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itsjuststardust · 2 months ago

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Heaven in Hiding - Chapter 25: Don't Look Back

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Word Count: 23,820

Author's Note/Chapter Warnings: Oh, dear readers... We have reached the conclusion of 'Act II' of Heaven in Hiding. I will save most of my thoughts and feelings for the end of the chapter, but I have a couple of things to warn you about. First, I hope you like long chapters because this one officially takes the crown for the longest chapter (thus far) at 23.5k words (sorry, not sorry). So, make yourself comfortable, put your feet up, and play your favorite sad girl music. Second, this chapter follows the last half of Ch. 7: The Reckoning and Ch. 8: Redemption. I borrowed some of the dialogue from the show for this chapter, but I have changed some to fit with my story. Lastly, there is some sciencey stuff in here that I have taken creative liberties with. Just go with it. That's all I have without spoiling the chapter, but if you need to read chapter warnings, please jump to the A/N at the end of the chapter so you can prepare yourself. MINORS - DO NOT INTERACT - 18+ ONLY 🎵Chapter Soundtrack🎵 “Francesca” - Hozier Without further ado... may I present the 🐍🐍 Act II 🐍🐍 finale of Heaven in Hiding - "Don't Look Back"

Chapter 25: Don't Look Back

“Alaina!” he called after the blur of green velvet that stomped past him.

“Trouble in paradise?” Karga asked, keeping his watchful gaze on Alaina as she headed toward the lava river.

Din growled and stormed after her, knocking Karga’s shoulder a little more forcefully than he intended as he passed by his former guild leader. When he made it to that beautiful pain in his ass, he was going to remind her about her promise not to do anything rash, like stomping off away from the safety of the campsite. Especially when they knew the odds were stacked against them.

A shock of white came up over the hill, standing in sharp contrast to the surrounding black and lava-cracked landscape. Din froze at the sight of the weasel-eyed doctor as he walked towards Alaina, who was so lost in thought she didn’t even realize her former friend was approaching her.

“Oof,” Alaina grumbled when she smacked straight into Pershing. “I’m sorry—” she cut her apology off when she realized who it was she just ran into.

“Hello, Lainey.”

Din stood a short distance away, watching Alaina closely as she stared in shock at the man before her. He was still close enough to intervene if needed, but he decided that it was best that the two had their emotional reintroductions in private.

A guttural cry he’d never heard from another living being before left Alaina’s mouth, startling both men. Pershing’s face turned to one of shock as his former friend launched herself at him, tackling him to the ground.

So much for introductions. "Kriff,” Din muttered as he ran to the two scuffling on the ground.

“I hate you!” Alaina screeched and wound her arm back before clocking the doctor smack in the middle of his face.

A small swell of pride formed in his chest. At least her form was improving, Din noted with a cringe as she went in for another punch.

“Alright, alright,” Din grumbled, grabbing Alaina around her waist to pull her off the doctor. Alaina thrashed in arms, clawing and kicking to get back to Pershing, who was now holding his bloodied nose as he attempted to crawl away from his petite attacker.

“Tranyc,” he murmured, holding her tightly against his chest until he felt her relax. “You can’t kill him. Yet,” he added when she growled.

“Fine,” she huffed, and he set her down on the ground once he was convinced Alaina wouldn’t immediately charge at Pershing again.

Din returned his attention to the doctor who was examining the blood on his hand left over from his bloodied nose.

“I suppose I deserved that,” Pershing muttered, looking up from his hand to stare at Alaina, who let out a low growl. Din held his arm out, preventing her from attacking the doctor again. “I see you were still traveling with the Mandalorian,” he commented with a tight smile before turning his attention to the Mandalorian. “Thank you for returning her. Again.”

Din cocked his helmet at the doctor’s words. Returning her? He crossed the distance between them in three strides, taking special pleasure in the terror in the man’s eyes. When he reached the white coat, Din’s elbow reared back before delivering a quick snap to the man’s face. Pershing fell to the ground, groaning as he held his face in his hands. If his nose wasn’t broken before, it was broken now.

Din turned back to Alaina, who was giving him a bright smile. “One quick jab to the face, right?” he asked, grinning when Alaina giggled. “Although your form is getting better,” he complimented with a nod.

Alaina’s eyes sparkled, refracting the light from the lava river as she said, “Thank you!”

When he returned to Alaina, he grabbed her right hand to inspect it for damage. Her knuckle only had one minor cut, but it wasn’t too bad overall. “You let your elbow drop,” he said, balling her fist back up and using his other hand. He lifted her elbow to put her in the correct form. “Just because you continue to punch someone doesn’t mean you get sloppy.”

“Well, I was just surprised when I hit him, and my hand didn’t immediately shatter,” she said, grinning at his helmet. “It’s easier to punch someone in the face when they don’t have a beskar helmet.”

He hummed and nodded, letting go of Alaina’s hand to return his attention to why they were there.

Pershing had managed to make it back to his feet and had dried blood caked under his nose and some splattered across his uniform, but it was the way he was looking between the two of them as if they were some puzzle he had yet to solve. Some deeply buried feeling of protector surged through him, and Din had to restrain himself from putting an arm around Alaina’s waist to draw her to him so that he could rub it in the other man’s face that Alaina was his.

“Now that the two of you have been reacquainted, you said you had a solution?” Din asked, prompting the doctor.

Pershing jumped at his words and shook his head, returning to the problem at hand. “Um, yes,” he nodded and reached behind him to dig through a canvas backpack until he retrieved a datapad. The man’s face faltered when he turned to look back at Alaina. “Lainey, I just want you to know I never intended it to be like this.” Alaina scoffed. “I didn’t! If I would have known—”

“Penn, you sent a bounty hunter after me! You used me as a science experiment for five years!” Alaina’s reprimand slowly crescendoed to a scream. “You tortured me! You locked me away until I went crazy! Even when I started having seizures, you still didn’t stop! So don’t give me the if I would have known bullshit!”

“I’m sorry! He was breathing down my neck for results! I thought I was close!” Pershing pleaded. “Lainey, you know I would never—”

“I don’t! I don’t know you!” Alaina seethed. “I thought I did, but obviously, I was wrong about you!”

Din gripped Alaina’s arm to stop her from continuing and to give her a small show of support before turning his attention back to Pershing. “Arguing about the past is going to get us nowhere,” he started, letting go of Alaina’s arm. “You agreed to meet because you wanted to make it right. How do you plan on fixing her?”

Pershing’s eyes looked between him and Alaina. “I’m sorry. I know you brought her back here, but why do you care?” he asked, trying to work out the puzzle before him.

His blaster was in his hand instantly, directed at the doctor’s head. Pershing’s hands shot up, with his datapad still in his right hand.

Alaina’s hand came to rest on his forearm, encouraging him to lower his blaster. “Just answer the question, Penn,” she said, sounding exhausted from arguing already.

As Din lowered his blaster, Pershing’s hands dropped. “Maybe we should go talk. In private,” he suggested.

At his comment, his blaster rose, forcing a sigh from Alaina. “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it in front of Mando,” she told Pershing as she gripped his forearm again until he lowered the blaster again.

“But—”

“No buts,” Alaina stopped him. “If you can’t say what you came here to say in front of an audience, then we’re leaving,” she announced, making Din bristle. “And if you think that Mando here is going to let you out of his sight, you are mistaken,” she informed him with a shake of her head. “We don’t trust you,” she ground out bitterly.

“Okay,” Pershing agreed quickly. “Okay. Maybe we could go closer to the fire,” he suggested, nodding to where the others had set up camp nearby. “It’s not safe out here at night.”

Din nodded and motioned toward the campsite. Pershing nodded and walked with them the short distance to the fire. “How long do you have before they notice you’re missing?” he asked the doctor.

“My supervisor at the compound in the city thinks I headed out to the main lab in the lava flats early, but the lab doesn’t think I’m coming until the morning. They won’t come looking for me until late in the morning,” Pershing told them. “It’s not a lot of time, but it’s enough to do a couple of tests on Lainey—”

“You don’t get to call me that,” Alaina snapped.

A flash of pain came over the doctor’s face, but he recovered quickly. “As I was saying, it’s not a lot of time, but it’s enough to do a couple of tests on Alaina and compare it to the previous data I have.”

“And then?” Alaina prodded with a glare.

“I need to start with the tests first. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions without all the data,” Pershing answered, keeping his head directed down at the lava-cracked ground, avoiding eye contact with his former friend.

Alaina scoffed, “Like you jumped to the conclusion that I’m dying?”

Pershing sighed. "Lai—Alaina, I didn’t lie to get you here." When they reached the fire, he stopped to return his attention to Alaina. “Please believe me. Let me proceed with the scans. Then we can talk more once I have more data.”

Alaina nibbled nervously on her bottom lip before turning to look up at his helmet. Din cocked his head, wanting her to come to the same conclusion that he had—they’d come all this way for answers; they weren’t going to leave now without some. It would be easier for her to reach that conclusion independently than for Din to force her to participate. Alaina could be stubborn when she wanted to be, and it wouldn’t do them any good to waste what precious time they had arguing.

“Okay,” she nodded, and Din placed a reassuring hand on the small of her back when she gave him a tight, nervous smile.

“O-Okay,” Penn stuttered as he watched Din’s simple contact with a concerned face. “Let’s—Uh—Let’s find a spot where we can get comfortable,” he suggested, nodding to the large lava rock Karga was already propped up against.

Din gave her a gentle push to get her moving. One eye was on Alaina and the doctor, but he kept an alert eye on the others—Karga was giving orders to the other two he’d come with to go hunt something for dinner. Dune was walking the perimeter with her borrowed rifle like the soldier she was. Kuiil was with Grogu, pulling the kid’s new floating pram around their blurrg while he listened to the kid babble.

“The Child is still with you,” Pershing commented as they reached the lava rock.

Alaina picked the opposite end of the rock from Karga to sit down. “Why wouldn’t he be?” she asked as she made herself comfortable with her back propped up against the wall.

“I—I don’t know,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “Of course, I would have thought you’d have parted ways with the Mandalorian, but that doesn’t appear to be the case,” Pershing answered, unable to tear away from the kid. “You were never one for, what did you call them? Meatheads?”

Din looked to Alaina with a cock of his helmet at the comment, earning him a snicker from the blonde.

“Yeah, well, this meathead isn’t so bad,” she admitted to the weasel, giving Din a playful kick to his boot.

When the doctor looked at Din with watchful eyes, Din glowered back at the man, refusing to back down. “Don’t you need to get started?” Din prompted with a growl.

“Right,” Pershing nodded and moved to sit opposite of Alaina.

With one last look around the campsite to ensure that everything was okay for now, Din sat next to Alaina while Pershing dug through the pack of supplies he had brought.

If the doctor was surprised that the Mandalorian was sitting beside his friend, he didn’t show it. Pershing placed four monitoring devices along Alaina’s forehead, each with tiny wires attached to white stickers that all returned to the doctor’s datapad.

When the doctor pulled out two more monitoring stickers, Alaina took them from him so she could reach through the top of her shirt to stick one on either side of her chest. “I’ve done this before,” she reminded the weasel.

“Right,” Pershing replied softly. “Then we will go in the normal order,” he said, making Alaina scoff. “I need to be able to compare results as accurately as possible—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alaina grumbled. “Meditation first?” she asked, to which the doctor nodded. Alaina turned her green eyes to his helmet and gave him a soft smile. “There are three tests in total. He’s going to monitor me for thirty minutes at a time while I do different things. Meditating is first,” she explained.

Din nodded, “Let me know if you need anything.”

Alaina reached for his hand and gripped his glove tightly. “Just be here,” she whispered.

Din gripped her hand back, and the two shared their look for one last brief moment before Alaina gave him a subtle nod. He kept his helmet directed at her, waiting for the first inclination for something to go wrong. Alaina’s eyes closed as she rested her head against the lava rock as she… meditated, he supposed.

As the minutes ticked on, Din’s eyes slid to Pershing but caught that he wasn’t studying the datapad like he would have thought. Instead, the doctor’s eyes were locked on Alaina and Din’s intertwined hands.

Din cocked his helmet at the doctor, making him flinch when he realized that he’d been caught. Pershing’s cheeks tinged red, and he returned to focusing on the datapad to analyze whatever information he was getting.

Din’s teeth ground together at the weasel, but Mando refused to take his eyes off the other man. They hadn’t come all this way for the man to get distracted by his feelings. His alleged best friend’s life was literally in his hands. If there was a time to focus—it was now.

The countdown inside his helmet ticked off, and Din felt the minutes drag by. Alaina was meditating while Pershing was focused on whatever data he was receiving on his end. It wasn’t until almost twenty minutes later that Din noticed Pershing’s lips frown slightly and his brows knit together at whatever he saw on the screen.

“What?” Mando asked, startling the doctor.

“Vermilion fingertips.”

Din’s helmet snapped back to Alaina at her whispered words. Her eyes were open now, but the unsettling, vacant eyes of a vision replaced her normally expressive emerald ones. More alarming was the slow stream of blood coming from each nostril.

“Alaina!” Din called, squeezing the limp hand in his glove.

“Wait!” Pershing whispered, holding a hand out to stop him. “This is good,” he told him excitedly. “This is good. Don’t try to interfere.”

“He’s coming,” Alaina whispered, and then her words dissolved into a fit of unnerving laughter. “He’s coming to take the sunlight away and rip it apart limb by limb,” the ramblings continued.

Din looked at Pershing, but he looked just as confused as he did. He remembered that vision. It was the first vision she’d had in front of him in the woods of Sorgan. He hadn’t thought much of it until her next vision on their last day in the village and then had assumed she was warning them about the hunter lurking in the woods.

“Don’t trust the moon. She’s always changing,” she giggled, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Pershing…” he growled, but the man waved his hand to silence him.

“Vermilion fingertips walk the end of the road,” she continued, and then her head slowly turned to stare down his helmet, somehow still able to find his eyes under his helmet. Her hand moved, and Din released it from his grip, allowing her to move it freely. Alaina’s now free hand rose until it found the transparisteel ‘T’ of his visor and let her index finger trace along the glass. “Remember, the foundation survived,” she whispered.

He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding as Alaina’s finger slid off his helmet, and he waited for the vacant look to leave.

The few times he’d witnessed one of her visions, they had ended one of two ways: disorientation or unconsciousness.

But nothing could have prepared him for what happened next.

Din watched helplessly as her green eyes rolled back into her head, and her petite body went rigid.

“Hold her down!” Pershing ordered moments before Alaina’s entire body collapsed, and she began convulsing. “Hold her down! On her side!”

His heart pounded against the beskar plating outside of it. His surroundings faded away to the point where the only thing he could see or feel was Alaina. His gloves fumbled as he tried to contain her body as it thrashed under him. He felt utterly helpless as foam began leaking from her mouth, turning red as it came into contact with the blood from her nose.

“What’s happening?!” he barked at the doctor, who was drawing something up in a syringe.

“Seizure,” he supplied as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. Pershing took the syringe and instructed Mando how to hold her arm so he could find a vein.

The two worked in tandem, and by the end of the injection, the convulsions slowly came to a stop until the body he had pinned to the ground went limp in his hands.

“What did you do to her?!” Din demanded as he attempted to make Alaina comfortable.

“I didn’t do anything!” Pershing defended. “She had a premonition—Wait,” he paused, and his expression changed to one of curiosity, “has she not had any seizures since she’s been with you?”

Din shook his head. He would have remembered something as terrifying as that.

“Interesting,” was all Pershing commented before he buried his nose in his datapad.

“What happens now?” Din asked, stroking Alaina’s hair back off her forehead, and took the corner of his cloak to try and clean Alaina’s face up the best he could.

“I gave her an anticonvulsant. She’ll be unconscious for a while,” Pershing mumbled.

“What about your tests? Alaina said there were three.”

“I’ll continue to monitor her scans while she is unconscious,” Pershing told him while he rummaged through his pack to pull out another datapad. “Catching a premonition is better than I could have hoped for. It will give me a better understanding of her neuropathways now compared to her last scans. There used to be four tests, but since she lost her telekinetic abilities, it’s harder to prompt a premonition out of her.”

Din frowned, “Telekinetic?”

“She used to be able to move objects,” Pershing explained, pausing his studies of the datapad to glance at Alaina.

“Until you went meddling in her mind,” Din accused, fixing the doctor with a knowing tilt of his helmet.

Pershing’s eyes slid from Alaina to his helmet, “It wasn’t intentional.”

Din scooted closer to Alaina, shifting her to rest between his legs and her head on his lap. “She was able to move something a few weeks ago,” he told the doctor as he stroked Alaina’s hair.

Pershing’s eyes went wide, “She did?” Din nodded, and the doctor excitedly scrambled a little closer to them. “Wh-what happened? Was it intentional or accidental? You said a few weeks ago, has she tried again since?”

“She was working with the kid,” Din started, trying to remember the last afternoon on their moon. “She was giving him lessons to work on his powers, and I think trying to see what she was still capable of,” he continued, looking down at the unconscious blonde in his lap. “They were meditating, and she was trying to get the kid to float a rock. I was sitting with them, and the rock suddenly began to lift off the ground. I looked, and the kid was smiling at Alaina, but Alaina was doing it.”

“So the ability wasn’t lost forever,” Pershing muttered, smiling at Alaina. “What happened next?”

Din sighed. “The whole thing lasted a minute tops. And then… it was like something snapped inside of her. She started screaming and clutching her head. Her nose was bleeding. She said it felt like it was burning her, and whatever happened, it was. She ran a fever and went in and out of consciousness for hours. Once her fever broke, she was able to get some real rest, but…” he tapered off as his chest clenched remembering back on the event. How could he have missed her slipping away in his arms?

“But?” Pershing prompted him eagerly.

“But I don’t think she ever fully recovered,” he finished. “She complained about headaches off and on, and she’s looked drained since. I thought it was getting better. I wanted to believe it was getting better… and then we got your message,” he finished, directing his helmet at the doctor.

Din watched the doctor’s face change from open excitement to a more closed-off, disappointed look.

“You weren’t lying in that message, were you?” Din asked, keeping his helmet on Pershing. “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

Pershing’s eyes looked up from Alaina’s prone form to his helmet, and the pained look the doctor gave him was the only confirmation Din needed.

“Why?” Din asked, clutching Alaina tighter.

Pershing’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “I’m not sure the exact reason why,” he admitted. The doctor’s lips flattened, and he shifted to pass Din the datapad that wasn’t connected to Alaina. “Those are her brain scans when we first began our trials. Before she lost her original powers,” he explained.

Din took the datapad from Alaina in one hand while keeping the other on Alaina. He frowned at the intricate web of yellow lines staring back at him. “What am I looking at?”

“Her neuropathways,” Pershing informed him. “Her neuropathways before she lost her original powers. It’s only one of at least ten other tests I performed regularly. My original hypothesis was that her powers were located in a specific area of her brain, and I thought if I could track down their location, I could figure out how to activate other powers.”

“Original hypothesis? So, you were wrong?”

Pershing nodded. “But I continued to monitor them because you never know what information will make or break an experiment.”

Din looked down at the web of yellow neuropathways that made Alaina—Alaina. They were bright and golden like the sunlight.

“After you kidnapped Alaina and the Child,” Pershing continued with a glare over the top of his glasses, “the Moff insisted that we jump straight to trials. I had five years of data on Alaina, and we had the Child’s blood,” he told him. “I had three different test groups, each with three volunteers,” Pershing stopped, and Din looked up from the datapad when he didn’t continue. The man’s face morphed into a haunted, far-off look. “They all died,” he whispered. “Everyone of them. I—I don’t know what I did wrong. I’ve been developing those methods for years, and not a single one of them worked.”

Din didn’t know whether or not to be relieved that the doctor’s trials had so far been unsuccessful or angry for the nine volunteers who lost their lives to a mad scientist.

“So, I went back to the beginning to try and find another avenue to try,” Pershing said, looking at Alaina. “I don’t know how I missed it, but neuropathways are difficult. There are millions upon billions of them. Every time you learn something new, a new one forms. On the opposite, others fade away. That,” he paused to point at the datapad Din was holding, “is the very first scan of her brain that I took.” The doctor reached to flick through several images to show Din, but he couldn’t see anything different about them. “They all look similar, correct?”

“Yes. How can you tell she’s dying if they all look the same?” he asked, looking up from the pad in his hand.

“Well, a skilled eye would tell you they are not the same,” Pershing told him. “In her first few months, she developed many new neuropathways… because she was exposed to certain new… experiences.”

“Like torture?” Din ground out.

Pershing’s lips flattened, and the weasel adjusted his glasses on his nose before nodding. He took the datapad back from Din and fiddled with it to bring up new scans to show him. “These are after she had her first premonition and lost her original powers,” he explained, flicking through several new images.

Din frowned as he looked over the scans. Maybe Alaina was right, and maybe this was too advanced for them to understand because Din couldn’t find any noticeable difference in what Pershing was showing him.

“When you’re looking at the scans chronologically, even to the trained eye, it’s hard to find the subtle differences,” Pershing continued, and Din could already tell by the look on the man’s face he wasn’t going to like what was coming next. “It’s when you compare the data from the beginning,” he stopped to bring the scans back to the first one, “to the last scan I took side by side. Can you see them?” Pershing’s face drew painfully, and he brought up a new scan for him to see. Then, he split the screen so that Din could compare the two. “The one on the left is the first scan I took of her, and the one on the right is the last one I took,” he explained quietly. “The last one was actually the day you came for the job. Lainey had complained that her bones were vibrating, and I performed my scans a little early that day but couldn’t find anything abnormal. She snapped and tried to run and ended up running into you.”

He remembered that moment vividly. The frail-looking girl in the flimsy white hospital gown came sprinting out of one of the back rooms and was too busy looking behind her and crashed into him. He remembered everything. How her emerald eyes filled with hope. How her hair was dull and reminded him of straw. How gaunt she had become… He remembered it all.

“Tin Man?” Alaina’s doe-eyes were emerald pools, looking up at him for help. “Save me. Please.”

After five years, Din Djarin had been given a second chance.

Now, Din Djarin stared at the two images, noting the millions of golden webs of neuropathways on the left side. However, compared to the image on the right… there were maybe a little over half the number of neuropathways. He took in the cold, hard facts before him and felt that second chance slipping away.

“And now?” he rasped, forcing himself to look away from the datapad in his hands to look at the doctor.

Pershing’s face remained a blank, emotionless canvas as he turned the datapad connected to Alaina around for him to see for himself. Din’s heart sank. The differences weren’t quite as dramatic as the images on his pad, but they were still there. She had maybe lost another quarter of what she had compared to Pershing’s last scan. Not only were her neuropathways diminished, but two new colors weren’t a part of the original scans.

“What are those?” he asked, pointing to the small red and blue patches mixed with gold pathways.

Pershing shrugged, “That, I don’t know. I’ve never seen them before.” Pershing took his finger to the datapad, and Din watched as the images rewound. “This is when she started meditating,” he explained. “They are there before the premonition. And then, she has her premonition,” he paused to fast forward through the scans, and Din watched as the golden web of pathways exploded to life, looking more like the original scans Pershing took. “And this is after the premonition,” he continued, forwarding again to the picture he showed Din. “Neuropathways are unique to the individual, like a fingerprint. The datapad is highlighting those two patches because they are different from hers,” he explained.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t have an answer to that now,” Pershing admitted. “With the theory that a neuropathway is like a fingerprint… my first inclination is to say that those do not belong to Alaina,” he said slowly and then shook his head. “But that has to be impossible. That would mean that somehow there is not one, but two, other people sharing brain space with her.”

Din’s chest clenched at his words, and he turned to look at the kid, still tucked away in his floating pram. As if feeling Din’s gaze, Grogu turned to look back at him, and he was immediately transported back to the night that everything changed—the night on their moon when they became trapped by Alaina’s mind.

“You’re not meant to understand the innermost thoughts of another,” Alaina had told him.

“Innermost thoughts? Are you trying to tell me we’re trapped inside your mind?”

He remembered the decaying room that represented Alaina’s mind. Her haunting eyes were black, bottomless pools. How the three of them experienced memories of their past…

“I can’t keep you two out of my head. It’s taking all of my power to keep our memories separate, but you guys are so loud it’s making it hard.”

Din turned to look back at Pershing. Should he tell him? Tell him that perhaps the man’s theory wasn’t as preposterous as he thought. Tell him that those two patches very likely represented him and the kid and their bond with Alaina.

“Without further research, I can’t answer that question,” Pershing began, turning the datapad back around to study it. “But whatever they are, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if they weren’t there.” Din didn’t have to ask him to explain. The doctor pressed a button on the pad and then turned it around for Din to see. “Because without those two patches…” he tapered off.

Din clutched Alaina tighter at the image of her remaining neuropathways. Without the two patches, it was alarming to see the difference between her current scan and the last one Pershing took.

“It looks like they’ve acted like a bandaid of sorts,” Pershing said with a shrug, taking the datapad back.

“How long?” Din asked, knowing that Pershing knew precisely what he was asking. How much longer did Alaina have?

“I don’t think I could give you an exact date,” Pershing answered, studying the datapad. “Without those two patches filling in some gaps, I would have said weeks, but I think months if we do nothing.”

“Months?” he asked, unable to believe the doctor’s answer.

Pershing nodded and returned his attention to his unconscious friend. “Three to six months based on the current rate of deterioration,” he elaborated. “Her mind will go before her body. Even if those two mystery patches are the only thing she has left, I don’t think it would be enough to save her. You mentioned headaches and nose bleeds when she was able to move a rock?” Din nodded. “Have those continued?” Din nodded again. “Briefly, I was hopeful when you said she hadn’t had any seizures with you. She was having them with an increasing frequency before you kidnapped her. But that doesn’t appear to be the case,” he sighed. “I believe her symptoms will continue to progress until her mind is gone, and her body will fail at some point after her mind goes.”

Din looked down at the unconscious blonde in his lap and tried to imagine what his life would look like without her. He tried to imagine waking up in the morning without a sea of honey-blonde curls obstructing his helmet. He tried to imagine taking care of the kid on his own without Alaina there to help. He tried to imagine coming down to the hold and not finding Alaina subconsciously going through what was likely old choreography when she would move around out of boredom. He tried to imagine what it would be like not to hear her laugh or her quick-witted sarcasm. He tried to imagine never seeing those emerald green doe eyes ever again.

The images of that future were bleak and dull. Traveling with Alaina and Grogu these past months had made him almost forget what it was like to travel alone.

The what-ifs flooded his mind. What if he succeeded five years ago in preventing Alaina from walking into the hands of Penn Pershing? What if he paid closer attention to Alaina’s symptoms and forced her to get help sooner? What if he had stopped to take some of the research and information that were undoubtedly stored on the computers back at the compound in hopes that they could find another doctor to help them?

But now wasn’t the time to think about the what-ifs or the worst-case scenarios. Now was the time to get answers.

“Was it worth it?” Din asked lowly. Pershing’s surprised eyes flashed to his helmet at his question, making his fists clench and teeth grind. “She was your best friend,” he continued, rage filling him. “She’s only been a part of my life for a handful of months, and I can’t imagine her not in my life. But you… she was a part of your life for twenty years! The two of you grew up together. She loved you!” he snapped. Vaguely, he realized that his voice carried the angrier he became, and they now had the attention of everyone at the campsite. “Was it worth it?” he rasped, ready to punch the man again.

Pershing’s mouth opened and closed like a fish struggling for air on land. “You have to understand—”

“I understand enough,” Din cut the doctor off with a growl. “How do you plan on fixing her?”

Pershing nervously tinkered with his glasses while he got his thoughts together. “I have a theory,” he began slowly, still keeping his gaze diverted from him. “I would need to take her back to the main lab with me to perform some more tests—”

“Not happening,” Din ground out.

“You asked how I plan on fixing her, and I’m telling you what I need to do to do that,” Pershing snapped back with a glare. “The scans of her neuropathways are just the beginning. I need more information.”

“And what once you get that information… what is your theory?” Din asked, running through a million different scenarios in his mind. What if they took over the lab while Pershing performed his tests, and once Alaina was better, they fled? Was there somewhere else they could take Pershing to, somewhere away from Nevarro and the Empire, where he could still do his tests? Could they find another place before it was too late?

“I believe the Child holds the answers,” Pershing announced, and the two men turned to look at the kid, who was oblivious to the attention directed at him as he ate some of the roasted meat that had been cooked after the hunt. “I know my first trials with the Child’s blood weren’t successful, but I know the answer is in there. I have a small sample of the Child’s blood left. It’s not enough to repeat my previous experiments…” When Pershing’s voice tapered off, Din turned to look at the doctor, only to find him already looking at him with nervous eyes. “To thoroughly test my theory… I would need them both to come back to the lab with me.

“Not happening.”

Din jumped at the sound of Alaina’s slurred words. He looked down and saw Alaina’s eyes open, staring at Penn.

“Lainey—”

“I said it’s not happening,” Alaina cut him off, voice scratchy and groggy from unconsciousness. She struggled to get up, and Din immediately moved to help her sit up. Once she managed to sit up, she collapsed back against his chest, exhausted by the effort, and rested the back of her head against his right shoulder. She ripped the monitors from her forehead and chest and tossed them back at the doctor. “You’re not touching the kid.”

Din brought his gloved hands to her upper arms. “How do you feel?” he murmured in her ear as he stroked her arms.

“Like I got trampled by a herd of blurrg,” she grumbled, eyeing the beasts they’d used to ride out here. “But not bad enough to let him experiment on the kid.”

“Lainey, this is just the beginning,” Pershing warned her. “But I truly believe that the Child’s biology holds the key to fixing you. Without him… this,” he paused to point at her, “is just the beginning. I wasn’t lying in my message, Lainey. You will die without my help.”

“Then I’ll die,” Alaina responded flatly.

“Lainey,” Pershing pleaded.

Din gripped her arms tightly. “Alaina…” he murmured but didn’t know what to say. What was there left to say?

Alaina patted the top of his thigh. “Tell me, Penn,” she began as she wormed her hands between the armor on his thigh. “You already have a sample of the Child’s blood and began your little experiments, right?” Pershing nodded. “You said you’d had disastrous success in your message,” she reminded him. “Just how many experiments lost their lives in your hands?”

“Nine,” came Pershing’s whispered reply.

“Nine,” Alaina huffed out a sad laugh. “I guess that makes me experiment number ten, huh? I heard you tell Mando you had some of his blood left?”

Pershing nodded, “Maybe enough for one more,” he said and then shook his head. “But that’s not enough! I need that sample to test my modifications before I proceed with you!”

“Penn, you’re not touching the kid. If you have enough for one more person, you’ll have to make that work.” Alaina and Penn glared at each other. “You’ve got enough of a sample left for one person, and you’re telling me that big brain of yours doesn’t have any ideas?”

Din focused all his attention on the nervous-looking doctor across from them and could tell the doctor was struggling to answer that question. After another moment, Pershing finally nodded, confirming Alaina’s suspicions.

“Now, I want you to look at Mando and promise him that if I go back with you, and I just mean me, because the kid is off limits,” she told him. “Look Mando in the helmet and promise him that if I go back with you, your body count won’t go from nine to ten.”

Pershing’s eyes slid from Alaina to his helmet, and Din could tell by the gutted look on the man’s face that he couldn’t make that promise. “Which is why the Child needs to come—”

“Not. Happening,” Alaina reminded him, hardening her eyes at her former friend. “Look Mando in the helmet and promise him that if you are successful and save my life, you’ll let me go when you’re done with me.”

Din continued his silent stare-down with Pershing, feeling every promise he made to Alaina slip away.

“Alaina—” Penn began nervously but was cut off by his former friend.

“Will you not let me go because you’ll need me to continue your experiments? Or will you not let me go because there won’t be anything left of what makes me… me?” Alaina asked. “If you’re successful, look me in the eye and tell me the odds that my brain won’t be a scrambled, worthless mess.”

Pershing looked between them, and Din thought his heart breaking was terrible enough, but through their bond, he could also feel Alaina’s break.

This couldn’t be it. There had to be something else. Some other alternatives were his only options, which weren’t losing Alaina or losing Alaina and the kid.

“Lainey,” Pershing began with a pleading expression, but whatever the man was about to say was cut off by the sound of a creature screeching in the night above them.

A blur of shadow and a wing swooped in front of them, and Din acted on instinct. He flipped Alaina to the ground with his larger body, shielding her from the beast.

Chaos erupted around them. There was shouting, and Dune was firing rounds blindly at their winged attacker. One of the blurrg let out a pained roar, and Din lifted his helmet just in time to catch a pair of talons sinking into the animal and carrying it away.

“Drop her!” Kuiil ordered, firing his weapon at the beast, carting off his precious blurrg while the other had the kid tucked away between him and the lava rock.

Another beast dropped from the shadows of the night, and Karga cried out when its talon scraped his bicep. The second winged beast changed course, went for one of the other blurrg, and took off with a second mount before flying away, leaving their party a frazzled, panicked mess.

He looked down at Alaina, inspecting her for any evidence of injury. “I’m okay,” she whispered, nodding at him. He turned his attention to Pershing, who had huddled up into a ball next to him and found that the doctor had survived without incident.

“He’s hurt badly,” Kuiil’s voice grabbed their attention, and Mando scrambled to get him and Alaina up off the ground.

“Hey, we could use a doctor over here,” Dune called from Karga’s side. The ex-trooper grabbed a band to tourniquet the guild leader’s upper arm.

“How bad is it?” Din asked as he and Alaina came to the injured man’s side.

“Bad,” Dune answered, nodding to Karga’s arm.

Din frowned at the gashes on the man’s arm and watched as the skin and veins under his skin quickly turned colors and spread as the poison raced through his system.

“So,” Karga started, gritting his teeth against the pain. “This is how it happens?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Dune glowered and glanced back behind her. “Come on, I need a medpac!” she yelled at Pershing.

Pershing hovered nervously next to Alaina and fiddled with his glasses as he watched Karga groan through another wave of pain.

“Penn,” Alaina whispered. “Help him,” she pleaded.

“I—I—I’m not that kind of doctor!” Pershing stuttered.

“So glad we came all this way for you,” Dune grumbled sarcastically. “Give me your medpac,” she ordered.

“I don’t have one,” he admitted. “I only came prepared with supplies I thought I would need for Alaina!” he defended when the ex-soldier glared at him.

Dune huffed and looked around at the rest of the group, “Come on, someone has to have a medpac on them!”

The other two hunters shared a look before turning their blank expressions back to their boss.

“Get this thing outta here,” Karga ground out through the pain, and Din had to do a double take when he realized that somehow Grogu had wormed his tiny body up to the injured man’s side.

Alaina’s hand gripped his forearm, and the two held a collective breath when the toddler placed one of his tiny, three-fingered clawed hands on the man’s injury.

“Wait,” Kuiil whispered as Grogu closed his eyes.

It was like watching Alaina’s shattered hand and wrist be repaired all over again. Grogu closed his eyes and focused on the wound, and Din watched in disbelief as the venom slowly receded until the infected veins and skin disappeared. The gashes on his arm healed until you couldn’t even tell the man had been moments away from death.

And just like he had with Alaina, the kid’s eyes fluttered closed, and he collapsed from the effort.

Din shot forward, grabbing the unconscious toddler to inspect him. The kid gave him a couple of sleepy blinks before he drifted off into unconsciousness, but his breathing and heart rate remained steady, allowing Din to relax. He clutched the kid close to his chest while the toddler slept. He had enough of his clan getting injured against their will for one day.

He turned back to tell Alaina that Grogu was okay but frowned when he watched Alaina dragging a stunned Pershing away from the group.

“How’s the womp rat?” Dune asked, pulling his attention to the rest of the group.

“He’s fine,” he replied. “He’s done this once before. He needs to sleep it off.”

Dune nodded and then jerked her head toward where Alaina had wandered. “Go. I can watch him," she said, pointing at Karga, "and let you know if something changes.”

Din nodded his thanks and followed after the former friends with Grogu nestled in his arms. As he reached the end of the lava rock where they had been sitting, he paused at the sound of Alaina arguing with Pershing on the other side.

“No,” Alaina growled.

“But Lainey, he healed—”

“Penn Pershing, no!” Alaina yelled.

Din peaked around the rock to find the two in an intense stare-down, but he remained where he was, curious to hear what Alaina was so upset about.

Pershing ended the tense silence with an exasperated sigh, “But—”

“Let me make one thing very clear,” Alaina cut him off and crossed her arms over her chest. “If you touch one hair on that child’s head, I will kill you.”

Din looked down at the sleeping child in his arms, feeling an equal wave of protectiveness crash over him.

“Lainey, he healed Greef! I’m telling you that the Child is the answer to fixing you!” Penn argued.

With his helmet still directed at Grogu, Din clutched the child in question closer to his breastplate. The doctor seemed so confident that was the case... but at what cost would that come for Grogu?

“You mean he’s the answer to Project Vermilion!” she snarled. “I can tell when you’re lying, Penn. Saving me is just a side effect of what you really want,” she continued with disappointment dripping from her voice. “You’re not getting your hands on Grogu.”

“Grogu?” Pershing asked, confusion evident in his question.

“It’s his name,” Alaina informed him. “And I’m not going to let you use Grogu; I’m not going to let you use someone so innocent and pure to fulfill your dreams of creating a legion of super soldiers.”

“That’s not my dream, and you know it!” Pershing snapped back angrily. “I told you what my dream was, Lainey! A way to help people. A way to clone organs so no one has to lose their mother to heart failure, or a way to cure cancer so that no one has to lose their mother to cancer—”

“Don’t!” Alaina ground out, and Din peaked around the rock just in time to catch her weakly shove Pershing in the chest. “Don’t use them against me!” she seethed, making Din realize that the doctor was possibly talking about Alaina’s mother. “Maker! They would be ashamed of you! Using their memories to justify your actions! Shame on you!” she finished with another shove.

“Alaina—”

“No! You realize that you’ve been played, right? Do you realize that Gideon won’t let you work on what you want to do until he gets what he wants?” Alaina continued her beratement of the doctor. “And when he finally gets what he wants, what then?” she asked, but Pershing had no follow-up to that question. “Gideon is going to chain you to Project Vermilion for the rest of your life, and he will come up with reason after reason why he won’t let you work on what you want.”

“You’re wrong, Lainey. It may take time, but Gideon promised me. And I’m sorry you don’t like his dream, but he only wants to bring order to the galaxy!”

“Order?” came Alaina’s harsh, disbelieving bark. “He wants to own the galaxy, and you’re helping him achieve his dreams. If Grogu is the key to fixing me, that means he is the key to Project Vermilion, and I will use whatever time I have left protecting him to make sure that never happens.”

“Lainey—”

“I’m not kidding, Penn,” Alaina said, voice low in warning. “The Mandalorian and Grogu… they are my family now. And I will do anything to protect the two people I love most in this whole stupid galaxy.”

Din swore his heart stopped at her admission. Love.

“Tell me after,” Alaina told him, stopping him before he could make his declaration. After they had endured this and returned to their moon…

“Love?” Pershing scoffed, interrupting his thoughts. “You love the Mandalorian? The same one who brought you in?”

Silence hung in the air, but Din dared not move from his hiding spot.

“This is your only warning,” Alaina said quietly.

“But… but you’re dying,” Pershing pleaded, and Din’s chest clenched at the despair coming from the man’s voice.

She nodded, “Yeah? And whose fault is that?”

“Let me help you. Please,” he whispered, and Din’s fists clenched when the doctor put his hands on Alaina’s shoulders. “Come back to the base with me, and I will call off the hunt on the Child.”

Alaina scoffed, “Like you have that kind of power.”

“I have the Moff’s ear! I can convince him to drop the hunt, but I need one of you to continue.”

“Then I guess you’re not continuing.”

“Lainey,” Penn whispered, putting a hand on Alaina’s forearm to stop her. Alaina snarled and snatched her arm out of his grasp, and the doctor put his hands up, likely hoping to calm her. “Lainey, please just consider it. If you come with me, yes, the trials would continue—”

“And you think Gideon will let you continue with someone dying when the real key to unlocking his twisted experiment is out in the galaxy?” Alaina countered.

“He doesn't have to know," Pershing whispered, and Alaina rolled her eyes at his suggestion. "I’ve spent years cultivating that relationship. I won’t tell Gideon you’re dying; he’ll just be happy one of you is back!” Pershing said, desperate for Alaina to change her mind. “Come back with me, and I’ll convince him to call off the hunt on the Child and the Mandalorian,” he offered, and Din went cold when Alaina’s face appeared to entertain the offer. “Come with me and the two people you… love most in the galaxy are free.”

Din held his breath while he waited for Alaina’s answer. Part of him knew that Alaina would never, but another part of him knew the rash, protective woman and knew that if she were given the opportunity to ensure Grogu and his safety, she would take it.

“And when you kill me in your trials,” Alaina whispered, “can you promise me that they will continue to remain free?”

Pershing’s mouth opened, but the man appeared to struggle with an answer.

“That’s what I thought,” Alaina replied sadly. “You can stay with the group tonight, but you have to go at sunrise. Alone. I’m not coming with you. I want whatever time I have left to be spent with them.”

“Lainey—”

“No,” she whispered. “We’re not friends, we’re not family. You’re just some person who was in my life once. You don’t get to call me Lainey. And I don’t have to go with you,” she finished, and Din watched as she turned away from the doctor and trudged back to the campsite.

Din looked at Grogu while he processed the conversation he eavesdropped on.

“How much of that did you hear?” she asked around the corner of the lava rock, making him jump. “Come on, you’re not with the rest of the group. It’s not a hard guess that you’re lurking.”

Din stepped out from his hiding spot, and when Alaina gave him a knowing look, all he could do was shrug.

“How much of that did you hear?” she asked again with a raised eyebrow.

Din looked down at Grogu, still sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware of the fight over him, and then looked back at Alaina. “Enough,” he answered quietly.

Alaina smirked, “So, basically everything?”

Din shrugged as Pershing walked past them, refusing to look at the three of them as he went to join the others near the fire.

Alaina walked over to him and smiled at Grogu cradled against his chest. She raised her hand to stroke the kid’s forehead, using her fingertips to smooth his wrinkles. “I can’t risk it,” she whispered as her hand went to rub Grogu’s ear. “Even if Penn isn’t lying, and Grogu is the answer to fixing me…” she tapered off and shook her head dejectedly. When her hand fell away, Alaina looked up at his helmet, and Din hated the glassy green eyes full of unshed tears looking back at him. “If Penn figures out how to fix me, that puts them one step closer to figuring out how to give our powers to others… and…” a choked sob prevented her from continuing, and she had to take a step back to wipe her eyes.

Din looked down at the sleeping toddler in his arms. Their sleeping toddler…

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Alaina pleaded, wrapping her green cloak tighter around her body. “Tell me I’m wrong because it’s not enough time,” she sobbed, and when she stepped forward, Din took the arm that wasn’t holding the kid to clutch Alaina tightly to him.

Din’s eyes pricked with tears. “We can still go with the original plan,” he whispered. “I just have to help Karga take out the Imps, and then we’re home free.”

Alaina sighed and pulled away from him, “Din—”

“If Penn can do his research here, he can do it anywhere,” he argued, cutting off any arguments she had. “You saw the med bay on Dietes. We can take him there! Rhoam wouldn’t care!”

“And then what? Are you going to let him poke and prod and experiment on Grogu?”

Din reached to grab her hand with his free one, keeping her near while he wracked his brain, trying to find a solution that would work in their favor.

“It’s over, Din,” she whispered, resting a hand on his chest. “Let’s go back to the Crest—”

He shook his helmet, not ready to admit defeat, “Alaina, no—”

“And we can take everyone home,” she continued, smiling back at him with tear-filled eyes. “And then we can go to our moon and just stay there and enjoy the time we have left. Together. As a family.”

Din gripped her hand tightly as a stray tear fell down his cheek. There had to be another option. Something they hadn’t considered yet, or even just their original plan. They hadn’t come all this way for nothing.

“No,” came his response before he could stop himself.

Emerald eyes blinked back at him. “No?” she asked, surprised to hear his answer.

“No,” he repeated, standing up a little straighter. “We follow through with the plan. We’ll break into the lab and steal the last sample of Grogu’s blood if we have to—”

“Stop! Listen to yourself! I’m standing right here in front of you telling you what I want—”

“You’re asking me to watch you die!”

“Yes. I am,” she whispered. Alaina gripped his glove tightly in her hand and looked up at him with those damned doe eyes. “I am asking you to be with me in my last moments. I want to go back to our moon, and I want to run through the lavender grass and swim in the lake. I want to go hiking with you and Grogu. I want to end every night talking by the campfire. And I want to fall asleep in your arms every night. And when it comes time—”

“Laina,” he rasped, but Alaina shook her head and leaned forward to kiss his chest.

“And when the time comes, just let me go. Let me have this. Please.”

Din shook his helmet as more tears came.

“Come on,” she whispered, tugging his glove. “Let’s try and get some rest. We can figure out how we’ll all get back to the Crest with just one blurrg in the morning.”

In a daze, he let her direct him back closer to the fire, and she picked a spot on the outskirts so they would still have some privacy. As if on autopilot, Din went down to the ground and tugged Alaina’s body back against his chest so he could hold both of them. The rest of the group was huddled around the fire. Kuiil was with the last remaining blurrg, and Pershing had his nose buried in a datapad. Everyone was quiet in the wake of the attack, but he caught Karga looking his way out of his periphery. With a sigh, he ignored the guild leader’s curious gaze and held onto his clan tightly.

Alaina turned her head and placed a discrete kiss on his bicep.

“It’s not fair,” Din murmured, staring vacantly at the fire.

“I know,” was all Alaina said.

What else was there left to say?

“Well?” Dune’s question startled him out of his somber thoughts the next morning. “Are we still proceeding, or…”

“I don’t know,” he murmured, unable to take his eyes off Alaina.

She was standing with Kuiil on the perimeter, with Grogu clutched tightly against her chest, rocking him. The kid woke up with them at the crack of dawn, bright-eyed and back to his usual self. Alaina took the kid in her arms and listened as the kid babbled excitedly at her, smiling and nodding along with him. How she could act like everything was fine…

“Didn’t get good news, I take it,” Dune asked, looking back at Alaina, who was now trying to extract a lock of her hair out of the kid’s grasp.

Din shook his head and forced himself to look away from Alaina to bring his attention back to Dune. Karga was standing a few paces in front of them, and Din caught the guild leader snapping his head away as if he were listening to their conversation.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, gripping her rifle tighter.

“I want to take that weasel and make him make it right,” he ground out.

Dune nodded, “And what about Spunky over there?” she asked, nodding to Alaina. “What does she want?”

Din turned to look back at Alaina, and his heart clenched when he watched her laugh at Grogu when the blurrg they were next to sneezed and startled the toddler. “She wants to go and just let… nature take its course,” he revealed, but Dune didn’t look surprised. “And I understand. To save her—if he can even save her, he needs the kid, too.”

“And then you risk losing both of them,” Dune pieced together.

“I risk losing both of them and risk Pershing figuring out how to make super soldiers for the Empire,” he seethed, clenching his fists.

“So, we’re leaving?” Dune asked.

Din took one last look at the campsite. One of Karga’s hunters was lurking nearby, and the other was hovering near Kuiil and Alaina. Pershing was repacking his bag and giving glimpses to Alaina as he procrastinated, leaving to head to the lab. Alaina caught his gaze and gave him a sad smile. She kissed the top of Grogu’s wrinkly head, making the kid giggle, and then returned her attention to Kuiil.

Could he do it? Just let it all go and give in to Alaina’s requests. And then, in three months, watch her begin to slowly waste away?

“Listen to you,” Karga grumbled, keeping his attention locked on the horizon in the distance. “When did you become so soft and indecisive?” his former boss asked and turned around to level a look at Din.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Din bit back. Dune snarled at the man and came to stand beside him in a show of silent solidarity.

Karga shrugged, “Maybe not,” he agreed. “But it sounds like you’re letting your feelings get in the way of what you know you need to do to save your girl.”

The man’s comment was another punch to his already sore gut. “Drop it, Karga,” he growled. “I respect her decision.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and fixed him with a disappointed look. “Decision?” Karga scoffed. “She’s giving up!”

Din shook his helmet, “That just goes to show you don’t understand. The Empire experimented on her and had plans to do the same with the kid. What if saving her means unleashing Imperial super soldiers on the galaxy?” Din asked, eager to hear someone else’s input.

“The galaxy has dealt with the Empire before,” Karga countered weakly. “Look, I don’t know what all they did to her, but I know what you’ve done for her,” he paused, but Din couldn’t take his eyes off the man. “I know you, Mando, and you wouldn’t have risked everything if you didn’t believe in them,” he said lowly, subtly nodding to Alaina and the kid. “And I’ll admit, I maybe overheard some of what went on last night,” he admitted and then gave him a knowing look. “Hard not to without all that yelling. But I’ll tell you what I see.” Karga paused again and turned his attention to Alaina, smiling at Grogu and showing him how to pet the blurrg gently. “The little green guy may be the key, or whatever Doctor Pershing was blathering on about, but if that was the case, why not just take the kid and run? Why are they so concerned with getting the girl back?” he asked, looking back to Din.

“Because she’s one of their experiments?” Din asked, feeling like he was missing the question. And the weasel of a doctor had unrequited feelings for Alaina, but he kept that thought to himself.

“Think it through, Mando,” Karga nodded at him. “They want both of them, but why? Why do all of this for a dying girl?”

Mando froze and cocked his helmet, “What do you mean they want both of them? What aren’t you telling me?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Karga told him, giving him an unsettling wink. “Now, answer the question: Why do they want both of them?” Din shared a look with Dune, but the former drop trooper looked just as clueless as he did. “It’s because they’re scared. Of her. Of what she could be,” he whispered, pointing at Alaina. “We’ve dealt with the Empire before and will again, but what if we had her? What if you go with your gut and take the doctor—”

“Boss,” the hunter nearby interrupted, staring at Karga as if the man was saying something he wasn’t supposed to.

Karga held up a finger for his hunter to wait before he continued. “But what if you take the doctor, and he fixes her? They couldn’t replicate their success immediately, but we would have her on our side and be ready for them when the time came.”

Din felt his heart rate slowly increase at the man’s words, and for the first time since landing on Nevarro, hope came to him in the form of an unlikely ally.

And then that hope was dashed. “She wouldn’t want to be used as a weapon,” he said, shaking his helmet.

“Then that’s her choice,” Karga shrugged. “After everything she's been through, if he can fix her, she should get to choose what she wants. Besides, what if he fixes her, but she loses her powers? Even if she’s just alive as a regular person with no powers to make her special, or he ends up turning her into a god, she’ll still be alive. And that—That. Will. Terrify them because she’ll be out in the galaxy. Maybe she’ll be in hiding. Maybe she’ll go to the New Republic and offer her services to them. Maybe she’ll turn into a god and go after them herself. They’re scared of the unknown. They’re scared of what they can’t control. But if they have her… then they have all the pieces. So, what’ll it be?”

Din’s fist clenched, “What if he can’t save her and she dies?” he asked, looking between Karga and Dune.

“From where I’m standing, it looks to me like she’ll die if you do nothing. At least this way, you tried,” Karga offered.

Everything seemed like it came closing in around him, and he felt torn in his decision. Go against her wishes and maybe save her life? Or… He knew what he wanted to do, but he looked to Dune for support.

“Don’t look at me,” she smirked. “You promised me saving that spunky scrap of sunshine and taking out some Imps while we’re at it.” Din smiled at his friend’s blessing. “But it’s your call. You’re the one who is gonna have to handle her because I have a feeling she’s not gonna take this well.”

Din’s helmet swiveled back to Karga, and his old boss was already smiling at him like he knew his answer. “We’re in.”

Karga acted immediately, his face going into battle mode. Then, his hand went to his blaster, and he took out the two hunters he had come with. “The jig is up, Doctor Pershing,” Karga announced in his booming voice, surprising the rest of Din’s party, and Pershing’s eyes widened in surprise. “He had an entire squadron waiting back at the lab to take the girl and the kid,” Karga informed them, aiming his weapon at the doctor.

Din’s helmet snapped to the doctor, who looked like prey caught in a snare. Fire filled his veins as the weasel’s mouth gaped like a fish. He’d been sent to lure them into a trap, and now the tables had been turned on him.

“Cara,” Din said darkly.

Dune smiled, “With pleasure,” she replied, already knowing what he wanted. The former soldier marched straight to Pershing, knocking him unconscious with the butt of her rifle.

“What are you doing?!” Alaina yelled, mouth agape as her former friend dropped to the ground.

Din took a deep breath at Dune’s knowing eyebrow lifted at him at Alaina’s angry question.

“Kuiil,” he called for the Ugnaught, and the short man came to join them. “Can the blurrg handle you, Alaina, the kid, and that weasel?” he asked, nodding to the unconscious doctor Dune just threw over her shoulder.

Kuiil looked at the doctor and then looked back to him to nod. “The extra weight may weigh her down, but she will make the journey back to your ship,” he replied.

Dune went to toss the unconscious Pershing over the blurrg’s back just as Alaina stomped over with Grogu clutched tightly against her chest.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked, searching his helmet for her answers.

“Change of plans,” was all Din had to say.

Her emerald eyes hardened at his words. “We talked about this!”

“We did,” Din nodded. “Alaina, you were right. This whole thing was a trap. I’m sending you and the kid back to the Crest with Kuiil, and then Dune and I will head into the city with Karga and make them hurt.”

“But—”

“This isn’t up for debate,” he stopped her. “When we get back to the Crest, we’re taking Pershing, and he’s going to fix you.”

Alaina looked around at the group for some backup and found none.

“Wait,” Karga stopped them. “It might help to bring them with us. Use them as bait. The Imp will let us in straight to his lair without red tape.”

Din shook his head. “We’re not taking any risks. Kuiil, take them back, and have the droid tie Pershing up—”

A harsh bark of laughter escaped Karga, and he asked, “You’re traveling with a droid?!” but Din carried on, ignoring the man’s jibe.

“Initiate ground protocols once you’re all in. Nothing will get through those doors once you’ve engaged that,” he instructed Kuiil.

Kuiil nodded at his instructions, passed him a commlink, and then turned to Alaina to lead her back to the blurrg.

“No,” Alaina argued, pulling her arm from the man’s hand.

Din tapped a button on his vambrace, and Grogu’s empty, floating pram came to his side. “Alaina, this isn’t up for debate—”

“I’m coming with you,” Alaina snapped.

“Alaina—”

“No! If you’re not gonna listen to me, then I’m not gonna listen to you!” she yelled. “I’m going with you.”

Emerald eyes locked on silver beskar, but neither of them backed down. He knew that look. He knew that those sharp green eyes meant that she was going to do something rash and ignore him anyway. As reluctant as he was to admit it, Alaina knew the city, the Imp compound, and the Imp in question, and if she were to come with him, he could at least keep closer tabs on her…

Din sighed, “I assume if I tie you to the blurrg, you’ll find a way to cause more problems?” he asked, and Alaina nodded.

“It’s the right call,” Karga tossed in his opinion. “One glimpse of that blonde hair, and we’ll walk in like we were invited. Even if you send the Child back, and we take the empty pram, that will buy us more time than you know.”

Din Djarin hoped he wouldn’t live to regret this. “Fine, but remember what I said about being rash—”

“Really?” Alaina deadpanned. “You really wanna lecture me about being rash right now?”

Din ignored her question and nodded back at Kuiil. With a kiss and whispered words to the kid, she reluctantly passed him to Kuiil.

“I will guard him with my life,” Kuiil told Alaina, bringing tears to her eyes. “I have spoken,” he finished and turned back toward the blurrg.

Din placed a reassuring hand on Alaina’s shoulder as they watched him ride away with Grogu and Pershing.

Alaina returned the gesture with a squeeze to his glove before she turned her fury toward Karga. “How do we know we can trust you?” Alaina asked Karga, squaring up with the larger man.

Karga looked taken aback by the question, but when he and Dune stared back, waiting for his answer, the man rolled his eyes. “Aside from the fact that I just shot two of my own people and warned you about a plot to take you and the Child back?” Alaina nodded at the man’s question, forcing a sigh out of Karga. “The plan was to take both of you if you were both still with the Mandalorian,” he started. “Doctor Pershing thought he would be able to convince you to go out to the main lab. From there, we were hired to take the Child and kill Mando,” he told her. “And if that didn’t work, then it would be up to me and my hunters to take out Mando, grab you and the Child, and take you to the lab ourselves.”

Alaina seethed, turning her anger on him now, and Din could tell she was doing her best not to yell I told you so at him.

“But I couldn’t go through with it after what happened last night!” Karga countered, showing the group the lone remaining scar on his arm, which was all that was left after Grogu saved him with his powers. The man looked pleadingly between him, Alaina, and Dune. “Go on. You can gun me down here and now, and it wouldn’t violate the code,” Karga offered, opening his arms. “But if you do… the Child and the girl will never be safe,” he warned.

“Then why suggest bringing us along?” Alaina asked, and Din could tell by the expression on her face as she watched Karga that she was attempting to get a read on him. “What’s to say there isn’t a trap waiting in the city for us?”

“I suggested it because it’s the right call,” Karga answered, not stepping down from the argument. “Because if I just show up with Mando, it will look suspicious. But if I show up with you and an imaginary baby,” he paused to point to the floating pram, “they have to let us in. They think you'll be at the lab, so when we change the plan, it will buy us time to have you as a distraction while we set up our new trap," Karga said, and Din caught Dune giving him a subtle nod that she reluctantly agreed with the man's plan. "You have no idea the monstrous reward for you and that little green bogwing’s heads.”

Alaina pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and turned to give him a nod. So, Karga was finally telling the truth.

“Why even bother heading into the city?” Dune asked with a shrug. “We got what we came for. Let’s just take the doctor and leave.”

Karga shook his head, “Mando, listen to me. Even though that reward would let me live in luxury for the rest of my life, the Imps are choking the city. The guild can’t even operate out of it anymore. People are scared to walk the streets. Nevarro City deserves more than that. But even if saving the city wasn’t the right thing to do, and you just left… The Imperial client is obsessed with getting his hands back on those two. And now you’re taking their doctor? Something tells me that will trigger a worse reaction from them. You’ll never know a moment’s peace. You’ll continue to be on the run. As long as the Imp lives… you’ll never be safe.”

Din didn’t need Alaina to tell him Karga was telling them the truth.

“That’s just one high-level Imp,” Alaina argued. “Moff Gideon would still be out there, so even if we do this, we’re just buying time.”

“Yeah, but the Empire took over Nevarro City for you, right?” Dune asked Alaina and shrugged. “More or less. The compound, the main lab further out, this was all for their experiments, wasn’t it?”

Alaina frowned, “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I guess.”

“So, we take out the Nevarro City boss, we take the doctor, and we have you and the kid… Sounds to me like Gideon will have to start from scratch. Even if we have to lay low for a while, how much time do you think Gideon’s puppet master will give him to use what little resources the Empire has left to look for you?” Alaina and Din shared a bittersweet, hopeful look. “I won’t say it will be easy, but I think we just need to wait him out.”

Din’s mind raced with possibilities. They had at least three months before Alaina began declining. Hopefully, that would be enough time for Pershing to refine his research and devise a plan to save Alaina. They could planet-hop and reach out to Rhoam when it was time to proceed and make use of the castle’s advanced medbay.

“What’s in it for you if we go with you?” Din questioned his old guild leader. He knew how the man worked. He wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble if there wasn’t something in it for him. “You wouldn’t be risking your life and giving up a reward like that if you didn’t have some kind of payout.”

Karga tipped his head and gave him a knowing smile. “I get the city back, just like I told you yesterday when we met at your ship. And it will be my city.”

“By saying you get the city back… just how many Imps are we talking about?” Dune asked, narrowing her gaze.

The guild leader brushed her question off with a wave of his hand. “As soon as we cut off the head of the snake, the rest will scatter.”

“And what if they don’t?” Din countered.

“They will.”

“Not good enough,” Din answered.

“You never answered my question,” Dune commented, raising a skeptical eyebrow at Karga.

“The mudscuffer in question has a personal detail of three to four troopers at any given time. When I stayed at the compound, there could be five to ten troopers at a time,” Alaina offered, turning to Dune. “That doesn’t include the troopers on the main base. I don’t know if I could give you an accurate number of how many are out at the lab in the lava flats. The numbers seemed to change. If Moff Gideon came, there were more.”

“So,” Dune drawled, “at least ten?”

Alaina nodded, “At least.”

Karga huffed, “Ten! Ten Troopers is an afternoon snack for a battle-hardened Shock Trooper such as yourself.”

Mando shared a look with Alaina and Dune. The ex-soldier shrugged her shoulders as if to say she was in, but Alaina didn’t seem as convinced.

“What do you think?” he asked the women, whose reactions were as polar opposites as their appearances.

“That this is obviously a trap and that stealing an Imperial Doctor was a kriffing stupid thing to do?” Alaina snarked.

Dune wrapped a friendly arm around Alaina’s shoulders, earning her a glare from the petite blonde. “Now, now, cutie," she tisked, "you can’t go into a fight with that kind of attitude,” she told Alaina, giving her a little wink.

“What kind of attitude are you supposed to have when you’re walking into impending doom?” Alaina asked, wholly disenchanted with Dune’s appeal.

“You go into it thinking about what you’re gonna do to the jerk who did this to you once it’s all over,” she answered. “That little tiny-eyed man was already terrified of you, and you’re dying. He’s going to piss himself when you come at him at full strength.”

Alaina seemed to mull that over, and then her emerald eyes went to his helmet. “Do you really think I could be terrifying?” she asked him with a teasing smirk.

Din chuffed. “Tranyc, I can honestly say I have never been more terrified in these last few months than I have been my entire life,” he answered, grinning when she narrowed her eyes at him.

“Ass,” she mumbled, making him chuckle. “Fine, we go in, do the job, and go straight back to the Crest. He can sort out the aftermath,” she grumbled, hooking a thumb back at Karga.

“Spoken like a true hunter,” Karga said, smiling at Alaina.

Din turned to Alaina to give her one last out. “Are you sure? Because once we get there—”

“I’m sure,” she whispered, placing a hand on the center of his chest. “Worst case scenario, they kill the dying girl—”

“Alaina…” he growled and covered her hand with his.

Silence settled over the group, and Din gave Alaina one last look, letting her emerald eyes fill him with determination.

“A Mandalorian and a ballerina?” Alaina asked him quietly, giving him a soft smile.

“They’ll never see it coming,” he whispered back, and the two smiled. With a sigh, Din reached behind his back and pulled out his cuffs. Ready to be used as bait?”

The Mandalorian followed behind Karga as they approached the city entrance. Alaina stumbled slightly, and he held onto her cuffs to brace her, but her eyes were fixed on the troopers guarding the entrance to Nevarro City. Din shared a brief look with Dune, who was walking on the other side of Alaina, and the former Drop Trooper tugged the band covering the tattoo on her arm up a little higher.

“Why are they guarding the entrance?” Alaina whispered behind Karga, but the man ignored her as they approached the checkpoint.

One of the Troopers stepped forward and held a hand to stop them. “Chaincode,” he ordered.

“I have a gift for the boss,” Karga told him, puffing his chest out proudly. Then, the man stepped aside to reveal Alaina and the floating pram behind him.

The Trooper glanced at Alaina, then returned to Karga and repeated, “Chaincode.”

Karga sighed, pulled his chaincode from his front pocket, and passed it to the Trooper.

“Something’s wrong,” Alaina whispered, garnishing her attention from the Trooper.

Din tugged on her restraints. “Quiet,” he barked, shaking his head, and said a silent prayer that Alaina wouldn’t flay him alive once this was over.

The Trooper’s helmet lingered on Alaina before turning to look at Mando.

“Don’t worry about Mando,” Karga brushed off. “As you can see, he’s cleared his name with the guild,” he announced, nodding at Alaina.

The Trooper returned Karga's chaincode and said, “I'm surprised it took him this long. That one’s got a mouth on her. You can proceed. He’s at the cantina.”

Alaina rolled her eyes and made a disgusted face at the man’s comment, leading Din to believe that this particular Trooper had been stationed at the compound with her.

Thankfully, the Trooper didn’t say anything else and waved them through the gates. Alaina kept her glare directed at the white armored soldier as they walked by and then, at that last minute, lunged and hissed at the man, taking him by surprise. Dune pushed her back between them as the Trooper tripped over his boots, trying to get away from the tiny woman, and fell to the ground.

“Cool it, Spunky,” Dune murmured but couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

Din gently tugged on the metal bindings around Alaina’s wrist as the trio followed Karga down the city’s main street, and one thing was very obvious—

“I thought you said the squadron was back at the main lab?” Alaina huffed under her breath, but loud enough for Karga walking in front of her to hear.

Din’s hand gripped Alaina’s binders tighter as he eyed the Stormtroopers lining the street.

“This is more than ten,” Dune seethed under her breath.

“Yeah, well, this was a direct result of Mando’s last visit to Nevarro City,” Karga grumbled as the cantina grew closer. “Things got heated after he crashed their little compound.”

Mando could feel Alaina’s worried eyes on him but could only discreetly rub his thumb along the underside of her wrist as they approached the cantina’s entrance.

The three took a collective breath as Karga opened the door and motioned for them to enter. “See, four, just like the girl said,” he whispered behind Mando as he followed them in.

The old man looked up from his table and didn’t seem surprised to see them.

“Look who had a change of heart,” Karga announced, walking around the trio to join the Client at his table.

The Client’s eyes looked between Mando and Dune before settling on Alaina. “A change of heart and a change of plans,” the man commented, keeping his eyes fixed on Alaina.

“Doctor Pershing thought you’d like to see them for yourself,” Karga brushed the Client off as he slid into the booth opposite the older man. “I had my men escort him back to the lab so there wouldn’t be any surprises. And I promised Mando here his spot back in the guild and one for his associate in exchange for the girl and the baby.” The Client’s eyes finally left Alaina to the closed pram. “I knew he’d come back around,” Karga laughed and patted the booth next to him for Mando to join him.

The Client’s eyes drifted from the pram to the Mandalorian, eying his new armor. “What exquisite craftsmanship,” he commented. “It is amazing how beautiful beskar can be when forged by its ancestral artisans,” he said with a tight smile. “Can I offer you a libation to celebrate the closing of our shared narrative?”

Karga nodded and smiled, “I would be obliged.”

The Client nodded to the droid at the bar, and the mechanical bartender began preparing drinks for their table. “Please,” the man said, returning his attention to the trio left standing. “Sit.” Dune gave him a displeased look before she slid into the booth next to Karga. Din tugged Alaina to follow, but the Client put up a hand to stop him. “She doesn’t get a seat at the table,” he informed them, with the slightest quirk of an evil smile as he stared at Alaina.

Mando looked at Alaina, but the blonde just rolled her eyes.

“Actually,” the man continued, reaching for something in the booth beside him. “I thought that since you were the one who took her, I would let you do the honors of chaining her again,” he finished darkly as he produced Alaina’s old collar.

Din bristled at the site of the metal slave collar as a lead weight settled in the pit of his stomach.

“I seem to remember you had an aversion to the collar, but I assume that since you’re returning her, you won’t care,” he continued, sliding the collar across the table for Din to take.

This was a test, and judging by the blank, neutral face that masked Alaina’s regular expressive face, she knew it too. She gave him a subtle flick of her eyes, and Din had to take a deep, calming breath as he grabbed the collar from the table. Alaina refused to look at him as he moved to stand behind her, brought it over her head, and lowered it into place around her neck.

He paused when he saw the leather cord of his mythosaur necklace resting on her neck. Alaina must have the charm tucked under her shirt because he hadn’t noticed she was still wearing it until now. He looked to his wrist, where the bracelet made of the lavender grass and black lake stones of their moon intertwined with a lock of her golden honey hair rested under his leather glove. He felt as if he were breaking some kind of promise. With his gut churning, he closed the collar around her neck and pretended to lock it, hoping her braided hair and hood would hide the fact that it was left unlocked, which meant that if the Client attempted to shock her, he would be unsuccessful. It was a risk, but a risk he was willing to take.

When he stepped back from Alaina, he had to restrain himself from reaching across the table and punching the smug look off the Imp’s face.

“I always knew I’d see you wearing this again,” the Imp said with his crooked smile. Then he motioned for Mando to take his seat and for the droid to bring their drinks to the table. Alaina remained frozen with a blank face, and her chin held high. When the Client snapped, Din’s fists clenched under the table as he watched her instinctively move to stand by his side.

“It is good to see order being restored,” the Imp continued, either oblivious or ignoring the disgust radiating from the three sitting across from him. “The girl will help restore order and allow the Empire to bring peace to the galaxy. The Empire improves every system it touches. Judge by any metric,” he preached. “Safety, prosperity, trade, opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now,” he suggested with a snarl. “Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.”

Din’s teeth clenched at the man’s monologue. He had forgotten how much the Imp could talk. When the old man’s eyes fell on the pram floating next to the table, Din’s hand hovered beside his blaster.

“I would like to see the baby,” he said, keeping his eye on the empty chamber.

Alaina’s eyes snapped to his helmet at the man’s words, and Din’s hand gripped his blaster.

“Uh—It’s asleep!” Karga tried to cover.

“We all will be quiet,” the Imp whispered. “Open the pram,” he ordered.

The communications radio flared to life from the bar, and one of the Troopers in the room motioned for their boss to come to the bar to take the incoming communication.

The Imp sighed. “Don’t think me to be rude. I must take this call,” he said before excusing himself from the table.

Din took the opportunity to check on Alaina but found her wide-eyed and pallid as she stared vacantly forward. “Alaina?” he whispered, but Karga motioned for him to be quiet.

“Focus, you are only gonna get one shot,” the guild leader told him, nodding toward the old Imp.

Din’s hand was on his blaster, but he was locked in on Alaina. He knew that vacant expression…

“This is bad,” Dune seethed, nodding to the Troopers gathering out the window. “You said four.”

“Hey, I never gave you any numbers. The girl gave you numbers,” Karga countered back.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly correct her, did you?” Dune shot back.

“Well, there are more. What can I tell you?” Karga whispered.

“Yes, Moff Gideon?” the Imp could be heard greeting in the distance.

Alaina’s head snapped to the old man at the sound of Gideon’s name, and she began nervously wringing her cuffed hands together, a nervous tick he hadn’t seen from her in months. When she turned back to look at the table, Din couldn’t say if it was because of how close they had become or their connection, but he felt his insides bottom out at the look of despair in her Emerald eyes.

“Have they returned our property?” the voice on the other side of the radio asked.

“Yes,” the old man confirmed.

“The girl and the Child?”

“Duck!” Alaina whispered, dropping to the floor.

Karga and Dune turned to give him similar baffled expressions at Alaina’s actions.

“What is she doing?!” Karga asked, voice becoming panicked as he eyed the Troopers, watching the woman on the floor go into a ball.

Their Imp host continued with his conversation, oblivious to Alaina’s actions behind him. “Yes. We have them both. The girl is cuffed and is in an acceptable condition, and the Child is sleeping,” he informed the man on the other line.

Mando turned to look at the two sitting next to him in the booth. “I’ve learned that sometimes, it’s better not to ask questions,” he said before dropping to the floor.

“You may want to check again,” the other man said as Dune and Karga joined him on the floor.

Din crawled to Alaina just as blaster fire opened from the other side of the window. Doing his best to protect Alaina’s head, he pulled her back to the table. Once they were huddled with their companions, Dune flipped the table on its side so they could use it as a shelter against the ravaging spray of blaster fire decimating the cantina.

Alaina flinched when he pulled her closer. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured as he removed the collar and binders from her wrists. “I’m sorry.”

Alaina nodded into his chest, clutching him as the blaster fire dwindled to nothing, leaving the cantina covered in eerie silence.

“I guess I understand what the big deal is,” Karga quipped, staring in awe at Alaina. “That’s quite a handy gift you have.”

Alaina frowned at the man and then turned to look back at him. “He’s here,” she whispered.

“Who?” Din asked, gripping her hands tightly in his.

“Moff Gideon,” she said as tears filled her eyes. “We need to warn Kuiil.”

Din’s eyebrows furrowed, but he did as Alaina asked. “Kuiil? Are you back to the ship yet?” he asked into the comm Kuiil had given him. Silence answered back over the comm. “Are you there? Do you copy?” he tried again when he saw tears leaking from Alaina’s eyes.

The comm crackled to life. “Yes!” Kuiil responded, and Alaina immediately sagged against him in relief.

“Are you back to the ship yet?”

“Not yet,” Kuiil replied.

Din rubbed Alaina’s back, and she looked up at him with her glassy, emerald doe-eyes. “Din,” she whispered quietly so the others wouldn’t hear. “Gideon can’t get Grogu,” she pleaded.

“Okay,” he nodded and brought the comm back to his helmet. “Get back to the ship and bail. Get the kid outta here!” he ordered. “We’re pinned down!”

Dune got up from their hiding position and slinked along the back wall to find a better position to visualize their situation. “They’ve got us completely surrounded,” she told them.

“How many?” he asked.

“More than ten,” came her sarcastic answer. “And more arriving.”

“The squadron from the main lab,” Alaina pieced together. In the blink of an eye, her worried, terrified eyes hardened and found a new target—him. “Why didn’t you just listen to me?” she hissed, gripping his hands tightly. "I warned you this would turn into a trap, you stubborn man." She paused to shove the middle of his chest weakly. "Stubborn man!”

“Hey, Spunky,” Dune called, and Alaina’s head snapped to glare at the other woman. “Save some of that anger for the fight because a TIE fighter just landed.”

“Gideon,” Alaina said flatly. “He’s here.”

Din shoved down his feelings and grabbed Alaina, pulling her up with him. Karga followed their lead, and they went to take shelter behind a corner where they could see out the window and be in Dune’s line of vision as well. He grabbed Alaina when she tripped over one of the deceased Troopers shot down by his own team and forced her to look away from the dead Imp who had wanted her back in a collar.

“You have something I want,” a new voice said in the eye of the storm.

“No,” Alaina whispered, flattening her back against the wall behind him and clenched her eyes shut at the sound of his voice.

“Who’s this guy?” Karga asked, looking between him and Alaina.

“You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not,” Gideon continued.

“Kuiil,” he barked into the comm. “Are you back to the ship yet? They’re onto us!” He attempted to keep the swell of panic at bay when he didn’t get an immediate response. “Kuiil, come in!”

“In a few moments, they will be mine,” the Moff continued, his deep, smooth voice unphased by their tense situation.

Alaina’s hand reached for his, and Din gripped it back tightly.

“Kuiil!”

“They mean more to me than you will ever know,” the man continued.

At his words, Alaina sobbed, and Din tugged her hand in his to pull her into his side with his arm over her shoulder.

“Kuiil! Are you there? Come in, Kuiil!” Din tried again, unable to keep the fear out of his voice.

“Please, please, please,” he could hear Alaina’s whispered prayers as she clung to his side.

Din wanted to throw the comm against the wall. How had everything gone so terribly wrong?

“Is there another way out?” Dune asked, looking away from her observations to look at Karga.

Karga shook his head, “No, that’s it.”

No. This couldn’t be it.

“What about the sewers?” he asked, looking to Karga for confirmation.

“Sewers?”

Din nodded as a plan began to formulate in his mind. “The Mandalorians have a covert down in the sewers,” he explained. “If we can get down there, they can help us escape.”

“Yeah,” Karga nodded, “Sewers are good.”

“Checking for access points,” he announced, changing the settings on his visor to help him locate an opening.

“We can’t just leave!” Alaina said, distressed. “We can’t just leave Grogu with them!”

“We’re not, Tranyc,” he reassured her, gripping her hand again. “But we need help if we’re gonna get him back. We won’t be any help to the kid if we’re dead.”

“Yeah, about that,” came Dune’s flat words. “They’re setting up an E-Web,” she announced morbidly.

Karga sighed. “It’s over,” he grumbled and reached for the bottle of spotchka behind the counter, took a deep swig, and then offered the bottle to Alaina.

“Wh-what’s an E-Web?” she asked, looking between him and Karga as she peeked around the corner to see what they were looking at. “It’s just a gun?”

“Just a gun?” Karga scoffed, taking another swig from the bottle. “You’re gonna have to brush up on your weapons if you plan on being with a Mandalorian. Try cannon,” he explained.

“I found the sewer vent,” Din announced, pointing to the metal grate in the back wall.

Karga sighed in relief, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Din marched with Karga to the crate, and the two began attempting to open it, but they had little success.

Mando attempted to block out the high-pitched sound of the cannon charging, but from the way Alaina gaped at the weapon, she wasn’t as lucky. “Try to focus on something else,” he offered.

Karga scoffed and turned from the grate to speak to Alaina. “Don’t listen to him; you’re right to be terrified of that thing,” he told her, making Din want to strangle the man. “The power it takes to charge that thing is enough to level a large enough to level three-block radius, and that’s just the battery. That doesn’t even account for the weapon itself.”

“Alaina,” Mando snapped, and he waited until her wide, petrified eyes locked on his helmet. “Battle lesson number one, survive,” he told her. “We can’t do anything about what’s happening out there; we can only focus on getting out of here.”

“O-Okay,” Alaina mumbled and came to kneel beside him. “How can I help?”

Din smiled and patted her knee.

“It’s assembled!” Dune announced. “How long until that thing’s cleared?”

“Blow it,” Karga ordered him, nodding at the Amban phase-pulse rifle strapped to his back.

Din shook his head. “I’m out of charges,” he explained, showing the man his empty bandolier. "All I have left are my blaster and magnetic bombs,” he finished, pointing to the two tiny bombs left on it.

“Yeah, and you’ll blow us up while you’re at it,” Dune grumbled. “Get out of the way!” she barked and aimed the grate with her rifle.

Din grabbed Alaina and pulled her out of the way, holding her against his chest while Dune attempted to shoot through the grate. After a solid minute of rounds, Dune stopped and slammed her boot against the grate to try to get it to collapse, with no success.

“Your astute panic suggests that you understand your situation,” Gideon told them in the quiet after Dune’s attempt at shooting through the grate failed. “I would prefer to avoid any further violence and encourage a moment of consideration.”

The group paused and waited for the shoe to drop.

“Alaina Corra,” Gideon began, and Din tightened his arms around her. “You could end this whole pointless, unnecessary display of violence. We already have the Child in our custody,” he announced, and if it weren’t for Din holding her, Alaina would have collapsed to the ground. “Turn yourself over,” he ordered. “Turn yourself over, and I’ll ensure the little friends you made on your field trip remain unharmed,” he offered.

Alaina turned her tear-filled eyes to him, and Din shook his head. “It’s not happening,” Din told her quietly. “There’s another way.”

“I’m sure a ballerina isn’t aware of the firepower currently aimed at you. Maybe your new Mandalorian friend can explain just how powerful this weapon is if you need an extra incentive.” Gideon continued. “Or, perhaps he could explain to you what it means to be a Mandalorian,” he suggested, making Din frown. “After all, he knows you don’t have to be born on Mandalore to be a Mandalorian.”

“You weren’t born on Mandalore,” Karga whispered. When Din shook his head, the other man’s look of surprise grew. “But you’re a Mandalorian?”

“Mandalorian isn’t a race,” Dune cut in.

Din nodded, “It’s a Creed.”

Alaina smiled and caressed his forearm, “I like that,” she murmured.

Sadly, their brief, tender moment was interrupted by the Moff. “But the two of you have had months to catch up, so I suppose you know that you both have that in common,” Gideon said with a chuckle.

“What is he talking about?” Alaina asked, pulling herself out of his arms to look at him.

“I have no idea,” Din muttered. “Why is he stalling?” he asked, looking at Karga and Dune. “The E-Webb is charged. They have at least fifty, if not more, officers out there. Why are they stalling?”

“You heard him,” Karga said and pointed to Alaina. “He wants the girl.”

Mando shook his head. Something wasn’t adding up.

“I’ll go,” Alaina said quietly. “If it means the rest of you live—”

“No,” Din snapped, gripping her shoulders. “You’re not handing yourself over to him. Something is… off.”

Alaina’s brow furrowed at him for a second, and then the wrinkles smoothed out, and she said, “Happy.”

Din nodded. That was it—something warm and… happy. Not an emotion he expected to feel in their current scenario.

“Okay, you two have officially lost it,” Dune said, eyeing them warily.

“No,” Alaina whispered and smiled up at him. “You feel it, don’t you?” she asked, smiling brighter when Din nodded back, and she turned her excitement toward Dune and Karga. “It’s Grogu,” she told them. “He’s happy.”

Their two counterparts stared skeptically back at them.

“I know it sounds a little weird,” Alaina began, but she was interrupted by a scoff from Karga. "If we had time, I would explain it… Well,” she paused and scrunched her face. We’d do our best to explain it, but we don’t have time, so just listen. Grogu is happy!”

Dune and Karga shared a skeptical look and then looked back at them, still unconvinced.

“Okay, he’s happy, so what?” Dune asked, annoyance creeping into her voice.

“It means Gideon is lying,” Mando filled them in as quickly as he could without going into the specifics. “Grogu wouldn’t be that happy if he was in their custody. He’d be scared. But he’s not scared. They don’t have him,” Din finished and shared a hug with Alaina.

“Great, they don’t have the womp rat,” Dune deadpanned. “How does that help us?”

“Ha!” Karga cheered, his joy becoming a full-on belly laugh. “It means they don’t have the kid, and they want both of them!” he exclaimed, yanking Alaina out of Din’s arms to plant a celebratory kiss on her cheek. “They’re stalling because they can’t fire that thing without killing her!”

Din nodded. “Maybe Kuiil’s comm got damaged, and they made it back to the Crest,” he hoped. He tugged Alaina out of Karga’s grasp, shooting the man an annoyed look.

“So, we’re fine as long as Spunky and the womp rat aren’t in the same place at the same time?” Dune asked, still full of reservations about their temporary stay of execution.

“Hey, I’m not arguing,” Karga announced, playfully punching Dune in the shoulder.

A speeder could be heard growing closer, and the four paused their celebrations to see who was coming.

The speeder slowed to a stop. Mando watched in disbelief as a Stormtrooper dismounted and helped a familiar weasel-eyed doctor in a dirtied white uniform and broken glasses get down after him.

“No,” Alaina whispered as she watched her former friend with a black eye limp to Gideon.

“Well, at least the kid is happy,” Dune snarked, walking back toward the grate.

“I don’t understand,” Alaina whispered, reaching for his hand. “If they got Pershing, where are Grogu and Kuiil?”

Gideon’s voice kicked up a couple of amps, pulling their attention back to the window.

“I thought you said you had the Child?” Gideon asked Pershing, and Mando heard the slightest irritation creep into the Moff’s voice for the first time since this began.

“There was… a complication,” Pershing finally settled on.

“A complication?” Gideon growled.

He could see Alaina let out a breath of relief, but he wouldn’t be able to relax until this was behind them. The blaster fire heard from the distance only cemented that this wasn’t over.

“What now?” Karga grumbled, and everyone glanced out the window to see what all the commotion was about.

A second speeder came tearing around the corner, forcing the Troopers filling the courtyard to jump out of the way, and those that didn’t jump were shot… by the IG droid.

The sound of Grogu squealing in delight when the droid held him as he jumped off the speeder, taking out three Troopers in his twists and turns.

Alaina’s arm came and smacked him across the gut, surprising him. “I told you we needed him!” she said with a grin. “Kuiil promised that he would protect Grogu!”

Din’s helmet tilted as he watched the IG-11 unit’s body spin and twist, narrowly keeping his kid out of harm’s way. When he looked down at Alaina, she cringed. “You were saying?” he snarked. Din sighed, “Cover me,” he asked Dune, who nodded. “Stay. Here,” he ordered, pointing at Alaina.

“Be careful,” she whispered, touching his forearm.

He paused and cupped her cheek, rubbing a gloved thumb against her cheekbone as the two shared a glance for only a second before he spun away with his blaster raised out into the fray.

As much as he hated that particular IG-11 droid, he was reluctant to admit he was handy in a shootout. The droid was holding his own, but with every twist and near miss the kid had felt like another year had been taken off Din’s life.

Another platoon of soldiers came around the corner, and he shared a look with Dune.

“Go!” he yelled at the droid, pointing at the cantina to direct him out of harm's way before the kid got hurt or worse.

Mando ran for the E-Web without looking back, spinning it to take out as many of the attackers as he could while Dune and Karga protected the cantina entrance. After several rounds, he took a hit to the back of his head, not enough to take him out, but enough to annoyingly knock him off his balance. Forced to jump off the cannon, he turned around to confront his attacker once he had stable footing and found Moff Gideon on the other side of the courtyard, staring him down with his blaster.

The man lowered his blaster and fired. Unable to escape the blast, Din was thrown, and the next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, looking up at the sky. The Nevarro sun was high in the sky, attempting to chase away the darkness of unconsciousness creeping in around the edges. The tinnitus ringing in his ears was loud enough to block out the sounds of the battle around him, and the pain radiating from the back of his head was enough to drown out every other bodily function. He attempted to move, but nothing cooperated with him, and the harder he tried, the darker the edges started to bleed.

In summary, this was not good.

More than not good.

The scenery changed, and he was only vaguely aware that someone was dragging him out of the danger zone. The abrupt change in position and the speed of travel made his stomach roll and made him aware of the blood dripping from his head wound down his neck.

A flash of yellow entered his peripheral vision, and two bright, emerald-green orbs swam before him.

Alaina.

He couldn’t even feel her anymore. He must be in bad shape if he couldn't even feel that warm, golden, invisible string was just gone.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” her sweet voice filtered through the ringing in his head as she helped Dune situate him up against the wall in the cantina.

He tried to move his hand to grab her but was barely able to lift his hand off the ground.

“It’s okay,” she told him, grabbing his gloved hands and bringing them to her chest. “IG is cutting through the grate, and then we’ll all be out of here.”

“I’m not gonna make it—”

“Stop, of course you’re gonna make it,” Alaina brushed him off with watery eyes.

“Alaina—”

“No, you just bumped your head,” she interrupted, dropping his hands to cradle the back of his head. She frowned, and when she pulled her hands out from under his helm, her eyes filled with tears.

His eyes dropped to her hands, and he was unsurprised to see that there was blood covering her fingers.

“Vermilion fingertips,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off her hands.

“Alaina—”

“S-st-stop,” she rasped, still staring at her bloodied hand. “IG is cutting through the grate, and then he can drag you through—”

“Tranyc,” he stopped her, resting a hand on her thigh. “I’m not gonna make it.”

Alaina’s green eyes left her blood-covered hand and snapped to his helmet. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, we can help you. You just need to remove your…” she faded as she realized what she was about to say. “Please,” she begged. “This is to save your life!”

He gripped her thigh and felt tears well in his eyes, matching the same tears in Alaina’s.

There was a commotion from the other side of the cantina door, and they turned their heads just in time to see the Troopers breakthrough in a blaze of flames. As the ball of fire rushed toward them, his view was blocked by a curtain of honey-golden hair as Alaina threw herself over him like an idiotic human shield. He wrapped his arms around her waist but was too weak to flip them around. Instead, he clutched her like a lifeline. Like this was the last time he would be able to hold her.

Slowly, the curtain of hair shifted, and the two of them watched in surprise and then in awe as Grogu stood in front of the group with his eyes closed, using his powers to protect them from the Trooper’s flamethrower. Din gripped Alaina’s waist tighter as they watched him concentrate with his eyes closed as he waved his tiny three-fingered, clawed hands and used his powers to push the flames back, engulfing their attackers and sending them flying out of the cantina.

There was a moment of stunned silence before Grogu wobbled, dropped to his bottom, and then collapsed onto his back.

“Grogu!” Alaina called and left him to grab Grogu.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cara Dune standing nearby, staring at him, and he motioned for her to come over.

“I’m not gonna make it,” he told her.

Dune’s lips flattened, and she shook her head, “Shut up. You just rung your bell—”

“Cara,” he said, stopping her. “I need you to get them out of here. Find the Mandalorians. Alaina has my necklace; she won’t want to, but she knows what to do. They’ll help you get to safety. You know where to take them from there.”

Alaina returned and kneeled on both knees before him with an unconscious Grogu tucked away in her arms. Din weakly rubbed the kid’s head with his gloved hand, but he didn’t stir.

“Go with Cara,” he murmured, giving the kid one last caress before his hand dropped to his side. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he could feel the exhaustion and the darkness creeping back in.

Alaina sobbed as she shook her head, “No! H-he could save you—”

“Alaina,” he whispered, bringing a hand to cup her cheek. “The kid just saved us all, and now, Grogu is going to need you. Go with Cara.” Alaina kept shaking her head, and Dune pried Grogu out of her arms and stepped back to give them some privacy. “We talked about this. It’s on you to protect the kid now. I can fend them off and give you time, but you need to go with Cara and find the Mandalorians.”

“Din—”

“It’s okay. Let me have a warrior’s death,” he asked as his hand collapsed by his side.

He stared back at those bright emerald green eyes, made brighter by the tears in her eyes as he lay slumped against the wall. The head wound would do him in, and he wouldn’t be responsible for the Empire getting their hands on Alaina or the kid because he slowed them down. The least he could do was take out as many Imps as possible to give them time to get through the sewers and get to safety. The kid would be well protected between Alaina, Dune, and the IG droid.

“Go,” he ordered Dune, jerking his gun toward the open sewer grate the IG-11 droid had just melted open.

Dune fixed him with a look before she turned to look at the droid. “Don't let her wait too long,” she ordered IG-11. She gave a lingering look to Alaina, who refused to leave his side. When it was obvious that Alaina would have to be carted off by the droid, Dune moved to follow Karga, who had already entered the sewers, undoubtedly eager to get out of the line of fire.

Alaina’s emerald eyes locked onto his from behind his helmet, and she brought a hand up to rest on the side of his helm, rubbing her thumb along the side of the silver beskar piece.

Din brought his hand up to squeeze her thigh, “Alaina—”

“It’s just a head wound… please,” she begged with a sniffle, cutting him off. “I’ve seen every other part of you…”

He sighed, “Alaina...”

“You’re a stubborn man, Din Djarin,” she told him, unable to hold back a sob that escaped her. “Let me help you.”

“You need to go. The kid needs you,” Din told her, bringing up his own gloved hand to hold the side of Alaina’s face, mirroring her actions.

Alaina grabbed his gloved hand and pulled the leather glove off before kissing the middle of his palm and rubbing her thumb over the bracelet she made for him. “We could get married!” she said with a watery laugh. “Right now. Then it would be okay, right?” she asked as her voice cracked at the end.

Din huffed out a weak laugh, “Alaina…”

“I already considered us the boring old married couple,” she tried. “We might as well make it official.”

“You deserve more than a marriage to a dying man—”

“Yeah, but we’re both dying,” she tried again with a shrug. “That makes it more romantic.”

He wanted to shake his head, but his body struggled to communicate. Alaina was wasting valuable time. Din wanted to say something, but the droid was there, ready to take Alaina, and there were too many words and not enough time left.

She inched closer to his helmet, cautiously bringing a hand up either side of Din’s helmet. He was frozen as he felt her fingers search for the release.

“Alaina—” he tried to stop her but gave up when he felt his helmet stop rising at his lips.

Her lips touched his, and he closed his eyes as he savored their last kiss. He could feel her tears fall and land on his face, mixing with the dirt, blood, and tears of his own. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her as close to him as he could, ignoring the pain to deepen the kiss. He hoped to show Alaina everything he couldn’t tell her in their last few minutes.

Eventually, Alaina let his helmet fall back down, and she opened her eyes only once it was secured over his head.

“Alaina, I—” he whispered, tightening his grasp around her.

“Wait,” she stopped him, placing her hand up to his helmet, like she was covering his mouth, and gave him a small smile. “Tell me after, okay?”

There wouldn’t be an after. Not for him. But if it gave Alaina the hope she needed to survive… “After,” he whispered, holding her tightly to him.

Alaina finally pulled herself away from him but grabbed his hand between hers. Her smile was worth it—Was worth everything. She leaned forward and pressed a lingering kiss to the center of the beskar helm, and Din let his eyes drift closed.

"The Child requires protection," the flat, uncaring voice of the droid said, interrupting their moment.

He could feel her freeze, and when she pulled away, she stared at his helmet as if she found the final piece to a puzzle. “Another living being…” she murmured. Alaina’s face hardened, and then she looked up at the droid, keeping his hand tight in her grasp. “The Child’s welfare is your only priority, right?” she asked the IG-11 unit.

“Affirmative,” came the droid’s instant answer.

“And do you agree that the Mandalorian is imperative for the Child’s continued survival?”

“Affirmative,” IG-11 confirmed.

“Alaina—” Din tried to stop her, but she spoke over him as she continued firing questions at the droid.

“And you’ll help the Mandalorian get back to the Child, no matter what the Mandalorian tells you—”

They didn’t have time for this, “Tranyc—” he slurred.

“—because it doesn’t matter what the Mandalorian wants. It only matters about the Child, right?”

“Affirmative,” IG agreed.

Alaina turned back to focus her attention on Din. Her eyes were filled with determination instead of fear, which put Din on edge. However, he couldn’t complain. If the last thing he saw were Alaina’s emerald eyes, he would have at least something beautiful to see before moving on to whatever awaited him in death.

“My mom told me something once…” she started and then tapered off, her eyes locked on his. “She told me that nothing in the galaxy was stronger than love.” He remembered. He remembered them trapped inside Alaina’s mind after seeing all three of their pasts, and she had told him while they stood in the snow-covered decaying room of her mind. “I thought I understood what she said, but I didn’t until now,” she revealed, giving him a sad smile as she covered his hand with his glove.

Din threaded his fingers through her hair, trying to look into her eyes to figure out what she wasn’t saying. “Alaina?”

“I need you to remember to stay a stubborn man,” she whispered, giving another kiss to his helmet before pulling away from him to give him a watery smile. “You’re a good man, Din Djarin, and I forgive you… Din, I... I love you.”

Din smiled. Now, he could die knowing he did everything he could for the woman and child he loved.

Alaina leaned forward to kiss the center of his helmet and rested her hands on his chestpiece. "If someone asked me if I would go through it all again, I would ask them to put me back in," she whispered into the beskar helm, her lips brushing the 'T' of his visor as she spoke. "You made me a better person. You were worth everything, Din Djarin. Don't ever forget that," she said, finishing with another kiss to his helm. "A Mandalorian and a ballerina?" she asked, and then her voice cracked, leaving her unable to finish with, "They'll never see it coming." With a watery smile, she rubbed his chest and said, "Don't look back."

Without another word, Alaina ripped two of his magnetic bombs from his bandolier and shot up, leaving her mother’s dagger tucked under the strap across his chest.

Din was frozen from a mix of confusion and shock from his brain injuries but still attempted to scramble up, but his body was uncooperative due to his head wound. After several failed attempts to stand, his back fell against the wall. Alaina was already out of his reach. She turned back to give him a sad smile.

“Alaina…” he whispered, shaking his head.

Alaina just stared at him with a pained expression before turning to look up at the IG-11 droid. “You save him, do you understand me? You save him and get him to the kid, got it? I can get you time. You get him to the kid, and you don’t let him come back. Take care of them. Please.”

“Alaina, no!” Din yelled, but it was too late. IG-11 already had him pinned against the wall, forcing him to stay down. “Alaina!” he screamed after her.

She didn’t look back, and Din watched her blonde hair disappear into the street.

“Hold your fire!” he could hear Pershing scream as his former test subject walked out of the cantina.

“Well, well, well,” he could hear Gideon’s voice speaking from somewhere, and his heart clenched. “The prodigal ballerina returns.”

It didn’t even register to him that the droid had his helmet off until the destroyed cantina came into full color. Still, Din tried to search over the droid to get a glimpse of Alaina. He had to stop her from doing something stupid before it was too late. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

“You can’t have the Child,” Alaina spoke, and Din swore his heart stopped in his chest at the determination in her voice. “You can’t have the Child, but you can have me.”

“No,” Din whispered, but the IG-11 unit kept him pinned against the wall as he treated his head wound with bacta spray.

“What’s to stop me from having both of you?” Gideon asked her.

The sound of weapons being drawn could be heard, and Din struggled to look around the droid. He needed to see what idiotic plan Alaina was trying to pull. She had two of his magnetic bombs, and he could clearly picture her holding them out in his head for everyone to see.

“You’re going to let the Child go. You’ll stop searching for him and the Mandalorian; in return, you get me. I know you still have some of the Child’s blood. And I am your control subject. I was experiment number one, and I’ll be experiment number ten. You don’t need both of us. You just need me.”

Silence filled the air, and his heart clenched, knowing that Gideon was actually considering her offer.

“And if I don’t accept your terms?” Gideon questioned.

“Then I set these off and take you all out with me," her nonchalant answer came. "I’m dead either way, so it makes no difference to me.”

The IG-11 unit placed his helmet over his head, and Din scrambled to try and stand, but his head still swam, and he relied too heavily on the droid to get up.

“And how do I know this isn’t a trap? That the Mandalorian and his little band of friends won’t come back to rescue you?” Gideon asked.

The droid's arms were tightly wrapped around him, preventing him from moving toward Alaina. Mando struggled weakly against the droid as it began to pull him to the sewer grate.

Alaina turned back, and his helmet locked onto her emerald eyes.

“Alaina,” he rasped as she gave him one last sad smile before she turned to face down the Empire. Alone.

“Because he knows there won’t be anything left of me to come back for.”

“I’ll kill myself before I go back to the Empire,” she had told him on Sorgan and had implied again on their trek between Dietes and Sorgan to enlist Dune.

“It won’t come to that,” he had told her so confidently a week ago.

“No!” he yelled as he was pulled to the ground.

He yelled at Alaina, the Empire, the droid, for not letting him run to save her and the galaxy.

“How maudlin,” Gideon sneered as IG pulled him through the open vent.

“Between Alaina and the small sample of the Child’s blood we have, we have enough to continue our experiments,” Pershing cut in. The man may be a weasel, but at least he could count on the scientist and his unrequited feelings to ensure Alaina stayed alive.

Silence stretched, and Din struggled pointlessly against the droid as he pulled through the sewer grate.

“Do we have a deal?” was the last thing he heard Alaina ask as the droid held him by his chest and drug him against his will. Eventually, the surface noise faded away completely when they stopped in the open sewers.

“Let me go! We have to go back!” he ordered, struggling against the droid's grip.

IG-11 continued to march him through the sewers. “Our directive is the Child. Returning to the imminent danger zone is counterintuitive,” he informed him in that standard droid—there was no room for shades of grey—argument.

Images from the last few months with Alaina and Grogu flashed through his mind. Of her dancing on the ship. Of her emerald eyes beginning to trust him. Of her trusting him enough to fall asleep in his arms. In vivid clarity, his mind played their night together on Arvala-7: holding Alaina against his chest with his helmet off, looking at the sunset with Alaina. Their first kiss in the middle of a storm on their moon. Their first night together on Sorgan, and then their last time together… Their afternoon swimming in the green waters of the lake. Swaying with her while she danced with him surrounded by candlelight... She honestly didn’t expect him to leave her. Not after everything they’ve been through… He kicked himself for leaving the ship all those years ago and allowing her to get captured. Her green eyes haunted his dreams until he saw her again five years later and felt like the galaxy had given him a second chance.

He struggled fruitlessly against the infinite strength of the IG-11 unit as he marched them past their first corner of the sewers, out of sight of the main drag and Alaina… his Tranyc. He couldn’t let her—

The sound of explosions could be heard from the ground above. Whatever had blown up was massive and even rattled the sewers, making the ceiling quake and rain dirt and debris down on top of them. Din dug his heels in the dirt in a futile attempt to stop the doid.

“No!” he pointlessly yelled, the droid not giving in an inch.

“You are required to ensure the Child's safety,” IG-11 told him, voice flat and emotionless.

Din refused to give up, feeling stronger with every minute that passed.

“Mandalorian,” the droid stopped him, holding his shoulders tightly so he would not escape. “Do not let her sacrifice be in vain.”

Din sagged against him.

“Her sacrifice.”

“I forgive you.”

“Her sacrifice.”

“I love you.”

She couldn’t just be gone. That should have been him. Din had been fully prepared to be the one to make that sacrifice. He was one foot in the grave as it was until Alaina… until she…

“Hey! There you are!” Dune greeted them in relief as the IG-11 droid helped him around the corner. Dune rushed up to greet Mando, passing the kid off to the droid and taking the Mandalorian off his hands. “I got him,” she told the droid. She then looked around the vacant underground corridor, confused. “Where’s Alaina?”

Pain stabbed at Mando’s chest, and he turned his helmet to look at the kid, who was still in the satchel, safely carried by the IG-11 unit’s protective steel arms. The kid looked up at him with large, sad, tear-filled eyes, and his large ears fell as if he knew. As if he could feel it. Part of Din had hoped that since the kid was stronger with his powers, he could sense something from Alaina. That he could somehow tell that Alaina was still with them… But by the mournful look he got from the kid, Din could tell that his hopes were unfounded.

IG began to fill Dune in for him, “She terminated herself and statistically a large percentage of the Empire so that we had the necessary time to escape.”

Dune stopped, looking up to Mando with a shocked look of disbelief. “Mando, I’m—I—”

“We need to go,” Mando gruffed, yanking himself from Dune’s shoulder. He stumbled but righted himself quickly and continued through the corridor. They didn’t have time for reflection or platitudes of sympathy.

“Mando, hey,” Dune tried again, jogging up to his side. “I liked Alaina. I can’t imagine how hard you and the kid are going to—”

“We need to keep moving,” he cut Dune off again. “We need to get more distance between us and… whoever is left. Alaina gave us time. I’m not letting it go to waste,” he told her, trying to shove everything deep inside him. Because if he let himself think about it… about her… he would collapse, and there wasn’t time for that. Later. Later, he would break when he was back on the ship with the kid, but they needed to get to the ship first.

Din ignored the worried glances that Dune and Karga exchanged with one another and kept moving forward. He switched his helm to tracking mode to look for signs of his covert to lead them in the right direction. When they turned the corner, he froze at the sight that greeted them.

Piles upon piles of armor lined the corridor of the sewer. While the droid’s bacta treatment was working, and he could feel himself slowly getting stronger, he found it harder and harder to keep the grief at bay, and this discovery was the straw that broke the Mandalorian’s back.

“I’m sorry,” Dune murmured. “We should go.”

Din shook his helmet. “You go,” he murmured. “Take the kid and the ship. I can’t leave it like this.” He couldn’t leave Nevarro like this. Leaving without his partner was hard enough to wrap his mind around, but leaving without his partner and learning that his tribe had been wiped out as well…

He rounded on Karga. “Did you do this?” he seethed, pointing at what remained of his tribe. “Is this the work of your hunters?!”

Karga shook his head rapidly. “No!” he defended. “When you left with the prize, the fighting ended, and the hunters just melted away. You know how it is. They’re mercenaries. They’re not zealots.”

Din lunged for the guild leader and shook him, ready to take his anger out on the nearest person, and unfortunately for Karga, that was him. “Did you do this?! Did you?!” he shouted again, ready to throw a punch until another familiar voice stopped him.

“No. It was not his fault. We revealed ourselves,” the Armorer’s voice echoed down the corridor, and Din let Karga go and watched as the gold helmet-wearing Mandalorian sorted through what remained of their covert to add them to her cart. “We knew what could happen if we left the covert. The Imperials arrived shortly thereafter. This is what resulted.”

So, this was his fault. “Did any survive?” he asked quietly.

“I hope so,” the Armorer nodded as she passed him. “Some may have escaped off-world.”

“Come with us,” he offered.

The Armorer shook her head, “No. I will not abandon this place until I have salvaged what remains.”

Din helped carry a few pieces as he followed her to the forge, with IG-11 carrying Grogu closely behind him.

When the Armorer turned around, she paused to examine the kid in his satchel. “This is the one responsible for all of this destruction?” she asked, pointing to the kid, who was hunched over with ears down, refusing to look at anyone.

Oh, kid, he thought brokenly. He walked to the droid and pulled Grogu from his satchel to present him to the Armorer.

“One of them,” Din confirmed as Grogu squirmed until he was huddled as close to his chest as possible so the kid could bury his face in his cowl. When the kid’s foot struck out one last time, it kicked Alaina’s dagger, and Din reacted quickly to prevent it from dropping to the ground.

He stared at the emerald gems of the serpent’s eyes and felt his chest begin to split open.

“You found the one the beskar dagger belonged to?” the Armorer asked, now staring at the silver weapon in his hand.

Din nodded and slowly breathed through his nose before explaining, “And she sacrificed herself so that the Child and I would live.”

“A noble death,” she replied with a deep nod. “What are your plans for the Child?” she asked, tilting her helmet to look back at him.

The crack inside his chest grew, and he looked down to share a look with Grogu. “If something happens to me, I want you to keep Grogu,” Alaina had told him on Arvala-7 after they watched the sunset. “I know you were a loner before, but I kinda think you’ve liked having us around. I want you two to travel, and explore, and take jobs, and… and whenever you come across a beautiful sunset, I want you to stop and enjoy it.”

“I am taking the Child as my foundling,” he declared.

“This is the way,” the Armorer proclaimed. “You have earned your signet.”

“Thank you,” Din nodded and clutched Grogu to him for a moment before passing him off to the droid to tuck back in his satchel. He couldn’t hear anyone approaching, but if they needed to make a quick escape, the IG droid would be faster than he would.

“Here,” Dune murmured. “Why don’t you have a seat? You need to rest.”

He said nothing but didn’t argue when Dune brought in something to use as a bench and helped him sit down. After she had him seated, she patted his shoulder before turning to leave him alone with the Armorer.

Din pulled Alaina’s dagger back out to look at the emerald gems that formed the serpent’s eyes. His gloved thumb absently rubbed at one of the gems.

“The serpent hilt is a Fanned Rawl, no?” the Armorer asked, making Din aware that she had been eyeing him from the other side of the forge.

Din nodded. “She said that the dagger had belonged to her mother. Alaina had no idea it was made of beskar when I asked her about it,” he told her, rubbing at one of the emerald gems. “She didn't even know what beskar was. She said that the dagger was a gift to her mother, and the hilt was constructed in the image of the Fanned Rawl native to her mother’s homeworld of Naboo.”

The Armorer paused her work to stare at him. He was used to the Armorer’s mysterious ways, but something about how her gold helmet froze made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “The Fanned Rawl is native to Naboo,” the Armorer confirmed. “It is also native to one other planet.”

Din frowned and looked down at the dagger, but his mind went blank. He then looked back at the Armorer, waiting for her to finish.

The Armorer’s golden horns tilted slightly before she said, “The Fanned Rawl is found native on two planets in the galaxy, Naboo… and Mandalore.”

Din’s helmet fell back to the dagger in his hands. A swell of emotions crashed over him—grief, anger, confusion, and sadness all battled for the lead, but for the moment, confusion won out. How her mother, a former Jedi, or almost Jedi, had even ended up with a beskar dagger in the first place… but it was hers, and then it was Alaina’s, and now it was his…

The Armorer walked around with his signet in hand. Din eyed the metal symbol, trying to see what it was as she welded it to his pauldron. When the Armorer stepped away, Din’s heart swelled, and he nodded his thanks to her for the thoughtfulness that went into her craft.

“Thank you,” he rasped. “I will wear this with honor.”

“You are now a clan of two.” The Armorer nodded, “This is the way.”

She hadn’t meant it as something to hurt him. She didn’t know that until an hour ago, they were a clan of three… but he had made a promise to Alaina. “This is the way,” he repeated, unable to keep the waver from his voice.

The Armorer fitted him with a rising Phoenix and restocked his munitions, but Din couldn’t help but look at his new signet.

When he left the Armorer after trying to get her to come with them one final time, he walked down the hall to where the rest of the group was waiting idly.

“Has anyone come down after us?” he asked, and Dune and Karga shook their heads. Din nodded and pointed down the corridor. “The lava river is this way,” he told the group. “We can follow it out to the other side of the city and then see what we have left to deal with.”

Karga nodded and followed Din's suggestion. IG-11 followed Grogu, leaving him alone with Dune.

“Are you gonna be okay?” she asked, stepping closer to him.

“I—I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” he rasped.

Dune nodded. “I know,” she whispered. “Are you ready?”

Din looked to his new signet—The symbol of a mudhorn, a representation of him and the kid's first encounter. The mudhorn alone would have been an appropriate signet, but the Armorer had used her skill to add one more element—the beast’s horn had an intricately crafted Fanned Rawl wound around it. The serpent came up over the horn, its head turned back toward the mudhorn with its mouth open and one fang visible.

With a deep breath, he gave Dune a solemn nod.

Din’s feet subconsciously carried him back to the city. He could hear the footsteps of the others behind him. No one said anything. No one tried to stop him.

Once they exited the lava river, Din found himself disappointed not to be greeted by Troopers on the other side. Part of him wished that there was more, something else to distract him from the pain that was threatening to overtake him. The group kept their guns raised, still prepared, just in case, as they walked across the eerily silent lava flats toward the city. Karga easily disposed of the one wayward trooper they came across, who looked just as surprised to see them as they were to stumble into him.

"I love you."

Din swallowed down the flashback. He just needed to know—to confirm what the empty hole inside his chest was already telling him. He needed to see her one more time. He needed to tell her... because it was after now, and he was supposed to tell her after.

He blinked the tears from his eyes as he marched toward the city gates.

He would find her and take her with them. Alaina deserved to be buried. She deserved someplace beautiful. Not Nevarro, this planet that brought her so much misery. She’d liked their moon. Loved running through the lavender plains and swimming in the lake's emerald waters. Din decided he would take her body there. Find a spot in the lavender plains close to the lake where you can still hear the water lap against the black shore. She deserved to be laid to rest somewhere beautiful.

Just as beautiful as she was.

Mesh’la.

When Din reached the city entrance, Dune stopped him with a soft hand on his arm.

“Hey, I’m all for closure, but don’t you think the kid has seen enough?” she asked, nodding to the green toddler, still carried by the IG droid.

Din looked back to the kid, who was staring at him with wide eyes, and let out a despondent cooing noise when he realized he had Mando’s attention.

He sighed and walked to Grogu. Din reached out and rested his gloved hand on his wrinkled head, giving him a gentle stroke like he’d watched Alaina do many times.

“Cara’s right,” he told the kid as if he understood him. After all, Alaina always told him Grogu understood more than Din thought. “I just need to… Alaina… Alaina, she wouldn’t want to stay here, kid," he tried to explain but stopped when his voice cracked.

Grogu closed his eyes and sunk further into the satchel, making the chasm in Din’s chest expand even wider than it already was.

“You’ll watch him?” he asked the droid without looking away from Grogu.

“That is what I am programmed to do,” it answered.

Din nodded and stroked the kid’s ear. “I’ll be right back, kid,” he whispered, turning to follow Dune and Karga into the city.

He took in the damage as he followed Dune and Karga. The buildings were in varying degrees of shambles, getting incrementally worse the closer they got to the center and the cantina. Some of the surviving residents seemed to have come out of hiding to explore the aftermath. Some look scared. Some looked injured. They weren’t his concern. They could be left to Karga to figure out later.

Din stopped to inspect the destruction when the trio reached the cantina in the town center. Buildings were decimated. The front of the cantina was obliterated and looked utterly unrecognizable. The small radius of other buildings looked to be in a similar shape. Din walked to what he guessed to be the center of the destruction and crouched down to inspect it closer.

Black chunks littered the area, and Din picked his helmet up to look around. Dune and Karga filtered through the debris, and judging by the looks on their faces, they’d come to the same conclusion he had.

Dank farrik—Alaina had blown up the kriffing E-Web.

“That Moff’s tie-fighter is gone,” Karga commented with a shrug. “There would be way more debris out here if it had been exploded. Maybe he grabbed Alaina,” he suggested hopefully.

Dune looked away from a Stormtrooper who had melted into part of the cantina wall and looked back at him with a skeptical look on her face.

He knew. The kid knew.

There will be nothing left of me to come back for.

Something silver grabbed his attention from the rubble, and he shifted some of the chunks of debris around until he freed the object—his blaster—the one he’d all but given to Alaina.

The blaster was dented and damaged, likely beyond repair, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he had a chance to dismantle it. He stared at the blaster in his gloved hands. He knew he should feel upset that his mentor’s blaster was damaged beyond repair, but he couldn't feel anything. Everything inside was numb.

Whispered, panicked words filtered through the numbness, and he looked up to see Dune and Karga having a heated argument. Dune’s eyes flicked to check on him, and she shoved Karga’s shoulder to nod in his direction, silently telling the man that Mando was watching them.

His former guild leader frowned when he saw his hunter staring back at him. "I'm sorry, Mando," Karga whispered.

Din watched in slow motion as the man knelt to move a couple of larger pieces away, revealing a glimpse of pale skin. When Karga’s hand came back up, he was holding Alaina’s anklet in his hand.

Finally, the numbness broke as the cord frayed and snapped in his chest.

🐍🐍 End Act II 🐍🐍

Chapter Warnings: Angst (duh), mentions of previous medical experiments/torture, a brief description of a seizure, canon typical violence… and… character death...

Author's Note #2: I can’t believe we finally made it here. When the idea for this story came to me, the last part(s) of this chapter was the first thing I wrote. Once this was written and the ideas started coming, I started plotting backward, and almost a year later, here we are. I also wanted to say thank you. Thank you for reading my story. Thank you for your kudos and comments. Thank you to the new internet friends I’ve met along the way. Heaven In Hiding would not have continued without y’all’s support. I won't beg for reviews, but I am *dying* to see what y'all think. Remember, dear readers, this isn’t the end of the road. It’s just the beginning. You know how I hate to leave you on a cliffhanger 😈 but I am taking a little break to go on vacation and take some time to hit the reset button. I hope to see you for 🐍🐍🐍Act III🐍🐍🐍

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Next chapter in series - Chapter 26: You Are Eternal

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