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You Mean More | Din Djarin x Fem!Reader

(Part III of The Aftermath of Losing Everything)

moodboard/sketch/gifs made by me, please don’t repost :)

Summary: The plan goes as follows: Send the Mandalorian to the Imperial base under the guise of full cooperation and stall the holoprojector Imp for as long as possible. This will give you enough time to sneak in through an air vent, find a terminal, and hack the system, wiping every Imperial archive of Din Djarin's face. It should work, right? As long as no one gets hurt. (Set after S2) Rating: M Word Count: 8023 Warnings/Tags: Soft!Din, Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, no use of ‘Y/N’, non-explicit smut, canon-typical violence, blood A/N: This is what they call: the climax.

[PART I] // [PART II] // [Read on AO3] // [Series Masterlist]

xi.

As Din flies to the Imperial base, the only sounds filling the cockpit are the low beeps of the control board and the tense quiet of your voice repeating the plan for the twenty-third time. When you finally land on an icy planet, you see the base outside the viewport blending in with its snowy surroundings — white, cold, frozen in time — and two stormtroopers flanking either side of the sealed entrance.

“Check your comlink,” Din says, voice gentle and authoritative.

“Testing, testing. Cuyan to Shiny Head, do you copy?” You whisper-shout into the device, watching as his gloved hand reaches for the side of his helmet, listening to your words spoken directly into his ear. He nods.

“You’re not calling me ‘Shiny Head’ by the way.”

You want to laugh. Normally, you would. But anxiety drops low in your stomach again as you peer out to the base.

“This is going to work,” you whisper and he wonders whether you’re saying that for his sake or to convince yourself.

“Don’t leave the ship until I give you the signal,” he says, his hands grasping both of your shoulders, thumbs brushing your upper arms in gentle circles. You only nod in response, your eyes boring into the visor of his helmet, biting your lip hard enough to draw blood. When he pulls you against his chest and tightens his grip, your body sinks into his, trying to memorize how you fit together in case it’s all you have left. Too soon, he’s letting go, leaving only the crown of his helmet connected to your forehead when he echoes your words, “This is going to work.”

The moment he exits the ship, you sprint to the engine bay and pull the ship’s electro-periscope from the ceiling. Through the red-tinted binoc lens, you have a magnified view of the Mandalorian as he saunters up to the base’s entrance, not even flinching as the stormtroopers draw their blasters.

You watch his helmet turn wide to the left and swing slowly to the right, scanning the base as the troopers check his person and confiscate his blaster. The stormtroopers step back to their posts, leaving Din standing in the middle of the snow outside of a round, closed door. Waiting.

“Cuyan Two to Cuyan One,” you mutter into the comlink. “What are you seeing?”

You’re met with a long gap of static and you panic, thinking the coms are jammed, before he finally answers.

“You were right, Cuyan One,” he whispers, the hint of a smile in his voice despite the circumstances. “There’s a small duct to the left of the entrance. You’ll have to distract the guard troopers.”

“I can manage.”

“I know you can,” he says, steadfast as ever. Din believes in you without an ounce of hesitation and it makes you feel like you could command stars into existence and the galaxy would obey. “After I give the signal, go to my weapons locker. There’s a locked box at the bottom. Punch in my code and take the bag inside it with you."

“What’s in it?” You ask, watching as the doors to the base finally open, revealing another pair of stormtroopers, one with red markings on their armor. A Burner, more infamously known as an Incinerator Trooper.

“Things to keep you safe,” he answers quickly.

One of the guards gives Din’s blaster to the troopers now leading him into the base. And before the doors close, you see Din’s fingers interlock behind his back: the signal.

Focusing the periscope on the two guard troopers, you scan the area again, looking for a way to distract them without causing a scene. Aside from a patch of bushes to the right of the base, the area is blanketed in pure white snow with nothing to give you cover. Great.

As you think over your next move, you run to Din’s weapons cabinet and rummage through his arsenal, finding the locked box under an old cloak. You punch his code into the number pad — 47648, ‘GROGU’ on a 10-key pad you remember with a bittersweet smile — and the box opens with a quiet click. As promised, there’s a small tan-colored pouch with a shoulder strap and, inside it, you find a blaster that fits perfectly in your hand and what looks like a silver sword hilt, its blade completely missing. You run your fingers across the angular handle, confused as to how a bladeless weapon could “keep you safe.” But when your finger presses over a smooth panel on the hilt, a high-pitched sound emits from its chamber and a black blade glows in front of your face.

A lightsaber, you think, like the ones Din had told you about what feels like a lifetime ago. But this one isn’t green like the one he’d described Grogu’s master used or white like Ahsoka Tano’s twin sabers. It's dark and blinding, laced with an energy you’re far too frightened to wield. You retract the blade almost immediately, heart racing as you stuff both weapons into the worn bag and sling it over your shoulder.

Taking a long, steadying breath, you slowly step onto the boarding ramp — thanking the Maker Din had the sense to leave it down so it wouldn’t make a noise and blow your cover. He hadn’t parked the ship too far from the entrance and you can clearly see the duct he’d mentioned a few yards away. If you can just get the stormtroopers to turn in the other direction, you could sprint and be in the clear.

The plan is dumb, you know it. But it’s already the day of dumb plans and it’s all you have. Kneeling, you gather a mass of powdery snow in your gloved hands and press it together until it clumps into a dense ball. With your arms outstretched in front of you, you close your eyes and reach out with your mind, focusing your thoughts on the ball of snow in your palms.

The snow levitates high above you, high above even the Imperial base, and toward the trooper standing on the right side of the entry. You lower the ball just to his head-level and out of his eyesight, flick your wrist slowly to the right to gain some momentum, then snap it quickly to the left, smacking the stormtrooper hard against his helmet.

“What the hell?” You hear the stormtrooper shout, shuffling back on his feet.

“What happened?” The other asks.

“I just got hit with a snowball?” He answers with his own question, rubbing the side of his helmet.

You focus your thoughts again, this time, reaching out toward the bushes to the right of the base, causing the branches to wiggle and rustle.

The two troopers snap their heads in the direction of the mysterious sound, walking slowly with their blasters aimed and ready. And when they reach the bushes, aimlessly kicking at the shrubs with their boots, you run for it.

Your lungs are on fire when you reach the duct, fingers trembling as you quietly jiggle off the vent’s cover to give yourself an opening. You crawl in the chamber and quickly replace the cover before the stormtroopers return to their posts.

Once you’re safe inside the duct, you turn Din’s line back on so you can hear his side of the mission.

“I’m in,” you whisper.

On his end, you hear him grunt quietly in acknowledgment before the line is filled with only the faint sound of marching boots.

You have no idea where you’re going — probably the dumbest part of your entire plan — but you hope to stumble upon a terminal or control room sooner rather than later so you and Din can leave this nightmare in the past.

The base’s air vent system proves to be an endless maze, however, with forks and crossroads at every turn. Your knees start to ache as they press and slide across the metal ducting, your hands leaving trails of water as the thin layer of ice on your gloves melts away. You freeze when you hear footsteps below the air duct, holding your breath as you peer through the slits of a vent to see a platoon of stormtroopers marching through the corridor.

After what feels like hours, you finally find a small, surprisingly empty room filled with computer terminals and open a vent panel before quietly dropping down from the ceiling.

By no means would you call yourself a hacking wizard, but you had some tricks up your sleeve. Years of scraping by on your own will teach you a host of odd skills. Within seconds, you bypass the facial scanners and begin combing through the archives before you hear some static crackle in your earpiece once again.

“Please, no need for formalities," you hear a faint voice taunt through Din’s com. “We already know what you look like.”

It’s the holoprojector Imp, the familiar sound of her throaty voice floods your ears. Din doesn’t respond, and you imagine him standing like a statue, calculating the odds and armed with nothing but beskar and silence.

“Very well,” the Imp says. “Leave the helmet on. We have more important matters to discuss.”

“I almost have it,” you whisper to Din, hoping your encouraging progress can serve as another weapon.

“Now, Din Djarin,” the Imp calls, his name dripping out of her mouth like venom. “Don’t think we’d be so foolish to believe you’d assist us willingly. Assume that we know everything.”

A shiver runs down your spine from the thinly concealed threat, and your fingers fly faster over the controls as time slips through the cracks.

Finally, you find it, a record labeled: ‘Din Djarin.’ And you erase every trace of him.

“Got it, Cuyan One,” you sigh a breath of relief into the comlink.

“For example,” the Imp is still talking, and you roll your eyes knowing you’ve already won. “We know you did not come here alone.”

Suddenly, the blast doors of the terminal room open with a whoosh, and you back up against the machines as two stormtroopers corner you in. With a blessed shred of forethought, you blindly pull one of the weapons out of Din’s bag behind your back and sneak it into the back waistband of your pants, covered by your thick cloak. Just as you thought, one stormtrooper tears the bag from your shoulder, looking inside to find the other weapon without searching you further.

They push you down the corridor, jabbing you in the middle of your back with the barrel of their blasters, and you count each step before stopping in front of a heavy-looking door on the shadowy end of the hall.

Din’s voice enters your ears at the same moment.

“If you even think about hurting her, you’re already dead.”

The door opens, revealing a dark room bathed in ominous red light. In the middle, the holoprojector Imp stands with her legs spread and her hands behind her back, flanked by two stormtroopers. Somehow, the Imp looks even paler without the blue tint of holo coloring her skin. It makes her eyes appear pitch black in comparison, piercing as they slant at you in unmasked scrutiny. She wears the same darkness in her hair which is cut blunt and short, severe against her skeletal pallor. In front of her, Din kneels on the ground, the Burner standing only a few steps behind him, flamethrower at the ready.

With your two captors holding you by the arms in a room filled with enemies, the odds feel slim to none. Din’s helmet turns to you, his beskar shrouded in red, and you do your best to send him a reassuring smile.

The Imp suddenly says your full name, a grin splitting her face in half when you turn to her in shock. “So nice of you to join us.”

“You already lost,” you spit at the Imp, grinning wider than her. “I erased the archives. You have nothing.”

“Oh, such a pretty, foolish girl,” the Imp sings and you hear the teasing, grating noise from both her true voice and its distortion through your comlink. With your arms trapped, you can’t even turn off the device, and you cringe each time the dissonance scratches its way into your ears. “You may have wiped the systems but I have a backup drive,” she smirks, patting the badge-decorated pocket on her uniform. “In fact, I’ve also collected some interesting records on you, my dear. About your family, your… history.”

She’s bluffing, she has to be.

“Assume that we know everything,” the Imp repeats.

“Who are you?” You grit through bared teeth.

She laughs and you wipe your ear on your shoulder in disgust.

“Surely you both understand if I choose to withhold certain information. One's identity can be so very…” the Imp pretends to consider her words, glancing at Din and then sneering back at you as she taps a gloved finger against her pale, pointed chin. “Valuable.”

You lunge at her, a snarl ripping from your throat, but a trooper holds you back with a painful grip, his blaster digging into your side.

“Now, Din Djarin,” the Imp says, turning her attention back to the kneeling warrior. “If you don’t want to watch me kill your partner, you’ll do as I wish. Help me retrieve Gideon. Otherwise, you both shall die here.” Her blaster clicks as she points the barrel between his eyes with horrifying gracefulness.

“No!” You scream, turning every weapon in the room on you.

“Let her go,” Din practically growls.

“Ah,” the Imp says, walking to where you stand on the other side of the room, her weapon dangling like a child's toy from her fingers. “Or perhaps the girl can be of better help? With the proper motivation, of course. Tell me, where are they keeping the Moff? I wouldn’t want to be forced to make a roast out of your Mandalorian.”

With a snap of the Imp’s fingers, the Burner points his flamethrower at Din’s head. But somehow, in that same instant, you manage to rip yourself out of the troopers’ holds, making them stumble backward. And your hand flies forward, lifting the Imperial officer from the ground.

The troopers seem dumbfounded by the magic they’re witnessing, blasters pointed at the ground in their stupor. You can almost see their slack-jawed expressions through their helmets as the Imp clutches her hands around her throat, gasping for air and hovering a foot above the floor.

“A Jedi?” She croaks.

Assume that we know everything. You knew it. A bluff.

“Wrong again,” you grin, pushing your hand forward and sending the Imp soaring across the room. Her head hits metal with a heavy crash, falling unconscious, and at the same time, a loud alarm sounds throughout the base. Somehow, the red of the room grows darker and more saturated as lights flash on the ceiling.

Blaster fire ricochets off the red-tinted walls when the troopers come back to reality, the blasts deafening as you dodge them, thankful it’s just a group of bad-shot stormtroopers and not an elite unit.

One stormtrooper charges toward you, raising the butt of his blaster to strike, but you kick him hard in the stomach, plowing him into the floor. In the corner of your eye, you see Din twist in a circle, his wrists still bound behind him as he sweeps his leg under the Burner, making the trooper fall backward with a thud.

You rush over to Din, pulling the saber from your waistband and igniting the blade to cut his binders off. You wordlessly hand him the sword but he pushes it back toward you.

“Use it,” he says, squeezing your wrist before turning back to knock the flamethrower out of the Burner’s grasp.

You’ve been in your fair share of scuffles back on Tatooine, even some while working with the Mandalorian — but you’ve never fought with a sword before. Clumsily, you swing the blade in front of you, brandishing it toward the troopers without skill.

“How do I use this thing?” You shout at Din who is busy punching a stormtrooper and taking back his blaster.

“It’s a sword,” he yells over the alarm, shooting a third clueless trooper. “Stab something!”

With both hands gripping the hilt, you send the blade slicing through the air, a loud humming sound echoing in your ears with each swing. And when you hit the side of one final stormtrooper, the strike punctuated by a roaring crackle, he’s on the ground, his white armor sizzling as it melts.

But while the chaos in the red room settles, a larger battle brews outside its doors.

“I erased it, they have nothing,” you explain breathlessly, retracting the saber as Din surveys your body for injuries. You pull Din’s bag off the fallen trooper and replace the sword inside. “The Imp was bluffing.”

You run over to the unconscious woman regardless, checking her pockets. Empty.

“Are you sure?” He asks when you return to him, holding your trembling shoulders.

“Positive. It’s like I could sense it.”

A loud crash echoes in the corridors, making you jump away from him.

“Let’s get out of here,” Din says, at the same moment you scream, “Watch out!”

It happens in slow motion. The Incinerator Trooper pushes himself on his feet and reaches for his flamethrower. Din’s gaze is focused on you when you see the trooper take aim, a small fire beginning to bloom from the barrel.

Your arms wrap around Din instinctively, attempting to shield his body with your own. You wait for the burning heat, for the scorch of flames to lick at your skin. You wait to hear both your agonizing screams before you and Din leave the universe together. But as bright orange and red tendrils flash behind your closed eyelids, you only feel cool beskar.

Opening your eyes, you see a dome of fire just inches away from your bodies. Din pulls away slowly, taking in the sight of the inferno around him, dancing flames reflecting off his armor.

“Are you doing this?” He asks, a hazy memory creeping into his mind of the stand-off on Nevarro.

You squint through the fire, only finding the Burner with his thrower still aimed forward. You are doing this. Closing your eyes again, you reach out and focus your thoughts harder on the protective shield blocking the flames. Your mind pushes forward and deflects the fire backward, hurling the blaze and embers into the trooper. When the flames dissipate, the Burner collapses to the ground, his suit scorched and blackened.

Standing in the middle of the destruction, you stare at your hands in shock before yellow-tipped gloves grab them and pull you out of the room.

“We have to go,” Din says.

The halls flash with red lights, sirens soaring through the narrow corridors as trooper footsteps drum closer and closer.

Din leads you quickly through the base and out where he first entered. But you’re met by a rain of blaster fire as you both attempt to sprint back to the ship in one piece. Din pushes you in front of him, running backward as he shoots and blocks the blasters with the armor on his chest.

“Hang on,” he shouts, and before you can question it, he’s scooping you into his arms and launching off the ground.

He flies to the parked ship in record timing. But before he can make his landing, a blast hits his jetpack. It combusts with a deafening boom, right next to your ear, and it sends both of you hurdling into the ice. For a moment, you can’t hear a thing except for the echo of the explosion as you fall to the pillowy snow. Then, beside you, you hear a dull crack of beskar on thick, hardened ice and Din groaning aloud in agony.

“No!” You shout, coming to your senses when you see his leg bent at a strange angle, blood seeping onto the ice from his helmet.

“Get us out of here,” he grits out.

It feels frighteningly familiar pulling his body into the ship, danger looming from all sides as blasts continue to ding off the freighter or melt into the snow. You close the ramp, leave Din in the hold, and get the ship high above the ground.

But you hesitate, hovering in the air for a long moment, before making a choice.

Charging the gunners, you aim at the Imperial base and release a shockwave of vengeful blasts. And as the facility and everything inside and around it disintegrates into ash and rubble, you launch into hyperspace, leaving nothing behind.

The next moments pass by in a blur, Din’s cries ringing loudly in your ears as you try to figure out what to do. He gives you strained instructions but you can barely understand him.

“Reset the bone,” he grunts with just enough clarity, all while writhing in pain.

“Reset the bone,” you echo. “Right. I can do this. I’ll need to cut your pants.”

You find a small blade, remove his boot and armor, and slice a line from the bottom of his pant leg to just above his knee. With one hand gripping below his knee and the other pressing down on his thigh, you pull and hear the bone snap back into place as Din screams. You run to the storage closet for the medpac and return with bacta gel in hand, smoothing it over the purple, splotchy skin around Din’s leg before delicately wrapping it with the cut fabric of his pants and a makeshift splint.

“Your head,” you remember, searching for the wound under his cowl, and he wheezes as if to confirm. “No. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, stars, Din. This is bad,” you sputter, your palm painted in his blood.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, breath slowing as he brushes his fingers through your hair. “You did so good back there, cuyan. My survivor.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” you cry, tears rolling in waves down your cheeks. “You’re Cuyan One, remember? You’re going to be alright. I’m gonna fix this.”

“You’re so brave, so clever, so strong,” he continues, coughing between words. “Kotep, mirdala, kotyc. Ner kar’ta,” he croaks, voice fading out.

“Stay with me, Din!” You shout.

“I want to see your face,” he mumbles as if in a trance.

“I’m here, Din,” you tell him, taking his hand and placing it on your cheek. “I’m here.”

“No,” he coughs. “I want to see your face with my own eyes.”

You stare at him, waiting for him to retract his words. When he doesn’t, he pulls your joined hands to his helmet. You’re shaking when your other hand finds the opposite side of the beskar, releasing the lock and lifting it from his head.

His face is covered in blood and cuts, his brown eyes drooping with fatigue, dark hair plastered to his forehead.

“Oh, Din,” you cry, unable to even process him without a helmet for the first time as you take in the damage. You can’t even see him behind the wounds that mar his features. But he sees you. His hand comes back to your cheek, thumb sliding back and forth in a half-moon shape.

“Mesh’la,” he whispers. “Means beautiful. You are so beautiful, ner kar’ta.”

You blink hard, heavy tears landing on his armor drop after drop even as he tries to brush them away. Your hand covers his own on your cheek, fiercely pressing his palm into your skin like you’re afraid he’ll let go. Kissing the exposed skin of his wrist, you taste a tragic mixture of blaster residue and wet salt on your lips.

“I can’t remember what ner kar’ta means,” you sob. “Please tell me.”

One corner of his lips twitches upward, a strained, painful effort to smile, but he does everything in his power to let you see it.

“It means,” he gasps. “My heart.”

His hand falls from your cheek, limp in your lap and your body shakes at the loss of his touch. You can still hear his shallow breaths but you’re not sure how much longer he can go in this state. You close your eyes, holding his hand as your fingers brush over his glove. The inside of the ship is silent — peaceful and still as if unaware that your entire universe is crumbling in front of you. There’s not enough bacta in the galaxy to treat the trauma he’s sustaining in his head. You can hardly see his skin under the layers of blood and scrapes.

His warm, honeyed voice echoes in your mind, stories he’s told you over and over when you’d make any excuse to hear his voice, stories about him and Grogu. You think of his little green son, how you’re failing him right now. Please take care of my father.

Din always sounded so wistful when he talked about Grogu, so in awe of his power.

He could do things I couldn’t even imagine…

He saved me, in more ways than one…

Grogu is a special kid…

He could heal people.

“He could heal people!” You shout out loud, eyes bulging from their sockets.

In all your years of walking a tightrope when it came to your strange wizard-like powers, you’d never imagined you could heal. All those times you’d tried to fall asleep covered in bruises or cuts, you could have prevented so many nights of excruciating physical pain. But now is not the time to dwell on the past when your future is slipping through your fingers.

You close your eyes again — slowly resting one hand on Din’s cheek, the other still clutching his limp hand — and try to relax, reach out with your mind, reach inside, and focus your thoughts, emotions, energy, everything you have on the man in front of you.

It flows out of you in waves, sinking into him, and you feel it: your body growing more tired each second, only hoping your vitality is transferring into him. Just when you’re about to pass out, you hear him gasp for air, his body shooting up like a fish out of water.

“Din?” You blearily wonder. But his face blurs out of focus before you fall to the floor.

—

x.

In the face of pain, the body has natural defenses to harden itself, like the calluses that develop on your fingertips and heels for armor. You can build a tolerance, a certain degree of numbness until pain regresses to a dull ache at the back of your mind. And sometimes, the skin gets so thick, the body so paralyzed, that you start to believe nothing could ever hurt you. Not coarse sand crystals or alleyway scum or sharp-clawed rancors or stormtrooper blasts.

But it’s funny how protection covering the outside does nothing to shield what lies underneath — merely a shattered fortress with cracks that let pain seep into the bloodstream and petrify the heart.

When Din’s hand had dropped limp in yours, you hadn’t felt the pain of his wounds or scars shrouding your body. Instead, you’d felt a unique kind of suffering, torture that hadn’t left your skin bruised but had rather sunken into your pores and gnawed at your insides: fear, loss, mourning.

The agonizing ache lingers in your muscles when you finally awaken.

The mattress beneath you envelopes your senses in a familiar fragrance of warmth and safety. Brightness filters in through the open door across the room and a sliver of light glares in one of your eyes, making you rub your fist against your eyelids to regain focus.

As your vision sharpens, you quickly realize you’re not in your own sleeping quarters.

These sheets are dark, the opposite of the crisp white color you’ve been used to for nearly a year. Knickknacks don’t litter the metal floors and socks aren’t piled up in the corner as you remember. The room is mostly bare, stripped down to the necessities, organized and empty to an almost alarming degree.

Then, a splash of color catches your eye on the durasteel wall near the door. It’s difficult to see with the glare spotlighting your face, leaving your surroundings in the shadows. Deciding to investigate, you wrap Din’s blanket tight around your shoulders, keeping his comforting scent around you like a cocoon. When your sock-covered feet finally carry you across his room to the wall in question, you gasp.

Tacked onto Din’s wall are at least a dozen small pages of parchment depicting lively landscapes of planets you’ve visited and picturesque portraits of creatures you’ve encountered together. Your drawings. You remember the times he’d come back from an easy mission, a charming swagger in his gait, and had asked to see what you’d drawn. He’d always held your booklet in his hands so delicately, taking the time he didn’t have to study and praise your work. When he’d hand it back, you’d tear the page from its binding and whisper, “You can keep it.” You’d never thought much of it, except that you’d wanted to share the beauty you’d captured with him. After all, he’d given you all these beautiful colors to do so. But more than that, you’d wanted to let him see the galaxy through your eyes since his own stayed shadowed by his visor. Whenever he’d allowed himself to indulge in removing his helmet in private, you’d hoped he could see what you saw through the pages. You’d never once thought he’d keep your drawings so sacredly displayed in his quarters, assuming the doodles would eventually pile up in some forgotten corner on the ship. But he’d kept each one.

And right in the center, you see the first picture you’d ever drawn for him: a portrait of Grogu sketched according to Din’s affectionate descriptions. It’s slightly folded in on itself from the way he’d tucked it neatly into his shoulder pouch for safekeeping. When you’d drawn it for him, you’d just wanted to do him a simple kindness, the same way he’d been so kind to help you leave Tatooine behind and travel the galaxies with him. You’d only had your pencil at the time, none of Din’s thoughtfully gifted pigments at your disposal, leaving the portrait of the child monochromatic. But now, vibrant color adorns the sketch, bringing Grogu to life in beautiful tones of green, pink, and brown.

Din had borrowed your chalk pigments and colored it in himself. You imagine him with vivid hues dusting his fingertips and green smudges on his beskar, and you smile.

But when you pull back the folded edge of the paper, you’re surprised to see another figure has been drawn next to Grogu, an image you don’t recognize as work of your own.

It’s… you.

Water blurs your vision but you quickly wipe the tears away so they don’t somehow fly onto the pages and ruin his picture. He’d colored you in your favorite garments, a familiar pink flower tucked behind your ear along with your pencil. Careful, reverent strokes define each of your features. You can’t help but think it looks like you and a stranger at the same time, and you wonder if this radiant image he’s drawn is truly who you are or just how he sees you. And what if those two ideas are one and the same?

You don’t notice Din leaning against the doorframe until you hear your name in a deep, dulcet tone. He whispers it, uninhibited by his helmet, and suddenly your name has a thousand more meanings than just some arbitrary label for the girl who used to be alone. When he says it, your name means survivor, brave, clever, strong, beautiful, his entire heart — and all you want is to dive headfirst into the sweet nectar of his voice.

But then you remember what happened, how you let him get hurt, how you failed to take care of him as Grogu had asked. You don't realize you’re crying until his bare finger swipes away a single tear.

And even though you technically already saw his face — albeit bloodied and distorted — you dare not look at him. You keep your eyes trained low, noticing his unbandaged leg, as his hands caress your skin.

“Are you feeling better?” He asks, voice so heavy with concern it weighs down against your heart.

You nod. “How long was I out?”

“About 16 hours,” he answers, crooking his finger below your chin to pull your eyes to his.

“What about your Creed?” You ask, closing your eyes tight.

“You mean more.”

You expected to hear something more along the lines of ‘you already saw my face’ or ‘I’ve broken it before.’ But no, he says, ‘You. Mean. More.’ They’re three simple words that carry mountains of blissful promises, an echo of a sentiment you’d heard him say about his child, a different time that feels so far away now.

So, you open your eyes, look up, and one of your hands cradles the side of his face. He’s fully healed and the blood from the nightmare before is washed away, the red stain only living in your mind, allowing you to finally see him clearly.

You’ve always had some sense of his face. He’d given you so many pieces, letting your fingers map out his features and answering your questions so you could sketch them onto paper. Some things you can know without seeing. But having him in front of you — stripped of his armor and helmet, a soft errant curl brushing over his forehead, warm tan skin on display just aching for your fingers to explore them the way they did before you’d ever seen him — it feels like setting down the last piece of a puzzle.

He’s beautiful in the way that broken stones and crystal fragments are when they form a mosaic, each piece jagged yet fitting together into a purposeful masterpiece.

And the way he looks at you, like you’re home when all he’s ever known is running… you’ll do anything to keep him looking at you like this.

He enters his quarters fully, extending his arms to hold you closer. When he leans his forehead against your own, you close your eyes. His warm breath tickles your skin, the slope of his nose slowly nuzzling against yours, and when you let yourself peek at him again from under your lashes, you see his eyes are softly shut, the smallest of smiles on his lips.

“When did you draw this one?” You ask, voice but a whisper, nodding at the papers on his wall.

“While you were resting... I’m not much of an artist,” he says sheepishly, watching your fingers delicately trace the lines of his drawing. “But I wanted to keep a piece of you with me too.”

You merely exhale, mind reeling. Any word you think of seems to evaporate each time you open your mouth.

“Maybe, when you finish it, we can hang the portrait you drew of me next to this one,” he muses. “So, at least on paper, we can be a clan of three.”

You nod fervently, your foreheads rubbing together from the rapid motion as you stroke the soft peaks of his cheekbones.

“I can’t believe you kept all of these,” you chuckle, gesturing to his wall of art.

“Of course I did,” he says, fully grinning now, his nose playfully bumping against yours. “They’re beautiful and… they’re from you.”

A sweet sigh escapes your lips, your breath hovering in the small space between your bodies, and you see a flash of pink when his tongue pokes out to swipe a quick line between his mouth. You bite your lip, trying to force your mind to stay silent and not ruin this moment, but knowing you need to address the guilt in your heart.

“You almost died,” you say quietly, the words falling from your lips in broken pieces and shattering on the floor.

“But I didn’t,” he responds, his brown eyes staring directly into yours. “You healed me.”

“I should have...” you start, not knowing how to finish the statement because, even now, you’re clueless as to what you could have done differently. “I should have been more careful. Maybe if I hadn’t gotten caught, you wouldn’t have been hurt.”

“I’m used to it,” he sighs.

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” you whisper. “Neither should you.”

It stuns you, causing you to pull your face away just slightly, ignoring the way your skin screams to touch his again.

Pain is universal except to those who harden themselves to it and let calluses develop. This is a natural defense. You know this. But the thing is, pain is protection too, another security the body uses to protect itself. From harm. It’s ironic how the ones who feel the least amount of pain carry the largest amount of suffering.

“You shouldn’t have gotten hurt,” you continue, walking over to his bed to sit on the edge. “I promised I’d take care of you.”

This time, he’s stunned. Take care of him?

“You almost died, Din. You shouldn’t have even gotten hurt. I don’t know what I would do…”

“I’m right here, ner kar’ta,” he whispers, moving towards the bed and kneeling between your legs. He cradles your jaw, lifting your gaze to meet his eyes. “I’m right here.”

“You almost weren’t,” you say, your lip trembling below his thumb.

“I’m here. With you,” he says, confident. “I always will be, I promise.”

“Din, you can’t promise—”

“I just did.”

As you look into his eyes, you see a fire that tells you this is more than a promise. It’s more than a tenet of the Mandalorians’ honor and you feel it in your bones. He would traverse every system, tear apart the galaxy, fall to his knees to keep it. This is more than a promise. It’s a vow.

It feels like entering a new atmosphere, gravity pulling you into his orbit until your lips meet his, the same way the horizon of Tatooine meets twin suns each evening. He’s soft — so soft — and solid and still, allowing you to release the worry and trauma you’ve been shouldering on your own against his eager lips. You capture his upper lip, press a chaste peck there, exhale, kiss his lower lip, then breathe him in.

When you pull back by an inch, his body sways toward yours like a pendulum, his eyes closed dreamily as he waits for your lips to return to his.

“Din,” you whisper, a single tear rolling down your cheek as you cup his face between your hands like he’s delicate and holy. “Ner kar’ta,” you call him.

He opens his eyes, finding yours glazed with something he’s never seen before but knows is mirrored in his own irises.

“How do you say ‘I love you’ in Mando’a?”

This time, it’s his lips crashing into yours first, capturing your gasp on his tongue. His fingers card through your hair and find a resting place at the base of your head, nails scratching lightly and pulling sweet songs from your mouth. His other hand settles on the crook of your neck, his thumb drawing circles over your clavicle before gliding over your shoulder, then along the side of your waist, finally falling to the small of your back. A gentle pressure pulls you closer to the edge of the mattress where Din still kneels between your thighs, making you gasp again. But he swallows the sound with his mouth, his tongue eagerly licking past your lips. You dig your fingers into his hair and wrap your legs around his torso to stay balanced, though your mind is drunk on his taste and dizzy on his scent filling your lungs.

All you know is him.

The hand on your back grazes across your hip, drags a slow line over the top of your thigh, and squeezes once. Then, you feel fingers tickle behind your knee. In one swift motion, Din pulls your leg higher around him and gently pushes you backward, the hand on your head guiding you as you fall onto the pillow.

He pulls away panting, letting you catch your breath as he takes the opportunity to rake his eyes over your body spread out beneath him.

You do the same, letting your fingers follow the same path as your eyes. He looks positively wrecked, hair sticking up from where you’d pulled it, pupils dilated, his lips pink and perfectly swollen. His breaths seem to come out more labored — but whether from your touch or the shameless way your eyes drink him in, you don’t know. All you know is the flushed skin below his jaw, how it draws your attention to the strong cords of muscle that run up the length of his neck, how his Adam’s apple bobs slowly below your featherlight finger when he swallows.

As your hands continue their exploration, Din’s thumb tickles your cheek with a tenderness that matches the look in his eyes. The shimmering dust of stars glistens in his irises as he gazes upon you like you’re…

“Mesh’la,” he whispers, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear.

“I could say the same about you,” you grin, drawing him back toward you and feeling his smile against your lips.

He settles his weight between your legs, moaning into your mouth when you raise your hips to grind against him. He gives you beautiful, desperate noises and you greedily capture each one with your lips. As he kisses you, your nails scrape down his back, his muscles tensing and rippling under your touch until you find the hem of his shirt. You tug on it once, twice, before he’s finally sitting back and pulling it over his head. Not wanting to have to separate yourself from him again, you remove your top at the same time, leaving you both exposed from the waist up. When his face emerges from the neck of his shirt, he looks down and stills, and somehow, you feel infinitely more beautiful under his lustful gaze.

He attaches your lips again, craving your taste like a famine-starved man, ravenous hands exploring new skin as yours leave crescent moons across his back. He kisses your lips, your cheeks, licks below your ear, sucks under your jaw, down your neck, above your breasts — tasting every soft plane with a hunter’s diligence until you’re soft and pliant below him, bending while he bows.

He rocks into you, eliciting gasps from both your lips. Desperately, you scratch impatiently at the skin above his waistband, your hands attempting to push the material down to no avail.

“What do you want?” He asks, pleads against your mouth, moaning when you hold his lower lip between your teeth and release it with a slow scrape.

“Want these off,” you mutter against his cheek, his scruff scratching over your lips deliciously. “Want you.”

That’s all he needs before he unbuttons his trousers, kissing you deeper as he bares himself completely to you.

“Now you,” he whispers, his lips dragging down your body and hovering over your belly, pressing languid kisses to each hip, and biting the skin lower down as he removes your clothes. His breath ghosts over your heat and sends a shudder up your spine, making you arch toward him. His lips roam the soft skin of your thigh, tantalizingly tracing his tongue up toward where you throb for him, and then moving back down leaving you writhing with desire. He gives the same treatment to the other thigh, teasing you with his soft lips until you’re groaning and desperate beneath him.

A surprisingly deft finger opens you to him and your mouth drops agape without a word, pleasure lodged in your throat until he curls his finger just so, pulling the wanton sounds from your lips. As you become more vocal, he strokes you more eagerly, his other hand massaging the plush skin of your body wherever he can reach, watching your face with fascination as he stokes a fire in your belly.

Just as he’s about to put his mouth on you, he feels your fingers tugging his hair, pulling him upward until your lips meld together once more.

“Need you.” The words come out as a growl into his mouth and you lift your hips pointedly to meet his. He hisses at the friction, nodding in understanding when you say, “Now.”

He enters slowly, feeling you stretch around him and engulf him in a heat he never wants to escape. It feels like a release of pressure even as pressure begins to build between your legs. It’s pain and pleasure and perfection all at once. He fills you so completely and he can’t help but think:

“Meant for me.”

He breathes the words out loud into your skin, lips trailing a burning path down your throat as he moves inside you, wicked sounds falling from your tongue when he hits a spot that has you seeing stars.

“What?” You gasp, but he doesn’t seem to hear.

Din kisses you everywhere he can reach, one hand interlocked with yours next to your head while the other pulls your leg higher and tighter around his back, giving him access to parts of you he gets to explore for the first time. It makes him think about the galaxies that always reflect in your eyes and how he’s getting to discover each one of them with you now.

“Or maybe,” he continues his previous thought, a sweet, gentle kiss placed over your heart. “Meant for you.”

His pace quickens and you dig your nails into his shoulders as an invisible coil tightens in your belly. He continues speaking low in your ear, some of the words foreign and others in Basic, though you still can’t understand for the life of you when he’s right there. As his thrusts become more erratic, your core ignites, and intense heat blossoms over your entire body like a flower. And it’s Din plucking each petal until all that’s left in your mind is one singular truth: he loves me. Your eyes screw shut and your toes curl and you’re out of breath and you feel heavy and light at the same time. He moans a ragged sound when he feels you reach your peak, squeezing him until he’s falling over the precipice right after you.

The room is awash in heavy breathing, a fiery warmth scorching every inch of your naked skin as you both pant to catch your breath. You’d like to stay like this forever, you think. No clothes, simply covered in Din. But eventually, he slowly pulls himself out of you and an aching, empty feeling settles in your stomach that screams for him to come back.

He hovers above you, not wanting to crush you with the immense weight he feels. But he can’t fight you when your hands wrap around his neck and mold his smile against yours, lips moving together like you can’t get enough.

You hold each other in silence, heated kisses cooling off into chaste pecks only when it feels too long since the last. Your breaths slow to a peaceful rhythm, hearts beating in time with each other to a secret song only you two know.

“Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum,” he breathes, the flight of his words spinning around the shell of your ear raises goosebumps on your skin.

“What does that mean?” You ask, your hand cupping his warm cheek.

When he looks at you, he sees ferocity, forgiveness, a future, a family. For so long, he never thought he could feel anything close to this. Then, he met Grogu and, just as quickly, had to say goodbye. But when you look at him with such goodness and grace — all he can think of is how he hopes you’ll stay looking at him like this until he dies.

“‘I love you,’” he answers. "Forever."

[READ EPILOGUE HERE]

End Note: We're almost at the end! I just have an epilogue planned. But hey, if you have any headcanons you'd like to see happen in this series, please send them my way! Maybe some blurbs could be arranged :) Mando’a Glossary: Cuyan = survivor [koo-YAHN] Kotep = brave [KOH-tehp] Mirdala = clever [MEER-dah-lah] Kotyc = strong [koh-TEESH] Ner kar’ta = My heart (kar’ta = heart [kah-ROH-ta]; ner = my [nair]) Mesh'la = beautiful [MAYSH`lah] Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum. = I know you forever [nee kar-TILE garh dah-RAH-soom] ⎿ “It's the same word as 'to know,' 'to hold in the heart,' kar'taylir. But you add darasuum, ‘forever,’ and it becomes something rather different.” — Republic Commando: Triple Zero

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