#something holy

Novalise is formidable in her gentlest moment, electric even when she smiles. She is laced with glitter and honey, sparkles with it. The Force—it radiates through her. But this? This is something else. Her eyes are gone. Her eyes—sage green, pure warmth—no longer. They are sepulcher-dark. Tombs. They are venomous, oil slick with poison. No. No, worse. 

They are nothing.

“Nova,” Din tries to croak out, but she is gone now, and his voice is, too. He grasps at her, dully, not fully there. Not a match for her. 

What remains is not Novalise—no, this is not Nova at all. This is…violence. This is demonic. This darkness—decidedly not the ghosts Bo-Katan spoke of, fluttering around in corners and weaving in and out of dreams. The thing holding him captive—the thing inside of his Novalise—this is not a haunting. This is an evisceration.

Novalise has gone radio silent. Novalise has gone nuclear. 

Novalise has gone, entirely. 

“Nova,” he tries again, but there’s nothing that comes out of his throat this time. Spores cloud Din’s eyes, and he knows he’s close to the end. He will not withstand her strength much longer. In his armor, he could likely escape her grasp, but here, he is bare. Down to his skin, his bones. He does not want to hide. Not from her. His Novalise, his cyar’ika, his salvation. 

Even now.

His eyelids blink, once, twice, and Din feels his heart beat slower. “No…va,” he croaks, barely air at all, trying to fight the bitter, blinking darkness. 

Din cannot tell if it’s just sleep, or oblivion. He doesn’t care. 

One thought flashes through his mind, though—distant, faraway—Grogu. 

“No.” 

It does not come from him, though.

It comes from Novalise. 

But it does not sound like Novalise—this wrenching, guttural gnarl. It comes from something deeper, lower. Baser. She is fighting off something of her own. 

“No,” she says, again, this time in a whisper, and her fingertips, still latched against his throat, chitter and jump. Din’s pulse is thready, but it thrums back in. Air floods his mouth, then his lungs, in great, streaming inhales. As if in restraint, Nova’s fingers twitch once, twice, and then, with incredible upheaval, she wrenches herself off of him, crying out. Horribly. Anguished. A low, keening, awful noise is coming out of her throat. 

It sounds inhuman. She sounds inhuman. She looks at him, eyes evergreen, tears flooding at the seams, nose dripping vantablack, lurid. They are both sprawled, gnarled, across the floor, entwined but afraid to touch the other person, Din’s hands bracing his own throat. Like a protection spell. To ward the demon inside of her off. He’s inhaling air like he’s never felt it before. Ragged. Horrid. 

Nova stops breathing as he sucks it from the sky. They are in the dark depths of this mausoleum, together, still entwined, still separate.

“Din,” she whispers, looking at him. 

With one word, he knows. It’s her. It’s her, and relief floods into him. He moves forward, dropping his hands from his throat, reaching for her, legs an entwined mess with her own, and Nova recoils. Horror is written across her face. Turmoil. “Din,” she says, again. Not an accusation, a—a collapse. 

“It’s okay—” 

“No,” she says, raw, split-open. “Did—was that—?”

“Nova,” Din says, carefully, bracingly, reaching for her, “I’m okay—” 

She holds her hands up—shaking, now, and he freezes, midair. “Don’t.” It’s a dividing line. Again. “Don’t touch me. Don’t try to make this—Maker, Din. I f-fucking strangled you, you cannot make this okay.” 

Din swallows. Winces—because swallowing is impossible, and then winces again, because the look on Nova’s face is cataclysmic. “Novalise,” he tries again, and it comes out ragged. 

Her eyes, in the dark, are as full as saucers, brighter than the pulse of her saber’s glow, so opposite than they were a minute before, and they’ve never cut him as deep as they have right now. “You should have let me die.” 

Din’s heart saws in half. “What?” he manages, the syllable broken down the middle, agonized.

Nova wipes black blood away from her nose, smearing it across her mouth, her face. The twin silver glint of her rings catch in the low light, on nothing but the tiniest hint of dawn on the horizon. The crystal glows, just once, then refracts on nothing. “On Hoth. When Thrawn blew it to nothing. You should have left me there.”

Din reaches for her again, desperate.

This time, Nova doesn’t push him away. 

“When I told you,” he says, fiercely, grabbing her head so tightly he fears he’ll leave a bruise, “I am never going to leave you again, I meant it.” He pulls her closer, grip tightening on her jaw, fingers snarling in the wilds of her hair. She melts into his grasp—yielding, folding. Nova looks relieved at the pain, and it makes Din’s grip loosen a little—but barely. He feels crazed, feverish, undone. There are tears streaking both of their cheeks, and he is rattled, bones restless and uncaged, blood hot, pulse thready. “There is nowhere you go where I cannot follow. Don’t you dare try to die on me. You will not like the consequences.” 

Nova looks at him. 

Din is bluffing. He is lying through his teeth—teeth that are aching, sore, red-hot from nearly being choked to death by the woman he loves. Nowhere you go where I cannot follow. That was true when he was just a bounty hunter and she was just his copilot. Now, they’re intricately interwoven—Mandalorians and Rebels both, in varying measures. Din is a hollow point, a broken animal, a pit of a person, a dutiful husband, a caring father, a worshipful man. Novalise is vigor and honey, Jedi-in-training, warmth personified, martyr-turned-savior, selfless wife, and…something more. Always something more. She has entered worlds he cannot access. She is not wholly herself anymore. 

“You should have let me die,” she repeats, mournfully, sadly, regretfully. Like that would have been the merciful option. Like that was ever an option at all. 

Din shakes his head. “Not a fucking chance,” he grits out. 

Nova swallows, the sound of it rough. “I’m—so sorry,” she chokes, tears streaming down her face, in rivulets, in waterfalls.

Din sighs, thumbs brushing them away. There is nothing to forgive. This is his atonement. His sanctification. “I know, baby,” he murmurs, “it’s okay.” Like a litany, like a prayer. He was right—to not let anyone else in this room. He will not speak a word of this. He will not let anyone else see her, not in this state. They can stay here, preserved, as long as they need to, until Novalise is ready to step foot outside. Until Novalise is fully Novalise again. 

“What happens if I do go somewhere,” Nova whispers, “where you can’t follow?” 

Din freezes. 

“Not my body,” she murmurs, so quiet, like that’ll keep it a secret, like that’ll keep it safe. “I’m not running. Not talking about—running. I—My…soul.” 

Din inhales, unable to look at Nova head-on. He squeezes his eyes shut, thinking about the bruises forming around his throat. About the threat of Thrawn and his disappeared fleet. About the ghosts they’re dancing around. About the impending doom hanging in the balance. Fuck, he doesn’t know. He—he’s not a Jedi. He doesn’t deal in magic, in these half-steps, in the glimmer and flash between worlds. But he loves her, he loves her more than anything else in this galaxy or the next, and if it takes inventing a way to step through an inaccessible portal, Din will do it. For Novalise, Din will do anything. 

“Novalise,” Din whispers, “I will make a way to follow you.” 

She looks at him—straight through. Crystal-clear, her eyes, the pulse of her heartbeat against his hand steady, even. Din knows she understands. And, the small, insidious part of his brain whispers, you know it’s Novalise who’s listening to you. 

Dawn creeps up over the horizon, and Din and Nova stay entangled on the floor, wrapped up in hurt and blankets and each other, shell-shocked, in silence. 

Nova doesn’t say anything else. Din doesn’t either. 

When her breathing regulates, the fall and rise of her chest in a fixed rhythm, only then does Din extricate himself to the fresher, turn on the showerhead, collapse under the concealed sound of the stream, and cry. 

*

In the morning, like it always is on Mandalore, the sun is hidden behind the clouds. 

Din wakes up after she does. He can feel Nova’s presence in the room before his eyes open—she’s staring out the window, the blue curtains fluttering in the breeze. She’s curled up in the windowsill, perched like a lothcat. Knees clutched to her chest, chin resting on one of them. Arms holding herself together. Her hair, long and wild, spills down her back. It sprawls, now, to her waist, longer than he’s ever seen it, and it’s not as tightly coiled as it was when it used to rest around her ribcage. 

For a minute, a blessed moment of silence, he watches her. 

“You’re stealthy,” Nova calls, still facing the landscape of Mandalore, quieter still in the half-dawn of early morning, “but I know you’re awake.” 

His heart stills. Din pulls the covers back, walks over to her, pulls her close. Nova rests against his bare chest, settling into him. Even after nights spent in the same bedsheets, she smells like coconut and freesia and lavender and something else entirely, and Din presses a kiss to her scalp before Nova swings around to face him, tipping her head back to look him square in the eye.

No darkness remains. Not in her eyes. No blood clotted from her nose. No teeth marks on her lips. But Nova’s eyelashes stutter, her breath catches in her throat. 

He knows there’s bruising around his neck. He knows how close she came—that thing came—to decimating him last night. He swallows. It aches. He does not flinch. Nova looks like she’s bartering with something. She bites it back, clenches down her jaw. 

She holds his gaze. A minute passes. She closes her eyes, inhales, exhales, lets her eyebrows relax, lets her shoulders drop. The average person would say this was letting it go—but Din knows it’s Novalise summoning the courage to do something harder. “How long was I out?” she whispers. 

Four small words—what a weight they hold. A gut punch, an anchor sinking. She hates losing things, his Novalise, but time most of all. “A little over two weeks,” Din murmurs, tracing his thumb over the now-prominent line of her cheekbone, and braces for the impact. 

Nova winces, just a little, then nods. Acceptance for this, too, maybe, or swallowing it down to fester like a wound later. 

“I can bring a commlink in here,” Din offers, “or a holotable, and we can review what’s happened since—”

Nova shakes her head. “No.”

He blinks. “No?”

“I can’t,” she says. “They don’t want me in there. In the war room. Making the calls.” She says it so matter-of-factly. She wipes her nose, which isn’t running. She should not know that, after being out for the better part of the last moon cycle, but she does. “I shouldn’t k-know anything.” Nova studies the lines on her palm, tracing the arc of one with the tip of her forefinger. “Just in case.” 

Din looks at her. “Nova,” he says, trying to straddle the line between pragmatic and delicate. He is not good at either, but he will try. For her. “You are…you’re the Mand’alor and a—a commander in the Rebel Alliance, and now both are stationed here. On this planet. In this palace. They…they need you to make a statement, to—”

“I,” Nova says, flatly, “am sick.”

Din stares. Scratches the back of his head. “Sick.” 

Nova pulls the covers up around her. “It’s as good an excuse as any, right? To answer why I’m not down there? To why I haven’t been seen in—” she stops, eyes defocusing, and Din lurches forward. Nova sags, shaking her head. “I’m fine,” she says, dejectedly. “Just… tired. I’m tired. Bo-Katan was right, though.” This is softer, dulled around the edges, like she’s asking Din to confirm. “With what she said on Hoth. I am unfit to rule.” 

“You are not—” 

“There is something inside of my body,” Nova says lowly, levelly, “that is not me.” 

Din feels the world bottom out. “Nova—” 

“I don’t know what it is,” she whispers. “I don’t know what it is, if it’s an it at all, or if it’s just—me, but a corrupted, awful, dark version of myself. Nova of the future. Nova that’s to come. Nova that could become Nova if I make a wrong decision. I went out into that storm on Hoth and I saw her. Me. But I have been seeing her, and these visions, for longer than that, Din. Much longer. It did not originate on Hoth. It did not originate in Deep Space. It did not originate in the Unknown Regions. There was not a demon on some planet that I swallowed, not some poison that let spores loose in my bloodstream, not some nuclear fallout that you did not protect me from because I did not have my beskar on.” Her gaze is chilling—clear. It’s all Nova, and for some reason, it fills Din with panic, flooding him like ice. 

“Nova,” Din tries again, weakly. 

“Ask me where,” she says, a touch softer.

He swallows. “Where?” His mouth wobbles. A little. Maker, he is so out of his depth. His skin is crawling, and he wants to be under armor so badly right now, but Novalise needs him bare, needs him raw, needs him as Din, not the Mandalorian. He does not move, does not flinch. Lets the light in—so that she can, too. “Where did it start?”

“Right here,” Nova whispers, “in this bedroom, on our wedding night, before we left Mandalore at all.” 

Din does not move.

He doesn’t breathe—not properly—not until Nova’s words settle into him fully, landing like ash.

Her—whatever this was, phantom-self? Flickering? Haunting? It wasn’t brought upon by Corellian back alleys, or the whetstone ice of Hoth. No, Nova spoke the truth of it aloud, and it sung to him, sunk in its teeth.

“Din?” Nova whispers, and he does not answer, his face frozen in what he hopes is a perfectly acceptable, neutral expression, but her eyebrows are turned up in the middle, her tangled lashes beating against her cheeks, and he knows he’s reacting. 

Maker, he really wishes he had his armor. 

“It came on quickly,” Nova is saying now, her voice shuttered, as if she was speaking through a funnel. Din nods, a sharp jut of his chin. 

In the place where he held her. In the place where he vowed everything. In the place where she whispered that she was his, and he hers, and there was nothing—nothing—in the stars that could pull them apart.

And still. Something had. This thing inside of her, a pitted, blackened presence.

He inhales through his nose, slow, shallow. The weight in his chest is not grief. Not yet. It’s dread, coiled. Suspicion confirmed. The storm had not blown in from Hoth or the fringes of space. It had bloomed here, grown like the freesia and forsythia of her hair. 

Nova’s voice is quiet, but it trembles on the edge of something shattering. “I felt it the moment I said yes. We came back here; I reassumed the role of Mand’alor, and something gnawed at me, Din. I felt it like a thread slipping around my ribs. Like something ancient… waking up.”

Din can’t speak. He watches her wrap her arms tighter around her legs, jaw clenched against the weight of what she’s just admitted. 

“I thought it was nerves. Thought it was…too much too fast. Too much responsibility, maybe. Too many people watching. I wanted to believe it was just that.” She glances up. Her face is hollowed, pale, eyes rimmed red with unshed tears. “But it wasn’t. And I think—” Her voice cracks. “I think I was chosen.”

Din flinches. Not blessed. Not called, not destined. Not anything else that Novalise has held in her hands over the years—her unwitting ability to be at the center of the entire universe, not just his own—this time. Chosen.

Like a host. A vessel.

He feels sick.

“I think it… knew I would say yes,” Nova says. She’s being very careful, all curved in on herself. “To…all of it. That some sick, unfinished part of me—” she cuts herself off, her finger pointed like a gun against her chest, “wanted to let it in. To fix it. It picked me because I’m the kind of person who says yes. Who doesn’t ask questions. Who wants to carry the burden so no one else has to.”

“Nova,” Din says, rough and barely audible, “you shouldn’t have to carry that alone.” It’s entirely too late, he knows this. Novalise is a study in survival and a martyr every time, and he doesn’t trust that unwitting luck he’s had keeping her anchored to hold. 

She looks at him like she wants to believe that. Like she’s starved for it. But then her gaze turns inward, and the moment slips. “Din,” she says, low, strangled, “I’ve already let it in.”

Silence falls. It feels like a verdict. Din swallows, covers his hands with his eyes, and tries not to shatter. Outside, the Mandalorian sky lightens, silver and blue bleeding across the clouds. Day is coming. And still, Din sits beside her, bare-chested and hollow-eyed, unsure how to shield her from something she’s already swallowed whole.

He leans forward, lays a hand on her knee—light, not possessive. “Then we cut it out,” he says.

Nova blinks. “You… what?”

“We fight it,” Din says. “We hunt it down, tear it apart, root by root. I don’t care if it’s in your blood or your bones or your soul—I’m going to burn it out of you if I have to.”

Her lips part, throat working around a sound that never comes.

“I made a vow,” Din murmurs. “To you. If this thing came for you because you said yes, then it picked the wrong fucking target.”

Something flickers in Nova’s face—hope, or horror, or both. “Din,” she whispers, “how the hell do you expect to do that? Cut it out? Exorcise it?” Her breath catches in the basin of her throat, and Din has to look away into the dawn, hazy and half-bright as ever, coming in from the eastern window, so he doesn’t start screaming. 

Din doesn’t flinch. “I’d kill for you. With you. Through you, if I have to. What part of you doesn’t understand that by now, Novalise?” A beat. “But this thing? I’ll kill it. Whatever it is. I don’t care if it wears your face. I’ll know the difference.”

Nova’s voice shakes. “What if I can’t hold it off next time?”

He cups her cheek, thumb grazing her jaw. “Then I’ll be here. Like always.” 

Nova nods, faintly. She knows this is a given. “What do we tell everyone else?” A whisper, her voice, barely there at all. 

Now, Din has conviction. He matches it, fire and fury, and holds a shaking, pointed finger in her face. “You said it yourself. You’re sick. That’s all they need to know.”

She blinks at him. Once, twice. “I won’t lie to them,” she manages, her voice all air. “The rest of them—fine, they’re safer not knowing. Bo-Katan and Wedge, though; they deserve to know.” 

Din shakes his head, resolute. He knows that both of them have already guessed, gesturing at what’s wrong with her, but he’ll hold this line so Nova doesn't have to. “No. Not yet. Not until we figure out exactly what we’re dealing with. You didn’t want them to know ten minutes ago.” 

“No, I didn’t want to speak as Rebel Leader or Mand’alor, and I still don’t. I am not to be trusted in front of a crowd.” Nova flexes her shoulders as her arms are still wrapped around her knees. Din can see what little remains of her muscle, and it terrorizes him. “Wedge and Bo are not my subjects. They’re in my command, and more importantly, they are my best friends, and I trust them more than anyone else who is not currently occupying this room.” 

Din repeats the head shake. Firm, absolute. “Not yet,” he says. “Let’s not give—whatever this is—more ammunition. You unload on me, cyar’ika. Understand?” 

Frustration—a blessed, eternal glimmer—sparks in Nova’s eyes. Her mouth is set in that way she gets when she’s defiant, but with one small blessing, she gives him a reluctant nod. “Okay,” she whispers. A beat of silence, their tomb of a room growing lighter with the permablue haze of a sunny Mandalore. “What do we do now, then?” 

“I’m going to smuggle you out of here,” Din says, the answer springing to life before he realizes what it is. “Then we’re going to the mines of Mandalore.” 

Nova looks up at him, sideways, and then releases her shoulders, her body unfurling, anchoring towards him like a tractor beam. Her head rests against his shoulder, she nods, and Din wraps his arms around her as if to stitch her back together. For now, there is no war room, or throne. No Jedi Council. No ghost fleets, threatening them from above. No Thrawn. 

Just them. Just this. 

And it tears through Din like a tsunami. 

* 

The mines of Mandalore are considered a sacred, holy place. To Din, and his sect of Mandalorians—Maker, that feels like centuries ago, when he was just a Mandalorian, in a faceless society—it was one of the pieces of mythos he always believed. Maybe it was because this place was a breeding ground for the strength the Mandalorians shouldered, maybe it was because a tiny part of him always wanted to believe in something more. 

But he’d never been here before. And now, he needs their magic so badly it fractures inside of them. 

The starfighter—once his, now Nova’s, belonging to the Manda’lor—cut through the azure air like smoke. It’s silent, the ship, and Din isn’t sure who he thought he would be disrupting, but no one bothered him about it. Downstairs, in the war room, in the dining hall, handfuls of Mandalorians and Rebels alike were together, orange and beskar, piling over maps and holotables and war plans. Bo-Katan affixed him with a cool, steely glare as he slipped past her to the shipyard. Once upon a time, Din would’ve seen that as opposition. Now, he knows it’s well-hidden concern. 

But she did not follow him. Just unfolded her arms and leaned over the holotable with Hera, both of them blue in its glow, continuing to pore over it. And Din brought the ship up into the open air of their balcony, beckoning Nova onboard. 

She is folded up with him in the passenger’s seat now, hair spiraling down her back in perfect ringlets, her eyes open but vacant. 

Please, Din thought. He isn’t sure exactly who he was praying to; he wasn’t a praying man. A God of some sort? The mythosaur itself? Please, bring her back to me. 

They left around dusk. Nova needed to shower first, Din pulling the suds through her hair, lavender-scented and alive. Din stood with her in the fresher as the steam rose, hoping with it would come peace. 

That was a tall order, but it was more the act of the ritual than the ritual itself that he adhered to. 

The sky over Mandalore now is the color of iron—dull, heavy, bruised. A storm was moving in from the west, slow and quiet. Nova didn’t say anything as they passed through the crumbling edge of the capitol’s center, its domes and towers collapsed into jagged silhouettes against the fading light. Din walked beside her, silent but present, his armor catching the last of the sun.

She’s not saying much now, either. As Din docks the ship, he steals a glance over at Nova. She wore her old flight leathers for the trip. Not her beskar. The leather had once been deep brown, but now it is weathered and pale, the color of dried blood. Burn marks scar one sleeve. A blaster bolt had ripped through the knee, years ago, on one of their first missions together, and she’d never patched it right. She doesn’t wear her helmet. She didn’t say it aloud, but Din knows: she doesn’t want anything between her and the air.

They travel the final distance on foot, descending through what remained of the outer cities—now little more than slagged metal and scorched stone. The tunnels narrow as they move inward, the ruins pressing in tighter, the light fading in thin, colorless bands. Din watches Nova.

*

Nova watches back.

Din doesn’t speak, but he stays close. She can hear his breath inside the helmet, the rasp of it against the vocoder. He carries their torch. She didn’t ask for one.

Nova’s fingers brush the wall beside her as they walk deeper into the curve of the mine. Carvings had been scorched into the duracrete long ago—glyphs and battle marks, clan symbols barely visible through the soot. She traces one absently. Kryze. Another. Vizsla. Then a third, nearly worn away: Vau. She doesn’t know that one, and she closes her eyes.

Her hand drops, refocusing on the trail—what little is marked of it—ahead. 

The deeper they go, the worse the pressure grows—like the weight of the mountain itself was bending in toward her. Nova, distantly, recognizes her ears popped. The air thins, full of dust and steam and something else.

Something breathing.

It’s not a sound, exactly. More of a pull. A vibration just behind her ribs, deep in the place where the Force used to live cleanly inside her. Now, the open sore of it festers there like a wound.

She opens her mouth, a slight O to speak some of this into the air between them, but she decides better of it. Nova shutters her eyes, once, twice and keeps moving forward. Inside of her, she can feel the thing snarling, coming alive. With force, she pushes it down. 

They emerge into a high cavern, half-natural and half-carved. The ceiling is low in some places, vaulted in others, shaped by centuries of Mandalorian ritual and reclamation. The walls bore the same sigils she’d seen in the upper tunnels, but here they were untouched by fire. The dark—the utter tomb of it—preserved them.

At the end of the path, the floor slopes down sharply, giving way to a jagged overlook. There, the cavern opens into the sacred chamber. Nova stops at the edge, her breath catching. 

Below them, the Living Waters shimmers faintly, just visible through the mist. Steam coils up in long, luminous tendrils, glowing slightly where Din’s torch touches them. The pool itself is darker than she expected, wide and still. Its surface doesn’t move at all, no stirring to speak of. But Nova can feel it. Pulsing. Awake.

She steps closer to the ledge. The steam continues to rise in soft circles, licking at her cheeks, damp and warm. Her hair clings to her forehead, matted with sweat and fear. Her knees tremble once—but she doesn’t let them buckle.

“I’m going to go under,” she murmurs. “Right?” 

Din nods through the helmet. “The Living Waters were once a ceremonial ground. But, in my covert…” He sighs, leaning up against the stone wall beside them. “You could be remade here. Redeemed.” 

Nova stares at the water. “And you think it’ll help me?” Her fingers curl slightly, then relax again. Instead, she steps past him, to the very edge of the stone platform, where the heat billows up in a sudden rush. It wraps around her like a breath—something woken up, coming alive.

“I don’t know,” Din answers, honestly, arms crossed across his chest. She can sense the exact movement of his brown eyes underneath the helmet, tracking her every move. “But seems a good place to start, yeah?”

“I can feel it calling me,” Nova says in response. The words are quiet, nearly lost in the hiss of steam. They don’t echo, though. They sink. Straight into the bones of the earth here. Nova inhales, a ragged, shuddering thing. 

Din moves to her side. Slower this time. Measured. “The Force?”

She doesn’t answer. No, a tiny, glum, petulant voice hisses. Nova’s eyes flutter shut. Lashes wet. Her chest rises, breath snagging. And then—she feels it. That familiar, dreadful thing inside her. The presence that had nearly overtaken her in their bedroom. That had screamed through her body in jolts of cold flame, stealing the strength from her limbs. It coils now in the center of her ribcage, emboldened. Stronger than before. Hungrier.

It knows this place. The thing recognizes it here, Nova thinks, even though there’s nothing concrete tying that thread together. Home, it whispers.

The word blooms behind Nova’s eyes. A voice that’s hers and not hers. Younger, older. Cracked down the middle. Something else entirely. 

Her breath catches.

Din shifts beside her, armor creaking faintly. “Nova—”

“It’s not hurting me,” she says quickly. Too quickly. “Not yet.”

Silence stretches between them. Heavy. Holding. Din doesn’t push. He stands beside her, steady and silent, hungry. Waiting.

Nova’s gaze sweeps across the chamber. The steam curls in strange shapes—tall and thin and reaching. They look like figures. Like spirits. Memories, here, too-real, like they remember bleeding. She closes her eyes, and that azure blue, star-spun vision from the war room spins around her. An echo, maybe—of a memory, or something yet-to-come. 

“I have to go in,” she says.

Din nods once. The torch in his hand flickers. The shadows it throws are long and broken, and they’re bent at odd angles. “I won’t let it take you,” he says.

Her jaw locks. She looks down at the water. It’s darker than she expected, and so much stiller. It would be unnatural if the rest of Mandalore’s surface wasn’t so quiet, but it almost settles her, this sepulcher reflecting pool. “Don’t pull me out,” she says. “Not unless I stop fighting.”

Din doesn’t answer—not even a curt nod, a promise he’ll break later. Nova’s heart thuds inside of her chest, wanting to reach for him, but she doesn’t. Her skin on his—it recalls the feeling of her hands crushing his larynx, wrapped like a vice around his throat. 

Behind her eyes, the darkness pulses again. Eager. Almost sweet. Nova steps down, bare feet finding the first submerged stone. The heat wraps around her legs like silk.

Or chains. 

She doesn’t debate it long enough to land on a definitive answer. Novalise plunges into the dark, living waters, and feels them close over her head. 

* 

Nova sinks.

Not far. But in the space between breathing and blackout, something cracks open. She floats underneath—not in only the water anymore—in a silence that hums. A pulse surrounds her, slow and resonant. A world breathing in the dark. 

She opens her eyes underwater and finds not Din, not the Living Waters, but a hall.

A circular chamber made of polished stone. Empty but for echoes.

The walls flicker with reflections of stars. Not constellations she knows. Not maps from any sector she’s seen. Instead, they glitter and shift—impossible, wrong. Like the night sky is staring back.

She looks down. She’s barefoot. Her dual rings glint on her left hand, catching a glimmer of light that doesn’t exist. The two bands feel like they’re swallowing her, suddenly, too tight on her finger.

Nova clenches her hands at her sides, and keeps moving forward. In the center of the chamber, a flame flickers to life. It dances atop a still pool, smaller than the one she sank into—shallow, ceremonial. But the flame doesn’t crackle. It whispers. And Nova steps closer, compelled.

When she peers into the water, her reflection stares back.

But it is not her.

The face is hers, yes—but too still. Too perfect. Hair unnaturally neat. Eyes open but unmoving. Mauve lips pulled into a near-smile, cruel and calm. Her ring flashes brighter on the reflected hand than it does on her own. Its center—normally colorless crystal—glows faintly red.

Nova jerks back.

The flame gutters. Smoke slithers up her spine. In the dark, something lilts to her—a blackened, melodic sound. You burn, too brightly. The words are her own voice—but wrong. Echoing, distant. She turns. No one is there. Her heart hammers. Nova opens her mouth to speak, again, but nothing comes out. 

The ring pulses once—hot.

And then, in the blink of an eye, she’s surrounded.

Whispers coil from nowhere, looping around her ankles like vines. Images strobe: a lightsaber igniting; her hands slick with blood; Din screaming her name in a ruined battlefield. A faceless enemy watching her. The sharp burn of failure in her gut.

The voice returns. You do not want to know what you are.

Nova clamps her hands over her ears. She’s shaking. Her knees buckle. The chamber warps around her. The ring on her finger is burning now.

And then—Din’s voice.

Faraway. Frantic. Real. She gasps, lurches, reaches. She comes out of the water like a blade. 

*

Nova breaks the surface with a sharp inhale, eyes wide, lips parted, soaked in steam and shivering. Din is already waist-deep, reaching her, holding her up. Her breath hitches like she’s trying to scream but can’t find the sound.

“Nova,” he breathes, pulling her close, bracing her against his chest.

She clings to him.

“I saw… something,” she whispers, barely audible. “But I don’t think it was the Force.” She swallows, hand ghosting around her temples, trying to jumble the words together to make more sense. “It didn’t feel like a Force vision,” she corrects herself, numbly, words slurring together. She’s not sure what she’s trying to protect.

Din doesn’t answer. Just steadies her. Cradles her in the rising mist. His fingers brush her hand—she’s hot to the touch; flushed. Fevered.

“Okay,” he whispers, finally, “let’s get you home.” 

Nova doesn’t speak as he leads them forward. She is silent, barely-moving, all the way back home.

*

Din wraps the cloak around her shoulders before the water has even finished sliding from her skin.

Nova doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t shiver, doesn’t lean in. She just walks forward, barefoot across the broken tiles, her hair dripping down her back like ink. Her silence is deafening, too loud. Din would beg a word off her, right now, if he could. It is a dark thing in the center of his chest.

Instead, Din follows three steps behind, torch in hand, the shadows on the walls skittering like creatures. The corridor stretches ahead, narrowing, winding back toward the surface. It feels longer now than it did before.

He watches the way Nova’s spine curves under the weight of nothing. He doesn’t say her name. She hasn’t looked at him once. His hand, furious, clenches tighter around the torch. Something’s wrong, deeply so. Not only with Nova, either—the palace itself is silent and not right. 

And he feels it now—like pressure building in the back of his throat, behind his eyes. He doesn’t have the words for it. He was never trained to name spirits or forces or curses. But he’s hunted enough to know when something is off.

Nova looked through him when she came up. Like she wasn’t sure he was real. And when he touched her hand—her ring was hot. Just for a moment. He thought he imagined it. Surely, it was the steam, or the adrenaline, or the weight of almost losing her again. But now… The feeling clings to him. Heavy. Like wet wool over beskar. Like an albatross hung around his neck. Ahead of him, dancing in the light of the flame he’s carrying, Nova keeps walking.

Her footsteps are slow but measured. Controlled. Like she’s afraid of what will happen if she moves too fast. He wonders if she even knows where she is. If she remembers. At the first bend in the tunnel, Nova pauses. Doesn’t turn, though. She stands there, her head tilted slightly, eyes trained on something he can’t see.

“Nova,” Din says softly. “Let’s keep going.”

She nods once. Wordless.

They resume. He watches her more than the path ahead—not because he doesn’t trust her footing, although he’s worried about that, too. 

Because he doesn’t trust what’s in her skin.

Din hates himself for it, he does. But it burrows deeper the longer he walks behind her. The memory of her hands around his throat—how strong she was. How absent she looked. She apologized. She cried. He forgave her the instant it happened, she has to know that. But—

He can’t shake the vision of it from behind his eyes, and he hasn’t stopped seeing her green eyes flood black. Vacant and cruel, right before his eyes. He can’t stop it from replaying on a loop. Not now, and not while she was in the water, and not while they begin their slow journey back to the palace.

The light from the torch flickers. Nova’s silhouette elongates ahead of him. Din hates this. 

He loves her. He would die for her. Has almost died for her. But he doesn’t know how to reach her right now. If Luke were here, maybe. If Ezra, and his strange fucking parasympathetic connection with Nova, were here either—maybe then, too. Leia, Hera, Ahsoka—Din cycles through the Jedi and Rebels that he knows, that may be able to shake her out of it, but he comes up empty. 

Not with the Force, not with words, not even with touch.

The woman he married is still here.

But something else is, too.

And he doesn’t know how long he has before it shows itself again.

*

Long after dusk, the ship returns to the palace. The stone floor chills Nova’s bare feet as she walks the long corridor toward their quarters. Her wet hair drips with each step, dotting the obsidian tile in uneven intervals. She disappears up the curve of their staircase; doesn’t look back.

Din watches her go. Even under the helmet—especially under the helmet—she can feel his eyes on her. A sentinel watch, sharp and deliberate.

The doors to the palace seal softly behind them, muting the outside world. The air inside is warmer, drier, but it doesn’t feel safer. Nova, exhausted, almost timid, doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t ask for him to follow.

She turns the corner and disappears into their suite, the noise of the door hissing shut echoing in the absence of the activity from earlier. 

*

Din lingers in the hallway, water trailing from the joints of his armor, steam rising faintly from where the warmth inside meets the cold of Mandalore’s stone bones. His helmet is still on. He doesn’t take it off.

He breathes, once, sharp. Then he turns.

He needs answers. Needs to feel like he can do something. Like he’s not just standing here while the woman he loves slowly breaks in front of him.

Din doesn’t follow Nova to their suite. Instead, he turns on his heel, heads for the war room.

It’s long past the hours the Rebels and Mandalorians usually keep in here. So the space is dimly lit, its glow cast in soft reds and tactical blue. The map table hums with data—fleet movement, resistance channels, Mandalorian patrols—but none of it matters when Din steps through the door.

Bo-Katan doesn’t look up. Her arms are folded tight, one foot braced on the edge of the table. She stares at a glowing node in the Mid Rim like she could kill it just by thinking hard enough.

Wedge is the one who turns, blinking when he sees Din. His expression breaks first into worry, then expectation. “Is she—?”

Din nods. “In the fresher. She woke up last night.” He clears his throat, impreceptibly—he can still feel the knot of Nova’s possessed, dark hands twisted around his neck. “We just got in.”

Bo-Katan’s head lifts now, slow. Her gaze sharpens. “She went out?”

“To the mines,” Din says.

Silence.

“The mines,” Bo-Katan echoes, flat.

“She asked me to take her.” He’s hoarse, isn’t he? His words are coming out ragged. 

Bo-Katan’s jaw works. “The mines,” she repeats again, and Din can hear worry in her voice. Disguised behind the blade of it, as always, but there. 

He presses his hands into his eyes, regretting not taking his helmet down with him. “Yes.” 

Bo steps away from the table, arms still folded, cloak swinging behind her. “So, what? Novalise  wakes up after nearly a full moon cycle of being—stunted, out, whatever the hell you want to call it—and you don’t call for us? You just…bring her down to the mines of Mandalore?

Wedge shoots her a look. “Bo—”

“No,” she says, calm and cold. “Let him explain.”

Din’s shoulders stay square. He doesn’t fidget. “She wasn’t afraid, Bo-Katan, she wanted answers.”

“That’s the problem,” Bo-Katan snaps. “She doesn’t need to be down in that place when she’s—” Her voice cracks in the middle, though only just. She closes her mouth like she’s said too much.

Wedge steps in. “Did something happen?” His eyes dart warily between the two of them—sensing the tension, rife more than usual, on opposite sides of a conflict, yet again—but he’s confused. In the dark. “Something else, other than the obvious?”

Clearly, Bo-Katan hasn’t let Wedge in on the conversation they had in the hallway, Din’s arm against her throat. 

Din doesn’t answer right away. Not because he doesn’t want to—because he doesn’t quite know how. His arms feel heavier than they should. The smell of steam and ash still clings to his skin. When he inhales, he can’t get a read on Nova’s scent anywhere. He clears his throat, grateful that the turtleneck he always wears beneath his armor covers the map of his mottled neck. “She saw something,” he says finally. “In the water.”

Bo-Katan stiffens. “A Force vision?”

Din shakes his head, resolute. Then, slowly, “She hasn’t told me what she saw. But I don’t think it was a vision—not like ones she’s seen before.”

“Did she lose time?” Wedge asks. “Did she pass out?” He swallows. Older than all of them, Wedge is, but right now, he looks almost childlike. Din studies him, carefully, a dull ache sparking up in the hollow of his chest. 

“Not in the mines.” Din clears his throat again. “But she was underwater for a while.”

Bo-Katan shakes her head, pacing now, slow and frustrated. “You made it worse, Din.” Her voice isn’t accusatory, and that’s what knifes at him. 

Din’s brow furrows. “She came back up. She’s still here, okay? She’s awake again—”

“For how long?” Bo snaps, turning to face him. “How long until she doesn’t come back at all? She hasn’t been right since Hoth. She hasn’t been Nova since before that.”

Wedge’s voice is softer. “Do you think she’s been…compromised?” He looks away, eyebrows knitting in pain. “By whatever’s inside her?” 

“I think,” Bo says, quiet now, “something’s dragging her under. And we’re all pretending not to see it, and that’s not—” she shoves a hand over the desk, papers fluttering over the war room floor. “Helpful,” Bo-Katan finishes, finally, breathing heavily through her nostrils, “to Nova, or any of us.” 

Din shifts. His hand brushes the edge of his glove. He doesn’t speak about the heat of the ring on Nova’s skin. Or tell them about the moment in the water, her reflection not matching Nova’s face. He files it away like he always does, on a need to know basis, and right now, he’s afraid of what Bo-Katan and Wedge will say. 

“She’s trying,” Din says, low. “Whatever this is… she’s fighting it.”

“Is she?” Bo doesn’t blink. “Or is she just pretending to, for your sake?”

The blow lands where it’s intended to. Din’s jaw tightens. Wedge exhales sharply and turns away from them, both hands gripping the edge of the holotable now.

“She’s not pretending,” Din says, lower than usual, no vocoder to distill it for him. 

Bo’s voice cools again. “Then what is she hiding?” The room falls quiet. The map flickers.

Wedge straightens. “Is she in danger, Din?” A soft thing in a room gone sharp. “Is she dangerous?”

“I don’t know,” Din says. And it, he realizes, is the only answer he’s had all day, and it is the worst answer of all. He won’t tell them, he decides. He will not speak a word about how Nova flooded back into herself, her hands knitted around his neck. 

Bo-Katan turns back to the map. She taps a finger on a blinking red icon.

“We don’t have time for ghosts,” she mutters. “Not with Thrawn building in this galaxy again. If she’s unstable—”

“She’s not a liability,” Din cuts in. “She’s a commander. She’s your Mand’alor, Bo-Katan, for fuck’s sake—”

“She was,” Bo corrects. “What’s happening now, Din?” She blinks. “Do you honestly think Nova should be leading any of us right now, as Mand’alor or into battle?” 

The silence between them is jagged.

Din steps back from the table, glancing once toward the hallway. He’s said too much already. Not enough. He’s not sure. “Nova needs rest,” he says. “Let her have that. For now.” He starts to walk away, then stops. “She’s sick. If anyone asks, she’s sick, and contagious, and—”

“Yeah,” Bo-Katan says, miserably, “that’s what I’ve been telling everyone since she first went down, Din.”

Wedge just nods, barely. A corroboration. He looks like he wants to go after Din, but he stays put—leaning back over the holotable, both of them in the blue of the projected stars. A line has been drawn, and Din can feel it down to his teeth.

In response, Din turns and leaves.

*

Nova stares at her reflection in the mirror. It is fractured and unwell, this thing inside of her, and it sluices through her veins. Her hands tremble. She knits them together at her bellybutton, the familiar hunger ripping through her stomach. Her hair has sprung back up into its curl pattern, and she tries to find the edges of herself—her mother’s face, her father’s eyes. Rebel Commander, Mand’alor, Jedi. 

The thing coiled deep inside of her flexes. Novalise, it beckons. 

She meets her eyes, and they flicker black. A blip, a tiny piece of it, and then it’s gone.