Chapter Text
Din walked back to the main room with a heavy heart. Trying to reason with this Paz was like talking to a wall. A wall hiding behind a barricade.
Paz was never easy to get through to, even back in the day. Din had fallen for him for his proud character, for how he would put honour and the tribe above anything else. He'd been raised to be a leader and had everyone's respect and admiration. At that time, Din was too busy trying to believe someone like Paz would choose someone like him, of all the adoring people Paz had around himself, to be with to realise their relationship couldn't have a future: Paz was expected to marry a Mandalorian woman and produce at least one heir. Being with a man wouldn't have met his clan's requirements. Din decided to sever their bond before it became too hard for them to break up, and Paz never forgave him for that. It's bittersweet, today, to see that, despite Din's sacrifice, Paz still failed to become the man he was brought up to be – bitter because Din gave him up for nothing, and sweet because, in the end, Paz may have ended up being a wreck, but at least this, however stupid and self-destructive, was his choice and not his clan's.
Some of the weight constricting his heart evaporated the moment he spotted Cara curled in the armchair, next to which a shy fire was burning in the fireplace. The child was nestled against her chest, wrapped up in his green blanket; Cara was trying to sing him to sleep, rocking him gently, but he didn't seem very keen on sleep, at the moment: he was making bubbles with his mouth, making himself giggle in delight at his own silly sounds, much to Cara's quite amused frustration.
“You need to stop this,” she was warning with her finger pointed at the kid's nose. A silent laughter danced in her eyes when the kid giggled back, sputtering more bubbles.
“Stop being cute when I'm trying to scold you, you little shit!”
Din smiled inwardly. Seeing Cara being so tender and maternal would always give him thoughts he couldn't afford to dwell upon, but it was such a sweet, heart-warming picture he just couldn't stop staring.
“Should we gas him?” he quipped, approaching.
Cara looked up at him, closed her eyes for a moment, smiling, as his helmet touched her forehead.
“I guess he's picking up the tense vibes around here. Get ready for a long, bubbly night, daddy,” she said, then glanced down at the baby with a helpless sigh. Din ran a caress through her hair, trying to infuse in the gesture as much love and gratefulness as he could. Cara had been up all day to monitor Paz's conditions, looking after him with the same attention and dedication she would have had for Din himself. Not many people would have done this for an ex lover of their partner, but Cara seemed to understand how much Din cared about Paz and apparently accepted it whole-heartedly.
“Are you okay?” she asked, taking his hand.
“I think so.” Din considered sitting on the armrest next to Cara but quickly decided against it: that armchair didn't look sturdy enough to take his weight, even without the beskar, so he opted for the floor, instead.
“Same can't be said about that idiot, though.” He bent his knees and sat down at Cara's feet, propping his back against her shins, then slipped his helmet off and set it down.
Cara parted her legs just enough for him lean further back and rest his head back on her lap with an exhausted sigh. Cara curled a hand around his jaw, stroking under his chin with her thumb.
“He seems... lost.”
"He lost the Way,” he corrected dryly. “He's a dar'manda.”
“Din,” soothed Cara in a painfully compassionate whisper. “He hasn't lost the Way. He lost himself, lost his belonging. I can't imagine what he must have seen on Nevarro, that day. He walked out of that massacre alone. He's entitled to be freaked out."
She was right, of course. He didn't know how it was Cara, who was the one easily incensed between the two of them, telling him to slow down and reflect before he judged; maybe it was her unbiased point of view allowing her to see things more clearly, maybe she was simply wiser than he was.
"He was always quite hot-headed, but... I didn't expect him to have abandoned the Way."
"Trauma is a bitch. Be a little sympathetic."
"I am,” he said defensively, but immediately realised it was an instinctual lie. “I'm... trying."
Even though his eyes were closed, he could feel a subtle grin in Cara's voice as she said, “Are you so upset because of what he did to himself or because he ruined the idea you had of him?”
Once again, she was proving to know him better than he knew himself. Din couldn't help a faint, reluctant laugh.
“Get out of my head, Dune.”
“I'm not in your head, buddy. I'm in your stupid heart.”
Always so smug. Did she never tire of being so obnoxiously right?
“He needs you, Din,” continued Cara, her caresses soft and loving over his cheek. “You're all he has left. Literally. We can't leave him here alone.”
“I know,” Din admitted.
Leaving Paz to himself was definitely not an option: the deranged moron would positively find a way to get himself killed, one way or another, and Din felt he had a responsibility toward him. Perhaps he could convince Paz to go back to Nevarro with him and look for the Armourer. There was still a possibility more survivors had scattered in the galaxy: if they found them, the Covert could be restored.
“Hey,” Cara's hand stilled as her voice got serious, “if you still care about him, you should tell him.”
Yes, Paz probably needed to hear that, at least as much as Din needed to confess it to him. He opened his eyes to find Cara's staring down on him, no trace of jealousy or judgement in them, only love.
“Then what?” he inquired. The child was looking back and forth between him and Cara, his ears twitching curiously, as though he had been wondering the same thing Din was and couldn't wait to hear a response.
And Cara, being the incredible person she was, juts smirked down at Din, her thumb tracing the outline of his lower lip, and said, “I don't know. Can the Crest still take off with an extra two-hundred-pound Mando on board?”
“You want to take him in?”
“We're certainly not settling down in this stinky hole.”
“You would do that?” Din asked, a bit breathlessly. “You would share our life with Paz for me?”
Cara held the child tighter to her chest and leant down to press a fond kiss on Din's lips.
“You fool,” she murmured. “I'd do anything for you.”
*
They switched places: Din sat down and took the kid to try to get him to sleep, and Cara went to check on Paz.
He was asleep. The fever was still high, but the worst had passed. With some rest and some decent food, he should be able to get back on his feet within a couple of days. All Cara had to do was convince him to follow her recommendations, which wasn't going to be easy: dealing with Paz Vizla was like dealing with a giant, unruly baby.
Cara couldn't imagine what he must have been like in the past, but even now that he was lying unconscious and drenched in sweat, she couldn't look at him and not see the man Din had been – and probably still was – in love with.
To Din's credit, he had fallen for this man without the unarguable incentive of being allowed to see his handsome face – and this credit went in equal measure to Paz, she had to concede. What Cara saw in the man lying in the bed before her was a bleeding soul in desperate need of a reason to heal, which, to her taste, sounded all too familiar to her own scarred heart. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Paz to have someone like Din beside himself, however different Din was back then, and lose him – and ultimately lose everything.
She sat down at Paz's side, taking in his large figure in the milky moonlight pouring in right upon him from the window: his broad chest was marked with scars of all shapes and sizes, much like Din's, mementos of battles Cara could barely imagine. She felt sorry for him for the loneliness he had encountered after the loss of the Covert. This was a grief Cara could imagine: her entire world had been wiped out, if there was someone who could understand what Paz was going through, that was her.
She tried to shear off the debris of years of anger and solitude, digging through the scars and the cheeky facade, and what she found beneath was an injured beast curled in his lair, letting himself bleed to death not even bothering to lick his wounds.
“You're as big as you're stupid, buddy,” she muttered as she wiped his face with a fresh cloth.
He had a scar on his left cheekbone, she noticed, a reversed V that cut into his skin and seemed to merge along the line on the other scar he had across his left eyebrow. Something sharp must have hit his face quite violently to leave such a peculiar mark.
She knew so little of this man, and yet she couldn't help feeling drawn to him. It would have been easy to blame this on the fact that he was important to Din, and whatever and whoever was important to her husband was important to her; however, a part of her realised it was more than that: there was something oddly familiar in Paz's coping mechanisms, in the way he seemed so fond of trouble. Cara had been there: ever since running from the army, she had spent her days between bar brawls and solitary nights drowning her sorrow in alcohol, covered in bruises and self-commiseration. She felt inexplicably protective of this huge guy who acted like a silly kid, and there was nothing she could do to change this.
She turned to dip the cloth into the basin of cold water she'd put on the stool by the bed, and when she turned back she found his eyes open in two drowsy slits as he tried to blink her into focus.
"Mesh'la?"
Cara stifled a grin. So she was just Beautiful, now?
"Good evening,” she greeted. “How are you feeling?"
Paz shut his eyes with a groan as he tried, quite uselessly, to move.
"Not... dead?”
His voice was a thick blur. Cara could see the white coating his mouth when he licked his chapped lips.
“You need to drink,” she said. She took a glass of water and help up his head to help him drink one small sip at a time. When he was done, Paz sank back into the pillow with a pained moan. He still has some trouble breathing; Cara took a mental note to get him some balsamic herbs, assuming this sorry excuse of a town had a market.
She dabbed the cloth over Paz's face and down his neck; he sighed in relief.
“You have very gentle hands."
"Or you just have very low standards," she retorted with a chuckle that successfully extorted a light laugh out of him.
"Could be. I've never been touched like this by anyone. Not even-"
"Din?"
Paz rolled his head in her direction, staring hazily at her with a deep, quizzical scowl. Cara simply stared back.
"You're in love with my man,” she acknowledged. “Okay, so what?” She gave a shrug, then winked at him, “Can't blame you."
“Yeah, well,” Paz faced away, his features darkening, “we didn't part on the best terms. Went through a rough patch, became almost strangers...”
“He's here for you, now,” she stressed, but he pretended not to hear.
“Paz,” she insisted, with the patient tone of an adult trying to reason with a whiny child. “You need help. We're not leaving you here to waste your life away.”
He almost turned around when she said 'we'.
"There's nothing for me out there."
"There's Din. And I'm here for you, too."
This seemed to do the trick: Paz rolled his head back in her direction, scrutinising her with hooded eyes full of sadness, and muttered, “I'm not joking when I say I'm head over heels for you, you know?”
A genuine pang of affection seized Cara's heart. She slid closer to Paz, put a hand on his bare shoulder and squeezed gently.
"Let us be your reason to get back on your feet, then."
Paz broke into a blue smile.
"That little ship will be a bit crowded, don't you think?"
“She can take it,” Cara promised.
Paz's eyes flickered across her face, lingering more than once on her lips. Cara would never admit she was a little flattered by his fascination with her. It was also comforting, in a way, to know she had a place in the thoughts of the man who was in love with her husband and whom her husband loved back.
It took a while before Paz, swallowing, finally asked, "Why do you care so much?"
Cara's hand trembled; she started retracting it from Paz's shoulder, but Paz's large hand came up to stop it and press it back against his skin. He was still burning from the fever, Cara's touch must feel almost cool upon him. She let his fingers dip between hers and flex lightly in something like a caress. He was touch-starved, she could feel it in his hesitation, see it in the hunger in his eyes.
"I can see the good in you,” she whispered. “And your pain, too. I can see a reflection of myself in that."
“Who did you lose?”
“Everything,” said Cara with a lump swelling in her throat, “everyone. I was born on Alderaan.”
Paz's smile became bitter as his eyes lock with Cara's.
“That explains so much.”
“Does it?”
“You have war in your eyes,” he said. The pressure of his hand over Cara's intensified. “I've never seen so much kindness in someone wounded so deeply.”
Cara stiffened.
She had never been particularly kind, mostly because kindness used to be seen as weakness in her old line of duty. She finally allowed the luxury of being kind only after meeting a certain Mandalorian and his green kid, but it certainly wasn't a dominant trait in her character, one a stranger would notice above the rest. Being defined kind by someone she had barely just met felt strange, and perhaps slightly surprising, but she wasn't such a hypocrite to try to convince herself she wasn't pleased to hear it.
“We should check your temperature,” she said, withdrawing her hand carefully.
“You need to check to know I'm hot?” replied Paz.
Cara, who had been about to feel his forehead, sat back with a warning look that wasn't entirely annoyed.
“I can't do this if you keep hitting on me, pal.”
“Forgive me.” Paz offered her an apologetic half a smile that actually managed to pull several strings in Cara's soul. She felt suddenly exposed, but Paz wasn't interested in exploiting her vulnerability; not as much as safeguarding his own, at least.
“I'm making a fool of myself with you because...” He trailed off, and his chest shook with a weak laugh. “Sister, everything about you is a work of art. But I guess the truth is... I hate that fucker for being so fulfilled.”
Cara arched her brows. “That fucker being my husband?”
“Don't twist the knife.”
“You mean you hate him for being so fulfilled without you?”
Paz snorted, but the way he was looking at Cara could only be described as awe.
“Why can you read right through me?”
“I can't,” said Cara, feeling a surge of sudden fondness for the guy. That was a question Din had asked her a thousand times. “But Din's that kind of person you have to fight to get and don't want to lose.”
“You're never gonna lose him. You've got him wrapped around your charming little finger.”
“I know,” she admitted. She had no intention to sound smug: she simply knew what she and Din had could not be threatened.
"My love was always unrequited,” said Paz out of nowhere, “and I was okay with that. It couldn't be me, but at least it wasn't gonna be anybody else, either. 'No one's ever gonna breach through that beskar heart,' I kept telling myself.” His gaze softly rose to Cara. “Guess I had to open my eyes to that beautiful face of yours hovering upon me in that cantina to see how wrong I was."
"Now you're just flattering me,” she grinned
Paz gave a light shrug. "I would, if I thought it'd work. Stars, the things I'd do to have just one taste of you... That bastard is damn lucky.”
“The luck is mutual,” said Cara. Why did her cheeks suddenly feel so warm?
Paz let out another faint laugh.
“Don't I know. I'm glad it's you, though. I couldn't have accepted losing him to anybody else.”
“You haven't lost him,” she objected. This was the point of the whole conversation, had he even listened to a single word Cara had spoken so far?
“Yes, I have.”
“No. He's angry and confused, but what he felt about you is still there.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I love him,” said Cara with a light, condescending giggle, “and I want him to be happy.”
Paz's features contracted into a wistful frown. Cara had no idea why it was so hard to believe she merely wanted what was best for everyone. If Paz did love Din, he must feel the same way.
Slowly, his hand sought Cara's over the blanket coving half of his body. She watched as he took it and and started rubbing his thumb over her scratched knuckles. When he looked at her, he was so serious Cara nearly flinched.
“You got no problem with me getting between you two?”
His touch burned on her skin – not because of the fever, she suspected. She didn't know when her pulse had started speeding up so much. She couldn't believe this mess of a Mandalorian was effectually carving his way to her heart, and so quickly.
She tilted her head to one side, lips curling up, and said, “It's so sweet of you to think you could get between me and my beskar idiot. Sorry, buddy: you can't.”
She let her words knock some boldness away from Paz's expression.
“But we can civilly make some room,” she added before he had a chance to pity himself. “A lot of room, if necessary.”
And then, just as quickly as it had clouded, Paz's face brightened up with the most sincere and heart-breaking flicker of hope Cara had ever seen. It took him a few seconds to regain his confidence.
“Civilly?” he pouted. “No hope for me to woo you, mesh'la buruk?”
Cara laughed, a deep, spontaneous laugh that washed away some of the tension in her back and made her feel lighter.
“Keep trying. Who knows.”
“You like me. I know you do,” said Paz, holding her hand tighter. His tone was playful but there was a shade of desperation to it that made something melt inside Cara.
She glanced down and her and Paz's hands holding on to each other. “What if I did?”
She didn't know if she was asking this to Paz or to herself.
What if she did? What if she found out she actually liked this man independently from his history with her husband? Would it really be so crazy to consider that the three of them could...
“Things could get very interesting,” smirked Paz, shaking her out of her train of thought.
Cara bit her lip.
“Are you serious about this whole thing, Paz? The unrelenting flirting, the innuendos...” She shook her head, grinning to herself. “You don't need to conquer me to get to Din. If he wants you, you can have him.”
“You're just making me more and more smitten with you, cyar'ika,” said Paz. “This unbreakable confidence you and Din have about your bond... you have no idea how hot that is.”
“Oh, I do,” she purred, rather proudly. She did know, but it still felt good to hear.
Paz gathered her hand between both of his, holding it to his chest with a passionate glint in his look. “You're gonna haunt my dreams forever with those beautiful eyes of yours.”
“I know exactly what sort of dreams my eyes are going to give you,” Cara giggled, feeling a flare of heat, not only in her cheeks, but all over herself and inside. She might be wrong, but she had a feeling things were already getting interesting.
“So, are you two going to kiss or what?”
Both Cara and Paz jumped. From the door across the room, Din chuckled. He had put his helmet back on and was leaning against the door frame with a shoulder, arms folded across his chest. How long had he been there, exactly?
Cara tutted. “He's not going to have that so easily.”
“There is hope?” exclaimed Paz, bolting up from his pillow, only to be pushed back into it by Cara's firm hand, which he was still clutching between his own.
“Why can't I keep my damn mouth shut?” she groaned, fighting against the pull she was feeling at the corners of her mouth. She pressed her lips together with all the dignity she could muster, then took a deep breath and cast a brief glance Din's way. At Din's encouraging nod, she said to Paz, “You've got a place in the family, if you want it.”
“What about your heart, mesh'la?” Paz inquired with an exaggerated sigh. “Do I have a place in there, too?”
“Isn't your place in my husband's heart enough, for now?” she argued, though deep down she couldn't deny she was enjoying Paz's theatrics more than she should.
“I love you as much as I love him, my warrior goddess,” he declared, prompting a sound from Din that was half a snort, half a laugh.
“We've known each other for three days, Paz,” Cara argued amiably. “Isn't that a bit of a stretch?”
“And for three days I've been ardently in love with you!”
He was still feverish, Cara told herself. She couldn't strangle a feverish man for acting ridiculous.
“Do you guys take drama courses at Mandalorian school?” she wondered, turning around to extend the question to Din, too, who shook his helmet in amusement.
“I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.”
“Just give me a sparkle of hope,” Paz begged, ignoring her comment completely, “and I'll cling to that forever!”
Cara was laughing again. Something must be wrong with her. She turned back to Din again and quirked a brow at him.
“Our marriage vows did say 'We will share all'...”
This time, Din's snort was definitely a badly concealed laugh. Before he could say anything, however, Paz bolted up again:
“Say no more, Cara! This beskar heart is yours and nobody else's!”
Still leaning against the door frame, Din cleared his throat with an eloquent tilt of his helmet.
“Yours,” Paz rolled his eyes, “and that shiny guy over there's,” he rephrased with a hint in Din's direction.
“He's rather cute, isn't he?”
“Yeah. We should keep him.”
Din brought a hand to the forehead of his helmet and massaged the beskar with an aggravated sigh.
“I'm not sure I can stomach the cheek of you two combined.”
Cara could feel his grin all the way across the room, and apparently, judging by how stupidly he was beaming, so did Paz.
She still wasn't completely sure this was a good idea, but there wasn't much she could do about it, anyway. They were going to take Paz away from this horrible place, and that was it; what would come next, they would face together, all four of them.
“I guess we're gonna find out,” she said while Din came forward, bringing his aura of peace with himself. He sat down behind Cara and pulled her onto his lap; slowly, without a word, the heads of the three of them moved toward each other until they hesitantly met in the most awkward, most touching Mandalorian kiss the galaxy had ever seen.
In the quiet intimacy of this moment, surrounded by two pairs of arms, Cara realised her life had just reached a whole new level of crazy.
Now she was going to have to deal with two helmeted idiots.