#realizing the public has no context for this but f it we ball

[doodledrawsthings]

Silly little collab for a crossover AU between my Don't Worry About It AU and @gensational's Corruption of the Innovator AU that we've been playing around with in discord. Made the animatic as a warm up and some friends voiced it. Based on a bit from Brooklyn 99. Yi Voiced by @arcanilumia Eigong Voiced by @possessable

[amiedala]

SOMETHING MORE (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 20: Desperation

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: violence, sex, (they do things in semi-public so voyeurism sort of???) lemme know if anything else needs to be tagged please!!

SUMMARY: He pats your cheeks and you look up at him, letting him tuck rogue hair behind your ears. “That was way too close, Nova,” Din hisses, pressing the cold metal of the visor against your forehead. “Way too fucking close.”

“I survived, didn’t I?” you ask, and you’re not trying to question him, but it comes out that way, loose and aggressive. “You—you got away. We got the bounties and we got away, Gideon didn’t touch me—”

“He got pretty damn close,” Din snarls, barreling over you. “Too close. I’m never putting you that close to danger again.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: HAPPY SOMETHING MORE SATURDAY MY LOVES!!! this chapter is dedicated to all of you, thank you SO much for sticking it out for the two week wait while i put my full energy into finals!! i hope that you love this one; it's full of action and angst (and sex)! i am all finished with all my finals now, so i should be able to get chapter 21 up next weekend, Saturday the 15th, but it's the day before i graduate so i'll keep everyone updated on here and tiktok (padmeamydala)!!!

HOPE YOU ENJOYYYYYYYYY!!! <3

*

You’ve always known Din’s eyes were warm, soulful, filled with life beyond the opaqueness of the visor, and you’ve always yearned for a glimpse for them. To see the way he looks at you, how hungry his gaze is, how full of light, how quiet yet radiant they were. Not anymore. You’d trade it all to go back five seconds in time, to stop lifting the stupid metal ball in the air with your mind. To never see the look of betrayal that’s locked on you like a laser beam, horrified and dark.

The ball drops to the floor. It sounds so much louder than it actually is, and the squeaks that come out of your mouth along with the clatter are almost deafening. “I—”

“You’re—you can use the Force?” Din asks, expressive brows scrunched together in confusion, his eyes fluttering between you, the baby, and the ball the two of you can move with thought alone. Your heart is tangled up in your throat.

“I didn’t know—” you say, breath shallow, heart hammering something horrible in your chest, “that’s what it was—I—I swear, Din, I justdid this for the f—first time, I didn’t know—” you swallow, the feeling of it thick and immovable in your throat. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t keeping it from you, I just found out I could even do this—”

“The blaster,” he interrupts, and the hands that you’re emphasizing your poorly delivered point with fall limp at your sides. “On Coruscant. That’s how it flew out of Xi’an’s hands.”

You wince. “Yes. But—”

“You’ve known for days?” he asks, voice funny in disbelief. Maker, you feel your heart breaking in your chest. “Why—why didn’t you tell me, Nova?”

There are tears now, forming hot and heavy at the corners of your eyes. “Danger. I’m dangerous. The baby,” you say, swinging your shaking pointer finger to his little green body, trying not to focus on how big and scared his eyes are, “the baby—he’s being hunted by everyone who knows about him. T—there aren’t Jedi left, and something the baby has makes him—” you swallow, trying to wet the tip of your tongue, “—a target. Vulnerable. And that means someone is always chasing after you. I didn’t know that what I could do—and feel—was because of the Force, I just thought I could—do strange things, and once I figured out the other day that I could use it…I’m a target too. I’m a liability. I’m—I’m putting you in danger if I use it.”

He’s still staring at you, completely bewildered. You can feel how large the ache is inside your chest.

“Din,” you start, and he shakes his head at you. You swallow, eyes roving down his body, over the pockmarks and lines of scars you’ve sewn back up, the flesh that he’s only ever let you see, and you can’t help the tears from falling now.

“You’re a target,” Din interrupts, voice faraway and strangled.

“If I use it,” you whisper, “if anyone c—can sense it, they’d probably want me, too.”

“You lied to me,” he says, and you blink at the accusation. Not only because it came from his bare mouth, but because it’s true. You’re not even sure what you lied about, but you know the weight of it, how affronted he sounds, how he’s made it a point to never lie to you, and how much truth means to him.

“I—” you start again, desperate, teary-eyed, and then the bounty puck he has strapped against his armor, strewn across the floor of the Crest, starts blinking, furious and red.

Before you can say anything else, Din’s redressing, pulling clothes from where they landed and snapping the beskar into place. He gives you one more look, betrayed and dark, before he roughly pulls the helmet back over his head, climbing the ladder. You exchange teary looks with the baby, and then you pull him to your chest, feeling his warmth radiate against your skin as you hoist the both of you up through the hole in the floor, trying to squash your tears from where they’re still falling from your eyes. Wordlessly, you sink into the copilot’s seat, running your shaky fingers over the peach fuzz on the baby’s little green head, trying to soothe yourself more than you’re trying to soothe him.

Your eyes feel like the galaxy’s worst reflecting pool as you watch the back of Din’s helmet, the beskar dark and impenetrable as he navigates out of Yavin’s starry atmosphere, shooting the Crest into the crush of space. The quiet beeping on the dashboard is the only noise for what feels like lifetimes, and you bite down hard on your lip as he pushes the ship into warp, and you close your eyes against the hurtling blue around you.

It’s quiet again. You don’t know how to fill it in a way that won’t make the situation worse, so you just worry your hand over the baby’s head and try not to make a sound. Finally, the ship pulls out of warp, and you see the scarred atmosphere of a planet, radiating a ring of blue around red and tan notches. You’ve never been here. It looks alien. Silently, Din navigates the ship down onto the surface, and you try to modulate your breathing, try to let the air hang in the way he clearly wants it. You haven’t seen him so stoic since you first boarded the Razor Crest, what feels like a lifetime ago. You can still see the outline of his face every time you close your eyes—his beautiful brown eyes, the shape of his nose, the softness of his lips—and then, in every reimagining, it morphs into betrayal.

When he lands, Din stays sitting in the pilot’s chair for so long that you think he won’t ever move again. Shallowly, your breath catches in your throat when the bounty puck starts blinking, and, abruptly, he rises up. He towers over you. Even when you’re standing with your body pressed up against yours, he completely eclipses you.

“You’re Force sensitive?” he asks, and his voice, modulated and quiet, is completely flat.

You nod, swallowing before you can answer. “Yes.”

Din’s staring at you, still, under the helmet. “Good,” he says, “that makes it easy.” He’s down the ladder before you can even process what he’s said, eyebrows furrowed down the middle of your forehead.

“W—what?” you say, gently placing the baby in his cradle, trying to climb down as fast as you can, before Din disappears with absolutely zero context. “Makes what easy?” you say, voice almost completely gone, heart pounding something dangerous and horrible inside your chest.

The puck starts blinking again. Furiously. You look at it, and back up at Din, seeing how incessantly it reflects in his visor, how obscured he is from you.

“I have to go,” he says, and his tone is still so flat, so detached from where he’s standing, close enough to feel the heat radiating off your body.

“O—okay,” you manage, completely and utterly confused. Before you can react, Din steps in closer, reaches a gloved hand around to the small of your back to anchor you against the beskar. Before you can react, before you can apologize, before you can do anything, he presses the metal of the helmet up against your forehead. Your eyes flutter closed, trying to savor every single millisecond that Din spends embracing you, and when he wrenches himself away, it’s far too soon.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promises, and you watch, wordless, as the gangplank descends.

You watch him walk away, disappear into the haze, every shiny inch of his body gone. “Be safe,” you manage, finally, before you let yourself cry again.

It’s been hours. Maybe. It could be a handful of minutes, or a collection of days, and you wouldn’t know. You’re alone and listless against the wall of the Crest, the same one you’ve frequented whenever Din leaves and the same one you’ve shared when he comes back. It feels like it’s been full moon cycles that you’ve cried out, the way that your heart aches in your chest. Like something rotten, like a festered wound.

You made the wrong choice. You know it by the way the guilt aches and hangs over you, a dark storm cloud. You should have told Din the truth from the second you realized that all your intuition was something more than just knowledge and empathy. When you first started seeing the visions. Okay, maybe not the one in the cave on Dagobah, because that was clearly the planet’s doing, that wicked gnarltree, but the ones after. When you protected him from Xi’an, when you fell into the baby’s vision back on Balnab. Maybe that’s why the bounties—and the subsequent stormtroopers—found you so easily. Maybe you were an amplifier, and maybe you have been this whole time, putting Din and the baby in danger before you even realized what sick power you hold.

The baby toddles over to you a few times, his eyes big and expressive. You let him settle in on your lap, rub your fingers over his fuzzy head, but everything inside you is dark and heavy and exhausted. You sit in silence, hallucinating that your commlink is beeping on your wrist, hallucinating that Din’s voice comes through the darkness to pull you out of it. You just sit and let yourself fester, marinate in all the ache, for what feels like forever. Eventually, the Crest gets even darker, and you know that wherever you are, whatever planet Din’s landed the ship on, it’s nightfall. You hate how empty and eternal the Crest is when he leaves, and this time, it just feels like an unrelenting blackness that you’ve been forced to surrender to.

Eventually, you let yourself sit back up against the wall instead of your melodramatic slump on the Crest’s floor, and, later still, you make your way over to the small pantry where the stockpile of food has been dwindling. There’s not much freshness left, so you eat up the small handfuls of fruit and vegetables teetering on the line of spoiling and pour one of the larger broth packets into the bowl for the baby. He laps it up twice as fast as you’re able to digest all your food, and you push some small red berries towards him, encouraging him to eat something that isn’t just thin soup. When you both finish, you slog yourself towards the fresher, washing out the remnants from your bowls and utensils. Your reflection is an even sorrier state than you imagined—the corners of your eyes are laden with the crustiness of old tears, your cheeks are sunken and inflamed from crying, your hair a mess in your face.

“Get it together,” you whisper, and when even your voice comes up broken, you sigh noisily. The water in the faucet doesn’t come out strong enough for your liking, but it’s cold enough to splash the remnants of your afternoon spent sobbing off your face. When you finish, you just want to sleep—you’re tired and your head is pulsing—but the baby is still wide awake, giant expressive eyes filled with all of the emotion you’ve been trying to purge and avoid.

“I’m okay, bug,” you say, your voice still coming out weakened, the syllables splitting in half. “Can we sleep, please?”

He shakes his head. You sigh, compromising by sinking down to the floor so you’re as close enough to eye level as you’re going to get.

“Baby,” you reiterate, “I am literally begging you. Let’s just sleep until your daddy comes back, huh?”

He blinks at you with those giant, sentient eyes like he suddenly can’t understand a single damn word you’re saying. It’s impressive, really, how stubborn he can be when he wants to. It’s a mystery where he picked that one up. Certainly, it couldn’t have been from his shiny father, man of few words and fewer agreements. You squint at him. He squints back.

“What do you want?” you ask, eyes roaming over the floor for his metal ball. He perks up when you roll it towards him, watching as it levitates from the floor to the air between the two of you as his tiny green hand rises. You don’t know how long he suspends it there before he looks over at you, and you shake your head. “No. I’m not using it again.”

The baby makes a noise, and you sigh, throwing your head back. You’re not setting a very good example—you’re being stubborn and tense and short-tempered, and you know how easily the kid picks up and embodies mannerisms of the people around him—but you’re exhausted, and you’re half-heartbroken, and your fiancé just found out you were keeping the biggest secret in the galaxy from him, and now he’s out there searching for a bounty on this unfamiliar wasteland of a planet.

“I can’t use it again,” you repeat, gentler, “it puts you and your dad in danger, bug, I—I’m not going to be the reason to do that.”

He looks up at you, ears down in sorrow, big eyes wide and filled with the same tears you feel building in yours again. His little green hand, still outstretched, flaps just the tiniest bit, and you reach out your own to meet him in the middle. You don’t know what else to say or how else to say it, but you’re so exhausted. When he steps closer, and his hand slips out of yours, you don’t have the foresight to stop him. His palm presses directly up against your forehead, and, for once, you don’t fight it. You let the vision come.

It’s dark. Darker than it was before, the entire planet clouded and shrouded by deep, impenetrable fog. You can hear the cries of people around you, but you can’t see farther than a few inches. Somewhere, you can hear—or feel, or sense—the pulse and whine of those white lightsabers, and you know that shrouded figure who wields them is somewhere in the fog. When you turn to find the source, the vision shifts. You see Din with his beskar staff, fighting with the same woman you saw in your last one, and you’re on the ground, writhing and desperate to get to him. And then, as you roll over to get up, the vision shifts once more. It isn’t Din and his spear, you’re on a vessel that looks too closely like an Imperial cruiser. Your heart catches in your throat as the image in front of you takes shape. It’s not Din. It’s Moff Gideon, tall, enshrouded, and dangerous. He pulls something out, a weapon, and you throw both hands up over your head in a sad attempt to protect yourself, but before you can shield your eyes, you see the blade ignite. It’s not a lightsaber. It’s in the same family, maybe, but it’s pulsating and wicked, the outline shifting and crackling with stark black electricity. You gasp, skittering backward, and when your hand meets something that isn’t the cool metal of the ship’s interior, you see the baby, scared and handcuffed, and before you can protect him, the beskar of Din’s spear appears out of absolutely nowhere and clashes against Gideon’s blade, and then the vision is over.

“Hey,” you say, voice shaky, opening your eyes to the familiarity of the Crest, close enough to your makeshift bed to grab blankets and pull them over your lap. You’re freezing, suddenly, heart hammering in your chest. “Hey, baby—what was that? W—why do you keep showing me that? Are you in danger? Are wein danger?”

He just stares at you, eyes wide and scared. You try to coax your heartbeat back to a resting pulse rate, and then you gather his little green body up in your arms, pressing his head against your chest. You’re still breathing heavily, and you can feel how hard he’s wheezing, his breath hot and scared in your ear. You pull him closer.

“Bug,” you say, again, trying for both his sake and yours to keep your voice level, “is that a premonition? Is—is that going to happen?”

You can’t hear him, can’t see him shake his head, but you know he’s answering you. Yes.

“How soon?” you ask, trying not to convey anything anxious and terrified to him—through your mind, through the Force, however you’re communicating with him right now. “Is it on this planet?”

No. It’s not. You know, somehow, that it’s not.

“How c—how can I make sure that you don’t get separated from us, sweetness?”

Nothing. There’s nothing. You even pull his face away from where it’s buried in your collarbone to try to understand, to search for the answers that had so easily been in your head beforehand, but he looks just as confused and scared as you feel. You sigh, letting him nuzzle up against you again, trying your hardest to not ruminate on the fact that you’re in danger, hard, unavoidable danger, that everything you’ve seen over the past few months, everything you’ve been terrified of—is almost tangible, almost close enough to touch.

Your wrist blinks, and it’s so startling in the darkness that you audibly gasp. It startles the baby, too, before he leans back, sleepy and quiet against your shoulder. You’re not sure how long that you’ve been out—if you’ve even slept at all, because everything in your chest is still heavy and full of grief.

“Hello?” you whisper into the darkness of the hull, pulse quickening when you remember Din’s the one on the end of the line.

“It’s me,” he says, low and quiet, and for some reason, that makes everything in you return back to normal.

“I know,” you answer, your lips contorting into half of a smile. “Are you okay?”

He’s quiet, for a second, and you sit in silence, even though it still feels so loud. “Just wanted to hear your voice.”

“What time is it?” you yawn, rubbing at your left eye with the heel of your hand. “How long have you been gone?”

“Dark,” Din answers, and you don’t have the energy to argue with him that’s not a real time, and you just smile against his voice again. “I’ve been away for six or seven hours.”

“When are you coming back?” you ask, and the question sits heavy like it used to, before you knew you loved each other. Before you knew he wanted to marry you. Before he knew you had the Force.

“As soon as I can, cyar’ika,” he mumbles, and for some reason, that makes tears well up in your eyes again. “Go to sleep.”

“Is it even night?” you yawn again, settling back into the nest you’ve made for you and the baby in all the blankets on the floor. “Like—is the sun up on this planet? Or is it…um…dark?”

“Did you just—need to ask if it was dark to describe night?” Din asks, and, Maker, there’s relief flooding through you at the shape of his smile.

“I said night first,” you insist, but you’re already so cozy huddled back up on the floor, and the baby’s wheezing out of his nose, and it may or may not be nighttime, and Din’s voice is in your ear. And he’s not betrayed right now. His eyes are probably crinkled up inside the helmet as he laughs, his mouth pink and open. You pull the pillow closer under your head, the baby shifting against your chest. “Din? Din. I said night first. I need you to know that I asked if it was night first. Okay?”

“Night first,” Din echoes, sighing as he settles in against whatever corner of the planet he’s on. “I got it, Nova. Go to sleep.”

“Is it night?” you yawn, and night doesn’t even sound like a word anymore. You don’t think that any of the syllables feel correct in your mouth, but you’re half asleep with Din’s voice up against your ear, and you don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world that you cannot understand the full context of nighttime. “You know, out on the planet?”

“No,” Din says, and you blink yourself awake. “Technically, it’s early morning.”

“Formality,” you whisper, sinking back down into the sweet, warm embrace of your blankets, “technicality. That’s a technicality, Din. It’s nighttime. Sleep time. Do you understand?”

“Mandalorians don’t adhere to nighttime being sleep time,” Din argues, and your heart is doing cartwheels with how light his voice is, how easily he’s talking, how he doesn’t sound betrayed anymore. It’s like the first time he’d left when the two of you first got together—warm, happy, new.

“You lie,” you yawn, curling up, close to the baby. “Mandalorians do. Bounty hunters don’t.”

“Hard to tell,” Din counters, “I’m both.”

“Go sleepy,” you say, which isn’t even a real sentence, and you hear him laugh against the commlink, and then you’ve faded off into dreamland.

When you wake up, your comm is blinking. You startle, kicking the blanket up from where it’s tucked around your feet, heart hammering loud and intense. “Yeah?” you squeak into it, voice rough around the edges with sleep, trying to coax your heartbeat back to its normal rhythm.

“Are you awake?”

“Am now,” you say, grabbing the baby up and placing him in this cradle so you don’t scramble over him in the darkness. “Wh—do you need me to pick you up?”

“No,” Din says, “I’m outside.”

You blink. “What?”

“I’m outside,” he repeats, and you look around in complete bewilderment, trying to reconcile the image of him outside of the Crest and the sound of him in your ear. “Open the airlocks.”

“You have your heat signature,” you say, stumbling over to where the control panel is, “can’t you unlock it by your sheer—hotness alone?”

“Hotness,” Din repeats, flat.

“I’m allowed to call you hot,” you say, affronted, before you realize that he means that you said the wrong conjugation of the word. “Oh.”

“Oh, indeed,” Din says, and then the gangplank lowers, and you’re staring at him. He’s tall and he’s so shiny, shimmering in the atmosphere of the planet, and all you want to do is run into his arms.

“Bounty?”

“Not caught,” Din confirms, and you walk a few steps forward until you can touch him. “I have eyes on him, but he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

You look up at him, confused, still blinking around the sleep that’s still in the corners of your eyes. Din’s arm wraps around you, pulls you into the beskar, and you let out a breath, content. “What…do you mean, exactly?”

“He’s at an inn,” Din says, and starts leading you outside of the ship. “Come on.”

“Din,” you counter, looking back and forth to the planet’s surface to the dark interior of the Crest, “I am really not understanding what you mean.”

Din sighs, low and easy, and stops halfway down the gangplank. “His girlfriend showed up. I saw them get a room at an inn in town, and I put a direct tracker on his bag as I walked by him. He’s going to be in there for at least an hour. I know where he is. I know where he’s going. I want to show you something. Come on.”

You stare at him, eyebrow still furrowed. “You’re not—grabbing the bounty because…because he’s having sex?”

“His crime wasn’t horrible. Figured I’d give him an hour,” Din shrugs, and you blink at him, completely blank. “What?”

“You have gone soft, Mandalorian,” you say, looking up at him, letting his hand fall into yours, the yellow pads of his gloved thumbs grazing over the gaps in your fingers. “You’re giving up a bounty so he can get it on? Are you the same man who froze the one you struck a deal with back in the Mid Rim just because you wanted to fuck me?”

“I’d want every last second with you,” Din says, and everything in your melts. His head is cocked at you, and your stomach does somersaults with how you know he’s looking at you under there.

“Oh,” you manage, and then he starts moving, and the shimmering horizon of a small city appears before you. You’re distracted by its glitter—just a bit, but its enough to keep your attention—and you keep moving, wordless, stumbling through the ground’s terrain. “What are we doing here?” you whisper, watching as the people you pass keep their gaze trained on the both of you—the shiny Mandalorian, and the girl walking twice as fast trying to keep up with his long strides.

“Clothes,” Din says, and you’re still not awake enough to understand what he means. “The ones that I promised you four planets ago.”

“Oh,” you echo again, and then your eyes travel down to what you’re wearing, and you nod. Everything starts clicking into place. Why you’re here, why he returned to the Crest to pick you up, why he let the man he’s hunting down have a quickie in this inn with his girlfriend. Din’s showing you the thing he promised you when he proposed—he’d drop it—all of it, the bounties, the hunt, the armor—for you. You swallow around tears again, before you even realize they’re there.

Slowly, the town comes into view. The planet’s atmosphere is similar to Tatooine’s, hot and sandy, and everything that juts up from the terrain looks like a mirage until you’re on top of it. The people here, varied in size and species, are loud and dynamic, and you have to sidestep speeders and whatever’s being sold out on the street, just trying to keep and match Din’s pace. He’s so good at it, even on the sandy planets he hates. Maybe it’s the beskar, maybe it’s just that his shoes hold up against the hot terrain more than your old boots do, or maybe it’s just from the years of practice traversing across different ground. You try your best to follow his hulking footsteps, but with the outside factor and your wandering eyes, it’s difficult.

When Din does stop, you’re so distracted by the rest of the world around you that you almost slam headfirst into his armor.

“Here,” he says, decidedly, looking down at you. “For clothes. Does this seem okay?”

You nod, stepping through the vestibule. The darkness of the store feels cavelike in contrast to the bright, sandy planet just a few footsteps back, and you blink a few times before your eyes adjust to the low light.

“Um,” you whisper, “Din, what planet are we on?”

“Er’kit,” he answers, gloved fingers reaching out to touch a cloak that’s hanging from the rack. “They might not have everything, here, because the entire planet has the same hot atmosphere. But it’ll be enough to get you started.”

“I do not need to get started,” you whisper as three cloaked people in tan robes and light fabric head to the storefront, arms laden with their selections, “I need, like, three shirts. Maybe a pair of pants. And underwear. I can get that all here—”

“I promised you clothes,” Din argues, and then his hands are your hips, swiveling past you to get to the other side of the store, where trousers and loose shirts are hung, all in varying shades from white to black, all neutrals. Typical sand planet clothes, the same kind you collected when you first picked out your own after escaping from Jacterr. Din’s pulling down everything that’s even remotely in your size, and you’re just staring at him. Everyone else seems to be just as transfixed with the armored Mandalorian in the middle of the desert, hauling down an array of shirts and pants and underwear for his considerably shorter and less shiny companion. “How’s this?”

You blink at him, brain stuck on how ridiculous it looks for Din to be holding this many clothes. “Well,” you start, “I think that’s probably triple how many articles of clothing than I’ve ever owned, so that whole comment earlier about this getting started may be a little too eager—”

“Let’s go pay for them,” Din interrupts, and you stare at him.

“I don’t need that many,” you argue, trying to understand where the hell he’s coming from. “Really, D—Mando, just a few things to replace the ones we’ve torn to shreds—” another group of people passing makes your voice cut off, and you step closer to Din, tracking your face in the visor, reflection just as bewildered as you feel. “Plus,” you whisper, blinking as you raise your chin up to meet his helmet, “I have to try them on to make sure they fit.”

He stares at you. Maker, he looks so intimidating when he wants to, so commanding, so powerful. You don’t shy away, though, just cock your head to the side like he does when he’s trying to understand what you mean or wants you to be held under his gaze enough for the butterflies to swirl up in your belly.

“Where’s the closest dressing room?” you ask a passerby clerk, and she gestures toward the very back of the store, where a small, dimly lit hallway opens up to another alcove. You don’t break your staring contest with Din, and, when the clerk has passed, you grab his hand and pull your Mandalorian after you, heart hammering. You look both ways before you step down the hallway, but everyone in the store is either entirely distracted with picking out their own clothes or are up at the register with the worker you just asked, so you pull Din in behind you and lock the door.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and even modulated, it’s low and quick. Urgent. You bite down on your lip as he slowly puts the clothes on the bench at the far end of the dressing room, and, before you lose your nerve at the collection of people still left in the store and the wide expanse of space where the dressing room meets the open air of the building, you pull your shirt off.

Din sighs. Loud. For someone who moves so quiet, so stealthily, when he’s out hunting people for a living, he has quite the tendency to moan whenever he’s near your body. His helmet moves as he sweeps you up and down, and before you lose your nerve, you pull your pants off, too. You hadn’t put any bra or undershirt back on after showering last night, so, beside your panties, you’re completely naked. It’s cold in here, freezing in comparison to the ultraviolet, simmering heat on the planet outside, and with the combination of your temperature and how tantalizing you’re being, your nipples harden. You don’t do anything. You don’t try to cover up, you don’t try to move towards him, you just stand there, every inch of your skin bare except for the underwear you have hiked up over your hips, black and revealing. Din sags where he’s standing as you let your hair down from where it was pinned on the top of your head, letting your hand trail past your chest as you lower your arms, eyes doe-wide and innocent, pinching at your right nipple as you do so.

You’re not sure why it’s so easy to be so brazen in a place so public, but you step forward, just a little, letting your mouth fall open as both of your hands return to your tits, tracing lines over your exposed skin. Din’s leaning back against the wall, now, everything he piled into his arms earlier forgotten on the floor, strewn across the bench. You step closer still, one hand still flicking and pulsing near your nipple, other hand trailing down your open skin towards where the line of your panties are.

“Nova,” Din says, and you’re sure he’s meaning to warn you, but his voice comes out strained and desperate. When you step closer to him still, you watch how he stiffens even through his full Mandalorian regalia, tongue swiping out of your mouth as you imagine how risky it would be to suck him off in here, how public it is, how quiet he’d have to keep as your mouth was wet and hot around him, tongue fluttering in and out, the vacuum of your lips crushing and warm. You pick up Din’s gloved hand, pulling it off by the yellow tips, all while maintain eye contact with him. This is the most dominant you’ve been, you think, especially in a place this public, where anyone could walk down the hallway and see the both of you in there. But you bite your lip as you bring Din’s hand to your mouth, putting his thumb in your mouth, refusing to break eye contact. With your free hand, you slip past the waistband of your panties, middle finger dipping straight down into your slick, and a small moan comes out of your mouth around Din’s thumb.

You know how badly you’re teasing him, and you know how hard he’s going to want to fuck you for it later, so, instead of shying away, you push the tip of your finger inside you, slowly pumping and moving as you’re sucking on him, tits still exposed and perky with how much you’re turned on, Din’s fingers in your mouth. His breath is hitching. He’s so hard. You keep bumping into the bulge in his pants as you finger fuck yourself, and every time your knuckles graze against him, Din’s breath gets faster, heavier, more dangerous.

“What?” you ask, finally, eyebrows raised. Something about the fear of getting caught is making you bolder and bolder, and knowing how much you’re affecting Din while you’re totally naked, dripping around your fingers, makes it easier to forget anyone could be listening.

“You—” Din whispers, his voice cutting off in a wheeze, “you’re fucking killing me, you know that? Dirty girl.”

“What are you gonna do about it?” you ask, raising your left eyebrow, trying to ignore how hard your heart is hammering, how your ears are pulsing with your heartbeat. “You gonna put any of these clothes on me or are you just gonna stand there salivating over how much you want me?”

Everything in you is burning. Some logical, embarrassed voice in the back of your head is screaming at you to stop being so cocky, so brazen, but with the way you can feel yourself tightening around your own fingers, how wet the inside of your panties are around your hand, it’s impossible to stop.

Before you can try to taunt Din again, he moves. Lightning fast. One minute, you’re pressing him against the wall, anchoring him there with your naked body and your fingers pumping in and out of your pussy, and the next, he’s slamming you up against the same spot, face-first. You gasp with the speed of it, how rough he is with you, and when he pushes you against the wall, you moan, barely disguised against your shoulder and the music that’s playing from the storefront. You’re expecting him to yank your panties down and push himself inside you, but when it doesn’t come, you buck up against where you can feel how hard he is, trying to encourage him with just your body.

“Dirty girl,” Din whispers again, his voice low and menacing, and absolutely everything in you is on fire. You gasp as his ungloved hand comes down on your ass, hard, intentional. The logical part of you is still yelling to stop, that you’re so exposed, that you have to shut up and bite your tongue or you’re going to be found in here getting fucked senseless by a Mandalorian, but your desire doesn’t give one single fuck. You want him, here, now. You want him to sink into you, hit every single inch, leave you devastated to make up for the look on his face when Din realized you were Force sensitive, use your pussy as punishment.

But he doesn’t fuck you. He doesn’t pull his pants down, doesn’t start thrusting. Instead, he wraps his gloved hand in your hair, fistfuls of it gathered up at the crown of your head. You gasp as you feel his ungloved one travel from the nape of your neck all the way down to the small of your back. Din freezes, for just a second, and you’re so strung out on his touch that you would let him do literally anything. You feel high, completely buzzing in an astral plane, shivering with how turned on you are, with the knowledge that anyone could walk in on you. His hand slips down, a singular finger tracing just under the outline of where it is on either cheek, and you’re expecting him to pull it down, rip it off you so that he can redress you in something new, but he doesn’t. Instead, over the fabric, he runs his pointer finger down between either cheek, pulsing it right over every ridge, and it feels so foreign, so dirty, that you can’t stifle the moan that comes out of your mouth.

“Shut up,” Din whispers, so deadly, “I can’t touch you if you’re letting the whole town know. Understood?”

“Where are you t—touching me?” you breathe back, heart hammering as he pushes the tip of his finger in between the valley of your ass, and then it disappears. You’re about to groan in protest, tell him he can touch you anywhere he wants, that he owns every inch of your body, before his hand reappears at the front of your panties, yanking the waistband of them down so he can plunge his fingers inside you. The only reason you’re not screaming out in pleasure is because Din’s other hand, the one that was tangled up in your hair, is now pressed flat against your mouth. You sag against him, knees buckling as he works his fingers in you, pumping and out, and your vision is clouding with how close you’re getting, and you’re pretty sure Din could hold you right here forever on the edge of an orgasm, and you’d die happy. But then, right before you’re about to let go, shaking and heaving, the bounty puck strapped to his wrist is blinking, and Din’s fingers are out of you, lightning quick.

“Please,” you moan, so desperate, turning around, breath heavy, hands fluttering towards Din’s wrist to drag it back to touch you, “please, I’m so close, can we wait two seconds—”

“We have to go,” Din interrupts, but he sounds just as dejected and needy as you do, and you blink, trying to come back down to somewhere normal, as he throws you new clothes. Black shirt—a tank top made of thick, durable ribbed material, and a pair of tan cargo pants that were identical to the ones he ripped to shreds a few planets back. You gather up all the tags, fumbling with trying to pin your hair back out of your eyes, barely buttoning the pants over your soaked panties before Din’s flashing out o the dressing room, and you load your arms with enough clothing as you can, shoving fabric into your back as Din throws a handful of credits at the clerk, more than enough to cover whatever you’ve taken, and you try your best to keep moving in his footsteps, immediately attacked by the heat and the sun reflecting off the beskar.

“What’s wrong,” you holler at him as he runs, expertly weaving in and out of the crowded streets. “Hey! Where are we going?”

Din stops, so sudden you almost collide into him all over again, takes your hand, and keeps running. You’re not prepared for this. You’re quick when you need to be, but your body aches from sleeping funny around the baby last night, and your body still wants the orgasm Din got you on the edge of just a minute ago, and it’s so fucking bright out here, and your breath is quick and shallow in your throat.

“Bounty’s running,” is all he manages, and then you’re being yanked behind him again, trying to keep your feet moving in a pace that’s steady, if not fast, sweaty and covered with dust from Er’kit’s sandy atmosphere.

The noise comes before you’re even aware of what it is, the whine and pitch of the TIE fighter familiar and angry.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” you scream, and Din stops long enough for you to take cover behind the beskar before an array of blasts are rained down on the two of you. In the distance, just over the next few streets, you see two people joined at the wrist like you and Din are, tearing out of the inn he mentioned, and your heart sinks as the fighter turns back around, sending another set of bullets towards both of you, and Din pulls you around the corner right before the sand swells up and the rounds ricochet were you were just standing. “Why is the Empire here?” you scream, over the noise, as Din pulls his gun out of its holster and aims a few shots at the couple tearing through the sandy path.

“Bounty must have called them,” he volleys back, ducking behind the wall as the TIE fighter starts screeching towards the both of you instead, “he must have seen the Crest.”

The Crest, you think, okay, sure, maybe, but how did he know that was Din’s ship? Then, just as quickly—the baby.

“The baby!” you scream, over the noise of the ship hurtling over you, and Din shields your entire body with his, dragging the both of you around the corner. “Din! He’s alone on the ship—”

He turns around, grabbing your hips so that you’re right up against the beskar, and you stare straight into the visor. “Can you get to him?” he asks, and he’s so intentional with it, so quiet, and you blink, trying to make sure you feel steady enough to make a break for it.

“Yes,” you promise. “Can you get this Imperial scum off my back long enough for me to make it down the road?”

“Yes,” Din echoes, resolute. “I’ll meet you there in three minutes.”

“Be safe,” you say, and he presses the visor against your forehead, hand squeezing in yours, and then he’s up and out from around the wall, firing an entire armada at the TIE fighter, running towards where the bounty’s on the move, gaining speed as he shoots up into the sky. You swallow, press the symbol on your necklace between your two fingers for luck, and start running yourself.

You’re not fast. You’re not that quick on your feet, you’re so much better in the air, but the second your eyes collide with an abandoned speeded against the cantina, you hop on, revving the throttle. The presumable owner comes rushing out of the bar, yelling after you, but you go anyways, screaming your apologies into the wind. “I just need it for a second!” you scream to the dust behind you, “I’ll give it back, I promise!”

It’s much faster than you would have been on foot, and you pull up on the throttle as you zoom past where Din’s running. The bounty and his partner are still a considerable distance ahead of Din, but he’s gaining speed, and you’re the fastest in this particular equation. You exhale, praying to the Maker above that you don’t completely wipe out with the maneuver you’ve never attempted, and throw the contents of the compartment on the back of your speeder at the bounty. It doesn’t hit him square in the middle of the back like you intended, but it knocks into his shoulder, hard, and the two of them go down face first into the sand as Din catches up to them.

The TIE fighter screeches from behind you, and you chance one look at where it’s gaining speed, and you swing the bike around clumsily to shoot what’s left of your bullets into the sky. None of your shots land, but that doesn’t matter, because the fighter veers noisily off its course and you’re able to shudder to a halt, jump down into the sand, and run furiously towards the gangplank. The airlocks hiss as you get close enough to unlock them with your heat signature, and you thunder up the plank, where the baby’s sitting in the middle of the floor, the rest of your food supply strewn out around him.

All the adrenaline runs out of you backward as you fall to your knees on the floor of the Crest, looking in disbelief at the rest of the stock, which is all over the floor.

“You are a little menace,” you say, but you can’t even be angry, because you’re so grateful he’s standing right there, little green belly full, eyes open and full of love. You pull him towards your chest, just for a second, and then you hear the screeching return. You hoist the gangplank up as quickly as you can before the noise multiplies.

“Get in your cradle,” you toss at the baby as you climb the ladder, and as you’re strapping in, you hear the egg zoom up the stairs behind you, parking on top of the copilot’s seat. You see Din out of the Crest’s front window, gun to both bounties, and as the fleet of TIE fighters whine in the sky above, your heart does backflips, stomach unsettled. “Shit.”

You’re about to lift off, fly the rest of the fighters out of the sky, or at least send them on wild goose chase after you so Din can get a secure hold on the bounties, but then you see the gun in the woman’s hand and every single other instinct leaves your head except to protect Din. You hurl yourself back down the ladder, starting the ship up as you grab whatever weapon’s closest in the armory and thunder back down the gangplank.

She has her gun to his head. It’s probably not going to do anything, because it’s weak and rickety and no match for Mandalorian beskar, but the fear inside your chest is dizzying and real. You scream at her as you advance, trying to balance the weight of the heavy blaster in your hand while attempting to look menacing. She catches your eye before three new fighters swoop overhead, and you scream, unleashing bullets at the sky. None of them land this time either, but it’s enough for one to crash into the other, and the third has to circle up an away so they won’t be dragged into the impact. You stagger forward, trying to raise the blaster to a steady grip. It’s so heavy. You think Din’s yelling at you through the helmet, but the noise of the crash and the remaining fighters popping out of space and into the planet’s atmosphere is way too loud.

“Don’t you dare,” you scream, running towards the bounty. She doesn’t flinch, so you grab the real quarry, the man handcuffed in iron on the ground, and push the heavy weight of the muzzle flush up against his temple. “You hurt mine, I’ll hurt yours,” you warn, trying to sound much more resolute and honest than you feel. You don’t dare to take your eyes off her, but you can hear the screech of the TIE fighters in the distance, and you don’t have enough time. “Let him go,” you warn, and she clicks the safety off. You have no intention of actually hurting the bounty, let alone sending him to his death, but with the ships gaining speed behind you and with her own blaster up against Din’s head, your choices are evaporating quicker than your deliberation. “Let him go,” you warn her again, and she pulls another blaster out of her pocket, and you’re staring down the iron as Din tries to wrestle the gun she’s pointed at his face out of her other hand. She fires a shot, just once, and you’re almost positive it’s just into the sandy ground, but you scream, guttural and unhinged, and you kick down the bounty as you swing the heavy blaster back towards his girlfriend.

Din’s laying in the dirt, and you’re crying, and you’re pretty sure you’re yelling for him, but she’s still threatening you with her blaster and you can hear how quickly the fighters are gaining speed and you panic. You see Din move—weakly, but enough to prove that he’s just injured, not fatally wounded—and something in you snaps. As the first fighter whizzes over your head, sending down an array of blasts, your hands drop the blaster and shove palm-first into the sky.

It wasn’t intentional. You were trying to not use the Force at all, especially in front of people who probably summoned the leftovers of the Empire here after you and Din and the baby, but the blaster is completely useless against an array of ships, and it unleashes itself from you like a lightning strike. You freeze the bullets from the TIE fighter midair, the fizzle and pulsing of their electricity surging as you scream, sending them straight back up where they came from. It’s enough to keep most of the ships back, diverting their route and blasts away from the four of you, and when you’re sure they’re not an immediate threat, you turn on the woman, who looks terrified of you.

You hate that look. It’s the same one that Din wore this morning, the same one that you knew anyone would ever have if you showed them what you could do. You’re not a scary person, let alone a menacing one, but you can feel how nervous she is, how much power you can harness. You breathe, exhaling slowly as you pull your hands down, level with her chest, and she’s frozen. You’re not trying to keep her there, to choke her off, but it’s like the power you can hold in your palms is doing it for you. Horrified, you pull your hands down, releasing her into the sand, and you help haul Din to his feet, grabbing the second set of cuffs for her as he starts pulling the couple towards the Crest. You follow behind, trudging through the sand you just kicked up, exhausted and aching.

You’re on the gangplank before you hear it. You feel it before it even jumps into the atmosphere, that pit of darkness and danger in your chest, but you’re so wiped from sending the other handful of ships packing that you think it’s just leftovers. It’s not. Out of nowhere, Gideon’s vantablack, arachnid TIE fighter unfolds its evil wings, and you collapse on the gangplank as it surges towards the five of you.

“Get inside,” you scream, and Din freezes the couple in one block of carbonite as you crack your neck, trying to summon the energy that all drained out of you a few seconds ago. The baby coos from behind you, and you shake your head as Gideon advances, shooting a volley of bullets towards the Crest. You stop them, but you’re shaking, hands trembling, watching helplessly as he swings around and doubles back. There are tears at the corners of your eyes, and your chest is heaving, the hot, dusty air parching and sucking a wound in your esophagus. “I can’t—” you manage, and then Din pulls the Crest up off the sand, and you hang onto the bar just inside of the gangplank, hauling yourself back up standing. You can feel the baby as strongly as Gideon’s ship is loud, and you feed off his energy, trying to gain enough back to stop the blasts that are being shot through the open air.

Being airborne helps. Even when you’re not at the helm, it steadies you to be skyward, to have gravity on your side. Gideon’s ship fires another round of blasts, and, to avoid them, the Crest slams back against the sand, and you tumble down again. You push yourself off the floor, still weak, still unable to hold a steady breath, and you watch as Gideon lands his ship and emerges from the cockpit.

Something ignites in his hands. At first, you think it’s still a mirage, that shimmering blackness against the hot horizon, but as Gideon advances, you realize exactly what it is. It’s a weapon you’ve only seen in nightmares and in the baby’s visions. It’s like a lightsaber, but sharper, electric. The blade is as dark as his ship is, so black it would scare darkness, and the edge frenzies with white-hot light. You skitter backward, up the gangplank, as Gideon advances through the sand. His face is set and angry, vicious and cold. You hold your hands up, heart hammering something horrible, knowing there’s not a chance in hell that you’re a match for him to begin with, but the last time you were face to face with a lightsaber—a real one, not one that came from dreams—you nearly died because of it.

“Fucking—move,” you shriek at Din, “I can’t hold him off!” And the Crest groans, but he’s able to get her airborne as Gideon breaks into a run, hurtling straight towards you with death and destruction in his eyes, the blade of the saber wicked and electric. Din’s able to get the ship up off the ground right before Gideon’s boots meet the end of the gangplank, and you scream, guttural and desperate, as you use the last remaining source of energy to push him back.

“There is no place,” Gideon screams, “that you can hide from me, Mandalorian.”

“Try me,” Din seethes, over the sound of the engine, pulling your slumped body backwards as the gangplank shakily rises.

“The baby or the girl,” Gideon says, his voice determined and taunting, “Next time, I’ll make you choose which one.”

You want to give him a snappy response how he’ll have to pry you from Din’s cold, dead hands, and the baby too, but you don’t even have the energy to sit up straight, and with the fury that Gideon is harnessing, you don’t want to put any ideas into his head. You nod wordlessly at Din that he can leave to navigate the ship, and he hurries up the ladder, punches in coordinates that are anywhere but Er’kit, and shoots the Crest up and out into the atmosphere before he returns, dropping to his knees and pulling you up against the wall, his hands suspending both of your cheeks to keep you upward.

“Novalise,” Din whispers, his voice low and urgent, and your eyelashes flutter. “Nova.”

“’M okay,” you manage, and the word itself takes so much out of you that you know Din can tell you’re lying. “I’m fine, I—”

He pats your cheeks and you look up at him, letting him tuck rogue hair behind your ears. “That was way too close, Nova,” Din hisses, pressing the cold metal of the visor against your forehead. “Way too fucking close.”

“I survived, didn’t I?” you ask, and you’re not trying to question him, but it comes out that way, loose and aggressive. “You—you got away. We got the bounties and we got away, Gideon didn’t touch me—”

“He got pretty damn close,” Din snarls, barreling over you. “Too close. I’m never putting you that close to danger again.”

“I am the danger,” you protest, blinking up at him, weakly grabbing onto his wrists where he’s suspending your face, holding you up. “I—I made the mistake, I used the Force when I wasn’t supposed to, and he probably already knew we were down here, and he—”

“Don’t you dare,” Din snaps, and you’re not even sure what he’s warning you about, but your mouth bubbles closed, staring up at him. Everything hurts. You’re still heaving and exhausted, and all you want to do is strip Din down and fall asleep pressed against his bare chest, but he’s still holding onto you like you’re the only thing in the galaxy, and you just let him. “That was not your fault. It was mine. I was reckless, I put you in a dangerous situation, and he got too close. You’re not going to ever be that close to Gideon—or anything dangerous—again, do you understand me?”

“I’m—” you start, and you know you should protest, tell Din that you’re a big girl, that you can handle yourself, that you don’t scare easy, but you simply don’t have enough energy left in you to even make the words come to the forefront of your mind, balance them on your tongue. “I protect you, remember?”

Din pulls the helmet off. It’s so abrupt that you don’t even realize it’s happening until it’s off and you can see every inch of his beautiful face. His hands find your cheeks again, and you pull him down on the floor with you, enough so that you can climb into his lap, leaning up against the wall, body slumped in exhaustion against the weight of his armor.

“He almost took you,” Din whispers, and his voice sounds so much more fragile when it’s not running through the modulator. You swallow, trying not to cry. “I put you in that situation, cyar’ika, and he almost took you from me. Just to strip you for parts—for whatever makes that energy run through you. He would torture and kill you afterward just to get to me. There’s not a fucking chance I’m ever letting him get that close to you again. Do you understand me?”

You just nod, transfixed, lifting your fingers to graze up against his face. He doesn’t flinch when you touch him, doesn’t try to shy away. He stares at you, deep, soulful, protective.

“I can protect myself,” you say weakly, and Din shakes his head.

“You can. You’re more than capable. But it’s my job to keep you safe,” Din says, his voice broken and dark, “and I didn’t do that out there.”

“I’m fine,” you insist again, and then, because he’s still shaking his head, “I’m fine, I promise, I’m fine, okay, Din, I’m okay, I’m safe, I’m here, I’m fine—”

“Were you scared out there?” he asks, forehead so warm against yours, and you want to nod, want to tell him you were terrified, but you think it might break him, that he’d stop down at the next port and reinforce every single part of the Crest, revamp the artillery, and buy you something completely bulletproof if you do, so you shake your head wordlessly.

“I don’t scare easy,” you remind him, the promise you made way back on Nevarro finding its way to your lips. “Remember?”

Din doesn’t have a chance to answer before his lips are up against yours, desperate and wet and warm. You let him lean you back into the wall, and all the dominant, intimidating energy that he pressed you up with not a half hour before has completely drained out of him. Din’s not devouring you because he’s insatiable. This time, it’s because he’s desperate.

You let him kiss you like it’s the first time all over again. You let yourself be pushed back, body limp to everything except Din’s touch, and he pulls you closer and closer, mouth roving down the pulse points on your neck, lips like wildfire. His hands tangle in your hair and you hum happily under the feeling, and, finally, he slides you down horizontal.

His eyes are hungry. Desperate, pulsing with the kind of energy that he barely lets out. He strips you down, quickly but gently, and then he starts prying off the armor, throwing it behind him all over the hull. You pull down on his pauldrons, releasing them as you run your own fingers through his dark hair, eyes fluttering open to the shape of his nose, his dark eyelashes, his pink mouth. If he catches you staring, he doesn’t let on, just keeps pushing his tongue inside you, licking the inside of your mouth, hands seizing both cheeks, trying to coax every kiss you have in you out of your open lips.

“What can I do?” Din murmurs. His voice is so deep, it rumbles through the butterflies in your belly, startling them to awaken.

“I’m okay,” you insist again, and then you realize he’s asking for permission. “Anything,” you breathe back into his mouth, trying to resuscitate him the best you can. “You can do anything to me. Touch me like you did back on Er’kit. Devour me like you did on Naator. Just take me however you want me—” you say, trying to throw all your energy into your words, but Din’s mouth cuts you off. You moan permission back into his lips, and he nods against you. When he pushes inside you, it’s slow. Agonizing, like he’s trying to savor every single second. You want him just as badly as you did back down in the dressing room, but you don’t dare tell him to move harder and faster. You let him pull and glide in and out, every single inch disappearing into the hollow of your stomach. Your breath is hot and heavy, and he’s murmuring something into your collarbone. Eventually, as you relax into the sensation of him inside you, Din picks up the pace. He’s slamming into you like you’re the last thing on earth, like you’re the only thing left. You can’t hear what he’s whispering against your skin, what he’s whining in your ears, because everything in you is focused on how his hips are hammering, how he’s burying himself to the hilt. It’s deafening and hot and you’re completely on autopilot, eyes wide open on the crush of space that’s just above the surface of the Crest, one hand tangled up in Din’s curls, the other on the side of his beautiful face, and as you feel him starting to quiver, he pulls his mouth off your neck and looks right at you.

It’s intimidating. You haven’t seen him this up close before, not without the helmet. Even the blip you had on Yavin before both of you came at the same time, it wasn’t like this. In the darkness, even, you can see how he’s looking at you. His gaze is frenzied and desperate, and you put both hands on either of his cheeks, trying to calm it down, trying to coax his orgasm out of him as gently as you can, but he’s looking at you with such a passion that you flush under his gaze.

“I’m not ever letting him touch you,” Din whispers, and the rhythm of it matches what he was whittling into your collarbone this whole time, “I’m never—ever—putting you in danger like that again, cyar’ika, never, never, never—”

“I’m okay,” you echo again, your vision starting to glaze with tears, and Din nods, breath heavy and hot against you as his hips pick up the rhythm, pounding every inch of his cock inside you as hard and intentional as he can. “I’m safe, you keep me safe—”

“No one is going to hurt you,” Din interrupts, like it’s a mantra, “I’ll protect you, I—I’ll protect you, I’ll protect you—”

“No one can touch me like you,” you whisper, and you mean it every way you possibly can, and Din’s sweaty forehead presses up against yours as he moans, low and strangled, and you hold his face as he lets go, pulsing and warm. You just keep him there, as long as you possibly can, staring deep into his eyes, letting your promise sink in. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He stares at you. Your eyebrows furrow, looking up at him, trying to decode the look on his face. Finally, he kisses you, all that frenzy and desperation form earlier evaporated, and his lips are gentle against yours. You sigh as he pulls out, cleans himself off, and curls up next to you. You’re not even sure if you came, but you don’t care. You press yourself up to Din’s bare chest, trying to heal whatever you broke down there with your touch. The silence is so loud, but you stroke your fingers through his hair, trying to show him you’re not leaving, you’re not going to be torn away from him, that Gideon couldn’t ever get through him to grab you—but you’re not sure it’s going to do the trick. After what feels like hours, you’re able to summon words. You’re up in the crook of Din’s arm, face resting in the hollow of his neck.

“What did you mean earlier?” you ask, and in this silence, even your whisper is loud. “B—before you left, you told me that me being Force sensitive, it makes something…easy?”

He’s quiet. You wait, grazing your fingers over the side of his face. “I didn’t know how powerful you were,” he says, finally, and you bite your lip in the darkness, trying to understand. “I—the baby, he’s saved me like you did today. It takes everything out of him, after, but you know how much he protected us when we crashed on Dagobah. He’s done that. A few times.”

“He’s stronger than I am,” you start, and you feel Din’s head start shaking next to you.

“I think you match him. You’re just as powerful, Nova. I saw it today.”

Your heartbeat is fast and loud. “I—I don’t know what I’m doing—”

Din shifts to face you, and you try to find his brown eyes in the darkness. “You have the ability. You—you can learn. You can teach him.”

You blink at him before you sit up, realizing what he means. “I—I almost got us killed down there, today, Din, that was a very—” you inhale, sharply, “close call, and I got us out, I didn’t get hurt, b—but every time I use it, we get closer and closer to danger. I don’t want it. I don’t want to use it. It makes me and the baby targets, I meant what I said earlier—”

“You can train him,” Din repeats, sitting up beside you. You’re shaking your head fervently, and you don’t think he can see you, but you hope he feels it. “You can get strong together, and then—I don’t know, we can go after Gideon and stop him—”

“No,” you interrupt, voice high and shrill. “I don’t want to. I don’t want this. I’m putting us all in danger every time I use it—don’t you understand that? I almost got killed today because of it.” It’s too sharp. You feel it dagger him in the chest, and you reach forward for him. Din freezes, affronted, but he slowly lets you pull yourself up against him. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” you murmur, and you lay back down, entangled in each other’s arms. “I—I just don’t think I know enough about it to teach the baby. I don’t know enough about how it works myself. I think we need to find s—someone, another Jedi, I don’t know—to teach the both of us.”

“Gideon’s going to keep coming,” Din whispers back, suddenly, “and I don’t think I can protect both of you when he does.”

You don’t have it in you to argue, because somewhere deep and dark inside you, you know it’s the truth. The thought’s full of nightmares waiting for you. So you just pull Din’s head into your chest, wordless, and try your best to pull the both of you, heavy and exhausted, into sleep.

*

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*

I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!!!! this chapter broke me a little to write because i hate angst, but i promise after the storm that's coming, there's going to be so much happiness!! if you're an angst-hater like me, i promise sticking it out through these next few chapters will be worth it ;) thank you all so much again from the bottom of my heart for your kindness and patience!! your support truly means the world and more to me!!! love y'all!!!!!!

CHAPTER 21 WILL (LIKELY) BE UP AT 7:30 PM EST ON SATURDAY, MAY 15TH!!! i'll let you know if anything changes!!!

xoxo, amelie

[resetting37]

A R C F O U R

It’s a happy finale, the friends are reunited after a fun night of crashing a ball and dressing up ! It looks like happily ever after <3 (but it’s not I’m sorry there’s more to the story and there’s worse - and better !! - to come)

Context time !

So a few months prior, Audrey ran away to her hometown in the island of Dile to find the source of the substance Aurora stole from her in (aka the amulet Audrey always wears around her neck.) She needs proof that it’s “connected” to her and not something Aurora can willfully take to a lab or whatever she was going to do with it. But while Audrey is gone, a lot happens. Avery and Zack return to the city (after being kidnapped by Trinity, do you think that’ll come back to haunt them ???) and everyone learns that Avery is the secret half sister of Aurora and Samson. So it’s her newfound way of entering the prime circles, what she truly wanted from the beginning. She’s a little distant from Morgan after realizing Morgan didn’t have concerns over her disappearance and Morgan is trying to fix their relationship.

Of course Morgan feels awful, but Avery’s working towards her own internal struggles at the same time while handling this new wave of attention from Aurora and Samson. She’s not committed to Morgan all the way. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not completely broken up either - we still get to have them be together. Avery is just not ready to be Morgan’s girlfriend (insert trademark logo) - that is, until the event I’m gonna get to.

Meanwhile, Kat’s undergoing her alter ego “GLOSS” as a secret attempt to regain her old fame. And it works ! In fact, Gloss is more famous that Kat ever was. Gloss is adored by crowds through her battle games against genetically-engineered creatures.

Zack’s welcomed back into his family while his new friendship with Sean grows, despite that being a conflict since Sean still has tension with Advik. To be fair, Morgan is the only one out of Advik’s friends that knows why Sean and Advik hate each other (the only secret Advik can actually keep). But, that doesn’t stop Morgan from wanting to be friends with Sean. What ?? Maybe he’s nice now ! As for Advik, his situation is relatively the same as it was from the previous arc. He works alongside Echo in attempt to follow his prototype’s footsteps of being a ~scientist~. His tension with Sean and Aurora and his fear of the experiments are what are stopping him.

Anyway, now that I’ve basically summarizaed Arc four (jk more stuff happens it’s not all angsty there’s fun stuff) Everything changes when Audrey returns ! But she’s got a friend with her ! The sole resident on Dile, Lilith. (Lots of Arc four’s story revolves around the events on Dile, but for the sake of this post, I won’t go into it.) Now that Audrey has found the source of her amulet’s power, SOUL, she can find the amulet again so she can publically take it back and show the council it’s not theirs.

She’s hiding under the radar, and the first person she goes to is Kat. She tells Kat everything and apologizes for leaving. Morgan, Advik, and Zack also get the news that Audrey has returned and go to Kat’s place to see her. Avery is purposely left out because she’s super close with Aurora right now and they can’t afford to have Affora find out Audrey’s back in Evelow. Another important note is that Lilith and Advik remember each other !!! They hadn’t seen each other in ten years, who would have thought they’d ever see each other again ? Audrey doesn’t blame Advik for being preoccupied on Lilith’s return more so than hers. After all, her mind is on Kat the most. When she was in Dile, she did a lot of examining on her relationships and she realized that she did love Kat in a way that was different than the way she loved her other friends.

Regardless, the Group of six have to find a way for Audrey to get back her amulet and prove to everyone Aurora can’t possess it. But how ? And when ? Perhaps the grand Evelonian Ball, suggests Advik. It’s conveniently being held at the city hall in the same center that the laboratory the amulet is being stored in. Due to the heavy security of the ball, it’d be easy to sneak into the laboratory due to less attention there, which leaves the difficult part of making the entrance into the ball. None of them are invited to the ball. If anything, Advik and Zack have bad blood with Aurora and are blacklisted. A thought was maybe Morgan would be Avery’s date and she’d be their inside access, but Avery is too close to Aurora (see above) they didn’t want to risk it. Which bums Morgan a bit, but she understands.

Then Kat has the idea of going as GLOSS ! No one knows Kat is Gloss besides her friends, and despite Gloss not being invited, she could make a date to someone that was. Perhaps Crystal ? And who else to pose as Crystal than her brother Zack. They’re not twins or anything, but with makeup and some styling, it could work from afar. As for the real Crystal, Morgan uses that attraction Crystal had for her to her advantage and get Crystal to take her as her date to the ball. Would this hurt Avery ? No, because they wouldn’t make it to the ball ! Morgan would make “accidental delays” to make sure she and her date don’t make it to the ball so that Kat, aka “Gloss”, and Zack, aka “Crystal” could infiltrate the city hall and thus let the rest in after they retrieve the amulet from the lab.

And so it works. Morgan is Crystal’s date, Kat and Zack dress up, hell, Advik, Audrey, and Lilith get a little fancy for the occasion.

The Lab Heist is a success. The trio sneak in, aren’t caught, and find the amulet. It’s back to Audrey ! But something’s off with Lilith. This is the lab she grew up in, and while Advik and Audrey initially assume this is the reason for her discomfort, she says there’s something else.. SOMEONE else.. and Advik knows. It’s Adam, who was taken in after a deteriorating condition, who is being held in a lower level in the laboratory. So Advik tells to go get him and that’s where they part ways with Lilith. Don’t worry, they’ll meet again, and soon, but Lilith has parted ways in this night.

Meanwhile, the infiltration into the ball is a success. Kat and Zack, ahem, Gloss and Crystal, are in the grand Evelonian Ball ! But oh no ! Turns out the real Crystal was a little more persistent in going to the event so now she and Morgan are there too ! Aurora makes some side comment like “Of course Crystal would have two different outfits and two different dates” and that’s when it catches Avery’s attention. Something is up, and she confronts Kat and Zack.

(Kat has her mask removed in this picture ? This was drawn before I had the alter ego totally laid out so that’s why) and they tell Avery that Audrey has returned and their plan to come to the ball with the amulet. Avery is in, but they have to get off the dance floor, they need to find a way for the others to sneak in without Aurora’s attention. But they have been caught by Crystal, who gets ultimately gets Zack kicked out. But security couldn’t recall which was the imposter date so Crystal lies and says Gloss is her date, getting Morgan kicked out. After all, she wants to find out who’s behind the mask >:-)

Anyhow Morgan and Zack have been kicked out, and Kat is stuck inside. Avery sneaks out to help Morgan and Zack back in, but Zack already contacted Sean to get him a change of clothes and was out of sight, so Morgan and Avery use this moment alone to reconcile. Blah Blah sappy stuff, they love each other and want to be together <3

When Avery and Morgan are out there, Advik and Audrey run into them. Avery lets them the three of them in with her, and soon all eyes are on them ! Audrey proclaims to the crowd that she is a host, Aurora would never be one and stole the amulet from her. Aurora is McFreaking pissed. Doesn’t help that Avery and Advik stand up for Audrey (Aurora ? Betrayed by her sister ??) and the grand reveal comes when Gloss comes, tells everyone that she is Katsumi, the woman they all once shunned for spying on behalf of Aurora. And Kat finally gets to have her telling off. Aurora gets them all kicked out, but the damage is done. The ball continues, but Aurora makes a silent departure, and a promise to herself that she’ll get back at them. It may take some time and some manipulating, but she’ll do it.

And then they go to the diner ! Yay ! It’s happy ! They’re eating fries and sodas, with Aurora plotting her revenge behind the scenes. Thanks for joining me on this incohesive tale I had fun telling in, I promise it’s so much funnier in my head with a lot more detail and dialogue lol

[arlingtonpark]

#worthit

You know, we’re lucky Zeke is a moron. At long last he has access to the ultimate power in the world, and instead of using it then and there, he tries to show Eren the error of his ways like this is A Christmas Story or something.

Zeke thought he was Chris Marley and Eren was Ebenezer Scrooge. Turns out, he’s a QANON believer and Grisha is the owner of Comet Ping Pong.

It’s just stunning how unself-aware Zeke is. He’s like one of those hyper-partisan, extremely-online people who shout about how Obama is a tool for the rich, but freeze up when asked for details. This is a man so immersed in his own worldview, his head so far up his ass, that all he accomplished is making the most spectacular own-goal of the entire series.

I mean, he takes Eren on this wild ride, is basically making this all up as he goes along, certain that the next memory will be the one that proves Grisha’s EVIL-ness, and they spend God knows how long watching a dude filing paperwork.

This exercise was meant to turn Eren to his side, but all it’s done is create an opening for Eren to turn Zeke. And that may happen, honestly. Zeke’s beliefs have been pretty shaken now, so he may be receptive to some reasoned persuasion.

But up next is Grisha stealing the Founding Titan, so Zeke definitely won’t be want for validating material.

The only bigger jackass this chapter is Eren.

Eren really, honest and for truly, fucked up. He shat on his friends, he shat on his country, he shat on little kids, and he did it so he could trick Zeke into unlocking the Founding Titan powers for him.

Except now all that’s out the window because actually Zeke is in charge.

Oops.  

Eren presumably did all this because he couldn’t bear to see Historia’s life shortened, but now it seems he has no choice but to do it anyway, meaning he did all this shit for nothing! Amazing! Dreams really don’t come true in this story!

I love how the chapter foreshadows Eren dropping the ball by showing him literally dropping a ball.

At least now it means Historia is going to be relevant again soon. I don’t think I’ve ever said it before, but I lean towards the pregnancy being fake.

Yeah, Historia having a kid means Zeke’s dream can be easily undone, but Zeke probably realizes this and plans to overwrite King Fritz’s deal with the Founding Titan with one of his own: all future royal bearers of the Founding Titan will be infected with Zeke’s ideology instead.

After that, all he’d have to do is feed Eren to Historia. Zeke’s ideology takes over, and everything is set.

Eren needs Historia to eat Zeke, and Zeke would need Historia to eat Eren. And all the while Historia just wants to eat out Ymir.

Would Zeke really do that to his little brother?

…Yeah, he would. Zeke himself said Eren was just a key this whole time. He wants to save Eren from Grisha’s brainwashing, but remember that means convincing him life isn’t worth living. Because of that, Zeke probably wouldn’t even see it as a betrayal. From his perspective, it’d be him freeing Eren from the hell of life.

The reason why I think the pregnancy is fake is because I figure Zeke somehow coerced Historia into it, but then Eren told her about his true intentions and told her get pretend-pregnant. Then, once Zeke was disposed of, Historia could drop the act and live happily ever after.

(And then die with no heirs, thus leading to a succession crisis.)

And if the pregnancy actually is real?

Well, that would be a travesty and I’d rather not think about that.

This chapter has the most explicit endorsement of nationalism so far. Which is bad because no matter how much gold the series puts on it, nationalism is still a garbage heap of an ideology.  

Talking about nationalism and this series is a bit complicated because really there are two levels to this. There’s the depiction of nationalism in itself and then there’s that depiction as it relates to the social context of the story.

Just looking at the story, taking back the Founding Titan and actually having a ruler who cares for his subjects is very reasonable. King Fritz is a lunatic who believes Eldians deserve to die for the sins of their former Empire. And it’s understandable that people like Grisha would be pushed to support extreme beliefs like that the Empire must be restored.

Issues start to arise when you look at the social context of this story. King Fritz is pretty obviously a caricature of progressives who emphasize the need for society to own up to past sins. You see this in the United States with recent debates about Confederate monuments, for example.

Other debates about how the founding of the country is glorified and morally questionable actions like the three-fifths compromise are swept under the rug have been ongoing for literally centuries.

There are progressives who think these facts are not reflected upon enough, and then there are conservatives who think the progressives want Americans to hate being American.

Japan has a similar debate going on. The Japanese Empire of course did many awful things throughout its history, especially during World War II, when it tried to conquer East Asia. Japanese progressives argue this history is not given its due. (It isn’t)

King Fritz is obviously a caricature of these people and not a very flattering one. The strongest evidence that this series leans conservative is the echoing of the popular Japanese conservative talking point that the official history is a “masochistic” one designed to shame Japanese people.

Like, I don’t actually have to explain how the obvious parallel is obvious, do I?

Everything about King Fritz reads like a satire of liberals written by a Fox News pundit. Deranged king so obsessed with past sins he’s cool with his people dying for it? Did Sean Hannity write that?

Said King is a chump because he’s…a pacifist, which makes him weak, I guess. (How can a series be anti-war if #pacifismisforlosers?)

SNK’s brand of anti-pacifism seems reasonable on the surface, but when you consider the real world analogs the story’s set up, things start to fall apart.

The story’s message seems to be that the Eldians should be allowed to live as themselves with no outside interference and they should be allowed to use the wall titans to defend themselves if needed. That seems reasonable, but then you realize the Wall Titans are basically nukes, so the series is basically endorsing nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation.

Nuclear weapons are not military weapons, as their in-story equivalents are set to be cast as. They’re used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. And their use leads to massive environmental damage.

It’s disturbing that the series treats the morality of their use as a given. Isayama doesn’t seem interested in grappling with this exceedingly difficult question at all. There is no debate between the characters on this, literally everyone wants to use them, even Armin who previously made a point of not wanting to.

It’s simply stunning that this series would set up such a weighty situation and just not grapple with the moral implications of it. Does Isayama even realize the metaphor he himself has written?

This isn’t to defend Fritz’s actions. Just up and leaving like he did was lazy and irresponsible, but that just ties back into the hyperbole of the caricature. The details aren’t important in the sense that what’s important is the overall statement being made. It may seem weird, defending the idea this character supposedly stands for, but not defending his literal actions in the story, but that’s because you’re not approaching the story from the perspective of satire.

Isayama’s laughable statements aside, Attack on Titan is clearly satirical. It is making its point through hyperbolic caricature. Though with King Fritz the series arguably veers into straw-manning.

It may be hyperbole, but no reasonable pacifist actually believes we should roll over and let other people kill us, and I honestly can’t believe we are apparently supposed to take this seriously.

The point is that pacifism is bad.

King Fritz swears a vow to renounce war, which the series has lambasted at every possible opportunity. This vow is directly analogous to the vow to renounce war contained in Japan’s constitution, which also binds future generations no matter their personal beliefs since, ya know, it’s the law.

Fritz does this because he believes it will lead to an everlasting peace, which also echoes Japan’s constitution, which renounces war specifically in the name of peace.

Article 9 in Japan is broadly popular with the public, but is criticized by a small usually conservative minority.

All of this is to say that the series echoes conservative talking points and generally seems to be written from that perspective.

Now we come to this chapter. Zeke explicitly refers to Grisha’s ideology as a nationalism and is then made to look like a dumbass for thinking Grisha is an evildoer.

#nationalistshavefeelingstoo.

Yeah, Grisha loves his family, but who cares? The series is clearly going frame Grisha forsaking his mission to be with his family as a mistake, because that’s what this series does! In the world of SNK, people who chase their dreams either fail in some way or are otherwise evil, unless that dream is to fight for the survival of your race, in which case you’re a hero.

Nationalism is bad because it’s an ideology centered on loving your race. It is an inherently exclusionary belief system. The series may not be afraid to criticize specific methods, but the idea of fighting for your race is itself not presented as a bad thing.

Even though in the real world, you would be hard pressed to find a similarly sympathetic example of a nationalist movement.

Nationalism is an inherently emotional ideology, it is fueled by grievance. The series acknowledges that certain expressions of nationalism can be fueled primarily by emotion, but we are also apparently supposed to think that a “rational” nationalism is possible.

In fact, rational nationalism is an oxymoron.

The idea of fighting for your race can never be rational because the notion is inherently irrational. The only people who would care enough about their race to emphasize fighting for it are the desperately insecure.

Whether it’s because they’re desperate for anything about themselves to love, like with Floch, or outraged over the targeting of their race specifically, like with Grisha, nationalism is never born out of some coldly rational thought process.

So now the Yeager Bros. finally succeed and Eren finally gets to betray Zeke. But wouldn’t you know it! It’s the royal who has control of the Founding Titan!

I was leaning against this idea, but for a while now I’ve had the inkling that the Founding Titan is supposed to be a metaphor for the concept of sovereignty, and now it seems that instinct was right.

Sovereignty refers to the absolute authority that governments have. In republics like the United States, sovereignty resides in the government, but it is exercised on behalf of the people.

In monarchies, sovereignty resides in the reigning monarch, who rules by God’s grace.

The key word here is “resides.” The king/president is merely a vessel for the sovereign authority of the government.

For many centuries, kings, and, later, officeholders in general, were thought of as having two bodies.

Their body natural, that is, their physical, human bodies.

And the body politic, that is, the power that comes with the office.

When the king dies, only their body natural dies, but the body politic is eternal and passes on to the next body natural that occupies the position of king.

The Founding Titan is apparently modeled after this idea. Each successive Eldian king is a vessel for the Founding Titan, which grants absolute authority over all Eldians, but only to those who are of royal blood, ie those with the right to rule.

Of course, only people with a legitimate claim to the throne may properly exercise sovereign authority, just as only Zeke may command the Founding Titan. As I said in an earlier post, as a commoner, Eren’s use of the Founding Titan is illegitimate by default.

Needing a royal sympathetic to his cause creates an opening for Historia to become relevant again and that just highlights how everything would’ve been better if Eren had just used her in the first place.

I get that Eren cares about his friends (really hoping he and Historia are just friends), but if you think that makes Eren sympathetic, then let me tell you a little secret: it doesn’t.

Prioritizing someone’s literal life over another’s simply because you know them is awful. It reduces the choice of what you should do to the randomness of who you just so happen to have gotten to know better.

If this was just about who Eren was going to spend a Saturday night with, then choosing based on rapport would be fine, but the stakes here are significantly higher. People are dead.

The excuse that Eren is doing this for his friend’s sake is no excuse at all.

At this point we’re half way through the fourth volume of this arc. The next chapter will probably wrap up this A Christmas Story riff and the chapter after that will most likely end with the Wall Titans finally being awakened.

Afterwards, I’m betting it’s just one more volume to close out the story proper and then maybe we’ll get a volume for that epilogue Isayama mentioned once in an interview.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHERE TO STARTUPS CONDENSE IN USA

One level at which you can then trade again for anything else you need. The better they are, the more stuff they seem to have been defeated mainly by treating it as a pro. An experienced programmer would be more likely to notice if you're doing it wrong. The programmers I admire most are not, on the whole, captivated by Java. There is a large random multiplier in the success of any company. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him.1 How many of us have suspected. And that's exciting because it means lots more startups will happen.

As I was mulling over these remarks it struck me how familiar they seemed. And as his example suggests, this can be valuable knowledge.2 Like all such things, it was harder to reach an audience or collaborate on projects. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea to get bought, if you admire two kinds of work. It was coming, all the same. I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. I'm convinced, is a mistake.3 Similarly, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to get the attention of an audience than as a reader. Don't expect it to be, but it will be. And what getting a job seems to mean is joining another institution. Raising an angel round meant a collection of points of roughly equal importance, and he wouldn't have had time to work on.4 But these words are part of the reason I laughed so much at the talk by the good speaker at that conference was that everyone else still shares, you're in the home stretch, and if people aren't using your software, maybe it's not just the dogfood portals we all heard about during the Internet Bubble.

Look for the people who use it. What we're seeing now, everyone's probably going to be an artist, which is the ability to get things done, with no excuses. You have to assume it takes some amount of pain.5 It's so simple. Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine managers at this point the default outcome. All other things being equal, they should.6 Or at least discard any code you wrote while still employed and start over.7 Startups, like mosquitos, tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would in a big company is probably getting a bad deal, because his performance is dragged down by the overall lower performance of the others. Whereas if you solve a technical problem that a lot of work. So bang, there's the structure, and you can decrease how much you spend. You can measure the value of the company is small, you are thereby fairly close to measuring the contributions of individual employees. Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do it without getting yourself accused of being a good writer than being a good speaker.

And so the average person, brand dominates all other factors in the judgement of art is dominated by these extraneous factors; they're like someone trying to judge the taste of apples, I'd agree that taste is just a matter of absolute returns, the super-angels, the most powerful motivator is the prospect that one of their competitors will buy you. It's what impresses reporters, and potential new users.8 That averaging gets to be a property of objects after all.9 Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Even if you start a startup. Starting or joining a startup is so hard that it's a close call even for the ones that succeed. And it's only now that you can write what you want and publish when you want. A speech like that is, some of each. It's too early to ask. Can you do more of that?10

Starting or joining a startup is the startup itself. If you want to know what they are so that I, at least, wow, that's pretty cool. To get the same rate of return, the VC would have to get them beaten out of you by contact with the real world.11 Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than fashions in clothing, the mechanism of their adoption seems much the same way a gene pool does. Otherwise these companies would have tried to fix the problem. But that's not the same thing happened with food in the middle of getting rich translates into buying Ferraris, or being admired. So if you hope to start a startup just one year later, after you graduate, as long as you're producing, you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction as an excuse for being lazy.12

If you want to do. That's the only defence. In our own time. Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. To launch a taboo, a group has to be powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.13 How do you know how you're doing. What does that mean for founders? Others say I will get in trouble for. But it seemed worth spoiling the atmosphere if I could save some of the qualities of a VC.14 The reason: today's teenage hacker is tomorrow's CTO. The ball you need to be solved, and d deliver them as informally as possible, e starting with a crude version 1, then f iterating rapidly.15

Notes

Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to take board seats for shorter periods.

With a classic fixed sized round, or it would have become good friends. You'd have to do that? And journalists as part of grasping evolution was to realize that. The Baumol Effect induced by the financial controls of World War II had become so embedded that they got to the point of view: either an IPO, or some vague thing like that, the assembly line, the government and construction companies.

Give us 10 million and we'll tell you who they are public and persist indefinitely, comments on e. They can't estimate your minimum capital needs that precisely. There are simply the embodiment of some brilliant initial idea. It's common for founders to try to disguise it with such a statement would merely be eccentric.

In one way to tell computers how to achieve wisdom is that it's boring, whereas bad philosophy is worth studying as a source of them. Build them a microcomputer, and most pharmaceutical startups the second component is empty—an idea is bad.

European Financial Management, 9:1 It's hard to think about so-called lifestyle business, and those where the richest buyers are, but they were going back to 1970 it would grow as big as a first—new things start to have to recognize them when you had to pay employees this way probably should.

In practice it just feels like a ragged comb. In Russia they just don't make users register to read a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made steam engines dramatically more efficient. You can safely write off all the best hackers want to be a lot online. And the reason for the spot very easily.

Ironically, the editors think the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and the war on. 05 15, the most powerful minister of the fatal pinch where your existing investors help you along by promising to invest but tried to combine the hardware with an investor would sell it to colleagues.

Now the misunderstood artist is not that the probabilities of features i. It's a case in point: lots of people starting normal companies too. Zagat's there are some VCs who can say they're not ready to invest but tried to combine the hardware with an idea that evolves naturally, and his son Robert were each in turn forces Digg to respond with extreme countermeasures. How can people who did it.

It doesn't happen often. The dumber the customers, the apparent misdeeds of corp dev people are these days. Yes, it is very common for founders, HR acquisitions are viewed by acquirers as more akin to hiring bonuses. More precisely, the last batch before a consortium of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup founder or investor I saw this I used a recent Business Week article mentioning del.

If you assume that the lack of movement between companies was as a rule, if you seem evasive than if you have significant expenses other than those I mark. In this context, etc. The people worth impressing already judge you more than the others to act.

Your mileage may vary. If your income tax rates were highest: 14.

Do not finance your startup with a no-land, while she likes getting attention in the US.

But those are usually more desperate for money. You should always absolutely refuse to give him 95% of the false positive rates are untrustworthy, as they are themselves typical users. Ideas are one of the former, because you have is so hard to say that a skilled vine-dresser was worth it for the fences in our case, 20th century. Because we want to keep them from leaving to start businesses to circumvent NWLB wage controls in order to test a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is exactly the point of treason.

Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this at YC I find I never watch movies in theaters anymore. Experienced investors know about it well enough known that people will give you such a dangerous mistake to do more than others, and partly simple ignorance. The first alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert. 5,000 or a community, or invent relativity.

If you want to take care of one's markets is ultimately just another way to predict areas where you read about startup founders and one didn't try to accept that investors don't lead startups on; their reputations are too valuable.

Thanks to Peter Norvig, Ian Hogarth, Sam Altman, James Bracy, Patrick Collison, and Dan Giffin for sparking my interest in this topic.