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nicad13 · 2 years

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Crossroads: Chapter 17

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Summary: Rayne and Din pick up the pieces of Din's spectacular failure.

A decision is made.

A course is set.

A message is sent.

Notes: Canon-compliant through Season 1, alt version of Season 2. Posting some old fic before the sequel, which will hopefully be complete by the end of Season 3. Start now so you're ready! AO3 link in the Source at the bottom.

Tags/Warnings: angst, sexual situations

Rating: Mature

---

Love, love is a verb Love is a doing word Fearless on my breath

Massive Attack, Teardrop

Rayne sat cross-legged before the low table as Jenkins poured tea for both of them.

She couldn’t say she was surprised about this latest test. The way it had been set up. What they had used against Din. Din’s reaction. Shocked, yes. Few things were as shocking as being held at knifepoint by a delusional Mandalorian. Even if that Mandalorian was inherently dangerous. Inherently aggressive. Inherently deadly. Because, with her, he wasn’t those things. With that one exception. The exception that had prompted his promise to not be that way with her ever again.

And so with all of the shock that had come with the breaking of that promise, there was little surprise to go along with it, because of course that would be the exact thing they would push him to do.

It was how tests of the Jedi went; find the weakest point, and poke at it as hard as possible.

Jenkins settled across from her. “You were quick to determine the cause of Din’s behavior,” she said, sipping her tea.

Rayne pondered the cup before her. “Not much else could push him to do that.” She wrapped her hands around the cup, but did not lift it quite yet. “I’ve seen it before.”

“Anakin.”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe he can succeed at Force-resistance training?”

“I do.” Rayne gave in and tried the tea. It turned out to be pretty good. “Din Djarin is nothing if not disciplined.”

“His dedication to Yadier is fierce,” Jenkins observed.

“Yes. It is.”

“What would have happened if the vision had been reversed? If we had shown him Yadier killing you?”

Rayne froze. He likely would have interpreted it as Yadier’s fall to the Dark Side. Would he have sought the Council’s help? Not likely. He wouldn’t go to anyone who had not yet gained his trust. Cara. He’d have taken Yadier to Cara, and the two of them would’ve handled things the way warriors do. He would’ve gone into it hating himself, knowing he would continue to hate himself for the rest of his life.

At least, that would have been his plan of action. Talking him out of it would’ve been… interesting, if not horrifying.

Jenkins read her thoughts easily enough. “You understand why we take Sith infiltration so seriously.”

Rayne nodded. Anakin Skywalker’s downfall was not on his own shoulders. His failures were merely a reflection of the failures of the Jedi as a whole. Cutting him off from his family. Cutting him off from love. Rayne was unaware of his involvement with Amidala, but Luke didn’t just appear out of thin air, and the fact that he’d taken his father’s last name implied consent, so it was easy enough to put the pieces together. Pulling the plugs on love only left empty spaces for the Sith to fill.

Perhaps that’s how the Jedi had missed it. A lifetime of training for emotional detachment had left all of them blind to the cold hate radiated by Sith presence. Rayne had felt it plainly on the two occasions she’d been tracked by an Inquisitor, the same one both times. A lighthouse of darkness and fear, broadcasting its presence with such clarity that Rayne was able to stay far enough ahead to find passage to a different system, avoiding certain death.

Rayne swirled the remainder of her tea. “Are the Jedi of Genesaria any better at detecting the Sith?”

Jenkins tipped her head, having followed the train of Rayne’s thoughts. “As you suspect, our older Masters do not trust their own judgment on this matter. Our younger Force-sensitives, much like yourself, also felt the presence of Inquisitors and were able to escape. The Inquisitors seem to have disbanded by the beginning of the last war, so testing our abilities in this manner is difficult. But we must assume that the Sith are still a danger.”

“And what’s being done differently here to guard against them?”

Jenkins smiled. “Keeping families together as much as possible. Encouraging Force-sensitives to form and keep emotional bonds.”

“Will my family be granted the same allowance?”

Jenkins betrayed a quirk of an eyebrow.

Rayne recalled another feature of Jedi training. Often, the response to the failure of a test was just as important as passing or failing it to begin with. Some tests were designed so that failure was the only option – the true measurement was in how big a mess one made of it and what one did to make it right, afterwards.

“Din’s failure was stunning,” Jenkins said. “But his immediate response was to demand the chance to get better. That will play well in his favor.”

Rayne nodded. She sighed and poured herself another cup of tea.

---

“What did you do to me?” Din asked. They were seated on mats in Yandia’s chamber, Din’s elbows around open knees, posture held together with fingers hooked around each other.

“A false vision we gave you. Loosened your tongue. Attack the mother of your son you did. Surprisingly easy to manipulate to violence you were. Expect this level of hostility we did not.”

“I failed.” Din already knew this, but it seemed to bear repeating.

“Spectacularly! Hm!”

“I know non-sensitives can train for Force-resistance. I’ve been raising a Force-sensitive toddler for a year. We’ve been living with a Jedi for two months. I can handle this.”

“Your training with Rayne I have seen. Of the old ways of fighting, it reminds me. A specific purpose you have in mind.”

Din sighed. He had actually planned on having this conversation today, but wasn’t sure how it all fit in with this morning’s events. Yandia brought it up though, so he decided to roll with it. “The Jedi and Mandalorians were ancient enemies. Mandalorian armor, weaponry, and tactics are what they are because of the Jedi. The Jedi have always had the Force – their one advantage over the Mandalorians.

“It’s time for the Jedi and the Mandalorians to end the conflict and join forces.”

“For what purpose?” Yandia asked.

“The Empire isn’t done. We’re not safe, even here. If Force-sensitives can find this place, so can the Sith. Assuming Gideon was the only resurgence out there is foolish.”

“An army, you wish to build.”

Din recoiled, just a bit, before he caught himself. He hadn’t thought of it as an army, per se. No more than he’d thought of Mandalorians being an army. It was… simply a way of life. A people who were.

“What separates the Mandalorians and the Jedi from others?” Yandia asked.

Din drew a breath, starting to see where the old Master was headed.

Yandia’s eyes narrowed. “Riddled with war for ages Mandalore was. A barren desert now most of the planet is. Arrogant with their abilities the Jedi were. Wiped out by the Sith as a result. Neither people war served well.”

Din had to concede that. “I’m… living proof of the shortcomings of Mandalore’s old ways. Rayne doesn’t want the mistakes of the old Jedi made with our son. That’s why we’re here. We both want something different. The ways of one complement the other. Mandalorian desire for family. Jedi desire for peace. They keep each other in check.”

“Mm. An interesting proposal, this is. One to be considered carefully from many perspectives. Bring it to the Council, I will.”

Din tipped his head. “Thank you.”

“And what of the Darksaber?”

“What of it?”

“Unite Mandalore, its possessor can. So the legend holds.”

Din had to keep himself from laughing. “Gideon stole it from a Mandalorian. I hope to give it back to its rightful owner.”

“And if the rightful owner is of Clan Vizsla?”

Din froze.

Yandia ticked an ear. “Clear, your hatred for Death Watch is. Perilous is the path forged by hate. A prime tool of the Sith, hate is.”

Din took another long, slow breath. “I understand.”

“Yet renounce that path, you do not.”

“That will… take some time.”

“Hm! Your honesty I appreciate. And yet, in other matters, divided your heart is.”

Din dropped his gaze. “Not as much anymore, I don’t think.”

“What was it about Sorgan that drew you so?”

Din closed his eyes, allowing himself to slide back into memories that he had forced the door closed on months ago. “It was simple. Peaceful. Would’ve been a good place for Yadier. When that didn’t work, I thought, once I got him to safety, maybe it would be a good place for me.”

“Driven by simplicity and peace you are not. If you are the Mandalorian you claim to be.”

Din sighed. “That’s not all there was.”

“Hm. Another Mandalorian value, then. A family you found.”

There it was. “Yes.”

“Of your mother Omera reminded you.”

“Huh.” Din hadn’t realized it at the time, but now that it was brought to his attention, he saw the truth of it. The shape and color of her eyes, the long dark waves of her hair, the brownness of her skin, the careworn face, the chiseled chin. He’d found a distant comfort in all of it. The lengths she would go to protect her child. Except where his own mother had died for her efforts, Omera had survived her protection of Winta. And he would’ve claimed Winta as his own in an instant. They would’ve replaced the family he had lost so long ago. “Yes,” he finally admitted.

“And cease your thoughts of those you would leave here once on Sorgan.”

“No. I’ve come too far with Yadier and Rayne to leave them. For Sorgan or anywhere else.”

“What is it that Din Djarin wants, then? Hm?”

That was the thing. Right there. Life had never been about what he wanted. It had always been about what he’d had to do. He’d never had much of a choice. Until the last few years, the circumstances of his life merely shoved him around and he’d dealt with it the best he could. Stealing the Razor Crest was the first time he’d bucked against the flow of his life, but stealing Yadier was the first time he had truly banked a hard turn against it, and his world had been turned upside down ever since, pinning him against a different variety of hard places. But now, he actually had goals, and he found himself completely flummoxed as to how to reconcile them. Have a family and raise his son. Raise an army, apparently. Maybe somehow raise hell with Death Watch without inviting a downward spiral to the Dark Side. Figure out what to do with an ancient holy Mandalorian relic. But the ache in his back reminded him that he was in his mid-forties, and he recognized how exhausted he was, how he sometimes dreamed of retreating to a forest, maybe switching which planet that forest might be located on, to lay back upon the earth and watch the stars turn through the trees with his lover’s fingers laced through his.

Still, the three pieces of him. To love. To destroy. To retreat.

“All at once, it does not have to happen,” Yandia said.

Din let out a breath, not realizing he had been holding it.

“Love your son, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“Love his mother, do you not?”

He opened his mouth, but only silence came out.

“Difficult the words are.”

“Yes.”

“Still broken, that part of you.”

The only response Din could manage was a shift in his shoulders.

“That part of her, as well.”

“I know.” He was quiet for a moment, unsure if his question was appropriate, then decided to give it a voice. “Do the words matter?”

“Hm! Less than actions, certainly. How else to communicate, hm?”

Din tapped his helmet. “She sees right through me most of the time. She must already know.”

“What you hide from yourself she cannot see. Actions only, you have given her.”

He couldn’t help his mind from straying to their intimate moments, then locked it down, sure that wasn’t the answer Yandia was looking for.

Yandia apparently disagreed. “One way, yes. Others you have, as well.”

Neither Din nor Rayne were particularly affectionate people, both having been trained against it in childhood. Their expressions of it were thus more subtle than most, and easy for both of them to miss. A lingering gaze. A gentle touch. An encouraging word. The motions were small, but the emotions that drove them were powerful, driving storms that did little more than shift the blade of a seized windmill the barest of an inch. But sometimes, the storms were powerful enough to break the windmill free altogether, a wild spin in the form of bringing an entire starship down or mutilating a Stormtrooper. Violent, gruesome expressions of love, but ones that made sense given their lives and circumstances. Yandia showed all of this to Din, and he tilted his head in understanding.

“We’re the windmill.”

“Correct. And the wind.”

“Fixing the windmill will make us less vulnerable to the Dark Side.”

“Ah. Entirely blind to the ways of the Force you are not.”

Din knew exactly where to start.

With the big chunk of beskar on his head jamming up the works.

He was done with the cowardice that was keeping it on. That isolated him from his family.

Yandia’s eyes widened just a bit. “Done for today we are. Home from school early, you may take your son. A few more hours, we will keep Rayne.

---

Din picked Yadier up from class, feeling impatient, afraid he would lose his nerve. Still, he let his son walk home next to him, something they had been trying to do more often now that they were in friendly territory. It took longer, his short little legs pumping out eight or nine steps for every one of theirs, but they were generally in less of a hurry these days, anyway.

When they got home, Din swept him up and carried him to the kitchenette, where he could sit him on the table and be closer to eye level while Din sat in a chair.

Worn out from the walk, Yadier was calm, sucking on his Mythosaur pendant.

Din put his head in his hands and listened to his own shaking breaths through the modulator. “I need a friendly audience, kid,” he said to the floor. “You get to be the first living thing to see my face in more than thirty years.”

“Merwelp.”

Din sat back in the chair. “That’s all you’ve got?”

His son gave him a raspberry around the Mythosaur.

“You’re right. Foot off the break. Here goes.” Be brave. Look your son in the eye. Do what he does every day. He disengaged the seal, pulled the helmet off, and let his son look at him.

Yadier’s eyes grew huge and the Mythosaur fell out of his mouth as his face split into a wide grin. “Buuuuuiiiiirrrrr!” The squeal came out about an octave higher than usual. Before Din knew what was happening, Yadier launched himself off of the table and into his father’s arms, his tiny body shaking with laughter and joy. He climbed his way up the chestplate and Din held him up so they both could get a good look at each other. Yadier’s eyes spilled over with tears, and his head tilted left and right to cover all the angles. “Buir!” He reached his arms out to be held close, and Din held him to his face. The little boy giggled as he rubbed his cheek against Din’s scruff and patted Din’s face with his tiny clawed hands.

Relief flooded Din as he held Yadier close. He brought his lips to the top of his son’s head and kissed him there, and his mind was inundated with the memory of the last kiss his own father had given him, in the same place at the top of his head. He let it come, let the tears come, as he cried and laughed with his son.

---

Rayne came through the door and the first thing she saw was Din’s helmet still on the kitchen table.

His armor was stacked on the floor beneath it.

She froze.

She could think of about a million ways this could be bad, and only one way this could be good.

She heard talking and laughter from Yadier’s room as she took measured steps to the table. She reached out for the helmet with one hand, hesitated, then let herself trace a finger across the black T of the visor.

There was an unhelmed, unarmored Mandalorian in her home and the golden rays of the setting sun were streaming through all of the windows.

She lifted the helmet off of the table with both hands. The only face she had ever known of her Mandalorian stared back at her, the black T against silver. It weighed heavy in her hands, as if his head was still in it.

She’d handled it twice before, when installing the fob scrambler at the back of it, just next to the bottom of the louver, and again when deactivating it. A two-time necessity. She had not been one to touch it often even when his head was in it. She wasn’t sure that the first time she’d lifted it off of him even counted, blindfolded, using his own hands between hers and the beskar to lift it off so she could heal the blood-spilling skull fracture.

And now here it was on the kitchen table next to Yadier’s rubber frog, her data pad, and Din’s book tablet, where they’d all been left after breakfast this morning, the knickknacks of their daily lives.

Helmet in her hands, she turned and walked towards the hallway that led to the bedrooms. She heard Din’s unmodulated voice as he chatted with Yadier in the child’s room, and his tone sounded light. He sounded… fine. When she got to the entrance to the hall, she lowered her head, dropping her eyes to the floor. “Din?”

The chit-chat stopped, and she heard him take a long breath. “Yeah. We’re in here.”

“Do you want your helmet?”

A short pause. “No.”

“Everything ok in there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, things are good. I didn’t scare him, so, yeah.”

“This was on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“You ready for me to come out?”

“Um…” she turned so her back was to the room. “Yeah.”

She heard his knees crunch as he got up off the floor. His steps were light as he walked into the hallway. She heard Yadier shuffle over, poke his head out the door, and squeak out a short “Buir!” in greeting to his mother.

She lowered her head again and responded. “Hey, ad’ika.”

Sensing that the adults wanted to talk, he let loose with a final raspberry and returned to his toys.

She felt Din’s right hand on her hip as he reached around with his left to lift the helmet from her hands by the bottom edge. She heard it drop to the floor, and then his left hand fell to her other hip. He stepped close behind her, placed a kiss at the back of her head, and leaned against the wall. “Hey.”

His voice was so close. His face was right behind her. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Losing my religion.”

“Losing or changing?”

“Mm. Maybe just changing.”

“What about your soul?”

“This hasn’t been about my soul since Coruscant. You know that.”

“What’s it been about, then?”

“I couldn’t let you look me in the eye. Knowing what I was.”

“What was that, exactly?”

“The foundling of a terrorist organization who swore his soul to the people who murdered his parents. A man who’s captured or murdered hundreds of people for a paycheck to feed more foundlings of the same terrorist organization. A man who sold a baby to the Empire.”

“I’ve known who you are this whole time.”

“Knowing and seeing aren’t the same. I didn’t…” He paused, voice cracking. “I didn’t deserve your eyes on me. Either of you.”

Oh, Din. She’d sensed the recriminations he’d flung at himself in a vague sort of way since Coruscant, but to finally hear it all out loud broke her heart. “What changed?”

“I’m tired of it… the helmet… being used against you. It’s happened twice since we’ve gotten here. It’s been used against me all along. Against all of the Mandalorians. It stopped being protection and turned into a shackle. We’re slaves to it. I’m done with being a slave.”

She nodded. “Yeah.” She’d told him as much two months ago. In the end, it was something he had to come to terms with himself. The silence stretched as they stood in the hallway, breathing. “So you can put it back on?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to see you?”

“No, but we’re at the point where it’s harder on you than it is on me.” His voice cracked again. “I… don’t know what’s going to happen after today. I know I blew it, but… I have something to say to you and I need you to look me in the eye when I say it.”

Rayne swallowed, discovering that her breaths were coming hard. “Is it time for that do-over?”

“This morning… never before in my life had I fought with words, and there I was, spewing delusions, and then… that… came out. And it was… weaponized. And… yes. I want to take it back and do it over.”

She took a breath, head lowered, and turned around. His hands returned to her hips. For a long time, she just stared at his feet, clad in his socks. Black pants and a black short-sleeved shirt rounded out the top of her field of vision.

She lifted her gaze and looked upon the face of her Mandalorian for the first time.

Round, brown eyes, lines forming at the outside corners as his mouth pulled into a tentative, anxious smile. She brought her fingertips to the top edges of his eyebrows, running along their length with a light touch, then brought them along his jaw, lined with patchy stubble. The same motions she had run through before, hidden in the dark, but now with the light to guide her.

She looked upon what touch had not otherwise spoken of. The dark brown mop of hair that he had obviously cut himself weeks ago, flecks of gray coming in at his temples. Brown, penetrating eyes. Long, black eyelashes. A pleasant mouth with full lips. An almost boyishly round face, despite the strong jaw line. Light bronze skin that matched the rest of him, his tan from Methuselah fading. Stubble salted with gray at the backs of his jaws. A proud, aquiline nose. Two lines between his brows, just like he told her about, just two months ago, their first night together. It all came together in a face that was surprisingly kind for someone who had done the things he had done. Taken the abuse he had taken.

Maybe there was something to be said for the protective properties of beskar.

Din was stunning.

And the expression of anxiety on his face screamed that he had absolutely no idea how stunning he was.

“Thirty years of hiding that face in a bucket was a crime against nature.”

He broke into an embarrassed grin that revealed white, even teeth. He brought his hands up to her head, threading his fingers through her short hair, catching himself from his first impulse to pull her in and kiss her. Allowing her the space to look, instead. The space to see. To have her acceptance, for her to look him in the eye knowing full well what he was, even after what he had done to her today, even if it wasn’t of his own volition, was overwhelming.

The first adult to ever see his adult face had looked upon him and deemed him worthy.

It should have made what he had to say next easier, but it didn’t.

Din’s expression switched from embarrassed grin to burdened confession in an instant, and Rayne bore witness to the fact that he had never learned to control his facial expressions. His face was an absolute beacon betraying his emotions, and she realized that she would have to teach him to school himself back. For now, though, she would take it all in.

He took a breath, found that he couldn’t hold her gaze and say the words at the same time, so he dropped his eyes. “Rayne, I…” Again, the words hung in his throat. He swallowed. A whispered “Goddammit” fell out instead.

She reached for the back of his head and brought his face to hers for a slow, gentle kiss. When she released him, her tone was soft. “Take all the time you need.”

His expression switched to pained nostalgia. “The last person I said this to shoved me into a bunker and was killed by a missile.”

She met his gaze. “The last person I said this to shoved me through an airlock and was sucked into outer space.”

He huffed out a sigh, closing his eyes and bringing his forehead to hers. We’re both so fucked up.

She let her arms fall around him as he shuddered against her, giving him as much comfort as she could. When he pulled away once more, she held his gaze, his face now a study in desperation, deep brown eyes round and wide, brow furrowed, mouth pressed into a thin line of tension.

The Mando’a phrase for I love you was not a direct translation. Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum. I hold you in my heart forever. Din thought Rayne might know the words, but the Clones would not have strung them together like that for the Jedi Younglings, so she might not get it. And he needed for her to get it. If he could just… get it out…

Without realizing what he was doing, his hands fell into the literal motions of the sign language used by the Tuskens on Tatooine, his eyes not leaving hers. With his right hand, he pointed to his own face. With his left, he closed his fist and placed it over his heart. His right opened in her direction. With his left, he reached up, then lowered his hand slowly, fingertips making a sprinkling motion. The sign for “rain.” I love you, Rayne.

She slid her hands up his arms and threaded her fingers through his hair, blue eyes locked on brown, and her response was mercifully immediate, even if it was only whispered. “I love you, Din.”

He kissed her, long and deep.

They stood in the hallway like that for a long time. Quiet. Gentle. Connected.

Yadier continued to play with his toys in his room, a broad, toothy grin opening his face as he floated his toys in an orbit above his head, very much attuned to the love his parents were finally sharing. Finally healed enough to love. Finally healed enough to admit it to each other, even if just barely. He shared the news with his new friends, their minds already interconnected through the Force, and they rejoiced with him.

Yandia, in particular, was quite pleased.

---

After an undetermined amount of time, Rayne and Din became aware of their son’s giggling from his room. With one last kiss, they pulled apart and stepped in to observe the levitating toys. They fell to the floor as Yadier raised his arms.

Instead, Din got back down on the floor so Yadi could crawl all over him, punctuating his explorations with little grunts as he thumped his tiny claws against Din’s ribs and chest. Rayne lay next to them, almost melting as she watched her son play so openly, as if he was more alive without the beskar blocking him from his father. His eyes big and round, his ears perked up, he romped up and down Din’s legs, squirmed up Din’s chest, and then sat on the floor between them so he could resume the exploration of his father’s face.

Din endured it for an hour and a half, and Rayne found herself floored by the range of expressions his face transmitted. The broadness of his smile, how it flashed his teeth and crinkled the skin around his eyes. She had never imagined that he could look so… happy. For two months, he’d been nothing more than a black T against silver and a mess of body language. For the last few weeks, he’d been vague shapes of warm flesh and scruff in the dark. Now, he was finally a real person, a real person who laughed without a modulated filer. Laughed and blinked and rolled his eyes and smiled.

The baby’s energy began to wane, eyelids half-closed, ears drooping. They let him snuggle in under Din’s jaw while they continue to lay on the floor facing each other, fascinated with the notion of direct eye contact. Rayne stared at Din without apology, noticing that the brown of his irises was even darker than Yadier’s, even if they didn’t fill up quite as much of his eyes. Finding where the irises ended and the pupils began was difficult, and after a while, she realized his pupils were dilated.

“Handling everything ok?” Rayne asked.

“Yeah.”

Din’s stomach chose that moment to make a disgruntled noise, and Yadier giggled.

“I may not have gotten around to lunch today.”

Rayne raised an eyebrow. “Ready for your first face-to-face meal with your family?”

“I don’t know, but I’m starving. Now is a good time to try.”

They prepared the meal together with what they had on-hand in the small kitchenette. Din’s hands kept shaking and he had to yield the knife duties to Rayne. They kept it simple; fish, rice, and vegetables. Things that would stay on a fork with ease no matter how much his hands shook and not get caught in his teeth.

Once he found himself seated in front of his plate, fork in hand, Din found himself unable to lift it. He kept his eyes down, doing his best to ignore his audience, unaware that they actually weren’t focused on him. He looked up at Rayne’s laugh, saw that she was watching Yadier, and turned to see him Force-lift his entire helping of fish and slide the whole thing into his mouth, swallowing it whole. Din turned back to see Rayne’s face in her hands, still laughing. She was able to face him when she’d collected herself after a minute or so. “I guess we’ll have to prioritize teaching him table manners, now.”

Table manners. “Good luck. He’s been catching frogs and eating them alive straight off the dirt for the last year.” He picked up his fork again, broke off a small piece of fish with it, pushed the tines through the flesh, and lifted it off the plate.

He couldn’t get it more than a few centimeters off before his arm froze. His hand hung in mid-air for several seconds before he gave up and put it back down.

Rayne watched him struggle, heartbroken at the frustration written all over his face. “I know this is a lot all at once.” Her tone was soft.

He brought his gaze up to meet hers, and she was struck by the mixture of hope and weariness she saw before her. He looked back down. “Yeah,” was all he could say.

“Do you need me and Yadier to step out for a bit? Give you some space?”

“No,” he reached across the table for her hand. “Please stay.”

“Ok. Do you want me to close my eyes or anything?”

“No,” he said again. He reminded himself of all the times she had dealt with her claustrophobia to share herself with him in his bunk on the Razor Crest. All the times she had tolerated the press of his helmet against the back of her head, despite the harrowing memories of her clone-trooper-uncle turned murderer. If she could do all that, the least he could do was eat a plate of fish in front of her. “I’ll make it work.”

“Ok.” She tightened her hold on his hand.

With his other hand, he managed to pick up his glass and take a few gulps of water without incident. Progress. Once more, he picked up his fork, fish still on it. He closed his eyes, pictured himself lifting it to his mouth, parting his teeth, bringing it home. The flavor of it spread across his tongue before he realized he’d actually done it. He kept his eyes closed, concentrating on how it tasted, knowing that it wasn’t important for him to see, but in the being seen that mattered.

She watched as the fork slid from his mouth and he paused for a moment, furrows in his brow smoothing out, eyes still closed. After what seemed like a long time, his jaw finally worked as he chewed a few times, and then he held his breath as he swallowed. When he was ready, he opened his eyes once more, the deep brown of his irises crowding out most of the whites.

“How was that?” she asked.

He held her gaze with his for a long time before he finally answered. “Delicious.”

Yadier laughed. They turned to face him. Seeing that he had their attention, he Force-lifted all of the rice off of his plate, opened his mouth wide, and managed to get every last grain past his teeth before swallowing it all and letting out a belch.

They managed to make eye contact without turning their heads from him. “He’s picking up some skills at school. He’d have had half of it all over the table before.” Rayne said.

Din dropped his gaze and huffed out a laugh.

He ate his dinner.

Din got Yadier ready for bed, giving him a bath and reading to him as Rayne cleaned up their dinner items. When all was done, he eased himself into the couch, slouched back, and closed his eyes.

It had… been a day.

Rayne made to sit next to him but he pulled her into his lap instead, facing him. “Mmm, you’re right,” she said, bringing her lips to his. “This is better.”

He sighed into her kiss, bringing his hands to her hips. They stayed like that for a long time, overwhelmed by it all, focusing on what they could when they could, the familiarity of warm, soft lips and gentle excursions of tongues, the novelty of the roundness of an iris, the arch of a brow, the shadow of a jaw.

When they pulled apart, he closed his eyes, bringing one hand up to keep her forehead to his. “You’re sure you can love a man without a soul?”

She brought her hands up to rest her weight against his chest, and he opened his eyes to catch her gaze. “Whatever you have in here that makes you who you are, that makes the choices you make when you have room to make a choice… that’s who I love. I love the man who gave everything up to get a strange little alien baby to safety. I love the man who is kind and gentle despite being raised in an unkind and ungentle world. I love the man who was willing to trust me when he had little reason to do so.”

He closed his eyes once more, his next words coming out in a whisper. “I love the woman who takes my broken pieces and puts them back together. I love the woman who protects me and our son from the rest of the galaxy.” He paused, wondering at the relative ease of the words now. They only came out in a whisper, but still. He opened his eyes, meeting her gaze for what he said next. “I’m sorry about what I said this morning. About… not being able to have our own children. But I meant it when I said that didn’t matter. It doesn’t. At all.”

“I know.”

“Does it matter to you?”

She turned her head in a slow shake. “Not really. I grew up knowing it would never be an option, so…” She shrugged. “Wouldn’t matter if it did.”

Once again, he noted her characteristic detachment from things that most others would find difficult, part of him feeling heartbroken for her about it, another part of him grateful for the insulation it provided her.

She stroked the blank patch in his stubble with her thumb. “Did you ever want any of your own?”

He took a long breath and let it out, wondering how to get this next part out. “Mandalorians who aren’t in a clan can have children. They get adopted by a clan or are raised by the Fighting Corps. Anything to get our numbers back up. The catch is that the birth parents can’t ask about them. Blood ties don’t matter. The kids know the names of their birth parents only so they can avoid sleeping with a sibling later on, but that’s it. Women make it clear about what they want. The men either agree or don’t. We’re never told if anything comes of it.”

Rayne gave a slow nod. “You’re trying to tell me you might have children.”

“Yeah,” he said, heart hammering in his chest. “I might.”

“Huh.” She broke eye contact and sat back, her gaze distant.

“Does that bother you?”

“What?” She brought her gaze back to his. “Oh. No, sorry. It’s just… weird. That you might have kids out there. Somewhere. No idea how they are. If they’re ok. That… must be hard.”

He shook his head. “It’s just how things were. I never thought to question it until the… whole thing at Coruscant. I just… wanted you to know.”

“Thank you,” she said, running her hands from his shoulders to his elbows. Her expression was one of complete acceptance. “Any guess on how many?”

“No more than five, I don’t think. That’s only if all the ones who…” He left off, then he remembered Gideon’s words and frowned. “Maybe six. I’m not sure about the first one.”

“Are you questioning things now?”

He relaxed, flattening his hands over her thighs, having gotten through the hard part. “Haven’t had the mental space for it until this week, but, yeah. The files Reesha gave me might have some leads. The oldest might’ve made it to the Mandalorian registers before the Purge.” God, if Alaria… they were eighteen when they were separated. When she left. He could have a twenty-six year old child. He could be a grandfather.

God, he felt so old.

Din shook his head. “I haven’t had the nerve to look anything up. I won’t until I figure out…” He left off again, unable to complete the thought. He took another long breath, meeting her gaze. “All the secrets are out.”

“Yeah.” Rayne’s voice was rougher than he expected.

He changed his earlier decision about letting her bring up the issue of her name. Might as well get all of the cards on the table, now. “Does it bother you that I know your name?”

“No.” She dropped her gaze. “I just… wanted to tell you under different circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

She ran a thumb along his jaw, wondering if she was about to admit too much. “The same way I told Hayes.”

The only other person she had ever told. Her husband. Oh. Oh.

She lifted her gaze back to his, brown eyes wide and full and round. Mildly surprised, but they’d both had enough for one day. “If it ever came to pass,” she said, taking mercy on him. “The Council got ahead of me on it.” She paused, watching as he closed his eyes and turned his face into her hand, exhaustion winding its way through both of them. “I haven’t used it in three and a half decades. I’m not sure I’ll ever be comfortable with it again.”

“Mmm…” His eyes were still closed. “I like the name you’ve been using.” He brought a hand up to hers so he could press it to his lips for a kiss. All of the tension left his body for a brief moment as sleep claimed him, and then he jerked back awake. The hour was not particularly late, but the day’s mileage was long and getting Force-controlled had taken its toll on him.

Rayne kissed the top of his head, his hair soft against her face. “Time for bed.”

Din grunted his agreement as she helped him up, and he made his way to the fresher with a weary shuffle, leading her by the hand. When they got to the door, he turned and let his hands fall to her hips. “I’m not gonna make it past half-mast tonight.”

She nodded. His anxiety, both about being totally seen and the future of his residency, washed over her with his exhaustion. “I understand.” She smiled, tracing the lobe of his ear.

“But…” he tipped his head toward the shower, lifting an eyebrow. “I could stand to ease into things.”

Oh god, his eyebrow quirk almost undid her. The way it changed his expression in such a complete manner. The perfect arch of it, the promise it suggested. Had he been doing that under the helmet all this time? She slid her hands down from his head, down his chest, then dropped them away all together, her eyes not leaving his until she pulled her shirt off over her head. She recalled the first time they had showered together, when he had removed the helmet in the dark, needing to shed himself of the blood from Mayfeld and Xi’an’s executions. Now, he had removed the helmet in the light, needing to shed himself of the experience of being manipulated by the Force and breaking the promise he had made to her. She met his eyes with her own again, slid her pants off over her hips, and stepped out of them. She stood before him; just her and nothing else save for the beskar casing hanging at her throat, hoping her first venture would give him the courage to follow. He pulled his shirt off easily enough, but he only got as far as unbuckling his belt before his hands began to slow, and he ground to a halt after hooking his thumbs through his belt loops.

He dropped his gaze, then brought it back up to meet hers. “Can you close your eyes?”

She complied.

He took a breath, removed the rest of his clothes, then reached out to take her hand in his. “Keep them closed,” he said, voice soft. He brought her fingertips up to trace his right eyebrow, then the bridge of his nose, then kissed them with his lips, then along his jaw, down his throat, past his own beskar casing, down his sternum, and abs. He paused to slip one into his navel, then along the ridge of his hip, and finally brought her hand to rest around the parts of himself that he had begun to think of as belonging to her. In the same way he had come to think of parts of her as belonging to him, unable to keep himself from thinking mine in a possessive way as he brought his mouth to her, as he sank what belonged to her into what belonged to him.

Maybe that was messed up. But he couldn’t help that the exchange felt fair. Mine. Hers.

Her hand was gentle on him. She always was. Still, his body responded about how he expected; an initial twitch of promise, followed by exhausted reality. “You can open your eyes, now.”

She did. She understood his actions, needing first to be touched all the way through, in the way he was familiar with, before he could be seen in his entirety. The unspoken message. I am vulnerable, and I am in your hands. Her eyes landed first where he had left her hand, unused to his lack of responsiveness in this particular position, but understanding it. She released him, and reversed the path of her hand, her eyes following, up his hip, through his navel, back up his abs, sternum, throat, jaw, lips, nose, and back to his eyebrow, careful again to stay along the outside of the orbit of his eye.

For the first time, she saw the full length of him, from head to toe. Fully human. An actual person. No longer just a body with an anonymous Mandalorian head tacked onto the top of it.

For the first time, he was whole to her.

She let out an appreciative sigh.

He led her into the shower.

They watched as the water poured over each other. Din was reminded of how she looked when she swam in the lake, curls tamed by the weight of the water as they lay flat atop her head before she swept them back. Rayne watched as he let the water soak him through, eyes closed as his hair plastered against his skull, mouth open as the water ran over his stubble and off of his jaw. He watched her wash her hair, this being only his second shower with another person, their first time in the dark, and he marveled at the vulnerability of the whole thing. Somehow even more vulnerable than sex. Standing naked before each other, eyes periodically closed against the soap, wet and slippery, off-balance when reaching in certain ways, confined in an enclosed space.

When they were done, they toweled off. No need for the hairdryer; the helmet wasn’t going back on until the morning. They brushed their teeth together simply because they could. Naked, simply because they could.

He followed her to their bedroom and they donned their usual sleeping attire, shorts for both, plus a t-shirt for Rayne, expecting Yadier to make his usual swing through to check in at some point during the night. Din pulled the curtains open, and when Rayne turned out the light, moonlight flooded the room and she could see the edges and shadows of his face in the pale glow.

He collapsed into bed, pulling her to him as she slid under the covers. She watched his eyes close even as he pulled her knee over his hip, then slid his hand back up her thigh, palm open and fingers spread wide. “I want this to work,” he whispered in the dark, his voice gutted by exhaustion.

“I do too,” she whispered back.

---

She dreamed.

A man in white Clone armor. Red and blue stripes painted across his chest.

“Ad’ika,” he said, his voice warm. He walked to her, but she was powerless to flee as he pulled a knife from his boot. “Ad’ika,” he said again, a voice she hadn’t heard in decades, holding his other hand out, palm up. “Rez…” He pushed her back against an unseen surface in an odd, gentle way, and she found herself paralyzed.

He held the knife to her throat. “Rayne.” The voice changed. Ragged. Sorrowful. Din’s voice. He took the Clone helmet off to reveal Din’s face, grief writ large in the furrows of his brow. “Don’t make me do this, Rayne.” His brown eyes stared straight through her, even as she felt the edge of the knife against her skin. “I don’t want to do this.” His voice cracked into a million pieces. “Don’t make me kill the ones I love.”

He closed his eyes, brought his mouth to her neck, just behind her jaw, and she felt his breath on her skin as he placed a slow, hard bite on her.

She woke with a start.

Din’s eyes, wide open in the moonlight, stared back at her, face etched with concern, his hand warm around the back of her neck.

He’d woken her up.

The same way he always had before, when her nightmares woke him before they woke her. A caress at the back of her head at arm’s length, before she could make enough noise to wake Yadier.

She blew out a sigh and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” She opened her eyes. “Just grinding over yesterday. Did you… get any of it?”

“No.”

Good. That was good.

He pulled her to him, pausing when he noticed her hesitation, but then she came the rest of the way herself, tucking her head under his chin. Done with the flinching. Done with the strangled moans. Her body at rest as her breathing evened out against his chest.

Just a normal nightmare. No different from the half-dozen she’d had before over the course of the last couple of months. Outpacing his own rate by a little, but not much.

Normal, he told himself. Then he almost laughed. Nothing about them was normal. Our version of normal.

Nothing more.

---

Rayne woke to daylight for the first time since Takodana.

She woke to daylight without a beskar helmet pressed to her head for the first time since Methuselah.

She woke to daylight and the sight of a man’s face half-buried in the pillow next to her for the first time in two years. Din was still asleep, so she took the opportunity to stare, to take him all in, as much as she could.

He was on his side, facing her, with only the right side of his face visible. Relaxed. At peace. Hair an unruly mop. Long eyelashes casting shadows over his cheek. Lips parted just the slightest bit in the middle.

God, those lips of his. She wanted them on her forever.

As if sensing he was being watched, he woke with the simple motion of an opening eye, big and brown, and his breath paused. His eyebrow lifted and his mouth pulled into the ghost of a smile as he pressed himself further down into the pillow, as if trying to hide.

She broke her stare with a slow blink and smiled. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.”

“Morning,” he replied, voice thick with sleep, rolling over to face away from her, but pulling her arm with him so she was spooning around his back.

They lay like that for a little while, and he placed soft kisses on her fingertips, one by one.

Breakfast was a mildly anxious affair.

Din got through the meal itself with little hesitation, just yogurt with pineapple. He kept bringing pineapples home, about one every other day. Rayne had sensed him watching her eat it from behind the helmet, and confirmed it this morning, judging by the stolen glances she’d caught him in. She wondered in an idle way if he’d developed a kink for it after The Great Bacta Bath.

She couldn’t decide if that was hot, hilarious, or messed up.

When it was time to get going, he picked the helmet up off of the table and held it in his hands for a moment, staring down at the visor. She watched his hesitation, then let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding when he turned it around in his hands and slid it over his head. “Everything alright?”

“Yes.” This was fine. The old Death Watch rules didn’t matter anymore. He was still a Mandalorian. He still lived according to the Resol’nare. Just… a looser interpretation of it. It didn’t matter that he’d shown his face to his son and the woman he loved. They protected him as much as the helmet did. It didn’t matter. It didn’t.

But it would take some getting used to.

They walked Yadier to school, the child skipping and hopping and burbling the whole way, just like any other day.

Ona greeted them at the door, just like any other day. When Yadier dashed in to join his friends, his teacher turned back to his parents. “Master Yandia said he wished to see you in his chambers as soon as you got here.”

Rayne felt Din stiffen next to her. “Thank you,” she said, and they set forth.

The line of his shoulders was taut. His movement was nothing short of ultra-efficient, no motion wasted. As much as a solid pillar of walking beskar as possible. When they reached the central atrium, with its two-tree jungle and butterflies, he had to stop, hands gripping the rail, head bowed between his shoulders, motionless.

She stood next to him, her hand on the rail next to his.

“What if-” His voice hitched. “What if…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“Then we’ll figure something out,” she said. “I can bring him to Jedha. We can meet there. As much as possible.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course.” Her tone was hard, as if she would brook no argument. “You will always be his father. You’re the one who brought him here. You returned their Lost Son. I will never let the Council forget that. Or our son.”

“Thank you.” His tone was a mix of gravel and gratitude. He placed his hand over hers on the rail. She spread her fingers so he could lace his own through them.

Once again, he watched the butterflies. Locked inside.

He wondered if he was about to get locked out.

---

They waited in Yandia’s chamber. Rayne in the customary Jedi meditative kneel, Din in his customary butt-to-the-mat-knees-to-the-elbows cross-legged sit. They did not have to wait long, as Yandia entered only a few minutes later, sinking into the curious squat that came so easily to his species.

He got straight to business.

“Deliberated long and hard the Council has on the matter of Din Djarin’s citizenship at Genesaria. Many factors we took into account. Your return of our Lost Son we will never forget. Your love for him, and his love for you a major factor was.” Yandia paused, as if to soften the blow of what was to come next. “Also of concern your swiftness to violence was. Troubled and damaged you are. A prime target of the Dark Side you may be. Difficult to find was a place of practical use for your skillset. Of concern were your ties to Death Watch.”

Din remained still through it all. As if he had frozen solid under the armor.

“And yet,” Yandia continued. “Tremendous growth you have shown. Flexibility in your ways you have demonstrated. Even love you have admitted.” The old master cast the faintest of knowing glances in Rayne’s direction, and she did not miss it. He breathed a great sigh. “A warrior you are. A warrior you will always be. In this, you will not change. But the causes for war you have grown more selective in. A worthy target is the Empire still. A great threat this resurgence the Council agrees.

“For these reasons, earned the citizenship of Genesaria you have, Din Djarin.”

Something in Din’s posture faltered, as if he wasn’t expecting what he’d just heard, his brain stumbling to catch up to it.

And then, an exhale of relief, of a breath he had been holding for two months.

He could keep his son.

He could raise his son.

He could be a father. A real father.

Him. Yadier. Rayne. They could stay a family. A real family. Here. Among his son’s people.

Rayne closed her eyes, feeling Din’s relief wash over her own. As if a barrier somewhere in him had broken and it all came rushing out. They could stay together. Her son could keep his father.

She could keep her Mandalorian.

He could keep his Jedi.

“Much work yet there is to be done,” Yandia continued. “Force-resistance training the Mandalorian must undergo. Counseling as a family you also require. Orphans, all three of you are. Much trauma you have each suffered. Guidance as a family of orphans you will have need of. Force-sensitives not of Jedi training make the best counselors for such things. Hm!” Yandia seemed to laugh at his own joke.

“And now the training you can provide us, we come to,” Yandia said. “Many agents Genesaria sends abroad. To listen. To gather. Sometimes to influence. To keep us hidden. Some Force-sensitive, some not. Some walk the path of the Sentinel, some the path of the Guardian, as do you, Rayne and Din. Highly proficient your skills are. Invaluable, your training to these agents would be.

“In these ways you both will begin your contributions to Genesaria. Grow, your roles will, as your familiarity with this world grows. Defeat of the Imperial resurgence, a union of the Jedi and Mandalorians may herald. You are not yet too old to accomplish great things, here. The unification of the Jedi and Mandalorians may yet occur under your guidance.”

Din’s head was bowed, and he sucked in a long, shuddering breath. “Thank you,” he said, his tone low but even.

“Go now,” Yandia said, “and take the day to settle in. Your duties begin tomorrow.”

Din led the way back outside, strides long and purposeful. Rayne almost had to jog to keep up, but she did so without complaint, finding her relief and joy and anticipation reflected in the armored man next to her.

No… not just reflected. He was flooded with it. Like a switch had been flipped in his brain and a year’s worth of hardships, sacrifices, struggles, and dreams were finally coming to fruition.

When instead of turning towards their place, Din turned in the opposite direction, heading to a different quadrant of the city, Rayne was confused. “Where are we going?” She’d hoped to head back and catch up on what they couldn’t complete the night before.

Din turned back and took both of her hands in his. “Follow me?” He said it like it was a question. As if she wouldn’t.

“Of course.”

They didn’t walk far, a mile at the most, an easy distance over the flat topography of the city and the warm, dry day. The neighborhood was similar to the one they were quartered in currently, modest high-rises with ground-floor restaurants, bars, and retail, though perhaps geared more toward permanent residents and less toward visitors from the countryside or abroad. Outdoor markets of all types crowded the side-streets; food, furnishings, fashion. Din slowed at one of the high-rises and ducked into the residential lobby, Rayne following.

The door attendant appeared to be expecting them. “Mando. Jedi Rollins. Please follow me.”

Rayne cast a look in Din’s direction, which he ignored with stoic precision.

Up the elevator they went.

They stopped and exited at the thirty-first floor. The numbers on the panel went up to forty.

The attendant led the way to the end of the hall, keying the lock to the door. “Take as much time as you need,” she said, casting a small nod in Din’s direction.

The door opened into a corner flat, and Rayne came to a sudden realization.

“So this is what you’ve been up to all week.”

“Yes,” Din said, walking to the middle of the main room, with windows on two sides.

He’d been hunting… of sorts. House hunting. Not knowing if he’d even be able to stay at the place he’d picked out. He shrugged, as if reading her question of his logic. “You and Yadier needed a place either way. This seemed like something you’d like.”

Indeed, it was. Small without being cramped, still enormous compared to the living space on the Razor Crest. Cozy without being confined, the west-facing windows included a door opening onto a deep balcony overlooking the city, roofed-over by the balcony for the next floor up. Comfortable without being a cage, its simplicity and proximity would allow them to focus on their coming responsibilities. Kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, all in good order, an open floor plan that allowed for flexibility of arrangements. Simple but comfortable. Close to the Jedi temple and all manner of bustle and activity at the street-level, Din recalling Rayne’s absorptive response to a similar kind of area at Coruscant when he had picked it out.

After a thorough inspection, Rayne stood in the middle of the main room, overwhelmed. “It’s… it’s…” She looked to Din. “Will it work for you? It’s not too urban? Too… dense?”

He shrugged again. “Soundproofing is good up here. Light-rail platform around the corner. Straight shot to the shipyards from here so we can get to the Crest easily. It’s a good base of operations. I found a few other options if you want to take a look…”

He pulled his book tablet out and showed her the pictures of the other possibilities, but she shook her head. “No, this is the best one. What’s the price?”

Her jaw dropped when he showed her the contract. “They cut the asking price in half when they figured out who we were. I got it back up to something less embarrassing, but not by much.”

She could buy it outright. So, in signing the contract, she did.

And just like that, they were homeowners.

Din had done the same with the basic furnishing necessities, having had a few things set aside at the nearby markets until they met with Rayne’s approval. The only thing she hesitated with was their bed. “I kinda want to try it out before-”

“It’s the same model we had at Reesha and Zavin’s place.”

“We’ll take it.”

That settled, they went back to their temporary lodging, packed up the few belongings they had there, checked out, and by the time they returned, everything had been delivered.

It wasn’t until that moment when it finally all hit him.

He belonged here.

He was home.

Din… had a home. A home that was rooted in the ground. An actual place, instead of a vehicle. An actual space, instead of a nook in a sewer. With people who loved him. People who protected him and who he, in turn, protected. He stood in the middle of his home, gaze fixed somewhere through the window looking out over the city, brought his hands to the bottom edge of his helmet, and lifted it off.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

The woman he loved, his Jedi, snaked a hand behind his cloak and flattened it against the small of his back. “Welcome home,” she whispered. “You’re ready for this? To settle down?”

He turned to face her, locking her gaze with those brown eyes of his. Without breaking eye contact, he undid the vambraces from his forearms and let them fall to the floor. “I’ve wanted this for a long time. Settle down. But not… settling. We’re not done, yet.”

“No,” she said. “We’re not.” Rayne helped him with the rest of the armor. Their traditional removal of it. Piece by unhurried piece.

He led her to their bedroom.

They made love in the afternoon light streaming in through the open windows.

The sunlight caught copper highlights in his hair. Warmed the tone of his skin.

Never before had he been able to see what he was doing with his mouth. Never before had he been able to see what he was doing when his lover’s fingers were twined through his hair. Never before had he been able to allow eye contact at that first moment of connection, to allow another to look into his soul through those moments of penetration, to allow another to see his eyes when they were both at their most vulnerable.

He was so happy it was with Rayne.

The mother of his son. His Jedi.

To taste her and see her and feel her tide rise up his spine all at the same time was almost too much, his movement more urgent than was his custom, but she followed his lead with willing abandon. He was embarrassed at the sound of his own groans in his ears until she responded in kind, unable to keep her eyes open as her release finally crashed over them, the swell of it pushing up through his throat and into his head. And when he followed soon after, she watched him as he flooded her mind, brow furrowed, eyes shut tight, lips pulled back just a little from his teeth, until his features smoothed out and relaxed.

---

Yadier loved their new home, explored every inch of it with great fanfare, and fell asleep with ease in his first actual bed. A small mattress low to the floor to facilitate his getting in and out of it, his parents knowing better than to try to cage him in a crib.

The Jedi and the Mandalorian went for a second round, this time in the moonlight. Slower. Quieter. More languid and relaxed.

After, Din sat with his shoulders against the headboard, Rayne once again in his lap, legs wrapped around him, arms around his shoulders, kissing in the dim light. After several long, unhurried minutes, she pulled away to rest her forehead against his. “Unifying the Jedi and the Mandalorians, huh?” She’d known something had been kicking around in his head for the last month or so, something he hadn’t dared give voice to, and finally put the pieces together when Yandia spoke the words that morning.

Din let out a satisfied sigh. “We make a good team.”

“Mm. We do.” She kissed the bridge of his nose. “You think that’ll scale up? Will Mandalorians be so quick to get over that thing about thousands of years of war with the enemy sorcerers?”

“If we do it right,” he said. “If both our people can each learn from our failures. Our own and each other’s.”

“That’ll be tricky.”

“Yes.” He ran his hands from her knees to her hips. “It will.” He brought his lips to the space under her jaw next to her throat and placed a kiss there, heart swelling as she sighed into it. “We’ll have to set a good example.”

“Yeah? How does that work?”

His hands twitched at her hips, and he waited until her eyes met his before saying the next words. “By unifying a Jedi and a Mandalorian.”

She tilted her head, but did not break eye contact. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”

“I am.”

He really had broken open. She took in a deep breath. “What’s the rush?”

“No rush. Just… why wait?”

She smiled and shook her head. “When you brought me into your clan, it was as Yadier’s mother.” She paused as she swallowed. “And that… I never dreamed anything could be so huge. It’s been the most incredible journey, the most incredible part of my life, and I can’t thank you enough for bringing him into it.”

She paused, battling words that lodged in her throat.

Din tried to ease her forward. “But…”

“Since then, I know that, to you, I was the mother of your son. To me, you were the father of my son. But we had trouble figuring out what we were to each other directly. We just barely got through the ‘L-word’ yesterday. We’ve only known each other for two months. We slept together after only knowing each other for three days. I adopted your son after only three weeks. Let’s… take our time on this one. Ease into it. Look forward to it for a while.”

His eyes were almost pleading in the moonlight, and she felt his yearning to solidify their family roll in like the tide. “Is that a yes or a no?”

She brought her forehead to his, knowing what the gesture meant to him. “It’s an ‘ask me again in six months.’ We’ve only known each other in extraordinary circumstances. We have a whole new life ahead of us here. I do want this. Let’s just… not put too much pressure on it all at once.”

“Three months,” he countered.

“You bargain like a Jawa.”

He rolled his eyes and let out a growling sigh.

Rayne laughed. “Okay. Three months. If you can still tolerate me by then, ask me again. I’ll most likely say yes. Then we get hitched whenever you want.”

“Deal.” He brought his lips to hers. A family. An honest-to-god family. He wanted to ride this wave forever.

“So what’s involved with a Mandalorian wedding?” She slid a finger along his collarbone.

“Just us and the words.” His hands slid back to her knees, dark eyes gazing into hers, gauging her reaction.

“Mm. Sounds nice. Simple.” She leaned her forehead back to his, and he closed his eyes, sighing into the contact. “What do the words mean?”

“We are one when together. We are one when apart. We share all. We will raise warriors.” Something warm bloomed in his chest as he spoke them. He slid his hands back up to her hips. “We’ve been doing all that for a while.”

“Yeah.” She paused. “So I get half the Razor Crest,” she teased.

He laughed. “I get half of that ridiculous pile of money from that deal on Coruscant.”

“See what I mean about easing into things?”

“Yes,” he conceded. “I’m definitely getting the better deal.” He kissed her again. “I’m guessing there are no Jedi weddings.”

She laughed. “No.”

“What’s involved with an Onderonian wedding?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care.” She ran her nose along his. “We can go with the Mandalorian version.”

He opened his eyes, met her gaze, then brought his lips to hers by way of thanks. When they broke off, he kept his forehead to hers, kept his eyes closed. “We could do it right now.”

He really was eager. When Din went in to something, he went all in. “Three months,” she said.

“Okay.”

“In the meantime,” she continued, “I thought maybe I’d get some more ink. If it’s appropriate.”

He lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head in a silent question. Good god, this man’s face.

“A mudhorn. On my right shoulder. I know I haven’t earned it, but-”

“You’ve more than earned it,” Din interrupted. “You’ve absolutely earned it.” He kissed her once again, long and deep.

---

The next day, they dropped Yadier off at school and then headed to the Razor Crest. Rayne wanted to fix the ion leak she’d rigged with the starboard engine before their last encounter with Gideon. Din wanted to re-arrange a few things and pick up more of his belongings. The ship needed re-fueling. They didn’t know when they would take it out again, but they wanted it to be ready.

Rayne found Din on the flight deck when she was done with the engine. “I saw a bazaar nearby. I’m gonna go sell Xi’an’s knives there, if that’s ok.”

He sighed. “Yes. Thank you.”

She ran a thumb along the top of the T-visor. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Okay.”

He listened as she opened the drawer in the hold, heard the distinctive snick of the blades as they were removed, heard Rayne’s light steps down the ramp as she left. Looking through the windscreen, he watched as she struck out through the yard, amber shades over her eyes, sun casting red highlights through her short chestnut curls, lightsaber clipped to her belt.

He settled himself in his seat, took a breath, and flicked the com recorder on.

Omera,

I hope this finds you well. I’m calling to let you know that I’ve found a safe place for the child with his people.

I’m… staying with him.

Our family includes another we met along the way. The child wanted her as his mother, and she and I have grown… close.

Please know that I will never forget you and what you did for me and my son. I hope that you find happiness. You deserve it.

Please give Winta our best.

Goodbye.

He closed the contact on the recorder and sent the message.

He had allowed his voice to crack, allowed her the knowledge of how difficult it was for him to let her go. He sat there for a few more moments, head bowed, packing up that piece of his soul to preserve it in his memory. Had he loved Omera? Yes, probably. In that way that he would never have been able to admit, never having allowed it to fledge. Not quite the right woman. Not quite the right time. She would have given him what he wanted, would have given him all the love she had, but she would not quite have been able to give him what he needed. She would not have been able to give safety to him and his son.

The woman who could do that was out selling the knives that had been thrown to kill her. That she had plucked out of the air like fruit off of a tree. Who possessed an armor that would protect him even when he shed his own.

He turned and opened a small drawer, pulling the small drive that held the classified files that Reesha had given him. Gideon’s words about Alaria drifted through his thoughts. He slid the drive into a pocket.

Maybe he would look into that in a few more days.

He slid a hand along the console, then flicked a switch, shutting the auxiliaries down. He then swiveled around, taking in the rest of the flight deck.

His ship.

His home for close to two decades.

It had seen him through some rough times. It had given him protection. It had given him solitude. It had chugged along to the best of its capabilities, only giving out when he’d pushed it far too hard or neglected it for far too long, and yet it had always hung on.

Now, it would no longer serve as his home. It would go back to being a vehicle of service, as it once had been long ago. He didn’t know what role it might have in their coming responsibilities, but he knew it would come into play, one way or the other. We’re not done with you yet, old girl.

Din Djarin, Mandalorian, wielder of the Darksaber, got up from his seat, slid down the ladder, and waited in the hold for the woman he intended to make his wife to return.

#the mandalorian #din djarin #grogu

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magicrowiswritingstuff · 4 years

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“Embrace” - Din Djarin x female!reader

Tigaanur Series: Part 1 | Part 2 (you’re here!) | Part 3 | MASTERLIST

Summary: The first time you slept next to the Mandalorian definitely wasn’t that comfortable. The second time would have been a lot better … if you could have fallen asleep in his embrace.

Warning: the fluff continues, a bit of violence/near death experience? (honestly ... is that news in that series?), more touching and bed sharing, suggestive themes, Hmmm slow-burn romance! My favorite ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Category: fluff

Words: about 8.000

Notes: The sequel to “Touch” is here! You don’t have to read the first part necessarily but I would suggest it because some things are references you might understand better if you read both. I also decided to name this series “Tigaanur“ which is Mando’a for ... touch, lol. I hope y’all like the second part just as much! I had a lot of fun writing this, hehe. Note 2: Again, set during season 1 but the events are drawn out over a longer period of time (but they aren’t really mentioned) Note 3: If you like my writing ... I’m taking Requests! Or if you just want to be notified when I upload something: I’ve started a taglist, too!

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“Embrace” – Din Djarin x fem!reader

With a huff you turned in your makeshift bed and stared at the ceiling of the Razor Crest, your hands clasped and neatly placed on your stomach. Keeping track of the time was difficult when you were in hyperspace for more than a day, at least for you, but when spending these days unable to fall asleep, the minutes seemed to last an eternity longer. Insomnia plagued you in your hours of otherwise peaceful slumber ever since a few weeks. All those events, all those concerns to keep the Child safe and the realization that there was a bounty on your head now, kept you awake, alert even when you knew it was safe to close your eyes. Your days were a constant pattern you couldn't escape from. Fighting, fleeing, repeat. You were aware of what you had signed up for when you joined Mando and the little one on the Razor Crest and you didn't regret a thing. But what you hadn't been aware of at the beginning was just how much your mind would struggle to process everything. You adapted to having to be observant and careful all the time, you just couldn't switch it off anymore. Your body shook with energy, prepared to act if necessary at any time even when you were more than exhausted. In the last couple of weeks you only seemed to find any sleep when your body was too exhausted to function anymore, leaving you passed out in the copilot seat more often than not. When Mando would notice you almost falling sleep beside him, he always urged you to go down in your bed. You knew he only wanted you to sleep comfortably, the copilot seat wasn't the best alternative for your body and especially for your back. You didn't dare to tell him that the moment you would settle down in your bed, you would be wide awake for the rest of the flight. Sometimes sleep was within reach, so close but your mind would startle you awake before you could get a hold of it. Leaving you panicked in your bed with your heart beating relentlessly against your ribs, keeping you awake for the rest of the night. Other times your body was simply too restless for you to even feel tired, let alone fall asleep. The constant stress your body and mind were under, slowly but surely strained your nerves.

You groaned, frustrated at yourself, and pressed the palms of your hands against your eyes. You couldn't deal with this anymore. You kicked back your blanket and stood up from your makeshift bed. You stretched your arms over your head until your shoulders made a satisfied plopping sound, then you grabbed your blanket, draped it over your shoulders and head like a hood before you made your way to the ladder leading up. You tiptoed silently past the Mandalorian's cot in which the kid was sleeping soundly, not wanting to wake the little on up, and then climbed up to the cockpit.

Mando shifted in his seat the moment you set a foot onto solid ground again, tilting his head in confusion as he looked at you. You walked up to him with your head lowered and sat down into the copilot seat to his right. With your feet plopped onto the seat, you wrapped the blanket around you and leaned your head back, glancing at the streaks of blue and silver above your through the window. "Nightmare?" he asked, his voice a soft whisper his modulator struggled to pick up. His concern for you made your heart flutter and warmth spred in your stomach. "No" you shook your head and wrapped the blanket tighter around your body. "Just can't fall asleep right now." It wasn’t a lie, just not the complete truth either. You let out a sigh, your eyes still fixated onto the fascinating beauty that was hyperspace even though you have seen it a million times already. But the nebula of blue and silver, of the stars swirling around you, never ceased to amaze you. The silence was light but filled with unspoken words and questions. You didn't dare to ask any of them out loud. You didn't want to disturb the comfortable silence and you weren't sure if you wanted to hear his answers anyway. You had asked him the question that was burning on the tip of your tongue before. His answer didn't really clarify much for you, you were still unsure at times. Now you only knew that he didn't mind the touches, didn't mind you around him. You were curious but also afraid to ask again. You liked how the bond you two shared was right now, you didn't want it to change to something awkward.

Your eyes fluttered close unwillingly, the exhausting taking a hold of your stiff body. You still couldn't relax but your body needed to shut down, needed to recharge. You heard the Mandalorian shuffle with something but before you could open your eyes to look, he had already grabbed your hand from underneath the blanket and intertwined his un-gloved fingers with yours. The warmth of his touch immediately washed over your whole body. Your lips formed into a soft smile as you squeezed his hand in thanks, slowly melting into his touch and the seat, gradually you felt your body relax. Mando began to draw small circles on the back of your hand, soothing your racing thoughts to a halt. No words were spoken, but you didn't feel like they were necessary right now. You were just grateful for his touch as your mind slipped into a peaceful slumber. The last clear thought you could form stuck with you even when you woke up again a few hours later. You never seemed to be able to relax in your bed just as good as if you were in the cockpit with Mando by your side.

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"Why does this always happen?" you huffed under your breath as you ran beside the Mandalorian, trying to get back to the Razor Crest before one of the men hunting you could land a shot.

You had just wanted to get some more supplies again, with three people on the ship rations didn't last long, especially with the always hungry kid that was hiding in the bag slung over your shoulder right now. You had wanted to go alone but after what happened the last time, when you had gotten badly hurt, Mando didn't allow that. Especially now that there was also a bounty on your head to track him and the kid down. You were in far more danger than he anticipated, than he wanted. But you also were in a desperate need to leave the ship even if it was only for an hour. You couldn’t stand being trapped there any longer, so you argued with him, refused to stay behind. After a while, and very reluctantly, Mando agreed to you going with him which meant that the kid had to join, too, because you didn't want to leave him alone on the ship. You had hoped for it to run smoothly, to just for once be able to enjoy a trip to a market and not be confronted with the harsh reality again. But you should have known better, you should have known that some bounty hunters would spot you three, that it was just inevitable.

So, that was why you were running through the narrow streets of the city you were in right now. Fighting them all off immediately hadn't been an option this time with all the civilians around you blocking your path and sight, so you three had to resort to shooting your way free and immediately fleeing after that. The plan had been to find a spot where you would have some advantage to attack but the city seemed to only consist of small, narrow streets in which you couldn't do anything except try to run, try to not get shot in the back.

Mando was running beside you but after a while you had trouble keeping pace with him. Your legs burned, the exhaustion in every fiber of your body from weeks of almost no sleep slowed you down more and more. Gasping for air you tried to not fall too far behind. The Mandalorian took a sharp turn to the left, vanishing into another small side street. You stumbled, struggling to slow down enough to take the turn without needing to stop completely. You could only vaguely hear the shouting of the bounty hunters behind you over the blood rushing through your ears and your heart hammering against your ribs. But what you could hear, or rather feel, was the blaster shoots zooming past you, barely missing. They were coming closer, fast. The kid cooed in your bag, confused by what was going on when you grabbed the bag and pressed it with him in it protectively against your chest. At least he wouldn't get hit there. You managed to round the corner and fixated your eyes back on Mando's form. With a groan you sped up, trying to catch up to him. But then you felt the laser of a blaster, its heat sizzled past your face, missing your skin only barely. Your heart leaped into your throat and you jumped to the side, your back collided with the wall of a building as you came to a sudden halt. When you collected your thoughts enough to turn your head, you saw the bounty hunters had already followed you into the small street and you knew there was no use in escaping anymore. If you ran, they would just shoot you in the back. You looked down at the Child who had stuck out his head from the bag, staring at you with his big, round eyes, and you knew what you had to do. You had no other option. You had to fight. You grabbed your blaster from the holster on your hip -Mando made you take one with you and had taught you the basics, now that you were on the radar of bounty hunters too- and slung the bag around so the Child would be hidden behind your back, safe from any blaster shots coming your way. You had no time to aim so you just shot into the general direction of the bounty hunters, hoping for the best, as you pushed yourself from the wall, avoiding a few shots only barely. Miraculously you managed to hit a few of them, or maybe it was Mando who hit them. He had to be somewhere behind you, he probably noticed your absence and had turned around to help, but your mind was too clouded to notice his footsteps hurrying closer or his blaster shots coming from behind you, more unfocused and aimless than usually. You ducked your head down to avoid a few more otherwise fatal shots and directed your blaster to the bounty hunter closest to you, only for it to jam. You pulled the trigger three times before you realized that nothing was happening. Your eyes widen in horror and you did the only thing you could think of right now: Protect the Child at all cost. You let your blaster fall to the ground as you spun around, so your back was facing the bounty hunters. You grabbed the bag during your turnaround and pressed it against your chest again, putting one hand on the little one’s head in an attempt to soothe him while your body shook in fear. You prepared yourself for the hit, prepared yourself for the heat sinking into your skin, for the pain, when you suddenly felt someone grab you and spin you around with them. You were too disoriented to react, to fight, you could only hear the lasers leaving the bounty hunter’s blaster, but none of them hit you. Instead, they hit something metallic, making them bounce off. You lifted your head slightly and your breath got stuck in your throat as you realized what was happening. Mando had wrapped his arms around you and spun you so his body was shielding you and the kid from the lasers, his back facing the bounty hunters, instead of yours. You couldn't do anything, except for staring at his visor in pure shock while he silently stared back, not even tilting his helmet in question. Him moving his hands behind your back stayed mostly unnoticed by you. Only when the whistling birds already struck down the bounty hunters that were left did you realized what he had done.

The echo of the blasters suddenly stopped, leaving the small side street in complete silence with the only exception being your still widely beating heart hammering against your ribs. The first one to move was neither Mando nor you but the Child, who was tugged in between the two of you. Wiggling and stretching his arms out he cooed at the Mandalorian whose helmet lowered to look at him. Slowly he loosened his grip on you, though his arms still stayed wrapped around you. If you didn't know it any better you would have said he was afraid you would disappear if he let go. But you didn't mind his hold on you, your legs were shaking uncontrollably and you would probably have slumped down on the ground without him. "Are you hurt?" he asked and glanced back at you, his voice frantic. You shook your head and let out a breathy sigh. "No-o" you said and gasped for air, your heart pumping hard against your chest in relief, before you directed your gaze to the little one. "We're okay. B-but I need a moment." You let your forehead fall against Mando’s armored chest and just focused on your breathing. The Mandalorian didn't move or interject, instead he tightened his arms around you again, giving you not only stability but comfort, too. You closed your eyes and tried to stop the shaking of your body. The adrenaline had vanished and only left the fear behind that was still closing its claws around you. You gulped, realizing that you almost ... that you could have died. A cold shiver ran down your spine as your breath hitched. This could have been the end of your journey. You could have... "We need to go" Mando spoke up, his voice caring an apologetic tone. You nodded against his chest, understanding that you had to leave the planet before more bounty hunters could arrive. You bit your lip and straightened up, taking a step back the Mandalorian let his arms slip from you, bringing them back to his sides. "Let's go" you agreed, trying to cover the waver of your voice with a small smile.

You held the Child pressed against your chest the whole remaining way back to the Razor Crest. His soft squeaks kept your mind at ease and focusing on his big, curious eyes made you forget about what almost happened. At least for the time being. Luckily, you didn't walk into any more bounty hunters. Though you could only take a deep breath of relief when the hangar closed tightly behind you. You only half-heartedly noticed Mando gently pushing you down onto the edge of his cot by the shoulders. You stared at the ground before you, still hugging the little one against your chest, and didn't even register the Razor Crest taking off. The short startle of the jump into hyperspace was also left unnoticed. Only when the Child was softly taken out of your arms did you look up at the Mandalorian, who had come back down. You didn't protest as he put the little one into his hammock where he promptly fell asleep.

"You should get some rest" the Mandalorian suggested, one of his hands resting on your shoulder, the leather of his glove brushing against the skin of your neck. The sensation left small tingles behind which would have made you sigh if you weren’t so tense. And even though you would have loved to, you knew sleep wasn't an option for you right now. "I can't-" you choked out and lowered your eyes to stare at your still shaking hands. You clenched them to fists and bit your lip. And even though the Mandalorian didn't speak up, did you know what he was asking when his hand wandered from your shoulder to your neck and cheek. You leaned into his touch, closed your eyes and wished to just fall asleep in his comforting presence, to just be able to forget this day. "I haven't been able to sleep properly ever since I joined you" you confessed, your voice faint. "But it has gotten worse over the last few weeks." "What can I do to help you?" the Mandalorian asked sincerely concerned. You couldn't help the soft chuckle escaping from your mouth. "Can you stay?" you hummed even though you knew he couldn't. This wasn't necessarily the worst sleeping position you were in since the last couple of weeks, but also not one of the best. However, if you moved to your bed or to the cockpit now, you would be wide awake once more. But Mando probably didn’t want to and couldn’t stay in that position anyway. You sighed at the warmth of his touch, relishing the moment for a few seconds more before you would have to stand up. But then Mando pulled away, making you open your eyes in an instant. You were about to stand up from his cot when he suddenly kneeled down before you. Freezing in place you stared at his visor that stayed trained on your face. Every word you could have said got stuck in your throat when he grabbed your legs and slipped your shoes off. You couldn't even ask him what he was doing, though your face probably gave that thought away. He placed your shoes neatly beside the entrance to his cot before slipping his off, too, which only left you even more confused. You blinked at him in lack of understanding, searching for words.

"What are you doing?" you managed to ask when he had stood up and took a step closer. He was now directly in front of you, his body so close you could feel the warmth that radiated from him and it springing over to you. He was so close that you had to put your head back to keep your eyes focused on his helmet. "Staying with you" he only answered. Before you could ask further questions, he suddenly picked you up with one arm underneath your legs and the other bracing your back. Your eyes grew wide as you just clung onto him, unable to protest. Somehow Mando managed to get you two settled into his cot with him lying on his back, almost taking in all the space, and you on your side, trying to squeeze into the space that was left. Nevertheless, you had to press against him with your head lying on his armored shoulder. You didn't dare to breathe, didn't dare to move at all and just watched Mando for a while. He had his hands clasped on top of his stomach, the visor of his helmet pointed to the ceiling, harshly reflecting the still switched-on lights of the ship. He didn’t move and you began to wonder if he had already fallen asleep. But then you thought about how he was even supposed to fall asleep that way in his bed, completely dressed in his armor. Wasn’t he uncomfortable? You furrowed your brows, your eyes still trained on his helmet. Or did he always sleep that way? Fully dressed in his armor? Unmovingly on his back like a rock?

"Sleep."

You couldn't help the squeak spilling over your lips as you flinched in embarrassment, making the Mandalorian chuckle lowly. He had noticed you staring, obviously. You cursed at yourself and ducked your head in, trying to sink into yourself and appear smaller while your cheeks heated up. Embarrassed you stared at your hands, refusing to meet the Mandalorian’s gaze again. His shoulders shook lightly from his silent laughter. Then he grabbed the blanket, draping it over the two of you before he pushed a button on the side of the wall which switched off the lights and closed the door to the cot. You were grateful for the darkness as your face definitely gave away your flustered state. For a few moments you focused on Mando's regular breathing through the modulator, feeling his body move next to you to the almost completely silent rhythm. You mimicked his relaxed breathing, trying to clear your thoughts and focusing on only that and not the close proximity you had to each other. And before you knew it your body relaxed and you fell asleep, tightly pressed against him.

_______________

You were relieved and grateful to Mando for finally having found some sleep through his help, but you would be lying if you said it was a comfortable slumber.

You had awoken alone in Mando's cot. Well, not completely alone. The kid was still sleeping in his hammock above you and the pain in your back was now also a new companion. Spending one night cramped into one tiny space with a man completely dressed in cold, hard armor probably wasn't the best idea. Nevertheless, you had slept and for the first time in weeks you felt somewhat well rested, back pain brushed aside.

You groaned and set up, rubbing your eyes and wondered how you didn't notice Mando leaving. In the tight space that was his bed you surely would have felt him move, right? Well, apparently you had been far too out of it for that. You were somewhat impressed at yourself for having fallen so deeply asleep but your body probably had just passed out, far too exhausted to keep being alert even in your sleep. You yawned, searched for the button to open the cot and then crawled to its edge to put your shoes back on, noticing that Mando's were gone. You stood up and glanced at the Child but when you noticed that he was still soundly asleep, you silently walked to the ladder and climbed up. Once you were at the top you stopped and stared at the back of Mando's helmet, suddenly feeling very unsure of yourself. Sleeping next too him was the most intimate gesture he had shared with you. And even though that wasn’t really something big normally, you had shared a bed with friends before, this felt different. Somehow it felt intrusive and very exciting at the same time. You felt special but flustered none the less. Then you huffed and shook your head, clearing it from those thoughts. 'We only shared a bed' you told yourself. There was nothing special about that, right? Well, maybe not with any other person. But with Mando every small step felt like a miracle, like a risk to take even though being close to him was nothing new to you anymore. You held hands, you saw and felt his skin underneath the leather gloves, you even sat on his lap a few times while in hyperspace. But nothing ever felt so intimate than lying next to him in his small cot, even if you had a sore back now because of that. Alone the memory of it made your heart speed up again. Never had so simple gestures felt so exciting to you. And then the desire hit you that you wanted more, wanted to be closer to the man behind the beskar. And that thought suddenly scared you. You shook your head once more and forced yourself to sit down into one of the copilot seats. You stared out of the window, too afraid to meet the Mandalorian's gaze should he tilt his head to you, too afraid he would somehow know what you were thinking. You felt torn. Torn between wanting to embrace whatever this was and scared to know what he wanted, what he thought. Scared to know what exactly this was. It wasn’t a simple partnership anymore, not just a crew you happened to join. This was something that set your heart aflame whenever you were near him. But you didn’t want to ask. You didn’t want to know his answer. As long as he didn’t tell you what this was to him you could continue to pretend, to relish these moments that meant so much to you.

You folded your hands and placed them in your lap to stop yourself from fiddling with your thumbs. The silence was uncommonly heavy, pressing down on your shoulders and pinning you to the seat. "Thank you" you whispered after many minutes of complete silence and glanced at the Mandalorian through the corners of your eyes. He only hummed and nodded, not turning to meet your eyes.

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The rest of your day was filled with the giggles and squeals of the Child as you played with him to distract yourself form your thoughts. You couldn't stand being in the cockpit alone with Mando today, so you had passed the time and busied yourself with caring for the kid. That was until he had fallen asleep in your arms at the end of the day, or at least you guessed another day had passed. Keeping track of it in hyperspace was still rather hard for you. You had put the little one to bed and were now standing in front of him, in front of Mando’s cot, unsure what to do. Glancing at your own bed you felt your stomach tighten. You already knew you would only turn from side to side without finding any rest in there. The only option to find any sort of sleep would be next to Mando. You sighed and climbed back up to sit down into one of the copilot seats only to almost run into the Mandalorian as the door to the cockpit slid open suddenly before you. You froze, your face only inches away from his chest. You took a deep breath before you slowly lifted your head until you could look into his visor. When he didn’t move to the side or reacted at all, you furrowed your brows at him in question. "Aren't you tired?" he asked and gently took your hand in his. It was the first time that he had talked to you today. The rest of the day had always been filled with awkward silence, something you had always feared should you ask the questions that were circling in your head, something you had wanted to prevent by staying silent, but now it was too late. He tilted his head at you when you didn't react. For a few moments you were overwhelmed and struggled for words. "Ehm, well, yeah but-" you weren't able to finish your sentence, though you weren't even sure what you had wanted to say anyway, when Mando squeezed your hand and nodded to the ladder. Understanding what he wanted to signal to you, you let your hand slip from his and began to climb back down, Mando following close behind. You were back where you had stood before, not knowing what to do. When Mando slipped his shoes off you did the same, just so you had something to occupy your mind with. When he turned to look at you, you stayed put where you were, frozen in place with your heart hammering against your ribs, begging you to let it escape. Did he really want to sleep in his armor again just so you could find some sort of relaxation, some form of comfort through his presence? Not to forget how painful it was to wake up earlier today for you, then you couldn’t possible imagine how it had to be for him. You suppressed the wince that would have spilled over your lips other wise and shook your head. Now wasn't about your comfort during sleep, but Mando's. And sleeping in armor definitely couldn’t be comfortable or even good for him. He should be able to relax in his ship and not be reminded of his job, his chaotic life through the armor he wore during the day and now at night, too.

"Isn't it uncomfortable to sleep in your armor?" you asked sincerely concerned and not just to gain some more seconds to try and sort your mind. Mando only shrugged his shoulders, while you rubbed the back of your neck that still felt a little stiff from this morning. "You don't have to-" you wanted to explain to him that he didn't have to do this for you when he would be uncomfortable as a result, that you would just try to sleep in your bed again so he felt comfortable enough to take the armor off and sleep alone in his cot. But every word got stuck in your throat when he did something you never thought your eyes would ever witness. He took off his armor, piece by piece, right in front of you. Your eyes grew wide and your mouth fell slightly open. "What-" you only managed to croak out as your eyes wandered over his form, the last piece of armor he still wore being his helmet and the rest of his clothing being what he wore underneath, a simple shirt and pants. You couldn't help yourself, you couldn't keep yourself from staring at him. His shoulders were still broad and wide even without the armor but only now did you notice his slender waist. You gulped and stopped your eyes from moving lower, bringing them back up, only for your heart to leap into your throat as you stared at his chest and arms that were now only covered by a dark, long-sleeved shirt. You already knew Mando was physically strong but the shirt did nothing to hide the muscles flexing in his arms and shoulders even when he was only standing before you. Why did you feel like he was standing bare before you when he only took his armor off and was still standing before you fully clothed? You felt your face heat up and your breath getting shallow at that thought. Your body tensed as you forced your eyes to stay on Mando's visor. You had embarrassed yourself enough already.

He hadn’t said anything when he had taken off his armor nor when he stepped closer to you, directing you backwards to the cot. When the back of your knees hit the edge you stumbled, almost falling on your back but Mando grabbed your hand and kept you upright. "Careful" he chuckled. Your face grew even hotter as you bit your lip, suppressing the mindless blabber that would have escape you otherwise. Slowly he lowered your still tilted off-center body until you found yourself on the exact same spot as yesterday. It felt rather surreal and you kept wondering if you weren’t just dreaming right now. Maybe you were still asleep? But when your eyes glanced at his exposed neck, the skin sun-kissed and flexing over his muscles in such detail, you were sure you couldn’t make this up during your sleep, that this had to be real. "Mando, I-" you began but he shushed you. "Let's just get some sleep, okay?" You nodded and stood up, letting Mando settled into his bed first. He laid down like he had yesterday, flat on his back with his arms on his stomach. For a second you hesitated, staring down at him before you followed him into the tight space, plopping down on your side with your back to him and snuggling underneath the blanket he had already draped over himself. You felt far too flustered to face him right now, especially with the lights still on. Without a word he closed the door to the cot and switched the lights off. You gulped, somehow feeling Mando's side pressed against your back even more prominently than before. You took a deep breath and closed your eyes, snuggling deeper into the blanket in an attempt to make yourself fall asleep faster. Only to suddenly realize that everything in the cot smelled like the Mandalorian, smelled like something metallic (his beskar) mixed with something earthy, something grounding, something soothing. Heat immediately rushed back into your cheeks and your body tensed. Oh Maker, how were you supposed to fall asleep now? With Mando's scent in your nose and his body tightly pressed against you, you definitely couldn't. You didn't really feel uncomfortable but to say this position did anything for your still slightly sore back and neck was also not correct. And that your heart racing uncontrollably fast didn't help you in any way either. You couldn't relax like this.

Your eyes darted around in the dark as you tried to jump over your shadow and control your rapid breathing. Then, before you could back out again, you turned around underneath the blanket so you would have faced the Mandalorian if the lights were on. He didn't react or at least as far as you were aware. He could surely be looking at you through his visor, that probably had night vision, without moving his head. You gulped before carefully placing your hand on his chest. You felt him tense underneath your touch instantly, signaling you that he wasn't asleep yet. You felt how your cheeks heated up even more when your fingers brushed his muscular chest instead of the cold, hard beskar armor you were used to by now. "Mando?" you asked quietly, your voice trembling nervously while you patiently waited for an answer even after many seconds of silence. You wanted to make sure he was comfortable enough to answer you before you tried anything else. "Yes?" he finally said and you felt his head moving beside you ever so slightly. "Are you comfortable?" you questioned further. Another few seconds of silence followed in which the only thing you could focus on was how close you were to the unarmed Mandalorian. You could feel every muscle on his chest underneath your touch, still a bit tense but slowly loosening up more and more. You could feel his soothing warmth even more, now that the beskar wasn't in the way. You bit your lip, suppressing a sigh. "It's alright" he only answered, leaving your question rather unsatisfied. You took a deep breath, trying to stop your body from shaking and forced yourself to speak up again. "I am not" you whispered and felt him tense up again underneath your touch. You felt his head move once more, probably now completely turned to face you. He didn't say anything, just stared at you through the darkness. You struggled for words for a while, unsure how to continue without making him uncomfortable, without sounding too demanding. Then you lightly shook your head as far as that was possible lying on your side next to him. "Could you-" you began but bit your lip. Collecting all the courage you had left you forced yourself to continue. "Could you turn on your side?"

You stared into the darkness, at the unmoving Mandalorian as your pulse quickened. Nobody moved and you began to fear that you had overstepped a boundary. Maker, he had taken off his armor in front of you for the very first time. This must be even more uncomfortable for him than you. You gritted your teeth, cursing at yourself. You should have stayed silent and just tried to sleep. About to apologize you opened your mouth only to suddenly feel movement beside you. Before you knew it the Mandalorian laid on his side, but not like you had expected it with his back facing you, but with his chest. Your heart leaped into your throat, leaving you breathless and unable to form the words you had wanted to say out loud. You froze, your whole body tensed up in disbelief. "Is that better?" he asked, his voice an almost inaudible whisper. "Yeah" you croaked out. The silence that followed was deafening, making the beat of your heart even more audible and you were sure Mando must have been able to hear it, too. Your brain shut off, leaving you alone in the dark, helpless. How were you supposed to sleep now?! With your eyes wide you stared in front of you, stared into the darkness where Mando's chest was, only inches away from your face. You almost yelped in panic when you noticed that your hand was still touching him, pressed against his unarmored chest. But you couldn't move away. Was your mind blank only seconds before was it now swarming and crowded with thousand of thoughts.

You flinched when you suddenly felt a featherlight touch on your waist. You needed a few seconds to process that it was Mando's un-gloved hand. "Is this okay?" he asked, his voice so soft his modulator didn't even pick it up. You realized that this was Mando's real voice, not the distorted sound of his helmet but what he would sound like without it. A shower of tingles wandered down your body, leaving you breathless. You opened and closed your mouth a few times, trying to find the words. "Ye-yeah." Mando let his arm sneak around your waist, wrapping it around you and slowly pulling you against his chest. You didn't even notice that you were the one to tangle your legs with his, it felt intuitive. Suddenly you felt really dizzy. Was this really happening right now? You grabbed Mando's shirt with your shaking fingers and buried your head in his chest in a stupid attempt to hide. Because the moment you had to take a deep breath to try and calm yourself down, you only grew even more dizzy when his scent filled your nose. You cursed silently in your mind. But even through all of this, did you notice how your body slowly relaxed under this touch and warmth. Involuntary, you let out a soft sigh and closed your eyes.

"Thank you, Mando" you managed to whisper after probably minutes of silence. The Mandalorian didn't immediately retort anything to that and instead tightened his grip on your waist and squeezed the hand of his free arm between the two of you to place it on to of your hands that were still pressed firmly against his chest. "Din." You lifted your head to look at where his eyes must be hidden behind the darkness and furrowed your brows in lack of understanding. "What?" you asked confused. "Please. Call me Din." Your eyes widen and your face grew even hotter if that was even possible at that point. He ... he just revealed his name to you? Your breath hitched. He just revealed his name to you. "Din" you tested his name on your tongue in a hushed tone. The Mandalorian went rigid as he sucked in a sharp breath and you feared you had misunderstood him but then he pressed you even closer to him, making your heart skip a beat. You gasped for air in shock when he nestled into your hair as you felt his chin on top of your head and not the cold helmet. His legs had sneaked around yours, pinning you against him but you didn't feel trapped. Quite the opposite, you actually enjoyed his tight embrace. "Din?" you asked, your voice wavering noticeably. The grip around your waist tightened for a split second as he tried to stifle his sigh, making you chuckle and melt against him. "Din" you said again with a cheeky smile on your lips. The Mandalorian growled against you, making you jump in surprise. "Are you trying to torture me, cyar'ika?" he asked, his voice husky and low. You paused, not quite understanding what he meant by that. "What-" you began, shifting in his hold so you would be looking at his face in confusion if it weren't so dark. For a few seconds you just stared and thought until your eyes widen in realization as your mind caught on. "When was the last time someone called you by your name?" you asked in a hush. "Can't remember" he answered you in a low growl as he pressed himself against you. Your cheeks burned again in an instant as you struggled for words once more. Din’s breath stuttered through the modulator, his chest heaving against yours. You wondered if his mind was as blank as yours was but then he suddenly let go of your waist and instead grabbed both of your hands before you could collect yourself enough to react to any of the things he had said, to the things he had revealed to you. For a few moments he just drew soothing circles on the backs of your hands, tracing your soft skin as if it was the first time he felt it. Then he directed them upwards and placed them on each side of his helmet. After that no one moved and you barely dared to breathe. You hadn't touched his helmet before, always far too afraid since it seemed to be the most important part of his creed. But the only thing on your mind wasn’t your surprise at that and instead you could only focus on how the coldness of the beskar underneath your hands and the warmth of Din's hand on top sent shivers down your spine.

"(Y/N)?" You hummed in response, still unable to speak up, your mind far too clouded. "You can take it off." Your body stiffened as you blinked in confusion. Did he really just say that? You must have imagined that, right? Right? "B-but your creed?" you objected, staring into the darkness. "It's okay as long as you can't see my face" he explained, squeezing your hands before leaving them alone on his helmet as he wrapped his arms back around your waist, lifting you a bit further up so you were face to face with him. Your hands were still cupping the sides of his helmet as you sucked in a sharp breath. Were you really about to do this? It felt wrong even though he had asked you to. It felt … intimate. "Please, cyar'ika. Let me be close to you." Din's pleading voice and the foreign nickname send shivers down your spine. Your breath hitched as you pushed all your worries to the side and slowly lifting the helmet up. Its hiss echoed in your ears as you held your breath, your heart beating so strong you felt it in your throat. You pushed it up over his hair that brushed your hands, leaving tingles behind. Then you placed the helmet to the side and gasped when you felt Din's breath on your face. The sensation left you dizzy as your heart began to drum relentlessly against your chest. Your hands felt useless as they floated in the air, not knowing where to put them. For many seconds you didn’t dare to move before you squeezed one of your hands back between the two of you, placing it on his chest before taking a deep breath.

"Can I?" you asked in a whisper, your other hand hovering over where his cheek must be hiding in the darkness. A soft "Yeah" escaped Din's mouth and you didn't waste another second and gently placed your hand on his face. The sensation and his warmth left you with a feeling you couldn’t quite place or understand. Slowly you began to outline his features, let your hand wander from his chin up to his ear, feeling his strong jar and the slight stubble that adorned it. The combined feeling of his surprisingly soft skin and rougher stubble left you breathless. You let your hand placed on his cheek for a few moments, trying to collect your thoughts and failing miserably. You sucked in a sharp breath and carefully continued to let your fingers wander to his forehead, tracing his eyebrow you felt how his eyes fluttered close. Then your touch traveled back down, mapping out the shape of his nose. In the end your fingers hovered over his lips and you felt his breath against them as they trembled. Gently you placed them on his chin and felt your way up to his bottom lip. You traced the outline of his mouth in a trance and when he chuckled against you, you didn’t even flinch and joined in. Your fingers found their way further up, to the corner of his lips, feeling the stubble above his lips form into a mustache. You chuckled again. He took your breath away. "Beautiful" you whispered as you continued to caress the corner of his mouth. You felt it crinkle up in a smile as Din laughed, the rumble of it vibrating in your chest, the sound hypnotizing you. "Mesh'la" he responded in a hushed tone, as he drew your faces closer. You weren't sure what the word meant but you didn't really care right now. His scent so metallic yet earthy, so soft yet sensual and warm it left you breathless and with your thoughts spinning, craving more. Your heart hammered against your ribs, screaming and begging for a few more millimeters, only a small push forward. You were sure Din was able to feel the echo of your heart against his own chest. He shifted lightly against you, wrapping his legs around you more, and tightening his grip on your waist, drawing your body even closer even though not a single hair could fit in between you two anymore. Your sleepiness was completely forgotten by now as you stared into the darkness, not able to close your eyes even though you couldn't even see anything. But you didn't need your eyes to see him, to know how beautiful he was. He lowered his head, placing his forehead against yours. You were glad to note that you weren't the only one whose breath stuttered over your lips at that. You couldn't help but melt into him, soaking in his warmth and the feeling of comfort, the feeling of belonging right there with him. Feeling like this was all that life was, feeling safe and protected. At peace. You let your hand wander to his hair, burying your fingers into his locks. The slight tug made Din growl once more, the sound low and dangerous, teasing and daring you to continue. You smiled and brushed his hair back, taking part in the game he dared you to play with him, no matter the consequences. You wanted to see what he would do, you wanted more. All those months of faint touches, whispers of being close to one another, had left you even more touch-starved then before, even more desperate. You didn’t care for the unspoken boundaries anymore. You just wanted to let yourself fall into your desire, a desire Din seemed to share. Slowly one of his hands crept up the back of your neck to also bury his fingers in your hair. The sensation made you gasp and your hair stand on end. You were sure Din was grinning at that, proud and pleased. Out of instinct you freed one of your legs from his and draped it over his waist, seeking to be even closer to him, even though his whole body was already pressed against you and his lips so close that you could feel the ghost of his breath on yours. It made you shiver in anticipation. Pressing your forehead even more against his you took a deep breath, taking in his soothing scent. Only a few millimeters more and you would have the closeness you sought. Only a few millimeters closer to fulfill the whishes of your heart. Only a few millimeters closer and you would have known how his lips felt dancing against your own.

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Tigaanur Series: Part 1 | Part 2 (you’re here!) | Part 3 | MASTERLIST

No kisses, hehehehe. Want to have a third part with them kissing? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Then leave a comment and reblog! Feedback is always highly appreciated, it keeps me motivated and I’d just like to know what y’all think and if you liked it!

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#the mandalorian #din djarin #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x female reader #the mandalorian x female reader #mando x reader #female reader #x reader #star wars x reader #fluff #the mandalorian oneshot #the mandalorian imagine #Tigaanur series #mando #the mandalorian season 1

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amiedala · 4 years

Text

Something More (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 1: INTO THE STARS

Rated: Explicit (not this chapter, but future chapters will be)

Warnings: light descriptions of violence

Summary: Meeting the Mandalorian was like colliding into the rest of your life at a moment’s notice. Like oh, there you are. It was both jarring and familiar at the same time, like stepping into a minute with no intentions and stepping out of it in deja-vu. You had always been told you made too much out of everything, that you blew up every circumstance to fit some kind of grand destiny, some huge significance. If anyone asked, you’d swear up and down this was different. It was different. The Mandalorian sweeping you off your feet and out of your back alley haunts and narrow escapes was something kismet. Something cosmic. Something more.

Or, a slow burn love story across the stars featuring you, Din, and your little green baby. With love, angst, lust, and everything in between following you across the galaxy.*this deviates from canon for the most part, the plot begins at the very end of season 1 and will deviate for about half of season 2! there is LOTS planned for this (i already have 19k words written & will be posting regularly) so i hope you all enjoy!! <3 muah*

this is 1000000% completely inspired by the incredible behemoth SUPREME Mandalorian fic Rough Day by our lord & savior @no-droids but it will have its entire own plot & more of a slowburn in both love & smut, specifically for suffering long haul romance lovers like myself!

i already have 19k words written & will be ATTEMPTING to post updates regularly (and if i get excited about getting new chapters up, they might come early. i'm gonna try to post Saturday evenings every week, extenuating circumstances notwithstanding <3

hope you enjoy!!! more to come VERY SOON!!!

Meeting the Mandalorian was like colliding into the rest of your life at a moment’s notice. Like oh, there you are. It was both jarring and familiar at the same time, like stepping into a minute with no intentions and stepping out of it in deja-vu. You had always been told you made too much out of everything, that you blew up every circumstance to fit some kind of grand destiny, some huge significance. If anyone asked, you’d swear up and down this was different. It was different. The Mandalorian sweeping you off your feet and out of your back alley haunts and narrow escapes was something kismet. Something cosmic. Something more.

You met him on Nevarro. You weren’t even supposed to be there. You were supposed to be back in the Mid Rim by that point, long gone from your last mission gone sour. Your ship had broken down and you narrowly escaped a crash landing, and you’d hiked for hours through the unyielding lava fields for the closest town, with nothing but a handful of credits and the clothes on your back. Somehow, miraculously, you were able to grab the last of your water and your mother’s necklace from where it was hanging on the dashboard before the magma had bubbled up and claimed the better half of the old X-wing before you could go back in for more.

“Dank ferrik,” you seethed, and the curse felt alien under your tongue. There was no one out here to hear it but yourself, the lava, and the sulfuric air, anyways, so you grumbled out a few more before the ship fully sank into the magma in front of you.

The ship itself wasn’t a big loss—you’d only gotten it because it was the cheapest after you lost your own to that smuggler, but being stranded on a planet that was so aggressive towards any sort of survival wasn’t the best circumstance in the galaxy. But here you were, stuck, unmoored, anchorless, on a planet not known for anything except its rivers of lava and a bounty hunters’ guild you’d heard about and tried your best to stay away from. That town was the only landmark you had, though, so you begrudgingly trekked across Nevarro’s molten surface in search for any form of civilization.

The sky had started to slip off into darkness, and the small flecks of the other Outer Rim planets glistened lightyears away from where you were hiking when you stumbled over something and nearly fell into what you assumed was a dormant vat of lava. It was only when you scrambled away from the hot pocket of ground that you realized it was a stormtrooper helmet. A stormtrooper helmet with a head still in it. You gasped and skittered away, pushing off the heels of your hands to get upward as fast as you can, not even registering the heat eating through the skin of your palms. You didn’t have a weapon—the old blaster you’d carried for the last few years had been eaten up with the X-Wing—and as your eyes adjusted to a collection of white armor and bodies on the ground, you kicked yourself from not prioritizing the gun over getting out unscathed.

You didn’t scare easy. You grew up on a slowly abandoned Rebel base back on Yavin, and even after your parents’ deaths, you were surrounded by a legion of people who took care of you and taught you how to fight. Really, you were good at getting out of sticky situations that looked too dire to survive—take the crash landing an hour back for example—but you had a giant blind spot of earnestness to believe the people you went into business with were being sincere. That’s how the ship had crashed in the first place, you exchanged a repair of your original starship with providing Alderaanian liquor to a smuggler and his droid back on Dantooine who had both cut and run with it before fully repairing the vitally broken control panel. It was a rookie mistake, which you definitely weren’t, but he had just seemed so earnest in his need for the alcohol, and your fatal flaw was that you always trusted people who needed help. Even to your own detriment.

It had been your downfall back home, and at least twice when you were adventuring through the Outer Rim, and when you narrowly escaped a Deveronian when you had first started out on your own, because you were too close to a scumbag in friend’s clothing who fumbled the bag and left you for dead. He even stole your ship, then, and you had to make a series of sordid deals to get off Polis Massa, let alone find a place where you could crash safely for weeks before you could work up enough credits to get the X-Wing, which was, quite ceremoniously, dead now.

You shivered with the realization that you might be in danger, too. There were so many bodies scattered across this ridge and the next, and a handful of crashed TIE fighters. The sight of them didn’t strike fear into you—they never really had, you were raised in the Alliance and you could outfly the Empire since you were six years old—but they made you feel uneasy. Nevarro didn’t have a Rebel base, and you had never met someone in the Alliance who was from the planet. With the obvious show of Imperial affiliation and the bounty hunters’ guild, Nevarro was seedy enough that it kept you on edge as you walked, hopefully towards a town with people who didn’t want anything more from you than an easy job.

It must have been near dawn when you finally made it to the edge of the town. It was at best shot to all hell and at worst absolutely obliterated. Your heart sank. There were more dead suits of white armor scattered across the dirt and sand. There were helmets on pikes that looked far too fresh. Your hand twitched near your thigh where your blaster was usually strapped. All of this was a bad idea. You shouldn’t have left the blaster in the ship. If you were really playing the game of regrets, though, you never should have helped the smuggler. You should have paid the fifteen more credits to get the X-Wing fixed on Tatooine instead. You should have stayed on Yavin after your parents died and shouldn’t have been so earnest to make it on your own and—

“Hey.” The voice came from behind you, and you whipped around so fast your hair fell from where the clasp had been hanging on to nothing but a prayer since your crash landing. You shook it away from your face, eyes squinted at the figure that seemed to materialize behind you. “Where are you from, pretty thing?”

“Coruscant,” you lied through your teeth. The name of the planet you’ve been trying to avoid for years burns a hole through your belly.

“You don’t belong in a place like this.” He stepped into the light, and he wasn’t human. You didn’t know what he was, exactly, but his tone made your skin crawl. You held your ground.

“You’re right. I don’t. I’m looking for a mechanic.”

“I’m a mechanic.” Like hell he was. You clenched your jaw, trying to look menacing. The grease and sweat from the hike there was smeared on your face, your pants had gotten ripped while climbing out of the crash. You didn’t like how his eyes fixated hungrily on the flesh of your exposed thigh, and you had to shake the thought away while you walked into a voice much more brazen than your own.

“Do you know how to fix an X-Wing?” You stepped forward, and the Rebel insignia on your necklace glinted in the low light. Around these parts, after the fall of the Empire, you’ve heard Rebels strike fear into the local folk. Suddenly, the guy took a step backward, and you reveled in your menace for a split second before you realized someone was standing behind you.

He didn’t speak again before he took off. You stuttered, the sudden appearance of the figure behind you catching in your chest, and it rose to a cut off yelp when a red blast knocked the one who had hit on you off his feet, spiraling over a stormtrooper body, falling to the rocky floor. Dead. He was dead. You spun, praying that your heart hammering in your chest was just leftover adrenaline and not a signifier of a new threat.

Standing behind you, outfitted entirely in silver reflective armor, was a Mandalorian. “Nevarro doesn’t have mechanics.”

You squinted. You were completely taken aback by his presence, his hulking realness, but suddenly his statement overpowered your revelry. “I find that hard to believe.”

“That X-Wing crashed out there is yours.” It isn’t a question. His voice is deep, a baritone that spreads warmth even blocked by the modulator in his helmet. You’d only heard of Mandalorians in stories, legends, around the campfires growing up. You didn’t expect one to ever materialize in anything other than myth, let alone stand in front of you, electric.

You nod. Did he follow you all the way to town?

“You aren’t looking for a mechanic.” His voice is so sure, so big. Your world spins on its axis, the feeling foreign and familiar all at once. He had spoken three sentences to you, and already, you felt that dizzy, magnetic pull that you tried to convince yourself was there much more often than it was.

“I…” You trail off, staring up at his visor. He seems larger than life, much larger than you, at least, and for some reason, the hugeness is cutting off all of your words before they can fully form. “No. I need a way off this planet, though.”

“Can you fly?”

You balk at his question, annoyed—obviously, you could fly—and then remember the only track record you have in the Mandalorian’s eyes is your ship, crash landed and then immediately swallowed by lava. “I’m a pilot. A runner. I’ve been flying since I was six years old.”

He takes a minute, completely silent. The noise of the scattered stormtrooper bodies around you suddenly seems deafening. You aren’t scared of him. You think. Your heart is still hammering, but it’s nothing like the fear that rushed through you when the alien talked to you a few minutes ago. It’s different—not adrenaline, exactly, and not fear. You place the feeling when it washes over you again, warm and unexpected—Excitement.

“Okay.” He moves, and you startle. You didn’t realize the conversation was over.

“Uh,” you stammer, “Do you… do you need a pilot?”

“No,” he says, over his shoulder. His strides are long. You step forward, almost pulled after him, then stuttered to a stop. “But I might be your only ride out of here.”

“Oh,” you manage, and then follow him. The dim light spreads over the horizon as you walk, stunned into silence by his own, trying to mimic his step, his quiet. It doesn’t happen. You’re clunking along beside him, the noise made even louder by the silence in his gait. “I’m not picky, where we go, you know—I was heading away from the Outer Rim, so I’m in no rush to get back there, but—I mean, I’m thankful that you’re taking me anywhere—”

“I can’t pay you. But you don’t have to pay me, either.”

You blink, feet stuttering to a near stop, buffering before you remember to keep following him. “I’m sorry?”

“You can fly, right?”

You blink, eyes darting up to the back of his helmet. It might just be the modulator, but there’s no air in his voice, no struggle to cross the hard, hot terrain. It’s impressive. “I can, but you thought you didn’t need a pilot—?”

“You were a rebel.” His voice is curt. Quick.

Your eyebrows furrow, looking down at the insignia on your necklace and then back up at him. There’s a dry breeze over the molten moors, and his cape catches in the wind. It flutters. It’s the first sign of something gentle about him. It’s the memory you take with you for months later, savoring it for when he’s leaving you on the ship while he goes and catches his bounties, one by one. You cling to it in the long lapses of time where he doesn’t offer you anything but silence. You’ll hold onto it, a butterfly of a memory, for weeks—until he offers you something softer, something warmer. Something real.

You don’t know that in the moment, though. Right now, he’s asked a question, and you’re struggling to answer it honestly. “I was.”

“You don’t scare easily.”

It’s like he’s putting together these impossible puzzle pieces of your life. How is he guessing this? He’s known you for maybe ten whole minutes. It swells in your chest, a thunderbird of a thing, and you don’t know why.

“I’d like to think so,” you manage, as he tilts his helmet back to search you for your answer. Your breath hitches in your throat at the thought of his eyes on you, and you wonder what color they are. Maker. Where did that come from?

“Good.”

A ship seems to materialize out of nowhere, but it seems more likely that you were so caught up in the mystery of the Mandalorian and keeping your gaze locked on him that his ship was in the periphery of your vision. You follow him, still confused, up the descended gangplank. Sitting in the middle of the ship is a tiny green baby, with eyes ten times the size of its nose, with peach fuzz lazily dusting the top of its head. It’s holding a tiny silver ball in its three-fingered hands, looking up at the Mandalorian with outstretched arms.

You watch, in stunned silence, as the giant hulking silver figure crouches down to pick up the baby, meeting its little coos with soft words right back. It’s as soft as his cape fluttering in the wind, an unexpected, fleeting feeling of warmth. You don’t know what to do with yourself. The warm breeze buffets the small of your back, ruffles your loose hair. You just stand there, entirely enamored with this tiny green baby in the Mandalorian’s arms, speechless.

“You don’t scare easily,” the Mandalorian repeats.

You shake your head. “Nope.”

He holds the baby up to you. “How about now?”

You blink, confused. “Am I supposed to be scared of it?”

“Him.”

You take a tentative step forward, gaze flickering between the two of them, wondering what would have happened if you had crash landed literally anywhere else, at literally any other time. Something big and ceremonious swells somewhere deep in your chest.

“I’m not scared,” you finally say, and when your eyes find his visor again, you hope he knows you mean you’re not scared of either of them. You could be—most people with common sense are struck with fear at the sight of meeting a Mandalorian, especially one associated with such a widespread bounty hunters’ guild—but fear just keeps getting pushed away as the seconds pass. A small voice in the back of your head whispers that this is another mistake of being too trustful, but the larger half of you knows how to handle yourself if you find trouble. Besides, he has a tiny alien kid, and something tells you the Mandalorian wouldn’t put the baby in a situation that he deemed unsafe. As the door zips shut behind you, you step forward into the ship—into the place you’ll eventually make your home—heart still hammering on and on, thrumming as the three of you lift off of Nevarro’s surface and into the stars.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #fanfic #the mandalorian fanfiction #star wars #fanfiction #i hope y'all enjoy!!!!!#something more

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sirikenobi12 · 3 years

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The Bad Batch Review - A Masterpiece of Banality

So, after sixteen episodes we have finally come to the end of season 1 of The Bad Batch the follow up to arguably one of the most ambitious and accomplished projects in Lucasfilm Animation history. A show set in arguably one of the most interesting/dramatic and traumatic times in the Galaxy far, far away. There was nothing but potential for this show, and it looked like Filoni and team would easily have another hit on their hands. But with problematic whitewashing of the clones, tropey Toxic Masculine main characters and recycled Mandalorian story-lines not even a cameo from Rex could save it from the creative team’s baffling decision-making.

That being said, I have been trying to come up with the words to best describe how I felt about the show and I have landed on these three words:

1. Frustrating

2. Baffling

3. Lazy

*TBB spoilers below the cut*

Now, don’t get me wrong - I wouldn’t go so far as to say that TBB is “Bad”, but I wouldn’t say that it was “good” either. It just...was. In what should’ve been a show about Clones finding a life outside of the Republic, Jedi and war we instead were given protagonists who didn’t care about any of it - because of...reasons? They don’t care what’s happening to the galaxy, nor to their brothers (because they look down on the *sigh* Regs). All they care about is their own skin so we spend majority of the season with them on fetch-quests that have no real world building or even character development.

This is FRUSTRATING because imagine seeing this entire storyline through the eyes of the clones we just spent 7 seasons caring about. Imagine a group of clones who had their chips malfunction and are now faced with the idea that they were all programmed like droids - they killed their Jedi Generals and the Republic is now GONE. Why didn’t we get that show??!!! Also imagine the Crosshair and Hunter conflict (I mean, I guess it was a conflict) and let’s make it Rex and Cody - how much better and heartbreaking would that storyline have been if it happened between two characters we already know and love? Could you imagine Cody telling Rex that he took out the chip on his own and this is his own thoughts/actions?

Instead we were supposed to care about a relationship between two characters that we never really even saw interacting as friends. Even in the original TBB arc Crosshair didn’t really seem interested in much of anything - he was apathetic at best. Couldn’t we have at least been given flashbacks or something to make us give a damn?

Now also think about the destruction of Kamino from a “regular” clone’s POV - this was a home to him, a place he defended against the Separtists, maybe he lost brothers when Ventress and Greivous attacked the cloning facility. Maybe he’s thinking about all the babies that were still in the incubation tubes when the Empire destroyed the city? - But no, instead we got TBB who never seemed to really care that they were a part of the GAR, in fact they prided themselves on not being like the “Regs”...why were we supposed to care about them? It’s just baffling why they went with these “Superior” clones we barely know.

The show was also so very lazy - they recycled the format of the Mandalorian but only they didn’t do it was well. The cameos in the Mandalorian have a purpose in the story, the cameos in TBB did not. Din has a very clear cut motivation in the show whereas I still don’t really know what TBB wants. We as an audience are just expected to care for...reasons?

Despite all of this there were some good pieces to the show - things that did keep me coming back (besides it being the only new SW content out right now). I did really love Omega - though I am extra disappointed now in her white washing because I thought she was going to be a Palpatine clone, but somehow she is a identical genetic match to Jango...wow, that’s um...wow. I do like the glimpses we have seen into the rise of the Empire, but I just hate that we don’t get to see more of it because the show is too focused on TBB collecting things for Cid (for...reasons). There just don’t seem to be ANY stakes at all for them. Getting to see some of the “Reg” clones like Rex and Gregor bodes well to a Wolfe cameo in an upcoming season which will be fun - and who knows, maybe we’ll get to see Cody at some point. I guess my point overall is the show is mediocre, and it certainly is not Star Wars (or even Filoni) at their best. I will probably check out season 2 when it airs in hopes things get better (much like season 2 of TCW was better than season 1), but I just feel like this one could’ve been amazing and the decisions they went with remain baffling, lazy and frustrating.

But, if you were hoping that this would be a sequel on par with the storytelling of The Clone Wars I’d recommend watching Rebels instead. You can skip this one, you really won’t be missing much.

#star wars #the bad batch #the bad batch critical #star wars tbb #tbb spoilers #review #Dave Filoni #not your best #apathy inspiring #star wars meta #its meh

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mudhornchronicles · 4 years

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brick | din djarin

pairing: din djarin x f!reader

warnings: making out, season two spoilers, fluff, so much sweetness - willy wonka is jealous

a/n: this is part three of maroon. i’d like to thank @remmysbounty for the request and idea for part 3! i also got inspiration from this post!

also: a scene was inspired by this post

reds: maroon | sanguine | brick

masterlist

“Din Djarin - if you don’t give me that cape this instant, I promise you that this next stop will be your last.”

You stomped your foot and let out an exasperated huff. Your husband stands in front of you, clad in his armor minus the helmet, teasingly waving his tattered cape in front of you. You lunge for the shabby and discolored piece of fabric and nearly trip as he pulls back his precious cape.

“Cyar’ika, I don’t need a new cape. This one works perfectly well. See?” He wraps the material around his broad shoulders and tucks it into his chest plate - making sure it stays intact. “It does its job. All I need it to do is hide body heat from snipers.”

You let out a loud sigh with a dramatized eye roll. “Riduur, please. I didn’t say to get a new cape. I just asked to fix it. So Din, just let me sew the holes at the bottom of the kriffing cape!”

You walk over to him and place your hands on his chest. You trace the ridges of the beskar chest plate and look up at him through your lashes. “Besides… doesn’t the Mand’alor always have to look his best?” You smirk and raise your eyebrows up and down.

He shakes his head no and places his arms around your frame. “The only person I care about looking good for is you. I didn’t ask to be Mand’alor.”

You wrap your arms around his neck to give him a peck on the lips, but he wanted more. He held you tighter and deepened the kiss. Your hands unwrapped from around his neck and cupped his face - one hand on either cheek. His tongue peeked out and licked your bottom lip. A sign you knew meant his tongue asking for permission to join the party. You smiled and invited your tongue to meet his.

You loved kissing your husband. Not because he’s your forever partner, but because kissing him is a dance of sorts. His mouth moves perfectly with yours while your tongues waltz. His big hands on you - one against your lower back and the other bringing you closer to him by your hip. You can kiss him forever and you’d never get tired of it. His facial hair doesn’t get in the way of kissing him, but it can get long enough that it covers his upper lip and that bothers you. You love seeing his lips - especially in the morning as they’re swollen and full from sleep. He tends to groom himself whenever he notices you staring at his lower half of his face.

The pair of you are torn away from your trance when Din hears the navigation device beep indicating that the ship is approaching its destination. Din gives you one last kiss and runs up to the cockpit of the ship Greef Karga let him borrow. You walk up into the cockpit and look out the dashboard and see you are approaching an ocean planet - curious, you thought.

“What’s this planet called, riduur?”

“Ahch-To.”

“Do you have a bounty here? It’s beautiful.”

“No, something even better.”

You look over to him as he turns on a small commlink. When the light glows green, you watch your husband speak into it. “Am I landing across the island?”

You look back out the dashboard in confusion. Who could you husband be speaking to? You wait a few seconds and the commlink comes back alive - a young man’s voice comes through.

“Yes, Mandalorian. Land your craft on the east side of the island. I will send a landspeeder for you. He’d be very upset with me if I had you walk across an island.”

“Copy. Landing on the island’s east.” With that, your husband turns off the commlink and puts it back into his belt pouch.

He lands the ship on the east side of the island, as instructed, and leads you back into the hull. You walk to your shared sleeping quarters and grab his helmet. You walk back and place a chaste kiss on Din’s shaking lips before latching his helmet back into place. He grabs a bag from the floor near the ramp and places it around his shoulder. He grabs your hand into his gloved one and opens the ramp.

You walk off the ship and sure enough, a rusted landspeeder awaits you with an eager R2 unit set up in the back. You walk over to the beeping machine and pet his round top. “Why hello R2 unit, do you have a class number?” The white and blue beeps excitedly and starts to shake. You let out a giggle and continue to pet him. “It’s very nice to meet you, R2-D2. Will you be taking us to whoever my husband is here to see?”

R2-D2 beeps once more and you nod in satisfaction. “Very well, R2. Thank you for picking us up.” You hear a scoff to your left and you turn to see your husband shaking his head in disbelief - all while laughing and putting the final bag in the landspeeder. You put your hands on your hips and lean on one leg.

“Is there an issue, riduur?”

“No,” he puts his hands up in surrender. “Not at all. I just forgot how much you liked to talk to droids. How can you even understand them? They just... beep.” He helps you into the landspeeder and settles himself in. You tell R2-D2 that you are ready to go and the landspeeder begin to move with a beep from R2.

“Every beep is like morse code. Just like sign language has specific angles and motions, droids have specific tones and lengths. My dad had me spend a lot of time with our protocol droid back on Naboo who taught me quite a lot.” Your husband nods in an understanding manner and leans back into his seat. He places an arm around you and you think he may have slept throughout the ride.

When R2-D2 notifies you of your arrival, you and Din jump off the speeder. You collect your things and thank R2-D2 for the ride. He beeps back and asks you to wait as he rides away. You assume he went to park the landspeeder.

You walk into a cottage on the ledge of a cliff that R2 had led you to and are met with colors painting the walls. A child’s drawings plastered on every surface. You leave your things in the spare room R2 told you about and are led to a flat area atop a hill not far from the cottage. You see a young man in a black robe and a small green child sitting in front of each other and you saw… floating rocks? Is this what Din meant when he said you’d see “weird” things?

You were pulled out from your thoughts by a child’s shriek and blabbering. You focus on the scene in front of you as you see the blubbering mess of the green child running towards your husband. You watch in shock as your husband removes his helmet, tosses it to the side and falls to his knees. He catches the youngling in his arms and places a kiss to his wrinkled little head. Din stands and hugs the child tight.

“Hello ad’ika. I’ve missed you so much.”

You can’t help, but smile at the thought that Din brought you here to meet Grogu, his foundling.

“He’s very happy to see you, Mandalorian. When I informed him about your upcoming visit, Grogu couldn’t wipe that smile off his face.”

Din looks over at the young man and nods. He looks back at you and introduces you to the man you now know as Luke Skywalker.

“Grogu.” The child looks up at his father and holds his cheeks in his little claws. Din turns to you and has Grog look at you as he introduces you by name. “This is my riduur - my wife.”

Grogu hides in Din’s neck and shyly waves his claw at you. You thought it would be best to not overcrowd the child, so you wave back at him while keeping your distance.

“Hello, Grogu. It’s very nice to meet you. Your father could not stop talking about you. He loves you very much.”

Grogu coos at you and snuggles into his father’s neck once more. You smile at the baby and look at Din. He’s looking down at his son with the eyes you know to be filled with love.

“How about we go back to the cottage. We can have some food and I can update you on Grogu’s training.”

When you make it back to the cottage, Grogu immediately takes Din into his room in the cottage. You hear Din say phrases such as “good job, kid!” and “is that supposed to be my helmet?” and finally “that’s really good, buddy.” Your heart melts away as you imagine him saying things like that to your biological children. Instead of going into Grogu’s room and making him shy away again, you decide to help Luke prepare dinner as he tells you what Grogu’s training entails. Grogu drags Din to the table set up in the living room - well the middle of the cottage really - and sits him down and hands Din a crayon. He grabs a cookie from the jar on the table and breaks his cookie in half, handing a side to Din. You know Din’s heart is about to explode when you see Grogu clap at Din’s drawing of Grogu’s silver ball.

As you all sit and eat dinner, Luke tells Din about how advanced Grogu is in his training and the kind of power he predicts Grogu will have. Grogu was the first to finish and asked Luke to be excused from the table. When Luke gives him permission, Grogu runs to the table in the middle of the room and continues to draw - his favorite pastime you learn.

As you listen to Luke and Din talk about Grogu for what feels like ages, you feel a tug on your tunic. You look down to see Grogu lifting his arms to you with a paper in one hand and a red crayon in the other. You ask him if he’d like to be picked up by you and he nods. You place the baby on your lap as he places his paper and crayon on the table. You look down and you feel tears forming in your eyes.

His drawing consisted of three people.

One figure was drawn in an obsidian black crayon with a helmet adorning its head - Din.

Another figure was much smaller than the other two and was drawn in a forest green crayon - Grogu.

The third and final figure was drawn in ocean blue crayon. You looked down at your tunic and saw it was blue. He drew you.

He asks you for his red crayon that rolled too far from him to reach. You grab it and read the crayon’s color - brick.

He begins to scribble on the paper above the figures. You assumed he was writing his name or simply scribbling, but when he cooed at you to look, you couldn’t help but give him a gentle squeeze.

Above the figures in Grogu’s scratchy handwriting was the word ALIIT in blocked brick-red letters.

Din looks over to you when he hears you sniffling and is in awe when he spots the drawing. He gives Grogu a loving head rub. Grogu asks for his blue cookies that are placed near Luke. Luke obliges and tells Grogu he can have them. Grogu summons them and mentally drags them until they are in front of him. He grabs one and breaks it in half, offering you one half of his cookie as he eats the other half.

As you bond with your husband’s foundling, you overhear Luke tell Din that Grogu’s training is complete. Grogu had informed him that he did not want to walk the path of the Jedi - he just wanted Din.

“Mandalorian,” Luke warns, “If your Grogu refuses to train as a Jedi, I cannot stop him. His attachment to you is too strong to break. If he is forced to stay, his emotions will get the best of him and the pull towards the darkside will become stronger than ever.”

“Then he goes with us. If he doesn’t need anymore training to control his powers then he can go right?”

Luke simply nods. He then looks at Grogu and as if he told him the plan, Grogu springs in excitement and jumps in your lap. He babbles and looks up at you as if saying “do I really get to go with you guys?”

As yourself and Din pack up Grogu’s possessions before going back to the ship, Grogu makes it clear that he wants every drawing of his neatly packed as well.

With Grogu’s two bags and a box full of drawings, you make it back to the ship. Grogu gives Luke a big hug and places his forehead onto Luke’s. They stay like this for a while and Luke finally says, “no, thank you, Grogu. It’s your turn to take care of your family just as your father took care of you.”

You bid your thank you’s and goodbyes to Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 and promise him that Grogu will come back to see him again. As the ship takes off, you and Grogu look out the dashboard and wave goodbye. You keep waving until Luke and R2D2 look like specks and your view is clouded by oceans.

“What’s next, riduur?”

Din looks over to you and removes his helmet. He looks down at his son and takes Grogu’s claw into his fingers.

“I think it’s time that we formally adopt Grogu.”

You smile and place a kiss on top of Grogu’s head. “Din, have you not vowed him as yours yet?”

Din shakes his head and laughs. “I never had the chance to. I was either getting shot at or he was getting kidnapped.”

You playfully shove him. “Then what are we waiting for? Does the Mand’alor want to start or should I?”

“I found him first so I get to start.”

You roll your eyes and gesture him to continue. You take Grogu’s other hand in yours.

“Ad’ika,” Din clears his throat and begins, “ni k-kyr'tayl gai sa'a. I know your name as my child, Grogu.” Din places a quick kiss on Grogu’s forehead and Grogu smiles brightly.

It’s your turn now. “Grogu, ni kyr'tayl gai sa'a. I know your name as my child, if you’ll have me.”

Grogu seemed to understand what this saying was. He stood onto your lap and hugged you, little claws on your jaw and then launched himself into Din’s arms.

You knew you wanted to start a family with Din ever since you first met the shy little foundling in maroon armor back on Mandalore. You also knew you wanted to have foundlings join your clan, but you didn’t know that the foundling would turn out to be a green baby with jedi powers. Though you don’t fully understand Grogu’s powers, you wouldn’t wish for a different little kid.

As you’re putting Grogu to bed, you hear Din come into the ship’s hull trying his hardest to be quiet. Din may be covered with beskar with head to toe, but he can sneak up behind you like nobody’s business. You put your hand out to motion him over behind you. He looks over you to see Grogu sleeping peacefully with Din’s cape wrapped around him with a corner of the fabric in his mouth.

“Cyar’ika, do you think - you think we can finally build a home and settle down? I just want Grogu to be able to be a kid.”

You lean back until his torso hits your back. “That sure sounds nice, Din.”

“How does Endor sound? Maybe even Naboo? I know you may not like Naboo because of your mother, but as your husband, I want to give you new memories. I think our kids would like the lakes there. Endor is also a beautiful planet and I’ve heard Ewoks are nice when you offer them food. They’re little teddy bears so our kids would enjoy befriending those little creatures. They’re small, but highly intelligent.”

“What about being the Mand’alor? You have to take back Mandalore for your people. Wouldn’t we have to be on the planet you want to take back?”

“I’ll take back Mandalore, no doubt about that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t start a life with you elsewhere first. I want to make up for the time we were forced apart. I still haven’t given you little warriors.”

“No, Djarin. You haven’t. I think it’s time for you to put in some work and give me a baby. Well, aside from our little green son.”

“I’d jump into a lava river if you’d ask me to.”

“Nah, I just want to raise our four or five babies with you by my side.”

“Four or five babies?”

“Yes. Two biological babies, Grogu, and other foundlings. There are so many children with no one to love them and we both have plenty of love to give. We just need stability.

“That can be arranged, my queen.”

mando’a translations:

cyar’ika = sweetheart

riduur = spouse

mand’alor = leader of Mandalore

ad’ika = little one

gai bal manda = adoption ceremony

Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad = I know your name as my child

taglist: @theocatkov @remmysbounty

#din djarin #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #mandalorian #mandalorian x reader #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #star wars

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dindjarindiaries · 2 years

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Omera, Or Winta’s Father, Was A Mandalorian - Theory

With The Mandalorian season 3 on the horizon, as well as large hints being dropped about Mandalorians uniting together behind Din Djarin and the Darksaber, I’ve been thinking more about this theory of Omera (Chapter 4: Sanctuary) and whether she has a larger role to play in all of this.

Before I begin to go in depth, please keep in mind that this is nothing more than a theory at this point. Whether or not it comes true, I’ll still be more than satisfied with all season 3 has to offer! I’ll now present a few reasons why I think it could be possible that Omera or Winta’s father was once a Mandalorian.

Omera Recognized Din’s Ship

When Din, Grogu, and the Razor Crest made its descent onto Sorgan for the very first time, the one who spots them first is Omera. As far as my knowledge goes, a Razor Crest isn’t exclusive to Mandalorians, so someone must’ve known that some Mandalorian was known to still be flying such a vessel around the Outer Rim. Since Omera’s the only one in frame at that moment, it seems to suggest that she was the one who urged the farmers to travel to the landing site of the Crest. That could very well be how Caben and Stoke knew to travel out to find Din and ask him for assistance in taking down the raiders.

Sorgan Villagers Knew A Lot About Mandalorians

The ponds of Sorgan were known for being in the middle of nowhere. It took Caben and Stoke a full day just to get to the Razor Crest, which means that resources on Mandalorians couldn’t have been easy to access. Yet, Stoke still tells Din that he’s read a lot about Din’s people, which means his information had to have come from somewhere. If an ex-Mandalorian lived on Sorgan, than it would’ve been a lot easier for Stoke to have access to readings and information on Mandalorians. This is especially important when Stoke says “if half of what I’ve heard is true;” Stoke has heard about Mandalorians, and who better to tell than an ex-Mandalorian themselves?

Omera Knew About Din’s Creed

Omera didn’t even have to ask Din where he would like his meals once he had made himself comfortable in the barn. Of course, we’ve also seen other characters know about Din’s Creed in advance, such as Mythrol in Chapter 1. However, for someone who lives in a place that seems pretty far out of touch from the rest of the galaxy, it’s quite remarkable that Omera knew this about Din and didn’t have to ask him about his helmet. Instead, her questions were more centered around him personally and his experience as a Mandalorian. Perhaps if she had once been one, but fled in the Great Purge or beforehand, she was part of a clan on Mandalore that was more like House Kryze or Wren.

Omera Has A Good Shot And Quick Thinking

We’ve seen that Omera’s shot is extremely accurate, enough to impress a Mandalorian like Din himself. She also had no trouble directing her fellow farmers in the heat of battle, such as when she commanded Caben and Stoke to remain in place and join the fight. At the very beginning of the episode, she was able to find a way to keep her and Winta hidden from the raiders in a very quick and impressive way. It’s very possible that Omera’s past is meant to be unknown forever, but her shot with a weapon that a Mandalorian favors could be hinting at a familiarity she has with such training and technology.

Omera And Din Became Close, Fast

This very well could’ve been simply because the two had chemistry, but Din is not too quick to trust and Omera seems to be the same. She was able to sympathize with Din in a way that many others in his life haven’t. If Omera had some shared experience of knowing what life could be like within a suit of armor, that could’ve been the driving force for her to become an anchor for Din during his time in Sorgan. It also, however, could’ve just been her kindness at work during Din’s weeks spent there.

Omera Was Going To Tell Din Something Before He Left

This is from the junior novelization of The Mandalorian, when it was said that Omera had something to say to Din as they said goodbye but decided not to speak on it. That could’ve been a confession of admiration and/or love, but it also could’ve been Omera finally confessing the truth about her past to him. Either way, Omera left Din without saying everything she needed to, and that could give her a good reason to reunite with Din for the Mandalorian cause in season 3—whether or not she or Winta’s father used to be one.

#i hold this headcanon/theory dear to my heart #omera #din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian season 3 #theory #theories #the mandalorian theory #star wars

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spvce-cowboy · 4 years

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a strange beauty

chapter 1 of i’ll be here in the morning (the mandalorian x fem!reader)

next-ch.2: “gentle things”

rating: Explicit

5.8k words

summary: The Mandalorian crashes on an unknown planet. Severely injured, he follows the sound of singing until he, literally, lands in your lap. A trained medic, you begrudgingly decide to help the bounty hunter in order to continue evading a dark past.

warnings: Violence, descriptions of gore, masturbation (m), brief panic attack description, hurt/comfort, angst/fluff, suggested sexual assault, canon divergent (post-season 1), slow burn, eventual smut

a/n: i wrote this after reading the Rough Day series by @no-droids as well as @cptnbvcks ‘s fics. i continue to be inspired by their work so i must give credit where it is due ! my first reader insert/mando thing so let's see how this goes !! thank you for reading <3

What he hears first is song.

It’s nearly night on the unfamiliar planet. At first he thinks the sound is some kind of bizarre hum of wind. He’s crash landed and between the hole in his chest and the blood in his eyes, he can barely stagger forward, let alone think things through, as he stumbles out of the smoldering Crest.

It stuns him, for a moment. On the verge of it all ending, the pain vibrating through his body, and he literally falls into some kind of melody so haunting he can’t help but think he’s already in some cruel kind of afterlife. Underworld would be equally fitting, he deserves that more.

He tries to pull in a breath. The sound that leaves him could only be described as a gurgle. It’s followed by a cough. Something hot and metallic tasting comes up with it, coating the inside of his mouth and dribbling over his chin.

Maker, he’s screwed.

He hadn’t realized how much worse it was going to get until he was finally safe in the Crest. In a daze, he opened the med-kit only to find the last Bacta treatment in a shattered mess. In the fresher, he tried to stuff some remaining gauze into the gaping hole on his right pectoral. He really tried not to pass out. He wasn’t successful. He wasn’t sure if it was the exhaustion or the knife wound, but every breath exited in a fluttering wheeze he was barely able to push through. It must have punctured a lung. Fucker was able to get right up under the armor.

Delirious with blood loss, he could barely register the one-handed climb into the cockpit and typing in whatever coordinates first come to mind before he blacked out again. It was in and out from there. He thought he entered Naboo, somewhere safe and familiar and not teaming with others who’d like to do much more and worse than he had already weathered, but a glance at the red-orange slicked control panel told him he was quickly approaching an uncharted planet. His hands were uncontrollably shaking, covered in his own blood and who knows who else’s. He had no idea if the Crest has the ability to dampen the landing but it was too late to start asking favors of some higher power now.

“Sorry, kid.” It’s all Mando could think to say, voice barely registering over the modulator.

The child was fast asleep already. He had to mend Mando’s spine in order for Mando to drag himself back to the Crest once the smoke of the battlefield had settled.

Mando’s entire body was still vibrating from the energy of it, probably the only thing keeping his heart beating. He was barely conscious long enough to slide the shields shut on the child’s cradle before impact.

It had been a long day.

He woke, miraculously still breathing—if the futile gasps trying to be made around a collapsed lung could be called something like that. He swung his heavy head around, blindly grasping the child’s cradle and pulling it behind him. The child was still asleep—unharmed save for a dent on the side of his crib that sputtered with an occasional spark. It took Mando a moment to register the alarms blaring, the flashing lights and acrid smell of scorched plastic and metal.

He doesn’t remember staggering out of the Crest. Just that now he is in a field of some sort, staggering forward with the kid’s cradle following close behind.

It is only then that he hears the song.

An idyllic hillside stretches before him, tall grass dotted with small, yellow wildflowers reach to meet a light fog. In the distance there’s the shadowed suggestion of mountains. If he didn’t know any better, he would really think this was Naboo. Mando can’t even begin to comprehend how his brain is able to process any of it. Really? You’re about to take your last handful of breaths and you’re taking in the flowers of all things? Though maybe he isn’t, if he is able to. His head begins to fill with a kind of static where nothing makes any sense.

He can hear, at least. Very well. Well enough to recognize that there is some kind of singing, some kind of song, reverberating through the sensors of his helmet loud enough to bring him back to reality.

A song isn’t necessarily the right word for it—there are no words, or, at least, no words Mando could distinguish. Sound, more like. Melodious sound. Long, whooping notes of crisp sound. A siren’s call. So he follows the singing.

Mando doesn’t know how long it takes to reach its origin—between his quickly blackening vision or the equally disorienting fog, it is hard to navigate the expanse of green before him, let alone determine the time it takes to see the slight silhouette in the distance. Once he does, it’s a stumbling, panting race to reach it before his legs give out. Mando falls once, then pushes himself up. He doesn’t have the ability to call out around the useless, deflated bag of tissue leaning against the right side of his ribcage, so he keeps pushing forward. And it’s like he’s running in a dream, the pace as which he lurches forward, trailing blood and gore behind him. And he’s trying to move but he keeps almost falling and the figure is getting closer but it isn’t moving and he’s half certain he’s hallucinated it all and this is it. It’s over. All this for almost nothing and what about the kid. What about this kid if it’s over and. It’s over and. And.

And it’s you. Standing there. A long dress lifting slightly with the breeze. Your back is to him, hair swept over and through itself in an intricate braid. When you turn, your face is already contorted in shock.

And still, you are the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

The Mandalorian falls to his knees, colliding with the ground before he can even process losing feeling in the lower half of his body.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure.

In it, he is Din again. For the first time in a long time. He knows this in the way one just knows things, in dreams.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure.

He is kneeling before it, in defeat or prayer he does not know. It is one in the same, either way.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure.

It touches his face gently. When it does, he vomits ticks or leeches, depends on the day. They spill into his hands and he is left there. Staring at them. Writhing, they slip through the fingers of his cupped palms. He always wakes before they reach the ground.

On waking, the first thing he notices is that the grass is trying to reclaim the house.

He knows that he is in a house because of the soft mattress beneath him, pressing up and into his body as if in some kind of forgiveness. It’s a single room cabin, a dirt floor, a single bed, a kitchen to the far wall. Incredibly bright with three windows of varied size above the sink. As he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees are sparse but tall green stalks brushing the leg of a sturdy looking olbio-wood table, a messy collection of bloodied bandages, glass bottles, and bowls resting atop its surface. A flower dots the top of only one of the stalks, its petals no bigger than the nail of his thumb. He hears two soft voices, speaking from somewhere above him. Darkness clouds his vision as soon as he realizes he is awake.

When his eyes open again he is already in the process of sitting up, holding his shoulder with a grunt. He fully gains consciousness in the middle of the action, in time to barely recognize a cry of surprise as something clatters to the floor. He swings his head around, right hand automatically going to his holster despite the burning pain the motion conjures. Empty.

He turns sharply and it’s you. It’s you, again, looking all the more surprised at his sudden waking than you had when he was dragging his half-dead body towards you.

Your hands are pressed against your stomach, the wooden bowl of some sludge-like salve at your booted feet. Your eyes are wide, frozen as if he had a weapon to draw. The skin beneath them is puffy and discolored with exhaustion. Your dress is now smeared with what he can only assume is his own rust-brown blood. The dress presses tightly against your chest with your heavy breathing. Mando’s gaze catches there, for a moment, in spite of himself, before traveling again to your face. Wide eyes, plush lips slightly parted--your hair is in a loose bun that has barely managed to contain itself, escaped pieces gently framing your face. You’re one of the most beautiful creatures he has ever seen. His resolve hardens immediately because of it.

You press your lips together firmly in annoyance, almost in tandem with Mando clenching his own jaw. You stoop low to snatch the bowl and pestle from where they lay at your feet, irritation radiating off of you in waves.

“You’re taking my bed, Mandalorian.” Your voice is steady for the most part, but falters slightly with his name. It betrays the fear in your eyes, nearly masked by the tightness in your tone. Regardless, you persist. Straitening with the bowl pressed between your hip and forearm, you gesture with your free hand towards where he is still reaching for a non-existent weapon. “It is unbecoming to start our acquaintance with threats.”

“I was here with a… a companion,” his voice sounds absolutely ragged over the vocoder. Mando whips his head back around to scan the room, heart pounding. His shoulder feels like it is on fire. He begins to struggle to his feet. He fails.

“The little one is fine, resting.” You blow an offending strand of hair off your forehead with a frustrated, upward huff. “You’ve been out for days. We’ve been up every night trying to keep you breathing. Frankly, I could care less if you choked on your own tongue.” Your voice gets less biting when you’re facing him directly, as if the courage for your snark is dependent on not being able to see him. You continue, “Am’ile, however, is an old friend of an acquaintance of yours. You’d care to show her a little more respect.”

With another huff, you’re turning away and pushing through the piece of fabric that functions as a door. He watches you as you reappear through the wide window stationed just above the kitchen sink. Mando sags against the bed’s simple headrest.

There are little pieces of stained glass that have been strung from the tops of the windows, dripping down like raindrops. He watches them for a moment, clattering into one another. Mando swallows, shaking his head. He tries to take a few deep breaths before attempting to stand once again. He isn’t successful.

“I wouldn’t test that one, Mandalorian.” This voice is much older, slightly raspy in a way that automatically demands a lowered head or a knee pressed into the earth. A long-fingered hand pushes past the fabric still swaying from your exit. An elderly Bardottan woman enters, regarding him a moment. The child coos in the arm she cradles him with, his hands reaching out towards Mando. The Bardottan smiles, wobbling over to the bed and laying the child at his side. “She doesn’t like it when kindness is taken for granted.”

She turns, pulling out a chair from the table and sitting down with a sigh. He can tell her age by the halting way she walks, one four-fingered hand resting against her lower back, her leathered yellow-green skin’s pale stripes dulled by time. “Am’ile Dovalien of Naboo. I am an old friend of Caraynthia Dune, from her Republic days,” she takes her time with her words, and then even more to regard him. “You’re looking rough for wear, Mandalorian. I’d ease up on that shoulder before you put all the girl’s work to waste.”

An old friend of Cara’s. He doesn’t know why it’s surprising by any means. Cara’s discussed her time before the war enough, and it is not like she is… inhibited, he guesses, is the right word…by the Way. So of course she would have “old friends.” Good friends. Maybe it’s surprising because he feels like there are similarities between the two of them that he has not shared with anyone else, odd to think she is able to having something that he does not.

“Who is she? The girl?” The words leave his mouth abruptly, before he can think them through. They hang there for a moment before Am’ile answers.

The Bardottan says your full name, he’s noticed she has a habit of doing so. Between that and her syrupy accent, it lends anyone she mentions in the conversation a kind of regal stature that he can’t help but admire. “She is my student. I hope she didn’t… frighten you too much. It’s rare we get visitors from outside the local village. You’re the first of her kind she’s encountered in almost six years now.”

The child chirps, clambering onto Mando’s chest. The pain is sharp and immediate. The man makes a sound he can’t control, using his good arm to pull the kid off and tuck him into his side. “Thank you, for all of this.” He’s ashamed he didn’t manage to get it out sooner, his lips pressed together firmly under the beskar. “I… I had to retreat before I could complete the job. I don’t have many credits on me but—"

“Do not, Mandalorian,” Am’ile shakes her head. “I would be insulted if you do.” She stands with a struggle, using the edge of the table to help herself up and waddling to his bedside, extending both boney arms for the child. Mando does what he can to help prop him back into the crook of Am’ile’s elbow. “Keep resting, if today’s treatments take well, you can start repairing your ship by tomorrow morning. The locals are a secluded people, they do not like strangers staying for very long.”

“Thank you,” he says. She hums something low in her throat in affirmation, flicking her hand in Mando’s direction with her back already turned. The fabric of the door only stills after a few minutes of swaying.

After your first—well, technically second—encounter, you don’t really make conversation when you come in to check on Mando’s healing and clean up the medical station Am’ile and you had established on the kitchen table. It’s all matter-of-fact, from the tilt of your shoulders to the set of your jaw. When you do directly address him, he notices that you stare at the space just above his helmet, never into the t-shaped visor. Never right at him.

He deserves it, he supposes. Never one for talking unless necessary, he’s fine with the complete silence interspersed with: “Okay breathe in, breathe out,” as you check if his stitches can hold, or “try and stand up, walk around the table” hovering a few inches away in case he falls. It seems like Am’ile is the one who takes over the more internal matters, coming in to check on his lung capacity, if his ribs were healing in the proper place.

Apparently the child had to mend the worst of it, now all that was left over was a grinding, bone-deep soreness that comes with being put together from the inside out, as well as some particularly nasty scrapes, the surface remnants of the near-fatal stab wounds. The child had tried to heal those, too, later that morning, but Mando pushed his tiny hand aside, just as he had done the first time.

“No need to waste your energy, womp rat. Save that up for someone else,” he pats the kid’s head as he say this, placing him on the ground with a wince to toddle around the room in search of trouble.

You have your back to the both of them, washing a bowl once filled with Mando’s dirty bandages. You pause as he says this, head tilted slightly over your left shoulder as if contemplating turning around. After a beat, you seem to reevaluate and continue washing the blood out of the bowl, scrubbing at it with a brush heavy with soap. You’re wearing a different dress now, looser, cinched at the waist with a green-brown apron. You dry the bowl with the corner of your apron and start on the next object, a gleaming pair of surgical scissors.

It seems as if you’ve just come from a bath, hair wet and tucked behind your ears as you work. When you first entered, he thinks he heard you mention something about it, now that his condition had stabled. It was mumbled so quietly he almost believes he’s imagined it.

He wants to ask you where the glass hanging from the window is from, how you managed to string it up so perfectly that when the suns get to a certain place, as they were in that moment, it sent a kaleidoscope of colors onto the floor. A kaleidoscope of colors that dapple your face in such a beautiful pattern he half expects he’s in the middle of some torturous spice-dream.

When you turn to leave again, Mando turns his head to stare forward, feigning sleep.

When Am’ile confirms that the treatments have taken well, pointing out all the signs to you as you stand back with your arms crossed and nod intermittently, a diligent student. A part of him is okay with being a living anatomy model as long as it means you actually looking at him.

Once given the clear, he spends the next two days working on the Crest. It was, thankfully, in much better shape than he thought. A bit difficult to go about making the repairs the first day with one of his arms in a sling, but breathing is easier and the deep pain has been replaced with a dull ache that is less difficult to push aside for the time being.

You bring him meals and check his stitches at the crash site—you seem to continuously clarify that you’re only doing this because Am’ile’s hips cannot take the inclines of the hills anymore. Every time you hike up the grassy slope towards him you seem to get a little bit braver, looking him evenly in the eyes for short periods each time.

He’s grateful to see you each time. It’s been a long time since he’s eaten anything that wasn’t from a cantina or a freeze-dried bar. Even though he eats quickly, pushing his helm just below the tip of his nose to do so, he savors it all the same. You turn your back to him as he eats for privacy, playing with the child.

His third morning working on the ship, he gets up at dawn. He’s restless and wants to finish the build as soon as possible, get out of here before Greef Karga starts getting antsy with his absence. A very small, very weak part of himself also knows the longer he stays, the more he becomes a threat to a place like this. It’s too warm. Too gentle. He doesn’t belong here. Something about his presence is disruptive. He just knows this.

Mando still can’t bear the weight of the beskar against his bad shoulder. He pulls on the button-down tunic Am’ile had asked him to wear in order to get better access to his stitches with a wince. It’s a dark green kind of fabric, loose enough to fit both him and the bulk of his bandages comfortably. He’s still a bit light headed on his way to the Crest, but once settled beneath the hull he’s fine.

You come up with breakfast at around the same time as the previous day, setting it on the ground a few feet away from him as if he were some kind of cornered animal you were trying to lull into some sense of false security.

The child babbles something unintelligible from your arms as you turn your back and sit down in the grass. The child had been spending nights with you and Am’ile in the neighboring cabin, since Mando had taken the cabin you’d been sleeping in previously. Am’ile told Mando it was so he could get the rest he needs, without having to worry about the little one. One glance at the way you act around the kid makes it plainly clear that you’re absolutely smitten. It’s hard not to be.

Mando eats quickly, lowering his helmet and turning to give you the clear. You don’t respond, too consumed with attempting to thwart the child’s attempts to catch a hopping bug the size of your palm. You’re wearing a tank top and long, brown cargo pants, seated with your legs crossed and leaning forward every so often to plop the kid back into your lap every time he toddles too far.

There’s a moment where he allows his eyes to trace the elegant curve of your shoulders. Something in his throat tightens. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he pushes himself to his feet and resumes the task at hand. Leaning down to pick up a replacement panel, he straightens with a grunt.

“What are you doing?” Your voice surprises him enough to drop the paneling. It barely misses his booted foot. Small hands wrap around both his biceps, pulling him back. “Stars, stop that you’re gonna—”

And suddenly you’re in front of him, a whole head shorter yet already fussing over him like some family pet. You keep talking to yourself as you do so, maneuvering him to sit with his back leaning against the Crest, kneeling beside him as you pop the buttons of his shirt open. It’s like you started in a moment of complete vindication, and how have to keep up the act despite a deflating confidence. “I feel like the best bounty hunter in the galaxy could maybe use some common sense after getting fresh stitches, just a thought but you obviously could care less…”

You keep talking, he knows that because he sees your mouth moving, but after that last word your hands are against his chest, unwrapping the bandages to check the punctured skin underneath. Your bare hands, on his bare chest. Any possible thought he could have formed after the fact left his head instantly.

He couldn’t even remember the last time someone had touched him, especially like this. Before, when you and Am’ile started patching him up, he was out cold. When you checked on his healing wounds the day before, you had politely asked him to remove his shirt and bandages with an undeniable warble in your voice, standing with your hands clasped behind your back and only glancing at his chest before instructing him to refresh his gauze.

They are soft and a bit colder than he’d expected. So soft. One hand is wrapped around his right trapezius, thumb resting in the dip of his collarbone, and the other cupping his left ribs as if he was trying to get away somehow. Something in him instantly stills. You keep your hands like that as you observe the wound. You give another huff,

“Don’t move.” You turn away, scooping up the kid and walking back down the hill.

He’s not sure if it’s in obedience to you or pure shock, but by the time you return, mumbling something about Am’ile taking over babysitting, he hasn’t moved a muscle. You dab on another layer of ointment, rewrapping his bandages. Satisfied with your work, you sniff, placing your hands on your hips to look back up at him. “What do you need lifted?”

Mando blinks, pausing long enough that you narrow your eyes, chin raised. “Well?”

After a beat, he gestures to the panel he dropped earlier. You both work together, in complete silence, for the rest of the day.

When both suns sit low and heavy in the horizon, you raise your hand to your to your forehead and squint at the place where they are held by the two ragged lines of distant mountains. “It’s a strange kind of beauty, isn’t it.”

He looks at you, looking at the suns. When he doesn’t say anything, you wipe at the sweat and grease smeared across your forehead with the back of your forearm. Wordlessly, you brush your hands off on your pants twice before turning back down the hill.

Mando continues soldering wires. He only pauses an hour or so later, when he hears the song again. He puts down his tools and sits in the grass with his back to the Crest, staring out and into the mountain range before him, the two rocky faces cupping two entangled suns, one indistinguishable from the other. The song is as sweeping and ethereal as when he first heard it, heard you. He takes off his gloves, closes his eyes, and runs his fingers through the grass. He curls them into fists.

Later that night, he has to stumble out of the house and into one of the fields in order to keep the thoughts silent. He has the dream again, it is always impossible to keep sleeping after. He’d been up for hours at that point, trying to breathe through bursts of absolute, vision-blurring panic.

Usually he rests in hour-long bursts, whenever the time allows. He’s gone days without it, to the point that it’s more comfortable to refuse it than give in. It always gets worse when he allows himself to sleep at night. Whatever it is, it always gets worse.

But there’s nothing to fucking do here but think.

It’s the bed. There’s something maddening about your mattress. He hadn’t been touched by another, skin to skin, in so long--the trails of fire your gentle hands left made something in his lower abdomen squirm, restlessly. Hopelessly. Without thinking, he lifts his cock from the waistband of his pants.

Nothing in him can keep the images out. The curve of your knuckles brushing his collarbone. His hand rises in a hard stroke. The low hum you gave once you pushed aside his tunic, unraveling the bandages. Eyes searching for damage. Another stroke, this one even more forceful than the last. The light from the glass against your skin, against the elegant curve of your throat. His thumb comes up to catch the head, already seeping with pre-come. Your gentle palm, dwarfed by the bicep it was pressed against yet steady and determined all the same. He’s so hard it’s excruciating and—

That first morning. The way your chest pressed and swelled against the tight fabric of your bodice, your breasts nearly pushing themselves up and over the gentle ivory neckline with each inhale.

“F-fuck. Fucking sick,” he chokes out in horror as he finishes, his cock pulsing in his hand, his releases onto the damp ground before him. Shame settles itself in place of the writhing desire in his stomach. It is a much deeper feeling, he realizes, as he lowers himself with barely enough energy to tuck himself back into his pants, wiping his hand on the grass already wet with dew.

The girl is just trying to piece you back together and this is all you can think? But he really can’t remember the last time he was touched. With such kindness. Your hands were the softest thing to grace his body for as long as he could possibly remember. He already knows that this, whatever it is, will be devastating. Absolutely devastating. For this reason, something in him will cling to it for as long as he can.

The cold ground welcomes him, it’s the only measure he is given to realize his skin has quickly grown feverish. He almost falls asleep, right there on the ground. But there’s a gentle cry, from the neighboring house, just across the field from his—er, your—cabin. A gentle cry that quickly turns into an all too familiar hiccuping wail. From where he is curled on the ground, he can see right through one of the house’s windows as a lantern flicks on.

It’s just your silhouette, backlit by a warm orange light. You pace in small circles, bouncing the child on your hip, occasionally leaning your head down in what he could only think is to whisper something, just for you and the child. To press a kiss to the dip of his wrinkled forehead. He calms quickly afterwards, but you keep walking anyway. It’s a strange beauty, being able to watch your two forms, the way they bend and lean into the other, rendered indistinguishable by the lantern’s low light. Mando stays there for a long time.

“What is that sound?”

It’s almost nightfall again, the next day. Both Am’ile and Mando are seated at the table in your cabin. The Bardottan woman is playing a card game across from him that he’s been silently observing as they wait for one of his final treatments to sink back in. No bacta, here. Am’ile informed him on his first day. Too isolated of a planet. Her remedies are equally good if not better treatment, just needing some patience.

The singing has started again. It’s the only hint of your presence he’s gotten since the morning, when you unceremoniously plopped a plate of food at the food of his bed and told him you had informed everyone to steer clear of the cabin so he could take his time eating without “that thing on your head.” It was the best meal he’d had in a long while, sugared bread with a fruit jam and a piece of meat that tasted like some kind of mutton.

You start singing right as the healing muscles in his right shoulder have started to go warm and tingly with the salve Am’ile applied. When she doesn’t remove her gaze from her cards, he asks her again.

“What is that sound?”

Am’ile glances up, regarding him for a moment. She says your name, softly, turning her horse-like head towards the window to stare out into the gently moving grass, the empty orange of sunset turning the cut faces of the mountains a dull purple. “It’s a traditional song, from her home planet. It’s how they would call in the seasons, pray for the weather they needed to survive—the people here ask her to sing at nightfall. They say she summons a calm night. When she first arrived it… took some negotiating to allow her to stay.” Am’ile has the gentle, warbling voice of an old grandmother. There is another note from outside, long and slow and beautiful, ending in a sharp, high whoop that reverberates against the sides of the hills. “We look after their children when they go for hunts, it’s how we pay for our place here. This planet has been untouched for centuries, but the beasts are fierce. Would put any Endorian boar-wolf to shame.”

“And why is she here, with you?”

Am’ile is quiet for a moment. Her gaze remains fixed out the window. “She is escaping from a new kind of debt, Mandalorian.” The phrasing hangs in the air, static with its own weight. “The, ah… ex-Imperial officials who turned into warlords after the Civil War...” She looks like she does not want to continue any further. Mando waits in silence. She caves, they always tend to.

“The girl was a nursemaid, by label. They have drugs now, that tell your body you are with child. Lactation, pain of the body so deep it keeps you complacent. It’s a fetish for them, functional for their wives with babies they want nothing to do with. Miserable existence. Caraynthia Dune and I did much work trying to free as many girls as possible years ago, when she was still a soldier. I’d given up the fight, started this farm—began working as a healer for the locals, a peaceful people. The girl found me herself. I still have no idea how. She’s a fighter. Stronger than most any I’ve come across.”

Am’ile’s eyes grow sharp in a way Mando never expected they could. He’s taken aback momentarily, she can’t see his hands flex from under the table. “I have trained her to the best of my abilities, she’d be accepted as a distinguished medic at any Republic facility without a bat of the eye.” She doesn’t have to see Mando’s face to know that he’s in the process of rolling his eyes. “The girl is in danger staying here—they don’t care about what they’d consider to be former cattle as long as they don’t mock the warlords by staying sedentary. She may not be an engineer, but she’s professional--one of the best medics I’ve trained. Kindest, too. You’ll need someone to look after that lung,” Am’ile leans forward, resting a boney elbow against the table and extending a long forefinger to circle the space in front of Mando’s chest. She continues, “Amazing with children. Can hold her own well enough in a fight. Please don’t ever tell her I’ve told you this, but she has asked me to ah… propose this to you. Since the first night of your arrival she has asked to help on board. I know you’ve been looking for a… a… caretaker. The girl is it, Mandalorian. I know you’re an honorable man. I know you would treat her fairly, with kindness. It’s what she deserves. She’s all you could possibly ask for.”

The words hang in the air for a long time. Mando leans both forearms against the table, looking down at his loosely clasped hands. He takes five breaths, then looks back up at Am’ile. “One of the best medics you’ve trained?”

“The best,” Am’ile smiles to herself. It appears as if she already knows his answer. “Without hesitation, the best.”

“With that bedside manner?”

There is a beat of complete silence. Then Bardottan woman bursts into gleeful laughter, nodding her head as she does. The joy of it is enough to fill the entire room.

Mando looks down at his hands and allows himself a small, private smile. It was the closest thing to: yes. Absolutely, yes, that he’s brave enough to voice.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure. In it, he is Din, again. For the first time in a long time.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure. He is kneeling in prayer.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure. She touches his face gently. He reaches out to her.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #reader insert #i'll be here in the morning #i'll be here in the morning ch.1 #fanfic #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din and grogu #mando and grogu #grogu

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burnwater13 · 1 month

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Fennec Shand standing by the throne in Boba Fett's palace on Tatooine. Image from The Book of Boba Fett, Season 1, Episode 3, The Streets of Mos Espa. Calendar from DateWorks.

Someone had made the mistake of annoying Fennec Shand. It was hard to fathom. Why would you want a top tier assassin who hangs around with a top tier (former) bounty hunter to be annoyed with you? Grogu found the behavior of some people to be just unbelievable.

He’d been speaking with the Majordomo and heard the story and just had to laugh. It was like someone trying to arm wrestle with the Mandalorian without explaining it to Grogu first. It just wasn’t the way things were done. Fortunately in that case Cara Dune had learned her lesson and the Mandalorian had stopped arm wrestling people but the message was the same. Learn and survive. Or learn to survive.

He supposed that history had been littered with stories like that. People heard of a person. What they heard indicated that the person shouldn’t be messed around with and yet, for some reason, they thought they were special. They were unique. They knew better than everyone else who said things like, ‘No! Stop! Wait!’.

How many tragedies had played out that way? How many families had cried? How many holes had been dug with markers set upon them commemorating the whole fiasco? Hundreds? Thousands? More like Millions given how large the galaxy really was and how slow on the uptake many of the people were who inhabited it.

At the Jedi Temple, when he was just a youngling, Grogu had to take lessons with Master Drallig, just like everyone else. Master Drallig had learned a lot about dealing with Grogu and eventually they became sort of friends. They both agreed that Grogu would never be Master Drallig’s padawan because that would be for the best for both of them.

Grogu wished that he had thought to convey everything he had learned to his friend Ian. Master Drallig didn’t suffer fools gladly. Master Drallig was also made the definitive determinations of who was a fool and when they were being foolish. But he hadn’t taken the time to share that information with Ian. He had supposed, incorrectly as things turned out, that Ian had observed how he and Master Drallig worked together and that it was based on exceptions to rules, but not the rules themselves. The rules didn’t work well for Grogu due to many factors, not the least of which was his height. Master Drallig liked his shins and knees and Grogu agreed with him about that.

So the day came when Ian, being himself, arrived at the beginners lightsaber class late. Grogu was already in his special place and watched warily as Master Drallig called Ian to come over to him. He was standing in the back of the large room. Ian slowly worked his way down each row and then across, then down, then across, then down, until he reached Master Drallig.

“Youngling Ian, when does this class begin?”

“When you begin to instruct us?” Ian asked in a kind of bland tone. He wasn’t actually making fun of the Battle Master, but he wasn’t actually being totally respectful either.

“That is true. When do I say I will begin to instruct you?” Master Drallig persisted.

“When you tell us what to do the first time?” Ian asked, again missing the point.

“Youngling Ian, you are missing the point. What time is class scheduled to begin?” Master Drallig was practically growling his question.

“At oh nine hundred or there abouts. If that’s what you wanted to know, why didn’t you just ask?” Ian was grinning.

Grogu shook his head. He could see, quite clearly from his special location at the front of the room facing the back, what the rest of the younglings were undoubtably missing. Master Drallig had rarely looked so annoyed.

“Seb Ta’low! You will be helping the kitchen staff clear tables in the masters’ mess hall for the next three weeks. You will not be late to those events and you will not be late to this class.”

Grogu wondered who Seb Ta’low was briefly. He must have been someone who annoyed Master Drallig as much as Ian had and the Jedi Master had simply said the wrong name. He was glad that he wasn’t whoever Seb was.

After that outburst the class carried on as usual and Ian behaved better than Grogu would have thought possible. When the lesson was finished Grogu asked Ian if he was heading to the Masters’ mess.

“Why would I do that? He told some kid named Seb to do it. I was pretty surprised, but when you get lucky, you get lucky.”

Grogu had sighed and just hoped that someone else could explain the situation to Ian. His friend was very special to him, but Grogu doubted that he was anything like special to Master Drallig. At least not in a good way.

As he considered who might have annoyed Fennec, Grogu was struck with a thought and asked the Majordomo if he’d ever heard of anyone named Ian visiting with Fennec. It would explain a lot if he had. A lot a lot.

#calendar prompt a day #the book of boba fett #grogu #fennec shand #din djarin

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beskar-cowboy · 4 years

Text

A Close Call

Part Three of The Best Things Dwell Out of Sight Series

Summary: After bounty hunting in the jungle, Mando comes back to the Crest with many pent up... feelings. (6k words) ao3 link here

Warnings: NSFW, smut, canon typical violence, descriptions of injuries, blood, yearning, mutual pining, rough sex, the helmet stays ON, breeding kink if you squint cause its Mando, also no season 2 spoilers

A/N: this series will be uploaded in a non-linear order! i realize that this way of doing things might not be everyone’s favourite so please let me know if you would like to be notified when all the parts are uploaded (which will be linearly in my masterlist) <3

The sweltering heat was heavy, drowning you in your own sweat as you walked deeper into vines, tall grass and thick foliage of the unfamiliar jungle.

The air was humid, the forest vast and dense, filled with shades of greens that you never thought you’d experience with your own eyes. You were seeing colours you had only previously dreamt of. It was such a stark contrast to the ice planet you had been on maybe a week prior to this. You weren’t sure which extreme you preferred but you were not the biggest fan of the way the humidity was making your hair puff out, curl exaggeratedly and stick to your neck and forehead with the sheen layer of sweat coated on every inch of your body. Your clothes were beginning to stick to your skin as well.

Mando was a fan of that, however. Yet the helmet gave away nothing, as always.

The moment you landed on the planet, he noticed the way your chest heaved, taking in the supple, fresh air for the first time. The look of wonder in your eyes, taking in the flora and fauna you could only have only ever dreamed of previous to this. You were very endearing, it made his heart feel heavy, tense, as if you were squeezing it in your perfect little hand, bleeding him dry.

You couldn’t believe this was your life now; travelling with a deadly bounty hunter, caring for him and his adoptive child day and night. What was even stranger, perhaps, was that you were having the time of your life.

No matter how cold Mando could be, how rude, closed off or just straight up silent he could get some days. You wouldn’t trade it for anything. This was much better than your life on that dingey planet, working that dead end job in the scummiest bar in town. You tried not to think too much of your past, but you couldn’t help the few untamed thoughts that crossed your mind every now and then. You shrugged them off with relative ease, usually being whisked away in some task the Mandalorian asked you to complete, or by the cries of the Child.

No matter how hard the days could get, no matter how lonely you felt some nights, you were thankful for the loving affection of the kid, you were thankful for how much he seemed to care for you. And you cared for him in return. Not because it was what you signed up for, to more or less be his babysitter, but because you truly cared and maybe even loved the little green booger like he was your own. He was very sweet, kind, curious and reckless like Mando. You liked how they seemed so similar in some strange little ways, it made your heart feel heavy.

Heavy with some emotion you wouldn’t dare name because it would only fuck you up further, fuck up the missions, fuck up your tasks, fuck up everything. That sickening feeling you got in the pit of your stomach everytime you caught Mando talking to the Child, staring at him sweetly, catching the way he seemed to stare at you sometimes too. At least you think he was. Whatever, that helmet made it near impossible to ever tell what he was thinking, feeling or even just looking at.

No matter how little he was actually beginning to warm up to you, he was still extremely apprehensive and closed off. He had his moments of perceived kindness, gentleness or whatever it really was, but he always seemed to take five steps back when he realized he had been too vulnerable with you.

You couldn't blame him though, he was on the run from people who were trying to take the kid from him, or busy chasing after bounties himself, he didn’t have time for… whatever it was you were feeling. Whatever emotion you were terrible at suppressing, you know without a doubt that Mando didn’t have time for such trivial, childish things.

You huff and look down to your side, the Child’s pod floating seamlessly along your side, the two of you just a few steps behind Mando.

The Mandalorian was tracking a bounty and he said there was a good chance he’d be on this jungle planet seeking refuge with a friend or something like that. You had literally begged him to come along, not wanting to spend another day alone in the ship with the Child. It had taken a few days to get here, and you desperately needed to stretch your legs and breathe some fresh air. Mando was reluctant, very reluctant, but after enough begging and pouting from you he allowed for the two of you to come along, figuring it would be a pretty easy quest anyways.

Oh how he was wrong about that.

His visor display was showing multiple footsteps having walked in the same direction that the three of you were now walking. The footsteps were strange, seeming to be left by a herd of long bodied, four legged animals. Mando had no way of knowing if they were a threat or not, but he had a feeling he’d be finding out soon enough. The Child’s safety and… and yours was not something he felt like gambling with today.

Mando stopped dead in his tracks and you nearly walked right into him, having been engrossed in a more or less one-sided conversation with the Child.

“Head back to the ship.” Mando commanded, his voice trying to give the sense that there was no room for discussion. He barely even turned around to glance at you, but you noticed his hand hovering over his blaster.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Your own hand now hovers over your own blaster, technically Mando’s but he had trusted you to wield it after that one stunt back on Batuu when you saved him and the Child.

“Animals. Too many of them, you’ll be safer on the Crest.” He turns to glance at the Child who coos back up at him, his ears turning downwards as if he too knows of the animals which creep up on the three of you.

“No, I can stay and fight. I’m not leaving.” You, I’m not leaving you, you want to add. But you bite your tongue.

You can’t see because of the hemet but Mando is rolling his eyes at you, at your stubbornness but also your resilience. How eager you are to stand by and help him almost blindly. He doesn’t doubt that you judge him or criticize him in your mind, but he doesn’t think he’s ever heard a negative comment leave your mouth. You’re always sweet to him. Sweet girl.

“Our job is to take care of the Child, make sure he’s safe,” He huffs, pressing a few buttons on his vambrace and suddenly the Child’s pod is floating away at a leisurely pace, back in the direction you’ve just come from. “Follow it back to the ship, close the hatch and do not leave until I’ve returned.”

You glare at Mando and how he’s given you no choice but to head back to the ship. There was no way you’d leave the Child floating unattend, and without Mando’s directions, you had no way of finding the ship again on your own. You sigh but turn on your heels after the pod, following its lead through the jungle and back to the Crest like Mando had programmed it to.

It’s been hours.

Or at least it feels like it’s been hours. You aren’t aware of the planet’s day cycles so you have no idea if it's been minutes, hours or days but it was dark now and you’d been trying to keep the kid occupied, distracted from the fact that his dad wasn’t here and you had no idea when he would be.

Luckily, the Child was in an agreeable mood so he was distracted pretty easily, playing with various shiny things that he usually reached for on the ship. You made him a couple of snacks with what you managed to find stashed away, he took a nap and you cleaned up the tiny mess he made. Overall, a pretty good day for him.

You on the other hand, were fucking stressed.

It was dark, really dark, and Mando hadn’t even contacted you on the comlink, not that he even did that before but you think that if he comes back- no, when he comes back - you’re definitely going to make that a new rule.

The Child was rocking sweetly in your arms, you had been trying to get him to fall asleep for the past thirty minutes and he was finally getting a bit dopey. Those big eyes of his seeming to get heavier, his blinks growing slower. His little hand was wrapped around your thumb and you quietly hummed a random song to him, maybe it was one your mother sang to you, you’re not quite sure but it seems to be doing the trick.

You can hear small disturbances outside the hatch and you use your hand which isn’t holding the Child to hover over your- Mando’s blaster. You lean against the wall, blaster in hand, hoping, praying it’s him.

Please be him, please be him, please be him.

The hatch groans as it releases its locks and opens slowly to the ever humid jungle. That familiar beskar glints and shines in the moonlight like a precious jewel. You exhale a much needed sigh of relief, Mando was back.

You tuck the blaster back into your holster as you watch him roundup the quarry into the ship, pushing him aggressively up the inclination. He stands wide, broad and big as he does his job. He’s tired and annoyed, you can tell. You can always tell, but he’s strong too, always strong.

The quarry’s hands are shackled, his face beat up and bloodied. Mando really did a number on him…

The quarry’s eyes meet yours, take in the sight before him, a beautiful young girl cradling a strange little green baby. He seems confused, he looks back to the intimidating Mandalorian inquisitively. It’s the last thing he sees before he’s frozen into carbonite.

You say something something to him, to Mando. You sound worried, but he can barely make it out. He had seen the way the quarry’s eyes racked the length of your body, landing on the Child as well. Mando saw red, his adrenaline still pumping heavy and potent in his veins, coursing through his body from the chase, the act of hunting.

So much so, that he hadn’t even realized he had come to tower over you, caging you in against the wall which you had been leaning against.

You look up at him with wide, worried eyes, you look flustered, lips red and swollen. He wants to touch you, he… he wants to do more than touch you-

The Child’s sleepy cooing breaks him out of his wicked mind. He looks down at the kid who reaches for him sleepily with his tiny hands, eyes half closed. He takes him from you, out of your motherly hold. Your hands brush and he wishes he wasn’t wearing gloves.

“W-What did you say?” He finally asks, remembering you had said something to him and he heard absolutely nothing.

“I said your arm is bleeding, Mando.” Voice so small, gentle.

Mando huffs, barely acknowledging it before he steps away from you, turning to the Child’s pod and placing him gently inside. It closes with a hiss. You suck in a shuddering breath.

Mando rummages around for a few moments before pulling out his tool kit, sitting down on the edge of his cot and pulling out his taser-like contraption. You watch almost dumbfounded, trying to piece together what exactly it is he’s doing. He reaches for the tear in the thick material of his sleeve, pulling on it and tearing it further to better show off his wound and his… his skin.

Flesh. Mando’s arm.

Maybe you weren’t supposed to be looking, maybe you were breaking his creed by seeing part of his skin but you couldn’t look away, and he made no motion for you to do so either. So you stand transfixed as he begins to shoddily cauterize his tanned skin.

“L-Let me help you, please.” You take a step forward, towards him, hands reaching out.

“I’m fine.” He basically growls at you, his rough tone startling you, stopping you in your tracks.

So you stand by idly, watching him burn his own skin, attempting to close his open wound.

You only interject again when he starts taking longer breaks between each electrifying tase. When his hand starts to shake and his movements slow down, motivation and determination leaving him as he slowly accepts the pain of the deep gash on his arm, blood trailing down his toned bicep.

“Here…” You say quietly again, hoping he listens to you this time. You reach into the tool kit, pulling out his bacta gel before coming to stand in front of him, your knees grazing his bent one from where he sits on the edge of his cot.

He seems to have listened, his movements having stopped, the taser held weakly in his hand. You take it from him, setting it back in the metal box before zeroing in on his bleeding cut.

You shudder at the sudden proximity, his pent up adrenaline and anger palpable, intoxicating. It lays thick and heavy in the air between your two bodies. Your hands shake as you gently douse the wound with the gel, trying to stay focused, trying to get the bleeding to stop. You fingers brush gingerly along toned, scarred skin and you try, you try so fucking hard to focus. To not let your fingers linger, not let them wander to regions unknown to any other living thing.

Mando groans as it begins to seep into the wound and you wince as well, feeling his pain as your own. You mumble a quiet ‘I’m sorry’ but continue to apply the thick substance to his bicep.

His gloved hand suddenly shoots out and latches onto your hip bone, fingers grasping the clothed flesh in a deadly grip, as if trying to ground himself to you, to the ship, to ignore the throbbing pain. You didn’t realize it would hurt that bad, maybe it went deeper than you thought.

When you’re finally done with the gel, you turn slightly to get some gauze to wrap the wound in. Mando’s touch never leaves you, his hand seemingly welded into your form. His thumb begins to absentmindedly rub up and down in soothing motions, you try to ignore the way it makes your heart pound but… but it's not really a big deal is it? No, Mando’s touched you before, what's so different about it now?

The air? The tension? The way he looks up at you, through that mask, begging to be seen?

God, you wonder what colour his eyes are.

You bet they’re soft, beautiful, kind. They probably give away how secretly gentle he is, something no one else would notice or dare assume about the deadly Mandalorian, but you know. You know because he’s been touching you more lately, especially since the ice planet. Just passing touches but still, you can’t imagine how much significance a simple touch holds for a man covered head to toe in armour, and who’s never shown his face to another living being in decades.

“Who are you?”

His voice startles you. It’s dropped several octaves since he last spoke, it felt like hours had passed since he last spoke- or more, growled at you.

“What?”

“What are you? H-How do you do this to me?” He helmet tilts to the side as he gazes up at you and your heart fucking pounds in its cage, trying to escape and expose itself to this metal man, expose everything you’ve been feeling since you met him.

“Mando-” You don’t understand what he’s saying, he’s not making any sense. Could the pain really be that bad? Making him this incoherent?

“You’re not real… you’re too good, to us, too good to the child… to me-” He was rambling. Mando was rambling. When has he ever spoken this much to you before?

Never.

“You’re good to me too.” You interject meekly.

“But not as sweet… not as sweet as you.” His words make your next intake of breath sharper than usual, no doubt he catches it by the way his helmet tilts up further. You wonder if he’s looking you in the eyes. It sure feels like he is.

“I-I don’t know what I would do if, if anything happened to-” His fingers tense on your hip as he lulls over his words, tossing them around on his tongue, afraid. “The Child… or you.”

“You keep us safe Mando.” You try to reassure him, but you’re not sure if he’s listening. His left hand joins his right one, both sides of your hips now engulfed in his large, strong hands. You throb everywhere, your body pulses for him.

Mando thinks about just letting his helmet fall forward, to let it rest against the softness of your belly but.

But he can’t. He’s too fucking scared. You scare him more than anything. More than any unknown animal in an unfamiliar jungle, more than any quarry, bounty chase, Mythosaur. More than anything, you scare him more than anything because this is the only domain Mando truly always fucks up. Feelings or whatever the fuck going on in his head right now.

“You take such good care of us.” He says, deflecting your words.

He pulls on your hips and you rock forward, almost losing your balance but your hands come forward to lean against his beskar covered shoulders, dropping the gauze you held. You shudder at the cool bite of the metal on your warm, overheating palms. Mando barely budged at your added weight, and you look down at him from where you now tower over him.

Your eyes rake over the sharp edges of his helmet in the low light of the hatch, down to his wound which still needs to be wrapped up but he was... Seriously distracting you for lack of a better word. You notice the heave of his chest, the heavy fall of his breaths like he’s having trouble getting oxygen into his body. And then you notice- you notice the bulge forming underneath his thick pants.

Mando takes you in as you do the same, watching as you finally notice his state, finally notice what you do to him. What you’ve been doing to him since the moment he met you.

“Take your pants off.”

You think your brain short circuits.

Because there’s no way that’s what Mando has more or less just ordered you to do, judging by his harsh tone.

“Wha-”

“Take them off or I will.” He groans, hands squeezing your hips again.

You whimper and bite your lip, trying to see through the pitch black T of his visor, trying to find the man underneath the beskar. You remove your trembling hands from his shoulders, standing up straighter and letting them travel down, down, down towards the button and fly of your utility pants.

“M-Mando, I-”

“Don’t make me ask you again, sweet girl.” You whimper at the nickname, it wasn't the first time he used it but this was probably only the third time at this point. With his thumbs relentlessly caressing your hip bones, you shiver underneath his touch.

You had been dreaming of this for months now, dreaming of his hands on you, sexual or not, you were so deprived of intimacy, having gone months now only barely touching, grazing each other. You both needed this, both needed this more than fucking anything esle right now and you were no one to deny him of what he wanted.

Mando keeps the helmet trained on you as your nimble fingers pry the button open, admiring how easily persuaded you were by his thick, lust-laced words. He couldn’t believe he had managed to draw this out as long as he did, his urge to just tear your clothing away from your body and sink his raging cock into your tight heat the moment he entered the Crest was…. overwhelming to say the least.

But he had barely touched you up until now, and he wanted to work you up to it, no matter how much restraint that meant he had to have on his part.

The sound of your metal zipper sliding down below your belly button tests that restraint. He keeps his eyes on you even though he knows you wouldn't be able to tell where he’s looking. He knows you feel it, knows you feel the way his eyes burn holes into you, devouring you silently, pleading with you, please, please show me.

He feels your hands come to rest over top of his gently, as if you’re still nervous about touching him. You interlace your fingers with his and lower your pants, shimmying them down your hips and thighs together. It makes Mando’s breath catch in his throat and his heart pummel in his chest.

Never had he undressed someone before. Never had the patience, never cared to. But with you, oh with you.

Maker, did he care.

Maybe cared too much, but now was not the time for such ill inducing thoughts. You were becoming more and more bare to him as the seconds passed. You only let go of his hands once your pants went past your knees. Pushing them down to your ankles, you stepped out of them, kicking off your boots as well.

There you were, standing before him in a black tank top and that fucking thong of yours… of course that’s what you had decided to wear today. Mando groans as his hands come up to touch you again, tentatively this time. He can’t believe you were allowing him this, letting him touch you, letting yourself be vulnerable with him when he wasn’t sure how ready he was to be vulnerable in return.

Maybe he could learn.

His hands travel up to your hips again, toying with the thin waistband of your panties, letting his gloved hand run along your pristine flesh that was once covered in ugly bruises. He-

He thinks he wants to be the only thing to bruise you. From now on, he made a promise to himself (and to you, secretly) that he was the only thing in this galaxy that could mark you up, claim you.

Mando’s hands travel back, reaching for the supple meat of your ass, clutching it in his large hands, kneading it before he pushes you forwards again, into him. You yelp as you land in his lap, catching yourself quickly as both of your knees rest on either side of his hips. You readjust and sit back down, your minimally clothed cunt coming to land on his hard bulge, you gasp, eyes wide as you look into his visor. He was so hard, he felt big too.

“S-Sorry I didn’t mean to-”

“What are you apologizing for now, hmm?” He asks tauntingly, helmet tilting slightly to the side, as if he were considering you.

His gloved hands come up your sides, going underneath your tank top and brushing along the underside of your breasts, feeling the tight skin. You unintentionally rock in his lap, creating friction on your already embarrassingly wet center. Mando’s hands tighten at your sides, groaning as he tries to still your movements but. But it feels too fucking good to stop.

He brings a gloved finger to your lips, running the worn leather over the pillowy flesh as if to let you taste it. You look at him, confused.

“Bite.” He instructs, voice clipped, sharp.

Without needing further instruction, your teeth latch onto the absolute tip of his glove, letting him slip his hand out of its leather confines, revealing to you the most precious amount of skin of his you’ve ever seen.

Tanned skin, thick fingers, large palm, perfect. Him. The urge to litter the rough calloused skin in kisses, lick his entire hand, just put the whole fucking thing in your mouth was all consuming. Yet you sat there in his lap staring at his hand like it was a vase of water and you were a flower, parched for water. He asked you to do the same with the other glove and of course, you did as he asked. You quickly found yourself wanting to please him.

You stared at his bare, rough, strong hands in awe, watched as he let them peek underneath your thin top to skim along your silky smooth flesh, an expanse unknown to him. His fingertips brush over your nipples, feeling how the pretty buds pebble for him. He twists and pulls them in between his fingers, watching the way your face contorts in pain and in pleasure. It’s his new favourite thing, he feels drunk off of you already.

“Please.” You aren’t quite sure what you’re begging for, Mando isn’t really sure either. But he knows one thing, and it's that the sweet sound of your voice, begging for him, begging for anything, just so desperate, was enough to make him cum in his pants. His fingers dig into your skin, trying to cool his overheating mind, trying to slow down a bit before he actually does cum in his pants, before he’s even properly seen you.

His bare hands come down to your panties, toying with them again between his agile fingers.

“You want this?” He asks, daringly pushing your panties to the side, getting the smallest glimpse and your slicked up and drenched pussy. He thinks he could die right now, die happy, never want anything, ask for anything again.

“Yeah, yeah I do, always- have.” You choke on a hiccup, emotions welling in your eyes already from how fucking built up all of this is. You feel like you were both about to burst at the seams. You still couldn’t believe this was happening, even if it were to stop now and not progress any further, you couldn’t believe he had allowed you this much of him.

Mando wraps his arm around you completely, gripping your waist tightly to spin you around, pinning you underneath him in the tight space of his cot. You gasp, shriek at the sensation of it all, as he comes to rut against you, grinding his thick bulge into your cunt.

You notice how his arm has begun to bleed again, the skin ripping open and the deep red liquid trickling down what little part of his bicep was exposed, further proving his humanity, exposing the man beneath the beskar. You really felt like you could cry.

Lost in your whirlwind, Mando pulls off your thong, throwing it somewhere unpreciously behind him before doing the same thing with your tank top. Completely vulnerable, you laid bare before him as he hovered above you, covered head to toe, save for his hands, in beskar. That fact alone made you throb deep inside. The sheer power and size of him enough to get you off.

You knew what little he had already decided to show you was all he could afford, you were so grateful for it anyway, that he was even willing to show you his hands, the little glimpse of his bicep. His skin was beautiful, but you couldn’t possibly grasp the words to tell him.

So you hook your legs around his backside and pull him to you, silently begging him to do something, anything. You would take anything he gave you, you’d even thank him for it at this point.

“Fuck.” Mando growls, bare hands coming to work at unbuttoning his pants, pulling them low enough to pull out his engorged, thick cock.

Mando was… he was huge.

This came hardly as a surprise to you, however. You would have had to be blind to not noticed how he walked. He walked like it was big, talked like it was big, fought like it was big. But fuck.

You were not prepared for that.

“Mando, I-I don’t know if it’ll-”

“It will.”

You moan and arch your back towards him, needing it now, needing that sweet burn and stretch that you know is about to come.

And oh does it come.

Mando thrusts into you without further warning, giving you no time or preparation to adjust to what he was packing.

He makes you take it. He makes it fit.

The stretch burns, it bites and it knocks every single breath and thought from your body as he nestles himself all the way up against your cervix. Your body convulses in retreat, trying to push him away from the aggressive intrusion but your mind wants more, needs more. Needs him to fucking split you in half on his cock.

You scream and Mando growls, loud, his helmet falling forward and resting in the crook of your shoulder which meets your neck. His helmet is cold and your skin is burning hot, it creates a fog on his visor and he desperately tries to wipe it off on your skin, trying to look at you so up close. The way your eyes screw shut, squeezing tears out, watching the beautiful dew drops roll down your cheek so perfectly.

It hurts. Maker, does it hurt but fuck does it feel good. The pleasure overrides the pain more than you could imagine and you find yourself begging him to give you more even though he’s already started thrusting into you like he’s on a mission, a mission to sever you in half with his cock.

He was surely succeeding.

Mando watches you cry in pleasure as he fucks into your pussy with such aggressive fervour, like someone had a gun to his head. One hand on your hip and the other around your neck, bruising your skin in that beautiful way he always wanted, how he always dreamed of. He holds you in place so that his hips don’t drive you up his cot because they surely would from how fucking deep and hard he’s pounding into you. Stars, you think you can feel him in your stomach, in your throat.

The hand on your hip travels up to one of your bouncing breasts, kneading the sotf flesh in his palm and watching you wither beneath him. So desperate -

“S-so helpless.” He moans, watching your body bend to his will beneath him.

“Mando- oh my god.” You cry, hands and arms flailing at your sides, not knowing where to put them. Mando sees your struggle and takes both of your hands into each of his, pinning them above your head and using it to drive into you even harder somehow.

Your pussy squelches obscenely, trying to suck him in deeper, keep him inside forever. The only sounds in the cot are fucking lewd, skin on skin rhythmically slapping. You pray the Child can’t hear any of this from inside his pod, you pray he’s asleep.

“So fucking wet... You’d let me do anything, wouldn’t you?” You nod your head so fast you think you’d give yourself whiplash.

“A-Anything, anything Mando- fuck.” That familiar coil was beginning to tighten in your belly, your toes curling, fisting gripping onto his, no doubt cutting off some of his circulation.

Eyes rolling into the back of your head, your chest arches up, up, up your breasts rubbing against unforgiving beskar.

Underneath said beskar, Mando felt like he wasn’t getting nearly enough oxygen into his helmet, his skin flushing underneath the heavy armour but the pleasure rolling off of you and into him would be enough to sustain him for hours, he thinks.

Your pussy was squeezing him so tight, the ridges of your inner walls so soft, warm, wet, inviting. You felt like home. Absolutely fucking drenched, no wonder you were able to take him whole with almost zero preparation, you had fucking wanted it that way. Wanted him to be rough like this.

“I’ll never leave- never leave this sweet pussy...” He moans, hips stuttering, rolling and grinding deeper and deeper and you felt your orgasm quickly approaching, his words were only bringing you that much closer.

“Please, I- I…”

“Cum for me ner mesh’la, need you to cum for me.” He groans, cool and sharp edges of his helmet resting on your cheekbone.

You envisioned the faceless man deep inside you, what his face must look like now, deep in the throes of pleasure only inches from yours. You pictured the tanned skin covering his entire body head to toe, flushed and splotchy, hot to the touch.

Would his eyes screw shut? Would his mouth hang open, little pants, groans, moans slipping through swollen lips, only loud enough for the ears of his lover to hear?

Your legs wrapped tightly around his waist, you try to look into his visor as your orgasm wipes your mind blank, eyes screwing shut, an endless stream of tears falling onto already damp cheeks as you moan and cry his name into the tight space of his cot.

Mando.

You don’t think you could recall anything if anyone asked you. Not the name of the planet you were currently on, not the name of the planet you were born on, the bar you used to work at, your old bosses name, your name. Nothing.

With two, three, four more thrusts, Mando’s hips still after he drills himself into the deepest and darkest parts of your hot cunt, spilling white hot cum into you with the lowest moan you think you’ve ever heard flowing deep from within his chest. You gasp at the sensation, that warm pleasant feeling of being absolutely stuffed full, somehow more than you already were.

He draws his cock out before pushing it back in, plugging you up with his cum, pushing it deeper and deeper inside of you. You cry, bordering on overstimulation, his cock only softening in the slightest so the hard intrusion was almost too much for you to bear.

“Fuck Mando I’m- I don’t have the implant..” You whimper, suddenly worried, voice coming out uneven with your ragged breaths.

Mando feels another surge of blood to his cock at your words, groaning as his dick twitches and thrusting into you a few more times…. For-

For good measure, he thinks.

Not that he would necessarily want that right now but fuck. Fuck did the mere idea of it make him painfully hard against his own will. You…. swollen with-

“Fuck.” He growls, pulling away from you a bit to better look down at you. Your eyes are shiny, lashes coated thick and wet with your precious tears. Lips swollen, chest flushed. You look worried, but beautiful. His.

Mando remembers your old job at the bar…. Wouldn’t they have made it mandatory for all the girls to have the implant to prevent them from getting pregn-

“But- your job, you-?”

“I didn’t do that, I didn’t fuck them… just drinks.” You smile up softly at him due to fatigue, bashful nonetheless.

Mando likes that, it puts him at ease in some fucked up way to know that those men in those types of places couldn’t get too far with you, even if they wanted.

“We can, I can get it for you on the next planet if- if that’s what you want?” He asks, hips still gently thrusting into you and you start to see stars behind your eyelids. You whimper, feeling his cum mix with your and gush back onto his cock and down the backs of your thighs.

“O-okay… thank you.” Mando nods but says nothing, pulling his cock from your fluttering pussy. You gasp at the sudden loss, feeling terribly empty and used. More cum dribbles from you and you quickly cup your cunt with your palm, trying to stop it from leaking everywhere on his cot.

Moving quicker than you would have expected him to, Mando stands up straight and tucks his wet cock back into his pants before walking away abruptly. You, however, barely notice as you lay flat on your back, head staring up at the ceiling with eyes closed, trying to catch your breath, regain some sense of self after getting all of it fucked out of you.

You’re made aware of Mando’s return by the touch of a warm and damp washcloth to your abused pussy. You gasp and sit up on your elbows, looking down the length of you to see the Mandalorian between your thighs, wiping away the mess that both of you made. Together.

You want to thank him again but you can’t find the words within you, all of them lost to you because of this sudden display of dare you say affection.

“Stay here, gonna put us into hyperspeed. Once we’re up there, go clean up.” Mando orders softly, nodding his helmet at you. You nod back, still breathless, still shaking.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #reader insert #din djarin #din djarin x reader #imagine #smut #din djarin smut #the mandalorian smut #my writing #the best things dwell out of sight #fan fiction series #a close call

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nicad13 · 2 years

Text

Crossroads: Chapter 6

The Shelter

Summary: Din, Rayne, and the Child take some time out to rest up and heal at a remote campsite in the woods next to a lake. What could go wrong?

Not much, actually. It works out pretty well.

Din works out a few sensory issues. The Child gets a name! Rayne is thrilled to be back at her favorite place in the galaxy.

Illustration by @catstanbulite. I still can't get over how beautiful these are.

Tags/Warnings: PTSD, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm, Angst, Sexytimes, Agoraphobia, Force-healing, Grief/Mourning, Baby Yoda gets a name!

Rating: Mature

---

Can you see the stars that are assembled? When you held love tight remember how it trembled? So soft to the touch Don’t hurry so much It will come as sure as we are bleeding Let’s groove before the vultures start feeding

Willy Porter, Breathe

---

He paused at his door, listening as Alaria and her mother spoke outside.

“Is he good to you?”

“He is, mother.”

“It’s just that some of the foundlings are…”

Abusive. He knew it just as well as everyone else. The word you won’t say is ‘abusive.’ Foundlings were often so trauma-ridden that they were unable to see anyone as anything other than an enemy. He didn’t think he was that far gone, had sat through years of counseling, had learned to control his anger, had learned when and how it was ok to express it and when and how it was not. Had he slipped up without realizing it? A sudden knot formed in his stomach.

“He’s not. He’s very kind to me.”

The knot let go.

“That’s good. You understand why I worry.”

“I do.”

“His distance concerns me. He often won’t respond when spoken to…”

He could hear Alaira take a deep breath. “He means no disrespect. Sometimes he just doesn’t have the words, or sometimes he has too many and doesn’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“It’s ok for him to say he doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t like to admit that. He’s smart. He’s used to having the answers in class. Conversations are different for him.”

It made his heart ache to hear her defend him.

“I know it’s hard. Remember, you’ll be separated next year.”

“I know.”

He stared into the visor of the helmet he held in his hands. He knew he was damaged goods. The Mandalorians had done what they could for him, but in the end, none of the clans wanted a child who could only speak half the time and lost most of the fights he got into, so they’d had to place him in the Fighting Corps. He wasn’t built for heavy infantry. He was better at sneaking around. Long shots with a rifle. His hand-to-hand fighting still wasn’t great. He couldn’t quite fit in anywhere. Regardless, Alaria’s parents had always been warm to him, and he admitted that he didn’t really know how to respond to that. Part of him wondered if they only tolerated him because he would be separated from their daughter soon anyway, both of them sent away from their childhood covert to make their own ways in the galaxy. Because it would be easier for her to leave him knowing that everyone who came after would be a little saner, would be able to hold up a conversation, would be able to say the word “family” without locking up.

There was a knock on his door, and he slipped the helmet on before he opened it. Alaria stepped in, her mother already departed.

He didn’t deserve her.

But that was alright. He would lose her soon, anyway.

This was the Way.

---

Din opened his eyes.

He could just make out the back of Rayne’s head before him in the dim light.

Don’t fuck this up, Djarin.

Alaria’s voice in his head.

That she had invaded his thoughts once already this week was bad enough. Twice was downright unsettling. The message was clear enough, though. Muzzle the anger. Give Rayne the benefit of the doubt. Remember that she was not the enemy.

At the very least, don’t give her a reason to Force-choke him to death.

Another knock sounded from the foot of the bunk, and he craned his head down to see his son clamber up and into the cramped space.

Rayne groaned and turned over onto her back, not opening her eyes until the kid flopped onto her stomach and burbled, driving the air from her lungs. “Ouh. Good morning to you, too.” She turned her head to the visor. “You awake in there?” Her voice was quiet.

“Yes.”

“Sleep ok?”

“Yes. You?”

“Yeah.” She hooked one of her fingers around one of his. “Today will be a better day.”

I sure hope so. Fearing he would jinx it if he said the words, he instead broke her hold on his hand to bring his finger to rest with a light touch at her lips. She closed her eyes and returned the kiss.

---

The Razor Crest dropped out of hyperspace at Methuselah.

“Jawas,” Din groaned. He was in the starboard jump-seat, his son strapped to his chest in the birikad, ready for what was promised to be a harrowing ride.

“Yeah, I figured they’d be here,” Rayne checked the instruments. “The comp was a few months ago so they’re still picking through the wreckage.”

A hail came over the com in the Jawa Trade language. Both Din and Rayne understood it well enough. “Ah! A latecomer to the festivities. You plan on getting that tub through the belt? We gleefully await your foolish attempt and will enjoy the salvage of your failure.”

“Dammit. They saw us,” Din said.

Rayne responded to the hail in Jawa Trade. “Anyone make it through lately?”

Din tilted his head at her pronunciation. It was a lot better than his, though he figured negotiating with Jawas was a necessary skill for a mechanic.

A string of expletives came over the com.

“Did they just tell us to fuck off?”

Rayne smiled. “They did. And they’ll tell anyone who happens to come looking for us the same. We’re fine.” She keyed the com back on. “Yeah, yeah. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in the lack of wreckage I’ll leave behind. Prepare to be amazed.”

“You speak Jawa like a Tusken raider,” came the response.

Rayne cleared her throat, opened her mouth, and transmitted a decidedly Tusken-like bark/honk/roar/screech that sounded vaguely like “Fuck you,” as far as Din could tell. He made a slow, deliberate show of covering the kid’s ears with his hands.

Uproarious laughter came back over the com, and Rayne put the ship in orbit. “I love those little bastards.”

Sometimes Din wondered if Kuiil had come back from the dead to posses the enemy sorcerer just to annoy him.

Rayne called up a scan of the asteroid belt, nodded at what she saw, then swiveled the seat around to face Din and the baby. “We’ll need to orbit for a bit and map the field so I can study it. Might be an hour or so. You guys don’t have to stay up here if you don’t want to.”

“We’ll stay put unless he gets restless.”

She nodded and turned back to her work. Din sat back as much as he could in the jump-seat and read up on the unofficial “rules” of Methuselah as written by the few pilots who had ever made it to the surface. Most of it boiled down to “leave no trace” and “leave each other alone.” Harvest no more plants or animals than was necessary for personal use, don’t come within twenty miles of another camp without hailing first, don’t stay there for longer than two months a year, don’t build any permanent structures, and so on. The place was apparently a natural paradise, and everyone with the ability to get there wanted to keep it that way.

He was eager to see it.

Rayne worked with purpose, taking notes, winding recordings back to re-watch them, peeking out of the windscreen every now and then to confirm what the instruments were telling her, a soft mutter escaping her every now and then.

The baby dozed, Mythosaur pendant half in his mouth.

After almost an hour, she leaned back, stood up, stretched, and turned around. “One last trip to the vac tube for me. I recommend it for you guys, too. Then we’ll buckle in and head down.”

Five minutes later, they were ready, both Rayne and Din strapped to their seats, the baby snug in the birikad tight against Din’s chest, Rayne’s goggles pulled down over her eyes. She commed the Jawas one last time. “See you in a few weeks, guys.”

“We stand ready to salvage your pre-Imperial engines the moment you shred them off your ship.”

“They scanned my ship,” Din growled.

Rayne smiled, spun the Razor Crest so it faced toward the planet, and fired up the engines.

Their movement was slow at first, picking their way through the outer edges of the field, Din and the baby quiet as per Rayne’s instructions so she could concentrate on everything around her. The plan was to predict where things would open up enough for the Crest to get through without much trouble, and thus far, the otherwise random movement of the asteroids did seem to open up a path before them as Rayne guided the ship through.

Her posture was alert, shoulders squared but arms and hands relaxed at the controls, feet steady as she eased the yaw of the ship to and fro to skirt the bigger rocks, head titled to the right or the left as she reached out and listened to the approach of asteroids all around. Just when Din was beginning to think this was going to be a tame ride after all, she stiffened in the seat. “Oop. Heh. Here we go.”

She pushed the ship into a steep, rolling dive, and Din watched as enormous, cratered masses zipped by, centimeters from the windscreen. His son giggled, ears perked up. They angled to port, and the engines roared once more, responding to her touch at the slightest provocation. Upside-down and right-side-up became meaningless as Rayne threaded the Crest through needle after needle, and the only thing that kept Din from screaming was what little he could see of the smile on her face.

She was born for this.

Once again, he realized he’d forgotten to switch his vambrace’s connection to her wristband off as it buzzed her pulse against his wrist. Fast but steady, and he watched her right shoulder as it rose and fell with her breath.

“Whoops,” she noticed an incoming asteroid at the last moment, banking hard and pushing it away at the same time, grunting with the effort. She remained calm as she swung them through a path she had not anticipated, and they came upon an enormous chunk of rock that seemed to have its own gravity, judging by the way she pulled back on the stick. “C’mon baby… c’mon baby…” she muttered as the g-forces hit them and all of their stomachs settled somewhere in their ankles. Din noticed the darkness creep in from the periphery of his vision and tightened his legs in response, determined to keep what little blood he had left in his head, regulating his breathing. They cleared the rock and Rayne pushed forward, lifting the g’s.

Back down into another dive toward the surface, and the rocks here were smaller. Din heard what sounded like sand getting thrown against the windscreen as Rayne rolled them through another patch, forcing out a breath as she threw most of the rocks out of the way. One still managed to catch the edge of the cowling of the port engine, sending a clang through the ship and rolling it to port just a bit. Din barked out a “Hey!” before he could stifle it.

“I’ll fix it!” Rayne barked back.

And just like that, they were through.

Jawa cheers came over the com, the entertainment of Rayne’s piloting apparently making up for the lack of salvage.

“Hah hah, yeah!” She pumped her fists in the air, unlocked the swivel on the pilot seat and turned it, and Din met her in a high-five that nearly took his hand off of his wrist. She turned back to face forward again. “Yes!”

Din took a deep breath as the baby squealed with delight. “Nice work,” he said.

“You’re goddamn right that was nice work!” She shook her head as she let the adrenaline subside, taking her feet off the pedals as her legs and hands shook. “Whew…” With an uncharacteristically unsteady hand, she brought up a scan of the planet’s surface. “Let’s see who’s here…” The monitor brought up five points of light.

“Only five other parties? On the whole planet?” Din’s tone was incredulous.

“Welcome to the club, guys.” She tapped at the display. “Yes… Oh, yes…”

Din titled his head at her.

“My usual spot is open. And it’s mid-morning over there. We’ll have most of the day to set up.” A few minutes later, they were still at a relatively high altitude when they approached the coordinates. “I’m gonna do a spiral landing, if that’s alright.”

“Are you expecting anti-aircraft fire?”

She smiled. “No. Just want to expose as little wildlife to the approach vector as possible. And I don’t get to do it very often.”

“You got us this far…”

Just as they reached the coordinates, Rayne banked hard to port and put the Razor Crest almost entirely on its side as they corkscrewed down, shedding speed and altitude. Din looked to his left and watched the landscape spin around, catching sight of a long, thin lake with a clearing at one end, surrounded by forest. They leveled out as they approached the ground, and Rayne settled the Razor Crest at the edge of the clearing at the east end of the lake. Clearly forcing herself to not rush through the shut-down sequence, she counted herself through all of the steps as Din unbuckled himself from the jump-seat and loosened the birikad, the kid squirming as he sensed Rayne’s excitement. She still managed to beat them to the ladder, sliding down the rails, and Din set the child down on the deck as she bounced on the balls of her feet, waiting for the ramp to open enough for her run out and jump off the end of it before it was all the way down.

Din reached the top of the ramp, watching as Rayne jogged to the center of the grassy clearing, did a slow spin with her face turned up to the sun, and collapsed to the ground on her back with a happy sigh. His son tonked down the ramp as fast as he could, followed Rayne’s path with his arms outstretched, and just as he launched himself at her, she caught him, lifting him up as he flailed his arms and kicked his legs, squealing with delight.

The sun was warm but not overly so, an hour or two before its noon zenith, at which point it would be partially obscured by the asteroid belt if the odd band of shadows in the sky were any indication. The sky was otherwise clear and blue. The clearing ended at the sandy lakeshore to the left, with a tall mix of old-growth deciduous and evergreen trees around the rest of it, the ship itself nestled on the shady side of the clearing.

Something in his chest tightened as he realized it reminded him of Sorgan.

He shook his head, doing his best to clear it of the memory, and descended the ramp.

When he reached Rayne and his son, she was still on her back, eyes closed, the kid sprawled out on her chest with a smile on his face. “Welcome home?” was all he could think to say.

“Yeah,” she said. “Listen.”

He closed his eyes and did as she instructed.

At first, all he noticed was the ticking of the Razor Crest as it cooled, cycling through its normal metallic cracking and snapping. As it subsided, he heard the breeze though the leaves of the trees. The lapping of small, breeze-driven waves against the shore. The up-and-down buzz of cicadas. Even through the filters of the helmet, he could smell the water, smell the pine, smell the unspoiled freshness of it all.

God, if the manda couldn’t top this, he wanted no part of it. He’d chuck his soul in the lake right now if it meant they could stay here forever.

Ok, maybe not, but still.

He breathed it all in, filled his lungs with it, held it in as long as he could, then let it out in a slow exhale. “Yeah,” he said. “This was a good idea.”

---

They set up camp in short order. Chairs were placed at the rock-rounded fire ring, solar panels were unfolded, and Rayne swam out with the water-supply hose to anchor it forty feet from the shoreline. Din held his squirming son in his arms until she got back so they could test how the baby did in the water. He stood at the edge of the water line, yearning to shed the beskar and join her. He had been a proficient swimmer as a child, remembered enjoying the water, couldn’t really remember a time when he didn’t know how to swim. His life before the armor.

Mandalorians, as a rule, were not known for their swimming abilities.

When she returned to the shore, she stayed about ten meters out as Din freed the baby from his robe and put him down. The kid’s face nearly split in half with a grin, babbling a stream of nonsense as he ran to the water. The coolness of it did not deter him at all, and once he got waist-deep, he dove in, turned himself on his back, and paddled with uncanny skill to Rayne. “I guess we don’t have to worry too much about him drowning,” she said as he splashed past her, buoyant, ears folded back against his head.

“Is there anything in here big enough to eat him?” Din asked.

“No. Nothing venomous, either. Wolves and coyotes at night are the bigger issue, but I’ve already set up a low-frequency beacon on the ship that should keep them out of the campsite.”

He stood and watched as Rayne continued to spot the baby, then as they developed a game where she would duck under the water, come up ten feet away, tread water and wait for him to swim to her, then duck under again just before he reached her. It took longer than Din expected for the baby to tire, and when he finally did, Rayne guided him to shore while he could still do it under his own power. Din handed her one towel and scooped the baby up in another, feeling the coolness of his skin through the gloves, wrapping him up against the goose bumps and shivers, the baby still laughing and burbling through it all.

“He seems more talkative since we got here,” Rayne noted.

“Yes,” Din had noticed it as well. “He likes this environment.”

“Who doesn’t?”

He tipped his head in acknowledgement.

She wrapped the towel around her waist as he continued to dry the baby. “I’m gonna go do a little hunting after lunch. I can take him with me if you want some alone time. Go for a swim. Get some sun. Do something about that vitamin D deficiency.” A common problem among Mandalorians, he’d included supplements on his list for Rayne before they had left, but getting it the old-fashioned way sounded nice.

“Thank you. I will.”

They headed back to the ship, and Din tucked the baby into his crate for a nap while Rayne changed out of the swimsuit and back into her regular clothes. When she was done, she took a seat at the top of the ramp, looking out over the clearing, indicating for him to join her, so he did. “Glad we’re here?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “How are you feeling?”

“Head’s clear. Helmet fits the way it should, now.”

“Have a chance to look at your pupils yet?”

“They’re symmetrical and appropriately dilated.”

“Good. Anything else?” Be honest with me.

“Still tired. Back is sore. Ribs on my left side don’t quite feel right. That’s all I’m aware of at the moment.”

She nodded, understanding how things that hurt a lot could mask things that only hurt a little. Understanding that the bacta infusion couldn’t have possibly healed all of the damage that the cannon battery had done to him. “Sounds like someone tried his best to help you out.”

Din took a long, slow breath. “I tried not to let him. Pretty sure he managed it when I was sleeping.”

“Yeah. May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“I can give you a good once-over, tell you what I can fix, stuff like re-setting old breaks, soft tissue damage, that kind of thing. You decide what I fix and what I leave alone. Some of it will hurt, but you’ll feel better in the end. I’ll need skin-to-skin contact for it to work, but the helmet can stay on. I’ve already fixed everything from your neck up.”

He was quiet for a moment, gazing out into the clearing. “Sounds like cheating.”

“More like making up for the medical care you should’ve gotten but didn’t. I’ll leave normal wear-and-tear alone.”

“How long will it take?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later, he was seated at the edge of the bunk in his shorts and helmet, Rayne seated in a chair in front of him, working her way up his left leg with her hands, her eyes closed. She paused at his knee. “Partial ACL tear, here. Low-grade, but it won’t heal on its own. You’ve been passing this limp off as a swagger.”

He tipped his head as if in confession. “Forgot about that. Yeah, go ahead.”

She shifted so his knee was bent at a slight angle and flattened her hands out around the bend of the joint. It had been not-quite-right for a year and a half, a little swollen, a little unstable, the result of a scuffle with a cantankerous bounty. Nothing a direct bacta injection wouldn’t fix, but it would’ve required a day of complete immobilization and he hadn’t wanted to take the time off for it. Now, he felt an odd warmth start from his skin, felt as it reached in, one tendril at a time, to the center of his knee, that hard-to-reach place where the ligaments crossed. The warmth turned to an itch as the fibers regenerated and re-knitted, and the ever-present twinge that had been with him for a year and a half melted away.

When it was done, Rayne opened her eyes and looked up. “Better?”

Din took a breath. “Yes.”

She continued up, pausing with her hand on the outside of his thigh. “You have some bone growth in the muscle tissue here.”

“Huh.”

“Happens with blunt-force trauma.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No.”

“Okay.” She moved on to his right leg, pausing again at the knee. “You’ve had the ACL on this one replaced entirely.” Only now had she noticed the three small scars made by the scope to fix it.

“Yes. I was fourteen.” A mishap with the Rising Phoenix training. No bacta for that one. He’d blown the ligament out so completely there was nothing left, so they’d had to fix it the old way – take a strip of the tendon over the kneecap and graft it back in to replace the ligament.

Her fingers slid around that tendon, then spread to the sides. “They did a good job. Screws are in good shape. You have some calcium deposits in the cartilage.”

“They told me that would happen. Doesn’t bother me.”

She smiled. “It bothers me when you go up and down the ladder – I can hear it crunch from the other side of the ship. I’ll leave it alone, though.” Her smile disappeared when she traced six thin lines of scar tissue running across his thigh, just above his knee. She opened her eyes and looked at them, not having noticed them before. They were old. Not quite as old as the ACL replacement, but almost. They looked… almost ritualistic. The cuts had been shallow – no underlying tissue damage. She looked up to the visor with a silent question.

The answer was just as silent.

Maybe another time, then.

She moved up to his right arm, finding nothing amiss until she got to his shoulder. “This was dislocated, but it popped back in again. I’m gonna guess this happened when you lassoed the TIE?”

“Yes.” He’d forgotten about that one, too, only noticing that it was sore once she’d brought his attention to it. “This one hurts.”

“Okay.” Again, the penetrating warmth, the itch, the relief.

She switched back over to his left side, once again trailing over the collarbone break she had noticed before. “This treating you ok?”

“Yes.”

She could find nothing else wrong with his left arm.

She had him lie on his back in the bunk, head facing out, so she could check his ribs. She was half-crouched over him, most of her weight on one knee next to his chest, her other foot planted against the bulkhead on the other side. She found the broken ribs on the left. There had been some dislocation that the child had not known to fix before mending the bones, and though he had fixed the surrounding tissue damage at the time, the malformed edges were causing some inflammation. “I have to re-break these. It’s going to hurt.”

He took a breath. “I’m ready.”

She flattened her hands against his side, eyes closed. “I am so sorry…”

Three crunching noises sounded from his chest followed by his strangled grunt, and his right hand came up to wrap around her thigh, fingers spread wide and gripping hard as the pain surged through him. She worked quickly, Forcing the bones back together the way they were meant to be, smoothing the splinters, repairing the damaged connective tissue next to them, repairing the damaged lung tissue under that, all while working against the long, hard breaths he was taking. She was done after a few minutes, and it took him another five to catch his breath and settle back down.

She tried to meet his gaze through the visor, but wasn’t sure if his eyes were open. “You ok in there?”

“… Yes.”

In truth, he was more than ok. The endorphin rush was starting to catch up with him. That pleasant numbness, both physically and mentally, nothing hurting, nothing mattering, that someone could bash him in the face right now with a pipe and he wouldn’t feel it, and even if he did, he wouldn’t care.

“Can you roll over so I can check your spine?”

“… Okay…”

He did as he was told. She started low in his back, where his spine joined his pelvis, pressing her thumbs along his vertebrae, until she found two that were fractured. These had pretty much stayed put, but the muscles around them were tight. “This one won’t hurt as much. You ready?”

“… Muh…”

She pressed down and forward, and a long, indecent moan escaped him as his entire body went limp. Were it not for the tidal wave of relief crashing off of him, she would have thought she’d paralyzed him. She reached back for the pillow currently at his feet and brought it out with her. “Want to roll back over?”

Another low moan as he pulled his arms in and pushed himself over onto his back once more, head rolling to the side with the weight of the helmet. “I… I can’t…” One hand pawed uselessly at the air.

He was well and truly stoned.

She lifted his head to get the pillow under him, then threw the blanket over him, making sure everything from his feet to his shoulders was covered. “All good?”

“… Uh huh…”

“I’ll head out with the kid in a few minutes and you can take the helmet off if you want, ok?”

“… Uh huh…”

She ghosted a thumb along the horizontal band of the visor, not quite touching it. “Don’t get into any trouble while we’re gone.”

“… Kay…”

---

He wasn’t sure how long it was before he opened his eyes again.

He’d pushed the helmet off when Rayne and the kid left, hearing the ramp seal shut behind them, and settled once more into oblivion.

He felt almost nothing. His body almost weightless atop the bunk. The blanket nothing but warmth above him. Aware of the fact that there was almost nothing to be aware of. Only the warm darkness around him. All of the worries and anxieties of his entire life, of the last year in particular, absent from his mind.

He floated in that stupor for what felt like a long time.

Eventually, he was aware of his own breathing; long, slow, relaxed breaths. Then, he was aware of the knowledge of where he was, in his bunk, in his ship, parked at the edge of a forest paradise that he hadn’t had much of a chance to explore yet. Next, the dryness of his mouth, still dehydrated from the blood loss. Finally, the noise from his empty stomach was enough to drive his eyelids open and slap the light panel.

He pulled himself out of the bunk and found a datapad, bottle of water, pair of sunglasses, and tube of sunscreen on the chair. The datapad opened to a note from Rayne.

Took the kid hunting. We’ll be back by dusk with dinner.

Use the suncreen if you plan on more than half an hour of exposure. The specs are too big for me – you’re welcome to them.

Have fun!

He downed half the water bottle as he padded over to the ladder, hauled himself up to the galley, and downed the rest of it as he made a sandwich. He re-filled the bottle, then stepped onto the flight deck to take a look outside. A couple of hours had passed, judging by the change in the shadows, so he hadn’t lost too much of the day to being high on his own supply. The proximity sensors showed that nothing was around, so it was safe to head out without the helmet. With practiced ease, he got himself back down the ladder one-handed with his sandwich in the other hand and the water bottle tucked under his arm.

That’s when it hit him.

That’s when he realized on a conscious level that he was no longer in any pain.

He stood staring at the eye-level ladder rung, and his left knee felt just as good as his right. He could breathe without the hitch in his ribs. His shoulder wasn’t sore. His back didn’t ache. His head was clear.

He hadn’t felt this good in fifteen years.

He turned and padded back over to the portside exit, lowered the ramp, and for the first time in… ever? For the first time in his life, he stood at the exit of his own ship wearing nothing but a pair of shorts.

Huh.

He stepped sideways and turned so his back was to the hull, facing back into the ship, just to the bow side of the exit. No living thing has seen my face since I swore the Creed. Never in his life since swearing the Creed had he had the opportunity to be outside in the woods and be completely assured that no one else was around.

Taking the helmet off in the desert, with miles of visibility and very little in the way of life was one thing. But in a forest? Where anything could be in or behind the trees?

Did the Creed include insects? Wild animals? Frogs?

Our safety is in our secrecy.

Bugs and critters were unlikely to go screaming to the Empire about his whereabouts. Even Rayne’s bots were powered down and crated.

He was fine. Everything was fine.

Taking some time to get used to the idea, he sat at the top of the ramp and ate his sandwich, casting his gaze out over the clearing, having the sudden realization that he might be agoraphobic without the beskar. To be outside without the armor. Without any clothes at all, if he wanted.

He realized he was breathing hard and forced himself to slow down, finish chewing his food, take a few swallows of water.

Normal people did this all the time. He knew he wasn’t a normal person. He was a Mandalorian. He was supposed to be stronger than a normal person.

He finished his sandwich. He finished his water. He could do this.

He got up, refilled the water bottle again, grabbed a towel, and just for the extra challenge, removed the shorts. With zero hesitation, he flipped the towel over his shoulder, hooked his finger around the bottle, and strode down the ramp.

And then he cleared the shadow line cast by the trees behind the ship, squinting against the sun.

Dammit.

He turned around, went back up the ramp, grabbed the sunglasses, and went back out.

Much better.

He walked to the beach, and, unable to resist, waded knee-deep into the water. It was cooler than he expected. From where he was standing, the lake looked long and narrow – about a mile wide at most. It must have gone deep to be this cold with the air temperature being this warm. He decided to get a bit more sun before going all-in.

He spread the towel out on the sand and was careful not to spend too long laying out. He remembered his one bout of sunburn as a child and did not wish to repeat it. He had to admit that it felt good, though. The warmth of it on his skin, working its way through his muscles and down to his bones, the light breeze making the occasional slip against his skin. He suspected that the feel of this much exposure would normally have driven him insane; only his lingering endorphin high kept him reeled in. He turned over a few times, glad for the sunglasses as he lay on his back, and then decided he was ready for the lake.

Oh, it was glorious.

He shivered through it until he was waist-deep and then dove in, swimming again for the first time more than three and a half decades. He slid into a crawl stroke, remembering how it felt to have the water flow over his head, around his shoulders, down his body, kicking through with his legs. It had always felt more natural for him to breathe on the left side, and he was a hundred meters out before it occurred to him to stop and check where he was.

Hoo boy, he was way more tired than he should’ve been, and he belatedly remembered that he’d almost been dead less than 48 hours ago. Forcing himself to calmness, he turned over on his back and did a slow backstroke to shore, taking his time, until he could reach the bottom with his feet.

He pushed back a little deeper just to tread water for a bit, to enjoy being in the water again, and surveyed the sight before him. His ship parked at the edge of the clearing, its silver hull incongruous against the lush forest around it, a simple campsite with nothing but chairs, a fire ring, and some solar panels to power the ship’s batteries for the extended time that the engines would be off. He spun around to look back at the lake, a strip of dark blue extending out to the west, high green hills rising on either side of it.

All theirs, for the next few weeks.

He didn’t entirely trust it. Two days ago, he was pulling an enormous amount of blood off the deck of his ship and hallucinating in the fresher. Today, he was sunbathing and skinny-dipping.

Amazing what a change of scenery could do.

How had he gotten so lucky?

---

Din had the fire going by the time the ship’s proximity sensors warbled an alert. Ten minutes later, Rayne whistled her approach before getting quite within sight, and Din flicked his wrist, the control in the vambrace signaling the “all-clear/helmet’s on” chirp from the ship. Rayne returned with the baby in the birikad, a quiver of arrows slung across her back, longbow in one hand, and three field-dressed rabbits in the other. She lay down the rabbits and longbow before pulling the baby from the sling. “Have a good day?”

“I did,” he answered with a contented sigh, leaning forward in his seat to pick up the baby as he waddled over, arms outstretched, babbling and buzzing away. “He really is more talkative today.”

“He’s making up for having to be quiet all afternoon.”

Din nodded to the rabbits. “Looks like it worked.”

Dinner was ready half an hour later, and Din took his portion back to the ship. When he returned, the sun was setting at the other end of the lake, throwing the asteroid belt into a silhouette against the blazing magnetic field of the atmosphere, the lake sparkling below it all.

Din took the baby back from Rayne and picked up with feeding him dinner so she could finish her own. “How did he do in the woods?”

“Loved it,” she said. “So I, uh… thought of a name for him. If… that’s ok.”

Din lowered his head, hesitating on the commitment of it, the fear that once you gave something a name, once you had something to call it by, it was real. And when it was real, you could lose it.

While the Armorer had made the bond between father and son official, the designation had come from outside him. Something not to be contested. While Rayne's suggestion was also outside of him, it was merely that. A suggestion. Something he and his son could agree on together, or not.

The kid deserved a name. Part of being a father was putting your own fears aside and doing what was best for your child. He took a deep breath and plunged forward. “What did you come up with?”

“Yadier. Yadi for short. Sounds like it fits with Yoda and Yaddle.”

Din remembered Yoda. “Who’s Yaddle?”

“She was the same species. Another member of the Jedi Council.”

“Yadier…” He turned the name over in his head, trying it out, rolling the R on the end just a little. He couldn’t say he was thrilled with such a strong Jedi connection, but when pronounced with just the right accent, it had a nice Mandalorian lilt to it. “That could work.” His son turned his head to look up at him and smile as Din said it, as if he had already decided. Din gave him a bounce on the knee. “How ‘bout it, kid? Yadier work for you?”

The baby squealed with delight and clapped his hands.

Yadier it was, then.

---

He puts Yadier to bed in his crate on the ship, and they watch as the asteroid belt drops meteors across the sky, a slow but steady stream of golden streaks fading as they fall to the horizon.

He asks if it’s like this every night.

She says yes.

She asks if they can sleep outside, tonight.

He says yes.

The stars glimmer in the magnetic field, and as the fire dies down, the fireflies emerge, flickering in time with the cicadas buzzing in the trees. He closes his eyes and he can still see the green flashes on the other side of his eyelids.

She’s so gentle with him. Something he is so unused to. She’s more sure of herself here, out in the open, the stars as their roof, and tonight he is the one who comes undone before her. She can see the color the sun has brought out on his shoulders, can smell the mineral hints of the lake on his skin, tastes it on the hollow of his throat, and leaves the longest, softest of bites as high up on his neck as she can manage.

This time, he is the one to whisper “Please” over and over.

He closes his eyes against the flickering green and her trembling against him, the feel of the Force once more gripping his spine, and he falls into the rush of endorphins and oblivion.

This time, she is the one to whisper “Thank you” over and over.

---

“Tell me about your husband.”

She was curled into him on her side, arm still thrown around him, heart rate not quite yet back to normal, his skin warm against hers, and she wondered about his timing of the question.

“You said a name that wasn’t mine. I assume it was his,” he said by way of explanation, voice soft over the modulator.

Oh. That was fair enough. “Hayes.”

“Yes.”

She nodded, gathering her thoughts. “He was flight engineer. We were stationed on an Alliance cruiser together. We worked on the X-wings. He’d diagnose the issues, we’d both fix them, I’d test-fly them.” She paused, letting the long-neglected memories come back. “Our ships had the lowest failure rate on the cruiser.”

Din ran his thumb along the Rebel Starbird tattoo on her shoulder.

“He was short – only a couple inches taller than me, mostly muscle. Dark skin, brown eyes. Tough. He hated being cooped up on a ship. Would rather be in the woods planet-side. He wanted to be a scout-trooper so he could run around outside all the time but it turned out he was really bad with a gun and really good at spacecraft design, so up top he went.”

She shifted her position, flattening her hand against his ribs, stalling on the next bit. Finding the words, she pressed on.

“We were in the back of the hangar when a TIE fighter smashed through the entrance and the field generator started to fail. Stuff was getting sucked out so we had to evacuate. The problem was we were in the middle of scrambling launches. We had about a hundred people in there. SOP was for the pilots and droids to get themselves launched and for everyone else to get through the revolving air-locks to the interior of the ship. Hayes spent a lot of time walking on the ceilings, so he was wearing mag-lock boots. He went out and dragged people back in. I hung on to a pole and hoped people wouldn’t notice that I was Force-dragging them back. He saved twenty-five lives before the floor started to de-magnetize. Last thing he did before it let go entirely was pull me off the pole and stuff me through the revolver. I was too tired by that point to pull him in with me. He saved my life, got sucked out into hard vacuum, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.”

Din’s hand tightened around her shoulder as he drew in a long breath. “An honorable death.”

“Yeah.”

Her tone wasn’t quite as flat as it had been when she’d told him about Eagle, her clone uncle, but close. He couldn’t tell if her shivering was from the cool air or the memory. He pulled the blanket up around her shoulders with his free hand.

“He knew you were Force-sensitive.”

“Yeah.”

“Was it difficult? Keeping that secret?”

Rayne smiled. “Not so much. It freaked him out at first, but the benefits outweighed the cost.”

“Did he know your name? Your real one?”

“Yes. He was the only one.”

“What happened… after?”

Her smile disappeared. She wondered at his curiosity, wondered if he would reciprocate if she probed him in such a way. She decided to test him on it in a bit, and went forward with her answer. “It was… unreal, at first. You wake up next to a person most days for ten years, get used to it, and all of a sudden they’re not there when you wake up, anymore. You start every day with an empty bed to remind you. Then you get to your station and you’re reminded again when someone else is there instead of him. Then all of a sudden, the war is over, you lose your home on the ship, part ways with all your friends. First year was the worst. By the end of it I was ready to put a blaster to my head. That’s the first time I did the comp here. When I was feeling… reckless. And then I actually made it through. Hung out at this campsite for a month and realized since his dying act was to save my life, I at least owed it to him to make that mean something, so I stuck it out. It did get better. A little at a time. Eventually you hit a ‘new normal.’ It never goes away entirely, but it stops sitting on your shoulder all the time. A while later, it stops surprising you – only comes out when you let it. Until five years later you’re in bed with a Mandalorian and apparently slip up with the wrong name.” She allowed the corner of her mouth to pull up a little. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be.” Again, he brought his finger to her lips, and she returned the kiss. “I’m honored to be a member of your connections.”

“Tell me about Omera.”

He had already sketched the last year of his life out for her earlier, had already told her about Sorgan, how his first contentious meeting with Cara later turned into a partnership, how they worked together with Omera to save her town. Now, he gave her the details of that particular chapter. Omera’s kindness to him. Her daughter’s affinity for his son. Her own life of transition from soldier to peaceful farmer, a journey from killer to life-giver, a path to redemption, had touched him deeply. He had allowed himself to hope that maybe the same was possible for him, had almost allowed her to lift the helmet from his head and end it all. And then, the crack of blaster fire, the sharp reminder that he and his boy would be a danger to whoever they crossed paths with. And so, their departure.

“Will you go back if we can get Yadier to safety?”

Din felt the tension in his chest return, torn between indecisions, remaining silent.

Rayne slid her hand along his ribs. “It’s ok if the answer is ‘yes.’”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“What more do you need to know to make that decision?”

“Even if we find out where Yadier belongs, I don’t know if I can leave him there. I don’t want the things that happened to you to happen to him. I don’t want the things that happened to me to happen to him. I want him to remember me. That could take years to sort out. By that time…”

“A lot could have changed for her.”

“Yes.” He searched the tone of her voice, knowing she must have caught his omission of her from his equation, wondering what she thought about that. Getting Yadier to safety and proper training was the number-one priority for both of them. Moving his thoughts past that was a difficult thing for him to do. He also understood that she might not want to be part of the equation. While this was an adventure she was wanting, she had a life to get back to, if she wanted it. She was ok with staring into the faceless bucket on his head for now, but at some point, if things went long enough, she was going to want it off. He was going to want it off. The darkness would buffer them for a while, a loophole of her not actually seeing his face, but eventually… the future beyond that was a dark void, and he simply wasn’t ready to do the math on that, yet.

As always, her read on his confusion hit the mark. “One step at a time, Din. We take things as they come.”

---

The fireflies flickered. On and off.

The cicadas buzzed. Up and down.

The peeper frogs peeped. Peep peep peep.

How do people stand this?

Din lay on his back, assaulted by it all. The desert was easier. Most everything was dead and silent. If anything was coming after you, you could hear it coming. On Sorgan, the space of the village gave some distance from the cacophony of the forest most nights, and he’d always been clad in the armor when he was in the forest itself.

Here and now, he lay at the very edge of the forest, wearing only his helmet, shirt, and shorts, his armor and other clothes stacked in a neat pile by his side. Rayne lay next to him, similarly clothed against the cool of the night, her long, slow breaths of sleep indicating her complete lack of problems with this scenario. On a conscious level, he knew the low-frequency beacon was keeping the predators away, knew the proximity alarm would warble about anything that still managed to get through, knew Rayne’s Force vigilance would wake her if anything was amiss. He just couldn’t bring himself to trust it. Any of it. Not entirely. If he could just get back into the armor, have his sidearm handy, he would be fine.

Rayne would be a lot less fine if she woke up next to all of that.

He was exhausted, but he would get no more sleep out here tonight.

He extricated himself as quietly as he could, gathered up his armor, clothes, and boots, and headed back to the ship. He found Yadier only half-asleep in his crate, squeaking and squirming with his eyes closed. Remembering how easily the child had slept under the stars on Sorgan, he carried him back out to Rayne and tucked him in with her, and the baby settled with ease. He ran a finger along the top of one green ear, then along the curl of one chestnut lock of hair, and paused to watch the two of them sleep as the word “clan” ghosted through his mind.

He retired back to the Razor Crest, locked himself in the safety of his bunk, pulled the helmet off, and fell asleep.

---

Notes: Yadier is a Spanish name, which seemed appropriate. Its Hebrew root means "friend."

#the mandalorian #din djarin #grogu #omera

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