#Hey baby are you Kyber? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nicad13 · 2 years ago

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Iron and Kyber

Chapter 1: Settling In

Summary: A Mandalorian, a Jedi, and a baby take on the galaxy that would see them all destroyed.

Din and his enemy-sorcerer family settle into a new life on a sanctuary world kept hidden from the rest of the galaxy. Old traumas are hard to shake, and all three of them need some time to heal.

Love is a complicated thing for orphans. Full of contingencies and uncertainty and a history of pain and abandonment. For a family made up entirely of orphans, love is an especially cherished item, precisely because of their prior experiences of uncertainty and pain. Each wants the other to know that their love is unconditional, certain, eternal, and tender.

Mother, father, child. Orphans, each of them.

Notes: After almost three years, I finally pulled the trigger on the sequel to Crossroads! You’ll want to read that before digging into this, if you haven’t yet. I’ve sprinkled enough reminders for those who have, so a re-read shouldn’t be necessary.

Canon-compliant through Season 1. Link to AO3 in Source at the bottom.

Warnings: Developmental delays, PTSD, jealousy, nightmares, flashbacks, self-harm

---

The worst is over now and we can breathe again I want to hold you high, and steal my pain away There's so much left to learn, and no one left to fight I want to hold you high and steal your pain… 'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome And I don't feel right when you're gone away

Seether, Broken

---

A Mandalorian in full beskar, heavy-set and powerful, adorned in blue armor like the belly of angry thunderheads about to unleash a hellfire of lightning and hail.

A Mandalorian in full beskar, lean and nimble, clad in red armor like dried blood spilled from an enemy, faces off against the first.

The second Mandalorian, her Mandalorian, pulls the hilt of a lightsaber from his belt. He activates it.

The blade is black, flat-edged, and curved at the tip.

The image blurs and shifts.

She sits upon a mountaintop, her son in her lap, rain pounding down upon them, until an Imperial Star Destroyer eclipses the clouds. They Reach up through the Force, to the crewmembers aboard.

On the slopes below, her Mandalorian lassoes a Stormtrooper around the neck with his whipcord and severs his spine as he yanks the body up into the sky, then proceeds to slaughter the remains of the platoon.

The image blurs and shifts again.

A purple Twi’lek, arms bound to a pole behind her, teeth sharpened to points as she smiles. “He was mine first,” she says, voice dripping poison. “I made him come long before you did.” She closes her eyes and moans the next words. “He made me come long before he ever laid eyes on you.” She opens her eyes. “He always called me mesh’la. Has he ever called you that? Do you even know what it means? He will always think of me before he thinks of you. And when he kills you, remember this.

“He killed me first, too.”

---

Rayne wakes up screaming.

“Hey…” Din is next to her, arm around her shoulders, the shadows and planes of his face clear in the moonlight of their bedroom. “Hey… it’s alright. You’re ok. I’ve got you…”

She forces her breaths to slow, sinking back into him. “Sorry… I’m good…” She tucks her head under his chin as his arms fall around her, one hand moving up and down her back in a slow slide.

“Same as last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” He kisses the top of her head in the dim light and breathes her in, the vague, sweet-pineapple scent of bacta still clinging to her, two weeks after getting pulled from the tank. He’s grown used to it, has come to associate it with the facts that she is alive, and his, and they have both been allowed to stay on Genesaria with their son and be a family.

But the nightmares worry him. Their son had used the Force to bring her back from the dead, and may well have caused a disturbance in the Force as a result. An imbalance. Retracting a life that death had rightfully claimed, unknowingly making his mother a prime target for the Dark Side.

Nightmares are the first symptom.

The thing is, nightmares are a part of normal life for Rayne anyway. They have been together for just over two months, so Din only has a vague idea of what her baseline for this kind of thing is to begin with. And it’s not like he’s free from this affliction, himself. Droids gunning him down as a child, giants crushing his skull as an adult, bounties breaking free of carbonite to exact revenge on him in the dead of night on the ass-end of the galaxy. His rate nearly matches hers.

He supposes if they’re trying to separate the effects of Sith influence from the effects of PTSD, he can, at the very least, serve as the PTSD-only comparison.

For now, the best he can do is to take her hand in his and place it against his chest, palm flat, over his heart. His lips form the words “I love you” against the top of her head, less than half of a whisper. Even a week after having first spoken the words, he still has difficulty repeating them.

It’s not that they’re not genuine. It’s not that he’s afraid to say them.

It’s what the words do to him.

They make his heart pound and his mouth run dry and his eyes run wet.

Because they’re so very, painfully, undeniably true.

Din loves Rayne with everything he has, and it nearly guts him every time he thinks about it. The words cannot be said lightly. The only other people he had ever said them to, his parents, lay dead for more than three decades. The words weigh so much that he can barely force them out.

But he makes himself do it at least once a day. Hoping that, like any other weight, the more often he lifts it, the easier it will become to carry. Wanting her to have zero doubts about his loyalty.

Even without the words, she feels all of this, his mind flooding hers with it without meaning to, and it nearly melts her down to her bones every time. That this man can, despite everything he’s been through, despite all the damage done to him, reciprocate her feelings for him, is nothing short of marvelous. She presses her hand into him and his heart hammers away from the other side of his sternum with steady thumps. In return, she takes his hand and presses it to her chest, so he can feel the same. Head still tucked under his chin, her lips form the words over his skin in a quiet whisper. “I love you, too.”

Nor is the weight light for her to carry, either. Words spoken to vanishingly few others. Once to a man who could not reciprocate them. The most common recipient, a man who could, a man who had given her all the love she could have ever needed, until the day he sacrificed his life to save hers and two dozen others. Dead for just over half a decade, somewhere in the cold depths of outer space.

Mother, father, child. Orphans, each of them.

A bond of loss that links them together eternally.

And yet…

Mesh’la. The Mandalorian word for beautiful.

She knows what it means.

He has never said it to her.

---

Din shaves in the morning. His stubble is getting prickly under the helmet, and Rayne had teased him about the lengthening gray patches at the back of his jaws.

She gets dressed as she hears him tap his razor against the sink. The sound is comforting; the sound of a man going about his normal routine in close quarters, something she associates with companionship and shared living. She remembers how silent her quarters on the Alliance carrier had become after Hayes died, remembers how she missed the sound of him shaving in the morning. One more experience she had been robbed of added to a long list of newly-absent things. Hearing Din shave for the first time at her home at the hangar two months ago had brought it all back, nearly making her burst into tears at the sound of it. The realization that, for the moment, she was no longer alone. The understanding that, at the time, she would likely lose it all over again.

But now… she’s hearing the tap of his razor in their own home for the first time. Their home. A sound that she can look forward to indefinitely. And for the first time, she will actually see the results of Din Djarin’s shaving. She generally prefers the clean-shaven look on men and is eager to see how it sits with him.

Din steps out of the fresher wearing only a towel wrapped around his hips and the ever-present beskar casing at his throat, hanging on a short leather string, matching the one she wears around her own, identical in everything except their contents – each holding a lock of the other’s hair.

Rayne sees him clean-shaven for the first time.

Hrm.

Din sees what he interprets as a look of disappointment on her face. “What?”

“That’s… um… you look a lot… different than what I expected…”

He drops his gaze to the floor, crestfallen.

Whoops.

“No, that’s not…” she stammers, taken by surprise on multiple counts. He truly does look different without the stubble. Something about the odd combination of his round face and square jaw needs the scruff to ease the transition between the two, and without it, he looks… mismatched, somehow. He’s gone from smoldering-hot to peculiar-adorable-baby-face with the swipe of a razor, and there is no diplomatic way of telling a middle-aged battle-hardened Mandalorian warrior that he has a peculiar, adorable, baby-face.

She also isn’t prepared for his apparent sensitivity about it, and she is horrified at the bluntness of her own response. He’s been out of the helmet at home for barely a week, still trying to get used to eating in front of his family, still occasionally waking with a start in the daylight next to her, realizing first that he isn’t wearing it, realizing second that he isn’t wearing it on purpose.

She should’ve been ready. She should’ve been more kind. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”

He shakes his head, bringing his gaze back up to meet hers, a smile ghosting his face. “I forgot.”

She can only answer with a look of confusion.

“I forgot I still have the chubby cheeks.” Alaria had teased him about it when they were teenagers, asking if he’d grown out of them yet, asking if she was boning a guy who had only grown up from the jaw down, knowing damn well he still had them from touch alone, the creases from his nose to the corners of his mouth evident to anyone with so much as half a nerve-ending in their fingertips. What if you are? he’d asked. What if you are boning a guy with a babyface? Would it make a difference? She’d run a hand along the length of him that had very much grown up, canting her helmet at an angle just so, as if to say, No. It would make no difference at all.

Rayne smiles, head canting at exactly the same angle, fingers lingering on his hip. “Maybe just trim it next time?” She decides she can let go of the sound of a razor tapping against the sink if it means she can trade baby-face-Din to get smoldering-hot-Din back.

Warmth returns to those big, brown eyes. “Sure.” Those creases had remained even when he’d fallen on hard times, at the brink of starvation, at his most gaunt. When he could count his ribs in the dark and see the hollows under his cheekbones in the mirror, the lines between his nose and mouth always betrayed the ghost of his youth.

Is that a dimple on the right side of his face? Gods above, she hasn’t noticed it until now.

Yadier chooses just this moment to waddle into their room. He takes one look at his father, lays his ears back, scrunches his face into the most intricate topography of wrinkles either parent has ever seen, narrows his eyes, lets out a prolonged “Eeeewww,” turns around, and waddles back out.

Din sighs. “I guess I’m outvoted.”

---

The clan of Rollins-Djarin makes their two-week check-in with Dr. Sedlack, the same doctor who had tended to them upon their arrival at Genesaria.

She starts with Din, conducting a more thorough exam on him this time in the same manner she had examined Yadier and Cara the first time around. He has to take the cloak off and unseal the helmet, but she’s able to work her fingers down inside his cowl to access his neck and assess him with the Force from there. She pauses for a few moments, eyes closed, Din sitting with as much calm as he can manage for being touched so intimately by someone who is not a family member. When she finishes, she pulls away and enters a few notes on a datapad. “Your blood pressure is much better, Mando. We can take you off the meds, but keep going with the diet plan. Continue to lay off the salty stuff and I think you’ll be fine.”

He nods his understanding, glad that things are responding to his efforts.

“Anything about your previous injuries bothering you?”

“No.” His answer is neither rushed nor delayed. His back hurts a little in the mornings but it loosens up within an hour, so he chalks it up as an age-appropriate ache. He feels pretty reasonable, all things considered.

Rayne is next up and gets much the same treatment, though with a few more questions thrown in. “How have the nightmares been?”

“About the same.”

“Master Jenkins reports that your Force resistance training is going well. How’s that going for you physically?”

“It wiped me out at first, but not as much, anymore.”

“Any physical pain? Headaches? Heart palpitations?”

“No.”

Sedlack writes another note and moves on to Yadier.

He’s more amenable to the examination this time around, with both parents present, accounted for, and in proper working order. He burbles and purrs as he sits on the table, Sedlack cradling him with one hand to keep him in place and sliding the other around his head and chest, returning the baby’s smiles with her own.

When she’s finished, she pauses to write down a few more notes as Din gathers his son in his arms. The doctor looks up to meet the gazes of the parents. “Yadier is happy and healthy. His calcium, iron, and protein levels are a tad low this time around. I know you’re able to cook more regularly for him now, but go ahead and let him eat bones and raw meat, too. He can still have the vegetables and fruit you’re giving him, and I know this sounds weird, but let him eat all the bugs and critters he can catch.”

“He was eating a lot of live frogs before we got here,” Din says. “That’s actually okay?”

Sedlak smiles. “For his kind, yes. He won’t choke on anything. Anything raw is fine – his gut microbes can handle it, and he needs the uncooked proteins. Hunting insects and small animals provides important stimuli for him. Just don’t let him get into anything rotten.”

Yadier turns to his parents with eyes that say I told you so.

“What about the venomous stuff?” Rayne asks. “He got a bee sting last week but it didn’t seem to faze him too much.”

“He’ll feel stings and bites and they’ll hurt, but he produces natural anti-venom to everything that we know about. He should be able to figure out how to neutralize his prey before it tags him too hard in another year or two.”

Another raspberry from the adorable hunter-sorcerer baby.

“I’ve looked over the records that Master Ona sent from school. He socializes well – he’s making friends and plays well with everyone.”

Din runs a loving finger along his son’s ear, smiling behind the mask. He doesn’t need a doctor’s exam to know his kid is a charmer.

“He’s reasonably well-behaved for a fifty-one-year-old of his kind.”

“Fifty-one?” Din interrupts. He realizes it has been just about a year since he’d taken that fateful bounty. “I don’t… I was never told his birthday…”

Dr. Sedlack flips through the datapad and finds the date. It had been a few months earlier, sometime between their run-in with Ran and returning to Nevarro. Din can’t place the date exactly, can’t remember what they’d been up to that day, and knowing that he’s missed his son’s first birthday while in his care makes his heart break, a little. Rayne’s hand cups his elbow, sensing his dismay. “We’ll catch it next year. It’ll be more fun now that he’ll have friends to celebrate it with.”

True. An observance over thawed-out frogs and ration bars on the Razor Crest would’ve been lame, anyway.

“He does have some developmental delays, though,” Sedlack says. “He’s quite far behind on his language, cognitive, and growth milestones.”

Din’s heart sinks. Too many lean nights when he’d let Yadier eat all he dared to budget and the child was still hungry. Too many exhausted nights when he’d nodded off before getting the chance to read to him. Too many violent nights when he’d held his son with one hand and murdered dozens of people with the other. He had given everything for his son, but hadn’t been enough.

“Mando,” Sedlack starts, feeling the guilt roll off him. “It’s not your fault. Remember that he was missing for four decades. The damage was done long before you found him.”

Rayne takes a breath. “I tried having him remember his past, once. We didn’t get very far. I think he was injured when he was taken from his birth parents.”

Sedlack nods. “I sense the same thing, but I think that played less of a role than the environment he was in thereafter. He was a prisoner for longer than I’ve even been alive.”

Now it’s Rayne’s turn to feel overwhelmed. Forty years of isolation. No one to play with. No one to talk to. No one to hold him or love him. “Can he recover?” she asks. “Can we help him make up for lost time?”

Sedlack almost shrugs. “We’ve not seen any other cases like his, so I can’t say for sure. A ten-year delay doesn’t mean much in the long run for a kind that lives nine centuries, but I can’t guarantee that window won’t widen as he gets older. Either way, he couldn’t ask for better care than what you’re giving him. You know what to let him eat now, he gets plenty of attention, exercise, and sleep. He’s clearly happy. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“What are the delays, specifically?” Rayne asks. “We don’t know what’s age-appropriate for him.”

The doctor nods. “He’s about ten years behind with his verbal communication. He should be speaking simple sentences by now. He still misinterprets others’ emotions, sometimes – he’s a little too quick to think that someone means him harm when they don’t, but that makes sense, given his situation for most of his life. His play is still simplistic – he’ll push toys around, but not do much with their moving pieces. He’s about five years behind in his physical growth.” She sees the dismay on Rayne’s face and the slope of Din’s shoulders. “I want to stress that he is healthy. He’s just behind schedule.”

“What happens if…” Din swallows, his voice catching in his throat. “What happens if he doesn’t catch up? Or if he falls further behind?”

Sedlack raises an eyebrow. “Mando. Your son is one of the most powerful Force users the galaxy has ever seen. What he lacks in language, cognitive, and physical function he makes up for a hundred-fold in Force abilities. He’ll be fine.”

He forces himself to take a breath to calm down, but finds his hands tightened into fists on the table, all the same. “I don’t understand what that means. I don’t understand how that happens.”

“It’s… difficult to explain,” Sedlack says. “The best I can really tell you is that you’ll understand more as you spend more time here and get to know your son better.”

“One more question,” Rayne asks. “Do you know what his midi-chlorian count is?”

“Well, yes and no…” Sedlack flips through her notes to confirm the unusual result. “Here it is. Our instruments are only gauged to detect up to 20,000. Yadier surpasses that, so we’re not exactly sure where he is.”

Rayne’s eyes widen.

“For reference, Master Yoda was around 17,000.”

Rayne blows out a sigh. She knows her son is powerful, but she’s had no idea…

Seeing how overwhelmed her patient is, Sedlack tries to distract her. “We measured yours when you first came in, if you’d like to hear it.”

Rayne shrugs. “Sure.”

“Hm… 10,100. Just about average for a Jedi Knight.”

“Midi-chlorians?” Din asks, his tone laced with trepidation.

“Sentient microscopic life forms,” Sedlack answers. “They form a symbiotic relationship with us and allow us to use the Force.”

Din draws back as if in disgust, just a tiny bit before he can catch himself. “You carry sentient microbes?” His voice betrays the tiniest bit of a tremor.

Rayne does her best to keep from laughing, but can’t help the broad smile on her face. “You have them, too. Every living thing does. Force-sensitives just have more.”

He pulls his shoulders in, squeamish, even if he’s not sure why. He knows, on an intellectual level, that he’s a host to any number of bacteria at any given time, some symbiotic, some not. But they’re not intelligent… they’re not sentient, and he realizes that’s what gets him. The idea that he’s lived four and a half decades with other organisms that have minds of their own under his skin, under his armor, sharing his blood, without having the slightest idea they were there…

He’s unable to suppress a shiver.

“Would you like to know your count?” Sedlack asks. “It’s a simple blood test. The results are immediate.”

Din considers for a moment. Is there any harm in knowing? He’s not Force-sensitive, so there can’t be that many of the bugs floating around in him. Maybe the count will even be low and he’ll feel better about the whole thing. “Sure,” he says.

He removes the vambrace from his left arm and pulls his sleeve up. Sedlack draws the sample, pulls the tube off the syringe, plugs it into a hand-held meter, and shakes it up.

“Huh…”

“What?”

“The average for non-sensitives is about fifteen hundred and the minimum for Jedi training is seven thousand. You’re at five thousand.”

“What?”

Rayne snorts. “You’re almost an enemy sorcerer.”

“I am not,” he growls, yanking his sleeve down and re-fastening the vambrace as Yadier giggles and claps his hands.

Sedlack tilts her head, considering. “Given the Force-opacity of beskar, you simply might not have noticed. People with this level of concentration do tend to have better reflexes and physical stamina. Things like that.”

Din forces himself to calm down. That… does track, actually. He’s not the biggest guy. Not the strongest. But he knows he’s quick. He can take a beating and wear out his opponents. He’s just always attributed it to his Mandalorian training.

He sighs. It’s bad enough that his Creed has crumbled and sifted through his fingers. He’s no longer sure he can rightfully call himself a Mandalorian. The idea of being a watered-down Force-sensitive on top of that is… too much.

His son lifts his arms in his direction, so he gathers him up as the little boy purrs and snuggles into his shoulder. “Can we go now?”

---

Din carries Yadier as he and Rayne walk him to school at the Jedi Temple. They normally allow their son to lead the way at his own pace, a mix of waddling, hopping, and skipping. But the results of the exam seem to have knocked something out from under Din, and he wants to hold his son close, wants to protect him from some unseen cruelty lurking in the back of his head.

It all washes over Rayne’s mind as she walks next to them. He prefers her at his left side, leaving his right hand free to pull his sidearm blaster. Not that he ever expects trouble here, on Genesaria, but warrior habits die hard, and he has no intention of losing his edge. So it is that when she brushes his hip with the back of her hand, she manages to not bump into his sidearm, but she is careful to avoid the thermal detonators he still carries on his belt. “He’ll be fine, Din.”

“… I know.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“… I’m not.”

Yadier snuggles into the cowl at Din’s neck, fully aware of his father’s distress on his behalf, ears flat against his shoulders, a sad mewl buzzing out of him.

Rayne’s thoughts stew in her head, not entirely sure how to give voice to it all in a way that won’t sound defensive. As they walk, she spies one of the many tiny parks scattered throughout the city, this one with a bench in the shade under a tree with huge red flowers in its canopy and small purple flowers scattered throughout the grass. She taps Din’s hip to get his attention. “Can we stop here for a moment?”

He hesitates, not wanting to be late for their Force-resistance session, but figures if it’s important enough for Rayne to want to stop and process something, it’s worth it. “Okay.”

He follows her to the bench, placing Yadier in the grass so he can roll around and smell the flowers. “Watch out for the bees, ad’ika. Don’t get stung again.”

“Batu,” is the only response the baby offers as he plants his nose in a flower, closes his eyes, and inhales.

Rayne’s gaze is downcast as Din sits back. Her arms are crossed over her chest and her legs are stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He rests his left arm along the top of the bench behind her shoulders, knees bent, feet apart. He takes up a lot of space, an unconscious habit in the defense of territory, exacerbated by the acquisition of a family. But for as much space as Din takes up, he does not encroach into Rayne’s. Rather, he angles around her, a protective curve of beskar, a shield at the ready. He gazes out over the park, watching their son enjoy the flowers, watching the city stroll by, trying to tamp his anxiety down.

“You don’t want him to be at a disadvantage,” Rayne says after a few moments.

“No parent wants their kid at a disadvantage.”

“Especially a Mandalorian parent.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His tone takes a hard edge.

“I imagine the Fighting Corps was an unforgiving environment to grow up in.”

“The galaxy is an unforgiving place.”

“I was a late bloomer, too.” She turns her head away from him, looking at nothing in particular.

He sighs, understanding her meaning. She had told him how, despite the early manifestation of her abilities as an infant, she’d stalled out as a kid, getting held back in her Force-related classes even as she had excelled in science and math. But in the end, when Order 66 came down, she was the only youngling, maybe even the only Jedi at all, to make it out of the temple on Coruscant alive.

The rest is history.

He curls his hand around her shoulder. “I get it.” His tone is soft, now. Relaxed without being resigned.

They continue on their way.

---

Master Jenkins concentrates on the family before her.

Three orphans. A Mandalorian. Two Jedi. A baby. Two parents.

One who understands the dangers of possessive attachment. Two who do not.

Master Jenkins has asked the three of them to meditate, to concentrate on what it means to be a family. What it means to love. Din and Yadier’s experiences are more similar to each other than to Rayne’s.

Din’s mind is awash in the memory of his parents, helpless to defend themselves, able only to hide their beloved son and hope to draw the battledroids’ attention away from the bunker as they flee. He reaches up for them, wanting them to come down and hide with him, his cry frozen in his throat, silenced in terror. The deafening explosion that had his ears ringing for days after bounces the blast doors on their hinges. He is pulled to the surface, and the crater next to the bunker is full of nothing but smoke and ash. He knows there is nothing left of them, nothing left of his life on Aq Vetina.

He remembers living with six different families in the mines of Concordia. A few weeks each. His inability to speak to any of them, limited to nodding his head, shaking his head, and shrugging his shoulders until they’d each given up in turn. They’d finally deposited him in the Fighting Corps, where the only responses expected of him were to learn the finer points of warfare and self-defense.

He remembers Alaria’s parents, their pride in her successes, their warmth through her occasional failures, their acceptance of him as her Sol’yc, as someone who made her happy and satisfied her needs. He remembers wishing he had the same for himself, knowing why he didn’t, knowing his own shortcomings had led to his failure at adoption.

He remembers being unsuitable for a family.

He remembers the five women who asked of his seed to regenerate the Mandalorian ranks, to merge his blood with theirs, never to be seen or heard from again. He remembers the one woman who, if Gideon was to be believed, took without asking.

He remembers finding the tiny green alien who would become his baby.

He remembers selling his baby.

He remembers stealing his baby back.

He remembers the long, tortured process of coming to accept the baby as his son, acknowledging his willingness to tear the galaxy down for him, to murder whoever he must to protect him. His failed attempt to leave him with a loving family, with Omera and Winta. His failed attempts to recruit long-term help, first with Kuiil, then with Cara, their instincts to be their own people forestalling anything greater than mission-specific aid.

He remembers his baby saving his life. Twice. From the mudhorn. From the fire.

He remembers stumbling upon a mechanic, a hard woman with a soft spot for his son, a woman who he soon discovered connected with his son in ways no one else could, a woman who shared his son’s powers. A woman who could keep them both safe. A woman who proved herself again and again, saved them again and again, who healed his wounds, who helped his son grow strong, who gave up a life of tranquility to defeat their enemy and get them to safety. A woman who he had, despite his best efforts, fallen in love with. A woman who his son had chosen for his mother, who had spoken the gai bal manda, the Mandalorian adoption vow, to his son, binding them together as a family.

He remembers his struggle to define what she was to him. His lover? His son’s mother? He remembers settling on his Jedi.

He remembers how they had nearly lost her, when she had given her life for them. He remembers the hole that had torn open in the remains of his soul, spilling out all the experiences he had shared with her, leaving him empty and abandoned. He remembers his relief when she had recovered, when he had gotten her back, only to fall once more to anguish at the promise she had forced him to make – to end her life if she fell to the Dark Side.

He remembers the day he shed his helmet before his son and his Jedi, the day he had chosen them over his broken Creed. The day he had confessed his love to his Jedi, and his relief when she had confessed her love to him. He remembers the following day, being granted Genesarian citizenship, and with it, the permission to stay with his family.

His family.

His.

His to keep.

His son. His Jedi. Soon to be his wife. He can’t bring himself to think of what would happen if he ever lost either of them. They make his life complete. They make his life worthwhile. Before them, he was little more than a machine, an animated sack of meat with armor for skin, capturing and killing other sacks of meat to earn coin to support the terrorists who had murdered his parents and stolen him away, fueling the very monsters who had made his life a living hell. Now, he lives for his enemy sorcerers. He lives to watch his son grow and thrive on a world that is safe and kind to him. He lives to watch his Jedi heal on a world that lets her be herself. He lives to watch the bond between his Jedi and son grow strong as they regain what they had lost, as they learn to become Jedi once again, as they learn how to share and magnify their powers together. He lives to build a world where their kind can coexist with his, where Jedi and Mandalorians can combine the best of each other and defend the galaxy against an Empire that refuses to die, to defeat an enemy that brings nothing but sorrow and destruction to anyone who won’t bow before it to serve its purposes.

With them, he is everything.

Without them, he is nothing.

They mean more to him than anyone else will ever know.

Yadier’s thoughts are of a similar theme, even if the details are wildly different. His immersion varies, sometimes looking back through the past, sometimes re-living it as if it is happening now. His memories of his birth parents are vague, buried under four decades of trauma and deliberate repression. The memories he does have are fond. He remembers being held, being warm, being cuddled. He remembers tasty food, his belly always round and full. He remembers bathing in the waters of the Force, his parents’ meditations buoying him up, showing him the inner workings of the very galaxy itself, the life it supported, the love that flowed through it. How, someday, he could connect to it and draw forth from it to do great things. He remembers their love and hopes for him.

Until the day it had all gone to hell.

He doesn’t really remember that day. Does his best not to. Fire and heat and smoke. Terrible, unbearable pain in his head. The deep cold and utter darkness of when his parents’ lives were extinguished. The gap that ripped through the Force when they left the realm of the living.

And then, darkness.

He cut himself off from the Force, overwhelmed by the evil and greed surrounding him. Shoved in a pod and moved from place to place. Rarely spoken to. Never played with. Never held. Fed just enough to keep him alive. Bathed just enough to not offend his captors with the stench of squalor.

Four decades.

He’d become little more than a captive lizard. A life of nothing more than misery and eating and shitting. Weak with confinement.

And then one day, a Shiny Being killed his captors and stole him. The Shiny Being, after fits and starts, became his father. Together, they chanced upon the woman who became his mother.

He won’t go back. He will not go back.

He cannot stand the thought of losing a parent again.

His father… his new father, has never died before, even if not for lack of trying. He’s come close, precariously so, but Yadier was always able to intervene before things got too far. Maybe he hadn’t done a perfect job, but he’d pulled his father through just far enough until someone else could step in and finish his work. He’d done what he could. He is, after all, just a baby, and he knows it.

But his mother… his new mother…

She had died. She had died protecting him. She had died trying to channel far too much Force, the blowback of a detonating Imperial cruiser and the hundred souls aboard flickering out all at once, amplified by a canyon of kyber ore, the midi-chlorians in her blood cutting her off from her son like a blown fuse, blasting itself apart, dropping the bridge so the overwhelming power couldn’t cross the gap and kill him too.

But it had been his fault.

He’d mis-judged. His mother had warned him about the kyber that surrounded him, warned him that it was going to amplify their power. He had gathered the Force and she had channeled it, but she’d reached her limits before they could complete their work. He’d needed just a little more from her. Just a little more capacity. Had asked his mother if she loved his father. Knowing that in love, in the recognition of that love, she could handle more.

And she had. For a few moments.

And then it had all blown to hell.

Darkness swallowed them both. His mother stepped in and absorbed the brunt of it. Shielded him. Protected him. She faded into the same abyss that had swallowed his first parents before the darkness closed on him, as well. His father brought him back, the pain and heat and life jolted into him from his father’s vambraces. His father tried the same with his mother, but she was too far gone, had been pulled too far under for his father’s machinations to reach.

And so Yadier had summoned all the power he possessed in that moment, closed his eyes and Reached, gathered everything he had, and, having taken note of how his mother had, in some latent instinctive way, used the kyber around them to focus the Force, did the same himself, lengthened his grasp, and dug deep.

Deep deep deep through death itself. He’d found his mother just as she was joining the Force, unresponsive. She’d been at peace, but he had not. He would not let her go. He had Reached and he had Grabbed and he had Yanked her away to bring her back, and in his haste, some part of her had torn open. The part of her that had already joined the Force was ripped away and left behind as he carried his mother away on his back, and she’d bled a trail that followed them all the way out.

Yadier shows all of this to Master Jenkins. Defiant. As if to dare her to tell him he was wrong to do it. As if to warn her that he’ll do it again if he must.

She sighs. “I understand, little one. It hurts to lose the ones we love. It hurts to lose the ones who have protected us.”

Does she? Does she really? Does she really understand watching his parents die and getting locked in a pod for forty years? Only to watch it happen all over again?

Master Jenkins hears the anger and grief he directs at her. “You are not alone, Yadier. You understand how much others have suffered. You understand how much your own parents have suffered, yes?”

He does. They’ve done their best to shield him from their memories, but he’s shared their nightmares all the same. The steel doors closing over his father before the missile destroys his parents. The fallen Jedi as he slaughters the Younglings before his mother’s eyes. He knows very well the horrors and loss his parents have suffered. He knows how hopeless they’d been. How powerless they’d been to do anything about it.

The difference is that he is not hopeless. He is not powerless. Why shouldn’t he make a difference if he is able to do so?

“You know why,” Master Jenkins says.

The wound his mother sustained when he tore her away from joining the Force. The wound that grows larger every day. Just a little. Nothing she or most anyone else around her can notice. But he sees it just as clearly as Master Jenkins does. He’ll learn how to fix it. He’ll learn how and then he’ll heal his mother. Make her good as new.

“That kind of power comes from a dark place, Yadier.”

Why is that, he wonders? Why should the power to rectify a death that shouldn’t have happened come only from the Dark Side? How can it possibly be a bad thing if it comes from a place of love? How can it possibly be evil if it comes from a place of justice? His mother had not deserved to die. He’d known how much more life she’d had in her. All the things she has done since only proves it. All the joy she has brought him, all the solace she has brought his father, none of it would’ve happened had he not intervened.

“And you, in your toddlerhood, are an unbiased arbiter of justice?”

He could do no worse than the cruel fates of the galaxy. He’s seen enough of it to know that.

He senses the threats that lie beyond, even as his parents try to shield him from those thoughts. Even as the broken pieces of his father heal, the cracks in his mother deepen. He doesn’t think anyone else other than Master Jenkins really notices, and it doesn't happen fast, but it does happen, and Yadier can tell the difference from week to week. She’s in no real danger yet, but someday, she will be, and he must be ready for it. Because he knows those cracks are his fault, from when he’d dragged her back from death, in his haste. He doesn’t blame himself, he knows he isn’t much more than a baby, but he must still take responsibility for it. He must master his abilities and use them to fix the damage he has caused. He remembers his father’s raging despair when his mother had died, and he does not want to see that again. His mother deserves to live a full life, his father deserves to have her at his side, and he deserves to have them both. For as long as is natural for their kind, which he knows will not be long for him, so he must appreciate what he has when he has them as much as possible.

Rayne’s thoughts, on the other hand, run along a much different theme.

She doesn’t remember her parents. Has no memory of their faces or their names. Instead, her earliest memories are of the Jedi crèche on Coruscant. Surrounded by other younglings, other Force users, so that she’d had no idea that her talents and theirs were vanishingly rare. Her memories of the crèche are dim, however, even if they are fond. A warm, soft bed at night, surrounded by other children, steeped in the flow of the Force as it surrounded them all. Lessons with the Masters during the day. Science and math and history and literature. Along with the ways of the Force. Learning how to connect with it through meditation, concentrating on how it gave her strength, how it connected her to all living things.

She’d had friends, in the way that young children do. She can’t remember their names, long buried beneath time and ash and death. She’d had instructors and caregivers, all who had radiated kindness and warmth. The one she remembers best is Master Yoda. He was both the oldest and the youngest at the same time, ancient in years and knowledge, youthful in mischief and fun. He had guided her and the other Younglings through their first steps along the path of the Force, how to Navigate, how to See, how to Listen.

She’d had Eagle. The man in white armor who’d watched over her and her friends on field trips, visored gaze turned outward, rifle in his hands, at the ready. Eagle had many brothers, all of whom looked and sounded just like him, but she could tell him apart. They were clones, identical in blood, but they were still unique in the Force, and every Jedi could tell every Clone apart. Eagle had a certain curiosity about the universe, always wondering what the purposes of things were, always wondering about his own purpose. He was not a violent person, despite his breeding. Despite his training. He didn’t particularly like the fact that he was born and bred for war. He’d thought about that more than the others did. But he liked his assignment with the Jedi kids. Getting them comfortable with a Clone. Helping to keep them safe in their field training. He’d thought they were cute. Over-powered little gremlins learning how to get themselves under control.

And so, when she had questions, she would seek him out. Find him in the dining hall. Interrogate him over meals of macaroni and cheese. He would answer to the best of his ability between forkfuls of food, dark eyes unfocused as he cast about for responses. Even if he didn’t have the answer, he was able to ease her fears. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough,” he’d say. “You’re a smart kid.”

In the end, he’d still tried to kill her, when the time had come.

Everyone she had ever known, snuffed out during the night from hell. Toddlers slaughtered before her eyes by her childhood hero. Her whole life turned upside down at the age of ten.

The next nine years are a haze of survival, starvation, and misery.

And then, a rescue of sorts. A weapons dealer, a woman who knew the harsh realities of the galaxy, had found her, recognized what she was. Offered her freedom and a path forward. The woman had fostered her to the best of her abilities, understanding the feral nature of the teenager she had taken in, giving her the space and safety she needed to become human once again.

It wasn’t love, exactly, but it was caring and concern. Genuine and heartfelt.

The woman had a son Rayne’s age. The woman’s love was reserved for him. They were the first family Rayne had ever seen up close. A mother and son. A father lost to the war, as so many were. The woman hugged her son and ruffled his hair and he hugged her back, even if he’d been a little embarrassed about it. The woman wanted him to Be Prepared for Life Out There, to be the best version of himself he could be, to do everything he could to make the galaxy a better place, and Rayne heard the echoes of her Masters’ lessons in the woman’s words and deeds.

The woman’s son had done everything he could to make his mother proud.

Rayne fell in love with the woman’s son.

With Zavin.

He was good and friendly and cute and still talked to her after she threatened him with a knife when she thought he’d stolen her lunch. She learned about Honest Mistakes and Forgiveness. After a few months, she learned about pleasure and satisfying physical desires. Zavin had been remarkably knowledgeable about such things for his age, had known Rayne had experienced little in the way of happiness for close to a decade, and had made it a personal mission to help her make up for lost time. She learned everything she could, how to make herself feel good, how to make a man feel good, how to give and take.

One catch.

She’d mistaken passion for love.

He had cared for her. He had been concerned for her. Genuine and heartfelt.

But he couldn’t love her. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, at the time.

Heartbroken, she’d withdrawn. They’d joined the Rebellion together by then, serving on the same ship. She managed to disappear from him. Avoided him at every turn. She’d let go in the worst possible way, believing that she was unworthy of any love if she was unworthy of his.

The timing could not have been worse. Her third sortie as a fighter pilot ended almost as soon as it had begun, a bout of mind-blowing claustrophobia driving her from an X-wing cockpit, shaking, sending her staggering to her berth where she curled up with a bottle of booze and drank herself into a stupor to escape the demons of failure.

Zavin felt responsible. Guilty. Hurting her was the last thing he’d wanted.

He had a friend. Some goofball of a guy who was both fearless and awkward, whose family had worked with the Jedi. Who could be trusted. The friend had listened as Zavin told him about her, nodding with understanding through all the scary bits. He was no stranger to tragedy. He was willing to meet her. Willing to give her a shot, see if she had any interest in him.

Hayes. His name had been Hayes.

He’d found her in the hangar one night, staring out into empty space. He hadn’t been much of a conversationalist, so he’d just stood there next to her, enjoying the view. Enjoying the stars. Letting his mind open up, letting her sus him out. It hadn’t taken her long to put the pieces together. Without turning to face him, she spoke her first words to him. “I’m not an easy person to be with.”

“I heard.” He continued to look out as the planet turned below them.

“Do you not have anything better to do?”

He shrugged. “I like a good challenge.”

It had turned out not to be a challenge at all. His easy acceptance of her had turned to adoration in short order. He was warm. He was brilliant. He was funny in a silly kind of way that was so rare in the galaxy. He was a little clumsy in bed to start, but had been eager to learn, eager to reciprocate the pleasures she bestowed upon him, and got up to speed soon enough. Spending time with him was easy. He delighted in the ways she was so different from most others. He brightened an existence that would otherwise be little more than drudgery and war. He offered his love. She accepted it. She reciprocated it. Five years in, he asked her to marry him. She accepted that, too. She let herself get lost in him, let herself center her world around him, let him in all the way. For ten more years, they lived together. Worked together. Loved together. Fought against the evils of the galaxy together.

And then one day he saved her life, shoving her through an airlock as the hangar vented atmosphere, and blew out into space, taking half her soul with him.

It’s amazing how much alcohol a Jedi can manage to drink without killing themselves. Even if maybe that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.

She’d never really gotten over it. But she had eventually come to a realization. Her late husband’s dying act had been to save her life. He had sacrificed himself for her. The Force had taken him and left her for a reason, and she was meant to stay alive and figure out what that reason was. She’d let go of the grief as much as she could. Moved on as well as she could.

Five years later, a Mandalorian showed up on her doorstep with a Force-sensitive baby tucked into the crook of his arm. The ghost of her childhood Master writ small in green skin and enormous ears.

This baby. This baby was the reason she had been spared while her husband had not. She had to get this baby to safety. Lucky for the Mandalorian, he had the same idea. The moment she saw this baby, she knew that her primary responsibility was to find out where he belonged and get him there.

She and the baby had figured out what they each were in short order, and they each delighted in it. For the first time in so long, they were no longer alone in the galaxy. She had never wanted to be a mother, but for this child, she would reach for motherhood as much as possible. She would teach him everything she could. She would provide all the care she could give. She would protect him with her life.

It didn’t matter that the Mandalorian belonged to a terrorist sect and had no idea. He was kind. He was lonely. She was lonely, too.

She made an offer of intimacy. He accepted. He turned out to know what he was doing. The hook was set. The next day, he asked her to come along. She accepted.

Had she manipulated him? Maybe a little. Nothing Force-wise. She hadn’t needed to. Men are prone to following where their dicks point, and the Mandalorian was no different. They were both using each other as means to an end, and they both knew it. They had the same end, a common goal – save this child. No harm, no foul. If they found a little happiness in each other along the way, so much the better.

And then…

And then the child called in the chip on her motherhood. Called her his mother in the Mandalorian’s language.

She protested. She wasn’t qualified. She had failed to protect children before, so long ago. But the Mandalorian insisted – the child knew what he wanted, and the Mandalorian trusted his judgement.

And so, she adopted the Force-sensitive child of the same kind as Master Yoda with Mandalorian vows. Together, they became parents to a being they did not fully understand but had sworn to protect with their lives. She entered parenthood shared with a man she’d only known for a few weeks, whose face she had never seen. The man then gave her a gift of himself, a lock of his own hair encased in beskar, meant to make up for the face he was unable to share with her.

A Jedi wearing beskar to commemorate parenthood of a Force-sensitive alien baby with a Mandalorian who was forbidden by the terrorist sect he was raised by to remove his helmet before others.

It was all very confusing.

Life came at them fast. The Pirate Queen poked and prodded at the vulnerable bonds between them, forcing them to acknowledge their conflicting understandings of what it meant to be a family composed in-part of Jedi. Gideon stole the Jedi of their family, and the Mandalorian rescued them. Together, they faced the remnant again, and brought it down.

She had paid for it with her life. Without reservation. Without hesitation. She had saved her son. She had saved his father.

Her only miscalculation was what her loss would do to them.

She’d woken up in a bacta tank to a Mandalorian at his wit’s end and a Jedi baby who had possibly used Dark powers to bring her back to life.

But their son was safe. Whatever had happened was worth it. The child, her son, her little green baby, was where he belonged. Whatever else she managed to keep would be bonus.

She’d been allowed to stay. The Mandalorian had been allowed to stay. The Mandalorian proposed to her, in his own roundabout way.

She had… not quite accepted. She’d needed to catch her breath. They had not known each other long, and she’d just needed to… settle in. Get used to the idea again. Get used to the idea that this was no longer about means and ends. Make peace with the idea that she was no longer just protecting her child with this man. That she would raise her child with this man. That she would let this man all the way into her life. Her soul. That she could fulfill the vows he desired. To be one when together. To be one when apart. To share everything. To raise their son as a warrior.

She’d just needed… some time.

The Mandalorian gave it to her.

And when time is up, she will likely accept.

She will wed a second husband.

She will allow him all the way in. Next to the place where Hayes had been. Not replacing him, but filling in the gaps left by his absence.

Her son. Her Mandalorian. Soon to be husband. She’s given everything she has to save them once already. She would not hesitate to do it again. She understands the distinct possibility that she could lose her husband once again. She understands the violent galaxy they live in. She understands the violent life he lives. She is not at peace with it, not exactly, but she’s been through it once already. She’d rather not go through it again, but she knows she can survive it. The idea of losing her son… she does not allow the thought much space in her mind. Avoids it whenever possible. She knows the proper Jedi way of handling it would be to mourn for however long would be necessary, and then let go and move on. Continue with the bidding of the Force. She knows the way she would actually handle it would be more self-destructive. Then maybe more other-destructive of whatever it had been that had taken her son’s life. She knows the careful line she would need to walk there, that murder in her son’s name would be a sure harbinger of the Dark Side. Maybe she’d manage to stop short of full-on murder. Maybe she’d manage to keep it within justice in her son’s name. The same holds for what may eventually take her husband from her. She figures the odds are even on which one of them will go first. If it is to be him, she will hold it together the best she can. Continue on the best she can. Bring justice to his death the best she can.

Master Jenkins sees all of this before her.

She still has much work to do with the family of orphans in her care.

---

By the time they make it home, Yadier is getting cranky, whining about the walk, low grumbles grating from his tiny throat, a sure sign that he is ready for his pre-dinner nap. Coming through the door to their flat, Rayne casts a glance in Din’s direction, a silent question about what he’s up for. Depending on the day, they either head to the balcony to relax or head to their bedroom for other ways to unwind. Today, he lifts his chin in the direction of the balcony. “I’ll meet you out there in a moment.”

“Okay.”

Rayne steps outside, into the shaded breeze of the balcony, thirty-one floors up. The hustle and bustle from the street is muted up here, just enough background noise to know interesting things are going on, but not loud enough to be intrusive. The space is large enough for a round table and four chairs, with more room for Yadier to run around. The four-foot high iron lattice-work rails offer a mix of privacy and sufficient holes for the toddler to peek through and see the world below. The view of the city over the rails is ample, encompassing other high-rises and surrounding low-rises, with a sliver of a river a mile off in the distance.

She lays Yadier in the crate they keep out here for his naps. He enjoys being outside as much as his parents, awake or asleep. A large wind chime in the corner rings with low, quiet tones in the breeze that lull the child under in short order. She turns a couple of chairs to face each other and, settling her weight into one, she props her bare feet up on the other, leaning back and closing her eyes. Din comes out a few minutes later, shed of the armor and helmet, wearing only a black T-shirt and black shorts, two bottles of beer in one hand. He places one on the table next to Rayne and eases his weight into the other chair next to her feet, leaning back and hanging his right foot on the rung of her chair, spreading his left under the table. She cracks an eye open, lifts the offered bottle, clinks it against his in an unspoken toast, and takes a swallow as he does the same.

He heaves a sigh and closes his eyes.

Sitting out here without the helmet has become a kind of practice for him. The balcony is deep enough so that some part of it is always shaded, so any view of it from the buildings on the other side of the street is obscured and distanced. Those across the way may get a vague glimpse, and he’s getting himself into the mindset of not caring. To what end, he’s not entirely sure yet, but it feels important, somehow, so he does it.

Rayne is pleased to see a five-o-clock shadow already coming in on his jaw and upper lip. She knows it comes in fast by touch already, but seeing it happen for the first time holds its own wonder. She takes the moment to study his face, still not over the novelty of seeing him, still unable to take the shape of his features for granted.

He looks exhausted.

She feels exhausted.

She takes another swallow of her beer. “Remember back when one of us had to shed blood or shed someone else’s for us to call it a rough day?”

“Hmm.” A hint of a smile quirks at the corner of his mouth and he drops a hand to her leg, just above her ankle. “Today was a different kind of rough.”

“Fair point.”

A calm quiet settles over them for a while. They relax into each other, listening to the wind chime ringing over the street activity below, feeling the warm breeze against their skin. They enjoy the companionable silence together, something that has come naturally to them from the start. Their son burbles in his sleep and Din draws a long sigh, almost as if in response. Rayne cracks an eye open once more, and sees that he has his head turned, looking in their son’s direction.

Once again, she is captivated by his profile. The hard angles of his eyebrow. The sharp line of his nose. The jut of his chin. The square of his jaw. All of it offset by the soft way his hair curls over his forehead, his ears, and the back of his neck. The soft set of his lips and the kindness in his eye.

She hasn’t noticed him looking at her the way she looks at him. To be fair, looking at him is still a new thing. Had he ever looked at her this way? When they first met and his face was shrouded in beskar and mystery?

She will never know.

Her eye slides shut just as he turns back to face her. She hopes he didn’t catch her in the act. Instead, he leans forward and takes one of her hands in his, and she opens her eyes in response. He first meets her gaze with his own, then brings her hand to the scars just above his right knee. The six evenly-spaced lines carved into the skin that she had first noticed on Methuselah and he had refused to explain. Their newer twins, six lines below the knee, were carved more recently on Coruscant, in the drunken rage he’d fallen into after learning the true circumstances of his childhood kidnapping by the Mandalorians.

She pulls her feet off his chair and leans forward so she can trace the old scars now that he has granted his tacit permission. She looks up to meet his gaze, asking the tacit question.

He breaks her gaze, looking back down at her hand, and takes it once more in his own. “I failed my first set of trials when I was fifteen.” He pauses for a while, not sure what else to say. The rest seems obvious.

“You didn’t take it well,” she says.

“No.”

“What happened?”

“I went up again a month later and passed.”

“How often did that happen with the others?”

“About half the time.”

“So, failure the first time around was common.”

“Yes,” he admits.

“Did you know that at the time?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you so hard on yourself?”

He’s quiet for a long time, remembering the shame, remembering how much it hurt, remembering locking himself in his room, turning his helmet’s modulator off, and screaming into it until his throat had gone raw. He’d wanted to lock himself in there forever, the thought of facing Alaria as a failure gutting him and driving him to his knees. He remembers thinking she deserved better than him, deserved better than the disappointment he had become. The pain in his soul had simply been too much. Too overwhelming. He’d only been taught to handle anger in ways that didn’t involve hurting others, ways that were physically distracting, sublimating it into going for a run or target practice or beating the stuffing out of a punching bag. But he hadn’t dared to leave his room. Physical pain was easier to handle. He’d been taught how to shift his focus away from that. To breathe through it.

So he’d shed everything but his helmet and shorts, pulled his knife, and drew the blade through his own skin. Six lines. One for every act of the Resol'nare. One for each family that had failed to adopt him.

He remembers it all while holding her hand, their agreed-upon signal inviting her to examine whatever came out of his head as closely as she wanted. Even so, he responds to her question with actual words. “It’s just how I was.”

She slides her other hand further down his leg to the newer scars. “It’s how you still are.”

He shrugs a shoulder and sighs.

She takes both of his hands in both of hers now, and holds them tight. “You being you is one thing. You setting an example for our son is another. I don’t want him carving himself up ten years from now if things don’t go according to schedule and he thinks this is the appropriate response because this is how Dad does it.”

Din returns the strength of her grip and nods his head. The thought of their son harming himself in the same way that Din had breaks his heart. He knows he has to do better, if not for himself, then for Yadier.

And then, he talks.

“His lifespan is so long. It’s bad enough that the best-case scenario is that we’ll die when he’s still young. A week ago I wondered if I was ever going to have a conversation with him about growing up. What he wants to be. What kind of mark he wants to leave on the galaxy. Dating.” He shakes his head. “All the conversations I never got to have with my parents.” He pauses, swallowing. “Now I don’t know if I’ll ever have any kind of conversation with him. Even if it’s about toys or frogs or…” he pauses again, voice cracking. “Or other kids at the playground. I don’t have the same kind of link you have with him. I can’t tell if he understands what I say. Sometimes it seems like he gets it. Other times he just looks at me and belches.”

For a man who has spoken so little to anyone over the course of his life, his sudden preoccupation with what he will or will not be able to speak about with his son is overwhelming.

Rayne drags her chair closer so their knees now touch and she brings her forehead to his, relieved as he sinks into the contact. “He understands most of what you say. When he doesn’t quite get the words, he gets the meaning.” She presses a hand to his heart, and he understands. “Aaaannnd sometimes he’s just gassy and you’re not supposed to take it personally.”

Din huffs through his not-quite-laugh.

She pulls away so she can look him in the eye. “If you want to know what’s going on in his head, you can do that, but you’ll have to open up and let him in a little.” She drops her hand back down to his knee. “Without showing him this stuff.”

Din nods his understanding.

“Is that something you can do?”

He thinks about it for a moment, meeting her gaze. Those blue eyes. The same blue as polished beskar. A hint of the resolve of the woman he will soon marry. The woman who will soon be his riduur. She’s so much stronger than he is and most of the time it seems like she doesn’t even realize it, and that does things to him. This casual power she walks around with. Proposing that he crack open the shell that used to house his soul and let his sorcerer son sing into it. Sure, what could go wrong with that? Letting your magical baby into your head couldn’t possibly have repercussions, right? Gods, it drives him nuts. It makes him want to scream at her and kiss her at the same time. What are you thinking? Are you out of your mind? Will you please help me do something about this boner you just gave me?

In the end, he settles for another sigh. “I’ll think about it.”

She kisses him, lips soft against his, warm and pliant. She slides her hands from his knees up his thighs, and he can’t hold back the quiet moan when she reaches the object of his silent complaint. “Still want me to do something about this?” she murmurs.

“Yes.”

---

Din stands at the end of the Razor Crest’s rear ramp, Yadier tucked into the crook of his left arm, right hand held in Rayne’s grasp.

“Be careful out there.”

“We will. It’s just a milk run.”

There are, quite literally, several thousand gallons of milk loaded into the gunship’s cargo hold. All packed up in several refrigeration units buzzing away as they keep it at just a few degrees above freezing. Of all the ironies, Rayne had to take the time to develop a custom heat-sink for the compressors, lest the pilot and passenger get cooked alive while sealed up with the refrigeration units. Din wonders at the ridiculousness of the whole thing – green milk from the Lata goat is apparently a luxury good in the Core worlds, and it turns out this breed of goat thrives on Genesaria under the care of Force-sensitive farmers on the rolling grasslands far to the southeast of the city.

The farming family had been less than happy when they’d arrived this morning to learn that a different hauler would take the fruits of their hard labor to Jedha, where, like one-tenth of the trade goods from Genesaria, it would be offloaded, re-labeled as Jedha-origin goods, and exported to Coruscant. The other nine-tenths undergo similar treatment on nine other worlds. Each port has a friendly face in a Genesarian ex-patriot, ensuring the secrecy of their homeworld by facilitating what is, in reality, galactic smuggling. The handoffs are typically smooth, aided by the fact that haulers and dock handlers know each other, so a new face, to say nothing of a new face hidden by a helmet, rattled the farmers. For that reason, one of the Genesarian Trade Magistrate’s general managers had been there to introduce them to Din and assure them that the handler on Jedha knew that a new guy in an old ship would be running the haul. Still, they had protested, returning on-and-off throughout the day to complain to whatever manager had the shift at the time, hoping for a different ruling, failing each time. It wasn’t until Rayne had arrived with Yadier that evening that they realized they were dealing with the Lost Son and his family, at which point they apologized profusely and accepted the terms. When they expressed their wonder at Din’s apparent new occupation, he’d breathed his trademark sigh. “Gotta feed that kid somehow.”

Provide for your clan. One of the six tenets of the Resol’nare.

And so he stands at the back end of his ship, a few million credits worth of milk cooling in the hold. He is of the understanding that he’ll come back with a few million credits worth of high-end foods that are not easily produced on Genesaria. He is a little chagrined at the fact that his ship is now registered as a perishable goods cargo hauler, a goddamned grocery getter, but he knows that if this run goes well, and the next several after it, he’ll be vetted for progressively more… sensitive… cargo as befitting a Mandalorian warrior. As it stands, this run will net him a few thousand credits after fuel, docking fees, and maintenance supplies. Not bad for what should be a few days of easy work.

“I’ll miss you,” Rayne says, running her hand over the fuzz on top of Yadier’s head.

This will be their first separation since Din arrived at her hangar. Since the beginning of the whole thing.

“We’ll be back in a couple days,” he responds. A day and a half, actually, but with the loading, unloading, and flight time, it all adds up to three full days of work. Three days a week for hauling cargo with two days off. Alternating with three days for military and assorted sorcery training, two days off. Rinse and repeat.

It almost sounds like a normal life.

Yadier takes one of Rayne’s fingers in his hand before she’s out of range, his huge eyes taking her in for as long as he can before they leave. Din adjusts him in the crook of his elbow. “You and me, buddy. Just like old times.”

The baby grunts.

Rayne runs her thumb over a stubby claw. “Without all the getting chased by bad guys and with plenty of food in the galley.” She’d re-activated their fob-scramblers, one in Din’s helmet, the other in Yadier’s mythosaur pendant, and the Razor Crest’s unit the night before. “I’ll be right here when you get back. Then next time you get to stay here with me when Buir goes. And we’ll both be here when he gets back.”

The baby grunts again. He’s not entirely pleased with the situation, but he senses the beginning of a new routine. These separations will be short and temporary, concluding with happy reunions. He senses his father’s need to be on the move, his need to provide for his family. He senses how his father is used to long trips away from a home that never really welcomed him back, how much easier this will be in comparison. A shorter, safer trip, an actual dwelling to return to, an actual family to reunite with. He gives his mother’s finger one last squeeze before releasing her, blinking, and tucking his head against the armor over his father’s chest.

Din presses his forehead to Rayne’s for one last moment, and the helmet is cool against her skin. “Time to go,” he whispers, pressing his free hand into her sternum.

She returns the gesture, hand flat over the kar’ta beskar diamond carved into his armor. “Good luck.”

He pulls away and steps back, and Yadi returns her wave goodbye before Din turns to walk up the ramp. She walks around to the front of the ship to avoid the thruster wash as Din fires the engines. The exhaust ripples in the warm evening air, and the orange blaze of sunset glints off the fuselage as Din lifts the ship from the ground, spins a quarter turn, and eases forward out over the hangar and up into the spaceport departure flight pattern. She watches the sublight engines burn, two points of fire growing smaller in the distance over the plains as they gain altitude before they shrink into a single point of light and then wink out altogether.

Rayne closes her eyes. She feels the empty gap left by the absence of her son and the man she is soon to wed. Nonetheless, all is calm within the Force. This will be fine.

She takes the light rail home. Alone for the first time in several months. Her heart aches a little, but she knows it won’t be for long. Next time, she’ll have Yadier with her and Din will be on his own; they’ll trade him back and forth as his school schedule allows. She’s never been alone with her son before and she’s curious about how it will go, but they had decided that it was best for him to go with Din for this first separation. A situation he is familiar with.

She returns home and is struck by the silence that greets her when she steps through the doorway. No burbling child. No slap of tiny bare feet as the burbling child scampers along the floor. No low grunting of a middle-aged man lurching along after the burbling child.

Nothing but the low whisper of air running through the circulators.

She is alone again.

The smallness of her previous life closes in on her with deafening silence, the empty spaces left by her family sucking away the sense of purpose she had gained in their wake. For a moment, she is back at her hangar again, filling her days with fixing ships and designing parts, filling her nights with alcohol, lonely and bored, adrift in the habit of maintaining anonymity under the Empire’s boot. Then, the walls close in without her family to hold them up, closing around her throat like claustrophobia crushing a little girl trapped in a ventilation shaft…

She walks to Yadier’s room and sinks to his bed, scooping up a bantha stuffie and clutching it to her chest, proof that her son is real, that he is not an ephemeral dream, that he is real and he will be back in a couple days. She presses the stuffie against the beskar casing at the base of her throat, a reminder of the reality of her son’s father. She still has these pieces of them, this beloved toy and this symbol of shared parenthood, reminders that they will come back for her.

She pads back out to the kitchen and opens one of the cabinets to pull a can of soup off the shelf. The cabinets are loaded to capacity with non-perishables; soups and grains and beans and dried fruits and dried meats and dried pasta and cooking staples and spices, all lined up in orderly fashion, new items added to the back of the shelves as older ones are consumed off the front. Perishables are kept at a supply consistent with what a family of three can consume them at, bread and eggs and dairy and meat kept on a careful tally. Only fresh fruits and vegetables are left to chance, purchased on an almost daily basis. Neither Rayne nor Din are particularly good at cooking, but the cabinets are always well-stocked. A casual observer would assume they just like to be prepared.

Anyone familiar with starvation would know otherwise.

Both parents and their son remember what it was like. Both parents have vowed that their son will never know it again, in their own silent ways. Neither of them realizes what they’re doing on a conscious level when they load up the grocery sack on their way through the markets, picking up whatever catches their eye now that credits are no longer an issue. All they really know is that when they open a door to see shelves loaded with food, the stone of anxiety that lives in their bellies dissolves away for a little while. One worry to put to rest. One more layer of security, safe and hunkered-down in their home.

Rayne empties the soup into a bowl, pulls a beer from the fridge as the soup heats, then eats her dinner alone at the kitchen counter. She tries not to think about how quiet it is. When she’s done with dinner, she settles down at the desk situated in the corner of the main family room, and brings up the comm from her niece, her late husband’s oldest sister’s oldest daughter. Tasha has gotten settled in at Rayne’s old hangar, followed up with Rayne’s comms to her regular clients about the transition in operators, and has completed her first rounds of service repairs. Things are going well so far, though Tasha has noticed a common fault with fuel regulators coming out of the Kuat Drive Yards for the last few years, and asked Rayne if there are any off-brand replacements that are any better.

Problem is, there aren’t.

So Rayne brings up a blank design template from her tablet, and closes her eyes for a few moments, clearing her mind.

Bringing forth the ideas that have been brewing there for days.

She opens her eyes and begins her work.

---

Hyperspace slips by him for the first time since coming to Genesaria. When he had fled from Ilum with Rayne comatose in the hold, Yadier miserable with worry, and Cara doing the best she could to keep them all chugging along.

This is fine, Din reminds himself. The baby is burbling in his pod, anchored to the starboard jump seat, gazing ahead at the blue-white ripples with his huge eyes full of wonder. Just like old times.

The comm beeps, reminding him of the message that had spooled through when he’d booted up the Razor Crest’s auxiliaries that morning. He’d wanted to focus on work, and, having a hunch about where the message was from, had decided to postpone looking at it until they were underway. He activates the comm now, keeping a steady hold on his thoughts.

He’d been right about his hunch. The message is from Sorgan. The message itself, however, is much shorter than he’d expected.

Message received.

That’s all.

He sits back, breathing through a sigh, the sound of it harsh through the modulator. Well, what had he expected, really? He’s not sure. He supposes this is the best possible outcome – Omera has received his message and knows they’re safe. If she was able to get to town and receive his message that he’d found Yadier’s people, that he was staying with the baby, and that they had added to their family along the way, then she must be reasonably safe as well. Beyond that, no news is good news, as far as it goes.

This is fine.

Yadier burbles again, and Din allows the diversion of his attention. He swivels around, lifts the baby from the pod, and settles him in the crook of his elbow. “Dinner time?”

The baby claps and giggles.

They eat together at the small table in the hold, truly sharing a meal for the first time, eye-to-eye, on the ship. Din picks through his bowl of stew as Yadier eyes a plate of three warmed-over frogs. He’s a little put off by the fact that they’re already dead, but they smell fresh enough, so he puts his claws around the first one, gives it a perfunctory sniff, then shoves it in his mouth. Din keeps his eyes lowered to the table as the baby goes through his peristaltic writhing and gulping to get the whole thing down, finishing with a tiny belch, and the spectacle is over soon enough. “You got spoiled with all the live ones in the park, buddy.” The baby grins in agreement. “Back to frozen ones for a few days.” Yadier sighs, gives what looks to Din like a little shrug, then swallows the next two in quick succession. Din works his way through his stew, taking Yadier’s newfound discriminating tastes as a good sign that his son is no longer a starving, voracious monster. At long last, his son’s dietary needs are being met.

Bedtime rolls around soon enough, and Din tucks Yadier into his pod after story time on the flight deck, just like old times. The only new twist is that now he takes his helmet off to bring his forehead to his son’s, relishing the scrape of stubby claws along his chin. The baby drops off to sleep in short order, and Din heads down to the fresher for a quick shower. He nearly runs into the closed door of the starboard-side storage bay before he remembers he’d relocated his sleeping area up and behind the galley in the final weeks of their nomadic life aboard the Crest, a concession to the needs of sharing close quarters with the new addition to their family. An acknowledgement of shared lives and a mutual comfort he had never before allowed himself.

Now, he creeps back up the ladder, through the galley, and into the makeshift bedroom. The air is cool and he shivers despite the long-sleeved t-shirt and long pants he wears as he snuggles down into the blankets by himself. He can’t tell if it’s just that he’s unused to sleeping in such a large space on his own or if the heat-sink Rayne built is working a little too well, but he feels off-kilter in a way he hasn’t felt for a long time. He closes his eyes against the eternal blue twilight of hyperspace. The sheets are soft against his skin and the blanket is cozy over his body. The mattress is thinner than he remembers… maybe he’s gotten spoiled over the last few weeks as well, but he’s physically comfortable enough. He just…

He reaches out for Rayne’s pillow and pulls it to his chest. He regrets washing the pillowcase. No lingering scent of pineapple. Just detergent. The pillow is uniformly squishy, lacking the firm definition of his Jedi, but it’s better than nothing as it warms against his body and he lets out an unsatisfied sigh.

Just a couple nights. This is fine.

He drifts in and out of sleep, unable to really settle, so he has no idea how long it’s been when he feels the tell-tale dip of the mattress as Yadier crawls in with him. The baby grunts and purrs his way up, and Din releases the pillow so his son can take his place against his chest, tucking his wrinkled fuzzy head under Din’s chin.

The Mandalorian breathes easier, son secure against his chest, and they both slip into a peaceful sleep.

#din djarin #grogu #the mandalorian

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sunnydaleherald · 2 years ago

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The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Tuesday, September 19

Oz: Hey. Willow: Hey! (notices) Your hair! Is brown! Oz: Oh, yeah, sometimes. So, uh, did you decide? Are you gonna be a Corporate Computer Suit Guy? Willow: Oh. Uh, well, I-I think I'm gonna finish high school first. What about you? Oz: I'm not really a computer person, you know. Or a work of any kind person. Willow: They why'd they select you? Oz: Oh, I sorta test well. Y'know, which is cool. Except that it leads to jobs.

~~Buffy Episode #22: "What's My Line, Part II"~~

[Chaptered Fiction]

Vamp for Rent 1/18 (Spike/Xander, M) by Forsaken2003

Hold My Heart (series) (Xander, T multiple xovers) by arcanedreamer

California Sun ch. 8 (Buffy/Spike, G) by ToBeHers

Crash and Burn Chapter 5/35 (Buffy/Spike, E) by NautiBitz

One, Two, Three Ch. 1-3/3 (COMPLETE) (Buffy/Faith, E) by NautiBitz

Heart Don't Lie Ch. 2/25 (Buffy/Spike, E) by NautiBitz

hit rewind Ch. 5 (Buffy/Spike, M) by untiljanuary

Eurotrip Ch. 5 (Buffy/Spike, M) by RavenLove12

Bound Ch. 50 (Buffy/Spike, E) by RavenLove12

Return of the Soulless Vampire: BTVS S9 Rewrite Ch. 31 - a WWS story (Ensemble, M) by Hoomanbeans

New Beginnings Ch. 4 (Buffy/Angel, Spike/OC, M) by Mindy1981

New Normal, Chapter 8 (Buffy/Spike, E) by holetoledo

The Neighbor's Point of View, Chapter 44 (Buffy/Spike, T) by the_big_bad

Of Babies and Belonging, Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, ) by Wojtekstan

Haunted, Chapter 6 (Buffy/Spike, E) by scratchmeout

Do better, Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, T) by onlyone87

The Art of Dying , Chapter 26-28 (Buffy/Spike, M) by disco-tea

Edge of the World , Chapter 4 (Buffy/Spike, E) by Dynamite

Use It or Lose It, Chapter 2 (Buffy/Spike, E) by Dynamite

Your deepest fears, Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, E) by JSBirsa

Haunted, Chapter 6 (Buffy/Spike, E) by scratchmeout

Origin Story of Shanna Brown Ch. 37 (Joyce Summers, M, multiple xovers) by Cristina

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork: Buffy by whatshisfaceblogs

Artwork: Angelus, Drusilla, and Spike by lemonharmonica

Artwork: BTVS “Every Outfit” “Witch” *redo* Xx by whatshisfaceblog

Artwork: “Will you just… hold me?” (Buffy & Spike) by thegothicalice

Artwork: Buffy & Faith by to-be-loved-by-death

Artwork: Giles and Buffy by pocketsizedann

Artwork: Cemetery Girl (Buffy) by jasmancer

Artwork:Angel by i-draw-shit

Manip:you can’t fight kyrumption (Buffy & Spike) by l0veisntbrains

Artwork: Spike by twankeys-art-dump

Artwork: Spike & Drusilla by twankeys-art-dump

[Reviews & Recaps]

The Buffy Re-watch: S2E17 Passion (part 2) by jvstheworld

[Fandom Discussions]

watching this years girl and who are you by thepunkmuppet

Hi my name is _illia_ (Killian/William) by a-heart-of-kyber

Faith’s first Watcher by coraniaid

in regards to the audible drama… by thepunkmuppet

“Spike didn’t show enough remorse! He’s a dick!” by a-heart-of-kyber

Cordelia's Development by nightshade nightshade

Did Buffy tell Angel she was in Heaven? by Tamwah1983

When Cordy flirted with Angel in Buffy I thought I had nothing to worry about ...then in Angel... by Almighty_Push91

What on earth was that? by Overtheedge33

Should Angel have treated Harmony better as his secretary? by Night-Caelum

Rewatching Buffy - the production quality. by Portmanlovesme

On my annual rewatch and just noticing now Angelus still wears the claddagh ring by littlelessthan9tails

You’re Welcome by TrueCrimeDanHam87

Just finished You’re Welcome by Daryl90

Melanie Lynskey as Willow by little_moustache

This student in Sunnydale high really looks like spike by Eglantine215

The Body question by ex-mummyhand

What do you think of Angel locking Wolfram and Hart in with Darla and Drusilla? by Night-Caelum

I just figured out that Cecily and Halfrek are the same person by catsandplantsandcats

Scenes like this is why I love Angel by Almighty_Push91

How would you rank the big bads of Buffy and why by Worried_Flower_7539

Is there any actual evidence at all for the often-repeated claim that the “original plan” for Faith was that she’d kill herself in the middle of Season 3? by coraniaid, herinsectreflection, & juanabaloo

tara related things i would have loved to see by missjessefantastico

I am recapping BtVS to my friend by bluestarsandclouds

watching btvs has been so refreshing, bc there’s so many women by lesbianlexluthor

RESTLESS vs HUSH by kipcarson37

[Articles, Interviews, and Other News]

PUBLICATION: The Best Single-Season TV Villain Nearly Unleashed Hell on Earth by Liam Gaughan

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #angel the series #fan art #fan fiction #meta

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megraen · 2 years ago

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What We're Hunting For - Chapter 9 - Piqued Interests

Later in the afternoon, Luis finally came to find the girls, who had spent their afternoon fawning over the farm animals, which Luis couldn’t deny were adorable, especially the baby animals. Not a single drop of masculinity in his blood would stop him from finding baby animals sweet. Faith and Abigail had been discussing what they were most excited about at the festival week. Faith was excited to see Abigail and her friends perform at the opening and closing ceremonies, while Abigail just wanted to have a good time with everyone. “I can’t wait to have some balls in my mouth,” Luis interjected, causing the woman to snap their heads towards him. Both seem mildly offended by his remarks, Faith more than Abigail. “I want to try some Rocky Mountain Oysters. Damn girls, get you’re heads out of the gutter.” He made his way to them, tossing an arm over Abigail's shoulders as he stood between them, kissing his friend's cheek. She nudged him playfully in the side. While Faith disapproved of the crude joke the man had made, but she found seeing the old friends' interaction was sweet, as it reminded her of how Joseph interacted with his brothers. “You lovelies been enjoying yourselves? I take it Abigail went on one of her knowledgeable rants because of the sheep.” Faith giggled. “Only because I encouraged her.” He sighed dramatically. “Never encourage this one.” Abigail jabbed him harder in the side for that remark, making him winch. “Hey, watch it. I’m a sensitive baby boy.” “Oh, you’re a baby, alright, mate.” Abigail bit playfully, jabbing him a third time, but softer. She turned to Faith, noticing her laughing at them. “You good?” The young woman nodded in between bursts of giggles. Faith was very much so enjoying the show the two friends were putting on for her, commenting on how close they were. “Yeah, that happens when you live with someone for seven years.” Luis audibly shuddered, earning a light smack on the shoulder from Abigail. “Is there a reason you’re here being a nuisance?” “Yes,” Luis answered flatly like it was apparent. “We’re all done setting up. So someone—” He emphasised, jerking his head at the blonde. “—needs to get back to the hotel and get dolled up for the performance. Well, I do too.” He stated, looking down at his own attire. The two friends were dressed casually in jeans, sneakers and t-shirts. Not something a band should wear when they perform, especially their lead singer. As the front-runner, Abigail needed to be eye-catching to enthrall the audience, and not just with her voice. “Yeah…” Abigail sighed, looking down at herself. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll look gorgeous no matter what you wear!” Faith beamed, taking Abigail's hands in her own. Abigail smiled at the kind words and the warmth of the woman’s hands. Faith was a comforting presence. “I’ll see you later tonight!” The two hugged as they said their goodbyes, Faith squeezing her tightly. She even said goodbye to Luis, which the man was happy to return. They had found the rest of their band sitting at the van waiting for them, both men looking annoyed. In truth, Timothy had gone on yet another rant during Abigail's absence about Eden’s Gate and how that Abigail shouldn’t be associating with its members. Luis and Michael had ripped into him, lecturing their friend on his words and actions in the last week. The entirety of the band had grown sick of Timothy and his anti-Eden’s Gate rants that he had been afflicting on his friends. They came to Hope County to perform and have a minor holiday, not to witness their guitarist having a breakdown.

I was tagged by @kyber-infinitygems to give this a go hahah

#oc: abigail fehn #fanfiction #fan fiction #joseph seed #jacob seed #john seed #faith seed #wip: what we're hunting for #wip wednesday #far cry #far cry 5 #fc5

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phoenixyfriend · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on “Auntie Soka and Little Leia” now that I’ve actually got it posted:

Call it a director’s cut! The process of actually writing the thing, and also jokes made along the way. Link to the actual fic.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the energy for image descriptions, even the text screenshots. Might come back that later. Most of this was DMs with @atagotiak.

This was an entire thing before I even started writing:

Before I decided on ages and stuff Ahsoka, to Jango, who has had zero contact with Kaminoans: Okay I know I'm a Jedi kid so you hate me but this toddler is your clone from the future. Jango, tired: What the FUCK are you talking about. Rex, barely able to talk: Don't you dare leave me with him, Commander! Ahsoka: I'm not going to leave you I just--I'm so tired I'm so fucking tired I haven't slept in five days and someone tried to kidnap Leia two days ago I am so fucking tired I need help

Ben: [twenty years of depression followed by a 'now I'm safe' breakdown over the course of weeks] Sokari: [whatever the FUCK this mess is]

When Ahsoka mentions there only being three other Jedi at the time of her death, I was thinking Kanan, Yoda, and Obi-Wan (Leia told her about the latter two living past her). She's not counting anyone that received training after the Temple fell, and she didn’t know about Cal.

When Leia says “I was adopted and raised by one of the founders of the rebellion, a movement built on the desire to instate freedom and democracy in a galaxy that had lost even the pretense.”

Depa: I'm no therapist but I diagnose you with "incredibly fucked up." Ahsoka: yeah, that’s fair

"Why did you pick Depa for--" She's pretty and I'm gay. Also because of the Kanan thing But mostly I'm gay "It's not a visual medi--" GAY

Empty of context beyond general post-fic AU: "Hey Sokari, we need to engage in psychological warfare against this individual and--" "I'm going to break into his office and leave a threatening note on his desk and leave no other sign that I was there. He'll see that his security is nothing and the only reason he isn't dead is because I'm too nice to kill him." "...okay, not what we were planning, but that works. Why is that your first choice?" "I really like breaking and entering, it's soothing." Ben just standing there with a bland smile like This Is Normal.

"We need someone to infiltrate a highly guarded facility in hostile territory." "So we're sending the Torrent kids?" [sigh] "We're sending the Torrent kids."

Rex and Sokari insist on both going by "Torrent" even though Rex could be a Fett. Jango really wants him to be a Fett. Rex has too many grudges to agree to being a Fett for... a while.

I really hope it's blatantly obvious that Ahsoka's not a reliable narrator for some things Ahsoka: Fett could care less if I died Jango: jfc even if you are older than me I can see you're fucked up. Drink your hot chocolate. Hells. She's got good reason to expect him to hate her as a Jedi! BUT. THAT IS NOT REFLECTIVE OF REALITY

We don’t get a lot of actual characterization for Jango, but the way I played him out here is he has never really parsed that Jedi are people before all this. It's a lot harder to treat them as a monolith when the traumatized former child soldier is having regular breakdowns in your shitty little kitchen

Fett: I respect you Ahsoka: No, don't do that

Ahsoka’s vigilantism is something that, in my mind, she's associating heavily with Zygerria and then the clones.

I figured that she never bothered to learn Quinlan’s teacher’s name but in the process of looking up some basic facts (whether he had a surname), I found that Wookiepedia was forced to give us a VERY wide range of possible death in Legends.

Please take a moment to imagine Quinlan's FACE when Ahsoka initially dismisses him. Quinlan has put a lot of effort into being rogueishly charming! It's very useful for his line of work! He knows to expect either irritation or a return flirtation when he acts like this with people his own age! Ahsoka is not flustered OR rolling her eyes and insulting him, she's just ignoring him and it's a bit of a blow to the ego

This just makes me really happy:

This was the initial comment I made, as a joke What if Maul is just. There. On one of the planets they make a pitstop at. What if Maul exists as the walking problem he is, but fifteen, and Ahsoka immediately tries to kick his ass and drag him back to Coruscant. I do not have room for this plot but What If

Despite not having room for this plot, I proceeded to write this plot.

Maul is kidnapped and it’s the best thing that ever happened to him HE'S FIFTEEN HE'S DUMB AS SHIT AND HAS A BAD ATTITUDE AND YEAH HE'S A DARKSIDER BUT HE'S FIFTEEN

Ahsoka: I sense... Maul [takes off sprinting] Rex: [immediately takes Jango's blaster and runs after her] Jango: Wait who Tholme: Who Quinlan: Who Jango: [looks at Leia] Leia: I don't know who that is either! Ahsoka, already wrestling a teenager to the ground: Oh no, you're a child, REX STUN HIM AND GRAB THE CUFFS, I'M SURE FETT OR THOLME HAS SOME

Fighting him isn't even legal, they have NO evidence of criminal wrongdoing, so first she needs to yell until he admits to something she can fight him about

Ahsoka: When I see Maul, it's on SIGHT Maul: WHO ARE YOU

Ahsoka: The Force didn't give me hands just to NOT throw them when I run into That Crafty Son Of A Bitch

Ben, when they arrive, after the tearful reunion: You... you brought Maul. Ahsoka: Well, yeah, he's fifteen and kinda dumb. I figured we could drag him here and force him into therapy, see what happens. Ben: I can't quite tell through the gag, but I think he's threatening to feed you your own spleen. Ahsoka: Lol, yeah.

Ben is absolutely on team "get Maul therapy" and will fight the Council on rehabilitating the baby Sith But also it's like. Here's your daughter! And your niece! And your daughter's QPP! Also your best friend, but baby, and his teacher, and the biological origin of a number of people you cared for deeply! AND ALSO THE GUY WHO SPENT LITERAL DECADES CRAVING YOUR DEATH, FOR SOME REASON

I just really want Ahsoka lovingly bullying Maul She gives him noogies and the horns don't protect him because girl has reinforced gloves

Maul's only allowed a low-power training saber and his fights with Sokari involve Much Taunting by her and Eventual Screaming by him, and everyone pops by to see: 1. Sokari doing the most absurd flips, for fun. 2. The bullshit that is ataru-shien reverse-grip jar'kai in the hands of someone who makes it work 3. What a Sith lightsaber form looks like 4. Just the general nonsense that is the way these two fight

Tia said “Wrt ridiculous flips. I'm remembering that time she beheaded four Kryst'ad at once.” and I just Rex brings up the quadruple beheading at one point to get someone to stop asking questions and the awkward, horrified silence almost makes him regret it. And then Sokari just snorts and makes a joke about how Rex once speared a slaver point-blank and everyone's just like hello??? "are you two okay" "no"

Maul absolutely starts crushing on Sokari after a 'sword under chin' moment and she's just very "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you're fifteen, bye" GO MAKE PUPPY EYES AT OBI-WAN OR SOMETHING

The crushes are the worst part of everything, really, she's an attractive young woman that can kick a lot of ass, and a lot of people are into that! Unfortunately, most of those people are a decade younger than she is, mentally, because all the people her actual age look at her and see a child on account of the 17yo body.

It’s almost a good thing she’s in no place mentally for a relationship.

I just want Ahsoka to wear beskar.... I think that would be Nice........

This AU is also what caused this post.

I'm deeply enamored by the idea that Ahsoka can win fights against "older" padawans pretty much unilaterally, even when they team up 2v1 And then she offers to fight 5v1 "But only if I have permission to fight dirty." Ben approves it, a horror show full of "I fought many wars and will scream in your face or kick you in the balls if that's what it takes" follows She wins. There are no permanent injuries, but her reputation certainly gets weirder. Nobody under the rank of Knight agrees to let her fight dirty again. She just lets that stand because, well, she's not actually a padawan, she's thirty-three.

I’m not going to write this but my brain was EVIL and suggested it:

IT WOULD BE REALLY SAD IDK maybe 9yo Anakin has nightmares about what's happening to baby Ahsoka because bullshit about time-traveling force bonds IDK ANYWAY he cries to Sokari about the nightmares and she's like "oh shit" and it's time to go rescue herself from motherfucker unlimited

It's either that or she's like, expecting to welcome mini-me aaaany day now, for like, several months, before she realizes Something Went Wrong. Anakin’s dreams could even start right as she’s starting to realize something’s off.

Obi-Wan has never had a padawan that doesn't at some point bite Even Luke will, when pushed

OH also once the twins get Baby's First Lightsaber (training sabers, not real kyber), Sokari begs to borrow them for a dumb joke and tells Rex to get on her shoulders for a "Grievous Greeting" and they do The Thing

Jango and Ahsoka wrt Quinlan is just “Do I need to beat him up for you” “You realize I’ve beaten up sith lords before?”

JANGO'S TRYING He's just. "Can we be friends? Can I--can I be the guy that just noticeably gets in the way of a creep on the subway so you can be more comfortable without someone making a scene? I'm fucking trying here, give me a hint."

We didn’t actually figure out Jango’s age until this point. The only reason Fett's age matters is for Quinlan making a Wild Oats quip after Jango says he didn't know about Rex until a few weeks ago, and Fett going "How old do you think I am? And how old do you think the kid is?" and Quinlan getting Very Awkward as he does the math. Rex overhears and lets Quinlan sweat for a bit before saying "I'm a genetically-modified clone someone grew in a tube, he didn't know or have reason to know until he saw me with Sokari." Which is like. Eight additional layers of WTF, obviously, but at least Jango gets to avoid awkward wild oats jokes

Like, you’d expect the rebuttal to be ‘he’s my brother just with a biiig age gap’ or ‘he’s my nephew’

I find it very unfortunate for Quinlan that I've decided his defining characteristic in this context is going to be repeatedly putting his foot in his mouth

He’s trying so hard but "That sounds like a cool thing, maybe I'll ask ab--and it's another fucking trauma."

I'm doing Ahsoka&Jango t w i c e (there’s another fic where I’m doing it)

It’s just a fun dynamic! So much resentful respect.

Like she's twenty seconds away from calling him a bitch at any given time and he's just there like "I don't like you but I do see you move like you're about to tell an entire building to get on their knees with their hands in the air and I can respect that" Also she's probably much less judgmental about using blasters than Obi-Wan is The Maul subplot actually started with me daydreaming about Ahsoka grabbing a blaster for Reasons

I like the idea of Jango just deciding the most Useful thing he can do is help teach the Smol how to fight. He's AWKWARD around Rex and Soka because he doesn't know if there's anything he CAN teach them.

I didn’t actually plan for Tholme to figure out the age thing, he just SAID it and I had to sit there like Wait.

Ahsoka, Rex & Leia: ahhh, children Tholme: you say that like you aren’t children

I liked getting to write Rex's little "I have worked with all of them, and they're all Terrible" He loves them But They once got stranded on a planet that didn’t exist and Ahsoka died and Anakin killed a god.

There was research and discussion as to whether Ahsoka could win against Tholme but seeing as she held her own against Vader, and fought Grievous at that physical age without dying, etc.... yeah, the only thing holding her back was her body not being what she was used to, and she’s had a few weeks go adjust.

“I miss being able to just jump off skyscrapers” is such a jedi thing

Jango: I'll take the gun back if he tries to leave, they can't get far before--WHAT THE FUCK He knows Jedi are scary but he’s still not really used to just how over the top ridiculous they are He knows how to deal with Jedi in battle, not Whatever The Fuck These People Are Doing

Rex isn't even a Jedi, he's just so used to working with them. “Oh yes time for free-falling without a parachute again, same shit as always.”

Tia: I’m imagining Jango freaking out and Quinlan and Tholme being like. Concerned but mostly exasperated Clearly if they’re jumping off buildings it must be serious? But jfc they could’ve maybe communicated a bit more?

Leia: I want to finish my juice Tholme: Quin, stay with her while we go figure out what those two are doing. Quinlan: Wait what

Jango: Oh now he’s jumping off a building too??? Tholme: Sokari, you are not registered! You can't legally jump out windows yet! Jango: What the hell is going on? Is this normal?

We don’t necessarily know how often Ahsoka and Maul ran into each other after Mandalore. There was the later thing on Malachor, but other than that I'm just going with the idea that they ran into each other every year or two and just went for the eyes like feral cats

Ahsoka: I need to kick ass and you're coming with me. Rex: Yeah, okay. [several minutes later] Rex: Whose ass are we kicking?

Ahsoka and Rex

Neloms aren’t a SW fruit to the best of my knowledge, I just wanted to mess around with lemons/melons

Jango: you didn’t think any of this through, did you? Rex: you were there, you know we didn’t "When the Jedi says to jump out a window, I jump out a window."

Tholme’s real composed about stalking the ancient nigh-mythical enemy of his people, very “Life is already so goddamn weird”

This fic has been so heavy on the trauma but then I introduce Maul and suddenly it's the worst kind of comedy Nobody is competent, everyone's a little dumb, the bad guy is just grocery shopping

My propensity for banter has turned this into a six-person buddy cop comedy about Maul buying grapes They spend a significant amount to time ineffectually stalking Maul before Quin suggests the sensible option Quinlan just "You remember this is my literal job and specialty right"

Ahsoka sees Maul and all her brain cells go out the window except "Fight good" Usually she doesn’t need to worry about doing things legally. Maybe she needs to worry about someone seeing her do illegal things but she spent the past 15 yrs in a place where her existing was illegal

I feel like he’s also maybe kinda wanting to reassert that yes he is competent. Bc like. Ahsoka’s been kinda condescending this whole time and also can beat everyone up so. It's not his fault that he's actually the youngest person there, but.

Jango is finding this whole being friendly to Jedi thing a lot more overwhelming than he thought it would be. And overwhelming in different ways.

Maul usually signifies things getting worse and more horrifyingly tragic but he's just a dumb teen that they needed to arrest for his own good.

Quinlan: Look, I'm useful! Ahsoka: I've been through hell, wanna hear? Quinlan: NO. I DON'T. WHY.

Quinlan: I understand the concept of joking about your traumas, I do it sometimes myself! But sith hells that’s a lot of trauma.

Quinlan just wanted her to treat him as a Competent Individual, and here she is whipping out stories about Dying and Gods and the Force insists it's the truth and he just???? And apparently emo darksider over there is a Sith. And just, sure. Why not

A lot of people’s interactions with the time travelling disaster lineage is just

Tholme and Fett arguing and Ahsoka's just waiting for a moment to pop in with "Hey, when's the last time either of you worked with the other's culture before this mess? Yeah, that's what I thought."

Much like Leia and Ahsoka hurting each other earlier, and Tholme figuring out the de-aging, we ALSO have Fett’s confrontation with Ahsoka being something the characters just did, rather than something I planned.

FTR the only time I managed to trigger myself while writing this fic was the “your behavior isn’t actually acceptable and we’ve all been trying really hard to give you room to recover but you have to at least make an effort to not be a bitch”

Writing about people having PTSD and symptoms of such: Yay! Writing about people having PTSD and engaging in toxic behavior to cope: Shit Ahsoka had... basically my exact reaction. It's "remind yourself that you're in the wrong, that they have a point, and then be overly formal in the apology because fuck if you accidentally make them feel sorry for you when they're the injured party"

Quinlan: Can we be friends? I mean, you're an asshole, but you're really cool. Let's be friends. (He MIGHT be nursing a crush) (Neat mysterious girl who can beat him up.)

Also he realises she's probably nicer when not having a slow-motion breakdown He's like "Huh, you'll probably be less of an asshole once you've gotten therapy."

...also, she pretty and got Nice Biceps

I love writing a good mental breakdown

I was so close to including a "he tried to kill me" just early enough for Jango to wildly misinterpret as her thinking Quinlan tried to kill her. He'd have been very confused, considering Quinlan's the one that called them down in a panic and currently has Ahsoka having her massive breakdown in his lap But

Tia: I could see Jango interpreting it as idk, Quin resembling someone or for a moment acting like someone who tried to kill her and she had a flashback or something like that

There's absolutely room for a couple reasonable interpretations there And "trapped in a flashback about someone who tried to kill her" is absolutely what's happening! Just. You know. For a different reason. Jango probably wouldn’t assume Quin would hurt her, for one thing he seems to like her, for another even if he did he’s smart enough to pick a way that wouldn’t be so likely to get him caught

I had to step back and actually say “Also I'm just. Wow. I'm really just shoveling QPP Rex&Ahsoka at full speed”

Me, a few weeks ago, joking: Two halves of the same idiot black ops specialist Me, now, entirely seriously: Two halves of the same idiot black ops specialist

Me, belatedly: Oh, Ahsoka being joyfully mean to people was a form of mania she was unconsciously using to build a barrier between herself and her impending meltdown

She went from "just died" to "in charge of Rex and Leia" in like. Two minutes.

Confession: I've been delighting in the mental image of this whole Mess leading Jango to try to retake Mandalore, and Ahsoka loans him a saber for a 1v1 to get the darksaber.

“Can’t I just fight him barehanded? That’s how I did it on Galidraan.” "But the drama, Fett!"

Probably Rex has learned how to use a saber as well, because you never know when you have to borrow a weapon

I later changed my mind to Jango asking her to help, rather than her just sneak-teaching him, but it was funny.

Background nonsense to all this is Ahsoka and Rex, despite Rex being as force-sensitive as a lump of coal, having developed a process where she can extend her sensitivity to him mind-to-mind for weird symbiotic battle trance that scares everyone around them. It’s very similar to Battle meditation.

CONTEXT FOR LEIA BEING WORRIED ABOUT THOLME HIDING THINGS: Tholme is hiding the fact that the Council reached out and told him that the people he picked up might be connected to Ben and Luke, who showed up after the Depa thing but a solid week and change before Jango's ship makes it to the Temple. They asked that he not share that information to avoid getting anyone's hopes up in case the two situations aren't related. Ben and Luke haven't shared enough information for anyone to really be sure if the other three are connected Because the info Tholme has isn't quite the info Jango has, etc. And they can't just say Ben is a future Obi-Wan over comms

I just have a lot of feelings about people trying to do something right and just. Nobody's at fault! Not really! It's just complicated!

Tia: I like how when Ahsoka isn’t doing maladaptive trauma response stuff she’s very mature. And of course she’s had to be but it’s a good like, contrast. Where when she slows down to think about things she’s very sensible

Jango just spends most of this story lowkey wanting Ahsoka to Be His Friend but there's too much baggage that he's only metaphysically responsible for

Local aroace(?) has a squish

Ahsoka: He just wants to get on my good side because of Rex. Jango: I'm pretty sure you could kill an entire army without trying but you wouldn't because you have actual morals and stuff... and when I met you it was because you were killing yourself trying to keep (what appeared to be) children safe... you seem cool please be my friend.......

Ahsoka’s #1 weakness: mountains of trauma Ahsoka’s #2 weakness: she just doesn’t get why so many people think she’s cool and want her to be their (girl)friend

Jango, a 27yo massacre survivor who's killed Jedi masters with his bare hands: [gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly]

Ahsoka was raised in a religious meritocracy but developed all her opinions during a galactic war and then became a vigilante spy, Rex comes from a military cult, Leia is from an inherited monarchy that participates in democracy, Quinlan was originally from what appears to be a dynastic dictatorship, and IDK about Tholme other than that he is also from the religious meritocracy. And in legends Quinlan came to the religious meritocracy after his aunt sacrificed his parents to a vampire cult and then forced him to experience the psychometric echoes of that. There's just. A lot going on.

Leia at least has knowledge about structure and admin in theory that isn't based in either the military or populations under 10k

Jango: I want to be your friend. Ahsoka: Sounds fake.

I am unfairly fond of "Rex destroys a conversation by bringing up his own horrifying childhood and calling it a cult"

"Why does Sokari call you 'Rex'ika'?" "Because she's older than me." "...can I--?" "No."

Nickname privileges are extended ONLY to Ahsoka and older clones. There are no more older clones, so it's just Ahsoka.

Me joking about Star Wars AUs: Would you like a crackship? Me writing actual Star Wars fic: My favorite character type is apparently “too traumatized to have a relationship” so this is at least 90% gen.

I had to pull a scene opening at one point because Ahsoka's skill with not getting shot is actually much less useful than Tholme's clearance levels.

Now I really want a team-up of Ahsoka, Rex, and Jango where they do have to get in a dogfight of the "she flies, we shoot" variety and Fett just has to scream because the speeder thing to catch Maul was one thing, but this....

Ahsoka, before TCW: I know all the traffic rules but I'm not that great at flying! Ahsoka, after TCW: I'm great at flying but if you let me behind the wheel we are absolutely getting arrested.

She went from "knows the rules but doesn't have the skills" to "has the skills but primarily in the form of not getting shot" which! Is delightful! "Bet I can get us through that alley--" "DO NOT"

Jango and Ahsoka are both just very "Is this friendship? Is this camaraderie? My heart's been fried on platonic love by so many murders that I'm not sure anymore." "I've lost a lot of friends. I kind of forgot how to make those."

I have no idea if "hasn't been closer than Alderaan except that one trip to Chandrila" is canon-compliant but ehhhhhhhh It feels plausible enough?

Belatedly realized that I could just explain my optimal Rex&Ahsoka dynamic as just... drift compatible. It's vague enough on the specifics while still digging into the meat of what they mean to each other and how they work together. The terminology is already in existence. I can just use it.

Romantic? Platonic? Familial? Doesn't matter! They're drift compatible.

They are important to each other and that is what matters

I really like the Leia&Quinlan thing. He's just like "This small child needs a friend that isn't super depressed," and decided he's going to be her friend. I keep trying to toss in "Quinlan volunteers to 'baby'sit." She's not much older and she has a Baby Brain, it works out

There's a running bet as to whether Leia will leave the Order the second she turns thirteen, or if she'll let Sokari "train" her for a few years first. And... that’s how I came up with Leia Antilles, Senator of Serenno.

They'll be bullshitting Ben as her new master to "finish out the padawanship" since they can't tell everyone she's really in her thirties and he's conveniently there and already knows everything and was half her master anyway. Like Ben was planning on taking on Luke, but Luke is "six" and even he can't swing that as old enough to be a Padawan, and it's not like Sokari will take more than a handful of years to justify knighthood, sooooooooo

#Ahsoka Tano #Captain Rex #Leia Organa #Jango Fett #Obi Wan Kenobi #time travel #de aging #Phoenix Babbles #Uncle Ben and Little Luke #Auntie Soka and Little Leia #I need to excise the bits that are actually funny on their own

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morganas-pendragons · 4 years ago

Text

Long Story Short (I Survived) | Din Djarin

Okay, I apparently write for Din now. This is set after It’s A Long Way Down and will feature the same Grey!Jedi reader, I am done with finals and am intending to write a fic between this one and the first one for Chapter 13!

i forgot that din took his helmet off in the first fic i wrote for him, so we’re going to call this - another separate instance in which reader could have seen helmet less din - and change one saber to two

if you’d like to be added to tags for when I write for din, please let me know! until then...

@earthtokace / @demigod-dragonrider-schoolidol / @kyber-queen / @kaikai1324 / @snippy-tano / @fractiouskat / @doctorsteeb

SPOILERS FOR THE BELIEVER

Din is staring down at the Imperial console when he feels it creep up upon him. It’s a niggling fear, one that sinks deep down into the pit of his stomach and very nearly disappears - which gives him hope that it’ll just dissipate and die - until realization smacks him right back into reality.

“You’ll have to take your helmet off.”

He’d felt this same emotion when IG-11 had coerced him into taking his helmet off when he’d been injured. It had felt the same, affected him the same, paralyzed him the same.

Panic. It’s panic.

The last time he’d done this had been out of necessity, out of fear, and that had been the only reason he’d survived. He’d broken The Creed to save his own life and of those who had been with him when the Moff attacked. Now, staring at this console, the life of his son is at stake if he doesn’t take this helmet off.

Din whispers into the corners of his frightened mind. I’m scared.

You had accompanied Mayfeld and Din as the third party (since Boba and Fennec had Cara) and had displayed skill in aiding him with the bands of pirates who had attacked their transport of Rhydonium. His mind was still spinning with the sheer speed in which you had spun those lightsabers. He didn’t think a person could move that fast.

Around the corner and turned away from Din, you allow yourself to feel the whispers of The Force encircling your mind - the newly acquired bond you’d somehow formed with Din since having seen Ahsoka - and whispered in reply I know. A beat of silence passes before you continue. Remember who you’re doing this for.

In the moment that Din’s fear threatens to overtake him, you send waves of comfort and assurance through your Bond in the Force - which shouldn’t exist to begin with, it’s not that easy to create bonds with a non-force sensitive - to coax him into doing what needs to be done. Your eyes are turned. Your focus is on Mayfeld and the dozens of Imperial Officers who surround you.

As he removes his helmet, Din remembers. He remembers your boundless laughter playing with The Child. He remembers the way his son beams at you, the way he falls asleep on specific words of lullabies because that’s always the precise moment your voice goes just soft enough that he feels as if he needs no more comfort. Din remembers the way you’d watched on in silence, quietly mourning a relationship that had yet to reach its peak, and how breathless you’d appeared - and overjoyed, he still hasn’t recovered from the sudden hug you gave him upon return to the Razor Crest - when he’d brought Grogu back inside after Ahsoka claimed he could not be trained.

Remember who you’re doing this for.

Maker help anyone who dared to cross him when his child, his son - the one attachment he has not verbally acknowledged yet, but everyone else has, including you - is the one in danger. When you are the one in danger.

Maker help them.

You are not anticipating what comes next.

This was supposed to be easy. Get in, get the coordinates for the cruiser, and get out. Mayfeld had mentioned to you after Din had entered the mess hall that he’d need to take his helmet off in order to access the terminal, and on instinct you had turned away from the mess to survey the crowd around you.

Your lightsabers - now meshed together into the staff slung across your back - lay comfortably and within reach as dozens of Imperial troops brush past you and congratulate both you and Mayfeld on being the only transport to bring back the Rhydonium.

“Trooper? Hey, trooper!”

Mayfeld’s hand shoots out before you can protest, and your head is whipping back just enough to ensure that Din hasn’t been found out. “No.” Mayfeld murmurs, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

You’re not focused on him. You’re focused on the dark hair that frames the very visible head of the same man you’d resigned yourself to falling in love with.

His helmet is off.

Dread curls itself in your veins as you and the former Imperial turn to the mess hall. You’ve managed to respect Din’s wishes in refraining from both seeing his face - and using his name, you’re only allowed to do that in private - since you met, but circumstances have ruined the reverential act he would’ve saved for marriage. That was when he’d had removed his helmet to allow you to see him.

The thing is though.. You’ve always seen him. You don’t need to see his face to know Din Djarin’s heart, and his heart lays with you and that baby. The one he’s fighting to get back.

“No, son. What’s your TK number?”

Lucky for you, you’d been alive during The Clone Wars. You can worm yourself and him out of this situation fairly easily.

“This is our Commanding Officer TK-593, and First Officer TK-616, sir.” Mayfeld slaps your back as the two of you enter the mess hall and flank either side of Din. You cannot bring yourself to look at him head on. It would not be fair, not in the midst of the pure fear that’s coursing through his mind.

I’m right here. You whisper into the heart of the fear that plagues him, fingers idly tracing the inside of his hand as you stare the Imperial Officer down. As expected, Din visibly relaxes at the gentle trace of your fingertips against his palm. We’re surviving.

“I am Imperial Combat Assault Transport TK-111, sir.” Mayfeld continues, folding his hands over each other as he stands at relaxed parade rest at Din’s side. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to speak up to him a little bit since his vessel lost pressure in Taanab.”

This gives you the brilliant idea of conversing with Din in Tusken sign, something he’d been adamant to teach you after your excursion on Tatooine.

“She’s our interpreter. We call her Whip.’’

While Mayfeld guides the conversation with the officer, you and Din are easing into talking in Tusken about however many ways this can go wrong, but then he changes the topic to something you’re not quite ready to acknowledge.

You can look at me, you know. He signs, hands frantic as he tries and fails to find your eyes. You value him - and his heart - far too much to be the first person he knows to have seen his face.

No. You shake your head. I can’t.

And you don’t. You only look at his side profile for the remainder of that trip, refusing to allow yourself the satisfaction of being the one person he cared about that has seen his face. Seen him.

Like I said. You don’t need to see Din Djarin’s face to see him.

***

Din is almost positive he’s ready to accept how he feels about you.

The minute Mayfeld shoots that officer in the chest, you spring into action and whip that staff off your back - disengaging the lock that holds the two lightsabers together - and the world explodes in a flurry of blue as you perform the sword and shield method he’s seen you do flawlessly at least five times now.

You don’t look at him even after you’re back in Slave One. He and Cara have escorted Mayfeld back to the surface of the planet, and it’s just you and Fett in the cockpit. Despite the clone and bounty hunter being so much older then you, there’s something oddly comforting knowing you’re sitting next to has suffered as much as you have. If not more.

Long story short, we both survived.

“You know, I’ve been with you a grand total of a day and I can already see it in your eyes, Whip.” The nickname Mayfeld had come up with in the facility has already made its rounds on the ship, and Boba feels it’s more then appropriate for the first Jedi he’s met since the kids who put him in the Sarlacc to begin with. Being inside of that thing had mellowed him out. He had accepted his life for what it was now. Oddly enough.. Boba Fett is at peace. “You’re lovesick for the Mandalorian.”

“Boba-”

The older man, one who mirrored what you’d always envisioned the clones - may Maker rest their souls - to look like as they aged, removed his helmet to look at you. “Take it from someone who knows. He gets you. You get him.” Boba turned his gaze back towards the ramp of Slave One where Din was talking in low voices with Cara. “Wish I’d had a jeti like you who saw me despite the armor.”

He stopped speaking after that.

Taking a deep breath, you descend from the cockpit just as Slave One takes off again, the coordinates for Moff Gideon’s cruiser inputted into the navi-computer. Fennec and Cara move by you to join Boba in the cockpit which leaves you and Din alone in the cargo bay.

It’s deadly silent.

Ner jeti. He whispers. You can hear his thoughts as clear as you hear your own. Why will you not look at me?

Your eyes slam shut as his fingers curl around your hips. You cannot do this to him, no matter how much you want to - no matter how much you desire to finally kiss those lips you’ve dreamt idly about so many times - because here’s the truth of it: You have suffered, parts of you have died, everything you have ever known has died, you have lost everything and didn’t even try to save those on the other end of those attachments you’d formed... but something, something good, put you right here. Right here in this moment with Din Djarin mere moments before plunging into the subject of your night terrors after months of being tormented by nightmares of your fellow Jedi being tortured by the Empire for simply existing.

And quite frankly, there’s no one else you’d rather take that plunge with.

That fact terrifies you.

“I can’t look at you, Din.” You whisper. “I can’t look at you because then that would be breaking your Creed for me... and I can’t let you do that when the baby hasn’t even seen your face yet-”

“Oh, believe me.” A clunk echoes in the cargo-bay as the beskar falls from his hands. Your heart stops and your breath catches in your throat as you tremble beneath his grasps, eyes still closed as he steps into the curve of your body - chest to your back - and lowers his entire head to your shoulder. “I intend for him to.”

Din lays a kiss at the nape of your neck. Maker... he’s real. Your head starts spinning as his kiss ascends right to the shell of your ear, in which he then whispers, “Open your eyes, Sarad.” and it’s such an intimate act on the behalf of someone who has not known love until you and the baby showed up that you can’t not open your eyes.

When you turn around, your world is enveloped in a mirage of onyx. Brown eyes.

“Din-” Din chuckles at your obvious reluctance because he is absolutely terrified to let you see him, the real him, vulnerable and waiting and desperate for the same acceptance.

“I told you my name way earlier then I ever anticipated I would.” He begins, taking your hands in his own to lay them against his cheeks. It has been so long since he allowed himself to accept touch, to accept that people in the galaxy were still gentle, that he trembles when your warmth seeps into his skin. “After what Bo-Katan told me and what Mayfeld kept saying in the transport... I’ve done alot of thinking recently, and I’m coming to the conclusion that maybe the way I was raised was wrong. There’s nothing wrong with taking the helmet off.” He exhales on a shaky breath and turns his face to kiss the inside of your hand. “But then again.. I’ve always wanted to around you.”

Your voice is small as you ask, “Why?”

“Because you’ve always seen me.” Din replies. “Despite the armor and the helmet, you’ve always seen me for who I was. You saw me as a father for the-” He swallows the knot in his throat and leans inward until you are a hairs breath apart, forehead resting against yours as he pulls your body into his own. “As a father for our child. Not just as a bounty hunter, but as a man. A man I could never see myself as. When you came around, I stopped surviving. I started living.” He snorted sharply through his nose. “I almost forgot what that felt like.. I think you pulled me back right before I forgot entirely.”

He’s so grateful. It’s hard to live feeling like you’re a ghost.

Din tests the waters of this desire radiating from you both by applying just the barest amount of pressure of his mouth on yours. As to be expected, your entire body quakes at the contact and it takes all his physical control to not allow his spinning head to make his knees give out and send him falling on the floor.

Oh.. he could get used to this. Used to this feeling.

He’s felt this before.

Joy.

“That’s the thing.” Inward, outward, forward and back again, you slowly allow yourself to succumb to Din’s kiss and grip his face in your hands just a little bit tighter. “I’ve always seen you.” You pull away just enough to force your eyes open, and then you are graced with the face of the man you love. You do. You love him, and you’ve accepted it. Kriffing Boba Fett. “And you know what? I thought I’d died before I met you. I never thought I’d make it here, much less be with you.. and I am so lucky.” There it is then, that breathless smile Din has pressed the sight of twice now into his memories, that presses itself into your aspect as the two of you look at each other.

“Why are you lucky?”

You wink and shrug. ‘’Long story short?” You muse. “It’s a good thing I survived.”

Little to Din’s knowledge as he plunges into the mystery of his growing love for you - his flower, the one who made him bloom - that when he kisses you again, your eyes are wide open the entire time.

There’s never been quite so beautiful a sight as somebody who’s survived.

bonus: i am thinking about how beautiful pedro pascal was in this episode

#Din Djarin #Din Djarin x Reader #The Mandalorian #The Mandalorian x Reader #Star Wars imagines #Star Wars oneshots

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band--psycho · 4 years ago

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Chibs Telford Smut-Illicit Affairs (Music Writing Challenge 2021)

Music Challenge Masterlist

A huge thank you to @miss-nori85 who helped inspire this fic, I hope you like it!

Warnings: Smut, cheating

‘Meet me at the usual spot in ten minutes,’ I couldn’t deny the way my heart skipped a beat, nor could I deny the arousal that flooded directly to my core as I read those words. It was like my body was autopilot, quickly changing into the closest items of clothing I could get hold of. For a while now Chibs Telford and I had had this arrangement; originally it started with long (and somewhat romantic) nights spent in hotel rooms, fucking until we fell asleep. That’s all it was, it wasn’t making love, it was a lot more primal in that, like an animalistic hunger that we both craved. The guy I was seeing now, he was one of the sweetest people I’d met in a long time, he was practically perfect in every aspect except one. He wasn’t Chibs. I knew what I was doing was so many levels of wrong, I always said I’d neve cheat on anyone….but when it came to Chibs, I just couldn’t say no. He could ask me anything and I’d do it in a heartbeat and he damn well knew it. He had a hold over me, one that I couldn’t seem to shake no matter how hard I tried. I’d be his in heartbeat and that again was part of the problem because that’s not what he wanted. He didn’t want a relationship like that. I tried so hard to fight the feelings I had for him, the urge to feel his lips against mine, I tried to forget him and move on. That’s how I met Reece, we’d been on a couple of dates and we weren’t officially official but he spent most nights at mine. The relationship I had with Reece was so different to the one I had with Chibs, Reece and I went out on cute little dates to the movies, the park, all of those things a normal couple should do and for a while I did manage to forget about Chibs, a small part of me even began to imagine a future with Reece, a future that was filled with security but slowly, the echo of Chibs’ touch found me again and I couldn’t help but crave every aspect of him again and I couldn’t resist it when I was alone with him and neither could he, that’s how our affair started and that’s how it carried on, today was just another day of being torn between my heart and my head.

Quickly I made my way over to the abandoned parking lot that was a few blocks away from my house and there he was standing next to his car.Just the mere sight of him was enough to get me soaked; his hair was slicked back, dressed from head to toe in black. As soon as he looked up, I averted my gaze to the floor as I walked closer to him. I felt his eyes burning into me as I approached him, like a rabbit approaching a fox. In one swift motion I felt his cold grip on my chin tightly forcing me to look up at him, the anger burning behind his already darkened eyes. I knew I was in trouble, before I even got a chance to defend myself, he placed a finger over my lips.

“Ye’re late,” he growled in my ear, lowering both of his hands to my waist and lifting me up onto the bonnet of the car, quickly pulling my trousers down so they were hanging off of my ankles. Those actions were enough to have me dripping for him as my arousal continued to build

“Chibs-” I began, my voice barely a whisper but was cut off when his lips crashed down onto mine in a bruising kiss, one of his hands gripping my thigh tightly while the other hand traced along the damp line of my panties. He was the only one that could turn me on this quickly and in such a dominant way. He wasted no time in removing my hoodie and sports bra, disregarding them onto the floor, he trail of hot, open mouthed kisses down your neck before moving further down your chest. His mouth sucking on one of the curves of my chest, his tongue rolling over my nipple while one hand squeezed my breast, occasionally pinching the nipple causing jolts of pleasure to course through me. I was barely keeping it together as he switched actions between my breasts.

“Need you-” I moaned out, gripping onto his shoulders, desperately trying to catch my breath as he continued his relentless attack on my breasts. A low chuckle escaped his lips as he halted in his actions, his lustful eyes locking on to mine.

“Need what?” He asked, his hand moving slowly moving my panties to the side, allowing him access to the place I craved him most. All the words seemed to melt away in my mind as he lightly tapped his finger against my clit, the pleasure taking over all of my thoughts and all I could do was moan in response, bucking my hips slightly.

“I need an answer, love,” he whispered, gently biting the lobe of my ear as he began to tap my clit faster.

“You, I-I need you,” I moaned out, feeling his erection pressing against my thigh.

“Does your guy get you this wet?” he taunted, his hot breath making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge as he ran a finger along my dripping slit. I let out a shaky breath as he whispered “answer the question, or I stop right now.”

Just as he was about to pull his hand away from my pussy I whispered a “no” in response, a small smirk came across his face at my admission.

“Say it louder,” he demanded, as he slowly pumped his finger in and out of me.

“NO,” I moaned in response, gripping onto him for dear life.

“No what, love?” he taunted, his thumb circling my clit as his finger drew me closer and closer towards the edge.

“He-he doesn’t make me this wet,” I admitted, desperate for my release and just as I was about to fall over the edge he stopped. My moans turned into a whimper at the loss of him, but he just smirked, raising the finger that was covered in my juices to his lips.

“So fuckin’ sweet,” he stated with a triumphant smirk on his face. He waited a few seconds before doing anything else, reveling in how desperate I was for him. Those few seconds felt like an eternity to me, I needed him inside me. I needed him to fuck me, now...I was so lost in the ecstacy of pleasure that I didn’t even hear him unzip his trousers before he entered me. I screamed slightly at the sudden feeling of his member inside me. I knew it wasn’t going to take long to push me over the edge, but by the look on Chibs’ eyes it was going to take him long either. Relentlessly he thrusted into me hitting my g-spot. Every.Single.Time. It was like I was on cloud nine; there was nothing that compared to this, no one that could bring me so much pleasure. I could feel myself about to fall over the edge again this time Chibs didn’t stop, he just kept on pounding into me.

“Fuck,” he groaned, wrapping one of his hands around my throat, only adding to the sheer pleasure I was feeling.

“Does he fuck you like this?” He asked against my lips, applying slightly more pressure to my throat with each thrust.

“No...he... doesn’t fuck me... like this,” I choked out in between moans, sweat beaded both of our foreheads as his speed increased.

“Who owns this pussy?” He asked, slowing his thrusts down, to look at me directly in the eyes, awaiting for my answer.

“You do…” I answered,knowing that it was the truth. He clearly saw the truth in my eyes because his thrusts began to get faster and faster, after a few more rapid thrusts my loud moans and his guttural groans were echoing around the parking lot as both of us came undone, finally reaching the release we both craved. Once we both caught our breath he released his grip on my throat and pulled out of me and I hopped down from the bonnet of the car, both of us quickly sorting ourselves out and just like that, it was all over, nothing else was said by either of us, although I could feel his eyes lingering on me for a split second as I got changed. But that was it. And just like that he got in the car and I made my own way out of the parking lot. By the time I got back home, I was already craving him inside me again.

“Hey baby,” Reece called out, as I entered the front room. I mentally cursed myself, completely forgetting that I’d given him my spare key.

“Hey,” I called back, guilt washing over me.

“You okay? You look a bit flustered,” he said, worry lacing his voice as he walked over to me, his hands moving to my face, caressing my cheeks lightly.

“I’m fine, I just went for a run,” I lied, with a fake smile painted on my face but it was enough to persuade him.

“Aw babe, don’t burn yourself out okay? I’ll go so you can get some rest,” he said, pressing a light kiss to forehead. I couldn’t help but remember how foreign his lips were on my skin compared to Chibs.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” I said, with another fake smile on my face. Breathing a sigh of relief as he left. Part of me hated Chibs...hated how his touch, his kiss had created some type of secret language that I couldn’t speak with anyone else because no one else was him.

Tagging:

@little-diable @rosieposie0624 @xbreezymeadowsx @ideclareflananigans @sharpiewashere @leah-halliwell92 @chibsisadream @tommyflanagans @screesflanagan @rebelwrites @come-join-themurder @kyber--wolf

Join my taglist here

#chibs smut #chibs telford smut #chibs telford imagine #chibs telford x reader #chibs telford x oc #chibs telford #chibs sons of anarchy #SOA chibs #chibs x oc #chibs x reader #chibs x you #chibs x ofc #chibs xofc #chibs telford imagines #chibs imagine

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superhusbands4ever · 4 years ago

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DinLuke (Skydalorian) Fic Rec List

Hello all! Like many of us, I have fallen into Dinluke hell since the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, so I have compiled a list of Dinluke fics that I love for you all to read. I’ve sorted them by series, and long fics, and one-shots. Incomplete/in-progress fics are marked with **. If you are like me and you absolutely LOVE force-sensitive Din Djarin, those fics will be bolded. If you want a rec list of just force-sensitive Din fics, let me know!

Enjoy!

Series

**Seperate Ways by PepperPrints - Explicit - iconic, exquisite, 1000/10, peak art, would recommend

With Moff Gideon defeated and the Darksaber reclaimed, the rumours of newly named Mand'alor Din Djarin spread through the galaxy... along with the stories of the Child he carries with him. Determined to meet him, Luke Skywalker arrives on Mandalore -- but before he can get any closer, he has to prove himself worthy of Mandalorian standards.

**Skydalorian by Celestial_Alignment - Explicit

What if Din and Luke met pre-episode 4 and continued to run into each other through the years.

The Mandalorian ends up at Tosche Station and meets a desert youth who is apparently named "Wormie."

**The Vanishing Breed Series by @dosmit-raeh - Mature

The first thing Din noticed was the fire in the hearth. Near the hearth was a small, handmade crib, and from the crib came an excited cry. It spread through Din's chest like a bloodstain, perhaps it had in fact pierced his heart. He knew that little voice.

“Hey, you,” said Din softly. He dropped to his knees as the Kid scrambled out of the crib and scampered to him, crawling into his lap and burbling happily.

“That’s the most excited I’ve seen him in months,” said Skywalker. Din hadn’t even noticed him sitting across the room at a rough-hewn wooden table, nursing a cup of something. He wore the same carefully neutral expression he'd had on Gideon's ship, but his clothes were now desert-colored and hung loose around Skywalker's wiry frame. His hair was in disarray and it made him look much younger than he'd seemed on the ship; there, he'd seemed world-weary and ancient. Now, Din felt an insane need to protect.

Skywalker raised his cup at Din in greeting, a lopsided smile on his face. “He’s missed you," he said.

“Feeling’s mutual,” said Din gruffly.

___

The Mandalorian becomes Din Djarin. Din Djarin becomes.

(Luke helps.)

**Beskar and Kyber by Insomniac_with_dreams - Not Rated

“This is going to be awkward,” Luke sighs down at the baby in his arms. R2 beeps besides him and Luke nods in agreement. “Nothing to do but go back.”

His X-Wing is almost completely dismantled, sparking where wires hang limply. There is no way he’s getting off of this cruiser until it’s repaired. There aren't even any escape pods on board all of the docking bays empty. He hadn’t anticipated this, and now he was going to have to walk back to the bridge with the baby and explain himself to a heartbroken Mandalorian.

**you and i have memories by itBlackLeader - General

“What are you doing ?” A quiet voice asks behind his back.

Luke only responds with hums of contentment and a gentle tap on the grassy ground next to him.

(Luke and Din enjoy a quiet evening.)

Long Fic (Multi-chapter & 10K+)

Smoke Signals by Thestorans - Explicit - 23.5K

"Din Djarin"

He hears his name and it scares him enough to throw up his blaster, finger hovering over the trigger that is pointed right at Luke Skywalker's heart.

(or the one where a Jedi meets a Mandalorian and things get complicated.)

More Than His Armor by twoseas - Teen - 12.6K

Din visits Grogu at Luke’s academy more than any other parent. Luke isn’t complaining.

**Fates of the Force by starkjoy - Explicit

Six months after Grogu's rescue, an unexpected encounter launches Din on a quest throughout the galaxy alongside Jedi Master Luke Skywalker—a journey that may alter their fates forever.

the warmest bed i’ve ever known by ceedawkes - Explicit - 11.5K

pre-original series, din djarin is injured on a remote planet and found by an incessantly chatty farm boy named luke skywalker || i won't ask you to wait, if you don't ask me to stay || aka "making out with hot farm boys doesn't count as breaking the creed if he's blindfolded during it". edit 12/29: now with a post-series chapter 2.

**Worlds Apart by PepperPrints - Teen - honestly an absolute favorite, it only has 3 chapters so far but I’ve already re-read each one a million times

Having safely delivered the Child, Mand'alor Din Djarin inherits the Darksaber, a ruined planet, and the burden of Moff Gideon's fate. That burden brings Din to the New Republic on Coruscant, where he's thrown into a shimmering world of galactic politics even less familiar to him than the planet meant to be his home.

Din isn't the only one on Coruscant with his hands full of a once forgotten order - the Jedi is here too, and as their paths cross, Din will be forced to navigate both what's expected of him, and what he wants.

**we could be enough by @snap-dragon-pop - Teen

Din Djarin fights a war he never wanted to be a part of, and Luke Skywalker slowly makes a place for himself in a family he never knew he needed.

**he feels like home by bilgegungorenoo - Teen

Luke is in love.

And Leia doesn’t even need her strong Force bond with her twin to know that.

Or, 5 times people try to convince Luke to ask Din out, and 1 time Din takes it upon himself to do it.

**Family is a Funny Thing by SkylaDoragono - Mature

He promised the child he would see him again; he just didn't realize how hard it would be for him to stay away, even with the responsibility that came with the Darksaber breathing down his neck.

**Kir’manir by @iamonewithyouandyouarewithme - Teen - this one is one of my top 5 favorites already and it only has 2 chapters so far lol

He lets go of everything.

He reunites with his son, sees with his own eyes that he is safe, and just as quickly loses him again.

He gives the child to the Jedi, watches them prepare to leave. He sins, removes his helmet; feels the faintest touch of his son's tiny hand against his tired skin.

And then Bo-Katan shoots the Jedi in the back.

**For All The Things My Eyes Have Seen by Strawbebbi_Daiuiri - Teen

“He missed you.” The Jedi laughed. For a moment, Din didn’t respond, too wrapped up in the moment. Not that he probably would’ve responded anyways, but his focus was on the child in his arms. The feel of the other man’s stare, however, brought him back to where he was. ---- Or, the one where Luke and Din don't realize they're in love with each other for way too long and raise children together.

**no path runs smooth series by @andillwriteyouatragedy - General

"I don't know what game you're playing, here, but you know you have to go with the Jedi. This is your destiny."

"Luke." Din looks up to the Jedi, scanning him through his visor. As if he can see his face — and Din hopes even the most powerful Jedis can't see through beskar — the Jedi smiles at him again. He clarifies, "The Jedi? Has a name. I'm Luke Skywalker, Din Djarin."

One Shots

HOT SINGLE DAD IN YOUR AREA NEEDS YOUR HELP by coldishcase - Teen - crackfest but honestly relatable and funny as hell

A bright red box appears in Luke's vision, declaring in big, bold basic lettering: "HOT SINGLE DAD IN YOUR AREA NEEDS YOUR HELP." He's seen several just like it by this point, each more insistent than the last.

Someone needs his help, apparently. They sure have an interesting way of asking him for it, though.

How (Not) to Meet Your Son’s Boyfriend by fifteenminutesoffame - Not Rated

“You’re blocking the sunlight,” Obi-Wan chides, cast in shadow from Anakin’s hovering, his eyes still closed.

“Will you pay attention?” Anakin snaps. “Luke has made me a grandfather.”

i think i’m gonna marry you by snapdragonpop007 - General

It is an ancient tradition on Mandalore, that before you can ask for someone’s hand in marriage, you first have to defeat them in battle to prove your abilities to care for and provide for the family you’ll have. If you are not a capable warrior, you are not a capable spouse.

Luke didn't realize he had already skipped that step.

Got Me Hypnotized (So Mesmerized) by wasted_wallflower - Teen

“Thanks. For what you’re doing, I mean.” The words come out stilted and slow, and not for the first time, Din curses his inability to talk to people like a normal person. Luke Skywalker smiles at him, ducking his head with an undoubtedly bashful expression on his face, while the kid (Grogu, he reminds himself) chatters between them. “You’re welcome.” He says, that smile still on his face, and oh.

Oh no.

Din Djarin does not have a crush, despite what everyone else thinks. Enter Luke Skywalker.

#the mandalorian #star wars #mandalorian #dinluke #din djarin #luke skywalker #skydalorian #fic rec

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amiedala · 4 years ago

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SOMETHING MORE (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 22: I'll Come Back for You RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!) WARNINGS: violence, sex, the usual, as always tell me if you need anything else tagged!! SUMMARY: “No,” you cry again, but this time you go limp. You’re crying now, for real. The planet is crushing you. Or maybe the air. Or maybe it’s just your own broken heart, suffocating itself against your ribs.

“Nova,” Din whispers again, “Cyar'ika, you have to hide. You have to stay out of reach of Gideon, which means you have to stay out of reach of me. Hey. Hey. Listen to me.” You try to find your center of gravity, but you can’t. You tumble to the ground, tears hurtling down your cheeks. Din follows you, clinging to you all the way down. “You just need to stay away long enough for me to defeat Gideon, kill him, and get the Darksaber back to Bo-Katan. Once he’s dead, once this is over, I’ll come back for you. Do you understand me?” AUTHOR’S NOTE: i am just truly so sorry for this. i would say the usual "happy Something More Saturday!!!!!!!!!" but i broke my own heart with this one. angst lovers, this one is for you, fluff lovers (me included) i promise it's just getting worse before it gets SO much better, and that i have a very sold (and fast) plan to fix it. more notes at the end. i love you :(

In and out, the lightsabers pulse. It doesn’t just flicker and hum with the glow of a kyber crystal, Ahsoka’s blades themselves run in radiating beams of light. It might just be the atmosphere on Corvus, the way that the fog messes with the brightness, but they look infinitely more real than you remembered the one back on Coruscant looking. When you held that one in your hand, it felt like a weapon. Hers feel like a lifeforce, equally as strong and as radiant as the other.

Ahsoka’s demeanor is just as ebullient, even though it’s clear she’s just as determined as she is kind. She’s tall in stature, purposeful with the way she walks. She seems to know the planet inside and out, although you’re not quite sure if that comes from lived experience or Force intuition. Every step she takes is intentional. You’ve tried to muster up the courage to ask her questions, to understand how the Force works through her, but every time you do, something else makes it sink back down into obscurity.

All three of you are in awe of her. Din’s quiet is usually just as purposeful, but here, you can tell it’s because he’s trusting, and that he knows she’s the one to default to. His visor tracks her footprints against the dirt of Corvus. The baby is currently in your arms, ears perked up every time Ahsoka speaks or moves in a certain way. You’re just openly staring. You know you’re probably being rude, or at the very least making her uncomfortable, but you can’t help yourself. This is the closest you’ve ever been to a Jedi before, and you can feel the energy radiating off of her. It’s like the baby’s, only fine-tuned and amplified. That sort of mind-meld connection you have with him, all of that radio frequency is sharing one, unified thought—I love her.

The three of you follow her, deep into the foggy forest, and you can feel Din’s eyes lock onto you when you’re stepping over the roots, watching Ahsoka’s footfalls. He holds up a gloved hand to help you over the large and mossy ones, but other than that, you just track her movements, a strange, bound triumvirate. When you finally reach the hill that feels like her temporary home, you sit yourself down on a low rock, cracking all the ache out of your neck, heart hammering, trying to figure out what comes next.

It doesn’t. Not for a long while, at least. Din starts to fill the silence once, then twice, then three times, but Ahsoka just looks serene and quiet, gaze intense enough to stop anything, and his voice falters off somewhere inside the modulator. Her eyes are locked on the baby’s, all that blue counteracting his giant ones. You see the way his facial expressions move, how his nose twitches, and it’s like you’re remembering a fragment of a memory. They seem to be communicating in another language, or some frequency you can’t quite seem to tap into. The way that you and the baby have been talking, somehow, you know it’s different. This is a practiced act, something wizened and older than you are.

You exchange looks with Din every once in a while, just trying to stay quiet and not interrupt whatever Ahsoka and the baby are doing, but everything in you is a complete live wire. You can feel his gaze on you, just as sparking, just as bright. Everything feels huge and colossal in a way it didn’t before, like you can feel all these moments in time through the blips of your visions starting to lace themselves together into something tangible. Even in the fog, even with the residual sounds of the town you know is nearby, you can feel how loudly the energy is pulsing. Something in you tells you Din feels it, too, even without his own tether to the Force.

Ahsoka is serene. She’s tall and athletic, lean muscles that bulge whenever she flexes. Her lips are always pursed together, and her skin is somehow even more orange and beautiful in the foggy, low light. She’s clearly been from one end of the galaxy to the next, seen wars you’ve only heard about. Her sabers are slightly different shapes. You notice them whenever they catch reflection through the trees.

For hours, it feels like, you’ve been sat here. You slowly slide off the mossy rock you’re perched on, trying to stretch your legs out, shake the stiffness off them. Your new pants are getting dirty, which is a shame considering the hassle you and Din went through to get them, but you happily spread out on the ground, relieving the aching pressure as quietly as you can. He sits, finally, after realizing this whole interaction might take some time. He tries again to talk to her, and when Ahsoka just tilts her head to gaze deeper into the baby’s eyes, he gives up.

You can feel the sigh through the modulator from here. It’s become less about sound, now, and just the recognition that he’s sighing. Even though it’s long and heavy, you know how much of a relief it must be for the three of you to finally be here, to meet a Jedi who can train the baby. It’s the thing he’s been tasked to do for as long as you’ve known him, and after so many close calls with Gideon and the residual death that follows him around, you can feel the pressure radiating in waves off Din’s back. Before, the three of you were outnumbered and outgunned. But now, with Ahsoka? Now, you’ve got a fighting chance. One that might give you the opportunity to strike fast instead of running, dodging, and hiding.

Din pokes at your leg. You look up at him, squinting, smile filling up your whole face. Slowly, he slides down to the forest floor beside you, and you rest your head in the crook of his shoulder, just long enough to be intentional, and he leans into your touch. You don’t want to be loud, don’t want to do anything to startle Din or the baby or Ahsoka, but then Din’s pinky cinches yours at the knuckle, and you sigh happily. Even with the noises echoing from the town in unrest, even with your heart still racing from all the scrapes with Gideon and his henchmen on the last few planets, there’s something warm and bright here in this little nook in the woods. The light is low in the sky before you hear anything from Ahsoka and the baby, and you curl your knees into your chest, trying to quiet the grumble of your stomach.

“How long has it been?” you murmur, quiet enough that you thought Din would be lucky to catch it, even sitting up right against you, but then Ahsoka is the one to answer.

“Long enough,” she says, and you feel the rush of blood to your cheeks. “We had a lot to talk about.”

“Talk?” Din asks, silently making his way to his feet. “What did you—speak about?”

“Everything,” Ahsoka answers, voice still smooth and even. “He’s been looking for me for a long time.”

You glance back and forth between her and the baby. “D—did he know you before?”

She tilts her orange head at you, and you feel your breath catch in your chest. “No,” Ahsoka confirms, “but he’s been looking for a Jedi for some time now. Grogu seems to have found a family instead.”

Your eyebrows furrow.

“Grogu?” Din repeats, head tilted, stepping forward. “Is that—?”

“His name,” Ahsoka answers, nodding. The baby—Grogu—coos from where he’s sitting, his big green ears perked up and attentive. He doesn’t really grin, just coos happily at you, but you see his small mouth break into a smile. You can feel his energy, how calm he is, how at peace he must be now that all three of you have your true names, your family unit together and truly whole. You quietly kneel down in front of where he’s sitting, and he grabs a hand at your necklace, swinging out against your squat and catching the low light. You let him thumb over the Rebel insignia, spending a few extra seconds pressing the pad of his finger into the star you carved on the back.

“Is that—” Ahsoka steps forward, and you turn your head to try and face her. She’s tall, determined, and when she squats right down beside you, she’s considerably larger, too. You stammer, realizing how close she is, how she’s a Jedi in front of you, someone who can feel the world in the same way that you can. It’s deafening, the rush of it. “It is. Are you a Rebel?”

Your breath gets caught in your throat. “I was,” you tell her, truthfully, “most of my life.”

She looks at you with pain in her eyes. It cuts through, sharper and brighter than the rest of her. It’s an odd look against her easy warmth, something deeper and striking than you’ve seen on her so far, but you can feel it. She is, too, even if she isn’t fully part of the Alliance. You have shared grief, and hers goes deeper than yours can even name.

Slowly, she stands back up from where she’s beside you, intense eyes locked back on Din. “You saved him,” she asks, but it doesn’t sound much like a question.

He nods. “Once upon a time,” Din confirms. “Truthfully, though, the kid—and Nova—save me more than I do them.”

Ahsoka turns, looking back at you. Quietly, you push off the ground. You’re clumsy, and there’s an ache in the middle of your thighs from where you and Din fucked on the floor last night, but when you’re finally standing, you nod against Ahsoka’s unasked question.

“I’m Force sensitive,” you whisper. You haven’t really ever said that out loud before, how heavy and residual the fact feels under your tongue. You nervously tuck a fistful of loos hair behind your ear, eyes oscillating between Din and Ahsoka. “I—is that a problem?”

Neither of them answer. You feel stupid. You know it’s a problem, that with the energy radiating through both you and the baby, you’re both vulnerable and very easy targets for a whole lot of evil. You know it lives, seeping and hungry, an insidious itch under your skin. You know how much danger the three of you have been in lately, how it plagues Din, how it keeps him restless.

“It’s going to make you accessible,” Ahsoka says slowly, her eyes flickering over to Din, just for a second, but long enough for you to gauge the meaningful look she gives him. “I could tell that Gideon—and the remnants of the Empire as a whole—want Grogu. They’re after him, and mainly him, so that they can experiment on him and take samples of his blood and cells. He understands that.”

You swallow noisily. In the distance, you can hear the fighting echoing from the neighboring city get louder, and, unconsciously, you take a step closer to Din.

“You,” Ahsoka continues, tilter her head in your direction, “are every bit as much of a target now that Gideon knows you can use the Force. You’re a bigger specimen, larger, complex. I don’t know what he wants with either of you,” she continues, crossing her muscled, slender arms over her chest, “but it can’t be good.”

“We—” you start, choking over your own words, “we know we’re in danger, I know I’m dangerous, because I’m…loud and untrained, and—”

“You aren’t dangerous,” Ahsoka interrupts, striding forward so that she’s closer to you. Maker, she towers over you, strong and lean. “You’re untrained, yes, and you’re very valuable to whatever Gideon’s plan is, but you aren’t a liability.”

The way she says liability, the way it fits in her mouth, immediately makes you look at Din. She’s angry, you understand, she’s angry because she thinks Din has told you you’re a reckless, loose cannon, and that you’re too close to every cliff edge that you’ve pulled the three of you back from, and you shake your head furiously, trying to assure her that isn’t the case.

“She’s strong,” Din says quietly. His voice, modulated and even, sounds distant. Unfamiliar. “Stronger than most.”

Ahsoka tilts her head at Din. “I can see that, just by looking at her. By being in her presence. But I think, somewhere along the way, somewhere between when you found both her and Grogu, and realized what danger they’d be in running from Gideon, you’ve forgotten her strength.”

You swallow again. Noisily. You can feel Din fuming, feel how hot and heavy he is, and you want to step in between the middle of the two of them, mitigate the conversation, try to diffuse any collateral damage. The baby coos next to you, and you lunge forward between the man you love and the Jedi you’ve just met, heart hammering. “This is helping no one—”

“You think I want to shelter her from every threat in this galaxy?” he snarls, and you blink at Din as he moves angrily towards you. “That I want to keep her in the middle of all of this? I don’t. I’d kill Gideon today if I thought it meant Nova and the kid—Grogu—wouldn’t be in danger. I would let her shoot every single bastard in his fleet to their deaths if it meant the two of them could live safely. I’d—I’d leave them on the safest planet of the galaxy and hide myself away for the rest of my life it meant that they could be free from this. I’m doing the best I can, and you have no right—”

“Stop,” you plead, facing towards Din completely, desperately throwing your hands up against the silver, armored chestplates, trying to stop him from advancing on Ahsoka. You can feel her hands against the hilts of her white lightsabers, and the absolute last thing in the world you want is to get a matching scar on the other side of your belly. “I mean it, stop. Fighting over this—over me—isn’t going to stop the problem at hand. You,” you whip around, pointing a raised, shaking finger at Ahsoka, “you’re a Jedi. You—you have the Force, you can teach the baby. Grogu. You can train him, and then he can show me.”

She starts to speak, but you twirl back to face Din. The careful braid you knotted up this morning has become frayed and undone, chunks of hair hanging in your face, brushing against your cheeks in the foggy, green haze. You try to find his eyes under the helmet. “You ever talk about leaving us somewhere ever again, I’ll shake the idea out of your beautiful, thick head myself. There’s no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me. I protect you, you protect me. That’s how this works, remember?”

Slowly, jerkily, he nods.

“Good,” you say, sounding a hell of a lot more confident than you feel, trying to stop your voice from wavering. “Teach him,” you repeat, looking at Ahsoka. All that darkness and flame that lit up her eyes a few minutes ago is gone. There’s a hardened edge there, but it’s not made out of steel. She doesn’t look angry. She looks exhausted, sad. You can see it in her posture as she drops your gaze, stepping closer to Grogu.

Din goes in to stop her, but you shake your head, and he lets his gloved hand drop listlessly down at the side. You’re not sure what she’s doing, and you’re even more confused that it seems like Grogu and Ahsoka have their own frequency, one that you can only catch distant warbles and static off of. Frustrated, you blow hair out of your face, stepping back to observe. Finally, she kneels down to the ground, picks up a pebble. Wordlessly, she shows it to Din, then to you, then to the baby. His big bug eyes are wide, unflinching. You know that he understands what she wants him to do before Ahsoka even says the words. He stares at it, tiny nose scrunching up against the task of trying to move the rock with his mind. For a few tries, it’s impossible, no luck. He’s distracted. Grogu keeps glancing back and forth over the three of you, to get permission that he doesn’t seem to have on his own.

“He doesn’t understand,” Din protests once.

“He does,” you and Ahsoka say in unison. Her tone is heavy. Yours is excited, like you can feel the way your heart is trying to keep in time with the words. And it’s true. The baby doesn’t follow commands well, especially when he’s decided he doesn’t want to, but this is different. You can feel the energy rushing through him, but he keeps breaking concentration to stare up at Din, and the pebble falls quietly against the mossy rock he’s sitting on, tumbling down to the earthen forest floor.

“Why isn’t he doing it?” Din asks, and you can hear how poorly masked the concern in his voice comes out.

“He wants your permission,” Ahsoka answers. Any of the fire that was in her voice earlier is completely gone now, like a flood just went through. She’s still intent, and she still has an edge to her, but it’s colored something more like determination than anger. “He needs it.”

“You can do it, baby,” you whisper, leaning down so that your necklace will swing out from under your covered collarbone again, something to fortify him, keep him balanced.

Your cheeks burn with the realization that Ahsoka was talking about Din’s permission, not yours, but your action seems to relax the baby’s little heart, his expression melting into something slightly softer.

“You can do it,” Din echoes, kneeling down in front of the three of you, a strange triangle made on Corvus��s forest floor. Grogu coos, trying to meet his dad’s eyes under the helmet. “Go on. You’ve got it. Take your time.”

You’re not sure how much time you have, really, because the noises of whatever’s going on in town keep increasing, and with how quickly those men appeared out of the thin, foggy air earlier, you’re on edge knowing that anything else could emerge with little to no warning. Nervously, you scan the treeline as Din continues to coax and encourage the baby, picking up the rock off the ground. You lean up against the tree immediately behind the three of them. Its bark is thick and coarse, and the branches hanging off every side are pointed and sharp, the leaves all budding and a dangerous shade of green. It’s exhausting, keeping an eye out on the potential enemies in the distance and trying not to miss what’s happening with Din and Ahsoka and the baby, if he could move the rock farther than a few inches.

Sleep is still encroaching the borders of your eyes, even though you were out for hours last night. The massiveness of the day is heavy and loud, and right now, it’s demanding all of your attention. You let your back brush up against the cold, course tree, cracking your neck free of all the ache again. When Grogu catches your eye again, you smile at him, nodding encouragingly. He still is having difficulty focusing on the pebble, so you step as far away s you can. You close your eyes, let everything drip down your spine and run out of you. You’re trying to just be, to not let anything heavy and dangerous slip in through the cracks, and it’s harder here. You wonder if it’s because there’s another, powerful Force-sensitive being around, or if it’s just sheer exhaustion doing you in, but one thing’s for certain, and it’s that it’s hard to pull yourself into a space where your mind is weightless. Eventually, though, you can feel it pull out of your head, and that wave of knowledge, serenity, and energy comes and crashes over you. In your head, you’re able to tell the baby to do it, gentle and coaxing, just like he was with you when you floated his ball for the first time. When he looks at you again, you feel something change. Before you even open your eyes, you can feel his gaze shift to Din’s, and your lashes flutter open to reveal Din giving the baby an encouraging nod.

The rock is airborne. It isn’t flickering, and it isn’t even really moving, but it’s enough for all three of you, who gasp and clap, breaking Grogu’s concentration. You slap a hand over your mouth, trying to wrangle everything back in, to restrain yourself so that he can keep moving forward, keep the pebble skyward.

He does. It’s shakily, and somewhat uncontrolled, but you watch as Grogu moves, letting the pebble levitate, then letting it come back and forth between him and Ahsoka. In a few tries, he’s got the rhythm of it, moving intentionally and slowly, letting the rock float through the air as unencumbered and free as his little metal ball does. You try to make yourself stay quiet, but you can’t help it. You clap excitedly as Din falls to his knees to get close to the baby, show him how proud of him his father is. You beam, watching the two of them, everything else rolling off your shoulders. This is the closest you’ve come to feeling free from the evil that lurks in the galaxy’s corners in months. Since you told Din you love him. Since he proposed. Since you’ve been aware just how much Moff Gideon wants to get his scary, manipulative hands on you or the baby to harness your power, leave you breathless, take everything for himself. It’s like there’s a bead of light in the place of where your heart is. It’s momentary, it’s fleeting, but it’s there, really there, at least for a second. Something to fixate on, to haul all three of you out of the darkness. Something to shine in the same way you do.

Ahsoka steps forward, and you catch her eye as she tilt sher head towards Din and the kid. You smile at her, completely, fully. She smiles back, just as easy. You still see that glint in her eye, that exhaustion, the way she stares at the three of you like she’s interrupting, like she’s something knife-shaped cutting through. You nod at her, just once, and you can tell she knows what you mean. There’s no hard feelings. She’s wise, and she’s seen probably three times as much of this fight as you have, and she’s still here, on the periphery, kind and unafraid to cut down things that are making the darkness bigger.

“Thank you,” you whisper. “For helping us.”

Ahsoka studies you. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

Heat rushes to your cheeks. You want to thank her again, but everything your mouth starts tumbling out is stammering and silly. “I—what do you mean?”

“You’re an ex-Rebel engaged to a Mandalorian,” she murmurs, and you blink, trying to figure out how she put that together before you remember that she and the baby had a conversation through the Force earlier, and the little gossip probably told her everything. You smile, tucking your loose hair behind your ear. “You don’t seem like the bounty hunting type.”

You kick a bit of mossy earth with the toe of your boot. “I’m not,” you admit quietly. “I don’t like killing.”

Ahsoka steps closer to you. You gulp, looking up at her. You thought Din was intimidating, that his stature was enough to make anyone not confident enough to look him in the visor run screaming. But as calm as Ahsoka is, how warm her heart beats, she’s just as fierce. A protector. A defender. A fighter. “Is that why you dropped out of the Alliance?”

You nod, slowly. “Sort of. My parents died on a mission, and I never really came back from that. I—I grew up on Yavin,” you continue, fingers absentmindedly finding your necklace. “On base. And it never felt like home after that. By the time they died, we were so close to winning, anyways, and once the Death Star blew, I left. I wanted to help people,” you say, your voice barely catching in the wind, “and I’m an excellent pilot, but I never liked shooting anyone down. Still don’t. I left, met some dangerous people, fell in their path, and barely made it out.” You swallow noisily, realizing how much you’re sharing. “I’m sorry, I’m babbling—”

“No,” Ahsoka encourages, tilting her head at you. Din and the baby are still practicing over with the rock, and he’s gleeful, showing off to his dad. “I’m curious. Please continue.”

“I was just a runner for a while,” you say, leaning back against the bark of the tree. “I moved food and drink and resources in the Outer Rim from one place to another. Before long, though, I started picking up people in bad situations, ones like I was in myself. I didn’t charge them anything, just shuttled them to nearby planets to help keep them safe from whatever they were running from.” You watch as Grogu lifts the rock in the air again, smiling faintly at him in the distance. You feel a lifetime away from the disbelief and betrayal on Din’s face when he saw you doing the same thing, your heart swelling with how he’s watching your kid in all his strange, magical, little, green glory. “I crashed my ship on Nevarro, which is where D—Mando picked me up. He told me he was just going to get me off the planet, that he’d drop me somewhere safer, but then I just ended up sticking around. Then we fell in love instead.” You mouth shapes a smile around the word love. “I know we’re in danger,” you say, urgent and quiet. “I know that we’re both liabilities. And I know we won’t be out of trouble for a long while, at least until we can get the Darksaber back from Gideon at the very least. But I’m not running,” you say, lifting your chin, resolved, into the air. “I’m not running. And I don’t know what kind of time you have, or what you can teach the baby and I,” you continue quietly, looking straight into Ahsoka’s eyes, “but I do know this is the closest I’ve felt to something that feels like winning in a long time.”

She’s quiet. It’s like she’s peering into your soul, spending time dissecting your every bone, every current your blood runs through. It takes everything in you not to waver, not to falter under her gaze, but you hold it. Finally, Ahsoka faces you head on, and she smiles. “You’ve still got something a lot of people in this galaxy don’t, Nova,” she says.

You blink. “What’s that?”

Ahsoka looks at Din and the baby, then back at you. Her gaze over you is still intense, but you can tell it’s because she likes you, because she sees a fierce spirit to you that nothing ever got close to stomping out. She lifts her chin to match yours. “Hope.”

You want to thank her, want to do anything to signify how that fortification alone feels huge enough to make everything in you swell and sing, but you don’t have a chance. An arrow shoots out of nowhere, and Ahsoka’s orange hand lunges forward, lightning quick, to knock you in the middle of your chest right below your collarbone, moving you away from the impact. You fall to the ground, scraping the heel of your hand against the rough bark of the tree root, skittering back out of immediate danger.

As if it were nothing, Din’s got both hands on his blaster and Ahsoka’s unsheathed both of her white blades, and you grab for the baby as they go running in the direction that a cacophony of blasts are heading from, and you duck and cover. It’s not your best move, but it’s the smartest one, at least until you can see where the fight is and be strategic about it. You don’t have the Crest, and you don’t have control, or lightsabers, or a whole artillery strapped to bulletproof armor, but you have your head. You pull your cloak up and around your face, covering the tops of your exposed shoulders and the gathering of hair, and you grab the baby and tuck him under the cloth. It’s not perfect, by any means, but with the atmosphere of Corvus being emerald and foggy, your faded green hood is enough camouflage to sneak closer and closer to the battle. You can’t see Din, and all you have to find Ahsoka is the hum of the blade and the screams of the attackers in the dark and you duck down as low as you can, pulling Grogu off your chest so you can look at him.

“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” you hiss, over the noise, “do you understand me? I’m just going back there to get my blaster.” You gesture back to where you were leaning against the tree, the weapon that’s supposed to be strapped against your thigh laying on top of the mossy earth. “I will be right back,” you whisper, holding his face between both of your palms, “I promise, Grogu, okay?”

He nods. You nod back. You’re not stealthy, and you’re not particularly fast, but there’s something about this planet, something about all this green and the baby’s energy and the way Ahsoka holds command that makes you feel invincible. You don’t sprint. You don’t try to run, either, because you don’t know how covered you are by the fog that’s drifting closer and closer to you. You don’t have an armada. You don’t have clear access to the ship. But you’re better this way, on the fly, focused by adrenaline instead of your anxiety of what’ll happen next get into your head. You lunge against the mossy ground for your blaster, and when you pick it up, you start running back to where you’ve hidden the baby, stronger with a weapon in your fist. Someone, tall and clad in dark clothes emerges from the fog, and even from a distance, you know that they don’t match either of the people who are defending you and Grogu right now, so you stop to steady your grip against a rock, and you take aim.

The person roars when your bullet ricochets off the boulder they’re kneeling in front of, glaring wildly, trying to find you. You see the baby’s big eyes widen and close back down when he spots you, and you nod the best you can lodged behind a safe hiding place. The person starts roving forward, and you roll your eyes when you see it’s a man stomping around, trying to find where you’ve hidden.

“You’re a shit shot!” he yells, and you can feel the hum of Ahsoka’s sabers. She’s close, you can sense it, and you close your eyes, clicking the safety off the blaster as you stand up enough to take aim again. He’s looking the opposite way, so you spring up, bending your knees slightly, locking your arms and your grip into place. When he turns around again, he’s against the barrel of your blaster, and he gasps as you push the could maw of it against his temple.

“Don’t think I would be now,” you say, in a voice so much more level than how you’re feeling. “Wanna test your theory?”

He shakes his head, you raise an eyebrow. Maker, it’s like he’s actually scared of you. You, Novalise. You, overemotional hopeless romantic that can’t make a shot to save her life. You, Her Highness Rebel Rouser Pilotess of the Outer Rim. At that and that alone, you steal a small smile when he closes his eyes.

“Why are you here?” You ask, tilting your head at him. “You’re trying to hurt us, take my son. Why?”

“The magistrate,” he says, lifting both hands sky-high. “She wants the Jedi. The orange woman. With the lightsabers.”

“I know whom she is,” you interrupt, shooting the baby a warning glance to stay where he is, camouflaged against the green, mossy rock. “Why does she want the Jedi?”

He shrugs, and you press the barrel of your gun a little closer into his scalp. He raises his hands even higher, so you let the pressure go, still staring down the gun to act like you’ll drop him at any second, even though you have literally no desire to shoot someone ever again. You step back, not much, but enough to plant your foot in a better spot, and you let him look down the blaster to coax him to answer. “Don’t know. We want her out of here. The magistrate. Their whole group is awful, holding the city of Calodan captive. Figure getting the Jedi out of here might placate her long enough for bargain for our city back.”

“You look pretty capable,” you counter, looking at the gun he’s dropped on the ground, gesturing to the arrows parked in the middle of the trees surrounding you. “Why wouldn’t you just attack them? Form a mutiny?”

He doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, and you sigh, dropping your grip just a little. It’s too much, though, stupid. The second you aren’t staring him down with the gaping mouth of your blaster anymore, he lunges for you, knocking you and your weapon to the ground. It doesn’t hurt, since the terrain is all grass, but it’s enough to knock the wind out of you, and he’s taken your blaster and kicked it off somewhere you can’t see, making a beeline for the baby.

“Help!” you scream, picking yourself off the ground, running, winded, back to where he’s heading for. You could kick yourself, but you’d probably trip over your own foot, so you keep going. He’s taller than you, and he clearly has more practice at running than you do, so you’re barely gaining speed when he picks up Grogu. He shrieks with being suddenly airborne, and you thunder your feet across the ground as fast as you can. You keep yelling loudly for Din and Ahsoka, because now you’re totally weaponless, and that piece of cowardly shit has your kid, and then you stop short, remembering you may not have a weapon, but you have something.

You clear your mind. Everything rushes backwards out of you. It’s still hard to make everything quiet in the midst of so much danger and noise, but you’re better at it now. Raising both hands, you focus, eyes snapping back open. You move, just slightly, and the man stops midair. He’s still trying to get the baby away, and he’s much stronger than you are, but then Grogu makes eye contact with you, determined and strong, and you nod, somehow knowing exactly what he’s about to do.

The baby bites down on the man’s arm. Hard. A real chomp, one he usually reserves for frogs and the food that’s supposed to be for you and Din. The man howls as he drops to the forest floor, and you lunge for Grogu as his abductor is stopped in his tracks. You give him a good stomp on his left foot, grabbing your blaster off the floor. He looks up at you with wide eyes, and you see how scared he is, so you decide to have a little mercy. “Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you,” you say, firmly, “and focus all your energy on taking back what’s yours instead.” He nods. You flick your finger back to stun and shoot him. It catches him in the belly, so he won’t be out for long, but it’s enough time to swaddle you and Grogu back up in your cloak, make your way through the edges of the fog that’s a lot quieter than it was s minute ago.

Your eyes aren’t the best on a good day, so you’re squinting and making shapes out of nothing. When you collide into Din, he has to clap a gloved hand over your mouth to stifle your shriek. The second he knows you aren’t going to be a red flag in the middle of the darkness, his hands moves off your lips and caresses against your cheek instead. You sag, letting him keep you upwards.

“That was some good fighting, cyar’ika,” he mumbles, and you feel your heart doing cartwheels in your chest.

“I learned form the best,” you manage, trying to wink but accidentally closing both of your eyes. “What’s the plan?”

Quietly, Din pulls the three of you behind another mossy stone. From this vantage point, you can see the mass of soldiers the two of them have taken down. Up on the parapet, there’s a shrouded figure with a thin, sharp metal spear. Your eyes narrow, knowing exactly who’s up there—the magistrate and her evil eye making sure that there’s bloodshed outside the city walls.

“Ahsoka’s clearing the last of them now,” Din whispers, and even modulated and quiet, his voice still sends shivers through you. “You’re going to sneak through the gate of the city with her and the kid.”

You blink at him, doing a double take. “Me?”

Din stares at you through the visor, tilting his head. “You proved yourself, Novalise. I trust you to be quick and quiet enough to sneak through undetected.”

You nod, butterflies soaring to life in the middle of your stomach.

“Besides,” Din adds, clicking the safety off his blaster, the noise muted against the rough fabric of his glove, “there will be three of you. And you all have powers.”

You smile at him. “The Force.”

“Looks like powers,” Din shrugs. Out of nowhere, Ahsoka appears behind you, equally as stealthy and silent as Din is. You smile at her. “Get ready.”

“Wait,” she says, cutting one orange hand through midair. “She’s going to shoot at you.”

Din nods. “The armor can take it.”

Ahsoka looks him up and down, disdainful. “She has a beskar spear.”

Din, who was about to emerge from a crouched position to stand straight up, a shiny force to be reckoned with through all the fog, sinks back down. “What?” The word is low and dangerous in his mouth.

“Listen,” Ahsoka says, urgently. “It’s yours. I have no use for it. You help me defeat her, you get the spear and I’ll…” her gaze lands on you and the baby as she trails off. “I’ll find someone to train both of them.”

“But I thought you—?” you start, but then arrows and blasts are being hurdled through the air again, and Ahsoka pulls you and the baby around to the side, where a cover of trees mixed with the nightfall and the ominous grey still hanging in the air will keep the three of you sheltered enough to make it through the gate undetected. You place your hand over your heart, looking at Din, who nods at you just for a second before he comes out of hiding, guns ablaze, in full Mandalorian mode. As promised, you, Ahsoka, and Grogu are able to make it through the gate without anyone catching sight. The city is small, desolate. It’s quiet, eerily so, and you think that if it weren’t caught between captivity and war, it would be beautiful. All the green from outside has evaporated in here, the streets looking shoddy and destroyed. You follow against the wood of the buildings, keeping only a few paces behind Ahsoka. Her grip on her lightsabers is light but intentional, ready to strike at any minute. The three of you sneak through the majority of the city undetected. When you’ve reached the border of what is clearly the magistrate’s headquarters, she signals for you and the baby to standby. You nod, ducking back against the buildings as she fights her way through the guards. Slowly, silently, she beckons for you to follow her, and you do as quietly as possible, trying not to take stock of the dead bodies on the ground.

It is beautiful in here, just as you predicted. You stay close behind Ahsoka, eyes darting up and around to watch for anyone who might try to hurt you. It’s dark but the greenery is lush and alive, and you run the tips of your fingers over the petals of flowers before you sit in the cloak under a big, sprawling tree, letting the baby out from under your cloak so he can see, too. Eventually, your gaze drifts over to Ahsoka. She’s regal, tall, shoulders set and back. Down the middle of this part of the city is a long slab of granite, dark and glassy. It cuts through a reflecting pool, and your heart lurches as you realize where you are.

In the visions, any that you’ve had that go farther than Ahsoka shrouded here with her sabers, this is where you’re trying desperately to get to Din, to see your panicked face in the beskar. Worriedly, you try to stand, knees wobbling, and when he steps through the doorway, your heart seizes in equal parts relief and terror. Ahsoka stares at him, and you want to start running towards him, shield him with your own body, but you’re frozen in place. Before you can start to shake the fear loose, another figure spears behind Din, pointing the tip of a beskar spear against the unsheathed part of his neck, right where his helmet meets his armor. It’s the only place that’s really left uncovered, just a sliver of skin at the nape of his neck, right before his head meets his spine, but if you know it’s there, it can be fatal. Your stomach is heaving, stormy and dangerous. You want to run to him. You want Ahsoka to use her lightsabers to cut the magistrate down. You want to know enough about the Force to use it, to get the magistrate away from the man you love, but as much as you denied it earlier, you are a loose cannon. You’re good at moving things. You don’t have much practice in saving them.

Ahsoka shoots one glance your way, but you know what it means, even in the dark. Stay put. You shrink back in the shadows the tree gives off, pulling the baby quietly up against your chest. No one knows you’re here except for her, so as long as you don’t give it away, you’ll have the high ground. You watch, heart in shreds, as the magistrate pushes Din forward.

“You have a choice,” she says, voice so smooth, so full of ice, “between the Mandalorian and the freeing of the city. You want Calodan back? I kill him. You want him alive? You leave this planet forever.”

Ahsoka’s eyes narrow. “An ultimatum? Weeks of you trying to kill me, to have your captives hunt me down in exchange for their lives, and all you have for me is an ultimatum?”

“It’s a choice, Jedi,” the magistrate spits. You move forward, enough that you can pull your blaster out of the holster. You aren’t stealthy, but the noise of it is quiet enough to be hidden by their conversation and the proximity to your vantage point. “A compromise.”

“No,” Ahsoka counters levelly, stepping forward with her lightsabers. The hilts are still unsheathed, and you watch carefully for the flick of her thumbs to bring them to life. “A compromise would mean me leaving you alive. I can dangle death, too. You just have to fight me for it first.”

You feel your eyes bulge open in the dark, impressed. She steps forward again, unflinching. She doesn’t even look scared to face the woman that’s holding your fiancé’s life in her hands, and normally, that would both you, but right now? Right now, you’re just marveling. Ahsoka’s a badass.

“Fight me for it, then,” the magistrate seethes, and Ahsoka raises an eyebrow, igniting both blades. You gasp at how they hum and pulse, the white blade both dangerous and serene. When she lunges, the other woman takes the spear off of Din’s pressure point. If you were faster, this is where you would have lunged, but he rolls, sweeping a leg underneath the magistrate’s feet. She avoids them midair, but when he kicks at her coming down, she stumbles. You thumb the safety off, still hiding in the shadows until they need you. For people who just met today, it’s clear that Din and Ahsoka know each other’s rhythms, how they move. It’s like watching a dangerously choreographed dance, all three partners wicked and fast. The other woman is clearly skilled, almost on the level of th both of them, because she’s able to both defend and attack in the same swing. Wordlessly, she swipes through the air. She catches Ahsoka’s skin with the beskar blade, and Ahsoka hisses and kicks just as dangerously, swiping the blade of her own saber over the blood to cauterize it and then swings with it as she yells. You’re in awe of her. Between her blades and Din’s armor, you’re completely mesmerized. There’s not a chance in hell that you would be a match for any of them, so you just watch with the baby safe behind your body. For minutes, it seems, the three of them fight, sharp and quiet. You watch Ahsoka swing the sabers through the air. When the magistrate tries to kick the one out of her left hand, she tosses it overhead to Din, who, amazingly, catches it and swings back in the same momentum she gave him. For a minute, it looks like they have the magistrate cornered, but when she falls to the ground, you’re right in her line of vision.

You panic. You don’t know what to do. Your heart is caught in your chest, and you know she sees you. Din and Ahsoka are so preoccupied with keeping her down that they don’t notice the magistrate’s hungry, dark gaze on you, and you’re frozen. When she gets to her feet again, it’s like she has a whole new wind. She strikes Din down viciously, and you can hear the beskar tearing into his flesh, over a just-healed cut on his leg. He roars as he drops, and you silently make the baby agree to stay hidden. You sprint towards him, throwing all caution and stealth to the wind, just trying desperately to make it there in time to get him off the ground. You scream at the magistrate, a slew of curses in every language you know, sliding across the smooth tile of the ground. Over her head, Ahsoka throws you one of her sabers, still ignited, and somehow, despite all odds, you catch it. It flickers in your hand and you stare down at Din, trying to steel yourself for what you have to do again.

“Now,” he pants through the helmet, “do it, Nova, do it—”

You do. You press the lightsaber down on his cut, just for a second, and he cries out with the cautery, going limp on the floor. You don’t have any time to make sure he’s more okay than that, though, because the magistrate is charging straight after you. Before you can turn, you feel her hurl the spear, the beskar whittling through clean air as it soars towards you, and you catch your terrified expression against Din’s armor before you lift your hand, bracing for the fatality of the impact, knowing that at the very least, you saved the man you love and the kid you share.

But the spear doesn’t come. It doesn’t pierce you straight through. After a minute, you open your eyes, looking around. You, Ahsoka, and the baby all have your hands up in unison, freezing the spear midair. Relieved, you exhale, breath shaky, letting the spear clatter against the pavement. The magistrate makes a desperate attempt to reach for it, but you’re quicker. For once, you’re quicker, and you lunge for the spear, and when you’re back on your feet, exhausted and bloody, you have Ahsoka’s lightsaber in one hand and the beskar spear in the other. She doesn’t move. She looks up at you with filth and anger, and you press the point of the spear to her open neck. She doesn’t recoil.

“Nova,” Ahsoka whispers, over the pulsating thumb of her saber. “It’s not worth it.”

“It is if she’s going to terrorize people again,” you hiss, raising the saber up with conviction. “I could make it quick. Fast. Better than she deserves.”

“You could,” Ahsoka levels. You don’t dare take your eyes off the magistrate, her evil gaze. “Or you could walk away and let me do it.”

“She deserves it,” you spit again, but already, your conviction is fading. You feel the spear being tugged out of your hands, and you whirl around with your arm raised, ready to strike someone down, but it’s just Din, and you sag. You can feel the magistrate ready to lunge, and you aren’t in the place to defend yourself, so you just look up at Din, terrified, making your peace with death for the second time in the matter of a minute. But before you can die, before anything, he’s stabbed the spear unto the shoulder of the magistrate’s right hand, and she drops, writhing against the ground, screaming bloody murder.

“She deserves to fall from grace,” Din grunts, “with no iron fist to cling to or come back with.”

Silently, Ahsoka reaches down to cauterize it. You look away, sheathing her lightsaber and tossing it back. Wordlessly, exhausted, you stumble over to Grogu and shoulder him against your chest. The four of you make your way over the magistrate, who’s knocked out on the ground, and go through the gates. A small gathering of citizens are there to greet you, terrified and just as tired as you feel.

“She won’t be in charge anymore,” Ahsoka says softly, voice firm. “I’ll stick around for long enough to make sure of that, and then you can restore Calodan to its former glory without any oppressive regime.”

“Thank you,” one woman manages, and you can see the tear sin your eyes. Ahsoka smiles, nods, beckons you to follow her. Slowly, you tread back to the Crest, everything in your bones weak and sleepy. You want to fall asleep in the shower. You want to fall asleep with your head on Din’s lap. You’d fall asleep on the ladder if it meant you could spend ten hours without being awake anymore. When the gangplank gets lowered, you don’t have the energy to even make it up the few steps to your bed on the floor. You just drop right there, holding onto the baby.

“Are you coming?” Din asks Ahsoka, and you look up to find her gaze, calm and kind, on you.

“No,” she says, decidedly, eyes still on you and Grogu. “I can’t train them. They both have emotional attachments to you, and to each other. I’m not going to be the one to stop that.”

Din starts at her, but you raise a tired hand. “Are there any Jedi left who will train us?”

Ahsoka’s gaze is so full of intention you don’t have the energy to decode. “Yes,” she answers, finally. Go to the planet Tython. It’s strong in the Force. Call out to other Jedi, and anyone who hears it will come for you.”

“Thank you,” you say. You’re so tired, you could fall asleep on the spot. You want to thank her for everything, but you can barely keep your eyes open, and hope your two words convey enough gratitude for Ahsoka to feel it radiating.

Ahsoka steps closer to Din. “Gideon is coming,” she whispers, lowly. “I know he gave you an ultimatum. I know he’s going to try and take them, btu I also know he’s ruthless enough to discard one of them to keep you distracted and to cut you down.”

If you were more awake, you’d be concerned, but you listen to Din’s intentional, determined voice, and something about his tone makes you think that he’s telling Ahsoka the same promise he’s always made you—he’ll protect you, Gideon won’t touch you, that nothing evil and Imperial can cut through him. She nods, kneeling to brush a light hand over your messy hand and boop the baby’s tiny nose, and then you’re being carried up the ladder. Eventually, you feel the ship take off, and Din comes back to sit against your wall with you, bacta patches in one hand and his helmet in the other.

You mewl at him, reaching to touch his beautiful face, to tangle your fingers hungrily through his messy hair. He lets you get as close as you want, and after you pull off his pants, with the intention of dragging the both of you to lay in the shower together, he pushes one of the bacta patches into your hand. Wincing, you see how deep and nasty the cut was, and how messily you cauterized it. “I’m sorry,” you whisper, voice uneven, and he waves a hand at you, just wanting you to fix the patch over the whole thing to try and let the bacta work its magic. You do, and you slump against Din’s chest, half-naked and exhausted. Eventually, you feel him move out from under you, arms strong and secure around your waist, and you let Din carry you up and into the fresher. You’re on the floor while he turns on the hot water, and the second that you can touch the warmth of it you stand up, letting the pressure rinse over your face, your aching muscles, stripping away as much pain and exhaustion as it possibly can.

When Din comes in behind you, you just turn around to look at him. His own eyes are tired, his beautiful hair getting wetter as you pull him into the stream, dragging the pads of your fingers over his shoulders. He sighs against your touch, pressing his own hands into the small of your back, trying to release the pressure. You’re not sure when he gets hard, when you feel him inside you, but it’s desperate and needy, and he’s leaving an artillery of kisses down your neck. His mouth sucks on and off you, marking your skin. Din’s hands, large and tan, grip either side of your hips to hoist you up, to rock every inch deep inside you. Before tonight, sex always felt like a gratitude, a reprieve. Even the hot and heavy times in the last few weeks have felt more like a thank you, like it’s something both of you want and give each other. Tonight, with the way Din’s burying himself in you, it feels like it’s the last time. The gravity of it, the sharpness, it all feels too heavy.

“My sweet thing,” he moans into your mouth, ricocheting off the walls and up into your ear. “I need you, n—need you to—my sweet thing. He hasn’t called you that in months, not since before Dagobah, and you feel tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. You’re not sure why you’re even crying, but with how desperate he is, with how he’s groveling, begging you to let him fuck you, it makes everything in you feel like it’s going over a cliff.

“You have me,” you murmur, punctuated by his thrusts, but it sounds like a reminder and not like an encouragement. When he’s ready, he looks at you through the water and steam, and you nod, afraid to speak in case your voice comes out hollow and fucked. Din thrusts down as he fucks into you one last time, gasping with the intensity of his orgasm, and when he lets you down he takes the showerhead and rinses between your legs, dragging the soap that smells like him over your skin.

You’re both so exhausted that you don’t even bother redressing when you get out of the shower. You just stumble, a two-headed animal, to the nest of blankets and pillows on the floor, and when Din brings you close against your chest, there’s something still so raw and hungry inside both of you. You can feel it, the despair, the dread, the sucking feeling of something being wrong in the air. But you’re too exhausted to talk about it.

“I’m here,” you repeat into the darkness, heart hammering in your ears.

“I know,” Din allows, but he sounds so faraway, so distant. If you weren’t this tired, you would cry, you would beg him to tell you what’s wrong, what he’s hiding from you, but all you can do is push your nose in the crook of his neck to fall asleep, hoping all that darkness will have been turned over by the time you both wake up.

It feels like minutes when you do, but you know it’s been over a day. You feel the Crest hurtle out of hyperspace, and you drag yourself to the fresher to rinse your sleep-filled mouth out with water. By the time you redress and make your way up the steps, you’ve already landed. It’s just about dawn, as far as you can tell, and your eyes are still full of exhaustion from the day before. You sit down next to the baby, and when he reaches for your necklace, in your stupor, you unhook it from your neck and give it to him to hold on to until you make your way out onto Tython’s surface. Din’s suiting up, grabbing everything and sticking it back into place, and you let your hair loose, swinging around your face as you crack your neck to relieve the pressure. You’re still half asleep as you follow Din down the ladder. His helmet isn’t on yet, and you reach up for a sleepy kiss. He returns it, mouth full of desperation and urgency and everything he was made out of last night.

In retrospect, that right there should have been the first sign. Maybe not the first indication that something was seriously wrong, but the way he touched you, the way he drank your face in, the way he fucked you in the shower. Like it was the last time. You follow Din down the gangplank, the same way you’d follow him down the aisle, or follow him into battle. Determined, protected, lovingly. But when your boots make contact with the ground, you realize that you aren’t on Tython. It should have been obvious. And if you hadn’t exerted every ounce of energy in your body the day before, protecting yourself and your family from someone trying to eviscerate you, you would have known exactly where you were.

Your eyes widen around the familiar greenery of Dantooine. You’re on the other side of the planet than you were the last time you were here, where Din killed Merle and ignored everything in him to kiss you anyways. Your heart is hammering as you look around, eyes darting back and forth from Din and the Crest, where the baby is hovering in his cradle. The tears come before the knowledge of what’s happening does.

“Wait,” you manage, your voice shattered. “W—what are we doing on Dantooine?”

You’re right on the forest’s edge. You can see the city through the foliage, just a few klicks away. You look wildly back at Din, trying to scry the look on his face past his helmet. Your heart is a staccato in your chest, everything in you screaming that this is wrong, that you’re misinterpreting the situation, that this is a dream/

“Nova,” Din starts, and you shake your head at him, violently. “Novalise, listen to me.” When he grabs for your face, you sob, loud and unashamed. “Gideon is going to keep coming.”

“I—know,” you say, thrashing against his grip. “I know that, Din, I know—did you see what I did back there on Corvus? I can help! I can s—stop him, I can protect us—”

“No,” he says gently, “no, Nova, you can’t. Because if you’re with me, you’re the one he’s going to kill. He’s not going to capture you. He’s not going to keep you alive for long enough to fight back. He’s going to use you to break me, to get the kid.”

“No,” you cry again, but this time you go limp. You’re crying now, for real. The planet is crushing you. Or maybe the air. Or maybe it’s just your own broken heart, suffocating itself against your ribs.

“Nova,” Din whispers again, “Nova, you have to hide. You have to stay out of reach of Gideon, which means you have to stay out of reach of me. Hey. Hey. Listen to me.” You try to find your center of gravity, but you can’t. You tumble to the ground, tears hurtling down your cheeks. Din follows you, clinging to you all the way down. “You just need to stay away long enough for me to defeat Gideon, kill him, and get the Darksaber back to Bo-Katan. Once he’s dead, once this is over, I’ll come back for you. Do you understand me?”

You’re not coherent. You want to scream, you want to barter, you want to plead. You want to do so much, but all you’re capable of is sitting there and crying, breaths long and dragging, the air barely getting in your lungs. “Please don’t leave me,” you sob, finally, and Din deflates too.

“Nova, I’m supposed to protect you,” he says quietly. “This is for your own good. It’s selfish of me to keep you close when I’m the one putting you in danger. You—” he stops, sighing. The baby is crying now, too. Your heart keeps breaking in your chest. Every time you realize what’s happening, it shatters again and again. “I’m going to kill Gideon. I’m going to protect you.” You’re still a mess on the ground. Din drags something over to you, and you realize it’s your bag, stuffed with food and bacta and credits. You just cry, trying to scream, but it’s like all the noise has drained out of you. “I’ll come back for you,” Din repeats, and then he’s gone. The ship is boarded and in the air before you can move, and you finally, finally scream, but it’s drowned out by the thrusters. You sob, loud and horrible, like a wounded animal, as the dust settles around you. You reach for your necklace only to realize it’s still in the baby’s fist. Every shred of proof of the people you loved is gone, off in the stardust somewhere while you’re stuck here, grounded and drowning, heart broken in your chest, crying out for all four members of your family lost out there in the crush of space.

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I AM SO SORRY AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! i love you all and i'm so grateful to have you here with me. i am literally breaking my own heart writing this, but now i can finally tell you all that THIS is the foreshadowed brokenhearted moment that we have been building to. yes i have already written both their reunion scene and makeup scene. the pain will not last longer than absolutely necessary!!!!!

CHAPTER 23 SHOULD BE UP NEXT SATURDAY, MAY 29TH AT 7:30PM EST!! i am unfortunately having another big slew of health issues, and after my doctors' appointment next week, i will at best have invasive testing ahead of me and at worst need surgery. i will not know until Wednesday, so please just be patient with me as i figure out when i can write!!! as always, i'll update you on tiktok (padmeamydala) and here as i get news!!!

thank you all so much again, not only for understanding my erratic, hectic posting these last few weeks, but for being here and caring about me and my health and wellbeing just as much as you care about Something More! graduation went so well, thank you all so much for all your well wishes!!! i promise we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming SOON!!!

xoxo, amelie

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