Chapter Text
The floor is sticky with spills, and this late in the night the air hangs thick with smoke of various substances. You’re mostly immune to it by now, weaving a graceful path through the swaying, staggering and occasionally falling bodies.
It’s busier than usual this night. A local festival, and your bar just happens to be the lucky one that the overflow spills into. A lot of happy, raucously laughing faces, but a lot of angry ones, too.
These are the ones you’re trained to defuse. You do so with extra rounds ‘on the house’, snacks of varying origin and levels of alive ness, and smiles. Oh, so much smiling. By the end of the night your face hurts and the sag of a frown is almost a welcome relief.
You ache from the disingenuousness of it all. The fight to remain upbeat, because it is a fight - a fight for your livelihood, for the next handful of credits in your immodest account. A fight for the future.
You can see it slipping further and further away, every day.
The thought haunts your steps tonight, and your smile doesn’t come as easily as usual. Maybe it’s the extra-charged level of clientele, running your energy down. Maybe it’s just time , dragging at your ankles like a threat. Either way, you’re not at your best when the stranger approaches you - in fact, after almost slipping in another puddle of something that looks and smells expensive, you’re almost grumpy .
“Have you seen this man?”
You can barely hear him over the chatter from the nearby table you need to bus next, its surface crowded with empty glasses. At least, you think it’s a him - he’s wearing a shiny, full-face helmet that eliminates much effort of identification. He’s wearing a whole suit of armor, in fact.
Something tickles at the back of your brain, a thought or a memory you don’t have attention enough for at the moment. You hope it’ll come to you later as you say, eloquently: “What?”
“Have you seen this man?” The voice is filtered by the audio equipment in that shiny silver helm, and it comes out sounding oddly cold and metallic. Almost like a droid , you think, unbidden, even as you squint at the holo-puck he holds up.
It depicts a nondescript Trandoshan - inasmuch as Trandoshans can be nondescript - rotating slowly in blue with big red WANTED letters floating above it.
“Ah,” you say, smiling at last as your brain catches up. “A bounty hunter.” You turn from him and sweep a field of glasses onto your tray before darting off through the crowd, back toward the bar.
He follows you. Of course he follows you. Tonight wasn’t meant to be a simple night, after all.
You swing round behind the bar and shove the tray into the cleaning unit underneath it, kicking it into life as you stand. The shiny bounty hunter is on the other side of the counter, and he follows you round as you try to avoid him.
“Just tell me if you’ve seen him or not, and I’ll be on my way.”
“That I very much doubt,” you snort derisively, for you know very well that the nondescript Trandoshan is at a booth in the very back of the cantina. But you’re not about to tell Mr Shiny Bounty Hunter that .
“I can pay for the information.” The soft clink of metal - a small pouch on the bar, small but more than you see in a week. You hesitate - your boss is on the other side of the bar, serving another group of rowdy festival-goers, and probably can’t hear your conversation with the hunter over the din.
You hope not, anyway, because you’re sorely tempted by that coin.
Once upon a time, you wouldn’t have been. But the days of menial work for menial pay has worn you down, so much so that sometimes you can’t even imagine that escape you had planned. It seemed more like a dream than an eventual reality. And now, well…Here you are.
You look at the stranger, for the first time taking him in, from the silver armor to the blaster at his belt and everything in between. This guy is not karking around , you think, and you feel a chill that has nothing to do with the pathetic ‘breeze’ blown by the bar’s straining ventilation system.
“How much is this Trandoshan worth to you?” you wonder slowly, cautiously. You place your hands on either side of you atop the counter - a mistake, it’s stickier than the floors - and lean over it a little. There’s a group of Bothans trying to get your attention to order, but you ignore them for now. “Because for twice this - ” you reach out and tap the pouch with a forefinger “- I could introduce you two.”
The hunter’s helm tilts. There’s a word for a race of people that go about like him, you know it, but you can’t think of it just then. Your lungs are too seized with hope.
To your dismay, he reaches out and removes the pouch from the bar. You’re about to go serve the Bothans and kick yourself the rest of the night when he drops a larger one down with a thunk .
It’s got to be more than twice the amount of the smaller pouch. Possibly more than thrice . Which would be enough for -
You circle out from behind the bar and grab the credits in one hand, and the hunter’s in the other. “Come on,” you say, and you’re grinning as you lead him through the scrum.
You’ll regret this later, you’re sure of it. And right now, you have no idea exactly how right you are.
The Trandoshan looks up at your approach, and the bounty hunter pulls free of your hand as you gesture to him with a smile. He nods to you, and you think you hear the echo of a filtered “Thank you,” as you leave them to their business.
You wonder, belatedly, if he might be about to shoot him in your bar. If so, and your boss finds out it was because of you - well, the credits won’t matter; you won’t be alive to spend them. But you stuff the pouch under your apron and go back to the bar and back to work.
The night winds down, and by mid-morning you’ve kicked out the last of the mostly-unconscious stragglers. The bounty hunter is gone, you’re relieved to see, and so is the Trandoshan.
You wonder if you should feel guilty about that.
The planet’s single lonely sun is struggling its way over the horizon by the time you’ve finished cleaning. You collect your pathetic few credits from your boss - resisting the urge to smile, now - and leave through the back door.
You pause to take out the pouch of credits. You’ve been stopping yourself from looking at it all night. You knew if your boss saw it…But he’s passed out in his office now, three bottles in. You can afford a quick peek.
You open the pouch and look inside, and the future looks back at you.
And so you’re smiling, genuinely smiling for the first time in months when you look up and spot the Mandalorian.
That’s the word , you remember belatedly, for the warrior-race that wears their helmets all the time, whose religion revolves around weapons. And you curse your brain for deciding to supply that fact just as you notice that he’s coming toward you with his blaster out.
“Get down!” The metallic voice booms and the pouch falls from your suddenly-numb fingers. The credits burst and roll across the ground and into the gutter; the durasphalt bites into your knees as the bounty hunter reaches you and pitches you over with a vicious shove.
You cry out, as much in rage as in surprise or fright, and scream - “ You scragging mudlicker, what the kriff do you think you’re doing -” only to be cut off by the crack and hissing sizzle of blasterfire slamming into the wall where you were standing not two seconds ago.
You scream for a different reason, and this time you’re cut off by a gloved hand around your upper arm. The Mandalorian hauls you bodily to your feet and drags you down the alley before you can so much as catch your breath. You want to yell at him again, but more shots erupt around you and shower you with sparks and you decide that maybe your breath is better off saved at the moment.
The hunter seems to know the alleyways almost as well as you do, for he leads you down a zig-zagging path through them, side-stepping piles of trash and people as easily as you sidestep customers. Your lungs ache and the muscles in your legs and stomach are burning and cramping but you manage the breath to warn the Mandalorian of a wrong turn - “Wait - not this way - it loops round and they’ll be on us!”
He pauses for just an instant, and the blank darkness of his visor regards you for less than a second, then he nods. You take a moment to orient yourself before indicating a nearby street. Again, you’re off, and just when you think you can’t hear the pounding of boots behind you any longer, more blasterfire bites into the ground at your heels.
You run faster and farther than you ever thought you could. Every time you start to fall behind, or pause to catch your breath up against a wall, the hunter urgers you forwards, first with his voice and then with his hands, surprisingly gentle on your arm, your shoulder.
Just when you think you’re about to collapse, he pushes you through a doorway. You tumble through into a dark interior, and you hear the distant echo of shots and shouts as the Mandalorian’s armored bulk presses into the space behind you and the door shuts, plunging the both of you into darkness.
Your breath wheezes in your lungs, and it takes a while for you to get that under control before you can speak.
“Excuse me, Mr. Bounty Hunter, but what the fuck is going on?”