Din has been gone for too long, chasing an elusive bounty in the depths of the Radhii rainforest. You and Grogu try to manage on your own. Four parts, completed.
Total WC: 8.8k
Tags: Angst & Fluff
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
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Underestimation
Din teaches you how to spar after a particularly close call. As he begins to trust in your abilities, things go too far. Four parts, ongoing…?
Summary: You underestimate the toll of the mission on your family and the weight of your next.
Rating: E. 18+ MDNI. PTSD. Language. Mentions of violence and sexuality.
WC: 2703
NOT BETA READ!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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You woke slowly. The first thing you heard was the cooing of Grogu and the soft mumbling of your lover as he spoke to the child, music to your tired ears. A tinkle of wind chimes trickled in through the windows of the house from the garden. Birdsong sounded through the city. Everything was still. The sun was filtering warm and orange through the windows of the room. It was early enough to be cool, but the touch of the sun on your face was beginning to make you sweat under the sheets. You reached out a hand to the bed beside you and found it empty, but warm. You did not want to get up yet. You felt slightly sick. Lethargic, heavy, your head pounding slightly from the exertion of release. You slipped back into sleep, feeling the mattress dip as Din returned.
Dreams found you in your mid-morning sleep. You were lost in a soft silver mist. You could hear Din and Grogu laughing softly together in the distance, but your ears could not locate the direction. You looked down to your chest and saw a bright rope connected to it, leading into the fog. You grabbed the fiber with your hand, feeling a vibration of energy that went straight to your heart, warming it and filling it. You moved forward, gathering the lead into a loop on your arm. Din and Grogu’s laughter became louder but remained far away. You got lost in the rhythm of moving along the rope, a pull forward, a flick of the wrist, tension on your arm, the weight growing.
You looked up slightly and were surprised to see a small, ornate side table in a pool of water. Above it, the rope hung tightly but was thinned significantly, almost down to a thread, and had lost most of its glow. You stepped slowly into the water. When you reached the segment, you frowned. Frays lined the thinned section, sticking out messy and bent. You looked at the table and found a small drawer. You opened it. Silk bandages of blinding white rested inside beside a small pair of scissors that shimmered like beskar. You picked up the scissors and looked at the nearly broken string. Gently, softly, you trimmed away the damage. It took a long time. With each cut, the rope dimmed slightly, the section thinning as you trimmed away the breaks before glowing again, slightly brighter than before. At some moments you held your breath, afraid that another cut would sever the thread completely. It held. Once the section was clean and smooth, you reached for the silk bandages in the drawer. You wrapped it, around and around, until the glow of it encased your hands. The light of it filled your vision, and the dream faded into white.
When you opened your eyes again, the sun was high in the sky, throwing light across the sheets and blankets. Din and Grogu were not in the room. You heard small clinks from down the stairs, soft laughs and curious babbles. You rose from the bed and stretched, letting the afternoon sun shine on your naked body as the sheets fell to the floor. Your ears picked up every sound of your son and Din, alert for any sounds of trouble. All you heard were the warm sounds of safe domesticity. You retrieved some clothes from the rucksack and made your way to the bathroom, finally ready to start the day.
You were not startled this time when you looked into the mirror. Your face was more rested than it had been the night before, your lips carrying slightly more color, but the shadows under your eyes and cheeks remained. When you looked at your body, you were shaken by how thin you looked. You had always been soft, warm, curvy, but now you seemed deflated and sharp. Your ribs were visible beneath your skin on the sides of your body, ridged and hard, and your abs showed through in a way that was starved rather than strong. Your breasts hung from your frame, less perky than you had thought, and your hip bones jutted from your pelvis. The muscles you had cultivated for so long seemed to have withered away. You looked frail, weak, and sick. Maybe you were. You spent a few minutes looking at yourself before putting on a loose set of clothing and moving down the stairs to what you assumed was the kitchen.
Din stood before a large cutting board, Grogu beside him on the counter with a plate. Din was slowly chopping some fruit, eyes on Grogu to ensure that his hands didn’t creep too close to the blade. When he finished cutting, he placed the fruit on Grogu’s plate and handed a small piece directly into his son’s hand, wrapping the gift in melodic Mando’a. You rested a shoulder on the door frame, watching them. Grogu ate a particularly sour piece of fruit, face moving into a small grimace that made Din laugh.
“Sour one, huh? Try this one, it’s sweeter.”
Grogu looked up at Din and chirped like he didn’t believe him.
You moved into the room.
“Let me have a taste.”
Din looked up, a smile warming his face. He held up the piece of fruit and placed it into your mouth. Mango. Your favorite. It was sweet, perfectly ripe, juicy and tender, nectar exploding on your lips. A small hum of pleasure left your mouth as you closed your eyes, savoring the bite. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d let yourself enjoy food like this, or even when the last time you’d eaten a fresh fruit or vegetable was.
“Did you and Grogu go to the market?” you asked innocently.
“Of course not. We got this delivered. We wouldn’t leave you here alone. But we can go later today, together, if you want,” Din offered.
“That sounds really nice, actually,” you said, surprising yourself when you realized you were being honest. “Can I still bring the bag?”
“You won’t need to. But you can, if it helps.”
You turned towards Grogu and rubbed his soft ears, his eyes gazing at you and Din above him. He extended the hand holding the fruit up to you, mouth slightly open in a baby smile.
“Grogu, no! That’s yours.”
He only held it out more insistently.
“Okay, fine,” you huffed in a laugh. “Just this one. You’re so good at sharing!”
Din laughed softly at the praise.
“Right now, at least. You’ve seen him when he gets his berries.”
“We’ll get some more for you at the market tonight, buddy. And I won’t even ask you to share,” you said to Grogu, teasing.
Grogu held up his arms to you and you scooped him into your arms, resting him on your waist. Your faces were so close, and you nuzzled your nose against his.
“Hey little guy. I’ve missed you.”
Grogu’s hand touched your cheek, tickling slightly. You responded in kind, running a single finger down the side of his face. He closed his eyes at the sensation. You held his little hand in yours and breathed in the clean smell of his baby soap, light and simple. You turned to Din and tried to hand Grogu over.
“You wanna share some of those snuggles with your dad?”
When he felt the movement of your arms, Grogu instantly began fussing. As you lifted him away from your chest, his feet began kicking, his hands reaching desperately for your face. His voice turned high and frantic as you tried to move him. You returned him to your hip, where he grasped your shirt with a clawed grip, leaning into your body like you were about to abandon him. A few tears slipped down his face. You felt a deep twinge of guilt at the reaction, remembering Din’s words. It’s like I’m watching you disappear. You looked at Grogu, heart aching.
“Buddy. You don’t need to worry about me. You shouldn’t worry about me. You’re a baby!” You tried to turn the reassurance into a joke, but your voice sounded sad, slightly quiet, more than a little broken. “Mama’s alright. I’m going to be alright.”
You held Grogu close to your chest. His head dipped into the space between your neck and your shoulder. You stroked his head, hushing him as you rocked gently back and forth. You hummed a lullaby, the sweet sound soothing both of you.
Din’s head was ducked to the side as he listened to your song. When Grogu was at ease, Din handed you a cup of caf with foamed milk over the top. You whispered a thank you and clinked your cup to Din’s, feeling silly at the little ritual. You took a sip, savoring the bitterness of the coffee, the sweet richness of the milk. You reached over the counter and poured a small cup of the remaining foam for Grogu, holding it up to his mouth as he sipped greedily. You loved him so much.
You had a delicious breakfast of fruit and pastries. You ate some of what you put on your plate, but your appetite still felt wrong. The guilt of what you had done to your family burned in your stomach as you witnessed the lingering hurt from your emotional withdrawal in every interaction. Grogu kept putting pieces of fruit on your plate, even after you’d stopped eating. Din’s new habit of reaching for your hand in the silence of mealtimes made you unnaturally restart the conversation, taking the touch as an admonition instead of concern. You wanted to be better for them. You had to. But you could only pretend so much.
Din cleared your plates away, not commenting on the piles of fruit and picked-at crumbs that remained. He smiled gently as he took away your empty cup of caf. When you stood from the table, Grogu began to whine, arms up as he asked for you to carry him again. You complied, but you worried about what the day would bring. You couldn’t hold him forever.
As the house grew hotter in the afternoon sun, Din proposed that you go to the market. You were feeling somewhat ragged and tired, but you wanted to show him that you were improving. With a smile pasted onto your face, you agreed to the trip. Grogu was in the bag at your side, his little hand attached to your belt, unwilling to let go. Din’s hand was on your lower back throughout the walk. You shrugged it off, hating how fragile you must have looked. You felt slightly claustrophobic at their attention but could not bring yourself to move further away.
The crowds at the market had thinned as the heat peaked, a few shoppers flitting lazily from stall to stall. Shopkeepers fanned themselves and their wares, trying to keep the flies from alighting too heavily on the ripened fruit. You were relieved at the lack of activity. Your eyes moved automatically to the darkest corners, the hidden alleyways and the back of the shops. They were empty. You periodically glanced at them anyway.
Din stopped at every stall. You indulged him, buying fruits, vegetables, and proteins that you knew you’d have been interested in if your mind was less preoccupied. Dark green leaves, ruby red fruit, berries for Grogu, some herbs and aromatics. When you passed the butcher and the fishmonger, you increased your pace and breathed through your mouth. Din glanced sideways at the goods in longing but did not push. Arms laden, pockets significantly lighter than when you’d arrived, you, Din, and Grogu walked the cobblestones back to the house.
You prepared a simple meal, and it was good. You ate your fill and chattered about things you had noticed, pulling from the list you’d prepared on your outing. You knew that Din would be asking; you knew he would be looking for what you’d noticed. You told him about the different produce you hoped to try, a skirt you’d liked, the smell of the flowers, a toy you wanted to buy Grogu. You did not talk about the dark corners, the weapons you’d noted under the clothing of passersby, the smell of stale seawater on the fish carcasses, the blood scattered on the butcher’s apron.
Din put Grogu to bed while you excused yourself to the bathroom. When you entered, you did not look in the mirror. You quickly removed your clothes and jumped into the shower before Din could meet you. The water was too hot. You let it burn.
You retreated to the bed, exhausted from the day. Din took his time in the bathroom. You weren’t sure if he was giving you space or if he was buying your facade and basking in the comfort. You hoped it was the latter. When you went to sleep, you curled yourself into Din’s side, tears sliding from your eyes. When he felt the stuttering of your breath, he kissed your back, lips warm on your spine and shoulders. You grasped his hands to your chest and did not let him turn away. When you slept, you dreamed of dark water, black and neon.
A few days passed in the same fashion. You tried to act as you were before, finding moments of enjoyment in your beautiful surroundings. Grogu and Din rarely left your side. You let them stay. When you needed distance, you walked into the garden with your journal and wrote by the babbling fountain, lit gold and green by sunlight through the foliage. When you were done writing, you stared into the moving water, closing your eyes in the comfort of the sun. Once or twice, you fell asleep beside it, your journal closed, pen off to the side. Din and Grogu would find you resting, hope glowing between them at the warmth of your face, the peace in your rest.
Your days found rhythm. The marketplace saw you, Din, and Grogu daily. Some days you did not cook at all, content to be fed and cared for by the locals and their rich, exotic fare. With each visit you noticed more of the wonders inside the large square shopping center – the luxurious fabrics, the foreign spices, the mingling families, the kind shopkeepers, the smell of good food. The dark corners were only noticeable when you looked to your side and Din was not there. Without fail, your eyes found him bathed with light.
After a week, you told Din that you were ready to leave. He took you for your word. You packed your bags and strolled through the city on your way to the palace. At the market, you took your time at each booth, gathering a variety of fruits and vegetables that would keep well on the Crest. Grogu ate as many berries as he could fit into his mouth. When you returned to meet with the leaders of the New Republic, you were instructed to follow a bounty’s trail to some planet you hadn’t heard of before called Mon Calamari. Din turned to you. You nodded once. He accepted the charge without a word. As you walked to the Crest, you were surprised by the warmth of it. Naboo was lovely, but it was not home. You felt a rush of affection for the ship as Din took hold of the controls and lifted you away.
Once in hyperspace, Din turned to you from the pilot’s seat, his helmet reflecting the stars.
“We’re going somewhere you’re not going to like.”
You looked at Din in the broken silence, your face neutral. Grogu sat on your lap, babbling lightly. You gave him a small squeeze. At the pressure, Grogu held one of your fingers in his clawed green hand and pointed it to the lines of light that surrounded you. You, Din, and Grogu looked up at them, lost in thought. A few moments passed in quiet contemplation.
"And why is that?" Your voice was louder than you expected. It echoed in the cockpit for a moment, ringing in your ears.
Din’s helmet tilted sideways. “Mon Cala."
You looked him expectantly.
"It’s covered in water.”
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AN: Rewrote the ending and so much happier with it! Brevity is the soul of writing. Hope you guys enjoy!
So many characters should be permanently disabled in multiple ways or AT THE VERY LEAST have severe chronic pain but everyoens a coward so no one writes the effects of the injuries they inflict </3
Summary: After almost losing Din in a fight, you underestimate the toll it takes on you. Heavy angst.
Rating: E. 18+ MDNI. PTSD. Language. Mentions of violence and sexuality.
WC: 3818
NOT BETA READ!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
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You started to have nightmares. Different nightmares. Your mind was already preoccupied with the safety of your family, the lack of normalcy, the tenuousness of your connections to each other. After Din almost drowned, you felt like you could see the threads connecting you in neon, glowing brightly for everyone to see, waiting to be severed. You didn’t tell Din. He didn’t hunt for weeks. A month passed in a blur.
Your spars with Din became frantic. You were too intense, too sloppy, too afraid. When you started fighting again, Din patiently went over the basics even though you knew them. Your performance slipped. You could see Din’s frustration, could hear him trying to coax you out of your head, but every attempt to draw you out made you sink in deeper. Proximity to Din meant vulnerability.
You began yearning for safety. It felt almost like a betrayal. Your dreams started in temperate forests and idyllic fields, only to transform into floodplains, wildfires, or battlefields littered with unidentifiable bodies. In each dream you wandered, turning over the dead, seeing nothing but wounds that you hadn’t remembered making but knew had come from your hands, your blade, or your blaster. Each face you saw was blackened and burned. You could never find what you were looking for. When you woke up in the middle of the night and saw Din next to you, his hair damp from the shower, you could only imagine the brackish water that had almost claimed his life. You did not wake him.
When Din began hunting again, things became worse. The month of rest and recovery had made you terrified to let him out of your sight. He took only the easiest bounties, minor debt collections, the occasional small-town jailbreak. Nothing longer than a few hours. The entire time that he was gone, you sat with Grogu, staring at the ramp of the Crest. Grogu whined at you while you rocked him, begging you in his way to play, but you couldn’t concentrate long enough on his books to read them to him. You left him playing with his balls and shapes in the corner while you rocked your body, waiting for Din to return. When Din came back and asked what you’d done in his absence, you lied.
You stopped talking. You were serious, thoughtful, but often spilling over with ideas. Your chatter before the incident was replaced by uneasy silence. During meals, Din would reach across the table to rub the back of your hand. You’d squeeze him back before withdrawing. You wrote often, sometimes for hours on end. Din knew better than to look inside your journal. You noticed the way his gaze lingered on your journal and pen during the brief periods when they rested on your bedside shelf. You began hiding them under the bed.
Grogu began to prefer being held by his father. When you played with him outside the Crest, you let him wander only a few feet before snapping at him to stay close. Every time he picked up a plant or leaf, you made him place it back on the ground. When he looked up at you, round, black eyes pleading, you could only look away. Mothers approaching you to compliment your child were startled by the harshness with which you greeted them, turning away with confusion. Some looked at you with a deep understanding. It made you furious.
You wore socks everywhere. The cold of the metal Crest on your bare feet, previously grounding, now filled you with unrelenting panic. You bought a rubber mat for the fresher to distance yourself from the wet floor. Your showers were short and scalding.
The food you cooked became simple. Before, you’d cooked elaborate meals with whatever local produce or meat you could find at the markets, methodical with your knifework, brimming with pride after your hours of culinary labor. After, you only prepared bland, textureless meals, your prized chef’s knife and cutting board gathering dust in the corner. You no longer cooked with meat. You ate very little. Grogu and Din made a point to scrape the pot clean. They did not complain.
You and Din fucked with a concerning intensity. You pushed him deeper, repeated “harder” even as his thrusts made you scream into the pillow. Your orgasms were short and desperate, never enough. Din whispered in your ear as he took you from behind, telling you how beautiful you looked, how well you took him, how safe you were, but you did not believe him. You held onto him impossibly close in the aftermath, whining when he left to wash himself. You lie awake for hours in his arms. In the mornings, he looked into your face with a deep, open worry that made you turn away.
Eight weeks after the ordeal, Din made a stop on Naboo to meet with some New Republic officials to share the possibility of a new underground on the outskirt planets. You packed a bag until it was bulging, filling it with rations, medical supplies, extra batteries, things you couldn’t have needed. Din let you shoulder it. As you walked the crowded streets to your meeting place, your eyes darted to everyone who passed. When Din tried to stop at the market to explore the goods, you continued onward and waited at the far end, feet tapping, Grogu restless in your arms.
The meeting itself was uneventful, as productive as any meeting with such a large organization could be. The leadership were thankful for you and Din’s continued efforts, for the new information, for the chance to see Grogu. You were petrified by their directive to continue pursuing the trail you’d found with Din. Din did not accept the charge immediately. He was given three days and resources to consider his options, restore his stocks, and rest.
Din was quiet on your walk back to the Crest through the rose-colored city tinted by the sunset. Your mind raced. You knew you would have to take this job. This was Din’s life. Your life. You felt frozen between what had happened and who you were. The silence did not dissipate when you reached the Crest.
Once inside, Din removed a rucksack from under the bunk. He filled it with clothing, your journal, Grogu’s baby soap, a few odds and ends. You stared in confusion.
“Din, what are you doing?”
“Cyarika. We have to talk. We have to get away from the Crest.”
“What are you talking about? This is our home.”
“My love. Since our last hunt, this has been your prison. We’re taking our leave elsewhere.”
“Din, I’m fine. Please, let’s just stay here,” your voice went slightly higher at the thought of sleeping in a bed that was not your own, eating food you hadn’t prepared, keeping watch in a place you did not know.
“You’re not. I’ve kept quiet, tried to let you figure this out on your own, but you’re a wreck.”
You looked at him in disbelief.
“What the fuck? Din, I’m fine!”
“You can’t possibly think that. It’s like I’m watching you disappear. You hardly eat. You don’t sleep. You snap at Grogu, you don’t talk to me. When we sleep together it’s like you want me to break you in half. You can’t even touch the floor anymore. You’re barely holding yourself together.”
There were a few moments of silence. You looked at the ground, eyes burning. You’d buried your shame for weeks, but it bled so clearly through the cracks. You hated being afraid. But it colored everything – every thought, every action, every choice.
You couldn’t meet his eyes. You whispered so quietly it was almost a breath.
“It’s like a wound. I can’t stop reopening it. What if it never closes? What if I can’t hunt with you again? What if I can’t get there in time?”
Din sat on the bed in front of you, legs wide to draw you closer. He said your name.
“It will. You will. But you can’t keep trying to do this alone. You saved me two months ago. I can see what it cost. Please, Cyarika. Let me help.”
You rested your head on his helmet. His warm hands settled on your hips.
“Okay.”
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You left the Crest, Grogu in his carrier on Din’s hip, the rucksack over his shoulder. You still carried the backpack. You knew it was irrational, but Din didn’t ask you to leave it, so you didn’t. You wound your way through the beautiful streets in the approaching dusk, streetlights popping on with a soft buzz. Shopkeepers were closing their doors, bars opening them. You passed through the main square and followed the winding, stony streets through wealthy neighborhoods. After a 30-minute walk, you arrived at a small apartment with a domed roof and a lush garden surrounded by high, solid walls. It was beautiful.
Grogu was asleep in his bag, swaying slightly from the rocking of Din’s body. Your back ached slightly from your load. Din looked at you through his helmet before approaching the door.
“What do you think?”
“It’s perfect.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly at the admission.
“Good. We’ll stay here as long as we need to.”
“Din, they only gave us three days.”
“I’m not their charge. We’ll rest. I promise. As long as you want. As long as it takes.”
He unlocked the door.
As you stepped into the entryway, golden lights twinkled on, bathing you, Din, and Grogu in warm, yellow light. Grogu looked up from Din’s side at the sudden glow, eyes blinking tiredly, purring contentedly as he settled back into sleep. Din removed his boots and placed them by the door. You did the same, looking around the space. Curved ceilings were lined with ornate carvings of leaves, flowers, and unnamed organic shapes. The shadows of the rooms beyond seemed welcoming and gentle in the silver moonlight that filtered in through the windows. You could make out a kitchen, a living room, and a short hallway.
Din led you up a set of stairs in the middle of the house to a beautiful bedroom furnished with soft wooden furniture and gauzy white fabrics. A large, circular bed lay in the center of the room, surrounded by curtains. In one corner, a door led into a bathroom.
The other corner was filled with a large crib full of stuffed creatures of many shapes and sizes. A mobile of stars spun gently above it, softly reflecting the moon and the golden glow of the lights. A small bookshelf sat beside the crib next to a large, cushioned rocking chair. A fuzzy blanket was thrown over the arms. Looking around the room, one thing was clear to you. This home was meant for a family.
You and Din tiptoed to the crib. With slow, gentle hands, Din moved Grogu from the bag at his side. He held Grogu at chest level. Both of you stared at the child with tenderness, letting the moment linger. You brushed a finger lightly over his forehead as Din lowered him into the cloudy confines of the crib. Grogu shifted slightly when his body felt the mattress beneath him before curling onto his side, fingers in his mouth. You smiled down at him. Din’s helmet was tilted towards you, a sigh of relief audible through his vocoder at the sight.
“You haven’t smiled in a long time,” he offered gently.
You hummed thoughtfully, eyes still on Grogu’s sleeping figure. Your heart glowed with a warmth it hadn’t allowed itself to feel since you’d almost lost Din. It might have been comfort. It might have been love. With a sigh, you turned towards Din’s body. His armored arm wound itself around you in a tight, one-armed embrace. The chin of his helmet rested on your head. You breathed as one. You stood together in the gentle glow of the lights, swaying gently. Grogu slept on.
Din shifted to face you, hands taking yours in the space between your bodies. You gazed up at him, face softening.
“Thank you.”
He bent to kiss you with his helmet.
Without another word, you both turned and padded gently over to the other side of the room. Your gaze lingered on Grogu in the crib. When you reached the bathroom, Din lightly closed the door behind you, careful to leave a small gap for you to see the crib. You melted slightly at the gesture. You turned to face the room, seeing a shower, a bath, a sink, and a large mirror. When you saw yourself, your blood ran cold.
There were no mirrors in the Crest. It usually lent a layer of comfort, relieving the pressure you used to feel to look a certain way. Now, you wished you’d had it. The evidence of your decline was stark and obvious. You looked nothing like yourself. Purple bags seemed to fill half of your face, your pale lips doing little to combat the dark shadows under your eyes and cheeks. Your skin looked dull and lifeless. Your hair was limp and greasy. Your clothes, while usually loose, now hung off of your frame in a way that made you look slightly emaciated. Your shoulder slipped through the neckline. Din watched you as you took in the image. You stared at yourself for a few moments before speaking.
“How long have I looked like this?”
“You never really recovered from the fight, meshla,” he said quietly.
You cringed at the word. You did not feel beautiful. You felt ill. You were sickened by how clearly the fear showed itself on your body, by how clearly Din must have seen it. Your efforts to hide your fear seemed more shameful than they had before. Your cheeks became ruddy as you imagined the last two months through the eyes of your family. You’d thought you were coping. You’d thought you were fine. How could you have been so selfish?
“I was barely hurt. Din, you almost died. How…how could I become this?”
Din stepped behind you, broad chest framing your head. He looked so strong, stable and sure. His arms wrapped around your front, his helmet leaning to your ear. You felt fragile in his hold.
“The wound of loss is the slowest to heal. You lost your trust in my safety. You’ve managed it the best you could.”
You laughed bitterly. “I would hate to see myself handling it poorly.”
You shrugged off his arms. He let you. After a moment, he began removing his armor.
First came his gloves, followed by his bracers, right, then left. He unclasped them carefully, leaning them against the wall. Next came his pauldrons, then his chest plate. Without a word, you stepped to him and began undoing the clasps. Piece by piece, the armor fell from his body, lining the floor in beskar. His helmet came last. You placed your hands on the sides. Din placed his hands over yours. You lifted together.
His gaze was warm. So full of love that you did not feel you deserved. He undid his flight suit and let it slide from his body. He stood before you, bare, before reaching a hand to caress your face. His other hand settled on the small of your back, grasping the fabric of your loose shirt. You nodded, swallowing fear back into your stomach.
As carefully as he’d removed his armor, he removed your clothing. First came your shirt, then your belt. Your pants fell to the floor. Din held out a hand as you stepped out of them. He unclasped your chest binder and let it fall to the floor. As each item fell away, Din carefully picked it up and folded it, placing it beside his armor with reverence. After a few minutes, you stood before him wearing nothing but your socks. You looked up at him, an irrational flash of fear hitting you as you thought about your feet on the cold tiles.
“It’s alright.”
You nodded.
Din knelt by your side and bent your knee, stripping your sock off in one fluid motion. Before he placed it on the pile of clothing, he gently kissed the top of your foot. When he released your leg, the sole of your foot hovered above the floor. You placed a hand on Din’s shoulder to stabilize yourself, letting a moment pass. You gingerly let it touch the ground before lifting the other. When he was finished, Din turned towards the large bath at the end of the room. He walked over and turned on the spout. You were hit by an overpowering wave of panic.
“Din, no, I’m taking a shower.”
“It’s alright.”
“Din, I can’t. I can’t.”
“Cyarika, it’s alright. It’s just water. Just a bath.”
“Din, it’s not. I swear it, I can’t get in there.” The tile beneath your feet was numbingly cold. You looked around frantically for a bathmat or a towel, anything to create a barrier between yourself and the floor. The sound of water hitting the bottom of the tub made you want to clamp your hands over your ears. You turned your head to the gap in the door, making sure that Grogu was still in the crib. You started backing away, your hands wrapping around your chest.
When Din saw you retreating, he turned off the water. He looked at you with concern so deep it bordered on pity. It made you feel sick. Your breaths came fast and shallow as you regained control in the silence, your arms tight around your torso. You knelt to the floor, the feel of the cold tile on your knees giving you reprieve from the sensation on your feet. Your eyes fixed on the floor in front of you.
You heard Din’s bare feet tread quietly over to you. He knelt beside you and cradled your face between his hands, gently guiding your eyes to look into his.
“It’s going to be alright. I won’t make you get in. Just sit with me while it fills.”
You nodded shortly and let him lead you over, tense and jumpy. Your eyes squeezed tight with each drip from the faucet into the tub. Din leaned on the wall beside the bath, splaying his legs so you could sit between them. You slid into his embrace. One hand reached around you to hold your waist. The other reached for the handle of the faucet. Your arm darted out to stop it.
“It’s alright,” he whispered in your ear, guiding your hand with his to the handle.
When your hands met the handle, he waited until you squeezed to turn the water on. You sat, legs entwined, while the bath filled. The room became warm and humid, pleasant and heady. The feel of Din’s naked skin on yours made you settle deeply into his hold, your body completely relaxed against his. You breathed deeply as steam filled the air. Your hands did not move from the handle. When the tub was full, you turned the water off together.
Din squeezed you before moving into a stand. You remained on the floor. He raised a foot to step into the water. He glanced down at you before entering the bath, checking your breathing, your expression, the tension of your muscles. When he saw that you were still in control, he slowly lowered one leg into the bath, followed by the other, and sank down into the hot water with a heavy sigh of relief. He let a hand dangle over the side for you to hold. You took it.
Din looked at you over the lip of the tub, the lower half of his face submerged as you watched him from the floor. How was this so easy for him? He’d almost drowned, had coughed the water from his lungs, vomited it from his stomach. But you were the one who couldn’t bear to let it touch you. You leaned your head back onto the wall as a wave of nausea hit you at the sight of Din’s mouth beneath the water. You closed your eyes and counted to 10 before opening them again. Din’s gaze was steady on your face. He raised himself into a sitting position, lounging on the tub until he was submerged only to his chest.
“It feels really good.”
You blinked. A rush of memories you seemed to have forgotten over the last two months washed over you. You remembered bathing with your sister, books damp as you traded them between your wet hands. You remembered summers spent swimming with your friends in alpine lakes, lying in a circle on the sun-warmed rocks to dry. You remembered washing Grogu in a river, water flowing over his tiny body and trilling over the smooth stones. You remembered showering with Din, washing each other with Grogu’s baby soap after a successful hunt. You stood, your legs unsteady, and took the final step towards the bathtub.
You slowly lowered yourself in with your back against Din, waiting for the panic that had been your constant companion for the last two months to rear its ugly head. It did not. Instead, the warm, clean water seemed to cradle you, your muscles relaxing into it as the tension you’d been carrying since Din’s near-drowning finally left your body. You felt Din’s solid chest behind you, his breath deep and even. You closed your eyes and breathed out. The sense of relief was overwhelming. Tears began to trickle down your cheeks and into the water. You let them flow. Din didn’t try to wipe them away. You lay, back to chest and chest to back, letting the warm water draw the strain of the last two months from you like poison from a wound. You didn’t know how long you lay there.
When the water had gone cold and your fingers and toes had wrinkled from the moisture, you and Din climbed out of the tub. It was late. Din retrieved a pair of fluffy towels from a shelf and wrapped you in one at the neck, covering your body from head to knees. He smiled as he wrapped you. You waddled past the mirror and paused before continuing forward. Whatever your body looked like was a discovery you would make in the morning. It could wait.
You and Din ambled from the bathroom to the bed, giggling lightly as you prepared for sleep. You felt yourself for the first time in months. Still naked, you and Din kissed gently on your way to the bed. The mattress was soft. The air was cool, the blankets warm. The canopy moved with the light breeze that filtered through the house. Grogu snored gently in his cradle. Facing one another, you and Din slept. The space between you was nothing more than bedsheets. You did not dream.
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AN: Can you guys tell that I have GAD and regular nightmares. Lol! Leave a like and reblog! LMK if you want to be added to the taglist!
You began yearning for safety. It felt almost like a betrayal. Your dreams started in temperate forests and idyllic fields, only to transform into floodplains, wildfires, or battlefields littered with unidentifiable bodies. In each dream you wandered, turning over the dead, seeing nothing but wounds that you hadn’t remembered making but knew had come from your hands, your blade, or your blaster. Each face you saw was blackened and burned. You could never find what you were looking for. When you woke up in the middle of the night and saw Din next to you, his hair damp from the shower, you could only imagine the brackish water that had almost claimed his life. You did not wake him.
When Din began hunting again, things became worse. The month of rest and recovery had made you terrified to let him out of your sight. He took only the easiest bounties, minor debt collections, the occasional small-town jailbreak. Nothing longer than a few hours. The entire time that he was gone, you sat with Grogu, staring at the ramp of the Crest. Grogu whined at you while you rocked him, begging you in his way to play, but you couldn’t concentrate long enough on his books to read them to him. You left him playing with his balls and shapes in the corner while you rocked your body, waiting for Din to return. When Din came back and asked what you’d done in his absence, you lied.
Summary: On a desperate hunt, you underestimate what you're willing to do to save your family.
Rating: E. 18+ MDNI. Extreme depictions of violence. Brief mentions of sexuality.
WC: 3814
NOT BETA READ!
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
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You and Din fell into a rhythm. On nights you weren’t hunting, you circled one another under the belly of the Crest, Grogu watching from his bassinette. He loved spectating, shrieking at a particularly good takedown, laughing when you outwitted Din, babbling like an announcer during particularly long fight sequences. He loved to wave at you when you caught his eye. You made a point to always wave back, even if it meant losing the bout.
Each training session brought you closer to Din. You learned his movements just as he learned yours. Purple bruises could be seen below your clothing from your frequent impacts, darker as Din began to trust more in your ability to evade, respond, and recover. After Din put them there from the sparring, he spent the evening winding down by kissing them. You spent the mornings doing the same for him.
Din began trusting you more on hunts. You hadn’t realized before how closely he kept you. At first, you’d thought the proximity was a normal part of a hunting partnership, a show of trust, but as your capabilities sharpened and Din let you stray further, you realized that it had been fear. You became hyperaware of the distance between you.
This time you were on a planet you’d never heard of with a name you couldn’t remember. The bounty was elusive, no name, no age, just a puck with a slightly blurry face on it that looked vaguely human, vaguely female. Grogu slept inside the Crest while you and Din hunted.
You’d decided to start in the clubs and bars. Trouble always found you there. You sat on one end of the bar in heels and a dress that allowed you to move while drawing modest attention to yourself with its high neck and low back. The bartender waited on some patrons at the other end of the counter. Din sat on the other side of the club, stares glancing off his armor with the entry of every new patron. It took effort not to keep looking over at him.
There were a few other human women in the club. One sat a few seats down from you at the bar, head down, shoulders broad and muscled, nursing something strong. Another sat with a group of Trandoshans, at ease with a long knife by her side, her hair shaved bald to reveal a striking, geometric floral tattoo on her scalp. A third was on the dance floor with a partner, dancing slowly as men of a variety of species watched with a hungry look in their eyes. The final one sat in the corner booth opposite Din, back turned. You could see nothing but her solitude. It was clear to you which was most likely your target.
You slid over to the table with two drinks in your hand, hips swaying gently.
“Dangerous to be a woman alone in these parts,” you said silkily, sliding a drink across the table as you sat.
The woman looked up at you, eyes darting up quickly. A hand moved below the table. The other reached for the glass.
“Could say the same to you. Never seen your face around here.”
You sipped your drinks, letting a few moments of silence pass.
“New in town. Anything I should know?” you asked wryly. “Can help you out if you’re looking for company. If I’m of the persuasion you’re after, at least.”
The woman let out an exhale that could have been a laugh.
“I could be persuaded,” she said simply. “Didn’t take you for an escort.”
“Not an escort. Something better.”
“And what might that be?” The hand under the table reached for your thigh.
“Just company. Company that’s been looking for someone like you.”
A beat passed. The woman looked at you, weighing something.
You slid the puck across the table. The woman’s hand retreated from your leg.
“This look familiar to you?”
She glanced at the door.
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’ll be able to enlighten me, then.” You turned on the puck, blurry face leaping from the screen and turning, turning, turning.
“That’s not me.”
“I can see that. But you know who this is.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
A beat of silence.
“She’s going to be hard to find.”
“Only if you don’t cooperate. And even then, we’ll figure it out.”
“We?”
Shit. Never reveal your position. You cursed yourself for the mistake.
“We,” you confirmed, your voice playful in an attempt to keep your emotions in check. “Where is she?”
“She’s here.”
Confusion. Four women in the club. Five, including you. What were you missing?
“Looks like your Mandalorian’s found her.”
Surprise. You’d entered the bar separately, minutes apart. How did she know you were hunting together? How did she know him at all? What did she mean “found her?”
You turned. Mando was gone from his seat. A rush of fear went through you.
“With any luck, he’ll be as obvious as you.”
You stood. Where was Mando?
“Where is he?”
The woman only laughed.
You turned on your foot and walked to the bar, faster than you should’ve to get a better view of the pub. Your eyes should have been on the door, should have stayed on Din. Anxiety roiled in your stomach. You swallowed your nausea and sat at the counter, looking around for the bartender. Mando was obtrusive. Barkeeps kept an eye on him. This was the best place to ask.
A minute passed, your hand tapping rhythmically on the table, your foot bouncing, mind racing. You felt your instincts go sideways at his absence. You knew he was a stabilizing presence, but you were shocked by how quickly you felt off balance and at a disadvantage without him in sight. You took stock of the individuals in the club. No change. The woman at the table was staring at you, bemused. Fuck. Where was Din? Hell, where was the bartender?
Shit. The bartender. You’d checked every patron in the club, every person sitting, every body coming and going. You’d forgotten to count the one person that was always in sight. Without looking around to see whose eyes might be on you, you went behind the bar and through a curtain to the kitchen. You drew your blaster from a holster on your thigh. Your breath felt tight, but you fought hard to even it, make sense of your racing thoughts, keep the panic at bay long enough to find where your Mandalorian had gone.
The kitchen was dark, lit with red lights to keep the activity from disrupting the feel of the club on the other side of the curtain. The pots and pans reflected scarlet, your face distorted, your dress looking out of place and foolish. Knives were attached to magnets along the walls in jagged spikes. You grabbed a chef’s knife and walked forward, aware of the blade, the small click of your heels, the hum of the lights, the thump of music through the walls. Every metal surface reminded you of the man you could not see.
You crept forward into the next room, taking a moment to remove your heels and hide them in a corner. The smell of mold reached you and you wrinkled your nose. A storage room with food on the shelves, flies alighting on some vegetables past their prime. A fridge held meat you could only guess the source of. A freezer on the far end was slightly ajar, cool fog pooling on the floor around it. The door at the end was solid, dark, and closed. There was no sign of movement. No sign of the bounty. No sign of Din.
You moved slightly faster, throwing the freezer door open before peering inside, blaster raised. It took a moment for the fog to clear, revealing freezer burned meat, packaged food, and nothing else. As you turned away, something glinted from the floor. You knew better than to approach it.
You heard Din's voice in the back of your head: Never put yourself in a position you can't get out of. Always have an exit. You had a vision of someone slamming the freezer door behind you, of slowly suffocating, freezing to death while Din walked into a trap. But you had no other leads. No other options.
Your heart thundering, ears piqued for any sound behind you, you rushed towards the shining thing, eyes wild. It was a handle, cold to the touch. But no frost covered it. The rest of the freezer was coated in a thick sheet of sharp ice. This had been touched recently. Touched regularly. You crouched close to the floor, breath white, hands and knees frigid, looking for the cracks that you knew would perimeter the metal handle. A trapdoor. Slightly askew. You grabbed it and heaved with no hesitation.
A ladder, then blackness. You put your blaster and knife into your thigh holster and stepped down with your bare feet, praying you wouldn’t slip. If the smell of the kitchen had made you pause, it was nothing compared to the thick scent of stale, rotten, stagnant air. You took a deep breath and descended, pulling the trapdoor closed with a creaking thud. If Din had gone this way, he had covered his tracks. You would too.
The world around you went completely black, save for a green glow emanating from a distant, unseen bottom. You wished for Din’s helmet as nausea rose in your throat at the sour stench of decay. Anything to create a barrier between yourself and the rotting bowels of the city. You tried not to retch at the feel of the slimy rungs on your palms and soles, one after the other. You desperately hoped that Din was down here, that your instincts were right. You hadn’t thought to count the rungs until you were too far to remember. Could you trust that you were right after so many mistakes had led you here? Your mind turned with your stomach, spoiling with the air. The descent was long. But it ended.
You crouched at the bottom, breathing through your mouth. You wiped your hands on your dress and raised your blaster, holding the chef’s knife blade-down in your palm. A tunnel extended before you, lit a sickly green by what you could only assume had once been white fluorescents, now covered in filth and some horrible type of algae. Long, rusted pipes ran along the ceiling. The echo of water dripping through hollow spaces was all you could hear. You crept forward, staying close to the wall. A faint trail through the grime about 8 inches above your shoulder made you picture Din in the same position. A flame of determination flashed hot in your stomach, settling into a smolder as you crept further into the hall.
As you approached your first intersection, you heard voices. You ducked, struggling for breath in the cool, suffocating humidity. You couldn’t make anything out. A loud clang of metal on metal made you jump. You edged around the corner, eyes searching for the telltale mark of Din’s passage. There. With a quick glance to ensure the hallway was clear, you followed. Wherever he went, you would go.
You walked in a predator’s crouch, one foot in front of the other. The slime on the wall smeared thick across your bare arm, but you couldn’t stand to lean away. The anchor, no matter how awful, held you steady. Another clang echoed through the hall, followed by a grunt. You moved faster, careful not to make noise. The floor of the tunnel had always been damp, but as you progressed further and the collision of metal grew louder and more frequent, dark, opaque water began to cover your feet. Your pace slowed as you tried to quiet your steps, hoping the dripping of water that filled the tunnels would cover any sound of your movements. You tried not to think about your bare feet and the endless possibilities of what could lie below the surface of the stagnant black water.
The clanging increased in intensity, this time punctuated by grunts, splashes, and the hollow sound of body on body. You heard the whoosh of Din’s flamethrower and began to run. They would not hear you over the cacophony of the fight. Din wouldn’t use his flame in such an enclosed space unless things were extremely dire. Your arms pumped, knife on one side, blaster on the other. As you sprinted, the thickness and stench of the air felt like fuel in your lungs – gaseous, dense, and flammable. You heard a grunt that was distinct, a grunt that you knew, and pushed yourself impossibly faster.
You leapt into an open chamber that looked oddly like a swimming pool, the raised lip almost tripping you as you ran. The center of the room was dominated by a still, black mass of unmoving water, neon lines of green running across the surface from the lights overhead. Din fought three opponents on the far end of the water near the exit, holding his spear. A tall, thin man with a dark scorch mark across his clothing was pushing Din sideways with a vibroblade, glinting with electricity. Another man, impossibly large, wielded nothing but a crude, rusted metal pipe that matched those lining the ceilings. Din’s final opponent was a woman, muscled, lithe, catlike and fast. The throwing knives in her hand were small, curved, and deadly. The bartender you’d missed, the bounty you hadn’t seen, aimed wildly at the fight on the opposite side of the pool. Her back was to you. Nobody noticed you enter.
You ran towards the bounty and rammed into her from behind with your shoulder, knocking her blaster from her arms and into the water. The thick ripples made strange, hypnotic motions as the green light danced on their contours. You shot the bounty’s leg without a second thought. She screamed, drawing the attention of her comrades on the other side of the room. One down. You sprinted towards the fight, knife and blaster ready in your hands. In the rush of confusion, Din whipped the thin man in the head, his spear contacting bone with a sharp crack. He dropped like a ragdoll. That’s two.
Which opponent would you fight? Which would you be able to survive? The first question would be decided for you. The second, only you could answer.
The woman broke away from Din, leaving him alone with an opponent who easily equaled two men. She was fast, a knife thrown from her hand as she pivoted to meet you. You turned sideways to stop the blow with your arm, blade embedding itself in your bicep. You grunted and pulled it out as you ran to meet your opponent, throwing yet another weapon into the murky darkness of the pool. Blood spurted from your arm. Her eyes flashed as you met by the edge of the pool, hands raised, weapons at the ready. She lunged immediately, forcing you to jump closer to the edge of the pool.
You’d sparred with Din plenty of times by now. Hot, urgent, playful, and tense. It was nothing compared to the intensity of your current fight. The woman slashed, stabbed, swung, and spun in dizzying motions, herding you closer to your death like a terrified animal. It was all you could do not to get hit. Blood flowed from your arm onto your knife, the handle slippery and hot. The woman lunged forward again, and you leaned backwards, almost losing your balance on the lip of the water. Your eyes widened and the woman smiled as she went in for the kill.
As she flashed forward for the final hit, you raised your knife and yelled as you overcorrected your balance, falling forward heavily. The woman brought a knife forward just as you did, hitting your shoulder and twisting as your knife embedded itself into her throat. Her eyes widened as blood spurted from the long, clean wound across her neck. You screamed in pain and horror. Your bodies fell in a heap, blood pouring from the woman as you removed your knife, indistinguishable from your own.
Din’s head whipped sideways at your scream at the same time his opponent swung mightily at his body. The deafening clang as the metal pipe hit the beskar helmet was followed by a large, nauseating splash as Din’s armored body flew several feet and hit the surface of the water. His limp body sank like a stone.
“DIN!”
Your blaster still in your hand, you fired once, twice, three times at the back of the man. He roared and lurched from the impact but did not fall. He turned, eyes glinting with triumph that turned to horror as he saw his fallen comrade in a growing pool of blood. She did not stir. He ran towards you with a deep, graveled yell, pipe still in hand. One hit would kill you. You quickly glanced back at the water, waiting a beat for Din to emerge before retreating. The water was still, dark and deep.
You raised your blaster again, dropping the knife to your side. A fourth shot hit the man in the chest. A fifth hit him on the arm. Your sixth missed him completely. You scrambled away towards the fallen man and reached for his vibroblade as your final opponent closed the distance. You spun, electrified metal meeting the man in the stomach. His body jerked from the energy, spasming, the metal rod falling to the floor with a shower of sparks. The smell of burnt flesh began to reach your nose as you pressed the blade further into his body. You did not wait to see if he was dead.
The water was unmoving. You dived. Your arms moved through the slime, eyes blind. Your lungs burned from your exertion. You hadn’t taken a breath before jumping. You could not tell which way was up. You swam harder, arms trying to find purchase on anything at all, a foot, an arm, a chest plate. Precious seconds went by, your muscles weakening from lack of oxygen. You felt your hands slide against something soft. Din’s cape. You grabbed it and pulled, legs kicking desperately. His body was so heavy. You wouldn’t make it. You couldn’t make it. You kicked anyways, arms around Din’s broad body, deadweight in the thick water. Your head broke the surface.
You held a desperate arm around Din’s shoulder to keep his head above the surface, dragging him above the lip of the pool onto the ground, coughing, chest heaving with oxygen that was far from fresh. Once out of the water, you leaned over his face, eyes wild with panic.
“DIN. WAKE UP.”
He did not move.
“I SAID WAKE UP!”
You saw motion out of the corner of your eye. The forgotten bounty was crawling towards you. Your blaster was in her hand. You moved without thinking, throwing your body onto the barrel of your weapon. Her hands bent backwards, fingers useless against the force of you. With a desperate yell, you rotated, reaching down to pull the weapon from between your bodies and wrestled it from her hands. You fired three times into the bounty’s shocked face. You dropped the weapon and raced back to Din’s side, heart pounding out of your chest, breath short and panicked.
No survivors were left to witness Din’s face. You ripped off his helmet, hands immediately reaching into his mouth to ensure that no debris was blocking his airway. You pulled a mass of algae, mud, brackish water and threw it aside, tilting his head back and blowing air into his lungs. His head was covered in blood. He lay unmoving on the floor.
Your breath was coming in short gasps, body numb as you unclasped his chest plate and pushed it off him with a thud. You felt a twinge of guilt at the carelessness with which you handled his beskar. It was quickly replaced by fear. You began compressions.
Each second felt like an eternity, your arms shaking with the force you used to move Din’s heart. You paused to breathe once more in his mouth. As you pulled away to restart compressions, his body jerked violently. He turned onto his side and retched long, hard, and painful. Deep, ragged inhales punctuated the chamber as he filled himself hungrily with air. You gave him space as he spat the foul water from his lungs, his stomach, his mouth. When he finished, he was on his hands and knees, arms shaking, eyes wide.
It took him a moment to get his bearings. As his breathing slowed and his body began to feel the weight of the fight, he turned to lie on his back. When his head turned sideways, he stopped mid-motion, staring in disbelief at the carnage in the chamber. He looked around, eyes catching yours as you knelt a few feet from his side, water dripping from your body, dress black with grime, blood flowing down your arm and shoulder. Your shoulders were shaking with silent tears. He was alive.
“Meshla.” He sounded so small, voice quiet and hoarse. “Look what I’ve put you through.”
You stared at him for a long moment.
“I had to find you,” you whispered.
He only nodded.
Din recovered on his back as you searched the bodies. A fair number of credits, some weapons, ammo. Who were these people? How had they known you were coming? Were there more?
With each body you approached, you saw nothing but gore. The blood from the knife-throwing woman was sticky and thick. The body of the large man was scorched, still twitching periodically from the vibroblade embedded in his torso. The bounty lay faceless, skull black and burned from the blaster. Each time you saw the carnage, your mind became numb and separated itself from your hands, red with the blood of the people you had killed. You’d killed before, certainly, but never like this, so desperate, so animal, so little concern for the cruelty or horror of the kill. Had Din seen a battlefield so red before?
You did not speak as you supported one another back through the tunnels. You left the bounty at the bottom of the pit, too exhausted to carry her up the ladder and back to the Crest. The credits you’d scavenged from your enemies would have to suffice. There would never be enough to cover what it had cost you.
That night, after your wounds were tended to and your bodies cleaned, you and Din clung to each other. Din reeling from his failure in the fight, you numb with the choices you’d been forced to make to save him. There would be other hunts, perhaps just as brutal. But there was nothing so traumatic as the first time you almost lost.
It took you a month before you could spar again.
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AN: Really ate with this one I fear. I love imaging myself in violent, life or death situations. Hope you enjoy!
Have yearned for an Eros/psyche Mando fanfic for years bc the helmet makes it sooooo easy but the consent nuances are a tough barrier for me, I fear for the shortcomings in my writing
Summary: Life is normal, working as the librarian in Nevarro’s new holorepository — until a Mandalorian seeks your help with an impossible query. (Post S3, but fits anywhere before or after TMAG)
Tags/Warnings: E/18+! (Some) violence, a lot of blood, a tiny bit of drinking, swearing, weapons, a dead body, fingering, unprotected piv sex, naked female/clothed male, reader is shorter than din but otherwise written as inclusively as possible, strangers-to-friends-to-lovers, porn with plot (?)
Words: 20.3k (listen... it's a novella)
Restoring each page of a thick, ancient tome would be preferable to troubleshooting this stupid thing. This, being an updated search function for Nevarro’s holorepository. A way to scan an object in front of you and pull any related data.
Huffing, you arch your back and stretch in the uncomfortable chair, then cross your arms and spread out across your desk, forehead nestled in your elbow. You blindly search and tap your datapad with a finger, turning off your work session. The holographic screen floating in front of you disappears, letting the golden glow of the library take over.
Sunlight filters through the small rectangular windows on each side of the front door. It shines over the stony center pathway, lined by rows and rows of tall shelves. But the mid-afternoon rays aren’t long enough to reach your work station at the end of the main aisle, leaving you in the dim twinkle of the ceiling pot lights. Occasionally, the spines of the holobooks flicker, a brilliant electric blue.
Silence. You could count how many visitors you’ve had in the last week on your two hands. Hunters, soldiers, pilots, even plain old civilians… they don’t have the time or interest for research. No time for pleasure reading either—but does anyone?
At least you have a job. One that revolves around archiving military reports, for the most part.
Stationed in the heart of Nevarro City, the library was ordered and built in collaboration with the New Republic. In exchange for funding the collection of holobooks, you’re tasked with creating an archive on the New Republic’s business in the Outer Rim.
Your datapad pings several times a day with messages from colonels and commanders at ranger outposts, passing along reports on missions, prisoners, and Imperial remnants. You store the information on a data stick in a private back office, away from public access. Once in a while, you also aid the closest neighbouring base on Adelphi by researching planets of interest and crime syndicates.
There’s a handful of other repositories like yours; the New Republic established one in each galactic region, creating an expansive network of information. You share the filing duties remotely with other librarians, each constructing an archive on the Core Worlds, Inner Rim, Mid Rim, so on. The arrangement allows inactive records to be stored separately from ranger outposts, while providing a few lucky cities like yours with social development.
Still. The contract doesn’t make much of a difference with in-library patronage. The people who do come in are nine-times-out-of-ten looking for help with configuring their holoprojector so they can talk to their friends on some backwater planet you’ve never heard of. The other time, it’s someone convincing you the Death Star was a hoax and that Alderaan is going strong.
The rumble of a throat clearing snaps you out of your reverie.
“Librarian.”
Your palm slaps against the surface of your desk as you whip your head up, your wide eyes falling upon a stock-still, shiny wall of armour. One that you might’ve seen before, stalking through the market streets. Just never up close.
Swallowing, you straighten your back and fail to come up with a reason as to why you’d just been lazing about on your desk.
God, he’s tall. And broad. You might find him slightly more terrifying than you already do, if it wasn’t for the green baby.
The Mandalorian’s silver armour glints in the low light of the library as he shifts his weight onto one foot. A pair of enormous eyes watch you from over his shoulder, leathery ears flapping against his helmet. For a short, mortifying moment, you can see your face reflected in his chestplate, and what you find is a pretty dumb expression.
So, you stand from your chair and put on a smile.
“Hello,” you greet them both quietly, hiding the timid quiver of your vocal chords. “Can I help you find something?”
“Yes.” It’s one word and yet, devastatingly, it’s so raspy and deep and… The baby blinks at you as one of its claws reaches further up the Mandalorian’s pauldron, then its nail catches on the wooly cowl underneath, tugging the fabric. The baby slips a few inches down Mando’s shoulder, constricting the fabric around his neck.
“Ah,” he hisses, casually reaching behind him before the baby slides all the way down his back and plops into his palm.
Then– “Yes,” he repeats, “I’m looking for information about my apprentice.”
He maneuvers the green and beige bundle to the front of his body, then holds him there against his stomach. His helmet tilts up by the chin in a proud manner, and you let yourself just stare at the baby, all swaddled in a too-large sack of a coat.
“Well,” you finally respond, eyes drifting back to the Mandalorian’s visor, “what is it that you’d like to know?”
The baby reaches its claws out for you, which are immediately restrained by the Mandalorian’s gloved thumbs and tucked back into his hold.
Faintly, you can hear him mutter something to the child.
“I want to learn about his species. I… do not know what he is. I’d like to know how to train him better.”
It makes you feel small; this unconventional request is likely too big for your little library, and never in your life have you seen a creature like this one.
The last time someone needed research help, you had but to refer them to an almanac. Identifying a mysterious alien species? You pause, calculating your response.
“I want to be honest with you,” you start, trying to make your voice confident, “the repository is newer. We’re still rebuilding after the whole, you know… Although I’m working on acquisitions, there’s a slim chance I have information on your little friend here.”
The helmet tilts again, this time to the side. And he doesn’t say anything. Just stands there, shining at you, as big as a Bantha.
You take a deep breath, noticing how much of his body is covered with weapons. In fact, right now, he’s holding the baby against a bandolier of ammo. There’s a red splotch on his right glove that you’re certain is blood. Your exhale ends with a shiver. More silence. A challenge to see who will speak first.
Would it be worse if you could see his face, in all this quiet nothingness, and stare at each other blankly? Probably.
“I can try.” You cut through the stillness, just above a mumble. Your shoulders relax a little when the Mandalorian makes a quiet hum of approval.
“Good.”
Good. Twist my arm, you think, not missing the continued raspiness of his modulated voice.
“But I’m not a scientist,” you add, attempting to make your face into something severe, but since he won’t take no for an answer, you doubt he’ll hear out your concerns.
After a beat, “Excellent sleeper, though.”
Your breath catches in your throat.
You shoot him a weak glare, unsure if that was humour or contempt in his voice. Was he judging you? Of course, he picked the one time you decided to take a five-second snooze to barge in with this baby and demand help. An impeccable first impression on your part.
“You just caught me at a bad time.” You grumble, then curse yourself for taking the bait. Why would this clearly seasoned Mandalorian still want a dozing librarian’s help? The desire to prove yourself creeps along your shoulders, pools in the bottom of your stomach.
He takes another step toward the desk.
“Yeah?”
Fuck, why is it so stuffy in here?
After gaping at him for a few more seconds, not knowing what to say, you shift. He inhales, like he’s about to rag on you further. “Or are you always—”
You cut in.
“So, what can you tell me about him already? I’ll need some time to find proper resour–” Your gaze flits back to the creature, who is currently making your cup of caf float in mid air.
His little hand stretches out, eyes closed in a deep focus as the mug moseys towards him, a full foot above the desk.
“Hey, kid–” Mando reaches to wrap his fingers around the mug at the same time that you do. His hand gracelessly closes around yours, and out sloshes the caf, dripping onto the counter. He withdraws his hand lightning quick, as you, stupefied, set the mug back on the surface.
What the fuck?
“Suppose we can start there,” a nervous laugh bubbles out of you, and Mando heaves a sigh, humbled.
He reprimands the baby by shaking a finger, but it’s a half-assed attempt. Those big, shiny eyes crease with laughter.
“Sorry, he’s… still learning his manners. But I don’t need to learn more about his powers. I want to know what he is. What planet he came from.”
“I see,” you nod, reaching for a tissue, but the Mandalorian is already wiping away the liquid with the edge of his cape.
***
Turns out, the baby’s name is Grogu. He’s fifty, and an absolute pain to research. But, as it also turns out, you’re able to import certain holofiles from repositories on other planets. It grants you a welcome respite from tinkering with the new search function and lets you work on some much needed acquisitions. The repository will ideally grow into a grand hub of knowledge for the New Republic, so, if that means importing several hundred files to the database to help figure out what species the green baby is, then… fine.
A few days after your initial encounter, the Mandalorian brought the baby back in with him to check for an update. Graciously, he’d let you take Grogu to test with the new search function, in which you’d taken a scanner and held it over the baby for a good five minutes before the system spat out some results. The Mandalorian leaned against a tall shelf and crossed his arms, somehow managing to look like a concerned father even with his casual stance and lack of a visible face.
“Careful,” he murmured, as you held the baby still under the scanner’s undulating blue light.
“He’s okay. I’m a librarian, not a Wampa.”
“I see that,” came his flat reply.
His discomfort permeated through the armour, though he remained unmoving.
“Would you prefer I stop scanning him?” You glanced up from your control panel, ceasing to press any more buttons.
A grumble. “Keep going.”
The scan worked, to a certain degree.
It pulled up all creatures with big ears and anything to do with the colour green. Nowhere near as specific as you’d hoped, which meant the scan-search function was going to need a lot of refining.
To your surprise, the Mandalorian didn’t show any signs of disappointment. His brief combativeness died once the baby was back on his shoulder. Instead, he told you he could pay handsomely for your continued efforts, to which you replied that it was simply part of your job to connect people with information. Besides, you didn’t need the New Republic on your back for accepting money under the table.
It’s the first proper query someone has brought to you in an age, and it’s effectively made you question both your sanity and choice of career. Even with all your determination, you find nothing. Nothing, nothing. Not in the holobooks, not in the research databases, not even in the searchable catalogues of other repositories on the holonet. You curse the authors of the galaxy for not writing a guide on identifying green, floppy eared babies with bottomless pits for stomachs.
You try not to let it eat away at you. Finding answers is what you do, and you want to give an answer to the mysterious hunk of beskar.
***
Two weeks later, you have zero leads on the species, but a good deal of information on the Jedi.
After another day of adding New Republic documents to the data stick in the back room – and getting nowhere on the Grogu case – you switch the library lights off and make your way to the entrance.
Unsurprisingly, one of the few patrons you welcomed today was a grumpy Quarren who wanted a holobook on how to fix a speeder. He then proceeded to ask you to read it so you could fix it after your shift.
You reminded him that you could help to locate information, but you were not a teacher, nor a mechanic, which resulted in you being yelled at for refusing service and the Quarren storming out. You whispered curses under your breath as he bellowed his own.
Now, you slip out the door and into a purple, dying sunset. Once the bolt clicks in place and you key in the secondary lock’s passcode, you swivel on your heel, turning smack into another wall.
Gasping, your key — a silver rod — clatters to the ground.
“Anything yet?” The Mandalorian questions you, visor tilted low. Even though he hadn’t trapped you in a corner, the sheer size and proximity of him gives the same effect. Hiding his face must have an impact on his idea of personal space.
Heat blazes across your cheeks in embarrassment; you’d been hoping for a breakthrough before the next time he decided to check in. Now he’s (somewhat) cornered you, demanding answers after giving you a perfectly reasonable amount of time to have found something. Anything.
Your mouth opens to say hello first, then you remember he hadn’t the mind to greet you properly either. Why he insists on stealthily materializing behind you instead of saying hello like a normal person is beyond you. If he means to scare you, it’s quite effective.
“Still no…” you draw the last syllable out as you try and think of how to explain it. Well, why would he care if you were the best keeper of knowledge in Nevarro if you can’t find anything on where his sorcerer baby came from?
He sighs, and the sound slices your ego in half. The plaza behind him is nearly empty, street vendors packing away their tents and wares, a few people headed for a drink at the cantina.
“There’s nothing, not even in the remains of the Coruscant archives.” You scrape the toe of your boot along the thin layer of dirt covering the step, avoiding him.
His eyeless stare bores into you, your skin. Had you angered him? What was he expecting, for you to find a birth certificate?
Steeling yourself, you cross your arms, waiting for him to lash out the way other patrons do at the tiniest, inconsequential things.
The silence stretches for long enough that the flagstone street outside the repository has now fully emptied, leaving you alone with the Mandalorian, who is once again swimming in weapons. It only occurs to you now that you should probably start begging for your life. Sure, he had been rather well-mannered during your two previous meetings, apart from making a jab at you sleeping, and not knowing how to make his presence known without giving you a heart attack. Your soft heart reminds you he’s just a father trying to understand his son. Ward. Apprentice — whatever it is. Then again. There is a warrior standing not two feet away from you, in a vacant street, while you tell him you failed at his one, simple request. Another glance at the blaster on his hip gets your mouth running.
“I’m serious, I spent hours looking everywhere— believe me, I wanted to, I appreciated the challenge, but there was just—”
“Thank you.”
“I–”
What?
“Thank you,” he repeats himself, and all the rising fear inside you fizzles out.
“I’m not sure I follow.” Your arms fall from their crossed position to rest at your sides. Looking down, you notice the baby is here too, wrapped around the Mandalorian’s boot. He wags his fingers to make a tinkling sound with your key that he’d picked up off the ground.
The Mandalorian’s voice comes soft and steady as he kneels down to take the key from Grogu. “You’re the only one who’s agreed to even try.”
His helmet comes rather close to your face as he rises back up, his palm open.
You pluck the rod from his hand, fingertips grazing the smooth leather glove. You had almost refused him; you knew it was a shot in the dark as soon as he asked you for help. But who else had he tried talking to anyway?
“Did you try a xenobiologist?”
“Five.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Another librarian almost tried but it fell through when Grogu… made a mess of their repository.”
You snort. Apparently, stealing your caf was nothing compared to what this baby is capable of. It makes you feel a little better, knowing you weren’t the only one stumped by it.
Your meek voice mumbles, “Your friend is just…”
“Rare.” Mando visor tips down to Grogu, who has now detached himself from his father’s boot, and is gazing up at you. Lovingly, almost.
You reach into your pocket, recalling your unfinished snack from this afternoon.
“May I?”
Mando nods, hands on his hips. You toss the remainder of your cookie to the grabby hands at your feet. Grogu swallows it whole, gulping.
It’s probably nothing, but you offer it anyway: “I did find a lot of information about the Jedi, though I guess you probably know a thing or two already.”
He stills. “Tell me.”
***
Ten minutes later, a server droid thrusts a Bloody Rancor into your right hand.
Grogu slurps a bowl of soup, caged in between you and Mando, who eats nothing, drinks nothing.
You’d been stunned by his suggestion to come here. He shrugged, said it was just a comfortable place to talk about your research. You stifled a laugh, doubting he knows much about comfort based off of his everyday attire – but you said yes, despite your nerves.
You hadn’t visited the cantina since its relocation after the magistrate fashioned the old one into a school. To be fair, there was a lot of the city you hadn’t explored since its makeover, always skittering between your home and the library. Now, there’s yellow fabric streamers, multicoloured mood lighting, more server droids, and considerably less scowly faces going around. Along the walls are small booths nestled in private alcoves, each glowing a different colour.
There’s even softer music, you noticed, washing over your ears when you stepped foot into the cantina. Heads turned, conversation halted. Your cheeks burned so hot with the attention you thought they might catch fire. Then, lightning zipped up your spine as the ghost of a hand brushed your back, leading you to a booth. You wanted to think it was gentlemanly, but considering the stares, it was just protective. A shield. Hardly a touch. It hit you again just how intimidating he was when he wasn’t asking for help with his baby in your quaint community library. Even then, he had you cowering a little.
The chatter and drinking resumed as the Mandalorian took a seat across from you.
And it’s weird. It’s really, properly weird to sit across from this giant, metal stranger. His presence fills the room with talk, with whispers of awe and fear and you — you are so unlike him. Your soft edges and flowy clothing are a stark contrast to his gleaming suit of armour, the bandolier, the holster. Oddly, his fearsomeness is the same thing that gives you a sense of security. He could take on anyone in this cantina without breaking a sweat, but no one is brave enough to approach your table in the first place, leaving you in utter peace.
Perhaps he is more like a giant, metal… acquaintance, now that you’re settled in together.
The alcove you share glows a deep pink. Beskar reflects the warm colour as you quietly relay your findings on the Jedi. Some of it he claims to know, some of it is new. Some of it he plans to incorporate into training his apprentice. He watches you intently, one hand resting on the table. Occasionally, he uses his cloak to dry Grogu’s chin.
Multipurpose, you think, wondering how many mysterious liquids are trapped in the fibers.
“How did you two…” You trail off, unsure whether to take the conversation from business to personal. You then consider the hours and hours of work you put into this. “...Meet?”
They look at each other. It’s sweet, how the tiny creature leans closer to the Mandalorian, watching him with adoring, crinkled eyes and a wide smile full of soup cracker crumbs.
An answer doesn’t come. You shift awkwardly on the cushioned leather seat. What, was that the wrong thing to say?
“Well, I highly doubt you’re his biological father, so. You must have met at some point.”
An exhale. Whether amusement or annoyance, you don’t know. You’re hoping it’s the former, and that hope is satisfied when he finally replies.
“Grogu was a target of the Empire.”
Frowning, you turn to Grogu, who could be mistaken for a pillow in that coat. “Him?”
Crumbs line his collar. You study him for another moment; his big flappy ears, his fuzzy white baby hairs. His claws – you remember your mug, floating above your desk. “Oh. Of course.”
“They wanted to… extract his powers. I spared him.” A beat. “It was messy.”
With a little more convincing, he tells you how he shot up the Guild to save Grogu, then how he’d lost him to the Jedi. How upon reuniting, he’d formally adopted him as an apprentice.
You lose focus halfway through the story, the mention of the Guild perking you up.
“That was you?” You ask, an incredulous smile spreading on your face.
There was hardly a repository at that point; there was simply a credit-operated kiosk where citizens could access information on the holonet. You’d been scavenging to make ends meet, trading for money at the junk dealer. There was the shootout between the Guild members, then a full-fledged Imperial siege of the town, explosions and all. You should honestly thank him. Once it had all blown over, the town was made anew. New paint jobs, new amenities, resources – and the construction on the repository was finally finished. “Messy indeed.”
“I thought we were talking about the kid.”
“Yeah, okay,” you laugh on the rim of your glass, citrus zest wafting up your nose. “The kid.”
He wipes Grogu’s messy chin again, managing to look resigned even under the helmet. “I’m not going to get anywhere with this, am I.”
It’s not a question. Just a tired remark.
“In my honest opinion, no. Especially not if you’ve already tried five xenobiologists.”
He goes quiet again. He’s pretty and shiny to look at, if a little stunted at conversation, so you turn to the side, watching the rest of the cantina bustle about. Under the low lights, a few pairs of eyes are still trained on your companion — the bounty hunter, you presume. Unless parenting has become his full time job.
The buzz of your drink encourages you to turn back to him and change the subject.
“Do you get tired of the staring? From, like, everyone?”
The helmet tilts, barely. “Like you?”
You hiccup.
Stars, he makes this booth look tiny. He fills his seat and then some, miles between his pauldrons. Your face burns for the third time today as you look down into your lap.
“Sometimes. But not from librarians.”
His voice is so low you’re certain you imagined the last part. Whatever it was you thought about him being poor at conversation vanishes in an instant. Is he flirting with you?
You snap your gaze back up to find him leaning ever so slightly over the table. The look you share is charged, electric, even though his eyes are invisible. You swallow thickly, throat dry.
Mando relaxes back against the cushion of the booth, slinging an arm across the top edge, thighs spreading. The hand that was resting on the table finds purchase on his knee. His position taunts you, invites you to say something. It takes you a moment to remember how to form words into a sentence.
“My point is, you must be used to getting what you want,” you muse, “considering how spooked everyone is when you walk in a room. How they stare.”
It’s all too true. You gave him exactly what he wanted once he walked into the library, and all he had to do was stare at you until you agreed. But you don’t find him as frightening now as you did the first time you met, or even earlier when he appeared outside the library door. You’re glad to admit that the Mandalorian has a decent sense of manners, for the most part. He says his pleases and thank yous, but you get the sense he’s likely as violent as he is courteous.
“Or I take it by force,” he replies. At your vaguely horrified expression, he continues, “I’m a bounty hunter. No one is happily running into my arms.”
You wiggle your finger at the baby, who’s already finished his second bowl of soup. “Except you. You’re always running into his arms, isn’t that right?” Claws gently close around your finger as you turn back to Mando. “Who do you work for now, with the Guild gone?”
“The New Republic, occasionally.” His fingers tap on the counter.
You brighten. “Oh, so I’ve probably filed some old reports about you.”
“Yeah? What do they say?” The lilt in his voice is rousing, a teasing kind of curiosity.
You bite the inside of your lip, emboldened by it.
“That you need to stop tormenting poor librarians with difficult questions.”
Glinting in the magenta haze, Mando leans back in, fixed on you. The baby watches him with wide, puzzled eyes.
“Am I tormenting you by buying you drinks?”
The Mandalorian did pay for you earlier, slapping credits onto the table as the server droid handed you the beverage.
You take a swig. The alcohol is fire on your tongue, his unyielding, black gaze fire in your belly.
“No.”
He hums, satisfied. “Good.”
The Mandalorian escorts you home after a second Bloody Rancor slips down your throat. He waits in the darkness until you’re inside with the door locked, then saunters away with the sleeping baby in his arms.
You’re not certain just how long you sat there with him, explaining away your life while he gave little snippets of his. He told you little else of himself, other than that he occasionally takes breaks from hunting and settles in his small home on the Nevarro plains.
You’d also discovered that no, the helmet does not come off.
It’s funny, how much more human he seems after sitting with him in that booth. How surprisingly gentle, you think, watching him through the window, cradling the bundled baby.
***
The Mandalorian is unpredictable. Human, yes. Gentle, somewhat. But unpredictable. And it’s definitely on purpose, you think, that he can’t help himself from startling you, whether in the street or in the repository. You’d think he was stalking you, but it’s just infrequent enough that your meetings are plausibly accidental.
Over the months, he flickers in and out of your life. Hunting, then not hunting. Creeping up on you once in a while, seemingly just to watch you quiver.
Two months ago, as you shopped at the market, he appeared from behind a stall’s red draping.
“Hungry?”
“Fuck, Mando!”
Four weeks ago, as you dropped off holofiles containing textbooks for the school, he was there, dropping off Grogu.
“Your kid goes to school?”
“Just when I need daycare.”
When you finally decided to give the cantina another visit, he happened to be leaning outside the entrance, his back on the wall and his hands clasped in front, a heel resting on the toe of his opposite boot. A smear of blood ran down his chestplate, dried to the colour of rust. He beckoned you toward him with two fingers.
“Buy you a drink?”
It’s annoying, how big and fast and debilitating your crush grows, despite not knowing his name or what he looks like. Despite not really knowing who he is, other than the fact that he loves his child and hunts Imperial remnants for the New Republic.
Despite not knowing whether you’ve graduated from acquaintances to friends.
You want to say you have a friendship together, because you’d finally gotten over the remaining dregs of fear in your belly when he’s around. The absence of that fear had made room for something else, something like admiration. Excitement.
***
As another morning turns to afternoon, you wander through the aisles on a hunt to locate a particular book on droid mechanics for a technician. You slide your fingers along the edge of the shelf, the holobooks glimmering with light. Some of them are out of order, you notice, until you spot the one you’re searching for. You pull the tablet out and carry it to the waiting technician at your desk. The device comprises of two screens folded together, the outside cover reinforced by sturdy metal. The spine, where the screens hinge, emits the bright blue light of electronic data within.
“Page seventy-eight is all about fuses,” you call, approaching the Twi’lek. You work the holobook open. The two screens sputter to life, text forming in flickers, until settling down to a steady glow. You slide a finger across the right-hand screen, scrolling through digital pages until you land on the fusing section. “Try starting with this, and good luck repairing your droid.”
The purple Twi’lek wordlessly takes the tablet and hurries out of the repository. Even without an expression of gratitude, it was still the most decent interaction you’ve had this month. She didn’t even ask you to read the book and fix the droid.
You return to the disordered section to start re-filing the holobooks. By no surprise, Old Republic history books have somehow weaseled their way into mechanics. You gather a stack of misfiles in your arms and take them around the corner. The first book in your pile, on the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, belongs on the top shelf. You huff. You can still see a gap on the ledge where it was taken from.
Your calves pull tight as you rise to your toes. Your wrist strains, and the top edge of the holobook barely scrapes the underside of the shelf. A frustrated groan rumbles in your chest before you catch sight of someone in the corner of your eye.
As you turn, you find the Mandalorian standing at the end of the aisle, perfectly centered between the two rows of shelves.
Heat pools in your belly at the familiar sight of him; tall, shiny, decorated in weapons. You slowly lower back to your heels, the history book still in your hand and the rest of the misfiles tucked in your other arm.
He walks to you, lowering his visor the closer he gets, keeping his gaze trained on your face. A hand, with fingers wrapped in orangey leather, plucks the holobook from your grasp.
Mando briefly studies the book. Then he reaches the top shelf, effortlessly slotting it in with the others. His visor tilts down in your direction before he’s finished tucking it all the way back.
“I need to brush up on my Rodian.”
He leaves his hand up on the ledge, the other resting on his hip.
Your heartbeat picks up. A coy smile separates your lips. “Say hello first and then I’ll help you.”
When he doesn’t say anything, you raise your brows.
“Bright… suns, librarian.” It sounds like it pains him, obeying your frivolous demand. His flat tone coaxes a giggle out of you.
“That’s a bit dramatic, but thank you.”
He sighs. You attempt to peer behind him, but fail to see past the silvery breadth of his shoulders. “Where is the kid?”
“He’s with his friends.”
He leans just an inch closer, hand still braced somewhere above your head.
It’s been two weeks since you’ve seen him — you’ve gone a lot longer before — but it’s hard to hide your excitement. Stars, are you always this shaky around him?
“Why do you need to practice your, uh, Rodian?”
He exhales, retreating slightly from your personal bubble, miffed by the reminder of his duties. “I have some New Republic business with a group of Rodians. They don’t speak Basic.”
You could almost whine at the way he straightens away from you, then — you realize he’s just granted you an opportunity to prove you are capable at your job, seeing as his last request went south almost as soon as he’d asked. For a split second, you reason that it shouldn’t matter what he thinks of you and your abilities. His kid is a flat out enigma, and he understood that. Then again… you look up at him, shining in his armour.
“Follow me.” You step forward. Mando drops his hand and turns his body to let you pass, then trails closely as you lead him to the language section.
You crouch down, sliding a finger across the spines until you land on a Rodian instructional book.
“Will this do?” You pass the tablet to him. He opens the device, screens sputtering to life, then scans through some pages.
“Good enough.”
It might as well be praise.
While Mando settles down in the corner at a carrel that is two sizes too small for his body, you check the communications log at your desk for messages from the ranger outposts or the Head of Repositories on Chandrila.
Nothing.
You could go back and finish putting away the misfiles, but you can’t conceive of focusing while the Mandalorian studies nearby.
Instead, to your complete and utter dismay, the Quarren returns.
He stomps up the central aisle, fuming, sandy-toned tentacles whipping around the bottom of his grim face.
“You are going to fix my speeder.” His seething voice scrapes your ears, and you’re already shrinking into yourself.
“Sir…” Your nails dig crescents into your palm. “Surely you have some time to read the instructional—?”
You cut yourself off when the Quarren’s eyes darken even more, his laboured breathing growing faster and faster. In your defence, it had been a good few months since the first time he yelled at you, yet he still hasn’t solved his problem. What has he been doing this whole time?
“It’s broken again, and I do not have the patience for any scalper mechanics this time.” His words burst with venom. You might feel sorry for him if he wasn’t spitting in your face.
Desperate, you glance to your left in search of Mando, who is no longer sitting at the carrel.
Fuck.
You probably shouldn’t, but… “Again, just so we’re clear. You expect me, a librarian, to read a manual for you and fix your speeder?”
A bitter laugh. His hands fly up in exasperation. “You got something more important to do?” He squints at your tidy desk, then he gestures to the aisles, the carrels, void of other people. He regards you with an air of contempt, pinning you as some sort of imbecile for not doing him a favour well outside your jurisdiction. “Thought you were here to help the community.”
You power through the overwhelming urge to roll your eyes.
“Sir,” you try again, “You misunderstand. I have told you already, I can show you how to find the information you need, but I am not—”
You stop yourself. Exhausting as it is, you try to form an understanding with each of your patrons, even when they’re exploding in front of your face. You wonder, maybe he can’t read? Perhaps his anger is just insecurity—
Your seedling of sympathy is squashed when the Quarren stomps one foot closer, his arm raising as if he’s going to smack the holobooks out of your arms. The first syllable of a derogatory name forms on his lips, but he fails to get the whole word out before a calmer, raspier voice overpowers him.
“Quit.” The Mandalorian emerges behind him. Bigger, taller, scarier. The Quarren chokes on his unspoken wrath, then slowly turns, revealing his palms in a placating fashion. You like it a little too much, how fast he crumbles at the sight of the towering Mandalorian. “Leave. Take your speeder to the Anzellan shop down the road.”
Mando tosses credits at the squid-like agitator, who barely manages to catch them all.
“Now.”
A gloved hand hovers near the blaster on his hip.
The Quarren scrambles, crashing a shoulder into the side of the automatic door on his frenzied way out.
You stare at the door for a few seconds, gathering yourself, then cross your arms. “That is not how we deal with angry people in a library.”
Paying the man for being a nuisance? It was effective, you can admit that much. You could also admit that the display of sheer power made your knees weak. But you won’t tell him either of those things.
“It didn’t look like he was leaving anytime soon.”
True.
“I took care of him last time. I could have done it again.” Another truth – but were you secretly hoping the Mandalorian would save you from the trifling Quarren? Yes. Were you going to pretend like you wanted to handle it all by yourself? Absolutely.
“Yeah?”
“Yes!” You guffaw, incredulous, trying to ignore the effortlessly sultry tone of his voice.
His helmet and shoulders start to shake as if he’s chuckling, but the vocoder doesn’t pick anything up.
“I believe you,” he says, not without a trace of humour. “Let’s just say I sped up the process.”
You frown at him, although it’s becoming harder and harder to conceal your smile. “You’re not a security guard.”
Mando tilts his helmet in a lazy shrug.
Your semi-feigned frustration morphs into gratitude, but you manage to maintain your displeased expression as you tell him, “Thank you.”
You’d learned how to de-escalate situations like this in the library — namely, patrons who want to get in a yelling match and call you names — but it nags at you that you probably wouldn’t know where to start if someone like Mando was that displeased.
You must be wearing the thought on your face, because he slices through the silence with a blunt, “What.”
“Nothing, I’m just… imagining how to get rid of you.”
He slants his head in such a way that you can feel the exasperation coursing through him. “I just helped you.”
“No, I mean… if someone like you came in here, all angry and ready to pick a fight.”
“You get a lot of people like him? In here?” He gestures around the emptiness, just like the Quarren had.
It’s borderline serene right now. But you don’t feel like explaining the woes of librarianship and all its intricacies – the fact that it’s not always this quiet and you’re most often acting as a community therapist for patrons with emotional issues. Holobooks are seldom your concern.
“More than you could imagine,” you mumble.
Mando shifts his weight to the other foot. “You said you’ve handled him before. And I believe you.”
Your brows lift. Before you can speak, remind him that he handled it this time with credits, he adds, “He was berating you.”
A spark flies from the top of your head, down to your toes at his protective lilt. Your knees wobble. He’d intercepted not because he didn’t trust you, but because he didn’t like it. As if he couldn’t help himself from shutting the Quarren up.
When the spark fizzles down to a dull zap and you regain a sense of composure, you huff, hugging your arms tighter over your chest. “But the Quarren, he’s not like you.”
He steps closer.
It’s the same as when he’d appeared outside the door to check if you’d found anything out about Grogu’s kind. He’s not cornering you, but it feels like he is, the spread of his shoulders crowding your view of the library behind him.
Your eyes widen.
“Not like me?” He’s toying with you now – just wants to hear you stutter out the obvious: that he's big, he’s strong, whatever else. You start to squirm, shifting your feet and rolling your shoulders.
“I think you know what I mean.” You turn your gaze from him, finding the fold of your arms very, very interesting.
“Librarian.”
He says it carefully, like a prompt; he won’t let you avoid him. You want to shake your head at him, but you bask in it – how he sometimes uses your title instead of your name. It makes you feel like you’re equals, makes you forget that you still don’t know his name. Mandalorian. Librarian.
You take a while to croak out a shy response, cringing at each word that exits your mouth. “You’re… big. And sort of scary.”
“Sort of.” Fuck, you can tell he’s smirking with that tone.
“Well, very.”
He must be enjoying this, under all that metal.
You clarify, “Because you’re covered in weapons.”
“They’re part of my religion.” He speaks plainly, a thumb tucking under his utility belt.
“I’m aware. But they’re still there.”
“Uhuh.”
You tear your eyes from your own body to find his visor slowly shifting down, then back up. Studying you. Almost… admiring you.
“Guess you have a point.”
You drop your arms. “What?”
Mando stalks across the floor, retrieving the holobook from his carrel. He offers it to you.
“I don’t think you could handle me either.”
***
Another month passes, each morning the same.
Except this one.
The eerily vacant streets draw tension in your shoulders as you walk to the repository. It’s not just the lack of people, but the fact that the merchant tents flap in the wind, wares laid out on shelves, with no one staffing them.
Slowing your step, you make your way past the empty stalls, past the silent school, past the lifeless cantina. A hanging flower basket lies crumpled in its own dirt, petals strewn across the street. Not even the leaves on the trees are rustling. The alley is still in the absence of any life form but you.
Unease fills your lungs. You crane your neck, finding the spires and stony white roofs stark against an ordinarily sunny sky.
When the repository comes into view across the main plaza, your jaw slackens. Your hand claps to your mouth.
What used to be the door is now a yawning, jagged hole, sizzling with the embers of a blast. Your legs turn to jelly, but you force them to take you wobbling to the crumpled mess of rubble that used to be the entrance.
Heart in your throat, you step through and peek inside. To your relief, all the shelves and carrels – even your desk – appear to be untouched, except for a few holobooks scattered on the floor that must have been knocked from the blast.
Creeping further into the dark building, you ignore the voice in your head, clawing and screaming at you to leave, to get help first. You tip toe towards the back room where the data stick is kept, holding the New Republic archives. You bite the inside of your cheek when you find its door slightly ajar. You bite down even harder, stomach going hollow, as you spy into the room. No data stick.
“Wha–”
A red, searing bolt of plasma erupts from somewhere in the corner of the back room, whizzes past your shoulder, then explodes on the wall behind you.
Your hand slaps to your chest, clammy fingers clutching and pulling the fabric of your shirt. You hold your breath, paralyzed.
“Who’s there?” Comes the muffled, crazed voice of an anonymous man hidden behind the door. From your position, you see only the toe of a white boot on the stone floor. Another voice responds, equally as muffled as the first. At the sound of them shuffling, you bolt away from the back room with tears forming in your eyes and your heart beating so hard it dizzies you. The stomp of boots follows somewhere behind you as you careen through the bays of shelves.
Just as you reach what is left of the front door, another shot from the blaster rips through the air, a hair’s breadth from grazing your calf. It crashes and fizzles into the debris at the entrance, pebbles skittering to the ground.
You scrape through the hole and stumble across a heap of jagged rubble from the wall. A sharp, rocky edge slices across your palm as you grasp it for balance. Rivulets of blood swim through the creases of your hand, mimicking the tears rapidly slipping down your face.
Your thigh muscles strain in protest as you sprint back through the ghostly, abandoned street. Parts of your vision blur, the buildings and alleys turning black and distorted, but you don’t look back. The only sound in your ears is that of your ragged breaths and heavy foot falls as you lose speed.
You fight against the adrenaline pounding through your veins, threatening to make you vomit, and compel your legs to keep moving until you find someone. Anyone.
Soon, a jog is all you can manage. Sobs break out of your throat. You wipe at your face with a forearm, trying not to collapse there in the middle of the road at the feeling of failure weighing you down. Trying not to think of what they’ll do with the information on the data stick that you’d so easily let them get away with.
You trudge through the arch at the edge of the city, sleeves wet. The solid grey plains of Nevarro spread out wide in front of you. With a shuddering breath, you shield your eyes from the sun and scan for any signs of life. Nothing, nothing, and…
There.
A land speeder coming your direction. Before long, you make out the Mandalorian’s helmet and his cape, whipping behind him. You trade your sobbing for a sigh of relief. He brakes. The speeder screeches and swerves to the right as he comes crashing out of it. He lands on his feet, steady, Grogu clutching his shoulder. You stumble toward him while he closes the distance with a determined sprint, his armoured body clanking.
Gloved hands stabilize you with a firm grip beneath your elbows.
“Are you alright?” Mando asks, hoarse and intense. The visor raises and lowers rapidly as he looks you over.
You stutter, mind fuzzy. “There was– the library. Tw–two men. The data stick–”
“I know. Adelphi base received a breach signal. Colonel Ward paged me. Are you alright?”
Adelphi, breach signal? How does he–?
Your thoughts slog through mud.
Bounty hunter. New Republic.
“I’m… yes, I’m just– scared.” Your bottom lip quivers and your teeth chatter as you try to get the words out. “They missed.”
He stiffens under your tight grip on his forearms. You don’t have to say anything more for him to understand.
Pathetic. You feel pathetic and embarrassed and… what were you supposed to do? It’s not as if you show up to work everyday with a blaster, ready to defend the building from Imperials.
Mando’s voice softens as he says your name, bringing your focus back to him. His sudden tenderness lets loose another well of tears. “Can you get yourself home?”
“What about–”
You must be bleeding on his vambrace.
His voice catches an edge again, like he’s struggling to keep it dampened and soft for you when there’s a pursuit ahead of him and your palm is weeping scarlet. “Go home. Stay inside. I will take care of it.”
The finality sobers you a smidge. You blink away some of the saltiness in your eyes. The teasing, the laughter, the natural ease from your previous encounters – none of it is here. There’s a mechanical nature possessing him this time, like he’s flipped a switch. Like he needs to hunt down the cause of your tears or he may burst.
“You’re taking a break, aren’t you? It’s not safe, a–anyways. But still, the data stick, I need to get–”
He shakes his head, bright morning sunlight dancing across the silver helmet. He loosens his grip on your elbows, ensuring your stability before letting go completely. Then his palms rest heavy on your shoulders, squeezing and grounding you.
With bold conviction, “It will be done.”
***
Puffs of steam curl out of the kettle’s spout as the water boils. The room is dark, the only light a golden glow from the lantern on your tiny kitchen table. Your bleary eyes sting, your palm now haphazardly bandaged in gauzy white strips. A patch of dried blood marks the center.
It’s been hours since the Mandalorian caught you at the edge of town. Hours since you watched a yellow and silver gunship chase a pair of TIE-fighters out of the atmosphere.
Hours since Kallu, the head of the New Republic repositories, contacted you through hologram from Chandrila, her miniscule blue figure alight in your palm. You were expecting one of three things; to be severely reprimanded, suspended, or fired for not protecting the data stick. But she had no end of employment notice to relay. Instead, she confirmed your safety and informed you that it would be a few days before you could return to work. A group of New Republic builders would soon arrive to repair the site and install improved security equipment.
She would not take your apologies nor your shame for the situation, but her reassurance did little to calm your nerves; Imperial remnants now had access to loads of New Republic intelligence on the Outer Rim.
She passed on Colonel Ward’s statement that an independent contractor was working on retrieving the data stick before ending the call. This, you already knew.
Your thoughts drift to the Mandalorian as the wireless kettle sings. The way he carefully held you up as you sobbed, how he told you with such confidence that he would take care of it all for you. Amidst the storm raging through your head, the memory of his heavy, warm hands on your shoulders provides a faint relief.
You pad across the cramped kitchen and grab a sachet of tea from the cabinet.
If anyone were to ask, you could not describe this feeling. To say that your insides feel hollow and black, that your limbs weigh sluggishly, that your heart beats only to pump more shame through you, is an understatement.
You pour the boiling water into a mug and drop the teabag in. The water darkens with the herbs, swirling and rippling, reminiscent of your palm, wet with blood. Every muscle in your body draws tight in discomfort.
You trudge from the kitchen, through the tiny living space, and sweep away the jewel-toned curtain and beads separating your bed from the rest of your home. You set the mug beside your mattress then plop onto the covers with a groan.
Eyes on the ceiling, your mind bursts with worry. What could you have done? What was going to happen now that Imperials had captured tons of New Republic information? Or could the Mandalorian intercept them before they accessed the data?
You sit up, reaching for the tea. The minty water burns your tongue, but you hardly notice as the questions dance tauntingly, around and around. You close your eyes.
***
It’s humiliating. With your job on hold and the rest of the villagers shaken from the intrusion, all you can think about is him. For the week that New Republic contractors work on repairing the entrance door and the surrounding wall, the Mandalorian is wrapped around your every waking thought.
It’s been months since you’ve had the time to read a holonovel. A stack of them perches lonely and untouched on your bedside table, the teacup from the other night next to them, half drunk. Yet you find yourself incapable of slogging through even just a paragraph without the beskar-clad man interrupting your focus.
A trashy holodrama should work. You curl up on the mismatched mound of cushions on your living room floor and flick one on. A terrible mistake, really. Watching two people kiss dramatically makes your stomach constrict and your heart swell with longing.
Sure, you’d been harbouring a crush on the Mandalorian for the past several months. You’re not going to pretend like this is the first time he’s been stuck on your mind. You’d spent afternoons wondering about his face, picturing what features went along with his short but strangely caring nature. You’d guessed at his eyes – brown, you decided. Not blue. They had to be warmer than his silver exterior. Deep and vast. And his nose would be prominent, his lips contrastingly pillowy, but you could never figure out how they all would come together and make his face.
It was all a fanciful daydream. Now, with him gone fighting Imperials Maker-knows-where, no indication of when or if he’ll return – it’s a worry-stricken frenzy.
“I’m being ridiculous.” You blurt out loud, frustratedly shutting off the holodrama with a thwack. He’s dealt with much worse if the tales he’s spun at the cantina are all true. This should be a piece of cake.
So why does it feel like you can’t breathe, won’t be able to breathe until he makes it back safe?
You still don’t even know his name. It’s a fact that hurts you more than you thought it could, and right now it stings particularly strong in your eyes. This was New Republic business. He wasn’t just doing it for you.
You like to think that you could have prevented the Imperials from snatching the data stick had you been there. That you could have stealthily plucked it from the back and snuck out a hero. In reality, you probably wouldn’t be breathing, blinking, thinking about Mando right now if you were.
They might have destroyed more than just the door. And perhaps, that’s the only thing keeping you sane right now – that they didn’t take away your library, not entirely. They didn’t trash everything. Just blew down the door and took the data stick, which, with any luck, will be returned along with Mando.
***
The day Kallu calls and gives you permission to go back to work is the same day that you find a green baby in your chair.
Just as she’d said, a New Republic officer is waiting for you just outside the building to pass along your new key, which is twice the size of your old one.
After admiring the refinished doors – now double layered, fashioned in a stronger metal with more locks and alarm systems — you hurry down the center aisle to get the library prepped and open for the day. Even with the new security measures, you arrive at your workspace with a sprinkle of dread. The memory of your last time here flashes in your mind, makes you feel like you’re not alone.
Which… is technically true. Grogu is in your chair, using his powers to spin it around and around, a silver rod in his hand.
“Oh, thank the Maker, you’re alright.”
Your heart swells at the sight of him, and you scan through the building in search of Mando. You don’t find anything. You peek around the corner towards the archival office in the back, still nothing.
“What are you doing here by yourself?” You crouch down to his level, bracing your hands on the seat to stop it from spinning.
Grogu has a big, fat… frown on his face. Not what you were expecting from a baby in a spinny chair. Your expression mirrors his own.
“What’s wrong? Where’s your buddy?”
You check him over, patting his fuzzy head, rubbing his back. You notice the rod in his hands is in fact the data stick.
You yelp. Then you squeeze Grogu in the gentle grip of your palms, raising him up and down, up and down. “Thank you, little guy. Thank you so much.”
You fit him in the crook of your elbow as you take the data stick to the back room. You punch in the passcode, walk through the sliding door, and insert the stick back into its proper home. You press a few buttons on the control panel, and the contents of the data stick light up the room with a blue holographic interface.
You swipe through some folders, some files, images, all intact. Nothing corrupted. Everything, just as it was. Relief crashes through you like a wave in a storm, so strong it threatens your balance.
With a heavy exhale, you exit back to your desk and flop into the chair, the baby in your lap. The sensation of relief leaves you as quick as it came.
Grogu’s face is still scrunched up, in the worst of ways. He trembles in your hands, looking left, right, skittishly.
“Grogu?”
He throws a little arm up, pointing to the entrance.
You point, too. “Go?”
He nods twice.
“Where?” You ask, panic fluttering up your spine, down your limbs. “Is it your dad?”
His bottom lip juts out, his eyes even bigger than you thought possible. Fuck. Where is he?
You tuck the baby back into the crook of your elbow and race out the front door, locking everything back up. Outside, it takes less than ten seconds for the sun to start weakening your body with its oppressive heat.
“Now where?”
Grogu gazes up at you, then turns his head downward. You follow his eyes to the ground, where a tiny speeder seats four greyish-blue critters about the same size as Grogu. Their wrinkly faces are half covered by goggles, chins sprouting fuzzy little beards. Taupe stomachs peek out of their utility belts. They each throw their arms up in unison, chanting, “Baby! Baby!”
You crouch down, bringing Grogu to their height. “Um, hello?”
Grogu skitters out of your arms and climbs onto the mini speeder. He rolls over the outer ledge and plops in without a sound.
The creatures greet you with a series of “Heys” and other noises you can’t pick out.
“You know where the Mandalorian is?” You interrupt the chatter, bracing your palm on the ledge where Grogu had just flopped over.
They bellow affirmative sounds, their voices gurgly. You make out the word “house” amongst the four of them.
“Well,” you say, rising up from your crouched position. “I can’t come with you on that thing.”
“No, no! That one!” The creature in the driver’s seat points further down the road to a red, regular-sized speeder bike, parked beside the cantina.
“I’m not going to steal a speeder.” You shield your eyes from the sun, studying your surroundings. Yellow banners stretch across the street, attached from one roof to another. They billow in the wind, their shade traversing back and forth across the ground. The creatures jump up and down in the vehicle, their tiny bodies flitting between sunlight and shadows.
“Not steal! From our shop. You bring it back.”
You eye them, unsure whether to grant your trust. But then you think of the Mandalorian.
“Fuck,” you whisper under your breath, jogging toward the speeder bike. With another brief scan around the street – rather empty, you suppose – you straddle it, toggle a few buttons, and engage the repulsorlift.
“Okay, guys,” you call back, and the baby-sized speeder takes off in front of you. You follow them close, through a cramped alleyway and out to a wide backroad, the wind drying the perspiration on your forehead. The cool breeze calms your nerves only slightly – your heart is still hammering away, dread shrouding over you like a billowing cloak.
Grogu and his companions continue past the docking bay at the edge of town, traversing the rocky plains. The horizon ripples with heat, breaking the ground into wavy ribbons. You ride long enough to cross a small cropping of lava streams, and then the rough terrain starts sprouting with spiky green leaves and other widely dispersed shrubs.
They slow to a stop once they reach an enclosure with two rotund beasts. Beyond it lies a quaint, white cabin with a wooden chair at the front. You recognize the ship resting on the rocks behind it– the one that chased the TIE-fighters away when the data stick was stolen.
You screech to a stop behind the creatures and bolt off of the bike, gravelly rocks crunching under your boots. Grogu follows, but his friends stay behind.
Nausea churns in your stomach when you notice a body – a dead one – laying in the distance between the house and the ship. It’s a man in a cheap suit of white armour. The handle of a blade juts out of his abdomen, the sliver of space where the armour couldn’t protect him. But you can’t bring yourself to study him any further. The Mandalorian clouds your thoughts as you barrel through the open doorway and into a singular room.
In the center, there’s a small counter with a pack of turquoise cookies on top. In one corner, a dwarfish kitchen, in the next, the fresher. You spot a twin bed, a baby pram, some propagating plants. You circle the counter and come upon the Mandalorian, sprawled out on the floor, unmoving. Puddles of almost-dried blood accompany him, staining his clothes and the tile beneath his body. His blaster is a few feet from his outstretched arm.
Grogu climbs on top of his chest and pats the beskar plate. You watch, frozen, while he turns his head to look up at you. His eyes are pleading, expectant. He points at his father again. Claws tinkle against silver. The sound spurs you to action.
You lurch to your knees and ease your fingers under his cowl, wishing you were touching him under any other circumstance. It takes a moment to find bare skin. When you do, it sears you. Your fingers glide over his neck, searching, until you find a weak pulse.
You groan in relief, slipping your hand away. “Grogu, what happened?”
You know it’s futile. If you could communicate with the baby, Mando wouldn’t still be splayed on the floor.
Your fingers tremble as you brace them on Mando’s bicep, steadying your nerves. You squeeze. Calculate. You’re not going to remove his helmet. Out of the question.
Instead, you study his torso. There’s a gash– or there was one. His flightsuit gapes, blood crusting down the curve of his body. So much of it, in fact, there’s a gummy, congealed layer of blood on top of what’s already dried. But whatever wound he had is already closed up and healing into a fresh scar.
Brows furrowed, you rise to your feet and call out to the little creatures. They amble into the cabin, distracted by the body out front.
“Do you know where they just came from?” You gesture vaguely behind you at the pile of the Mandalorian and the baby on the floor.
When they notice Mando, they give sad, knowing sighs, like they’d already seen this earlier. Then they shake their heads in unison, all speaking at once. You parse through the jumble of words, stringing together something along the lines of “Baby no speak, know nothing.”
You didn’t expect much, but your heart still drops. It beats too hard, as if sinking and settling against your diaphragm.
You kneel by the Mandalorian again, slipping your fingers back underneath his woolly cowl. His neck still pulses against your fingertips.
Grogu squeaks as you push your palms against Mando’s blood-smeared chest. “Mando,” you croak, “wake up.”
You press rhythmically against him, leaning your weight into your wrists, but it’s not accomplishing much — you’re just sort of nudging the chestplate into his ribs and smudging the streaks of blood. Grogu slides off and pats his chest along with you.
“Mando!”
You stop, then give the hardest push you can muster. Your hands ball into fists as you give one brutal pound to the chestplate, hurting yourself more than him. A dull metallic thud is all you hear before your hands are flaring with pain. You recoil, shaking them out.
And… he’s not moving. Not doing anything. Nothing. You sit back on your heels, heaving raw breaths and shaking down to the bone. Grogu frowns.
What are you missing here?
Your eyes flit back to the red scar on his side.
A cough. Mando’s chest rumbles, barely. The movement is so minute, as if the effort might kill him.
“Mando?”
You grab him by the shoulders and shake him again, or try to. He’s too heavy for you to truly jostle.
Your name brokenly scratches through his vocoder.
You lean over him, easing your hands under his head, cradling his helmet. “Are you alright? Can you hear me? What happened?”
He groans. Doesn’t move a finger. It scrapes at the back of your mind that he should have startled awake and reached for his blaster, or grabbed you, or thrown his arms up in defence before recognizing you— but no. He just lays there, utterly frozen.
“Data st– stick… on a ship… tracked me.” He coughs again. “Gone now.”
Your gaze flits between where you imagine his eyes are, behind the black visor. Although he can’t feel it, you stroke your thumbs softly over the helmet, over his covered jaw.
A silver pin glints. You pull back and notice a dart lodged in his other side, opposite the knife wound. He doesn’t even wince as you pinch it between your thumb and forefinger and pull it out. A dollop of yellow liquid slips off the sharp end.
“What is this? Can you move?” Something roils in your stomach at the sight of the unknown substance that is clearly running its course.
“S’okay… Senf-f-lax. Not… lethal…”
“Not lethal?” You repeat, anxiety warbling your voice. “Then what is it?”
“Watch the k–kid. I’ll… stay–” His whispers crackle out, and so does he. But his shallow breathing continues.
***
Every muscle in your body aches after somehow shoving the Mandalorian on his bed. Even with the help of Grogu’s powers, you probably pulled something. You considered removing his armour first, but figured he’d prefer not to wake up with half his wardrobe missing. So you hoisted him up with your hands under his armpits, dragging him with all your might to the mattress in the corner. Grogu closed his eyes in focus, easing your burden.
You double checked his injuries, still baffled by the fresh scar over his rib cage– there was so much blood on the floor, on his armour, in his cape — yet it was almost as if he’d never been cut. Then you scrubbed away the rusty, dried blood on the floor, and tucked the blaster back into his holster, trying and mostly failing to keep positive.
Not lethal, he’d said. It does little to ease your worries.
Now, with Mando asleep on the bed, you pick up the baby and mount the speeder bike with him in your elbow. Grogu makes his dislike of leaving the house abundantly clear. He whines and scratches at you with his nails, but it’s decidedly gentle.
To be fair, you don’t like it either. You feel like a fool, leaving Mando here, but you need to head back to the repository so you can figure out what Senflax-something means and fix this stupid, horrible fucking mess. You can’t just lug his body to the repository with you. He should be fine. Totally fine. His wounds had already been tended to, by whoever or whatever it was. You’d just have to hope no other Imps show up while you’re gone. You’ll find out what’s wrong with him and come right back here to fix it. Everything is fine. Not lethal, you repeat in your head.
“I’m not going to leave you here alone,” you murmur to Grogu, engaging the speeder. Alone is technically untrue — unsupervised is more applicable. Either way, you’re not leaving him with a sleeping Mando and a dead body.
Not lethal.
The creatures in the mini speeder follow you back to the library, the sun hanging higher than before. Graciously, they allow you to keep the bike for another day. You thank them for helping you find Mando, then creep into the repository with Grogu. You leave the door locked, only intending to stay until you’ve figured out Mando’s condition. No time for Quarrens.
Grogu sits patiently in your lap while you scour the holonet, the bright interface painting your clothes blue in the dark room.
“Senflax…”
You swipe through articles. Cadannia. Jungle planet. Toxins. Plants. Senflax.
“Oh,” you whisper. You switch gears, taking Grogu with you to the botany section.
Your shoulders relax for the first time since this morning as you read about the Senflax plant, native to Cadannia. A neurotoxin that paralyzes the body’s major muscles while leaving vital organs, cognition — and judging by Mando — the ability to speak intact. As for healing, the effects can only be waited out.
“Paralytics such as this are often used by hunters to capture prey.” You read to Grogu, who leans curiously over your shoulder, gazing at the text on the holobook’s screen. “If only you coulda told me that, hey?”
His velvety ear brushes across your cheek, and you sigh, leaning against the shelf.
If it’s just a muscle paralytic, it doesn’t explain why Mando was knocked out, nor why it took a pounding to the chest to wake him up. Blood loss? The thought twists in your stomach.
He spoke to you. That was good. Then he passed right back out. You could determine the state of him much easier if you could just… look at his face. But you won’t, you’ll just — you’ll just hurry back and keep watch.
***
You spend the evening in Mando’s hut making dinner for you and the baby. He’s nestled between his father’s chest and bicep. It feels intrusive, what you’re doing, but you’d rather be here watching over the two of them than anxiously twiddling your thumbs at home.
You set a steaming bowl of soup on the island in the center of the hut. Grogu peeks at it from the comfort of his father’s arm, then soars, flipping through the air and landing on the counter.
You stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as he slurps up the broth. He clutches the bowl in his hands, which is about half the size of his body, and finishes it up in less than ten seconds.
He lets it go with a clatter.
You laugh, “More?”
While Grogu works on his second bowl, you work on your own. It’s a simple, salty broth, a few veggies thrown in. Mando didn’t have much to work with.
You think of sitting by him on the edge of the mattress, then decide against it and sit cross-legged on the floor.
When your bowl is empty and your belly full, you consider moving the body that’s still laying outside, then quickly squash that thought when your soup threatens to come right back out.
When he’s ready, Mando can handle it. You have nowhere to take it, anyways.
He hasn’t moved an inch since you shoved him on the bed, which tracks, given the Senflax, but his extended slumber is troubling you. He should at least be awake.
Guilt washes over your face, your shoulders. It heats up your cheeks.
All this for the data stick.
As night falls, you flick on the lantern hanging above the counter. It casts a warm glow around you, the plants, the baby, and the sleeping Mandalorian.
You check his pulse a third time, his neck warm as ever. It’s stronger now, but still slow. Then you check his wound again and decide to set about cleaning it. It may be healed – how, you have no clue – but it’s still dirty. You locate a medkit by the fresher and settle next to the mattress.
“I’m going to clean you up,” you murmur to him. No response.
Carefully, you reach into the tear of his flightsuit, holding the fabric up, and pass an alcohol wipe over the bloodied area. He doesn’t stir.
It didn’t hit you then, but it does now – his skin. You can see his skin; tan and soft, yet blemished by scars. It’s as warm as his neck was– but you didn’t get to look at it. Even this tiny glimpse of his bare body is overwhelming. Swallowing, you quickly swipe bacta gel over the wound and pack up the medkit. As good as it feels to touch and admire the warm tone of his skin, it’s also so wrong – him, unconscious, unknowing.
Fingers trembling, you toss the medkit back in the cabinet by the fresher and plop down, your back against the wall. You debate whether to take Grogu home with you for the night. It feels too much to stay here without the Mandalorian’s knowledge, yet unsafe to leave him defenseless. What if he didn’t want you here, staying in his private space?
You fight with yourself long enough to fall asleep like that, sitting on the floor with your legs spread out before you, your back digging into the wall.
***
You wake with a start against the floor, the urgency of getting to work spinning your head. Blinking, you recall where you are— the night before. You scramble to your knees and peer across the room to find the Mandalorian as still as ever. Grogu snores in the crook of his elbow.
Now. He should absolutely be awake by now.
You stumble toward the medpack, this time in search of the stimshot. You slip it out of the package and, bleary eyed, move Grogu from the bed to his pram.
“Mando,” you sigh, “say something.”
You stand over top of him, staring into the nothingness of his visor.
“Say something, or I am going to give you a stimshot.”
You press a hot palm on his chestplate, leaving a sweaty, temporary imprint. You push.
Nothing.
You crouch down and raise the needle, finding the sliver of skin through the gash in his suit.
“Mandalorian.”
You hold it an inch shy of his side, radiating heat. You don’t even poke him before he jolts awake, his hand closing around your wrist, and gripping it hard.
A startled, ragged grunt fills your ears. It fills your whole body.
The leather of his glove squeaks with the intensity of his hold. The stimshot clatters to the floor.
You gasp.
The helmet turns toward you with the grace of a malfunctioning droid, then he relaxes. Your name is a quiet sigh of recognition, floating from his helmet, his fingers still wrapped around you.
“Librarian.” His voice softens. It’s one word, yet it carries so much relief. Warmth. A glint of humour. He releases you, fingers slipping off your skin. His hand drops against the mattress. “Didn’t think… still here…”
You murmur, low. “Are you okay?”
He shifts his legs, testing his mobility, then plants his palms on either side of his body, pushing himself up. His thigh brushes your fingers as he moves.
Slowly, he looks down at you, kneeling by his side. You swallow, removing your hand from the bed. His next movement is so small, you could have missed it – but you don’t. You don’t miss the way his thigh twitches forward, chasing the trail of your touch.
He chokes a dull sound.
As if you’d been poisoned yourself, your own body goes rigid as you gaze at each other. His helmet drops down without severing your stare, and you notice he’s panting.
You wait for an answer to your question, heat spreading everywhere.
But he whips his head around, breaking each of you out of whatever trance had just enveloped you. He calms, finding Grogu still asleep in the pram. Then he glances toward the counter, probably eyeing the bowls from last night’s dinner.
“You took care of him,” the Mandalorian declares hoarsely after a moment, his breathing slowing.
You situate yourself on the floor. “Of course. He came and found me.”
You don’t know how long he’d been unconscious before you got here. How long Grogu had sat with him, trying to wake him up.
“He’s smart,” Mando murmurs, shifting higher and groaning with effort. “He trusts you.”
He’s still looking at the baby.
The words dance around your head – glittery, special. Pride shimmers in your chest. Hearing him say it is like receiving a heavy, golden medal.
Mando turns back to you, studies you for a long moment. You try not to shrink yourself.
“Thank you.” It’s weighty, meaningful, charged.
You shrug, mostly to soothe the shiver creeping up your spine. “Least I could do. Thank you for getting my data stick. I feel… kind of terrible.” You laugh, gesturing at his body, the state of him.
He shrugs back, winces, and collapses on the bed.
You clamber onto your knees once more, hand on his forearm. It’s breathtakingly solid under your touch, his muscles flexing. “What is it?”
He shudders. “Hurts.”
Your brows furrow. “Everywhere?”
His chuckle is ragged, scraping out of his throat. “Something like that.”
“You slept for a long time,” you whisper, “like… really long. I think you stopped being paralyzed quite a while ago.”
“Yeah, well…” Another grunt. “Hit my head on the way down.”
You picture the dart piercing his skin and his whole body freezing, and — he had a long way to fall.
“What do you need?”
He replies faster than you expected. “Water.”
You set a glass beside him and step outside, giving him the privacy to remove his helmet and drink. It's a cloudy, drizzly day. The raindrops lift a fresh scent out of the dry rock and steam rises from the lava fissures in the far off distance.
You peer out the other direction, and the body is still crumpled over by the ship. You cringe at it— him. Whoever he was. Though you have yet to witness Mando use his weapons, you know he’s grossly capable with them. And here you are, staring at the aftermath. A conflicting blend of remorse and relief fill your chest. Is it so terrible to be glad that because the Imp is dead, Mando is okay? That because he killed him first, Mando is drinking water next to his sleeping kid?
After a few minutes have passed in torn reflection, you knock as a warning, then slip back inside.
He’s sitting up again, the baby in his lap.
“I have to get back to the repository.” You cross your arms, leaning by the door.
They both lift their heads. You smile at their coordination, the way they watch you together. You notice Grogu’s small claw wrapped around Mando’s thumb.
“You’ll both be alright?”
“I’ll send Grogu back to you if I find myself paralyzed again.”
You laugh at his deadpan tone. “Okay. Put that baby to work.”
The vocoder crackles with a sigh.
You take one more peek around the cabin – the tiny kitchen, and its shelf with Grogu sized-mugs nestled inside Mando-sized mugs. The plants, which surprised you. You hadn’t thought of him as a plant person. Then again, he didn’t look like a baby person either. You glance again at the cookies on the counter.
“Should I, um, check on you later?”
You’d yet to establish whether the Mandalorian was actually comfortable with your presence in his house, or whether he was just grateful you’d looked after his kid.
“No need,” Mando says, and it suddenly becomes hard to hide the disappointment on your face.
You turn to leave, once more recalling the Imp in the rain. You don’t know what exactly went down, what Mando remembers. Could he have forgotten, in the foggy haze of paralysis, that he’d killed a man who is still laying out on his property? There’s so many questions, so much you need to know – but he’s only just woken up.
“Mando, there’s… a man outside…”
He shoots to his feet, the baby rolling onto the mattress with a gleeful sound. Mando shuffles a boot forward, wavering slightly as he fingers the handle of his blaster.
“The dead one…?” You clarify, eyes shooting to the floor.
His shoulders drop. “Yeah. I’ll handle it.” He falls back on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. “Just… try to be more specific next time.”
***
You ride back to town and return the speeder bike to the little creatures. You’d never noticed their minuscule shop before; it’s tucked away in the basement of a round building, the entrance about three feet tall. You finally piece together who they are when you catch a glimpse of a squid-like man crouched inside by a worktable covered in wires, retrieving his land speeder. The Anzellans.
You skitter away to the repository before he can spot you.
It’s midmorning now. There’s a few people waiting outside the library who grumble at you for not being open yet. A mother and her child frown at your clothes as you unlock the door. You glance down – blood on your knees, a little more on your hands. The capacity to mind has escaped you. You shrug it off and walk inside.
You spend the rest of the day like that, sprinkled in blood, a certain absence in your mind as you think about Mando. He doesn’t come in, nor does Grogu – which is a good sign, you suppose.
After arguing about the library’s right to keep holobooks on various religions with a disapproving old woman (“Ma’am, the library is here to reflect the viewpoints of all its users, not just one”), you close early and head home.
You flop onto your bed in your bloody clothes and fall asleep.
There’s no sign of Mando the next day, nor the one after that. You grow annoyed with yourself and the incessant bobbing of your knee, anxiously wondering whether it will be weeks or months before you see him again. Every ten seconds, you imagine him walking through the door to rescue you from your constant agonizing over whether you’d dually succeeded in damaging his trust and violating his privacy. Grogu was the one who took you to the house – he trusted you to help his father. Mando had even seemed relieved to see you when he awoke, but the way he’d denied your offer to check up on him left you – admittedly – spiraling.
By the third day, you almost wonder whether you should just go back – perhaps he really wasn’t okay – then you find the sliver of reason left in you. Grogu would come and find you again if he needed to.
On the fourth day, your nerves begin settling down. You busy yourself with researching Nar Shaddaa for a commander from Adelphi base. Once you finish gathering resources and notes on its atmosphere, you send them off and work on re-shelving holobooks.
There’s more than you expected in the return bin. The cart’s squeaky wheel sings as you roll it around to your starting point: the microscopic fiction section.
You trudge through the shelving, the remainder of your shift dragging as slow as it ever has.
***
The Mandalorian is waiting across the street under the leaves of a tree when you lock up the library. He leans against the white bark, his hands resting politely at the front of his body, one atop the other.
Everything inside you floods with warmth as you take him in. It’s like the edges of your vision turn all pink and dreamy, the anxieties you’d piled and fussed over the last few days melting away. It’s like… nothing happened.
He’s here, standing tall and strong and clean, beckoning you forward as he nods in greeting. Your limbs go numb as you walk to him.
He manages to look handsome without a sliver of skin on display. Perhaps it’s the freshly polished armour and how he gleams in it. Or the way his helmet makes attractive angles over his hidden face. Maybe it’s the size of him, from his big heavy boots to his wide shoulders and the slim waist in between. How a sense of safety envelops you just looking at him. Whatever it is – your heart is fluttering a mile a minute.
Words catch and pile in your throat.
“Dinner?” He pushes off the tree, nodding towards a market stall a few metres away from which a mouthwatering steam curls.
“Please,” you breathe, all at once conscious of the intense hunger roiling in your stomach.
He pays for your food, and you walk comfortably alongside him as you eat, your face warming at the occasional stares from other villagers. Once you step out of the main plaza, he leans into your side, bringing his helmet closer to your ear. “Thank you for watching the kid.”
“Oh.” You swallow a bite, taken aback. “It was no problem.”
He straightens his back, voice suddenly slashed with guilt. “It could have been. I was there for a day before you came.”
A day. You recall Grogu’s trembling little body when you found him in the library. A fissure forms in your chest. You want to reach out, place your palm on Mando’s shoulder and comfort him, but you keep your hands to yourself.
The road thins here and there with the spread of other street vendors and their lineups, interrupting your conversation. Mando fits himself in front of you when the path squeezes, reaching behind to gently hook his fingers around your forearm and guide you through the swarms. Your heart trips, as if over a boulder. You almost drop your napkin.
You return to his side when the crowd dwindles, taking two steps for every one of his long strides.
“What… happened?” You have no clue whether it’s up for discussion, and a bolt of adrenaline zips through your body as the question leaves your lips. “You were gone for a week, and then I found you paralyzed and covered in probably not just your own blood.”
He doesn’t pause or sigh. He merely seems to take notice of your doubled footfalls and relents, slowing his pace.
You pass a fiber artist’s booth, a jeweler, and several more leafy trees before he responds.
“I tracked the Imps for a few days,” he offers, cutting the quiet. “Found a covert operations unit on Coruscant. Took a little while to take it down.”
“The whole thing?” You blurt.
“Whatever they’d already accessed from the data stick had to be compromised,” he answers, plain. “But I was sloppy. A couple strays followed me home.”
You lift your eyes from the flagstone paving to him, a casual sway in his shoulders as he walks. “I thought there was only one body outside the house…?”
“Uhuh. Rest of his crew didn’t make it that far.”
You chew your last bite and toss the napkin into a receptacle on the side of the street.
He shot down their ship, he explains. It crashed miles out from the house in the lava flats. “I was going to bring you the data stick when he… showed up.”
He says no more, the rest of the story forming easily in your head.
The guilt hasn’t fully washed away yet – it’s still nestled somewhere within you, stirring as you contemplate the magnitude of what he’d gone through to return your stupid data stick. He spent a week taking down an entire Imperial unit on your behalf, and when he got home, his reward was a knife in the ribs and a nasty paralytic dart wedged in his other side. He swung violently between sleep and consciousness while you watched over him – was he awake when the kid healed him? Did he try to move, comfort him, and find himself utterly incapable?
And – there’s still a missing piece.
“When I got there, you had this… cut on your side. There was blood everywhere but the wound had already closed.”
“Grogu,” he mutters. “Like I said, he’s smart.”
You hum, in both astonishment and agreement.
It hadn’t quite occurred to you that Grogu could have done it, even though it was the only probable explanation. Healing capabilities never came up in your research all those months ago. But thank the Maker for that. You don’t really want to entertain the alternative — but without Grogu’s strange, wondrous abilities, you wonder if Mando would be here, walking alongside you and just barely brushing the back of your hand as your arms swing back and forth. If the gash in his side would have killed him, had Grogu not forced it closed.
Something builds in your chest, makes you stand a little straighter. The kid had been strong enough to heal his father’s wound, but when he still didn’t wake or stir, when Grogu no longer knew what to do, he gathered his friends and came to find you.
When you open your mouth to thank Mando, your voice barely coasts above a whisper. “It means a lot to me, everything you did. I know you were trying to take a break, but… I guess it just worked out that you were so close.”
The hand plate on his glove skims your sleeve. “I could have said no.”
Just like that – your heart is leaping again. “What do you mean?”
“They could have sent someone else.”
Your head swims, vision blurring. Your pulse tingles in your fingertips. You want to ask who, you want to ask why, but an understanding is taking form. It blossoms in your chest, delicate but sure. This wasn’t about a contract. This was about you.
Another silence passes over you.
You keep walking in tandem, his admission hanging in the evening air. You crest the town’s border where the buildings end and the rocky terrain takes over.
It’s quiet here, under the city’s white arch, the crowds having thinned to nothing. The orange sun hangs low over the distant grey bluffs. A few silvery ships rest in the docking area to the left, dwarfing the lone land speeder parked at the boundary.
You’re still processing what he said, absently admiring how the sunset shimmers across his pauldron when he stops, perching his weight on one leg. He seems to eye the docking bay, calculating, before turning to face you. The attention pins you to the spot. Your feet cement to the ground. Holding his gaze is a challenge – one that you lose when you avert your eyes and focus instead on the way his cape rustles in the slight breeze.
“You know, the kid misses you,” he murmurs. “Think he wants you to come back.”
You choke on nothing. Is he joking? “He wants me to come back. To your house.”
In fairness, that would be understandable. You did make a pretty good soup. But what is this?
“Did he tell you that himself?” You cross your arms over your chest, tilting up your chin to meet his dark visor.
Mando huffs impatiently. “I can tell.”
You almost feel bad, giving him a hard time. But watching him get a little ruffled, hearing the slight irritation in his voice – it’s exhilarating.
“And what about you,” you say, a certain boldness mixing in with your nerves. “You miss me? Do you want me to come back?”
A step forward brings you toe to toe.
His chestplate caves like you’d stolen his breath with that simple question. But he doesn’t look away. You watch his fingers roll against his palm. Is he… fidgeting?
Finally, a gruff murmur. “Yes.”
Yes, I want to take you home, now. Not “if you want,” not “I guess you could.” Yes.
Your pulse is a drum throughout every vein in your body. You waver on your feet and fall silent, no longer trusting your voice to come out as sure and as steady as it was mere seconds ago. First, he admits to putting himself through this whole debacle for you – not the New Republic – and now he’s inviting you home with this aggravatingly sultry yes. You think your knees might give out.
The helmet angles closer into your face, as if he’s narrowing his eyes at you beneath the visor, waiting.
“O-okay,” you blink, eyelids fluttering as you fight to maintain your composure. By some miracle, your next words come out casual and collected. “Only if you got rid of that man outside your house.”
He pulls away, no longer crowding you so closely. There’s remorse in his grumbling. “I wouldn’t invite a lady home if there was still a dead body at my door.”
It’s so… ridiculous, how a sentence like that sets your whole being on fire. He’d called you a lady, and it makes you feel precious, like some coveted, sweet thing. Then he’d referred to a man he killed, probably quite easily, the bloody image of it playing in your head. Instead of making you recoil from him in fear, there’s a heat that sears through your abdomen, a pulse that sings in your core. You sober yourself with a deep, deep breath.
His fingers find your wrist once again, and he swivels on his heel, stalking with you toward the docking bay.
“Get in the speeder.”
***
On the outside, the ride to his house is breezy and peaceful – inside, you’re anything but calm. The wind rustles your clothes, tussles your hair, and dries the sweat collecting in your palms. Anticipation prickles across your skin. It doesn’t feel real, sitting beside him and watching his hands guide the speeder. That question – what is this? – echoes in your mind. It couldn’t just be a friendly kickback, not with the way his voice dragged low when he asked for you to join him. But you’re not sure what else to expect, and you don’t want to hope. You lace your fingers together and try to squeeze out the shakes.
You’re vaguely aware of his gaze on you as you cross the hot springs, the landscape now sprinkled with green shrubs. The sun has dipped behind the bluffs on the horizon, taking the warmth with it. Pink and blue swathes in the sky slowly meld into one purple blanket.
When you climb out of the speeder, the familiar racket of Anzellans floats from the ship behind the house. You squint, making out the shape of Grogu’s ears through the window of the cockpit.
“Repairs,” Mando grunts, already trudging away from the speeder. “Come on.”
You chortle to yourself. The kid misses you, Mando said. He’s not even waiting for you.
Mando points you to the front door while he approaches the enclosure housing the two round-backed beasts. You watch from the small porch as he reaches into a large barrel beside a tree, tossing what looks like flaky cubes of dried grass over the wired fence. They each take a block in their gigantic mouths, swallowing without a single bite. You think of asking him what they are, why he has them, but that curiosity dies when he turns in your direction, observing you from a distance.
Your heart quickens when he begins striding to you with purpose. A shiver runs through you. Here you are – alone.
He stops just short of your body, closing you between himself and the front door.
“You’re nervous.” It’s almost satisfied, the way he says it.
Fuck – he’s so close, you can hear his breathing under the helmet without the vocoder having to pick it up.
You force your voice to carry some semblance of flirtation and not betray the way you’re burning up inside. “Should I not be?”
His arm reaches past your face, caging you, as he presses a button on the wall. The door slides open.
“Go inside.”
Lightheaded, you swivel and walk towards the counter. You place your palms on the smooth surface, letting it cool them down.
The door seals with a hiss. It’s dark; the hot air consumes you. You’re painfully aware of his presence somewhere behind you, but you stay there, hands braced on the ledge of the counter.
Seconds pass. They feel like hours.
“When you were here,” his voice is scraping, so low you can almost feel it vibrate at the base of your core. “You took care of the kid. You fed him. You cleaned the blood off the floor.”
Mando is still standing by the door when you look back. His body takes up the whole archway. It feels like he takes up the whole room, really – he’s nearly as tall as the ceiling.
He approaches you at the counter, taking slow, careful steps.
You’re trembling. He steadies you by grasping your upper arms.
The warmth of his palms seeps through his leather gloves, through your shirt, onto your skin. Your pulse races, beating violently against his grip. You want to speak, ask him what his point is, but the words aren’t coming. Your mind is lost to his touch that is somehow blazing through layers of fabric.
“You cleaned the blood off of me,” he says. “You touched me.”
Your backside presses against the counter. Fear tugs weakly at the back of your mind at his severe tone, but it’s nothing to the intensity of the arousal warming between your thighs.
“I–I’m sorry,” you plead, blindsided. Perhaps you really shouldn’t have. “You were paralyzed, I couldn’t just leave you there, filthy–”
“You could have waited.”
And – oh, fuck – this is exactly what you were hoping for, isn’t it?
He’s panting, just like when you’d tried to give him a stimshot. So are you, you realize, air puffing rapidly out of your nose. Another shiver knocks through you.
“I wish you would have waited,” he groans. “Then I could have felt– ngh–”
A wrecked gasp tears through your lungs when he presses himself against your thigh, rutting his hard cock against you. It’s harsh, lacking control – he shudders at the sensation. Your head falls back and he instantly invades the space, letting his helmet rest in the curve of your neck.
Something strains in him as he rumbles brokenly through the modulator. “Would you have touched me if I was awake? Or were you scared?”
He rocks against you, giving another soft grunt that makes your head swim. When you don’t respond, he lifts his head from your neck and pinches your chin between his fingers, holding you at attention. “Would you?”
There’s truly nothing computing in your mind right now. It’s blank. You just watch him dumbly as his thumb presses to your bottom lip and grazes your teeth.
“I–” You hear a pitiful little whine, and you realize it’s yours over the blood pounding in your ears. “I don’t know… I – oh, please, let me touch you now, I wanna feel you.”
Your hand slips downward, and his whole body goes rigid when you give him a squeeze. The sheer size of him is so much more apparent in your hand, although still covered by the canvas texture of his suit. As you look into his visor, hand pushing against his hard cock, beskar pressing into your thighs, he rasps, “Go to the bed.”
He pulls off of you and your body slackens without the support. He stays by the counter, watching, as you walk to the single mattress and settle on the edge of it. The sheets are crisp and fresh – he’s washed them since you were here last.
He follows, taking a knee at the side of the bed. His palm smooths down your thigh, dipping under your calf, then he lifts your foot onto his raised thigh and starts pulling off your boot. He tosses it to the side and grabs your other foot. When the second boot slips off, his gloved fingers work into the flesh of your calves, massaging and loosening the tight muscles.
Your head lolls to the side, resting on your shoulder as you watch him deftly work his way up your leg.
“Take off your shirt,” he demands, hands now resting on your knees, his voice full of want.
Slow– so awfully, frustratingly slowly, you lift the hem of your shirt. Maybe you take so long because you’re shy. Maybe you just want to tease him. He doesn’t care – his fingers dig into your knees all the same when he catches sight of your bare skin, the soft swell of your breasts.
You let the fabric fall beside you, adjusting yourself.
He stares. And he stares. Finally, his hands coast up your thighs, his fingers find your torso–
“Wait—” You cover his hands with your own. They’re butterflying over your ribs, painfully close to where you want them – but they’re gloved.
You sigh, “Please, can you take those off?”
At that, he tenses, gripping your torso tighter. The tips of his fingers dig into your skin. He looks up at you for a prolonged moment, chest heaving. Then he releases your torso and offers his hands up, holding them steady for you to take off the gloves.
Oh.
Not what you expected.
It's almost too much, the image of him kneeling before you with his hands raised, as if pledging fealty, waiting for you to start undressing him. Your hands shake as you start pulling off one glove. His tan, veiny hand is slowly revealed. You work on the other, then hold his wrists up as you admire his strong, calloused fingers, the thickness of his palms. He lets you look for a few more seconds before he breaks out of your hold.
A breathy moan is stolen from your mouth at the sensation of his hot, bare touch as he cups your chest. He massages around your curves, gentle at first, then with a slight, impatient roughness. He takes your soft noises as encouragement, sliding his thumbs over your nipples. They harden at his touch, and your thighs squeeze with need, and you force yourself not to beg for his mouth.
You cry out for him, “Mando, fuck–”
It must be the wrong thing to do. He stills, and his hands drop from your chest to brace on the edge of the mattress. Your skin prickles over the plushness of your breasts at the loss of his touch. Your eyes snap open to find the helmet turned down as if he’s pondering something, and your heart starts pumping anxious adrenaline through your veins as you wait for him to spit it out.
“If we’re gonna do this,” his thumbs slowly find your skin again, stroking at your sides. You start to quiver. “I don’t want you to call me that.”
Fuck, what does that mean?
You don’t know what to say, so you just tilt your head at him like he’s done countless times to you. Your stomach does obnoxious little flips. His helmet lifts, finding your eyes. Then his whole body lifts too, as he comes to stand between your spread thighs.
His rough hand catches under your chin, guiding your eyes back to his visor. He’s exceptionally big from this angle, and it makes you squirm under the rigid hold on your jaw.
What is he doing?
“I’ll give you my name,” he says. “Do you want it?”
And… white. Your vision goes completely white, no matter the darkness of the room. It’s just pure nothingness for a moment, a blankness you’ve never known. You don’t even bother stuttering out some helpless form of nonsense to fill the quiet.
“Do you want it?” He repeats huskily, pulling your chin up a touch higher, forcing you to finally think.
It doesn’t escape you – how you’re sitting half-naked before him as he offers you a deeper form of intimacy than anything you could imagine. More intimate than his soft grunts as he’d rutted against you, more intimate than his own bare hands brushing your naked chest. More intimate than it will be, when he slides himself inside you and curses out your name.
It’s barely audible when you whine out a simple yes.
“Fuck– come here.” He pulls you up off the mattress, supporting you and your jelly limbs by wrapping an arm around your waist and holding you to him. He releases you once you find your balance and fits his hands underneath the fabric of your pants, squeezing your ass. Your lip slides between your teeth as his hands go lower, working the fabric off of your body, and you step once, twice, out of your last piece of clothing. He kicks the garment to the side with a boot.
He undoes the strap of his utility belt. Your chest constricts at the way his fingers work the leather, just above his straining erection. It falls, along with the bandolier, slapping against the floor.
He’s still covered head to toe, except for his bare hands. But you’re perfectly naked, and it’s perfectly fair that way, when he’s giving you something so much more than his skin and his body.
“I won’t take anything else off,” he murmurs, dark and hoarse and full of desire. “I’ll give you my name, and you’ll just – you’ll let me have you. Okay?”
You nod, anticipation knocking against every bone, arousal burning white hot between your legs.
It’s like your heart itself knows what’s coming, and it stops for a few seconds. The noise of your blood pumping ceases to fill your ears, just so you can hear the way he whispers his own name to you.
“Din.”
Din.
Your heart kicks back on after a few more seconds, thrashing against your ribs as you process his name. It’s short. It’s simple. Easily spoken; a press of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, a push of air, a petal soft close.
“Din?” You fit his name in your mouth, tasting it for the first time. It’s just a weak murmur when you say it. Din. It feels strange yet right to call him by his name instead of his creed. Din. Unembellished. Entirely him.
You’re hardly aware of how he falters at the sound before your mind starts racing. What do you say now? Do you thank him? But he’s already laying you down on the bed with a new sense of urgency.
He fits himself beside you on the tiny mattress, the armour cold against your skin. In your delirium, still reeling– Din, Din is his real name – you absently murmur something about not getting his boots on the bed. He just grunts dismissively, to the effect that the sheets are going to get dirty either way – fix it later– while his fingers skate down your torso and dip between your thighs.
This time, his name is an urgent plea, a heavy moan on your lips. “Din–”
“That’s right,” he sighs alongside you, fingers sliding easily over your clit. “Fuck– you’re wet.”
He continues whispering under his breath. Words like pretty and need and soft slur together as he circles your clit, finding only more and more of your dripping arousal.
Your back arches off the mattress. You might have felt embarrassed at the ridiculously soaked state of your cunt– it’s borderline pathetic – but he just groans louder in your ear, and his hand moves lower, shallowly dipping inside you. It’s almost too easy for him to sink his knuckles deeper. Din shifts, perching himself slightly more upward on a supporting elbow. He angles his hand so that his thumb can press against your clit while his fingers massage against something achingly sweet inside of you. That spot – you didn’t really know it existed, until now. You thought you’d brushed against it yourself before, but it didn’t feel like this. It didn’t knock the breath out of you like it’s doing now, as Din rubs circles against it.
You reach out, finding purchase with a hand on his shoulder. Your muscles pull taut. You tense your stomach to mitigate the overwhelming sensation of Din’s fingers working you open. Your core pulses around him — and he doesn’t miss the way you hug his fingers tighter.
“Good?”
You make some sort of desperate noise at him, reaching for his waist, searching for his cock. It’s even harder than it was minutes ago. He rolls his hips against your touch, letting you blindly unzip the trousers of his flightsuit and pull his devastatingly hard, thick cock through the opening.
You stroke him, spreading the bead of arousal leaking from the tip. You fit your fist around the head and slide down. He shudders, ragged breaths punching out of the vocoder.
“Fuck, you want it? You want me to fuck you? Tell me you want me to fuck you.” He pushes forward, urging his cock through the tightness of your fist. “I bet you feel– I bet you feel good.”
He’s on top of you before you’re even aware that you’re nodding, bobbing your head profusely against the pillow. A whine breaks your lips open when he slides his fingers out of you.
Faintly, you feel his cock twitch on your thigh, but he catches your wrist when you reach for it again. His gaze doesn’t break from yours as he gathers your other wrist in the same hand, holding them both to his chest.
He crowds your vision like this — his helmet, his wide shoulders and chest making up your whole world.
“Din,” you whine again, his name already tasting familiar. You feel his thighs stiffen against yours at the sound.
“Tell me.” He tightens his grip around your wrists as if you might slip away from underneath his body.
You suck in a breath, then your mouth starts running before you know what you’re saying. “I want you, Din, I’ve wanted you for months, please don’t make me wait any longer–”
“I won’t, fuck, I won’t,” he hushes you, your name slurring wantonly somewhere amongst his hurried promises. He releases your wrists, dragging you down the mattress by the hips.
“Open your legs,” he orders, though he’s already using his palms to shove them apart. You obediently let him spread them wide, reaching for his shoulders.
Din slides a fist down his cock and holds it at the base before notching the head at your entrance.
The need is no longer a dull beat in your abdomen. It’s a violent strike, a painful throb.
“Hurry up– hurts–” You’re mewling at him, and it sends his hips jerking forward in answer. One second, you’re so empty it hurts, and the next, you’re full of him.
The sound he makes… is the sound you imagine he would have made when he was stabbed. It’s tattered. It’s a low, broken moan that ends on a hiss of pain. But it’s so beautiful, too, because he keeps moving, and more sounds tumble out of him, softer than the last. Sounds that aren’t so pained. Just sounds of pleasure – and that’s what’s tearing out of your lungs as the initial pain burns away, blooming into a blissful stretch.
“Fuck, I knew you were– you’re perfect–” His voice lands somewhere between a whimper and a growl as he adjusts.
He cradles your jaw in his palm and slides his thumb back between your lips. You run your tongue over it, holding it between your teeth. Then he pushes his cock further, taking another inch, and another.
“Shit,” you cry around his thumb.
The stretch might have been painful if you weren’t this soaked – but it only soothes the ache. He fills you, his cock sliding against that sweet spot, and then he fills you some more.
His thumb falls from your mouth.
“I thought of you,” he rasps, his palm travelling further down and pressing against the base of your stomach. It transforms the stretch of his cock into something more. “On Coruscant, I thought of you like this– ngh– to keep me going–”
You must be drenching the fabric surrounding his cock already. His flightsuit chafes against your skin each time he sinks himself into you, but the rough sensation is wholly overpowered by the way he’s moving against that point of pleasure inside you.
“And then I– fuck, I make it back home, and the next time I see you, I can’t fucking move.”
He’s increasing the pace now, rolling his hips upward each time he bottoms out inside you.
“You were like a-an angel when I woke up, but I blacked out ag–again–”
You wrap your fingers around both of his biceps, between the pauldrons and vambraces. The muscles are hard beneath your touch, working and flexing to hold himself over top of you.
“–and ngh– I fucking missed it when you cleaned my– fuck– I c–couldn’t feel you.”
He sounds desperate and frustrated even now as he’s working you open on his cock. You don’t think he’s ever talked this much, or so freely – he hardly ever talks, even with prompting. But now, it’s like he’s baring all of his inner thoughts to you in place of his skin, and it’s working a certain kind of magic; his raspy voice worsens the pulse between your thighs.
“You can feel me now, Din,” you reassure him, purposely tensing your walls around him, “I’m here, you can have me as long as you want.”
The pressure on your stomach disappears. He stops moving. Your brows raise in the middle, your bottom lip threatens to jut out. You squirm, refusing to look away from the visor, your cunt squeezing around his cock that’s buried, now motionless inside you. You're sure he’s meeting your eyes with his own as he pants above you.
Then he reaches underneath you, taking your body with him as he leans back on his knees and gathers you into his lap.
He wraps his arms around you, hands grabbing at your ass as he guides you back down his length. Your thighs cage his kneeling frame, and your hands lock over his traps, clutching at the gathered wool of his cape.
At this angle, the underside of your clit slides against his cock as he bucks up into you.
“Din.” You sigh his name. Again, and again, and again. A lightning strike thunders in your ribcage every time you say it, and your voice stumbles with each bounce, “Din, you f-feel, fuck, you feel so big.”
“Yeah?” The cold beskar of his helmet presses against your shoulder as his hips stutter. His vambraces dig into your sides. He fucks you like that for a while, an absurd display of strength – he could fuck you however he wants to, but he elects to kneel on the bed with you on top of him, using his arms and hands to help you bounce on his cock. “God, you’re fucking tight, ngh– and soft–”
Soon, he lets you just grind against him, stimulating your clit against the coarse dark hair at the base of his cock. He must notice when you’re getting close – your head falls back and your eyes shut in pleasured focus, and your walls seize around him – then he’s stammering, “No, no, no, hang on,” into the vocoder.
You’re dizzy with pleasure when he eases you onto your back again. A whimper catches in your lungs when you lose some of the friction on your clit, the dull ache of your building orgasm fizzling away.
One of his hands travels up underneath your spine, and his fingers slide through your hair at the nape of your neck before he closes them in a fist, pulling. Your scalp tingles as his other hand grabs the underside of your thigh to hike it up higher against his body. It only slightly alters his angle but it’s doing something, causing your eyes to shut tight and your cunt to drench him with more of your already excessive slick.
He slows, milking it, admiring how your wetness makes his cock glisten. “Shit, how are you–? You’re soaking.”
You take his brief pause to try and roll back on top of him and gain some control — you want to lay him down, use your mouth, show him just how grateful you are for all he’d done. But you can’t move, can’t get him to yield to the weak pushes at his shoulders.
He says something that is lost between his concealed lips and your ears; you’re too busy squirming helplessly under his body. He tightens his grip in your hair, forcing you to look at him.
“Hey— relax,” he soothes, albeit a tiny bit rough and gravelly. “What?”
Jaw clenching, you struggle against the feeling of fullness and battle the words out of your mouth. “Please let me back on top. You did so much for me, let me do the w—”
He cuts you off, although your words clearly affect him, judging by the strain in his voice. “Fuck, it doesn’t matter. I’d do it again. Just– just let me fuck you. Just stay there for me.”
Din starts to move again, a new pressure building in your core. It sings with every thrust he gives, and you can’t form a single argument.
“Then just…” you cry, “don’t stop until you c—come. Please, I’m close enough, I'll g–go with you.”
He chokes out a torn sound when you wrap your legs around his back, bringing him closer and locking him against you.
He slides his grip from your hair to rest his hand possessively on your neck, but he doesn’t close it around you or choke you. He just lays it there, adding a pleasant weight, and holds you like that as he starts fucking you harder, your legs squeezing his waist.
“–Needed you, I needed you,” he rasps, hardly audible above the sound of him pounding into you. It’s rough. Every part of him is digging into you, beskar no doubt leaving temporary dents in your skin. But it’s all an afterthought to his thick girth, his wrecked moans.
“Wanted to fuck you since, ngh– since I took you to the c-cantina, ‘nd you looked so fucking pretty—”
He’s losing rhythm now, just helplessly rutting his hips against you, sliding his cock back and forth through your soaking entrance. “You st–stared at me for s-so long and then you f-finally smiled and fuck— I wanted to— oh shit, I would have taken you out back and fucked you right th—there.”
His words make your walls pull tight around his cock as he grinds against you. You wrap your arms around his shoulders — or you try to – he’s too fucking broad to hold the way you want to and bring him close.
The weight of his palm is relieved from your neck as he rips off a pauldron, then the other, tossing them to the floor with a loud clank.
“Better?” He grunts.
You snake your arms back around his shoulders, enjoying the lack of the cold, hard armour against them. You don’t have the mind to tease him that he said he wouldn’t take anything else off.
“Yeah– oh fuck, Din…”
His hand slips between your bodies, palm pressing once more to your stomach and his thumb extending down over your curve to put pressure on your clit.
Your whole body is hurtling back towards the orgasm he’d delayed. “I’m gonna–”
“Can feel it,” Din strains, fighting to regain a sense of rhythm to coax it out of you. “Come on, give it to me.”
His thumb slides through the wetness on your clit and you hear another hiss slip from the helmet before the ache in your core becomes a shattering, white hot release, spreading through your limbs, tingling in your fingertips. It knocks the breath out of you and holds you there, shaking beneath Din’s body as he continues to fuck you through it.
“Fuck—good girl…” He’s not so much talking anymore as he is breathily moaning out praises, drawing out syllables like he can hardly think of what word comes after the next. “You get t-tighter when you— fuck, I might—”
You’re still coming, neck straining against the pillow, and he’s panting in your ear like he might collapse.
“Wh–where do you...?”
Before you can form an answer, he’s giving you one last deep push and then dragging himself out of you to come on your stomach. It spills warm and thick on your skin, trickling down the curve of your belly.
“Fuck, you’re so… pre—”
Without thinking, your fist closes around his cock, pumping out the rest of his cum. Your grip easily slides down his length with the mixture of both your orgasms, and he twitches hard when your thumb passes over the tip. Gently, he guides your hand away, too sensitive to withstand your touch.
Stars blanket your vision in the aftershocks. With your trembling figure still bracketed by his, you place your other hand on the caved cheek of his helmet. He sinks into the touch he cannot feel, gasping. Your breath fogs over the beskar. His own is caged by it.
Metal skims your forehead when your eyes flutter closed, the cool touch fleeting — gone as soon as you open them again.
“Din?”
At the sound of his name, he tumbles beside you. He works an arm under your limp, pliant body and pulls you onto his armoured chest.
“Sleep here,” is all he says before his arms close around you and his breathing evens out.
***
The next time the Mandalorian – Din – returns to the holorepository, he’s not there to brush up on an alien language. He’s not there to pester you about researching his baby. No, he stalks toward you through the shelves, corners you until you slip backward into the archival office. Then one hand covers your eyes while his other lifts the helmet. He kisses you, and it’s more. More than sex. It’s more than knowing his name, when he trusts you won’t try to peek between his fingers.
His lips are warm and soft and searching, a moustache prickling your skin.
Going on a hunt, he says.
Could be days, he says.
Need you first, he says.
high all the time, horny occassionally @dindjarinsstonerbitch - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
