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cactuswaterscactusfields · 2 years ago

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Never About Us - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Offerings from a Beroya

Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4.7k

For anyone who has trouble imagining a sith din, here’s a link to a Tumblr post with something I made on mandocreator.

Chapter Warnings: Angst, a hint of fluff for you goblins, violence, descriptions of injuries and blood. Arguing, Greef Karga (is he a trigger?), fluff, mando being an overprotective socially inept brick wall, I’m making things up about armor and metal. Should I tag this as slow burn? Idk anymore. Hinted at S/A (unsuccessful), fennec shand is cool. Forced drugging, more passing out. Please let me know if I missed any, I know this was a pretty heavy chapter. I love you all, and thank you for staying with me.

Translation guide: Beroya (mando’a): “Bounty Hunter”

I have no excuses for why this took so long. Love you all! Thank you to geo for betareading!

“I thought you said you knew how to fly this damn thing!” You scream out, as the ship around you rocks, screams, rumbles, and twists through the atmosphere as the flames lick at the plasteel viewing panel. Of course, he should have known how to fly, he’s Mandalorian.

“I…may be a little rusty.” He is clearly struggling, his teeth gritting as he fights to correct the ship’s course so that you two don’t end up as two little bug splatters on the blazing surface of Nevarro. You’re thrown into the ship's wall, as he yanks the controls, dodging around a mercantile ship as you arc through the clouds.

“Learn to drive, Mando!” You shriek, as he spirals down towards the landing docks. He yanks back on the controls, sending you into the back wall of the cockpit, and the ship gently slows to a stop with a thud as it lands on the ashy sand.

He turns back to look at you from his seat and tilts his head.

“Are we going?”

You glare up at him, before standing up and dusting yourself off.

“Once you learn not to kill me. One of us doesn’t exactly have a full suit of beskar.”

He watches you, and you can imagine under there he might be smiling if he even smiles. You’re still not even sure he’s human under there. Who knows? Is he just some really well-designed AI, some killer robot masquerading as a Mandalorian waiting until you have a weak moment and then leaping in for the kill? What if he–

“Keep moving.” He bumps into you as you’re caught in your thoughts, gently pushing your shoulder toward the exit of the Crest. You blush, and hurry toward the exit, not wanting to irritate him by getting in his way, lest he leave you there on Nevarro without a ship. You walk by his side, the painting of his armor as an inquisitor parting the crowd around you like the sea in some religious story you were told as a youngling. You smirk a little to yourself, feeling like he’s protecting you from the normally unsafe and crushing crowds of Nevarro’s city. In the distance, you can see the sun beginning to set, a dull blob of light against the ash of Nevarro’s atmosphere.

You finally arrive at the entrance to the guild, and you enter first, your Mandalorian bodyguard an ominous shadow behind you. You sit down in front of Karga, sliding him the completed puck of the bounty you took. He doesn’t need to know you completed it only with the help of a very dangerous inquisitor.

“Ah, my favorite little crash-lander. How are you?” He flashes his signature grin at you, his eyes flicking up to the beskar-clad warrior currently trying to squeeze into the booth next to you.

“I want to add him as a bounty hunter. We’re a pair now.” You cut to the chase, hoping he won’t make you drink more of his sand-flavored spotchka. Mando watches him, his fist resting on the table between you, and he nods slowly.

“You picked up…an inquisitor, and you want him to join you. Become part of your…little..team. I...I suppose that can be arranged, but I do need to know his name.” He begins to tap away on a holopad, and you look up at Mando, hoping he behaves himself and doesn’t kill the good guild leader for asking for his name. Mando’s shoulders tense, and he looks at Greef, his hand beginning to tighten.

“Can’t you just put it as Mando Lorian?” You cut in, hoping to prevent a murder.

“I can make that work.” He taps it into the pad and slides it over.

“Sign there. He’s your responsibility now. As for the bounties, here is the payment, and new pucks. I have one I think you’d like.” He chuckles nervously, and you quickly sign with your finger.

“Figured this one would be good to get you on the good side of the empire. It’s all under the table, not even an official bounty.” He slides over a puck and a tracker.

“The one on the left is a normal Tattoine bounty. You’re capturing an assassin named Fennec Shand, she’s evaded Republic capture for a long time. The one on the right will lead you to the offerer of the private bounty, who will provide you with the tracker to the bounty itself. And get this, paid in beskar.” He smiles at Mando, whose shoulders stiffen further when he hears that it’s being paid in beskar. Your eyes widen at the sound of your payment, fist clenching on the table. You’re being paid in stolen beskar that should have been yours.

“Hey, let’s not get too aggressive, now. Why don’t you two head to Tattooine and see if you can’t capture Ms. Shand? If you’re successful, I’ll give you the private bounty.”

You slowly reach your hand out to the puck, but Mando snatches it off the table and slips it into a pouch on his belt. He slides out of the booth, and you look at Karga again.

“Thank you for the puck–” Your arm is grabbed by a thick leather glove, and Mando drags you out of the bar without any more discussion.

“He’ll take advantage of you.” Mando releases your arm, and you have to jog to keep up with his strides.

“Advantage? I’m perfectly fine. I’ve survived this long, I’m not scared of some slightly–”

“You don’t understand.” He spits your name, quickly grasping your wrist again and dragging you into an alley. He crowds you against the sandy brick, and you have to crane your neck to look up at him. His arm presses at the brick next to your head, and he studies you through his visor. You can feel his eyes searching your face, and he tilts his head again.

“Oh? Is that so? What do I not understand, Mando? Don’t treat me like one of your stormtroopers. I’m not your servant.” You glare up at him, your snarky mouth running before you can stop it. Of course, you’ve been trained to stay independent, to push people away, it keeps you alive. Your secrecy is your survival, after all. With each word, you can see his hand clenching into a fist, and he takes an audible breath.

“He will hurt you. Badly. He will take and take until There. Is. Nothing. Left. It was never about us. It’s about keeping you safe.” His helmet glints in the last light of the sun, leaving you in almost total darkness, save the artificial lights of the night market.

“I don’t need your protection.” You slide out from under his arm, and begin to walk back toward the direction of, you hope, the ship. He follows you with his helmet, and you push into the crowd. You weave and bob through people, half-hoping that he stays following you and half-hoping to lose him.

Of course, he follows you. You keep bobbing and weaving, hoping and praying to the maker that you know where you are going, even as the sun sets and you’re cast into the artificial yellow and white of fluorescent night market string lights. And then you see it. Like a beacon from the darkness, your ship, glimmering with the barely-visible stars and the blinding lights of night, laying there in the docks. You speed up in your steps, almost running, and you finally clamber up the too-steep ramp and practically jump up the ladder into the cockpit.

You hear his heavy footsteps thud up the ramp, and you begin to press buttons almost haphazardly, trying to get off this makerforsaken planet, as if leaving Nevarro will leave Mando there. Who does he think he is, commanding you? You’ve survived your whole life alone, doing nothing but rejecting those around you so that you stay safe. After all, attachments could lead to your heart or bones being broken. But..why does a part of you feel raw for wanting to leave him? He saved your life, hunted you down and kept you alive from that awful Trandoshan, but..he wants to hold you like you’re some pristine artifact, any scratch capable of shattering and ruining you.

So why do you feel this way?

All too quickly, your thoughts are once again interrupted as his hand lands on your chair’s back. He looks down at you, tilting his helmet toward the copilot’s seat expectantly. Right. He likes to drive. You sigh, get up, and move back to the copilot’s seat, not without shoving past him.

He sits down as if your pass at him hadn’t felt like more than being brushed by a Kowakian monkey-lizard’s feather, and begins to plug in the coordinates for Tattooine, and you’re both pushed back by the jump from reality into hyperspace.

“Hey, mando.” You finally break the silence, and he turns to look at you.

“We should..probably repaint your armor. Inquisitors aren’t exactly popular, and that suit of armor puts a target on your back..”

He looks down at himself, as if having just realized the implications of walking around in a suit of metal propaganda, and he nods. He gets up, and looks at you, as if waiting for you to follow. You quickly get up, and follow him down the ladder, grabbing a box of basic ship repairing equipment as you move past the storage closet.

Mando sheds his armor quickly and without grace, revealing that..the armor wasn’t exactly lying about how muscular he is. His arms, covered by that sinfully tight flight suit, flex as he pulls his chestplate off, dropping it onto the floor with a thud that sends shockwaves through your system and right to your core.

He hands you one of his bracers, and a piece of sandpaper, before he plops down and begins to sand his chestplate. And you sand. And sand. And sand. And sand. And sand. How much sanding can one piece of beskar require? Your father wasn’t kidding when he said that beskar is some of the strongest material in the galaxy.

After what feels like millenia, you finally finish sanding, and you put the armor piece down, finally stripped of its paint. He looks at you, having finished about three in the time it took you to finish one bracer, and he gestures to the paints you pulled.

“How about just raw beskar? We can smooth the surface and coat it with a gloss..” Your mouth begins to run off mechanic terminology, and he nods slowly.

“Will you be sanding your helmet?” That touched a nerve. His hands tighten on the gloss tube, and it splurts some of the expensive, albeit shiny gel.

“I don’t take my helmet off.” He growls in your general direction, and you raise your hands defensively.

“Sorry. You’re…one of those mandalorians, huh.”

“One of those?” He squirts more of the gel onto the floor, and you glare at him.

“Could you put that down? That shit is practically worth more than bacta.”

He sets down the tube, and you scoop up the gel and begin to smear it onto a piece of equipment that he’s finished sanding and shining.

“Yes, one of those. There’s a cul–a group of people that have elected to never remove their helmets because that is how the ancient mandalorian culture used to be, and they’ve lived their lives entirely behind a mask. I’m assuming you were..brought up by them before the empire took you?”

He nods slowly, scooping up the rest of the floor gel, and spreading it onto his armor.

“Got it. So no helmet removing. Do you sleep with it on?” You try to lighten the mood, and he begins to wipe the excess gel away with a cloth.

“Yes.”

“Have you taken it off at all?”

“If you’re asking whether or not I shower with it, no. I don’t shower with it on.” He casts away the cloth, sending it into a box of other mechanical equipment, and he examines his now finished armor. He nods, and you smile softly.

“Does it come off in bed?” You wink at him, and he pauses for a moment. You can almost see his ears flushing red, his lip quivering as he tries to come up with what to respond to that. He clears his throat, before beginning to pull his armor back on.

“...Depends on what you mean.”

“During s–” You’re cut off by the ship beeping loudly, signaling its imminent departure from hyperspace, and you both quickly clean up before heading to the cockpit and getting strapped in.

You’re jolted as you’re pulled into interplanetary space, and the great yellow and dusty planet lies before you. Haven’t you had enough sand for one life?

As you enter the atmosphere, you’re strangely reminded of Geonosis, even though that had been sterilized artificially. Can people really live on this hellish planet? There’s no water, hardly any shade, and the stories you heard as a child of Krayt dragons terrified you to no end. Then again, they likely ask the same thing about Geonosis. Irradiated, hellish, with zombie parasites and abandoned pre-empire factories filled with the skeletons of droids that could have been, now condemned to live in perpetual imperfection, with cults and slavery and shadowy figures that could snatch a small child from their mother’s arms and burn them into a worshiper of death and darkness.

“You have that look again.” You’re jolted out of your fears by his voice, baritone and honey, and you sigh.

“Sorry. Was thinking about Geonosis and Tattooine. I just don’t understand how people have grown to live and settle on these apocalyptic planets..” You trail off, embarrassed to bother him.

“They make do. We live and we learn.” His words are jarringly wise, almost strangely so. For a moment, his somber tone makes you wonder what hell he has been through. Has he seen the burning flames as you have? Did he see death like you had? What has the emperor put him through, to become a mandalorian inquisitor, hunter of jedi and now hunter of bounties?

“I do not think you want the answer to that question, little mandalorian. And you’re not bothering me.” He places his hand on your shoulder.

“You carry the galaxy on your shoulders. I am here to help you carry that burden.”

He tightens his grip, and it’s..strangely comforting, like you’re two beings against a galaxy of hate. Perhaps this isn’t so bad after all, you have to learn what makes the other tick, but at the end of the world, it’s you two, and you wouldn’t trade him for the world. As if he can smell it on you, he pulls his hand away, and the comfort is gone.

At least you have the memory of his warmth.

Blood. So much blood. Charred flesh, hatred, glowing red blade strikes and bruised throats are all you can see before everything goes dark. The crunch of a shattering femur focuses your senses, and you’re brought out of shock. Hot. Arid. Burning sand sprays across your face, and are you..are you on Geonosis? You blink quickly, trying to clear the sand from your eyes, and you narrowly avoid a flying limb, which, upon further inspection, appears to be inhuman in form. You look toward the loud sounds of blade cutting through flesh and bone, and you see him, like a silver wraith in the shadows.

He’s standing over a crying man, hunched over and spitting green blood. He raises his hand toward Mando, who tilts his head silently as he clenches his fist, crushing the man’s windpipe into oblivion. You quickly stand up, unsure of how long you had been unconscious, and begin to survey the scene around you.

Lots of blood spattered across sandstone alley walls, three or four mangled bodies, some missing a limb or two, glowing with molten cuts, and so, so, so much sand. Mando turns toward you, stepping over body and limb alike, and he reaches out to touch your face. He gently reaches down, lifting you to your unsure feet.

You remember now.

“Hey, sweet thing, why don’t you leave droid boy there and come have a good time?” One of them had slurred at you, clearly drunk out of his mind. You’ve been catcalled before, it’s nothing you’re not used to, and you let the insult slide off your shoulders as you attempt to continue your journey across Mos Espa, but that hadn’t been enough for them.

You can sense them beginning to surround you, wall you in, and you begin to calculate escape routes as they slowly corner you and Mando into an alley.

“Surely you mustn’t have heard my friend here. Leave droid boy and come with us, it’s been so long since–”

There is a glowing red blade right through his throat, and as he reaches up, eyes widening to feel the new..air hole in his trachea, Mando slices to the left, cutting the man’s head off. He then twists, and as he twists, you feel a small prick in your neck, a disgusting arm wrapping around your torso as it presses the plunger of the small syringe in your neck. You’ve heard of drugs like these before, used on drunk or unsuspecting patrons at bars and clubs, used to take them home for…for…

You can’t remember. Your train of thought begins to fade, as the world around you feels silent, gray…it’d be so easy to sleep right now, so easy to just…

“How many fingers am I holding up?” He gently touches your face with one hand, keeping your dizzy eyes focused on his hand, and you pause for a moment to clear your head.

“F-four. Four fingers.” You shake your head.

“Why did you do that? You have a target on your back, Mando..” You look around worriedly, concerned of the implications of him revealing himself.

He just tilts his head at you, as if he’s confused.

“We need to leave, surely word has spread by now..” You grab his hand, and pull at it, stumbling as your legs relearn how to take your weight.

“Why are you worried? This is Tattooine, little mandalorian.” He follows you, holding onto you to make sure you don’t collapse again.

“Couldn’t you have just knocked them out?” You hiss, and he pauses mid step.

“And let them walk the earth unpunished for what they did to you?”

“They didn’t do anything until you got involved. They wouldn’t have drugged me, I could have just…jedi mind tricked them..I could have figured it out…that was completely unnecessary, Mando!” You finally regain your confidence, and he pulls you into another alley.

“I was doing it to protect you.”

“I don’t kriffing need your protection, Mando! I’ve been surviving on my own this long, I do not need some overgrown sith warrior in indestructible armor following me like a lost puppy, and I especially do not need one to protect me! First, Nevarro, now here! When will you learn? I escaped from you, I can escape from the empire. I do not need you painting an even larger target on my back than the one that is already there because you cannot control your temper!” Your voice is shaking as it increases in volume, and you feel saltwater tears streak down your dirty face, dripping onto the parched sand below. You step back, and glare at him, wiping your tears furiously. You take a few deep breaths, trying to calm your heart rate, trying to lower your blood pressure, and look back up at where you hope his eyes are.

“I don’t need your protection.” You finally reiterate, before turning and leaving the alley. His visor never leaves your back.

“Fennec Shand. Assassin and sniper.” You quietly murmur to no one in particular, not that the man in metal next to you is even listening. Since you finally broke and screamed at him in that alley, he’s been silent, even more so than usual, not even responding when you try to communicate with him or get his attention, not even when you try to make the jokes that always would have gotten at least a quiet chuckle from him.

You peer back into the binoculars pressed against your face, scanning the horizon in the distance for any sign of life, any sign of the legendary ranger that is worth so much she could pay your fuel costs for three months, not that you’re even being paid in credits.

“There. Next to that outcropping!” You notice the bright red glint of a sniper’s red laser, and you quickly duck your head down as a red blaster bolt flies through where your forehead just was. His head jerks toward you, before he starts to stand, and you grab his arm and yank as hard as you can.

“She’s using heat tracing. We have to wait either till morning when the sun blinds her or until we can come up with a new idea to stop her. We’re sitting ducks anywhere but here.”

He nods slowly, before he turns to look down at his toolbelt, and you can almost see the idea lightbulb above his head blink on.

“Grenades.”

“What?”

“She’s using heat tracing. Flash bangs will blind and defean her temporarily, which lets us get close enough that I can freeze her.” He finally speaks after a moment, having figured out how to explain his absolutely batshit idea to you.

Except..it’s not batshit, It’s genius. He does think like a mandalorian, like a bounty hunter, coming up with ways to weaken his opponent until he can immobilize or kill them. He hands you three of the little handheld suns, and looks toward the speeders that brought you all the way out here into the Dune Sea.

“On three, I’m going to throw the first one. Get on your speeder, and wait for my signal. We will alternate, until we’re close enough to get cover at the base of her cliff.” He commands you, and it reminds you strangely of times that have never happened, of lives long past. What if you had been a soldier, or captured and became an inquisitor? Would you and he be close? Would you–

“Three!” He throws the grenade, and it explodes, a red blaster bolt shooting off a ways away, Fennec’s shot having been thrown off its course. You jolt up, your feet propelling you to your speeder, and you leap onto it, revving it and speeding off into the dune stretch between you and your target.

“GO!” He shouts, his voice straining to be heard over the wind rushing past your ears, and you press the button on top of the grenade before tossing it, and it explodes, sending another shot careening into the sky.

He tosses his, and your speeders weave back and forth on the dunes like dna, intersecting and then arcing away from eachother. You continue this deadly dance, this dance of evasion and light and blaster shots, until the once tiny cliff on the horizon becomes a monolith in front of you, all you can see, and you slow to a stop at its base.

“How do you plan to get up?” You pin your back against the rock, in case there is any way Shand could shoot you if you’re too far out.

He tilts his head, before he crouches and flies up into the air like a rocket. That’s right. You could just force jump.

You crouch as he did, hoping to replicate your success on Geonosis, but all you do is a nice little hop. In the distance, though, you see a ramp, and you sigh before climbing aboard your speeder and taking the naturally formed ramp up the side of the cliff. What feels like hours later, you ride up expecting to see his blade out or a dead body, but instead you see a bound Shand and a mandalorian inquisitor shining his bracer.

“I was wondering where you were.” He looks up at you, and you blush before slowing to a stop and climbing off the speeder.

“Not all of us were trained in the force from birth, Mando.” You pick Shand up by her wrists, gently laying her onto the back of your speeder.

“I suppose I’ll meet you at the bottom–?” You look up, and he’s already falling toward the sand below.

Of course he is.

“So now that she’s in carbonite, what’s our next bounty, oh keeper of the pucks?” You twist the towel around your sopping wet hair, patting it dry and casting the damp towel into a hamper. You stretch, feet padding against the metal floor of the ship, and you look at the interior of your ship. The bruise on your neck from the injection site still aches, but the pills Mando made you take before you showered must have been some kind of reversal agent, since you feel almost back to 100% much quicker than you should have been in any other situation involving those drugs.

After you retrieved Fennec, it was a fairly simple matter getting through the streets of Mos Espa and getting her frozen in the on-board carbonite freezer. You’ve never seen one work up close, and it took you at least twenty minutes to stop shivering from the gas. You finally decided to take a shower, cleaning yourself of the dust and sand, and the warmth helped your still slightly frazzled mind clear. You’re glad for midichlorians and the force, for it allowing you to heal quicker than the average person, the dull ache in your ankle from what feels like years ago nothing but that–a dull ache. He looks up toward you, his visor tilting up and down, and he leans back against a wall. His visor locks onto the small bruise on your neck for a moment, before he looks back down at the tablet he was swiping through.

“You look comfortable.”

“Been a while since I’ve had clean clothes, Mando. Thank you for washing them for me. While I was unconscious.”

He looks away, and you blush at the memory, not having meant to be so passive-aggressive to him. After all, he didn’t exactly knock you out, but he didn’t keep you awake on Hoth. It was probably for the best, you would have screamed and bit the whole way back if you had been awake.

“Our next bounty is a long jump away, and it’s another desert planet.” Was that..humor? From mando? You let out a small giggle, never having thought you’d see the day where a mandalorian inquisitor cracks even the worst of a joke.

“What is it? Tell me it’s not Geonosis.” You shiver, the radiation coming back to you like burning flames and licking hell against your skin, ripping apart your machinations like nothing but wet paper. You don’t ever want to have to venture out into the irradiated deserts again, the one time Gakrux made you having left you crying and screaming as you could imagine your flesh melting and burning away. You were just a teenager then, your life barely having started, and already you had been scared of it ending. The radiation isn’t too terrible now, nor was it when you ventured, but the trauma and idea was enough to tell you the most radiation you ever want to experience again is a star’s light from the comfort of a spaceship.

“No. It’s called..Arvala-5.”

I am so sorry this took so long. My life kind of got kicked in the shins and I had a massive burst of writer's block, rewrote the chapter, and today I had the biggest burst of inspo while listening to music. I'm so sorry this took so long, again, but thank you so much for writing. I'll try to have the next one out in a timely manner :)

Cactus

#mando x f!reader #mandalorian x you #mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian #mando x you #mando x reader #mando and reader #fanfiction #fanfic #din djarin x f!reader #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #din djarin #star wars

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cactuswaterscactusfields · 2 years ago

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Never About Us - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Another Day, Another Repair

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 4.9k

For anyone who has trouble imagining a sith din, here’s a link to a tumblr post with something I made on mandocreator. This does not have to be how you visualize him, it's just how I interpret him!

Chapter Warnings: Angst, verbal (and light physical) abuse. Violence, Suspense, cursing, mentions of death. Description of injuries, blood. Non canon compliant. Let me know if I missed any!! I’m making things up about ships and mechanics don’t eat me.

Translation guide: Ner kar’taylir gar darasuum (mando’a): “I love you forever” lit. “I know you forever”

Ad’ika (mando’a): “Child” lit. little one

Wermo (geonosian): “idiot” lit. A stupid person.

Cyare (mando’a): “beloved” lit. “beloved, loved, popular”

Cyar’ika (mando’a): “darling” lit. “darling, sweetheart”

Aruetyc (mando’a): “traitorous” lit. “traitorous”

Darjetii (mando’a): “sith” lit. “sith, dark-side user”

– Thank you to my beloveds, Wren and Geo, for beta reading this. I couldn’t do it without you. MINORS DNI!

Your hands stick to the metallic wrench they’re holding, as a black, inky material sprays down at your face. The ship you’re facing the bottom of seems to have lost a panel, and a stray tube is spraying the remnants of whatever dirty oil the last mechanic seems to have loaded the ship with. So many mechanics around the galaxy will act like they’ve fixed a ship, only for it to break a couple of jumps later in their friends’ sectors, so that they get more money. Frankly, you hate it. But now is not the time to get lost in your despisings, as the dirty oil continues to paint your face a new shade of gross.

“Shit!”

You scoot out from underneath the ship and see the extent of the damage done by a singular fallen bolt. A metal plate is lying inches from your head, and the dark oil continues to spray where you were just laying. Your hair sticks to your forehead like glue, as the hot sun bears down on your shoulders. The dirty work overalls you had just washed are now freshly dirty as if this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. Damnit.

“Kriffing hell, not again..” You mutter to yourself, getting back down to attempt to stop the oil flow from blasting down at your face. At least your boss isn’t here to see this, the geonosian would have a fit at seeing the state you’re in in front of a customer’s ship!

However, as if summoned by the force itself, the bug-like man flies in and screeches at the sight. Standing at a solid five-foot-flying, he’s not the most attractive bug like creature you’ve ever seen. In fact, he might be the ugliest. This is Gakrux Thern, your boss and fellow mechanic. Well, on paper he’s a mechanic, but in reality you do all the work around this damn yard. He pays you enough for you to live, but not enough to buy a ship to escape, not when rent gets higher every year you live here as clean water gets rarer and rarer to find. His four arms are waving about as he takes in the sight before him, and it can’t be pretty. You, crouched in front of a half-scalped razor crest, covered in oil, dripping literally from head-to-toe in the disgusting, maker-you-hope-it’s-not-caustic material. Your hand tightens around your wrench, as you begin to attempt to fix the still-pouring oil flow coming out of this old beat-up bucket-of-bolts.

“How dare you do this to a ship, when our customers are paying so much to have their ships fixed!” His thick, geonosian accent sends spittle flying at your face, and the screeching begins to give you a migraine. Another day, another repair, another verbal thrashing from your boss. His wings beat against the sand around you, which earns him a side-eye from you. “I’m sorry. A bolt came loose, and I’m working on fixing it. Just be patient.” You sigh, and he huffs, unsatisfied. “Ungrateful..” He trails off into a language you can’t understand, but the intention is clearly there. It always is, out here. Intentions leave you with yes’s and no’s and get out of this place’s, and nothing is ever kind. But that’s the way the desert is, isn’t it? Harsh, dry, irradiated, with no life for thousands of miles except for in the few sparse cities that still exist after the empire decided it would be a good idea to sterilize the entire planet.

As you lay back down on the sliding board you use to get underneath ships now that the oil is quenched from its flow, for the time being, your mind wanders. After all, the creaking din of a wrench twisting a loose screw into place or hammering a plate back into shape gets old…

–

Smoke rises from a building and blasters whip past your head only to be bounced back by crimson sabers the color of death. Your father holds you tightly as he runs through alleys, feet pounding on the blood-soaked sands. He brushes your hair from your face, and your hand tightens around his flightsuit. You can’t have been more than five…Sharp pain comes across your face, and you feel tears leak out from your little eyes. Blood drips down your forehead, and he looks down at you, before placing his hand over the wound with a little rag. You can feel concern coming from him, as you see the perpetrator, a sharp rock, flying away from you both.

“Ner kar’taylir gar darasuum, ad’ika. Never forget I love you more than you could ever imagine. I will see you again, I promise. I will. Until then, you have to survive!” The helmet covering his head has a familiar emblem burnt into the side, but the image is fuzzy. The beskar is scratched, dented, stained with blood and ash, but the bright paint still sticks out to you. It’s home to you, a memory you can’t quite forget, a set of colors you can’t quite remember the exact shade of. You wonder if you’ll ever see that crest again.

As he runs, you see where he’s headed. A yard has a few finished escape pods, and one of them has your things in them. Did he know this was going to happen before now?

His hands push you down into the pod, and two small hands that must be yours press up on the glass between you and the man who raised you. As his hand touches yours through the glass for a moment, more blaster fire and smoke tarnish the already orange and dark brown sky, as tall creatures with glowing white eyes and metal skin aim blasters at him. He turns to face the creatures, reaching into his jacket to draw something, but you fear he’s too slow.

You hold your little hands out to stop them, as if something you could do could stop immortal creatures of titanium and wire. One’s blaster floats slightly into the air, and..

–

“Fuck!” You’re snapped out of your memory when something sharp hits you on the arm. You slide out from under the ship to see the geonosian floating there, looking especially disgusted with you.

“Get up, ungrateful wermo.”

He’s holding what look like bolts with sharpened corners, and he’s poised to throw another one at you. The bug-man’s face is wrinkled with anger, and the bolts he’s holding are rusted and worn with years of sand and difficulty working on the geonosian sands below and whatever other trash heap of a planet they come from. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get an infection from that bantha shit of a projectile.

You stand, dusting yourself off, small sand granules falling to the ground, joining the rest of the oily sand below. It clumps around you, as droplets of oil fall to the ground and seep into the earth. Yuck.

He grunts, and looks away from the oil, disgusted with the state you’re in. You are too. The disgusting ship oil coats your arms up to your elbows, pastes your hair to your skin, and makes the shirt you had already wanted to get off cling to your skin even deeper. It’s not skin tight, just nasty and pressing the minute grains of sand against your skin.

“Get out of my yard. It’s late and I don’t want to pay you any more than I have to.”

At this point, there’s no point in arguing with him, so you walk away from the ship after packing your equipment into the wrenchbox where it is all kept. The rusty droid that cleans up the yard takes the wrenchbox, and wheels it away to the corner with the other tools. Those little metal fuckers can’t have a conversation or share friendship with you, but it’s better than one aiming a blaster at you. The lesser of two evils, you suppose.

You see your pack in the corner where you’ve always kept it, same as ever. A bit sandy, a bit dusty, but there.

You walk to it and sling it over your shoulder, before looking back at the yard and beyond it, the setting geonosian sun over the towering rocky cliffs and sandy buttes. Home? No, but as close as you’re going to get given the present circumstances. You make your way out of the yard and onto the evening streets of the geonosian city, and a few people give you a look but most keep to their business. That’s the way it goes out here. You kill or die, or somewhere in between. Everyone on this planet has dirty laundry they’d like kept swept under the rug, and everyone would kill before they let someone else find out.

You don’t speak, don’t interact with any of the many passersby whose eyes you meet for but the shortest of moments. That’s the way to survive. Don’t speak, don’t get noticed, don’t say a word. What you are is hunted to veritable extinction, and those that remember the orders that came before the empire do not speak of them. That’s the way it goes.

You finally arrive at the small apartment building which you call a residence, and you enter. The glass doors shutter behind you, and you make your way up the elevator to your small, shabby apartment. It’s not much. Two rooms and a bathroom with a sonic shower in the corner, a sink that doesn’t work half the time, and a canister of water in the corner of the bedroom worth more than two months’ rent. How did geonosians survive for thousands of years in this place? You may never know the answer. The bug-like humanoids are hardy, you’ll give them that, but you aren’t one of them. You’re a mandalorian human. You grew up on a planet ravaged by war, yes, but it had water. It wasn’t barren like this place. The Sindari palace was always open to the different clans until that usurper…your mind wanders. It’s been so many years since your father told you the stories of mandalore from before your time, before the empire decided that the mandalorian people were better off dead. You finally get the door open after finagling with the key for a few minutes, and as you enter the dining room with the single table and windows against the wall, the dying light of the last dredges of the geonosian sunset greets you. You flick the lights on, beige paint peeling on the walls and reflecting the orangeish red sky. You lock the door, and finally set your bag on the counter. You can finally get out of the clothes that you deal with so much in. As you pull your overalls and undershirt off, you see the extent of the injury that that damn geonosian’s terrible throwing abilities graciously blessed you with. A bit of blood trickles down from the open cut, but it’s nothing a few bandages and a small bacta patch won’t fix. You gently paste the greenish patch onto the wound after cleaning it with a waterless cleaning solution (damn those aristocrats and damn this planet, with so little water) and finally, you can look in the mirror.

Your hair is still slightly pasted to your forehead, oil making it run slick and greasing it with a delicious coating of sand and dust. Gross. The oil still shines slightly on your skin, and your eyes are the only part of you that was fully spared from the dark liquid’s mayhem. You turn to the sonic shower in the corner, and after shedding your chest band and undergarments, step in.

The sonic waves slowly vibrate the oil, dust, and disgustingness off you, but it doesn’t make you feel truly clean. Nothing here does. That’s just another day, another sonic.

You step out after the oil seems to be gone from your body and hair, and you pull a shirt from your laundry that seems clean enough.

You finally flop into your bed, and the uncomfortable, tough mattress does wonders for your back. You can still feel sand pressing against your skin, even here in this bed of yours. It never truly leaves. The dry, disgusting feeling coating your skin and drying out your hair. That’s life on a sterile, irradiated desert planet that most would rather forget about. You stretch and sigh, and finally, uneasy sleep pulls you away from current reality.

–

Your hands grasp at a small bar of metal a familiar man holds, and he smiles. His hair is messy, like yours, but his smile is warm and holds deep love.He hands it to you, and the tiny hands hold onto it. Metal. “Beskar, cyar'ika.” He says to you, and you giggle.

You know when this is. You were but a small child, in your home.

Home. This was your home, with its comforting walls and roof and the soft bed you always played with your toys in. Your father studied at his desk in the other room most days, but always came and checked up on you.

“Can you say cyare?” He smiles, touching your face. You blurble something out in response in some form of toddler speak, and he chuckles, round glasses sliding down his nose slightly.

“Not quite, my love. You’ll get there one day. I just know it.”

He ruffles the hair on your head, and you grab again at his hands, dropping the shiny metal in favor of your father’s love and warmth.

As it hits the ground, your eyes follow, and you hold your hands out again. The beskar floats up toward you, and your father’s eyes widen just slightly, before they crinkle again with his smile.

“Be careful, sweetest one. Your power is beyond what anyone can imagine.”

–

Your dreams, lovely as they are, are interrupted by the loud screeching of your commlink. That’s your alarm, as always.

You grab it, and press the button on the side to turn it off. The light shines dimly from outside, and the sun is beginning to rise. Another day, another repair.

As you sit up from your bed, the metallic cylinder of your lightsaber glints on the table in the corner.

You remember the day it was ungracefully thrust into your hands, and your eyes had met his for the last time. You remember the day you saw the crystal encased inside for the first time, and how that fiery orange had stuck out vibrantly against the dark sky of the night time in your home.

You finally get up and pull your chest band and undergarments on, before finally donning a shirt and semi-clean pair of overalls, better than the oil nightmares of yesterday. Another day, another repair. You tame your hair in the mirror, and give your face a couple slaps to get the sleep out of it. Not like it ever rested in the first place. As you stare into the mirror a little while longer, tired eyes greet you. Eyes not full of rest, but full of exhaustion. Exhaustion from running your whole life, escaping slave catchers and force sensitive-killers alike. You’ve left countless times by now, and for what? Just to have to leave again? Is your whole life destined to be like this? Living in hiding while working for a man who you hate and who hates you? Are you to be nothing but a glimpse working in the shadows of a cruel, destructive empire? Is this what you are to be? Living on a planet irradiated by a too-close sun with water that costs more than your apartment? Only seeing the burnt orange of the deserts against the dull sandy yellow of the skies?

As your thoughts mingle onward, your com screams at you again. That’s your signal to leave. Your eyes land on that dark metal saber again, and before you know what you’re doing you place it into your overalls. Perhaps it’s for the best to keep it on you. You grab your bag and sling it over your shoulder, the extra clothes and medical supplies pressing against your side for a moment as a stark reminder of what you are.

You are a glimpse. Nothing but a haunted memory of something eviscerated in the past.

–

You find yourself once again underneath the same ship as yesterday, finally finishing up the repairs. Luckily this time, there were no more oil incidents and your overalls are mostly clean, save a grease mark here or sand there. You tighten the last of the bolts on, and slide out from under the ship to examine your work. The metal hull of the ship before you reflects the yellow-orange sand that you’ve grown to..despise? Is that the word to describe the feelings you hold about this place, this job, this planet, this life? Is that who you have become? A despiser, hating the surroundings which have blessed you for so long with sunburns, dehydration, and sleep deprivation? “Wermo!” Your boss’s voice once again breaks you from the din of your thoughts about this place. “Is this ship done?”

“Yes, it is, Gakrux.” You speak his name, and he makes a noise akin to disdain.

“Do not speak my name, child.” He shoves past you, and examines your work upon the ship which has cursed you with too many sonic showers and water bills. At least it’s pre-imperial, which makes it hard to track in case you missed something.

Your brain, mandalorian as it is, goes to how you could steal it. You’d have to break past the several security measures that likely line its technological innards, and you’d have to have the money for the fuel. That’s not even mentioning the fact that you’d have to figure out the controls to a pre-imperial warship.

Your father taught you how to fly, once. Doesn’t mean you know how to fly everything immediately.

–

“Pull up on the thrusters when you’re ready to take off.” His voice is warm, soft, and comforting. His hand rests on your shoulder as your small hands hold the controls, and you press a button before slowly lifting the ship into the air. You then press forward a little too hard, and the ship jerks forward.“Not that hard, dear. Let’s try again, okay?”–

You’re once again snapped out of your daydream by a smack on the back of your head. “I am speaking to you, child!” Your boss, understanding as ever, is glaring at you. His hand is poised to smack you again, but you steel your footing. “Yes? Can you repeat that?” “Only because I can’t afford a droid, you insufferable waste of water. If I had half the right mind I’d fire you and leave you out in the irradiated deserts. That’d be a better use of space than what you do all day.” You look away at his words. You’ve grown used to them. It’s not the first time he’s threatened to leave you in the deserts to die, and it probably won’t be the last. That’s how it goes out here. Once you lose your value, you’re left to die in the dust along with your past and your memories. They replace you almost invisibly, so that the next sorry soul to come along can give a few good years and then lose their value, and the cycle goes on and on.

Before he’s able to start in on you again, however, what sounds like a shattering pot sounds out outside the yard. You look over, as does he, and you both instinctively go to investigate. And then you sense it. Darkness. Cold, unfeeling, darkness. Wafting through the air like choking smog, piercing your mind with images of red blades and dark helmets. It pushes away the already dim light around you, with nothing but numb pain left in its place. Claw-like shivers travel up your arms, down your spine, even into the back of your neck. The little force-weilder inside you screams, run! Run! Not safe! And then it comes to you like an arrow, landing dead-center at the forefront of your mind, as if aimed by a god itself, the answer of what brings this darkness. It’s every jedi’s worst fear, every force-weilder’s nightmare and dread.

Inquisitors.

–

You and Gakrux make your way out of the yard into the main street, and you see the storm troopers slowly walking down the road. You stand in the back, blending into the shadows. And then you see him.

A crimson cape spreads down from his shoulder, covering an empire logo half cut off on the left side of his chest. His armor is dark gray, like beskar, and his helmet has red accents. This is a mandalorian, but he has been…corrupted. His flight suit is an even darker gray, while the whistling birds and missiles lining multiple parts of his armor are a deep scarlet. Even his beskar heart is corrupted, with a deep red surrounded by gray lined with a darker red replacing what should be honorable. A mandalorian inquisitor? Regardless, you’re looking right at him, and he’s looking right back at you. Before you know it, he takes a step toward you, and then another, and another, and then he’s running.

–

Your feet pound on the sand below as you twist and turn through the crowds, trying to put as many people and as much distance between you and the inquisitor behind you. You have no clue where you’re going. You take random twists and random turns, and there is no order to what alleys and streets you weave down. The sun flickers in and out of sight as you pass under roofs and tarps, and you can hear cries of pain behind you. That’s how it always is, isn’t it? You run and run and run, and flee and flee and flee, and yet you always leave suffering when you leave a place.

You turn toward another alley, but as you head down it you realize you’ve hit the wall at the end of this sandstony deathtrap.

You turn around, and see stormtroopers approaching you slowly. They slowly step aside, and the mandalorian inquistor approaches you. His coal-black visor bears down at you, and you step back, but your back presses against the stone. Reflecting into his plasteel you can see yourself, shaking slightly, eyes wide.

He takes another step, and you see him slowly reach for a saber hilt at his hip. Thank the maker you decided to bring that saber with you today. His armor reflects the sunlight above. You’re a little surprised at that, you were expecting him to wear plasteel like the stormtroopers he’s surrounded you both with. His saber gleams in the bright light, and as it reflects, you’re brought back to that day on mandalore.

–

Red sabers, crimson blades swinging through the air as an ominous, unstoppable force of death.

–

Your thoughts are ripped back into place as the clanking of stormtroopers amassing at the entrance to the alley sounds out.

He ignites his blade, and the threatening hum is, for a moment, all you can hear.

And then, he speaks in a strange, modulated baritone voice you can’t but for a moment imagine would be rich like honey or molasses without that helmet.

“I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold.”

–

You reach into your overalls, and draw your saber, before igniting it. The orange reflects off his armor, and he tilts his head almost imperceptibly. Perhaps he knows what the orange color means? Your father knew. He would never tell you, not even when you had your desperate escape from your home.

Pulling you back into the moment, the Mandalorian moves. His saber swings down toward you, and you instinctively raise yours to block it. He presses down, and you press back up. He’s clearly got experience with this kind of thing, unlike your sorry arms. They’re already aching with the force of his blow, and your blades are locked for a moment. What kind of mandalorian would betray your already aching culture and create this sort of suffering? Clearly, this kind would. He’s a traitor to your people, to your home, and he was there when that great extinction happened. He was there to watch your home planet die. Regardless of your flying thoughts, he lifts his blade before swiping at your face. You narrowly duck, and of course your wandering mind pulls out the memory of the oil yesterday, and how you wish you could have dodged that oil stream instead of getting coated. You swing your saber out at his armor, but of course it had to be beskar too.

Your saber bounces off, and he swipes across your chest, cleaving a burning path across it you’re lucky to have survived. Searing, agonizing pain radiates out from the instantaneously cauterized wound, and you wheeze in pain. The slice on your chest is indescribably painful, and even though your ever-wandering mind knows it isn’t deep, it hurts like kriffing mustafar’s lava was tossed into the wound. You feel the air itself seem to burn your skin more, the sand blowing its disgusting, coarse granules into your face and torso. You fall back from the force of the strike, landing on top of your bag. Your saber lies in your hand, and it deignites as it feels like your connection to the world is fading.

He steps back, before lifting his saber again, no doubt to deal the final blow to your already half-incapacitated body. You can feel yourself leaving, dying. Is this how it ends? Lying on the sands in a back alley in a terrible city in the middle of a sterile desert planet? You’ve survived so long, this doesn’t seem right, seem honorable. This is not a death worthy of you, worthy of anyone mandalorian. For a moment, words not commonly spoken come to your dwindling mind.

“Aruetyc darjetii..” You wheeze out, the words themselves feeling like they tear some of your already ebbing life force away from your body. He freezes. “You speak…mando’a?” He whispers, and you hear tones of shock and hints of surprise in his voice, and..almost regret. So he is truly a mandalorian, but an inquisitor. What in his life led him down this path? And why are you almost sickly curious? The whisper injected a bit of adrenaline into your system, enough for you to realize what you have to do. Your father spoke it to you long ago, in a situation almost akin to this one. You have to survive!

His hand slowly reaches out, and he’s distracted for a moment. You find your bag underneath you, and your hand lands on an emergency bacta-adrenaline shot. Bingo.

You bring it out from the bag very slowly, and jam it into your leg. The adrenaline instantly sends your heart beating like thunder, and you feel your mind snap back into action like whiplash. You can feel the almost addictive healing supplement flood through your antagonized veins, and the adrenaline from the shot is the only thing keeping you from succumbing to the unconsciousness that the bacta offers to you like a starving man to a feast. You see why this stuff was expensive–it’s a heal all shot with the added bonus of being awake during the healing so that you, you know, don’t get murdered by a mandalorian inquisitor.

Your body stumbles to its feet quickly, almost on its own volition, and he steps back with a growl.

Before you know it, you’re flying up through the air and toward the rooftop above, hair whipping behind you as you lightly land on the rocky rooftops. Force jumps, right. You can do that.

You take off running across the rooftops, and in the distance, you see Gakrux’s yard. You hop from building to building, before finally leaping down onto the sand. You hope you fixed it well enough. The crest gleams in the midday sun, with pipes and wires attached. You see the stain on the sand from the earlier oil spill, still there as a tarnished reminder of the accident of yesterday. You wave your hand, and hope to everything in you that the force that allowed you earlier to leap will detach these pipes.

To your overwhelming joy, it does. The person who owned the razor crest was supposed to pick it up earlier today, but apparently, he never showed. That happens a lot, surprisingly. Free ship? No, but an escape route nonetheless.

You trip and save yourself, before leaping onto the ship and climbing up the ladder to the cockpit. You look down at the controls, and at that moment, it hits you. You can leap fifteen feet into the air, detach pipes with your mind, lift objects just by thinking about it, and from what you’ve seen the mandalorian do, control people with your mind. But…nothing in the force prepared you for this moment.

You have no clue how to fly this thing.

–

After what feels like hours of pressing buttons, the ship comes to life with a roar, and you pull up on the controls. The ship slowly lifts into the air, and you slam forward onto them, and the ship jerks off into the sky. You’re so lucky the ship didn’t explode, with how randomly you were pressing the buttons. Your adrenaline begins to fade as you punch the only coordinates you can remember into the system, and the searing pain from your earlier fight returns with a vengeance worthy of a good man done wrong.

The razor crest jets off into the stratosphere, and for a moment, as your vision fades, you see him staring at you from the yard below. Your mind echoes with his voice, almost unnoticeably.

“I’ll see you again, little mandalorian.”

And in your final moments, you know he speaks the truth.

–

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!

~Cactus

#din djarin x f!reader #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mandalorian x reader #mandalorian x you #the mandalorian #fanfiction #first fic #angst #eventual fluff #slow burn #series

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cactuswaterscactusfields · 2 years ago

Text

Never About Us - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Lava and Glaciers

Rating: Explicit - Minors DNI!

Word Count: 5.7k

For anyone who has trouble imagining a sith din, here’s a link to a Tumblr post with something I made on mandocreator.

Chapter Warnings: Angst, violence, cursing, mentions of death/threats of death. Descriptions of injuries, Trauma, PTSD, descriptions of fearful/radiation injuries. Descriptions of weaponry/making things up about ships and weapons. Indirect mentions of s/a. Let me know if I missed any!!

Translation Guide:

Cyar'ika (mando'a): "darling, sweetheart" Ner kar'taylir gar darasuum: "I will love you forever" lit. "I will know you forever"

Thank you to Geo and Wren for betareading this and sitting with me all those late nights I had the three am caffeine-induced writing sprees. I couldn’t do it without you.

Holy Shit.

You are currently sitting in a razor crest rocketing through hyperspace at a thousand lightyears per hour, probably breaking at least four Coruscantian laws of physics. But, you’re alive. You survived a battle with an inquisitor. You survived a battle with a force-sensitive Mandalorian murderer, and though you’re no Jedi, you somehow distracted him well enough to steal a ship from your abusive boss and make it into hyperspace.

The only issue now is you’ve got a target the color of your lightsaber, which is bright-kriffing-orange, on your back. Well, kriff. It was bound to happen eventually, your hind-brain consoles you. As you look down from the psychedelic-colored view panel in front of you that people have probably gone insane watching, you realize you have no clue where you’re going. The control panel lies still sticky with blood and ash, and the controls are blinking lazily. The ship’s on autopilot, which is probably a good thing, but you’re still a mess. You finally find the courage to look down at your chest, and there is a distinct lack of wound where the Mandalorian slashed you. That bacta isn't messing around.

Sure, there’s a fading pink scar, but that’s better than the gnarly saber wound that had painted your vision a new shade of starry and introduced your nerves to what a burn feels like. Sure, you’ve been burnt before, but it’s different when it’s from a white-hot energy blade made from force energy and plasma that probably could beat a star when it comes to who’s hotter.

Regardless, you find the motivation to get up and survey what you’re working with. Your bag lies on the floor next to the chair where you collapsed, and the items in it have begun to spill out. You reach down and begin to rifle through it to take a quick head count.

One lightsaber, check. You click the button on it, and the blade extends like an extension of yourself. It still works. You quickly deignite the blade and place it back into the bag.

Two sets of clothes, check. They’re a bit sandy, but they’re livable.

Three days’ worth of rations. It’s gray mash, but you can’t complain. It’s not like you haven’t been eating that for the past three days anyway.

Two days’ worth of drinking water, but not enough to bathe with.

Enough credits to buy passage on a passenger ship to a nearby planet or perhaps buy some food.

It’s not much. But there are things to be grateful for in this world, and your bag’s contents fall under that list. You shove the stuff back into your bag and stand back up. Your back aches slightly from laying unconscious for who knows how long on that makerforsaken chair, but it’s better than being dead.

You turn toward the exit and make your way down from the cockpit into your new home. A ‘fresher in the corner, what looks like a…carbonite freezer on one wall, a stack of boxes, and a cabinet strewn open. Whatever was in that cabinet is gone now. As for sleeping, you see a cot built into one of the walls, and it appears to be of the fold-down variety. Makes space easier, you suppose. You sigh and look back up toward the cockpit. You still have no clue where you’re going.

You enter the fresher, and see..a shower? Are your eyes deceiving you?As your wonderstruck self creeps toward the shower and twists the nozzle, apparently they were. The shower sputters for a few moments, but no water comes out. Typical.

To have a working shower, you need to have water. To have water, you need to restock at a planet. And of course, the planet you were just on, deserted as it is, doesn’t have water. Whatever, you’ll find a sonic on whatever planet your sorry ass plugged into the ship’s coordinate system.

Almost as if the force itself heard you, a sharp beeping sounds out from upstairs. Fuck.

You bolt out of the refresher after twisting the nob back to the ‘closed’ setting, and you climb up the tower, back screaming at you from the sudden movement.

“Kriff!”

You sit down in the chair quickly, and your mind blanks again. You still don’t know how to fly this thing, and sheer luck allowed you to get off Geonosis in the first place. Why can’t this damn ship have labels?

The ship finally drops out of hyperspace with an aggressive jolt, and apparently, the beeping was to let you know that you should be strapped in. Should you be thanking it? Maybe, but it did almost give you a heart attack and interrupt your moping about the distinct lack of water aboard your ship. What’s a desert girl got to do to get some kriffing water?As the planet wooshes into view, white clouds and gray continents greet your eyes. And then it comes to you:

Nevarro.

–

Your ship lands in a landing field, and you slowly climb out of it, bag slung over your shoulder, and warmth greets you. Not again. Of course, it had to be a hot, lava-filled, ashy dusty planet with probably a low quality of life, and judging by the fact that you’re not getting any stares for having a burnt and ripped shirt, wrecked overalls, leather boots, and a face smeared with dirt, oil, grime, and whatever else Geonosis brought you, you’re not in a place you’ll be provided with top-level medical care. But who are you to complain? It’s somewhere that the Mandalorian Inquisitor isn’t.

You look around, and the ground beneath your worn leather shoes flutters around, like ash and dust. That could be because it is ash and dust, but you won’t go into the semantics of what Nevarro’s soil is composed of. Your mind jolts to more pressing matters, and you’re brought a memory.

–

“Now, cyar’ika, listen to me. If you ever need help, go to one of these planets.”Your father is holding a paper with numbers on it–coordinates.

“Wh-why?” Your voice sounds foreign even to you, young as it is, and still full of innocence. Oh, how times have changed. Your hand reaches out to grasp the paper, and the material feels foreign to your datapad-accustomed hands. The writing on it is meticulous as if written by hands familiar with deeply important subjects, where a mistake means life or death.

“These places are going to provide a form of solace. You may not be in the best area, and bad things could happen, but you will be safe. There are people there who can help you.

The blaster fire almost deafens his voice, and you realize where you are. Orange-black smoke fills the sky, and you see two dead robot men–droids–behind him. Screams and cries echo around you, and your very soul aches with the pain that those around you are currently going through. It hurts. Badly. It’s like thousands, no, millions of lives are being put out, as if an entire culture is dying, a planet itself burning in pain for the false transgressions of a few leaders.

Your pod gleams with dust, and the blueish plasteel panel begins to close. Your father takes your hand, kisses it, and–

–

“Hey, ash-face. You gonna walk or what?” A gruff voice sounds out behind you, and on instinct, you begin to walk. So it’s that bad, huh? You know what led you to this place, but damn, to be called out on it hurts. Well, that’s the way life goes out here. You’re in the outer rim here. This isn’t like coruscant, where the money flows free, and if you bet you only lose a speeder. Out here, if you take a bet and fail to pay, you get shot. But, it’s somehow safer, you think to yourself. You’ve learned to survive.

The wind blows past your face, and it stings slightly on your raw, grimey skin. It’s nothing you aren’t used to, being that normally by now you would have had four or five sand burns on your body from the drifts of winds coming into town from the irradiated deserts beyond. You remember it…fondly, the heat of the sun on your face, the nightmares all those nights triggered when Gakrux was particularly pleasant toward you. The sarcasm your thoughts bring is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The thought of being forced to stay in that desert as the remnants of the empirical sterilization slowly tear your DNA apart and you slowly die from dehydration–you shiver. Your hindbrain jumps off that topic and back to the issue at hand, and for once you agree with it. Nobody wants to think about being left in a desert to die, especially not you. But you’re not there anymore. You’re in a new place, hopefully safe (at least your father seemed to believe so), and may have a new chance at employment.

You walk down the road, and you see a bar in between the innumerable gray, black, and brown stony buildings permanently stained drab from the ever-present fires off in the wilds and the ash that somehow manages to coat every inch of life on this planet. First sand, and now ash? You can’t catch a break. But, whatever the force has in mind has got to be better than being hunted down by an inquisitor who knows how you were raised, how you were trained to think, and how you can fight.Maybe you could ask for help. It doesn’t look too…shitty, but it’s not the safest dive you’ve ever been to. Regardless of the socioeconomic status of the town around you, you press onward and enter the open doorway. Eyes meet yours, and a greenish lizard–trandoshan, you correct yourself–walks toward you. However, before he can say a word, a man dressed in rich-looking clothing and a cloak appears in your frame of vision.

“Hello, little one! Welcome to the guild! To what do I owe this pleasure? My name…is Greef Karga!”

–

So, you’ve met Greef Karga. Maker, he talks a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. He doesn’t stop. First, he asked you where you’ve come from, (“You’re covered in grime, there must be a story behind that!!” He cheerfully cantered to you, you so fondly remember.) where you’re going (“No Clue,” You answered honestly.) and who you are (you didn’t give an answer to that one beyond your name.). After, however, you’ve downed a few spotchka shots and sufficiently burnt your throat with the liquor, you begin to open up.

“Why did you come here?” His voice breaks your ever-present reminiscing.

“To be honest..I’m not sure. Someone I trust told me I could find work and safety here.”His eyes narrow slightly at that one, and your senses sharpen slightly. He’s tense, very tense. You almost wonder why, but everyone has their dirty laundry. Perks of being force sensitive, you suppose? You’re able to sense someone’s emotions unless they’re really good at blocking it, or, they’re a force-immune species like a Geonosian. That’s another reason you hated Gakrux. You couldn’t read him any better than you could his language. You’re not quite sure how you learned how to read people so well, or if it’s just something that comes with the multi-part package that is being force-sensitive. However you gained the asset that has kept you alive more times than you can count, you’re still in your present situation on Nevarro.

“Do you know who I am?”

You shake your head. Greef Karga. He’s gotta have money, or power, or something to his name. You can’t quite figure out what, though. By now, you’ve attracted a few eyes, and the trandoshan from earlier definitely has his eye on you. Let’s just hope that he doesn’t know who you are. Apparently, that’s a common theme around here. Just like geonosis, you recognize. On that maker-be-damned sterile sand-hole of a planet, you knew nothing about anyone else beyond their name, beyond whether they broke their ship often or kept it in pristine condition. That’s the way it goes.

“I am the head of the bounty hunter’s guild here. I’m sure you recognize what that means.”

Oh. OH. Your brain immediately jumps into action, thinking of a thousand different possible escape routes by which to get out of this bar. That trandoshan will probably give chase, you’ll probably have to dodge some blasterfire which means drawing your saber, you may have to fight your way out and that could draw the empirical authorities, which means you’d be on their radar again and have to leave–it’s not a favorable situation at all. You could maybe–

“It means you need work, right?” His voice pierces your mind like a spear thrown by some long-dead god.

You quickly nod, and throw back another shot of spotchka to get your mind away from the escape-fueled adrenaline currently pumping through it and your quickly-beating heart. Maker, that would have been bad. Just a job. It’s just work, it’s just a job.

“Tell you what. I’ll register you with the guild, and get you started on a simple bounty. You ever been to..Hoth?”

–

As the mechanics present at the shipyards on Nevarro slowly fill your ship with fuel and drinking water, you learn a few things. First, you’re pretty good at what you do, according to a conversation between two of the mechanics you overheard while restocking. At least that’s one positive you gained from your years of being on the run, beyond the sleep-deprivation and nightmares that seem to always plague your restless slumber.

Second, the people on this planet really don’t like the empire. You can’t blame them, though. From what you’ve learnt over years of hiding in the shadows, ever-familiar as you are with them, the empire has brought nothing but a façade of peace and deeply-rooted suffering in the circles you’ve passed through, whether those are richly coated disgraced former magistrates or Geonosian head mechanics with a penchant for throwing rusty objects at their underlings.

Third…you have no clue what you’re getting into with this Hoth bounty. Hoth, from what you’ve read in Nevarro’s absolutely miniscule library (a real shame, you think to yourself. It could have been so helpful for information or parsing through some of the coordinates your father gave you), is cold. Like, really cold. But, you’ve managed to buy a thick coat (the shopkeeper gave you a really weird look when she heard that you’re buying all of this winter gear. It’s not like Nevarro truly even has a winter beyond hot lava and less hot lava), some cold-weather-attuned gear, and rations. You hope it’s enough.

As you slowly make the trek from the marketplace (if you ever come back here, you note, you’ll have to explore it more. It seems very..quaint.), you see your shiny razor crest all fueled up and ready to go. The sands and sun of Geonosis really did a number on her image, and now that she’s not reflecting radiation, you can appreciate the real beauty of the pre-imperial gunship. Two massive laser cannons next to two engines you could probably fit in if you tried, a hyperdrive at the back that dwarfs the nearby imperial-era ships, and who knows what else. She’s a real beauty, your mandalorian heart purrs. You’re never truly not a mandalorian, and from an early age your father taught you to appreciate weapons not as forces of carnage, but as forces of strength. Even after you were forced to flee your home, you’ve never truly stopped seeing the ships and weapons around you and appreciating their craftsmanship and dedication. Maybe that’s why you’re scared to use your saber, beyond the fact that it instantly reveals who you are. It was made for you, to fit in your hand, to be weilded to defend you, to keep you safe, made as a weapon to fit in the little hole in your heart that is a defenseless force weilder, made for you by your father. It’s the last thing you have left of home, beyond your memories.

You walk onto her after all of the tubes and pipes have been disconnected, and you start to unpack all of the rations and equipment you bought. Apparently, the guild has a pretty good starting bonus, seeing as it provided free ship repairs and refuels, and enough to afford you three weeks’ worth of rations and the clothes you bought. Your eye falls back to the refresher, and walk over. Maybe you’ll get to shower?

Your hopes are dashed, however, when you remember that Nevarro is a dry planet too. What is it with you and dry planets? Apparently, as much as your conscious mind hates them, your unconscious mind wants to stay very far from them. The reason why is lost on you, as you turn back to look up at the ladder. You also managed to pick up a quick infopanel from the library on how to fly a ship, and though it’s nowhere near the real thing, you know what the buttons do and when to press and not to press the throttle. It’s a miracle you’re not dead.

You climb up the ladder after pressing the red triangle labeled “closed” in Aurabesh next to the door. At least your father taught you how to read. He taught you a lot of things, it appears. If only you still….no, you say to your mind. That’s a topic you’d rather not breach.

The cockpit once again presents itself to you, all shiny buttons and metal walls and plasteel viewing panels. Maybe this could be home, for now. Better than your apartment back on Geonosis. You wonder what will happen to that place. After not paying rent, they’ll probably investigate and find you no longer living there. When that happens, they’ll likely auction off the belongings you left there, get rid of the water and give it to people with more money than you can dream of, and rent the property out to someone else so that they can suffer in your place. What makes you different than anybody else? Why did you deserve to escape mandalore? What did you do to deserve escaping Geonosis? What makes you so special? You don’t know, honestly. You lived your life as any other mandalorian child. You were force-sensitive, yes, but what does that give you when others like you have been increasingly hunted by imperial soldiers and inquisitors? Why are you so unique that you survive in the face of death when others have not been so lucky? Unfortunately, you know exactly what your mind is doing. Survivor’s guilt. You read of it in your father’s notes, back when you first learned to read. Of course, then, you couldn’t understand what the book was telling you. Why, your small brain had asked, why would someone feel this way when they’re alive? Alive is a good thing!

You know for a fact that’s not the case. Regardless, you have places to be.

You sit down at the control panel, and hesitantly press the startup button. The ship roars to life beneath you, and you flex your hands.

Okay, that’s step one. Remember what he said. Pull on the throttle, and then push, but not too hard.

You do as your train of thought commands, and the ship slowly raises into the sky before jetting off into the atmosphere. You enter the coordinates Karga gave you for Hoth, and then press the blinking bright red hyperdrive button. As if on instinct, the ship slows for a moment as the stars begin to warp, and then it almost tears through space as it enters the hyperspace lane. Your ship settles almost as quickly as it entered, and the streaking lights are all that greet your eyes. Now what?

–

It appears the next course of action is to wait. Just like your trip from Geonosis to Nevarro, you have no way to tell the time beyond the ticking of the destination panel, which displays how long until you arrive, and the clock you bought and set to Nevarran time while you were on Nevarro. Your circadian rhythm is so screwed. Well, at least you could try and organize.

You climb back down the ladder and face the equipment, clothes, and food you purchased at the market. Maker, there’s a lot. The bags of clothes (provided in canvas bags by the kind shopkeeper that you assume will keep the fragile articles safe) are piled up to your waist, and your food crates are stacked taller than your head. Well, you’ve got about two days, and absolutely nothing to do but think, so, here goes.

You start with the clothes. You begin to sort them first by function, and then by color, and then by size, from thinner to thicker. Your winter clothes have one cubby, your desert-related clothes have another, and of course, other cubbies are assigned for undergarments, clothes without a distinct weather pattern protection, and coats/overlayers. It’s a lot more than originally expected, but at least you have some variation from the overalls and tunic that you’re used to. As you sort, your everchanging mind wanders.

–

“How do I use it?”“When the time comes, my dear, you will know. You will know with your heart. Remember what I’ve always told you. Trust in the force, and trust in yourself.”

“Will you be there when I do?” Your eyes focus on his face, and you focus, and the blade ignites.

It’s orange, like blazing fire, or a pool of lava, or leaves from trees you’ve never seen but in books falling to the ground. Somewhere between yellow and red, somehow familiar, like you’ve seen it before. It stands out against the fiery skies, and the ash that lands on the blade burns up on contact. It’s hot, you can feel the heat on your face, its weight powerful in your palm. This object, your little mind tells you, will define your fate.

The blade de-ignites as you refocus, and your eyes meet your father’s.

“Ner kar’taylir gar darasuum, cyar’ika. Never forget that.”

He closes the pod once again, and you watch him as the pod lifts slowly into the air. You see more metal men approach behind him, and your little fists bang on the glass desperately. You see the ground below you begin to disappear, and you begin to sob. You can see it now in your mind's eye, them putting a gun to his head, your mind conjuring images of watching your father die in front of you while you can't do anything, and it'll be all your fault. You didn't stop them. The tears pour down your sliced face, stinging the cut from the earlier rock. You can’t get to him, you can’t tell him. You’re trying so hard, but he doesn’t hear, he doesn’t know, they’ll hurt him! They approach him from behind, and as you scream out to him, they--

–

You snap awake, your face pressed into the floor of the ship. You’re sprawled over a pile of rations, and you sit up slowly. You look down at the rations, and they’re half-organized. You must have fallen asleep while organizing. You look at the clock, and it’s been about eight hours since you fell asleep. You must have been very tired. At least you don’t have long until you land on Hoth.

Over the next four hours, you finish organizing the food and water into their separate expiration dates and types, and you stand up. Your knees scream at you from the prolonged pressure on the ground. You’ll be sore for weeks. Your back aches again, and you’re reminded of how you felt waking up just a few meters away in the cockpit. Your poor back, it’s been through a beating, and you know for a fact that the suffering is not over. You could see if the clinic in town has a chiropractor, but for now, you’ll just have to deal.

As you pull on the winter clothing, the cockpit sounds out with a loud beeping you recognize almost instantly. You’re about to drop out of hyperspace. Now the only question is..how do you hunt down a bounty? Sure, you’ve fought before. It’s part of your culture, almost part of your religion. But you’ve never killed. Maybe you could bring the bounty back alive, so that no blood would be spilled on your hands beyond that from a minor scuffle. That’s probably for the best. You look over at your small blaster, and slide it into the holster on your hip.

You climb up the ladder to the cockpit, and the quiet hum of the engines greets you. You sit down in the pilot’s seat, and strap yourself in. The beeping increases in frequency, and then it hits you–the shock of exiting hyperspace sends you forward, and your body strains against the straps that hold you into the chair. You hear both full and empty boxes sliding across the floor of the bay downstairs, almost ruining all of your hard work. At least you remembered to close the storage compartments, so your labor isn’t too ruined. Still, you’ll be slightly afraid to look down there when you inevitably have to clean up later. Ouch.

You see the whitish-blue planet of Hoth through the view panels when your head finally stops spinning from the vertigo of the ship lurching to a slower speed, and you can immediately tell that this is going to be cold. The planet appears to be made of snow and ice, but at least it looks solid. Your hands tentatively land on the controls, and you slowly pull the ship down toward the surface. As you enter through the atmosphere, the visibility of the area around you decreases to a minimum. You try to pull up on the thrusters to give you more control, and you finally clear the clouds. The ship lowers to the ground, and as its weight comes off the thrusters and onto the ice, you hear a crack.

Uh oh.

–

You pull yourself from the smoking metal of your ship, and it comes back to you. Karga had warned you that Hoth is absolutely littered with ice caves. It’s a bit of luck and a guessing game to land in the right spot, and it appears you lost. You step away from the wreckage, and survey what you’re working with.

First off, it looks fixable. You always have tools on you, a mechanic would be stupid not to. One of the engines looks partially fried, and some of the landing gear is bent in a shape it should not be bent in. The outer plating is pretty badly dented, but the hyperdrive and second engine appear to be fine. She won’t be pretty, but she’ll fly with a bit of TLC. The only issue…you’re on a kriffing freezing planet in an underground ice cave.

They weren’t kidding. It’s cold here. Really cold. You would have frozen in minutes if you didn’t spend the extra credits on cold weather gear. The icey wind of the blizzard outside is only dampened by the icy walls around you, and snow still falls through the hole in the ice ceiling above to land on your furry coat. You luckily avoided tearing the clothes on your back currently keeping you alive in the crash, but your nose burns as blood rushes away from it to your core. Kriff, it’s cold. Your teeth chatter slightly, and you pull your hood over your head, secure it to the mask attached to the front of the hood, and zip the rest of the coat closed. That’s a reprieve from the cold, but your eyes still sting at the absolute white of the sky above. You pull on snow goggles from the bag you had on your person when you crashed, and though your vision is now orange, your eyes won’t die from the sun reflections.

You stretch, and check your hips for your blaster and saber. One is hidden in a secret pocket on the inside of your coat, while one is in a holster. You pull the beeping red tracking fob from your boot, and as you slowly turn in a circle it beeps loudly when you face one entrance of the tunnel ahead.

So a Hoth bounty, huh?

–

You’ve been walking for about an hour, and you see an exit to the ice caves. Blue stalactites of eternally frozen ice hang above your head, and they’re almost a constant reminder of the planet you’re on. It’s not like you’re not familiar with the concept, you’ve spent the last few years on a sterile, irradiated planet of orange sand, rocky spires, and abusive bosses. However, this one is covered in snow and ice. You step, and as the snow crunches under your feet, you hear a faint footstep behind you.

Instantly, your brain jumps into high gear. Your hand flies to your blaster, and your senses are on high alert. It doesn’t help that your hearing is already slightly muffled by the hood, but you can still hear faint noises. You just have to listen. And so, you listen.

The footsteps are getting closer, and if you had to estimate, they’re about a hundred feet behind you in the caves. You turn toward the corner you just passed, and quietly leap to hide against the ice wall next to you. From this angle, you’re hidden in the blind spot of whoever is coming toward you, and you check the blinking fob in your hand. As the footsteps grow nearer, the beeping increases in frequency just slightly. You slip it into your boot and draw your blaster. You’ve got to be ready for anything.

What you aren’t ready for is the trandoshan from the guild hall rounding with a blaster aimed directly at your head.

Your instincts kick in, and you duck. On a tragically humorous note, you’re reminded of that day when you were sent away from Mandalore. Oh, how the tables have turned. You draw your blaster and aim for his gut, but his foot comes around and kicks it from your hand. You hiss in pain and draw your hand back toward your chest protectively. As you’re distracted by the sharp pain in your wrist, he leaps onto you.

What the hell is he about to do? Your mind immediately prepares for the worst.Your flight or fight instinct immediately kicks in, and you kick at his gut. Your foot collides with his soft stomach, and he’s thrown off you. And then he draws his blaster, and before you have time to dodge, he shoots you in the leg.

KRIFF. If you thought the lightsaber slash had hurt, this is a new level of pain. The wound begins to sting and bleed, as your adrenaline pumps through you. He creeps toward you as stars swim across your vision, and it begins to become difficult to differentiate him from the surrounding snow, ice, and dizziness your adrenaline-drunk brain is producing. You try to reach for your saber, and his foot comes down hard on your hand. You begin to try to use the force, but he quickly clasps a cuff on one of your wrists.

It’s like the world has stopped.

You can’t feel the life around you, minuscule as it may be, you can’t feel the life of the trandoshan who currently has you half-cuffed and at unconsciousness’s door, you can’t feel the ever-swimming life that has surrounded you your whole life. It feels cold. Not like a temperature, the biting wind still causes you to feel the temperature drop in the now-open wound on your ankle. You were in this web, this indescribable web connected to all the other life in the galaxy, each pulsing heartbeat sending a thousand ripples through your soul, but now…silence. Horrible, horrible silence. Silence you can’t break if you scream, silence you can’t destroy if you were to spend the rest of your life standing next to a starfighter’s engine. It feels…so lonely, like you’re in this little bubble all by yourself that can’t be broken, can’t be escaped, can’t even be felt outside of. You’re, for the first time in your life, alone. It feels awful.

The wound on your ankle is your only solace of stimulation, the scorching pain beginning to ache deeply as blood bubbles up from the exposed veins. You’re lucky the blaster shot didn’t hit an artery. If it did, your ever-present mind tells you, you’d be dead.

It kriffing hurts, and as it begins to swell, your world fades. Your foot, already low on feeling, is now numb, and you’ll be lucky to keep it after this shot, not that it’ll matter. The trandoshan slowly places the blaster against your forehead and smiles a cruel, fanged smile. Faintly, you hear a beeping from his hand, and you see a small fob in the gloved grip of your soon-to-be killer.

“This is the end of the road for you, hmm, Jedi? There are some very powerful people who want you dead.”Is this the last face you’ll see before you join the rest of your people? Is this how it is supposed to end? A frozen planet your final resting place an eternity away from the planet your empire razed to the ground for disagreeing with it? Will this be your finale? Not in the back alley of some irradiated planet, not in the warzone of the people you were supposed to die with, but on an ice-death sphere thousands of light years away from the nearest populated planet? Is this–

A red saber cleaves through the trandoshan like a hot knife through butter. The trandoshan falls, now in two pieces, and his blaster drops from his hand onto the snow next to you. No blood falls, but the faint glow of molten flesh is all you see for a moment before two black gloved hands push the remains off of you. And then you see him. Dressed still in crimson and black, armor gleaming with snow and ice clustered to it, black plasteel t-panel staring directly at you.

The Mandalorian Inquisitor.

“I told you I’d see you again, didn’t I, little mandalorian?” You can almost hear the smirk in his voice.

Your vision fades, and you feel yourself drop away from consciousness.

–

I had to split this chapter into two parts because of how long it was going to be, but I’ll be out soon with the third. Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!

~Cactus

#mandalorian x reader #mandalorian x you #mandalorian x female reader #din djarin x f!reader #din djarin x you #angst #first fic #star wars #the mandalorian #never about us chapter 2

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