you lack conviction

Melted beskar was the lifeblood of the covert in the eyes of all those who came before and all who would find themselves behind the visor of a helmet. Though rare and scattered across the galaxy after the siege of Mandalore, the steel remained marked with the screams of people you never knew, but could hear nonetheless. They called each piece blood money—claimed it to be cursed like the ruins of the planet its own people couldn’t return to.

But it poured the same into molds carved near a century ago. It bent the same beneath the swing of a hammer and the flame of the press meant to mold it into shape.

You could taste the sparks at the back of your tongue when she brought her tool down with one final swing, the sound resounding off the walls with a harsh clang. Your ears used to ring with the noise as a teenager. Back when you first came stumbling off the ship that rescued you from Concordia after an attack from the Empire.

It would keep you up at night. Pinging with a vibration that sat low in your stomach. Each loud hit a new wound as she molded you new pieces to fit your growing form, the old pauldrons and chest plate destroyed in battle.

The helmet sat in your lap most nights. Staring back at a face you could no longer recognize after years of forgoing ever glancing in the mirror and ignoring you had a face altogether. Perhaps if no one could see your eyes they wouldn’t notice the tears that burned hot down your cheeks at night. They’d forget you existed behind the wall of beskar and the barrel of your blaster.

The screams of your mother to run as she held your father’s corpse in her arms became a ghost you couldn’t exorcise—their spirits were tattooed onto the very skin they never got a chance to see one final time.

You think your mother had brown eyes. Or blue. Or…something.

All you could recall was the black T of her visor staring at you, shouting in a language that was rooted down to your very being. Your father’s eyes were already rolled to the back of his head before you could discern their color to have for when you simply wanted to remember.

The picture you formed halfway of what they must have looked like blended together until you could no longer tell which of your features came from your mother or which were given by father. Perhaps they wanted it this way. For you to forget what they looked like and only remember the splash of blue across your mother’s helmet and the scratch on your fathers that resembled a scar he must have harbored on his skin.

“What’s the most important part of the covert?” Her voice was clear as a drum through her modulator, helmet fixed on yours while you fidgeted with a new pauldron for a child.

“The foundlings,” you uttered quickly.

“And why do we protect the foundlings?”

“Because they are the future of the covert.”

Another swing forced a jolt right down to your bones, the power of it reverberating beneath your dark beskar. Gold littered your armor and traced along your visor, scattering along your chest plate and pauldrons. The color black was certainly different for a Mandalorian to wear, but you felt you had earned the dark hue after witnessing far too much death. Friends fallen, family slaughtered, an entire clan turned to ash because the Empire willed it so. Jaig eyes once marked in gold and now smeared in a mess of red you hastily painted on one night through tears became a reminder for those who watched you pass in the tunnels.

Their whispers followed like a permanent half written story you never bothered to help finish. They knew you came from Concordia, that your parents were Mandalorian, and that your line traced back to the the planet Mandalore at some point in the past. But that didn’t stop them from talking—making assumptions that you were hand picked because of your bloodline.

Not because you witnessed more death in the tribe than most had in their entire lives.

“You seem distracted today prudii (shadow).”

Her words cut through you, forcing your attention back to what she was doing. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Your dreams of their end still haunt you then?” Your head snapped up, mouth opening and closing beneath your helmet, but she’d already snagged the thread of your irritation and began to unravel it at an alarming rate. “The sacrifice of your parents is an honorable one. As their child, protecting you was an act for the future of their clan.”

“I hear them sometimes,” you whispered, setting the pauldron down and watching the firelight play off the silver. “They tell me what to do, let me know if what I’m becoming is a mistake.”

“To be chosen as leader is a path every Mandalorian would wish for their legacy. You wear their honor-” She gestured to your helmet, the crimson jaig burning a hole in your skull each time you set the beskar into place. A ceremonial crown you hoped one day they wouldn’t bestow on you. “Bearing it with shame only turns their final act into failure.”

Betrayal in the Mandalorian culture didn’t fade like others, leaving behind a wound that might heal one day even if the blow inflicted was ugly and torn. To betray a Mandalorian brother or sister was to sever the ties with one another entirely. To betray a family member—living or dead—would taint their honor and bring ruin to its once honorable status.

No matter how much you willed the future they chose for you to be handed off to someone else, buried and forgotten in a grave you would dig yourself. This was one choice you couldn’t make for yourself.

Ruining their honor.

Decimating a legacy that spanned for generations beyond them and you.

You’d rather face death—the full might of the Empire—than rip the remains of their spirit out of your body. You were their child, the future of the clan they would no longer get to uphold. It was your honor, your duty, to carry out their wishes until your dying breath passed it on to the next foundling in line.

“I understand,” you got out between clenched teeth and a throat constricted with the burn of guilt. “It’s an honor to carry them.”

The Amorer didn’t believe you. The lie that slid off your tongue was translucent and shallower than the waters that flowed in the underground of the planet. But her question that would normally come in the tip of her helmet was overshadowed by the sound of boots thudding down the steps, the soft clang of metal against metal echoing in the darkened space only lit by the forges fire.

Rusted red armor and a blue pauldron lit by the orange glow rounded the corner as the familiar echo of his modulated voice greeting the Armorer filled your ears. Din Djarin. A fellow warrior that you met in the first week of finding your place in Nevarro. He’d come from the same moon as you, though trained in a different section with foundlings that were rescued on planets attacked and burnt to the ground.

Considering the brutality he’d faced as a child you didn’t expect to find yourself latching onto someone like him. Although you supposed that was the irony of why you stood closer to him in training than others, why you sat side by side around firelight as the elders spoke of a time when Mandalorians didn’t have to hide. Why you once snuck out to meet him years back in the middle of the night to practice with a blaster he stole from someone’s bunk; a choice that would later come with consequences he refused to let you be apart of.

You both emerged from the embers of a stolen life and chose survival at the end of that suffering.

“My pauldron,” he said, allowing the Armorer to inspect what damage had come to the metal. “I tried to fix it myself but-” He winced when she yanked it clean off, gesturing to the bench one usually took in the building process. “It’s been awhile since I’ve worked with it.”

“A Mandalorian must always know how to fix ones armor,” she snipped never bothering to glance over her shoulder. You could taste his shame in the air as he ducked his head, fingers curling into fists on his thighs.

“Always trying to be the best,” you muttered soft enough to blend into the hiss of hot metal touching wires.

His head reared back, visor fixed on the sight of you welding together the inside of a foundlings chest plate. “Like you wouldn’t do the same?”

You scoffed into your work, ignoring the burn of his gaze through his black visor that you could feel through the metal clasped along your body. “What’s there to prove with me? When my future is marked out.”

The clang of metal hit the table before he could reply, his blue pauldron flickering on the inside. “Prudii (shadow) you will finish this piece. I will take the chest plate to the foundling. He will no doubt be pleased with your work.”

“Of course.”

Din’s back stiffened, fingers splayed wide and elbows locked at his sides as you stepped in close. He could feel the nerves along his spine jolt, want a sweet taste on the tip of his tongue. The pauldron was heavy in your hands but set in nicely with a familiar click, the magnetized wiring on the inside fitting back into their proper space. You’d learned the inner workings of the armor well enough to know that this would last him for years to come—quite possibly his entire life if he stayed out of trouble.

Highly unlikely in his case.

“You don’t want this,” he finally said as the fire spit viscously into the air, as if handing over your answer for you.

“And you know what I want.”

His head tipped back to find your visor. You stood over him, a shadow of night bathed in the orange glow of a flame that knew you far more intimately than he did. And still he saw you. Past the black armor, beneath the markings of a warrior, until he peered into the eyes of the person that somehow still lingered in between the destruction.

“Your future,” he hesitated, a hand shifting until the back of his glove pressed to the plate on your thigh. “It isn’t carved into beskar.”

“To them it is.”

“What about to you?”

The question occurred to you more times than you cared to admit. Especially to yourself. For as long as you’d been alive your future existed in a line, always straight and headed directly to a point marked and forged by the people who brought you to existence. It never curved, never arced sharply to the right or left. You were destined to be clan leader even if they had to drag you down bloody and fighting to take what they deemed your rightful place.

More often than not you found yourself considering a hasty plan to escape off world in the middle of the night. A chance to run from what you feared the most—a life that existed beyond any choice of your own.

“To me…” You faltered when his hand curled around your wrist that hung loose at your side, tongue twisting and chest a rapid thud at the sight of his large palm clasped around yours. The fine line was drawn in the sand the day you met him—you stay just out of reach of being friends, nothing more, nothing less—and now it blurred with the shift of his body angling closer than before. “I don’t exist,” you finally admitted in between heavy breaths and a heart that sounded different in this shade of darkness.

“I can see you just fine from here.”

Your lips curled, tongue sweeping along your bottom lip. If only he could see you beneath the beskar—oh how he longed to. “I mean, I’m not my own person like you or the others. I’m made up of my parents and their parents and their parents before them. I’m…vheh (dust).”

“Dust,” he muttered. “I don’t…”

“Don’t you remember the theory of stardust told to us on Concordia?” For a brief moment you allowed your palm to linger on his shoulder, thumb dragging along the pauldron and Din felt as if you were touching his bare skin. “Everyone is made up of what first created the galaxy: the dust of stars. The start of everything.”

He chuckled dry and low enough to simmer a flame in your stomach. “A myth if you ask me.”

“I used to think so too. But…I’m the dust of my family’s legacy. Their clan. Many leaders came before me and as expected many will follow, but to uphold that future I must sacrifice my own. For the good of the covert.”

A scoff ruptured through the modulator, startling you. “You sound like the elders. Did they tell you to say that?”

“It’s true!”

“It’s bantha shit-” The sharp thwack of your hand striking his side echoed off the walls, punctuated by his muffled groan as he doubled over in pain.

“Do you think I’m blindly following their advice? I know my choice Djarin.”

“Your choice is because of what your parents wanted.” Standing up he felt part of his shoulder pop beneath the weight of beskar set back in its original spot. He ignored the splint of pain to catch how you deliberately shifted back.

The possibility of more lingered between the two of you longer than either of you cared to admit. He could taste it some days. Like sugar stuck behind his teeth that he continued to pick at—the constant question of maybe became the wall erected in the space where your touch remained. Never able to press through the steel but still warm enough to burn.

“But you understand that,” you reminded him, your mouth tugging down. “The need to keep a part of them alive.”

He did.

Probably more than most.

The foundlings that were rescued came to Concordia as children younger than him—many small and malnourished from years on their own. Which meant the memories of their parents had time to fade, to become distant images that blurred in the back of their minds. They were given the opportunity of a fresh start. The title of Mandalorian never hindering where they came from or who they might have become. But his parents were burned into the front of his mind day and night. He could no sooner forget them than he could you.

Handing over pieces of yourself that might have survived beneath the rubble of a former life, in order to save something so insignificant to others yet everything to the Mandalorians, made sense to him. If he was in your position he would act no different. He’d wade through blood and bone and the death of his future to keep hold of what little memory still remained of his parents. You were merely doing what had always been expected of you.

“I should get back to work,” you got out, chest tight and lungs aching with the burn of shame.

“Okay.”

“Make sure not to damage that again. Or she’ll have your head—helmet included.”

“We wouldn’t want that to happen,” he dryly said though you could hear the smile in his words. “Ret’ (goodbye) Ca’tra.”

He turned, cape brushing the table as he re-attached the rifle along his back and left up the steps. You watched his form vanish into the shadows but still refused to move even when he was long gone. There were nights you wished you were a foundling unearthed from a life that held no return. Days you wanted to be just like him. Free.

The hope that he might turn back around with a plan for escape burned eternal in the base of your chest. To even think of it felt like a form of madness in its own way, but you had little to grasp onto. If anyone were able to drag you from the grave carved in the names of your parents, you hoped it would have been him. Perhaps that’s why you found Din Djarin. A person to keep you stable.

An ally to depend on. A friend to place your trust in.

The welcome sound of metal clashing and the pained groan of a fist colliding with its intended mark filled the tunnels of Nevarro’s underground. You likened them to the songs of old; to the memories of Concordia as a child. Sparring happened before dinner, when the energy had yet to dwindle and spirits were high. You grew to look forward to that time—when the clan found peace in those few hours and allowed themselves the chance to settle.

Warriors, ones your age and younger, took the center space as the others buried themselves with tasks at hand and matters of business your generation wasn’t privy to. Every now and then they spared a glance and on the rare occasion, traded credits in favor of who might come out victorious.

“Kaysh shu’shuk. (He’s a disaster),” Paz grumbled beside you, glaring at the helpless grip the youngest Mandalorian had on an older boy nearly twice his size.

“He’s trying,” you retorted.

“They’re gonna eat him alive.”

“Vizsla,” you growled under your breath, clamping teeth into your lip to stifle a laugh.

“We trained you better than that!” he barked.

The youngling tripped over himself, slipping out of their grasp. This was the nature of finding one’s footing in the covert. An opportunity to grow into the warrior’s shadow cast upon everyone at a young age. Harsh as it may be there was little you could do as Paz clipped their helmet with the base of his palm, maneuvering their legs back into a stance that wouldn’t knock them down.

The duty of the older Mandalorians was to train the young. Everyone was required to spend time dedicating their skills. And you were no exception.

As leader the Alor was the example from which others followed. They upheld the way of all Mandalorians and so you did as you were told—following traditions that had been passed down longer than Mandalore had existed. The young learned what you were taught as a child on Concordia. Lessons handed down from your ancestors. Not simply the ways of battle—though certainly important—but the politics of why Mandalore fell. Why it existed in the first place.

You spoke the history of a people they would never get to know in the hopes that they might do better. That if the culture of Mandalorians were tested once again at the hands of fury, they wouldn’t allow ego and old grievances to dictate centuries of legend.

“Keep your hands up,” you ordered. “Don’t let them catch you off guard. You are as much a weapon as the tools you use. To keep your faith in whether your blaster will work each time you pull the trigger is a fools way of fighting.”

Your father’s words slid easily off your tongue. His voice a baritone echo in the back of your mind, filled with the grit of battle and the knowledge of what his enemies blood tasted like on his tongue. It made your lips curl to hear your voice recount them—your stomach bubbling with acid at the knowledge that you became the child he might honor with pride.

The boy nodded, arms rising to block a jab. You could feel the burn of one too many eyes on your back, regarding you as the leader you weren’t. Years from now you’d stand before them and take the oath. You would recite the vows and promise them a life that was never yours. The signet of a Raqour’daan—a dark wolf—worn by your parents and theirs before them would finally be set into your armor. Solidifying you as their perfect warrior.

Honor. Legacy. The words lost all meaning in the face of something you didn’t fight to keep. When the Empire set ruin on the lands of Mandalore you understood that the future they planned for you—the fate tied in red knots around your wrists—would be the only outcome of your life. If they weren’t alive to train the next generation then you’d set your boots into their footprints and hope to fill it the same way.

Burden.

You loathed the word.

Mandalorians stood for digging their blades into the stones of the past and using them as a foothold to craft the future. But no matter how many different ways you looked at the sum total of your life and the results that now lay in tatters at your feet—honor and legacy had nothing to do with you becoming leader. You didn’t earn the title. You weren’t deserving of its prestige.

They built your burden from their own wishes cracked off from pieces of your shattered bones that were set in place to resemble a child. You didn’t exist.

What dreams you tucked in the back of your mind and hopes that echoed with the striking burn of desire vanished in the face of their expectations.

Maybe Din was right. Maybe you were just spouting the nonsense the elders ingrained in your mind the day you first arrived here.

“How about you get in the ring?” A voice not yet matured with the years he pretended to carry sounded behind you. The ego dripped off his tongue and you didn’t need to turn around to know who bothered to goad you on.

Orron Dene. He was a year older than you, stood half a foot taller, and wore his new clan marking like a crown the covert never awarded him. Although his helmet was certainly big enough for his head, you didn’t see it surviving beneath the weight of his ego for much longer. He singled you out your first week there, intent on digging just far enough to find your breaking point. A nuisance in blue and silver armor.

“I’m helping today Orron. Maybe you should give it a try.”

He scoffed and you caught sight of Paz’s large form taking the space at your right—a weapon in case you needed him. Though you never did. But something else tugged sharp at the back of your mind, heat spreading along your neck as another set of eyes drilled holes into your armor. You didn’t need to find his helmet to know he stood in the shadows away from the rest.

A guard dog primed and begging to sink his teeth into the flesh of your opponent.

He’d taste the blood so you didn’t have to. Even if he knew you enjoyed the flavor just the same.

“Then show them how its done. I challenge you to fight.” You nearly laughed at the ridiculous spectacle he made of detaching his cowl and dropping it at the edge of the hand drawn circle. “C’mon, don’t you wanna prove your worth of being our Alor?”

You stepped into the ring. “I don’t need to prove anything.”

“Really?” The condescending smile dripped into his words. “You’re just that bloodthirsty huh?”

“Keep it civil Dene,” Paz growled.

“Civility is an earned right on Mandalore. Isn’t that right?” His head tipped, fists rising and you watched his feet slide into the traditional stance you taught the younglings on the daily. “Or do you not remember seeing as how you were born on Concordia.”

He swung towards your face and you dipped to the side, grabbing his arm in your grip and twisting it until his shoulder popped. He stumbled nearly hitting the ground with his knee but caught himself before he could land out of bounds. The sparring wasn’t so much about hurting one another rather than knocking the other out far enough to lose. At least those were rules you abided by. Orron didn’t seem to care.

Another swing landed a hit to your side and you felt the pain splinter with malice up your chest. His shrill laugh echoed off the walls, piercing your ears as you ducked another swing. Your knee came up into his thigh, elbow smashing into the space just beneath the pauldron set on his shoulder. It was hard to fight the smile of his pained grunt when he fell to the side.

“That’s all you got?” he huffed, scrambling back to his feet.

“We’re sparring.”

“Are we?” A kick to the side of your thigh and fist to the base of your chin just beneath your helmet left you gasping for air. “I challenged you oh great future clan leader. So give me a challenge.”

You blocked his fist but didn’t anticipate the boot in your hip as pain slid up your torso and the air punched from your chest. The crack of the metal strapped to your knee hitting the ground drew all conversation to a halt. The stillness of the quiet drowning everyone out until all you could hear was the sharp ragged gasp of you fighting for air. An ache bloomed in your body and you knew you’d be sporting sore limbs for days to come.

Orron didn’t stop there.

The punch to the back of your neck sent you forward, hands slapping to the ground to keep you steady as he rammed another swift and heavy kick to your side.

“That’s enough!” Paz snarled. “You’ve made your point Dene.”

“I don’t think I have,” he chuckled dryly. “I wanna see the wolf in her natural state.”

“Fuck you.” The words spit out against your helmet, rage seeping into your already hazy vision.

Orron crouched to your level, gripping the edge of your helmet and dragging you forward. “Are you gonna take me out kyr’am (death)? Thought that’s what your clan was known for. The dark wolves of Mandalore sent out to do the dirty work.”

You pulled back but he kept a hold of your face, the burn of everything you swallowed—the grief you buried—bubbling to the surface and searing heat into your chest. His sneer ripped the fine line of your patience in two. “Or are you just as I thought. I’ll put your out your misery, but be sure to tell your parents I said hi.”

Sucking in a breath you felt the lick of red wash along the edges of your vision, coiling anger at the base of your spine and you swung before you could drag it back in. Your fist collided with the side of his jaw with a sharp crack and he fell back. You heard the cry tear from your throat, felt the spit burn hot at the back of your mouth as you ground out words that were said with the same explicit rage your mother exhibited the day she died.

The day you lost everything.

“Gar kyr'am. Ibac’ner.” (Your death. It’s mine.)

In a reckless move he swung his leg to knock your feet out and you grinned when you smashed your foot into his knee. His sharp wailing moan nearly overlapped the loud snap of his bone shattering. You swung for his face, clipping his jaw, his neck and side. Anywhere you could drive your fist into his body you went for it, colliding metal into flesh until blood began to pour between the crevices of his armor. He blocked your hits the best he could, clawing away from you with wet gasps for air, but you dragged him back with a snarl.

“Laandur (weak, pathetic),” you spit harshly. “Get up and fight.”

“Stop-” Your knee hit his chest sending him sprawling onto his back. “Please-”

You clambered onto his form, rearing your arm back with a growl and a heavy breath, the rage narrowing your desire for his blood that hung in the air. The death of your parents, the loss of a planet, the home you once knew turned to rubble that still smoldered with the stench of dead bodies buried beneath the metal of armor you’d never be able to pry off. It played in your mind as you pummeled him until you could no longer feel your hands, the pain in your knuckles now a numb ache.

“He’s had enough!” Someone yelled as they watched you seek the death you vowed to take from his immobile body. “Get her off him!”

“No!” you roared as two arms banded around your waist and hauled you up and off Orron. “Get off me! Get your hands off me!”

They didn’t bother fighting off your meager attempts to hit them with your elbow as you were all but dragged out of the room and into the empty hallways. The crowd gathering around Orron to make sure he was alive became the last thing you saw before the door slammed shut. Leaving you bathed in the jaundiced yellow glow of Nevarro’s underground.

“Get off me,” you gasped, air difficult to come by as the rage fell back into the shadows of your mind and reality set back in. “Please. Let me go.” The words croaked from your mouth, thick with the rush of tears.

“Ca’tra,” Din murmured, turning you into the wall with an arm still holding you upright. You slumped into the concrete, legs giving out as you struggled to come back from the waves that begged to drag you under.

A minute passed—the hallway filled with the sound of your breath—before you spoke again. Guilt lay heavy on your tongue oddly tasting of Orron’s blood that still coated your knuckles. “Is he dead?”

“No,” Din replied quickly.

You nodded, icy relief flooding your veins. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” You reared back, watching as he pressed his other hand into the wall beside your head and dropped his helmet to yours. “Orron’s an ass. What he said about your parents crossed a line.”

“No I crossed the line. We were supposed to be sparring and I should have ignored him-”

“If you hadn’t done it I would have.”

“Din-”

The hand on your hip killed what protests lay on the tip of your tongue. Always primed for a fight—that was the nature of your being. But around him it retreated to the back of your mind. In his presence you could picture the person you were and not the warrior everyone else wished you to be. He silenced their words with a touch and you wished some part of you was eloquent enough to tell him that, to thank him for giving you a piece back to yourself.

He sighed long and low. “I’m leaving Ca’tra.”

You imagined what it felt like to die many times over. After having witnessed enough of it you were able to gather the basics of what it meant to leave this mortal plane. But never did you think about how it would feel. Standing there you finally understood what it was to die as your heart dropped to your stomach and pain erupted along every nerve and vein. Until you couldn’t even catch what little breath remained in your lungs.

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” you got out, hot tears spilling down your cheeks.

“I joined The Guild that operates above ground. The covert needs the credits and I can’t hide anymore.”

“So you’re just going to go? Were you planning to tell anyone or is that just your way.”

“I’m telling you,” he said.

You scoffed. “Yeah thanks for the consideration. I’ll see you when you get back-”

“Atin verd (stubborn warrior),” he chuckled hand shifting to tip your helmet until you could look nowhere other than his visor. “I want you to come with me.”

You paused, sucking in a breath as his words absorbed into your already tired mind. Leave the covert. Step out beneath the winding corridors of Nevarro’s underground and see sunlight for the first time in who knows how long. You couldn’t remember the color of the sky most days. Instead you began to pretend you still existed on Concordia with its pale blue and bright sun. The last time you breached above ground you were seeking medicine for the younglings when fever spread quick and deadly.

But this was an opportunity to leave the planet altogether. To see the stars once more. You viscerally recalled how their light flickered in the vast expanse of space as you left the surface of Concordia still coated in mud and blood and the ash of battle. Did they shine the same way? Were they as beautiful as you once thought? Or would you see them differently now that you weren’t drowning in death.

“I can’t leave the covert Din they need me here.” Excuses that tasted the same as lies. You knew it, he knew it. But what else was there to say when he offered your dream in the palm of his hand? “The Alor wouldn’t allow it.”

“She thinks it would be good for you to gain experience off world. To train somewhere Mandalorians aren’t.”

The words died on the back of your throat, eyes going wide. “What do you mean she thinks?”

His shoulders moved as he laughed with a rasp that burned a hole in your chest. You swore you could feel your heartbeat at the back of your throat, the speed growing quicker by the second. He had no idea what he did to you. What you spent so long fighting.

“I asked her.”

“When?” you pressed, the accusatory tone enough to send him into another bout of laughter.

“The moment after I was handed my Fob and given the clear. Early this evening.”

“Your pauldron was damaged…”

He nodded. “To join The Guild you have to bring in a bounty. I found one on the next moon over.”

“You went off world.” Din hummed and you suddenly you felt dizzy, your hand clamping onto his arm to keep you upright. “You left Nevarro.”

The days you couldn’t find him suddenly made perfect sense. When Din Djarin had suddenly up and disappeared from the covert altogether. You thought he was sick or dying or possibly avoiding you, but he’d been off world to plan his escape all along. You were right in your assumption.

He’d drag you out of the grave never meant for your body without question. As long as it kept you alive.

“I did.” The press of his thumb along your neck spilled heat into your fluttering stomach, body growing warm at his touch. “Will you come with me?”

“But the clan. They expect their future leader to be here at all times.”

He interrupted you with a huff, helmet knocking into yours gently. “Don’t you want to know what it’s like beyond Nevarro? Or what it’s like to not have to hide all the time?”

“Of course I do. You know I do.” Perhaps that was the most difficult part of it all. He’d been off world before many times and you were trapped by the walls of the underground. Fused to the beskar of everyone’s armor as they plotted where your feet would go next. “I dream of the day the covert won’t have to hide anymore and can just exist. But I have to protect everyone, for the good of the clan.”

His thumb pressed into your throat and he felt the racing of your heart. Satisfaction bled into his chest at the knowledge that you were affected by him, that this thing wasn’t something he made up in his own mind. But rather something tangible that existed between your bodies.

“What about the good of their future leader?” Your teeth clicked as you shut your mouth. “How can you expect to lead these people if you don’t know what’s above ground? You dream of not hiding. Then stop hiding.”

You needed a push. A hand to hold as you dropped into the unknown once more. Din understood your hesitation, why your heart beat the way it did in difficult situations, but he could see your willingness to yield. When it came to your future you remained on the precipice for every chance that arose. He ran his thumb along your neck and felt the shift in your breathing as his heart rammed hard in his chest.

“Come with me Ca’tra. See the galaxy with me,” he murmured.

Your breath hitched and his knees trembled. “Yes,” you whispered, relenting into his hold. Setting your heart in his shaking hands as he vowed to die protecting it. Til you were old and frail and could no longer remember his name.

Until all the stars burned out in the galaxy.

The muscles of your back screamed with each step, the edge of your chest plate digging into your side. Sweat clung to your face, dripping down your chin as you were suffocated by the hot air of the planet Cantonica. What you wouldn’t give for a hot shower and a quiet place to strip yourself of your armor. Din trudged beside you with his weapon at the ready, body stiff and breaths heavy. He was suffering as much as you were in this fucking place—a sauna that threatened to kill the both of you with heat stroke.

“How much further does the map say?” he asked abruptly. His armor was hot to the touch even through his own gloves. He tried to maintain what little peace he had left in his mind, but the thought of being out here longer than necessary began to grate on his nerves.

“One click away.”

He nodded. “Good. Let’s finish this.”

You took the lead, blaster in your hand and feet silently hitting the ground. He admired your ability to remain stoic in moments like this—even as you flinched each time the breeze of hot air pushed along your bodies. The thought of collapsing on the floor of his ship with the sound of you cleaning off in the fresher muddled his brain. What he wouldn’t give to join you, to wipe the sweat off your body, but the line remained dug into the ground deep enough to crack the foundation of your friendship.

Din wouldn’t risk collapsing it over something as trivial as sex.

The first two bounties you and him found were simple. Having fought side by side together for years you moved in sync with ease. The battles were over quicker with you at his side and you settled into his ship without difficulty. But the close quarters are what drove him to the brink—the knowledge that somewhere on the Razor Crest you were without your armor or bare from your helmet in order to eat.

On Nevarro he could ignore the way his heart leapt at the sound of your voice or the sharp tug of need that pulled at his gut when he stood in the same room as you. All things that were easily rectified with him putting distance between your bodies. Except on The Crest you were there all the time. At every corner he turned he found traces of you and it left his heart clawing at the cage in his chest.

“This one is different,” you finally said, drawing him out of his own mind.

“What do you mean?”

“The bounty.” You huffed as you pulled yourself up and over a fallen tree in the middle of the road. He followed silently. “They know how to hide compared to the other two. This one has been on the run before.”

Din grunted, tearing his eyes away from your form when you bent to fix the armor on your leg. “Makes sense. He’s a thief with a history.”

“You’re the one with more knowledge under your belt about thieves. So how would they think?”

“I wasn’t a thief.”

You shrugged. “Then what do you call those missions you went on with that crew? You were bringing credits back each time.”

Long before you were friends, before he found it was harder to remove himself from your life each day he saw you. He didn’t think you noticed him at that point—so buried in your grief stricken mind to even bother with anything other than what the Alor instructed you to do. He’d witnessed the days it took everything in you to even step outside of the Armory. You were a shell of the person who must have existed on Concordia. Silent, a shadow that clung to the walls most days.

No wonder the covert began to call you death.

You carried it with you. The memory of those you knew, the living embodiment of the last remnants of Mandalore. It dug into your shoulders and he watched your spine snap beneath the weight.

Only when you finally spoke your first words to him: your shitty armor will get you killed, did he understand why he found his way to this clan in the first place. You. It would always be you. The shadow, the dark wolf of Mandalore. Din became a warrior in pieces that you put together—shards of the boy who grew to be a man that followed wherever you lead.

He existed for you.

“I did jobs with them, but I wasn’t a part of their…family.”

The tilt of your helmet dug into his chest. You read him with perfect ease and some days he hated it. Found the idea of you peering into his mind far too invasive for him to handle. But more often than not he delighted in how you perused him in any way you could. As if you couldn’t get enough of the man you saw faint traces of beneath the mask.

“They didn’t trust you did they?” He didn’t need to respond for you to see the answer written in the way his shoulders tensed. “I do. I trust you.”

He smiled, warmth blooming along his face. “I trust you too.”

“Besides if you were still tagging along with them I wouldn’t have the pleasure of your company,” you threw over your shoulder tracking the map to a crossroads. Tall thin trees offered no shade but you would take what you could get, leaning against the smooth bark with a sigh.

Din followed suit. “I asked you to come.”

“Would you have gotten this far without me?”

“Yes.”

If you were anyone else and he was simply a man who grew up on his home planet, he wondered if he would have found you. In the grand scheme of the galaxy, out of all the mapped planets and moon and star systems was there a chance he’d come across you? In a different life, with a different creed. Din liked to believe there was no doubt. That if neither of you weren’t Mandalorian he’d recognize your face in any life. He’d know the curve of your smile simply from hearing your voice.

“But I prefer doing this with you,” he admitted softly, seeing how you shifted from one foot to the other. A nervous tick that came when you were battling emotions others might never see.

You toyed with the handle of your blaster. “I suppose I’m pleasing company.”

“You’re more than that.”

“Less annoying than Paz?”

He groaned, helmet knocking against the tree with a thunk. “I prefer you any day over those utreekovs (fools, idiots).”

“Careful. I might hold you to that when you finally get fed up with me.”

Falling silent he turned to watch you through his visor until the echo of insects and hot air brushing along dead bark filled the space. You wanted to laugh off the words, play them with humor to fight the heat that clung to every inch of your body. Any other time you would, but Din fixed you in place. He trapped you where you stood and picked at the scabbed over chasm you pretended didn’t exist in the center of your chest.

“That wouldn’t happen,” he finally murmured, voice a soft rasp through his modulator. “I’d spend every day with you and still look forward to the next.”

Heat spilled into your face, the thud of your heart resembling wings of a bird ready to take flight. “Oh.”

Din picked the right lane off instinct—even if you knew it was most likely a guess—and you fell into step with him as the sun blared in the sky. It was closer to the planet than others in its system. Which caused the burn you felt seep through your layers and warm the black of your armor. Din’s red chest plate kept the temperature regulated but you were burning up even with the cooling system built into your suit.

“There should be a small cantina up this path. The planet is too hot. They would have had to stop somewhere to cool off before sunset.”

He nodded. “You think they’re that naive?”

“I think they’re in the same situation as us. Thirsty and lacking anything to drink.”

“You’re right,” he replied. “We’re too far from Canto Bight to get there without any sort of transportation. They’d be going on foot.”

The small hut built from clay they foraged from the ground stuck out in the distance. Unlike the trees that you could spot from several clicks back this blended into the surroundings with ease. The formation looked like a boulder that had been there since the very beginnings of the planet itself, but the sign clattering in the breeze set it apart from the terrain. You caught etchings in Cantonican that had to be the name of the place. If you had the data pad stored back in Din’s ship you’d be able to translate it with ease.

A Chinar tree wound up to the sky bending low over the front of the cantina providing shade. The pump set to the left of most likely artificial water poured freely into a pit dug in the ground for animals to drink from. You spotted a few before they scurried away at the sound of your boots.

“Keep an eye out for other hunters,” Din said holstering his blaster and walking up the makeshift porch. Nodding you followed close.

The doors swung open with a creak, sand kicking up where your feet hit the floor as Din headed straight for the bar set in the center of the room. Tables were scattered to and fro; chairs held layers of sand on them as if the place had been vacant for awhile. Four occupants in the corner dealing Sabaac cards barely acknowledged your existence with a glance over their shoulders and a sniff of most likely some type of spice sold on the outskirts of Canto Bight.

“What can I get ya Mando?” An Ithorian wiped glasses clouded in dust most likely set in to the glass as Din silently dropped credits on the bar. “Ah…information. You people are usually the strictly business type.”

“We’re looking for someone,” Din said.

“Got a name?”

You dropped the Fob and clicked the holo-image on. “Rix Halcorr.”

“Must have done somethin’ awful to warrant two Mandalorians on his tail.”

“You can say that,” you replied. “What do you have to drink around here?”

Din stiffened, his hand knocking your thigh. Sticking around would give Rix time to get away, or at least offer him a head start that would lead you trailing after him for days to come. But your tongue was sticking to the roof of your mouth and you could feel your throat begin to grate each time you sucked in a breath. It was either steal away to drink something now or suffer the heat stroke later.

“Artificial water ‘s all I can offer ‘round these parts. Alcohol won’t get shipped in for another three weeks.”

You smiled and felt another drop of sweat follow the curve of your cheek. “Perfect.”

Sand burrowed between suit and beskar as you took the chair closest to the shadows. Din ordered nothing, opting to angle his seat to block any prying eyes as you lifted the base of your helmet and downed the water with a soft hum. The hot air on the base of your chin told you it was just as fucking hot inside as it was outside—the water doing very little to kill the heat curling around every limb.

“They’re still here,” you muttered dropping your helmet back into place with a pitched hiss.

Din nodded. “I know.”

“The bartender is helping him. Did you see how he tensed at the sight of Rix’s face?”

“Looks like you should order another cup. We’ll head around the back when you’re done and the sun is ready to set.”

Rising from your chair you nudged him as you passed, lips curling into a grin. “And you said you’d get this far without me.”

Your stomach sloshed as you moved into a more comfortable position with a sigh. Two hours passed before the pale sky began to fade into a dark purplish hue that made the planet famous. If you stepped outside you’d be able to spot the nebula that brightened in the dark—drawing in crowds of people to the casinos of Canto Bight.

Only the rich frequented the city, or people with freshly earned credits to burn. But out here in the desert you were surrounded by sand and stars—the noise of the city an afterthought as quiet overtook everything but the echo of insects and the splash of artificial water.

“You know this isn’t my first hunt,” you mused leaning back against the trunk of the Chinar tree.

Din stood above you, arms crossed and helmet tipped down. One would think he was asleep if they didn’t know any better. You knew he was peering down at you, keeping guard as you took the time to regain your strength. The act became second nature around you—his need to protect. Even if he understood that when it came to a fight you were far more lethal. Hunting was in your ancestry, a descendant of the dark wolves that kept Mandalore safe from enemies that wished to do it harm.

He grunted, a small acknowledgement as the exhaustion began to weigh on him. The sound made you smile as you picked at the dead leaves scattered on the ground.

“There was a boy on Concordia.” He went still, shoulders tensing as you spoke. It was rare you recounted stories of your past—the memories usually clouded by the haze of grief—so he took every moment you offered. “Castin Vancil. A cousin of the Viszlas who was sent there to train. He was…my friend.”

A lick of jealousy burned down his spine and he swallowed it down with a dry mouth. “What was the hunt?”

“We were sent to the other side of the moon as apart of our training. A fake bounty created by the leaders, but it felt real to us. Well real enough that we were shot at multiple times and nearly killed.”

“They took your training seriously. We were just told to pretend in the mountains.”

You shrugged. “Part of it had to do with me. A child of the wolves must learn to the hunt like one. That’s what my father used to say. Castin was dragged along because the Vizslas wouldn’t stand for a member of their clan not having the same capabilities.”

He remained quiet, just another notch on the tree that hoped with baited breath you might continue. Water spilled into the ground as chirps from critters you could barely see bathed and drank what little they could get.

“He kissed me on the last night.”

Din’s stomach churned, breath stilling in his lungs as you spoke with a grin he could blatantly hear. His fingers clenched tight until an ache spread to his knuckles and the leather of his gloves cracked beneath the strain. “Oh.”

“It was nothing special. I don’t even think he liked me but rather the fact that he could say his first kiss was with a future ruler of a clan.”

He wanted to ram his fist into the boy’s face. Even if it was irrational and stupid Din couldn’t help the twist in his gut at the thought of your first kiss going to someone so inconsiderate. If only he’d met you sooner. He sucked in a breath, leveled his racing heart, and asked the question that he already knew the answer to. Deep down in his bones he knew where Castin was, where everyone on Concordia wound up.

“What happened to him?”

Your back went rigid and Din ached to reach out and stuff the words back down his throat. “He was killed on the same day as my parents. At least that’s what I think happened. We were taking the foundlings to a transport before his parents called him in for reinforcements. I didn’t see him again after that.”

Everyone you knew, the people you were closest to now lay in a grave the size of an entire moon. He was sure the destruction the Empire caused still existed on the surface of Concordia, but by that time he was gone to a different planet. You were left behind to deal with it all on your own. He could recognize the grief in your voice, your throat now thick with emotion. It was familiar to those who lost everything in one fell swoop—the residue of who you were bleeding through the person who existed now.

Before he could stutter out frayed condolences the creak of the door swinging open put you on edge. A man stumbled out of the cantina, bottle in hand and mouth sticky with alcohol. He muttered words you couldn’t hear and called a name you didn’t recognize. But the wide brim hat that tipped over his eyes and the leather coat that flapped around his clumsy feet told you enough.

“Rix Halcorr,” you said under your breath.

The man’s head swung up with a grin, liquid dribbling out the corner of his mouth. “In the flesh.”

“Watch out for him. Plays it off like he’s some broken tortured soul but he’ll rip you to shreds if given the chance.”

The words tasted rotten along the back of your throat, but you the truth seeped through as Rix staggered down the steps. Far too balanced for a man who supposedly drank half the cantina that housed no alcohol. You could see his fingers slide to the side, no doubt anticipating how Din’s hand twitched. This was a man who found joy in the act of violence—a thief with the spirit of a hellion at war.

“To what do I owe the-” he burps in a long breath, coupled with the gurgle of something dragging up the back of his throat. “-pleasure. Two Mandalorians? The Guild is just desperate ain’t they?”

“You have a reputation,” you throw out, getting to your feet as Din stood, body stiff and ready to fight. “Word travels fast around the galaxy.”

“Fast huh?” Yellow teeth and beady violet eyes. You’ve never seen anyone quite like him, but you had half a mind to bet beneath that hat there was a collection of horns that stuck up at odd angles. “D’ya like it fast?”

Din growled a response you could barely hear over the sound of his feet thundering forward, but you know it’s not good. Your hand rammed into his chest before he passed you entirely, mind reeling. Rix Halcorr, notorious escapee from prisons even you haven’t heard of, wouldn’t just walk out of a cantina drunk and on his own. That wasn’t the way for someone of his caliber.

“Plays it off,” you muttered, hand reaching for the blaster at your side before Rix’s smile can curl deep enough to morph into a sneer.

“Shame. Yer smarter than most,” Rix croons.

A blaster went off in the distance with a sharp whistle you heard coming before it could hit its mark. Ramming into Din’s side you knocked him out of the way with a gasp as the bolt embedded itself into the part of you not covered in armor. Your hip. The shot burned as it tore through flesh and you hit the ground with a guttural shout, the breath in your chest punched clean out of you.

“Shit,” Din bit out, whipping around to shoot at the sniper in the distance as Rix took off with a rasped laugh.

Rage burned almost as bright as your wound and you let it fuel what parts of you aren’t injured. Pointing your weapon you suck in a hot breath, aim at Rix’s retreating form, and pull the trigger as Din busied himself with the two men at the back of the cantina. Rix dropped with a scream, clutching his thigh. But you didn’t have time to gloat and Din let you know it. The burn in your hip went ignored as you got to your feet with a sharp groan, aiming your blaster at the bartender who held an old fashioned blaster between two large hands.

“He’s wanted by The Guild.” Din let his own blaster drop an inch, but yours remained with a finger on the trigger.

“Rix is a friend.”

You’d heard those words before. People attempting to find reason for the wrongdoings of others, who fought tooth and nail for people who wouldn’t do the same for them. Kindness bled through the man’s eyes. You wondered if Rix tore out his heart would his eyes shine the same?

If the roles were reversed would Din protect you with as much ferocity as this man? Would you protect him?

The acrid burn of smoke from the bartender’s pipe filtered through your helmet and you swallowed the ball in your throat. It hit your stomach with a twist that you wished more than anything you could ignore. Pain flared to life along your thigh. Soon your leg would collapse and dragging Rix back to The Crest wouldn’t be your only problem. Surviving the heat wave of tomorrow was one thing, doing it injured and on a limb that might not make it was something else.

“Your friend killed people.” The truth cut a hole in his chest—you watched the light dim and set your jaw with a harsh breath. “He blew a hole in a building housing fighters from the Rebellion. They were meant to be honored by The Republic.”

“No he wouldn’t do that-” Din stepped forward and reached a hand out in silence; a gesture of kindness that felt foreign to you and the streak of cruelty that curled tight around your spine. “We fought together against the Empire.”

“The Republic is the one who called in the bounty,” Din explained, taking the blaster from the man’s hand and you felt the compassion in his movements even if they remained stiff.

The man’s silence isn’t what made you drop your weapon, allowing him a moment to grieve. It was Din’s hand on his shoulder. Steady and enduring and burning with the fires of Mandalorian’s songs. A warrior second and a protector first. He didn’t say anything—there was nothing to be offered—but Din enveloped the man in a stillness that could only be shared by those who understood the word betrayal. You nodded his way and he watched you through the visor when you reached for the binders on your waist, limping over to Rix and his crumpled form.

He kicked at your leg with a hiss, the burn clawing up into your chest until you had no choice but to dry heave into your helmet as you slammed a fist into his the side of his face.

A shuffle of boots on sand dragged your attention up to Din’s form approaching, the bartender nowhere in sight, and you smiled. Heat washed down your spine, the burn of open flesh partially cauterized drowning you in the hum of insects that floated nearby. You swallowed around a dry mouth, throat raw and pinched each time you sucked in hot air through the filter of your helmet.

“Guess we can go home now,” you said between shuddered breaths that sent an ache through your lungs.

“I’ll find us transport.”

“I can help.”

Pushing up on your only good leg the pain rammed into you, a cold sweat breaking out and soaking through your clothing. You muttered a curse, unable to fight the wave of bile rushing up the back of your throat. Black spots clouded your vision and Din’s voice calling your name in a tone cracked with worry became the last thing you latched onto as you careened towards the ground. Hands flying out to brace for an impact you wouldn’t feel.

The wound on your leg pulsed, skin burning against the desert air. Din’s knees hit the ground beside your head, fingers tearing at the fabric by your hip. You heard the drag of leather along beskar steel and felt the press of his touch along your thigh as he pulled you into a place where he could see better. Stupidly you grinned behind the cover of your helmet. A delirious fucking smile that curled deep into your cheeks and gave way to the emotions that fluttered against your heart.

“Yes,” you mumbled, fingers digging into his cape. “I think we would.”

Panic edged along his voice as he dug through the small pouch on his hip for the bacta tin. Questions flew from his mouth: can you feel this? where does it hurt? are you okay?. But the heat was pulling you under, cocooning you in the safety of his touch and the low rasp of his voice pushing through the modulator. Your eyes slipped shut, hand loosening its grip with a sigh. Din’s voice a distant hum you felt in the base of your chest.

The frigid air tasted stale along the roof of your mouth, light flashing in bursts behind your shut eyelids as pain hit you with a swing you hadn’t been anticipating. A groan was the first thing you were capable of, your body stuck in a desperate loop of needing more sleep and itching to move about the space. You weren’t sure how long you’d been out of it. Or even where you were, but the sound of a ship’s hum and recycled oxygen that pushed around The Crest gave you enough of a clue.

“You’re awake.”

Your eyes slid open to the cavern of darkness, pitch black nothingness expanded beyond where you could currently see. The only light that came through was the gleam of hyperspace trailing down from the cockpit’s ladder. He must have left the door open to light his path to you.

A hand flew to your face, your fingers sliding along bare skin and terror seized around your heart. “My armor-”

“I haven’t been able to see you,” he quickly replied. His voice sounded…different. Warmer—free from the technical modulation of a helmet. “I removed mine to stay…blind.”

“Blind. Of course.”

He moved closer and you noticed the absence of beskar clanging together gently each time he moved. You slid a palm down your chest, the other going for your thigh and found soft clothing in its place. The suit you wore was cut open at your hip, boots off and discarded to the side, but other than that he’d left you as you were. Careful enough to strip you of what blocked him while maintaining your dignity and creed. The thought left your throat thick with emotion, the hot sting of tears pulsing at the back of your tightly shut eyelids.

“Thank you,” you managed to get out.

“Drink this.” A glass of water pressed close to your face, knocking against your chin as he blindly followed your voice. “I’ll need to put a fresh layer of bacta gel on it, but its healing nicely.”

You swallowed the cold liquid and nearly moaned when it washed down your throat. “How did we get back here?”

“Slowly.” A thump echoed in the space as he sat nearby, his legs drawn up and back to the wall. “I couldn’t carry you and Rix back so I tied him to a small loader from the bar. I helped you walk back where I could.”

The echo of distant memories scraped at the edge of your mind. His soft mutters of encouragement and nonsensical conversation to keep you alert, your feet unable to remain in a straight line as he all but dragged you beside him. You were half awake, one foot entirely in a different world. That certainly explained the ache in your legs.

“Rix is-”

“In carbonite.”

“Good.”

There was so much built in the back of your throat, words that clung to the roof of your mouth and cut the enamel off your teeth. You wanted to thank him for helping you escape Nevarro, for the adventures you’d been on. But most of all you wanted to whisper words that you never even heard your own parents say to one another. Sayings that were carved in your chest with the unsteady hand of someone who couldn’t fathom that intimacy had another name entirely. One you wanted to use.

The consequence of falling in love with Din Djarin was that there seemed to exist no consequence at all. Until it was too late to stop it from happening altogether.

“Ready?” he asked abruptly somehow closer than you expected. His voice came from above you and you imagined what the curve of his face looked like, the shape of his mouth and slant of his eyes. Was he handsome? Or did he hold exterior scars on top of the ones he stitched together beneath his flesh and bone.

You nodded and he must have heard the sound of your head shifting against the blanket spread beneath you. The soft press of bare fingers to your hip sent heat rocketing up your spine. You gasped, twisting your fingers into the soft fabric as he apologized with a rough hum.

Physical touch wasn’t unusual to you, having experienced the warmth of another body and the pleasure sex could bring you. But this seared a hole in your pounding heart so large you couldn’t patch it up. He spread the bacta along your wound gently, pulling the ripped fabric away to give him more space and you sucked in a sharp breath as goosebumps sprouting along your entire body just from the heat of his hand.

His fingers weren’t calloused or rough. An after effect of wearing leather constantly to protect you from the elements. But oh how you wished they would be. If just slightly to give you something to imagine later in your solitude.

“How’s that?”

Your chin jutted down, teeth sinking into your bottom lip hard enough to cut through the soft skin. “Fine.”

“No pain?”

“N-No.”

Another swipe of his fingers had your spine going taut, body rigid and hands clammy as you struggled for any semblance of air. “You scared me out there.”

You willed yourself to say something—anything—that might distract you from the need that ripped at your insides. “They were going to shoot you.”

“So you let them shoot you instead.” His voice was too close now, his breath practically washing across your face. “Don’t do that again. Don’t risk your life for mine.”

“I’m okay-”

“You’re not.” Your teeth clicked shut when his thumb pressed high up on your hip, slipping beneath the fabric. “When you hit the ground I thought I lost you. I haven’t felt fear like that in a long time.”

“Din,” you breathed.

Another inch higher and you knew he could feel the rapid pulse of your heart that spread down through your body. “Cyare,” he sighed, head dropping low enough to feel the brush of his hair along your forehead. It was longer than you originally thought—slightly curled too.

Whatever breath you were holding onto vanished as he spoke a word you’d never been called before. One that was traded between spouses and partners who had spoken the traditional vows. Rarely heard in the light of day and only uttered among others when the alcohol flowed freely and the hefty weight of reality was light. Beloved. A word your mother used once when she cradled your father’s dying form, his head in her lap and eyes glassed over, permanently fixed on his final sight. Her helmet.

Your heart flipped, mouth dropping open to say anything back, but what could you say? How would you phrase years of emotion into something so small?

“Can I try something?” he finally asked breaking the thick silence that blanketed both of you.

“Yes,” the word was soft and almost meek. It didn’t sound like you, held no resemblance of the strong capable warrior you knew yourself to be, but rather echoed the sentiment of someone desperate for touch—a person who begged silently for love.

He exhaled and you felt it along your chin, his nose dragging against the side of your cheek and you dug your fingers into the blanket when his mouth found yours. His lips were chapped, the dry weather of the planet doing neither of you any good, but you couldn’t think past the feel of their warmth. How they moved against yours. A sound pulled from the back of your throat and you replaced the blanket with the front of his shirt, your mouth parting to slide your tongue along his bottom lip.

Din jerked back with a hitch in his breath, but you felt the flutter of his eyes closing as he sunk into you. A hand propping itself above your head and body shifting to slide along yours. You kissed him until you couldn’t breathe. Tasting the burnt caf he must have made on the ship and something entirely him. Spit clung to your mouths, the wet sound of his lips findings yours over and over again drowning out the hum of hyperspace.

“You’re in my dreams,” he breathed quickly against your cheek, kissing along your jaw and cupping the back of your neck. “Every fucking night.”

“Oh-”

He groaned, teeth sinking into your throat and you jolted, hand curling tight into his curls. “I think about you like this. On my ship, in my bed, on Nevarro.”

So it wasn’t just you plagued by that stirring in your chest. The dormant feelings of something ancient rising up out of the ashes of a former life you held no knowledge of. Maybe somewhere in the past you hung in the sky together. Two stars dancing amidst the galaxies endless planets and moons.

“I think about you too,” you gasped, slotting your mouth against his again. Only this time you knew where this would lead, what the burn in your stomach meant as it screamed through the rest of your body.

Clumsy fingers tugged at your suit as you ripped at his shirt. You wanted to see him, admire his physique and burn the color of his eyes into your mind. The fate of your parents—unable to see one another in their final moments—wouldn’t be yours with him. You couldn’t allow that to happen. So you traced his chest with your bare fingers and mapped him in your imagination—the slope of his shoulders, the muscles that bunched on his arms when he moved to settle between your legs.

Existence without him sounded like a hell that only the galaxy could deliver. So you battled against it with your lips, dragging them along his throat until he all but purred at the attention. Your tongue followed the line of his collarbone, teeth indenting into the top of his heart and Din dug a hand into the back of your head to wrench you up to his mouth.

“Can I have you?”

The question made you smile, your teeth latching onto his lip and tugging it into your mouth. “You already have me Din Djarin.”

He laughed but you could feel the nerves rattle beneath his skin when his hand slid along your waist. “Do I?”

“Ratiin (always),” you spoke against his lips. “There wasn’t a day you didn’t.”

Stripping yourself of armor was easy. There didn’t seem to be difficulty in letting the beskar hit the floor and giving Din the time to pull the fabric from your body until you felt his bare chest against your own. But prying open the walls of a heart that had seen far too much and been given back too little became a convoluted labyrinth you couldn’t escape from. You once thought they’d be sealed shut forever—trapping you inside.

He broke you free.

Din took your hand and yanked you from the grave, he dragged you off Nevarro and beyond the walls of the underground. He salvaged any parts of you that remained and let you put the pieces back together as he watched. Always there in the background. Waiting for you to open your palm to him and lead him through the door.

“You’re beautiful.” His mouth closed around your nipple, your back arching up and off the cold floor of the ship as he sucked on it with a moan.

“You—Maker—you can’t see me.”

“I don’t have to.” Thick deft fingers slid beneath your pants and into the folds already sticky with your slick. He groaned long and loud against your chest, mouth planting open mouthed kisses down your stomach. “I’ve known you were beautiful since I first saw you.”

“Don’t mess with my ego Djarin.”

He smiled, thumb pressing down on your clit as you pulled at his hair. “I like your ego sweetheart.”

“Most people don’t-” Your moth dropped open when he pulled your pants down the rest of the way, careful of your hip and mouthed at your cunt with a rumble in his chest. “T-They think I’m difficult to handle.”

A wicked grin curled on his lips as he licked at you in a slow line, fingers dipping into the heat of your entrance. “Oh I can handle you just fine Ca’tra.”

Your eyes rolled back, noise pulling from the base of your chest when he curled two fingers into you, sucking at your clit and letting it go with a loud pop. The shame that would normally come from being with someone bare and open like this didn’t curl around your stomach. Instead need replaced it, burning down your limbs until you could feel it in the tips of your fingers.

The audible moans Din let out vibrated against your cunt, his tongue flicking against your clit and fingers pumping fast. A third one slid in easily and your legs trembled, breaths coming in pants as you sunk into the searing bliss pulling taut in your torso.

“Din,” you gasped, pulling at his curls. “I need you to fuck me-”

His mouth ripped from you as he clambered back up to your mouth, thumb pressing down hard and you came with a shout. It split you open down the center, pulled the unraveled edges of you together and set something whole in your chest. He kissed you—swallowed your moans—and let you taste yourself as you coated his hand in another wave of slick.

“Again.” Though you couldn’t see him you imagined his eyes were dark, pupils blown wide with lust. “I want another one.”

The hard line of his cock pressed to your thigh and you tugged at his pants with a shuddered moan. Your fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. He knocked them aside to pull himself free, letting you curl a hand around the hot length of him as he all but collapsed on top of you. A ragged whine tearing free when you slid a thumb along his tip, dragging what precum was there down.

“Oh fuck, baby.”

You smiled. “When’s the last time you touched yourself Din?”

He stilled, mouth shifting to your throat and you pumped him slowly, enjoying the shudder that went down his spine. “Two days ago.”

“And?” you whispered. The question was traded in silence, hanging in the air as he rutted into your palm and let out another low pitched whine.

“Yes,” he gasped. “You. I think about you every time.”

For years you ignored the emotions that stuck beneath your skin and burrowed their way to your heart. The grief shrouded any concept of love, blinded you to the devotion of his actions. He bled the parts of life you’d been missing for so long. You were two halves of a whole that had been forged into beskar armor. The songs may ring in your heart, but his name sounded louder than anything you’d heard before.

A distant call that grew into a deafening crescendo. You welcomed it with a blissful sigh, feeling him drag his cock throughout your folds. A cracked sound falling into your open mouth.

His hand found yours, pressing it into the blanket as he began to press into you with a groan. And you clutched it when the stretch burned with the strike of a match. He sunk into you slowly, pulling back every inch to press forward again. You were making a mess with each thrust but that made your skin grow warmer. The heat beneath your cheeks bloomed down into your neck, your thighs hitching up around his hips as he stilled. Filling you in a way that killed something deep within you.

That lingering ache of loneliness. The belief that there would come a day you’d be utterly alone in this universe. He chased it away with his lips on your jaw and his cock sliding back into you with a throaty grunt.

“I can feel you in my chest.” Your words tripped over themselves on the way out. Eyes screwed shut and head pushed into the floor. You wanted to see him. Watch his cock slide in and out of your stretched open cunt, see how his eyes rolled back when your walls fluttered as he hit the rough patch that had your toes curling.

“You’re so fucking warm,” he rambled. “So fucking beautiful.”

“Din-” Your heart rammed against your chest, mouth falling open and he kissed you clumsily, knocking his teeth into yours with a throaty laugh.

“Feels good cyar'ika?”

You nodded, digging your nails into his back.

The glow of hyperspace flashed behind his head and you watched it play along his spine. The light giving you something to latch onto. Tan skin and a broad form and the ink of a tattoo that seemed to be on his side or stretching up from his hip. You weren’t able to tell in the darkness. But you took what you could get and shut your eyes to the rest—your teeth finding a home in his shoulder as he pounded into you.

Everything narrowed to how his cock dragged inside you, how he nipped at your jaw and licked along your neck. How he grinded down perfectly so your clit caught along his pelvis. It rose at the back of your spine, trickling into every part of you it could reach, and you let it take you.

“Gonna come,” you choked. “Oh fuck Din don’t stop. Please. Don’t—oh—”

“I need it.” His forehead dropped to yours, hips ramming down into you until you had no choice but to take it. “C’mon sweetheart. Give it to me yeah?”

His teeth closing around your nipple and tugging it sent you over the edge with a hoarse shout, your hips meeting his thrusts the best you could. His fingers tightened on around your hand, mouth colliding with yours as he chased his own release. The wet slick of your come was a mess between your thighs and it splattered against his stomach with the force of his hips, a stuttered cry echoing off the walls of the ship.

Din came with your name on his lips, his spine going taut beneath your hand and muscles contracting along his shoulders. He spilled into you, sighing as you dragged your mouth along his jaw. Content to lay there for as long as he wanted. Until you could no longer feel the pain in your hip.

Silence gathered you both in a comfort you welcomed. His cock softened in you twitching every time your walls fluttered, but Din refused to budge. He dropped his head to your shoulder and allowed the both of you time to simply exist before the demands of bounty hunting caught up to you once more. The press of his thumb into your wrist pulled a smile along your lips, eyes shining with the burn of tears—far too overwhelmed to work through the feelings that pressed insistently against your chest.

He dragged his cloak up and over your waists, letting it warm you in the frigid vacuum of space. Such a small gesture, barely anything to marvel at. But you understood why love was something people died for—why battles were fought and why at the end of the day death was a simple act for your other half.

“Strange to think we never met on Concordia,” you finally utter, his mouth finding yours for a brief moment.

“If we had I’d have been in trouble a lot sooner.”

“I didn’t cause trouble,” you exclaim. “I was perfect.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

You grinned and wrapped an arm around his neck. “I guess you can say we’re made from the same moon.”

Made from the dirt of Concordia, forged in the same fire used to mold and shape the strongest steel in the galaxy. Pieces of who you used to be bound together to create who you would one day become. Maybe that’s what you needed to endure to find one another. The grief, the never ending tragedy your life amounted to. It grew dim in his light—faded to nothing in the warmth of his heart.

“Dust from the moon of Confordia,” he mumbled, thumb smoothing a line beneath your eye. His skin was soft, though you could tell when he was on his own he bit at it the same way you did.

“Dust from the moon,” you sighed, finding his mouth in the darkness.

Want turned your insides molten as you slung your legs higher and felt his cock twitch inside of you. The wet press of his lips slid over yours, tongue a needy mess in your mouth but you met his fervor with a whine. Rutting yourself against his hot skin, your slick caught on his pubic hair as he shifted forward. Dragging you back into the bliss that still flickered with life in the base of your chest.

ONE YEAR LATER

“Hunting bounties has made you strong.” Her voice rang through the armory as she set a finished piece of armor on the table where you sat. “You hold yourself differently.”

Over the past year you’d been everywhere the galaxy allotted you to go. Traversing places you didn’t think were possible to get to. You’d seen planets with no life, moons teeming with it, and through it all he remained at your side. Hunting whatever The Guild offered just for the sake of getting off world and away from the covert for as long as possible. You barely returned in the months you’d been gone. Stopping in briefly to deliver credits and oversee the progress of the younglings before heading off on another job.

The freedom gave you time to think. Space to consider the future you were returning to. Yet every choice you came up with—all the options you ran through—they all lead back to Din. To his ship and the home you’d made together.

That morning he took you in the cockpit, a hand banded over your waist and helmet knocking into the back of yours as he fucked up into you so hard your legs shook when you got back up. Even now you felt the heat of his body. You tasted his mouth and smelled the soap he used that never quite got rid of how leather always lingered on his skin.

You returned today at the behest of the Armorer and like a dutiful lamb you offered yourself back up for slaughter. For the good of the covert.

If only you understood the full extent of what that meant. Maybe then you might not have left the ship.

“It is time you came back to us here on Nevarro.”

Your heart dropped, fingers curling into fists as you watched her set another piece of armor on the table. A pauldron of black beskar with the signet of a dark wolf, a marking that had been etched into your skin since the day you were born. You knew the day would come when they’d burn it into you—when the freedom you so desperately ached for was no longer an option. But that seemed like such a distant afterthought, a life you could run from.

Now it stared you in the face, curling its lips back to reveal teeth ready to sink into your flesh. Unbreakable jaws that now clamped around your throat until blood ran down from its jowls.

“My training isn’t finished.”

She nodded. “That is true. I had hoped you would find other Mandalorians in your journey. That they would teach you the lessons of old that your parents never finished, but it seems I must take that upon myself.”

No.

You couldn’t let go of it all now. Not when you had the life Din offered in the palm of your hand. His necklace hung around your throat, tucked safely into the confines of your suit buried away from prying eyes, but it burned you now. A reminder that what you pretended to have was fake. Simply a dream you concocted to flee the path to being Alor. Something you never wanted.

“Give me a few more months. I’ll complete your training, I’ll find others-”

“The covert needs to see you are ready to lead.”

“They have you.”

“My role is not permanent. Neither is our survival. We each make choices that don’t always benefit us. For the good of the covert.”

You sucked in a breath, shrinking back down to the person you were a year ago. Despite all your running, the nights spent with Din in his ship. Mornings lost to one another as he fucked you into the floor and whispered sweet nothings into your throat afterwards. Days spent walking ground you might never return to, if only to make memories you could dig out and admire later on. It was fiction. And you were now being forced to step back into reality. Tears burned your eyes, dripping down your cheeks and for once you felt thankful that you wore a helmet that shielded you from prying eyes.

“Of course,” you finally replied, voice heavy with grief. You endured it once before—leaving everything you loved behind—and so the pattern repeated and you endured it again. “For the good of the covert.”

“You must tell him.”

“Tell him…”

“If he is to be at your side when the time comes. If he is to speak the vows then he will need to know that the hunting must come to an end. For both of you.”

Both of you.

Not only would you have to leave it all behind, but Din would too. He’d have to let go of a life he built from the ground up, relinquish his ties to The Guild, and start over again trapped in the underground. You might be able to survive that, but Din had changed too much of himself to let it all go now. You wouldn’t allow it. He’d suffocate a slow and grueling death if he let go of the freedom he worked so hard to keep—the future he planned to build…with you.

“I will.”

The pauldron glared at you the longer you fixed your gaze on its shape. You weren’t sure how long you sat there, how many minutes or hours had gone by since the Armorer left to attend to other tasks. How many days had gone by? Would you wither up and fade to dust if you sat there any longer? Or would your armor become a fixture in the armory—a reminder to those who passed you by that this is what happens when you give yourself up. When you meld into the clan and forget who you were.

“I’ve been looking for you.” His voice sliced through your chest, a blaster bolt to your heart as he came down the steps and entered the room. “You missed dinner with the clan.”

“I’ve just been…here.”

He froze at the monotone lilt in your voice, the stiffness in your form. “What did she say?”

If he is to be at your side…

“She told me that I’ve gotten stronger. That our hunts have been doing what she hoped.”

The smile in his voice was obvious and you wished you didn’t know what it felt like on your skin, how it fit into the base of your throat when you told a joke that made him break. You wished you could stop the flow of tears that hadn’t ceased since she uttered those words. How your heart chipped off pieces the longer you sat there and stared your future in the face. You wished you could disappear.

“Something is still wrong.”

“Nothing-”

“You haven’t moved cyar'ika.” The endearment hit like another bolt you weren’t expecting and you swallowed the pain down before it could morph into a sob.

Shutting your eyes to his form, you felt your heart give way as you made the choice that would damn you for eternity. “I’m staying here Din.”

You didn’t need to see him to know his heart stopped. “What?”

Sucking in a breath you got to your feet and met him head on, as a warrior would. “I’m not doing this to hurt you. It’s time I take responsibility for what they trained me to do. I’m doing this…for the good of the covert.”

He snapped, hand gripping your arm to drag you forward. “Those aren’t your words. So tell me the truth.”

The truth was that you loved him. You didn’t think there was a day in your months of hunting that you didn’t love him, that you wouldn’t make the same choice and take a blaster bolt right to the chest for him. The amount of times you nearly died for another would never outweigh the times you should have told him how you felt. How you knew he felt.

Din’s heart rammed in his chest, unsteady and twisting with a pain he remembered from childhood. The same agony that came with uprooting his life after witnessing his parent’s death, the brutal slap of reality that accompanied starting a new life on a strange moon. The same home he thought you were meant to be find one another on. He watched you choke on words that didn’t belong to you and yet he wasn’t surprised by how easy the rolled off your tongue.

The walls in your heart were far too high for him to climb and he’d done all he could to find a way over them. But not even that was enough for you to let him in.

“I have to be focused on the needs of our clan if I’m ever to take on the role of being Alor.”

The words were sour on your tongue. Lies you spewed to make him feel better about the situation both of you were handed. They were practically transparent and you could see him peering right through them. His gaze fixed on the root of what all of this amounted to. You were never meant to be free. Your red string of fate was a noose he never noticed before and it was growing tighter each day you spent away from the walls of the underground.

They forged you here with purpose and here you would remain.

Footsteps echoed in the distance and Din stiffened as the Armorer entered. “Din Djarin I hear you have brought something back for the clan.”

A beat of silence passed before Din pushed forward, the line digging just a few feet deeper than before. “Yes.”

You stepped back into the role of apprentice, your shadow playing along the wall as Din took his place at the table. The sight of his fingers curling into fists at the pauldron already on the table twisted your stomach into knots. He knew what the symbol meant. Could see the path of your future set in the beskar steel before him and did what he could to ignore the rage that simmered at the base of his chest. Not at you—never at you. At the clan that claimed you long before he ever had a chance to.

A slab of beskar was set on the surface and you nearly dropped at the sight of it. An empirical symbol set into the metal as the Armorer lifted it with curiosity.

“This was gathered in the great purge. It is good it is back with the tribe.” The purge that left you stranded—the consequence of power falling into the wrong hands that now had you trapped. The Armorer continued before you could say anything. “A pauldron would be in order. Has your signet been revealed?”

Yours stared him in the face and you itched to slam it into a different shape, mold it into something neither of you would recognize.

“Not yet,” he replied briskly.

“Soon.”

She turned to gather supplies as you fell into old motions and removed the pauldron from his shoulder. “Your meeting with Greef Karga,” you muttered under your breath.

“A new job.”

One you wouldn’t be joining him on. For the first time in a year he would leave this place alone and remain that way until he chose otherwise. All because you couldn’t find the courage to rip yourself away. They lay dirt over your grave faster than you could dig and you were unable to claw your way out as he stood by and watched. No longer the one to pull you free.

“You may set the pauldron,” she said, handing you the steel that was still hot from the fires. You ignored the burn that came through your gloves and set it into place as you swallowed a choked cry—tears blurring your vision.

A hand curled around your thigh briefly, fingers dragging along the back of it before leaving you entirely. The hot air of the armory drenching you in a warmth that existed without him. A life written in beskar steel and forged in the fires of old long before you were born. Din could see that now—watched how you were wrapped in a legacy so tight no blade could cut you loose. So he let you go.

“Thank you,” he uttered and glanced at you briefly, helmet tipped down and fingers twitching at his side. “Ret’urcye mhi (goodbye, may we meet again).”

Smiling beneath your mask you nodded once and released him with a breath. “Ret’urcye mhi Din Djarin.”