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amiedala · 3 years ago

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SOMETHING DEEPER

CHAPTER 4: An Open Wound

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: sexual content, canon-compliant violence, graphic descriptions of violence, mentions of past abuse/trauma

SUMMARY: “I don��t expect you to follow what I say. I’m not a dictator, and I have no interest in becoming one. But if a single one of you brings danger to this planet you claim to love to hurt me or my wife,” Din continues, and the way his lips shape around the word wife makes something warm and wet unhinge in Nova, “there will be no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me.”

If you're a newcomer, my fic "Something More" is the first installment of this story! <3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: hello my loves and happy Something Deeper Saturday! this chapter is truly a whirlwind, it's hard and sweet and intense and simple all at once. there are very graphic descriptions of violence and death in the one (in the form of Force visions, no one's actually dying, I PROMISE!!!), so please be aware that there is potentially triggering material in what you're about to read. it mentions past abuse and dives pretty deep into current violence, so please just read with caution! i hope you enjoy this journey—i certainly did writing it! more notes at the end!!! <3

Mandalore isn’t a ghost town.

Not how Nova originally thought, anyway. The throne room is filled with wary, armored people. Some are the guards that usually stand watch outside, through the giant palace doors. Nova recognizes Koska Reeves and Axe Woves from the brief, charged encounters she’s had with each of them. Bo-Katan is there, of course, regal and pristine, her shoulders pushed back, her red hair impeccable. There are a handful of villagers that Nova’s seen in passing, but besides the few faces she recognizes, most of the people gathered in the throne room have been hidden somewhere on Mandalore, away from this strange Capitol, away from the everyday. Half of them are without armor, without impressive beskar helmets to hide their wary expressions. Bo-Katan’s icy, measured gaze is clearly a popular currency on Mandalore, because every single person in this room looks skeptical at best and enraged at worst. Nova keeps her eyes on Din, who’s decided to stand at the helm of the dais instead of taking a seat on the beskar throne, watching his every movement to ensure he’s safe up there, and that he stays unharmed.

“I want...to be your leader,” Din says, his voice quiet but earnest. He sounds like he’s incredulous at his own words, like he’s reading off a script he’s never seen before. But there’s power hidden underneath whatever’s scaring him, an undercurrent that Nova knows is unfettered, genuine passion. “I wasn’t raised in the way of Mandalore. Not in the ways that you were—”

“Clearly,” Koska whispers, and the Mnadalorians standing closest to her proximity offer uncharacteristic smiles and snorts. Nova steps forward, but Bo-Katan raises her sharp hand at her side, and they immediately fall silent.

Din looks back at Nova, and for the first time, she can see the fear in his eyes. She nods, encouragingly, even though she has absolutely no clue what point he’s trying to make. Every time she closes her eyes, even if it’s only for a heartbeat, she sees the strange, young hologram of her face, with the word MURDER, MURDER, MURDER flashing back at her, a ceaseless and terrible pattern. Nervously, she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, realizing that she’s the only person in this room who isn’t outfitted in Mandalorian regalia. Her black shirt has remnants of dust on the sleeves from the amphitheater. Her pants saw their best days weeks ago. Her shawl, the only proof that she wears any sort of allegiance to the throne, Mandalorian blue and regal, is thrown haphazardly over her rounded shoulders. The boots on her feet are older than her relationship with Din, picked up planets and planets ago, somewhere sunny and warm and an entire lifetime away. When Din’s panicked brown eyes find hers again, Nova smiles, taking a half-step forward, trying to portray anything other than her own frenzied state, the hammering heartbeat that could likely be heard outside of the palace.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Din finally continues, turning back to the crowd. Even from this angle, with most of his face obscured, Nova knows how hard it is for him to stand here, in front of dozens of people, without his helmet, how many rules he thinks he’s breaking, how this must feel like agony. He reaches for the Darksaber hanging on his belt, and when it ignites, every single face in the room is on Din, on that horrific, captivating blade of electricity and death. “I won this in battle. Twice. Both were accidents,” He inhales heavily, studying the flickering, wicked blade. “But they still happened. I wasn’t born on Mandalore. I wasn’t raised here, either. I’ve given some of you this speech before, when I first took the throne.” He exhales through his nose, and Nova wets her dry lips. Her throat feels like the middle of the day on Tatooine, parched and treacherous. “I...I am not a Mandalorian in the way that you’re Mandalorians.” Nova chances another half-step forward, letting the captive, tensioned room blur in her vision as she just focuses on Din. There’s a tremor in his voice, something alive and unsteady, something she only notices because she’s spent over a year studying every inch of him, memorizing Din right down to his bloodstream. “I follow a Creed that you don’t. I’ve spent most of my life trying...trying to be a good soldier, a true Mandalorian. I know I’m not the leader you wanted. I’m not even sure if I’m the leader I wanted. But I’m the one we’ve got, at least for right now. And—” Din exhales sharply, his breath strained, and Nova knows he’s suppressing a sigh, “I swear, I will try my best to do right by this planet. But—but I’m not only the reigning Mand’alor. I’m—”

“Right,” Axe interjects, but there's no malice in his tone. Nova stiffens, crossing her arms over her chest, staring over at him. But he doesn’t look threatening. His smile seems genuine, like he;s just attempting to get Din to lighten up. “And a bounty hunter. A damn good one, at that. He’s caught me twice.”

“Three times,” Nova corrects, and her eyes go wide when she realizes that everyone’s attention is now on her. “But,” she continues, rather nervously, trying to square back her shoulders in a shoddy imitation of Bo-Katan to not display that nervousness, “Din hasn’t been just a bounty hunter in a long time.”

Din sheathes the Darksaber, and instead turns his outstretched hand to Nova. Heart pounding, she slides her hand into his large, gloved one, trying not to show the massive tremble in her fingers. Quietly, he reaches for the Skywaker lightsaber hanging from her belt, and when Nova hesitates, he lets her hand close over the grip instead. Bo-Katan moves forward, so quickly Nova doesn’t even notice, and when she ignites the crisp, illuminated blue blade, half of the people gathered in the throne room draw a weapon. Nova’s expecting Bo-Katan to do the same, but she raises one impeccable eyebrow and turns back towards the room.

“Stop,” she says, and immediately, the majority of the room lowers whatever weapon of choice they’re gripping. Nova manages a tiny, stuttered breath. “She’s not going to hurt us.”

“She,” a voice says from the back of the room, “is wanted by multiple parties. Contacts all over the galaxy will pay a pretty price for Andromeda Maluev, you know. I accepted the cult member as Mand’alor. I accepted you standing down from the throne, Bo-Katan. I will not accept harboring a criminal,” he continues, voice as icy as Hoth, “and a Jedi, at that.”

Din moves forward, all tension, all rage, but Bo-Katan holds up that same, steady hand, and the man making his way across the foreground halts in the same beat that Din does. Nova pulls her own lightsaber back, pocketing it, pulling the shawl higher over her shoulders, trying to unclench her jaw before all of her teeth break off in her mouth. She’s tired. So tired. Exhausted, slogging through this conversation, her heartbeat accelerating, stars shooting out behind her eyes. And still, this time, when she closes them, all she sees is MURDER, MURDER, MURDER.

“Her name,” Bo-Katan returns, measured and cool, “is Novalise Djarin. And yes, she is wanted by both the scum that still survived after the Empire’s demise, and a middleman somewhere in between which we cannot identify yet. Yes, she is a Jedi, or at least is certainly heading in that way. Yes, I stood down from the title. But that wasn’t because I was weak, or because I wanted them on the throne.”

“Bo-Katan—”

“Nova,” Bo-Katan interjects, “I’ve got this.” She steps off the lowest stair on the dias, posture perfect, right arm curled around her distinctive helmet. Everything in her screams royalty, regality. Behind her eyes is a fire so much stronger than the ice in her voice. “I didn’t want this. Neither did you. But Din won the Darksaber, fair and square. And Mandalore isn’t what it used to be. None of us are, either. We’re good at surviving, but we’re even better at fighting. And I believe,” she says, pointedly, glancing over at Din, who’s still coiled in an attack position, “that was the point our Mand’alor was getting to. So let him finish. With your mouths closed.”

The man who spoke, wizened but grizzled, exhales angrily through his nose, but his mouth stays clamped shut. Bo-Katan stands at attention, nodding back at Din.

“War is coming,” Din continues stiffly, and half of the people crowded around the room roll their eyes or mutter under their breath.

“War is always coming,” another woman enunciates, “it’s what the galaxy knows best.”

“War is coming,” Din repeats, and Nova has to force herself to unfurl her palms. Before she can even try to jump to his aid, though, he walks down the steps and presses his flat palm against the holotable. Reflected in the glittering dome above them is thousands of pixels of blue light. Nova’s juvenile mugshot is up there for the entire room to see, but so are statistics from every mission they’ve engaged in, anything even remotely related to the Order. Hundreds of faces swarm the screen, all with interwoven lines connecting them to other profiles and rotating planets. There, at the center of the screen, is the First Order’s name in menacing, large letters. Underneath are the silhouettes of Luke, Nova, and Grogu. When Din opens his mouth this time, his words are vivid and clear. “I know that Mandalore has been razed and sieged. I know that in your eyes, I’m not one of you. I know that none of you signed up for another battle. But I also know that fighting,” Din says, his voice weary, but his dark eyebrow raised, “is what’s in our blood. All of us.”

“I won’t follow a ruler who isn’t a true Mandalorian,” the same man finally continues. He steps towards them, and his face is angry and ghastly in the flickering blue light. His rage is barely concealed, and Nova’s hand flies unconsciously to the lightsaber hanging from her belt. “And I certainly won’t protect a Jedi who doesn’t belong here.”

“Well, then,” Nova says, and she’s so bone-dead tired that she doesn’t realize she’s the one who’s speaking until the second word is out of her mouth, “good thing I can protect myself.” She chances a glance at Din, who could very easily be aggravated at her stoking the fire. The only thing written across his face, though, is pride. Nova’s eyes flicker over to Bo-Katan, who is somehow, unbelievably, wearing the same exact expression.

Din slams his fist down on the holotable, sending all of the blue light back into the atmosphere it came from. The low light of the war room is returned to its usual state, but no one speaks. “I don’t expect you to follow what I say. I’m not a dictator, and I have no interest in becoming one. But if a single one of you brings danger to this planet you claim to love to hurt me or my wife,” Din continues, and the way his lips shape around the word wife makes something warm and wet unhinge in Nova, “there will be no place in this galaxy where you can hide from me.”

Still, no one moves.

“Mand’alor,” Bo-Katan snaps, icily, all of her usual vigor and venom back in her voice, and it’s like she’s given an order no one can deny. Half of the Mandalorians nod in wary agreement, and the other half keep their low mumbles close to their chests, all of them shuffling out of the throne room, presumably to disperse outside. When the heavy door closes shut, with only the three of them remaining, Bo-Katan turns back to Nova. Din is already climbing the steps back up the dais where the menacing beskar throne sits to retrieve his fallen helmet. When he pulls it back over his handsome face, it’s like closing an open wound.

Nova looks at Bo-Katan, who doesn’t look nearly as threatening in this low light. Her hair is slightly ruffled, and the hard set of her jaw is tense, electric. “Bo-Katan,” Nova whispers, and her gaze snaps impeccably back to Nova’s. “Thank you,” Nova continues, earnest, “for defending me. Defending us. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I did,” Bo-Katan counters, but there’s the ghost of a small smile on her beautiful, cold face. “They were wrong, and they needed to hear that. See? I’m not always a total bitch.”

The word—so commonplace, so foreign—sounds absolutely ludicrous coming out of her mouth that it makes Nova laugh out loud. The sound is both musical and jarring, and the tension held in Bo-Katan’s shoulders evaporates, even if it’s only momentarily.

“Noted,” Nova says, smiling. Maker and all the stars above, she’s exhausted. Bo-Katan glances back at Din, armored and impenetrable, and then back at Nova.

“You need sleep,” Bo-Katan allows, pulling her own helmet back over her head. “Both of you. I’ll stay down here and monitor any incoming correspondence. I’m too wired to go to bed anytime soon.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do,” Bo-Katan interrupts, and her usual edge is back in her tone. “And I will. Go.” She raises that commanding arm again, and Nova’s too exhausted to resist. She wants to take a shower and wash the last few days off of her, and then sleep for three more. Her scar hurts. Her shoulders ache. Her head feels impossibly heavy. Silently, she lets Din lead her over to the heavy double doors, her ears buzzing with fatigue, but before they step into the hall, Nova hears her name chase her across the war room. In tandem, she and Din turn, watching Bo-Katan ignite the blue holotable. There’s something unreadable about her, even under the helmet. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Bo-Katan says, finally, and the heaviness of her words is louder than the doors when they close on her impenetrable face.

Steam from the shower fills the entire fresher. It’s wet and hot, the humidity seeping deep into Nova’s skin, burrowing under the residual ache from the last few days, nestling between her cold bones from the chill back on Ahch-To, the frigidity back on Hoth. Din joins her once he wrestles off the rest of the armor, and before Nova can explain she wants him, but it’s impossible right now with how exhausted she is, how she can barely keep her eyes open, Din wordlessly lathers up his hands with her favorite, clean-smelling soap, gently raking the suds through her hair.

Nova sighs in the silence, letting her shoulders hunch over, her body weight alleviated by sagging against the warm shower walls and by the soft grip Din has on her arms, making sure she stays upward. For what feels like years, they stand together under the warm running water, reveling in the steam, the heat, without either of them needing to say anything. Din wraps Nova’s long hair up in the freshly washed towel, while she dries off the residual runoff down her arms, her thighs.

The room is cool and dark in the blue twilight, that same fog and haze sinking over the horizon. Wherever the rest of the Mandalorians went, they’ve all but disappeared off the face of the planet. Everything is an eerie kind of quiet, no bugs, no animals, no clamor, nothing that signifies any kind of sentient life outside of the castle. Most nights, that kind of awful silence makes Nova wired, like it permeates even into her dreams, but not here, not now. She has what feels like years’ worth of sleep to catch up on, and the second that Din pulls back the fluffy, silk comforter on their giant bed, Nova steps out of the towel and into the soft cocoon. Din’s barely even settled up behind her before she drifts off somewhere peaceful, somewhere that’s not here.

She sleeps. For hours, maybe days, Nova sleeps. It’s dreamless and empty, warm and safe. Usually, nightmares flicker and flash through her mind, her legs sprinting away from whatever menace or threat is chasing her, but not tonight. Nothing wakes Nova up, not the strange quiet, not Din tossing next to her, not the immeasurable weight of saving the galaxy on her shoulders. She sleeps, uninterrupted and powerfully, swaddled up under the light blue blankets that are somehow keeping all the bad things away.

In the end, it’s not a nightmare that startles her away, nor is it Din’s unshaven face pressing into the crook of her neck. It’s the sleepy, quiet beeping of her commlink, which has somehow been removed from its usual place on her wrist and is buried under the extra pillows that stand sentinel over their bed when neither Nova or Din is there.

Din, at this very moment, is also nowhere to be found, and Nova rakes a hand through her hair, tries and fails to suppress a yawn, and digs through the array of pillows on the floor until she can see the bright, red light. “Hello?” she asks, her voice still off somewhere in dreamland, and she rubs sleep from her eyes as she collapses down on the bed, body still stuck in sleep.

“Hey,” Nova hears, and it’s halfway through another yawn before she realizes it’s Cara calling. “Listen, I’d love to actually catch up, but—”

“You have news?” Nova asks, suddenly wide awake. She smooths the comforter out under her hand, crossing one of her legs underneath the other. Outside, the sky is dark.

“I have news,” Cara confirms, grimly. “I know Wedge called you to Hoth a week or so ago because there was a prison break somewhere outside of my jurisdiction.”

Nova nods before she remembers Cara can’t see her. “Yeah,” she adds, belatedly. “Yeah, but no one seemed suspicious or in league with the Order, and it was a holding cell full of minor offenders, so it was kind of a dead end.”

“Well, it was,” Cara sighs, “until it wasn’t. We were right, kind of, because no one who escaped was linked to the First Order. But the night after that prison break happened, your photo with your old name and manufactured crimes popped up as a hit from the Guild.”

Nova’s heart sinks. Something suffocating is blocking her airway, and she tries to swallow past the feeling before she can exhale. “What does that mean?” she manages, barely, hand fluttering around her necklace, pressing into the embossed star.

“Someone’s setting you up,” Cara continues, and her voice is gentler than Nova’s ever heard it. “Someone who likely knows you or Din, knows how to get under your skin. The reason why this is so dangerous is because whoever did it knows exactly what they’re doing. I’ve tried, and Karga has tried, but we can’t even identify where the hit originated from, let alone who put it out. We’re not going to stop looking, but it’s going to be hard to figure out who did it. And because the warrant is for you alive or dead…” Cara trails off, the silence buzzing and dangerous.

Nova closes her eyes before she fills in the blanks. “I’m going to be in danger anywhere I go.”

“Listen,” Cara tries, but it’s too late. Nova’s still exhausted, she’s in pain, she has no idea where Din went, and all she wants to do is to bury her face in Grogu’s head and smell his sweet, reassuring baby smell. Her heart aches. “Novalise, I’m not going to let them get to you. You have some of the strongest forces in the galaxy who’ve got your back.”

“Yeah,” Nova whispers, “and I appreciate that, Cara, I do, so much, but—but Mandalore isn’t exactly a safe haven, either. The planet knows I can use the Force, and besides that, most of the people Din’s supposed to be ruling hate our guts. I’m not scared of being left to defend myself, because it’s kind of what I’ve learned to be best at. But with what you’re telling me, there’s not a single safe place left in the galaxy for me right now.”

Cara’s silence is deafening. Nova’s heart sinks just a little bit deeper, swimming around somewhere in her stomach. “It’s not forever,” she says, but her voice is a little too glum to be anywhere near reassuring.

“I’m so tired,” Nova admits, feeling tears bubbling up at the corners of her eyes. “And I can’t rest, because that’s when someone can get me. I mean—what would you do, if you were me, Cara?”

Nova can hear Cara moving, a soft rustle underneath the comm. When she speaks again, her voice is low and clear, like she’s telling a secret that only Nova can hear. “I would do what we both know you’re going to do. You’re the rebel girl, remember?” She pauses. “So rebel.”

Nova watches as the comm clicks off, everything in her body electric, a live wire. Before she can bolt to Kicker, or try to find where Din’s hidden in the chambers of the palace, or call Wedge and tell him she’s coming back to Hoth, the door opens, and Din walks in.

“Hi,” Nova breathes, suddenly very aware she’s not wearing any clothes, which is completely ridiculous, because Din has seen, ravaged, and worshipped every inch of it. “Where were you?”

She watches as Din crosses over the floor, the low light of the day catching on his armor. He sighs, moving closer to Nova until he’s standing in between her open legs. Halfheartedly, he hooks his fingers under the rim of the helmet, but gives up completely the second Nova’s hands reach to pull it off instead. Underneath, his mustache isn’t manicured, his hair has been weighed down by the metal, and he looks about as exhausted as she feels.

“Ruling,” Din says, tiredly, and there’s a flint to it Nova hardly hears. He lets out a small scoff in the silence, and she reaches out the smooth palm of her right hand for his cheek to nestle against. “Trying to get the people of this planet to recognize I’m not here to destroy it, or that you—we’re not the enemy.” He catches his slip almost as quickly as it comes out of his mouth, but still, Nova’s heart sinks deep down in her chest again. “I didn’t—look, Nova, I’m not blaming you—”

“It’s okay,” she whispers, even though they both know it’s not. For a second, Din just stares at her, and then he presses his forehead against hers. The warmth his skin gives off is almost enough to make her forget about where they are, about the people that refuse to see her as an ally, about having to save the galaxy from forces that want her dead or for their own malicious intent. “They’ll come around,” she offers, her voice barely there, and Din shakes his head, his hair rustling against Nova’s forehead.

“What if they don’t?” Din asks, and by the weight in his voice, it’s clear he’s not just talking about Mandalore accepting her as the Mand’alor’s riduur, as an ally, as on their side, but about the infiltrated Guild that’s out to kill her, and the First Order that’s out for worse.

Nova’s quiet for a long time, just listening to him breathe, trying to map both of their heartbeats, yearning for the constellations hiding above the hazy Mandalore sky. “What if we can’t do it?” she whispers, her mouth hollow, her head aching. “Any of this? What if we can’t pull this off, Din?” She doesn’t point out the specifics, the weight of planets hanging over both of their heads. They both know what she means. The silence is horrible, but Nova keeps her eyes closed, just like she used to, predicting every move Din will make in the dark.

“Then we don’t,” Din breathes back, and Nova’s about to resist, tears springing back to life in her eyes, and then Din’s mouth is on hers and nothing else matters. She lets him sprawl her back on the bed, the smooth satin coaxing and cool under her skin. Stars are burning out behind her eyes, the same celestial imprints that flood through hyperspace, something more, something deeper, something beyond this planet, this moment, this darkness. When Din’s mouth leaves Nova’s, her eyes stay shut, and his lips trail down to her ear. “I’d give everything else up but you.”

They both know he’s lying—Din’s heart is too big, Nova’s purpose is too bright—but neither of them say it out loud. Nova keeps his words in the hollow of her mouth, something shiny and devastating, a supernova or a pearl.

Din kisses Nova like he’s never had her before, low and desperate. It’s an echo of what happened in the amphitheater just hours ago, but it’s sustained, huge, warm. His mouth is made to devour, and if he’s whispering anything to feel the silence, Nova can’t hear it. She’s focused on where his kisses are trailing, desperate and hot and everything she didn’t know she needed. It’s freezing in here, but he’s so warm, his body heat louder than the cold.

“Kiss me,” Din whispers, his voice rough, a plea. One of his hands comes up and braces against Nova’s chin, not an order, but a question. She reaches towards his neck, trying to pull him down, to anchor their bodies together. It’s dark in their room. Without the stars shining above, it’s even darker.

She’s so tired. Still, even after all that rest, it’s like the exhaustion has permeated Nova straight down to her bones. She shudders and sighs as Din moves down her naked body, his lips planting kisses that she doesn’t know she needs until he’s already there. It’s easy and devastating and wonderful and crushing all at once. When Nova tries to return the favor, Din gently pushes her down, mumbling something about taking care of her.

It’s sweet. So sweet, even, that she’s on the verge of tears. Nova would do anything to stay here forever, to feel her husband’s lips on her bare skin, washing away all of the horror, the trauma, the darkness. She doesn’t open her eyes, even though she wants to. Din’s spent so much time without his helmet to appear like one of the people that call themselves Mandalorians, and she wants to give him back every single second of the time that prying eyes stole away.

Before long, Nova’s already close—her orgasm bubbling up quietly, without fanfare, without dramatics, just because Din knows exactly how to make her body sing—and when she taps at his arm to let him know, his mouth unlatches from the small hickies he’s leaving on the terrain of her bare stomach, and moves in between her thighs.

Effortlessly, he hold her legs up, hooking both of them around his shoulders so that his tongue can stay anchored in place. Nova moans, a quiet, radiant thing, and Din’s tongue finds exactly where she needs it to go. It pulses there, on the sweetest of spots, over and over again until she’s finished.

Breathless, she claws at his pants again, but Din shakes his head, his mouth dropping to her forehead as he pulls her into bed. “Rest, Nova,” he whispers, his voice faraway, a deep rumble. He pulls her in against his body, warm and soothing, and both of them are out before their heads hit their pillow.

Din’s asleep next to her, his slow, even breaths barely anything even in all the silence. Nova wants to fall back to sleep, but she knows she can’t. Her heartbeat is running itself rampant, and she’s a tangle of wants and needs, everything pulled in opposite directions. As quietly as she can, she slides herself out from the protective warmth of Din’s arms and the comforter, gently placing her feet on the floor. Even in the cool darkness of the night, her wardrobe, sleek but huge, has nothing but clothes in the same shades of Mandalorian blue, of beskar silver, but right now, Novalise doesn’t want to be a Mandalorian. She doesn’t want to be royalty, doesn’t want to be a figurehead. She doesn’t exactly want to be a Rebel either, because both titles mean the ultimate fate of the Outer Rim and beyond in her hands, so she settles for somewhere in between.

When she’s all dressed—black monochrome right down to her scuffed boots, in a weak imitation of the Luke Skywalker style—she braids the top half of her hair back, sleek and functional, and chooses a shawl buried at the back of her closet, underneath all of the Mandalorian haze of clothing. It’s a stormy grey that shimmers with the silver her husband wears when the fabric catches the light. If you pay close enough attention to the shawl, small, intentional stitches of rust and orange are woven into the fabric, hidden, furious, tiny flames.

Not exactly Mandalorian, but not entirely Rebel, either. And when Nova looks at herself in the mirror, studying the way her eyes flash with all that fire she was so certain was gone a few minutes ago, she sees herself right down to the quick, the high wire in between—she looks something like a Jedi.

So she pulls the Skywalker family lightsaber out of the hook on her door and pulls it to her belt loop, watching as the metal sways and dances in the low light. The weapon seems ancient, like something from another world. Something holy, even though she knows Luke Skywalker is a man and not a myth.

When she closes the bedroom door behind her, Din doesn’t even move. Usually, Nova’s the loud and clumsy one, worlds more obnoxious than Din’s practiced quiet, but she’s grown into her stealth over the last few weeks, especially living here, in a palace that has more rooms than the planet does people. It’s strange and eerie here at night, down the sprawling marble stairs, and she takes the first corridor she can find, just trying to walk off some of the pressure, to put her head back on her shoulders.

It’s lit only by candlelight, an archaic, flickering warmth, so in contrast to the rest of the steel and metal that Mandalore is made up of. It’s like she’s stepped into something that’s been around for years, even though she knows that it’s not possible. Mandalore was sieged, usurped, sieged again, razed and brought to the ground, destroyed. The planet’s atmosphere is mostly ash and haze, all that leftover war from years ago. But this part of the palace looks older, like a tomb that somehow survived.

It’s too creepy, Nova decides, even though the curious part of her is itching to explore it. She wants to pore through every aspect of it, try to find remnants of lost Mandalore, like her father used to unearth texts, like her mother used to excavate history. Before the war, before the Alliance was necessary, before all this death and darkness. When Nova comes out the other end of the corridor, she’s right next to the intimidating double doors of the war room, the holiest place Mandalore has. She pulls her shawl a little closer to her body, trying to retain the warmth she left back upstairs, trying to hold onto a memory more than anything tangible.

Nova isn’t intending to slip into the war room, let alone walk towards the sprawling dais that holds the beskar throne, but she does. It’s still quiet, so quiet, and the dark is coaxing her closer, pulling her up the steps, something beyond a simple want or need. She has the sneaking suspicion that she’s not supposed to be in here, not this late, not without Din, not when she has no legal or physical right to this place, but when she sits down on the throne, something deeper echoes out from within her chest.

It feels like a hymn and a battle cry. Before she has a second to adjust, to rationalize anything, everything becomes starry and disconnected. It’s been so long since she had a Force vision this immediate, this intense, and it hurls her through the proverbial hyperspace, everything dropping away.

It takes three steps forward in this strange, terrifying liminal space before Nova can even identify what’s scaring her. It’s the same kind of evil she felt way back on Takodana, before she was married to the ruler of a planet, before she even knew it was her destiny to be both Rebel and Jedi. There’s a mask she doesn’t recognize, twisted and devious. Behind its menacing, blank expression is something horrifying. Looking into the visor, it’s like her own soul is being fractured into pieces.

It’s humanoid until it’s not. The figure wearing the mask of destruction is tall, easily a foot taller than she is, horrible and menacing. But when the lightsaber they’re using ignites, it’s scarier than the vision of the person at all. It’s awful. It looks like it was forged out of lava, menacing red, the blade flickering and hissing in a way that’s somehow even more terrifying than the stark contrast of the Darksaber’s blade. Nova gasps, the light too bright, too sudden, and she can feel the residual thud on the floor, even in the vision. She knows when she comes out of it, she’ll be hurt, but the blade is getting closer. It looks like a giant rapier, a sword made only for evil things. At the hilt, spraying out in both directions, the blade extends. When the figure in the mask swings, it’s without remorse, so quick, so terrible.

But Nova’s not the target. She rolls away, out of the strike zone, and then she hears Luke Skywalker’s voice cutting through the darkness. She turns, and suddenly she’s not in the horror of the vision, anymore. She doesn’t know where she is. The ground looks icy, like Hoth, but there’s red powder spit everywhere, vomited across giant salt deposits. It’s so bright that her hand comes up in front of her eyes, and when she lowers it, Luke is gone. She’s gone, too. She turns around, hair whipping in the furious wind, trying to find where her name is being cried, and she trips over a mound on the salty ground, and when she falls to her knees, it’s a person, newly slain. The blood is so red, redder than the powder, redder than the evil lightsaber. It drowns through the lines on her hands, slips through her long fingers. She screams, trying to back up from the body, and then she realizes it’s Bo-Katan, gurgling through the slit in her throat, and when Nova tries desperately, in vain, to buffer the blood spilled, Luke Skywalker calls her name again.

But it’s not Luke. It is him—for a second, for the tiniest fraction of a moment—but then it’s not. His lightsaber floods with red, cancelling out the green light. The hallway flickers, once, twice, and then Darth Vader is charging towards her, and all Nova can hear is her blood pounding frantically in her ears and his heavy breathing through his mask, the sound that used to fill all of her nightmares. She’s slamming on the door at the other end of the hallway, and when it opens, the only person standing there isn’t a person at all, but a small alien baby all of two feet tall, green and adorable, and Nova drops her body around her son, protective and sobbing, curling every single inch of her around his tiny little frame, trying to shield him from Vader’s wrath, but when she cries, the vision changes again.

She can feel the motion sickness bubbling up in her stomach, horrible and nauseating. When Nova lands, she doesn’t open her eyes. She’s seen more than enough. Even right now, in the middle of her Force vision, all she wants to do is go back to sleep. She can feel the ache she slept away burrowing right back into her bones. Her scar is pulsing, enraged and angry. The headache she spent the last two and a half weeks fighting off is back, radiating straight down to behind her left eye. It’s all too much, and she can’t look. She doesn’t want to see anything else.

“Novalise,” she hears again, and the only reason she opens her eyes this time is because it’s her mother speaking. Her mother, who only ever called her Andromeda. Her mother, who spent half her life in the stars. Her mother, long dead. Her mother, who never got to know this version of her daughter, this Jedi-in-training, royal Rebel Girl that just desperately needs a hug from her mom.

“Mom,” she cries, and it’s so white. Everything here is antiseptic and deafening. It doesn’t even look like a planet, or even a room, or anything at all. She’s not even sure if there’s a floor, but Nova starts running like she’s never ran before in her life. Her breath is ragged and coming out in bursts. The jiggle in her chest and thighs burn under her speed, but she doesn’t care. She’s racing towards her mother, towards open arms, towards everything she’s been cheated out of for the last ten years.

It lasts for a second. Just a second. The figure is Piper Maluev, her skin dark and radiant, her hair down to her waist. Her lips are wide open and welcoming, her eyes crinkled at the seams. She’s tall and radiant and strong, and she’s everything Nova’s missed for nearly half her life.

And then it isn’t Piper. It’s not Luke, either, or Darth Vader, or whoever the dark, terrible, masked figure was. It’s not her usual nightmare transformation of Jacterr Calican. It’s not Bo-Katan, convulsing and dying. It’s Din. Just for a moment, a tiny fraction of relief, and then it’s not Din, either.

It’s a woman Nova’s never seen before, and her hand is clamped firmly around Nova’s windpipe. Like it’s nothing, she pulls her right off the disappearing floor and choking the life out of her. Her eyes are light but so terrifyingly menacing, her hair is a mess of a dark blonde. She’s pale and awful and her face is gleeful as she pulls the life out of Nova, a sucking, open wound.

She can’t talk. She doesn’t even want to plead for her life. If she’s this close to death anyway, and she just saw her mother, Nova figures there’s a pretty damn good chance that both of her parents are just over the other side. The woman is so happy to be killing Nova off, she doesn’t want to fight it. When her grip recedes, just for a half a second, Nova chokes out a confession that makes everything else grind to a halt.

It’s four words. Barely anything. Tears are streaming down her cheeks when her lips finally open. “I want my mom.”

Then she’s being dropped onto the floor, which very much exists now, and the light room filled with nothingness curls away, receding like it’s being burned. It’s dark in here, the tiled floor slippery and treacherous. In the background, there’s a makeshift trophy made from what looks like bones. Nova’s gasping for air, fighting back with a newfound vigor, kicking her legs helplessly to try and get some leverage on this woman who wants her dead, when, suddenly, she’s at eye level with her.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she seethes, a terrifying smile still spread across her horrible, beautiful face. “When I find you, you’re going to be begging for your life instead of your death.”

“Who—who are you?” Nova manages, through agony. Her shoulders hurt. Her headache feels like it’s trying to split her jaw in half. Her scar feels like it’s being reopened. Everything is torture, and she can’t even breathe.

“You’ll see,” the woman whispers, and her voice is so deadly that Nova internally corrects every time she’s ever called Bo-Katan venomous. Bo-Katan Kryze is a flower. One of the iridescent, gorgeous ones, that lined all the brush on Yavin, the ones Nova’s spent years pressing into the pages of every journal she’s ever owned. She’s kind and lovely and Nova’s very best friend, and when she gets out of this alive, Nova’s going to tell Bo-Katan that. “I’m going to enjoy killing you, Andromeda.”

Nova heaves one giant breath into her lungs, trying to muster up anything that she can, even if it’s just more air. “I—” she starts, and the woman smiles again, loaded and dangerous. “I—I already did that, you miserable bitch,” Nova manages, and when she’s slammed into the awful floor, it’s worth it. There’s some kind of desperation behind the woman’s eyes, now and when her hand finds Nova’s throat again, she spits in her face.

And then she’s out of it. Hurtled out of it, actually, like a dying starfighter in the middle of space. She gasps and heaves on the floor, and as her sight comes back, her breathing does, too. Her head is still killing her. Her shoulders feel like they’re trying to carry the entire weight of Mandalore. Her scar is awful, white-hot and painful to the touch. Somewhere, distantly, her knees hurt like she’s fallen to them, and when she gains back her sense of sight and the feeling of her life being choked out of her body subsides, Nova realizes she has fallen to them. She’s fallen a lot, actually, down multiple steps leading to the floor from the raised platform where she was once sitting in the beskar throne. Nova shudders, inhaling through a terrible wheeze, curling her legs up close to her chest, trying to shake off the absolute shitshow that just hurtled her through the most traumatic Force vision she’s ever had.

“You,” comes a booming, rueful voice, and when Nova’s eyes flutter open, she’s expecting it to be the malicious, purple-haired woman from her vision. Her eyes take a second to adjust, her left one throbbing from the horrid ache pulsing behind it, and when she finally locates the source, it’s the miserable man from the gathering earlier.

“Can I help you?” Nova asks, her voice shooting up at the end, on the verge of tears.

“You aren’t supposed to be up there,” he spits, and Nova squints up at the throne she’d just fallen from.

“I know,” she whispers, dully. She presses a shaking hand to the ache behind her eye, trying to shut out this conversation like she wishes she’d ignored the vision. She tries to stand up, but her knees are too bruised to sustain pulling her to her feet, so she just slumps back against the step she’s on, trying to muster all the strength she has in her exhausted body to not break down. “I’m sorry,” Nova tacks on, the words barely there. “I—I wasn’t intending to sit here, or even come in the room, it just—”

“Happened,” he finishes, oddly calm. His voice sounds closer. Much closer. Nova opens her right eye, and he’s only at the bottom of the staircase. There’s something so wretched and dangerous about the energy he’s giving off, and she wants to run, but she’s in no position to even stand, let alone fight him off, so she just sits there, curling her knees into her chest, pulling her shawl as tight as she can against her upper body. “You’re an abomination.”

A laugh, the traitorous thing, bubbles up inside Nova’s throat. It’s not funny. It’s not. It’s pathetic, and likely racially motivated, but she can’t help herself. Her ribs ache, like they got banged up in her distant fall down these sharp, steep marble steps. “That, surprisingly, is not the first time I’ve been called an abomination in my life.”

“Do you know what the Jedi did to our people, little girl?” He’s angry. Nova can hear it in his voice. And normally, it would scare her, trigger her fight or flight reflex, keep her moving, but after her paranormal face-off with two of the scariest figures she’s ever seen, this one isn’t really that high up on our list. “I do. You were eradicated for good reason. You scorched our planet down to nothing, and now you and your cult leader husband come back here and try to take over? Not on my watch.”

Nova can feel him getting closer. He’s so much bigger than she is, up close, tall and buff, menacing and taut. She weakly pulls her hand away from her eye, trying to at the very least give him her full attention, but she’s so fucking tired. It’s in her bones, at this point. She doesn’t want to be royalty. She doesn’t want to be a Rebel. And, in contrast to what the man in front of her is screaming, she doesn’t want to be a Jedi.

She wants to be the Novalise she was on Naator, with nothing but domesticity and yellow leaves and pink skies. She wants to be the protector she was out there in hyperspace. And, for the first time in ten years, she wants to be Andromeda Maluev, fifteen and gleeful, running around Yavin knowing the stars were her destiny and that evil could always be defeated.

“I don’t even want to be here,” Nova whispers, finally, and it’s like something inside her breaks.

“Good,” the man spits, “then we’re in agreement.” And then his hands are yanking away the hood of her shawl and tangling in her braided hair. Nova’s scream gets cut off as she’s thrown down the rest of the stairs, like her body’s giving up. She chokes out something horrible, fighting to get to her bruised, banged up knees, sore from the fall, aching from the blissful time riding Din’s face less than an hour ago, but she can’t summon the strength. Somewhere, she knows Luke Skywalker is yelling at her to use the Force, but Nova’s had enough force today to last a lifetime. When she’s kicked in the stomach, brutal and awful, she just curls in on herself, hoping her death isn’t a slow one. He startles towards her again, ripping her shawl off of her body, clawing at the meat of her upper arm, and something snaps inside of her. If she’s going to die, really die, it’s not because she succumbed to the injuries this rabid Mandalorian is giving her to try and put the blame on her shoulders. She survived Moff Gideon. She survived Din and Grogu leaving her. She survived her parents dying. And she survived the abuse of Jacterr Calican’s awful hands. Novalise can survive this.

When her lightsaber roars to life in her hands, it’s not only Nova swinging. She can feel the weight of what it being the Skywalker family lightsaber, of Luke and Leia before her, of his father before him, of all the generations yet to come to wield this weapon, this holy sword, this impossible thing. It takes all of her energy, a brilliant beam of blue light, and then she falls to the floor, knowing that even if this is where it ends, that she fought back.

Everything next comes in flashes. It’s in these tiny fractals like what happened when the Crest had died right over Dagobah and crashed to the surface. She sees a blade ignite, and in between the rhythm of her fading in and out of consciousness, Nova thinks she’s just watching herself fight the man back. Suddenly, he drops to the floor, his body nothing but dead weight, and she wants to scream, but she’s back out. It’s horrible and deafening. She’s being scooped up, she can feel that. She’s crying. She’s definitely crying. There are voices, loud ones. When she has enough strength to open her eyes again, Din is slamming his gloved fist against the airlock on Kicker, his voice frantic. She can’t make out what he’s saying, though, and another face appears above her. Din gently transfers Nova’s limp body into someone else’s arms, and when Nova looks up, it’s Bo-Katan, her face so panicked it’s almost impossible to recognize who it is.

“Nova, you gotta stay awake,” Bo-Katan whispers, her palm slapping softly at Nova’s cheek. “C’mon, I mean it. If you die here on this planet you hate, I will haunt you in the afterlife. I swear, you have to stay awake.”

“I don’t—” Nova starts, and Bo-Katan shakes her head.

“You literally should not be talking,” Bo-Katan says, her eyesight dipping to Nova’s neck. Her eyes widen for a second and then her smooth fingers ghost over the outline. Nova coughs at her light touch, and she realizes that the marks from the vision she had of being choked within an inch of her life are here, that they followed her back out of the vision and into this moment. “Nova, no, shut up, I’m serious—”

“I don’t—don’t hate Mandalore,” she manages, her voice sounding like shards of glass, and Bo-Katan offers her a hasty, worried smile.

“You do,” Bo-Katan argues, but her voice is so gentle. “But don’t worry, princess, we’re getting you the hell off of it. No complaints now that you’re off Mandalore, you got it? The second you got here, I knew both of you wanted to leave.”

Din’s at her side again, and Bo-Katan kneels down, gently placing Nova in her familiar tangle of blankets and pillows. Nova’s eyes close again, and when they slide back open, Bo-Katan is standing, trading worried glances and hushed tones with Din.

Nova’s head hurts. So bad. It’s splitting down the middle of her skull, actually, but all she can do is press a hand over her eye and try to block out the familiar low light of the ship that smells more like home than this entire planet ever had.

“Listen, about what I told you back on Hoth—”

“It’s fine,” Din cuts her off, and his next few words are warbled. “I get it. Your allegiance is to Mandalore, not to us.”

Nova can’t hear Bo-Katan’s answer. In fact, she’s not even sure if there’s even words being spoken, because the next time she looks up, Bo-Katan is just staring down at her, incredibly concerned, such an obvious change from her usually stoic expression. Nova’s whole body feels like it’s on fire. She’s exhausted. Bo-Katan kneels down again, just for a split second, to pull the loose end of Nova’s shawl over the rest of her folded body. Nova wants to cry.

“Flower,” she garbles, nonsensically. She’s trying to tell Bo-Katan that she’s sorry for all the animosity, that she trusts her, and more than that, she likes her. It doesn't make a single lick of sense to anyone outside of Nova’s head, but Bo-Katan offers a tiny smile anyway.

“Here,” Din says, stiffly, holding out the sheathed blade of the Darksaber to Bo-Katan. Nova’s eyes flutter closed, just for a beat, and when they open back up, Bo-Katan is pushing the weapon back into Din’s grip.

“It’s not mine,” she insists. “Besides, you’re not getting out of it that easy. You’ll be back.”

“Bo-Katan—”

“Take care of her,” Bo-Katan interrupts. Nova blacks out again until they’re up in hyperspace. Din’s body is shielding her from the cold, his limbs draped all over the places that hurt the least. When she opens her eyes, they’re floating through the cosmos, and all her eyes can see is sweet, sweet stardust.

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