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When you wake, there’s a cold sweat on your brow, and the hull is completely dark. Your heart pounds like a fluttering bird that cannot land, and you push yourself up carefully in the small bunk you occupy. This is not the first time you’ve woken in the dark following the death of Toro Calican, and there has yet to be a time you remember the dream that wakes you.
Hyperspace is quiet, peaceful even, but tonight something in your bones restlessly aches. Your throat is raw, your limbs sore and stiff, and it takes some shuffling to quietly slide out and over to the ladder. You have never gotten up in the middle of the night on the Razor Crest before, the fear of the overwhelming darkness with the lights out and the certainty you might fall or embarrass yourself keeping you stuck in the bunk, fitfully trying to find sleep again when you do wake up. But tonight, you think you’d rather let the quicksilver of the stars streaming by the windows wash over you than wrestle in the dark of the hull.
As you stare up from the shadows of the lower level of the ship, you can see the soft silvery blue light pouring out of the cockpit’s open doors above. Your fingers shake as you climb up the rungs, taking a breath with each step. When you pull yourself up, your sleeping shift has fallen off your shoulder, your hair loosens from its plait. You shiver from the cold air, crossing your arms and taking cautious steps through the threshold.
The pilot’s chair creaks when you walk in before slowly at your approach, and you stop in your tracks to find Mando cradling the child against his chest. It’s hard to see past the shadows the chair creates, but the small bundle, wrapped in his cloak and snoring softly, doesn’t make a peep when he tilts his head up at you.
“What is it?” The quiet baritone is raspy from sleep and tender as you’ve ever known it. The following days after leaving Tatooine have been bitter. There are hunters on your heels, and it is a full-time occupation for the Mandalorian to find new places to run, new places to hide. You can taste his discomfort and anger in the air, the tension and fear of being found making the child fussy and hard to soothe.
To know it was all your fault has left you weary. You draw closer until you kneel gently beside the chair, resting one gentle hand on his thigh.
This close, you realize he does not wear his armor, and you still. Only his helmet, and your fingers feel soft fabric and muscle beneath it. He’s never been without the beskar in your presence before, and you swallow hard, looking down at your hand where it holds your balance. You’re startled when one of his hands reaches out to touch your face. Blinking widely up at him, his fingers hesitate in the space between you before drawing two fingers over the apple of your cheek.
“You’ve been crying.”
“I had a dream,” you whisper, not feeling the tracks of salt beneath your lashes until the bare pads of his fingers whisper over the heated skin of your face. His thumb brushes beneath your eyes, and you close them, leaning against his hand. It feels so much like forgiveness. “And it was bad.”
The Mandalorian seems content to settle in the silence with you before shifting forward. You open your eyes in time to see his shadow lean past you to set the child in his crib, drawing another blanket over him to block out the light without covering his face. When he leans back, you settle on your heels, leaning against one of the consoles, and you stare at each other in the starlit cabin.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asks, folding his hands over his stomach, just above where his belt rests. Even his vambraces are gone, and the long, dark sleeves of his shirt are pushed up just above his wrists. You can’t see much in the darkness of the cabin, but starlight kisses his shadow every other moment enough for you to feel safe.
You consider the offer, sniffling and reaching up to wipe your face. Neither of you have ever spoken of things such as dreams before, nothing beyond the immediate. It feels too intimate, too warm to be so close with words. You swear his fingers still trace your face when you finally look toward him again.
“I don’t remember it to tell you,” you finally murmur, leaning your back against the cool metal wall. “And I would not burden you with it even if I could. I’m sure you have enough of your own.”
The Mandalorian says nothing to that, and you both watch the other without pretense or expectation. He seems to be more shadow than man, save for the silvery glow that cuts the beskar protecting his face. Something reminds you, then, of the language he has taken to speaking more in your presence, and you draw your hands into your lap.
“You call the child verd’ika . What does it mean?”
He shifts back against the pilot’s chair, stretching his long legs in front of him. You can see his boots are unfastened around his calves, hanging loosely in repose. “It means ‘little soldier,’” he says, leaning his head back more comfortably. After a longer pause, he adds, “My...the Mandalore who took me in called me that when I was a child.”
Something hot burns inside you beneath the bones protecting your heart, and you roll your head to regard him as best you can. “Taken in? You were not born to the Mandalorian?”
“No. I was a foundling. Raised in their fighting corps, and I swore the Creed when I came of age.” You have only heard his voice so quiet once before, just after he killed Toro Calican and comforted you as you fell apart. You recognize this, the tone and the moment, for what it is. It does not cost him little to share something so raw with you, and you feel compelled to give him something back to cover what he has lost.
“The Imperials killed my father for hiding rebels,” you say, the thread you begin to pull tugging something tender inside you that putrefied beneath your grief. It almost makes you sick to admit it. “And they felled my mother for fighting back.”
The Mandalorian leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He reaches out a hand, and you slip your own into his, unfamiliar with the smooth skin of his palms and fingers. You imagine the gloves protect him from the calluses of other working men, and it makes you want to smile.
“What are you doing?” you ask, looking up into the gleaming shade of his helmet.
His voice is gentle when he asks, “Has no one ever held your hand?”
You shake your head, helpless and a little lost. When his thumb brushes over your knuckles, you shiver. “No. It feels nice,” you say, moving your other hand to trace small designs over his fingers. They’re long, finely shaped things. “Does it feel...odd to be without your gloves?”
His helmet shakes once, echoing your words back, “No. It feels nice.”
Shifting forward, you sit up on your knees between his boots, following him as he slowly sits back in the chair to regard you. Taking both his hands now, you draw your fingers from the bare, smooth skin on the inside of his wrists, over his palms, and curl your fingertips over the new territory. Your lashes kiss your cheeks as you drag your fingers up and down his hands, memorizing the rivers of veins, the valleys and hills of his knuckles, all the way down to his own fingertips.
His intake of breath, as if he holds it in beneath his helmet, makes you open your eyes and speak your mind.
“You have very lovely hands.”
His fingers close over yours so suddenly it scares you, and you look up.
“What did they do?” asks the Mandalorian, a desperate tone in his voice you’d never heard before. It makes your heart beat hard enough to hurt. “The Imperials. What did they do to you after.”
Your lips part, pressing the pads of your fingers against the soft skin inside his wrists. You can feel his pulse beating strong and fast. The air tastes humid between you both as you’re cradled between his knees.
“The Moff commanding the operation of executing traitors indentured me in his household,” you say softly, recounting the story like it’s from a book rather than your own life. “I served his wife for most of my life. Until her death.”
He spoke from between his teeth. You could hear it. “Did she mistreat you?”
You turn your head once, then shake it slowly. “N-No. She was kind to me,” you say with a pained smile. “She let me read the books in her study, and play in the kitchens with the other servants. I missed my mother most when I was with her,” you frown gently, feeling tears begin to tighten your throat. “I can’t remember what she looks like now.”
The Mandalorian turns your hands beneath his own, and his palms are warm on top of yours. They rest on his knees. “You could see, when you were with this household.”
It was not a question.
You nod.
The two of you are silent, the pregnancy of what is to naturally follow hanging between you.
“You can ask me, Mandalorian,” you say, not realizing you’re crying again until a tear falls and lands on his knuckle. “Though it is not a pretty story to hear.”
You think perhaps he will not ask when he is silent for so long, holding your hands like pale birds he is afraid to set free. This will cost you the most, you think. Not because it is painful, but because no one has ever cared enough to know. When he speaks, you wish you could be closer than you are.
“How did you lose your eyesight?” he asks, and you know he is afraid of the answer.
I will be brave for both of us. Perhaps sharing your own ghosts would help him find rest. Perhaps you will find rest, if he holds them for you. “My lady did not want a slave, too merciful for the Empire, but I was a child and naive. I saw her often caring for others, servants and visitors to their estate, so it did not...occur to me, until much later, that some of the people she cared for, gave food or money to were resistance fighters.”
Your throat begins to close up around tears, thinking of the sweet, lined face of the woman who protected you from licentious fates. Blinking hard, you shake your head and sniff. “I was such a stupid child, too...soft and blind, even when I could see,” you mutter, remembering the utter chaos, the cacophany of screams and fighting when the Moff had discovered his own money, his own resources were being fed to the enemy. Your eyes unfocused as you remembered the abject horror you felt when you saw a man drag his wife by her neck, throwing her into a wall, and the same sickness you felt in your stomach then came back now. “I wanted to protect her. Because I loved her. So I told them I did it.”
The silence in the cockpit is deafening, and you take a deep, cleansing breath. You had never repeated the truth before, too afraid to give it voice, of being the reason another good person died. You slide your pale eyes towards the Mandalorian and give him a small, sad smile. “It was more believable, I think. More bearable to everyone that a traitor’s daughter was also a traitor, rather than an Imperial lady of standing. And she still tried to protect me,” you murmur, thinking of her white face drawing in terror. “And I was punished. It was personal to him, so he did it himself. His version of honor,” you scoff, eyes dropping to your hands. “I was taken out into the middle of nowhere, and it was hot and empty. I was scared-” Your breathing hitches, and you turn to look at the child’s cradle. The soft snores give you courage. “-I was so scared.”
You consider the truth, the memory in your mind that fizzles like a burning picture. “He liked it, when I was scared. It excited him, and...children, little girls know. We know what that is,” you whisper, sniffling and trying to pull your hands back to wipe your face. The Mandalorian holds them tighter.
The silence of hyperspace is no longer peaceful. It’s alive with your hammering heart and labored breathing. You don’t know how you go on, but stars, you do. “It was exciting for him to punish me, but it was against the law where we came from, then, to kill children even if they were a traitor. If I were to make it home, I would still be his property. If I didn’t...he could claim it was an accident, an expenditure. So he left me there, in the middle of nowhere. I don’t recall much more than walking through mud and sand and eating bugs because I was hungry. On the second day, my eyes began to hurt, and I did not know the sun was…” Your chest spasms, and you recognize sobs building up. You blink back the pearls of brine gathering in your eyes. “There were traders passing through who found me delirious with thirst, but I couldn’t...see their faces. They took me back to the Moff, but I never saw anything the same after that.”
You shake, trembling from your center, though you are not cold anymore. In fact, you feel as though you are radiating a heat that borders a fever. “He seemed satisfied.”
The Mandalorian pulls your hands gently upward, pressing them against his chest.
“What was his name, Cyare?”
You turn your face upward and find the visor shining just mere inches from your own visage. You blink slowly, curling your fingers over his own against his chest where his heart thunders like a war drum, beating for blood that is not his own.
“Give me his name,” the Mandalorian whispers. “And I’ll have him kiss his life away at your feet.”
Tears fall from your lashes now, and you can’t stop them. “That is dead and gone, Mandalorian.”
“Not to me,” the warrior hisses suddenly, one of his hands snatching from his chest to cup the back of your head and pull you close against him. Your breath leaves you in a soft gust, but you go willingly. “Not when it is you who has been wronged.”
Your heartbeat quickens, and you shake your head slowly. “I do not want him here with us. Please,” your voice breaks, and you feel his fingers twitch in your hair where they have threaded through the soft tresses near your ear. “It is enough to know you would take this from me. For me.”
When he stands up, you feel weightless as he brings you with him. It is a natural feeling when his arms, softened by the woven fabric of his shirt, draw you against his warm body. Your cheek rests against his chest, and you close your eyes, leaning into the quiet strength he offers so freely, safe and sound.
“So that’s why your eyes look like moons,” he murmurs. “Because you are brave.”
You’re growing drowsy, soothed by the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest beneath your palm, and you sway when he shifts just enough to tuck his armored chin against your shoulder. You hum, too comfortable to do more. “If you will not give me a name,” he whispers, curling his fingertips into the watery fabric of your shift. “Will you take one?”
“I will take anything you give me,” you mumble, smiling. Letting loose the past has made you drunk with feeling, everything too much and close, and his warmth is even more intoxicating. Your words are muffled against his shirt, but you know he hears you by the way his heart jumps beneath your cheek.
“Din Djarin,” he murmurs, lifting his helmet enough to touch his crown to yours. “It is my name, and it is yours to keep.”
Something soft beneath your breast aches. You never knew to call him anything, and so you have not. Identity is sacred to the Mandalore, as you know from reading in your lady’s study so long ago. It is the little you know of their Creed. The warmth of his palms through the fabric of your clothes at your back pull you from your surprise, and you lift your head to look at where your fingers splay against his chest. The conflict you feel must show on your face, because he soon grows still against you.
“May I say it out loud?” you finally ask, curious and hesitant to touch this new part of himself he has given to you.
A long, slow sigh comes from his helmet, and you feel him relax. “Only to me. Only in front of the child.”
You smile, slowly stepping backward out of his arms. You aren’t sure where the two of you stand, who has given more to the other, but you know this as more than trust. “Then I’ll keep it for you. Thank you.”
He lets his hands fall from you to hang loosely at his sides, and you imagine he might be blushing beneath his helmet. Wanting to spare him any shyness, you move to the cradle to look upon the sleeping infant. You feel him move to stand behind you, his hand coming to touch your shoulder in comfort. It was a touch that asked for nothing. It simply told you he was there, and you reached back to lay your fingers over his.
“Why do you never sleep in your own quarters?” you ask softly, turning your face to the side to make sure he can hear your quiet tone.
The question must surprise him, because you feel his fingers flex on your bare shoulder. “The cooling system that recycles the air is above it. It makes it colder than the rest of the ship,” he murmurs, answering another question you had. “Too cold for the baby.”
You nod in acknowledgment, swaying as you hold onto his fingers that remain on your skin, warming you through. “It’s more comfortable than your chair,” you whisper, your voice losing its strength. A distinct part of you wants to leave the cockpit and everything you gave to each other behind for tonight, and you think the two of you will find better rest away from your pasts.
His breathing is soft but forced, as if he’s concentrating on something. “More comfortable than that...stupid bunk you sleep in.”
A little laugh escapes your lips, and you turn to look at him. “You’re the one who told me to sleep there.”
“No I didn’t,” he replies, quick and indignant. His hand falls from your shoulder to settle on his hip.
“When I first boarded, you told me to stay down there,” you whisper, not sure why you’re smiling but you are. You can’t seem to stop.
He seems befuddled by your statement before he shakes his helmeted head quickly. “I just-that-I only meant while we took off,” he huffs in exasperation, his voice rasping when it goes up an octave, one hand flinging out to the side.
You suddenly snort, trying to shush him and falling into giggles. You smother your laughter with both hands so as to not wake the child. The Mandalorian drops his head, his chuckles coming out from under the lip of his helmet as you two snickered like children. You don’t know why it’s so funny, but your sides begin to stitch as you hold your hand over your mouth, tears pooling beneath your lashes. You think of the nights spent curled in that dark corner of the hull, the ghost of the trigger in your hands jerking you from sleep, and suddenly you’re not laughing anymore.
The Mandalorian’s hands fall to his sides, and he’s not immune to the cloak of exhaustion, either. “You should sleep,” he whispers, a hiccup of panic bubbling from behind your hand that still covers your mouth. You shut your eyes, nodding in agreement. You’re on the knife’s edge of falling into hysteria, the guilt that’s sickened you for days inflaming the brief comfort you’d shared moments ago. “T-Take my bed. One of us should use it.”
Your hands fall away, and you sniffle again, feeling, for the moment, sure enough you won’t break apart. You nod, turning your face back down to the sleeping child before wrapping your arms around yourself and walking to the cockpit door. You can see the door to his quarters, open and dark, the cool air brushing over your feet. You lean your back against the threshold, looking back to find his helmet trained on you while he stands watch over the child’s cradle.
“Come with me.”
You can hear when his breath stops beneath the helmet, and your eyes crinkle, trying to make out more of him. He looks back down at the cradle, and your heart tugs for this faceless man and his sought after son. You think, looking at him in the starlight and steel, you would do anything to make him laugh again, anything for him to hold your hand. You would lose your sight once more if it meant he would be there to reflect the light so you could see.
He leans down to lift the bundled child up, his long dark cloak trailing from his arms, and he slowly closes the distance between you. His helmet tilts down to where you lean against the doorframe, and he nods. When you enter the cabin, he pauses at the door as you make your way to the bed, folding the tightly made up sheets back.
“You’ve been in here before.”
Your heart jumps, but from his unaccusing tone, you know you have nothing to fear. “Yes,” you answer, spreading out the woolen blanket from the foot of the bed. Perhaps you could buy a heavy fur, should you find a trader in a market. The room was cold enough for it. “When you were gone.”
“Good.” Your cheeks heat. Turning toward him, you fold your hands, the motion habitual. He steps forward and hands you the sleeping child, and you feel his hand on your shoulder, pressing you gently down until you’re seated on the edge of the bed, looking up at him. “Go on,” he rasps, his thumb drifting over your collar where your shift meets skin. “Lay down.”
Holding his gaze as much as you can in the dark, you slowly lay back, pushing yourself to the far edge and angling your body towards the middle. The child is swallowed in the nest of the cloak, kept warm by your own body heat, and you know, watching the Mandalorian sink onto the edge of the bed, that he will be kept warm tonight. You hear the clicking and unfastening of his belt, listening as he hangs it up and the holster bumps the side of the bed. His boots are next, falling with muffled thumps to the floor.
Lastly, you hear a quiet metallic hiss, and you open your eyes. It’s too dark for you to see anything, save for an outline of his shoulder or arm as he lays back in bed beside you. But you hear the sound of his breathing, naked and pure in the room so close, and your heart aches. What a beautiful sound.
“Why…” You lick your lips, your fingers winding into the sheet as you press your cheek into the pillow. “Why don’t you take your helmet off more?” There’s a long pause before you add, “I can’t see your face, you know.”
You think of your previous owner’s words. I can only imagine what kinds of uses a blind servant can have for someone like you .
He shifts beside you, his elbow brushing your hand that lays over the child. You know he will answer, you can practically hear his mind working as you lay so close to him.
“It would be…” You can hear him frown thoughtfully as he speaks. “Disrespectful.”
“To your religion,” you surmise, closing your eyes as you begin to lose the will to keep his shadow in your sight.
He turns his head on the pillow. “To you.”
Your eyes are closed now, and you feel a smile tug at the corners of your lips. “Explain yourself, Mandalorian,” you murmur, thinking it would be nice to listen to him talk like this, without beskar separating you, while you slip into dreams.
His arm straightens, and you feel his hand rest on top of the sheets where your knee is curled up. “You are no less a soul because you cannot see my face. I would not use that as an excuse for my comfort.”
If you were more awake, you might have felt your heart leap, your eyes fill up with tears. There was much you wanted to say to him, so much you wanted to pour out in return, but your breathing evens out, your eyes growing too heavy to open. You use the last thread of consciousness to reach over, and as you fall asleep, you hold his hand.