The thought occurred to her late in the night. He was asleep, arms loosely around her, as though emphasizing her realization. The soft puff of air from his mouth as he slept next to her whispering against her hair.

She wondered if this is how his usual prey felt. To be caught long before they knew they had been hunted, only to find out too late.

He shifted in his sleep, his arms tightening slightly as he pulled her closer to his chest (Mine, my Shm’ika) and settled. She felt his heart beat on her back. His fierce heart. His kind heart. His powerful heart. She rested a hand on his (And now my heart.)

He had watched her, those early days of their courtship. With the patience and keen eye that made him the best at his trade he watched without her realizing. Somehow without her telling him, he knew how she liked her tea, the order in which she cleaned her armor, that she paused for a few seconds longer when passing by the orchids in the fields. He had charmed her without the same empty flattery men approached her with. Not that she particularly liked being noticed, for any reason. But she liked that he had noticed her, and that he had noticed mundane things and recognized and respected them as important to her. 

Tell me a secret.

A phrase that had once frightened her, the first time someone had whispered it to her. It had been a stranger on Nar Shaada, the smugglers' haven. She had already been there with Mij a few times and they were there to deposit a bounty and collect. There had been another Mandalorian there (unsurprisingly) and she and him had gotten a drink and talked, and he had leaned against the table with the smile of “Don’t you trust me?” after he had listed his credentials and supposed ties to her clan. He had been charming, polite and handsome, and had she met him anywhere else she imagined they might have had a fling, if his ties to the Bralor clan were as strong as he claimed them to be. It wouldn’t have been more than a fling, she knew his type, he was the type that turned women’s heads, but smashed their hearts after he stole them. She supposed that, being as young and naive as she had been then, she would have taken that risk anyways for the thrill and novelty of the romance. 

As it was, they had met in a smugglers’ den, and maybe it had been the environment she was in at the time, or the sickly sweetness of his all too trusting smile that her instincts told her hid something darker within that caused her words to choke in her throat and she left, leaving him with the bill. 

Mij later identified the man, he was clan Vizsla.  Death Watch. 

She had learned, as a little girl. Loved ones and monsters wore the same helmets. 

Tell me a secret.

Jango had whispered that to her, years after the Vizsla stranger on Nar Shaada had, his dark eyes above her, his hands stroking the side of her face. His eyes, cold and calculating when she first saw them, were now warm, reflecting the moonlight. Not a demand or interrogation but a question. A request, asking her to trust him. And she found she did. The words came to her mouth easily and she told him of the name Skywalker, the one that formed the very core of who she was. The name that was armored and protected by the name Bralor.  The name that only her beloved sisters and Buir knew. She offered it to him, and he had cherished it. She had then repeated the phase to him, asking for his trust the way she had offered hers. He had smiled, and kissed her, and then given her the most fragile and vulnerable part of himself “I’m falling in love, Shm’ika.”

And that, she mused in the moonlight, had been the final catch. For him, capturing her heart, and her capturing his. In that moment they had both been caught. 

She had been hunting too, she realized in hindsight. Watching and knowing what she wanted, and letting him come to her. He was a prideful and at times vicious man. But never without purpose, and that was what had been what set him apart from the monsters of Death Watch. And never to her. With him, she felt loved and protected. They were what the other needed. She grounded him, and he didn’t allow her to face her own demons alone. 

At night he whispered her full name to her, each one measured out and punctuated with a kiss. Each name he whispered a promise, until he murmured to her that he hoped she would take a name from him. One that they might share. A name, a life. 

Tell me a secret. 

I love you. 

She stared out into the moonlight before closing her eyes and settling into his arms to sleep. The moon over Mandalore stood its sentinel guard. 

Tell me a secret.

“I am sorry for your loss. Hershel was a good man, he had good character.” Mr. Caorrin flicked past a few more pages. “And he liked to talk about you, he was very proud of who you had become,” he said as I leaned forward to hear him better.

I smiled despite the twist in my heart. It was taking all of my effort to keep my composure despite the lack of sleep from last night.

Mr. Caorrin studied one of the pages. “He named me as the executor of his will, and I will notify all of the parties listed in said will by the end of this week,” he said, pulling out a page to study what looked like a list of names. “He also said that you would be in charge of the funerary arrangements, given that apparently he didn’t trust anyone else to follow his wishes as outlined in his will. The first order of business today is for me to tell you that money was set aside for both the nursing home bills, and the funeral arrangements.”

“Thank you. He once told me he wished to be cremated, is that still the case?” I asked, my palms sweaty as I tried to refrain from twisting my hands in my lap.

“Yes. Cremated, and then he wished for his ashes to be scattered across a specific mountainside in the White Mountains,” Mr. Caorrin said, studying a page before pushing it across to me.

Wait, what?

I frowned as I studied the paper. In it, Hershel had outlined his exact specifications for his cremation, and the process after the cremation. Short funeral service to humor his three nieces, including Mom, and then a small family gathering for the scattering of the ashes. Mr. Caorrin was also invited, which I suspected was either because Mr. Caorrin and Uncle Hershel were close, or because Uncle Hershel didn’t trust my mother to not butt in and change everything. The reading of the will was to be done once the funeral arrangements were made, arrangements that I was apparently in charge of. Probably because he never trusted Mom. While he never said anything out loud, I never missed the wrinkle in his forehead or traces of disgust in his voice when he talked about Mom or his other two nieces.

“He, uh, never talked about the will to me, but, um, let’s do it after the funeral, so  we can be certain that the money he allocated for the funeral actually went to where it was supposed to go,” I finally said, pushing the document across the table to Mr. Caorrin.

Mr. Caorrin arched his brow. “You’re that worried about someone challenging the will?” he asked.

I raised my own brow. “Have you met my mother yet? No?” I asked, tilting my head when he shook his head. “Well then, you’re in for a real treat. She has a severe case of selective hearing, which probably means you and I are going to be really good friends in making sure that Uncle Hershel’s wishes are respected,” I said, gesturing to binder sitting in between us.

Mr. Caorrin hummed. “I assure you, Ms. Sanders, that I have handled difficult clients in the past. Your mother will be just one more challenge in a long line. I have handled people like her in the past, and I will most certainly handle people like her in the future. I am confident of it,” he said, taking another document and writing the date on the line. “Please sign this, it confirms that you accept all responsibilities of handling the funeral. Hershel insisted on this formality.”

I raised a brow. “Care to put your money where your mouth is? Twenty bucks that my mother is unlike any person you have ever met before?” I asked as I took the document from him. “Don’t you think this particular form would be unnecessary if Mom was a reasonable person?” I asked, holding it up.

He narrowed his eyes. “Again, I have dealt with these people before. Hershel had not. And I will not gamble with clients.”

I took a few deep breaths as I set the paper back down. Fine, want to play that game? You’re on. I carefully read through the document, and then signed at the bottom. “I want my own copy of this before I leave, after you sign it.”

Mr. Caorrin nodded. “Very well, Ms. Sanders,” he said as he accepted the document from me.

I pinched the bridge of my nose as Mr. Caorrin got up from his desk to make a copy of the document. I get that he had multitudes of difficult clients before, but there was no one like my mother.

“Cassie? Are you still there? Did you hear what I just said?”

I blinked, vaguely aware of something hot blurring my vision. “What?”

“Hershel, he died a few hours ago. I tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up.”

I was working. “Um, I don’t keep my phone on me during the day. You know that,” I mumbled, trying to recall where I was sitting. Standing? I must have sat, I didn’t remember the ottoman seat being underneath me a few seconds ago. “Was he comfortable, in the end?” My voice sounded empty to my ears.

“I don’t know, I wasn’t there with him. I actually thought you were.”

Wednesday, literally the one day of the week that I couldn’t visit Uncle Hershel.  She knew that, despite her claim otherwise. Twenty-four hours. I glanced over to see my overnight bag packed and sitting by the door. I inhaled once to collect myself, reminding myself that as much as I hated it, my mother was still on the phone and screaming wasn’t an option if I didn’t want a lecture on polite phone etiquette. She was really the last person I really wanted to be talking to right now, but in the immediate heartbeats, I felt frozen, unable to just even hang up on her. I barely registered her saying “Why weren’t you there? I thought you visited him every day, even it meant forsaking your other family members. For God’s sake, we had a talk about that.”

Was she talking again? Why was she still nattering in my ear? I had started skipping events when Uncle Hershel stopped going to them due his age and inability to walk unassisted. He stopped offering to host when he was turned down for the fiftieth time, and the cousins stopped inviting him. I always stayed with him instead, playing cards with him, or working on my papers when he wallowed in guilt for me giving up ‘quality family time’ to keep an eye on him. I had told him that he could sulk as much as he wanted to, and that I loved him, but when I made the decision to be with him, that was my call to make, not his. What neither of us mentioned was the loneliness I knew he had been suffering from since Aunt Barbara had died, and it seemed to sit over the room like a suffocating blanket until I walked in.

“Cassandra Sanford, don’t you know it’s rude to just sit there and not respond—”

I removed the phone from my ear and hit the ‘End’ button.

Right, ending the call was that easy.

I remained sitting on the floor, back against the side of the couch before I drew my knees close to my body. Resting my chin on my knees, I stared at the door and the overnight bag, the latter of which now seemed to be mocking me, the bright pink and yellow flowers standing out in the darkness of the little alcove by my front door. The apartment seemed deafeningly quiet, with not even the chirps from the nest near the kitchen window to break the silence. Each time I thought to get up, go back to packing, my brain whispered ‘why?’ and my butt fell back down on the hardwood floor.