#whoa angst

[solqrays]

obsessed with the idea that due to the flower valley wall being burnt down by joel, and the events that followed it, jimmy is afraid of fire, or more specifically he believes fire to be a root cause of their destruction, the dare to flare game with lava, the flower valley wall being burnt down, the fact that in empires and xornoth and everything- jimmy believes that fire is a bad omen to destruction and death, the prelude to the canary curse. (thats why in lim life, he knew he would be the first out, because of the fact that the bread bridge was destroyed). flash forward to double life, and jimmy is paired up with tango, a blazeborn with fire for hair. he's the reason they lost their first life and even if jimmy doesnt blame him for it he knows he wouldnt last long in this season. but when he meets tango and he feels like his world has been shifted upside down, because before fire reminded him of death and destruction, of unhappiness and eternal doom. now it reminds him of home, a sanctuary in the death game, he thinks he's finally safe from the eyes of the watchers and that perhaps, just perhaps fire could mean something more than a curse. but alas nothing ever seems to go his way as fire comes back again, messing with his life when scar comes back and burns the ranch- a physical reminder that fire will destroy everything that comes in the watcher's way of torturing jimmy. but little do they know how much the ranch and tango has affected him, when he walks up to tango who is in his rage, flaming hair and hands and everything, he knows rationally that he will get hurt, thanks to his avian heritage and his curse, but at that moment he finds himself not caring, he holds tango's hands, and even if the fire burns his own hands he finds himself not caring. because he was sick and tired of fire getting in the way of things he loved (with scott distancing him after the walls burnt down and then leaving him after he died and joel who used to be his loving and caring brother-in-law betraying him and after the grimlands explosion- forgetting him and turning into a cruel shadow of his former self)- but jimmy couldnt let that happen to him and tango's relationship. he wanted to break the phoenix's cycle, burning up and then reincarnating to lose a small part of himself. he couldnt let that happen and so when jimmy took tango's hands into his own, he wanted to change the watcher's plans, and to pay for that he died again, sooner than expected- but to him it didnt matter anymore, because he finally had someone who would be there for him. his relationship with fire was still shaky, not trusting it completely, but he knew he could trust tango, and he knew that he wouldnt hurt him or leave him be- and even when they returned to empires and jimmy was faced with the cruel remarks of the other emperors and their meaningless insults, he longed to be with tango, to be with his fire. sure he may not be doing the best on empires, but he had someone to live for, someone who would help him break free from the cold clasps of the watchers, and thats what mattered. no amount of fire would break this bond, for it was forged in the brightest flames of love and understanding.

[samtheacesheep]

Work Description:

Melissa can’t allow herself to recover, her guilt is too strong. But she decides that she has to try- just not for her own sake.

[scalytunster]

random Stobotnik doodles (for the people :D)

[smeg-and-the-red]

Smegtober Day 11: Jealousy

(prompts by @strange-and-off-putting)

word count: 544

A/N: set during series 8, sometime after the gang are sent to the brig.

Rimmer was no stranger to envy. His entire childhood and adolescence had been spent in the shadows of his three older brothers. All of them were more clever, more handsome, and more accomplished than he was, and Rimmer envied them bitterly for the things that seemed to come to them with ease while he struggled endlessly.

As a young man he had envied his fellow technicians in the JMC. He’d seethed as, one by one, they'd received their pips and ascended the ranks, leaving him behind.

When Lister joined him on Z-Shift, Rimmer envied his ability to make friends with everyone he met, and the ease with which he spoke to the girls on board. Because, even after more than a decade on Red Dwarf, Rimmer still felt like an outsider.

But none of that comes close to the envy - the sickening, burning jealousy - that Rimmer feels towards himself. Or rather, the version of himself that Lister talks about.

Most of the time it’s fine. Apparently, spending so much time with this other Rimmer has made Lister and the others far more friendly and tolerable towards Rimmer than he’s used to. For the first time in his life, he knows what it’s like to feel included. But it’s not quite right. Sometimes Lister will do something, or say something, or sometimes just look at him, and Rimmer can tell it’s not him he’s thinking of, but rather his Rimmer.

Lister had told him about his Rimmer late one night, a few days after they got arrested. He lay in the top bunk in their cell, staring up at the ceiling and speaking in a hushed, almost awed voice about his Rimmer, who was different. Who left them to become a space hero. Rimmer sat across the cell in one of the rigid metal chairs, staring tight-lipped down at his clasped hands as Lister spoke.

It’s almost impossible to believe that any version of him could do some of the things Lister was telling him. But Lister’s voice is quiet and sincere, and Rimmer knows he’s not lying.

It’s an agonisingly difficult pill to swallow. On one hand, he actually did it. He became the hero he’d always wanted to be as a child. Not only once, it would seem, but hundreds of thousands of times across multiple universes. But it wasn’t him, even if Lister insisted that he and his Rimmer were the same person.

Then there was the way Lister spoke about him. Whenever he recalled some adventure or another, he got this glassy look in his eyes, his voice softening the slightest bit. Once Rimmer had sneered, tartly suggesting that perhaps Lister and this other Rimmer were rather more than just chums. Lister had just smiled, saying that his Rimmer said the same thing when they met the original Ace Rimmer.

Rimmer lies in his bunk, staring up at the bottom of Lister’s. The way Lister snores has changed. He breathes more deeply and slowly now. Rimmer realises it’s a ludicrous thing to take notice of, but he can’t help it. He tries not to think about everything else that’s changed. About the fact that Lister and his Rimmer changed each other.

[itsjuststardust]

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

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Word Count: 23,820

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

Chapter 25: Don't Look Back

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

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

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

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

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

“Hello, Lainey.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And then?” Alaina prodded with a glare.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” Mando asked, startling the doctor.

“Vermilion fingertips.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But nothing could have prepared him for what happened next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Din frowned, “Telekinetic?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But?” Pershing prompted him eagerly.

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

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

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

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

“Why?” Din asked, clutching Alaina tighter.

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

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

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

“Original hypothesis? So, you were wrong?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like torture?” Din ground out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does that mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not happening,” Din ground out.

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

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

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

“Not happening.”

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

“Lainey—”

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

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

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

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

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

“Lainey,” Pershing pleaded.

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

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

“Nine,” came Pershing’s whispered reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” Alaina growled.

“But Lainey, he healed—”

“Penn Pershing, no!” Alaina yelled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alaina—”

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

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

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

“Lainey—”

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

Din swore his heart stopped at her admission. Love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then I guess you’re not continuing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lainey—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alaina smirked, “So, basically everything?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re asking me to watch you die!”

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

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

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

Din shook his helmet as more tears came.

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

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

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

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

“I know,” was all Alaina said.

What else was there left to say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So, we’re leaving?” Dune asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Cara,” Din said darkly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alaina—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They will.”

“Not good enough,” Din answered. 

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

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

“So,” Dune drawled, “at least ten?”

Alaina nodded, “At least.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” the old man confirmed.

“The girl and the Child?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you back to the ship yet?”

“Not yet,” Kuiil replied.

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

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

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

“How many?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Kuiil!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. This couldn’t be it.

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

“Sewers?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Din smiled and patted her knee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The group paused and waited for the shoe to drop. 

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

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

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

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

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

Din nodded, “It’s a Creed.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their two counterparts stared skeptically back at them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A complication?” Gideon growled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In summary, this was not good.

More than not good.

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

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

Alaina.

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

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

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

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

“I’m not gonna make it—”

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

“Alaina—”

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

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

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

“Alaina—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not gonna make it,” he told her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Din—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He sighed, “Alaina...”

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

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

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

Din huffed out a weak laugh, “Alaina…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Affirmative,” IG-11 confirmed.

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

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

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

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

“Affirmative,” IG agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alaina…” he whispered, shaking his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Din sagged against him.

“Her sacrifice.”

“I forgive you.”

“Her sacrifice.”

“I love you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come with us,” he offered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I love you."

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

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

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

Just as beautiful as she was.

Mesh’la.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He knew. The kid knew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🐍🐍 End Act II 🐍🐍

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

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

Tag List: @racheldon @zenrobbins0021 @locked-ness @smoochispoof @hipcheckchick

Comment or send me a message if you would like to be added to the taglist!

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

🐍 Stay tuned - Act III of Heaven in Hiding - Coming soon.

[childlikegoblinqueen]

Happy one month chapter-versary to this nightmare sequence!

And thank you to @imperfection-you-will-find for depicting it soooooooo perfectly for the commission !

“Give her to me…”

[fairy-verse]

I've been curious about this for a while since I read you mentioned none of the firstborns are 'siblings' and left it up to our headcanons, essentially?

What would a relationship between the firstborn of Summer and the firstborn of Autumn look like? How would they have become mates? How would their personalities go together in a relationship?

There are such differences yet similarities, and I'm curious how a relationship between Dream (who is shown to usually stay in his Valley) would go with Nightlight (who i remember almost never leaves Nightmare's area)?

Please do feel free to disregard this ask if you see fit, thank you for making such a truly lovely au, it's always fun to backread again whenever I have the time. Thank you for sharing your au with us :D<3

Before Nightmare’s corruption, a relationship with Dream would have been pleasant and filled with gentle touches and soft poems made of song and dance. They would frolic on the Meadow of the Firstborn as they were free from worry and grief, flying either naked or with flowing silks that made them giggle sweetly. They are different, that is true, but their earliest days were slow-moving and filled with nothing but time and patience, so they slowly drifted closer and closer, until eventually they interlaced and became inseparable… Up till the fateful day of Nightmare’s corruption and the demise of his innocence.

Their relationship would have become gloomy and distant. Nightmare would appreciate the support and love Dream gave him, but his broken soul would no longer be able to fully take it in, at least not yet. He’s split apart, changed, covered in corruption as thick and sticky as tar that he’s not yet mastered full control over. He shoves Dream’s love away, and Dream is left in the growing dark of autumn’s new visage.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Now, you specifically ask for Nightlight, so I will show you how him and Dream end up together and how this development will affect Nightmare.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Dream might rarely leave his valley of summer, but at the arrival of Nightlight, he will quickly begin to make frequent visits to Nightmare’s underground nest. He’s beside himself with delight at the sight of the fragile fairy and he cannot help himself but to weep from joy, grief, and relief. He cannot help the fact that he reacts this way, nor can he truly be blamed for not thinking it all through properly. Nightlight holds the memories of Nightmare’s early days, so his love for Dream is as present and strong as back then, too.

Their embrace completes a puzzle left undone for centuries.

Nightmare is happy at their love for one another. He’s happy that Nightlight is loved in more ways than one, and he’s happy that Dream is smiling like that again. He’s happy with this outcome.

He is happy.

… Then why does his happiness sting in his sockets and hurt so badly in his throat?

Nightlight looks and acts the way Nightmare did before his corruption, so of course, Dream would be drawn to him. He is what Nightmare lost, the pleasant sight of colours of early autumn and the gentle breeze of a cooling wind not yet biting cold. Nightlight is sweet and lovely and pure, and he and Dream are so wonderful together. They’re beautiful.

And that is what hurts so badly.

Nightlight is Nightmare in a way, but he’s a past version of him, the second half of Nightmare’s soul that broke apart and died. Nightmare is what was left, what survived the cruelty done by the Big Folk, the harsher and darker part of autumn that could withstand the defilement brought upon him. Nightlight is the part of him that fit so well with Dream, the part of his autumn that still held onto summer and cherished it as much as summer valued its gentleness.

Nightmare isn’t that. He’s not someone who can be careless and free together with Dream anymore, he’s the wrong kind of autumn for Dream, and he’s as deceptive as half of the season he represents, the one giving false promises of a prolonged pause before the bitter winter cold’s arrival. As such, it’s easy to lie right to Dream’s face as the firstborn fairy of summer cradles his cheeks in remorse and pleading mercy for his sudden reaction at the sight of Nightlight.

Dream realises that he’s gone past Nightmare and straight for his lighter counterpart, and he’s remorseful and sorrowful as he begs for Nightmare’s forgiveness and gives away terrible promises that he’ll stay away if he’s hurt him too badly.

Nightmare loves Dream and it breaks him to see Dream so willing to cast himself down just because he was overcome with joy and love for the rebirth of someone that he’d lost so very long ago. Nightmare doesn’t ever want Dream to feel guilty for expressing his raw and wondrous emotions, so he lies. He lies and tells him that it’s okay. That he wants Dream and Nightlight to be together and that he’s moved on. And he doesn’t even stop to think about offering himself to Dream, too, because he doesn’t think Dream wants him like that anymore.

After all, Nightlight is made of the best parts of him, he’s everything that used to be good about him. Why would Dream want him as he is now… melancholic, sarcastic, stubborn, sullen, withdrawn…

If only he’d asked Dream he would have known that he’s not below Nightlight. He would have known that Dream wanted him, too. But now Dream believes that Nightmare isn’t interested, that he has indeed moved on; Nightmare is too good at lying so Dream doesn’t see the grief in his soul, and with how Nightmare’s grown to endure the pain from centuries of being without half of his soul, he’ll be able to endure the heartache from seeing Dream and Nightlight together.

He will endure it, no matter how much it stings and numbs him.

[dukeofthomas]

What if... they were gems

[side-shuffling-hyperfixations]

R is for "Regret"

Raph prided himself on being upfront, to the point. He wouldn’t hesitate to call people out on their bull. He despised liars. Why then was it so ridiculously, dangerously easy for him to spit out things he didn’t mean? His brothers’ wounded expressions felt as poisonous to him as his verbal barbs were to them. Lose-lose.

Why then was it like pulling teeth to say how he really felt?

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m so sorry. I love you, I do.

He could only hope actions spoke louder than words.

[m4morine]

Im not your doll.

[skillzissue]

In my angst era,,,

fortunately that means that I will need to draw a bunch of fluff to recover from my own doings

[bawnjourno]

Sparks’s 1980-1984 run, scanned by me

Terminal Jive / Whomp That Sucker / Angst In My Pants / In Outer Space / Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat

[itsjuststardust]

Heaven in Hiding - Chapter 12: Angel On Fire

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Chapter Summary: And I’m fading away, you know, I used to be on fire. I’m standing in the ashes of who I used to be. -Halsey

Word Count: 13,734

Author's Note/Chapter Warnings: The chapter title comes from the Halsey song ‘Angel On Fire’. This chapter is dark. Tags are updated. Chapter warnings are: attempted SA, angst like whoa, mental breakdown, disassociative disorder, PTSD. Please proceed with caution. MINORS - DO NOT INTERACT - 18+ ONLY (for reals)

Chapter 12: Angel On Fire

Mando’s words resonated inside of her—Stay. Here. Those two words echoed through the hollow shell that housed what was left of her as she replayed their last interaction on an eternal loop.

Nothing made sense anymore. Everything that she knew, everything that she believed for the last five years, had been based on a lie. With those two words—Stay. Here. Mando had left and decimated her in the wake of the bomb he dropped.

Stay. Here.

There was nothing left.

There was nothing left, and it was all her fault.

Her mind spun as it tried to process this new information. Evidently, it was ill-equipped to make sense of this revelation, leaving Alaina unmoored and floating through her memories of the past.

Yes, there was sand and grit under her hands from the ground of the hangar. Yes, her cheeks were wet with tears. Yes, Peli was nearby having a discussion with her pit droids. Yes, there was Grogu, who had wedged his tiny body under hers so he could try to see her face. Yes, her Mandalorian hallucination had returned, trying to provide, albeit awkward, comfort, but he was trying in his own way.

Alaina was aware of all of this, but she wasn’t there. She had left hangar three-five.

She was on the Razor Crest. 

“Look,” she whispered, pointing to the white blanket, “it’s the first fall of snow on the Crest this season.”

No, that wasn’t right. Besides, those words were pointless now. Mando never needed that clean slate in the first place.

She needs to find that memory. Stay. Here. She needs to replay it, analyze it, and live in it. 

Her mind rewinds past Sorgan, painfully skipping over the memory of creamy white skin tangling with tanned skin and broad muscles, pleasure, and the moon.

Her memories come to a jarring stop, and Alaina is back on the upper deck of the Crest with her dislocated shoulder, wearing a white hospital gown, snarling at the Mandalorian, “Just know that I’ll never forgive you.”

“I never said I did it for your forgiveness. I said I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

Her mind keeps going, searching for that one particular memory.

Unfortunately, there are five years of memories between the last time she stepped off the Razor Crest and when she returned to the gunship. Some memories from the last five years are too painful and all-consuming to skip over, forcing her to relive them.

Her memories glitch, and she is thrust back into the lab on Nevarro. 

Penn is frantically trying to save her from General Graven. She can see his panicked face as he attempts to pry the General’s hands from her throat. With a snarl, General Graven finally let her go, allowing the burn of oxygen to return to her lungs.

Penn instantly fell to his knees, trying to assess the damage. “Lainey,” his concerned voice floated in her ears as she struggled to stand up.

“I don’t know why Gideon is still bothering with her,” Graven huffed, absently wiping his hands on his pressed uniform.

Penn is oblivious to her Mandalorian hallucination, holding her against his armored chest as if the figment of her imagination could protect her from the other two men in the room.

“Because—” Penn attempted to start, but Graven wouldn’t let him finish.

“Because you’re nothing,” Graven snarled at her, not bothering to let Penn finish whatever feeble explanation he was about to give.

And she believed it. 

Her imaginary Mandalorian was having none of it. He silently spun her to face him and held his balled-up hands in front of his helmet, looking like a boxer preparing to strike. He was telling her to fight.

“Look at her,” Graven laughed. “Her brain is already gone. She doesn’t even know where she is.”

Mando shook his head at the man’s words, brought his gloved hand up to his neck, and drew a line across his throat with his index finger. Kill him.

Alaina turned back to the General, and Mando marched by her side as she approached him.

Graven smirked at her, “What are you going to do to me, little girl?”

Mando raised his fists again—Fight.

Alaina acted on instinct—She raised her hand to rest it on the General’s cheek, earning her a snarl.

Everything stilled inside of her. There was nothing but her and General Graven in that lab on Nevarro—

The orders flow through her lips, and for the first time in years, she feels the snake of her former powers rattle against the confines they had been trapped in. They surge through her, winding and twisting into her words, “You’re going to turn around and walk in a straight line. You are going to keep walking. You will keep walking, and you won't stop for anything.”

Graven’s ice-blue eyes glazed over, and his snarled face relaxed as he listened to her speak.

Alaina nodded at him and removed her hand from his cheek, severing their connection.

Graven nodded, and like the good soldier he was, he made an about-face and began his final march.

“You did it,” Penn whispered, watching in wonderment as Graven continued doing as she instructed. “No,” he continued when he realized Graven was heading to the open hangar bay carved into the mountain overlooking the lava flats. “Alaina, stop this,” he pleaded, grabbing her arm.

Alaina watched as the silver-haired General kept walking. The first drop of blood fell from her nose onto the floor. The bright red liquid stuck out vividly in her memory, dulling the other colors.

“Alaina!” Pershing yelled, jumping in front of her. “You can’t do this. You can’t kill him. Stop this before it’s too late!”

“This is your fault,” she told Pershing quietly as she stoically watched the man take another step closer to his death. 

Her memory is now black and white except for her blood. The blood from her nose turns into a steady trickle. The bright red of it was stark against the colorless memory. Her own blood painted her memories in a striking vermilion hue.

“Alaina, please…”

But it was too late. 

It was too late for General Graven, Penn Pershing's consciousness, or Alaina’s soul as Graven took his last step and toppled over the edge of the building.

Alaina turned to look at her hallucination. The Mandalorian nodded at her and held his fists up to his helmet one final time.

Fight.

Watching her life in reverse was odd—the things that stood out and those that didn’t.

Other flashes of her time on Nevarro flicker as she searches, but nothing stands out quite as poignant as the first time she took a life.

Here, she thought, when her mind returned to the Razor Crest.

Five years ago.

On Nevarro.

Stay. Here.

She watched the scene unfold as if watching it for the first time.

Mando’s gloved hand caressed her calf as he spoke. His words were soft, soothing, and confident.

Stay. Here.

How different would her life have been if she’d stayed put? Would she be settled on some planet? Would she have a family? A purpose? 

“Snap out of it, Blondie!”

Alaina was rudely returned to the present in the blink of an eye.

The heel of her hand and her knees ached where she hit the ground. Her eyes burned. It felt like someone had cracked open her chest and ripped her heart from the hollow cavity.

Peli had pulled her up to kneel on the ground, and the shorter woman held her up by her shoulders.

Grogu grabbed her hand and tugged on her fingers.

Alaina could feel them there but could only see her favorite hallucination, which had finally returned to her.

The Mandalorian from five years ago stood behind Peli in his brown armor and beyond tattered cloak. There was something menacing about this former version of the Mandalorian. He wasn’t shiny and new. He was battle-tested, worn, and damaged. 

Like her.

He looked at her over the mechanic’s shoulders and raised his fists to his helmet. He was trying to tell her to fight.

Alaina slowly shook her head, causing Peli to look behind her. Then, when the mechanic didn’t see what she saw, she looked back at Alaina with a frown.

Mando kept his fists raised, not accepting her answer.

Alaina felt a tear leak from her eye.

The invisible string she’d felt that had connected her to Mando for the last five years pulled taught and snapped.

A warm, late afternoon breeze came through the hangar, gently caressing her cheek as it whispered in her ear, “He’s coming.”

Her hallucination raised his fists at her again, but she directed her head to the sky, watching the suns race past the hangar's walls to the horizon.

Let him come.

There was nothing to fight for anymore.

If he was being truly honest with himself, the first time he felt the tiniest hint of that cord in his chest was five years ago.

Alaina had challenged him to a fight and won. She brazenly straddled his chest and pinned his arms at his helmet because he was too stunned to do anything after she’d used her magic powers on him. Then, with her emerald eyes sparkling in amusement, he felt the first inkling of a tickle in his chest. He shouldn’t have allowed her to tell her story; he should have excused himself from the hold, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat there and listened to the ballerina, Alaina Corra, tell her story.

He’d been professional, more or less since he’d brought the woman on board. He’d ensured her wounds were treated, he got her out of her wet clothes and warmed her up before she could add hypothermia into the mix, and he had remained professional the entire time. But now, he was listening to her talk, and there was this unknown feeling in his chest, and for the first time, he allowed himself to really look at the quarry and realized how beautiful she was.

Maybe it was her beauty, her wit—maybe it was the woman’s story, but the seed of doubt had been planted.

And then she went and called him a karking Imp, and he tried to douse the tiny flicker of doubt that had taken up residence inside him. It wasn’t his job to meddle. It wasn’t up to him to play the judge and jury. His job was to collect a quarry and then return it for a profit. It shouldn’t matter what happened to said quarry once he returned it and collected his payment…

The Mandalorian watched Greef Karga get up from the table and head to the bar to order himself a drink.

Unfortunately, that seed of doubt never left, and against his best judgment, he put in motion his plan to save the ballerina.

The dingy Nevarro cantina was packed, and there was a queue at the bar, giving Mando precious minutes to make arrangements before his boss returned.

He looked to the table next to him and nodded to the teal and white Togruta cargo ship owner sitting by herself, nursing a drink over an empty plate of food.

The woman caught his eye and nodded back at him.

“You got room for some more cargo?” he asked, nervously tapping his fingers on the table.

The woman narrowed her gaze as she studied him. “What kind of cargo?” She was undoubtedly wondering what kind of cargo a bounty hunter would be looking to use her services for.

“Small, keeps to itself,” he said and paused. “Mostly,” he added on, and the smuggler smirked. “Dangerous, though. Will put a target on your back.”

The Togruta studied him, and Mando held his breath. The cargo ship owner was known around the guild. She had a puck out on her. It was a low reward (intentional by Karga). It was so low that it was not worth turning the woman in. Besides, there wasn’t a single member of their guild who was going to turn in the woman who frequently smuggled slaves out from their owners and delivered them to freedom. She knew how and where to take them to start their lives over, which is just what Mando needed.

“Not worried about the target on my back,” she replied, and the Togruta’s eyes slid to Karga. The guild leader’s back was to them while he waited for his drink at the bar. “But I am worried about upsetting the status quo.”

“I’ll handle Karga,” Mando said.

“There’s a price tag to my services—”

“I’ll pay your price. Do you have room for more cargo,” Mando interrupted, pressing the woman for an answer before it was too late.

The smuggler nodded, and Mando let himself relax. “Have your cargo to me by sundown,” she instructed. “If you’re not there by the time the sun fully sets, I’m gone.”

Karga turned from the bar to head back to rejoin Mando at the table.

The Togruta cargo ship Captain took another sip of her drink, going back to ignoring the guild leader and bounty hunter sitting next to her.

“One of these days, Mando,” Karga began as he retook his seat. “One of these days, I’m going to get you to join me in a celebratory drink!”

Mando sighed and tossed three of the four pucks he had across the table to the guild leader. The fourth he hung onto.

Karga smiled as he began shuffling his bag of jobs to let Mando take his pick of the next round.

“We need to talk about the last puck,” Mando finally started, holding Alaina’s puck for Karga to see.

“What’s there to talk about?” Karga questioned with a smile. “You got the girl, and now a big fat reward is coming your way!”

This was it. With a steadying breath, he said, “She’s dead.”

The smile dropped from Karga’s face, and the man stared at him dumbfounded. “What do you mean she’s dead?” he asked, irritation creeping into his voice.

Mando sighed. “I mean, she’s dead. It was storming. She put up a fight. We were on a rocky cliff, and she slipped and fell while trying to run from me. Slammed her head into a mountain.”

“Shit,” his boss growled, slamming his drink back. 

Mando pulled the velvet green cloak out of his bag to show Karga the blood-stained hood. “If she wasn’t dead by the time she hit the ground, the river she slid into took care of the rest of her. I tried to save her, but she slipped out of her cloak and bag when I grabbed for her, and the river swept her away.”

Karga ground his teeth, “There’s no reward for proof of death.”

“Then there’s no reward,” Mando shrugged.

Karga sighed and leaned back in his chair, “I was looking forward to that commission.”

Mando cocked his head, irritated by Karga’s admission. 

The Togruta at the table next to them got up and gave the guild leader a nod as she left the cantina.

Karga put on a fake smile and raised his drink to the striking teal Togruta, “You be sure you stay out of trouble, Taal!” he yelled after her.

The cargo ship captain, Taal, turned back to give the guild leader a wink before she sauntered the rest of the way out of the bar.

Karga’s fake smile dropped and was replaced with a deep frown from learning that his portion of the cut from Alaina’s reward had just washed away in a river on some backwater skughole.

“Can I just pick my next jobs?” Mando asked, eager to return to the Crest to prepare Alaina for what would come next.

“Oh, you can pick them,” Karga answered, pushing the options at him. “But you’re staying until you explain to the husband that you killed his wife.”

Mando sighed, “Not my fault she crashed head-first into a mountain. Besides, you’re the guild leader. Don’t we give you a sizable cut of our payouts for you to deal with the bureaucracy?”

“Mando, when we’re talking about a reward in this price range, and you killed some poor doctor’s wife, you have to deal with the fallout.”

“I don’t have time for this,” he grumbled, standing up from the booth and grabbing a handful of pucks at random without looking.

Unfortunately, Karga also stood up while Mando was strapping his Ambam rifle to his back. “Oh, no, Mando,” Karga called after him. “You’re not getting out of this that easily.”

Mando continued to ignore the man as he started to leave, barely giving his boss a second glance. “You’re not the only one relying on that hefty commission,” he grumbled, hoping to get Karga to drop it. “The faster I get back out there, the faster I can make up for the lost income,” he finished, heading out of the cantina.

Karga’s heavy footsteps could be heard stomping behind him. “I don’t think you realize the possible repercussions of this, Mando,” the man barked as he followed him through the decrepit town.

Mando clenched his fists. “What repercussions? You, of all people, know it’s not possible to bring every bounty in warm—”

“That’s why I came to you for this one,” Karga argued angrily.

“Accidents happen,” he countered. “There was a storm, and we were on a cliff. She slipped, hit her head, and slid off the cliff.” Mando stopped in the middle of the road, forcing Karga to slam into his back at his abrupt stop. He spun on the guild leader, taking the man by surprise. “You’ve never been this upset about a mishap with a quarry before,” Mando pointed out, carefully eyeing the man before him. “What’s so important about this girl?”

Karga squirmed in front of him, obviously struggling with whether or not to tell the truth. “It’s not about the girl,” he finally admitted through clenched teeth. “It’s about whose footing the reward,” he sighed.

Mando’s heart rate picked up at the man’s words. Green eyes swam in front of him. “I’m sorry to say that you’ve been lied to by your Imp friends,” Alaina had taunted him. He hadn’t lied to her when he replied, “I’m not friends with Imps.” But now, Karga was shuffling in front of him, and Mando realized that Alaina hadn’t been lying.“I just assumed they were your friends since you were taking credits from them.”

“Who. Is. Footing. The. Reward?” he seethed, needing to hear the truth from his boss with his own ears.

Karga sighed, “There may be a slight connection with the Empire.” Mando’s fists clenched tightly at the man’s words. “Look, I’m sorry, Mando!” he tried apologizing. “I didn’t realize it at first. I met with the doctor, and he wasn’t wearing any uniform. Nothing seemed suspicious. He just truly seemed concerned about his wife!” Mando scoffed and shook his head. “He did! The man came here distraught, and I knew just the man for the job. Someone who would handle the job discreetly and quickly and probably one of my only hunters who wouldn’t do anything unsavory to the woman. It wasn’t until I got the downpayment that I realized it was all in Imperial credits, wired from an Imperial account.”

“Karga,” he growled.

He needed to get back to Alaina—now. Too much time had passed, and he still needed time to tell her what would come next and get her to the smuggler’s cargo ship.

“I know,” the man tossed his hands up. “I know, and I’m sorry. The contract was already signed, and the payout was going to be worth it. But he’s going to be here any minute, and I’m not going down for killing some Imp’s wife.”

Mando cocked his head and took a menacing step forward, “But you have no problem putting that on your best hunter?”

Karga shook his head, “I didn’t say that! I just… I’m sorry, alright. I just think it would be best if we told the man together. I just wish you had more than some of her personal belongings. Not sure that will be enough to prove her death.”

Mando searched his mind for anything of Alaina’s he could use. Usually, in cases where he had to bring the quarry in cold for various reasons, he at least had a head, or an appendage, or something—

“I have a chunk of her hair,” he grumbled, not looking forward to telling Alaina that she was about to lose a hefty portion of her honey-blonde hair. 

“Hair?” Karga asked skeptically.

“She had a lot of yellow hair. It was in a braid that got snagged on some rocks,” Mando fibbed, hoping Karga wouldn’t try and poke too many holes into his explanation. “I left it on my ship.”

“Well, let’s go get it!” the man bellowed.

“I’ll return it to you, but then I’m leaving. You made a deal with the Imps; now you have to deal with it.”

Mando spun to stalk back to the Crest, and his teeth clenched when he heard Karga stomp his feet in the dirt behind him.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight, Mando,” Karga said from behind him. “No offense, but I think you’re just angry enough to take off and leave me hanging.”

“Maybe that would teach you not to make deals with Imps,” he shot back.

Mando looked at the entrance to the town as he approached it. There was no way he could hide Alaina or keep her quiet if Karga made it to the ship. He racked his mind for ideas or possibilities as he crossed the threshold to the lava flats. His best option would be to get Karga to wait for him outside and hope that he could get Alaina to stay quiet—

Panic swelled inside him at the sight of the Crest’s ramp open. Those mudscuffers had forgotten to close up his ship again.

He was about to reprimand Karga for the shoddy help he used when a shock of yellow peered out from inside his ship, forcing his feet to a screeching halt.

No, his mind screamed at the girl, and Mando clenched his teeth. He’d told her to stay on the fucking ship, and now she was about to blow her cover. His feet began moving on their own accord, taking large steps as he headed toward the ship, ignoring Karga trying to match his pace.

Someone he didn’t recognize stepped out from behind the ship, wearing a stark white uniform, and his heart stopped as he watched from a distance as the stranger grabbed Alaina and slapped a pair of cuffs on her. When the two stormtroopers appeared from their hiding spot, his heart restarted.

“You son of a bitch,” Karga muttered. “Please tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing,” Karga’s stunned voice said from beside him. The man turned to glare at him, “I thought you said she was dead!”

He didn’t have time for this. Mando broke out into a sprint, “Hey!” 

“All right, suns are down. Time to ride, Mando,” the annoying voice of the wannabe hunter ordered, pulling him from his daydreams from years gone by.

Mando had yet to be able to calm his twisted, angry soul.

He had never intended to reveal to Alaina that, at the zero hour, the ballerina had convinced him not to turn her in. She had convinced him that if there was even a sliver of a chance that she was right, and this had all been a setup so the Imps could get their hands on her magical powers, then he had an obligation to make sure the Empire never got their hands on her.

Unfortunately, Alaina’s rash behavior had ended her chance at freedom before it began.

That wound had cut him deep.

Every time he revisited that day, he found a different way he could have approached the situation that would have likely ended with the ballerina escaping.

But hindsight was twenty-twenty. Now, five years later, he had to deal with the fallout of both of their actions from that day.

But he had meant it when he said he couldn’t watch Alaina continue to repeat her mistakes. Especially now after they’d…

Needless to say, he snapped.

Even now—well into the Tatooine night, he could still feel the panic he felt when he returned to the hangar to find the ship empty without a sign of Alaina or the Child, and every terrible thought that his brain could conceive flooded his thoughts, making him become irrational. He could still clearly see Alaina’s bright green eyes from across the busy Mos Eisley town square, making his anger swell. All he wanted was to keep her safe. He just wanted to keep her locked away from the galaxy so that nothing bad would ever happen to her again. 

“Come on, wake up,” Toro Calican said again, kicking his boot.

Mando rolled his eyes. He hated this kid. The wannabe, Calican, had an elitist attitude and genuinely thought he was tough shit. It was only a matter of time before the kid got himself killed. There is a high probability that that will happen tonight since he thought he could take on Fennec Shand.

The kid kicked his boot again.

That was if Mando didn’t kill him first.

“Look at you,” the kid commented. The mock pitying voice he spoke with made Mando want to shove his face in the sand. “Asleep on the job, old man.”

“Kick me again, and I’ll snap your ankle,” Mando growled as he got up to head to the speeder.

“Geeze, I was just trying to wake you up,” Calican bemoaned. “You’ve been crabby since you grabbed that chick back in town.”

Mando stayed low and readied his speeder.

“Thought you would have worked all your anger out on that blonde,” the annoying wannabe hunter continued speaking, and Mando did his best to ignore him, but the wolf whistle the man let out made it difficult to tune him out. “She was hot. Did you know her? Cause if you didn’t, I’m gonna have to find her when we get back and,” Calican stopped to thrust his hips suggestively while he grunted obscenely.

The world faded, and when it returned, Mando had Calican pinned to the sand with his hand wrapped around the younger man’s throat. Calican thrashed under Mando’s larger, heavier body, and his head turned bright red as Mando continued to close his airway off.

Mando’s mind caught back up with him and let the younger man go before standing up.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Calican rasped, clutching at his throat.

Mando straightened his shoulders and gave him a menacing point, “If I ever see you within a parsec of her after this, you’ll wish I killed you here.” Calican’s eyes widened at the threat, and Mando offered the man a hand to get up off the ground and get this over with. The boy studied the offered hand, clearly expecting the Mandalorian standing over him to change his mind, but eventually gave in.

This was why Mando didn’t travel with others. This was why the others he had before Alaina were flings. He didn’t do friends. He didn’t do feelings—For this exact reason. Friends—feelings all complicated things. Those things made it difficult to see what the right thing to do was under all of it.

The cord tugged in his chest, and he growled at the feeling. Calican abruptly let go of his hand, obviously thinking that the growl was directed at him.

Mando wanted to open his chest and rip the damn cord out so he never felt it again.

He would finish this mission, take the girl wherever she wanted, and figure out what to do with the kid.

He would finish this mission and, for once and all, be done with Alaina Corra.

The day faded to night, and the night was now giving way to the twin suns as they slowly climbed back over the horizon, signaling a new day.

The world kept turning, but Alaina hadn’t moved from her knees in the middle of the hangar.

The wind had gone quiet long ago, no longer whispering warnings in her ear, and Alaina welcomed the silence.

Whoever was coming could come.

She deserved whatever was going to happen—

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and shook her.

Alaina blinked at the Mandalorian figment of her imagination kneeling before her. Peli had taken the kid in for the night when it was evident that Alaina wasn’t going anywhere. Not her hallucination, though. Her hallucination had stayed by her side all night. 

“You’ll leave me too,” she whispered. Her throat hurt, and her voice rasped, sounding as if she had spent the whole night crying or screaming. She might have done both. 

Her hallucination shook his helmet, silently telling her he wasn’t going anywhere. When Alaina didn’t respond, he got up and walked away, proving her point.

It was for the best. Even though her hallucination was nothing more than something her own mind had conjured at her lowest, it was right for him to see her fall apart and shatter into a million pieces that could never be put back together again.

Smack.

Alaina gasped and brought a hand up to her cheek at the sharp pain that blossomed across the right side of her face. She blinked, ready to rip into her hallucination, but he still wasn’t there.

But Peli Motto was.

“Alright,” the mechanic began, crossing her arms across her chest. “Get up,” she ordered.

Alaina could only blink at the stinging sensation left over from the smaller woman’s slap.

“Do you want me to slap you again? Because there’s more where that came from,” she threatened.

“You—You slapped me!” Alaina huffed, staring up at the mechanic.

“And?”

Alaina blinked and finally saw her hallucination come back into view, standing next to the shorter woman who had just slapped her. She glared at her imaginary friend, expecting him to look more perturbed than he did. Her look only made the Mandalorian put his hands expectantly on his hips.

“You’re taking her side?” Alaina seethed, pointing at Peli.

The mechanic’s eyes shifted to her right, but apparently didn’t see the pretend version of the pain in her ass for the last few years—Her hallucination cocked his head at her thoughts, and Alaina rolled her eyes.

“She slapped me!” Alaina told the apparition, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah, I did,” Peli agreed. “And I’ll do it again if you don’t get up.”

Alaina glared at the mechanic but made no move to get up off the ground.

“Look, I gave you the night. Clearly, you’re going through some things,” Peli grimaced, vaguely motioning at her with her hand. “But at some point, you’re just gonna have to accept what’s happened has happened, and now you’ve gotta deal with it.”

Alaina kept her glare in place while she stared down Peli. “I have been dealing with it,” she seethed. “I’ve been dealing with it for the last five years! And now I’ve learned that the only person I have to blame for that is me!” she yelled. Her voice cracked, and Alaina struggled to keep from breaking down again.

“Well, at least you have someone to blame,” Peli shrugged, forcing a growl from Alaina. “Look, kid, it’s not my business. Do I have questions about why someone like you and your adorable baby are traveling with a Mandalorian bounty hunter? Sure,” she shrugged again. “But here’s the thing,” the woman began and paused to move her hands to her hips. “You and your kid look cared for. Neither of you have bruises or broken limbs. You both smile. And that tin can genuinely seems to care about you both. It’s a big galaxy out there. I’m the last person who should be judging anyone, but the three of you seem alright.”

The woman’s words cut through her chest, and Alaina couldn’t stop the tears from returning. Mando had done nothing but care for her, and what had she done to repay him?

Anger flared inside her—anger at the situation, anger at Mando for not telling her sooner, anger at herself for being the responsible party.

Her eyes flicked to her Mando, standing next to Peli, back in his defensive position, silently telling her to fight.

“Come on, get up,” Peli grumbled, and Alaina let the other woman help her stand up, ignoring the fake Mandalorian, hoping he would take the hint and leave her alone.

Alaina looked around the hangar as she brushed the sand off her knees. The pit droids were all lingering. Some were moving around pieces of equipment, and one was watching Grogu. When the kid saw that she looked his way, he smiled brightly and held his hands out for her.

“I’m sorry I—” Alaina began apologizing but stopped when she couldn’t find the words. “Was he okay for you?” she asked Peli as she made her way to Grogu.

“‘Ole Bright Eyes, there was a perfect angel!” Peli informed her with a smile. “I think he’d eat me out of house and home, but once he was down for the night, he slept straight through.”

Alaina smiled down at Grogu, “Thanks, buddy,” she whispered as she picked him up and squeezed him to his chest. “I’m sorry I disappeared. I just needed time to think.” Grogu blinked at her, and she shrugged her shoulders. “I still don’t know what to think,” Alaina whispered, pushing her head into Grogu’s forehead. “But I have a feeling that this might be the last time you and I get to see each other,” she told him sadly.

Grogu’s smile dropped from his face at her words, and Alaina closed her eyes to block out the kid’s disappointment. A small, clawed hand reached up to touch her cheek, and before Alaina could pull herself away, she was thrown into a sea of images.

Sorgan.

The sight brought her heartache. Grogu showed her their lazy afternoon before… before she took that next step with Mando.

The three of them were sitting on a blanket next to the creek. The afternoon, from Grogu’s perspective, was interesting. Where Alaina just remembered the queasy feeling of uncertainty that laced her veins the entire day, he saw something else.

He saw two friends talking and laughing. He saw Mando relaxed as he lay on the blanket. He saw Mando’s helmet keeping tabs on them when Alaina pretended to chase Grogu up and down the creek bed. He showed her fragments of their walk through the field back home and how Mando’s hand stayed glued to her lower back. He showed her a brief clip of Mando holding him, and his vision was filled with the silver beskar helmet before he turned to see Alaina sitting on the cot, smiling at him and Mando.

Alaina pulled away from the kid and tried to swipe the tears she didn’t realize were leaking from her eyes.

“I know—” she started and stopped, trying to get her emotions under control. “I know that’s how things were, but I don’t think things will be like that anymore.”

Grogu cried and rested a hand on her chest. Alaina kissed his forehead. “I know,” she whispered. “But I messed up, buddy," she tried to explain to the kid but had to stop when her voice choked up. “I just think it would be in everyone’s best interests if I weren’t here when Mando gets back.

Her hallucination reappeared beside her, and Alaina closed her eyes to block him.

She saw signs for public transport ships on the outskirts during her ill-fated journey to the market yesterday. She had hardly spent any of the credits that Peli had given her. She could use whatever she had left to have one of those ships take her as far away as her money would allow. She could find someplace where she could fall into the crowd and slip away, someplace where she could try and start over—alone.

Grogu cooed and patted her chest with his tiny three-fingered hand, making Alaina smile at him.

Her smile slipped when she felt something warm blossom in her chest. The tiny, tattered shreds of the string connecting her to Mando trembled, and her imaginary friend moved in her line of sight to lift his fists back to his helmet again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Grogu, pulling him tightly against her chest. “Stay with Mando. He’ll keep you safe,” she told him, kissing him on the top of his head before she placed the kid back on the ground.

She ignored the kid’s cries and her baffled hallucination as she turned to head back to the Crest to gather her belongings.

Alaina ignored Peli as she stomped up the ramp and immediately headed to her cot. She dropped to the floor to pull her black bag from under her bed and began to gather her meager accumulation of belongings. She grabbed some of her clothes and tossed them into the bag, followed by her pointe shoes. Her hands fell to her hips as she looked around Mando’s ship for the last time. She frowned when her hands brushed against the metal that rested there.

Mando’s blaster and her mother’s dagger. 

She pulled the blaster from its holster and studied it. A sigh escaped her as she looked at the silver and black blaster. Gloved hands appeared, and his larger fingers enclosed her smaller fingers around the weapon before they slowly pushed it into her stomach. Alaina blinked and looked up at her hallucination, sadly shaking her head.

“It’s not mine to take,” she whispered, shaking her head as she placed the blaster on her cot. 

Her Mando looked at the blaster and then back at her, lifting his fists back into the defensive position in front of his helmet.

“I’m tired of fighting,” she said, keeping her voice in low, hushed tones. “I just want to go—”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Peli barked as she walked up the Crest’s ramp, pointing to the packed bag. The mechanic held an upset Grogu to her chest, but the kid’s cries seemed quiet when he saw her.

“I’m leaving,” she muttered, moving to step around her pretend Mandalorian.

Peli came and stepped in front of her, blocking her exit. “And what, you’re just gonna leave me with your kid?” Alaina rolled her eyes and tried to step around the short mechanic, but Peli refused to let her pass. “You’re gonna leave me with your kid and leave me to deal with an angry Mandalorian when he comes back to find that you took off? I don’t think so.”

“Peli,” Alaina sighed, but the woman interrupted her.

“Besides, where are you gonna go?” she asked, lifting a challenging eyebrow. “He’ll find you if you stay in town, and if you were even thinking about hopping a ride on one of those transport ships, then you should probably know that there’s only one that comes today, and it doesn’t arrive for hours.” Alaina frowned at the information. “And when it does finally arrive, there is at least a two-hour turnaround time before it takes off. And that doesn’t account for any maintenance if it needs to happen. I’m guessing your tin can will still beat you back before you leave the atmosphere.”

“That’s a risk I’ll just have to take,” Alaina told her. “Besides, you heard him yesterday. He’s done with me,” she reminded the woman, doing her best to keep the waver out of her voice at the memory of his words. “I’m just saving him the trouble. I can handle myself.” She tried to move around the woman, but Peli blocked her exit again.

“What about your broken heating coil?” Peli asked, nodding to the fresher behind them.

“What about the broken heating coil?” Alaina asked, not seeing the woman’s point.

“Well, you wanted it fixed, didn’t cha?”

“I’m not going to be around to enjoy it, and Mando went for years without bothering to fix it, so something tells me he won’t care that it’s still broken,” she retorted.

“Alright, yeah, I hear ya, but what if we fixed it anyway?” Peli asked with a shrug. “A little something for that tin can to remember you by?”

Alaina glared at the suggestion, but something about the fact that every time Mando got to take a warm shower, it would be because of her—

“No,” she finally answered, shaking her head.

“Okay, okay,” Peli started again, getting frustrated. “Just—Just hear me out, alright?” Alaina looked at the mechanic impatiently and crossed her hands over her chest while she waited for the woman to get it over with so she could be on her way. “I’m not saying I’m not gonna let you go,” she continued, and Alaina narrowed her eyes at the frizzy-haired woman. “I just think you need to take a few hours to think about it,” she suggested. “I don’t know your story, but I think what your Mandalorian told you yesterday rattled you to your core, and now you’re being rash by running away from your problems.

“You’re rash,” Mando’s words from… gosh, was that only yesterday? “You’re rash, and you rush into situations when you don’t know all the facts.” He’d used Sorgan as an example, but now Alaina knew the truth. He wasn’t referring to Sorgan. He was referring to her leaving the safety of the Razor Crest and getting herself captured by Penn Pershing.

“And I may be out of line by saying this,” Peli continued, giving her an apologetic smile, “but I don’t think you’re quite all there.” Alaina frowned at the woman’s admission. “I’m just saying that you’ve been seeing and talking to things that aren’t there, and I’m worried that a woman such as yourself in your state would be putting herself in harm’s way by leaving.”

Alaina’s eyes slid to the left to see her hallucination casually leaning against the carbonite machine with his arms crossed over his chest and his right foot propped up against the empty machine. Peli’s head turned to follow her eyes, and when the mechanic didn’t see her imaginary friend, she turned back to give Alaina a pointed look. “I thought you said you weren’t going to stop me from leaving?”

“Two hours,” Peli offered. “You give it two hours; if you still feel the same way after you fix that broken heating coil, I’ll let you go.”

Alaina scrunched her forehead in confusion at the woman’s words. “What do you mean after I fix the broken heating coil? I don’t know how to change a heating coil.”

“You won’t be able to say that in a couple of hours,” Peli told her, in an annoying peppy, can-do attitude. Alaina scoffed as the mechanic grabbed her bag and pushed her toward the fresher with one hand while still holding onto Grogu in her other.

Alaina frowned and looked behind her for help from her Mandalorian, but the man stayed propped up against the carbonite machine. When Alaina glared at him, he lifted his fists to his helmet—fight.

Mando returned to the cliffs on dewback just as the Tatooine dual suns breached the horizon, painting the desert in a bright, vivid orange.

He had approached from a higher vantage point to allow him time to observe how Calican handled being left alone with Shand for the few hours he was gone tracking the large dewback to bring their quarry back.

He was not surprised to find a dead body when he returned.

He was surprised that the dead body was Fennec Shand’s and not Calican’s.

Mando had fully anticipated having found that Shand had managed to escape, killing the wannabe before taking off with the kid’s speeder to take her to freedom.

He frowned at the turn of events, looking from Shand’s dead body to where Calican’s speeder had been. 

Why would the kid kill the quarry and take off? He needed Shand to get into the Guild…

The feeling in his chest that he had done his best to ignore for hours flared and caused him physical pain, and he was startled by the sensation. It vaguely reminded him of finding those AT-ST tracks in Sorgan's woods when he initially felt something inside his chest slide into place—instead of something slow and dormant, the cord that had been embedded inside him had snaked itself around every major organ inside of his chest and constricted painfully.

Mando clutched at his chestpiece, trying to figure out what was wrong, but the feeling didn’t go away.

“I don’t know… Do you not feel that?” she asked quietly, bringing his focus back to her again.

“Feel what?” he whispered back, not at all sure where this was going.

Alaina’s mouth flattened, and her forehead crinkled as she looked down at his prone form.

“Here,” she finally said, bringing a hand out from the blanket to point to the center of her chest. “That something here that… It’s like I have something in my chest that keeps wanting to pull me to you. I don’t know if it’s just our history or getting closer to you the last few weeks, but I don’t know… It’s probably stupid.”

Mando felt as if the world around him had just come to a screeching halt. Not because he was confused by what she was saying but because he had felt what she was describing and just brushed it off as him being too close to the situation.

Alaina looked down to fiddle with the hem of her blanket, “I don’t know how else to describe it… but looking back on it now? To have you, of all people, come to me whenever I felt like I was about to break…” she sighed. “It’s like something in here,” she paused to point at her chest again, “was trying to tell me to trust you. It’s like something was pulling me to you. It doesn’t make any sense, I know. I wish I could describe it better. I don’t know, it’s like there has been this… this chain? Cord maybe—”

Mando blanched at her word and moved to prop himself up on elbows so his helmet was level with her head.

“It’s like there has been some kind of invisible string tying us together,” she finished, speaking the words as if they pained her to admit it.

Mando’s helmet whipped to look in the direction of Mos Eisley, and that cord in his chest pulled him to head back. Calican had left his quarry, his ticket into the Guild behind… which meant he was after something with an even higher price tag than Fennec Shand.

Emerald green eyes and green, wrinkly skin flashed in his mind.

With a sharp kick to the dewback’s sides, Mando tugged on its reigns and urged it back toward Mos Eisley.

I’m coming.

Two hours later, the only thing she wanted to fight was Peli Motto.

Two hours later, they hadn’t even started replacing the broken heating coil.

The mechanic refused to start without breakfast and a cup of caf. After procrastinating for as long as she could and eating as slowly as possible, she decided that Alaina needed a detailed explanation of electrical work.

When they finally made it to the part where they replaced the broken coil, Peli described the process in as much detail as possible. She even went so far as to explain how the water system worked on an older ship like the Razor Crest, and the mechanic was surprised it even functioned at all. There was another lecture wasting precious minutes while Peli went on to ramble about why Mando hadn’t just converted to a sonic system and be done with the outdated technology. Alaina tried to zone out, but anytime the mechanic felt like she didn’t have Alaina’s complete attention, she would stop and patiently wait until Alaina rolled her eyes and waited for her to continue.

Two hours turned into four, and Alaina finally left the Crest once the job was done.

She wiped the sweat from her brow and grimaced at the bright sun beating down over the hangar.

Her eyes searched the hangar until they landed on the shaded area in the back where Grogu was napping… and her hallucination sat next to him.

“Doesn’t it feel good to fix something?” Peli asked as she came up behind her. The woman pulled a rag from her back pocket to wipe the grease and grime away. “How about some lunch?” she offered, pocketing the rag. “Wouldn’t be right for me to send you off without a meal.”

Alaina didn’t respond. Her focus was on her hallucination: sitting on the ground, looking protectively over Grogu while the Child slept.

The scene unsettled her. It wouldn’t be out of place for the real Mando to do something like that—sit with his back propped up against the wall while he looked over Grogu… but for the figment of her imagination that she conjured… for her hallucination to act protectively toward someone or something that wasn’t her made her take pause.

Her hallucination turned to look at her as if hearing her thoughts, giving her a fixed look with his helmet.

The sounds faded from the hangar until Alaina could only hear her heart pounding in her head. She was missing something—something important that her Mandalorian was trying to tell her. Her hallucination never spoke or made noise of any kind. Instead, the man relied on actions and gestures to communicate his thoughts.

His gloved hand moved to point at her, holding the point for several seconds before he took that index finger and dug it into the ground.

Stay. Here.

Alaina clutched at her chest.

Next, her hallucination turned to look at Grogu sleeping next to him, blissfully unaware of the invisible Mandalorian sitting next to him. Alaina held her breath when his helmet turned to look back at her. 

A gust of wind carried the hot Tatooine desert air through the hangar, ruffling her curly hair as the wind whispered to her once more, “He’s coming.”

Her Mandalorian lifted his fists back to his helmet. He still wanted her to fight, but he wasn’t telling her to fight for her.

He was telling her to fight for Grogu.

He was telling her to stay here for Grogu.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind about leaving?” Peli asked after the minutes of silence ticked by without a response from Alaina.

Her hand came to rest on the hilt of her mother’s dagger, and her Mando nodded.

In the blink of an eye, Alaina startled as hangar three-five came back into focus. The suns had somehow moved from directly above the ship to almost disappear from Tatooine altogether.

“Hey, Blondie!” Peli yelled, snapping her fingers in front of Alaina’s face.

Alaina blinked and looked around, confused by the mysterious time lapse. Not only was it much later than anticipated, but her hallucination was nowhere to be found. “What happened?” she asked as she continued to search the hangar for the familiar dented brown armor.

“You tell me,” Peli countered, resting Grogu on her hip. “You’ve been in some kind of trance for hours. Just been standing there… staring.” Alaina frowned, and her gaze finally settled on the mechanic standing before her. “It was creepy,” Peli finished, looking her up and down with a wary eye.

“Mando?” Alaina asked, already knowing the answer.

“Haven’t seen him,” she informed her flatly. “But you missed your transport ship because of… whatever you want to call what you just did.”

Alaina looked to Grogu, who was looking up at her with wide, curious eyes. The wind blew in warning, forcing Alaina into action.

“Do you trust me?” she asked Grogu, ignoring the confused mechanic for the time being. Grogu smiled at her, and Alaina grabbed him from the mechanic. She marched down the ramp and searched for the perfect place—an empty barrel that had been tipped over was left where she last saw her hallucination. “I need you to be really brave for me, little one,” she whispered, kissing the crown of his green, wrinkly head.

“Hey, what are you doing with the kid?” Peli called after her, following Alaina as she crossed the hangar.

Alaina continued to ignore her, choosing to give Grogu another kiss. “I need you to be really brave and stay as quiet as you can, okay?” she asked Grogu, putting her hands under his armpits to hold him in front of her. “No matter what you hear, stay quiet until Mando finds you.”

Grogu’s mouth quivered, and he reached for her as Alaina placed him inside the empty barrel.

Alaina placed her index finger over her lips and shushed the scared toddler. “Everything is going to be okay, little one,” she whispered, leaning into the barrel to rub one of the kid’s ears. “Stay here, Grogu,” she said, giving the kid one last smile before placing the lid over the barrel to hide him from the hangar.

“Hey!” Peli yelled, angrily spinning Alaina to face her. “What is going on?”

“Someone is coming for us,” Alaina explained, moving out of the small alcove and back into the hangar.

“What do you mean someone is coming for you?” Peli asked frantically as she followed her through the hangar.

“I don’t have time to explain, but you were right earlier when you said something is wrong with me,” Alaina admitted, tapping her head. “Mando has been trying to hide us—” she stopped, closing her eyes, unable to think about Mando right now. “I’m broken,” she confessed, opening her eyes to see a very confused Peli looking back at her. “I’m broken, I’ve lived, but he,” she stopped to point at the barrel where Grogu was hiding. “He is an innocent. He has his entire life ahead of him. I will fight for him to get to live that life. I will fight so they don’t get their hands on him and make him broken like me until my last breath.”

Peli studied her momentarily before saying, “What can I do?”

Alaina smiled thankfully at the woman. “Make sure he doesn’t find Grogu,” she told the mechanic. “And tell Mando… Tell Mando this isn’t his fault,” she nodded. “Tell Mando that I forgive him.”

Peli opened her mouth to say something, but another voice called out across the hold before the woman could speak.

“Word has it,” the voice began and paused until he stepped around the corner of the entrance into the hold. Alaina frowned at the man, recognizing him as the one Mando shoved against the alley wall yesterday. “Word has it, a Mandalorian is traveling with a blonde girl and a kid,” he said as he sauntered into the hangar.

Alaina moved to position herself in front of Peli. “Where is Mando?” she demanded, squaring her shoulders.

The stranger shrugged, “In the desert somewhere.”

Alaina studied the man, taking in his short, black hair, the leathers he wore, and the vileness that radiated from his eyes as he raked them up and down her body. She lifted her chin in defiance, hoping her confidence would squelch the unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“You and your kid are gonna be my ticket into the Guild and make me rich,” he told her, taking a step closer to her.

“Sorry, buddy, you’ve got the wrong hangar,” Peli told him, moving around her to look at the younger man with a look of disgust. “There’s no babies here, so I suggest you move on.”

The man’s wandering eyes stared at Alaina before they finally settled on her chest, and he gave an empty grin before saying, “But there is a blonde girl.”

Everything happened in the blink of an eye—Peli lunged for the stranger, taking the man by surprise. She was small and quick, but he recovered from his shock quickly. He dodged her punch and responded with a fist of his own, crashing into the woman’s cheek and sending the mechanic flying.

“Peli!” Alaina cried.

She ripped her mother’s dagger from its place on her hip and went after their attacker. The blade scraped across the man’s neck, drawing blood. The stranger’s eyes flared in anger and came after her. He attempted to disarm her with a kick, but she dodged it and swiped at him with the dagger again but the man blocked her easily and knocked the dagger from her hand, leaving her defenseless.

Alaina blinked at her empty hands.

She wasn’t defenseless. These hands used to be able to move things. Just her words and these hands killed an Imperial General.

Alaina growled and flung her hands at the man, calling on her powers to return to her. To just let her feel them one more time and throw her attacker into the wall or across the planet, but nothing came.

The harsh bark of laughter taunted her, and her eyes flicked up just in time to see the man’s foot hurtle toward her. Alaina tried to step back but wasn’t fast enough, and the man’s boot sent her reeling. Her back hit the ground, and the air rushed from her lungs on impact. Alaina tried to pull the air back into her chest but could only flounder and gasp.

The man jumped on top of her, straddling her hips, and tears pricked her eyes when he ground his pelvis into hers while he laughed. “Oh, I’m gonna enjoy you,” he sneered, sticking his tongue out of his mouth while he smiled down at her.

Alaina tried to grab for any scrap of skin she could find, but the man kept evading her.

The man snatched her wrists, pinned them to the ground, and leaned over her until their noses were touching. “What do you say we teach the Mandalorian a lesson?” he asked her before his lips came crashing down into hers.

Alaina’s breath returned to her, and her eyes went wide as she struggled to get away, but when the man wouldn’t budge, she found the man’s lower lip and bit down until his blood poured from his lip into her mouth.

The man ripped his mouth from hers, staring at her with wild eyes. “You bitch!” he screamed, backhanding her as punishment for her defensive attack.

Alaina gasped at the force of the strike. Her head had turned painfully to the side, and the hangar blurred while nausea rose in her stomach.

Concussion, she thought as she looked around the hangar, confused when she no longer felt the man’s crushing weight on top of her. The world tilted on its axis, making bile rise in her throat.

The stranger was back to Peli, tying her up.

Her eyes briefly flicked to the black barrel where Grogu was hiding, and she said a silent prayer that Mando would find him quickly.

A shadow fell over her, and her unfocused eyes looked up at the man towering over her.

The man swiped more of his blood off his lower lip as he looked down at her. “How mad do you think the Mandalorian will be if I take off with his girl and his ship?” he asked her with an evil smirk. “At least I’ll have you to entertain me on the way.”

Alaina’s eyes closed, and she let the tears come as she felt herself being lifted from the ground.

When she opened them again, her hallucination stood there, watching as this strange man carried her up the Crest’s ramp. She lifted a hand toward him, and he raised his hands to his helmet.

Her limbs felt heavy as she lifted her hands to the stranger's face, and she screamed.

Mando stormed into hangar three-five, chest heaving from sprinting the rest of the way to Alaina and Grogu.

Alaina’s blood-curdling scream could be heard from over two streets away. Too late. He was too late to save them. Panic gripped him as he frantically looked around for any sign of them but found none. He blinked at the surprisingly quiet hangar, but the hair on the back of his neck raised in alarm, warning him that everything was not okay.

His helmet swiveled quickly as he took in the hangar. The mechanic, Peli, he thought her name was, was bound, gagged, and propped up against the wall. She looked at him with wide, panicked eyes before exaggeratingly throwing her head toward the Razor Crest.

Mando’s helmet stalled when he saw Alaina’s mother’s dagger left forgotten on the ground between the mechanic and his ship. The serpent’s emerald eyes glinted in the moonlight, but the sight of red blood coating the blade made his chest clench in fear.

“No!” 

Mando’s helmet snapped to look at the ship after hearing Alaina’s strangled cry come from inside. His fists clenched at his sides after hearing Alaina, and he silently marched toward his ship, stopping to grab Alaina’s dagger on the way. 

He was on high alert, every muscle poised to attack as he silently walked up the ramp, stalking his prey in the dark.

“This why he keeps you around, huh? A little something soft and sweet to come back home to?” Toro Calican was speaking. The man’s back was to him, and he had Alaina pinned against the floor near the back of the ship. Her hands were on his face, keeping him away from her while the rest of her body thrashed fruitlessly under him. Calican was kneeling between her spread legs and had her dress pushed up around her hips. “Maybe I should take a page from his book. Keep you around instead of sending you back to the Empire.”

Her voice wavered as she spoke, and Mando could tell she was crying. “You’re going to let me go,” she told him, trying to sound brave through her tears. “You’re going to let me go, and you’re going to walk out into the middle of the desert—” her words cut off as her voice cracked as she struggled to speak through her tears.

Mando watched as Calican actually let her go. His body became rigid, and the upper half of it sat up straight.

Mando had seen enough. He had been right when he thought that he would be the one to kill the wannabe bounty hunter. If only he had done it a day ago, he could have saved Alaina from this. He sheathed the beskar dagger and strode across the ship in five silent steps.

Mando grabbed Calican by the back of his neck and ripped him away from Alaina. The man had a distant, far-off look on his face once he had been pulled to his feet, and Mando blinked in confusion and then looked down at Alaina on the floor, his confusion growing when he saw her glaring intently at the man with blood trickling down her nose. “Alaina?” he whispered, confused by the situation.

Alaina blinked and snapped out of whatever trance she was in. Her emerald eyes widened when she saw him standing over her with her attacker in his grip. Her face crumpled, and she sagged back to the floor, turning her head to look away. He turned to look back at Calican, who was blinking as if he were confused about how he got here, and then when the man saw the Mandalorian, the wannabe hunter gave him a smug, taunting smile—taunting the older hunter that he had made it onto the Mandalorian’s ship and had forced himself on his crew.

The man opened his mouth to say something, but Mando moved his hand to the front of Toro’s neck, squeezing tightly before slamming him back into the wall, forcing a satisfying choke out of Calican’s lips.

Mando observed the man, noting that those lips were bloodied and bruised. His heart stopped when he realized that the man hadn’t received those injuries from being punched. The indentions, the punctures… no, he wasn’t punched, he was bitten.

“Alaina,” Mando started darkly, turning his helmet to look at the crying girl curled in on herself on the floor. Alaina refused to look at him, but from his angle, he could see a glimpse of blood that coated her chin. More blood than what just came from a nosebleed. “Did he go any further?”

“I didn’t!” Toro wheezed from under his choke hold.

“I didn’t ask you,” Mando reminded him, tightening his grip around the man’s neck. “Alaina?”

Alaina sniffled but finally shook her head.

Mando felt relieved to see that—Relieved to see her responding at all. He had told her to stay here… and then he left her defenseless and was almost too late to save her.

He couldn’t think about those thoughts right now. After. After he handled the situation, he would let the thoughts consume him. But now… now he needed to ensure that Toro Calican never put his hands on another soul ever again.

“And the kid’s okay?” he whispered, hoping that Calican hadn’t somehow passed Grogu off to a waiting friend.

Alaina nodded again, and he closed his eyes in relief.

“I told you,” Toro wheezed.

Mando turned his helmet to look back at the man he currently held in a chokehold. He welcomed the anger as it washed over him. He embraced the calm that it brought as he cocked his head at the man.

He gave the man a nod, acknowledging him. “Which means you’re lucky,” Mando said, making Toro relax as much as one could in his situation. “That means I kill you quickly,” he finished darkly. 

Toro opened his mouth to argue, but Mando snapped, bringing his other hand up and stabbing Alaina's dagger into the side of the man’s head.

Once the light left the man’s eyes, Mando let him unceremoniously fall to the floor, knife still sticking out of his head.

Mando ran to Alaina, dropping to his knees by her side, and rested a concerned hand on her shoulder. She cracked the moment the leather of his glove touched the ripped fabric of her shirt. Alaina scrambled to get up off the ground, and once she made it to her knees, she flung her arms around his neck and clung tightly as she pressed her face into his neck. Mando wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her tightly to him while she sobbed into his neck.

Her gasps for air were muffled by her lips being against his cowl, but she did not attempt to move her position. “I made sure—I made sure Grogu was hidden,” she told him between cries. “I could feel he was here for us. He didn’t see the kid. I hid him in one of the barrels out there.”

“Shhh,” Mando soothed her, rubbing his hands along her back. “You did good,” he told her, nuzzling his helmet to the side of her head. “I’m glad you’re both okay. Are you sure you’re okay? He didn’t…”

“N-No,” she stuttered.

“Good,” he rushed out, relieved to hear that. “I need to free the mechanic and tidy up. Are you going to be okay?”

Alaina squeezed his neck tightly, and Mando responded by squeezing his arms tighter around her waist.

“The sooner I get this done, the sooner we can leave,” he murmured, clutching her as tightly as possible. 

Gods, he’d almost been too late. He’d told her to stay, wanting her safe, and his order almost let her be… he couldn’t even think the word.

“Alaina,” he murmured again when he hadn’t gotten a response from her.

Alaina finally nodded, and Mando rose to his feet, keeping her in his arms as he stood, bringing her body up with him. Once her feet were on the ground, he slowly released her and moved his hands to rub her arms. She refused to look at him. Her head hung low, defeated, her face blocked from his view with her curtain of blonde curls.

Mando hated the way his insides twisted painfully. He hated the way she looked defeated—broken. He raised a cautious hand to cup her cheek. Alaina lifted her watery green eyes to stare at his helmet. “Come sit,” he ushered her to the sleeping alcove and encouraged her to sit on the mattress. She went with him compliantly; her green eyes started to lose focus, and he could see her shutting down. He rested his helmet on her forehead. “I’ll be right back, okay? And then we can go wherever you want.”

Alaina stared blankly back at him.

“Wherever you want, Tranyc,” he tried again, but his only response was a hollow, vacant stare.

He gently pressed his helmet into her forehead before turning to take care of the mess.

Mando grabbed the dagger by the fanned rawl's hilt and yanked it out of Calican's head. He used his cloak to wipe the blood from the beskar blade before he tucked it away in his belt for safekeeping. He grabbed the body and quickly tossed the worthless carcass out of the ship before heading down the ramp to find the kid. 

Peli looked relieved when she saw the dead body hit the ground, and Mando went to her first to free her of her confinements and cut the rag that was used to keep her quiet.

“Thank the Maker!” she sighed in relief, scrambling to stand up. “Blondie is okay, isn’t she?”

Mando hesitated and looked back at his ship. “She will be,” he replied, not entirely confident in his words. He looked back to the mechanic and asked, “Where is the kid?”

The mechanic whistled, and the assembly of pit droids came out of hiding in the shadows. “Get in there and get the place cleaned up for them,” she ordered, pointing at the open hold of his ship. Mando didn’t even have it in him to argue about the droids being on his ship, not if they would save some time by cleaning up the pool and streaks of blood left from Calican.

He followed the woman as she walked to a nearby alcove to a black barrel and pried the top open. The kid looked up at him and gave him a lecture using a series of sounds. Mando clearly understood that Grogu was less than impressed with his confinement.

“Come on, kid,” he said, reaching into the barrel to pick him up. The kid continued spitting and babbling nonsense to him, and all Mando could do was nod at the toddler as he accepted the kid’s tongue-lashing.

He walked to the dead wannabe hunter and yanked the purse of credits off of him before tossing them at the mechanic.

Peli opened the bag and raised her eyebrows, impressed by its contents, so Mando assumed that was enough to settle their remaining debt.

“Hey,” Peli called out after him, and Mando stopped at the ramp to look back at the short, frizzy-haired woman. The woman frowned and rocked back and forth as if she were debating on whether or not to vocalize her thoughts. “Before—” she began and sighed. “Blondie put up a heck of a fight,” she told him, nodding at the ship. “I don’t think she thought she was gonna make it.” Mando’s eyes closed at her words. “She told me to tell you that this wasn’t your fault.”

The words cut through his beskar armor straight to his heart.

“She said somethin’ else too, but I think it’s best that come from her,” she said, giving him a nod.

Mando’s eyes opened, and he stared at her, wondering what in the galaxy Alaina could have said that the mechanic didn’t feel comfortable repeating.

The two stared at each other, and the short mechanic gave him a quick, dismissive nod. Mando nodded back, turning to enter his ship. The mechanic’s pit droids came stumbling out, carrying bloodied rags and disinfectants as they passed him, tripping over each other in a race not to be the last one on board.

Alaina was still in shock in the alcove, unaware that the ramp had closed behind him. Mando walked to her and set the kid down at her feet. He put her head between his hands and forced her to look at him. Even though her head was looking up, her green eyes were glassy and unfocused with tears, and Mando wasn’t sure what, if anything, she was actually seeing.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, wiping a stray tear away with his thumb as it rolled down her cheek.

Alaina didn’t respond.

“Keep an eye on her,” he instructed Grogu, who seemed to understand what he was saying and latched onto the bottom hem of Alaina’s dress.

Mando took the rungs of the ladder two at a time and launched himself into the cockpit to get them off the desert hellhole they had landed on.

Soon, they were up in the air, and Mando put the Crest in hyperdrive with no real destination in mind. It was just for the safety of the hyperdrive channel.

Mando removed his helmet and let it fall to the floor, then raised his gloves to rub his weary face.

He’d made an absolute karking mess of everything.

He’d promised Alaina that he would protect her, and she’d almost been…

He slammed his hands down on top of the console with an angry growl.

He couldn’t keep failing her. She’d been through too much, and he couldn’t let any more be his fault. He’d take them somewhere quiet to regroup, and then… 

Then, they would make serious plans to get Alaina situated somewhere safe. Once Alaina was safe, he could focus on finding the kid’s people, or maybe even the Jedi, if they still existed, to take him in.

Then, they could all just move on with their lives.

He ignored the painful tug in his chest at the thought of his companions leaving and plugged in coordinates for their next destination—a small, quiet moon just on the other side of the border in wild space. He’d encountered the uninhabited moon a few years back and found solace in its beauty once. Hopefully, he could share that with Alaina and the kid, giving the two of them one last pleasant memory of him.

Once the ship was headed toward their destination, and the alarm was programmed to alert them when they were approaching, Mando grabbed his helmet from the floor. He stared at the heavy beskar piece, buffing a scuff out of the side with his sleeve before putting it back on and heading back down to the hold.

Alaina remained motionless, sitting stoically on the edge of his mattress with her feet dangling above the ground. Grogu’s hand still clutched the bottom hem of her dress, and he looked at Mando with large, pleading eyes. When Mando made it to his two companions, he took a moment to study Alaina, trying to quell his anger with a detached view as he looked over her injuries.

There were traces of a bruise blossoming across her right temple. The tiny stream of blood that had come from her nose had long since dried and caked to her face, ending at her upper lip. Her bottom lip and chin were covered with that piece of shit’s blood from when she must have bitten his lip when he forced himself on her.

His fists clenched at his sides as he tried to reign in his anger.

“Alaina?” he whispered, searching for any sign that she had heard him. Her face remained vacant, and her normally expressive eyes were empty and bloodshot. He sighed and forced himself to relax. “Alaina, let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” he suggested, keeping his voice low and calm, even though he wanted to do nothing more than go back to Tatooine and punch the corpse of Toro Calican until there was nothing left of him.

Alaina made no indication that she had heard him.

He shuffled around the hold, keeping one eye on Alaina as he started to gather his old tunic, which Alaina had taken to sleep in, and a canteen of water from next to her cot. Grogu looked nervously between him as Mando returned to their struggling friend.

Silently, he went to work cleaning her face. Unable to find a rag nearby, he grabbed his cloak, poured water over a small portion of the edge, and began to gently dab at the blood on Alaina’s chin and nose. She didn’t so much as blink as he cleaned her face. The dull green eyes physically pained him, and he wished she would snap out of her dissociative state and cry, fight, or something just so he could see the spark return to her emerald eyes. Once he cleaned her face, he examined the bruise on her temple a little closer, but it didn’t appear as if she suffered any fractures.

“I think we could use some rest,” he said, hoping for a response, but not surprised when he didn’t receive one. He held up the tunic in front of her eyes, but still nothing. “I don’t think you’d want to stay in those clothes,” he said, pausing to look over the ripped, tattered green shirt and dress. He knelt before her, untying her laces to work her boots off first. Grogu rested a tiny hand on his glove and then pointed up to Alaina. “I know, kid. She’s gonna be okay. She just needs some time.” Grogu’s ears flattened, and Mando felt as dejected as the kid looked.

Once her boots and socks were removed from her feet, he stood back up and bent over so his helmet aligned with her head. “I’m going to take your dress off. Stop me if this makes you uncomfortable.” When Alaina remained frozen, he sighed and eased her off the alcove's edge.

Alaina was pliant in his arms. Nothing more than a doll to be positioned as he untied and removed her dress and slid the green tunic he’d gotten for her back on Sorgan up over her head. Now she stood before him wearing only her breastband and underwear, and his helmet flicked over her body, looking for any signs of external injuries that needed to be addressed. A shock of black and blue was already cracking in the middle of her abdomen, and if he looked hard enough, he thought he could make out Calican’s footprint in the middle of her stomach.

“Kriff,” he muttered when he realized that she must have taken a kick to the gut. 

Quickly, he grabbed the kid and placed him in his hammock above them. He gently pushed Alaina back to his mattress and helped her lean back. Once she was on her back, he began palpating her abdomen, checking for any indication of internal bleeding or organ damage. Alaina’s unfocused gaze didn’t move from staring at the ceiling. Her abdomen briefly tensed when his fingers began prodding her, and he relaxed his examination, not wanting to cause her any additional pain. Thankfully, he didn’t find anything to indicate that she had any internal bleeding, but he would check again later.

He tried to move her, but even though her eyes were open, she was nothing more than a limp shell of herself. Mando continued to murmur words of comfort and praise as he dressed her in his old tunic. He didn’t know what he was even saying; he just hoped that something would make its way into her mind. Once he successfully got the tunic on her, he eased her back to the mattress.

Mando undid the magnetic clamps holding his armor in place, leaving it in a messy pile at the foot of his sleeping alcove. He toed his boots off until he was dressed in only his helmet, flight suit, and gloves.

He cautiously climbed into the alcove and, after a brief shuffle, had Alaina situated with his sole pillow and flimsy blanket on one side, leaving him with just enough room to have the other half if he turned on his side.

“Alaina?” he whispered, caressing her arm with his gloved hand, but received no response from her.

Alaina stared blankly at the ceiling, completely unaware of her surroundings.

“My mind would always conjure you up whenever I needed a hand to hold or a shoulder to lean on.” Her words from Sorgan echoed through his troubled mind. “Can I hold your hand? At least until I fall asleep?”

Mando ripped his gloves off and shucked them out of the alcove. His fingers tentatively grazed down her arm until they found her hand. Slowly, cautiously, he entwined his fingers between her smaller ones, hoping his actions comforted her.

A sad coo from above pulled Mando’s attention from Alaina. He found the kid looking down at his friend with large, sad eyes. With a sigh, Mando moved to grab the kid, bringing him down to join them.

“Come on, kid,” he whispered and twisted his free arm so he could reach above him to grab the small toddler by his shirt, placing him between them. Grogu immediately crawled away from him and onto Alaina’s chest. He watched with a sad smile as the kid stroked her cheek, knowing he needed to be gentle with her.

Mando brought their joined hands under his helmet and brushed his lips across her knuckles, but not even the shock of feeling his lips or the overgrown scruff on his cheek could pull her from her mind.

With a sigh, he laid back down on his side, resting his helmet on his arm as he watched Grogu drift to sleep, sprawled across Alaina’s chest.

“We’re here for you,” he whispered in the alcove, gently squeezing her hand. “We’re here. Just let me know if you need anything,” he said before going quiet, hoping that the woman next to him would find sleep at some point.

He wasn’t expecting a response, but his heart fluttered, and the cord in his chest jumped when she squeezed his hand back.

🐍 End Act 1 🐍

Author's Note #2: Ooof. I'm okay. Everything is fine 😢 Let's move on to our healing era, shall we?

Peace and love, XOXO

-Stardust

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Next chapter in series - Chapter 13: Elysium

[rainydaysandcloudyskies]

This is so good!

is it ok to be a little selfish

[chuluoyi]

𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐖𝐈𝐅𝐄, 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄

- zayne x reader

husband and wife, at the pinnacle of their love. on a night filled with wonders, you will know that he sees only you and everything that you are

genre/warnings: 18+ suggestive content—minors do not interact!—fluff, explicit smut: slightly rough & drunken sex, fingering, missionary. you and zayne have a daughter (her name is meirin!)

note: god what have i written... the anniversary banner pv made me do it T^T anyhow, this is also a direct prequel to the upcoming angst fic in the name of love :))

“Whoa, so that’s Dr. Zayne and his wife...”

Soft whispers rippled through the crowd the moment you and your husband stepped into the pristine ballroom, all eyes subtly drawn to your arrival.

Tonight, you were accompanying Zayne to Akso Hospital’s anniversary dinner party. His sharp gaze and immaculate three-piece suit made a striking impression. Naturally, you matched his sophistication in every way—your flowing black dress accentuated your figure, while your hair styled into an elegant updo.

A sight for sore eyes, that was what the two of you were.

“Mind your step,” he murmured softly, his voice reassuring as the two of you gracefully ascended the stairs. His left arm wrapped around your shoulder, and you couldn’t help but notice the envious gazes of the ladies fixed on you.

“How does such a perfect couple even exist?”

“She’s so pretty… Of course, Dr. Zayne only wants the best.”

“Oh! And I’ve heard they already have a daughter too!”

A smile curled on your lips, a subtle boost of confidence washing over you as their murmurs reached your ears. You felt giddy too—on most days, you were a hunter in a life-and-death situations, rough and rugged. But tonight, draped in elegance and arm-in-arm with Zayne, you felt like a princess.

“Don’t smile that wide...” he suddenly whispered to your ears, a twinkle in his hazel eyes. “You’ll look like Meirin when she’s munching on her cookies.”

You shot him a frown. “Wha?”

“All those praises are going straight to your head.” Even in a prestigious event like this, Zayne couldn’t resist teasing you. “Sooner or later, it’ll get too big for me to handle.”

Fixing him with an unimpressed glare, you deadpanned, “Shush, you!”

When you reached the main hall, the buzz of conversation and clinking glasses filled the air, blending with the elegant music playing in the background. The hospital director, an elderly man with a warm smile, greeted you both along with his wife.

"Zayne, thank you for coming," he said, shaking your husband's hand and giving him a light pat on the shoulder. His gaze then turned to you. "Ah, this must be the stellar hunter wife of Dr. Zayne. You look absolutely radiant, madam."

"Ah, please don't call me that..." You mustered your most polished facade, supplying a soft, graceful laugh.

The director's wife grinned and added, "Why didn’t you bring your daughter here? Everyone’s looking forward to finally meet her already."

"She's a handful," Zayne immediately replied with a smile, his tone warm and affectionate. "And she gets fussy when her bedtime nears, so we decided to leave her with my in-laws tonight."

The director let out a hearty guffaw. "No matter how fussy she is, she must be really adorable with a mother this beautiful, eh?"

Throughout the night, it was a compliment you frequently heard. While you were flattered, a thought lingered in the back of your mind—what were your husband's true thoughts about all this attention to you?

Zayne was keenly aware of how captivating you were.

There was a surge of pride whenever he had you on his arm. Just like any man out there, he too wanted to show his hot wife off and flaunt her so everyone could see, as if saying: This is my woman.

But he too knew that it was in a human's nature to covet what they didn't have. And it was rightly proven when he stepped away for just a moment, only to return and find you engaged in conversation with a man.

The hospital director's son, no less.

"Miss, I've heard you're part of the Hunter Association?" he asked you inquisitively. "What a noble profession it is! Keeping all of us here safe on daily basis."

You responded demurely, "And those in Akso do the same, don’t they?"

Your conversation was harmless, and Zayne was a rational man, so he didn’t feel the need to intervene. He just made sure his gaze was on you every so often.

But when the director’s son began persistently offering you drinks, filling your glass time after time, Zayne's patience began to wear thin. The sight of the man’s insistence grated on him, stirring a possessive unease he couldn’t entirely ignore.

. . .

You could’ve sworn your vision swam a little after the third glass of alcohol. The warm buzz coursing through you also made everything seem a little brighter, and left you feeling just slightly off-balance.

"Miss, the white wine here is the best—" the man standing before you declared with a convincing grin, swirling the bottle in front of you. "Don't you want to try some?"

"Ah, no, sir..." you replied with a polite laugh, raising a hand in subtle refusal. "I've already had whiskey and gin just now—"

"Just a little! You really have to try it!"

You hesitated, heat creeping up your neck as the alcohol already coursing through your system made your cheeks flush. You didn’t even like alcohol much and only drank socially, but this was the very son of your husband's boss. Refusing outright seemed rude—

“Can you kindly not make her drink too much?”

Or so you thought, until your knight in three-piece suit suddenly stepped in and saved you from your plight.

Zayne’s tone was gentle yet firm, his words striking an authoritative balance. He flashed a placating smile. “My wife doesn’t have a very high tolerance.” Swiftly, he grabbed the glass from your hand and, without missing a beat, downed its contents in one go.

“If you’re looking for a drinking partner, let it be me instead.”

You knew better than anyone that your husband didn’t have a particularly high tolerance for alcohol either. Yet, for the next 30 minutes, you watched, equal parts impressed and concerned, as he matched the man drink for drink, deflecting further offers directed your way with a subtle, protective grace. Though Zayne’s words remained measured, you could see the flush creeping up his neck.

And soon, you’d witness just how far his limits had been pushed.

“Zayne! Are you alright?”

Worry laced your voice as you placed both hands on Zayne's cheeks, your brow furrowing in concern. Somehow or another you managed to drag your husband away and led him to the hotel room.

The warmth of his skin was unmistakable, and his face contorted in discomfort as the vertigo hit him full force. “Oh no, what have you done? Why did you even drink that much!?”

“I’m fine,” Zayne grumbled, his voice thick.

“You’re drunk!” You couldn't help but scold him as you started pulling off his coat and unbuttoning his shirt, trying to help him breathe easier. “You can’t even handle alcohol properly, and yet you’re trying to keep up with him...”

To Zayne, your voice somehow felt comforting. His mind was hazed, but your touch—your hand against his neck—felt like a cool splash of clarity.

His pretty wife... The dizziness was making it hard to stay upright, but the sight of you grounded him, and he instinctively leaned into you—

“Zayne—!”

You barely managed to catch his weight, instinctively wrapping your arms around him. He was so warm against you, his breath uneven, not to mention the slight tremor in his body. "Are you alright?!" you asked in a flurry. "Oh, let me get you some water—"

"You talk too much..." Zayne murmured, his words slurred as everything around him swayed.

Gripping your shoulder to steady himself, his unfocused gaze lingered on you, drawn to the curve of your lips, the delicate line of your neck, and the outline of your cleavage.

How can he have a wife this ravishing and do nothing?

And suddenly, he was sober. Very sober.

Or maybe not. It was simply just him finally giving in to his desires.

In one go, he seized your wrist, yanking you against him with sudden force— and with a quick tilt of your startled, precious face, he devoured your lips in heat.

"—!" It was like a spark igniting, burning through every thought. His mouth was urgent, demanding, as if he couldn’t wait another second to feel the rush of your closeness. His kiss was intoxicating—almost overwhelming—as he tangled his fingers in your hair, tilting your head to gain better access.

Zayne's hands moved to your back, pulling you into him, so close that the heat of his body pressed against yours. Then those sinful hands wandered to your hips, guiding you toward the desk. With reckless urgency, he swept everything off the surface, sending objects crashing to the floor with a sharp clang and made you sit on it.

"Ah, Zayne, you—!" You accidentally pushed him back, and he growled the moment your lips parted.

"Are you trying... to escape?" His gaze turned dark with lust, a dangerous glint flashing in his eyes. "Why? Isn't this exactly how you wanted me to be...?"

In that moment, you gulped as your heart thundered in your chest. What was even happening now? How did it escalate into this?

You stuttered, eyes widened, "Z-Zayne..."

But your husband had shed all traces of his usual composed self. In the haze of his muddled thoughts, he was driven purely by need. He swiftly removed his glasses, tossing them aside without a second thought, and this time—

His lips went straight for your neck, which, unbeknownst to you, had looked so enticing to him all evening.

"Hahh..." His breathy grunts were hot against your skin and his touch no longer gentle but firm and possessive. His mouth moved with a mix of hunger and desperation, and you struggled to contain the moans as his hands slipped inside your dress, and—

A shiver ran down your spine when he spread your legs, and you couldn’t help the titillating gasp that escaped when inserted his two of his fingers in you all at once, edging you.

"Ungh, ngh! Hah—" Your body jerked and you clung to him, your arms instinctively wrapping around his neck. Zayne wasn't usually this brash, but tonight it was as if a screw had come loose.

"Louder," he commanded in your ear, and your heart pounded at his authoritative voice. He pushed his digits deeper as if punishing you, that you yelped. "Do not hold back."

He lifted you by your waist, effortlessly pressing you against the small table by the window. You were on the 20th floor, the world below far out of sight, but the thought that anyone might catch a glimpse was somehow... thrilling.

"I-I'm close—" you stammered, and the moment you did, your husband vigorously moved his fingers inside your squelching folds, "A-ah!"

The room felt smaller, the air thicker. The way your walls took his fingers alone made your thoughts scatter, and when you came undone on him, you latched onto him, your head resting against his chest as your breaths came in shaky, uneven gasps. "Z-Zayne... please..."

He pulled out his fingers, looked at your cum coating them, and brought them to your lips. You, still trembling, sucked the essence off with teary eyes.

Sweaty, disheveled, lips swollen and cheeks flushed... how he had reduced you into this state was gratifying.

Zayne’s gaze darkened, his breath heavy as he stared down at you. "Are you ready to take me now?"

You nodded.

He gave you a small smirk, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw gently. "Good girl."

He lifted you over to the bed, and you gasped in surprise as he tossed you onto the soft sheets, the motion quick but not unkind. You barely had time to react before his intense gaze locked onto yours, his presence domineering above you.

“Spread your legs.”

Was this man really your husband? Sometimes, you still struggled to reconcile the tender part of him and the man consumed by a unrestrained intensity before you now.

By now you had swallowed all shame and did so. You wanted to look away, but then unable to when the sight before you caught your breath—

All the while, he had his eyes on you. Zayne pulled at his tie with deliberate intent, then he shed his suit pieces, casting them to the floor with a casual abandon, before undoing the remaining buttons of his shirt, revealing his bare chest altogether.

Your husband looks so hot. The way he gazed at you throughout it all too...

He glanced at the space between your legs. “Wider.”

You complied, letting your face burn impossibly hotter, anticipating him.

He eased in slowly, starting with just the tip. You whimpered at the intrusion.

"Hurts?" he questioned with a frown.

"No," you refuted quickly, desire too burning in your gaze as you met his eyes. "I can take more."

You arched your back as Zayne sank deeper, his full length filling you. A moan tumbled from your lips as your walls clenched in response, and he pushed himself completely inside you.

"Hah..." You inhaled sharply, giving yourself a moment to adjust to his entire length, and seeing you like that, your husband cradled the side of your face with his palm.

"So beautiful..." Zayne whispered, his glazed gray-hazel eyes fixed on your spent face. His other hand clasped yours, pinning it beside your head. "My wife... is so incredibly beautiful."

It was heart-fluttering to know that your husband found you pretty. Everyone might compliment you the same way, but his were the only one that truly mattered. After seven years of marriage, your heart still skipped a beat every time he held your gaze like this.

Without warning, Zayne started to move his hips. Your moans got louder and unabashed as his movements were slow at first, before he picked up the pace and thrusted in and out of you with fervor.

"Ahhh!" You threw your head back as his thick cock messily dragged itself against your walls. In, out, in out— Stars began to blur your vision, your nails digging into his shoulder as you reached for him.

You could see that excited glint in his eyes, the lust exploding at the sight of you. He watched you intently, savoring the way unbound desire twisted your face, each mewl you made filling the air. Your thoughts turned into puzzle pieces—

Thrust. So full, you are.

Thrust. What if... this time— you become pregnant again?

Thrust. That would be... nice. You can call it “New Years’ baby.”

Everything was incoherent. Teetering on the edge of consciousness, each hit to that one spot sent waves of pleasure crashing through you, pushing you to the brink of tears and screams.

Then, unexpectedly, he reached his climax first. His cum shot through, filling your womb to the brim in spurts after spurts, and you cried, trembling beneath him. Your release followed suit though, and you went limp in the aftermath.

Zayne collapsed on top of you and you wrapped your arms around him, burying your head in the crook of his neck, his name still falling off your lips as a whisper in his ear, a gentle song laced within moans. He kissed your neck, your shoulder, panting heavily against you.

“I love you.”

The world outside seemed to fade, leaving only the two of you in a tangled web of desire.

The first thing he heard was your whimper.

With a groan, Zayne cracked his eyes open the morning after, instantly recognizing the dull ache in his head—it was a hangover. But before he could press his hands to his temples, his gaze fell on you, curled up in a blanket next to him.

And the whimper came again, and it tugged at something deep inside him.

“What’s... wrong?” he asked in a groggy voice, turning toward you, his hand instinctively reaching for you despite the pounding headache. “Are you alright...?”

You blinked up at him, a flicker of resentment in your gaze, and Zayne gathered you into his arms. The events of last night came back to him in fragments, and realization dawned on him.

“Are you... sore?” he murmured, concern edging his tone.

“I hate you,” you retorted in a scratchy voice, mushing your head in his shoulder. Zayne widened in slight surprise, pulling you closer into his embrace.

“Is that it...? I’m sorry...”

He gently patted your head and back, trying to soothe you. The sight of you—vulnerable and distressed—made his heart tighten with a pang of guilt. Just how rough had he been with you last night?

“There, there, it’ll pass...” he said quietly, brushing a stray strand of hair from your face. “It’s normal... because we went longer and more vigorous than usual... Probably just mild irritation in your—”

“Don’t pull medical facts on me,” you muttered sullenly, weakly punching his chest. A smile made its way to his face at your mini attack.

“But it’s true though?”

How endearing. He couldn’t help but feel a warmth in his chest, his heart softening at the sight of you, even in your grumpy state.

And in that moment, Zayne thought, nothing could've possibly ever shatter his world ever again.

[animadartista]

Timbriche

Growing up as a child of a mom who grew up in the 80's I probably should be as sick of them as I am of JLO but as soon as I hear any of the opening notes on their songs i switch into blorbo mode.