Mar'eyce: Chapter 13
Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Mando OC Kaiyah Awaud
Word Count: 4.5k
Rating: M, 18+, no younglings. This is a mature fic.
Warnings: Language, canon typical violence, no beta, too much Mando'a, and Gideon.
Author’s Note: This covers The Believer and some of The Rescue. I apologize in advance for the weird formatting (dumb only ten images a post rule) and... The rest of it.
Summary: Din wasn’t sure how to respond to Mayfeld’s statement, but he knew he was wrong. He wasn’t desperate, just different.
Read from the beginning: Mar'eyce Masterlist
If you asked Din Djarin, The Mandalorian bounty hunter, and leader of his clan what the past fifty-two hours entailed he wouldn’t be able to tell you. Not anything past the terror and rage. His absolute determination to do what needed to be done as quickly as possible. Then Morak happened and Din didn’t think he could ever forget that.
Mayfeld was running his mouth, talking about ruling and being ruled. That Mandalorians were no different than the Empire, the wars and bloodshed all meaning the same thing. Power, undiluted and incorruptible. It was strikingly black-and-white for someone so grey. Din knew Mayfeld was wrong, that Mandalore fell because of the Empire, the weak rulers, not because of what Mandalorians were or believed. Din knew Arumorut and the Mandalorians there, that their power came from the people and the trust they had in their leader. Mandalore never had that, at least in his lessons.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Din had never been one to listen to ramblings and Mayfeld’s conjecture about his life and people was grating. “You and I are nothing alike.”
“I don’t know. Seems to me like our rules start to change when you get desperate. I mean, look at ya. You said you couldn’t take your helmet off, and now you gotta stormtrooper one on so what’s the rule? Is it that you can’t take off your Mando helmet, or that you can’t show your face? ‘Cause there is a difference.”
Mayfeld was somewhat right, Din was different now then he had been when they first met. He was learning about different Creeds and mandokar, something Kaiyah talked about all the time.
To her, the right stuff is what made Mandalorians and making sure you were worthy of it, working on mandokarla, was the most important thing. If a Mandalorian was wearing armor without mandokar, that was where she would step in. If they weren’t honorable, loyal, or a defender then they were dar’manda and didn’t need their armor. For Kaiyah it was simple, she was all those things so she was Mandalorian.
Din was trying to meet her in the middle, relax a little, but every time he would try to eat with her - the easiest way for him to break the ice - Kaiyah would look away, leave the room, obviously give him space. He appreciated the gesture and under normal circumstances it would be a non-issue, but this was his soulmate. Someone he cared for, deeply, and wanted to share things with them. He had given her his name, the one that he would share with her someday and while he was nervous about showing his face to someone for the first time in thirty years, he was… Excited.
Din had The Covert, people to share in the collective highs and lows, but this was going to be his clan. His person, the one that would be there for all of them. They wouldn’t be separated by Jedi, exposure, nothing would take Kaiyah away from him. It was why he had to get her back. She was his and he was hers.
Din wasn’t sure how to respond to Mayfeld’s statement, but he knew he was wrong. He wasn’t desperate, just different.
"Mrs. Djarin? Mrs. Djarin, there you are. I have to say, regardless of the circumstances, I am very pleased to meet you. My name is Moff Gideon."
Kaiyah blinked away the bleariness from her eyes, shaking her head slightly to knock away the double vision. The Imp in front her containment field, Gideon, is not one she had ever met before. The dark skin, greying hair, and lanky armored body did nothing to jog her memory but the name itched in the back of her mind. Din mentioned him, once and only once with minimal detail. He was ex-ISB with a vendetta against Mandalore and supposed to be dead on Nevarro, blown up by a detonator on his TIE fighter.
Gideon looms over her from her prone position despite the crimson electrical field. Kaiyah gets the first good look of herself since she was taken hostage on the light cruiser as she went to stand. She’s armorless, not surprising, but Gideon has left her with nothing. No gloves, no boots, her hair is out of the braided style she usually wore it in.
Gideon cocks his head in mock worry, a frown on his face, “Are you missing something, Mrs. Djarin?”
Kaiyah doesn’t deign to respond. It’s rhetorical and stupid. It's also not Kaiyah's first time in integration and probably wouldn't be the last. She does what she was taught and keeps her fucking mouth shut.
"You know what happens to snitches!"
She’s just had her first encounter with a Imp officer. She didn’t say anything, she promises, she pinky swears. They caught her, she didn’t see them, it was an accident.
"Ro, stop. Secrets keep us safe. All of us."
Even at eight, Kaiyah and Ro understand the weight of what's being unsaid.
The Rebels we do and don't know.
Ba'buir.
Armurot.
Civilians.
It is heavy, the silence, the knowledge, that if they let anything slip it would mean ruination.
"Say nothing and do less."
So that's what she does. This Imp won’t get an ounce of her, no reactions, he will use it all against her on the chessboard that is - at least in his mind - diplomacy.
“How was your rest, Mrs. Djarin?”
She looks the Imp right in the eye, letting them marinate in the silence until he breaks it.
“Well,” Gideon smacks his lips, looking almost confused at her muteness. “Our medics had to take off the armor to set your wrist. Nasty thing, a compound fracture in your forearm from the detonation. Mandalorians will do anything for family, won’t they?”
She can’t help the twitch that goes through her body when the Moff family. He has Grogu here, she knows he does. Who else would be after him besides this piece of garbage? Gideon was a big gun, someone who got things done according to Din.
He smiles at her reaction a slow, too-wide thing, “You’ll be happy to know the armor is safe, as is The Child. So safe in fact, that it’s right here with you. Now I can’t make the same promise for your armor as I can for him, but let’s call this a token of my good will.” The Imp flicked his cape to the side, showing a standing case full of her armor, the red light making her armor seem darker. Red and maroon instead of orange and purple. Honor and power instead of shereshoy and luck, all polished and put together it looked almost like a memorial or a shrine.
“I’ll see you soon, Mrs. Djarin.”
Drinking with Valin Hess was the worst experiences of Din’s life. He didn’t like drinking under normal circumstances, it left him feeling disoriented and exposed. Now, he was feeling that way for an entirely different reason. He barely took off the armor to sleep and shower, preferring to keep most of it on or near him in case of an emergency. The only person to see his face, besides himself, in three decades was a melted down IG unit on the lava flats of Nevarro and now a mess hall full of Imperial officers.
“I could blather on about ‘to health’ or ‘to success’, but I’d like to do somethin’ a little less rote. Where you from, Brown Eyes?” Hess asked, looking Din straight in the eyes. The only person to ever get it right over the years was Kaiyah, everyone else veered a little too far to the right.
Din had a lump in his throat the size of Coruscant and has dry as Tattooine, he had been burning all day. The burning in his wrist from Tython was gone, replaced by nicks and scrapes in his fingertips from something - more than likely someone hurting Kaiyah. Gideon was going to take her only weapons from her, healing her, then doing it again.
“How ‘bout a toast to Operation Cinder?” Mayfeld shrugged.
The two Imperials reminisced, though that would be a strong word for it. The sharpshooter was getting angrier with each passing second and Hess was getting suspicious. This wasn’t where Din wanted to be, needed to be. They needed to be on Fett’s ship, they needed to be gone, they needed to get his aliit and this was unnecessary.
Din tried to get Mayfeld to back off, shaking his head. If they could just toast, drink, and leave then Mayfeld could do whatever he wanted. Din didn’t care if he killed the Imperial in his sleep, blew up the mine, just as long as they kept it quiet and fast here right now.
That didn’t happen, of course it didn’t when Hess started rambling about freedom and order and power yet again. The only thing he didn’t expect was Mayfeld to shoot the man right in the chest, in the middle of the mess with a million witnesses.
The Imp was back.
Kaiyah had been marking time through the vents. Every six hours, without fail, some kind of air would start pushing through the vents. The rush of air was her only companion as she looked at her armor. She cataloged every piece with her own eyes, getting as close as she dared to the warbling field. She named every piece in Basic, Mando’a, and every other language she knew, then did it backwards. Kaiyah wandered around her half of the divided cell, not that there was much to see. A bench long enough for her to lay down on, to the right a toilet and some kind of rainfall spout, no shower head or handle. If they wanted her to bathe the Imp would have to give the order and let water fall through clear to the lower floors.
In a strange way, Kaiyah was flattered. They really pulled out all the stops to make sure she couldn’t escape. Or get to Grogu. Or Din. Well, she could always get to Din, it would just be painful on both ends and cause unnecessary panic.
As she paced in time with the seconds she counted in her head - never out loud, saying nothing and doing less - Gideon entered during the third vent cycle.
“Su cuy'gar, Mrs. Djarin.”
Kaiyah didn’t stop her pacing, even though Mando’a was coming out of this barve. He didn’t deserve to speak it, he shouldn’t even know it, but she couldn’t do anything about it now.
“I apologize for our less than optimal dinner services. Please, sit. Don’t stand on ceremony on account of myself.”
Out of her peripheral she watched as a trooper set up a travel desk and set down two trays, one on the desk the other on the floor. “Red gourd soup with haarshun bread. To drink we have kri’gee, all the things to remind you of home,” Gideon explained before he began digging into his food. He didn’t spare Kaiyah a glance as he pushed the tray through the red divider using the toe of his boot. By the time it got to her side the food was charred and the liquor was gone leaving only a smoking, super heated mess.
Gideon grimaced looking down at the bowl, “It doesn’t taste the same. It never does with Imperial cooks. They just don’t get draluram the way Ordo did.” He looked up at that moment, seemingly embarrassed about a faux pas he meant to make. Ordo was a Mandalorian name for a Mandalorian clan and Gideon didn’t seem like the kind of Imp who made mistakes, unless it was on purpose.
Waving away the tension he created, Gideon continued, “He was my personal chef, in another life. He could make anything and I took full advantage of that.”
He stayed for nine hundred seconds, fifteen minutes, eating in silence until he wiped the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin and stood, bowing shallowly to Kaiyah, “Ret'urcye mhi, Mrs. Djarin.”
Kaiyah waited for five minutes by her count until she started poking around. She wasn’t entirely sure of the schedule the Moff was setting up but he wouldn’t be coming back this cycle, there was no reason to. He had played his hand and would try again tomorrow, at least Kaiyah hoped by the display he made. Stripping her of her armor, eating her food, speaking her language, Gideon was planning to disrupt her or get her angry. It felt like he was digging for something, but what she didn’t know what.
He could always try to throw her off in other ways, visit her once an hour or send someone to check on her, he could make sure she was never alone and he more than likely had a video feed. Kaiyah could see parts of his plan but not all of it and it was frustrating. It seemed like he had every step planned out for her to fall into some kind of trap but she wasn’t sure of what kind.
Her only hope was to be faster than the troopers and get to a escape pod. Din would grab her armor for her because he was coming back for her, for the both of them. From there Kaiyah could scrap the pod for parts, get them shelter and food. Din would find them, he had to. With that thought in mind she headed for the shower, the only place that had anything she could possibly use to escape.
She kept up with her counting as she dug around the drain and the shower head, pinching, twisting, pushing, and prying to get it out at the expense of a few new cuts and broken nails. Metal became hot through the field, there was a chance she could shape the metal into something else, or if it was thin and sharp enough she could use it like a throwing dagger, killing Gideon. But that was a long shot, escape first, kill the Imp second.
Without warning warm water rains from the shower through the grate, “If you would like a shower Mrs. Djarin, all you had to do was ask.”
It wasn’t Gideon, but a woman. Lower pitch, rigid language, definitely an Imp, but a woman. “Seriously? Scheduled showers?” Kaiyah asked, wet, annoyed, and embarrassed that she has to talk to someone to get basic necessities.
“Not scheduled. It’s voice activated, or, if you were feeling polite you could always ask.”
Kaiyah scoffed, “I’m not asking for a shower.”
“There are five minutes of warm water. Your meal is coming down in ten.”
Three days. Three days since Din had felt anything from Kaiyah. No new injuries, small or otherwise. He couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t think about eating, he had no ship. The only thing Din could do was think. And think. And think.
What favors could he pull in? Who was an ally? What were there strengths? There was no way that even with how good Shand and Cara were that the three of them were enough for Gideon. Peli wasn’t a fighter, neither was Karga. Not for the kind of fight they were picking. There was no way Fett was leaving his ship, the Imps would get rid of it first before picking them off and they needed a ride off the cruiser.
In his darkest moments, Din thought of killing Moff Gideon. How good it would feel, especially after that message. He knew what he was saying to the kidnapper. They meant more to him than he would ever be able to put into words. Din thought about what he would do, how he would do it. He wouldn’t take his time, that was too easy. He wouldn’t be merciful, that was for the gods. The Moff had taken Din’s family and he was going to show him pain. Make him wish for death -
“Mando? Mando, you there?” Cara asked waving a hand in front of his visor.
“Yes. You were saying?”
“Is there anyone else? Anyone we can find?”
Din shook his head as he flipped through the map of the galaxy. He couldn’t get The Covert dragged back in this, he had learned his lesson about that. If Arumorut got involved it would be Nevarro on a huge level. So many would come above ground for only the worst to happen. “No. The Covert went underground, I can’t find them before…”
No one needed to finish that sentence.
“There’s no one else? No one like myself or Boba?” Fennec questioned from her seat.
Ahsoka was gone in the wind, Din wouldn’t be able to find her again without Bo-Katan. That was it. A Mandalorian above ground and had it out for Moff Gideon. She could keep the saber all he wanted was his family, his people, safe. Din started looking through the Outer Rim and called out to Boba, “Start scanning for assaults on the Imperial Remnant. Any starships that have Mandalorian names.”
It goes that way for the next hundred or so hours. The disembodied woman would let her know when food was coming down and sent new clothes after her flight suit got soaked in her first ‘shower’. Gideon showed up for the third meal, which Kaiyah assumed was dinner, without fail, every day.
On her third day, if it could even be called that, she broke. Nothing was working, the grates were welded to the floor, water was worthless against electricity, the panels on the wall held nothing besides bulbs, she couldn’t even find the speaker that the Imp was talking through. She couldn’t do anything if she tried.
“So why the Empire?”
“Why the Rebellion?” the woman asked.
“What the Empire was doing was wrong. Subjugation is wrong. People deserve to live their lives free.”
“That’s rich coming from a Mandalorian.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Kaiyah gritted out.
“Well, your kind fights wars based on nothing for nothing. Your planet is glass. Your kind has never fought for anything but scraps of land for a title that doesn’t even exist anymore.”
Kaiyah couldn’t argue against that. The Mandalore Mandos did do that, between Death Watch and the New Mandalorians there wasn’t much left. Arumorut was easy: respect The Creed and you can stay. Don’t be a shitty person and you can stay. If you weren’t, well, it wasn’t like Ba’buir Nejaa would let them leave and tell everyone about them. They did what they had to to protect their aliits.
“The Moff will be dining with you in five minutes.”
Din watched as Cara walked off the passenger ship carrying Pershing. The pilot deserved to be shot for mocking her pain. There was no way to cope with that kind of loss besides marching on. Hoping that you do something to see them all again.
Selfishly, Din wished that he could have something that Cara did. Something that would kill that kind of pain, he knew it after Nevarro and while he was too small to remember Mandalore he had heard the stories. He wished it for Kaiyah too, he had seen her laugh off too many glassy eyed looks and thousand meter stares. Heard her nightmares and commiserated in her pain. He wished that they both had something to suffocate, kill that feeling, fill that gaping, sucking wound and be whole again.
Kaiyah was losing her mind. She had to be. She was laughing at an Imp’s joke. This was rock bottom. Insanity. There was no coming back from this.
“I know, it’s awful. It was my brother’s favorite joke, it’s so stupid.”
“No, don’t say that. It’s pretty good, honestly. Where’s your brother stationed?” Kaiyah asked as she wiped the corners of her eyes trying to remember how to breathe again. The two had been doing this since their first conversation. Kaiyah would usually start rambling because it was boring as hell to be stuck there and the Imp wasn’t Gideon so it was a plus in her book. There were no deep questions after their first conversation, both choosing to keep details vague and anecdotes funny.
There was a pause, “He was on the second Death Star.”
Even though Kaiyah was the only one in the room it still felt like all the air was sucked out of it. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be, he’s not dead. I know it. We’re twins, I would know if something happened to him.”
The ache twisted farther in Kaiyah’s gut. She knew where the Imp was coming from. She could find Ro anywhere, at anytime. She could feel him like a limb, if he was gone she would know. “I get it,” Kaiyah cleared her throat. “I’m a twin too.”
“Really? I feel like it’s rare to meet one, I never have before.”
“Yeah, it’s kinda crazy, they ended up having twins too. Just carrying the family line,” Kaiyah laughed.
“You don’t have any kids?”
Her fists clenched on top of her knees, “I do. You have him.”
“The Moff will dining with you in ten minutes.”
It didn’t feel like ten minutes. It felt like eternity and the blink of an eye, her perception was all skewed even as she kept count. Seconds were nothing if you had no comparison.
Bes'bev blared through the speakers and Kaiyah jumped up at the sound. It wasn’t a particularly soothing kind of music as the end of the flute was cut off and sharpened to a point, when the bes’bev wanted to be it was shrill, demanding, and annoying. Gideon swished through the door a moment later, as he show cased a bottle of wine.
“I apologize for the late night. Some things came up, but I figured we could share a nightcap.”
Kaiyah barely held in her scoff. She didn’t know what time it was unless someone deigned to tell her. Gideon rambled about nothing, choosing to inform her all about the history of ‘this kind’ of music, where the rice was from, why its legs are more pink than true red.
Then the field turned off. Blinked out of existence and her chance at escape was in her grasp. Kaiyah charged, tucking herself for a tackle to bring Gideon down and book it to Grogu, get off this stupid ship and get safe. Then the field was up again, red hot and jumping, crackling with a frenzy. The electricity stopped her because there was no way she was stopping herself in time. Holding her forearms to her face, she gritted her teeth and made her scream a groan as too many volts swarmed through her body and she dropped to the ground.
Gideon scolded her from his seat, “I thought we were passed this. I wanted to build trust with you like you have my captain. How wrong I was, acting like the savage you are.” He pushed Kaiyah away from the field with his boot, rolling her just centimeters from the living red energy as her body recoiled.
“I’ll see you soon, Mrs. Djarin.”
Din nearly dropped to his knees in the Slave. Bo-Katan had her nose in the air as she surveyed their surroundings, Cara was taking her sweet time uploading the plans, and Pershing was fidgeting in cuffs all while Din’s stomach dropped. It had been four days. Four days of silence, no more scrapes or cuts or broken bones. Gideon got his message, Din knew he did, but he didn’t think the Moff would do something like this in retaliation.
Din needed both Kaiyah and Grogu alive. He wasn’t sure what he would do otherwise. Overlapping images swarmed his mind as he thought of who he would be without his runi. Kai was suddenly replaced with himself. It would be so easy, so understandable, to put down the armor, become a recluse, barely do the minimum it took to keep himself alive. Din wouldn’t be what Grogu needed, not that he was now, but at least the kid was safe.
What if Grogu was hurt too? Din didn’t know. He wouldn’t know until he got them back. All of a sudden the anxiety he was pushing away suffocated him. Every terrible thought, outlandish and otherwise was now a reality.
Grogu harvested of not just his blood but scrapped for parts like a droid.
Kaiyah burned to a crisp but kept alive.
Both of them sold off to slavers. Separated by two different buyers.
Neither of them there.
A fake cruiser.
Only one of them there.
Din having to choose who he would save. Kaiyah would force him to pick Grogu.
Gideon being a figment of Din’s fucked up imagination.
His breaths were getting shorter. Something was wrong with his heart. What was happening to Kaiyah? Something grabbed his shoulder and Din broke the hold, grabbing the wrist and squeezing.
“Mando, what the hell?” Cara gritted out, trying not to make a scene in front of everyone. Which was exactly was he was doing.
He dropped Cara’s hand as soon as he grabbed it, “I’m sorry. Excuse me.”
“Mrs. Djarin, we’re being boarded. They are obviously here for you,” the disembodied Imp woman sounded like she was just talking about the weather. It was impressive that she managed to sound that collected and Kaiyah told her as much.
“Thank you. It’s been a pleasure, Mrs. Djarin.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it that but -“ Kaiyah’s sentence hung in the air as the red electricity disappeared again. It had only been twelve hours by her count but she wasn’t risking getting shocked again. She had stayed curled up on her little bench far, far away from that thing.
“A group of four is heading to the bridge. Good luck.”
Not willing to bite the hand that fed her, Kaiyah took off. Her bare feet slapping against the floor as she started to pound on the control panels close to her. This was the brig, it had to be, Grogu had to be close. Plastoid clunking together alerted her before the tinny voice ever did, slipping in a alcove she pressed herself to the wall, “We’re heading to the bridge now.”
***
Din felt her before he saw her. She was somewhere nearby, not even close to the brig, this was cargo and storage. Kaiyah was right next to the Death Troopers. Moving down the hall, he followed her, feeling along this new connection before he saw her, peeking out from a corner in no armor, not even her flight suit, just some loose baggy clothes that they would give someone before medical testing or exams.
“Kaiyah!”
***
Translations:
Mandokar: the ‘right stuff’. Epitome of Mandalorian virtue, a blend of aggression, tenacity, and lust for life.
Mandokarla: having the ‘right stuff’. Usually by showing mandokar, a compliment from a Mandalorian.
Dar’manda: not being a Mandalorian, someone having lost their soul.
Shereshoy: Lust for life and much more, living life to the fullest.
Aliit: family, clan.
Su cuy'gar: Hello. Literally, you’re still alive.
Barve: Legends, slang for pig.
Red gourd soup, haarshun bread, kri’gee: Broken down, it’s basically squash soup with matzo and a malt liquor from hell. Kri’gee is awful to put down with a bitter taste, leaves you with a nasty hangover and being able to not complain about said hangover is a sign of Mandalorian fortitude.
Draluram: Vivid, used only to describe food.
Ret'urcye mhi: Goodbye, literally ‘Maybe we’ll meet again’.
Ba’buir: Grandparent
Bes'bev: A shank flute
Fun Fact: Mando wine is made with rice and grapes, it’s a red wine, kinda gives me Bordeaux vibes based on very minimal Google research, but I dunno. I don’t drink red wine it’s icky.
Osi'kyr: exclamation for surprise or dismay, I’m choosing to use this as ‘oh my, god’ but who knows if I’m right.
