoulders. Her steps get surer as they emerge into the common area, but she lets him lower her onto the sofa. He pads to the kitchenette and back, pressing a container of water into her hands which she sips greedily, washing away the taste of blood.

“How do you feel?” the Mandalorian asks, leaning a shoulder against the wall and folding his hands in front of him. Effortlessly casual, even though she knows coiled in that body is a power she has experienced firsthand. It seems too purposeful right now, though, the distance he’s putting between them, and even without the Force, she thinks she would be able to sense his concern. He’s practically vibrating with it, and she knows that he’s holding himself back from touching her again. He is wary of the after-effects of the e-bacta.

Tavi swallows another mouthful of water. “Like a steaming pile of bantha shit,” she says honestly. “But...getting better.” At least she’s not bleeding any more. 

The memories aren’t fading as quickly. They’re less like nightmares now, jumbled suggestions of sound and images, and more like actual sequences of events that settle in her psyche, a chunk of durasteel sinking to the bottom of the sea. It’s like slipping into old clothes, clothes that no longer fit, and they hang awkwardly on her. 

But they are hers .

“Good. I was...worried, for a second there.” Din seems uncomfortable with the admission, like he’s confessing a weakness. For him, it probably is. “But you heal fast.”

“Not always. Not everywhere.” She touches the side of her head, smiles wryly. Under the helmet, the Mandalorian makes a noise that sounds somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle. 

“Rest,” he says as he pushes off the wall and heads stiffly for the hatch to the bridge. “I’ll be here.”

Tavi nods, watching him go. He leaves the hatch open behind him, but she can’t see him beyond its edge. She waits a while, sipping the water, until the container is empty and she can think again.

She looks around. Her lightsaber lays where she left it on the table. When she rises to her feet, her legs feel more solid beneath her than before, and the pounding in her head is almost muted enough to ignore. Glancing over her shoulder, she eyes the cargo hold door which stands open, the path clear to the ramp beyond.

Tavi knows, before she even pauses to contemplate, that she’s already made her decision. 

“I’m sorry, Din,” she whispers, with one final glance towards the cockpit before she grabs her lightsaber and heads towards the ramp.

Chapter Text

The entryway smells like choking dust, the coppery tang of dried blood, and the fading bite of burning flesh. It is still strong enough to permeate the filters of Din Djarin’s helm as he steps carefully through the darkness.

The bodies are gone but the stains remain, dark brown clouds discoloring the bare, duracrete floor in places. Din weaves his way through, wondering who cleaned up the bodies - Kepler’s authorities, the Imps, or Tavi herself.

He discovered her gone barely an hour after she woke when the Kom’rk’s ramp opened without his authorization. By the time he made it there, she was gone, her light sword along with her. 

It’s as if she forgot that Din Djarin is a Mandalorian, a bounty hunter by nature, by trade. Tracking and hunting is what he does best. Somehow, though, he doubts she was thinking about that when she ran off. He doubts she was thinking at all.

He is angry, yes - but again, more at himself than at her. The haunted look in her eyes, the way she hunched in on herself, obviously reluctant to talk, made him pull away to give her some space to be alone. He hadn’t even considered that she might run. 

He’s tracked her here, straight to Signas’ lair. He’d stop to wonderhow she knew where it was if he didn’t remember she is also a Jedi. She probably figured it out by...Force magic, or whatever it is.

It doesn’t stop him from worrying. She’s still healing, and clearly not thinking straight. He can only hope he finds her before she gets herself into any trouble he can't get her out of.

There’s a clatter from the corridor that makes him whirl on his heel. Mando has his blaster in his hand in less than a second, touching the side of his helm to activate the audio and visual enhancers. He can hear breathing, small and sharp, but when the world fades to purple-gray and he sweeps his gaze across the floor, he can only see faded, four-padded pawprints in the dust.

He presses his shoulder flat against the wall next to the doorway and slowly, millimeter by millimeter, he leans out, giving only a sliver of his helm to the corridor beyond, presenting as small a target as possible. 

He needn’t have bothered. The source of the sound, the facility’s only other occupant, is a raggedy-looking Tooka cat, sitting there licking itself. Din sighs.

The cat spots him as he steps out, and bares twin rows of needle-sharp teeth in a wide hiss before running off.

“Guess you remember me,” he murmurs, lowering his blaster. But only a little. 

He sweeps the corridor with his enhanced vision, and that’s when he sees it: Bootprints. One set. Fresh, not faded like the others. They light up in his view, a bright path for him to follow.

Din thinks about calling out but that’s something only the inexperienced, the stupid or the people in holoplays do. Instead he advances slowly and silently, blaster held at the ready, and follows the bootprints into the room at the end of the corridor.

Signas’ office. The desk inside is plain and functional, but the terminal is dark, burnt-out, destroyed by blaster fire. Exactly as he found it on his last visit, only before there was Relem Signas himself slumped over it, the gaping hole in his head leaking blood everywhere. The stain is still there, but like the other bodies, his is gone.

The room has also been tossed since then. Every drawer is open, every container emptied, papers and trinkets strewn about every which way. Tavi has been busy.

The bootprints go to the open window. The drop is two storeys and leads straight into the quarry. Din sighs as he stows his blaster and clambers out through the window - finding it considerably narrower and more awkward than a small Jedi girl might have.

Still, he makes it, using the jetpack to smooth his descent and landing easily on his feet. There are no workers around - no doubt dead or scared off by their employer’s demise. It makes it easier to refocus on picking up Tavi’s tracks again. They are clearer in the rock dust, so much so that he barely needs the visual enhancer, but he keeps it on anyway - just in case.

She can’t be too far ahead of him.

Normally, the thrill of the hunt would be singing in his veins right about now, but it’s tempered by the itch of frustration in the back of his mind. This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been so stupid, not locking the ship down in the first place. This wouldn’t have happened if he’d just kept an eye on his girl, like he keeps telling himself to. The trouble is, she’s so damn capable sometimes that he forgets that four months ago, she was just a carbonite popsicle.

Din follows her footsteps out into the streets of the town. It’s edging towards evening, the horizon above the rocky outcrops fading to an unremarkable, orange-gray. Streetlights aren’t on yet and it’s beginning to get busy with workers finishing their shifts, trudging to their homes or haunts. The smell of sweat and dirt is pervasive. Most of the workers give Mando a wide berth, but he has to shoulder his way through a couple of the busier streets as Tavi’s path leads him onward.

After another couple of twists and turns, the trail leads towards the light and warmth from an open door. Raucous laughter and the smell of smoke, spice and alcohol spill out into the street. The cantina. 

It’s considerably livelier than his first visit - in fact, it's packed almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Is this the only damn cantina on the planet? Mando wonders as he edges his way in. His presence, lost almost immediately to the press of bodies, doesn’t draw as much a reaction as last time he was here, for which he’s simultaneously grateful and annoyed. It’s a mission just to make it to the bar.

Behind the counter there’s a droid, wiping glasses in a repetitive, robotic motion. It looks familiar - and a lot better-cared for.

“Evening, Smiley,” Din says, shouldering away a couple of rowdy patrons who turn to glare at him, see the armor and helmet and think better of it, moving away.

“What Can I Get You?” the droid named Smiley asks, its vocabulator still warbling a little, but the words come out smoother than he before.

“Information,” he says. He has to raise his voice a little to be heard over the din. “I’m looking for someone. A girl.”

Smiley lifts a rusty, but no longer creaking arm, and points across the cantina. Mando cranes to glance over the heads of the miners and workers cramming the bar.

Across the crowded space, through the swirling smoke, he sees her. And beneath the helmet, his mouth drops open.

Tavi sits on the edge of a table, surrounded by a group of miners - at first he thinks she might be in danger, and the urge to just shove his way over there with his blaster drawn is strong , but the longer he looks the more details he can see. 

She’s holding a half-full bottle of something that looks alcoholic, and she is speaking animatedly, gesturing with her free hand; the men that surround her are hanging on her every word. She has her coveralls tied around her waist, her hair unbound and flowing free down her shoulders, and the long line of her neck glistens with sweat as she throws her head back and laughs . The men echo her, and one slings an arm around her shoulder and says something into her ear.

Rage simmers and boils over in Din's veins, narrowing his vision. His fists clench with it, and he has his blaster in hand and is forging through the throng before he’s even conscious of moving.

He reaches her side, ignoring the shouts and growls of protest. He has one, singular focus, one mission:His Kit. His Tavi. Nobody else gets to touch her like that.  

“Get off her!” He grabs the man with his arm around her by his shoulder and throws him to the ground before he can do much more than glance at him in surprise. He hits heavily and does not get up again.

“Mando?” Tavi looks up in shock - as do the rest of the men when they spot his weapon. A couple scuttle off to be swallowed by the crowd, but the swarthiest of the group, one unfortunately brave and quite foolish soul, rises to his feet and gets in between the angry Mandalorian and the girl.

“Hey, buddy, what’s your kriffin’ problem? We was just havin’ a conversation with this lovely lady here and you come bargin’ in-”

Mando’s fist closes around his throat and squeezes. The miner’s eyes bulge and he scrabbles futilely at his wrist. “The lovely girl and I are leaving,” he hisses through the vocabulator. When he senses movement out of the corner of his visor, he points his blaster at the last man as he gets to his feet. He raises his hands slowly. “Am I understood?”

“Sure, sure,” the last worker says. The one whose throat remains in his durasteel-like grip can only nod. Mando lets him go, and he falls back, coughing.

“Good. Come on, girl. Let's go.”

Tavi has been staring at him the entire time, a frown heavy on her brow, her mouth twisted in anger. She gets to her feet at last, but to his disgust, she pauses to check on the downed workers before she joins his side. He grabs her upper arm, none-too-gently, and ignores her wince as he drags her back through the cantina towards the door. 

She doesn’t say a word.

The crowd hasn’t taken much notice of the commotion up til now, and a few curious soot-smeared workers turn to watch as the Mandalorian makes his way to the exit, girl in tow. None of them try to stop him. Perhaps they can sense the rage burning in him; it feels bright enough to turn his armor incandescent with its heat.

They emerge into the cooler, dusty night air but Din doesn’t say anything either until they’re well away from the bar, ducking down a side alley before he finally lets Tavi go. She steps back, rubbing her arm, glaring at him with undisguised hostility.

“What the fuck was that?” she asks him. He thinks he’s never seen her so angry before - but then, nor has she seen him like this, coldly furious, all coiled tension ready to snap. 

He looms over her, getting into her space, crowding her against the wall of the building behind her. “I could ask you the same kriffing question! Letting those - those filthy chakaaryc put their paws all over you-”

“They used to work for Signas,” she hisses, her eyes flashing. “I was looking for information- ”

He slams a palm into the wall by her head. She flinches, her words dying in her throat. “Without telling me where you were going,” he begins, his voice flat with deadly calm. “Without-”

“Din-”

“Quiet ,” he snaps. He can’t remember ever speaking to her so harshly, and it shocks her into silence. “You’re still healing, you’re not thinking straight. You could have been killed. Or worse - “ and it would be his fault.  “You’re just lucky I tracked you here. Foolish girl, what were you thinking - ” He’s just making himself angrier with every word, even as he can see her cowering, shrinking in on herself, helpless in the face of his rage.

Normally, he would care. Normally, he would rein himself in, turn away, seethe beneath the helmet where she cannot see. But the sight of her with that man’s arm around her lingers in the forefront of his brain, making him grit his teeth, and he keeps picturing him leaning in and brushing her hair from her neck to whisper in her ear while she laughs and it fills him with a sick, nauseous wrath, a fury he’s never known before.

“I wasn’t thinking!” she blurts out, in the space between his angry words. It’s enough to stop him, enough to give him pause for her to speak, and her words are...not what he expects.

He expected anger, shouting. She would be justified, perhaps. But her voice is quiet, measured, an echo of the deadly calm he is capable of, and it reminds him - along with the saber hanging from her belt - that she is not some defenseless maiden, some wilting wallflower hanging on his every word, his every order. If she were, he would not love her as he does. With the fierceness and savagery of a strill guarding its mate.

“You’re right, Din, you’re right. I shouldn’t have rushed off like that, I should have told you before I left. But I couldn’t just sit here on your ship, waiting - helpless - when the people who are responsible for me losing twenty years of my life are out there, living theirs.” She waves a hand back towards Signas’ office, the cantina, Kepler itself, then lifts her chin to meet his gaze through the visor. Fierce, unapologetic.

“Now, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’m only going to tell you this once: Nobody gets to make me feel helpless. Including you .”

Her words are like a slap to the face, a splash of ice water direct to his veins, cooling his simmering anger from its flashpoint. Instead he is flooded with a mix of contrition, of pride; of regret and fierce affection for her, his girl, his Tavi, his warrior.

So small. So strong. He wonders what it is that weighs on him the most in this moment - that she is his and doesn’t know it, or that he is hers and he cannot tell her. Cannot possibly hope to ever voice what she means to him.

“Din,” she murmurs, tearing him from his thoughts. He feels a gentle pressure on the side of his helmet, and her hand turns his head to look at her. “I’m sorry.”

Din heaves a breath into his lungs. He feels as if he hasn’t fully inhaled since he saw her in that cantina. He reaches up, engulfs her hand in his. “Cyare.” He hopes the word tells her all he cannot express, in this moment and others. “Come back to the ship.” His breath shudders unevenly through the modulator with the next word. “Please.”

He can see her hesitation, but he’s not sure if it’s due to surprise or unwillingness. Then, at last, she nods. 

He steps back, keeping hold of her hand, her wrist. She lets him. 

She lets him lead her out of the alley, into the busy streets as they teem with people, and back towards the ship.

Together.

Chapter Text

Din Djarin’s temper cools with every step they take back towards the ship, until he almost can’t remember why he was so angry in the first place. But even with Tavi’s hand firmly in his grip, the images creep in unbidden of that man’s mouth by her ear, his lips so close to her skin that remembering it makes him sick. It simmers in the pit of his stomach like venom, keeping his muscles tensed and his steps heavy.

Tavi can no doubt sense it, but she says nothing. He wonders if she is afraid of him. The thought only makes him angrier. 

Finally, they reach the Guardian. She goes up the ramp first, but there’s nothing in the blank address of her gaze nor the set of her shoulders to give away her thoughts. It’s not until Din plods his way up after her and closes the ship behind them that she even glances at him. 

He is surprised, and a little chagrin, to see no echo of his own anger there in her freckled face.

“Are you okay?” she asks him. She asks him. As if he hasn’t just -

“Fine,” he grinds out, heading towards the cockpit. He can’t be around her right now. Not without fearing he might say or do something else unforgivably stupid. 

Because he knows he was wrong. He knows he was wrong, but that doesn’t make the images in his brain go away. They remain seared into him like a burning brand of jealousy, stamped into the skin above his heart, so deeply it brings a bitter, acrid tang to the back of his tongue.

Infuriatingly, Tavi follows him into the cockpit. Trying to close the distance between them as he seeks to increase it. Din settles into the pilot’s seat, absently eyeing the readouts which tell him nothing, make him feel nothing. Distract him not at all from her presence. 

“Din.” He feels her small, soft fingers touch his pauldron, tracing the signet there. “Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he manages, but her fingers are relentless. Reminding him of how deeply she has wormed her way underneath his armor. How much he has let her.

How much he should regret it, but doesn’t.

“I think there is.”

“It’s fine,” he lies. He flicks a switch, stares at a screen, unseeing. Next to him, Tavi makes a strangled sound of frustration and her hand withdraws from him. He feels its loss keenly.

“How many times do you want me to apologize?” she huffs. “Look, I told you. I know it was stupid, all right? 

“You - you don’t have to apologize,” he replies, stilted and stiff. Still not looking at her.

“Then why are you refusing to look at me? I’m not blind anymore, you know.”

Din swivels the chair so quickly it nearly spins all the way around, but he arrests it with his arm on the control panel. He tilts his helm up to fix her in his visor’s sights, but he finds himself looking at her chin, her mouth, her ear; anywhere but at her eyes.

“Better?” 

“No. You’re looking at me, but you’re not looking at me,” she says, and he wonders, not for the first time, how she can tell. Through the visor, he meets her gaze, and it’s like he’s not wearing the helmet at all. 

“I meant for you to find me,” she says, after holding his eyes for a moment, too long, not long enough. “The whole time I was sitting there, I was thinking - Force, I hope Din walks in right now so I don’t have to cut off this motherkriffer's hand.” She rubs her arm, and again he imagines that chakaar’s paws on her - but this time, his anger is directed at him and not at Tavi herself. “I regretted leaving the ship almost as soon as I stepped out, but I couldn’t turn back. I-”

“I’m sorry,” Din interrupts, and it comes out easier than he thought; his voice is even, and he wonders how much of that he owes to the modulator. “I should have been with you. I should have listened when you said you wanted to go. Brain damage or not.” Her lips twitch in a slight smile of that. His head dips. “I should’ve gotten there sooner.”

She bites her lip - and nods. He feels as if the thick, invisible strand of tension between them has snapped; something in the air relaxes, a strained humming frequency he wasn’t aware of now suddenly, consciously absent. His hands have been clenched into fists on his Beskar-plated thighs; he loosens them finger by finger as he watches Tavi’s shoulders sag.

“Come here.” Din’s not sure if he says it or if she moves first - but she is suddenly there, soft and pliant beneath his hands as he draws her into his lap. She settles over his thighs, so small and light, taking up his whole world. He rests his chin on her shoulder as he strokes her back, feeling the shudder of a sigh move through her. 

“Promise you’ll tell me where you’re going next time you run off,” he murmurs, and permission, forgiveness, and apology are layered implicitly in his words. Her hands find the spaces between his armor, as they always do, and settle there, digging in just enough to let him know she’s real, she’s here, and she’s not going anywhere right now.

“Will you try to stop me?”  

“No.” Somehow, he senses that’s the wrong answer; he pulls back to look at her, a hand at the back of her neck, his leather-bound fingers threading through her hair. “Not unless you want me to.”

The smile that curves her lips is achingly familiar, and he rests his thumb in the dimple formed in her cheek. She hasn’t been gone that long, but he feels as if he has just gotten her back after an age apart.

With his fingers at the nape of her neck, he tilts her head forward to meet his, resting the smooth Beskar of his helmet against her forehead for a moment. When he pulls back, her eyes are hooded, warm. Din swallows around the dryness in his throat.

“I don’t know about you,” she tells him, “but I’ve had more of Kepler IV than I can stand. Can we get out of here?”

He lets her go - reluctantly - and nods, less reluctantly. She shifts off him, and her hesitation is obvious in the lingering touch of her hand on his bicep. 

Tavi settles in the passenger seat to his right, and all feels...as it should be. Din relaxes as he presses buttons and flicks switches, priming the Kom’rk ’s thrusters and engines. 

At last they lift off from the planet’s surface, soaring up and onward, away from her past and into his future.

---

“Any ideas on where to go next?”

Din expects silence. He doesn’t expect the snore. They’ve barely cleared atmo when he turns around to ask the question, and the girl is curled up in her seat, her legs pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them and her cheek pillowed on the points of her knees. Her hair slips over her face, sticking to her lips as she breathes softly through her mouth.

He’s not wholly surprised. She’s still healing, despite her recent attempts to subvert it, and who knows what kind of physiological process is going on in her brain. It’s probably better that she sleeps.

Still, the Mandalorian worries. Besides, he’s slept too much in his chair lately to let her do it, too. He knows how kriffing uncomfortable it is.

He switches the nav to autopilot and rises from his seat. Tavi’s head lolls and she mumbles softly as he lifts her into his arms, but instead of protesting she turns and nestles close to his chest. He carries her, half-limp, through the common area and towards the sleeping berth. 

Din lays her down on the thin mattress and straightens, hesitating. He longs to join her, and he finds that he really doesn’t have a good enough reason not to any more. Once he wished she would wake and ask him to stay, now he doesn’t need her to.

He wants to stay.

Reaching out, he thumbs the hatch controls and it slides shut with a soft whoosh, plunging the compartment into darkness. He doesn’t need light to take off his armor, to find the desk against the wall and set it all aside in a careful pile. The space fills with the sound of metal clinking and heavy fabric rustling - and then, the girl’s voice.

“...Din?” She sounds panicked, confused for a moment, and he remembers belatedly: Shit. Her sight. She probably thinks she’s gone blind again. He takes a knee on the bed and grasps her shoulders firmly; she trembles, on the edge of panic.

“I’m here. I just closed the hatch. You’re okay.”

“Oh,” she sighs, and she begins to calm, drawing air into her lungs with deep pulls that slow, all too gradually. 

Din considers, hesitates. “Do you...do you want me to turn the light on?” 

Her fingers find the back of his hand, his bare hand, and trail up his wrist, his arm, similarly naked. And when her fingertips drift up his neck and find his jaw, her exploration stops. 

“Is it easier?” she asks, dodging his question. “To be without it, like this?”

“Yes.”

Her fingers trace the shell of his ear, meander into his hair. She moves closer to him, and he feels her breath warm on his chin.

“Then leave it off.”

He does. And before he consciously makes the decision, he is on her.

Din heaves himself over her, heavy on his elbows and bearing down between her hips, and she accepts him with the outward cant of her knees and her hands in his hair. His lips sear her skin, as if he seeks to kiss away the very memory of another’s mouth too close to his girl, his Kit, his Tavi. He latches lips and teeth and tongue to a spot on her neck, sucking bruising marks into her skin, claiming her. And she lets him.

“Din,” she gasps, overwhelmed, and the sound is music to his ears; better than the cycling of a phase rifle, better than the impact of a point-blank shot, and it goes directly to the growing tension in his groin. He hadn’t even been aware of it until now and yet he is more than half-hard, straining at the fabric of his pants.

“Tell me to stop,” he grinds out, scraping his teeth over her throat, her chin, “And I will.” But by all the dead gods and Mand’alor himself, he prays that she won’t. 

“Don’t stop,” she says, and her voice is firm while his resolve crumbles. If he ever had any.

Her jumpsuit parts like the chrysalis of a butterfly and her skin emerges, sweet and smooth, textured deliciously by scars. He follows the path of her zipper down her chest, tugging up her shirt to scrape his stubble across her sternum, mouthing the curves of her breasts. She groans when he finds a nipple, drawing it tight between his lips, and her fingers fist at the back of his head as he laves it with the flat of his tongue. 

His bare hand palms the other, the calloused pads of his thumb and forefinger rolling the neglected areolae between them, and she squirms beneath him, panting her ardor.

“Mine,” Din growls into her flesh. He thought that having her like this - soft and malleable beneath him - would cool his blood, but it’s only driving him to new altitudes of frenzy, stealing the oxygen from his lungs. He needs her like he’s never needed anything, anyone else.

In the dark, she tugs at his remaining clothes, his shirt, his pants. He parts from her only to pull them unceremoniously from his body. Where once he needed a shield, a carapace to shelter from the world, he is compelled now to shed it, to drown his sacred mortal shell in the embrace of another, where he can be safe, as safe as he is behind the helmet.

When he kisses her, it’s not rough, but it’s deep, and the savagery of the sweep of his tongue lies only in the totality with which he consumes her. She consumes him back, her hands roaming his shoulders, her heels scraping the small of his back.

When Din feels the damp and hot brush of her slit against the head of his cock, she’s wet, wetter than he’s ever felt her, and it takes all his self-control not to allow his possessiveness to translate to that first thrust. Instead he presses forward slowly, achingly slowly, and the give and stretch of her pussy is the closest thing to divinity, to absolute contentment, that he thinks he’s ever going to get.

And it is more than enough. She is more than enough.

His pelvis notches flush to hers, her knees high and tight against his ribcage as she arches her back, and he releases her mouth with a gasp that’s as much to draw in air as it is to steady the sensations spooling through his body, setting his nerves aflame.

“You’re so - fucking - good,” he grunts, drawing out a little and then thrusting back in, and she envelops him with a cry and a shudder. He noses her cheek, her jaw, her neck, and rests his mouth there, groaning harshly into her skin. “Too good to me, cyar'ika.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” Tavi whispers, and in the darkness his world suddenly tilts and shifts, gravity upending itself. He lands flat on his back, dazed with her above him, and when she lifts her head and rolls her hips above him he squeezes his eyes shut and wonders if he hasn’t somehow managed to get to heaven after all.

“Is this - okay?” she asks, so tentative, so sweet it makes his heart crack with the ache of it. Din responds by lifting his own hips, and the shift of hers stutters with the next press of her knees into the bed, and he reaches up to find her face. 

He palms her cheek, touching her lips, her scar. “Perfect,” he rasps, curling his other hand around her hip, his thumb pressing into the jut of her ilium, steadying her. Tavi hardly needs it - she moves with an animal fluidity, undulating over him as she drags herself up his length then allows for a controlled fall that has his gut clenching and her insides fluttering around his dick.

He doesn’t even need to guide her movements; she seems to know by instinct exactly where and how he wants her, how fast or how slow. Right now it’s slow, an almost torturous drag of his cock through her cunt, and he grits his teeth against the urge to hammer up into her, to pound away every frustration and fear he’s harbored for weeks. But he doesn’t. Instead his hand leaves her hipbone and his fingers seek the space at the apex of their join. His fingertips nudge at where his cock disappears into her, and he fairly moans at the way she feels stretched around him before he drags them higher and seeks the bundle of nerves above her lips. 

Her movements lose regularity when he finds it, and she makes a choking sound and jolts above him, driving down over him deep enough to make the head of his cock scrape against something devastatingly wonderful inside her. Din doesn’t care. He presses firm, deep circles into her clit just as he knows she likes.

Tavi lights up above him, and even though it’s dark he can almost imagine the line of her body as her spine bows and she curves over him, pressing her face into her neck and whimpering there. “ Fuck , Din,” she hisses, her hands at his shoulders, his face, and he shudders as her pussy flexes around his cock. He’s not going to last much longer, especially not with her fingers rasping through his stubble, her mouth at his jaw.

But her longer strokes are evolving into shorter, erratic jerks; she takes him to the hilt and stays there, grinding into his pelvis, into his hand. Din knows she’s close. He nudges finger and thumb deeper to pinch just lightly at her throbbing, swollen clitoris; digs his heels up into the bed and thrusts up into her as best he can, as hard as he can, as deep as he can.

That’s all it takes. She comes apart for him with a thin, keening sound that lifts the hairs on the back of his neck, her inner muscles rippling around his cock with a ruinous pattern of squeeze-and-release, and before he can warn her he’s burying a hand in her hair, gasping her name against her temple and coming, too.

His dick swells and jerks in erratic spasms inside her, pulsing as the liquid heat of his come fills her; she stills as she feels it, still quivering with aftershocks, his hand trapped between their pelvises, thumb still pressed to the plush flesh of her tingling clitoris.

“Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum, cyare,” he croaks when it’s over, when they’re both boneless and trembling, his voice wrecked and half-gone; there would be no saving it even if he had the helmet and its vocabulator on. “I-”

“I know,” she whispers, twitching inside as she kisses his cheek, his chin, his mouth. “Shh. You don’t have to say. I know.”

He believes her.

Eventually, when the press of their bodies becomes more sticky and uncomfortable than either of them would like, they part; as she withdraws, Din rolls onto his side, hissing as his softened dick slides from her warmth. She keeps her leg thrown over his thigh, though, her face nestled into his chest; he rests the point of his chin on top of her head and strokes her hair, eyes closed.

When her breathing evens out and her body relaxes beside his, Din thinks she’s fallen asleep, until he hears a soft murmur in the dark.

“I love you too.”

And the Mandalorian is glad for the darkness so that he can tell himself the moisture on his cheek is just sweat.

Chapter Text

That night is not a restful one.

Tavi tosses and turns, her sleep broken by dreams of a place from a long time ago, in a system far away, punctuated by faces she doesn’t remember and names she can’t recall. The sense of pure, visceral fear in the dreams is the only thing that is becoming disturbingly, disconcertingly familiar. 

She doesn’t know what happened to her, but she knows it wasn’t good.

The only good, the only comfort, is that Din is there with her in the darkness when she wakes. He soothes her when she stirs, sobbing, wipes her tears away, holds her with a ferocity of strength she knows stems from his deep-seated instinct to protect , to defend . To safeguard this one, precious thing he has left. 

Tavi drifts back to sleep as he kisses the salt away from her skin and brackets his arms around her, pressing her into his broad, muscled chest. 

She dreams of the ocean again, of emerald green waves and dark purple clouds like bruises roiling on the horizon. She dreams of warm, salty air and the feel of wind on her skin.

She dreams of home.

When she wakes next, she is alone, and light drifts in from the open hatch. The pile of armor is gone from the desk - Mando is up and about already. She stretches, pulling at the ache in her limbs as true memory filters through the shattered shards of broken recollections that refuse to settle in her head. 

Had she really told Mando that she loves him? Well, it’s true , she realizes with a jolt. It is as true and certain as any absolute law of the universe. There is physics and there is the Force and then there is the fact that she loves the Mandalorian named Din Djarin.

And there is the ocean, churning in her head.

Tavi drifts out of the cabin and towards the refresher, lost in thought. No faces this time, no voices, no half-formed scenes - just the expanse of that endless green sea. It means something, she knows. She just doesn’t know what .

The flow of water from the sanisteam cuts through the echo of the boom and slap of the waves in her head. She remains under the spray a little longer than usual, and when she emerges wrapped in a towel that she’s reasonably certain is one of Din’s old, refashioned cloaks, he is there waiting for her.

He’s leaning nonchalantly against the wall in the kitchenette alcove, his helmet held up with a thumb just above his nose as he sips at a cup of hot, steaming kaf that she can smell from here. Tavi averses her eyes, gazing at the deck until she hears the hiss of the pneumatic seal. The Mandalorian clears his throat through the vocabulator, letting her know it's safe for her to look.  

“Hey,” he says. He sounds cautious, nervous almost, but that’s not like him. She looks up again, meeting the darkness of his visor, and yes - that is apprehension she senses from him, through the ever-present filter of the Force. 

She thinks she knows why, but she doesn’t mention it. Not straight away. Stars, she’s not even dressed and her hair is still wet and the smell of the kaf is making her mouth water. She needs to be properly awake before she talks about anything even tangentially related to feelings .

To that end, she pads over to the kitchenette, and reaches around Mando for the full pot and a spare cup to pour herself some. It’s fresh and hot, and she sighs as she leans against the bench and inhales the strong, bitter smell into her lungs. "Hi," she says at last, managing a smile.

“You feeling okay?” he asks, the visor following her. “It ...didn’t seem like you slept well.”

She looks down briefly. “I didn’t.”

“Nightmares?”

“Memories. But that’s almost the same thing, at this point.” She takes a deep drag of the steaming liquid and makes a soft sound of enjoyment as it slides across her tongue and down her throat, the temperature just shy of burning - perfect. Her free hand wrings at her wet hair and tosses it over her shoulder. She remembers, suddenly, refusing to cut it - she left the temple with the Padawan braid she grew for a decade, wearing it like a badge of dishonor.

I was so stubborn , she thinks. I guess I haven’t changed that much. Memories or no memories.

“Memories of what?” Din’s filtered voice breaks through her reverie. She’s not sure if she’s glad he’s not talking about last night - about what they said in those soft, sacred moments in the dark. It feels like an understanding has settled between them, and with it, no need for explanations. He knows. And so does she.

And that is more than enough to-

“Home,” she says suddenly, looking up. The realization strikes like a bolt of electricity to the brain, lighting up the dim, shadow-swept caverns of her recollections. “I dreamt of home.”

Din is silent, still leaning against the bulkhead, and for a moment she’s not sure what she’s sensing from him. The predominant layer is uneasiness - uncertainty, and there’s a touch of dread, too. She can’t understand it. 

Then he pushes off the bulkhead and straightens, and it’s gone. He slips behind the armor of his thoughts like he does his Beskar. “Where?” he asks, calm and even through the vocabulator.

“I - I don’t know,” she says, tapping the rim of her mug against her lips thoughtfully. “Somewhere with oceans. Lots of them. And storms - terrible storms - “

“Coordinates?” Mando interrupts, pointed and rough in his tone. “A name? Anything?”

“Why?” Tavi asks, frowning at him as she tugs the towel tighter around her body. Suddenly uncertain, herself. “Do you want to get rid of me?”

Something in his posture relaxes, and she thinks she hears him let out a breath of relief as his shoulders lift then settle. Such a subtle movement that she might not have caught it if she wasn’t watching so closely. 

“No. But I thought-” He stops. Shakes his head. “Never mind.”

Tavi’s lips twitch, and she sets aside her mug. She approaches slowly, and Din hesitates, the visor tracking her movement as she sidles into his space. She gives him time to pull back or step around her and away, but he doesn’t. Just watches her, chin tilted down, hidden gaze fixed on her face.

She wraps her arms around his broad Beskar chest, and the metal is cold against her damp skin through the towel. She doesn’t care. “I promised you I wouldn’t run off again,” she tells him. “I meant it.”

Mando sets aside his mug. His gloved hand lifts, pushing a stray tendril of wet hair out of her face. “Good,” he says, haltingly, as if he can’t think of anything else to say, but it’s okay because he doesn’t need to. Tavi can guess.

“I meant everything else I said, too,” she adds. He relaxes, a tension that was subtle but present now melting from his body. His arms lift to encircle her, and although she is small in his embrace she feels like the space inside her chest encompasses the whole universe in that moment.

“I’m...glad,” Din says, his voice breaking just slightly, even through all of its modulation. She rests her head against his breastplate and he strokes her hair. “I meant it, too.”

She smiles. “I’m going to have to learn Mando’a, aren’t I?”

“It couldn’t hurt." A pause. "Maybe I'll teach you.”

She chuckles, peeling her face from his breastplate. She touches the side of his helm, just briefly. “I'd like that," she says quietly. Then glances down as the 'towel' starts to slip. "I should get dressed.”

The Mandalorian’s head tilts. “I don’t mind if you don't...”

Laughing, Tavi pries herself away and heads back to the sleeping quarters. Her clothes are all over the place in spots they landed after Din tossed them, heedless, over his shoulder. She locates her underwear hanging off the edge of a lighting sconce and shakes her head as she pulls them on. Shirt and jumpsuit follow, and she’s toeing her feet into her boots when he appears in the doorway.

“I need to set a course,” he says as he leans a forearm against the hatch. “Any ideas?”

“Velus,” she says without thinking, then freezes. Where did that name come from?

If she could see Din's face, she’s sure he would be raising his eyebrows. “Velus? Where’s that?”

“I….I don’t know,” she says slowly as she rises to her feet, rubbing her forehead, her eyelids. Her head spikes with a sudden ache, and she touches her nose, paranoid her fingers will feel the thin slick of dripping blood there again - but fortunately, they don’t. She doesn’t want any more e-bacta dreams. The normal ones are bad enough.

“I’ll check the nav computer.” Din turns, and she follows, gaping in wordless protest before she manages to speak. 

“Wait. Just like that? You’re not-” Suspicious? Questioning her sudden knowledge of a place that, for all she knows, she has never been? 

“Not what?” He stops at the hatch, turning back to her. She can’t read his non-existent expression, and her other sense is, for once, unhelpful.

Tavi opens her mouth once or twice, but she doesn’t know what to say. He touches her shoulder, oddly tender at times she never expects him to be.

She should know him better by now.

“Look,” Din says, “I trust you. If you say we have to go to Velus, then we’re going to Velus. Okay?”

She stares up, into his visor for a long, slow moment, warmth blooming in her chest and threatening to sting at the corner of her eyes. She blinks it away. “Okay,” she says, managing a nod, a small smile. “I guess we should find out where Velus is before we go, though, right?”

“Right.” He returns the nod, and they enter the cockpit to map out their next move.

Together.

Chapter Text

Velus is a Core system.

Din hasn’t been back to the Core in some time. Granted, he’s had more to do with the New Republic than he ever thought he would, and had come out of it surprisingly intact. 

Still, persecution and fear lives in his bones, in the echoing spaces between his Beskar and his flesh, and he can’t help but feel an overabundance of caution as he sets the course and pushes the Guardian into hyperspace.

The Core is plagued by lawlessness and corruption, worse than the Outer Rim ever was. At least the Hutts and the criminals of the galaxy are a known quantity. At least they don’t hide behind a thin veneer of society and pretend to be civilized, when in their chests beat hearts as black and depraved as belongs to the worst, most evil murderers Din has ever met. 

He doesn’t voice his views, though. He doesn’t want to worry Kit’la. And from the data he’s managed to scrape on Velus, it’s a relatively quiet system, long since abandoned by the Imperials and mostly ignored by the New Republic. They should be safe.

Should be. He still doesn’t know what they’ll find there. He’s not sure if Kit - Tavi - knows either.

She’s quiet as she sits in the passenger seat by his shoulder, her legs drawn up, feet on the seat. He’s given up telling her off for it - he hopes she’ll stop of her own accord once he fails to draw attention to it for long enough. Like Grogu with the silver control knob that rests, as always, in his belt. 

He wonders what’s next. What waits for them at Velus. Whether Tavi will remember who she was. Whether he will know where to go after that. So far, it’s been at the whims of the universe, the galaxy throwing what it can at him, and he can’t shake the feeling that it could all be taken away in a moment - despite Kit’s assurances.

Din hadn’t realized, but he’s been staring at her for some time, watching the way the blue light of hyperspace plays across her face, casting her dark eyes in shadow. She looks up, her eyebrows lifting, the scarred corner of her mouth quirking.

“What?” she asks, lowering her legs, her feet to the floor. “Sorry. Didn’t realize.”

“Not that,” he says. “Just thinking.”

“Oh, no,” she frowns, sitting up a little straighter. “You’re not brooding again, are you?”

“I don’t-”

“Brood. I know. You just think noisily.” She stands and steps towards him, but she hesitates and waits for him to loop an arm around her waist and pull her in close before draping her arm around his shoulders. Always waits for permission to touch him, treating it like some sacred thing that makes him feel...valued. Loved, even. It’s a strange sensation, one he’s not sure he will ever get used to.

“Just wondering what’s in Velus you’re supposed to find,” he muses, his gloved fingers splaying over her hip. “It’s mostly gas giants and freezing rocks.” He points to the nav computer with his free hand. “Here, though...Velusia. An ocean world.” He feels Kit stiffen in his arm and looks up at her face, bathed in pale hyperlight. She has that far-away look in her eyes, like she’s not really here, but focusing on something within - or without - herself.

“Kit?” He still uses her old name, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She responds, shaking her head, pulling herself out of her reverie. “You okay?”

“Velusia,” she repeats slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Sea. And storms.” She rubs her forehead, pressing her fingertips into the deep frown that’s formed there. “There should be islands. There’s one - ahh… ” She winces, grabbing her head with more force, and Din turns in his chair, his knee pressing against the outside of her leg as he reaches out and steadies her with a hand on her shoulder.

“What is it?”

“Headache again,” she hisses from between clenched teeth. Din rises to his feet at once, going for the first aid kit and the e-bacta, but she stops him with a hand on his pauldron. “I really don’t want another of those shots, Din.”

He shakes his head, grabbing her just below the elbow, his fingers encircling her forearm. He squeezes to emphasize his words, choosing them carefully. He needs to make sure she understands, that he's not doing this out of an overabundance of caution or a need to control, but as assurance she will be safe. That is his utmost priority right now. “If you want me to go to that planet, cyare, you’re going to have to take it. I’m not letting you off this ship if you’re gonna collapse at any moment.”

“Dank farrik.” She sighs, but there’s no real fight in her as she sinks back down into her seat. “Fine. If I turn into a raging Sith afterward, though, that’s on you.”

Relieved, but trying not to show it, Din retrieves an e-bacta syringe. “What’s a Sith?” he asks, desiring the change of subject as much as he desires to keep Kit distracted.

She stares at him for a moment, squinting. He’s not sure if it’s because she thinks he’s stupid or because her eyes hurt. Nevertheless, he kneels down on the deck in front of her and motions for her to unzip her coveralls and tugs the sleeve down to expose her shoulder. He will do this quickly, as painlessly as possible - even though he knows she can take it.

“It’d take too long to explain properly,” she says. 

“Try. It might take your mind off this.” He holds up the hyposyringe as he uncaps it and she winces, looking away.

“Fine. Layman’s terms. There’s the Light side of the Force, which the Jedi use, and the Dark side, which the Sith use. For doing...bad stuff. Killing, hurting, torturing.” The needle enters her skin easily and he depresses the plunger slowly, watching for any sign of distress, but Kit only thins her lips and frowns for a moment.

She rubs her arm after Din takes the syringe away. He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He's not sure who this is more difficult for - her or him. To his relief, she keeps talking. “They’re evil, basically. Just all around...bad guys.” 

He gets the feeling this whole Jedi and Force thing is a lot more complicated than he could ever understand. He tries, though. “So, what, using the Dark side makes them evil? Or they’re evil already?”

“Could be either. Both. But usually, there’s a path that can lead to the Dark side. A path of pain, suffering, hatred. Jedi try to avoid those emotions.”

Din snorts. “I’d like to meet anyone who manages to avoid suffering their whole life.”

“Mmm. It’s more what you do with it, I think.” She’s relaxing as the e-bacta does its work, the tension leaving her limbs, and she slumps back and leans her head against the seat with a deep sigh. “You can either let it get to you, let it corrupt you...Or you rise above it. You resist the temptation.”

The Mandalorian touches her shoulder, the side of her neck, not just to touch her but to measure the strength of her pulse. He can feel it even through his glove. Deep and steady. He sits back on his haunches. His work is done, she will be fine. As fine as she knows how to be. 

He looks at her, for a moment curious. “Have you...ever been tempted?” 

“By the Dark side?” She goes silent for a moment, and her eyes cloud; this time he’s not sure if it’s the e-bacta or her thoughts. “...Yes. In that alleyway, when you were being attacked by those bandits. I wanted to hurt them. To kill them. Slowly.” She clenches her fist, the scars stretching out into thin white lines.

Din thinks of Grogu. Of his incredible power. And he wonders if his son was ever tempted, too. Beneath the helmet, he frowns.

Tavi's voice is quiet when she speaks next, releasing her fingers, sliding down in the chair a little as she looks at him. “It made me feel sick inside. Like I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t like it.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” he guesses, soothing her with a hand on the outside of her thigh. He wants to ask more, ask whether it’s common, the Jedi falling to this Dark side, but Kit'la is too affected by the e-bacta in her bloodstream now, half-conscious and lolling. Her eyelids flicker, and she smiles at him blearily, reaching out to brush her fingers across his helm, tracing the hollows underneath his visor.

“You have too much faith in me,” she whispers.

He takes her chin in his hand, squeezing slightly, reassuringly. "And you don’t have enough faith in yourself,” he tells her, and he waits for her smile before he lets her go. “Rest now. Stay here, if you want. I’ll wake you when we get to Velusia.” He unfastens his cloak from around his shoulders and tucks it around the edges of hers. Her eyelids flutter and drift shut.

“Goodnight, Din.”

“‘Night, cyar’ika.”

The Mandalorian takes his seat in front of the controls again and stares out at the indigo blur of the stars, and wonders. About how much he didn't know, how much he doesn't know, and how much he'll never know because of the choices he's made.

Chapter Text

Tavi stands on the shore, Din’s cloak wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Over the horizon, far to the east, a terrible storm brews, the cloud front forming like a deep purple stain spreading inexorably, incrementally across the pale sky. 

The emerald waves boom with hidden rage, spitting froth and salt in protest against the wind, the rain, the sky. Tavi can feel the air pressure like a bubble of oppressive atmosphere squeezing at her head, her shoulders, her heart. She imagines this is what it must feel like in the cold vacuum of space - oppression, utter darkness and helpless fury.

Mando prowls behind her, and she can feel his anxiety, too, bubbling like acid beneath the Beskar, eating away at his perfect calm. He wants desperately to approach her, to touch her shoulder, to ask her if she is all right - but he’s too afraid of the answer. Too afraid of tipping her past some hidden point of no return and never getting his girl, his Kit, his Tavi back at all.

She didn’t say much after waking up. Just gave him a set of coordinates and waited, in the quiet starlit gloom of the cockpit, until they arrived. Assured him her headache was gone, and that was that.

And now here she is. Right back where she started.

She turns away from the ocean and her boots press deep prints into the silvery sand. This island is mostly sand and stone, bounded by deep, craggy formations carved by the wind like claws reaching up towards the sky. No signs of civilization whatsoever - unless you knew where to look. 

Din perks as she approaches, and she can almost hear him open his mouth to speak and then decide better of it when he sees her face. “This way,” she tells him, and he falls into her wake, following her across the dunes and towards the rock formations. 

There was a path here, long ago, and her feet find it even though her eyes cannot. It leads to a mountain, although calling it such would be an insult to mountains - the peak barely clears the top of the Guardian’s S-foils. But there is a cavity nestled at its base, one that could laughably be called a ‘cave’, leading downwards into the dank, gray gloom.

The Mandalorian touches the side of his helmet and the cave floods with light, Tavi’s shadow thrown in sharp relief across the walls. She doesn’t need it to feel her way forward, of course, but she appreciates the gesture. Loose scree and gravel shifts beneath her feet with each step, so she proceeds slowly, reaching out to touch a particular spot on the cavern wall.

Her fingers feel without knowing, without looking, for a tiny depression in the stone. It depresses beneath her touch and the grotto fills with the loud shrieking sound of metal grinding on rock. Din has his blaster in his hand in an instant, but Tavi stills him with a hand on his arm as the section of wall sinks inward then moves, retracting to reveal a set of man-made steps leading downward past rough durasteel-scoured walls.

“What is this place?” Din asks, his filtered voice echoing in the closed-in space. Tavi leads the way down and he follows, blaster held at the ready at his side.

“An old Rebel base,” she explains in a hushed whisper that’s swallowed by the gloom. The deeper they go the darker it gets, and now she is grateful for the Mandalorian’s light. 

Eventually, after what seems like an age, they reach the bottom of the stairs and emerge into a wider space, but the decking beneath their feet is rusty, with objects and miscellaneous detritus scattered about, making it feel more cramped than it is. A bank of computers are shoved up against one wall, and a hallway leads off in a direction perpendicular to the exit. The ceiling is bare rock, silvery sediment glittering in spidery veins above their heads.

“Generator’s probably gone by now,” Tavi muses as she drifts towards the computer banks. They’re covered in a thick layer of dust. “I wonder if any of them made it.”

“Who?” Din asks. The realization is starting to hit him that there may be no active threats here, thus rendering the blaster unnecessary; he eases it back into the holster at his hip as he trails Tavi through the base.

“The Rebels. The Jedi they tried to save,” she continues matter-of-factly, leading him down the hallway. Some of the doors are collapsed, crumpled in on themselves and stuck, but none of them are the ones she is looking for. She leads him to the end of the corridor, which opens out into a much, much wider room.

“A hangar?” Din’s voice echoes into the deep, distant darkness. When he looks up, his light just about reaches the ceiling, the concealed bay doors he estimates lie beneath the ocean surrounding the tiny island. 

“Yes. For ships. How do you think we moved around back then?” Tavi answers, a touch of irony coloring her voice. There are a few rusty hulks in the shadowed corners of the hangar, but her eye is caught by one ship there, an ancient gunship, pre-Empire - one she recognizes. One that makes her breath catch in her throat for a moment. 

She strides over to it before Din can say anything further. While the base is not powered, the ship has a trickle left, so that it lowers its ramp when Tavi finds the exterior access panel and demands entry with a few taps. Lights flicker inside, the only sign of life within the ancient durasteel tomb.

Tomb. She knows before knowing why the word comes to her, why it settles in the pit of her stomach with a feeling of heavy certainty. Still, she has to see .

Din startles her out of her reverie - a sharp spike of emotion as his helm’s light plays across the craft. “I don’t believe it,” he breathes, a strange tone to his modulated voice, a tone of - disbelief? Reverence? She turns to him, and his visor is as unreadable as always, but he shakes his head so vehemently, as if he’s trying to clear the sight from his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, glad for the focus on something other than the feeling of inevitability, of endings pooling in her stomach. 

“It’s the Razor Crest,” he breathes, and that is definitely awe in his voice. He walks up next to her, reaches out, hesitates - as if touching might make it dissolve into dust. “ A Razor Crest.”

She watches him, more than a little confused by his reaction. “Do you...know it?”  His glove plays across the durasteel hull, caressing, as if it’s a living thing. She’s not sure how - wouldn’t he have been a child back then? Or thereabouts? 

Red. Red robes and explosions and the burning embers of soulless eyes and -

“My ship,” Din is saying, and she blinks the strange after-images away. “My home. It was the...was a Razor Crest.” He turns to look at her. “Never seen another one in working condition before.”

There are no such things as coincidences, she knows that by now. The Force works in mysterious ways. Still, she can’t help but stare in wonder as the Mandalorian runs his hands over the hull like he’s greeting an old friend.

“Should I leave you two alone?” she wonders aloud, smiling wryly as Din stops and lowers his hands - reluctantly - stepping back from the ship. He clears his throat, a bark of composure, before gesturing to the ramp.

“Lead the way.”

She nods, suddenly reluctant. She knows what waits for her in there, but knowing does not make it any easier. 

Tavi makes her way up the gangway, her boots heavy on the metal as it creaks beneath her feet. Inside the small cargo hold, the blinking lights strobe in a random pattern, painting the bulkheads in flashing discord of black-gold, black-gold. Din touches a control panel just inside the hatch and the flicker eases to a dimmer but steady, lambent glow, and she steps forward, holding her breath.

The ladder up to the cockpit seems to lead into a black hole, nothing visible above. But she grabs onto the bars and swings herself up, step by step, refusing to give in to the yawning pit inside her.

She finds exactly what she expected - nothing. Nothing but dust, laying in thick sheets across the control panels, where only a single, softly blinking light shines.

Tavi steps forward and stops when her foot gets caught on something, something that clatters metallically as the impact slides it across the deck. Silver gleams in the half-darkness and slowly, she bends to pick it up.

A hilt. Slightly curved, narrower than usual. Familiar. Tavi grips it until her knuckles go white.

She finds the robe pooled in the recess of the pilot’s chair. The gray is stained in places, stiff and dark brown. She knows without needing to examine further that it’s blood.

Slowly, Tavi sinks into the chair and reaches out to press the glowing button on the panel. The comm system. She can hear Din’s boots coming up the ladder and the soft grunt as he hauls himself up, but he turns his helmet light off as the soft blue illumination of the holo springs to life.

Vae hunches over the panel, a dark stain on her mouth, her teeth as she speaks. “I have hope that you’ll find this,” she begins, and a deep, horrible cough wracks her and blankets her words for a few moments before she continues. Her eyes are wet as she sweeps back her hood, stares at her - at Tavi - through the dust and blood and tears of the decades that stretch between them. “I’ve engaged the auto-pilot to take me the rest of the way to Velusia; they will have to send another craft for your pod. I was attacked-” Another wracking cough that wrenches at her heart. “By whom, it’s not important. It is too late for me, young one, but you - you may yet live. And my hope will live with you.”

Tavi closes her eyes, and tears stream down her cheeks through the dust. She opens them again when Vae continues to speak.

“Remember. Your path is your own. It was not your destiny that it should end here - with me.” Vae sighs, and even through the decades-old recording, Tavi can hear blood bubbling in her lungs. She is tiring, and her words are growing slower, quieter. She has to lean forward to hear them.

“One final lesson, Tavi. One I never got to teach you. Listen, and listen well.”

“I’m listening, Master,” she whispers, touching the floating image, which warps and shudders around her fingertips.

“It is not what we are that defines us. It is who we love.”

Vae closes her eyes for the last time, and the image winks out, leaving her in darkness. Alone.

No - not alone. The Mandalorian is there, crouched at her side, his hand on her knee. She’s not sure how long it’s been since the recording ended, but the tears have dried sticky and brittle on her cheeks and her lungs and throat ache from the sobbing. How long has she been sitting here, the Gray Sentinel’s robe clutched in one fist, her shoto in the other? Din has been at her side the whole time, letting her grieve, and the immense weight of her gratitude threatens to make her cry all over again. No patting her shoulder, no mindless platitudes, no ‘It’ll be alright’ - just the steeling reassurance of his presence. The knowledge that he will be there, always, when she is ready.

“Tavi?” he questions softly, the visor looking into her face. She shakes her head, sniffing through blocked sinuses as she reaches up to wipe her cheeks on the back of her hand.

“No,” she says. “Tavi died a long time ago. I’m just Kit.” She reaches out, her fingertips brushing the curve of the silver Beskar helm. “We can go now. I found what I wanted.”

His hand finds hers, and he squeezes her fingers tight with his gloved ones. “So did I.” 

She leans her head down, resting her forehead against his for just a moment. A keldabe kiss, a part of her remembers. The part of her whose pain she is no longer afraid of. For without pain, there is no joy. Without suffering, there is no freedom. Without death, there is no life.

A lesson she is lucky to have finally learned.

Eventually, when her heart can’t feel any more full, she pulls back from Din and glances around the dusty cockpit. 

“I guess you’ll want to see if this bucket of bolts can still fly,” she murmurs. “But I have to do something, first.” Her hands fist in the old robe draped over her lap. 

“The ship can wait,” he tells her. “Tell me what you need.”

She nods, rising to her feet. “Just...come with me, that’s all. Be by my side.” She doesn’t want to say goodbye without something else to say hello to.

“Always, cyare,” he says softly. Impossibly softly, from a being defined by his hard, metal edges. She is so privileged to have seen beneath them. 

She shoots him a grateful smile, hoping it says what she cannot. 

“Thank you."

---

The metal bar is shoved deep into the ground, so deep no storm should be able to shift it. The robe is wrapped around it, gray stained with the brown-black of forgotten blood, and it flutters violently in the wind, hanging on by the strength with which Kit tied it there.

She stands on the shore, imagining her master standing beside her on one side; her past - and Din Djarin, her future, on the other. 

The Mandalorian does not touch her; he waits, letting her say her goodbyes in her own time.

Kit looks down at the hilt of the shoto in her hand. She gave it back to Vae when she rebuilt her saber the first time. Still, it feels right that she should have it back now. Not to use, but as a reminder.

She looks back up at the marker, at the cloak as it’s caught and tossed about by the wind. She thought she wouldn’t know what to say, that the only thing to come to her would be the weight of her own grief, but standing here in this moment, she feels oddly…free.

And she knows the words to say, now.

“There is no peace without a passion to create,
There is no passion without peace to guide,
Knowledge fades without the strength to act,
Power blinds without the serenity to see.

There is freedom in life;
There is purpose in death .”

Kit steps up to the marker, reaching out to lay a hand on the rough, gray fabric.

“The Force is all things, and we are the Force.”

She turns, and the wind finally tears it free; the robe flies up, up, up on a trajectory that appears endless, one that seems it might carry it on wings to the very heavens itself, but at the apex of its flight it finally begins to fall, and it’s soon lost to sight and to the churning, roiling expanse of the sea.

“Let’s go,” Kit says to the Mandalorian as she rejoins his side. She takes his hand, and her scars are enveloped in the comforting squeeze of leather. 

“We have a ship to fix.”

Chapter Text

The Razor Crest is smaller than the Guardian. 

It is smaller, and it is cramped; it is a ship of a better fit to one occupant instead of two, although by some logic it is capable of seating three. The hold is compact, everything’s recessed into the bulkheads where it can be, and space is a premium and a shortfall Kit never thought she would miss.

Mando is haunted by different ghosts that live in the hull of his memories. She occasionally catches him touching a particular control lever, one missing a knob, just naked threads in the metal where something else should be. But he doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t push him. It’s better he should sit in that pilot’s seat rather than she, or the memory of someone else she loved.

Her memories are all back where they should be now, like none of it was ever missing. No longer just a threadbare, patched quilt stitched together by guesses and inferences, but a complete tapestry of experience that spans the decades of her life before. It’s like she’s been separated into two people: who she was before the carbonite and now, who she is after. But no, both versions of her are parts that make up the whole, and without either, she would be none.

As for Mando...as for Din, he could not believe his eyes when he saw the twin Crest sitting in the dusty, disused Rebel hangar, shrouded in dust and shadow. If he’d had the facility to rub his eyes, he would have. But his disbelief was nothing in the face of Kit’s grief, and though he can tell it weighs on her, she doesn’t begrudge him his strange attachment to the ship.

It’s not his ship; he knows that, of course. The cargo hold is empty, no portable carbonite unit in sight, no weapons locker, and everything is a shiny kind of unscuffed gray from lack of use, whereas every surface of the original Crest was worn and burnished by his own hands over the years. This vessel hasn’t been broken in yet.

The pilot’s chair doesn’t have the same squeak at a particular angle that he was used to. The controls are too oiled, almost too responsive. But one of the control levers is also missing a knob, and he wonders , right up until he finds it rolled under the console. So he has two of them nestled in his bandolier now.

“Where to next?” Kit asks him, once they have her cleaned up and ready to go. He swivels in the seat to look at her - she stands taller, somehow, although he knows that’s impossible, but it’s like a weight’s been lifted from her shoulders. She hasn’t said much about it since the - the weird ritual, or funeral, or whatever it was, but he’s giving her time. She’s been kind enough to do the same for him.

“Have to return the Guardian ,” he says. “Although the person I borrowed it from won’t be too happy to see me.”

“Why don’t we leave it with Peli?” Kit suggests. “She can get it back to its owner. Or sell it. Whatever she feels like doing.”

Din nods. “Okay. Are you….You’re ready to go?”

Her smile is wan, but present. “Nothing left for me here now. The village where I grew up was swallowed by storms decades ago, and this base is done.”

He looks at her a moment longer, and she withers underneath the visor’s stare.

“I’d promise I’ll tell you everything now that I remember it - but there’s really not much to tell. It’s just...ancient history.”

“I believe you,” Din says, “But it’s your history. I want to hear it. When you’re ready to talk about it.” And it wouldn't hurt to learn more about the Jedi, as well.

“Of course,” she says, and something in her dark eyes seems lighter than usual.

They leave Velusia behind, its storms and its memories, just another set of coordinates buried deep in the nav computers.

---

2 WEEKS LATER

“Din, where is the - ow!” Kit whacks her forehead on the edge of the hatch for what feels like the thousandth time in two weeks. She does it every time she enters the Crest’s cockpit, without fail. She tells herself she doesn’t mind how cramped the ship is after the Guardian, but with a near-permanent dent in her head, her insistence is beginning to wear thin.

“What?” the Mandalorian asks, the Beskar helm turning towards her from the pilot’s chair. Occasionally Kit will see a flash of silver out of the corner of her eye that her mind turns to gray, and her heart will skip a beat, but it’s getting better gradually, day-by-day.

“My favourite kaf mug. The blue one. You brought it over from the Guardian, right?”

“I thought you brought it over,” he answers, frowning beneath the helm. “You were supposed to grab the stuff from the kitchenette-”

“I did,” she insists, dropping into the seat by his left shoulder, “I did! But I can’t find my mug, so I thought you might have-”

“Just use mine. It’s fine.”

“But what if you want kaf while I’m already having some?” Kit sticks her bottom lip out. Ancient Jedi warrior , the Mandalorian marvels. Arguing with her ancestral enemy-turned-lover - about a cup.

“Then we’ll have to share,” he says, trying to keep his voice measured and patient - like how he used to talk to the Kid. With the new - new er Crest - he’s been thinking about him more and more lately. It feels like he can see green out of the periphery of his vision, often catching imagined glimpses of a pointy ear or big round eyes - but it’s just the familiarity of his surroundings. 

That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

“Ugh. You never wash your mug out, either,” Kit complains, leaning back and bumping the back of her skull into the bulkhead behind her with a deliberate thunk . 

“I do, actually,” he protests, flicking at a few buttons as they light up with phantom warnings, then immediately turn off with the impact. The ship took some effort to get working again after years of disuse, and even after Peli spending a week on it - with a groaned “Another one ? Great, more work” - it’s still not entirely right. But it’s better than it was. And better than the Guardian. For him, anyway.

“We’re running out of kaf, anyway,” Kit'la tells him. “Going to have to stop for supplies at some point.”

“Low on funds,” Din murmurs. It’s been coming for a while, but he’s been dreading it. “We might have to...take a job or two.”

Whereas dread has settled in his stomach like molten durasteel, Kit lights up. “A job? Like a bounty?”

“You can stay on the ship.”

“Like kriff I’m staying on the ship! I’m coming with you. I’ve got a lightsaber and I know how to use it-”

“It’s too dangerous,” he says flatly, but his heart isn’t really in the argument. He knows he’s already lost before he even started. 

“Dangerous for who? You, me, or the bounty?” Kit’s grin is fierce and wild as she leans forward towards him, the control panel lights flickering in her dark hair. “Mando. I spent years cleaning up pockets of scum from far-flung reaches of the galaxy. We would spend days, weeks chasing gangs out of villages, flushing out syndicates, hunting down criminals and killers. This isn’t anything new to me.”

He knows as much - during the quiet hours between systems, as the ship hummed quietly around them, Kit began to tell him of her time with the Sentinels, a group spoken of in hushed, muted tones by unsavory types all through the Rim thirty years ago. If they were sent after you, or known to be protecting a city or system, you didn’t go there. Not if you wanted to survive with all your limbs intact.

Yet, reconciling this knowledge with the girl he has spent so long working to protect is...difficult. He’s not sure how to let go of her vulnerability, her dependence on him. 

He supposes it goes both ways now.

“Trust me,” she says gently, and she touches his shoulder, her fingers on his cowl, in the space above his breastplate. “Together, we can be better than we ever were alone.”

She’s not wrong. And that, more than anything else, prompts the dip of his chin in a nod.

“If you get hurt,” he warns, even as she bounces in her seat with barely-contained glee, “If you start to bleed, or get so much as a little headache-”

“I know,” she sighs knowingly. “I head back to the ship. Yes, sir, Mr. Mando, sir.” She rips off an offensively sloppy salute and then leans back with her hands behind her head and starts to put her feet up on the panel. Scowling, Mando reaches out and intercepts her ankle, resting her boot on his knee instead. She doesn't complain.

“I have to get some robes,” Kit says thoughtfully after a moment.

“What for?”

“Gravitas.”

“What?”

Star-lit, her eyes twinkling with mischief, she grins at him. “You’ll see.”

---

SOME TIME LATER

The streets of the spaceport are bathed in perpetual twilight, thanks to twin moons that rise on opposite sides of the horizon each night. There is never a moment of absolute darkness, but the shadows feel deeper, somehow, wherever they can be found - and in this particular night, they are found in the edges and doorways of a narrow alley as the sound of pounding footsteps and frantic, panicked breathing echoes off the walls.

The man has been running for some time. He first sensed eyes on him in the cantina, but that wasn’t so unusual; there are a lot of unsavory, warier than usual types in the cantina. Eyes usually slide off him, like water off a pelikki’s back. But not this time. This time, they lingered, and by the time he started to get that prickly feeling in between his shoulder blades, he knew it was too late.

Still. He runs, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He knows he isn’t going to stand there and await his fate. 

He catches a glimpse of his pursuer as he ducks around a corner. A flash of light off a reflective surface; the suggestion of metal, and slow, deliberately unhurried steps. Steps he can easily outpace if he just speeds up, takes the next corner a little quicker -

Something sparks in the darkness, something terrible, a low-frequency hum that sets his bones on edge as he skids to a stop at the mouth of the next street. A figure stands there, much smaller than the one pursuing him, shrouded in a dark cloak and holding a sword made of fire .

“Going somewhere?” The voice is light and feminine, but somehow far more terrifying than anything he could’ve imagined in his deepest, eldritch nightmares. He gulps and steps back - into a wall of metal that closes arms around him like twin vices.

“No!” he howls, struggling mightily - it doesn’t make a difference. “I didn’t do anything! You can’t do this!”

“Bounty on your head says otherwise.” The voice behind him is cold and as metallic as he expected, passing through some kind of filter before hitting his ears. He screeches and wriggles, but then the durasteel cuffs close over his wrists and he knows he’s done. The arms leave him and he falls to his knees in the dirt, sobbing, tears and snot streaming down his face.

“...Really, Mando?” The one holding the sword sounds nonplussed. He is terribly relieved when the golden glow fades with a whoosh , retracting into a leather-wrapped hilt which she stows at her belt. “ This is the guy you were worried about catching?”

“I wasn’t worried,” the one addressed as Mando replies. He hauls the snivelling prisoner up by the cuffs. “I was concerned.”

“About me? All I had to do was draw my saber and he practically pissed himself!”

“Might not have gone down this way. He could’ve been armed.” The armored hunter drags him down the street and the woman follows. All he can manage is soft, burbling whimpers. He can’t believe this is happening to him. 

“He wasn’t, though,” the robed woman points out. 

“Could’ve been,” Mando returns. “Stepping out in front of him like that was reckless. You-”

“Might have accidentally stabbed him? Or myself? Dropped my saber and sliced off a couple toes? Oh, please. You fall on your ass way more often than I do.”

The Mando prickles at that, and the prisoner winces as he’s shoved forward with a little more force than strictly necessary. “I do not,” the armored man says.

“Do. There was Chad-”

“Not my fault-”

“Taris-”

“It was crowded-”

“Subterrel-”

“The ground was slippery-”

“Excuse me,” the prisoner interrupts, incredulity breaking through some of the fair. “But who are you two?”

“Us?” The woman turns to him, and as they pass underneath the light of one of the moons, it illuminates a pair of dark eyes and a scarred mouth whose smile is far more sinister than kindly. “Well, you could say we’re both relics of a bygone age. But together? Let’s just say we’re people you don’t want to run into in a dark alley when you’re hiding out on a planet trying not to be found.”

“Enough talking,” Mando says, and when he turns hecatches a glimpse of the helmet - and that’s when the man lets go of his bladder.

A Mandalorian.

“Eugh! Why do they always do that?” the woman complains, stepping around the quickly growing puddle. ”Disgusting. Maybe we should decorate your armor so you look less threatening.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“You’re right. Let’s get this soggy idiot back to the Crest. What did he do again? Bail jumper?”

“Stole his mother’s life savings. Gambled it away.”

“Scum.”

“Yes.”

The last thing the man sees before he passes out from the stress and sheer terror is the tender smile the woman shoots the Mandalorian, and the brush of her fingers against the armored man’s free hand, and he wonders - is bounty hunting a family profession now? - before he sags in the warrior’s grip and slips into the blissful, uncomplicated world of unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

Din wonders if she will ever tell him what happened to her.

Since Velusia, since the ship, since the empty cloak and the saber Kit has seemed...lighter, somehow. A weight he could never see has lifted from her shoulders; her movements free, unfettered by the thousand-yard stare he came to know so well. The look that meant she was lost in her head, in what tattered remnants of memories remained to her. It doesn’t happen any more. Instead she will look at him sometimes and smile, touch his helmet with a brush of her fingertips and mouth soft words that make him feel unworthy.

It’s taking some getting used to.

The Mandalorian doesn’t ask, though. She hasn’t had a past for so long - it’s no surprise she wants it just to herself for now. It’s hers to keep, not his to try to take. And he is... happy to have her in his present. That, for now, is more than enough.

Kit complains about how small the Crest is compared to the Guardian, but she squeezes into the sleeping berth with him every night. Here, in this tiny space, Din can close the hatch and turn off the light and shed his armor and helm - a measure of freedom he allows himself nowhere else. And this, at least, Kit'la doesn't complain about.

She sleeps with her head pillowed on his chest. Gone are the nightmares, the phantom twitching of limbs in the darkness, the sweat that used to break out on her brow. She no longer mutters unknown names and wakes with shadows behind her eyes. 

It’s one morning - shifting slow and languid so he doesn’t wake her, reaching for his helmet in the dark - that she stops him, her hand on his cheek. He is still immediately. She traces his cheekbone with the precision of one who has never needed vision to see .

“I loved her.”

Din takes her hand, presses it more firmly against his stubbled cheek, detects the tremble in her long, scarred fingers. “I know,” he says. 

Kit curls into the narrow space between his body and the bulkhead, and he draws her close. Her breath feels hot against his collar, and her hair is thick and silky between his fingers as he strokes her.

“When I had myself frozen, I was supposed to wake up in the base on Velusia with her by my side. We were supposed to-” She cuts herself off, but Din is silent as he rubs her back. The tremble is there, too, winding its way along her spine, earthing in her bones. He waits, although he doesn’t want to.

“She was the first person to make me realize I could be kind to myself, too. That I could walk my own path.” He expects to feel her tears against his neck, but instead he feels her smile. His arm tightens around her waist. 

There is a question he wants to ask. It burns in him, but the dread of the answer burns brighter, clamps down on his throat, compresses his chest. So he just holds her and lets her speak.

Sometimes, though, he forgets that she knows his thoughts better than he knows them himself.

“I don’t regret walking that path,” she tells him, lifting her head to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Because it led me to you.”

Din doesn’t know if he believes in fate, or the will of the universe, or the Force - but he believes in her . And he is immeasurably glad that she has chosen to stay with him .

He doesn’t deserve her. But it’s a fact he can learn to live with.

“I’m - glad,” he manages, and for once he doesn’t care about the break in his voice, for it’s one that his helmet’s modulator could not hope to hide. 

He doesn’t want to hide. Not from her; his Kit’la.

“How long before we drop out of hyperspace?”

Some mental calculation - Mando knows they’ve only been asleep a couple of hours. “Thirty, forty minutes.”

She rolls on top of him, and her thighs part on either side of his. Her lips are warm, and he tastes the scar at the corner of her mouth as she kisses him, slow and deep. She is a soft, strong weight that encompasses his entire universe in this moment, narrowed to the tiny space they share.

“More than enough time,” she says, and Din doesn’t voice his agreement - he shows her. For maybe an hour. 

The universe can wait.