Summary: After you and Din finally name your baby, you suddenly realise the full horror of where you've landed.
Warnings: 18+only.
A/N: Thank you for all the kind comments. Enjoy the sweetness and the angst 🫣
Part Sixteen III Part Eighteen
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You breathe and look at your daughter properly.
Until this moment, you’ve only looked at her the way you first looked at Din, in pieces – the dark wisp of hair, the tiny fist, the snuffling mouth – and now, in the moving leaf-light, you can finally look at her whole.
She’s so small that the impossibility of her feels, for a long, suspended moment, like a kind of vertigo. Her fist against your chest is only slightly bigger than the pad of your thumb, the fingernails on it smaller than grains of rice. Her eyelashes – dark, thick and clumped wet at the corners – lie on her cheeks like tiny commas. Her mouth is pink, half-open and slack with sleep, and there’s a small bubble of milk at the corner of it that you wipe away with the pad of your little finger.
She has his nose. You hadn't seen it before, in the rush, but you see it now and laugh wetly. Bending your head, you press your mouth to her warm crown and breathe her in – the warm, new smell of her, the milk and the iron-trace and the strange sweet impossible smell of new skin.
"He'll be back,” you whisper into her skin. “He'll be back, sweetheart. Your buir always comes back."
She breathes, tiny and even, and her fist opens against your bare chest and rests there, palm flat, the trust of a thing that doesn’t yet know it can be afraid.
You lie still and listen as the hold ticks around you with the sound of metal cooling and there’s a faint creak somewhere aft as the wreck settles further into whatever it’s settled into. You notice the drip of something – coolant, maybe, somewhere in the bulkhead – at a slow steady rate, plink, plink, plink, like a clock. The birds outside the hole in the hull keep singing and there’s the faint distant chuckle of water somewhere past the trees.
You listen for him, for the beskar against the deck-plate but all you hear is a long silence – the kind of silence that means a man has stopped moving because he’s reached the thing he was going toward and is looking at it. You picture him in the wreck of the cockpit, the dome of the helmet tilted at the angle that means he’s assessing, the gloved hand reaching for the long-range comm panel and finding…
The personal comm in the blanket-fold by your hip clicks once causing you to jump and the baby to start fussing. You shush her gently and reach down to place your palm flat against the cylinder. He’s telling you he’s alright, that he’s thinking of you. You press once back once and feel him register it because two seconds later the cylinder clicks once more – an acknowledgment, the smallest possible yes – and goes quiet.
You breathe out, slowly and wait.
You don't know how long for because time is doing strange things tonight – the half-hour of labour that felt like a day, the long suspended second of the helmet coming off that felt like a year, the slow drift of the last little while that has been, in actual minutes, you suspect, very few. You count birdcalls, the plinks of the dripping coolant and the small breaths against your chest. The breaths of your daughter steady your own, the way his breath has steadied yours in the past through a modulator, and you laugh at the small inheritance of that.
You hear him coming back, moving differently than when he left, faster, the bad leg compensated for somehow, the bare grunt of effort each time he braces. He comes around the bend, through the canted bulkhead-door and the visor finds you immediately, the way it always does, the first sweep of the helmet always coming to wherever you are in a room. Even now. Even in a wreck. Even with the world on fire.
He drops down beside you, reaches for the helmet seal and after the soft hiss-click, his bare face is back, dark eyes on you, and the relief on his face when he sees that you’re still there, still breathing, still whole, the baby still snuffling against your chest, is so naked that you have to look away for a moment before you can look back.
"How long was I?"
"I don't know. Probably not long even though it felt like forever."
"Eight minutes. I counted."
"Of course you did," you roll your eyes.
He sets the helmet down beside him on the blanket, takes off his gloves and scrubs his hand across his face, hard, the gesture of a man who’s just been doing a great deal of difficult arithmetic and is letting himself feel it.
"Tell me what you found," you say.
"The cockpit's bad."
"How bad?"
"The whole forward section is…the canopy's gone, mesh'la, sheared clean. The pilot's chair is still bolted down but there's about three meters of nothing between it and what used to be the nose. Half the dash is in the trees. I don't know how I rode it down. I don't know what I did. It doesn't matter, the point is the long-range comm is gone. The unit's gone. It's not in the cockpit. It's somewhere, probably somewhere out there in a tree, but I don't have time to look for it before it gets dark."
"Okay."
"The short-range I already knew was dead. So, we have no comm, out or in. The personal units are short-range only. We can't reach Karga or Nevarro or anyone until I find another way."
"Okay."
"The locker’s intact. The long rifle, the carbine, the spare pistol, the kit-knives, three thermal detonators, two flares, and the med kit-supplemental are all in there and dry. The ration crate is intact. The water reclaimer is probably salvageable, but it would take me half a day, and I don't have half a day, so we’re going to drink from the stream when the canteens run out."
"Okay," you say for a third time and wonder if he’s expecting more.
"The aft hold is the only part of the ship that’s more or less the way it was. The door still seals so, as soon as you can move, we move in there. It's defensible, warm and enclosed. The hole in the hull is in the main hold, here, and I can rig a tarp over it, but I would rather have a sealed door between you and the outside.”
You nod and he nods in return before reaching, carefully, and lifting the edge of the thermal blanket. He looks underneath at the pad between your legs and nods again.
"The bleeding's slowing. That's good. The book said…"
"The book."
He laughs. "I know."
"I love that you read the book." You pause. "Tell me about outside."
"Outside is what looks like half forest, half swamp. The canopy is fifty meters up and we’re in a kind of bowl with soft undergrowth which saved us. The trees took the worst of the entry and the undergrowth took the worst of the impact. The wreck’s carved a furrow about sixty meters long through the canopy and the underbrush. Anyone flying over will see that furrow. Anyone flying over with eyes will see it from orbit. So, we’re visible from the air and there’s nothing I can do about that tonight."
"Okay.”
"The stream is, I think, about three hundred meters that way." He gestures with his chin toward what you’ve been calling the daylight side. "I haven't been to it yet. The terrain between is rocky and broken and there’s good cover. There’s a ridge on the other side, maybe about a klick from here. I couldn't see past it from where I was. If there's a settlement or a road near, it’s probably past that ridge. I’ll scout at first light tomorrow.”
"Wildlife?"
"I don't know yet. I heard birds and something larger move once at about two hundred meters out, in the brush, and then it stopped. It could have been anything, but I’ll set tripwires before nightfall. If something comes close enough to trip one, I’ll know."
"And if it's people?"
His jaw works.
"Then I’ll know that too," he says, "and I’ll deal with it."
You look at him a long moment and see that the tiredness in him is enormous. It’s starting, now, to show – the small grey under his eyes, the small tremor at the corner of his mouth, the way his hand on his knee isn’t entirely steady. He’s been on his feet, or on his knee, or hauling himself on his elbows, for the better part of an hour without rest, with a torn leg, having just delivered his first child in a wreck and you know he’s going to drop if he doesn't sit down soon.
"Din."
"Mm."
"Come here."
"Mesh'la, I have to…"
"Come here. Five minutes, I’m ordering you as your wife, the mother of your child and as your patient. As the woman who just gave birth on this deck-plate. Come here for five minutes, put your head down and breathe before you go anywhere else."
He looks at you. You watch the resistance gather and you watch it lose. He drags himself the half metre to your side, careful of the leg, eases down into the blanket-nest beside you, and lets his head fall, very slowly, onto your shoulder, on the side that’s not occupied by the baby.
He sighs a real, whole sigh. The kind a body makes when, for the first time in an hour, it’s allowed to admit that it’s tired. His arm comes across your middle, his hand finding the small of the baby's back and rests there, gently, his forehead pressing into the side of your neck.
You stroke his hair and realise it’s thicker than you would’ve guessed, damp at the roots and slightly curling at the ends. You stroke it, slow, the way you’ve stroked the back of his neck through the underweave a thousand times, and he sighs again, deeper, his hand on the baby's back goes going heavier.
"Five minutes," you whisper.
"Five minutes."
"Then you can go set your tripwires, rig your tarp and be terrifyingly competent.”
He laughs, a small, wet laugh against your neck. "Deal."
"Din."
"Mm."
"We're going to be alright, aren’t we?"
He pauses and his arm tightens, very slightly, around your middle, his hand spreading across the baby’s back.
"Yes," he says softly in a voice you’re still learning. "Yes, mesh'la, we’re going to be alright."
You don't know if you believe it. You don't know if he believes it. It doesn't, in this moment, matter. The leaf-light moves across the wrecked deck, the coolant plinks, the birds sing and your daughter breathes against your chest. The man you love – the face of the man you love, the whole face, the dark hair and the dark eyes and the small scars and the curved nose and the threads of grey – rests against your shoulder and breathes with you.
The helmet sits on the blanket beside him, and somewhere out past the ridge there may be a settlement or there may be a road or there may be nothing, and somewhere overhead there may be eyes coming or there may not, and you have, in this moment, five minutes.
You both take them.
****
The five minutes become ten and you let them. He needs them and you need them and the baby on your chest needs the quiet, warm tucked-in space of both of you breathing around her, and when he finally lifts his head from your shoulder it’s slow and reluctant, the lift of a man pulling himself back into the work by force.
"Alright," he says, softly and he goes back to the work at hand of protecting his family. He rigs the tarp with more efficiency than you’ve given him credit for, then he checks the aft hold one more time before you begin the slow progress of shifting your position.
He takes the baby from you, giving you a moment to gather your strength and allow feeling to return to your limbs before gently pushing yourself up from the blanket nest and onto your feet. The ship sways around you for a moment, and he shoots out one hand to hold you steady.
“Cyar’ika…”
“I’m fine,” you reassure him as you start shuffling along the deck, a blanket carefully placed over you, clutching the pad between your legs because you’re not wearing any underwear.
The distance isn’t far, but it takes longer than you anticipated and by the time you reach the hold and sink down into a new blanket nest, you feel exhausted. He passes the baby back to you then surveys you from above, brows drawn together.
“I should stitch you now.”
“Very romantic,” you reply wryly, then grit your teeth as he drops down to the deck and goes about the work, lifting his eyes every so often to meet yours, checking that you’re okay. “I’ve heard rumours that, after witnessing childbirth, some men find it hard to go near their partners again."
“I find that hard to believe,” he replies when he's done, kissing the top of your head.
“It’s true.”
“It’s not true of this man.”
“I know,” you reply, then watch as he fits the helmet on again and ventures outside once more to place the tripwires. By the time he comes back, the baby is fussing again, and you latch her once more to your breast to feed. “There, there little one.”
He removes the helmet and lowers himself down beside you again, one hand on the back of her neck. “She needs a name.”
“She does,” you reply, then look at her, because every name you’ve ever considered somehow doesn’t seem right now that you’ve seen her.
"Mira'ika.”
You blink and look up at him. "Mira?"
He goes still, pulling back just enough to look at your face. His eyes have gone slightly wary – the look of a man who has, once again, made a private decision and is, only now, realising he made it without consulting you.
"I…I was thinking it when I was outside. I'm sorry, I should have asked. I just…I…”
"Mira."
"It means – in the old dialect – it means…"
"It means miracle, Din. I know what it means."
"...yes."
You look down at her as she snuffles against your chest, her dark eyes – still that newborn dark, the unfocused, universal dark – open under the dark wisps. You watch her watch nothing. You watch her exist. You watch her breathe in and out, in and out, the small relentless miracle of a thing that only a few hours ago was inside you and is now a person with a name.
"Mira," you say, trying it.
She blinks, slow and accidental, the way newborns do, the way that means nothing and feels like everything.
"Yes," you say, meeting his gaze. "Mira."
His face does a small fractional break-and-mend behind the eyes, his mouth presses to your hairline and the three of you stay like that for a long time.
****
“I have a question.”
Din turns from where he’s refitting the beskar he took off the previous evening so as to be able to curl in the blanket nest with you and Mira, his body warm around yours and heavy with sleep – so heavy that you had to nudge him sharply awake when you realised you needed a change of cloth diaper for her.
“What’s the question?”
“Is she Mira Djarin or Din Mira?”
He pauses as he slides on the second glove and looks from you to his sleeping daughter and then back again.
“I mean, if she’s Din Mira, does that mean I have to call both of you Din? Because that might get a little confusing.”
“Technically, following the naming convention of my family, she would be Din Mira,” he replies, “Din being the family name.”
“Wait…” you frown. “Are you telling me that Din is your family name, not your first name?”
“Yes.”
“But…all this time I thought…I’ve been calling you Din because…”
“As you should.”
“But…”
“I’ve always been Din, cyar’ika, for as long as I can remember,” he smiles. “Calling me anything else would seem strange. But we can call her Mira.”
You shake your head, thrown once more by aspects of Mandalorian culture of which you have little to no knowledge – not even your husband’s proper name.
“When we get back to Nevarro, you have to find me a book that I can read about all this.”
“I will, but not every Mandalorian names their offspring the same. In other tribes, the names could be the other way around.”
“Mmm…” you look back down at her. “Let’s stick with Mira.”
“Yes.” He lifts the helmet. "I'm going to go up the ridge and try to see what's past it. I need to know where we are, mesh'la. I can’t plan until I know where we are."
"How long will you be gone?"
"Two hours, maybe three. I'll move fast, be back as soon as I can and I’ll be careful with the leg, I promise."
"Take the carbine."
"I'm taking the carbine."
"Take water."
"I'm taking water."
"Take…"
"Cyar'ika..." he smiles eyes warm. "I have done this before."
"Not with us in the wreck of what used to be your ship."
The smile fades and he bends, kissing your lips quick and hard, the kiss of a man who’s leaving and doesn’t want to dwell on the leaving. Then he kisses Mira’s head and puts on the helmet.
The visor finds you, the modulator catching his breath.
"One, two, hold," he says.
"One, two, hold."
He nods and then he goes.
This time, you don’t count the birdcalls or the plinks. You hold Mira against your chest and let yourself simply be. You doze in long shallow drifts, surfacing again each time she fusses, changing her diaper or shifting her against the other breast then dozing again.
The smell is back.
You don't register it at first. It’s faint, layered under leaf-smell and damp-smell and the trace of coolant, and you’ve been dozing, being a new mother, and your brain has been full of other things.
But it registers now with a familiarity that you pushed away before, but now feel coming at you, head on.
You go very still and don’t move as Mira snuffles against your chest. You make yourself stroke her back, slow and automatic, the small, unconscious soothing you’ve been doing since Din left but the smell is unmistakable now – that fetid, stagnant, slimy smell that seems to invade every part of your body, clawing at the back of your throat.
That smell you remember so vividly.
You tell yourself no, that there must be a hundred planets in the galaxy that could have the same smell, that it’s generic and that you’re tired and frightened and post-partum and your brain is reaching for the worst place it knows.
The personal comm by your hip clicks twice and your blood goes cold.
You snatch it up and press it once in response. The cylinder clicks back, twice, and you realise that he’s coming back with news that you’re probably not going to like.
You wait, lying tense in the blanket-nest, listening, and then you hear him – beskar on undergrowth, the small, careful crunch of a man who’s moving fast and trying not to – and then the dragging step at the hatch, the visor coming around the bulkhead, and he’s there.
He stops just inside, the visor finding you and he’s breathing hard through the modulator. He reaches up, takes the helmet off and you can see his face is flushed, hair damp at the temples and his eyes find yours with something behind them you can’t, at first, read.
"I have to tell you something, cyar’ika and I want you to listen and not be frightened.”
"Tell me," you say, your voice shaking slightly.
"I made the ridge and I got up high enough to see down the other side. There's a road about four klicks away. It looks like a main road, but it’s completely surrounded by swamp land.”
You can't breathe.
“I looked as far as I could without being seen, but it looks as though the road leads to a palace.” He takes a breath. “I’ve seen it before – the palace – in holo images, and the swampland. I recognised it…”
“Nal Hutta."
He stops, eyes sharpening on your tone, then moves forward to kneel, awkwardly in front of you.
"Cyar'ika..."
"It's Nal Hutta, Din, isn’t it?"
"Yes.”
You make a small sound, a small, flat sound that isn’t not a word. Mira startles and squalls, and you press her tighter against you making yourself breathe. The smell is everywhere now, and you can’t believe you didn’t name it the moment the leaf-light came through the hull, can’t believe you let yourself doze in the smell of the place you swore you would die before you ever smelled again.
"I know…I understand it's frightening. But Jabba the Hutt is dead and…”
"Din…" Your voice comes out faint, high and reedy as your body starts to shake.
“I’ll protect you, you know I will…”
“No…”
"What is it?” he asks, his tone panicked at the sight of you. “Are you cold?” He pulls the blanket tighter around you. “Tell me, cyar'ika."
You look at him, his eyes wide, searching and full of the careful banked alarm of a man who’s watching the woman he loves start to fall apart.
“I’ve been on Nal Hutta before,” you whisper, “a long time ago, when I was younger. Before…before I was sent to Shakari.”
His mouth opens as though to say something, but words don’t come and he simply shakes his head.
“I was…I was brought here from my home planet when I was a child. We were…we were all taken from our homes – kidnapped – and brought here. Jabba…he ordered that we be kept here until we were considered of age to…”
You break off and close your eyes, your face dropping to press once more against Mira’s head.
“To what?” Din asks quietly, when you don’t continue.
“To be of service,” you reply finally. “When we were considered of age to be of service. That’s when we were all transported to Shakari and…and made to work. Din…” tears blur your vision, “I know I’ve never told you, about Shakari, about what life was like there before I managed to escape and climb aboard this ship. I’ve never told you…”
You pause and his eyes hold yours, his body completely still.
"You’ve never told me."
“Because I couldn’t,” you say, fighting down a sob. “I couldn’t tell you what I had to do there, what I was forced…” you swallow hard. “And you never asked. You never asked me, that day when you found me, what I was running from. I told you I needed to be taken off-world, and you took me and you never asked…”
“I assumed that one day, you’d tell me cyar’ika.” His gloved hand comes to your face, the leather brushing away the tears. “It’s your story, your…”
“It was my hell,” you gulp, “and I escaped it, and I got away and I have a life now with you and…and with her…” you look down at Mira, the whole horror of the situation gathering in your chest and making it tight. “I can’t… I can’t stay here, Din, and I can’t be sent back to Shakari, and I can’t let her go through that. I can’t let them take her. The twins, they could take her…”
“They won’t.”
"Din…"
"They won't." His hand moves to your jaw, holding you firmly, forcing you to look at him. “Look at me cyar’ika. You will not go near the palace. She will not go near the palace. The twins will not lay eyes on either of you, and neither will anyone else who might harm you. Do you hear me?”
"But my face, Din, they…"
"Do they know your face?"
"Yes. We were all scanned when we were brought here and when we left and then regularly on Shakari so that they could keep track of us. The fact that I escaped...I…they’ll know me if they see me, I know they will.”
"Alright."
He takes a breath, looks down at Mira and his face does the small fractional thing that you can now read as the deepest and oldest love he is capable of. Then he looks back up at you, and his expression is steely again.
"Alright, so we need to get out of here as quickly as we can. We don’t engage or negotiate or do anything to draw attention to ourselves. We move tonight if you can and we get the karking hell off this swamp, okay?"
"Okay…"
"But we can’t fly the Crest, so we have to find another way.”
“There’s…there’s a freighter that comes and goes once a day. It takes off at nightfall and returns in the morning. Or at least it used to, I don’t know if…” you take a deep breath to steady yourself into the logic of escape. “It moves back and forth between Nal Hutta and Nar Shaddaa. If we can somehow reach it, stow away on board and get to Nar Shaddaa, we’ll be able to catch a commercial ship from there back towards Nevarro. But…”
“We’d have to get on the freighter undetected,” he finishes.
“Yes, and I don't know if...I don't know if they check...”
"How far is the spaceport?"
"From the palace – north, around five klicks. I don't…I don't know from here.”
He’s already thinking and you can see it, visibly, in his face – the small flicker of the eyes, the small tightening at the jaw, his glove coming off, and his hand coming up to scrub across his mouth as he runs the geometry.
"Five klicks from the palace," he says, low. "From here…call it ten klicks north of us through forest and swamp. With you and her and me with this leg. We’ll have to avoid scouts and reach the port before the freighter goes up…” he nods. “This is doable.”
"Din…"
"This is doable. We will do this, do you hear me?"
"I hear you."
"Alright. I need you to rest now whilst I inventory the locker, pack what we need and only what we need and then we’re going to move, okay?”
You nod, because there’s nothing else to do.
He breathes out and bends his forehead down to yours, staying there a long second as his mouth brushes, soft, across your lips.
"I won’t let any of them near you, I swear it on every creed I have left, mesh'la. On the Way and on the Waters and on every name I have. On my very life. No-one will see your face. No-one will see her face. The Hutts will never know you were ever here and we will be safely on our way back to Nevarro before they ever find this ship. Believe me when I say this.”
“I believe you,” you whisper in return.
He straightens, picks the helmet up and slides it back on.
"Rest," he says through the modulator. "I'll be back as soon as I can once I have everything organised.”
You hold Mira against your chest as he goes about the work of preparing for escape and press your mouth into her head.
"We’re going to get out of here, sweetheart. We’re going to get out of here. Your buir is the best there is and he’s going to get us out of here and you are never going to know the smell of this planet again. I promise you. I promise you."
Mira sleeps on, oblivious, and you close your eyes, and make yourself rest, because he told you to, and because you're going to need every scrap of strength you possess to get out of this nightmare.
Chapter summary: You finally get to see Din’s face.
Warnings: 18+only.
A/N: Excited to share this one with you 🥰
Part Fifteen III Part Seventeen
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You don't have time. You don't have time – the contraction is already rolling up the back of you, already gathering, already lifting – and you see him for one suspended second in the moving leaf-light through the hole in the hull, and the impression is not a face yet but rather pieces.
Dark hair flattened with sweat, a beard close-cropped, a nose with a slight curve in it, eyes – eyes – dark, wet, wide and fixed on you with an intensity that’s almost more than the body can hold.
Then the wave takes you, the face goes blurred and you arch up off the blanket-nest with a scream.
"Cyar'ika…"
It’s his voice – his real voice. Not through the modulator, not warped or filtered or flattened. The voice you’ve heard a hundred times muffled through beskar and never once direct now lands in your chest like a hand and you sob – sob into the scream.
He’s there, with both hands and a bare face and the helmet set down on the deck beside him forgotten, and his mouth is right at your ear.
"I'm here. I’m here… push. Push, mesh'la, push with it, push into it, that's it, that's it…"
You push, but it’s not a decision. It’s what the body does when there’s no other option. You bear down with everything you are and the noise that comes out of you is nothing you’ve ever made before – a long, low opening sound from somewhere underneath your ribs. And he’s there at the other end of you with his hands on the insides of your thighs and the unfiltered voice in your ear and you push and push, and the wave releases you, allowing you to fall back, gasping against the slope of the bulkhead as he wipes your face with his palm.
“Good, that’s good…”
"Din…"
"I'm here."
"I can't."
"You can."
"I can't, I…"
"You can, mesh'la, you are. She's right there, I can see her, I can see her, I can see her hair…"
"Her…her hair?"
"It’s dark like mine. I can see it, cyar'ika. Look at me."
You look at his face, at the wet eyes and wet cheeks and realise he’s crying. You haven’t understood, somehow, that his face could cry – you know his shoulders cry, you know his hands cry, but the face is new and the face is crying.
"One more, maybe two, you hear me? She’s right here. You’re going to push her out and I’m going to catch her and you’re going to hold her. You. First. You hear me?"
"I hear you…"
"Good girl, good girl. Here it comes, breathe – there – push."
You push and the world becomes only the push, only the long, deep terrible work of it, only the burn between your legs and the pressure that’s gone past pressure into something the body has no word for. His hands are there, and his face is there, and somewhere in the middle of it you hear him sob, a real sob, the unfiltered, helpless, wet sound of a man crying.
And you push, and you push, and you push, and…then there’s a slip – a great, hot, terrible, relieving slip, and the pressure breaks, the wave breaks, and you fall back gasping against the slope, the world silent for one suspended, endless second.
Then a thin, furious squall fills the wrecked hold of the Crest – tiny, outraged and alive.
You don't know if you’re laughing or sobbing and think it might somehow be both. He’s sobbing too, you can hear him, his hands full of something small and slick and dark-haired and moving and he laughs through the sobbing.
"Cyar'ika…cyar'ika…. cyar’ika."
"Give her to me…"
"Wait…wait, let me…the cord, I have to…wait, mesh'la."
You wait and watch as he works fast, hands shaking, the kit-clamps coming up off the blanket and applied to the cord with brisk efficiency, and then the small folding blade from his belt cuts clean between, and she’s separate, a small, furious, dark-haired thing with her mouth open and her eyes screwed shut and her tiny fists already up by her cheeks.
He lays her on your chest, naked, slick and warm, then pulls the thermal blanket up over both of you, tucking it in around her shoulders and the back of her head and you realise he’s laughing and crying.
"There…there she is. There she is. Hi, ad'ika. Hi… shh, shh, shh…"
She’s wet and warm, impossibly small and impossibly heavy, heavier than a thing that small has any right to be. Her cheeks move against the bare skin above your heart and her mouth opens, her cry going from outraged squall to confused snuffling. You wrap both arms around her and press your face into the wet, dark hair on her tiny crown and sob, openly, helplessly, into the smell of her.
"Din…"
"I know."
"Din, she's…"
"I know. I know, mesh'la, I know."
He bends and presses his mouth against your forehead, warm and wet from his own tears, and he kisses you there, long and hard and shaking before kissing the top of her head and murmuring something in Mando'a that you don't have the language for, but don't need to.
Then he straightens and the work-voice comes back.
"Cyar'ika, I have to keep going. There's…the placenta. There's bleeding. I have to…I have to see you. Hold her against you, skin against skin, that's what the book said. It'll help the both of you. I'm going to work, alright?"
You nod wordlessly.
"Talk to her while I work."
You talk, even though you don’t really know what you say. You say hello, you say I've got you, you say we did it, we did it, baby, we did it, you say nonsense and you press your lips to her hair and breathe her in. Somewhere down at the other end of you Din works fast and careful, his hands gentle and methodical with his face set in the close focus you have, until tonight, only ever read through a visor.
You feel the second, smaller delivery come and feel him catch it. He grunts, soft and satisfied, then continues working between your thighs, inspecting carefully before pressing a clean pad of bandage.
"There’s some tearing, but it’s small. I can…I can patch it. You're not bleeding bad, cyar'ika. You're going to be alright."
"I know."
You’re crying again and he’s crying whilst your baby is snuffling against your chest, her tiny mouth working, her tiny fist curling and uncurling. The leaf-light moves through the hole in the hull in long, slow, dappled bands across the wrecked deck and, somewhere outside, birds are still singing.
He works methodically, cleaning you with warm water from the kit canteen and a sterile pad. He applies the sealant in a thin, clean line where the tearing is then retrieves a second thermal blanket and lays it over your legs. He checks the bleeding again, then again, then a third time, his face hard with concentration, his eyes flicking up to yours every fifteen seconds to make sure you’re still here. He gets a small pillow under your hips then lifts the canteen up to your mouth, tips it for you and you drink, two long swallows, the water the best thing you think you’ve ever tasted.
Then he half-collapses, the bad leg finally giving, and drags himself up the slope of the bulkhead until he’s sitting beside you, his shoulder against yours, his arm around you and the baby both, his face turned in toward her head.
For a long moment you both just breathe. The thin squall has quieted as she’s found, against your chest, the warm, steady rhythm of your heart, and has decided, for the moment, that it’s enough. Her tiny eyes have opened – unfocused but open – and she’s here, and you and Din are still here, and the Crest is broken open around you and full of moving leaf-light and all three of you, against all reasonable odds, are alive.
"Try her,” he says softly. “See if she'll latch. It'll help… it helps with the bleeding. The book said..."
"You and that book."
"I read it twice."
"Of course you did."
You shift her carefully, both of you fumbling, and after a minute of small, frantic snuffling and one tiny, outraged squeak she finds your breast. Her tiny mouth opens and closes, then you feel a small, startling tug, sharp, strange and unmistakable, then a long, slow, steady drawing that you feel in your chest and somewhere lower, deep, a contracting pull that you realise, distantly, is the help he was talking about, the thing that closes you back down.
You both laugh and he bows his head against your temple.
"There," he murmurs. "There…my good girls. This is the Way."
You stay there a long time. She feeds, stops then feeds again whilst the leaf-light shifts outside and the birds sing on. Somewhere far away there’s a sound that might be water. Din's arm is around your shoulders, his hand cupped under the baby's back, supporting her, his cheek resting against the side of your head, his breath coming slow and warm against your hair.
She finishes, her tiny mouth slackening, her eyes closing. The fist against your chest opens, fingers splayed, and rests there, palm flat, the way a small animal rests when it’s decided it’s safe.
The hold is very quiet. All you can hear are the breaths of three people – you, Din and the impossible miracle of a thing that was inside you an hour ago now breathing the air of a planet you don’t know the name of.
You turn your head slowly, against his shoulder, and look at him, properly, for the first time.
He’s not what you expected, but he isn’t not what you expected either. He’s just…him. The face fits the voice and the hands and the careful set of the shoulders the way a key fits a lock you’ve been carrying in your pocket without quite knowing.
His dark hair is longer than you would have guessed, falling across his forehead in a damp curl that, even now, you find searingly attractive. His beard is close, dark and shot through, at the chin, with the first few threads of grey you’ve not known were there and his mouth is wider than the modulator makes it sound.
There’s a small constellation of faint scars along the line of his jaw, and his eyes are darker than you thought they would be. And they are, right now, looking at you, full of something that’s been building behind a visor and that has now, all at once, nowhere to hide.
He looks tired – so tired. He looks like a man who’s flown his ship through atmosphere with a hole in her hull and brought her down on a planet he can’t name and delivered his first child on a wrecked deck with a torn-open leg and is, finally, allowing his body to register the cost.
He looks like a man who is, despite all of that, in this moment, the happiest he’s ever been in his life.
"Hi," he says, softly.
"Hi."
"You're looking at me."
“Yes.”
"Well?"
You can't speak so you shake your head, smiling, wet, lift the hand that isn't supporting the baby, and set it against his cheek. You stroke your thumb across his jaw and his eyes close, slowly, his mouth turning into your palm. He kisses the centre of it, and you feel the brush of his lashes against the base of your thumb and almost stop breathing.
"You’re so handsome,” you whisper and he chuckles self-deprecatingly.
“You thought I’d resemble an Ugnaught?”
“Mm…I was thinking more like an Ewok.”
You both laugh again and then you look at him a long time. He sits there with his cheek in your palm and his eyes closed and the leaf-light moving over the planes of his face letting you look – letting you memorise. The line of the brow. The hollow at the temple where a vein moves. The small fine grain of the skin at the corner of the eye where it’s crinkled for years inside a helmet without anyone to see. The shape of the mouth.
You want to kiss his mouth. You want to kiss it more than you’ve wanted to do almost anything, and you’re too tired, and the baby is on your chest, and you settle, instead, for stroking your thumb across his bottom lip and watching him open his eyes for you.
He looks at you with something that, in the moment, you don’t have the vocabulary to name. Later – much later – you’ll think it was grief, or something that had a piece of grief in it. In the moment you only see the dark, wet eyes and the small, soft, warm smile and the tiny tremor at the corner of his mouth, and you think it’s exhaustion, and overwhelm, and the simple, impossible weight of having just become a father in a wrecked ship on a planet he doesn’t know.
You think it’s love.
It is love. You’ll never doubt that it’s love. But it’s…
It’s…
The thought comes slowly, the way a cold thing comes into warm water. You don't, at first, recognise it as a thought, rather more like a shadow at the edge of vision. A small wrongness. A something that doesn’t quite fit in the warm, dim hold full of leaf-light and birdsong and a sleeping baby on your chest.
You stroke his cheek again and feel the beard and the warm skin.
I am the only person alive who has touched this face.
I am the only person alive who has seen this face.
I am the only person alive…
This is the Way.
The cold reaches your chest, and you go very still.
He sees it. His face – the face that you can read now, the face that has been a visor for more than a year and is, suddenly, an open thing under your palm – goes through three small fractional shifts in quick succession.
First, the small dimming of the smile. Second, the small focusing of the brows. Third, the slow careful drop of the eyes from yours to the baby on your chest, and then back to yours, and then – somewhere underneath the dark, wet eyes – the smallest possible hardening, the closing of a door you didn’t, until now, know he had behind his face.
You stop stroking his cheek, but your hand stays there.
"Din," you whisper.
He doesn't answer.
"Din…the Creed."
His eyes close, slowly, mouth tightening. He turns his face just enough to press a kiss to the heel of your palm – soft, careful, the kind of kiss a man gives a thing he’s about to lose – and when he opens his eyes again they’re looking at you with all of the love and all of the grief and all of the impossible terrible weight of the thing he’s done, and the thing he now has to do, and the thing that has, in the last hour, been quietly waiting for the moment of calm in which to arrive.
"Cyar'ika…”
"Din, the Creed says…if anyone sees…"
"I know what it says."
"Din…"
"I know what it says, mesh'la, I know."
You stare at him and he stares back. The baby sighs in her sleep with a tiny, snuffling outbreath. Her dark hair, now drying in the warm thermal-blanketed air, is beginning to lift in soft fine wisps off the crown of her head.
She’s seen him too.
She’s seen him too.
You feel your whole body go cold and you drop your hand from his cheek. It falls into your lap, useless, and your other arm tightens, instinctively, helplessly, around the warm sleeping weight of your daughter.
Her. Her too.
"Din." Your voice goes thin. "Din, she…she…"
He doesn't speak.
"Din, she's seen you too."
His eyes close again and he bows his head. His forehead comes down, slowly, gently, against your temple, and his hand rises and cups the back of the baby's head where it rests against your chest, and he holds her there, gently.
"I know," he says softly.
"No," you whisper.
He lifts his head from your temple, his eyes finding yours.
"Cyar'ika…”
"No."
"Mesh'la, listen…"
"No. No, Din, no, no, no…!"
You start to shake, the baby shifting, fretful, disturbed by the sudden tension in the body she’s sleeping on, and you tighten your arm around her which only makes you shake harder. You can’t stop the small sounds coming out of you, the small, high, broken sounds that aren’t quite words.
His face goes white and his hand comes off the back of the baby's head as though her skin has burned him, lifts, and hangs in the air a foot from her, whilst he stares at you, mouth open.
"Don't take her," you whisper. "Don't take her from me, please. Please, I'll go. I'll go right now. I'll go and I'll never come back and I'll never tell anyone, I won't tell anyone what you look like, I won't tell anyone, I'll take her away…I'll take her away somewhere and I'll raise her and I'll never speak your name again. I'll change my name. You can tell Karga I died in the crash, that we both died, you can…you can…Din, please, don't hurt her, don't hurt me in front of her, don't…please…!"
"Cyar'ika..."
His voice cracks on the word and suddenly he moves, his bad leg dragging, both bare hands coming up to cup your face, his eyes right in front of yours.
"No…no….no, mesh'la, no, no, no, listen to me, listen to me. Look at me, look at me, look at me."
"Din…"
"Look at me!"
His face is right there, inches from yours, his hand warm on your cheeks. He’s shaking now too and his eyes are streaming, freely, the tears running down into his beard.
"Never. Never, never, mesh'la, never. Do you hear me? You have to hear me. You have to hear me, cyar'ika, you have to…look at me…never. I would die. I would die, do you understand? I would die before I lifted a hand to either of you… cyar'ika, look at me. Never, not in any creed, not in any code, not in any galaxy. Never. Never."
"But the Creed…"
"Fuck the Creed!"
It comes out of him like a thing torn loose, like a thing that’s been sitting on his chest and has, finally, found a way out. His thumbs sweep, hard, across your wet cheeks. His forehead comes down against yours and presses there, hard.
“Fuck the Creed. Fuck the Creed, mesh'la, fuck it before I do anything to either of you, fuck it before I do anything to anyone in this hold. Do you hear me? The Creed doesn’t say to kill you. The Creed has never said to kill you. The Creed says… the Creed says I’m not to be seen, and I’ve been seen, and that is a thing that has happened to me, not a thing that I am to do to you, do you understand the difference, cyar'ika? Tell me you understand the difference."
You can't speak. All you can do is shake your head under the press of his forehead, as his hands tighten on your face, his breath hot and uneven against your mouth.
"There’s a way."
"What…?"
"There’s a way, mesh'la. There’s always been a way. Listen to me…are you listening?"
"I'm…I'm listening, Din…"
"On Mandalore."
He stops and swallows. The baby wakes again, snuffling, troubled, and his hand leaves your cheek and comes down to cup the back of her head, steadying her against you, his thumb stroking once, soft, against the wisp of her hair.
"On Mandalore, there are waters under the ground in the mines. They’re called the Living Waters, cyar'ika. They’re older than the Creed, older than anything. There’s a…a rite. There’s always been a rite. If a Mandalorian…if a Mandalorian has been apostate, if a Mandalorian has broken the Creed, if a Mandalorian has shown his face… there’s a way back. There’s always been a way back. He bathes in the Living Waters, he says the words, he emerges, and he’s reconciled. Do you understand? The Way is not a…it’s not a trap. It’s a path. And every path has a way back onto it, even mine. Even mine, mesh'la, even after tonight."
You sob helplessly, the baby fretting against your chest.
"You can…. you can go back?"
"I can go back."
"You can…"
"I can go back. I can be reconciled. I can put the helmet on again with a clean creed, mesh'la. I can do it if I want to. And until I can, until I get the chance, I’ll simply not be seen by anyone else. The helmet goes on the second any other living thing comes within a klick of this wreck. The helmet goes on for Karga and for Vesha and for every soul on Nevarro and every soul in this galaxy. The only two beings who have seen my face will be the two beings in this hold. And when the time comes, if I want to, I’ll go to Mandalore, go down into the mines and walk into those waters with all of it on me and I’ll come back out with a clean creed, and the helmet will go back on, and that will be the end of it – if I want to.”
He takes a breath.
There’s no killing. There’s never been any killing. Where did you…where did you get that, mesh'la, where…?"
"I just…I thought… you never told me about the Waters, you never…"
"I should have. I should have told you. I just…cyar'ika, I’m sorry. I would never hurt you – never hurt her – please tell me you believe that.”
He pulls back just enough to look you in the face. His eyes are red and streaming, the lashes spiked with wet and his hand is still on the back of the baby's head and his other is back on your face, his thumb sweeping, hard, across your cheekbone, as he searches you, the way a man searches a sky for one star.
"Do you believe me?"
"Din…"
"Cyar'ika, look at me. Do you believe me?"
You look at him, at the wet dark eyes and the threads of grey at the chin and the long, terrible love in all of it. You look at his hand cradling the back of your baby's head, at the way he has not, since the panic took you, stopped touching her – the way he is, even now, still holding her against you, still steadying her, still gentle, the hand of a man who has never in his life raised it to a child and could no more do it tonight than he could stop the suns.
"I believe you," you whisper.
His face breaks open. The fragile careful composure he’s been holding through the crash and the labour and the delivery and the cord-cutting and the bandaging and the explanation – the fragile careful composure of a man being needed – finally cracks, and he drops his forehead back to yours and sobs, openly, helplessly, the great shuddering wet sobs of a man who’s been afraid that the woman he loves believes he’s going to murder her.
"Mesh'la…"
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Din. I'm sorry, I…I wasn't thinking, I was…I was just so tired, and she's so small, and you…you just…"
"I know, I know, I know...."
"And I love you. I love you, I love your face, I love your face, Din, please don't…"
"I'm not going anywhere, mesh'la, I'm right here, I'm right here, I'm…karking hell, cyar'ika…"
He laughs, wet and broken into your forehead and you laugh into his and the baby on your chest, finally, lets out one small, fretful squall and his hand moves, instinctively, down her back in a slow soothing stroke, and she settles, the way a thing settles when it’s decided the hand that is on it is a safe hand.
"Hush, ad'ika, hush. Your buir and buir are having a moment."
You laugh, hard and wet and he laughs back. He kisses your forehead then pulls back and wipes his face roughly with the back of his bare wrist, and the small fractional shift happens behind his eyes that you’ve learned to read in his shoulders.
"Alright," he says, his voice gathering itself back to its proper task. "Alright, listen, mesh'la. We have to think. Are you with me?"
"I'm with you."
"Good girl, stay with me. I have to think out loud. Sometimes it helps. You tell me if I miss anything."
"I'll tell you."
He shifts, dragging himself back up into the half-sitting position against the slope of the bulkhead, his bad leg out long in front of him, his arm coming back around you and the baby. His other hand stays on her, his thumb moving in the slow soothing stroke that has, somehow, become automatic, the absent unconscious gesture of a man who’s had a daughter for thirty minutes and has already learned the rhythm of the thing.
"First, where we are."
"You don't know."
"I don't know. I…when the first hit took the navicomp the screens went. I was flying her down on visual through atmospheric scatter and I was looking for anything green. I picked the biggest patch of green I could see and aimed for it. The biggest patch of green is…it's some forest or swamp somewhere in the system. We were three jumps from Nevarro. So, we’re somewhere within… somewhere within probably four parsecs of Nevarro. That's a lot of space, a lot of planets."
"Inhabited?"
"I don't know yet. We came down in trees. Trees mean atmosphere, atmosphere means probably habitable, habitable means probably settled somewhere, but not necessarily near us. We could be a thousand klicks from the nearest settlement, or we could be ten and then there’s that smell…”
You pause and inhale, tasting something for the first time that you haven’t noticed before – something that tastes vaguely familiar and yet you push it down because it just can’t be what you think it is.
"Second…” he carries on. “The Crest. It’s…I haven't been forward yet, so I don't know what's left up there. The cockpit took at least one hit before atmosphere, maybe two. The nav is gone, I know that. The long-range comm may or may not be intact. I need to look. There’s a chance – a small chance – that the long-range is up and I can punch a beacon to Karga. There’s also a chance the long-range may be on the ground in a tree somewhere a klick from here. I have to look."
"What about the attacker?"
He goes still.
"What about them?"
"Din, whoever shot us down must have seen us go down. They know where the wreck is. They…they could be coming."
His jaw works, the small ripple under the beard at the hinge of it, the small clench that you have, until tonight, only ever read through the helmet's slight forward tilt.
"Maybe," he says. "Maybe, yes…probably. I’ve been trying not to think about it but yes, probably. They hit us hard and that wasn't a random pirate sweep, mesh'la. That was a hunt. Which means someone is going to want to confirm the put-down."
"How long?"
"I don’t know. It depends on whether they have atmospheric craft or only the fighter. It depends on whether they tracked us through the burn and whether there's anyone on this planet for the ground search. It could be hours or days. It could be never, if we're remote enough and they decide the crash itself killed us. But I’m not going to plan for never, cyar'ika. I'm going to plan for hours. So, priorities."
He counts on his fingers.
"One – comm. I get forward, assess the cockpit and try the long-range. If it works, I punch a beacon to Karga. If it doesn’t, I rip the unit, bring it back here and see what I can do with the kit. Two – threat. I assess the wreck from outside and see what's around us. Trees, swamp, terrain, sightlines, water source – you heard the water too?"
"I heard it. I think it's a stream."
"Good, a stream means we have drinking water. A stream also means cover and a way to move if we need to move. Three – defence. If we have hours, I set the wreck for defence. There are still weapons in the locker, I haven't checked yet, but the locker was aft and the aft is intact. Four – you and her. I’m not moving you for at least a day, mesh'la. You just gave birth on a deck-plate. You’re bleeding and exhausted and neither of you are getting up. The two of you will stay in this nest and I’ll bring the universe to you, do you understand?"
"Din, your leg…"
"It’ll hold."
“But…”
"It’ll hold, cyar'ika. I've sealed it and it’s not bleeding. I won't run a marathon on it, but it’ll hold. I have to be able to move and I will, but you will not – promise me.”
"I promise."
"Good."
He breathes and looks down at both you. Then he bends and presses his mouth to the baby’s head and straightens again.
"I'm going to go forward now."
"Alright."
He reaches for the helmet where it still sits on the deck beside him. The dim red light of the auxiliary glows against the dome. He lifts it, looks at it for one suspended second, and then he looks back at you.
"This is not…this is not me leaving you, mesh'la. This is not me hiding from you. The helmet’s going on because I’m going forward and the cockpit’s open to the sky and there could be eyes already. The helmet goes on for them, not for you. The second I come back through the hatch, and it’s just us, it comes off."
“I understand, but Din…”
He waits.
“Will you kiss me, just once, before you put it back on?”
His face softens imperceptibly and, without any hesitation, he leans back down and presses his mouth to yours. It’s familiar in the way it was that one night you had in the hold – the night you believe you created your daughter – and you press back, a small, satisfied sound leaving your throat.
He pulls back and kisses the tip of your nose. “There can be more of that later.”
He puts the helmet back on and you watch his face disappear behind the dark T of the visor and feel something complicated in your chest. A small, unexpected grief at losing him again, and the deeper recognition that he’s not lost. He’s the same man, the helmet is the same helmet, and now you know what’s in it.
Now you know the dark hair and the dark eyes and the threads of grey at the chin. Now when the helmet looks at you, you’ll see them. The helmet is no longer a wall. The helmet is a window with the curtains drawn, and you’re on the inside of the curtain with him.
You watch as he pulls on the remainder of his armour, the gloves the last piece to be fitted. Then he reaches out and cups your cheek, the leather warm, the visor tipping down to you.
"If you hear anything – anything that isn't me – you stay flat and keep her quiet. There's a blaster in the kit-pouch on the right side. You put your hand on it, and you wait. You don’t call out and you don’t move. Even if you hear me. Especially if you hear me. You wait until you see me, understand?”
"Yes."
"Tell me where the blaster is."
"Kit-pouch on the right side."
"Good girl."
He pulls the personal comm he carries for short range from his belt, the one paired to the unit in the helmet, and tucks it gently into the blanket-fold by your hip.
"That's on and open. If you need me, you press it once and I’ll hear you. Don't speak unless you have to. Press it once if you're alright and just want me. Press it twice if something’s wrong. Press and hold if you can’t speak and I come running, okay?"
“You can’t run.”
“Cyar’ika…”
"One, two, hold."
"Good."
He bends and the beskar presses, briefly, against your forehead. Then the visor tips down to your baby and he presses it to the top of her head too.
"Hold the line, ad'ika, I'll be back."
Then he’s moving, the bad leg dragging, the cuirass scraping faintly against twisted deck-plate. He goes forward through the canted bulkhead-door into the dim, red corridor and disappears around the bend toward the cockpit.
The hold goes quiet around you, and you’re alone with your daughter for the first time, your life split open in so many ways.
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