Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s always been just a feeling buried deep in his bones. That quiet sense of good luck or bad luck, a small voice whispering advice and warnings.

That same voice tells Corin that right now is BAD , so bad he can’t feel any good or see anything beyond this moment.

He is running through a burning corridor somewhere underground, the child clutched desperately to his chest. Smoke blurs his vision and he coughs, stopping for a second to fold a blanket over the child’s face to try and filter the smoke from its small lungs.

“Mando!” he bellows, inhaling choking death if it means he will be answered. “Mando! Where are you?”

He still doesn’t know the man’s name and that hurts now. He wants to call for him, not just a random title for anyone in beskar armor bearing weapons and mystery as their religion.

Corin coughs again, his throat raw from the black smoke and lungs feeling compressed in his heaving chest. The child squirms faintly, and he is now faced with a choice: save the child or find the Mandalorian.

He cannot trade one for the other. He cannot live like this, torn apart, dying and crying and suffocating.

“Freeze!”

If he had his helmet like these soot-streaked troopers, he could breathe. He could nestle the child against the filtration units and save it while he hoped so desperately to see a silver-plated figure rise from the ashes to meet them.

Corin does not freeze. He rushes forward and turns last moment to slam his shoulder into the chestplate of a trooper, his momentum so fierce that he hears a cracking sound and feels the white plasteel bend under the impact.

His shoulder aches but he can think about that later.

It’s hard to fight in the swirling smoke and sizzling blaster shots while holding the child, but Corin follows the fall of the trooper he hit. He punches in the soft part of the throat not guarded by armor or helmet, his fist smashing into black material and silencing this faceless soldier.

Corin then yanks the helmet off and tucks the child inside, hoping it is enough to keep it breathing clear of smoke and fire. He coughs again and pushes to his feet, running away from the blurry white figures and their red shots and sputtering flames.

He’s fine. He’ll manage. He just needs to find the Mandalorian.

“Mando!” he shouts, his voice raspy and painful now.

The walls shudder around him and rubble crumbles down. Somewhere, something is burning very hot and the heat of it ripples blisteringly over his skin in icy waves of bad luck.

Corin cradles the helmet lifepod with the child inside. Breathing won’t matter if they’re crushed by a collapsed structure. He has to get out of here . . .

But how?

He stumbles forward, coughing more than he’s breathing. His head is spinning, he turns looking for a gust of fresh air to lead him outside to safety. He bumps into one wall and then another until finally his legs give out and he crumples to the floor, curled around the white helmet.

“There they are,” a trooper says from a distance as the white figures approach. “Retrieve the asset.”

The voice is screaming in Corin’s head, growing and changing into a force that rises from his bones and stretches into his muscles. He acts not on knowledge, but from instinct.

He flings a hand up, palm forward, and screams, “No!”

Power ripples from him and throws the troopers backwards. The smoke swirls after them, giving him a bubble of air to take with greedy breaths.

Hand still held forward, Corin gets to his feet. He is shaking and so, so tired, but that force is still churning wild and alive inside of him, giving him the strength to leave the fallen troopers and see a new hallway.

He runs and wonders how he did such a thing, but grateful it happened. He was on the doorstep of death, and now he is once more clinging to the stretching, precarious ladder of life. And the child is still safe.

But the Mandalorian is still missing.

“Hey, you there!”

The trooper says no more as Corin reacts with a slapping motion of his hand, tossing the trooper against the wall and holding him there with that unnamed, instinctive force until he runs past. The trooper clatters to the ground behind him, but Corin has the sense that he didn’t kill him.

Good.

The less death, the better. He doesn’t want to be another cataclysm, leaving a stretching wake of ruin wherever he goes. The Empire has done enough of that already and he’s severed his ties to that legacy.

Corin thinks maybe he’s found his good luck now, as the ground slants up and he smells the crisp of snow.

He steps through the broken, twisted door and falls to his knees in the sweet, soothing cold of the white-covered ground. He thinks he’s laughing a little, but tears sting at his eyes, too.

“Hey baby,” he murmurs to the child, peering into the helmet. Relief clenches tight around his heart when he sees the blanket move and those large dark eyes blink up at him. “We made it.”

And then he looks up.

The Mandalorian had brushed aside all of Corin’s worries about bad luck. He should have tried harder to convince the armored man that the voice in his head somehow always knew when it gave him a bad feeling about something.

It was supposed to be an easy bounty.

It wasn’t supposed to be a trap.

Stormtroopers lay scattered about the blood-stained snow that was kicked up in dirty furrows and blackened scorch marks. There are just so many of them lying crumpled in front of him, but they aren’t what drive a blade of grief deep into Corin’s heart.

It’s the one silver figure twisted in such an unnatural way that does that.

“No . . .”

Corin is running before he realizes it, his boots kicking up snow and dirt, slowing him when all he wants is to be at the Mandalorian’s side now .

“No,” he says again, tripping to a painful stop by the quiet, unmoving Mandalorian. “No, oh no, no, no, no.”

This is more than a bad feeling. This is torture of the worst kind.

He sets the helmet and baby down as he searches the beskar without really knowing why it matters. His fingers find the still-warm skin of a wrist but no pulse. He clutches the arm and brings the wrist to his lips again, begging for some sign of life.

He’s kissed this wrist so many times for so many reasons. And sometimes in the quiet depths of night, he’d moved restlessly awake with the yearning for more, but was still satisfied with what he had. Because he deserved none of it, nothing, but now it was slipping away.

Corin still didn’t deserve the Mandalorian, but he needed him so much.

There’s a soft coo from the child, who rises from the dark interior of the helmet. It looks at the Mandalorian, reaching out to tap questioningly at the beskar vambrace closest to it.

“I’m sorry,” Corin says, still holding the wrist and now bent over the beskar chestplate.

He should have stopped them from coming here. He should have known what the voice was telling him and listened better. He should have escaped the burning maze faster to help the Mandalorian fight so he wouldn’t have been overwhelmed.

He should have done better.

Maybe all the bad luck they found was his fault.

Black moves in the corner of his vision. He glances over and sees more stormtroopers approaching out of the side doors of this encircling base, reinforcements coming from wherever the Empire had them waiting. And there are Death Troopers here, too, along with more of the Fire Troopers that are the reason Corin still tastes smoke thickly on his tongue.

Anger rises like a tornado in Corin, thundering through his pulse and strengthening his tired body.

He rises to his feet and raises his hands, reaching deep inside for that power which has been whispering to him for so long. It doesn’t feel right, using it this way, with this overpowering emotion, but he doesn’t stop himself.

They deserve this for killing his Mandalorian.

“Stand down, CT-113,” one trooper says, but he doesn’t listen.

“You killed him!” Corin screams, and throws everything he has inside him.

A wave of energy slams out of him and into the squadron, throwing them through walls and deep in the ground . . . far, far away from the ones Corin loves. He grits his teeth and pushes harder, the ground trembling underneath as he buries these soldiers.

Suddenly, the power is gone. Cut off, like the flow of tap water.

He collapses breathlessly, his eyelids falling heavy over his vision and encasing him in unknowing darkness.

Chapter Text

Everywhere is white and ice and freezing air that slices down Corin’s throat as he lies in the deep snow, staring up at the churning gray sky. He is so cold . . . the kind that burns and aches and buries deep, quieting his shivering limbs.

Corin sits up, his skin numb beneath the thin layers they sent him out in. He stretches slowly, stiffly to his feet, breathing out a puff of resignation. He could die here and not many, if any, would really care. The only thing mourned would be the legacy that ended with him, and he thinks maybe that isn’t such a terrible thing.

But he isn’t ready to die. Not yet.

He trudges through the snow, smiling to himself at the silence it gives him.

He may be miserable and chances of survival far away from good luck, but he is his own master here. He has the choice to fight for life or not, no matter what orders he may have been sent with. He chooses life but he makes that decision for himself, not for them.

When he finally makes it back to base, blue-lipped and half-paralyzed with the cold, he’s never felt more alive.

“Welcome back, CT-113,” the officer replies, and Corin thinks maybe there’s a hint of approval in that dry voice.

“Thanks,” he croaks . . . and then collapses at the officer’s feet.

They wrap him in a heated blanket and set him at a table with soup, which he wraps his thawing fingers around gratefully. One by one, the other troopers stumble in, their names checked off on the datapad, and that’s when Corin realizes he was the first.

He was the first one back.

“Corin . . . Corin . . . Corin .”

Someone is touching him, shaking him, stirring pain awake throughout his body. Corin groans, the sound slicing at his throat.

“Shh,” the voice says, amazingly familiar.

He rises from snow-whipped memories and into the present, his mind blank of everything except that he hurts everywhere. He coughs and tries to sit up, but a gloved hand pushes at his shoulders to keep him prone.

“Don’t move,” that voice continues. “Drink this.”

The rim of a cup presses against his mouth, liquid sloshing warm and wet across his lips. It’s bitter and leaves an odd taste in the back of his throat, but Corin drinks it all, suddenly beyond parched.

“Where am I?” he asks, squinting in an attempt to get his vision to focus on his blurred surroundings.

“Back at the Razor,” the voice answers in a way that makes Corin feel as if he should have known this.

The Razor . . . but what about the trap? The troopers? The fire?

Wait, that voice, how is he hearing it? It’s not possible . . .

“Mando?” Corin whispers.

“Right here,” the Mandalorian replies, patting him gently on the shoulder.

“But . . . you were . . . no pulse . . . I thought . . .”

He’s struggling to keep his voice even, tears of confused relief pricking at his eyes and making his hope of focused vision rather useless at this point. He coughs, tasting the bitter medicine and old smoke.

“I thought you were dead,” he blurts, reaching blindly for the man somewhere in front of him.

His fingers find smooth beskar and then a leather strap, which Corin grabs and uses to haul himself upright and also the Mandalorian into a fierce embrace. He presses his forehead against a shoulder pauldron and breathes sharply, arms circling tight around the other man’s waist.

“I thought you were dead,” Corin says again, softer this time.

“Well . . .” the Mandalorian’s regulated voice sounds strange. Choked, almost. “You gave me a little bit of a death scare, too.”

He pulls back a moment later, and Corin blinks rapidly, his vision clearing enough for him to recognize the Razor Crest hold around them and the helmeted man in front of him. The Mandalorian brings his hands onto Corin’s shoulders and holds them loosely, but with enough pressure to give comfort.

“What happened?” the Mandalorian asks.

“I couldn’t find you,” Corin answers, closing his eyes.

Smoke and shouts and dark tunnels fill his memories. The child cradled in a white helmet. Troopers surging towards him . . . and then flung away by an invisible force.

Corin opens his eyes and looks at his hand, flexing it slowly.

“I think . . .” he says, “I think I did something .”

“The same something that left half a squadron of stormtroopers half-buried in packed-rocky ground?”

He looks up at the emotionless helmet, but listens to the emotion-holding voice.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs.

But he does know. The voice whispers softly, soothingly, telling him that, yes, he does remember correctly. He did that to those stormtroopers with nothing but rage and a strange power he feels lurking once more deep inside him.

A trilling peep pulls them both from the conversation as the child waddles around a corner, its blanket clutched in one small hand and dragging behind it as it approaches the two of them. It reaches Corin’s leg and then lifts its arms in an obvious plea, which he answers with a soft laugh and picks it up.

The Mandalorian watches the two of them as Corin cuddles the child, wrapping it up in the blanket.

“You saved me,” he finally says.

“What?” Corin lifts his head from where he’s been nuzzling his forehead against the child’s.

“Whatever you did, however you did it,” the Mandalorian says. “You saved me.”

“I . . .”

I couldn’t let you die.

I needed you to live.

I need you.

But he can’t say that. One moment of life-and-death isn’t new for any of them, so it doesn’t give him a reason to say such things. 

“I’m just glad you’re alive,” Corin chooses to say, offering a faint smile to go with it.

The Mandalorian makes a sound that seems like laughter as he rises to his feet. “Yeah, me too.”

The child lifts a hand, spreading its three stubby fingers apart and holds it up to Corin. He grins and lifts his own hand, meeting it palm to palm.

“Wow, look how big you’re getting!” he quietly tells the child.

It giggles and then pushes , but not physically. With a power.

A force.

The same force that Corin feels living inside him, that voice, that feeling.

“Kriffing stars,” he mutters.

The child smiles and Corin wonders just how much wordless knowledge lives inside that small head. He lowers his hand and holds the child close, his mind spinning.

It had once brought him back from the brink of death, which was why he was still here. But he also remembers his first snow trooper survival exercise, the one where he came in first but half the group did not.

Have all his good luck moments been because of this voice, this power?

He has so many questions and absolutely no idea where to find the answers.

“Do you know why we’re like this?” Corin asks the child.

It just blinks up at him, and then holds its hand up again. But this time it’s only to smack lightly against his arm with a happy chortle, its small body wriggling when he responds with rib tickles.

The Mandalorian reappears with a small bowl which earns the child’s full interest and promptly abandons Corin for food.

“So what now?” Corin asks.

“About what?”

He shrugs. “Everything.”

“That’s one hell of a question, Corin,” the Mandalorian sighs. And then, “There’s a bounty on your head now.”

“Really?” Corin scoffs. “Took them longer than I thought.”

The Mandalorian doesn’t reply, but Corin wants to squirm under the disapproving weight of his hidden gaze.

“Someone very powerful wants you very much,” is all the Mandalorian finally says.

~ ~ ~

There is so much to unpack in this scene.

The Moff walks carefully, his eyes flickering over the dead troopers who look as if they’d been stomped into the ground by some large creature . . . and yet no footprints. There are scorch marks on some of their armor, but more have been killed in a terrible way that has left no marks except their deaths.

“No survivors?” he asks the black armored trooper at his side.

“No, sir,” the trooper replies evenly. “None.”

The Moff narrows his eyes. This trooper is good at hiding his fear, but Gideon knows the effect his presence gives.

He reaches into a pocket for his portable transponder, clicking the transmitter on.

“The stakes have shifted,” he reports to the shaky blue figure standing small in the palm of his hand. “The child could not have done something like this. Not yet. There is another.”

“This is true,” is the reply. “Find them.”

Moff Gideon turns the transmitter off as his affirmative, a bold move but one fitting to his character. It will not earn him punishment.

“It seems our hunt continues,” he tells the trooper. “Gather a new squadron. And get me all the information you can find on Corin Valentis.”

~ ~ ~

Something is chasing him, but Corin doesn’t know what or who. But he does know why.

He is wanted, and not in a good way. He tries to run, but he cannot move.

He is paralyzed as a twisted figure looms over him, laughing to itself.

“I must say,” the figure rumbles, “that you are quite unexpected.”

Corin stares up at the terrifying face, almost split in half by a deep, twisting scar that slices down the center of its forehead. It looks like a corpse as it stares down at him with death-pale eyes.

“But I have you now,” the figure says. The right side of its face is hideously concave, hollowing further as it speaks. “How far you run, how deep you hide, it doesn’t matter now.”

The figure snarls and lunges for his throat with a clawed hand—

—and Corin wakes up with a shout, still feeling phantom fingers squeezing the life from him.

Chapter Text

He is breathing too fast, his heart is pounding too hard. He is drenched in sweat and beyond terrified, fear rattling painfully in his chest.

That nightmare feels like something more than a dream. It feels like an invasion of the recesses of his mind, all barriers torn apart as if they were nothing. He has no other description for it.

“Corin?” The Mandalorian drops softly down from the cockpit. “Are you okay?”

He looks up at the Mandalorian, too scared to think about anything other than just how scared he is.

“I . . . I don’t know,” he gasps. “I saw this-this thing . It was . . . in my head.”

“It’s just a bad dream,” the Mandalorin says.

“No, no, it’s not like that!” Corin shakes his head. He scrubs his hands through his hair, wondering if he can claw the memory from his mind. “This is different. It’s different . Just like I’m . . . different.”

He can’t stop shaking. He looks at his hands, at these trembling fingers capable of so much destruction. This power, this force, has put a mark on him bigger than any bounty could ever hope to be.

And his ignorance of it all is the most frightening thing. Because he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know anything .

“Hey,” the Mandalorian says, walking towards him. “Hey. Breathe, Corin. Breathe.”

He nods and tries, but it’s not exactly working out for him right now.

The Mandalorian suddenly takes his hands. He presses one of Corin’s palms against his own sticky neck and the chaotic hammer of his pulse. But the other hand . . . the other hand the Mandalorian puts under the edge of his helmet, resting against a calm, steady heartbeat.

“Just breathe,” he says again.

But Corin can’t do that, this time for different reasons.

The Mandalorian’s skin is warm and rough with stubble against Corin’s fingertips, and he tips the cool steel of his helmet against Corin’s forehead, grounding him with these few simple touches.

And yet these simple gestures are monumental. They shouldn’t feel like this; they’re nothing special. Corin closes his eyes and tells himself to ignore the new meaning behind the racing of his pulse, to accept the Mandalorian’s comfort for what it is—just one soldier helping another fellow soldier with night terrors.

“That’s better,” the Mandalorian murmurs, a gloved thumb moving slow and soothing over the vulnerable, sensitive pulse in Corin’s throat. “Just . . . breathe.”

Corin opens his eyes, his panic edging back into some semblance of calm. Maybe it was just a bad dream . . .

But the voice in his mind, his voice not that rasping invader’s, won’t let him believe that. It was more than just a nightmare.

And that is what truly terrifies him.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“You said you were different,” the Mandalorian says.

“I . . .” He doesn’t know how to explain.

“Don’t.” The Mandalorian moves his hands again, now holding them between their bodies. “I know.”

“You . . . do?” Corin blinks. “How?”

“I really don’t,” he replies with a quiet laugh. “But I’ve seen what the kid can do. I saw what you did. And there’s stories floating out there from a long time ago about this, too.”

“And you believe those stories?”

“Not really.” The Mandalorian shrugs. “But I can’t ignore what I’ve seen, can I?”

“I guess not,” Corin says, looking at their hands.

He can’t ignore himself, either. He can’t shrug away what he’s done, the power he has.

A moment of weighty silence lingers between them as he looks at the hidden gaze of the man in front of him. A moment to realize just how good it feels to be like this, held and understood. A moment to—

The ship lurches suddenly, alarms shrieking to life.

The Mandalorian loses his balance and tumbles against Corin, the impact throwing them both against the ship wall. Beskar collides painful against his ribs, his breath punched out with a small oof sound. They’re pressed tight against each other, the Mandalorian’s thigh prominently close to an area of Corin’s body that is more than aware of the pressing proximity.

It’s funny how such a thing distracts him so completely at such a time like this.

“What the hell?” the Mandalorian growls, shoving away from him. He catches hold of the shelf above Corin’s makeshift bed to steady himself and then reaches down. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Corin says, grabbing onto the offered hand and hauling himself up.

They’re close again now, standing almost chest to chest, his nose almost brushing the helmet in front of him. Another jolt shudders through the ship, and they collide again, but gentler this time.

And this time an armored thigh touches that low area of Corin that is reacting in all the wrong ways for a situation like this.

“We should, uh, see what’s going on,” he stammers. “I’ll get the kid.”

“Good,” the Mandalorian says, heading for the cockpit. “You both need to strap in.”

Corin nods and then pushes away all other feelings as he focuses on whatever danger they’re in now.

He finds the kid awake in its storage unit room, blinking up at him with startled curiosity. It reaches for him and he scoops the warm little body up protectively, cradling it against his chest as he climbs up into the cockpit.

“We’ll be okay, little one,” he says to the child.

But he has to suddenly brace himself against one of the twin seats behind the pilot chair as the Mandalorian rolls the Razor Crest in an evasive maneuver.

“Give up Valentis,” a comm crackles, the hunter’s voice rough like it’s eaten nothing but sand since birth.

“They tracked me up already?” Corin mutters, buckling the child into its seat. “That’s too fast.”

“Don’t worry,” the Mandalorian says, voice tight as he focuses on piloting. “They’re not going to get you. You strapped in?”

“Yeah,” Corin says, the click of his safety harness adding to his reply.

The Mandalorian yanks the nose of the Razor Crest up with a grunt, followed by a sharp twist to the right. Corin clutches his seat with one hand and reaches to make sure the child is secure with the other, a small clawed hand grabbing tight onto his sleeve.

As the Mandalorian expertly pilots them in avoidance from whoever is on their tail, Corin knows he should trust the man’s protective skills. But a bad feeling lingers and grows from the back of his mind, knotting uneasily in his stomach.

“ You cannot run from me. ”

That terrible voice twists through his head like a vibro-knife and Corin screams .

The Mandalorian turns to check on him with a worried, “Corin!”

And the hunter behind them hits them hard. Alarms blare, the ship diagnostics blinking a frantic red to show left engine failure as the Razor Crest sputters and shakes.

All of that seems too far from Corin, but the pain in his mind is so close. He can almost see that figure again, its presence so clear, so present inside him.

He’s being torn apart from the inside.

“Go away!” he sobs.

His power rises feebly and he throws it at the invader, trying to push the pain from him. It’s as if there is a door flung wide open and is so close to the command panel. . . but not close enough. He strains, reaching for control, but it keeps slipping from his grasp with a taunting laugh.

“ You have no idea how to use the power inside you, ” that terrible voice says, each word slamming into Corin like a cannon blast. “ And so you are weak. Pathetic. Just a skeleton of what could be .”

“Corin? Corin! Corin, answer me . . .”

That’s the Mandalorian, hovering over his prone form, desperate for a response. But he is trapped somewhere else by something else, and he doesn’t know how to escape.

Should he know how to escape? Is that what’s so kriffing amusing to this voice?

“ This is not your time, youngling. It will never be your time. That age is gone, buried by my order. ”

He won’t let go of that thread of power, even though the voice is pulling so hard on it. If this is his only weapon, he isn’t going to give it up so easily.

“ What’s this? Resistance? How adorable. You cannot resist me. You woke up because I let you. ”

Suddenly, everything becomes clear. Corin has been surrounded by voices like this his entire life. He’s grown up with those who think they can control him, but they don’t . Not really. If they did, he wouldn’t be here with his name called so urgently by someone who really cares.

The only person who controls him is himself.

“I said,” Corin grits out, reaching with both hands to slowly retrieve that thread of power from the voice’s greedy pull, “ go away! ”

Suddenly, he isn’t in the Razor Crest.

He’s staggering to his feet from in front of a robed figure. It laughs and straightens up taller, its face revealed to be the twisted one from his dream. But Corin still stands up, breathing hard but able to fight.

“ We will meet again, Corin Valentis ,” the figure says.

“I really hope not,” Corin manages.

And then he wakes himself up.

Chapter Text

Moff Gideon isn’t really concerned with the Force. Dark or Light, it doesn’t matter to him—what matters is control.

Darth Vader may have been the ominous figurehead of the Empire, helmed by the Imperial Emperor himself, but it was not their might alone that kept their rule secure— no . That was by his work, by the squadrons he and others commanded, by countless Moffs and generals and officers that let the Emperor and his vicious black dog keep their positions.

Still, Gideon cannot discredit the power of the Force. So, as he approaches the scarred, hideous figure introduced to him as Snoke, the Moff is wary. His life could be crushed by the gnarled hands of this mysterious creature . . . if it chose.

But he is also one of the last remaining Moffs of the Empire, something this creature should respect.

“You’re never keen to come before me, Moff Gideon,” Snoke rasps.

Gideon smiles at the greeting, clasping his hands behind him at the small of his back. He wants to portray confidence and equality with Snoke, and so that is what he does. 

“You said you would fetch Valentis,” he says. “You said it would be like crushing the mind of a child, if I remember correctly.”

“If I was not so amused by your insolence,” Snoke replies, “your mind would be mine.”

“Ah, but I am not a child.” Moff Gideon takes one step towards the seated figure. “And I wonder at your perception of Valentis. It doesn’t seem like he’s the child you thought he was, hmm?”

Snoke does not reply, but his hands grip the armrests of his jagged black seat that looks too much like a throne for Moff Gideon to be comfortable with. If there was anyone to assume the emptied seat of a reborn empire it should be him, not this creature from the unknown regions.

“I would like you to bring him to me,” the creature finally speaks.

“Me?” Moff Gideon laughs. “If you’re so powerful, you shouldn’t have much trouble retrieving one wayward trooper.”

Snoke grins, a terrible action that Gideon wishes never to see again. “Then neither should you, Moff.”

Gideon returns the grin and ends this troublesome conversation by spinning on his heel and walking away. But he is suddenly halted by an invisible restraint that feels just weak enough to be broken, but when he struggles, he can only think about resistance.

“Be careful not to tire me with your ambition,” Snoke murmurs. “I am not here to fight for what is already mine, but I will not hesitate to crush those who cannot grasp that simple truth.”

Moff Gideon grits his teeth. This is nothing more than a show of power, but there is something there, something unexplainable that sparks a thread of panic to life somewhere deep inside him. He’s never liked feeling afraid and he hates this Snoke for awakening that sensation.

“You will find Valentis in the Takodana system,” Snoke tells him, still keeping that hidden restraint around him. “And you will bring him to me.”

“What about the power of his?” Gideon manages, proud to master this one defiance. “What then?”

The hold releases on him.

“The Force is powerful,” Snoke replies with a chuckle. “But it still flows through simple things of flesh and blood, life and death. You’re smart enough to find a way.”

~ ~ ~

Corin slams back into awareness with a choked gasp.

He’s hanging at a painful angle from the safety harness of his seat. His head pounds in time with the sound of a drip somewhere nearby. And when he blinks enough to focus his eyes, he sees the child clinging to his left leg, staring calmly up at him as if they haven’t just crashed into an unknown area.

“Hey,” he manages.

The child squeaks a reply and blinks once.

Corin coughs but that makes everything hurt more—his ribs, his lungs, his throat . . . but it doesn’t compare to the pain that squeezes tight around his heart when he sees the slumped form of the Mandalorian.

The beskar-encased man is flopped halfway across the shattered, sputtering control panel of the cockpit. He’s still in his seat, mostly, thanks to the safety harness, but the angle his head lolls at is worrying.

And the blood trickling slow and red down the silver backplate of his beskar is even more concerning.

But Corin doesn’t know how to extract himself from the chair without falling directly onto the silent Mandalorian . . . or through the cracked window of the Razor Crest into the misty unknown.

“Kriff,” he gasps.

The child makes an answering sound that appears to imitate his curse, right before it crawls up his leg and perches on the back of the seat he’s currently suspended from.

“Oh no,” Corin snorts. “Don’t you start using words like that just yet, little one.”

The child laughs and makes that same sound again.

“Fine. Whatever.” Corin sighs. “At least you’re okay.”

“Hello in there!” a voice bellows from somewhere in the mist below.

Corin doesn’t know whether he should answer or not. But the voice inside him stirs awake and tells him this luck is probably good. Probably.

“Hello!” he calls back.

“Oh, survivors,” the voice replies, coming closer. “That’s good. That’s very good. Hang on, I’m coming up.”

“Uhh, I’m kind of literally hanging on here, so guess I’ll see you soon?”

The voice laughs: the kind that’s true and big and makes Corin want to chuckle too, even in his current predicament.

“I like you,” it says, even more closer this time. “Humor in the middle of a crashed ship suspended in a tree that could break at any moment? Good spirit. Very good!”

Corin swallows hard. The Razor Crest was suspended from a tree?

The child giggles and waddles to the top of the seat to tug gently on his ears. The ship creaks a little and Corin thinks that maybe it moved, which draws a strangled yelp of panic from his throat.

“Careful, careful,” he tells the little one. “We can have playtime when we’re good and steady on the ground, okay?”

“There you are,” the voice says, followed by the sound of a jetpack and the appearance of a small, vaguely-humanoid figure. Goggle-magnified brownish eyes blink at them through the broken glass as the orange-skinned creature hoversd easily in the air, hands moving to prop on its hips. “A baby, a Mandalorian, and a beautiful man . . . you’re like the start of a great joke, you are.”

Now that it’s closer, the figure’s voice sounds more female, but Corin knows better than to surmise gender based on how someone sounds. Or looks. Or anything unless he’s told otherwise, which has mostly kept him out of trouble in that department of life.

“What about the ship?” Corin asks.

The creature reached out to rap its knuckles against one of the metal portview frames, making the ship creak a little more and some glass to fall tinkling onto the cockpit floor. The child laughs again while Corin yelps even louder, instinctively flailing from his stuck position.

The ship creaks again.

“What are you doing?” he shrieks. “You said it could fall at any moment!”

“Yes, it could,” the creature replies in a smug tone that Corin really, really doesn’t like. “But I don’t think it will.”

Then the creature navigates deftly through a gap in the window to land in front of Corin, the jetpack turning off as soon as its feet touch the floor. It peers up at him again with those glassy-large eyes, a smile dancing crookedly at the corners of its thin, age-lined mouth.

“Your eyes are very interesting,” it says after a moment. “So many stories there. Also”—it smiles broadly now—“you really are hanging in here, aren’t you?”

Corin nods.

“Don’t worry.” The figure pulls a knife from its belt, the blade flicking out dangerously-fast.

“I’m worried!” he blurts, staring at the dirty metal.

Why did the voice inside him give the impression he could trust this creature?

“Interesting,” the figure murmurs. “Not as scared as I thought, but still a little bit. Weapons do that to a person, don’t they?”

The child must have been hidden from the figure’s gaze, because now it pops up with a coo of curiosity.

“Hello there, little one,” the figure laughs. There’s a funny lilt to its laugh and its smile turns almost . . . knowing? Like it knows this child already. “You’re very little, hmm?”

The ship creaks again , and Corin coughs as a reminder that he’s still stuck.

“Stop worrying,” the creature tsked. “These trees are old—much older than me. They’ll hold the weight of this outdated beauty. Now, hold still and let me get you free.”

“Wait!” Corin sputters. “I’m gonna drop on . . . on him?”

“Him?” the creature turns and squints at the Mandalorian. “Oh, him. That’s a lot of shine for a Mandalorian these days.” And then it turns again to look back at Corin. “And you’ve got some shine on you, too? Hmm.”

“Can you please just help me down?” he asks.

“I’m going to see if I can turn this thing a little less crooked,” the creature says, clambering down into the hold of the Razor Crest. “Recross some wires, maybe. Or put some weight in the right spot ooop —”

It’s words are cut off by the ship definitely lurching, and not in the right direction. It’s slipping further down into the mist below, metal groaning and the entire frame shuddering.

“You’re not very helpful!” Corin yells as the ship skids in a panic-inducing speed.

And then it’s falling, they’re falling, the kid is clinging tight onto his shoulders in a way that’s going to leave a mark, the Mandalorian is slumping further and barely held properly against his seat by his harness, Corin is yelling something , wishing this wasn’t the end, cursing that terrible voice for distracting the Mandalorian and putting them in this situation . . .

The voice inside, that power, stretches and jerks to life.

And they stop.

Corin is straining with invisible muscles he didn’t know he could feel until this power awoke in him, but he’s glad they exist. He can see tree branches rising claw-like from the mist and ground that is too-close. His head pounds and something wet is falling from his nose, the coppery smell telling him that wetness is blood , which isn’t good at all.

“Careful now.”

That creature is back, but its voice has dramatically changed. It’s slow and ancient, and when a hand comes to rest on his forearm, a wave of peaceful energy washes over him.

“You can let go,” it tells him. “Slowly. Gently. Ease away until—”

The ship is lowering steadily, trembling, every movement felt by the power Corin is holding onto so tightly. Their lives are in his control right now and he isn’t going to let them slip away.

But holding on is so hard and it’s taking away everything he’s got, until there is just nothing left.

The Razor Crest falls again . . . but not very much. It lands with a bone-rattling groan and the harness bites deeper into his shoulders and stomach, but they’re safe. They’re grounded.

And he is now at the right angle to release the safety straps himself and reach for the child, hold it close to know it’s safe.

“This is a story you must tell me soon,” the creature says with a decisive nod. “And one you need to hear as well.”

Corin knows he’s going to pass out again. He has no energy left after the power he controlled, like he’d caught the weight of the ship with just his physical body.

“I need . . . to make sure . . . he . . . okay,” he manages.

“I know,” the creature says. “Rest. You’re safe for now, you hear? You’re with Maz now. I’ll take care of you odd bunch.”

For some reason the creature is holding the child now, and Corin wonders how that happened. He blinks heavy, and when he next cracks his eyes open he’s in a different area, darker and warmer. The Mandalorian is there, too, standing in bloodless beskar, which makes Corin think he’s dreaming right now.

“Didn’t mean to come crashing down on you, Maz,” the Mandalorian rumbles.

The smaller creature walks by, waving a dismissive hand. “You apologize too much, Mando. It was good you came here. Your pretty boy doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.”

“Can you help him?”

The creature nods, and then walks over to Corin.

He wants to say something, but then he’s spinning back down into the thick darkness again.

“Rest,” he hears one last time.

Chapter Text

He wakes up fuzzy-mouthed, a headache throbbing in the dull recesses of his mind. He remembers the crash and the creature named Maz; the visions and attack . . . and that he stopped the Razor Crest from falling.

Corin groans as everything floods back, but mostly the awareness that he hurts. His shoulders and chest ache from the harness impact, his body feels worn-out, and his mind seems heavy. He wants to curl up and sleep for a year. He wants to jump into a pile of snow and let the cold wash over him, numbing him from everything—

His stomach growls. Loudly. Painfully .

“Kriff,” he grunts, cracking his eyes open.

He needs food—piles of sweet cakes and roasted snails and fluffed mallows and . . . and . . . and why is he starving ?

“You're going to start eating a lot more than you’re used to,” a voice pipes up.

Corin yelps, surging up and bangs his head against the top of the bunk he didn’t realize he was lying in. He squints into the dim interior of the room as he rubs at the already-rising lump on the front of his head. A flame surges to life and lands on the wick of a candle . . . which is held in the wizened hand of the small creature who found them on whatever planet they’ve landed on now.

“Yes, I was watching you sleep,” it continues, the left corner of its mouth pulling up into an expression Corin isn’t sure he’s comfortable with. “Very peaceful. So handsome.”

“Um . . .”

“Oh, don’t be shy!” The creature grins. “I would try and collect you for myself if you weren’t already taken.”

“Umm,” Corin says again, “what?”

“Did you dream?”

He blinks, thrown by the, well, everything about this conversation. “No, I . . . I don’t think so.”

“You shouldn’t get any of that nonsense here,” it says primly, adding to the statement with a decisive nod. “I may not be able to do much but I can at least give reprieve to minds troubled like yours. So it seems you came to the right place at the right time, pretty boy.”

“And what place is this?” Corin asks.

“My castle,” the creature says. “Kanata Keep. Maz’s Place. Or just Maz Kanata as it usually tends to be.”

“Your name is Maz Kanata?”

The creature smiles, bringing a hand against its chest. “I am she.”

Before he can think about what kind of reply he’s going to give, Corin’s stomach twists and growls again—hard enough that he winces.

“Come, come,” Maz says, standing up from the stool she’d been perched on. “Food now, talk later.”

“But I—”

She cuts him off with a wave of her hand. “Tch, tch, I said later .”

And so he gets up from the bunk, a little dizzy when he first straightens, but his senses settle soon. The voice has woken up inside of him, calm and content for now. But Corin still has so many questions . . . that will have to wait because, yes, food now .

“Brace yourself, boy,” Maz chuckles, blowing out the candle.

And then she opens the doors.

Corin raises a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden brightness and his ears resent the near-cacophony of noise as he stumbles after Maz into a vast, sprawling room packed with bodies. He sees more races and creatures than he thought existed or had even seen in his recent travels, all chatting and gaming and eating together. Music clatters from one corner and he thinks there might be singing, but he isn’t sure.

He feels lost but the chaos is somehow soothing. He doesn’t stand out because everything stands out.

“Here we go, here we go,” Maz says, her warm, dry hand sliding into his as she guides him through the maze of bodies. “Mando will be happy to see you up and about, I’m sure.”

“Really?” Corin murmurs, unable to think about much of anything in the daze of this place.

Maz doesn’t reply . . . and she doesn’t have to. Because Corin sees him.

The Mandalorian is sitting in a circular booth, the child seated on his knee and happily engrossed in a large, quickly-emptying bowl of what looks to be steamed amphibians. Almost as soon as Corin sees them, the pair seeming to suddenly leap out amongst the crowd, the beskar helmet snaps towards them and he can feel the man watching him.

He wants to be alone with him and the kid right now. He doesn’t want all these eyes or this strange lady creature standing next to him with a grin heavy with unwarranted implications.

“Corin,” the Mandalorian says as he reaches the booth and slides in. The kid leaves his knee and drags its bowl with it as it clambers onto Corin’s knee, giving a quick coo of greeting before resuming its feasting. “You . . . are you okay?”

“I think so,” he replies quietly, his gaze skittering away and back to Maz who has already seated herself across from them.

“Of course he’s fine,” she says knowingly. “He’s just coming to grips with something he wasn’t prepared for—destiny.”

Corin scoffs. “Destiny?”

“It’s not such a bad thing,” the Mandalorian mutters. “It’s kept you alive.”

“You meant that it brought him to you,” Maz adds from where she’s engrossed in piling a plate with food from covered dishes that Corin only now notices. She slides the plate over to him a moment later with a wink. “You can hide behind beskar, my friend, but that’s no reason for you to hide behind anything else.”

The Mandalorian makes a choked sound at the same time that Corin snorts.

“Stars save me”—Maz lifts her eyes to the ceiling—“they’re both idiots.”

Corin doesn’t deign to answer as he starts eating and is promptly lost in the food—piles of berries that pop both sweet and tart on his tongue, strips of dried stuff that tastes like fish but might be some type of seaweed, cold roasted tubers, and many other things that he tries not to eat so quickly . . . but fails.

“Poor thing,” Maz croons to the Mandalorian. “Got his energy all depleted from overexertion and Sith attacks.”

That word manages to pull Corin up from his plate, almost choking as he blurts out, “ Sith ?”

He’s heard that before—too many times. It was a term that circulated around the dark, mysterious form of Lord Vader and floated in whispers about the fallen Emperor. It was something that old Moff’s claimed as the backbone of the Empire and was yet always spoken of in tones of terror.

“Hmmm,” Maz leans in, hands braced against the table and magnified eyes narrowing as she inspects Corin’s features. “Stormtrooper then?”

He blinks, swallowing hard. And then nods, a shallow, barely-there up and down of his chin.

“Half the known galaxy has heard of you by now,” she says.

Corin truly chokes this time, thumping himself against the chest with his fist as he tries to make sense of everything and also sate his gaping stomach. Maybe he should focus on talking instead of eating like Maz said would happen .

“You said food first,” he mutters.

“You’re eating, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” the Mandalorian starts, shifting forward.

“Ah, ah.” Maz keeps her eyes on Corin as she holds up a restraining finger in the beskar-plated man’s direction. “He has food. He’s eating.”

Corin takes this moment to stuff another cold tuber in his mouth and chew on the fibrous, creamy-tasting thing. The kid slurps down the last from its bowl and starts climbing up in the direction of Corin’s plate.

It all seems so surreal—being here. Having gone through the last twenty-four or so hours. Realizing that his world had just gotten a lot, lot bigger than desertion.

Now, Corin’s world is strange powers and real monsters. It is crowded rooms and crazy castle ladies and . . . and the kid stealing his food.

“Hey now,” he says, lifting it from his plate. The little one makes a sound of complaint, wriggling in his grasp as it strains for the food. He can feel its belly, plump and extended against his palms. “You’re going to explode if you eat any more.”

“Oh, he won’t,” Maz says, crawling halfway across the table to take the child from his arms.

It grumbles and squirms, but she tucks the small thing against her side and bounces it a little until it settles in. But it’s gaze is fixed on Corin’s plate, almost disturbingly so.

A moment later, the kid lifts a hand and the Mandalorian says “wait”—

—but Maz just bops the hand lightly and then tucks it back.

The child stares in surprise at her and Corin laughs, spewing bits of tuber . . . which only makes him laugh more.

“Well.” The Mandalorian settles back. “That’s useful.”

“He’s just a baby,” Maz croons, lightly pinching the end of the child’s floppy ear. “He’s powerful and special but he’s still just a baby.”

“Do you know where he came from?” Corin asks. “Does he have a family?”

“This little one’s story is not mine to tell,” Maz says.

The Mandalorian sighs. “I thought so.”

But Corin frowns. “Why not?”

“I am old, pretty boy,” Maz states, “and it is as simple as this: I know many stories and many are not mine to tell.”

“What about me?” he asks. “Can you tell my story?”

“I can answer some of your questions,” she says, lifting a fruit from a bowl and dropping it into the child’s quickly-opened mouth. “I can point you in a direction. But the rest is for you to discover.”

She is silent for a few minutes, focused on the child and dropping fruits into its unending hunger. Corin almost finishes his plate, his own hunger finally beginning to be sated. He glances at the Mandalorian from time to time, but it’s hard to tell what the man is thinking from the way he sits there, still and armored.

Finally, Maz looks at him.

“You are going to have a hard time of it, Corin Valentis,” she says, surprising him with the use of his full name. “The Force has been asleep for a long, long time. But now”—she glances at the child—“now and several years ago, it has started to awaken. It is putting ripples into destiny again, ripples that have not been seen nor known for many years.”

She then turns to the Mandalorian. “Have your people told you of the Jedi?”

“They’re a myth,” the man replies automatically . . . but not with conviction.

Maz laughs, big and bold, loud enough to draw some attention their way.

“Oh!” she cackles, wagging a finger at him. “I would like to have words with your Armorer. Can you believe it? Forgetting your own lore? Not passing the history down? Failing so much that one of their own can’t see what’s exactly in front of them?”

As Maz continues, Corin begins to sense something from the Mandalorian. Something from the way the man stiffens and the way a hand curls tight against his thigh.

“We barely survived the culling,” he says quietly.

“I know,” Maz says, sobering. “That was the fate of many, including the Jedi.”

“Wait . . .” Corin leans back. “Does this mean that I’m a Jedi?”

He’d also heard of them—the famed warriors of the Senate that betrayed the Emperor and were then destroyed for their rebellion. He had heard whispers of one who survived and toppled the Empire before fading back into myth. He had always heard of them as disciplined and dangerous and feared.

Corin is not any of those things.

“No, no,” Maz chuckles. “To be a Jedi is to be trained by a Master and appointed by the High Council . . . none of which exists anymore.”

“And to think I had hopes of a normal life,” Corin drawls, idly picking at the skin of his last remaining fruit.

“On the run is normal for you?”

That makes the Mandalorian bark a laugh and Corin thinks that surprises him the most of anything else since he woke up.

“No,” he says, “anything else but realizing I’ve got a . . . a connection to whatever the Jedi were.”

“Oh, but you are what the Jedi were,” Maz corrects. “Not now, but you will be.”

“So what about the”—Corin lowers his voice—“the Sith ?”

“Here, watch him.” Maz plops the child, who is now quiet and seems sleepy, in the Mandalorian’s quickly outstretched arms. “Me and pretty boy have a lot to discuss.”

“You’re leaving?”

Corin isn’t sure who the question is directed to: him or Maz. The odd note of the man’s tone makes him want to believe it’s for him . . . but it probably isn’t.

“Yes,” the small lady creature says, standing up onto the table and walking towards Corin. She pulls on the front of his shirt, tugging him out of his seat. “Up, up! Too many ears here for what you need to know.”

“Okay,” he stammers, scrambling out of the booth.

Maz hops off the table and begins to walk away, but not without beckoning for him to follow.

He glances at the Mandalorian as he starts to go after the strange Maz and her knowledge that he wants and needs to know.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promises.

“I’ll be waiting,” is the reply.

Corin likes the sound of that, he likes the feeling of someone waiting for his return. He likes this man waiting for him . . .

And so he leaves with so many questions churning in his mind but a stupid smile on his face.