#extrasolar

She radiated softness. She felt bright. He couldn’t explain it if he tried.

“What can I get for you two?”

Din struggled to form a coherent thought, and she waited patiently, cocking her head slightly.

“Uh, broth for the kid. Please.”

“Of course! Anything for this cute little guy,” she reached over and grasped the child’s hand lightly. He trilled at her. “Is that all? Nothing for you?”

“Nothing for me.”

She was there every day after that when they stopped in the cantina.

She quickly became as enamored with the kid as he was with her. She cooed and tittered with him, played games with him and made him laugh. She brought him extra food, spoiling him with treats and snacks and easily securing the position as his favorite person. She was sweet and soft and colorful, everything Din was not.

Luckily for him, she was unfazed by the fact that, at the beginning, Din forgot how to string words into sentences around her, speaking in stunted phrases—even less loquacious than usual. She responded to his lukewarm exchanges with kindness. She wasn’t scared of him, not put off by the armor or his demeanor. Her brightness made it impossible for him to not warm to her.

Din found himself visiting the cantina far more than he should, telling himself it was to get the kid real food. The more honest reason was that he was immediately addicted to the foreign feeling that blossomed in his chest when she smiled at him.

She smiled at Din like she could really see him. And it was as terrifying as it was exhilarating.

She was like a sun, drawing everything nearby into her intoxicating orbit.

He was letting himself be pulled in.

He asked her name, and she told him. He told her to call him Mando, wishing for the first time in a long time that he could give his real name. He wanted to know what it would sound like in her voice.

She asked him why he never ate, and he explained the Creed. After that, she started wrapping up food to go, insisting that he take it back for himself.

By the second week, he knew he was in trouble. She felt comfortable enough to brush his pauldron as she passed or squeeze his elbow as she greeted him, and he lived for those moments. When Din was there late one evening, she joined them at their table for a few minutes after her shift ended, pulling the kid onto her lap with Din’s permission. He started coming exclusively for dinner.

She’d wander over to their table and ask: “Can I?”

“You don’t have to ask anymore—I think he likes you more than me.”

She laughed as she lifted the child into her arms and said, “No way, you love your dad the most, don’t you? Of course you do, buddy.” The kid giggled up at her.

She sat in the chair next to Din and chatted with him, asking about how his work on the Crest was going. He told her about how the kid had crawled into an open panel in the wall while he was working and fell asleep tucked deep in the tiny space. It took Din an hour to find him, and he had to wait another hour before the kid woke up to coax him out.

Her laughter was his favorite sound.

After about half an hour, she set the kid—who whimpered sadly—back in his seat. “Well, I should be going home.”

She stood, reaching back to untie her apron. She struggled for a moment then asked, “Can you untie this for me? I tied the knot too tight.”

Din said, “Come here.”

She stood in front of him, facing away, and he slipped his gloves off, setting them on the table. He loosened the knot, untangling the strings, then held on to them, so the apron wouldn’t slip to the ground: “Got it.”

She reached back to take the strings from him and grasped his hand instead. Din wrenched his hands away too quickly, like she’d burned him.

“Sorry,” she said, turning to face him, eyes wide with concern.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he assured her.

“Well.... thanks... for your help.” She muttered the words slowly, absentmindedly, and she wasn’t meeting his gaze anymore.

For a moment, he feared he’d made her uncomfortable, but when he followed her line of sight, he realized she was distracted by his bare hands folded on the table. The look that flashed across her face as she stared—a mixture of affection and hunger—made his heart stop.

By the third week, they were talking like friends.  Din couldn’t remember the last time he was close enough with someone that all conversation felt effortless and natural. His time with her always felt too short.

She was like a drug, altering his reality and addling his thoughts. She made him fixate on ridiculous, unattainable things—things he never let himself think about: soft hands on his face, a third member of his clan, a permanent home. He thought about her as he fell asleep, lusting after the idea of someone holding him, seeing him, loving him. He imagined her—what it would feel like to kiss her neck, to run his hands over her body, to be sheathed in her tight heat—when he took himself in hand. He wanted to make her feel good, to take care of her, to protect her.

She was sunshine. She was comfort. She was possibility.

He agonized over ways to express his interest but struggled to think of things that could be construed as anything more than platonic. He left tips that were decidedly too generous, greeted her by name, returned her light touches, and asked her things about herself. She loved swimming and summer days and strong drinks. She hated rude customers and how early the sun set in the winter. She was saving her money to get off world as soon as possible and start over somewhere else—somewhere with an ocean, somewhere she could look at the stars every night. In return, he shared little pieces of himself, more than he’d shared with anyone in years—just small things—but she accepted each one like a gift.

At the end of the third week, when he couldn’t justify staying on the same planet any longer, Din made a decision: he would ask her to come with them. She wanted to get off world anyway; the least he could do was offer her a way out. That’s what he told himself.

For two days, he tried to bring it up, but he hesitated each time, worried he would somehow be crossing a line. So, one evening, when they were leaving the cantina at the same time, and she asked him if he wanted to walk with her, he’d said yes. Of course. 

She was handing him the perfect opportunity. He took that as a good sign.

The kid trailed behind them in his floating pram, peeking over the edge to watch them talk. The last light traces of the sunset were disappearing as they turned down an empty side street. She stopped in front of an apartment with the number 7 painted on the door—the only doorstep on the street lined with flowerpots—and said, “Well, this is me. Thanks for walking with me.”

Din nodded. “Of course.” Ask her.

She waited, like she somehow knew, and smiled up at him expectantly, taking a small step toward him. His breath caught in his throat, but he forced his way through the fear.

“Do you...?”

But the look on her face made the rest of his question scatter like leaves in the wind. He couldn’t remember what he needed to ask her.

“Yes?” she prompted. She reached out to grasp his arm, guaranteeing that he wouldn’t be able to retrace his train of thought if his life depended on it.

So instead, he moved closer to her, until they were just inches apart. She tilted her face up, and before he could talk himself out of it, he rested his forehead against hers. She raised one hand to cradle the side of his helmet, and he closed his eyes. Hope flooded his chest.

She’s going to say yes.

They stayed like that for a long moment, the only sounds their breathing.

He was working up the courage to wrap both arms around her and pull her against his chest when he felt a sharp prick on his arm. His eyes snapped open, and he jerked back.

He looked down at where her free hand was emptying a syringe into his bicep, having forced the needle through the thick fabric of his shirt.

“Why—?”

The drug took effect immediately, and Din swayed on the spot, gripping her arm for balance, too stunned to even defend himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he wouldn’t be capable of hurting her anyway.

He watched her face; she looked stricken, like this development had somehow also caught her by surprise. She was saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear it over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Her gentle hands grasped his waist, guiding him to the ground as his knees gave out.

As he faded out of consciousness, he reviewed every red flag he had overlooked. He should have known from the beginning that her magnetism was dangerous. It was too good to be true. He should have been wary of anyone who responded to his cold indifference with warm affection, anyone who was willing to put that much time and effort into breaking down his defenses. He was angry with himself for falling into this well-constructed trap, but the feeling that completely overwhelmed him—flooding every inch of his sluggish, unresponsive body—was heartbreak.

He thought she was a sun—warm and bright and comforting, but she was a sun—hot and blinding and destructive. He couldn’t tell the difference until he was too close.

The last thing he saw was her, kneeling over him, mouthing words he couldn’t hear, concern etched on her beautiful face.

***

two months earlier, Nevarro

“He’s not as scary as he looks,” Karga said, reassuring you again that it was completely reasonable to take the puck that displayed the Mandalorian’s fuzzy image.

“He looks pretty damn scary.”

You needed the money, and his bounty was far higher than the rest. Plus, something fierce stirred in your chest when you thought about the fact that he’d abducted a child with the intention of delivering them to the Empire. What kind of monster could do that? You were a hunter too, and violence was part of the job, but some things—like kids—were over the line.

Karga admitted that Mando was one of the best hunters, perhaps the best, in the parsec. It would take a crazy amount of time, work, and plain old luck to trap him. And for that exact reason, bringing him in would immediately lend you the credibility you desperately needed to get a foothold in Nevarro.

“You can handle it!” Karga said, sliding the puck toward you on the table. It was clear that he was struggling to get anyone to accept this particular assignment.

“You don’t even know me,” you huffed. “But, fine, I’ll take it.”

“Wonderful! Let’s get a drink!” he insisted, waving to the droid at the bar.

“No, I need to make a plan,” you said, holding up the puck. “Tell me everything you know about him.”

“Straight to business, I see,” Karga chuckled. But he obliged, sharing every detail he could think of about the armored man while he sipped spotchka.

“Tell me again how he got the kid?”

“Oh, uh, sure—I don’t know all the details, just the gist. The client was the kid’s family. They hadn’t had any luck getting help from New Republic authorities, so they’d turned to the Guild as a last resort.” He shrugged and continued, “Mando took the fob, tracked down the kid, came back for the reward, and split. But he must have realized he could get a far larger sum from the Empire because he went back for the kid. You know bounty hunters—always looking for the best deal.”

“Who took the kid the first time if it wasn’t the Empire?”

Karga threw his hands up. “No idea—maybe it was! The less I know about completed jobs, the better. And Mando isn’t exactly one for sharing.”

“What does the Empire want with the child?”

“How should I know? All I know is that the price on the little one’s head is huge. The Empire is willing to pay anything. So we need to get to him fast.”

You nodded and started to get up.

“Mando will be hiding out for a few months before he makes contact with the Imp. He knows there are hunters on his tail and will let things settle before he comes back into the open.”

“Thanks for the intel. I’ll need two months.”

Before Karga could argue, you turned and walked out of the cantina.

Sure enough, a week later, you tracked Mando to a desolate Outer Rim planet. You touched your ship down deep in the forest that encircled the town and entered on foot. You found lodging, a small apartment up for rent, and for the first few days, all you did was surveil Mando.

You familiarized yourself with his loose schedule and habits, the places he visited, the location of and security protocols on the Crest, who he interacted with, what the kid liked. You memorized every one of his potential weapons and defensive moves when a group of men foolishly tried to take his beskar.

Armed with that information, you moved on to the second phase of your plan. You talked your way into a job at the cantina, vaguely referencing a heartbreaking backstory to convince the owner that, for your safety and anonymity, if anyone inquired about you, he should say you were a local. 

All you had to do next was get close to Mando, insinuate yourself into his good graces, and gain enough of his trust that he’d voluntarily follow you to a secluded secondary location.

And honestly, it was much less challenging than you expected.

The kid was easy to charm, taking to your bubbly personality and tasty treats instantly. You had prepared yourself for Mando to be cold and distant, to ignore you, to be suspicious, or even to be out-and-out aggressive. At first, he seemed almost exactly that—he was polite but stoic and unresponsive to your subtle advances, replying in monosyllables and not engaging with you in any meaningful way. He seemed indifferent behind the fathomless black expanse of his visor.

But, over the course of the first week, you realized he wasn’t purposefully withholding or disinterested. No, you were pretty sure he was flustered by your unflagging kindness. You could tell by the way it took him a beat too long to answer your questions, the way his gaze trailed you as you moved from table to table, and the way his shoulders pulled back when you smiled at him. He was hesitant because he didn’t know what to do with your attention, but he liked it.

Because of that, after just one week of persistent friendliness, you were almost there. He greeted you by name and responded to your questions in full sentences, even inquiring about you in return. If you asked him for help, you were almost certain he’d say yes. But to be totally sure—because there was no room for error—you gave yourself another week.

You felt immensely guilty that he played into your hand so readily and that you were exploiting what seemed like his only weakness—his desire for human connection. But, you reminded yourself you were doing this for the kid.

The second week, Mando started showing up to the cantina every day, instead of every couple days. He went from flinching away from your fleeting touches to reciprocating them. As you got closer to him, you expected to see hints of his duplicity, but, frustratingly, he continued to seem genuinely kind and generous and patient, especially with the child.

You found yourself looking forward to seeing them. You stopped asking questions to collect information and started asking questions because you just wanted to know. When he told you that no one had seen his face since he was child, without thinking, you reached over and put your hand over his. Sometimes, you thought if you looked into the depths of his opaque visor for long enough, you’d see the night sky reflected back at you—it was that vast, that unyielding, that hypnotizing.

When Mando laid a hand on your lower back as you both squeezed between two tables, you actually swooned, beaming up at him. Of course, that reaction was helpful in selling your interest in him, but it hadn’t been a calculated move; it was your natural, gut response to his attention—and that was not part of the plan.

By the third week, you acknowledged the major problem: despite your best efforts, he was drawing you in just as much as you were drawing him in. You thought about what he looked like under the armor when you were falling asleep, his deep, rasping voice echoing through your mind as you slid a hand into your underwear to relieve some of the building pressure. His distinctive silhouette started showing up in your dreams.

When he took off his gloves to unknot your apron strings, you stared shamelessly at his hands—large, golden brown, strong—for far too long. Somehow that small amount of exposed skin stirred up enough longing in you that you were tempted to get him alone just to quell that desire. You wanted to let yourself get lost in the void of his visor, to drown in the inky black abyss and forget your true purpose. 

You were starting to understand why the kid was so attached to him, despite Mando being his captor. Mando was exceptionally good at making his magnetic façade seem genuine. And though the kid didn’t know any better, you did.

What does it say about me that I developed feelings for a kidnapper?

Before you knew it, you were far closer to Mando than was strictly necessary, and you were delaying the inevitable for your own sake. Every day, you planned to ask him to walk you home, and every day you hesitated, inventing some reason why tomorrow would be better.

You reminded yourself over and over again until it stuck: he’s willing to sell a child to the Empire. Do it for the kid.

***

“Why—?”

The solitary word punched through the modulator and cut straight to your heart. Mando didn’t fight you, didn’t throw a punch or reach for his blaster like you anticipated. He kept his helmet glued to your face as he swayed slightly, his grip on your bicep tightening. You tapped a button on his vambrace, and the doors of pram closed behind him.

“It’s okay, it’s not poison. You’ll be okay.”

You coaxed him down into a seated position, trying to guide him to the ground slowly as the drug started to incapacitate him. It made it so much more heartbreaking that he didn’t resist, just followed your lead meekly.

He’s a job, not a friend.

You had to blink away tears when you thought about the white-hot betrayal you’d just inflicted on him, after he’d happily walked you home and as good as kissed you.

He’s a criminal, not a friend.

You couldn’t stop the reassuring words from pouring out of your mouth: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—you’ll be okay. It’s going to be okay. I’m sorry.”

They were meaningless lies, but they were just as much for you as they were for him, to assuage the guilt blooming in your chest.

He’s a monster, not a friend.

You left him there, slouched over, and ran to hop into the driver’s seat of your speeder, which was parked a few feet away around the corner. You pulled it right in front of Mando’s hunched form. With great difficulty, you hauled his incredibly heavy body onto the back and headed to the Crest, taking the least traveled streets. As expected, the floating pram kept pace with the speeder as it was tethered to the controls on Mando’s vambrace.

You opened the ramp of the Razor Crest with those same controls and backed your compact speeder up the ramp briefly to carefully guide his body to the floor. You propped him up against the wall and knelt in front of his limp form, removing his vambraces, blaster, bandolier, utility belt, vibroblade, and the ammo around his calf—anything that he could use against you. You left everything else. You cuffed his wrists and lashed his ankles and calves together with a thick metal cord that locked together.

When you were satisfied with his restraints, you brought the kid up into the cockpit before you opened the pram. The kid was whiny and unsettled, whimpering and reaching toward the doors.

“It’s okay, buddy,” you soothed him. “You’re safe now. You’re going home.”

You started up the Crest, punching in the coordinates for Nevarro and taking off.

After entertaining the kid for a while, you tucked him back into his pram and returned to the hull to keep an eye on Mando. He was still knocked out, hunched against the wall, helmet tipped down against his chest plate. About half an hour later, as scheduled, he started to stir—first, just his fingers twitched then he lifted his head. When he looked at you, sitting across the hull on a crate, his helmet was tilted to the side drunkenly.

“Where’s the kid?” he slurred, voice low and gravelly.

“He’s safe. That’s all you need to know.”

He shook his head, like he was trying to scatter a swarm of flies that was plaguing him. Then he scanned the hull slowly, taking in his surroundings. Finally, his gaze landed on his cuffed wrists and traveled down to his bound legs.

He snapped his head up again and canted his helmet back and forth like he was struggling to focus on your face: “The kid?”

“I told you, he’s safe.”

“Where?”

“In the cockpit.”

“Can I—can I see him?”

“No.”

“Please,” he said hoarsely, holding up his palms in surrender, “I need to know that he’s okay.”

Your eyebrows knitted together. This is a trick.

“You can drop the concerned caretaker act now, Mando. I know you were planning to deliver him to the Empire,” you spat.

Mando shook his head again, like he was trying to clear the fog in his brain. His words ran together, sentences stunted: “What—no, what? That’s not...The kid—he was wanted by the Imp...yeah, the Empire and I, uh, I had his bounty puck, so I collected him...and then I brought him in. But I went back for him... I went back for him.”

“Yeah, I know. Karga told me the whole story.”

“No, that’s not...” he mumbled, looking around the hull again like he just realized where he was. He couldn’t seem to hold onto a train of thought for more than a minute. “What did you give me? So strong.”

“I had to be on the safe side. You’re probably going to be sleepy for awhile.”

He released a resigned sigh and let his helmet clunk against the metal wall. Eventually, his breathing evened out and his head lolled to the side, as the drug pulled him under again. 

You ascended the ladder when you heard the kid fussing in the cockpit. You picked him up to comfort him, but instead of helping, that catapulted his plaintive whines into a full-blown tantrum. You rocked him, tried to feed him, distracted him, did everything you could think of, but he continued wailing and wiggling to get out of your arms.

“You want Mando,” you sighed. His ears perked up hopefully when you said ‘Mando’.

After twenty minutes, the kid showed no signs of letting up. You needed to monitor Mando, and you couldn’t be faced with the kid’s doleful eyes and pitiful little sniffles for one more second. It hurt your heart too much. It wasn’t his fault that he’d gotten attached to his captor.

You carried him down the ladder, and Mando lifted his head weakly when you hopped off the last rung. As soon as the kid saw Mando, he stopped crying—wails turning into watery hiccups.

“If you try anything, I take him back up to the cockpit, got it?”

Mando gave you a wobbly nod. You set the kid down on the floor.

“Hey, kid,” rasped Mando.

Arms outstretched, the child whimpered and tripped over his little robe as he ran to Mando, scrambling onto his lap. Mando wrapped his hulking form around the kid, hugging him tightly to his chest as best as he could with his wrists cuffed. The child let out a series of happy chirps, wiggling his ears in satisfaction as he reached toward Mando’s helmet.

“I’m okay. Are you okay?”

This is an act.

Right?

If Mando was doing this to manipulate you, he was doing a pretty damn good job. Your hands itched to release his cuffs so he could hold the child properly. You looked away, knowing that things like that would eventually distract you enough into making a mistake.

After a few minutes, Mando nodded off yet again, the kid snuggled in his lap, both content to be together. You turned away from them and unlocked your datapad to pull up a book, looking for anything that would keep you from thinking. You just needed to stay strong and focused for a few more hours.

The next time Mando woke up, about an hour later, he was much more coherent. He sat up and readjusted the kid on his lap then met your gaze across the hull.

“You know, you could have saved yourself a lot of work.”

You bristled immediately. “What do you mean?”

“In front of your apartment, I was going to ask you to come with us or at least offer you transport to another planet. If you’d agreed, I’d have brought you to the Crest myself, and you wouldn’t have had to move my body.”

“Oh.”

“And it wouldn’t have been hard for you to get me out of my clothes, so sticking me with the needle would have been even easier.”

“Oh.”

“Honestly, at that point, you could have backed me directly into the carbonite chamber, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Oh.”

The kid let out a little giggle.

Your neck was suddenly very hot, your mind blank. You scrubbed a hand over your face and covered your eyes, leaning back against the wall. If you looked directly at Mando, the captivating vacuum of his visor would almost certainly paralyze you, and you’d forget why you tied him up in the first place.

He trusted you completely.

You had won his heart more than you knew, and that made everything infinitely worse. For a split second, you let yourself play out what it might have looked like if he’d asked you to join him and you’d agreed. You imagined traveling the galaxy with him, holding his hand, fucking him. He would be a fierce protector and a loyal partner. Together, you’d care for the kid—wait.

“Did you really think I’d help you deliver a child to the Empire?”

Mando let out a long-suffering sigh. “No, you don’t understand. I already delivered him to the Imp, but I went back for him because I felt guilty. I’m not delivering him to the Empire now...I stole him back from the Empire to keep him safe. Whatever Karga told you is a lie. His client is the Empire. Why would I keep the kid with me for a month if I was trying to get rid of him?”

You ignored the nagging thought that this version of the truth made more sense; it rang true with everything you’d come to learn about Mando. You kept your face neutral, saying nothing, as you wondered if Karga would be that underhanded. He had been desperate to hand over Mando’s puck.

No, bounties lie all the time. This is a common tactic.

Mando happened to be far more convincing than any other quarry, but you weren’t going to reveal that to him.

“You don’t believe me.”

Keeping your voice level, you said: “Why would I believe a bounty, Mando? Do you negotiate with your bounties?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go.”

He nodded, looking down at the kid in his lap who was grasping his leather-clad thumb in his tiny hands. “I don’t usually know my bounties as well as you know me.”

You looked away, staring fixedly at the floor.

“You could have asked me about the kid. I would have told you anything you wanted to know.”

You did your best to keep your face blank, forcing yourself to breathe normally.

“I really read you wrong, didn’t I?” His voice was sad and resigned, but it was laced with something else... Dark amusement? Begrudging admiration? He couldn’t fully wrap his head around what had happened and was a little impressed you’d tricked him so thoroughly.

The next time he spoke, though, his voice was pure pain: “The worst part is knowing that person I was falling for doesn’t even exist.”

You turned your head and blinked away the tears that sprang to your eyes.

He’s doing this on purpose. He’s trying to manipulate me.

But you knew that wasn’t entirely true, perhaps not true at all. He was heartbroken. He’d had no ulterior motives with you. And it turned out that having ulterior motives had done nothing to shield your heart from the same pain anyway.

An internal battle raged silently within you: your inner bounty hunter and your heart dueled as you replayed every moment of the last two months.

When it came down to it, though, it didn’t matter which one prevailed.

Even if you said fuck it and decided to trust your heart and believe Mando, he’d still hate you. Your betrayal had proven that you never were, and never could be, the person he thought he cared for. It didn’t matter what choices you made now; what had grown between you was permanently ruined—that was a foregone conclusion. 

All that mattered now, all that could be salvaged, was the future of the child.

You sat in uncomfortable silence for a while, the only sounds coming from the kid. After several long minutes, Mando spoke your name, and like a conditioned response, you looked at him.

“Was any of it real for you?”

You angled your body further away from him, shame surging up cold and sharp in your stomach. Your voice wavered as you said, “Does it make it better or worse if the answer is yes?”

“Both.”

***

She didn’t respond. Din watched her as she did her best to hide the tears that were sliding down her cheek.  

He felt a myriad of emotions, but none of them were anger. He didn’t have enough fight in him to precipitate anger. He was hurt, stunned, worried, dazed, and exhausted. He felt foolish for falling into a trap, but he could barely blame himself—her tactics had been flawless. She’d wielded her kindness like a weapon, and it was the only form of violence that Din wasn’t prepared for.

He was still struggling to reconcile the image of her that had come together over the last three weeks with the image of the woman in front of him. It didn’t help that despite everything, she still felt like her. She was as good as a stranger, but he couldn’t seem to hold on to that fact—he felt her gravitational pull all the same. When she cried, he wanted to comfort her.

He knew that she thought she was doing the right thing; she thought she was saving a child from the Empire, exactly as he had. And while he wished she trusted him more than whatever intel she’d gotten from Karga, he didn’t fault her for it. Almost every one of his bounties plied him with an elaborate lie. If Din had taken them at their word, he would have consistently returned to Karga empty handed.

But, the thought that tormented him was that he didn’t ever know his bounties, and she knew him. How could she not know his heart when he had as good as handed it to her? Then again, if it was all a ruse on her part, did they really know each other?

Absurdly, he felt the answer was yes. As hard as he tried, as crazy as it sounded, he couldn’t talk himself out of that feeling.

The kid babbled on his lap, and he looked down at him. He knew he should feel an urgency to make a plan, to convince himself to overpower her, but he struggled to scrape together the will. So the next time the fatigue crept up on him, he didn’t resist it. He would pull himself together eventually, but for now he welcomed the escape of sleep; he wanted to feel nothing.

When he woke up, Din’s mind was clear. She wasn’t in the hull anymore, and the ship was still, grounded, silent. He must have been out for several hours. He didn’t have long until she’d return from the cockpit, so he needed to move fast.

He glanced down at where the kid was snoozing between his arms, and he realized the cuffs on his wrists were unlocked. His first thought was that it must have been the kid; he had no way of knowing the extent of his powers. But then he saw that his leg restraints had been loosened, and all of his missing armor and weapons were arranged next to him.

She did know him.

He slipped off the cuffs and unwound the cord from his legs. Slowly, he reattached everything and stood unsteadily, the kid in his arms.

The cockpit was empty.

Din had to walk all the way down the open ramp into the blinding sunlight of the early morning to really believe that the Crest was parked in the same clearing she’d taken off from.

She brought them back, but she was gone.

When he returned to the cockpit, he noticed a slip of paper on the console. It had one word written on it in delicate handwriting.

Yes.

He flipped it over, and on the back, it read: I’m sorry she doesn’t exist.

And all he could think was... she does.

***