Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Garen was not a superstitious person… But fifteen minutes ago, the sky had roared and sent the ground shuddering, and Garen had thought the heavens were falling; the old stories he’d always laughed away as myths at last coming true and showing how wrong he was to doubt them. Instinct had forced him to throw himself to the dirt next to the wall of the slot canyon he was currently hunting in, and wait helplessly for the thundering to crash down around him as the sound echoed, vast and all encompassing. Then, within seconds, it had focused in a direction and sped away down the slot canyon, and mere seconds after the heavens first seemed about to crash to the ground, all fell silent. And the sky had held, though for a moment in the echoing quiet, it had felt like a cascade of rocks was on the precipice of descending from the cliffs to bury him alive, but they made no move.

After several moments, Garen had pushed himself to his feet, dusted the red dirt off of his clothes—grumbling when some of it smeared and promised to stain—and stared in the direction that the sound had gone, curious at what had caused the noise. But, as both sky and ground had remained intact, he’d shaken himself off with a laugh at how easily he’d startled, and resumed skinning the raivor he’d brought down the day before, dismissing the noise as nothing to concern himself with yet. Beyond the startle, it had had no immediate direct effect on him, and with his occupation, you kept your head down and survived by focusing on the here and now. If whatever the sound was ended up crossing paths with him later, he’d deal with it then, but only then. There’d been no use wasting anymore thought or time on it than he already had.

But then the wailing had started ten minutes ago. It started as no more than a mournful whisper, so soft at first that he’d convinced himself it was only his ears, still ringing from the earlier thundering. But the whisper grew to pitiful cries, echoing down the slot canyon, twisting and turning through the caverns and clawing their way into Garen’s ears, setting his nerves on edge. And they’d kept getting closer.

And now, Garen’s knife was still, and his eyes were riveted on the place in the narrow slot canyon that bent and curved out of sight. Fascination and curiosity held him still, waiting for the source of the sound to appear around that bend, though his instincts screamed at him to run. His parents had always warned him of the haunted canyon out in the wastes, one where moans could be heard, where people entered and never returned. But when pressed about it, they could never remember which canyon it was. As with the sky falling legend, he’d dismissed it. But now, now he wondered if this legend was real, and if he’d just stumbled upon the canyon which held it.

Nonsense, don’t be ridiculous. The canyon isn’t haunted, it’s a creature in distress. He shook himself, angry that he’d let such ridiculous thoughts gain purchase in his head. Wiping his knife off, he sheathed it and rose from his crouch over the raivor, picking up his crossbow instead. Normally, it was a weapon unsuitable for hunts within the slot canyons of the wastes, given how short the lines of sight were between bends in the canyons—it was more suited for aiming up into the open air to fell flying prey, the shade of the slot canyon used as cover to shoot from—but here there was a good distance between Garen and the bend in the canyon around which the source of the noise would no doubt eventually appear. If it was a creature in distress bent on striking out at whatever living thing it encountered next, he would strike first. So, he waited.

But, as he waited and heard the cries grow louder and closer, with less echoing to twist and distort the wails, they sounded less and less fearsome and more and more… like a child.

But what would a child be doing all the way out here in the wastes?

It took him a moment to realize that the cries were no longer growing louder, no longer getting closer. In fact, they’d dimmed, as if the creature were losing hope along with its voice.

Well, if it is a child, it won’t last long out here… not without help. And if it’s a trap? He knew of no reason why it would be a trap. No creature he knew of on this planet lured in prey by using young, and he didn’t have enough of value for bandits to go to all of this trouble to steal—not to mention that it was unheard of to encounter bandits this far out in the wastes.

He told himself it was curiosity more than any sense of protectiveness that propelled him forward, but he knew he was lying to himself.

He stepped quietly forward, crossbow still at the ready, feet sliding silently in the soft dirt. Ten paces, twenty, and he rounded the corner.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to see. While his brain had been interpreting the sounds as a child’s cries, he hadn’t actually expected to see a child sitting in the middle of the narrow canyon. At least, he thought it was a child.

The tiny figure plunked on the ground, clearly unable to go any farther, was an almost indiscernible puddle of brown cloth and green… ears? Yes, ears, he quickly determined, taking a few more steps forward to get a better look.

The creature turned its head at the sound of Garen’s footsteps and he was immediately struck by the large dark eyes that brimmed with tears, framed by ears which drooped downwards in dejection and fear. The moment those eyes landed on him, Garen only had a quick moment to think, Oh no, in the face of the adorable figure before him, before the child’s eyes widened impossibly further, its ears popped up and it scrambled to its feet and began tottering towards him, arms outstretched and so much hope in its eyes.

And Garen was a goner. Resistance was futile.

He’d never considered himself a sentimental person, but there was no way he could stay detached and distant when faced with those wide, hopeful eyes and exhausted, uncertain steps.

He rapidly walked forward to meet the creature—not too quickly, in order to keep from scaring it—and noticed its robes and hands were covered in the red dirt of the canyon floor, a story of the trials it no doubt went through to walk here.

At his feet, it still reached upwards towards him, in a universal sign even he understood. Pick me up.

Scooping the little creature into his arms, he held it close to his face in order to get a closer look at it, and was rewarded by a soft burble of happiness as it peered right back at him, dark eyes seeming to see to his soul. One of its hands reached towards his face and gently touched the stubble that had grown on his chin over the past few days. He didn’t even care that it was probably unintentionally rubbing dirt on his face, so charmed was he by the innocence and calm of the creature, its cries having ceased the moment it saw him.

That is, until Garen turned around and took a step back towards where he’d come from. The child immediately uttered a sound of such dismay that he felt his stomach drop and heart stutter. It cried again and squirmed, clearly trying to get out of his grasp.

Afraid to let it go, he took another step, but that only increased the little creature’s frenzy. Confused, he turned back around to face the way the child had come from, scanning the ground to see if it had left a prized treasure on the ground. When he saw nothing, he turned his gaze back to the creature, who now sat still in his arms, staring at him. When it saw that it now had his full attention, it turned to look back the way it came and stretched out a red hand.

Garen’s gaze traveled the short length of the creature’s arm, out to its dirty clawed hand, and continued down the canyon where it was pointing, but he saw nothing. A small voice whispered at the back of his mind that he’d missed something, and he narrowed his eyes and brought his gaze back from the end of the canyon and to the child’s hand. And that’s when he froze.

The child’s hand was indeed dirty and red, but not from the red dirt of the planet. It was red with blood.

Eyes widening, he immediately held the child out at arms-length, realizing belatedly that the dark stains he’d seen on its robes and attributed to dirt were also blood. A quick examination of the child, however, revealed that the blood could not have come from it.

And still the child reached towards the end of the canyon, back the way it had come, small hiccups now shaking its body as a tear spilled down its face once more.

Kriff.

The look of betrayal on the creature’s face when he placed it back on the ground made him shrivel up inside. But the cries of anguish that echoed after him as he raced back to his small camp made him feel like the worse scum in the galaxy.

I’m coming back, I promise!

He hated leaving it, but if someone was hurt, he needed supplies in order to be of any help to that person—and by extension, the child.

Racing into his small camp, he snatched his satchel, threw a few items inside of it, and took off running again.

When he returned to the creature, it had crawled a few feet back the way it had come before collapsing in exhaustion, having worn itself out trying to get help.

Damn, whoever is hurt, this kid cares a lot about them. It both touched and hurt his heart. Touched it, because to give all of oneself in an effort just to try to help someone? That kind of devotion was practically unheard of on this unforgiving planet, and all he could do was shake his head in wonderment. Hurt it, because the prospect of this creature losing the person it cared so much about seemed so very high, and he did not wish that sort of pain on anyone.

Garen was going to do everything in his power to make sure that fate did not befall this innocent child. Which meant, given the amount of blood on the child’s robes, and how long he’d been hearing its cries before he found it, time was of the essence. Barely breaking his stride, he scooped the child up, eliciting a surprised squeak, and kept running down the slot canyon. He didn’t have to worry about going the wrong way, as there were no turn offs in the canyon path. Plus, he figured if he did end up going the wrong way, the child would let him know. Loudly.

It didn’t take him long to find where the creature had come from. What had taken the creature near a quarter of an hour, he traversed in a matter of minutes. Rounding a bend in the path, the slot canyon opened up into a true canyon, walls no longer arms-width apart, with a large flat area. And in the middle of it sat an enormous silver machine.

A ship! He almost slapped himself in exasperation. He’d seen a few as a child, on one of his rare visits to the one port on the planet, but none since then—his planet was remote to begin with, and he largely kept to the most remote areas of it in order to earn his living. It had therefore not occurred to him that the sound that roared across the sky a little while ago might be a ship, so unfamiliar a sound it was to his ears. Instead, he’d let superstition rule him.

The ship’s ramp was down and he set foot on it, intending to hurry inside, but then he hesitated, realizing he had no idea what he would find.

The creature clearly sensed his hesitation and growled a protest, squirming enough in his arms that he nearly dropped it. In order to avoid such an incident, he quickly set it down and watched as it did not hesitate to quickly totter up the ramp and disappear into the shadowed depths.

Ah, what the hell. He’d come this far, and there was no way he was going to abandon the kid now.

Making his way cautiously up the ramp, he made it to the top and stepped into the heart of the ship. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, but once they did, he immediately searched for the child; he found someone else first, though. His gaze landed on the form of an armor-clad figure, sprawled on their back near a ladder. He did not have to look much further in order to locate the child, for it was now pressed up close to the figure, nestled in the crook of the person’s neck, gently prodding the helmet clad head. When it elicited no response from the fallen figure, the child chirped in dismay and looked back at Garen with imploring eyes.

Galvanized into action by the child’s need, he scrambled to the pair’s side, falling to his knees and preparing to assess the armored man, when caution once again forced him to stop and still. With only a cursory glance he could tell that the armor was of exceedingly high quality, and on this planet, you didn’t get something of that quality through purely justifiable means. And while that by itself should not lead him to believe he understood this stranger, it did make him realize that he had no idea who this was, and whether or not the man was a good person who even deserved to be saved. In his hesitation, he looked towards the figure’s masked face, as if he could make some sort of determination of the caliber of the person by looking at it, and instead was given an entirely different measure by which to judge the injured man; his eyes landed on the child, gently stroking the impassive visor of the man’s helmet, murmuring and muttering in an encouraging tone.

And he decided that no one truly evil could earn the trust and devotion of such an innocent soul. At least, he hoped not.

Mind made up, his first task was to determine if the man was even breathing, as the armor obstructing his view of the person’s chest made it difficult to determine visually, and given the amount of blood pooled on the floor, he was worried he was too late. Reaching towards the man’s neck in order to feel for a pulse, he saw the child’s movements cease and it turned its head to look at him, before becoming unnaturally still and quiet. The child’s eyes bored into him as his hand got closer and closer to the man’s neck, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was on the precipice of doing something very, very wrong, but for the life of him had had no idea what that might be. His fingers landed on the man’s neck and he sagged in relief when he felt the man’s pulse—fast and faint, but there—through the thin cloth of the man’s cowl. He pulled his hand away and breathed a second sigh of relief when the child’s gaze relaxed and it resumed stroking the man’s helmet; clearly, he was no longer in danger of committing whatever unforgivable sin he’d been about to commit.

“Okay, first things first,” he started muttering aloud, “we’ve got to get this off of you.” He worked at the clasps of the armor plating at the figure’s collar, quickly removing the shoulder and chest pieces in order to provide better access to the man’s wounds, and ease the man’s labored breathing. Because now that he knew the man was alive, he could hear the man’s breath rasping ever so slightly through the helmet’s modulator.

Ripping the fabric of the clothes across the man’s abdomen where most of the blood was coming from, he first discovered with surprise that the man’s skin was not green like the child’s, which is what he’d been expecting, as he’d been certain that the person was the child’s father, given how the creature had been acting. But blood doesn’t always make a family, Garen, he reminded himself. Moving past the surprise of the man’s skin tone, he discovered a hastily slapped on bacta patch that was half falling off, and after pulling it away—as it was clearly no longer serving its purpose—saw what appeared to be a cluster of deep stab wounds in close quarters on the man’s right side. Palpating the wounds gently, he sucked in a breath; the damage was extensive.

“I don’t know, little one,” he murmured softly to the creature. “I don’t know if I can save him.”

His uncertainty was met only with wide, trusting eyes. And by all the Ancient Ones, he was going to do everything he could not to let that trust be misplaced.

Reaching into his pack, he pulled out several disinfectant and coagulant powders that he’d saved up for moons in order to afford, and poured them on the man’s wounds without a second thought. He took a closer look in order to ensure the powders were working—and was relieved to see they were—but something else caught his eye. “Huh, that’s curious. It almost looks like they’ve started to heal around the edges, but these can’t be more than an hour old.” He sat back, perplexed at the conundrum this presented.

A small sight caught his attention, pulling his gaze to the child, who stared at the wounds in what Garen could only describe as dejection, shoulders slumped and ears drooped.

“It’s okay, I’m sure it’s not your fault,” he quickly reassured.

The child frowned and looked away.

He turned his attention back to the wounds, covering them with a bandage and pressing down hard. It disturbed him that the man had no reaction, but, then again, perhaps it was for the best, given what he needed to do next. The coagulant would buy them a little time by temporarily stopping the bleeding—the thing most imperiling the man at the present—but it would not save him.

With the most obvious wounds temporarily taken care of, he began examining the rest of the man’s body to make sure he hadn’t missed something, removing the man’s arm and leg bracers as he went. It turned out he had, though the remaining injuries were relatively mild compared to the wounds on the man’s abdomen, and certainly not immediately life threatening. There was a good-sized slice along the man’s outer left thigh, and more minor lacerations high on the man’s left side, along with what Garen was pretty sure were several broken ribs.

“Damn,” he looked at the expressionless face of the metal mask and wondered at the person beneath it. “What the hell happened to you?”

Chapter Text

A short time ago...

Every hair on the back of Din’s neck stood on end. And frankly, he was a little ticked off about it. This was supposed to be a simple resupply trip: stop in the local market, pick up some necessities, splurge on a blanket and a few baubles for the kid, and be out in less than thirty minutes.

He’d deliberately and carefully picked a remote planet. And everything had been going fine; he’d found what they needed quickly, let the kid grab a few things—literally—from a few stalls (he paid for them, of course) and began making their way out of the market. But the more the crowd thinned as he got farther from the hub, the more something felt wrong.

When his footsteps started to echo unnaturally along the main alley he walked along, pursuers trying to mask their stalking steps, he swore silently, and adjusted his grip on the happily burbling kid so that he held the little gremlin in his right arm, freeing his left to draw his blaster. He’d considered leaving the kid on the ship, but had decided not to, and was now furious at himself for that decision. He’d chosen to bring the kid because he’d shown how much trouble he could cause when left to his own devices, and since they were on such a remote planet, he’d thought that no one would recognize them.

Apparently, he’d been wrong. And now, instead of the kid being safe back in the ship, he was here, in danger, where Din was once again about to be faced with the task of fighting his way out with only one hand.

He kept his steps even, unchanged, giving no outward sign that he knew something was wrong, but he murmured softly to the little one, “Listen up, kid. Something’s about to happen, and if it goes badly and you get the chance, I want you to scamper away or hide, okay?” He glanced down at the baby, who had immediately fallen silent, and saw his great big eyes staring back at him questioningly. Din had no idea if the kid understood, but he hoped so. “Got it?” he asked, squeezing the child slightly both as an act of comfort, and to press home the seriousness of his point.

The kid cooed and reached out a hand, patting his chest plate, as if returning the comforting gesture.

“Stop right there!” a gravelly voice called out from a side ally. The harsh sound was quickly followed by the owner of the voice stepping into the main alley.

And with that, any bystanders who had been around, suddenly conveniently disappeared. Because of course.

The figure now standing before them was a copper-colored tiss’shar. And if there was one tiss’shar, that meant there had to be six others lurking around here somewhere, because he’d seen a pack of seven of them in the market.

He stopped as commanded, blaster held down along his side, not out of sight exactly, but not directly aggressive. Yet. Maybe he could talk their way out of this.

Three more tiss’shars exited the side alley behind their leader, all with dark gray coloration, and the two that he’d heard and felt following him took a step closer. He could tell, though, that the pair was still a little distance behind him and not an immediate threat. But that still left the seventh’s position unknown…

“Drop the snack and walk away, and we’ll let you live,” the lead tiss’shar commanded.

The snack? he wondered in confusion, until he saw four sets of reptilian eyes zero in on a single target, and he followed their hungry gaze: they were staring at the kid. They wanted to eat the kid. They weren’t some band of hunters working for the Imps, no, they’d just spotted what might be a delicacy in the market and wanted to try it. If the situation weren’t so serious, Din might have chuckled at the absurdity of it. Instead, he clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on the kid. Over my dead body.

Aloud, he called out, “You don’t want to do this. This is barely a mouthful for one, let alone all of you. Is it really worth dying for?”

A harsh, grating sound that Din realized was probably a laugh exited the lead tiss’shar’s throat. “Dying for? The only one dying here today will be you. And the snack, of course.”

Well, that went well. At least you tried. Negotiations over, Din stepped to the side and raised his blaster, firing at the two tiss’shars to the left of the leader and taking them down instantly, just as the missing seventh tiss’shar landed hard on the ground where he’d been standing a second ago, having leapt from the building above in an attempt to surprise and crush him.

He was forced to turn his back on the lead tiss’shar and her remaining companion still in the mouth of the side alley, as they were farther from him than the one who had just landed and the two who’d been creeping up behind and were now almost on top of him. It was a risk, but a calculated one; tiss’shars preferred close combat, he therefore hoped that he could take care of the three closest to him before the leader and her companion reached him, without getting a blaster shot in the back.

Pivoting, he took out the tiss’shar still on its knees from its fall with a point-blank shot to its head, and kept turning to face the two who’d closed from behind.

One of them launched itself forward, aiming to bite his arm just above the vambrace in a move that would make him unable to block, and would undoubtedly crush the bones due to the force of its bite. He managed to jerk back just enough such that the tiss’shar’s jaws closed around his blaster instead. Its momentum carried it past him, ripping the weapon from his hands, but sparing him the use of his arm. He did not manage to step back far enough to completely avoid injury, however, as the large claw on the tiss’shar’s foot sliced his outer left leg as the creature tumbled to the ground behind him. He ignored the brief flare of pain, turning his attention to the more pressing danger of the other tiss’shar attacking. He saw two flashes of silver, one in each of its hands as it lunged forward, aiming for his midsection, just below the protection of the Beskar plate. He managed to block one with his left arm, deflecting it past his body and seizing the tiss’shar’s elbow, but the other blade was headed for his right side, where he held the kid. He had a split second to decide whether to drop the kid in order to defend them both and risk the kid getting snatched by the tiss’shar he’d just thrown to the ground, let the kid take the hit—which was not actually an option—or take the hit himself.

He acted without a second thought, twisting slightly to the left and pulling the kid higher on his chest, raising him out of harm’s way. He inhaled sharply as the blade sank into his unprotected lower right side, searing through him. He clenched his teeth against the pain and continued his twisting motion, pulling on the tiss’shar’s arm he still had in the grasp of his left hand, forcing it to pivot with him and throwing it off balance, allowing him to hook a foot behind its leg and shove it into the one he’d already knocked down. The agony as the dagger was ripped from his side when the creature went to the ground in a tangle with the other was almost worse than when it sank in; it wrenched his breath away and nearly stole the strength from his knees, but he locked them, attempting to shut out the pain which rippled through him, knowing that if he fell, he would not be getting back up again. And the kid… he could not fail his kid.

The lead tiss’shar and her remaining companion finally reached the two on the ground and bent to help them to their feet, eyeing the Mandalorian with calculating, predatory gazes. Their first assault had cost them three of their companions within seconds; clearly a reassessment was in order.

Din took the opportunity of their pause to take a few steps back and, without taking his eyes off of the four remaining enemies, slowly knelt to the ground and placed the kid behind him—now that all of their adversaries were in front of him, it would be safer for the kid… and he had a feeling he’d need both hands for what would come next. The kid squeaked in surprise and distress as he was placed on the ground, but did not protest.

Din rose to his feet again and slung his rifle from his back, setting his stance, unaware that just behind him and between his legs, the kid had also braced himself, a formidable frown on his small face, arms raised in preparation.

Neither party moved for a moment, both deciding their next step. The tiss’shars’ goal was to incapacitate or kill him in order to get past him and get the kid. His own goal was to take down every single one of them, or die trying. He had a strong preference for the former. Matters were complicated, however, by the fact that he needed to do so quickly, as the coolness that seeped down his side, soaking the fabric of his clothes, spoke of a silent clock that ticked ever faster. But, though time was not on his side, he waited.

The tiss’shar’s moved first.

The gray tiss’shar who’d approached with the leader drew a long blade and stepped forward to engage, swinging it in a wide arc towards Din’s neck. Din easily blocked with the shaft of his rifle while simultaneously stepping forward and inside of the reptile’s reach, and thrust the knife he’d kept hidden in his right hand up through its jaw, killing it. He immediately shoved it aside and turned to meet the assault that was already on its way, but he was not quite fast enough.

The lead tiss’shar slammed into him and pushed him against the wall of the main alley, knocking his rifle from his grasp and pinning his left arm to his side with her clawed right hand, which dug into his side between the gaps of the Beskar. In an instant, her left hand came up, targeting his weakened right side, and he only just managed to grab her wrist with his own right hand—dropping the dagger he’d held in order to do so—halting her deadly claws’ approach a mere inch from his skin.

Her reptilian eyes gleamed as she pressed forward, claws creeping ever so slightly closer as she tried to sink them into his wound. His strength ebbed as the flow of blood from his wounds did not; it ran rapidly down his side, propelled by the exertion of trying to hold the tiss’shar’s hand at bay. She was slowly overpowering Din’s ability to hold her off, and they both knew it. But, what was worse, was Din knew he’d just failed his mission; he was no longer between the two remaining tiss’shars and the kid.

And he had no idea if the kid was dead already or not, as his field of vision was blocked almost entirely by the lead tiss’shar. For a moment, fear overtook him—not fear for himself, but for his charge, for the little one who had somehow effortlessly wormed his way past Din’s Beskar steel, wriggled over the walls he’d so carefully constructed around his heart, and sat there with a pleased chirp. The fear was practically overwhelming as he imagined the worst—the brown robes of the young one stained with blood—and he felt his heart racing at the thought of the kid being ripped from him… until he saw the two remaining tiss’shars appear off to the left, floating. The fear vanished, and he couldn’t keep a grin of pride from slipping across his face. He should have known the kid would be fine—he’d lifted an entire mudhorn after all—but there was no reasoning with the concern that he’d felt about the child’s well-being almost from the first moment they met. The concern would flare up even when he knew rationally it shouldn’t, and he had not learned to squash it; he doubted he ever would.

With the fear for the little one gone, for a moment all he felt was immense relief, because he thought that even if he didn’t make it, the kid would.

And then, the lead tiss’shar pressed forward once more.

He didn’t make a sound when he felt one of the ribs on his left side crack from the pressure of her grasp.

He didn’t moan when he felt another break all together.

But he screamed when one single, outstretched claw sank slowly, inexorably into his already open wound.

Agony roared through his body, a cacophonous symphony that crashed along every nerve and thrummed within his bones.

And he knew he was about to lose.

His arm trembled. Only by sheer force of will was he able to keep the muscles engaged at all, and he was certain that within moments, his strength would fail, and there would be nothing stopping her from digging her entire clawed hand into his skin, shredding his side. He could not beat her with strength. Knowing he’d already lost that battle, that hanging on would be fruitless, he did the only thing he could think of: he let go.

The tiss’shar’s gaze widened in satisfied surprise as her claws sank fully into his now exposed right side, never realizing that it became her gaze in death. For, when Din had let go, he’d raised and twisted his right hand, activating the blaster on his vambrace and shooting her straight through the heart.

The pair collapsed to the ground, and it took every remaining shred of Din’s strength to stagger to his feet, aware that there were still two enemies remaining.

Except there weren’t.

The two remaining tiss’shars lay crumpled against the far alley wall, necks bent at unnatural angles.

His mind was slow to process this turn of events, blood loss and pain already taking its roll, and it took him a moment to realize what must have happened. Because while he’d seen them floating as he struggled with the lead tiss’shar, he’d seen nothing after that. He did not know that the child had floated them happily, content to wait for him to finish his scuffle and then take care of the remaining two. He did not know that after a few moments, the kid had frowned, realizing that something was wrong. He did not know that that was when the kid had heard him scream.

A gentle but insistent tug low on his right pant leg brought his gaze down to stare at the culprit, whose bright eyes began to close in concentration, hand reaching upwards.

“Hang on, no.” He bent over to grab the kid’s hand to stop him, and almost ended up falling all the way to the ground as the movement set his injured torso singing once more with pain. Just managing to stay on his feet, he explained, “Not here, I don’t want you to strain yourself and… and I can’t carry you back to the ship if you pass out.” Of course, if they kid managed to completely heal him, he would be able to carry the kid no problem. But, realistically, he didn’t think the child would be able to manage it; his eyelids were already drooping a little, a testament to how much energy the little gremlin had spent taking care of the other two tiss’shars. And Din knew his wounds were grave, he could feel the wrongness seeping through him, and he was certain it would be more than the kid could handle at present. If the kid tried, they would both pass out in the middle of the street, unable to protect themselves from whatever threat came next. It was safer, therefore, to try to get back to the ship. He could make it.

The wrinkle between the kid’s eyes deepened when Din told him no—an impressive feat, considering how wrinkled the child’s forehead already was—and he ‘hmphed’, but dropped his hand.

After carefully scooping up the rifle, they set out at a slow pace, and for once it was not the child who was the limiting factor on their speed. But the kid walked patiently by Din’s side, stopping to pat his shin whenever he had to pause and brace himself against a wall when the world spun and the ground was not where he expected it to be beneath his steps.

When the Razor Crest finally came into view, Din couldn’t help a sigh of relief, which turned to a muffled groan as he climbed the ramp. But if he thought climbing the steep incline was difficult with broken ribs and a shredded side leaking blood, it was nothing compared to climbing the ladder.

The kid chirped in protest when he saw Din take a step onto the first rung.

“We have to get out of here,” he explained patiently. “That brought too much attention. Just a short jump, just enough to get some distance.”

The kid squeaked again, still clearly not happy about it, but he moved to Din’s side and stood there as he climbed up, as if watching to make sure he didn’t fall.

It was slow progress; he had to go one rung at a time, due to the fact that he kept his left hand glued to his right side in a futile attempt to staunch the flow of blood. Gritting his teeth, he finally managed to push through it and eventually rolled ungracefully onto the floor of the cockpit. Groaning, he crawled forward and grasped the arm of the pilot’s seat, pulling himself upright and slumping into the chair. He grabbed a bacta patch from the emergency stash he kept beneath the controls and placed it over the wounds on his side. It was probably futile—he knew they would require more than bacta—but it was all he could do for now. Turning to face the controls, he quickly took off and flew them a short distance away, out of sight of the civilization, then jumped.

The moment the blue light of hyperspace shrouded the cockpit, he felt the kid crawling up his leg towards his lap. He winced when the little one grazed the gash he had on his left leg, causing the kid to pause and chirp what sounded like an apology.

“It’s okay,” he reassured. “It’s hard to see.”

The kid continued clambering up until he was all the way in Din’s lap, whereupon he sat and reached out towards the wounds hidden beneath Din’s hand. The child’s eyes closed, and Din felt the pain around the punctures vanish immediately. The kid had never healed him before, he’d never felt what it was like, and the sudden absence of agony took his breath away. For a moment, it was incredible, and he thought that he’d been an idiot and should have just let the kid do this earlier, because maybe everything was going to be okay… Until the pain roared back and the kid’s hand dropped and he almost toppled over backwards off of Din’s lap; only Din’s quick reflexes prevented it.

The kid growled in frustration, eyes blinking sleepily.

“Hey, you did what you could. You helped, I promise.” While the kid was clearly drained from taking down the two tiss’shars earlier, he’d definitely healed Din’s wounds at least a little, as they didn’t feel quite so wrong to him anymore, though they still bled. “You did good, kid, let me take care of the rest, okay? Everything’s going to be okay.”

The kid blinked at him sleepily, so Din reached over and unscrewed the metal end of the control the little one liked to play with and handed it to the three fingered grasp.

The kid stared at the piece of metal a moment, then tossed it over his shoulder and crawled closer to Din’s chest, curling up tucked on his left side and promptly falling asleep. If Din’s breath hitched slightly when the kid accidentally pressed against his injured ribs, he didn’t care, because the contentedness on the kid’s face was enough for him to deal with the small discomfort.

Glancing around for the now likely lost metal ball, he sighed. “Finding that thing later is going to be… difficult.”

If there is a later, a small part of him whispered.

He was glad the kid had fallen asleep after believing his lie, because Din was pretty sure everything was not going to be okay. In a last ditch effort, he sent out an emergency signal for help, because he was not too proud to admit he probably wouldn’t be able to deal with this on his own. But, he had no idea if the person on the other end would get it, let alone be able to respond to it in time.

When the ship dropped out of hyperspace a few moments later, it was immediately clear to him that he’d miscalculated slightly. Instead of dropping out just above atmosphere and gliding down to land on the planet gently, they dropped out no more than a few hundred feet off of the surface.

He lunged for the controls and pulled up in order to prevent a collision, but his focus was fading fast and he needed a spot to land, now. And he didn’t want to be smack out in the open. A little bit of luck was on his side, however, because just then he spotted a canyon that looked wide enough, with a large flat area to land.

Touching down less than gently, he shut off the controls and looked down to the bundle in his arms and discovered that the kid slumbered on. Which was just as well, because what needed to happen next wasn’t going to be pretty; he needed to get to his more extensive med pack in the lower area. Which meant he’d need to traverse the ladder again, and he’d have to do it holding the kid this time. Din didn’t relish the idea, but he’d have to manage it; considering what the little tyke had gotten up to when left alone in the cockpit the last time, he couldn’t leave him up there.

When he knelt to the floor with the kid clutched safely in his left arm, and blood dripped past the bacta patch he was pressing tightly against his side with his right hand, he thought he might have a problem.

When he swung his legs through the hole, found a rung to stand on with one foot, stepped down with the other, and had to remove his right hand from his side in order to grasp the rung with a now bloody, slippery hand, he knew he had a problem.

When he took a step down with one foot, then the other, and his vision blacked out for a moment, he knew he was running out of time.

When he came to the moment where he let go with his right hand—leaving him with nothing holding him to the ladder—in order to quickly grab the next rung below it, and his hand slipped and could not latch on, he knew his time was up.

As his body fell backwards, he cradled the kid in both hands, making sure that when they landed, the kid would not be hurt.

He did not feel his body make contact with the ground. He did not see the kid slip off of his chest, startled awake by the abrupt drop. He did not feel the kid gently shake his body, trying to wake him. He did not hear the kid’s cries of fear when he did not react. He sensed nothing, knew nothing.

But the child did. The child felt the Mandalorian’s body shudder on impact. The child saw the blood still slipping onto the floor even as he reached towards his protector’s face. The child felt the slack muscles and lack of response when he gently shook his guardian’s helmeted head. The child heard the heartbeat of his clanmate growing fainter. The child sensed his father’s soul weakening, and knew that he was dying.

Chapter Text

Now...

Of course, Garen received no response from the injured man, and could only wonder at the answer to his question. With nothing left to do while he gave the powders time to work, he moved to the last piece of armor he had not yet removed. He’d left the man’s helmet for last for a reason he couldn’t identify, but he knew it needed to come off now so that he could check the other man’s head for injuries; he was concerned about head trauma, given that the man had not moved at all, despite the painful ministrations Garen had been providing.

He reached for the helmet, gripping it on either side, prepared to lift it off, when the child’s three clawed hand landed gently on top of his own.

Garen frowned at the child and picked it up, turning to set it down behind him so that it wouldn’t be in the way. When he turned back to reach for the helmet again, the child was already there, right beside its father’s head.

Narrowing his eyes, he tried reaching for the helmet again, but once more, the young one placed its tiny hand on top of his. Of course, he could have knocked the child aside and lifted the helmet anyway, but he did not want to upset the child any more than it already was.

“You’re in my way,” he scolded gently, picking up the child again and this time setting it in a box that it could just peek out of. He knew it wouldn’t prevent the child from getting out, but hoped it would slow it down long enough for it to remain out of the way.

He turned back to the wounded man and reached for the helmet again, this time unobstructed by the child. He tried to ease it up and off the man’s head gently, but it wouldn’t budge. Not an inch.

“Huh,” he voiced in puzzlement.

He repositioned himself at the man’s head so that he had a better grip and pulled the helmet towards him, but all he managed was to shift the man’s entire body slightly.

Flummoxed, he gently released the helmet and in doing so, caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He quickly glanced at the box he’d placed the child in, thinking it was trying to escape, but while it had hiked itself up enough so that one eye and ear were peering over the rim and an arm was extended out towards him, the movement he saw was just the child lowering its hand.

He waited a moment, to make sure the kid didn’t continue to try to get out of the box, but when it made no further move, he turned back to the helmet and tried pulling it off again. He even felt underneath to make sure there wasn’t a strap or a release he was missing, but he could not get it to budge. And again, when he stopped trying, a flicker of movement caught his eye and he saw the child lowering its hand and blinking at him.

An impossible thought crossed his mind and he narrowed his eyes. This time, he kept his eyes on the child as he reached for the helmet. And as his hands made contact with the metal, the child’s hand came up, waiting. When he removed his hands from the helmet without trying to move it, the child’s hand lowered.

No way.

He did not understand what was happening. Because what he thought might be happening couldn’t be possible.

One last time, he reached for the helmet, eyes on the tiny being that seemed so helpless, and the child’s arm came up as well. This time, he tried pulling the helmet off, and saw the child’s three claws close, its eyes slide shut, and its face wrinkle further as it huffed in exertion. The helmet did not move.

When Garen stopped, the child visibly relaxed and opened its eyes, blinking slowly, eyelids at half mast, as if it was exhausted.

“Okay, kid, message received,” he told it gently, backing away from the man’s head to emphasize to the kid that he wasn’t going to try again. He still did not quite understand what had just happening, but he did understand that the kid did not want him removing the man’s mask.

The child blinked slowly and heaved itself up, teetering forward and just managing to plop out of the box and onto the floor, whereupon it crawled over to its father and sat by his side with a small sigh.

Well, if the man has a head injury, I guess we’ll hope it’s not a bad one. Because there’s no way I’m going up against that little tyrant.

He crouched on the man’s right side, best positioned to handle what was to come next.

Dear Ancient Ones, please let me be able to save him. The bleeding was stopped for now, giving the illusion that the man would be okay. But the moment Garen began stitching internally—for it would not be a simple, superficial fix—the powder would no longer be effective and the bleeding would start again, and with it, the clock. And the man had already lost so much blood… Garen didn’t know if he would be fast enough, or if he would have to watch the man bleed out right beneath his hands.

But he had to try. He picked up his needle and steeled himself. Please don’t wake up for this. He rested his right hand on the man’s abdomen, just below the worst of the wounds, and felt the man flinch.

Garen sucked in a breath and glanced at the still helmet-clad head of the man, which remained unchanged. “Sir?” he called questioningly.

No answer.

He shifted onto his knees, moving towards the man’s head and peering down as if he could get a glimpse through the visor to ascertain whether the man’s eyes were open.

Which was foolish, for it meant that the vision the man must have seen when his eyes did, in fact, open, was some stranger crouching over him.

There was no additional indication that the man was awake until Garen was suddenly flat on his back with a knife to his throat.

When his mind had a chance to catch up with what had happened, he realized that the man’s first action had been to snatch the child sitting by his left arm and thrust it to the side, away from danger, and in the same moment grab the front of Garen’s shirt, using it to pull himself up into a half kneeling position and pull Garen flat to the floor on his back, flipping their positions. Where the knife had come from, Garen had no idea.

“Please, no!” he shouted, hands by the side of his face, palms open in a universal ‘don’t hurt me’ gesture. “I’m only trying to help!”

The man’s breathing rasped as he stared at Garen, but his mask gave nothing away.

Since he wasn’t dead yet, Garen thought he should use the opportunity to try and explain, and perhaps give himself a chance to remain not dead. “My name is Garen. Your ch-child came and f-found me,” he stammered, gesturing at the young one who now peered out at him from behind the man’s bent leg. “At first I th-thought it was lost,” stop stammering, Garen! he admonished himself, and took a deep breath to try and calm his racing heart, “but then it led me back here where I found you and decided to help,” he finished lamely.

After a moment, the man’s grip on the front of his shirt and the pressure from the knife started to ease, which Garen took as a good sign. He started to sit up as the man began to rock backwards.

“Please, let me help you,” he begged, reaching slowly towards the man and grasping either side of his shoulders as the strength and adrenaline finally went out of him and he sat heavily. Keeping his grip on the man, Garen carefully eased him down onto his back.

The man’s labored breaths were fast and almost painful to the ear, enhanced and distorted as they were through the modulator. And his voice when he spoke was strained. “Wh-why… why are you helping me?”

It was such a simple question with such a simple answer, but admitting, Well, because your kid is adorable and I hope a good judge of character, didn’t seem like something he wanted to say aloud. “Well, because if someone found me bleeding to death, I hope they’d do the same,” he replied, but his eyes betrayed him and flicked to the little child, who tottered around towards the man’s shoulder.

The helmet shifted slightly, indicating that the man had followed his gaze, and a quiet huff echoed out. “Yeah, you have that effect on people, don’t you,” he murmured quietly to the creature, clearly not addressing Garen.

The child chattered happily and patted the man’s arm.

The man raised his hand towards the kid, who immediately seized a single finger in its small grasp, still chirping and patting his upper arm.

“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” the man murmured, and Garen felt like he had to look away in order to offer them the illusion of privacy. And, well, if he wiped a bit of moisture from his eyes, he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Seeing their tenderness for one another and how each tried to comfort the other… it moved him beyond words.

The helmet shifted again, and Garen guessed the man was once again looking at him.

“Thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything yet, really,” he cautioned, “just bought you some time, but…” he trailed off, unsure what to say. But now I might be about to kill you?

The mask of the helmet remained unchanged, but Garen got the sense that the man had picked up on his unspoken words.

“Whatever you have to do, do it,” the man declared, granting permission and also forgiveness… for whatever happened.

Garen hesitated. “I’ve some experience with this—out here you either learn to stitch yourself up or the person you’re with, or you don’t make it—so I can say with confidence that it’s going to hurt like hell, and I need you to be as still as possible. You’re going to start bleeding plenty heavily once I get to work, without you twitching so I cut something I shouldn’t and make you lose blood you can’t afford to. I was hoping you’d still be unconscious; it would have been easier that way.”

Garen didn’t quite hear the man’s response, maybe something about, ‘it’s never easy,’ but then the man’s words grew louder. “In m-my med pack,” he gestured with the hand not currently wrapped in a three clawed grip, “there’s a small blood supply, and a lo-local you can give, but not m-much else.”

Garen perked up at the news of the blood supply. Maybe we can actually do this… But frowned when the second part of what the man had said sunk in. “A local is hardly going make a dent in what you feel,” Garen told him frankly.

“It’ll have to be enough,” the man wheezed.

Since he was right, as they had no other option, Garen searched through the storage compartment the man had pointed to, and retrieved the pack as instructed. As the man had said, its supplies were limited—depleted, more like it—and other than the blood and the local, Garen found very little of use. There was what he thought might be a cauterizer that he briefly considered, before dismissing it. A lot more finesse would be necessary than what the cauterizer could provide.

He injected the local into the area around the wounds, and, in order to give it a moment to kick in, then worked on setting up the line to the blood supply; it was a small amount, but better than nothing. He hung the bag from the ladder, then hesitated. The man understood his uncertainty and he solved his quandary for him, by gently extracting his left hand from the child’s grasp and offering it to Garen. Garen sat and carefully removed the man’s glove, then deftly slid the line into one of the veins on the back of the man’s hand, securing it in place.

And then it was time. He shifted back to the man’s right side, picked up his needle, and took a breath to steady himself. 

The child, meanwhile, looked from the wounds, to the needle poised in Garen’s hands, and lastly to the man’s hidden face. Making a silent decision, it carefully crawled up onto the man’s chest, just beneath his chin, and sat there, hands pressed to the helmet’s visor, as if blocking his view of what Garen was doing would block the pain.

Garen thought the weight of the child might not be good for the man’s breathing, but the man made no move to dislodge the child and his breathing didn’t get any worse—though it was terrible to begin with—so Garen decided not to say anything.

Instead, he once more placed his right hand below the worst of the wounds, and was lowering the needle when a new voice, low and cold, stopped him.

“Whoever the hell you are, step away from my friend.”

Garen froze, then very slowly turned his head in order to see a woman standing at the top of the ramp, tension and anger evident in the set of her jaw, a blaster pointed directly at him.

“Cara,” the man spoke up from Garen’s left, voice strained and thin, but loud enough to carry to the new figure.

When the man’s voice reached her ears, the woman’s stance did not soften, nor did the blaster lower. But her eyes widened and flicked past Garen and towards the fallen figure, and it was in that moment that Garen realized that until she’d heard his voice, she’d thought her friend was dead. That Garen was just a scavenger stripping him of any belongings of worth.

The woman took in a breath and started to form a word, perhaps a name, before her eyes snapped back to Garen and he saw her mouth shape a different one. “Mando? You’re alive?”

“Cara,” the man—Mando? Odd…—replied, “you can put down your we-weapon. This is Garen… he’s here to help.”

The woman who’d been identified as Cara eyed Garen warily, but apparently trusted the man enough to lower her blaster… slowly. Only once it was pointed at the ground could Garen breathe again, which he did rapidly, while the woman stepped farther into the bay area and knelt across from Garen. She reached out with a hand as if to touch the face of the man’s mask, before she changed trajectories and ruffled the top of the child’s head fondly, eliciting several protesting squeaks. “How’d you know I was holding a weapon? You can’t even see around this lump.”

A huff echoed through the modulator. “With you, I figured it was a pretty good guess.”

She pursed her lips and scanned his body for wounds, frowning at what she saw. “What the hell happened?”

“Tell you later? I’d like to get o-on with it before the local wears off.”

Cara turned her gaze to Garen, looking for further explanation.

Garen very much did not want to be the one to inform this warrior of her friend’s dire state, but he knew it would be unfair to force Mando to do it; though the man’s voice remained surprisingly clear except for the occasional stutter, it was also weighed down with pain and fatigue, and he didn’t need to be wasting energy explaining something Garen easily could… not when he needed all of his energy focused on staying alive.

Therefore, it fell to Garen to share the bad news. “He has several severe stab wounds to his abdomen that caused him to lose a lot of blood. I’ve bought him time, but that’s it,” he informed her honestly, sparing the details as they didn’t have time for them. “The damage is extensive and if…” he stopped, considered, and changed what he’d been about to say. “And I need to use the time we’ve bought—which is rapidly running out—to get in there surgically and do some damage control.”

He watched the lines around her eyes tighten at the news; while he hadn’t said much, she could tell what he hadn’t said. She sucked in a breath, but gave no other indication of distress. Her strength was impressive; were Garen in her position, with someone he cared for as much as the pair clearly cared for each other, he knew he would not have the calm or strength she possessed.

“You have experience with this?” she queried, and Garen understood what she was actually asking: How likely is it that he won’t make it?

“I’m not a medical specialist nor a surgeon,” he clarified, “but yes, I have some experience.” But not enough! he screamed internally, suddenly uncomfortable with just how much pressure was on his shoulders. A thought occurred to him. “Did you bring any supplies with you? More blood, or a sedative perhaps?” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head in regret, eyes tracking down to look at the man’s visor. “I didn’t have anything at hand and didn’t think there was time.”

Garen shuddered to realize that, if the child hadn’t found him and brought him here, she would have been right; the man would have been dead by the time she got here, devoid of life and lying within the cavernous darkness of a silent ship, which echoed only with the grieving wails of a child.

“Right, well… I’m going to try to stitch the wounds closed, and I need him to stay perfectly still in order to have a chance to do that. But it’s going to hurt like—” he stopped himself. Both of these people were warriors, no strangers to the roaring agony that came with their way of life. He did not need to describe it to them when they no doubt already had more experience with it than he did. “It’s going to hurt and he says he can hold still, but the only thing I could give him was a local…” he trailed off, unable to keep the doubt from creeping into his voice.

“You need a way to hold him still?” A little hope sparked in her eyes. “That shouldn’t be a problem, ay, kid?” she addressed the little green one.

“N-no.” The man shook his head ever so slightly. “Kid’s tapped out. Already helped as much as possible. O-only awake through sheer stubbornness.”

And just like that the spark died, though she kept her tone light when she teased, “And I wonder where that stubbornness comes from.” She turned serious again. “But that does make things more complicated.”

“Cara,” the man murmured softly. “I can ha-handle it.”

She shook her head vehemently. “This isn’t some stupid macho moment where you have to be strong, Mando,” she hissed. “You’re about to have someone root around on your insides; you shouldn’t even have to ‘handle’ that!”

“That’s not what this is,” the man disagreed. “It’s the only—I can handle it.” He left the, It’s the only chance I have. I have to be able to handle it, unsaid, but it hung in the air.

“You could hold him down?” Garen offered the woman. “If you hold him down, we might be able to do this.”

It did nothing to make the woman feel better, Garen could see. Of course it didn’t. He’d just offered to her that she could hold her friend down while they put him through hell and inflicted indescribable agony. And he could see in the desperate look in her eyes that it was the last thing she wanted to do, but then her shoulders slumped and she nodded as she realized it was their only option. “Okay. We’re wasting time.”

“Just be careful of his ribs,” Garen warned, hoping to avoid injuring the man further in their quest to save him. “He has a few broken ones.”

She glared at the man as she shifted into position, as if he’d deliberately injured himself just to make her worry. “Dammit, Mando, you don’t do anything by halves,” she grumbled. Draping her torso across his upper chest, leaving Garen room to work and the child undisturbed, but keeping most of her weight in her elbows so as not to press down on his ribs, she picked up his right hand and held it tight. “Guess we’ll be able to finish that arm wrestling match this time,” she commented, trying for levity as the hint of a wry grin on her face cracked through the tension and concern.

Her words meant nothing to Garen, but a quiet huff of amusement echoed from the man.

As she stretched her left leg down and tangled it with the man’s own left leg, avoiding the gash but attempting to pin him down, she continued, “In all seriousness, Mando, you know this is going to hurt like hell. So, when that time comes, I want you to squeeze my hand for all your worth, okay? To quote you, ‘I can take it.’”

His only response was to tighten his grip.

They began.

In the end, Cara’s careful positioning proved unnecessary, but their joined hands proved to be everything. While Garen worked, Cara braced, and the child cooed softly, the man barely moved a muscle. Sweat began pouring off him and his breathing grew more labored, but save for a twitch here or there, he did not stir. His hand, though, closed tightly around Cara’s. Though her fingers turned white and she grit her teeth, she did not pull away; she squeezed back just as hard, as if she could hold him there, tethered to the world through the sheer force of their hands’ embrace.

Garen worked as quickly as he could, aware of how much blood was soaking into his knees and how very little blood there was left that the man could afford to lose, with the small amount in the med supply rapidly running out.

Eventually, as time seemed to drag on, Cara began uttering a quiet plea, over and over. “Pass out, Mando, just pass out, you idiot. Pass out… Pass out. Please. You don’t have to stay awake; you can let go. Just pass out. It’s okay.” Over, and over, and over.

And finally, he did. From one breath to the next, the man’s body went slack, so abruptly that Cara immediately sat up and reached for the man’s neck frantically, checking for a pulse.

A moment later she sighed in relief. “He’s still alive, just passed out.”

“Figures,” Garen croaked. He quickly cleared his throat, surprised at how rough his voice was, as if it were he, and not the man he was working on, who had been holding back screams of pain. “I’m almost done.”

She snorted in agreement. “Figures.”

After another minute, Garen finally tied the last stitch and sat back. His hands were slick with blood and the floor beneath him was covered in it. The damage inside had been less than he feared, as if by some miracle the wound had already started to heal, and he’d repaired what internal damage he could, but now could do no more. The rest was up to Mando, but whether he had enough strength left to fight, Garen didn’t know. He hoped so, though.

“That’s it, that’s all I can do.”

Cara sat back as well. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he cautioned. “I repaired what I could, but he’s not safe. The biggest danger now is the amount of blood he lost, because I don’t have anything to replenish it with beyond that supply he had that just ran out,” he gestured at the now empty bag, “and he lost more than should be… I honestly don’t know how he’s still alive... or if he’ll stay that way. And even if he makes it past the blood loss, if infection sets in,” he hesitated before admitting, “I seriously doubt his body’s ability to combat that right now.”

She nodded her understanding. “I don’t expect you to be a miracle worker—though getting him this far was a miracle in and of itself—but you’ve done more than I could have hoped for. When I got his distress signal, I knew it was bad—really bad—and it took me too long to get here and I didn’t know if I’d be able to do anything…” She paused, dropping her eyes, but not before Garen saw the remembered pain and fear reflected in them. “And… I didn’t think I’d find him alive when I arrived,” she admitted quietly, before picking her chin back up and meeting his gaze with eyes full of determination and gratitude. “But you changed that. You’ve given him a chance, and I cannot thank you enough for it.”

Garen had no words to respond to her kindness with, all he could do was nod.

“Now,” she clapped her hands together and rose to her feet, briskness and purpose slipping into place to chase away the worry and fear. “We need to get him warm and dry, and that’s not gonna happen where he is now.”

She moved to a side compartment and pulled out several blankets. “I know he probably shouldn’t be moved much, but if we slide him onto one of these, it would at least get him off the metal floor and we could pull him away from all… that,” she gestured at the blood and armor strewn around his current position.

“I think we can manage that,” Garen agreed.

They stretched one of the blankets out on the man’s left side, but then were faced with the quandary of what to do with the child. Because the little one had passed out when its father had, and its head now rested on the face of the helmet as the man continued to slumber, his pained breaths slowly rattling through the helmet’s modulator, reverberating through the ship and filling it with a comforting sound, for it promised that he was still alive. Cara solved their dilemma by gently scooping the kid up, hitting a button on the wall of the ship to open a compartment Garen hadn’t noticed before, and placing the sleeping bundle on a small bunk inside.

With the child moved, they very carefully shifted the unconscious patient onto the blanket, leaving all of his armor—save his helmet—behind, and gently dragged it across the floor, away from the chaos of their makeshift med bay. It left streaks of blood across the ship’s floor, but Garen imagined that didn’t even register as an issue at the present moment.

When they got the man to a distance that felt far enough away, they stopped, and silence echoed throughout the ship as the sound of the blanket dragging over the floor died. Garen sighed in relief, appreciating the peace the quiet brought with it in the wake of the ordeal they’d just been through.

That is, until Cara’s uncertain tone broke the silence. “Wait, do you hear that?” she asked quizzically.

Garen frowned, unsure what she could be hearing when the ship was silent… until he heard Cara suck in a sharp breath and he realized with dawning horror what was wrong: the ship was silent.

Chapter Text

When silence fell in the ship after she and Garen stopped pulling on the blanket, and Din’s head rocked gently side to side as he came to rest a short distance from the mess beneath the ladder, Cara knew something was wrong. But what… what is it? Her every nerve ending was ablaze and goose bumps slithered up and down her arms, but for the life of her, she couldn’t pin down what it was that set heart racing in fear.

She knew Din wasn’t safe yet, that his recovery was still far from certain, but it was so much better now than it had been when she flew across the galaxy, following his signal, stomach sinking with every passing moment that she couldn’t get to him.

At that time, she’d known with almost complete certainty that she would not make it in time. Because the signal he’d sent wasn’t just reserved for absolute emergencies… It was for an ‘in case of death’ situation; Din had asked to set it up because he didn’t want to risk the kid being left alone if something happened to him when Cara was not there.

Which meant she had expected to find him lifeless within the Razor Crest, the kid by his side staring at her with sad, confused eyes, unable to share the story behind the wounds that had claimed her friend’s life.

She’d never been so happy to be wrong, all because some gentle souled stranger had decided to help someone he didn’t even know.

She shook her head, tearing herself from memories that still made her stomach turn, because it was something in the present, not the past, that was screaming at her. “Wait…” she murmured, sorting through what her body clearly already knew, but could not get her brain to see. “Do you hear that?” she asked aloud, half to Garen and half to herself, realizing it was her ringing ears that were setting off all of the warning bells in her head.

Warning bells about what? she demanded. They hadn’t been going off an hour ago, when she’d been certain her friend was dead. So why were they so loud now? Why did she feel worse now? When Din lay before her, alive and breathing—

She sucked in a sharp breath. No.

Din’s pained breathing no longer echoed through the ship.

She felt rather than saw Garen come to the same realization; sensed his horror rise along with her own, a sweeping, brackish wave towering above them and crashing down. She felt him shift forward, preparing to spring into action, but she was faster. Between one moment and the next, her hands were in the middle of Din’s chest performing compressions, pumping what little blood he had left in his body, doing what his heart could not.

Garen shifted to Din’s head and pressed his hand against his neck, searching for the pulse Cara knew wasn’t there. She didn’t stop her actions, pressing down on Din’s chest again and again, and her suspicions were confirmed when Garen shook his head.

Dammit. Breathe!

She was so focused on trying to keep Din alive that she almost didn’t notice what Garen was doing, and as a consequence, she nearly let something happen that Din would never forgive her for—if he, in fact, lived.

“No!” she shouted at Garen. “Stop!”

The man froze in startled surprise, hand still clasping Din’s helmet.

“Leave it!” she ordered.

“Cara, he’s not breathing. He needs air,” Garen explained, confusion furrowing his brow.

“I said leave it!” she hissed.

She locked eyes with the man who was only trying to help, who didn’t understand that his actions to save Din’s life would cause a different kind of irreparable harm. He hesitated, as if he were going to remove Din’s helmet anyway, and she could seem him assess whether she would actually try to stop him, and sacrifice providing Din a heartbeat just to prevent him from removing a helmet. She didn’t particularly want to tackle him to the ground and lose precious seconds, but if he thought she wouldn’t, he would be wrong. She stared him down, until he finally removed his hands from the helmet, then she turned all of her focus back on Din.

She performed a full round of compressions, then stopped and Garen immediately felt for a pulse and crouched down, holding his ear close to Din’s head, listening for his breathing.

“Nothing,” he shook his head.

“Dammit, Mando, you are not doing this to me!” she growled, resuming compressions. “You can’t leave the kid all on his own! I know we had an agreement but you know I am not cut out for raising that gremlin!”

She counted up to thirty, then did it again, and stopped once more, waiting for Garen’s signal.

Still nothing.

Sweat flowing down her face, she began again. One, two, three, four, five, six—her concentration broke when she heard a crack and felt extra give beneath her hands as one of Din’s ribs snapped. She winced, praying that she wasn’t doing irreparable damage or undoing all of the hard work they had just put in to heal him, but he needed to breathe.

Seven, eight, nine, ten. Please, whoever, whatever is listening, please don’t let me fail.

“Cara,” Garen broke through her mantra, “Cara, I need to take his helmet off.”

“No!” she roared. “People breathe just from compressions all the time!”

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—

“Cara, you know that’s not true!”

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—

“Cara! In a few more minutes he’s going to start getting brain damage if we don’t get any air in to him!”

Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two—

“Cara!”

“I know!” she screamed back.

Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, please, Din, breathe —

“Then why the hell won’t you let me take it off?!”

Twenty-seven—

“Because I know he’d rather die!”

Twenty-eight—

“What?!”

Twenty-nine—

“And I won’t betray him like that!”

Thirty—

“So, you’re ready to let him die for it? For what, vanity? A senseless promise? You’d rather he dies than ‘betray’ him and save his life?”

No. No. Please no. Cara was not ready for Din to die, she wasn’t ready for him to leave her world after he’d marched into it so spectacularly. She wasn’t ready to lose him, to never see the stupid, sappy way he interacted with the kid when he thought no one was looking, when he didn’t quite know what to do with the little one but would die for him.

She began again. One, two, three…

No, she was not ready to let him die, but it was not for reasons of vanity or a senseless promise, it was for reasons that she knew Garen would not understand. Because she had not understood them herself, until she and Din were far down a path of friendship and she hadn’t even realized it. Until she’d been in the position to maybe save his life, and he’d stopped her… and she’d let him. She could have done it anyway; his hand had seized her forearm tightly, but it had trembled, grip loosening as he weakened. It was not the strength of his grasp that had stayed her, but the strength of his conviction.

She might not fully understand the why behind Din’s conviction, but she didn’t need to in order to understand and respect that Din did, that it meant something to him, that it was a part of him. And therefore it meant everything to her.

She might not even fully understand what exactly he believed in, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she believed in him. To rob him of his choice, to ignore and disrespect his conviction, to save him by betraying him would mean she could no longer call herself his friend. And she would not, could not, do that.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

She sat back and held her breath as Garen went to check Din’s breathing and pulse again. To Garen’s credit, he didn’t hesitate, nor did he continue to press the issue. He stared at her, though, face full of incredulity and confusion, and a touch of condemnation. That didn’t matter, though. It didn’t matter what he thought of her, only Din mattered.

Garen’s shaking head sent her stomach sinking, ragged breaths rattling her frame as she poised her trembling hands over Din’s motionless chest once more.

“Come on, Mando,” she begged, desperation curdling her voice. “When I said ‘you can let go,’ this is not what I meant!” she yelled, full of fear and anger—anger at herself for not getting there fast enough, anger at whoever had done this to her friend, and anger at Din for putting her in this position. Of making her care and then threatening to leave her. And fear… Fear at the fact that this wasn’t working, and it started to dawn on her that she might fail. That she might actually lose him.

Full blown panic began to overtake her, a sensation she hadn’t felt in almost a decade, had thought she never would again. She’d thought that after losing everyone dear to her, that she’d never be faced with this again. She’d been wrong. Because despite her efforts to keep everyone away so she would never feel that heartache, someone else had effortlessly slipped into her life, filled a void that had been gnawing away at her for years, and made her care, made her want to care. And now, he might just as easily slip away.

“Don’t you dare do this!” she half pleaded, half threatened. Please, Din.

She saw Garen sit back on his heels. Giving up.

Never.

She finished another round of compressions and stopped, paused, waited and listened.

Nothing.

She hovered her hands over his chest once more, just inches away, preparing to begin again in what she feared would be another unsuccessful round, but she waited just a moment longer, waited for his chest to start rising and falling on its own, waited to hear him breathe.

Her hands trembled. From exertion, from fear.

But she waited, one second, then another.

And he drew in a breath. One. And then another.

And kept breathing.

She lowered her shaking hands to her side and just watched his chest rise and fall, an irrational part of her concerned that if she looked away, he would stop.

“No way,” Garen murmured, voice full of awe. “You brought him back.”

She could hardly believe it herself. “Now he just needs to stay. You hear that?” she called down to her friend, raising her voice to infuse it with authority, though she knew it felt on deaf ears.

Which is why her heart stuttered in shock and joy when a rough, broken voice replied, “C-copy.”

“Di—” she caught herself and quickly shifted, “Mando?!” She grabbed his hand and squeezed.

And he squeezed back. “He-here.”

“For all the love of…” she leaned forward and rested her forehead on the front of his visor, eyes closed, taking in deep breaths and relishing that she could hear him doing the same. “Don’t do that again. Or I’ll…” she tried to think of a suitable threat, but came up blank, unable to get away from the fact that she was just happy he was alive. She left her sentence unfinished.

He squeezed her hand again. “Understood. P-pretty sure, though, I’m about to pass out…”

She smiled. “That’s okay, that’s allowed. Get some rest, but stay with me, okay?”

His grip tightened fractionally in confirmation that he’d heard, then slackened and would have slipped from her hand if she had not been holding on so tightly.

She didn’t let go. Didn’t want to ever let go.

Because she’d been within moments of losing him. Moments of losing her family.

She’d almost lost him on Nevarro, but it had been different then. Then, when she’d taken her hand from his neck and it had come back wet with blood, she’d only had an inkling that he might be more to her than just a fellow warrior. Then, she’d heard his defeated words but denied the truth they rang with, and clung to the hope that when she left him, she would see him again. And she had. She hadn’t lost him then. It had been close, but not this close.

Because this time, she had lost him. Only for a few moments, but in those moments she had realized that what had been an inkling on Nevarro, was now a welcome certainty; she’d found a friend, a family she would do anything for. But that had made the prospect of losing him that much more terrifying and impossible to accept. Because it meant the faint promise of peace, of belonging, that had flared when the certainty had settled around her, would never come to pass. That she was not enough, that it didn’t matter if she would do anything for him, because she could not save him.

But she had. She’d fought tooth and nail to bring him back, and she had succeeded. She held within her grasp the proof of a family, one she’d never intended to form, but which had formed all the same. It had dragged her—had dragged all three of them—in without a word of warning, and encircled them in all of its protective, at times awkward, humor filled, and wonderful embrace. And they were better for it.

And though their family might be small and broken at times, it was hers. They were hers. And she was not going to let go.

Chapter Text

When the injured man had taken a breath, Garen had been stunned. He’d been certain that the man was gone, that the woman’s inexplicable choice not to remove his helmet had cost her the life of her friend. But he’d been wrong, and he’d felt foolish for doubting the depth of their connection.

But doubt it he had… When Cara had been willing to let the man die for a reason Garen still did not—and probably never would—fully comprehend, he’d leapt to a judgment and condemned her for it. For, how could someone call themselves a friend if they stood by and watched their friend die, when it was within their power to save them? It had been so clear to Garen that what she was doing was wrong. That she was making a poor decision in the heat of the moment, and that they would both have to sit back and reap the consequences and mourn.

Instead, he sat back practically frozen in awed silence as the two clasped hands and Cara leaned her head down to rest on the man’s visor.

And he realized how much of a blind idiot he’d been. The woman’s willingness to let the man die because of some value that the man held did not cheapen their friendship, it deepened it. That she’d been able to respect the man’s wishes even in the face of losing him… it spoke to a strength and selflessness that Garen would never know. Their connection—whether it had grown over decades, or formed in a fiery ordeal, Garen did not know, it did not matter—was deeper than Garen could fathom. 

So Garen sat in silence, trying not to disturb the duo in front of him; they’d been through agony and anguish and more, the least he could do was give them a moment to reconnect.

He got the sense that Cara would have stayed that way forever, wanted to stay that way, caught in the moment where they were all safe, where the man was alive, but duty would not let her. Eventually, she sat back and gently placed the man’s hand on the floor, separating their grasps with care. She looked up at Garen, then, purpose and responsibility filling the line of her shoulders, and he honestly didn’t care that his face was probably filled with a ridiculous, awed smile.

She looked away, eyes bright, before she returned her gaze to his and cleared her throat. “I need to check on the ship, see what state it’s in so we can get out of here—eventually. He still needs to stay warm, though, and stay breathing,” she raised her voice slightly at the end, flicking her gaze briefly down towards the armored warrior as if her command would reach his slumbering ears and make it so. “Can you make sure that happens?” she asked, turning her attention back to Garen. “And call me if anything changes?”

“Of course,” he replied immediately, prepared to do anything to make up for how he’d doubted and berated her only moments ago, which had only made her arduous task more difficult.

She nodded, then rose and moved towards the ladder, which apparently led to the ship’s controls—which made sense, as it had been where the man had fallen from after piloting and landing the ship—and he expected her to climb it and disappear into the ceiling, but she stopped at the foot of it and did not move.

Garen frowned, confused why she’d paused; thus far, she’d not shied away from anything before her, not her friend bleeding out on the floor, not holding him down while some amateur performed surgery, not bringing him back to life, nothing. And yet she hesitated now?

He didn’t understand, until he saw that she was looking upwards, towards the top two rungs. Garen followed her gaze and understood what had drawn her up short: twin streaks of red glistened on the rungs, as if someone had latched on to the first with a blood-soaked hand, then slipped off the second, no longer able to hold on.

And Garen realized he had no idea what she would find at the top of that ladder. He could only imagine that she’d walk in to see a story tapestried in red, with nothing but questions to fill in the gaps between the footprints of red stumbling, dragging towards the door… between the handprints etched in blood on the controls… between the red rivulets snaking downwards to pool on the floor. To stand amidst the evidence of her friend’s desperate struggle to stay alive? To stand alone amongst a sharp reminder of how close she’d come to losing him, even knowing that she’d helped him triumph over that struggle? Yeah, Garen could understand why she might not relish experiencing that. But, he’d realized a little while ago that it was an established fact that Cara was a thousand times more fearless and undaunted than he, and thus, after the moment’s hesitation, she strode forward and climbed the ladder, disappearing out of sight up above.

Garen shook his head in wonderment and turned back to the task that Cara had given him. He first checked that the stitches on the stab wounds were still holding after the rough treatment the man’s torso had received while Cara kept his heart beating. He was pleased to see they were intact, and he therefore moved on to treating the rest of the man’s comparatively minor injuries, including the mild lacerations high on the man’s left side, and the gash on his leg. He hoped that they’d been treated fast enough to stave off the feared infection, but if the man had come back to life after Garen had been certain he was gone, he felt there was a pretty good chance the man could fight through the infection.

When there was nothing more he could do medically, he spread one of the blankets over the man, then decided another layer couldn’t hurt and snapped out a second blanket in the open air in order to add it over top of the first, hoping to keep the man warm in the face of the massive blood loss he’d experienced. But when he turned to place it over the man, he fell back with a cry of surprise: the little green child had suddenly appeared by the man’s side, between when Garen had put one blanket on and the next. It stared sleepily up at Garen, as if wondering why he was making a big fuss. When Garen just stared at it, it dismissed him and shuffled over to the man’s left side, lay down beside him, latched onto his arm and pulled his hand gently over itself like a blanket of its own, and promptly fell back asleep.

Garen’s heart may or may not have melted at the sight.

After carefully positioning the second blanket, he sat watching both his charges, as he’d promised, until, eventually, a loud whack startled him from his vigil. He turned and saw a pile of sodden rags had landed on the floor beneath the ladder. What color they were originally, Garen couldn’t say, perhaps a faded gray that spoke of years of use, but now, Garen doubted they would ever lose their red tint.

Cara followed them down, wiping the blood from the ladder before dropping to the floor and letting the last rag fall and join the rest. There was still the blood pooled on the floor beneath her feet, dragged in streaks across the ship’s bay area, but it would wait.

She stood there for a moment, just listening to the man breathe, then turned to Garen and held out her hand. “I’m Cara. I know you know that already, but it felt like a proper introduction was in order, since you helped save my friend. And while we’re at it, I think an apology is in order, too: sorry for threatening you with a blaster when you were saving his life.”

He scrambled to his feet and clasped her hand in return. “I’m Garen, and I understand.” He hesitated, before he added, “I can see how much he means to you. If I thought someone was killing a person I cared about, I’d have reacted the same way.”

She nodded tiredly. “Well, thank you. Again. I don’t know how to repay you—”

He cut her off. “Just try and make sure he makes it, okay? And I mean, given what you just did, I think the odds are in your favor…” Shut up Garen, you sound like an idiot. “Anyway, that can be my payment. I’d hate for the little one to lose him.”

She turned to gaze back at the man, her face softening into a smile. “Yeah, I’d hate to lose him, too,” she murmured, and Garen was pretty sure he was not meant to hear it.

Pretending he hadn’t heard, he plowed on. “And try to get him to a real doctor. I can’t do anything for his ribs, and another one broke when…” he trailed off, not wanting to make her feel guilty when she absolutely should not, but the line of her mouth and the quick nod she gave him told him she already felt that way. “Hey, you saved his life,” he murmured.

She barked out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, only had to hurt him and kriffing break his bones in order to do it.”

“I think he’d take an extra broken rib over the alternative any day.”

She sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. “I know. I know that. Logically I know that, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still feel terrible about it.”

“Fair enough. The good news is that none of the fractures punctured his lung,” he offered, trying to look on the bright side. “So, while I can’t do anything for them now, you might bind them later, once he’s awake, and as long as he doesn’t move around too much, odds are they’ll be okay. Broken ribs take forever to heal and are painful as… well, they’re painful, but if he’s careful… But Cara,” he hesitated, not wanting to turn towards the negative possibilities, but feeling he’d be remiss if he didn’t. “If infection sets in… that’s the big concern. If that happens, he should see a doctor. Or someone,” he added, aware that the little bit he could piece together about these three individuals’ lives might mean seeing a doctor would be a challenge.

She nodded.

They lapsed into silence then, just watching and listening. After a while, Cara sat down near the man and the child, back leaning against the wall, knees pulled up and hands resting on top, eyes staring at the two sleeping forms.

And Garen realized that his presence was no longer needed. That, in fact, this trio was ready to no longer have a stranger in their midst. While he would have liked to stay, to see it all the way through to the end, to see the man on his feet, child scampering around his ankles happily, and Cara standing to the side with a watchful eye, ready to step in and support the man should he stumble, Garen knew that was not what was meant to be. His path had only needed to touch fleetingly with theirs, to help save one of their own, and now that his task was done, it was time to move on.

Slowly, quietly, he gathered his things and hefted his bag onto his shoulder. When he rose, he found Cara’s eyes on him.

“You’re leaving?” she asked. “Do you have somewhere to go? You are welcome to stay.”

He smiled, touched by her kindness, at her willingness to welcome him in, but he shook his head. “That’s okay. I have a camp I need to get back to before nightfall—you don’t want to be moving around out here after dark.” Of course, his camp was only ten minutes away, and night would not fall for several hours more, but she did not need to know that. She did not need that burden.

“Well, thank you again, Garen. I can’t… I can’t put into words how much you did for me. For us.” She rose and walked towards him, pulling a small device out of her pocket. “We move around too much to tell you any place you could reliably find us, but here,” she handed the device to him. “If you ever need anything, anything, hit that button and we’ll find you.”

He smiled again. “Thank you. I’d rather not make it a habit of saving one of your lives, but if you ever find yourself in the area again, if you ask for me at the Trading Post, someone there usually knows where to find me.”

She held out her hand and he grasped it. “Goodbye, Garen.”

“Goodbye, Cara.”

He made his way to the ship’s ramp, and just before setting foot on it, turned around for one last look. Cara had moved and now sat with the man’s head in her lap, one hand on his neck, no doubt on his pulse point, the other gently stroking the head of the still slumbering child.

And he realized that they were not merely a trio of friends. No, amidst the wreckage of a day that had tried so very hard to take the man’s life, sat an unconventional family, whose bonds were stronger than Garen had ever seen.

With a smile on his face, he turned and walked away.

Tomorrow, he would return to this spot to find it empty, the ship gone, along with all of its occupants. The only trace that he’d ever crossed paths with them would be imprints in the canyon floor, a small device nestled in his pocket, and the memories of their devotion to one another, which would impact and stay with Garen all his life. Standing in the silence, he’d recall what had started it all—a noise shattering the sky and calling up all of his fears and doubts—and he would realize that it was true: he was not a superstitious person… But he was an optimistic one.

Because he’d have every confidence that the ties that held that family together would see them through whatever life had in store for them next.