Chapter Text
He watched you.
The whole morning, that was all he did, he watched you. From the moment you woke, to now, as he moved his repacked bags closer to the doorway. He watched you. The cracks of light, seeping in through the few uncovered slits of window, warned him of the hour, but he still watched. The pitch black of night turned to a gentle purple, and the purple faded to an even lighter lavender before it gave way to the warmth of the sun. He didn't have long before the orange and yellow of the morning began to rise over the coastline, yet still, he lingered.
The break in the storm wouldn't last long, if they wanted to be out by morning, the time to leave was now. And still, he lingered, watching you.
You were deliberate in every motion.
Careful to pick the exact knife you needed from your diverse collection lining the wall of your inferior cooking space, precise as you raised and lowered it over and over again, exact in the sizing of every piece of fruit that you cut. A few of the fruits he recognized, others he saw for the first time when you pulled them from your pack. Not an ounce of juice spilled from the board, even if it squirted from each of the fruits you sliced, the towel over your shoulder was on hand before you could make even a drop of mess.
It was careful. Precise. It was perfect. Everything he remembered you to be in a such a different way, the domestic equivalent of the skill you were capable of, of what you used to be with him. He couldn't pull his gaze away, he just couldn't.
He knew he was staring, he knew that you knew, and he just couldn't look away. You could feel his gaze from a parsec away, and here, confined to your small living space, he was suffocating you with it and he didn't even care. He just couldn't look away.
He couldn't breathe.
He wanted to stay.
But he was watching you, every inch of you, and that included your blaster, sat right beside your cutting board. Loaded with the safety off.
Each second was a second closer to the sun peaking over the horizon, a second closer to the morning becoming tangible, a second closer to you asking him to leave with a shot to the beskar to make your point. Or maybe, given how quiet you've been, a better placed shot than that.
It wouldn't surprise him, he wouldn't even argue he didn't deserve it. There was an uncomfortable tightness in his chest just imagining it.
Cara hit him from his thoughts, not rough, but toeing the line as her stare punctuated the warning. The sun was too close to the horizon, the storming sky warming as the hints of orange light began to break through the blanket of gray. As if he hadn't been counting down the hours since the moment you gave your conditions, as if he hadn't sat waiting with baited breath as each minute passed, as if he didn't know he was lingering on his few remaining seconds...
"You could talk to her, you know, ask if we could stay?" Her chin jutted towards you as her shoulders offered a weak shrug.
Another cut on the board, each piece of fruit the exact size as the one before.
Stood in the doorway with his bag over his shoulder, Karga continued the sentiment. "I don't think she'll shoot you... if maybe you apologize-"
He couldn't entertain a thought like that, and with a quick drop of his stare, he cut the older man off before he could continue any further. There was no world where you forgave him, no amount of time or words could ever make a difference. It was a mistake to come here, it was torture neither of you deserved. His helmet shook with a resounding 'no', and with a quick glance back to you, he knew he was doing what he needed to.
"We'll head into town, we'll get what we need and we'll keep moving." His voice strained through his chest, his heart screaming with a pain he hadn't felt in years.
Your knife hit the board again, you didn't even look back his way.
"Mando, whatever you did-"
"I shouldn't have brought us here." If he was loud enough, maybe you'd hear. If you were listening, maybe you'd understand, maybe you'd know that he didn't mean any of this. Stars, he wished you were listening. "Let's move-"
One step. That was all he had in him. One step and he felt it.
His tight chest constricted even further, the pain in his heart shot from a dull burn to a piercing stab in an instant, any breath in his lungs dissipated all together and the familiar weight of his beskar became heavier than he could bear. The broken ribs he had been nursing since the last fight were nothing new, but this was unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was a knife in his chest- no, he'd been stabbed before, this wasn't that- this was worse. This was somehow so much worse.
Was it... was it you? Did you shoot him? No... he would have heard you move for the blaster, he would have heard the shot, no matter how quick on the trigger he knew you to be. It wasn't you... This was coming from within him, his own body screaming as an indescribable pain latched itself onto every single cell in his body, high-jacking his bloodstream and tearing it's way through his whole body, echoing through his chest.
His knees buckled first. Cara reached out to keep him upright but she had no grasp for how much a man in full beskar weighed the second he became dead weight. Before he knew it, he was on the floor, a heap of his own arm armor, while Cara grew frantic with her calls for help. She was calling for Karga, she was calling for you...
You...
Stars, the last thing he wanted was to be more of a burden...
He struggled and squirmed, grunts and groans not making it out of his throat. There was no position to be in where it didn't hurt, something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
Flashes of faces moved across the slit of vision his visor provided, hands dragged across his body. Cara. Karga. You. You. You. You. You were all he could see. Not a hallucination, not a memory, but you. With your steady hands and unmatched precision.
"You've got to get him level with the floor."
Under your orders, Cara moved quickly, unravelling his twisted form with a few heaving tosses until he laid out flat on his back, but her frantic concern didn't leave her tone. "What happened to him?"
Everything began to blur, nothing but the flood of voices echoing in his head and the waves of pain.
"You were with him." Your sharp tone cut through the torrent of senses. You. You. You.
"There was a fight," Karga explained, but even his brow furrowed in disbelief as he said it. "He took a bad blow to the back of the head, maybe that's what-"
"It's not his head." Your hands never moved anywhere near his helmet, you knew better than to even try. Instead, your examining touch trailed down his chest, hands dipping beneath the armor wherever you could reach and staying there, feeling his chest rise and fall with each of his shuddering breaths. Uneven. Scarce. A curse fell from your lips in your native tongue, definitely not his head.
As you pulled yourself to your feet, you stepped in line with the burst of sunlight slipping in through the covered windows, the morning finally breaking through the gray storm to douse you at the perfect angle with a broken cascade of bright light. Bright. You were so bright. You were all that he could see. And the rain steadied to a gentle, rhythmic thump against the roof, much steadier than his labored breath sound. Steady. Rhythmic. You. You. You-
“Get him up, move him onto the table here.”
He lost you from his line of sight as he felt his body move, two hands on his, two on his feet as he began to swing, as level as they could manage, which with his hefty form, couldn't have been easy. A burden. A burden to you- Hot. Fire. Flame. He could feel the fire beside him as they laid him out flat on the only table in the small room, he could feel himself cooking in his heavy layers.
You. Your face was back and all he could see as edges of black began to skirt the outside of his vision, his own consciousness slipping through his fingers. He could feel your fingers pressing carefully to his neck for a pulse, he could hear the vibrations of your words as you spoke, he could see your lips moving-
"I'm taking your chest piece off." It wasn't a question.
He couldn't answer even if it was.
He reached out for your hand, trying with a near numb and deft hand to give it a squeeze, but everything went black.