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It's been six months when he decides to return to Nevarro.
Six months of aimless roaming with the child held tight to his chest, as if he was afraid he could lose him, too. Like he lost Cara.
Except he didn't lose Cara. He let her go, and this is something that haunts him every day he spends thinking he could have said something, done something, asked her why, at the very least, or even ask her to go with him, if he'd had the guts to do that. But she'd seemed to certain of her decision that he just thought it wasn't worth trying to persuade her: if she thought her place somewhere else – somewhere where he wasn't – Din could respect that. Even if it hurt.
It takes him a while to realise while he doesn't feel at ease in his own ship any longer. He catches himself off guard one day, all of a sudden, watching all the spots where Cara's stuff used to be – her clothes, her weapons, her books, the small toiletries purse – thinking that every corner and every space she used to occupy had once been a free spot and now just feels like an empty spot.
The kid senses his restlessness, reacts by clinging to him more insistently than usual. Din finds him curled up in the bunk that used to be Cara's – not sleeping, just... listening. Din wonders if his powers allow him to pick up the vibes she left behind, like a scent or a print. Sometimes Din himself turns around in the cockpit expecting to see her behind himself, polishing her blaster, or simply sitting there, watching him in silence.
He doesn't know why he lets the nostalgia churn in his stomach until it's too intense to bear or ignore. With hindsight, he should have known from the moment he climbed into the Crest without her that nothing would feel right again, just himself and the kid on their own.
When he walks into town, kid in tow inside his pram, he can't stop thinking he's waited too long, allowed too much time for too many things to change. Maybe, deep inside, he was delaying this moment on purpose, so that, when the time came, he would set foot in a whole new place and find the people he left settled in a whole new life. A life without him.
One person in particular.
“Mando! My dear boy!”
As soon as he enters the cantina, he spots Greef coming forward from the bar, a bit heavier than he remembered, arms open wide in a welcoming salute. He gives Din's shoulder a firm pat and doesn't waste time in platitudes, offering a seat and a drink before Din has even uttered a sound.
“I'll take the seat,” Din says politely. “Feel free to have the drink without me.”
“I always forget-” Greef taps a finger to his own head with a nod at Din's helmet. “I see you're still parenting,” he adds with a nod toward the kid, whose big round eyes are curiously exploring his surrounding.
They start talking and Din quickly finds out that a lot has changed around here. He holds back the question burning on the tip of his tongue, his eyes wandering across the room from time to time, scanning it for a familiar face he's dying to see and too afraid to ask about.
Then he hears it, a voice that stirs something in him he wasn't ready to face. He finds himself holding his breath.
He spots Cara walking in surrounded by a small group of laughing people. Next to her walks a pretty girl with dark skin and curly auburn hair, a taut body that looks forged by a lifetime of hard labour. She's looking at Cara like she hung every single star in the sky.
Despite the painful tug in his heart, Din smiles: he knows the feeling.
He can't take his eyes off her: without her armour, she looks so carefree, as if without the weight of the armour itself she also feels lighter inside. Freer, perhaps. Or maybe it's not the lack of the armour. Maybe it's the presence of the beautiful girl at her side.
It's not hard to imagine this young woman and Cara walk home together after a long day, tired but satisfied, sharing jokes, maybe holding hands. It makes a perfect picture. So perfect he starts doubting returning here was a good idea.
He feels like life has gone on for everyone and he's still stuck in that moment six months ago, when he left her without turning back and she let him go without a goodbye. No closure. No explanations.
"She seems... happy."
He chokes it out like a thorn stuck in his throat. It stings, and it hurts, and it burns.
"She's not," Greef says dryly.
"No?"
"Girl hasn't cracked an honest smile since you and the kid took off.” Greef pours himself a glass of strong-smelling brew and gives him a pointed look. “None of my business, but you two left behind lot of mess in each other."
Doesn't look like it, Din thinks, still studying Cara from afar. She looks at ease among those people, relaxed and confident. Like she used to be around him.
Coming back here was probably a mistake, but he isn't going to leave without saying what he didn't dare to say last time.
He feels braver, now, than he felt then. The first time, fear and disappointment refrained him, made him run away from his feelings rather than face them, and the result was the dull misery he's been soaking into ever since. He's hit rock bottom, now, and all he has is scraps of hope only Cara can either kill or fuel.
There is nothing left to lose.
I'm getting desperate
Desperate for a revolution
Some kind of spark
Some kind of connection
***
She doesn't flinch when she sees him, and it's a tough blow to take. It's like his presence here means nothing to her, doesn't affect her in any way.
His stomach twists as she approaches. She's the same, old Cara, and yet she's somebody else entirely, with these ordinary clothes and her hair bleached by the sun, and those freckles dusting her nose that were never there before.
He thought he missed her. He didn't really know how desperately he did until he sees her smile as she turns to the girl at her side to say: "You go ahead. I'll catch up later."
The girl follows Cara's gaze to Din and gives him a sharp glare before nodding and striding away with a few other people Din can only perceive as a blurry peripheral presence. Cara and the girl are the only neat detail, the lack of personal space between them, the way the girl's hand brushes so nonchalantly over Cara's hip as she leaves, making sure Din doesn't miss her gesture, like a predator marking her territory.
Cara is no one's to claim, he would like to tell her, but he can feel jealousy poison his tone, even in his mind, and the comment is bitter and burning to swallow.
Greef excuses himself with a pretext Din doesn't even catch. Cara plops down in his empty chair, beautiful and confident as she's always been, her hair considerably longer, her usual braid still in place and a second one hanging on her shoulder with three colourful beads sparkling at the bottom of it. The girl had several of these beads in her own hair, too.
"She's... nice," says Din, blurting the first stupid thing coming to his mind, even though he doesn't think the girl is that nice and certainly didn't mean to lie. He's just trying to let Cara know he's ready to accept whatever new twist her life might have taken, he guesses.
Cara raises a brow at him. "Makea? She is. We've grown quite close."
“I've noticed."
Cara shakes her head, scrutinises him like she knows exactly what he's implying.
"Not like that.”
"I didn't-"
"Yes, you did,” she says, then immediately seems to regret the unnecessary sharpness. Her face softens, she offers him a polite smile as she nods to the pram floating beside him. “No luck with finding the kid's people?"
Din sighs. He's not here for small talk and she knows it. She doesn't ask how he's been or why he's here; he has no reason to be on Nevarro – no reason except her – and all there's left to inquire about is the only other thing that matters to him: the kid.
"None."
Cara sits back, rests an ankle over the opposite knee.
"You sound relieved."
"I am,” he admits. No grudges, no regrets. “I know it's selfish,” he adds. It's not meant as a justification and Cara doesn't mistake it for one. She knows him well enough.
She doesn't look at him, focusing on Greef's empty glass, instead, as she mutters: "Can you really be selfish for not wanting to part from your child?” He sees her throat bob. He wonders what she's afraid he will see in her eyes if she looks at him. “It's never easy to let go of someone you love."
And this is when she finally meets his eyes. A quick movement, like a treacherous stab he wasn't prepared to take. He can see it, now, what she was so afraid to show him: the vulnerability they both harbour inside from all the losses they've had, the sour awareness that, by deciding to stay here, she made sure they let go of each other before they could lose each other.
She thinks she did them both a favour. She couldn't be more wrong.
"Did you ever regret it? Staying behind,” he inquires, not even bothering to inject casualness in his voice. He wants her to know he still cares.
Cara is staring at the bottle of liquor all too intently, her fingertips drumming over the dirty surface of the table in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. She frowns pensively, her teeth biting into her bottom lip, then looks at him like the conclusion she's come to confuses her.
"Yes."
She narrows her eyes at him, as if she didn't intend to be so honest and somehow holds him responsible for this slip.
He's still elaborating her answer, glad that she didn't lie, that she let him know he's not the only one who's been wondering how things could have been if they hadn't parted ways, when he hears her ask:
"How did you get hurt?"
He loves how she tips her head to one side, daring him to deny.
He almost does. But the wound beneath his ribs throbs in his left flank, reminding him it's there and there is no way Cara could have seen it under the layers of bandages, clothes and Beskar.
"How do you know-"
"The way you're sitting,” she cuts him off like it's obvious. “I can also tell you haven't been taking proper care of it.”
She used to tease him about this. Back when they were a team and fighting together and there was no telling his wounds from her own while they sat together in the Razor Crest, discarding bloodied clothes to check the damage and fix what could be fixed, then complain together about what couldn't be fixed. He remembers the easiness between them in those moments, naked flesh cut and torn and burned, and their fingers working on each other to mend and soothe.
He still doesn't know, today, how they tiptoed for so long over such a thin border between comfort and eroticism and not once tumbled into the other side of intimacy. Their balance, perhaps, was too fragile, both of them not knowing what they wanted and how they wanted it, if it was worth to take a chance when what they already had was so close to perfect.
Close, but not close enough.
"It was easier when you were around."
The clatter and the chatter of the cantina takes away most of the subtle undertones of his confession. The noise devours the slight tremble in his voice, stripping his words of their intrinsic emotion.
"Really?” Cara snorts. “You need me to remind you you should look after yourself?"
“It's not what I meant.”
Cara snatches the liquor bottle from the middle of the table and unceremoniously brings it to her mouth, taking a long sip. She makes a disgusted face as she gulps the alcohol, then slams the bottle back down and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
“What did you mean, then?”
Still that challenging edge to her tone.
“We used to take care of each other,” he argues, and Cara looks like he just slapped her.
Her eyes go wide, then they become impossibly sad.
“Yeah,” she whispers. There's an imperceptible twitch in the obstinate tightness of her lips. “Used to.”
He remembers – he will never forget – her hands on his shoulders, on his back, the softness of her touch while her fingers worked to patch him up and he was just sitting there, helmet on his lap, bared and exposed, and yet not remotely concerned, because his trust for Cara has always been stronger than any fear of being seen.
In all honesty, during all that time with her a significant part of him wished she would look at him – that she would see him. He didn't know how hungry he was to feel her eyes on his naked face until she took those eyes and everything else away from him.
“Was it so bad?”
Cara shakes her head. “It was good,” she breathes, her knuckles whitening for how tight she's holding the bottle. “It was good.”
There is a shade of regret painted on her face. Fondness, too but the sadness... the sadness is still there.
“Then why throw it all away?” he insists.
Cara stares at the bottle, scratches its side with her thumbnail before drawing another sip. She makes to put the bottle down but then she mumbles a scornful 'What the hell' under her breath and drains it to its last drop.
“Let's call it damage control.”
In these dangerous days
Come a little bit closer
I need to understand
***
Cara leaves him with his questions and an empty bottle of liquor he would have loved to drain himself. She shows no mercy for his dismay, doesn't even look at the kid before standing up and turning her back to them, stalking away like they mean nothing to her.
Damage control, she said.
What was damaged about them? All they had was a sky-high unexploited potential and too many false starts to count. There never seemed to be a right time for them to allow their relationship to grow and every step forward they would make would end up countered my three steps backwards. As insecure and messy as they might have been, he never saw anything damaged about it.
When a shadow appears upon him, Din doesn't need to look up to know who it is: hands on her hips, chin proudly set, the red-headed girl, Makea, towers above him with a glare so cold it could freeze Mustafar over. She's younger than he initially thought, probably in her middle twenties, and the peculiar golden specks in her irises makes Din wonder if she's entirely human.
"You're him, aren't you?” she says, full of disdain. “The one who broke her heart."
It takes a couple of seconds for it to sink in. There aren't many her she could be referring to, and it's ludicrous that she would insinuate that he could hurt Cara in any way. Especially because, if anyone's heart got broken at all, it was certainly not Cara's.
"I did no such thing."
The girl stares, unimpressed. She puts a foot on the empty chair in front of her and leans forward with a contemptuous expression twisting her pretty face.
"She says she's still bound to someone she lost. I know it's you,” she spits. “Knew it the moment she saw you.”
Din appears relaxed in his chair, leaning back with his legs spread and one elbow causally resting on the table; inside, he's in turmoil. If it's him Cara still feels bound to – if she feels she lost him – why did she push him away all over again?
"Did she also tell you,” he says defensively. “That she's the one who left me?"
"Why would she leave you if she's in love with you?"
His heart misses a beat, somewhere between a spark of hope and a pang of resentment.
"She's not in love with me.”
It burns on his tongue to say it. He doesn't know why he's so sure of this as he defiantly returns Makea's loathing gaze through his visor. Neither he nor Cara ever said anything about feeling something from each other: it was all left unspoken, imbued in their gestures, never explicitly addressed. This is what made it so easy for her to slip away. This is what made it so hard for him to bear the separation. He could have accepted things going wrong, but the fact that Cara dropped everything before they even had a chance to see what they could become... this isn't acceptable.
"I see how she looks at you.” The girl's teeth bare threateningly as she speaks. “And maybe I can't see how you look at her,” she says with a blunt nod at his helmet. “But I don't need to, do I? If you didn't love her, you wouldn't have come back here."
"What do you want from me?"
For the first time, he catches a glimpse of a real emotion in Makea's eyes – something warm and fierce he has no difficulty recognising as devotion, whatever its nature may be.
"She's miserable. She tries to hide that, but everyone can see how broken she is.” Makea stands back, angrily pushing the chair back with the heel of her boot. “You came back for her,” she snaps at Din, furious as only a woman in love can be. “Now either take her away with you or leave her once and for all."
“She didn't follow me then,” Din objects matter-of-factly. “Why would she follow me now?”
Makea smirks – a blue, bitter smirk that doesn't reach her eyes.
“She doesn't strike me as the sort of person who'd make the same mistake twice.”
Why we kill the things we love the most
***
He finds Cara in the morning, after forcing himself to steer away from her for a little while.
He spends the night thinking of the life Cara could have built here and didn't, of how Makea's eyes glittered with spite when she told him Cara is in love with him and still struggles with this. If there is any truth in this, any at all, he needs to find out.
Greef tips him off when Din asks him to look after the child for a little while: Cara likes to start her mornings by throwing some kicks and punches in her favourite spot in the whole planet.
The sun has barely started rising when he gets to the rooftop of the cantina. Cara is there, wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top, beating up an invisible opponent with a force that would knock out a real person in two moves. There are droplets of sweat all over the several inches of naked skin, shimmering in the orange sunlight creeping up from beneath the horizon. He listens to every breath, every grunt, watches every move, trying to commit them to memory in case this is the last time he ever gets to see her like this, free of restraints and inhibitions, pure.
He approaches her slowly. She notices him but keeps training as if he wasn't here at all, so he plants himself in front of her to force her to acknowledge his presence, and it's only because Cara has a remarkable control over her strength if her punch stops right before hitting him in the middle of his chest. She would have hurt him, and possibly even broken a couple of ribs: he came here without his armour, unarmed, and by the way her eyes flicker bemusedly all over him Din knows Cara realises how meaningful this gesture is.
"I had a little chat with Makea."
Cara lowers her fist. The bandages around her hands are damp and dirty, bloody over the knuckles.
"She's lovely, isn't she?" she pants, wiping her forehead with the back of a hand.
Lovely isn't the first description Din would make of the girl, but this doesn't matter, now.
"She is,” he indulges. Then, as Cara starts undoing her bandages, he adds: “She's also very much in love with you."
Cara stops halfway through the task to give him a look so genuinely confused that Din is surprised by how oblivious of it all she actually is.
"Don't be ridiculous,” she laughs. The first bandage falls to the ground, revealing the deep scratches on her knuckles.
"She is. And she told me to take you away with me or leave you alone for good."
Cara's shoulders tense.
"She shouldn't have meddled,” she says, and the feeble timbre of her voice might be anger, but also uneasiness. Or regret.
Din takes a tentative step forward, breaking into her vibrant aura of heat. The scent of sweat and soap she emanates sends a shiver rippling through his body. His attention lingers on the tan skin of her arms, on the wet trails on her neck and collarbones, on her face. She has her hair tied up high, thin stray locks sticking to her forehead and cheeks. Beautiful. So beautiful.
"She cares about you,” he sighs, against his own interest. “And she's right: we shouldn't have parted without talking, first."
"What's there to talk about?"
"You never said why you decided to stay behind."
She glances at him with eyes too dark and breath-taking for him to look away. It's a weapon he doesn't think Cara realises she has, these eyes, something overwhelming and inescapable that grips his soul and takes a little bit of him every time she looks at him.
There is something his father – his Mandalorian father – used to say to him; Cara reminds him of that, of those words it took him decades of his life to fully comprehend.
“You'll meet countless people, most of which you won't even remember about – their faces, their names, their voices... They will mean nothing to you. But some of them – very few, if any at all – will leave a mark upon you, and you will remember them. And one in a million will also take something from you – something you might willingly give or unawarely let go of. These are the ones you won't want to lose, because they own a piece of you, be it large or small. They become something you can't live without, you'll always need them in order to feel whole. These are the ones you'll miss when they're gone. These are the ones who will be able to hurt you. These are the ones you'll love.”
Cara leaves the bandage of her left hand half undone. She stands in front of him, somehow looking taller than she is, her chest rising with every short breath. This and the flush on her cheeks make Din uncomfortably hot despite the absence of his armour.
For a moment, Cara's face is so soft he thinks he did it, got her to the breaking point. Her lips part, but she closes them at once, stubbornly facing away.
"I don't do relationships,” she says in a low whispers. “I don't do attachment. I don't know what went wrong with you and the kid, but-"
"Maybe something went right?"
He tries to take her hand. She doesn't let him. He still manages to grab one end of the bandage.
"Nothing ever goes right, here,” she replies dryly, trying to jerk the bandage out of his hand, but Din won't let go. He's done letting go.
“We were going right.”
It hits him as he hears himself utter this thought, as if he didn't know until now, didn't know that the reason he couldn't bring himself to accept his abrupt separation from Cara was that she deliberately chose to cut a bond that was already there, already strong. And for what?
A cool wind blows between them. The sky is starting to bloom with shades of pink and purple as the sun ascends from the lava planes, its pale light outlining Cara's profile in a myriad of glimmering droplets of sweat.
"How long would it last?” she blurts. It's almost desperate. She shakes her head weakly, gazing down at the piece of bandage in his hand. “I'm good at loving from afar – the pining, the longing, the heartache... I'm so good at that.” She meets his eyes, looking suddenly helpless. Scared. “But the real deal? Not my area of expertise."
"So you won't even give us a chance?"
Cara licks her lips. She tugs at the bandage, silently begging to be set free. Din doesn't give in.
"I always fuck up,” she insists, her voice cracking, forcing her to swallow. “And fuck up big. You have a kid to think about."
It hurts, the distance this brief sentence puts between them, as if Cara needed to remind him – or herself, perhaps – that they're separate realities, that he has a kid and she doesn't. Like she didn't protect him and take care of him, too.
This is not what he wants.
"I'm doing this for you, man, believe me. You're better off without me."
It's clearly not what she wants, either.
Din can't tell her the truth, what he hasn't been able to admit even to himself, yet – that he loves her. Loves her like a moth loves the burning brightness of the fire that is slowly pulling it into the spell that will ultimately kill it.
He wraps the bandage around his own hand, once, twice, gradually erasing the distance between himself and Cara until he can feel her body against his as he mutters: "I'm willing to take a chance."
A hint of dampness is forming at the corners of Cara's eyes. She tightens her lips, swallows again, but it doesn't go away. Instinctively, her hand tries to slip away; Din's fingers, however, are too close and ready to catch her.
"Why?” she protests, her roughness crumbling in front of his gentle determination. “Why risk everything?"
So she's afraid of fucking up.
He gets it.
He understands.
And he can't guarantee they won't fuck up, but if they don't even try how will they find out?
He grabs her hand, squeezes it until he feels her tremble.
"Because it's worth it."
You're worth it.
He thinks it.
Doesn't say it.
Somehow, between the lines, he knows she hears it anyway.
And even though our love is doomed
And even though we're all messed up
You're the only thing worth fighting for
You're the only thing worth dying for
***
“I should have asked you last time. I didn't, and I regret it. But I'm asking you now: come with me.”
He's begging and he doesn't even care. He didn't bother to bring pride to this conversation, and even if he ad, it would be lying at Cara's feet by now.
"I don't see how this is supposed to work."
"You mean apart from the fact that it was already working?"
She gives him a heart-breakingly miserable smile.
"You think I'm this brave, invincible soldier, and maybe on the battlefield I am. But feelings?” She gives a soft squeeze to his hand, like a reluctant apology. “I've always run from them before they caught me. But with you... I let down my guard and... things happened.”
“You mean me and you?”
Cara huffs out a brittle laugh. "Me, you, and that little green thing. And I don't really know what I'm supposed to do now.” She shrugs, shoulders tight with hesitation. “I never got to this point before. It's-"
"Confusing?"
"Terrifying."
But isn't this the point in relationships? Finding strength together, overcoming difficulties together. What they don't know, they can learn. They're entitled to stumble, to fall. They'll find a way to stand up again.
Why stay here if she isn't happy? If neither of them is, when they're apart?
"Would it make any difference if I told you we're in this together?"
Despite his visor, Cara stares into his eyes, impossibly close, her look oozing doubt and blatant, unmistakable love.
"So we're both... what? Lost and fragile?” She sounds so cynical Din can't even move or breathe. This doesn't sound like a leap of faith: it sounds like a defeat. "It's been years since I had someone I loved. I don't know if I can-"
But there are no ifs. No more wrong moves left to make, he muses, feeling like she's slipping away from him even though he's holding on to her so firmly he's sure he's going to bruise her.
He won't allow this. Makea is right: it's all or nothing at this point. If she doesn't want to risk to hurt him in a possible future, she's going to have to hurt him now. She's the only one who can put an end to this.
“These are the ones who will be able to hurt you. These are the ones you'll love.”
Maybe Cara doesn't feel about him the way he feels about her. Maybe it's nothing, a delusion, a mistake. But maybe it's not.
"I know I need you more than you need me-" he tries to say, but Cara's free hand clasps over his mouth before he can finish.
"No,” she whispers curtly. She frowns like she's mad at him for even saying that. “You have no idea how wrong you are."
“Then why-”
Cara blinks. Something breaks between them and she steps back, goosebumps rising all over her skin while the wind blows on the rooftop, tousling her hair.
“Why can't you just let go?” she asks, a shaking cry that knocks the air out of his lungs. “Why am I so important to you?”
The answer to this question is the point of this whole situation – his loneliness, his return to Nevarro, his desperate attempt to restore things as they used to be: he, the kid, Cara. No one else. Nothing else.
He could tell her. Tell her how he feels, how she made him feel when she told him so carelessly they were going to part ways without a reason. He could tell her, but would she listen?
“Why are you asking if you won't hear the answer?”
And even though our love is cruel
And even though our stars are crossed
We're still waiting for tomorrow
We're still aching for tomorrow
***
“I've always been on my own...”
Cara trails off. She fumbles for words, bathed by the gold of the light of the sun, now almost a full circle in the clear morning sky. She keeps glancing down at her hand folded into Din's, wrapped up with it tightly by the bandage with her blood and her sweat soaking it.
This is them, how they begun: with punches and bruises, and a misunderstanding.
She tries again:
“Ever since Alderaan was-” It doesn't work. She sighs, rubbing her forehead between her fingers.
Din wants to say something, but Cara begins one more time, this time more firmly. This time, she looks at him in a way that tells him he should just let her speak.
“I've been looking for somewhere to belong, and I've looked pretty much everywhere.” A small smile lingers on her lips. “I didn't realise until you left... the belonging I was looking for was not a place.”
Din thinks he knows what she's trying to tell him, he just doesn't dare to believe it. It too good – too good to be true. After all the walls between them, all the stupid miscommunications... is she finally letting him in?
“Does it mean you've found it?”
“I guess he found me.” Cara pulls up their joint hands, gives a little meaningful tug. “And won't let go, apparently.”
Din tugs back. “No, he won't.”
Cara observes him for a long while, cautious, a hint of doubt still clouding her face.
“Why do you care so much?” she asks. As if she didn't know.
He came all the way from across the galaxy for this – all of this. For her.
“You're not the only one who wishes to have a home to go back to,” he says as his free hand comes up to brush the sticky stands of hair off her face. His fingertips trace a line down her cheek, among the salty sheen of her drying sweat. He wonders what it would be like to kiss her now, what she would taste like.
He shoves these thoughts away. They're too painful to bear, now.
“Tell me you don't want to come with me,” he continues, as gently as he can. “And I'll leave. And never come back.”
A surge of panic flashes in Cara's look.
“I'm trying. And I can't.” Tentatively, she moves her free hand to his chest, right above where his heart is beating fast and full of expectation. “Why can't I lie to your face?” she wonders, and grins at his bewildered hesitation. “Rhetorical question, no need to answer.”
“You'll come?”
“What do you think, you son of a bantha?” Cara playfully taps his chest. “You come here with this brooding hero attitude, spill your kriffing heart out for me, call me your home... It's not fair.”
Din covers her hand with his own, presses it down.
“But it's the truth.”
Nevarro was his home for a very long time, a home he lost when he lost the people who raised him and grew up beside him. A home he found again in the most unthinkable of places – a green baby with extraordinary powers and a woman who tore through years and years of safe seclusion in a matter of days and found her way to his soul so smoothly he didn't even realise until it was too late, until she was irremediably under his skin, and he under hers.
“It is,” Cara echoes wistfully. The smile on her lips spreads shyly. It feels more genuine, now.
Din relaxes for what feels like the first time in months. He feels ashamed by this, by the depth of this relief. All his life, he's been self-sufficient, independent, a lone warrior in a universe that had nothing to offer to him except another hunt, more money to bring to his clan. A clan that was taken from him. A clan he's built again from ashes with different people, different ties. Cara belongs to this clan. Cara built it with him.
She picks up the end of the bandage he's rolled over his hands and starts unfolding it, freeing his hand, then her own. The bandage falls to the ground. She doesn't let go of him.
“What are you doing?” he inquires as she pulls him closer, slipping a hand behind his neck to guide him down toward her, until his helmet touches her forehead.
“Really?” she replies with a smirk, eyes fluttering closed. “You have some reading to do about Mandalorian culture, man.”
She's shaking. It could be the cool breeze, or it could be the fact that she's finally allowing both of them some physical contact after such a long time of emotional starvation and too many mistakes.
“I'll catch up, if it pleases you,” he breathes, eliciting a small laugh from her and even himself.
He touches her hips in a mute question and Cara slides his arms around herself, letting him tuck her against his body, offering warmth and anything else he has to give.
“I have conditions,” she mumbles after what feels like an eternity, face buried in his neck.
He'll give her anything she wants. He can take any condition if he gets to leave with her.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
He cups her neck, his thumb tracing her jawline. The urge to kiss her salty skin is still there, clipping his breath in his throat, hitching in his fingertips as he touches her to make himself believe this is real.
“You know what they say about beggars.”
Cara leans into his palm, clutching at his shirt for grounding.
“This is as important to me as it is to you,” she murmurs, eyes still closed. She opens them as her lips part quietly; her voice is thick and hoarse when she says: “I don't wanna screw this up by rushing things.”
This is more than he was hoping for.
He came for an explanation, for his own peace of mind, and now Cara offers him an opportunity, a chance to explore a possibility she denied them six months ago. The last thing he wants is to ruin everything before it even begins.
“That goes for both of us.”
“I'm gonna need to move at my own pace. If you can wait- if you can be patient-”
He slides his fingers into her wet hair, drawing her back to himself so that he can rest his forehead upon hers again. One day, he promises to himself, there will be no Beskar between them, no filter. One day, he will show her the smile her mere presence can so effortlessly bring to his face.
“Take as long as you need.”
Cara nods, then a light chuckle starts spreading her lips.
“By the way, taking it slow? Doesn't mean not going anywhere.” She runs her hand up his chest to curl it around his neck with a suggestive sparkle in her eyes. “Just so you know.”
“You have the lead. Where you take me, I'll follow.”
“I'll hold you to that.”
They stand there for minutes, maybe hours. The sun rises upon them, thin blades of light filtering through the thin spaces between their bodies, through the gaps between their fingers as they hold onto each other without any more useless words, just basking into this moment that changes everything – what has been and was is yet to be.
When they finally find the courage to move and go back downstairs, the world doesn't look the same. Even they don't feel the same.
He accompanies Cara to her door, reluctant to let her disappear behind it, fearing that maybe she'll change her mind if she finds herself alone with what she put together in these few months here – a space of her own, silly mundane possessions that come with stability, like an actual bed, maybe a desk, books, plants and flowers.
“Do you need help packing your stuff?”
Cara shurgs.
“I travel light, have you forgotten?”
Din shouldn't feel so elated by the fact that she just admitted that in half a year living here she didn't gain anything worth taking away. She arrived with the few things she had on herself when he first met her and she's going to leave with not much more than that. She wasn't lying when she said she couldn't find what she was looking for.
“Isn't there anything from here you'd like to take with you?”
She shakes her head indulgently.
“Everything I'm attached to fits into my arms.”
“You sure?”
Without a warning, Cara wraps her arms around him, grinning mischievously, and lifts him up like he weights nothing.
“Yep,” she confirms, putting him down. “Pretty sure.”
She turns to open the door. Din grabs her wrist before she can cross the threshold.
He can't say what he wants to say. The situation is too delicate to risk throwing it off balance by scaring Cara away with a reckless slip. But he needs to say something, if only to get rid of the feeling he hasn't been completely honest with her. And if she's not ready to hear what he has to tell her just yet, he'll respect it.
So he whispers: "Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum."
Understandably, Cara scowls. He has no illusion his tone didn't convey exactly what he meant.
"Is that Mando'a?" she asks, tilting her head slightly.
“Yes.”
“What does-”
Din exhales an amused half a laugh. There is no way he can possibly explain in Galactic Standard what this Madalorian phrase encompasses. It's too complex a concept to be squeezed into a handful of inaccurate words that wouldn't do it justice.
"I'll tell you,” he says softly. “When you're ready.”
He can wait.
He can't wait.
In due time, she'll understand.
Perhaps, deep inside, she already does.
And even though we're all messed up
You're the only thing worth fighting for
[ Even Though Our Love is Doomed, Garbage ]