#oloreaa

He always came to her in the dead of night.

It had been the dead of night when she’d originally laid eyes on him. The first time she’d seen that beskar helmet and dull red armour walking into the cantina, her interest was piqued. She hadn’t been on the planet a terribly long time, and it was an unexpected surprise that the Guild operations brought in bounty hunters from every corner of the galaxy. Elle thought that if she couldn’t go to all those places, the next best thing was seeing the people from there.

A Mandalorian was new, though. She’d heard of them by reputation only, strong warriors who often took to the defense of innocent civilians. At least, they had, until their homeworld was torn to shreds.

She stalked him with her eyes from her seat at the bar. Hers weren’t the only pair that snapped to him as if entered; his sheer presence filled the room, replacing the very air she breathed. How anyone else in the room managed to look away, she had no idea.

And he really did nothing out of the ordinary. He made his way over to the man Elle knew to be Greef Karga with heavy steps. He sat and spoke with him, the words she couldn’t hear from so far away. They exchanged small objects over the table. He stood to leave again, not even taking the drink Karga had obviously set out for him.

But he didn’t make his way back to the door. No, instead his helmet turned in a new direction; towards her. And then he was walking towards her, somehow stealing even more of her breath, and she couldn’t look away if she wanted to. When he slid into the seat beside her, her eyes were still on him.

“You’ve been watching me.” A statement. Not a question. Elle wondered if he ever did anything without such confidence.

“I have,” she smirked, running her finger along the rim of her long forgotten drink. He was intoxicating in his own right.

“I haven’t seen you here before.” Another statement. Her smile widened.

“Nor have I seen you. Elle,” she introduced herself, extending a hand she wasn't sure he would even take. He did, surprising her. His hand, like she imagined the rest of him would be, was impossibly heavy in her hand.

“Call me Mando,” his filtered voice replied. “You’re new here?”

His first question, though Elle was sure he knew the answer anyways. But he was letting her reply. Keeping her talking. She’d seen it enough times before from men. He hadn’t let go of her hand.

She nodded. “I am. I work for Jira Rigil, just down the street from here.”

His hand tightened on hers in surprise. “You’re a—?” Mando didn’t seem to want to finish the sentence.

Elle’s face broke into a wide smile now, and she gave a small laugh.

“Yes, Mando,” she answered his unfinished question. “I’m a whore. One of the galaxy’s oldest professions. I wonder…”

She was the one who finally let go of his hand, so she should trail hers up his arm. Barely touching, she felt him try to suppress a small shudder.

“... do you think bounty hunting came before or after brothels?”

Resting her hand on his shoulder — Maker, it looked so small against the armour there — she felt him tense in time with the clenching his fist. She stood slowly, lightly taking both of his hands in hers now.

“If you’d be so inclined during your stay here,” she muttered, so quietly she would usually be unsure about whether someone could hear her. But she knew beneath his fancy helmet he could. After a pause, “I do have an opening tonight. Would you like that?”

She looked at him honestly, sincerely. That often was more attractive to men, she found, than the seductress act. Especially men like him. Men who were hard and sharp around their edges, and just wanted to hold something they didn’t have to worry about cutting.

He nodded.

“Meet me outside when you’re ready,” she whispered, leaning in close to his helmet.

A part of her didn’t expect him to come see her outside the cantina, to gently take her hand as she led him back to where her rooms were, to arrange payments with Rigil as she went to prepare. But he did.

Elle smiled as she neatened up her small bed, sheets freshly changed before she’d gone to the cantina. The room was small, but she couldn’t complain. Rigil had been more than generous to her in her short time on Nevarro.

A short knock came on the door, followed by it opening just a crack. She could see the shine from the beskar helmet of the man in the doorway.

“Come in, please,” she assured him. He stepped inside, standing awkwardly in the small space, hands clenched in fists at his side.

She gently brought her hands to his armoured chest, resting them there, looking up into the tinted glass visor.

“I can tell you haven’t done this before,” she supplied. She smiled, hopefully reassuringly. “This is all about you, Mando. Whatever you want, or need, or feel comfortable with. You needn’t be afraid to tell me. Sometimes clients and I don’t even have sex, just … hold each other. And that’s absolutely fine. Okay?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out.

“Good,” she smiled up at him again. His hands relaxed at his side. “Now, on that topic … how much of the armour do you want off? I don’t want to overstep.”

He was silent for a long moment. “I— all of it. I want it all off but— do you have a … blindfold, or something?”

Elle gave a small laugh. He was new at this. “Of course I do. I’ll put it on and let you lead, yeah?”

When she got another nod, she went to the small dresser in the corner. The top drawer kept all manner of cloth aids, and she found the thick blindfold she knew she had there. She settled on the bed, pulling it over her eyes, securing it with a tight knot over her hair. She felt hypersensitive to her own breathing as everything was plunged into total darkness.

“Will this work?”

She heard Mando step closer to her. Then, “can you see this?”

As she shook her head, she heard a sigh of relief.

A series of clanging followed as the Mandalorian in front of her shed his second skin. She waited, patiently, playing with the frayed edge of the blanket between her fingers.

Then, finally, a hand touched the side of her face. The bare skin was rough, calloused from years of fighting and working, and hesitant. Smiling, she brought her own hand up to lay over top, pressing his closer to her face. She felt his weight sit next to her on the bed.

“I just …” he breathed out heavily. “Can I just hold you? For the night?”

Elle reached blindly for his other hand, clumsily wrapping her fingers around it.

“Of course,” she whispered.

“Can I—” She cut off his next words.

“Mando, I told you,” she shuffled closer to him, leaning in until their foreheads gently touched. She felt his breath on her face, and couldn’t help but wonder whether anyone else in this galaxy had experienced the same pleasure. “This is about you.”

He closed the remaining distance between them, pressing his lips to hers. They were far softer than Elle had expected, but then again, he did shield his face from the elements most of the time. He kissed her slowly, tentatively, as if he were afraid of consuming her entire soul through her mouth. She brought her fingers up through his hair, embedding them in the loose curls she found there.

After a few moments — or maybe many moments, she couldn’t actually tell — he pulled off her lips, resting his cheek against her forehead. His breath fanned over her face again, warm and comforting.

The rest of that first night continued in a similar manner. He was a man starving in a desert of isolation, and Elle supposed she was a long awaited oasis. She touched every inch of his skin, some rough and scarred, some smooth and undisturbed. His face, his torso, his legs.

And he touched her too, slowly at first, then more confidently as the hours passed, the two of them alone in a dark room.

When she awoke the next morning, she wasn’t surprised to see that he was gone. He had removed the blindfold while she’d slept, the sun filtering through her eyelids. A small stack of credits sat on the bedside table. As she stretched, she examined the note left with them.

For you. Only you.

—

After his first visit, she had used some of the extra credits to secure spare fabrics. Pinning them into the window, she was pleased when they were able to plunge the room into total darkness.

The Mandalorian hadn’t told her that he would return, but she knew he would.

Some time later, she was proven right. He returned, traded his quarries for his next bounties, and then he came to see her in the night.

And so it went on like that. For so long that Elle had lived to see babes grow into children, children grow into men, old men depart the world of the living for whatever comes next. She made friends with her neighbours, with the local merchants, even with a few of the milder bounty hunters. The Guild and the lingering Imperial presence meant that they all lived under the thumb of violence, under the threat of it, but she learned to be happy despite it.

Things between her and the Mandalorian changed, as well. Sometimes, it was like the first night, and all he wanted was to be held as tightly as she could provide for him, and to touch her delicate skin like they were virgins again, though they were each far from it. Other nights, he fucked her within an inch of her life, making her come over and over again, until she felt like surely she would die from the sheer magnitude of the sensations flowing through her entire body.

He always kissed her like she was his only source of oxygen, like he would die otherwise. Sometimes she wondered if he really would.

One night, as he was deep inside of her, she sighed out the name he’d told her to call him when they’d first met.

“Mando…” she groaned. He gave another gentle thrust, hitting the sweetest spot she had. Grasping the side of her face, he leaned down to kiss her.

When he came up for air, all he said was, “Din … my name, it’s Din.”

She laughed, a little deliriously, peppering more kisses under his jawline.

“Din … it’s a beautiful name.”

Another night, he had his arms wrapped around, her back pressed into his bare chest. His hands ran gently along her forearms, fingers ghosting over her skin.

“I don’t want you to see anyone else,” he murmured into her hair.

And so she didn’t.

And so it went on. The two of them, giving piece after piece of themselves away to each other in that small, dark room, on that small, rocky planet. A universe of two.

—

Elle could time the movements of the stars overhead by his visits. As they moved, so did he, and then he returned to her. He never told her of the hunts he goes on in between, and she never asked.

One night he returned earlier than she expected.

When his heavy knock came on her door, a knock she’d know anywhere, she was surprised, but nonetheless delighted.

Opening the door, Elle almost contemplated whether this was her Mandalorian, after all. His armour shined, chrome that she could see her own reflection in, not the dull, painted armour she had come to know. But, even in the new armour, it was still undeniably and wonderfully Din.

He sat on the bed with a heavy sigh, not drawing the curtain as he typically would. She settled herself beside him, bringing a hand up to the side of his helmet, holding it as if it were his flesh.

“You’re troubled,” she said. Not a question, a statement. She knew enough of him to read even the most subtle body language.

He said nothing. She rested her forehead on the side of his helmet, watching her breath fog the surface. She dropped a hand to wrap around his, his fingers automatically grasping back.

“My mother used to tell me … the turmoil that we keep locked within ourselves acts as a poison. And it will eat us away from the inside if it is not expelled.”

There was a long silence as they sat there, wrapped around each, in their sacred space. The curtains weren’t drawn, and a dim beam of light fell across the floor. Neither of them moved to close them.

“I brought in a bounty,” he eventually said, voice so quiet she was surprised it was picked up by the helmet. Still, she did not speak, waiting patiently for whatever he was going to give. “For Imperials.”

She looked up at that. Furrowing her brow, she tried to meet Din’s eyes beneath the visor, but he refused to turn his gaze from the floor.

“You feel ashamed of that?” she gently prodded. “Because of what the Empire did to your people?”

He shook his head minutely. “It’s… it’s not that, not really. They told me this bounty was 50 years old but Elle… when I got there—”

Din stopped abruptly, seemingly unable to force the words out. She squeezed his hand, somewhat urgently this time, afraid of what may have happened.

“When you got there …? Tell me, Din.”

Finally, he turned his head to look at her. He brought the gloved hand she wasn’t holding to the face, cupping her warm cheek. She closed her eyes, just for a moment.

“It was just a child. He was just … a child.”

“Din …” Elle didn’t know what to say to him, what words of comfort she could offer while her head spun. The image of him started to smear as she felt the burn of tears.

She wasn’t stupid; she knew her Mandalorian had done awful, violent things. She knew that those hands which held her so tenderly and made her come with such skill had choked the life out of many others. She had seen blood on his armour when he returned to her bed numerous times.

But she did not know him to be cruel. And this— this felt cruel to her, despite how she tried to deny it, clutching onto his hand, deep in her soul she knew that to be true. Turning a helpless child, a defenseless being, over to the greatest evil the galaxy had ever known… it made her heart sink as it set in. She closed her eyes again, the heat of her own tears on her face now as they spilled over.

Leathered fingers wiped them away, even though more came shortly after.

“I— fuck,” Din said softly. “It was a mistake. I need to make it right. And I will, I swear to you, I will.”

Opening her eyes, she nodded slowly. She wanted to rip the helmet off his head, to kiss him until she was breathless, to draw the comfort she had grown so used to from his soft lips. But she couldn’t, not now.

He stood abruptly, pulling his rifle onto his back. She followed him to the door, heart burning in her chest at the prospect of him leaving so soon. When he hesitated at the door, she grasped his elbow, turning him towards her again.

“What’s going to happen?” she whispered. She bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from crying again. “You’ll be breaking the Guild… ” —am I ever going to see you again?

She didn’t voice her question. She didn’t need to.

Though she couldn’t see his eyes through the tinted visor, she still felt the weight of his gaze on her. There, for the first time in all the time she’d known him, she wished she could see his face in the light, to read from it the emotions he was feeling in that moment.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. His voice sounded rougher than usual. He gripped her forearms with urgency. “Elle … listen to me. I don’t know if it’s going to be safe here— fuck, I know it isn’t now, but it might get worse. If you go through the market, just past the spotchka brewers, take a right and a quick left, and you’ll see a staircase leading down to a series of tunnels. That’s … that’s my covert. If you’re in trouble, go there, ask for the Armourer, tell her you’re under Din Djarin’s protection.”

Elle didn’t know what to say. Instead, she flung her arms around his neck, burrowing her face in the fabric that pooled around his neck. He squeezed her tightly, hands splayed on her back.

“Promise me you’ll go there if you need help,” he whispered.

She nodded weakly into his neck. “I promise.”

“This is the way.” And then he was gone.

—

It wasn’t much later that Elle heard blaster fire in the street beyond her small window. She was afraid to look, but she was even more afraid not to. She couldn’t see much, view blocked by some merchandise the vendor below had hung up, but what did see churned her stomach.

She couldn’t find Din in the fray, and she hoped it was because he had gotten away and not the alternative. The dead lined the streets. She could see bounty hunters, Mandalorians, civilians she knew from the settlement. She pressed a hand to her mouth, willing herself not to be sick.

Were those Mandalorians from the covert Din had spoken of? Who else would they be? Her heart felt ripped open.

The wall beside her shook with the force of some explosion she couldn’t trace. A chill zapped down her spine as she saw Stormtroopers entering the frenzied mess of fighting below. She couldn’t tell who was fighting who. The wall shook again, and she heard voices that sounded closer than before, and she knew they were downstairs, in the entry lounge.

If this wasn’t trouble, she didn’t know what was.

Hands shaking, she grabbed the blaster Din had given her and her knife from where they were buried in one of her drawers. She wrapped her only cloak around her shoulders, pulling the slightly worn hood over her face, grasping it closed at her neck.

Rigil had installed a hidden set of stairs near the girls’ rooms, accessed by a nearly undetectable panel set in the wall. Elle flew down those stairs now, as the noises from where she’d just come grew louder.

She emerged into the back alley, already breathing heavily from the adrenaline in her blood. It seemed mostly deserted, and she thanked the Maker as she began running for the market Din had described which she knew was two streets over.

The spotchka stand was in her view as her feet carried her closer and closer. She could feel the blisters forming there, accompanying the ache in her calves, but she ignored them all. Blaster fire went off again, sounding closer than it had been before.

A burning sensation ripped through her side, through her ribs, and she cried out as she hit the ground, rough gravel meeting her face. The pain felt blinding, and she didn’t see the man approach her until he was on top of her, roughly flipping her over, intensifying the pain.

“Pretty little bitch you are,” the man on top of her growled. Through the dirt, sweat, tears, and blood, she couldn’t even distinguish his species, only the vague shape of him. She could feel him, however, his heavy body weighing on top of hers, pressing her down into the dirt below. “Seen you around town so many times, always wanted to have ya, would’ve paid your price three times over. But that greedy Mandalorian kept you all to himself … well he ain’t going to be around here no more.”

Elle shivered at his implication. Din was dead. He was dead and her life was over now, too.

She pushed away the thoughts roughly, hands grappling at her sides. Should could hear the man above her opening his pants and she scrambled and oh Maker, please let it be there— until finally, her hands closed on the blaster. Din’s words coming to her as she brought it in front of her, telling her where the trigger was, insisting she needed it to stay safe. He was right.

She fired.

The man didn’t even have time to cry out before the shot went through him, obviously vaporizing some vital organ on impact. His limp body collapsed onto hers almost immediately. Dead. She had killed him.

With a loud cry, she pushed on his shoulders, hefting his torso off of hers. She kicked her legs free, shuffling away as far as she could handle. Still grasping the blaster, she willed herself to turn over, getting all the way onto her hands and knees before expelling the contents of her stomach onto the street.

Her arms shook as the pain in her body increased with every passing second. She could feel where it was now, and brought her shaking fingers to the side of her abdomen, touching the area lightly. Hissing through her teeth, she could feel the singed flesh, blood coating her fingers as she pulled them away. She’d been shot.

Clutching the wall beside her, she pulled herself to her feet.

Get to the covert. Get to the covert. Get to the—

She didn’t know how she made it to the stairway Din had described. She had no memory of the short walk there. Sweat covered her entire body, and it felt like dust had settled in her lungs. She took a shaky step into the darkened corridor.

A large Mandalorian appeared in front of her. The armour seemed to be a dull blue from what she could make out, but the image owavered in front of her. Elle realized it wasn’t the Mandalorian wavering, but rather her own body.

“Who are you?” a deep voice demanded. He aimed his blaster at her.

“P-please,” she gasped out, moving to raise her hands as high as she could. The blaster was still in her hand, and she dropped it abruptly. It clattered down the stairwell. “I need … the Armourer. Din Dja—his protection …”

That was all she managed to say before she passed out.

—

Her body ached.

A dull hammering noise repeated inside her skull. Elle groaned, shifting slightly. She was warm. Furrowing her brow, she forced her tired eyes open.

It was then she realized the hammering wasn’t inside her head. A figure to her left was hitting a sheet of metal. She couldn’t recognize the type. Nearby, Elle could see what appeared to be a forge, though not one she had ever seen before.

She rose to her elbows with a small groan. Her bones felt heavy underneath her skin.

The hammer stopped, its owner turning to look at her now. It was another Mandalorian. Their chestplate was a dull red, similar to how Din’s had been, and they wore a gold helmet, adorned with short horns. A fur cape wrapped around their shoulders.

They approached her steadily, stopping beside the table she was laid on. Slowly, as if she were a frightened animal, they reached for the edge of her shirt. Pulling it up, Elle could see the bright red and raw skin underneath.

The Mandalorian nodded slightly, laying her tunic down again gently.

“It’s healing well,” she finally spoke. “You are lucky we had a small supply of bacta left.”

“You—” Elle winced at how rough her own voice sounded. She cleared her throat. “Are you the Armourer?”

Another nod. “I am the leader of the covert here. You were sent here by Din Djarin?”

“Yes, he … he said I could come here if I was in trouble.” Goosebumps rose on Elle’s arms now, hoping this Mandalorian wasn’t angry with her for being an imposter in the obviously sacred space.

When the Armourer didn’t speak again, she chewed the inside of her cheek, not wanting to ask but needing to.

“Din, is he …. is he dead?”

The Armourer looked at her for a moment. She slowly laid a gloved hand over Elle’s, where it lat beside her.

“No, child,” she answered. “He escaped with the foundling.” She didn’t offer anything more, and Elle decided it best not to push, relief flooding her body just knowing he was alive. The Mandalorian turned back to her work.

“Thank you,” Elle whispered, tears welling up again. “For saving my life.”

The other woman’s helmet turned partially towards her.