Ny

Adelphi looked less like a New Republic outpost and more like somebody had accidentally built a military base on a beach and then never found a reason to leave.

As the Crest descended, she spotted long half-buried bunkers sitting directly on the sand, their curved roofs weathered by years of salt and sun. Palm trees had worked their way into every available gap, growing between landing pads and maintenance yards as though neither side had fully won the argument over who the space belonged to. Mechanics moved between parked starfighters in shirtsleeves, cargo crates sat stacked beneath canvas awnings and somebody appeared to be repairing a speeder directly on the shoreline while waves crashed less than fifty metres away.

It was impossible not to like.

"That's unfair."

Mando adjusted the controls as the Crest settled lower.

"What is?"

She gestured toward the viewport.

"The fact that the entire galaxy doesn't look exactly like this."

He studied the beach for a moment.

"It's humid."

She laughed. "Are you afraid of rust?"

"This is pure beskar." The answer arrived fast enough to suggest he'd taken the question seriously.

"Good." She settled back into her seat. "I'd hate for you to develop a moisture problem."

The helmet turned toward her just enough to communicate disapproval. She held the look until he turned back to the controls.

It only made her grin wider.

Warm air flooded the ship the moment the ramp began lowering. Salt carried on the breeze alongside the distant sounds of machinery, conversation and crashing surf.

Grogu was already halfway down the ramp, goggles flapping around his neck.

Not running exactly. There was a specific direction to it, purposeful and intent.

The child reached the sand before either of them and immediately headed toward the far side of the landing area.

She followed his path automatically.

A large, bulky mass of Hutt was making his way across the beach.

The sight was enough to stop her in her tracks.

Stories about Jabba the Hutt had never properly conveyed the scale of the species. This one moved beneath his own power, dragging a mountain of scarred muscle across the sand as though it weighed nothing at all. Sunlight caught old scars cut into weathered green skin.

Every instinct she possessed immediately categorised him as dangerous.

Then Grogu squealed and broke into a proper run.

Her hand started toward her lightsaber. Training simply reached the conclusion to defend before the rest of her did.

Mando caught her wrist.

"They're friends."

Grogu launched himself forward with a delighted squeal that carried across half the beach.

The Hutt laughed, a deep booming sound, as he scooped Grogu effortlessly off the ground.

"Oh."

The word escaped before she could stop it.

The Hutt's attention shifted toward her. Sharp eyes caught the embarrassed realisation immediately.

"You thought I was about to eat him."

"No." She paused before adding, "Maybe a little."

That only made him laugh harder. The sound was surprisingly infectious.

"I get that a lot."

The voice caught her off guard almost as much as everything else. His Basic was fluent and easy, nothing like she'd expected, and the whole thing was disorienting enough that it took her a moment longer than she'd have liked to compose herself.

Beside her, Mando released her wrist and was making absolutely no effort to rescue her from the conversation.

Fortunately another arrival interrupted before she could embarrass herself further.

The woman approaching them moved with the easy confidence of somebody entirely comfortable being obeyed. Short brown hair, catching red in the sun, stirred in the ocean breeze while New Republic insignia sat neatly on one shoulder.

"Mando."

"Colonel."

Unlike most people who met him, she didn't seem remotely bothered by the lack of visible expression.

Her gaze flicked briefly to the lightsaber hanging at her belt before returning to her face.

"I heard he'd expanded the team."

Mando remained silent as always, insistent on being entirely useless.

The colonel sighed, resolving to simply extending a hand, "Colonel Ward."

The handshake that followed felt less like a greeting and more like an evaluation.

Ward's gaze flicked briefly toward the saber again.

"I imagine there's a story there."

"There usually is."

Something about the answer earned the faintest hint of amusement.

Ward jerked a thumb toward the largest building overlooking the shoreline, "Come eat. You can tell me absolutely none of it while I explain why I dragged him across the galaxy."

She had barely fallen into step beside Mando when she noticed someone was missing glancing behind them automatically. Grogu wasn't there.

The child had somehow managed to climb onto the mountains back and was currently hanging over one broad shoulder while the Hutt continued across the beach entirely unbothered by the extra passenger. Whatever conversation they were having appeared extremely important. Grogu was gesturing animatedly. Rotta was listening with the solemn attention he could muster.

"Grogu."

The child looked over at the sound of his name.

Then waved.

Then immediately went back to talking.

The betrayal was so swift she almost admired it.

Ward followed her gaze and laughed, "Ah, let him be. Rotta's got him."

The reassurance was delivered with such complete confidence that it took a moment to register.

The cantina occupied one of the larger bunkers overlooking the beach. Tables spilled out onto a wide veranda where off-duty personnel sat drinking caf and arguing over something involving fuel allocations. It felt less like a military facility and more like a coastal town that happened to own several starfighters.

A small island appeared above the table.

The island sat off the coastline, far enough from the main settlement to feel isolated despite sharing the same tropical waters. Its rocky shoreline gave way to steep cliffs and dense vegetation, the handful of visible structures tucked so carefully into the landscape they were almost invisible from a distance.

"Five days ago Monitoring Station Aurek stopped responding."

The easy atmosphere disappeared.

Ward enlarged the display and highlighted several streams of data.

"Power remains online. Environmental systems remain online. Internal diagnostics continue to report normally."

Mando studied the projection.

"But nobody's answering."

"Exactly. Every system appears to be functioning exactly as intended, while twenty-three personnel have collectively decided to stop responding to all communications.""

Ward leaned back in her chair.

"If there'd been an accident, we'd know. If there'd been a reactor failure, we'd know. If a storm had damaged the station, we'd know."

The island rotated slowly above the projector.

Ward leaned back. "Officially Aurek is a monitoring station. Unofficially it oversees a secured Imperial research facility."

She frowned before she could stop herself.

Ward noticed. "That reaction tells me you're smarter than some of the people who signed off on inheriting it."

"What kind of Imperial research facility?"

"The kind that no longer exists." Ward paused. "Mostly."

Mando looked up from the display, "'Mostly' isn't a word that inspires confidence."

"No," Ward agreed. "Unfortunately it's also the most accurate one available."

The hologram shifted. Structures appeared beneath the island, buried deep, built by people with resources and reasons not to advertise what they were doing.

"Three days ago this stopped looking like a communications failure and started looking like a security concern. The sensors are still transmitting. Traffic logs are still updating. Automated reports are still being received." Ward folded her arms. "Everything except the people."

The implication settled and stayed.

The systems weren't dead. Someone was there.

"What are you worried about?" she asked.

Ward considered it. "Imperial remnants are the obvious possibility. Smuggling isn't impossible. Pirates would be unusual. The honest answer is that I don't know." A pause. "And I would like to continue not knowing for a little longer."

Ward nodded toward Mando.

"If I send New Republic personnel, I've immediately escalated the situation. If someone has infiltrated the station, they'll know we've noticed. If it turns out to be a faulty transmitter, I've just created a political headache over absolutely nothing."

She understood immediately. Sending Republic personnel escalated things the moment boots hit the ground.

"I need an independent contractor to take a look, determine what's happening and deal with it quietly if possible."

"Assess first," Mando said.

"Correct."

"If it's manageable?"

"Neutralise the threat."

"And if it isn't?"

Ward's expression sharpened. "You call me before you try taking on the problem yourself." She levelled a finger at him, "I'm serious. I still have paperwork from Nal Hutta."

The briefing continued for another fifteen minutes, covering personnel files, station schematics and emergency access routes. By the time they finally stepped back into the sunlight, the tide had crept noticeably higher.

The transport wasn't ready yet. A crew chief waved them toward the dock and promised another twenty minutes.

The child and Rotta occupied a stretch of shoreline several metres away. Whatever game they were playing appeared to involve Grogu collecting shells, throwing them into the water and then immediately deciding those particular shells required rescuing.

There were several small piles arranged across the sand and Grogu was taking the entire thing very seriously.

The moment he spotted her, he abandoned whatever grand strategy he'd been pursuing and hurried across the beach carrying something carefully between both hands.

She crouched instinctively so that Grogu could drop a small blue shell into her palm. It was smooth and almost impossibly vibrant, polished by the tide until it gleamed beneath the sunlight.

She smiled, "Thank you."

He made a satisfied little sound then immediately ran back to Rotta without another thought.

She settled near the waterline and turned the shell over between her fingers. Bands of deep blue wrapped around the surface like paint. It was the sort of thing she'd have walked straight past a month ago. Now she found herself studying it like treasure. The ocean breathed steadily against the shore while she traced her thumb along the shell's smooth edge.

Only after several minutes did she realise somebody was standing beside her.

She tilted her head back, nearly blinded by the reflection of the sun on Mando's helmet.

"You know," she said, "most people sit down at beaches."

"The sand is wet."

She laughed.

"That wasn't an invitation to complain."

"It sounded like one."

The shell turned slowly between her fingers.

"Then consider this a formal invitation to sit down."

"No."

"You're impossible."

"Mm."

The agreement arrived suspiciously quickly.

She narrowed her eyes, "Okay."

Planting both hands in the wet sand, started to push herself up, changed her mind entirely, scooping a handful of water in one smooth motion and flicked it directly at him.

For one glorious second she thought she'd gotten away with it.

She was already running before she'd fully committed to the decision. The laugh came up out of her chest before she could do anything about it, sand scattering under her feet as she sprinted toward the only available cover.

Rotta looked up from the shell arrangement, glancing toward the shoreline. Mando hadn't moved which somehow felt infinitely worse.

"Oh no." Rotta immediately rolled aside, "I'm not getting involved in this."

She was still laughing when something caught around her waist.

The whipcord tightened and her momentum ceased to exist. The cable reeled back before she could do anything sensible and she was dragged backward across the beach at a speed that was frankly unreasonable.

"Shit"

The realisation arrived approximately one second too late. The cable reeled back and she was instantly dragged backward across the beach.

Every sensible instinct she possessed should have been screaming. Instead exhilaration burst through her chest so suddenly it left her breathless. The force hummed at the edge of her awareness.

She could cut the cable. She could probably turn the entire situation around if she wanted.

She didn't.

Then she hit solid beskar and the cord released.

The ocean kept rolling in.

She looked up. He looked down. Neither of them moved, neither spoke. She stood there looking into the reflection of her own startled expression mirrored faintly in his visor. His helmet was tilted very slightly in the way it did when he was turning something over in his mind, not quite a question and not quite a decision.

Whatever it was, she never found out.

A delighted squeal erupted across the beach and a tiny green missile launched itself directly into the space between them. Grogu wrapped both arms around Mando's leg.

The moment shattered instantly and she burst out laughing.

Mando straightened.

The child cheered excitedly, apparently convinced everyone was playing now.

From the dock, Ward's voice carried across the sand, "Transport's ready, kids."

Ward was standing beside the speedboat, one eyebrow raised.

The expression on her face suggested she'd chosen that particular wording very deliberately.

Rotta laughed loud enough for half the beach to hear, "She's talking about you."

"I know." She mumbled, guilty.

Grogu hurried toward the dock first. Rotta followed at a much slower pace while she brushed sand from her trousers and tried very hard not to think about how fast her heart was still beating.

Mando simply walked past her toward the waiting transport.

As though none of it had happened.

At the dock she bent to pick Grogu up and found that he had his own opinions on this. Both hands were wrapped around just one of Rotta's fingers. He looked up at her with the expression he used when he had decided something and considered further discussion optional.

She smiled despite herself.

"We'll be back soon."

Grogu frowned.

"You can play again later."

The child looked unconvinced.

Before she could continue, Mando stepped onto the boat and glanced back toward them.

"Let him stay."

She blinked.

"What?"

"We won't be long." The answer was so casual it took a moment to process.

Grogu brightened immediately.

Mando pointed a finger at Rotta.

"Don't overindulge him."

Rotta looked offended, "I would never."

Grogu gave him a questioning look.

The Hutt sighed, "Okay, maybe a little."

She was still smiling when Mando looked back toward her, a simple shift of his head, get in

She obeyed.

A minute later the engines caught and the dock began to drift away. She watched from the stern as the shoreline receded. Grogu stood ankle-deep in the surf, still holding onto Rotta's hand with one of his own as they waved from the beach.

The distance grew steadily.

Soon they were little more than figures against the sand.

Then even that disappeared.

For the first time in weeks there was no Grogu sleeping somewhere nearby.

No Grogu climbing over furniture.

No Grogu demanding snacks.

No Grogu at all.

Just the two of them and an hour of open water stretching toward the island ahead.

The boat cut steadily through the water, leaving a long white wake stretching back towards Adelphi.

The island ahead didn't seem to be getting any closer.

That was probably an illusion, but it was becoming increasingly personal.

She rested her elbows on the railing and watched sunlight scatter across the surface of the sea. The water here was absurdly blue. Not the murky grey-green she'd grown used to seeing on colder worlds, but the sort of vibrant colour that looked artificial until you stared at it long enough to accept that nature occasionally enjoyed showing off.

Behind them, the mainland had disappeared completely.

The realisation arrived a second later.

She couldn't see Grogu anymore.

Her gaze drifted automatically towards the horizon as though the child might somehow reappear if she looked hard enough.

The ridiculous part was that she wasn't worried.

Rotta could probably fend off a small army without interrupting whatever game he and Grogu had invented. If anything, she felt sorry for whichever unfortunate soul was currently being subjected to a detailed explanation of shell-related politics.

Beside her, Mando remained exactly as he'd been for most of the journey. One hand resting on the side of the transport. Helmet turned towards the sea. Motionless enough that, from a distance, he might have been mistaken for part of the boat.

It occurred to her suddenly that she knew an alarming amount about some parts of his life and almost nothing about others.

She knew how he checked his weapons. She knew the particular posture he adopted whenever Grogu was about to do something questionable. She knew he preferred caf strong enough to dissolve metal and that he became irrationally stubborn whenever somebody suggested he might need help.

The question arrived before she thought better of it. "What was Mandalore like? Before."

He didn't move immediately.

"Before the purge?"

"Yes."

The boat lifted and settled through a slow swell.

"I don't know," he said. "I've never seen it in its prime."

She glanced toward him.

He seemed to consider her for a moment, not reluctant, more like someone choosing where to start.

"I was born on Aq Vetina. My parents died when I was young. An attack." A pause. "I was found by a covert. Raised by them on Concordia."

She turned that over.

"A covert?"

"The Children of the Watch. They kept the old ways."

She studied the side of his helmet. "You're telling me this fairly easily."

The helmet shifted toward her slightly.

"You asked."

It was so straightforward that it almost made her laugh. He'd said it exactly as he said everything else, no performance around it, no decision visible, just the answer to what she'd asked.

"We're a little similar in that way," she said, after a moment.

"How?"

She looked back at the water. "I was taken young too. Four, I think, though I don't remember it. My first memories are from the enclave." She turned the blue shell over in her pocket, feeling the weight of it. "I didn't choose any of it. I just woke up there one day and it was the only life I knew."

The boat moved on.

"You miss it?" he asked.

She considered the question for a moment.

"I miss parts of it." A faint smile touched her lips. "The people, mostly. It wasn't some grand temple. Just a handful of Masters trying to keep something alive after Order 66. We trained, got into trouble, did chores, complained about meditation. It felt very important at the time."

The memories arrived more easily than she expected.

"Then the Inquisitors found us. I was thirteen. Maybe fourteen." She shook her head. "Everything happened so fast after that. The attack. The evacuation. Masters trying to get as many children out as they could." She swallowed. "A lot of people died."

Mando was quiet. Listening in the way he listened, not filling the silence, just leaving space in it.

"After the Empire fell, some of the survivors started finding each other again. The Masters tried to rebuild what we'd lost." She rolled the shell between her fingers. "The problem was that they weren't trying to build something new. They were trying to recreate something that had already failed."

There was no bitterness in her voice.

Only disappointment.

"I thought passing the trials meant something. That adulthood meant something." She let out a breath. "Instead it just meant more rules. More expectations. More lectures about attachment and duty and sacrifice."

She glanced sideways at him.

"I know. Shocking. Me and authority figures never quite worked out."

A low sound came from beneath the helmet.

She didn't say anything else for a while and he didn't ask her to, and the boat moved through the blue and the island grew ahead of them and that was enough.

Eventually she said, "Can I ask you something else?"

"You're going to ask even if I say no."

She smiled.

"Rotta." She watched the cliffs coming closer. "How long have they known each other?"

"Not long. A few months." Something in his voice shifted slightly when the conversation reached Grogu, the way it always did. "It's good for Grogu to spend time with him now, they'll need each other someday."

She turned that over in her mind until understanding dawned.

"Because he'll outlive you." she said.

Mando was quiet for a moment that had a particular texture to it.

"By centuries."

She thought about Grogu handing her the shell, the complete openness of it, the total absence of any armour whatsoever, and felt something move in her chest.

"That's why Rotta matters." She said it slowly, working it out as she said it. "Not just because he makes Grogu happy now. Because he'll still be there."

"Yes." His modulator crackled.

The word arrived the way words did when someone had thought them so many times they'd worn smooth.

She looked at him.

"That's what keeps you up at night huh?"

He didn't confirm it. He didn't deny it either.

"He needs people who'll still exist," Mando said quietly. "After."

She understood then, more completely than she had before, what this actually was. Not just good planning. The specific arithmetic of a parent who had looked down the length of time and found the answer unacceptable.

"He has a really great dad," she mumbled, not entirely sure if she wanted him to hear her.

"For a while."

It cost something. She could hear it.

She turned toward him more fully, leaning her hip against the railing. The boat moved. The sun hit the water and scattered. She said the thing that had been forming in the quiet since he'd said centuries.

"He'll have me."

Mando turned.

"One thing from the Jedi code I never stopped believing is that death isn't the end." She kept her voice level. "Not for me anyways. So he'll have me around a good while yet." She pulled the shell from her pocket and held it in the light between them. "Plus he gave me a shell. I think that qualifies as a binding agreement."

Silence. The boat moved. The island grew and the cliffs rose above them now, close enough to make out the individual seams in the rock.

When he finally spoke his voice was quieter than usual, like the modulator was barely picking it up.

"He'll be glad to know that."

A pause, small enough to almost miss.

"So will I."

She looked up at him. He'd already turned back toward the island.

The engine dropped to a lower register as they came into the shallows. The water changed colour beneath them, lighter and clearer, ground visible underneath.

She tucked the shell back into her pocket.

Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the journey in, and the quiet between them felt nothing like silence.

The island received them without ceremony.

They came ashore on a narrow strip of dark sand where the cliffs curved inward enough to shelter a natural landing point. Dense vegetation pressed close above and the structures Ward had pointed to on the map were invisible from here entirely. Somewhere above them, the low mechanical hum of something still running.

Mando checked his vambrace and started up the path. She followed.

The monitoring station revealed itself gradually as they climbed. First a comm array half-swallowed by the treeline, then a relay tower, then the main structure itself, a low building built into the foilage as though it had been trying to disappear into it. The door was unlocked, not damaged at all, which was its own kind of wrong.

Inside, every light was on.

Every console was active. Displays scrolled data continuously. Environmental systems breathed quietly through the vents. Everything was running. Everything was fine.

There was nobody there.

She stood in the middle of the main room and listened.

Then she felt it, faint and sourceless, a residual charge in the air that she recognised before she could name it. Not violence. Something else. Something that had moved through the space and left a particular kind of static behind.

"Something discharged in here," she said.

Mando crossed to the secondary terminal and pulled up the logs.

She watched over his shoulder as the data populated. Navigation. Communications. Both showed the same timestamp, five days ago, a cascade failure that had taken everything above the hardware level offline cleanly and completely. No outgoing signals. No way to call for help. No way to leave.

"They couldn't send anyone," Mando said. "They couldn't call out."

She looked around the empty room.

"They've just been sitting here waiting."

She found them two corridors down, twenty-three people occupying the station's emergency shelter. They'd retreated there when the pulse hit and the systems went dark and nobody had been able to tell them whether whatever was coming was already inside. They'd been in there for five days on emergency rations.

The station chief looked at Mando and then at her and then back at Mando.

"Please tell me you're the extraction team."

"Assessment team," Mando said. "But close."

He pulled out his comm link.

"Everything alright?" Ward asked.

"Fine," Mando said. "It was a comms failure."

A pause.

"That's it?"

"Pulse device," she said, leaning toward the comm link. "Imperial design, built specifically for this. Targeted isolation. Takes out navigation and communications simultaneously without touching anything else. Whoever designed it wanted teams incapacitated without visible damage so the automated reports kept coming and nobody would know there was a problem."

Ward was quiet for a moment. "That's either reassuring or deeply unsettling."

"Probably both. The station team is fine. You just need the maintenance crew."

"Two hours," Ward said, and clicked off.

Beside her, Mando said nothing. She could feel the particular quality of his silence, the kind that meant he was working very hard not to say something about having crossed three days of hyperspace for a janky piece of forty-year-old Imperial equipment.

"We flew three days across the galaxy," she said.

"Don't."

She pressed her lips together.

The station chief appeared with two cups of caf and the expression of a man offering the only currency he had left. She accepted hers. Mando set his on the nearest surface without comment.

"The research facility," she said, after a while. "Ward said it was decommissioned."

"Mostly," the chief said, with the exhaustion of someone who had been living alongside that word for a long time. "The upper levels are cleared. There are sealed sections below that we were never given full clearance to access. We catalogue them, that's all we were trying to do when all this happened."

"What were they researching?"

He shrugged. "Above my pay grade. We inherited it from Republic intelligence three years ago and the documentation had more redactions than words."

She looked at Mando.

He looked back at her.

"I'm going to take a look at the lower levels," she announced.

He didn't argue.

The access point to the lower facility was a sealed door at the end of the basement corridor, marked with decommissioning notices.

Mando examined the lock for a moment before messing with it, the same way he had at the last imperial base they visited. The door opened onto a stairwell that dropped into darkness before the emergency lighting flickered on, dim and amber, casting long shadows down the steps.

She went first. He followed.

The air at the bottom was older. Still, in the way of sealed spaces that had been waiting without expectation for a long time. The corridor beyond was precisely Imperial, identical doors, no concession to anything beyond function. Half the ceiling panels were dark. Some of the doors were welded shut.

She walked slowly, feeling herself being pulled forward.

The answer came three doors from the end. This one wasn't welded. The lock yielded to the same code without complaint. Inside, the lights came up automatically, flickering twice before settling.

The room was large. Workbenches ran along both walls, most cleared, some still holding equipment she didn't immediately recognise. Filing systems occupied two full banks of shelving. She moved toward the nearest terminal and pressed the power key without much hope.

It surprised her. The screen came up slowly, running off a backup cell, and populated with the last open files.

She read the heading once.

Then again.

The feeling that moved through her arrived in layers. The first intellectual, the recognition of what she was looking at and what it meant. Then something colder underneath. Then something older still, something that bypassed thought entirely and went straight to the part of her that had spent years learning the weight of a weapon that had belonged to someone who hadn't survived, learning to stop feeling the ghost of the hands that had held it before hers.

Kyber crystal sourcing. Yield analysis. Fracture tolerance under industrial compression. Maps of known deposits, Ilum marked and crossed out, others circled in red with extraction estimates beside them. Diagrams of compression chambers. Failure rates. A column of numbers she understood after a moment were counts. Crystals acquired. Crystals destroyed in failed processing.

They had been trying to industrialise them. To take something that formed over centuries in the dark, that called to specific people and no one else, that carried something she had never been able to explain to anyone who hadn't felt it, and reduce it to a component. A raw material. Something you could crush and process and feed into a weapon at scale.

Most of them had simply broken.

She thought about that for a moment. The ones that had broken. Whether that was resistance or just physics, and whether there was a difference.

Her hand found the hilt of her saber without her telling it to.

She was seven years old again for a moment, not literally, not visibly, but in the part of herself that remembered being handed a weapon too large and too heavy and too full of someone else's history and told that it was hers now because there was nothing else. Because you couldn't go to Ilum, it wasn't safe, so you made do with what had survived. It had taken years to stop feeling like she was carrying a stranger's grief. Years before it stopped feeling borrowed.

She thought about what a weapon like that, multiplied, mass produced, stripped of everything that made it what it was and fed into the hands of people who had never sat with a crystal and felt the moment of recognition.

She knew what it looked like. She had seen it. A red blade in a dark room and twelve men and smoke still in the air when she opened her eyes, and the expression on his face that was not horror and not grief but something settled, like a question he had finally answered.

The room was very small all of a sudden.

She needed to be outside.

She turned and walked back toward the stairs. She didn't run. She was quite deliberate about not running. But she moved with the particular focus of someone who has decided that being somewhere else is an immediate priority and is not interested in stopping for anything between here and there.

Mando followed behind her in his usual unwavering silence.

"I want to go back," she spoke only when she reached the corridor at the top of the stairs.

"Maintenance crew won't be here for over an hour."

"I know." She was already moving toward the exit. "I just want to be outside."

He followed without asking why.

The path back down to the shore was easier in reverse. When they reached the small beach she sat down on a rock above the waterline and looked at the sea and breathed.

Mando stood a little behind her and to the side. Not hovering. Just there.

The water was the same impossible blue it had been on the way out. The afternoon light was lower now, turning the tops of the small waves almost white. It was still beautiful. She fixed on that, something outside herself to hold onto while whatever had moved through her in that room finished moving.

She didn't speak for a long time and he didn't ask her to.

When the sound of an approaching vessel finally reached them from the direction of the mainland she stood and turned toward the path without being asked. Mando fell into step beside her.

The boat back was quieter than the journey out.

She sat at the stern and watched the island recede and held the blue shell in her palm without turning it over, just the weight of it, the smoothness. Mando took the wheel without discussion and kept his eyes on the water ahead and left her alone, which she was grateful for.

The mainland appeared on the horizon. She watched it grow.

After a while, without entirely planning to, she said, "There was someone."

Mando didn't turn. Didn't react visibly. Just listened.

"We grew up together." Her thumb moved absently across the smooth surface of the shell. "In the enclave, before the Inquisitors found us. Before everything fell apart."

The ocean rolled gently beneath them.

"I thought he died when we were separated. For years, actually." A faint laugh escaped her, though there wasn't much humour in it. "Then one day he was just... there again. Alive. I don't think I realised how much of myself had been waiting for him until that moment."

She watched the water slip past the hull.

"We left together eventually. The surviving Masters had become so obsessed with preserving the old Order that it felt like they were trying to build a mausoleum instead of a future. We wanted something different." She could almost see it again. "For a while we actually had it. A life. Something normal, or as close to normal as either of us knew how to get."

Her voice faded.

"Then we were attacked."

The words settled heavily between them.

"I was hurt badly enough that my presence disappeared in the Force. At least that's what he told me afterwards. He couldn't feel me anymore." Her fingers tightened slightly around the shell. "He thought I was dead."

For a few moments she was quiet, not because she was withholding anything, but because some memories still needed effort to reach.

"When I woke up, everyone who'd attacked us was already gone. They weren't just dead. They'd been..." She searched for the right word and ultimately shook her head. "There wasn't really anything left to fight."

Mando remained silent.

Listening.

"The first thing I noticed was his lightsaber."

Her gaze drifted somewhere beyond the horizon.

"A kyber crystal doesn't just change colour on its own." Her gaze remained fixed on the water. "They're alive in their own way. Not alive like we are, but connected to the Force."

She turned the shell over in her hands.

"That's why bleeding one is so difficult. Kyber is incredibly powerful, but it's delicate too. It resonates with the person wielding it. When someone pours enough fear, rage, grief or hatred into that connection, the crystal can't remain what it was."

The wind tugged at her hair.

"It isn't a natural process. It's domination. Corruption. You're forcing the crystal to submit to something it was never meant to carry."

Even now, she could still remember that moment with perfect clarity. The unfamiliar crimson glow. The look on his face. The horrible certainty that something fundamental had changed while she'd been unconscious.

"He told me to kill him."

The confession sounded strange spoken aloud.

"He said if he could do that for me, if losing me could turn him into that, then I needed to end it before it got any worse."

The shell rested motionless in her palm.

"I couldn't. I don't think I even considered it."

The boat cut through another swell.

"So we made a promise instead. A ridiculous, naïve promise that seemed very wise at the time. We swore that no matter what happened, no matter what either of us became, we would never kill each other."

She sighed.

For a while there was only the sound of the engine and the sea.

"He got worse after that. Not immediately. If it had been immediate, I think I would have left." She turned the shell over in her hands. "That's the part people never understand. Nobody wakes up one morning and finds themselves trapped. It happens slowly enough that you keep adjusting to it."

The waves were growing larger now.

"There was always a reason. Always an explanation. He was grieving. He was struggling. He was trying." A humourless smile touched her lips. "And I loved him, so I kept believing him."

The smile disappeared.

"It got to a point where I realised I was spending more time managing him than actually living my own life. Watching what I said. Watching what I did. Avoiding arguments before they started."

"I still didn't leave."

The admission sat heavily in the air.

"One day I finally asked him a question. Just a question." She stared out across the water. "I asked him if he understood how much he'd changed."

The memory felt unpleasantly vivid.

"He looked genuinely confused. Actually confused. Like he had no idea what I was talking about. When I tried to explain, he asked me something."

Her voice dropped slightly.

"'How have I hurt you?'"

She swallowed.

"He wasn't being cruel. That's what terrified me. He genuinely didn't think he had."

For a few moments there was only the sound of the engine.

"When I couldn't answer quickly enough, he used the Force."

Mando went rigid.

She noticed.

Didn't look at him.

Just continued.

"He lifted me off the floor and started choking me."

The words sounded strange spoken aloud.

"I remember trying to speak. Trying to breathe. I remember him standing there asking me why I was making things difficult."

Her grip tightened around the shell.

"He didn't stop until I was almost unconscious. When he finally let me go, he apologised."

The laugh that followed held no humour at all.

"He was crying."

The memory hurt more than the choking.

"He told me the galaxy was dangerous. That people kept trying to take me from him. That every time I got hurt it proved he was right."

Her eyes closed briefly.

"He'd convinced himself that freedom wasn't good for me anymore."

The words still felt absurd.

"He thought the safest place I could be was with him. Under his protection. In his possession."

She hated that word.

Possession.

"It took everything I had to get away."

For the first time since she'd started speaking, her voice wavered.

"Not physically. I could've beat him in a fight."

That wasn't arrogance, just a fact.

"The hardest part was accepting that the person I was fighting wasn't the boy I'd grown up with."

The shell felt very small in her hand.

"I had to force my way into his mind. Knock him unconscious. Then I ran before I could change my mind."

Silence settled again.

Heavy this time.

He didn't speak. She'd learned by now that his silence had different qualities to it, and this one was the kind that meant he was holding something carefully rather than having nothing to say.

"He's still looking," she said. "And what they were doing down there, I keep thinking about what a blade like that, what it felt like to understand what it was capable of in the wrong hands." She stopped. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm telling you this right now."

For a long moment, Mando said nothing.

The ocean stretched endlessly around them, the engine humming steadily beneath the deck.

When he finally spoke, his voice was as calm as ever.

"I told you before."

She glanced up.

The helmet was turned towards her now.

"You could tell me when you were ready."

The mainland was close now. She could make out the beach, the dock, the familiar shapes of the landing pads beyond. And then, small against the sand, two figures. One large, one very small, standing at the waterline.

Grogu was already waving.

Something loosened in her chest that she hadn't quite known was tight.

She raised her hand.

The boat came in slowly, the engine dropping low, and before it had fully docked Grogu had waded into the shallows and was reaching for her with both hands, babbling with the urgency of someone who had things to report and had been waiting far too long to report them.

She lifted him out of the water and held him against her and felt him press his face into her neck and go still, the way he did sometimes, like he was checking something.

"I know," she said quietly. "Me too."

Rotta regarded her over the child's head with the unhurried attention of someone who noticed things and filed them away without comment.

"Good trip?" he asked.

"Sure" she said.

Mando made a sound behind her that was very nearly a laugh.

She didn't look back at him but she felt it, that small warmth, and held onto it while Grogu tightened his grip on her collar and the sun came down low over Adelphi and the sea turned gold all the way to the horizon.

Corellia's spaceports were somehow even busier than she remembered. Then again, the last time she was here could have been 10 years ago for all she remembered.

Most worlds she'd visited over the last few years had been places people passed through. Refuelling stations. Frontier settlements. Hidden outposts. Temporary destinations occupied by people already thinking about where they needed to be next. Corellia felt different. People lived here. They built lives here. The closer the Crest descended toward the city, the more obvious it became.

The Razor Crest touched down amid a sea of ships arriving and departing in every direction. Freighters occupied entire rows of landing platforms while smaller civilian craft threaded confidently between them, guided by invisible traffic patterns that only seemed to make sense to the people flying them. Even before the ramp lowered she could hear the distant hum of thousands of people existing alongside one another.

A New Republic transport was already waiting by the time the carbonite slab containing their strategist was lowered onto a repulsor sled. Several officials moved in immediately, confirming identities, exchanging authorisation codes and verifying transfer orders with the kind of bureaucratic efficiency that suggested nobody wanted to be responsible for losing him.

Grogu had already wandered to the edge of the landing platform, standing on tiptoe to peer over a safety barrier at the endless activity below. She scooped him up before curiosity convinced him to explore the entire spaceport on his own and settled him onto her hip.

"You're not escaping that easily."

The child made a noise of protest.

"That's exactly what somebody planning an escape would say."

She was still arguing with him when Mando finally reappeared. Whatever paperwork the New Republic required had apparently been completed because the officials were already preparing the strategist popsicle for transport.

The whole process felt strangely anticlimactic after everything it had taken to get the strategist out.

"Done?" she asked.

"Done."

That was apparently all the summary she was getting before he was heading back up the Crest's ramp.

Grogu immediately disappeared toward the cockpit. Probably intending to pilot another ship he had absolutely no business piloting. She followed more slowly, settling into the co-pilot's seat while Mando powered up the systems.

The engines rumbled beneath them. Outside, the landing pad began sliding past. Automatically, she reached for the restraints.

Mission complete.

Corellia was behind them. Except several minutes passed and Corellia remained very much in front of them.

The Crest continued moving through the spaceport without ever joining the departure traffic. Instead they crossed between rows of docking berths and maintenance hangars before eventually turning into a section occupied by parked ships.

She watched through the viewport as Mando guided the Crest into an empty berth and powered down the engines.

For a moment neither of them moved.

Then she frowned, "We break something?"

"No."

"Need repairs?"

"No."

She glanced back toward the spaceport.

Workers crossed between docking bays carrying supplies. A family disappeared into a nearby restaurant. Several crews were unloading cargo from a freighter parked three berths away.

"We're staying?"

"Just until tomorrow."

"Oh."

The response escaped before she could stop it.

Mando paused halfway through shutting down the final systems.

"Hmm?"

She considered lying then decided there wasn't much point.

"I just assumed we'd leave."

"The city's got decent stores."

That was explanation enough for him.

A moment later her datapad chimed. She pulled it out absentmindedly.

Then stopped. The number staring back at her looked absurd.

Her head lifted slowly.

"What did you do?"

Mando had already risen from his seat.

"What?"

"You transferred credits to me."

"Yes."

She stared at him.

"You transferred a lot of credits to me."

"Your share."

"Mando, this is insane."

"You were on the job."

"I was helping."

The discussion was clearly going nowhere.

Not because she lacked points, because Mando had already decided the matter. There was no uncertainty in him. No internal debate. No concern that she might refuse. The money was hers. That was the beginning and end of it.

"You didn't have to do that."

The helmet tilted slightly.

From the floor below, Grogu called impatiently.

The child had apparently decided everyone else was taking too long.

Mando started toward the ladder.

"Come on."

She slipped the pad into her pocket and followed.

"Where are we going?"

"The market."

That made sense, a big pay day probably meant a big restock. She reached the bottom of the ladder just in time to hear him add:

"You need gear."

The smile arrived before she could stop it.

Of course, this entire detour was because she'd walked into an Imperial facility wearing a cloak and apparently given him several years worth of stress in the process.

The walk from the docking berths into the city took considerably less time than she'd expected.

Spaceports occupied a strange place in most settlements. They tended to exist slightly apart from everything else, as though local governments had collectively agreed that starships were somebody else's problem. Corellia appeared to have ignored that tradition entirely. The streets beyond the docks were already crowded. Shops lined both sides of the thoroughfare while streams of pedestrians moved confidently between them. The smell of street food drifted through the air from somewhere ahead, competing with engine exhaust and the lingering scent of machine oil from the nearby landing platforms.

Grogu stopped walking three separate times in the span of a minute.

The first interruption involved a vendor selling brightly coloured sweets.

The second involved a toy shop.

The third appeared to involve absolutely nothing at all.

The child simply froze in the middle of the pavement and stared through a shop window with the sort of complete concentration usually reserved for solving ancient mysteries.

She followed his gaze to a display containing decorative lamps.

"That's what caught your attention?"

Grogu pointed as one of the lamps slowly changed colour.

The child nodded as though this explained everything.

"Fair enough."

They continued onward.

At least, they continued onward until Grogu discovered another distraction approximately thirty metres later.

Ahead of them, Mando never broke stride. Years of experience had apparently taught him that resisting Grogu's curiosity was pointless. The child would either catch up eventually or be retrieved once he wandered too far.

The strategy seemed surprisingly effective.

The crowds thickened as they moved deeper into the commercial district. Workers occupied outdoor seating areas between shifts. Families browsed market stalls together. Several students sat around a fountain arguing over something with enough passion to suggest it was either philosophy or complete nonsense. Every storefront seemed to contain objects nobody strictly needed but had apparently purchased anyway.

That was the part she found herself noticing.

A woman stepped out of a shop carrying a bundle of fresh flowers. Another passed them balancing several books beneath one arm. Someone else emerged from a homeware store with a new kettle tucked under their shoulder.

The purchases themselves weren't particularly interesting. The assumptions behind them was. People bought flowers because they expected to have somewhere to put them. People bought kettles because they expected to make tea tomorrow. The thought arrived uninvited and lingered longer than she would have liked.

Grogu in the meantime had already been distracted by at least six more things. The latest appeared to be a shop displaying flight equipment.

The child stopped so abruptly that she nearly walked into him.

Most of the merchandise was designed for civilian pilots, but one corner had been dedicated entirely to children. Tiny flight jackets hung from miniature mannequins while brightly coloured navigation kits and toy control yokes occupied the lower shelves.

The first thing Grogu noticed was the pair of child-sized flight goggles resting near the centre of the display.

The child glanced between her and the current object of his desires.

There wasn't a manipulative bone in his body and frankly, he didn't need one.

"Oh, these are cute."

Grogu nodded enthusiastically.

Somewhere behind them, Mando continued walking.

"In here."

The child-sized flight goggles were forgotten for the moment when the Mandalorian disappeared into the larger shop next door.

She sighed, "Come on little man"

Picking up the child, she followed behind the suit of beskar.

The interior looked exactly like the sort of place Mando would love and she would normally avoid. Practicality had apparently been arranged into neat rows and displayed for sale. Reinforced clothing occupied one section. Protective equipment another. Weapons and holsters filled the far wall.

Mando moved through the store with alarming efficiency.

Not browsing, selecting.

The first jacket earned a brief inspection before being rejected. The second lasted slightly longer before being handed directly to her.

"This one."

She accepted it reluctantly.

"You've put a lot of thought into this."

"You wore a cloak."

"It's a perfectly respectable cloak."

"It serves no purpose."

The annoying thing was that he wasn't wrong.

She slipped her arms into the reinforced jacket that somehow managed to feel comfortable without sacrificing mobility. The armour panels had been integrated into the lining well enough that they weren't immediately obvious either, not that she didn't love the whole shiny plates of metal look, maybe just not on her.

Mando nodded once.

"Better."

"That sounded like approval."

"It'll stop a knife."

"There it is."

The rest of the shopping trip followed a similar pattern.

Boots.

Utility pouches.

A reinforced undershirt.

Enough equipment that she began to suspect he'd spent the entire previous mission mentally cataloguing every possible injury she could have sustained. Eventually he stopped beside a weapons display and picked up a compact blaster pistol.

"You should carry one."

She frowned immediately, "No."

"I don't see why not."

"I have a lightsaber."

"You won't always need a lightsaber."

The pistol remained extended toward her.

She stared at it.

For most of her life the answer would have been simple. Jedi didn't carry blasters. Jedi carried lightsabers. The distinction had been drilled into her since childhood. The elegant weapon. Civilised weapon.

A Jedi's weapon.

The thought felt strangely hollow now. A though belonging to a version of herself that no longer quite existed.

"I'm not shooting first."

"Didn't ask you to."

The answer arrived immediately.

She looked down at the pistol again.

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"You use it when you don't feel the need to burn a limb off."

A laugh escaped before she could stop it.

"That's a very specific selling point."

The pistol changed hands. Because he was right. There was a difference.

Sometimes a situation didn't require a lightsaber. Sometimes it didn't require announcing herself to an entire facility with a blade visible from three corridors away. Sometimes having another option was useful.

Mando immediately reached for a utility belt.

"Oh now here we go."

The helmet tilted.

"What now?"

"You got me to agree to one thing and now you want me to accessorise."

"You need somewhere to put it."

When they finally emerged from the shop, she'd somehow acquired a reinforced jacket, upgraded boots, a utility belt and a blaster she fully intended to ignore until an emergency forced her to acknowledge its existence.

Grogu rushed back to the flight shop. The moment he spotted them, his attention returned to the goggles.

She stopped behind him for moment then simply turned and walked into the store. A few minutes later she emerged carrying a small box.

The look on Grogu's face was worth every credit.

His ears lifted so high he looked like he could take off.

"Come here."

The child practically launched himself at her. The goggles fit surprisingly well. Once secured, they somehow made his already enormous eyes appear even larger.

Grogu puffed himself up proudly.

She laughed.

Across from them, Mando had gone suspiciously quiet.

The helmet shifted from Grogu, to the goggles, to her.

"What?"

"You bought him goggles."

"They're protective eyewear." The answer arrived immediately.

Mando continued staring.

She pointed at the beskar helmet covering his head.

"You've got a helmet."

Then toward Grogu.

"He's got goggles."

The child nodded enthusiastically.

"That's gear."

For a moment nobody said anything.

Then Grogu adjusted the goggles and walked directly into a support column.

She doubled over laughing. Even Mando's shoulders moved slightly.

Close enough.

The goggles remained firmly in place as they continued through the market.

She had expected the novelty to wear off within minutes. Instead, Grogu treated them with the same seriousness he normally reserved for important missions. Every so often he adjusted them with both hands when they slipped too far down his face, then continued marching through the market with complete confidence. The effect was made considerably funnier by the fact that the oversized lenses somehow magnified his eyes even further.

At one point he caught his reflection in a shop window and stopped to admire himself. She didn't have the heart to interrupt.

Corellia seemed determined to distract them at every turn. The market stretched through several interconnected streets, overflowing with shops, food stalls and vendors selling everything from ship components to handcrafted furniture. Mechanics haggled over replacement parts while musicians competed with the noise of the crowds. Strings of lights had begun glowing overhead as evening settled over the city, casting a warm amber light across the streets.

For the first time in a very long time, she wasn't heading somewhere.

There wasn't a deadline looming over her shoulder. No transport she needed to catch. No destination waiting beyond the next jump. They wandered because they could, stopping wherever something caught their attention before moving on again.

Mando, of course, continued pretending they weren't wandering at all.

The man had undoubtedly constructed an efficient route through the city in his head and was quietly guiding them along it while allowing enough detours to keep Grogu entertained.

She was still considering this when she noticed he'd disappeared.

The realisation arrived several seconds before she spotted him again emerging from a supply store carrying a crate of parts large enough that she immediately knew they were intended for the Crest.

The man couldn't spend three hours in a city without buying something for the ship.

Grogu hurried over to inspect the contents. Mando crouched beside him and began explaining something about fuel regulators.

Left temporarily to herself, she drifted toward a nearby storefront displaying household goods.

It contained nothing particularly exciting. Folded blankets occupied one side of the display while shelves of ceramic dishes and storage containers filled the other. Most people probably would've walked straight past without noticing.

She didn't.

Her attention settled on a woven blanket draped over the back of a display chair. The colours were muted enough to fit perfectly aboard the Crest. More importantly, it looked comfortable.

Her fingers brushed across the fabric but that was all. Yet she found herself standing there longer than intended.

Most things aboard the Crest served a purpose. Every item earned its place. Cargo space wasn't infinite and Mando wasn't the sort of person who collected things simply because he liked them.

The blanket didn't solve a problem. It wasn't necessary, they had blankets. It was simply something she wanted. The thought felt unexpectedly strange.

She glanced sideways.

Mando had appeared beside her at some point, carrying the crate beneath one arm while Grogu sat inside it examining the contents with intense curiosity.

"You cold?"

"No." She spit out too quickly.

The helmet tilted slightly.

"You already sleep under three blankets."

"That is a gross exaggeration."

Mando remained unconvinced. Unfortunately, he was also correct.

The Crest had a tendency to become cold during long hyperspace journeys, and she had developed a habit of surrounding herself with every available blanket before going to sleep. The fact that Mando had apparently noticed was information she wasn't entirely sure what to do with. Before she could formulate a defence, he shifted the crate and reached for the blanket.

The movement was so casual she didn't realise what he was doing until it had already been placed in her hands.

She stared down at it.

"You know these cost money." She mumbled.

"Good thing you have some."

The credits were still sitting in her account. She'd spent years treating every purchase as a calculation, weighing necessity against cost before deciding whether she could afford it. Nobody had ever suggested buying something simply because she liked it.

The realisation lingered as she paid for the plush blanket and tucked it beneath one arm.

A little while later they continued through the market with Grogu proudly wearing his goggles, Mando carrying enough ship parts to rebuild half the Crest, and her carrying a blanket she absolutely did not need.

She told herself she would probably keep it in the cockpit. The fact that she was already mentally assigning it a place aboard the Crest was a completely separate issue and not one she intended to examine too closely.

Grogu seemed equally pleased with his purchase. Every reflective surface had become an opportunity to admire the goggles. Shop windows. Polished speeders. The occasional decorative panel. If the child discovered a mirror, she suspected they might never leave Corellia.

Mando appeared determined to pretend none of this was happening. Which was impressive considering Grogu had nearly walked into three separate pedestrians while admiring himself.

The crowds thickened as dusk settled properly across the city. Lights glowed above the streets while restaurants and food stalls began drawing larger crowds. The scent of cooking food drifted through the air often enough that she found herself becoming increasingly aware of how long they had been walking.

Apparently Grogu reached the same conclusion. The child slowed abruptly beside a food stall and simply stopped.

"You know, most people at least pretend to be subtle."

Grogu pointed toward a tray of fried dumplings.

The vendor smiled.

"Good choice."

The child looked unbearably smug.

Mando sighed. The sound carried all the weight of somebody who had lost this argument before it had even started.

A few minutes later the three of them were walking again, this time with food containers in hand. Grogu carried his own with fierce determination despite the fact that it occupied both hands and most of his attention.

The market had become noticeably busier after dark, outdoor seating areas were packed with families lingering over dinner while vendors called out to passing customers. Every few metres somebody seemed to be carrying food in one direction or another.

"Want to find somewhere to sit?" she asked.

The nearest café still had a few empty tables.

Mando followed her gaze.

Before he could answer, she looked down at the growing collection of purchases between them. The blanket was tucked beneath her arm. Mando was carrying enough ship parts to rebuild half the Crest. Grogu was balancing dumplings, goggles and determination in roughly equal measure.

"Or... we could just take it back to the ship."

"What?"

"The food."

She lifted her container slightly.

"It'll probably be easier than trying to juggle all this and eat at the same time."

The suggestion seemed perfectly reasonable. Then another thought occurred to her.

"And maybe we could actually eat together for once."

The words escaped before she could think too hard about them.

For a moment she kept walking, her attention fixed on a nearby stall displaying strings of coloured lanterns, but the longer Mando remained silent the more her own suggestion began catching up with her. It wasn't as simple a thing as she'd made it sound. Most of their meals happened in passing. She and Grogu would eat while travelling through hyperspace or during maintenance stops, while Mando generally disappeared for a while and returned later as though the subject of food had never existed in the first place.

Grogu made a noise immediately, looking up from his dumplings with obvious approval.

"Well, at least someone likes the idea."

The child nodded so enthusiastically that his goggles slipped halfway down his face.

She couldn't help laughing.

By the time she'd reached over to push them back into place, Mando finally answered.

"Alright."

That was it.

No hesitation she could hear through the modulator. No explanation. Just a simple agreement that somehow left her feeling oddly pleased.

The conversation drifted away after that, swallowed by the noise of the market around them. They turned back toward the spaceport at an unhurried pace, weaving through the evening crowds while the city settled into the comfortable rhythm of night. Restaurants filled. Apartment windows glowed overhead. Somewhere nearby a musician had begun playing, the sound carrying faintly between the buildings.

She found herself looking upward more often than expected.

People occupied balconies above the streets. Some sat together over dinner while others watered plants or read beneath warm interior lights spilling through open doors. Nobody appeared to be in a hurry. Nobody seemed particularly concerned about where they would be tomorrow.

The route back toward the spaceport took them through a quieter section of the district where the crowds thinned just enough that she could walk without constantly sidestepping somebody. Most of the shops here seemed geared toward locals rather than travellers. There were fewer souvenir displays and fewer vendors trying to draw attention to themselves. Instead she found herself passing bakeries, bookstores and clothing shops whose windows displayed more ordinary things.

A few months ago she wouldn't have looked twice. Clothes were clothes. Blankets were blankets. If something served a purpose, it was worth carrying. If it didn't, it stayed behind.

Yet now she found herself slowing in front of storefronts simply because something looked comfortable. The realisation arrived while passing a display window filled with sleepwear.

She made it three steps beyond the shop before stopping.

Then she turned around.

Grogu nearly walked into the back of her legs, a satisfying reversal of roles.

"You need something?" Mando had apparently noticed she'd stopped.

She pointed through the glass.

The display itself was entirely unremarkable. Soft shirts. Lounge clothes. Sleep shorts. The sort of things people bought when they expected to spend their evenings relaxing instead of fleeing across the galaxy.

"I've just realised something."

The helmet tilted slightly.

"What?"

"I sleep in cargo pants."

Mando looked through the window, then back at her.

"Yes."

She stared.

"I've spent the last two years of my life sleeping in cargo pants."

"Okay."

The complete lack of concern in his voice somehow made the situation worse.

"That is insane."

"You wear them every day."

"That's not the point."

Although, from his perspective... She looked him up and down.

"Well you sleep in armour."

"I don't sleep in armour."

"You absolutely sleep in armour."

The helmet tilted again.

"I take the plates off."

She laughed.

"That is not the defence you think it is."

Grogu looked between them with the expression of somebody watching a conversation he did not remotely understand.

The child was right.

The conversation made no sense.

Yet somehow that only reinforced her point.

She was standing beside a man whose idea of relaxing involved removing a few pieces of beskar before going to sleep.

Perhaps neither of them were particularly qualified to discuss healthy sleeping habits.

"I'm fixing this."

Before either of them could respond, she stepped inside.

The shop smelled faintly of clean linen. Rows of soft fabrics replaced armour plating and tactical equipment. Nobody was trying to sell her something reinforced against blaster fire. Nobody cared about combat mobility or knife resistance ratings. It felt absurdly indulgent.

She loved it.

By the time she emerged again, she'd acquired a matching lounge set, a pair of sleep shorts, an oversized shirt and thick socks soft enough that she was already looking forward to wearing them. The shopping bag swung lightly from her hand as she rejoined the others, feeling disproportionately pleased with herself.

"That's a lot of stuff."

She looked up.

Mando was staring at the bag.

"It's one outfit."

"You already have clothes."

She laughed.

"You own one pair of boots."

"I own two pairs."

For reasons she couldn't entirely explain, the exchange left her grinning for the rest of the walk back to the Crest.

The purchases weren't important. None of them were necessary.

Yet she found herself thinking about the blanket tucked under her arm and the lounge clothes sitting inside the shopping bag with the same quiet satisfaction she'd felt watching Grogu put on his goggles.

They were hers.

By the time they reached the Crest, the evening rush had largely disappeared from the spaceport. Most of the ships around them sat dark and quiet beneath the floodlights while maintenance crews moved between docking bays finishing the last of their work for the night. The familiar sight of the old gunship waiting exactly where they'd left it should not have felt nearly as reassuring as it did.

Grogu disappeared up the ramp the second it lowered.

The child was still wearing the goggles.

At this point she suspected they would need to be surgically removed.

"Those are definitely going to bed with him."

The ramp sealed behind them with a familiar hiss. Purchases found temporary homes on the booth table while Mando deposited his collection of ship parts near the workshop. For a few minutes the cargo bay became organised chaos as everything was sorted into piles. Grogu proudly unpacked the goggles box despite already wearing the contents. She folded the blanket she'd bought and immediately unfolded it again because the fabric was even softer under the Crest's warmer lighting.

It occurred to her halfway through this process that nobody was actually eating.

"Hey"

Neither Mando nor Grogu looked up.

"We bought food."

That got Grogu's attention.

Across the room, Mando had already started unloading parts onto a nearby workbench. She watched him for a moment before realising he was doing exactly what he always did whenever food entered the equation.

A small smile tugged at her mouth, "You said yes."

The helmet turned slightly.

"To what?"

"Eating together."

Mando looked at her.

Or at least she assumed he did, the visor made it difficult to tell.

"I did."

"Then sit down."

For a second she thought he might argue. Instead he set the last component onto the workbench and crossed the cargo bay without comment.

Within minutes the three of them had settled into the booth. The arrangement wasn't unusual. She and Grogu ate together all the time. What felt different was the presence of the Mandalorian occupying the opposite bench instead of finding some excuse to disappear into another section of the ship.

The first few minutes passed easily enough. Grogu proudly babbled something about his goggles through a mouthful of dumplings. She pointed out that pilots generally benefited from being able to see where they were going. Mando informed the child that flying into an asteroid would not become less embarrassing simply because he looked impressive while doing it.

Grogu took this criticism personally.

She laughed hard enough that she nearly dropped her chopsticks.

The atmosphere settled after that into something quieter. Comfortable. Mando ate with practiced efficiency, lifting food beneath the helmet with chopsticks while never once disturbing the beskar covering the rest of his face. She'd seen him do it before. It still fascinated her.

Mostly because of how normal he made it look.

There was no awkwardness.

No self-consciousness.

Just another habit developed over years of living this way.

At some point she realised she was smiling. Not at anything in particular.

Maybe just at the evening they had shared.

The food.

Grogu's increasingly dramatic defence of the goggles.

The fact that Mando had actually stayed.

By the time the containers were empty, Grogu was visibly struggling to keep his eyes open. The goggles had finally slipped sideways across his face and neither of them had the heart to correct them.

She gathered her purchases from the table and disappeared up the ladder.

Mando picked up the adorable sleepy child and headed up the ladder behind her.

She locked herself in the cramped fresher, changing right into her self indulgent purchases.

The lounge clothes came first.

Then the socks.

Then the blanket.

When she emerged several minutes later she felt absurdly comfortable. The oversized shirt hung low and the shorts were soft in a way that made her wonder why she'd ever accepted sleeping in cargo trousers as normal human behaviour.

The blanket remained wrapped firmly around her shoulders.

She fully intended to enjoy every credit she'd spent.

Grogu noticed first. The child brightened immediately.

"See?" She pointed at herself. "This is what a person wears when they aren't expecting a firefight."

The helmet across from her remained suspiciously still.

Then it tilted slightly. She could almost feel his eyes scanning her behind the visor.

She narrowed her eyes, "What?"

"You're going to need four more blankets."

She blinked.

"To make up for the loss of fabric."

For a second she simply stared.

Then the laugh burst out of her before she could stop it.

"That's rich coming from a man who sleeps in armour."

"I don't sleep in armour."

"You absolutely sleep in armour."

The argument resumed immediately.

Grogu, delighted to discover his evening entertainment had returned, settled deeper into his hammock to watch the entire thing unfold.

When she looked down at him he was clearly fighting back sleep, blinking slower and slower while his precious goggles sat, still crooked, across his face.

She reached over and gently slipped them off.

Grogu made an offended sound and reached for them, half asleep.

"You are not sleeping in these."

The goggles were placed safely on a shelf as she got Grogu settled into his hammock for the night, promising they would still be there in the morning and that he could wear them again the second he woke up. The child had appeared to accept this arrangement right up until she turned her back and felt a familiar tug through the Force.

The goggles flew neatly off the shelf.

Grogu caught them, immediately curling his little fingers around them and closing his eyes.

She stared.

The child kept his eyes firmly shut.

"You're impossible."

No response.

Just three tiny green fingers wrapped possessively around the goggles.

A few minutes later she climbed into the cockpit with her blanket draped around her shoulders and immediately set it across the co-pilot's chair. The oversized sleeves on her shirt swallowed most of her hands while the thick socks made the metal deck pleasantly warm beneath her feet. Combined with the lingering excitement from her purchases, she felt absurdly comfortable.

Mando occupied the pilot's seat as usual.

The soft blue glow of a holographic display illuminated the cockpit.

"You look pleased with yourself."

She dropped into the co-pilot's chair.

"I am pleased with myself." No shame whatsoever.

The purchases had been excellent.

Mando made a sound suspiciously close to amusement before gesturing toward the navigation display floating between them.

"I got an urgent call from the Colonel."

That immediately caught her attention.

"Good call or bad call?"

"Don't know yet."

Never reassuring.

She leaned forward as the display expanded, stars spilling across the cockpit in a three-dimensional map of the galaxy. Hundreds of systems glittered within the projection while hyperspace routes connected them in glowing streams of blue light.

The sight immediately drew her in.

"Oh, that's pretty."

She leaned further over the console to get a better look. She reached out automatically, dragging her fingers through a cluster of systems and watching the map respond around her.

Mando had gone oddly quiet.

She glanced over.

The Mandalorian seemed to have forgotten whatever explanation he'd been about to give.

"What?"

The helmet shifted slightly.

Nothing.

Mando cleared his throat. Or at least the modulator produced something that sounded close enough.

"We need to get to Adelphi."

She frowned.

"I have no idea where that is."

"Didn't think you would." He adjusted the display.

For several seconds she simply studied the map, tracing routes between unfamiliar systems while trying to orient herself. The galaxy always looked different when viewed this way. Smaller, within reach.

Beside her, Mando shifted slightly.

Then leaned forward himself. Not moving from the pilot's seat. Just leaning in closer so he could point toward a route cutting through to the Outer Rim.

"It's here."

His gloved finger traced a path through the display.

"We'd take these lanes."

She followed the route carefully.

"How long?"

"Three days."

She glanced over.

"That's a long way."

"Two and a half if we're lucky."

The explanation continued while she studied the projection. She could feel the gentle pull of sleep clouding her thoughts. Spurred only by the familiar hum of the ship beneath the deck plating and smell the lingering traces of takeout containers still sitting somewhere below.

She hadn't realised how much she was looking forward to curling up beneath her blanket until that moment.

Still, the answer seemed obvious.

"We should leave now."

The helmet turned slightly, "You sure?"

"You said the it sounded urgent."

"It did. But I told you we were staying the night."

The statement seemed genuinely earnest. As though he was worried she'd feel cheated somehow.

She shrugged.

"It doesn't really make much difference."

Mando waited.

She smiled and settled back into her chair.

"I'm going to sleep either way."

That earned a quiet huff from beneath the helmet.

Victory.

A few moments later the navigation display disappeared and the engines began their familiar low rumble beneath the floor.

Outside the viewport, the lights of Corellia slowly started to drift away.

The planet appeared slowly through the viewport, emerging from the stars as little more than a dark sphere wrapped in cloud.

She glanced up from where Grogu had somehow convinced her to participate in a game involving three ration tokens and absolutely no discernible rules.

"What'd this one do?"

Mando didn't answer immediately. The familiar glow of a tactical display reflected across his visor while he adjusted something on the console.

"Who?"

"The poor bastard you're kidnapping."

"We're not kidnapping him."

She looked at Grogu.

Grogu looked at her.

"See? Even he doesn't believe that."

A long babble of agreement came from her lap.

"The asset is an Imperial strategist."

That got her attention. She abandoned the game immediately and leaned forward between the pilot and co-pilot seats to look at the display.

The facility looked small from orbit. A cluster of angular buildings perched on a stretch of rocky coastline, isolated enough that nobody would stumble across it accidentally.

"What does this Imperial strategist do?"

"Keeps the remnants alive."

She looked up from the datapad.

"Meaning?"

"The Empire lost the war. People like him stop them from losing the next one." Mando zoomed further into the facility.

A series of tunnels appeared beneath the main structure.

"We land here."

She followed the movement of his finger across the display.

"Maintenance pipe, Grogu you enter here."

The child immediately perked up.

Her eyebrows rose, "Excuse me?"

The ventilation network illuminated.

"Move using these pipes."

Another route lit up as he spoke, "Plant smoke charges here, here and here."

Grogu was sitting noticeably straighter now, eyes narrowed in concentration. A tiny criminal being briefed on an important assignment.

She pointed accusingly at him, "You've done this before."

The child looked up briefly before focusing on the map ahead.

Mando continued as if none of this was unusual.

"He exits here."

A blinking marker appeared near the northern side of the facility.

"We rendezvous at this point."

She nodded slowly.

Then another route appeared.

"You and I enter from above, and move through here, we'll have to clear a path for our exit before we get to the asset."

She frowned.

"...I'll what?"

"You'll enter here with me then-"

"No, I heard you."

The visor turned slightly toward her as she gestured vaguely between them.

"I mean the part where I'm involved in all this."

A pause, a long enough that she became increasingly certain he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

"What, you've got something better to do?"

She stared at him.

The worst part was that he sounded completely sincere. As though she'd asked why gravity worked. As though she'd somehow missed the obvious conclusion that, yes, of course she was coming.

Across from them, Grogu made a small sound that resembled a laugh.

Her eyes narrowed immediately.

Mando looked between them both.

Then back to the display, "We'll only have a few minutes before security reorganises."

And just like that he was already discussing the next stage of the plan. Not asking if she wanted to come or telling her to stay behind. Not even realising there had ever been another option.

She settled into the co-pilot seat, trying and failing to ignore the small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

The final approach toward the planet gave way to preparation.

The atmosphere inside the Crest shifted subtly as soon as the mission stopped being a discussion and became something real.

The Mandalorian moved through his equipment with the same quiet precision she had come to expect from him. Nothing was rushed. Nothing was forgotten. Every weapon was checked. Every piece of armour inspected. Ammunition counted. Recounted. Stowed exactly where muscle memory expected to find it later.

She found herself leaning against the doorway watching him for a moment longer than necessary before asking, "You do that every time?"

The helmet never lifted from the blaster he was checking.

"Do what?"

"Turn getting dressed into a religious experience."

"I'm a Mandalorian, weapons are my religion."

"It looks exhausting."

"It's not."

"It sounds exhausting."

This time she was almost certain he was smiling beneath the helmet.

Grogu, meanwhile, disappeared into a crate, only to reappear a moment later carrying his tiny round beskar chestplate with both hands.

He waddled directly past Mando, past the armour rack, past every other available option, and stopped directly in front of her.

The chestplate was lifted expectantly.

She looked between Grogu and the armour.

"Seriously?"

The child shoved it toward her. Behind her, Mando didn't even look up from the rifle he was assembling.

"He's perfectly capable of putting it on himself."

Grogu immediately hugged the armour to his chest possessively, a pleading look in his large eyes.

"Clearly he disagrees."

"He doesn't disagree."

The helmet finally tilted slightly in their direction.

"He wants your attention."

The accusation was delivered with the confidence of someone who had witnessed this behaviour many times before.

Grogu made a protesting sound as she bit back a smile.

"Well," she said, crouching to take the chestplate from him, "that's alright, it's all his anyways."

The child immediately brightened.

She adjusted the strap carefully before settling the little piece of beskar into place across his chest.

"There." Her fingers brushed lightly against the metal before she tapped it once. "Fits perfectly."

The child placed both hands on the armour and looked down at it for a second before looking back up at her.

The expression was genuinely excited that she laughed.

Across the room, Mando had gone suspiciously quiet. When she looked up, she found him watching them. Then he returned his attention to his gear as though he'd never been looking at all.

She was beginning to realise that was simply how Mando operated. The moments that lingered most were always the ones he pretended hadn't happened. He never mentioned them. Never drew attention to them. He simply collected them quietly and carried on as though they weren't important.

She finished adjusting the last strap of Grogu's chestplate before giving the little circle of beskar another firm tap. The child immediately looked down at himself, inspected the armour with great seriousness, then looked back up at her for approval.

"Very intimidating," she assured him.

A second later he climbed directly into her lap anyway.

She laughed. "And there goes the intimidation."

The child made a happy sound and settled more comfortably against her.

Across the room, Mando finished securing the last of his weapons before rising from the workbench. Watching him prepare was strangely fascinating.

The atmosphere aboard the Crest shifted as they descended through the outer layers of the planet's atmosphere. Not dramatically, but enough that she felt it. Conversation faded. Focus sharpened. Even Grogu seemed to recognise it, sitting a little straighter in her arms as the clouds swallowed the viewport.

By the time she followed Mando into the cockpit to retrieve the commlink bracelet he had set up for each of them, the facility had grown large enough to dominate most of the display.

It sat on a stretch of black coastline where jagged cliffs met a violent sea. The facility itself wasn't particularly large, which somehow bothered her more than if it had been sprawling. Imperial installations were usually built to be seen. Massive projects. Endless corridors. Monuments to their own importance.

This place looked practical.

The landing itself was smooth, but the moment the engines powered down the silence felt different. During hyperspace there had always been the constant hum of machinery beneath their feet. Here there was only the wind battering the hull and the distant crash of waves somewhere below the cliffs.

Mando was already moving before the systems had fully shut down.

She watched him secure the last of the ship's controls and rise from the pilot's seat in one fluid motion.

Grogu trotted after his father. The child had spent the last twenty minutes attempting to look professional. The effect was somewhat undermined by the fact that he was barely taller than Mando's boots.

"Remember," she said as they moved toward the ramp, "you're a highly trained covert operative."

Grogu nodded seriously.

"You are not allowed to get distracted."

Another solemn nod.

Mando was halfway through his final equipment check when his attention shifted toward her.

Or rather, toward the complete lack of equipment.

The visor travelled slowly from her boots to the cloak draped over her shoulders before settling on her face.

"You need to gear up."

She looked down automatically.

Then back at him.

"...I'm dressed aren't I?"

The helmet remained perfectly still.

"This is how you dress for a tactical operation?"

She glanced down again as though the outfit might have changed since the last inspection.

Seemed fairly self-explanatory.

"What exactly am I missing?"

"Protective gear."

The answer arrived so quickly that she'd clearly asked the wrong question.

"Oh. Right."

Mando waited.

She waited.

Eventually the helmet tilted.

"Well?"

"Well, my options are somewhat limited."

The visor lowered slightly.

"This cloak."

One hand pointed downward.

"Or my studded leather jacket."

The other hand pointed toward a storage compartment.

"I don't think either one technically counts as armour, but the studs could be like extra artillery"

The helmet remained motionless.

She raised both hands and made a series of tiny firing motions.

"Pew. Pew."

Nothing.

Not even a crackle from the modulator.

"Those are not projectiles."

"You don't know that."

The helmet tilted again, "You don't own armour."

There wasn't judgement in the statement.

Because of course she didn't. Jedi didn't wear armour and even in the years she had spent running, she'd never acquired things of her own. The concept of accumulating possessions had never really entered the equation.

Mando was practical enough that the thought simply hadn't occurred to him until the exact moment it became relevant. Unfortunately, now that it had occurred to him, she could practically see him cataloguing the problem somewhere behind the visor.

"It's alright," she said before he could start trying to solve it. "I've faced much worse wearing much less."

The helmet turned toward her immediately.

Somehow that made it sound worse.

She grinned, "That wasn't reassuring, was it?"

"No."

Mando stared at her for another second before apparently deciding that arguing further would accomplish nothing. Instead he reached toward her belt.

His gloved hand tapped lightly against the lightsaber clipped there.

"You have this."

The gesture felt oddly deliberate.

She rested her hand briefly against the hilt.

"I have this."

The visor lingered there for a moment longer before finally lifting back toward her face.

Apparently satisfied, he gave a single nod.

The conversation ended exactly the way most conversations with Mando ended. Not because either of them had run out of things to say.

Because he had decided the matter was settled.

The landing site was little more than a break in the cliffside, a strip of weathered stone trapped between the sheer rock face behind them and the drop that plunged toward the ocean below. Far out across the water, the sky burned with colour. Bands of orange and gold stretched across the horizon, melting gradually into softer shades of pink that reflected across the surface of the sea in shimmering ribbons. The waves caught the dying light as they rolled toward the cliffs, breaking against jagged rocks in bursts of white foam that sent spray high into the air.

She stepped down the ramp and stopped long enough to take it in.

"Grogu."

She pointed toward the horizon. "Look at that."

Grogu followed her gaze immediately. His ears lifted as he stared out across the water, and despite the fact that there was a mission waiting for all three of them, he remained completely still for several seconds, watching the colours spread across the sky. The wind tugged at her cloak while the last warmth of the day lingered over the cliffs. Beside him, Mando had slowed as well. The polished beskar of his helmet reflected streaks of pink and orange whenever he turned his head, the colours sliding across the dark visor before fading again.

"That's just beautiful."

Grogu answered with a soft sound of agreement.

Mando didn't say anything, though she suspected he was just as enamoured as she was.

The moment couldn't last forever. The facility waiting several kilometres away wasn't going to infiltrate itself.

She sighed dramatically. "Alright. Back to crime."

The facility sat further along the coastline, built into another section of cliff overlooking the sea. From a distance it appeared almost modest by Imperial standards. A collection of angular buildings clung to the rock face while communications towers rose above them against the darkening sky. Personnel moved occasionally along elevated walkways connecting different sections of the complex, though from where they stood they were little more than distant silhouettes.

Getting there proved considerably less pleasant than admiring the view.

The path narrowed repeatedly as they followed the cliffs toward the facility, forcing them to pick their way across uneven stone while strong winds swept in from the ocean. More than once loose gravel disappeared over the edge beneath her boots, vanishing into the crashing water far below. The constant roar of waves accompanied them the entire journey, echoing between the cliffs and making conversation difficult unless they stayed close together.

"Remind me why we couldn't land closer?"

"They have sensors."

She glanced sideways at him.

"Your ability to make everything sound practical remains impressive."

Eventually the cliffs dropped away sharply toward a narrow stretch of black stone below where the sea surged endlessly against the rocks. The facility loomed directly overhead now, built into the cliff face itself. Maintenance systems protruded from the stone at irregular intervals while reinforced walls rose above them toward the main structures.

Mando didn't hesitate in picking Grogu up. The jetpack ignited with a roar and carried him cleanly over the edge.

She watched him descend, then looked down at the drop.

Then looked after him again.

"Show off."

The Force gathered instinctively around her as she stepped from the cliff. Wind tore at her cloak during the descent, the rocky shoreline rushing upward beneath you before momentum bled harmlessly away at the last second, boots touching stone with barely a sound.

The beach itself was narrow, squeezed between the ocean and the towering cliffs above. Waves rolled across slick black rocks polished smooth by years of erosion, forcing them to move carefully as they worked their way toward the facility. Without knowing precisely where to look, the maintenance access would have been almost impossible to spot.

Grogu found it first.

The child pointed toward a large ventilation pipe protruding from the cliff face high above the shoreline. It blended almost perfectly into the rocky surface surrounding it.

Mando followed the gesture and nodded once. "That's your way in."

A burst from his jetpack carried him upward, Grogu clutched carefully in one arm. He landed beside the vent housing, examined the locking mechanism for a moment and then destroyed it with a carefully aimed shot. The cover swung loose immediately.

She leaped once, then again, allowing the force to take the weight of her body and carry her through the, landing next to them.

As the child looked up at the opening, Mando crouched in front of him and adjusted the small satchel containing the smoke charges. The motion carried the familiarity of something they had done before, a routine repeated often enough that neither of them needed to think about it.

"You remember the route."

Grogu nodded.

"The charges stay where we discussed."

Another nod followed.

"If anything changes, you leave."

This time Grogu hesitated.

Mando rested a hand briefly against the side of his head. The child continued looking at him.

The modulator softened slightly. "I mean it, kid. You turn around and go straight back to the ship. Don't come back for me this time."

Something passed across Grogu's expression at those words. Recognition. Memory. The kind that suggested this wasn't the first time the conversation had happened. The second nod came much faster than the first.

Before either of them could say anything, Grogu hurried toward her and wrapped both arms around her neck. The hug lasted only a few seconds before he pulled away again, clearly aware that he was delaying the mission. She laughed softly and brushed her fingers against the side of his head, extending the contact through the Force.

I'll look after your dad.

The response arrived instantly, though not through words. Just a sense of unwavering trust.

Grogu stepped back, looked once toward Mando, then disappeared into the darkness of the ventilation system. The faint sound of scrambling feet echoed briefly through the pipe before fading into silence as he moved deeper into the facility.

The two of them remained where they were for a moment longer, listening until even those sounds vanished.

Then Mando secured the cover behind him and looked toward a maintenance door built into the cliff face further above.

"Our entrance is up there."

The noise from his jetpack would draw too much attention that close to the access point, with no other choice they began to scale the wall of rock.

The cliff face wasn't particularly steep by itself. The problem was the combination of wet stone, fading light and the ocean tide coming in below with what felt like an unhealthy amount of enthusiasm. Every few minutes another wave exploded against the rocks beneath them, sending spray high enough that she could feel it against her back despite the distance.

Mando, naturally, seemed completely unaffected.

He climbed with the same steady certainty he applied to everything else, never slipping, never hesitating, never looking particularly concerned about the fact that one wrong step would send him tumbling into the sea.

By the time they reached the maintenance ledge, she was beginning to understand why Imperial engineers were universally disliked.

The door itself looked entirely ordinary. No guards. No cameras. No visible security measures whatsoever. It sat quietly in the cliff face as though it wasn't attached to a heavily guarded Imperial facility containing exactly the person they had come to steal.

Mando approached the access panel and extended his wrist. A few lights flickered anticlimactically as the lock disengaged.

The door simply opened.

She stared at him, "Mando."

The helmet tilted slightly.

"How do you keep doing that?"

"It opened."

"Yeah, no kidding?"

He stepped through the doorway wordlessly.

The corridor beyond was narrow, lined with maintenance piping and softly humming machinery. The sound of the ocean vanished almost immediately behind them, replaced by the distant vibration of generators somewhere deeper within the facility. It felt strange after spending the the last hour exposed to wind and open sky.

Mando checked the route on his wrist display.

She leaned closer.

The planned path wound through several maintenance corridors before cutting into occupied sections of the facility.

"That seems relatively straightforward."

"It won't stay that way."

An Imperial technician emerged from a side passage carrying a datapad and muttering to himself. The man looked exhausted. The particular expression of someone who had spent eight hours in meetings that could have been settled with a holo call.

Mando stepped back around the corner.

She reached out through the Force.

The technician slowed and his muttering stopped. A moment later he frowned down at the datapad in his hands before releasing a long sigh.

"You know what?" he said. "Tomorrow's problem."

Then he turned around and walked away.

Then the visor turned toward her.

"What?"

"You made him leave work."

"He wanted to leave work."

"You helped."

"He looked miserable, so yeah I helped."

The helmet remained pointed in her direction but he remained silent. Which was usually how she knew she'd won an argument.

The route continued.

A pair of security officers suddenly remembered a report they needed to deliver elsewhere. A maintenance worker became convinced he had forgotten equipment on another level. One particularly bored stormtrooper developed a sudden desire to check a corridor on the opposite side of the facility.

She wasn't controlling them, not really anyways, just nudging them. By the time they reached the next checkpoint, the facility had quietly lost several employees to improved work-life balance.

The tracker on Mando's wrist beeped softly.

Both of them looked down.

Grogu.

The first smoke charge had already been armed successfully.

He had just armed the second.

They stood there watching until the third appeared shortly after.

She couldn't stop the smile that crept across her face when the the tracker chimed again.

Both of them looked down.

The smile vanished.

Grogu's marker had stopped moving entirely. For several seconds it remained perfectly still. Then it began travelling in a completely different direction.

She stared.

"Mando."

"I see it."

"He's off the map."

"Yes."

"You're remarkably calm about that."

The visor remained fixed on the display while Grogu's marker continued wandering deeper into sections of the facility that weren't part of the plan.

"About fifty percent of the time he goes rogue for a good reason."

She blinked.

"Only fifty?"

"It could be closer to sixty."

"That is not the reassuring statistic you think it is."

The marker finally stopped.

Neither of them spoke for several seconds.

Then Mando closed the display.

"We're following him."

That was apparently the entire discussion.

A few minutes later they were moving through sections of the facility that didn't appear anywhere on the New Republic schematics. The deeper they went, the stranger the layout became. Entire corridors seemed absent from the maps. Security systems appeared where there shouldn't have been any. More than once she found herself wondering how much of the facility had actually been documented.

Eventually they reached a reinforced door tucked away at the end of a narrow corridor. Mando tried the access panel but nothing happened.

The visor remained fixed on the display for several seconds before turning toward her.

"This section isn't connected to the facility network."

She frowned.

That alone was unusual. Facilities like this were designed around efficiency. Security. Oversight. People disconnected parts of a system when they didn't want those parts found.

"You got anything?"

She stepped closer to the door and examined the narrow seam running between the two halves in response to his question.

"Maybe."

The metal resisted at first. Determined to remain exactly where it was.

Gradually the gap widened just a fraction of an inch at a time. Then enough for Mando to wedge his hands into the opening. The rest happened quickly. Gloved fingers gripped the edge of the door and forced it apart with enough brute force that protesting metal echoed through the corridor.

Warm amber light spilled into the passage beyond.

Neither of them moved immediately because whatever either of them had expected to find behind a hidden door inside an Imperial facility, it certainly wasn't a room that looked this personal.

She stopped just inside the threshold.

Every Imperial installation she had ever visited shared the same design philosophy. Function over comfort. Efficiency over personality. This room seemed to have ignored that entirely. The lighting was softer, too intimate. The furniture looked chosen rather than issued. A sitting area occupied one corner while shelves lined another. The space felt lived in, which somehow made it more unsettling than if it had looked sterile.

A familiar voiced cooed from overhead.

She looked up immediately to see Grogu staring down at them through a ventilation grate.

For a moment she simply blinked at him.

The child blinked back then waved.

"What are you doing?"

Grogu pointed at the room beneath him as though that somehow explained everything.

Beside her, Mando tilted his helmet upward.

The two of them stared at each other through the vent for several seconds before the modulator crackled to life. "Kid, if you're done with the side quest, get down here."

Grogu's ears lifted.

Mando raised his rifle and put a controlled shot through the grate. The metal crashed onto the floor below, leaving a clean opening in the vent. Without a moment's hesitation, Grogu stepped into empty air and dropped. The Force caught him before gravity had much say in the matter, lowering him neatly to the floor beside them.

Her attention returned to the room.

The further she walked into it, the stranger it became. A jacket had been thrown carelessly over the back of a chair. A half-finished meal sat abandoned on a nearby table. Several datapads lay scattered across a workstation, their displays still active. Whoever used this room spent a significant amount of time here. The space didn't feel like temporary accommodation. It felt owned.

Then she noticed the wall of screens. At first she assumed they were security monitors but then she actually looked at them.

An unpleasant expression crossed her face almost immediately.

Rows of surveillance feeds covered the wall. Some monitored ordinary corridors. Others showed workspaces. But most displayed private quarters, bunks, changing areas and showers. There was no security justification for half of what she was looking at. The cameras weren't protecting anything. They were watching people who clearly had no idea they were being watched.

"That is just creepy."

Mando moved closer to inspect the displays himself.

She didn't need to see his face to know he wasn't impressed either.

The surveillance wasn't random. Some of the feeds had been organised into folders. Others appeared archived and catalogued. The entire arrangement suggested somebody who had spent a great deal of time observing the people around him for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with security.

Grogu looked at the screens.

Then at her, making a grotesque face.

She pointed at him immediately.

"Exactly."

For perhaps the first time in the entire mission, all three of them appeared to share precisely the same opinion.

The hidden room suddenly made much more sense.

Nobody had forgotten to include this section on the schematics. It had been deliberately concealed. The strategist, or whoever occupied the room, had gone out of their way to keep it disconnected from the rest of the facility and absent from official records. The realisation only strengthened her conviction that they were standing inside the strategist's personal quarters.

"His staff are going to throw a party when he's gone."

While she continued judging the man's character, Mando's attention shifted toward another cluster of displays. Unlike the surveillance wall, these screens were actually useful. Security deployments. Personnel movement. Emergency procedures. One monitor tracked command staff locations throughout the facility while another displayed relocation protocols for senior personnel during security incidents.

The moment she stepped beside him, she understood what he was looking at.

When Grogu's smoke charges detonated, the facility would move its important personnel into protected areas off base while security investigated the disturbance. The strategist would be the first person relocated. Several routes were highlighted on the display, showing exactly where security teams would move him and which corridors they would use.

The interception point practically chose itself.

They wouldn't need to force their way into a command centre. They wouldn't need to fight through layers of security. If they got ahead of the movement route and waited, the strategist would walk directly into their hands while the rest of the facility was busy dealing with the smoke charges.

For several seconds she studied the display before looking down at Grogu.

The child was watching both of them expectantly.

The ridiculous part was that he'd actually found unbelievably helpful information.

Mando seemed to arrive at the same conclusion because the helmet lowered toward Grogu for a moment before returning to the display.

The child somehow managed to look even prouder of himself. This time neither of them could tell him he hadn't earned it.

Mando remained at the workstation for another minute, committing the evacuation routes to memory while she continued finding new reasons to dislike the strategist. The surveillance feeds were somehow worse the longer she looked at them. Every monitor seemed to reveal another invasion of privacy, another reminder that the man they had come to extract was exactly the sort of person who deserved to be removed from his comfortable little hiding place.

Eventually Mando stepped away from the displays.

"We've got what we need."

"Good."

The answer came a little too quickly.

The helmet tilted slightly, mocking.

"You sure don't want to stay?"

She looked around the room, specifically at the surveillance wall.

Then back at him.

"No."

The hidden room disappeared behind them as they slipped back into the corridor. The facility beyond remained blissfully unaware of the fact that three intruders were currently wandering through its restricted sections. Officers moved between departments carrying datapads. Technicians disappeared into side passages. Security patrols crossed intersections at regular intervals. Everything continued exactly as it had before, which made it strangely easy to forget that within the next few minutes the entire facility was going to descend into chaos.

They moved quickly, using maintenance routes whenever possible and occupied corridors only when necessary. Several times they stopped to let personnel pass before continuing on. Once, an officer emerged from a nearby junction unexpectedly enough that she reached instinctively for the Force before realising she didn't need to. The woman hurried past without sparing them a second glance, focused entirely on whatever crisis existed inside her datapad.

The further they travelled, the more obvious it became that Grogu's accidental discovery had changed the operation completely. The original plan had involved finding the strategist first and figuring out how to separate him from his security detail afterwards. Now they already knew where security intended to take him. They knew which corridors he would use and which exit he would be taken through to while the facility responded to the smoke charges.

Several minutes later they arrived at the junction identified on the strategist's evacuation route and thanks to the information hidden inside the private quarters, they had managed to get there first.

The corridor itself was remarkably unremarkable.

A long stretch of reinforced passage connected the command levels to a secured holding section deeper within the facility. Emergency lighting strips ran along the floor and ceiling, interrupted every few metres by identical doors and access panels. There was nothing memorable about it, which was precisely why it worked. Personnel would be focused on the emergency. Security would be focused on relocation procedures. Nobody would expect trouble from a corridor they walked through every day.

The three of them settled into position near one of the intersections branching off the main route. From there they could see approaching personnel without being immediately visible themselves. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't particularly clever. It was simply the point where every route they had identified eventually converged.

"We're really hiding in a hallway waiting to steal a former government official."

"We're not stealing him."

She looked at Grogu, eyebrow raised.

Grogu looked back and nodded.

"Thank you. At least somebody around here is committed to honesty."

Mando turned his attention to the panel on his wrist, preparing to detonate the charges.

Grogu stood a little straighter.

The helmet lowered toward the display briefly before Mando closed it again.

"Ready?" He asked.

The child nodded.

She smiled, "Do your worst."

Grogu looked delighted by the instruction.

The first charge detonated less than thirty seconds later.

A distant thump echoed through the structure.

Then another.

Then a third.

The reaction throughout the facility was immediate. Alarms began sounding from somewhere overhead while emergency lighting flooded the corridors in pulsing red. Personnel who had been moving calmly moments earlier suddenly accelerated. Officers appeared in nearby intersections speaking rapidly into comlinks while security teams changed direction almost in unison.

For a few moments the corridor transformed into controlled chaos.

Troopers rushed past, administrative staff hurried toward designated stationsl, containment doors began sealing off sections of the facility. Everything was happening exactly the way the strategist's relocation protocols said it would.

Several security teams passed before the strategist appeared.

She recognised him instantly.

Even though he didn't look important in the slightest, solely because everybody else was treating him as though he was.

Officers walked alongside him carrying datapads and delivering updates while stormtroopers formed a moving perimeter around the group. The strategist listened to all of it without breaking stride, issuing instructions as quickly as information reached him. Even from a distance she could see why the remnants valued him. The man wasn't a soldier. He wasn't particularly imposing. But his mind was clearly moving several steps ahead of everyone around him.

Unfortunately for him, somebody else's plan had gotten there first.

The group approached the intersection.

Twenty metres.

Fifteen.

Ten.

The escort detail rounded the corner and the strategist followed close behind.

For one brief moment she genuinely thought the interception was going to be easy. Then one of the officers looked directly at them. The man's expression shifted almost instantly from confusion to alarm. His mouth opened but Mando's stun round hit him squarely in the chest before he managed more than half a warning.

The officer collapsed.

Every stormtrooper reacted immediately.

The strategist disappeared behind the formation as rifles came up and security personnel surged forward to create distance between him and the threat. The first blaster bolt struck the wall beside them. Another forced them back around the corner.

The extraction had officially stopped being subtle.

"Well," she muttered, drawing back as another volley of fire scorched the corridor, "that was going going a little too well for a while."

Mando was already moving, one arm scooped Grogu up against his side while the other returned fire down the corridor. Two stun bolts dropped the nearest troopers, creating just enough confusion for the strategist's escort to continue moving. Unfortunately, that was exactly what the security detail needed. The further the strategist got from the intersection, the harder the extraction became.

"We're losing him."

"I know."

The answer came immediately, almost panicked.

The problem was that every route leading after the strategist was covered by troopers, and every second spent pinned behind the corner allowed the escort team to create more distance.

Then boots thundered from somewhere to their right.

She looked up to see another squad of stormtroopers was flood into the adjoining corridor. A second route closed off.

More movement echoed from behind them.

The facility had finally figured out where the intruders were and the bottleneck had formed almost instantly.

The strategist and his escort had surged ahead and now they were faced with additional security converging from the right and even more personnel moving in behind them.

The corridor that had seemed so useful ten minutes earlier suddenly felt very narrow.

Mando stepped forward and physically pushed her back against the wall as another barrage of blaster fire crossed the intersection. Beskar absorbed the shots that would have otherwise reached her while Grogu remained tucked securely beneath one arm. The position wasn't comfortable, but it gave a chance to think while protecting both of them from the worst of the incoming fire.

She opened her mouth to complain, stopping short when she felt the distress emitting from behind the visor.

The helmet tracked every corridor.

Every angle.

Every route.

Searching.

Calculating.

Trying to find a way through a situation that was rapidly running out of solutions.

Worse still, if they didn't move now, not only was the extraction was over, but their capture was imminent.

Her hand found the hilt of her lightsaber almost before she'd consciously made the decision.

Mando saw the movement immediately, blocking her path.

"No."

She almost laughed.

It wasn't an unreasonable response. If anything, it was exactly what she would have expected from him. The problem was that neither of them had the luxury of pretending there was a better option.

Another volley of blaster fire hammered into the intersection.

The strategist's escort continued retreating. Every second they remained pinned down made the distance between them larger.

She glanced past the corner.

"I'll clear the path for you."

"I said no." The answer came immediately.

She turned toward him.

"You got a better idea?"

Mando didn't answer.

She knew him well enough by now to recognise what that meant.

"Let me push them back, you get out behind me."

The helmet remained fixed on her.

"Just let me think." The modulator hissed.

"Mando."

Another burst of fire lit the corridor.

Neither of them moved.

For a moment all she could see was her reflection in the dark visor staring back at her.

"You don't have a choice." The words came quietly, "you have to trust me here."

The silence that followed lasted less than a second.

"Fine."

The lightsaber ignited with a sharp snap-hiss.

Emerald light exploded into the corridor and for the briefest moment everything seemed to stop.

The green blade illuminated the smoke still lingering from Grogu's charges. Reflections danced across white armour and polished floors. The colour flashed across Mando's visor as she stepped around the corner and directly into the path of the incoming fire. The first stormtrooper reacted too slowly.

His blaster was already firing when the blade intercepted the bolt.

The energy struck the emerald plasma and the redirected shot slammed into the trooper beside him.

A second bolt followed.

Then a third.

Each one met the blade and changed direction.

The corridor erupted into confusion almost immediately.

Troopers who had expected pinned-down intruders suddenly found themselves dodging their own blaster fire. Several dropped before they even understood what had happened. Others attempted to spread out, only to discover there wasn't enough room. The narrow corridor that had trapped her moments ago now trapped them.

She moved, through the mess, Force carrying her from one opening to the next with fluid certainty. A blaster bolt passed where she'd been standing a heartbeat earlier. A Stormtrooper foolishly crossing in the way of her blade collapsing to the floor. Blasts struck the ceiling as she twisted beneath it, the green arc of the saber tracing bright patterns through the air.

The stormtroopers tried to adjust.

Individually, many of them were competent but collectively, they were a total disaster. There were simply too many bodies occupying too little space. The first squad couldn't advance without blocking the second, the second couldn't fire without risking the first.

Those further back were forced to hesitate as fallen troopers created obstacles throughout the corridor.

She exploited every mistake.

A rifle barrel swung toward her, her blade severed it clean.

Another trooper attempted to close the distance.

She pivoted around him and through him back sprawling into two more.

More began to fire from further back but every bolt returned to its sender.

The entire engagement lasted seconds.

It only felt longer.

Behind her, Mando wasted none of the opportunity she'd created.

The moment the pressure eased, he moved.

Blaster fire from the rear corridor disappeared almost immediately as he established a firing line behind her. Any trooper attempting to push through the bottleneck found himself facing either a Mandalorian marksman or a Jedi with a lightsaber. It was an arrangement that proved remarkably impassable for everyone involved.

More importantly, the path toward the strategist was finally opening.

The remaining escort detail was still retreating.

Still trying to get their asset out of the now compromised facility.

She risked a glance over her shoulder.

Mando was already moving past her.

Grogu tucked securely beneath one arm.

The strategist's location clearly fixed somewhere behind that visor.

She stepped backward, blade spinning once to catch another incoming bolt before driving a kick into the chest of a stormtrooper attempting to force his way through the growing pile of bodies.

Rushing through the opening she'd carved straight toward the retreating escort team while she turned back to the steadily growing number of stormtroopers who had finally decided that charging a lightsaber was perhaps not their strongest tactical decision.

Unfortunately for them, that realisation had arrived a little late.

The moment Mando disappeared down the corridor, she became painfully aware of just how many stormtroopers were still trying to get through.

The bottleneck was slowly becoming less useful. The fallen troopers littering the floor continued to obstruct movement, but the Empire had never suffered from a shortage of bodies. Fresh squads were arriving from adjoining corridors now, replacing the men she'd already disabled. The narrow passage prevented them from overwhelming her all at once, yet it also meant she couldn't simply disengage without exposing her back to a very large number of blasters.

A bolt streaked toward her from somewhere behind the front ranks.

The lightsaber caught it instinctively.

The emerald blade moved almost continuously now, reflecting fire back whenever opportunities presented themselves and intercepting it when they didn't. She could feel the strain gradually building in the troopers opposite her. They were beginning to hesitate before firing. Beginning to second-guess angles. Beginning to realise that every shot carried a chance of finding its way back toward someone wearing white armour.

Unfortunately, hesitation wasn't the same thing as surrender. More boots thundered through the corridors beyond.

She risked another brief glance down one of the adjoining passages and immediately disliked what she saw. Additional security teams were moving to flank her position, attempting to approach from angles that would force her away from the choke point she'd been holding.

She steadied herself for a moment, reminding herself that the objective wasn't to win a battle.

It never had been.

The objective was extraction.

Mando had the strategist and that meant her job was no longer holding the corridor.

It was getting the hell out.

A stormtrooper rushed forward, hoping to close the distance while several others laid down covering fire. She stepped inside his reach before he could properly react, twisted around him and used the new opening he'd created to slip through the gap between formations, slicing the path ahead of her open with her saber. Shouts and yelps erupted behind her as several troopers realised what had happened, but by then she was already moving. The lightsaber remained active as she sprinted through the branching corridors, relying on instinct and the Force to guide her away from concentrations of personnel.

The facility had become complete chaos.

Alarms still echoed through every level. Entire sections of security were responding to the smoke charges while others searched for the intruders responsible. More than once she found herself cutting through maintenance routes simply because they were emptier than the main corridors.

Eventually the sounds of pursuit began fading behind her.

The lightsaber disappeared back into it's hilt.

The exit was only a short distance ahead.

The facility had become harder to navigate now that she was moving alone. Mando had spent enough time staring at maps and tactical displays to know exactly where he was going. Her own navigation strategy relied far more heavily on confidence than accuracy.

A few moments later she emerged back out onto the narrow ledge overlooking the ocean.

She froze as it dawned on her that there was absolutely nobody there.

The sky had deepened from pink and orange into rich shades of inky blue, the last traces of sunlight long gone. Waves crashed endlessly against the rocks beneath her while strong winds swept in from the sea.

There was no Mando.

No Grogu.

Not even the Strategist.

For the first time since entering the facility, uncertainty crept in.

Had they used another route?

Had something gone wrong inside?

Or had they left?

The questions arose faster than she could rationalise answers that would explain them away.

And unfortunately, the facility behind her was still full of people who would very much like to arrest her.

She felt despair clutching at her when she heard a noise coming from her wrist.

The comm unit that she forgot she had on blinked.

"Mando?"

Static crackled briefly before the modulator came through.

"Asset in custody."

She closed her eyes for half a second.

"Hang in there."

The words were accompanied by the distant roar of engines.

"I'm coming back for you, trouble."

The sound reached her a moment later.

She looked up and spotted him, a streak of light crossing the darkening sky.

For one ridiculous second she felt her knees threaten to give out beneath her. Not because she'd doubted he would do it. Not because she'd thought he wouldn't succeed. Just because she'd realised, standing alone on the cliffside with an entire Imperial facility behind her, just how much she'd wanted to hear that he was coming back.

The jetpack carried him over the cliffs and out across the open water before arcing toward her position.

He landed hard enough to scatter loose gravel across the ledge.

The strategist was nowhere to be seen.

Already secured aboard the ship, probably doing time as an icicle in the carbonite chamber.

The helmet turned toward her.

"You alright?"

She stared at him for half a beat then laughed.

"You left me with an army."

"You handled it."

That wasn't even remotely the point.

Before she could say anything else, he had stepped closer and reached out, his hands closing around her forearms.

The next thing she knew the ground was disappearing beneath her.

The jetpack roared.

The jagged rocky cliffs and ocean waves dropped away far below them.

She had exactly enough time to decide that she hated flying like this before the Razor Crest came into view.

The ship was already powered up.

They landed heavily inside the cargo bay and the ramp immediately began retracting behind them. The moment it sealed shut, the familiar vibration of the engines intensified beneath her boots as the Crest lifted away from the cliffs.

Mando finally released her arms, leaving her just a little unsteady. She leaned against the nearest bulkhead and took a long breath.

The mission was over.

They'd actually done it, though not without significant challenge.

Turning her attention to the freezer, she concluded that at the very least, the strategist was having a considerably worse evening than she was.

The thought improved her mood immediately as she climbed the ladder toward the cockpit.

The ship lurched gently beneath her as it lifted of the ground.

Then she reached the top and stopped.

Grogu was standing on the pilot's console, far to little to reach any of the controls from the seat.

His entire body leaned into one of the controls as though sheer determination was somehow a substitute for height.

She stared.

The child grunted with effort and shoved at the throttle again.

"Mando!"

The shout was halfway between alarm and disbelief.

The Mandalorian appeared a second later.

One look at the cockpit was all it took.

"Oh."

"OH?" She turned to him stunned.

Grogu looked back at both of them.

Entirely unapologetic.

Mando watched the child for a moment before looking at her.

"Told you he could handle himself."

Grogu leet out a meep noise in agreement as his father stepped into the cockpit to pilot the ship and get them as far from the base as physically possible.

Watching the two of them settle back into their places aboard the Crest, she found herself smiling despite the exhaustion settling into her bones. She wasn't entirely sure where she belonged in the galaxy, but she was beginning to suspect that at least for the foreseeable future, it might be here.

Hyperspace had a way of distorting time aboard the Crest. 

Hours blurred strangely once the stars stretched blue beyond the cockpit viewport, the old gunship settling into its steady rhythm of rattling pipes, humming engines and occasional violent shudders whenever the hyperdrive protested too loudly about its own existence.  

The child sat cross-legged opposite her in the middle of the cargo hold with his eyes squeezed shut in fierce concentration while a small collection of ration tokens hovered uncertainly between them several inches above the floor. 

“Well,” she said carefully, watching one wobble violently sideways before correcting itself again, “at least none of them have hit me in the face yet. That feels like progress.” 

Grogu made a pleased little noise. 

Across the hold, Mando glanced briefly up from the half-disassembled rifle resting across the workbench beside him. 

“He already threw a hydrospanner at me this morning.” 

“That was an accident.” 

“He looked proud afterward.” 

“That’s not evidence.” 

The modulator crackled softly beneath what she was becoming increasingly certain counted as amusement from him. 

Warm yellow light spilled dimly through the hold while hyperspace flickered blue beyond the cockpit windows above, painting shifting reflections across the beskar whenever Mando moved. The atmosphere aboard the Crest felt different now after several uninterrupted days in transit. Smaller somehow. Familiar in ways she was trying very hard not to examine too closely. 

Grogu’s concentration slipped suddenly. 

Every ration token dropped at once. 

One bounced directly off her knee. 

The child opened his eyes immediately with visible horror. 

“Oh no,” she gasped softly, clutching her leg dramatically. “A devastating attack.” 

Grogu stared at her for one long uncertain second before letting out a relieved sigh once he realised she was teasing. 

Mando shook his head quietly from the workbench. “You’re not taking it seriously enough, he won't either.” 

“He’s still learning.” She assured 

“He’s learning to commit crimes and assault people.” 

“Useful survival skills for a Mandalorian mercenaries son.” 

The helmet angled toward her slightly. 

“You got me there.” 

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it properly, disappearing softly into the steady hum of the Crest around them. 

Grogu reached for the ration tokens again, ears lifting with renewed focus. 

This time she reached out through the Force before he could lift them. 

Not to stop him. 

Just to guide. 

“Don’t force it,” she said gently. “Feel where they are first.” 

The child frowned in concentration. 

“The Force isn’t only for moving things,” she continued quietly while the ration tokens trembled uncertainly between them. “You can feel intention through it. Movement, danger, people.” Her voice softened slightly.  

Grogu looked toward her. 

Then, slowly, his ears lifted towards the other end of the hold. 

A second later she felt it too. 

The shift of energy from Mando approaching across the hold long before his boots actually sounded against the metal floor. 

Grogu chirped triumphantly. 

Behind her, the modulator crackled softly. “I was standing there the whole time.” 

“Yes,” she replied without turning around, “but he felt your intention before you moved.” 

Grogu looked unbearably pleased with himself. 

Mando stood beside them for a moment longer than necessary, rifle now slung across his back while his gaze lingered quietly between them. 

Something about the stillness stretched oddly. 

Not uncomfortable. Not at all really, it was comfortable enough that she found herself suddenly aware of how natural this had started feeling aboard the Crest. 

The realisation unsettled her enough that she looked away first. 

“What?” she asked eventually when the silence dragged slightly too long. 

The helmet tilted faintly. 

“Nothing.” 

Which obviously meant absolutely something. 

"WHat is it?" She insisted. 

The modulator crackled softly before he spoke, “Can you read minds?” 

The question caught her off guard enough that she laughed quietly before she could stop herself. 

“No.” 

The helmet tilted faintly. 

“That sounded dishonest.” 

“I said I can’t read minds.” She shifted slightly against the storage crate behind her while Grogu continued concentrating fiercely on the ration tokens between them. “Not the way you're thinking, anyway.” 

Mando remained quiet, waiting. 

“The Force lets you feel things,” she explained after a moment. “Emotions. Intentions sometimes. Surface thoughts if someone’s projecting strongly enough.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Which, to be fair, most people do constantly.” 

“And you can do that whenever you want?” 

“In theory.” Her expression softened slightly. “But I don’t.” 

“Why not?” 

The answer came more easily than she expected. 

“Because I wouldn’t want someone inside my head without permission. There's a very fine line between touching someone's mind and tearing into it." 

The words settled quietly between them beneath the steady hum of hyperspace surrounding the hold.  

Mando looked at her for a long moment through the black visor before asking, “So you’ve never tried it on me.” 

She shook her head once. “You deserve privacy too.” 

Something unreadable shifted in the stillness afterward. 

Not suspicion, challenge. 

Then the helmet tilted slightly again, “I bet I could stop you.” 

Her eyebrows rose immediately. “Stop me from what?” 

“Getting into my head.” 

A laugh escaped her softly. “You’re challenging a trained Jedi Knight to a mental standoff?” 

“You said you could do it.” 

“I said I wouldn’t.” 

“But you could.” 

She studied the visor for a second before a small smile finally curved against her mouth. “Well, you do have the beskar. Maybe that helps.” 

“No excuses.” The modulator dipped lower, quieter now beneath the warm hum of the ship. “Try me.” 

Grogu looked instantly delighted by this development. 

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You sound entirely too confident for someone who doesn’t even know how this works.” 

“I know enough.” 

“That’s usually what people say immediately before humiliating themselves.” 

The modulator crackled again with amusement, she was sure of it this time. 

For a moment she considered refusing purely on principle. Then, despite herself, curiosity won. 

“Fine,” she murmured, before straightening slightly where she sat across from him. “But if your head turns out to be completely empty, I’m going to be deeply disappointed.” 

Grogu chirped excitedly between them. 

Mando folded his arms loosely across the beskar. “Do your worst.” 

The Force settled around her instinctively as she reached toward him. 

Not invasive, she was being careful with that. The way one might test the edge of water before stepping into it fully.  

At first all she felt was resistance. Not violent resistance or defensive walls raised in panic but sheer discipline. 

Focus layered carefully over instinct until his thoughts felt strangely difficult to grasp directly, less like touching an open mind and more like trying to look through dark glass. 

She frowned slightly in concentration, eyes closing. 

Across from her, the helmet tilted just enough that she could feel the smugness radiating off him. 

“Oh, don’t start looking pleased with yourself yet,” she murmured softly. 

The modulator dropped lower. 

“You’re struggling.” he taunts 

“I’m being polite.” 

“Hm.” 

The sound carried unmistakable satisfaction. 

Unfortunately, that was the exact moment she caught something sharper beneath the surface. 

She couldn’t make out words or even a clear train of thought but something unmistakable warm flowed through her. 

Protectiveness so deeply rooted it barely even felt conscious. 

Grogu. 

Her. 

The ship. 

His people. 

Her? 

The realisation brushed unexpectedly against her chest before she pulled back almost immediately, suddenly aware of how intimate the moment had become without either of them fully noticing. 

Across from her, Mando had gone strangely still. 

“You stopped.” 

She reached for the tokens infront of Grogu again mostly to give herself something else to do with her hands. 

“I was right,” she said lightly without looking directly at him. “The beskar must help create a mental shield or something.” 

She kept her head down, knowing full well that the warmth from her chest had managed to creep its way up her cheeks. 

Before either of them could say anything else, Grogu made an impatient sound between them. 

She looked down toward the child sitting to her side and smiled. 

“Well,” she murmured softly, grateful for the interruption before the strange tension with the Mandalorian became something she actually had to examine, “you already know how to do this far better than he does.” 

The helmet tilted slightly. “I heard that.” 

“I know.” 

She smiled faintly before turning her attention fully back toward Grogu. “I know you can reach into someone’s mind already,” she said gently. “You’ve done it twice with me.” 

Across the hold, Mando went quiet again. 

The child blinked slowly up at her. 

“The first time was to tell me who you were,” she continued softly while one tiny claw curled loosely around the fabric of her sleeve. “And the second…” Her expression softened slightly at the memory. “You were trying to help me.” 

Grogu’s ears lowered just a little. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

The reassurance came instinctively enough that Mando’s helmet shifted faintly toward her again. 

She ignored it. 

“You can reach back when someone reaches out to you through the Force,” she explained quietly, "or you can initiate a connection yourself." Her fingers adjusted lightly around Grogu’s hands. “But you have to let the connection come naturally. Don’t force it.” 

The child listened with complete seriousness. 

“Try with me.” 

Across the hold, Mando straightened slightly against the bench. 

She could feel his attention now even without looking directly at him, still tuned quite closely to the energy around him. 

Grogu stared at her for a second before lifting one tiny hand uncertainly toward her face. 

“That’s it,” she encouraged softly. “Just gently.” 

The Force shifted around them almost immediately. 

Warm at first. 

Familiar. 

She let her walls lower instinctively to make the connection easier for him, allowing only light surface thoughts to drift upward naturally through her awareness. The warmth of the caf she had started her day with. The steady hum of the Crest beneath them. Grogu balanced sleepily in her lap. Mando sitting in the cockpit, the reflection of hyperspace light against his beskar helmet. 

Safe things. 

But Grogu was too powerful to understand restraint. 

The moment he felt the connection open, he pushed too deep. 

Pain hit her instantly. 

Her breath vanished from her lungs as terror slammed violently through her chest, sudden and absolute. The hold disappeared around her beneath the crushing sensation of invisible pressure locking around her throat while darkness crowded sharply at the edges of her vision. 

The Force reaching out in the shape of a hand that used to bring her comfort. 

The sound of herself choking for air. 

"You’re not going anywhere." 

Her entire body locked. 

For one horrifying second she felt it again exactly as it had happened from the agony in her throat to her pulse faltering desperately beneath crushing pressure while her connection to the Force shattered violently beneath fear. 

Tears slipped down her face before she even realised she was crying. 

Another presence tangled itself desperately through the memory, pulling against the panic with all the frantic determination of a child trying to fix something broken. 

She felt him. 

Not the memory. 

The light of his consciousness wrapped around hers instinctively and she grabbed onto it immediately, dragging herself upward through the panic hard enough that she finally tore free of the memory with a sharp gasp for breath. 

The hold slammed back into focus around her. 

Grogu had fallen backward slightly in obvious alarm, enormous dark eyes fixed on her tear-streaked face with instant horror. 

“Oh,” she breathed shakily, still trying to steady her breathing. “Hey no, hey-” 

The child scrambled toward her immediately. 

She caught him against her chest before he could panic further, holding him tightly while he made distressed little sounds against her shoulder. 

“You didn’t mean to,” she whispered quickly, one hand trembling slightly where it rested against his back. “Grogu, it’s alright.” 

Across the hold, Mando had gone completely motionless. 

She could feel the tension radiating off him even without looking, his urge to help but having abslutely no means of understanding what happened." 

Grogu pulled back just enough to place one tiny three-fingered hand carefully against her wet cheek. 

Then the Force shifted again, controlled only by emotion rather than intention. 

Images flickered gently through her awareness one after another, unsteady and fragmented the way memories often felt through the Force. 

The cockpit lit blue by hyperspace while she laughed at something Mando said. 

Her hands fixing the blanket around him while he slept. 

Grogu perched beside her during meditation. 

The warmth of her presence moving through the Crest over the last several days, safe moments. 

Seen through Grogu’s eyes. 

Affection wrapped clumsily in memory because he didn’t know how else to explain himself. 

Love. 

A shaky breath escaped her as she pressed her forehead carefully against his. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered softly. 

Grogu made a tiny sad sound against her cheek. 

Behind them, the hold remained completely silent except for the steady hum of hyperspace and the quiet breathing hidden somewhere beneath the Mandalorian’s armour. 

She could still feel the remnants lingering unpleasantly beneath her skin. Phantom pressure around her throat. Her pulse refusing to settle properly. The Force preserved fear too well sometimes, storing memory with enough clarity that the body forgot the difference between remembering and reliving. 

Across the hold, Mando moved toward them at last. 

Not rushed. 

Careful. 

Like he understood instinctively that something fragile had settled over both her and Grogu and he didn’t want to make it worse by approaching too quickly. 

“You alright?” 

The concern beneath the modulator caught her off guard badly enough that for one brief humiliating second she felt terribly young sitting there on the floor of his ship trying to stop her hands from shaking. She had spent the last several days slowly becoming aware of how different his protectiveness toward her felt from the way most people cared for her. Steady. Quiet. Unconditional in a way she didn’t entirely understand yet. 

Now, suddenly, she saw herself from the outside. 

A frightened little girl crying on the floor while he tried to figure out how to comfort her. 

The same way he would comfort Grogu. 

Embarrassment flared hot beneath her skin before she forced herself to swallow it down quickly. The realisation of what she was to him. Another lost child he’d taken onto his ship because it needed somewhere safe to stay for a while. 

The thought should have hurt more than it did but she found herself clinging to the warmth of the sentiment it anyway. 

“I’m fine,” she said quietly, wiping quickly beneath one eye before Grogu could start panicking again. “But he’s exhausted.” 

Mando’s attention shifted immediately toward the child still pressed tightly against her chest. 

“Mind connections are draining,” she explained softly while brushing one hand carefully behind Grogu’s ear. “For both people. And what he just saw…” Her expression tightened slightly. “That probably scared him.” 

Grogu’s ears lowered even further at the memory. 

She stood slowly with him still wrapped against her shoulder before moving toward the ladder leading up to the sleeping alcove. Grogu refused to let go of her sleeve even once while she climbed and she could feel the lingering distress humming through the Force around him in frightened uneven waves. 

The little hammock swayed softly once she settled him inside it. 

Normally he loved the thing. Tonight he only curled inward beneath the blanket while she rested one hand lightly against his chest and rocked the hammock slowly back and forth. His enormous eyes remained fixed on her face the entire time, ears drooping lower than she had ever seen. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she murmured quietly. “You just reached too far.” 

The Crest hummed steadily around them. 

Behind her, she heard the ladder creak softly beneath added weight before Mando climbed into the galley. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t speak. He simply stood there watching silently for several seconds while she continued rocking the hammock gently. 

Eventually she looked up. 

The beskar helmet tilted slightly toward the cockpit. 

Carefully, once Grogu’s eyes finally drifted shut from exhaustion, she rose from the edge of the bunk and followed Mando down into the cockpit. 

Blue hyperspace light stretched endlessly beyond the viewport ahead, washing soft reflections across the controls and the beskar while the Crest carried them steadily through the dark. 

Mando remained standing near the pilot’s chair while she leaned lightly against the entryway. 

“The beskar didn’t create a shield.” 

She blinked once before realising immediately what he meant. 

“You felt something,” he continued quietly. “Before you pulled away, I could feel it.” 

The modulator flattened most emotion, but she could still hear uncertainty beneath the words now. Hesitation. The careful edge of someone preparing themselves for an answer they might not want. 

“I know I’m not easy to read,” he said after a moment. “But whatever happened back there…” The helmet turned slightly toward her. “You saw something.” 

For one genuinely startled second she simply stared at him. 

He thought she had seen some terrible part of him hidden beneath the surface of his mind. Something shameful enough to explain her reaction. 

Oh, Maker. 

“You really think that little of yourself?” she asked softly before she could stop herself. 

The cockpit fell quiet. 

She pushed gently away from the doorway before speaking again, softer this time. 

“There’s a difference between touching someone’s mind and forcing your way through it.” Her fingers rested lightly against the back of the co-pilot’s chair while hyperspace flickered across the viewport. “What I did with you was surface contact. Emotion. Instinct. Whatever’s already sitting close to the front of someone’s thoughts in that moment.” 

“And Grogu?” 

She exhaled slowly. 

“He’s strong.” Her gaze lowered briefly toward the floor panels beneath them. “Too strong still to understand restraint properly. What happened with him was closer to a probe.” A faint grimace crossed her expression. “A forced connection. He didn’t mean to do it, but he pushed too deep.” 

Mando remained quiet for several seconds before asking, 

“So what did you see when you touched my mind?” 

The question settled strangely between them. 

She looked toward him properly then, toward the dark line of the visor where she knew his eyes must be hidden beneath the beskar. 

A faint smile touched her mouth despite everything. “Mostly how much you love Grogu.” 

Silence. 

But in that silence, her eyes lock onto the spot behind the visor where she’s pretty sure his eyes are. She knows he isn’t force sensitive but for a brief moment as the Force moved quietly around them while the cockpit glowed blue and silver beneath hyperspace light, she had the strange unmistakable feeling that he understood exactly what she meant without either of them needing to say anything further. 

She broke eye contact first. 

“You don’t have to explain anything tonight,” the Mandalorian said quietly, as he looked back toward the viewport. “But when you’re ready to tell me what happened to you…” Another brief pause settled between them before he finished, “I’ll listen.” 

A soft sniffle drifted faintly from the sleeping alcove overhead before the moment could become anything else. 

“Poor thing,” she murmured quietly before turning back toward the ladder. 

This time Mando followed her. 

Grogu had shifted restlessly in the hammock by the time they returned. She climbed carefully back into the bunk alcove before settling beside him again, one arm curling lightly around the child in his hammock while he instinctively pressed closer the moment she lay down. 

“You know,” she murmured softly once his breathing finally started slowing again, “people misunderstand the Force sometimes.” 

Mando remained leaning quietly in the galley doorway beneath the dim overhead lights while she spoke. 

“They think light and dark are separate things. Good people and bad people.” Her fingers moved absentmindedly through the fabric gathered beneath Grogu’s shoulder. “But emotions don’t really work that way.” 

He climbed out of the hammock entirely and curled himself stubbornly against her side instead, tiny fingers still tangled loosely in the fabric of her sleeve. 

“It’s okay to love people,” she continued more quietly. “And it’s okay to fear losing them. Those feelings aren’t weakness.” Her throat tightened slightly around the next words. “But once someone starts fearing love itself…” She swallowed carefully. “That’s when they can go wrong.” 

“Someone like that hurt me once,” she admitted softly. “But he was a good man before that.” Her fingers moved slowly through the fabric gathered beneath her hand. “Nobody is entirely light or entirely dark, Grogu. It’s about balance. Control. Understanding what you feel instead of letting it control you.” 

Silence settled gently through the Crest afterward, interrupted only by the low vibration of hyperspace beneath the floor and Grogu’s breathing gradually evening into sleep. 

She smiled faintly before adjusting the blanket more securely around him. 

From the galley, Mando watched in silence for several long moments. 

Then, when she finally started pushing herself upright carefully so she could leave his bunk without waking Grogu, the modulator broke the quiet. 

“Stay.” 

She looked up. 

The helmet tilted slightly toward the sleeping child beside her. 

“He’ll wake up if you move him now.” 

The excuse was transparent enough that warmth immediately curled through her chest despite herself. 

Still, she settled carefully back against the thin mattress instead of arguing. 

Mando remained standing there another moment longer before finally disappearing back toward the cockpit. 

Sometime later, she woke faintly beneath the soft weight of another blanket draped carefully over her shoulders. 

The Crest was quieter now. 

Grogu remained curled tightly against her side while warm fabric settled around both of them. 

Half-asleep, she lifted her gaze just enough to find Mando sitting on the floor opposite the bunks with his back resting against the wall beneath the cockpit ladder. 

For once, he actually appeared asleep. 

His helmet rested tilted slightly backward against the metal behind him while one arm remained folded loosely across his chest, posture slackened just enough that exhaustion had clearly won over vigilance at some point. 

The sight softened something helplessly inside her. 

And though she tried very hard not to smile, she felt it happen anyway before sleep finally pulled her back under again. 

Morning aboard the Crest arrived beneath the sound of wind scraping endlessly across metal.

The storm still raged beyond the docking bay shields, thick grey dust sweeping through the refinery structures hard enough that the entire ship occasionally groaned beneath the pressure. Somewhere outside, warning sirens echoed faintly through the industrial maze of Veryx IV while cargo haulers drifted slowly between suspended platforms like shadows moving through fog.

She woke slowly to the smell of caf.

Not the burnt ration substitute she had survived on often enough to recognise instantly, but real caf, darker and stronger, drifting over from the cockpit.

For a while she simply lay there staring at the low ceiling above the bunk, listening to the now familiar rhythm of the Crest around her. The low hum of the engines. The occasional metallic creak settling through the hull whenever the storm outside strengthened.

Below her, Grogu remained tangled deep inside the hammock blanket, one ear hanging limply over the edge while his tiny claws twitched occasionally in his sleep. She climbed quietly down from the bunk, careful not to wake him as she crossed toward the cockpit.

The Mandalorian sat exactly where she expected him to be.

The pale glow of the control panels reflected dimly across the beskar while refinery haze drifted endlessly beyond the viewport ahead. One gloved hand rested loosely beside the throttle, the other on his armoured thigh, relaxed enough that she suspected he had been sitting there a long while already simply watching the station wake around them.

He noticed her immediately despite never turning his head.

“You sleep?” she asked.

“Enough.”

The answer emerged rough through the modulator, deeper still beneath what sounded suspiciously like exhaustion.

“You say that like you’re personally offended by the concept.”

“I slept.”

“You endured unconsciousness for several hours. That’s not the same thing.”

Something low crackled softly through the helmet speaker.

Not quite a laugh. Close enough that she noticed anyway.

Only then did she spot the untouched cup resting beside the secondary console.

Her gaze shifted back toward him automatically and the empty cup in front of him.

“You made caf.”

“Yes.”

“And left one sitting there.”

“Yes.”

“You’re either becoming generous or attempting to poison me.”

“If I was poisoning you, I wouldn’t waste caf doing it.”

She stepped fully into the cockpit then, reaching for the cup while the warmth still curled faintly through the metal. The first sip nearly made her wince.

Stars.

“How are you alive drinking this?”

“It wakes you up.”

“It feels like it’s actively trying to kill me.”

“That too.”

A laugh slipped from her before she could stop it, softer this time beneath the constant hum of the Crest.

Outside the viewport, Veryx IV stretched endlessly beneath storm haze and refinery smoke. Massive extraction sieves loomed overhead through the grey atmosphere, their enormous shadows crawling slowly across the industrial districts below while long chains of cargo transports moved between docking gantries like insects through dust.

Nothing about the moon was beautiful.

But there was something strangely alive about it.

People survived here because there was work. Fuel. Trade. A thousand small illegal dealings hidden between refinery contracts and Republic oversight. The entire station felt stitched together by desperation and stubbornness alone.

The Mandalorian finally rose from the pilot’s seat with a quiet hiss of servos before crossing toward the ladder leading down into the cargo hold.

“Storm’s easing.”

“That sounds promising.”

“We leave once the upper lanes reopen.”

“Ah. So we’re still stranded.”

“We’re delayed.”

“Your optimism is inspiring.”

He disappeared below deck before she could see whether the helmet tilted again.

A second later she heard Grogu beginning to stir behind her. The hammock creaked softly. Tiny claws scraped lazily against fabric.

She turned just in time to see the child roll far too enthusiastically toward the edge of the hammock still half-asleep, blanket tangled around his legs as gravity immediately betrayed him.

The Force moved before her conscious thoughts fully caught up.

Her hand lifted automatically and Grogu froze inches above the metal floor.

For one bewildered second he simply floated there, ears drooping sleepily while the blanket cocooned awkwardly around him. Then his eyes blinked open properly at last.

She guided him gently up by her side before he could fully realise what had happened.

Grogu looked down toward the floor beneath him. Then back up at her, a soft questioning sound escaped him while his tiny claws gripped lightly against the folds of her shirt.

From below deck came the Mandalorian’s voice almost immediately.

“What happened?”

“Your son attempted flight before breakfast.”

Grogu made an offended little noise.

The Mandalorian climbed back up the ladder a moment later only to stop halfway when he saw Grogu holding onto her, restig comfortably by her side, looking entirely pleased with himself.

For a second the visor lingered on her still-raised hand before shifting back toward the child.

“You catch kids often?”

“This is actually my first experience with airborne children.”

Grogu blinked slowly at him before pointing very decisively toward the ship ramp.

“You just woke up.”

Another small insistent sound.

“He wants the skewers,” the Mandalorian translated while stepping fully onto the upper deck again.

“I'm with him”

“Don't encourage this.”

“What can I say, the old man has taste.”

“He’s not old”

She glanced slowly toward the helmet.

“Whatever you say grandpa.”

Grogu made another delighted sound from her arms while the Mandalorian stood perfectly still for a moment before a low distorted sigh finally rolled through the modulator.

“You’re both impossible.”

The skewers somehow smelled even better the second day.

Steam rolled upward from the cooktop in thick waves scented with spice and smoke while refinery winds rattled the loose metal sheets overhead hard enough that the entire stall sounded one strong gust away from collapse. Workers crowded the surrounding corridors despite the storm, shoulders coated in grey dust as they pushed through the drifting haze between docking platforms and supply routes.

Grogu sat perched on the counter, the Ithorian entirely unbothered by it, occasionally sliding pieces of roasted meat toward the child whenever the Mandalorian looked away.

Which was often enough to suggest this had happened before.

“You’re spoiling him,” the Mandalorian muttered after catching Grogu reaching shamelessly toward yet another skewer.

The Ithorian made a low amused sound in response.

Grogu ignored them both.

She watched the tiny disaster happily stuffing his face for another moment before her attention drifted further down the corridor instead.

The Mandalorian stood beside her with one arm resting loosely against the counter while Grogu happily committed theft between them both.

Only after several minutes did she realise something strange.

He still had not eaten.

The skewer remained in his hand while Grogu steadily worked through most of it instead, just as he had yesterday.

Her eyes drifted once more toward the black visor. Something about that had been quietly bothering her since boarding the Crest. Not because the helmet unsettled her. Because it never seemed to come off.

She had never seen him eat. Or drink. Even the caf aboard the Crest was gone by the time she woke. At first she assumed it was caution around strangers. But a full day had passed now, and she still had not seen so much as a glimpse beneath the beskar.

The old ways of Mandalore had always fascinated historians within the Order because they mirrored Jedi discipline in strange uncomfortable ways. Ritual, duty and identity shaped entirely around community and creed. Yet unlike the Jedi, Mandalorian culture had never feared attachment. Family, loyalty, foundlings, marriage, clans, connection itself sat at the centre of their society rather than outside it.

Carefully, she glanced sideways toward him. “Can I ask you something?”

“That depends.”

“Do you actually live by the old Mandalorian creed, or is the permanent helmet part of some elaborate attempt to appear intimidating?”

The question carried enough dry amusement to soften it, though she still caught the subtle shift in his posture afterward. Not offense exactly. More like caution settling instinctively into place.

She continued before he could mistake the curiosity for judgment.

“I’ve crossed paths with Mandalorians before. None of them kept the helmet on constantly.” Her gaze flicked lightly toward the beskar again. “Most of them seemed perfectly happy removing it the second food appeared.”

The refinery noise swallowed the brief silence that followed while workers pushed steadily through the crowded market around them. Somewhere overhead, one of the massive extraction sieves shifted through the dust storm outside, casting slow-moving shadows across the metal walkways.

Finally the Mandalorian spoke.

“I belong to a sect that practices the traditional ways of Mandalore.”

Recognition surfaced immediately. Fragments from old Jedi records returned sharply then. Traditionalist sects preserving older Mandalorian customs long after the rest of their people abandoned them. Creed-bound warriors raised to believe the armour was not simply protection but identity itself.

She rested one elbow lightly against the counter while Grogu finally succeeded in stealing the untouched skewer from his hand entirely.

“The Order used to speak about groups like yours almost like religious fundamentalists,” she admitted after a moment.

“It is a religion.” Again, no hesitation, no embarrassment.

Just certainty spoken plainly enough that something about it caught her slightly off guard.

The Jedi had spent years pretending they were not one themselves.

“You look surprised,” he observed.

“A little.” Her mouth curved faintly. “Mostly because the old Mandalorian ways always sounded strangely... warm compared to the Jedi.”

The helmet tilted slightly toward her.

“Warm?”

“You raise foundlings. You build clans. Community matters to your people.” Her fingers traced idly along the rim of her caf cup while she searched for the right words. “The Jedi spent centuries teaching that attachment leads to suffering. Mandalorians seemed to believe attachment was the reason to survive suffering in the first place.”

“And honestly,” she admitted after a moment, glancing toward the black visor again, “there’s something admirable about it.”

The Mandalorian remained quiet.

“The commitment, I mean. Most people only follow rules when it’s easy or when someone’s watching.” Her gaze lingered briefly against the beskar before returning to the crowded market around them. “Nobody could force that kind of discipline every second of every day. Not really. At some point it has to come from belief.”

The modulator crackled softly in the silence that followed, not with amusement this time.

She leaned lightly against the counter beside him while Grogu happily destroyed the Mandalorian’s abandoned skewer between them. “The Jedi liked pretending we were detached from identity. From self. But Mandalorians always seemed honest about the fact that people need belonging.” A faint smile touched the corner of her mouth. “Your creed is the reason you have him.”

The Mandalorian’s hand settled instinctively against the child’s back.

“And mine,” she admitted more quietly, “is probably the reason I ended up running from someone I once thought I’d spend my life with.”

The words slipped out before she fully meant them to. For a moment she considered pulling them back. Instead she exhaled softly through her nose and kept going.

“The Empire fell and everyone became determined to revive the Order.” Her gaze lowered toward the crowded market floor. “Rules became stricter, attachments became more dangerous. My master believed rebuilding the Jedi meant returning to the old ways entirely.”

Something unreadable settled into the silence beside her.

“You disagreed.”

It wasn’t really a question.

She smiled faintly, though there was very little humour in it. “I think I believed it right up until I realised the Jedi way wasn’t the only way to live.”

The words lingered quietly between them.

Because suddenly the Mandalorian understood.

“You should probably take better care of yourself, by the way.”

The helmet angled toward her slightly.

“You don’t sleep. You barely eat. I’m beginning to think the armour’s holding you together out of spite.”

“I sleep.”

“You stare at hyperspace for six hours pretending to meditate.”

“That counts.”

“It absolutely does not.”

Grogu made a soft sound then before suddenly holding out a tiny piece of skewer meat toward the black visor again in solemn offering.

The Mandalorian went completely still.

She stared openly this time.

Grogu gurgled softly, arm still extended expectantly toward his father.

Very slowly, the Mandalorian pushed the offered food away.

“No Bud, I'm alright.”

Grogu blinked in visible betrayal at that.

She turned to hide the smile on her face, when activity at the deeper end of the market caught her attention.

A pair of cargo loaders rolled slowly through the market carrying stacks of sealed medical crates beneath heavy tarps. Most of the markings along the containers had been scratched away deliberately, though enough faded Republic insignias still remained near the corners for her to recognise military surplus immediately.

Her posture straightened slightly.

The loaders continued toward one of the enormous freight elevators built into the lower refinery walls where armed workers waited impatiently beside flickering control panels.

The Mandalorian noticed her staring almost immediately.

“No.”

She glanced sideways toward the helmet. “I didn't say anything.”

“You have a look.”

“That feels insulting.”

The cargo crates disappeared slowly into the elevator platform below.

Bacta.

Fuel filters.

Compressed ration packs.

Real supply stock.

Not scavenged leftovers or overused salvage.

The kind of resources people held onto tightly this far out.

“I haven’t seen medical surplus that clean in months,” she admitted quietly.

“That’s because it’s Undergrid stock.”

“That’s because it’s illegal stock.” she corrects.

She folded her arms lightly against the railing beside the stall while watching the freight elevator descend deeper beneath the refinery districts.

The Mandalorian remained still beside her, though something in the angle of the helmet told her he was already anticipating exactly where this conversation was heading.

“The Crest could use supplies.” She nudges further.

“It has supplies.”

“It has optimism.”

“It’s flying.”

“Not at the moment.”

The modulator crackled softly in annoyance.

“That ship survived the Empire.”

“And now it deserves bacta packs that aren’t older than you are.”

The helmet turned toward her fully this time.

“You don’t know how old I am.”

“That sounds exactly like something an old man would say.”

The Mandalorian sighed quietly through the modulator before looking back toward the descending freight platform.

“The Undergrid isn't Republic controlled.” he rumbles

“That was implied by the stolen military supplies.”

“People disappear down here.”

“People disappear everywhere.”

“That isn’t comforting.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be.”

For a moment neither of them spoke while the refinery noise rumbled around them.

Then Grogu pointed very decisively toward the freight elevator.

The Mandalorian looked at him.

Then at her.

Slowly, she smiled, knowing she'd won.

The Mandalorian looked at him.

Then at her.

“You realise he agrees with you purely because he thinks this is an adventure.”

Grogu made a pleased little sound from atop the counter, entirely unapologetic.

She tilted her head slightly. “That still counts as support.”

“He once tried to eat a tracking fob.”

“That feels unrelated.”

“It’s absolutely related.”

The Ithorian let out another deep rumbling sound behind the cooktop while turning a fresh row of skewers over the open heat. Around them, workers moved steadily through the lower market beneath drifting refinery haze, boots clanging against metal walkways slick with dust and engine runoff.

Her gaze drifted back toward the sealed freight shaft.

“That shipment’s not staying on this level.” She reasons.

“No.”

“Medical supplies that clean don’t disappear into random freight tunnels either, so it's going deeper.”

The Mandalorian folded his arms across the beskar plate. “You’re making several dangerous observations very quickly.”

“You brought me to a black market beneath a refinery moon. Observation feels appropriate.”

“I brought you for skewers.”

“You brought me because Grogu unionised against you.”

The helmet turned toward the child.

The Mandalorian stared between both of them for a long moment before finally muttering something beneath the modulator that sounded deeply regretful.

A few minutes later they were standing inside a freight lift descending deeper beneath the refinery districts.

The atmosphere changed almost immediately.

The sectors they had been walking through had at least pretended to function like a city. There had been vendors, mechanics, workers moving openly between supply corridors beneath the refinery platforms overhead. The deeper the lift carried them, the more that illusion disappeared beneath exposed infrastructure and old industrial decay.

The walls surrounding the freight shaft grew rougher with age, stained dark by decades of heat and engine runoff while enormous pipes crossed overhead in tangled layers thick enough to block portions of the dim emergency lighting. Smoke drifted intermittently through the shaft as the platform descended level after level into the station depths below.

Grogu remained balanced on his fathers shoulder watching the changing levels with enormous interest while the Mandalorian remained visibly more alert than before.

One gloved hand rested close enough to the blaster at his thigh that she doubted he even realised he was doing it anymore.

“You’ve definitely killed people down here,” she observed casually.

“Yes.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“You asked.”

“You responded suspiciously fast though.”

The helmet tilted slightly toward her.

“You ask a lot of questions for someone willingly entering the Undergrid.”

“You agreed to come.”

“I was outnumbered.”

“That sounds dramatic considering one member of your opposition is two feet tall.”

Grogu made another soft pleased sound at being included while the freight lift continued groaning steadily downward beneath them.

When the doors finally opened, heat rolled into the platform immediately.

The kind generated by overworked machinery buried too deep beneath too many levels of infrastructure.

The Undergrid stretched beyond the lift in uneven layers of old refinery tunnels and converted maintenance sectors lit almost entirely by hanging work lamps and flickering red emergency strips. Cargo lines ran openly through the ceiling overhead while thick bundles of exposed wiring crawled across the walls beside rusted ventilation ducts older than the Empire itself.

Blasters hung openly from belts. Vibroblades rested against worktables beside half-disassembled droids. Men wearing scavenged stormtrooper armour leaned against railings watching the crowds below with the lazy alertness of people used to violence.

And despite all of that, people still noticed the Mandalorian first. Beskar drew attention immediately. Eyes tracked him the moment they stepped off the platform before quickly sliding elsewhere again.

Her, though, people looked at differently.

Not openly enough to invite confrontation, but enough that she noticed it happening over and over again as they moved through the crowded corridors. A woman sorting stolen ship components paused mid-conversation when she passed. Two armed men near a coolant vent lowered their voices entirely. Someone muttered something in Huttese she did not quite catch before another voice sharply shut it down.

Even dressed plainly, she did not belong here the way he did. Mando moved through the Undergrid like someone already understood by it. Like suspicion and danger and violence fit naturally around the beskar.

She looked like something softer trying unsuccessfully not to be noticed.

The Mandalorian shifted slightly closer beside her as another cluster of workers pushed through the narrow corridor toward the upper lifts. His shoulder brushed hers briefly before he angled himself automatically between her and a pair of armed men lingering near one of the railings.

“Stay close.”

The words came low through the modulator, casual enough to avoid attention yet firm enough that she obeyed without thinking about it.

Warm air rolled heavily through the corridor ahead carrying the sharp metallic scent of overheated wiring and leaking coolant while red emergency lights flickered weakly against the walls around them.

The market widened abruptly around the next bend.

Massive old processing chambers had been converted into overlapping rows of illegal trade stalls stretching across multiple levels beneath suspended walkways and hanging cables thick as ship moorings. Weapons parts covered entire tables beneath harsh work lamps while stripped Imperial equipment sat openly beside Republic supply crates with serial numbers burned partially away. Mechanics worked directly on the floor around dismantled security droids while somewhere deeper inside the chamber music pulsed faintly beneath the constant machinery noise.

She spotted the medical crates almost immediately.

Several workers hauled smaller sealed containers through the crowd toward a gated freight bridge descending deeper beneath the refinery. White Republic markings flashed briefly beneath grime and torn tarps before disappearing again into the lower red-lit corridors beyond.

She slowed slightly, trying to make out the faded inventory markings across one of the crates before another group of workers blocked her view.

The Mandalorian noticed anyway.

“I’ll handle the purchase,” he said, already steering them toward a nearby parts stall cluttered with stripped med scanners and replacement ship components. “Wait here.”

“You say that like I’m likely to disappear.”

“You wandered into a black market beneath a refinery because you saw discounted bacta.”

“That’s called resourcefulness.”

“That’s called exactly the kind of decision that gets people shot down here.”

She leaned lightly against the railing bordering the lower platforms while he moved toward the vendor anyway, Grogu still secured against his chest beneath one arm. The stall owner visibly straightened the moment beskar approached the counter.

Her attention drifted back toward the freight bridge almost immediately.

The workers unloading the crates moved quickly, heads lowered while armed guards watched from either side of the gate. One of the men carrying a sealed container stumbled hard against the railing bordering the platform below, nearly dropping the crate entirely.

The sharp crack echoed loudly enough across the chamber that several people nearby looked over.

The worker froze, panic crossed his face instantly as he crouched beside the damaged container, apologising before the nearest guard had even reached him.

It didn’t help.

The guard grabbed the front of the man’s jacket violently enough to drag him halfway off his feet before slamming him backward against the railing.

The man tried apologising again while the guard shouted something she couldn’t fully hear beneath the machinery noise around them, one gloved hand already reaching for the blaster hanging at his side.

The guard yanked the damaged crate upward to inspect the cracked casing along one corner. White bacta canisters sat packed tightly inside beneath foam insulation, one of them now leaking pale fluid slowly down the side of the container.

Expensive mistake, that much was obvious immediately from the fury in the guard’s posture.

Around her, the market continued moving almost normally despite the growing tension near the freight bridge. Traders argued over prices nearby while mechanics shouted for tools over the sound of grinding cargo rails overhead. Life simply bent around violence here the same way water moved around stone.

The worker tried apologising again, quieter this time.

The guard answered by drawing the blaster from his belt.

Her stomach tightened instantly.

Not because she thought he was threatening the man.

Because she realised he fully intended to shoot him.

The surrounding workers recognised it too. Several stepped subtly backward without ever looking directly toward the bridge while one older woman near the loading crates lowered her eyes entirely like she had seen this happen too many times before.

Something frustrated and instinctive coiled inside her chest.

She stepped closer toward the freight bridge before she could fully reconsider it, the Force moving instinctively around her thoughts as the guard raised the blaster toward the worker’s chest.

“You don’t want to shoot him,” she said calmly.

The words slipped outward gently beneath the surrounding noise, threaded carefully through the Force the same way her masters once taught her years ago.

Immediately, the guard’s expression shifted. The aggression blurred uncertainly around the edges while his grip loosened slightly against the blaster.

“No,” he muttered after a second, almost to himself. “No, I don’t.”

Relief flickered briefly through her chest.

Then someone grabbed her violently from behind.

The shock nearly broke her concentration entirely as a rough hand locked around her upper arm hard enough to wrench her backward.

“Well,” a voice drawled somewhere beside her ear, sharp with sudden interest, “that was interesting.”

Her body reacted before her thoughts did.

The Force surged sharply around her as she twisted against the grip, one hand already dropping instinctively toward the saber hidden beneath her cloak before the man behind her laughed softly.

“Easy.”

The word carried amusement rather than alarm, though the hand gripping her arm did not loosen.

Around the freight bridge, the atmosphere shifted almost immediately. Nearby workers slowed. Conversations lowered. One of the guards near the gate looked toward them while the man she influenced still stood frozen beside the leaking bacta crate wearing an increasingly confused expression.

Wonderful.

She forced herself still before this became worse.

The stranger holding her arm leaned slightly closer, close enough now that she caught the scent of coolant and smoke worked permanently into his coat.

“You said a few words,” he murmured near her ear, “and suddenly Dren forgets he enjoys shooting people.”

“I think you’re overestimating me.”

“Maybe.” His grip tightened briefly before finally easing just enough for it to stop feeling like restraint and start feeling more like possession. “But people like him don’t suddenly grow consciences either.”

The worker with the damaged crate had already disappeared back into the freight corridor while the other guards watched uncertainly from the bridge, unsure whether this situation belonged to them anymore.

Which meant the man behind her outranked them.

Slowly, she glanced sideways enough to properly see him.

Older than the others nearby. Cleaner too. Dark coat fitted over reinforced armour plating with a blaster worn low against one hip like someone confident enough not to reach for it quickly. Nothing about him looked improvised the way the rest of the Undergrid did.

Dangerous, then.

His eyes moved over her face with open curiosity before flicking briefly toward the Mandalorian across the chamber.

Unfortunately, she followed the glance automatically.

The stranger noticed immediately.

“Oh,” he said softly, interest sharpening further. “You came down here with a Mandalorian.”

Across the market, Mando still stood near the vendor’s stall with Grogu against his chest, though she recognised the exact second he realised something was wrong.

Stillness settled through him first, then the helmet turned. Even from this distance, she felt the shift in the Force around him almost instantly once he spotted the stranger’s hand gripping her arm.

The stranger’s hand finally slipped from her arm, though he remained standing far too close beside her.

“You should be more careful doing things like that down here,” he said conversationally, glancing toward the still-confused guard near the bridge. “Makes people nervous.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

His mouth twitched faintly like he appreciated the attempt.

“Of course not.”

Across the chamber, the Mandalorian had already started moving toward them.

Not quickly enough to draw attention.

Which somehow felt more dangerous.

Grogu remained tucked securely against his chest while workers instinctively shifted aside to let beskar pass through the crowded chamber. The closer he got, the quieter the surrounding space seemed to become.

The stranger noticed it too.

“That’s a serious amount of armour for a simple supply run,” he remarked lightly.

“He likes to show off.”

“Hm.”

The man studied the approaching Mandalorian for another moment before looking back toward her with growing interest. “And yet somehow I don’t think he’s the one I should be worried about.”

The comment unsettled her more than she wanted it to.

Because the Force curled strangely around this man. Not sensitive. Not trained. But observant in the dangerous way predators often were.

He noticed things.

The Mandalorian finally stopped beside her, broad enough now that his shoulder nearly blocked her entirely from view. One gloved hand still wrapped protectively around Grogu’s while the black visor fixed itself on the stranger with unreadable stillness.

“We done here?” the modulator asked evenly.

The stranger’s eyes flicked briefly toward the beskar before returning to her again.

“For now,” he said mildly. “Though your friend really should avoid performing miracles in public spaces.”

Her stomach lurched as the Mandalorian’s helmet tilted almost imperceptibly toward her.

SHe winced as she could practically feel him realising exactly what happened here.

The silence stretched half a second too long.

Then the stranger stepped back first, raising both hands slightly in a gesture that looked almost amused.

“Relax,” he said lightly. “If I intended to report her, we wouldn’t still be standing here having a conversation.”

The Mandalorian did not move.

“People down here notice unusual things,” the man continued, glancing briefly toward the freight bridge where the guards had already returned to unloading crates with forced determination. “Especially people desperate enough to survive the Undergrid.” His eyes slid back toward her. “Word spreads quickly. Best not to demonstrate talents like that unless you want special attention.”

She resisted the urge to glance around the chamber again.

Too late for that.

The stranger seemed to read the thought anyway.

“Fortunately for you,” he said mildly, “most people here are more interested in getting paid than asking questions.”

The Mandalorian’s voice remained level beneath the modulator. “And what are you interested in?”

That finally drew a proper smile from the man.

“Good question.”

For the first time, his attention shifted fully toward the beskar instead of her.

“Mostly making sure the Republic keeps losing shipments before they reach people who can actually afford them.” His gaze flicked briefly toward the stolen medical crates. “The refinery sectors above pay triple market value for bacta now. Funny how shortages happen.”

“Stealing medical supplies from workers isn’t charity,” she said sharply before she could stop herself.

The man looked almost delighted by the response.

“There she is.”

The Mandalorian shifted slightly beside her.

“You’re protective,” he observed casually.

“She’s impulsive.”

Her head snapped toward the visor immediately. “Excuse me?”

“You mind-tricked an armed guard in the middle of a black market.”

“He was about to shoot someone.”

“And now half the chamber knows something strange happened.”

Annoyingly, he was not wrong.

The stranger laughed quietly beneath his breath before stepping aside enough to clear the path back toward the lifts.

“Well,” he said, “consider this your free lesson about the Undergrid. People survive down here by ignoring things that aren’t their problem.” His gaze settled on her one final time. “You’ll either learn that quickly or the place will eat you alive.”

The Mandalorian’s hand settled briefly against the middle of her back as he guided her past the stranger toward the crowded corridor beyond.

Just firm enough to move her before she could argue with anyone else.

The moment they disappeared back into the corridor traffic, the Mandalorian’s hand dropped from her back.

“You used the Force in the middle of a black market.”

The modulator flattened the words into something dangerously calm.

“He was going to kill him.”

“And now people are paying attention to you.”

Warm air rolled heavily through the corridor around them while crowds pushed past in both directions, refinery workers weaving between armed traders and dangling power cables without slowing once. Somewhere deeper below, another freight lift groaned loudly through the metal beneath their feet.

She folded her arms beneath the cloak. “So I should’ve just stood there and watched?”

“You should’ve thought first.”

“I did think.”

“No,” he said evenly, “you reacted.”

That irritated her immediately because he was partially right.

Ahead of them, the corridor narrowed sharply around exposed pipework before opening toward another cluster of market stalls lit by flickering red neon. The Mandalorian guided them through the crowd without slowing.

“He was scared,” she said after a moment, quieter now. “I could feel it.”

“I know.”

The answer came immediately.

Not dismissive.

Which only sereved to frustrate her more.

“Then how are you okay with it?” she asked. “Everyone just watched.”

“That’s how places like this survive.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s practical.”

She shot him an incredulous look. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“They are down here.”

The words settled heavily between them while the Undergrid churned around both sides of the corridor. Steam drifted from cracked vents overhead thick enough to blur sections of the market.

The Mandalorian slowed slightly once they reached a quieter stretch of walkway overlooking the lower processing sectors below.

“You think that man was wrong?” he asked finally.

“The one who attempted murder in front of a thousand people?”

“No.” The helmet turned slightly toward her. “The one who said the Undergrid would eat you alive.”

She opened her mouth immediately before hesitating. Because the uncomfortable truth was that she did not think he was entirely wrong either.

The Mandalorian seemed to recognise the silence for what it was.

“You can’t save everyone you feel through the Force,” he said quietly. “Especially not in places like this.”

The corridor narrowed tightly around exposed coolant pipes before opening again onto a suspended walkway overlooking several lower refinery levels beneath them. Cargo lifts crawled slowly through the darkness below carrying shipments between sectors while red emergency lights painted long shadows across the metal framework surrounding the Undergrid.

“You think that worker survives long down here if guards stop fearing consequences?” he asked quietly.

She frowned immediately. “That’s not what I-”

“Places like this run on fear,” he continued, visor fixed somewhere out across the lower platforms below them. “People obey because they’re afraid of what happens if they don’t. Remove that fear for even a minute and someone else pays for it later.”

The words unsettled her because she understood exactly what he meant.

“He didn’t deserve to die over a damaged crate.”

“No,” the Mandalorian agreed again. “But you still walked into the middle of an organised operation and used the Force where anyone could see you.”

Frustration curled tighter in her chest. “You keep saying that like I announced myself to the entire galaxy.”

“You announced yourself to the wrong people.”

That shut her up for a moment, the honesty catching her off guard badly enough that her frustration loosened before she could hold onto it properly.

For a few seconds neither of them spoke while cargo lifts drifted slowly through the darkness beneath the walkway and warm air rolled through the Undergrid around them carrying the sharp metallic scent of machinery and overheated wiring.

Then Grogu made a soft impatient sound from where he rested against the Mandalorian’s chest before reaching both arms toward her expectantly.

The tension broke almost immediately.

She sighed softly before taking him from the beskar-clad arms reaching reluctantly toward her. “Your father’s being difficult again,” she informed the child quietly while adjusting him in her arms.

The Mandalorian started walking again beside her.

“I heard that.”

“You were supposed to.”

The upper freight lifts finally came back into view through the refinery haze, their old mechanical rails groaning loudly overhead while workers crowded impatiently around the platforms waiting to move between sectors.

Beside her, the Mandalorian’s pace had subtly increased.

Not enough to draw attention but just enough that she noticed.

“We’re leaving,” he said quietly.

She glanced sideways toward the visor. “You did get the supplies, right?”

“I got enough.”

“That sounds suspiciously incomplete.”

“It means we’re not staying down here long enough for your face to become a story.”

The words settled heavier than she expected.

Because she knew exactly what he meant.

Rumours travelled faster than ships and anything unusual became valuable the moment enough people started talking about it. A woman using the Force in the middle of a criminal operation qualified as extremely unusual.

The platform shuddered violently as it arrived before them, old gears grinding somewhere deep beneath the rails while workers immediately crowded forward to board.

She adjusted Grogu slightly higher against her shoulder before stepping onto the lift beside him.

“You know,” she said quietly as the platform began its slow climb upward through the refinery levels, “you’re surprisingly protective for someone who insists I’m a problem.”

The helmet angled toward her.

“You are a problem.”

There was a beat of silence before he added, quieter this time beneath the modulator,

“Trouble.”

The word landed softer than the criticism earlier. Almost fond despite himself.

She looked toward him properly then, startled enough by the shift in tone that she forgot to answer immediately.

Unfortunately, Grogu noticed absolutely everything.

The child made a deeply pleased little sound between them before immediately settling more comfortably against her shoulder like he had personally witnessed a long-awaited victory.

The docking bay sat half-submerged in rain and engine smoke by the time they reached it.

Ships towered overhead in uneven rows while mechanics shouted across the platforms through the noise of loading cranes and whining repulsors. The Mandalorian moved through it all without slowing once, Grogu occasionally peering over the edge of the satchel to make sure she was still behind him.

Then she saw the ship waiting near the far end of the platform.

A Razor Crest, looking far better than she expected.

Not pristine. It had clearly seen use, fresh scoring along one side panel catching beneath the floodlights, but it lacked the barely-functional desperation most Outer Rim ships carried. Someone maintained this one properly. Which, considering the man attached to it, somehow surprised her.

“It’s smaller than I imagined,” she said as they approached.

“It’s big enough.”

“That feels like a very male-specific unit of measurement.”

The helmet angled slightly toward her before facing forward again.

The ramp lowered with a hydraulic hiss.

Inside, the cargo hold stretched out in dim industrial lighting, metal walls lined with crates, cables, weapons lockers, and spare ship parts secured tightly into place. The low vibration of the engines hummed faintly through the floor beneath her boots.

Then her eyes landed on the carbonite chamber built into the wall.

Occupied.

A man stared back at her mid-scream, frozen forever in panic.

“Well,” she said after a beat, “that’s deeply unsettling.”

“It pays well.”

“That somehow makes it worse.”

Behind her, the ramp sealed shut, cutting off the sounds of Coruscant almost instantly. The sudden quiet felt strange after the chaos outside.

The child wriggled happily in his arms while the Mandalorian crossed the cargo hold toward the ladder leading upward.

Home, then, not just transport for them. A home.

She followed him up eventually, boots ringing softly against the metal rungs before emerging onto the upper deck.

The cockpit opened immediately to the left, glowing softly with navigation lights and blinking controls. To the right stretched a narrow galley, beyond it, the sleeping area beside the fresher.

Two bunks had been built directly into the wall. Or at least they had once been usable bunks. The lower one looked slept in. Blankets slightly uneven, a pillow pushed against the wall. Beside it hung a small hammock carefully secured into place.

The upper bunk, however, had vanished almost entirely beneath blasters, tools, spare parts, cables, and what looked suspiciously like a droids head.

Her eyebrows lifted slowly as Mando stepped past her toward the cockpit.

“That was storage.”

He states.

She glanced between the pile of weapons and the child currently climbing into the hammock with practiced ease.

“Of course it is.”

She watched him settle himself into the center of the fabric sling before glancing back toward the Mandalorian.

“You made him a hammock.”

“He kept crawling out of his bunk.”

The answer came instantly. Something unexpectedly soft flickered through her chest at the casual admission. Grogu, meanwhile, lifted one tiny hand lazily and began using the Force to rock the hammock back and forth. The movement was uneven at first, too much power, then too little. The hammock swung sharply sideways before correcting itself.

She laughed quietly, “show off.”

Grogu chirped without a trace of guilt and launched himself into another aggressive swing.

From the cockpit came the low crackle of the modulator.

“He keeps doing that.”

“And you keep letting him.”

“It's how he learns.”

Her gaze drifted toward him more carefully then.

Not indulgence. The Mandalorian taught through experience. Through reaction. Through survival.

A Mandalorian way of learning.

Meanwhile the child nearly launched himself directly into the wall again. She reached out instinctively, steadying the edge of the hammock before it could spin entirely sideways.

Grogu blinked up at her.

“You,” she informed him solemnly, “are one concussion away from becoming your father.”

The child made a pleased little sound.

Traitor.

The Crest shuddered softly beneath them as engines powered higher.

Outside the viewport, Coruscant unfolded in endless layers of neon and rain while the ship climbed steadily through traffic lanes toward open space.

For a while neither of them spoke.

The Mandalorian remained focused on the controls while she lingered near the galley, quietly taking in the space around her. The ship didn’t feel lonely.

That surprised her most, not because it was crowded. It wasn’t.

But because evidence of Grogu existed everywhere in subtle little ways. Blankets shoved carelessly into corners. Tiny fingerprints smudged faintly against the fresher door. A metal ball missing from one of the cockpit controls. Someone who loved this child lived here.

The realization sat strangely in her chest.

“You train him like a Mandalorian,” she said eventually.

The Mandalorian glanced back briefly over one shoulder.

“He is one.” A certain answer.

Grogu rocked himself harder with the Force, visibly proud of his technique now that he’d stopped nearly killing himself with it.

She rested one arm lightly against the edge of the hammock.

“And when he gets angry?”

Silence hummed briefly through the cockpit.

Grogu blinked sleepily up at her while the hammock continued swaying gently beneath him.

She brushed two fingers lightly over one green ear.

“Pushing feelings down doesn’t make them disappear.” She murmurs softly.

The Mandalorian remained silent.

The Crest slipped smoothly into hyperspace a few moments later, blue light flooding through the cockpit windows while the ship settled into its long-distance rhythm.

Eventually Grogu fell asleep in the hammock beside the bunk, ears twitching faintly every so often.

The Mandalorian remained in the cockpit.

She silently joined him, silently curling up into one of the passenger seats behind him.

Hours later, when Mando finally looked away from the flight path and controls to check on Grogu, he found her sitting behind him. Stars drifted endlessly outside in streaks of blue light reflected in her dark eyes.

She’d pulled one knee loosely against her chest, arms folded around it while hyperspace softly illuminated her peaceful face. She glanced toward him as he passed.

His gaze drifted briefly toward the sleeping area behind her. Then back to her again.

“You should get some sleep.”

She looked out at hyperspace once more.

“I’m alright here.”

He didn’t argue, didn’t offer the bunk either.

And strangely, she didn’t ask.

The passenger seat was warm enough. The steady hum of the Crest beneath her feet familiar already in a way she didn’t entirely trust. Outside, the galaxy stretched endlessly around them.

And for the first time in months, no one was hunting her tonight.

The next morning, she woke to the quiet sound of metal shifting nearby. For a moment she stayed still, disoriented beneath the dim cockpit lights before remembering where she was.

The Crest.

Hyperspace.

Safe.

Mostly.

She turned slightly in the passenger seat.

The Mandalorian stood near the bunks with his back to her, moving tools and weapons from the upper bunk into a crate on the floor.

Not storage anymore, then. Something warm flickered unexpectedly through her chest as she watched him work in silence. He never looked back at her while he did it.

Which somehow made the gesture feel far more intimate.

She watched him for longer than she intended to. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the task itself. A man reorganising weapons and spare parts into crates at dawn should not have held her attention the way it did, and yet she found herself following every movement anyway. Perhaps because the Mandalorian moved with such careful economy even in a space this cramped, mindful of every sound he made while Grogu still slept nearby. Or perhaps because there was something unexpectedly intimate about waking to discover someone had quietly made room for her without discussion.

The upper bunk looked respectable now. A folded blanket had been left near the wall beside a single leftover chrome blaster, as though he had reached a compromise somewhere between practicality and hospitality.

He finally seemed to notice she was awake when she shifted in the passenger seat. The visor angled briefly toward her before he secured another crate shut beside the bunks.

“You should’ve taken the bunk.”

Her voice came rough with sleep. “You should’ve offered.”

The modulator crackled softly in what she suspected might have been amusement, though the Mandalorian thankfully returned to moving crates before she could embarrass herself by lingering on the thought for too long.

She pushed herself upright slowly, wincing as stiffness pulled through her shoulders and neck. Sleeping curled into a cockpit chair had seemed perfectly reasonable the night before while hyperspace drifted endlessly beyond the viewport and exhaustion weighed her eyelids down. In the light of morning it felt significantly less romantic.

Grogu remained asleep in the hammock beside the lower bunk, one tiny hand still tangled in the fabric while the Force rocked him gently back and forth in unconscious little motions. The movement was smoother now than it had been the night before. More instinctive. Less likely to launch himself directly into a wall.

She found herself smiling faintly at that before she could stop it.

“He does that in his sleep sometimes,” the Mandalorian said from behind her.

She glanced back toward Grogu again. “He’s strong.”

The words left her more thoughtful than concerned. Grogu’s connection to the Force felt unusually natural, almost woven through him deeply enough that he reached for it without thinking. Most Jedi younglings had been taught control so early and so aggressively that instinct became secondary to discipline before they even understood what the Force truly was.

Grogu, meanwhile, seemed to feel first and react second.

The Mandalorian leaned one shoulder lightly against the wall near the bunks. “You think that’s a problem.”

It wasn’t quite a question.

She studied Grogu for another moment before answering. “No. I think teaching someone to fear their own emotions becomes a problem eventually. But I don't think you're doing that... he'll be alright.”

The cockpit fell quiet again after that, though not uncomfortably so. The Mandalorian had a habit of listening in complete silence that would have unsettled her once. Most people only listened that carefully when they were preparing an argument or looking for weakness. With him it felt different. He absorbed information the way he probably moved through combat situations, patiently, without wasted reaction.

Her eyes drifted once more toward the cleared upper bunk.

What a ridiculous thing to feel affected by.

She had spent months sleeping in borrowed rooms, abandoned buildings, cargo holds, hidden corners of ships belonging to people she never intended to trust. Yet waking to find someone had quietly made space for her belongings beside his own unsettled her more than outright hostility would have.

No conditions attached to it. No expectation of repayment. Just simple consideration offered without comment.

The Mandalorian crossed back toward the cockpit before she could think too deeply about that particular problem.

“We’ll stop on Veryx IV in a few hours.”

She straightened slightly in the passenger seat. “Why?”

“Gotta get rid of your friend in the cargo bay.”

She watched him as he passed her, settling back into the pilot’s seat with his broad shoulders illuminated softly by the pale blue glow of hyperspace outside the viewport. There was something strangely contradictory about him even now. Every visible part of the man suggested danger. The beskar, the weapons, the carbonite bounty downstairs, and yet the Crest itself told a different story entirely. One built around survival, yes, but around care too. Around routine. Around making sure a child slept safely through the night.

Perhaps that was why Grogu trusted him so completely.

Or perhaps the child simply sensed what she was only beginning to realise herself: that beneath all the armour and restraint, the Mandalorian loved with an almost alarming degree of devotion.

The thought lingered with her far longer than it should have.

The moon appeared slowly through the dust storms.

At first she mistook the grey haze for a damaged atmosphere, but as the Crest descended further she realised the storm systems themselves were permanent, thick walls of suspended particulate matter rolling endlessly across the surface beneath them. Massive extraction sieves hovered high above the planet in skeletal rings, filtering the atmosphere in slow mechanical rotations that cast enormous moving shadows across the settlements below.

The entire moon looked tired. Not dying exactly, but overworked in the same way the Outer Rim always seemed to be. Freighters drifted through the storm haze toward crowded docking lanes while refinery lights glowed dimly through the dust like distant embers. Somewhere below them, fuel scrubbers processed toxic plasma from long-haul shipping routes while scavengers and mechanics undoubtedly stripped half the ships passing through for parts before they even cooled properly.

She found herself watching the moon in silence as the Crest descended lower.

“It smells terrible already,” she murmured eventually.

The Mandalorian’s voice crackled softly through the cockpit. “You can smell a planet from orbit?”

“I have intuition.”

“You’re dramatic.”

That startled a laugh out of her quickly enough that she was grateful he still had his back turned toward the controls.

Outside the viewport the landing platforms came into focus at last, stacked vertically against enormous refinery structures stained grey with dust and years of engine exhaust. Cargo loaders crawled slowly between docking bays while workers in respirators moved through the haze beneath harsh industrial floodlights.

The Crest settled onto the platform with a heavy metallic groan.

The moment the engines powered down, Grogu woke fully, one ear twitching before he sat upright in the hammock blinking sleepily around the ship as though personally offended by having missed the landing.

“You slept through atmospheric entry,” she informed him while untangling the child from the hammock carefully. “Very irresponsible behaviour.”

Grogu cooed once before reaching both arms toward her automatically.

The movement surprised her enough that she hesitated for half a second before lifting him from the hammock. Grogu, meanwhile, seemed entirely pleased with himself, settling comfortably against her hip while his claws hooked lazily into the fabric of her cloak.

From the cockpit, she felt rather than saw the Mandalorian’s attention shift briefly toward them before he rose from the pilot’s seat and headed for the ladder leading down into the cargo hold.

“You stay close to me here,” he said as he descended, “The lower markets aren’t safe.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

There was something dry enough in the modulated delivery that she almost smiled again.

A sharp mechanical hiss echoed faintly up through the Crest.

She followed him down into the cargo hold a moment later with Grogu balanced against her hip while the Mandalorian wrapped a bundle tightly in worn brown canvas, throwing it over one shoulder. Frost clung faintly to the fabric while metal restraints protruded subtly beneath the cloth, enough to reveal the unmistakable outline of a compact carbon-freezing slab hidden underneath. Then his gaze drifted toward her waist, or rather toward the absence there now.

No lightsaber clipped visibly against her belt.

Something unreadable passed through the dark visor for half a second before he looked away again without comment. She hated how aware she suddenly became of the weapon concealed beneath the folds of her cloak. Carrying it hidden still felt wrong somehow. The saber had spent years resting openly at her side, visible enough to warn people away before they even spoke to her. On Coruscant that had been useful. Necessary, even.

Here it would only attract attention she did not want.

The ramp lowered slowly.

Dust-heavy wind swept immediately through the cargo hold, cold enough to sting against exposed skin while the noise of the refinery ports echoed up from below. She tucked Grogu under her clock to shield him. Workers moved through the haze in thick coats and respirators while cargo haulers rattled across nearby platforms beneath enormous flickering floodlights.

The Mandalorian stepped down first, broad shoulders squaring automatically against the storm while beskar caught dull silver beneath the refinery lights. He paused briefly at the bottom of the ramp, surveying the dock before motioning for her to follow.

No one looked at her twice.

She realised after several moments that the lack of attention unsettled her far more than the stares on Coruscant ever had. People noticed the Mandalorian immediately, heads turning subtly as he crossed the platform toward the Republic processing station built into the hollowed skeleton of an old Imperial landing gantry. Not fear exactly. More the quiet awareness reserved for someone known to be competent, armed, and difficult to kill.

Meanwhile she disappeared easily into the dust and movement around him, reduced to another cloaked traveller crossing the port beside a bounty hunter in beskar.

Still, she remained sharply aware of the lightsaber concealed beneath her cloak. The weapon rested against her ribs now instead of openly at her hip, hidden carefully enough to avoid drawing attention but still close enough to reach quickly if necessary. She found herself adjusting the fabric around it more than once as they walked.

The Mandalorian noticed, because of course he did.

Nothing in his posture changed, but she caught the brief shift of his helmet downward toward her hands before his attention returned immediately to the crowd around them. Not suspicious exactly, more attentive than before.

Grogu shifted slightly in her arms at the same moment, turning his head toward his father with the casual certainty of a child who expected him to remain exactly where he belonged. The Mandalorian’s free gloved hand settled briefly against one green ear as they walked, the gesture absent-minded enough that it was clearly habit rather than thought.

The Republic outpost had once been Imperial. That much was obvious immediately.

Even buried beneath years of dust and patchwork repairs, the structure still carried the cold brutal symmetry of Imperial architecture. The landing gantry rose high above the refinery district in massive steel ribs while faded insignias remained half-visible beneath newer Republic markings painted hurriedly over the old ones. Temporary floodlights buzzed overhead, cables hanging exposed along the walls where proper infrastructure had either failed or never arrived in the first place.

Workers, pilots, marshals, and mechanics crowded the lower levels in restless waves of movement. No one looked particularly happy to be there.

A pair of New Republic rangers stood near the processing entrance in dust-stained orange flight suits, helmets clipped loosely at their hips while one argued with a dockworker over some kind of intake manifest. The other glanced up briefly as the Mandalorian approached through the haze.

Recognition came instantly.

“You’re late,” the ranger called over the noise of the port.

The Mandalorian shifted the wrapped bounty slightly higher against his shoulder. “Dust storm delayed landing.”

“Convenient.”

“Not really.”

The ranger scoffed lightly before his attention shifted briefly toward her and Grogu. Not suspicious exactly. Curious.

She resisted the instinctive urge to straighten beneath the cloak.

The lightsaber remained hidden beneath the heavy fabric at her side, tucked close enough to reach quickly if necessary. Even so, she found herself acutely aware of every Republic insignia surrounding them now. None of these people were Jedi. Most probably had never even seen one outside war holos and stories passed around cantinas.

Still, instinct lingered.

The ranger glanced toward Grogu where he sat comfortably against her hip, wrapped half beneath the folds of her cloak to shield him from the dust-heavy wind.

“Well,” he muttered, “that’s new.”

The Mandalorian’s helmet tilted slightly toward her before returning to the ranger again.

“New babysitter.”

Grogu blinked at the ranger solemnly before sneezing directly into her robe.

She stared down at him in mild horror while the child looked entirely pleased with himself.

“I think your son just assaulted me.”

“He’s sensitive to dust.”

“That is not an apology.”

The modulator crackled softly again and she realised with growing irritation that she was beginning to recognise the sound of his laughter.

The ranger snorted once before gesturing vaguely toward the processing levels deeper inside the station. “Generator failure on level three. Intake systems are down again, you should've been on time Mando.”

The Mandalorian shifted the wrapped bounty from his shoulder without comment before dropping it heavily onto a nearby processing sled. One of the station workers immediately moved forward to secure the restraints while another scanned the slab through the canvas covering.

“Could be an hour,” the ranger continued. “Could be six.”

Wonderful.

The Mandalorian didn’t visibly react, though she had already spent enough time around him now to recognise the subtle tension that settled through his shoulders whenever plans changed unexpectedly.

“I’ll be back for the credits.”

The ranger gave a distracted wave of acknowledgement before already turning toward the next problem unfolding deeper inside the station.

“We’ll wait in the market.” Not a question.

She found she didn’t particularly mind that either.

The Mandalorian turned away from the processing station immediately after, clearly expecting her to follow without needing to check whether she actually would. Around them the outpost thrummed with noise and movement while refinery winds howled faintly through the exposed framework overhead. Somewhere above, a freighter engine roared loud enough to rattle the steel beneath their feet.

Grogu shifted suddenly in her arms.

She barely had enough time to look down before the child launched himself forward with complete confidence, tiny claws catching briefly against her cloak as he force-jumped directly toward the Mandalorian.

The movement was fast enough that instinct nearly sent her reaching for the saber hidden beneath her cloak before she realised the little menace had no intention of falling. Grogu latched himself to Mando's arm, immediately climbing higher to settle comfortably onto his father’s shoulder now that both of his hands were finally free again.

Clearly this happened often.

The Mandalorian adjusted the child automatically before continuing toward the lower station lifts as though nothing unusual had happened.

She stared at both of them for a moment.

“You realise he’s never going to walk anywhere normally again.”

“He walks.”

“He launches himself at people.”

The modulator crackled softly while Grogu cooed proudly from the safety of beskar plating. Honestly, she couldn't even blame him. If someone caught her that reliably every single time, she might start making reckless decisions too.

The lift platform groaned beneath their combined weight as they stepped aboard alongside a pair of refinery workers coated almost entirely in grey dust. Neither paid much attention to her beyond a brief glance, though one visibly recognised the Mandalorian before quickly deciding against conversation.

Again, not fear, recognition.

The lower market districts revealed themselves level by level as the lift descended deeper beneath the station. Endless walkways stretched through the refinery infrastructure below, layered tightly together beneath exposed pipes, suspended cables, and flickering neon signs blurred constantly by drifting dust. Heat rolled upward in uneven waves from engine vents and processing generators somewhere beneath the streets while the sound of machinery never fully faded no matter how deep they travelled.

The market felt less like a city and more like the inside of some enormous machine that had long since forgotten its original purpose.

The Mandalorian moved through it with practiced familiarity once they stepped off the lift, navigating crowded corridors and shifting foot traffic without hesitation. People moved aside for him instinctively in the tighter walkways, mechanics and traders glancing up briefly from their stalls before returning to work once they recognised the beskar. He stops in front of a food stall, Grogu cheering happily from his shoulder.

The stall itself looked barely stable enough to remain standing. Sheets of mismatched metal had been welded together overhead to form a crooked canopy while old engine parts lined the walls beside hanging strings of dried herbs and spice packets. Steam rolled thickly off the cooktop where an elderly Ithorian worked in slow, practiced movements entirely unaffected by the chaos of the market surrounding him.

“The usual?” the Ithorian asked without looking up.

“Yeah.”

That caught her attention immediately.

“You have a usual?”

The Mandalorian ignored her completely.

Grogu had already climbed down from his fathers shoulder by the time the food arrived, tiny claws planted against the edge of the counter while he watched the skewers with single-minded focus. The Ithorian huffed something that sounded suspiciously fond before passing over a smaller portion separately wrapped in thin flatbread.

“For the little terror.”

Grogu cooed proudly at the title while Mando handed her one of the skewers a moment later. The meat was heavily spiced, still hot enough to burn through the thin wrapping around it while steam curled upward into the cold refinery air.

She took one cautious bite. Then another one immediately after.

“That’s concerningly good.” she spoke, still chewing.

“Told you.” Came Mando's gravelly distortion.

“You did not.”

“I implied it.”

She glanced sideways toward the reflective visor. “You’re very committed to pretending you’re not funny.”

“I’m not funny.”

Grogu squealed softly around a mouthful of food as though contributing to the conversation while Mando steadied him automatically with one gloved hand before the child toppled directly off the counter in excitement.

The three of them settled briefly into something close to comfortable beneath the crooked metal canopy while refinery winds howled faintly through the distant upper levels of the station. Workers passed continuously through the corridor around them carrying crates, tools, weapons, salvage parts.

Even now she could feel the shape of the hidden saber beneath her cloak. Could still sense every exit surrounding them, every blaster tucked beneath jackets throughout the market corridors. The Force never fully quieted in places like this.

But beside her, the Mandalorian stood with Grogu balanced comfortably against one arm while the child stole pieces of food directly from his hands without permission, and somehow that simple domestic ease felt stranger to her than anything else she had encountered since leaving the life she knew.

“You really won’t take Imperial credits?” she asked eventually, remembering something he had said in passing the night before.

The Mandalorian tilted his helmet slightly toward her. “Already told you that.”

“I know. Most people still lie about principles when enough money gets involved.”

“I don’t.”

She studied him quietly while refinery lights flickered overhead through drifting dust. Most bounty hunters followed credits before principles. The galaxy after the Empire had become full of people selling whatever loyalty remained convenient enough to survive another month. But Mando spoke about the Imperial remnants with something colder beneath the calmness. Not hatred exactly.

“I spent enough years cleaning up after Imperials,” he said after a moment. “Not interested in helping them rebuild.”

She studied him quietly while refinery lights flickered overhead through drifting dust. Most men in the Outer Rim sold loyalty to whoever paid enough credits, yet Mando spoke about the Imperial remnants with the same certainty he carried into everything else. As though the line had already been drawn long ago and he had no intention of crossing it for anyone.

By the time they returned to the upper levels of the outpost, the refinery storms outside had worsened considerably.

Thick grey dust hammered steadily against the exposed framework surrounding the gantry while warning sirens echoed intermittently through the station overhead. Workers moved faster now, shoulders hunched beneath heavy coats as the storm systems thickened across the outer platforms beyond the transparisteel shielding.

Mando disappeared briefly into the New Republic processing office while she remained outside near the docking corridor with Grogu perched against her hip. The child looked half-asleep now, ears drooping heavily while his tiny claws remained tangled lazily into the folds of her cloak.

A few minutes later Mando emerged again, visibly irritated before he even spoke.

“Storm locked the upper lanes,” he said while adjusting the satchel strap crossing his chest. “No departures until morning.”

She leaned one shoulder lightly against the wall behind her. “You sound thrilled.”

The low mechanical rumble of his sigh filtered through the helmet speaker while Grogu yawned loudly enough to interrupt whatever response he had been preparing.

“You tired?” Mando asked immediately.

Grogu blinked slowly.

“Yes,” she answered for him. “The old man yearns for sleep.”

“He’s fifty.”

She stared at the helmet for a long moment, squinting.

“How old are you under there?”

The modulator crackled once in obvious disbelief.

“What?”

“You said that with the air of a man personally offended by ageing jokes.”

“I said it because he’s fifty.”

“That did not answer the question.”

Grogu made a soft chirping sound that suspiciously resembled amusement while she narrowed her eyes at the Mandalorian’s helmet again.

“You have old man energy,” she decided finally.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’m right.”

The low distorted sound of another sigh followed her all the way back toward the docking bay.

Outside the Crest, the storm winds screamed through the refinery structures hard enough to shake the boarding ramp slightly beneath their feet as they climbed aboard. Grey dust swirled violently beyond the docking shield while distant refinery lights flickered dimly through the haze surrounding Veryx IV.

The familiar hum of the Crest wrapped around her almost immediately once the ramp sealed shut behind them.

Mando disappeared toward the cockpit after checking the door seals while Grogu climbed sleepily back into the hammock beside the bunks. Within moments the child had bundled himself halfway into the blanket there, enormous ears drooping low enough that she assumed he would be asleep almost immediately.

For a while she simply sat on her bunk listening to the ship around her.

The engines.

The distant groaning of the docking bay beyond the hull.

Grogu shifting faintly in the hammock every so often.

Eventually she closed her eyes.

Carefully, she reached outward through the Force, not deeply, she had stopped allowing herself that long ago.

Just enough to feel beyond the Crest itself. Beyond steel walls and storm systems. Enough to search the currents surrounding Veryx IV for any trace of him lingering at the edge of her awareness.

Thankfully there was nothing. She even began to feel herself drift when with no warning at all–

Red flashed infront of her eyes.

The vision slammed into her hard enough that her breath caught painfully in her throat.

A crimson blade igniting through darkness, humming low and steady.

Her nostrils overwhelmed by the smell of blood and burning flesh.

The Force splitting violently around her own screams.

She saw him again exactly as she always did in these moments: standing amidst bodies and burning metal while red light bathed his face in something almost unrecognisable. Grief breaking him as he cried out with a pain she had never witnessed before. Pure unbearable grief twisted into something monstrous enough to consume everything around it.

Her breathing faltered.

The Force around her darkened almost immediately beneath memory and fear before she could pull herself fully away from it–

Then warmth brushed softly against her awareness.

The darkness receded slowly beneath it, not forced away but soothed back enough that she could finally breathe again without drowning inside the memory. A warmth washing through the energy around her, soothing her mind back into control.

Confused, she opened her eyes.

Grogu was no longer asleep in the hammock.

Instead he sat cross-legged beside her on the upper bunk, tiny hands resting carefully against his knees while his eyes remained squeezed tightly shut in concentration. His ears twitched faintly every few seconds as though he could feel the disturbance still lingering around her through the Force itself.

For a moment she simply stared at him.

The feeling surrounding Grogu through the Force was impossibly gentle. Bright in a way she had nearly forgotten the Force could still be. There was no fear inside him when he reached toward others through it. No control. No anger.

Only warmth.

Only trust.

Relief loosened something painfully tight inside her chest for the first time in months.

“Thank you,” she whispered softly.

By the time she found him, she was wet, exhausted, and in a profoundly bad mood.

Coruscant stretched endlessly around her in layers of neon and smoke, the lower levels glowing sickly beneath the constant rain. She’d spent three days following rumours, tracing fragments of stories through smugglers, mechanics, bounty hunters, and one very drunk information broker who’d insisted the Mandalorian had died twice already.

And yet somehow she’d still found him.

That alone irritated her enough to keep going.

From across the crowded street, she watched him move through the market with the kind of awareness that never truly relaxed. Even surrounded by noise and bodies, he tracked everything. Exits. Hands. Distances. Threats.

The armor made him impossible to miss.

Beskar caught the neon in flashes of lights as he walked, broad-shouldered and imposing in a way that turned heads even on Coruscant. A small green child peeked occasionally from the satchel against his side, ears twitching beneath the folds of his cloak.

The child, she thought immediately, was significantly less intimidating.

The Mandalorian disappeared into a narrower side street without looking back.

An invitation?

Or a trap?

Possibly both. She followed anyway.

Rainwater dripped steadily from overhead pipes as she stepped into the alley after him. The noise of the main street dulled behind her almost instantly.

The Mandalorian stood several feet ahead now, still as a statue.

Waiting.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then, through the modulator of his helmet, came a low voice roughened into something even deeper by static.

“You’ve been following me.”

Maker, that voice.

Calm. Controlled. The kind of voice that sounded like it belonged in dark rooms and bad decisions.

She folded her arms loosely instead of reaching for the saber at her hip.

“You noticed.”

“I noticed six districts ago.” There was no arrogance in it. Just fact.

She found herself oddly amused by that.

The visor remained fixed on her.

Assessing everything.

She could feel it almost physically, the weight of his attention moving over every detail, her stance, the lightsaber, the lack of visible fear.

Most men found Force users unsettling.

Most Force users enjoyed that, including her.

“You’re looking for a Jedi,” she said finally.

The silence that followed sharpened instantly.

Not surprise, protectiveness maybe?

The child shifted faintly against him beneath the cloak, and she felt the Mandalorian’s entire posture tighten around that small movement before he answered.

“That information’s outdated.”

There it was.

Annoyance flickered through her immediately.

Three days. Three days navigating this awful planet for nothing.

“You could’ve mentioned that sooner,” she muttered.

“You didn’t ask sooner.”

That almost made her laugh.

The modulator flattened his tone, but she could still hear it underneath. Dry, restrained, annoyingly self-assured.

She stepped a little closer into the weak alley light, enough to properly see the worn edges of his armor.

Not decorative then.

The child peered curiously out from beneath the cloak now, enormous eyes fixed directly on her.

And instantly, despite herself, her expression softened.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Hello there.”

The Mandalorian noticed.

She knew he noticed because his shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly, attention narrowing further.

Definitely protective. Good, she thinks.

The child blinked at her once before making a tiny questioning sound.

Something warm tugged unexpectedly in her chest.

“You are very small.” she informed him seriously.

The child cooed in response.

Behind the helmet, the Mandalorian remained unreadable.

“You came all this way for a reason Jedi,” he said. “Why?”

She looked back at him.

Rain slid cold down the back of her neck, though she barely noticed anymore.

How much did she want to say? Not much frankly.

Certainly not:

I’m being hunted across the galaxy by the man I once thought I’d spend my life with.

Instead, she shrugged lightly.

“I heard there was a Force-sensitive child traveling with a Mandalorian. Thought maybe I could help.”

“You’re offering to train him.”

“No.” She glanced back toward the child again. “I’m offering to teach him how not to accidentally throw someone through a wall when he gets emotional.”

Silence.

Then he scoffs “You don’t sound like a Jedi.”

This time she did laugh softly.

“No,” she agreed. “I suppose I don’t anymore.”

The Mandalorian stared at her for so long she began to wonder if he planned on speaking again at all.

Rain drummed steadily against the metal above them, water collecting in shallow rivers along the alley floor. Somewhere nearby, machinery groaned through the walls of the city.

Still, he said nothing.

She shifted her weight slightly.

“Well?”

The helmet tilted a fraction.

“Well what?”

The modulator distorted his voice just enough to smooth the edges of it, but not enough to hide the low roughness underneath. She could understand now why people found Mandalorians intimidating. It wasn’t just the armor.

It was the stillness.

Most people moved constantly without realizing it. Adjusting themselves. Fidgeting. Performing emotion.

He didn’t.

“You’ve spent the last several minutes looking at me like you’re deciding whether I’m a threat.”

“You carry a lightsaber.”

“So?”

“So,” he repeated evenly, “that usually means threat.”

A smile tugged briefly at the corner of her mouth.

“Careful, Mandalorian. You’re starting to sound judgmental.”

“I’m just being cautious.”

“Mm. Much sexier word.”

The silence that followed was immediate and absolute.

Beneath the helmet, she could practically feel his confusion at the direction of the conversation.

The child made a tiny chirping sound, as if equally curious about what she’d say next.

She glanced down at him instead.

“You,” she informed him quietly, “are very cute. Your guardian, unfortunately, has the personality of a closed door.”

The Mandalorian crossed his arms.

Beskar shifted softly beneath leather and fabric.

“You talk too much.”

Something dangerously close to amusement brushed against the edges of his presence before disappearing again so quickly she almost thought she imagined it.

Almost.

She shouldn’t have been trying to read him at all. The Force moved strangely around him, quieter than most people, shielded somehow beneath all that beskar and discipline. So difficult to grasp.

Which, annoyingly, only made her more curious.

“You still haven’t explained why you tracked me down,” he said, "Or how."

His tone had changed slightly.

More serious now.

She exhaled slowly, glancing back toward the crowded street beyond the alley before answering.

“I’m not looking for trouble.”

“That’s not an answer either.”

“No,” she admitted. “It isn’t.”

For a moment she considered lying. It would’ve been easier. Safer. But something about the way he stood there, guarded but patient, made dishonesty feel strangely unnecessary.

“There’s someone looking for me,” she said finally.

The Mandalorian went completely still.

Not visibly. Most people wouldn’t notice it.

But she did.

“I only take jobs from the New Republic now.”

“No. that's not-" The word came out sharper than intended, she cuts herself off, looking away briefly, jaw tightening before she relaxed it again.

“It’s… complicated.”

The visor remained fixed on her.

She could feel the weight of his attention even through the damn helmet.

After a pause, his voice came quieter this time.

“He’s like you then. A Jedi.”

Not a question.

She blinked once.

“How did you know it was a he?”

“You touched your lightsaber when you mentioned him.” Avoiding her actual question.

Her fingers immediately fell away from the hilt at her side that she didn't even realise she had reached for.

Annoying.

“You notice too much.”

“That’s how I stay alive.”

She huffed a quiet laugh through her nose.

There was a beat of silence before she spoke again, softer now.

“We left the Order together a few years ago.”

The words felt strange aloud. Old and bruised around the edges.

“We thought…” She stopped herself briefly, gaze unfocusing somewhere beyond the alley walls. “We thought wanting more than that life made us brave.”

The Mandalorian didn’t interrupt.

“I think he believed leaving would make him free,” she continued quietly. “Turns out it just made him angry.”

Rainwater slid from a pipe overhead between them.

For the first time since approaching him, exhaustion pressed visibly into her posture.

Not weakness,just tiredness that had settled deep into the bones.

“He doesn’t want me back,” she said quietly. “He wants me trapped beside him until I become as angry as he is.”

The child made another small sound then, almost sympathetic.

Her expression softened instantly as she looked down toward him again.

“See?” she murmured. “At least someone here likes me.”

“He doesn’t know you.”

The words should’ve sounded cold.

Instead, through the low static hum of the modulator, they landed strangely careful.

Her eyes lifted back to the visor.

“And you do?”

The question lingered there between them.

Not flirtation, not yet at least. But something quieter.

The Mandalorian didn’t answer her question immediately.

She watched him carefully, or tried to. The helmet made it impossible to tell where exactly his attention rested, but she could feel it all the same, steady, assessing, unreadable in a way that should’ve been frustrating and somehow wasn’t.

Finally, his voice came through the modulator again, low and rough around the edges.

“No. But he does.”

She looked down instinctively toward the child peering out from the satchel. Large dark eyes blinked back at her with complete trust already shining there, which honestly felt irresponsible on his part.

“You should work on your survival instincts,” she told him softly.

The child chirped in response, tiny ears twitching.

“He likes you,” the Mandalorian said, sounding faintly displeased about it.

“That makes one of you.”

“You think I don’t?”

His voice dipped lower when he said it, quieter beneath the static hum of the modulator, and she hated the way her stomach tightened unexpectedly at the sound. Dangerous. Not him exactly but her reaction to him.

She folded her arms instead.

“I think you’re suspicious of me. Which is fair considering I tracked you through half the city carrying a lightsaber.”

“You’re not denying being dangerous.”

“Oh, I’m definitely dangerous.”

The visor tilted slightly. She was starting to realize that was the closest thing she was going to get to visible reactions from him.

Most men she’d met since leaving the Order either found confidence intimidating or irresistible. The Mandalorian seemed determined to treat it like a logistical inconvenience.

“You still haven’t explained why you came to me specifically,” he said.

“The Mandalorian with the Force-sensitive child seemed like a good place to start.”

“For what?”

She hesitated this time, gaze drifting briefly toward the rain-slick street beyond the alley.

“I need to be difficult to find for a while. The extra firepower wouldn't hurt either.”

“That sounds temporary.”

“It is temporary.”

“You planning on leaving once he stops hunting you?”

She looked back at him then, properly this time. The armor. The blasters. The impossible stillness of him beneath the rain.

“Yes,” she answered.

The word came easily enough, but something in his posture shifted anyway before he turned his attention briefly toward the street behind her, instinctively checking exits again.

Always checking exits.

The child made another soft sound and reached one tiny hand toward her. Before she could stop herself, she let the Force brush gently outward toward him warm curiosity, bright affection, a name carried instinctively beneath it.

Grogu.

Her expression softened immediately.

“Well,” she murmured, “Grogu apparently disagrees on that bit.”

The Mandalorian went perfectly still.

“You know his name.”

She glanced back up at him, unable to stop the slight smile pulling at her mouth.

“He told me.”

The visor remained fixed on her.

“Why would he do that?”

“You’re right,” she said lightly. “Much more likely that I guessed.”

Grogu chirped happily at the sound of his name and reached toward her again with considerably more confidence now.

The Mandalorian adjusted the satchel before the child could launch himself directly onto the wet alley floor.

“You joke about the Force a lot,” he observed.

“I spent most of my life around people who treated it like a funeral ceremony.” She shrugged slightly. “I prefer reality.”

“And what’s reality?”

“That emotions exist whether anyone likes it or not.”

The answer came easily, instinctively. She watched the Mandalorian carefully after she said it, catching the near-imperceptible tension that settled through his shoulders.

Interesting.

“You think the Jedi are wrong.”

“I think they’re terrified,” she corrected softly. “Terrified people will feel something they can’t control, so they spend their lives pretending they don’t feel anything at all.”

Rain drummed harder overhead.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then, quieter this time, he asked, “Is that why you left?”

The question caught her off guard. Not because he asked it, but because of how carefully he did. No judgment. No suspicion. Just quiet curiosity roughened into something deeper by the modulator.

She looked away briefly.

“We left because we were in love,” she admitted. “Or at least I thought we were.”

The Mandalorian stayed silent.

“He used to talk about freedom constantly,” she continued, watching neon ripple through the puddles at their feet. “About how the Jedi wanted obedience instead of honesty. I agreed with him about that part. I still do.”

“And the rest?”

A humorless smile touched her mouth.

“The rest turned out to be significantly uglier once we actually had freedom.”

Grogu made a soft unhappy noise from the satchel.

Her expression softened instantly as she looked toward him again.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she murmured. “Bit heavy for a first meeting.”

“You shouldn’t call him that.”

She blinked, glancing back at the Mandalorian.

“What? Sweetheart?”

“He’ll get attached.”

The answer came too quickly.

And there it was again that strange tension every time attachment entered the conversation.

She tilted her head slightly, studying the unreadable visor.

“You say that like it's a bad thing"

The alley fell quiet again except for the rain.

She watched him carefully after that last comment, curious whether he’d answer or retreat back into silence. For a few seconds he did neither. He simply stood there beneath the fractured neon glow, broad and unreadable while water slid steadily from the edges of his armor.

“Sometimes it is.”

There was enough certainty in the answer to make something tighten unexpectedly in her chest.

Not ideology.

Before she could decide whether to push further, Grogu leaned farther out of the satchel with an impatient little sound, tiny hand stretching insistently toward her.

She laughed softly. “You are unbelievably persistent.”

“He usually gets what he wants.”

“Clearly.”

The Mandalorian adjusted the satchel again, though more carefully now, like he already knew resistance was becoming pointless. Grogu immediately made another demanding noise.

“Oh, no,” she told him. “You don’t even know me.”

Grogu blinked at her, deeply unconvinced.

The Mandalorian was quiet for a moment before speaking.

“You can take him.”

She stepped closer cautiously, suddenly far too aware of how large he actually was up close. The armor made him broad enough already, but proximity revealed the rest of it, the heat trapped beneath beskar despite the cold rain, the way he instinctively angled himself between her and the open street even while allowing her near Grogu.

Protective by habit.

Carefully, she slid her hands beneath the child as Grogu climbed eagerly into her arms. The moment she settled him against her hip, he relaxed completely, tiny claws gripping lightly at her jacket while he studied her face with open curiosity.

“Well,” she murmured, smoothing a hand gently over one green ear, “that’s probably a worrying lack of survival instincts.”

Grogu chirped in clear disagreement.

The Mandalorian watched silently. Not tense exactly.

Observant. Like he was measuring how naturally she held the child, how instinctively Grogu responded to her in return.

“You understand more than people think, don’t you?” she asked Grogu softly.

The child blinked once.

Then pointed directly at the Mandalorian.

She followed the gesture, confused for half a second before Grogu made an impatient sound and pointed again with more emphasis this time.

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

“Oh, of course he understands you.”

Grogu chirped proudly.

The Mandalorian shifted slightly. “He thinks he’s helping.”

“He is helping.” She glanced back at Grogu. “Very fierce. Terrifying, actually.”

Grogu looked pleased with himself.

“You shouldn’t encourage him,” the Mandalorian said, though the rough edge of his voice had softened slightly beneath the modulator.

“He already decided he likes me. I don’t think either of us had much say in it.”

The visor remained fixed on her for a second too long at that.

She became suddenly aware of how close they were standing now. Close enough to notice details she shouldn’t have been noticing. The worn leather at his gloves. The scrape along one shoulder plate. The deep timbre of his voice humming through static every time he spoke.

Dangerous territory.

She stepped back slightly before her brain could become any more embarrassing about it.

“You know,” she said lightly, “for someone so suspicious of attachment, you seem remarkably attached to each other.”

The Mandalorian folded his arms.

“He’s my son.”

The answer came immediately. No hesitation this time. Something warm flickered unexpectedly through her chest at the quiet certainty in his voice.

Grogu looked smug about it too.

“Well,” she murmured, “that explains the attitude.”

Grogu chirped loudly in protest.

“I’m sorry,” she corrected solemnly. “Your father’s attitude, not yours.”

For the first time since she’d met him, she heard it clearly, the faintest huff of amusement through the modulator before the Mandalorian suppressed it almost instantly.

Oh, that was interesting.

Very interesting.

Grogu seemed pleased by the reaction too, turning immediately toward the Mandalorian with an expression suspiciously close to triumph.

“You laughed,” she said softly.

“I didn’t.”

“You absolutely did.”

Grogu chirped in agreement.

Traitorous little thing.

The Mandalorian reached out then, one gloved hand settling briefly against Grogu’s back as though steadying him. The gesture looked instinctive, familiar enough to make something ache unexpectedly in her chest. Not dramatic. Not performative. Just habit. The kind built slowly over time.

She looked away before the feeling could settle too deeply.

“So,” she said after a moment, shifting Grogu slightly higher on her hip, “what exactly happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

“You confirmed the Jedi information was outdated. I confirmed I’m being hunted by a psychopathic ex.” She glanced between him and Grogu. “Feels like we should acknowledge we’ve reached a conversational crossroads.”

The visor tilted slightly toward the crowded street beyond the alley.

“You planning on staying on Coruscant?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Good.”

The answer came fast enough to make her laugh softly.

“You really don’t like me much yet.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Mm. There’s that charming personality again.”

The Mandalorian ignored that.

“You said he was looking for you.”

“Yes.” She sighs out.

“He knows where you are?”

“Not exactly.” She hesitated briefly. “But he’s very good at finding people.”

The modulator hummed quietly as the Mandalorian considered that.

“And you think he’ll keep looking.”

“I know he will.”

The Mandalorian looked toward the street again, thinking.

She studied him while he did.

Even standing motionless, he carried tension like it had rooted itself into muscle memory years ago. Vigilance sat naturally on him. So did solitude.

He looked like a man accustomed to leaving before anyone asked him to stay.

Finally, his voice broke through the rain again.

“I’m leaving Coruscant tonight.”

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “That sounds suspiciously like an invitation.”

“It’s temporary transport.”

“Ah.” She nodded solemnly. “Very different.”

“You need to be difficult to track for a while. The ship’s secure.”

She stared at him for a second.

Then another.

“You’re offering to help me?”

“You’re useful.”

The answer came immediately, dry enough this time that she almost smiled.

“And here I was hoping you’d become emotionally attached already.”

The visor fixed on her.

“You talk too much.”

“That’s twice now. Starting to think you just like saying it.”

Grogu chirped happily like he agreed.

The Mandalorian glanced briefly down at his son before returning his attention to her.

“He trusts you.”

The words landed differently coming from him.

More significant somehow.

She looked down at Grogu, fingers absently smoothing over one green ear while the child leaned comfortably against her shoulder.

Children had always trusted her easily. Maybe because she never spoke to them like they were fragile things waiting to become weapons.

“You should know,” she said eventually, quieter now, “that if he finds me, things could become complicated.”

“It already sounds complicated.”

A humorless smile crossed her face.

“That’s one word for it.”

Something in her expression must have shifted then, because the Mandalorian’s posture sharpened slightly beneath the armor.

“He hurt you.”

Not a question.

Her gaze flicked away instinctively toward the rain-dark street.

“Yes.”

The word came quieter than she intended.

For a second neither of them spoke.

The rain fell harder overhead, neon reflecting in fractured colors across the wet alley floor.

Then she exhaled slowly and handed Grogu carefully back toward him. The child made a soft protesting sound but allowed himself to be transferred into his father’s arms with visible reluctance.

The Mandalorian settled him securely against his side with practiced ease.

For a moment she watched the movement before looking away again. Dangerously domestic thought. Absolutely not.

“Well,” she said lightly, stepping back toward the mouth of the alley, “temporary transport it is then. Does temporary transport have a name?"

Silence

Then he says, “Mando.”

She stared at him for half a second before laughing softly.

“That cannot genuinely be what people call you.”

“It is.”

“Cruel,” she murmured. “Someone should’ve helped you.”

The visor tilted slightly. “You have a name?”

“I do.”

“You planning on sharing it?”

“Eventually,” she said lightly. “If you survive my personality.”

Another tiny pause.

Then he motioned once toward the street beyond the alley.

“Come on.”

She blinked.

“That’s it? No threatening speech? No conditions?”

“You need transport.”

“And you need someone who knows how to train your son.”

“You said you weren’t a Jedi anymore.”

A smile touched her mouth as she followed him out into the rain-soaked streets of Coruscant.