Chapter Text
The Razor Crest was a fine ship—that fact couldn't be denied on any front. Not that Din had ever been fussy about living quarters. But the Razor Crest had become an extension of him. It got him where he needed to go, but it had also become an infallible shelter; it was as close to home as he ever imagined having. However, the minute Omera and Winta stepped foot in the hold, Din started cataloging all of the modifications he needed to make. Because the Razor Crest was a fine ship—for a single bounty hunter and a baby in a reinforced cradle. But for four people to live comfortably (or, at least, acceptably) in her hull, she was going to need some upgrades, and fast.
Seatbelts were the first thing on the list. And some seats to go with them, if possible. Din punched in coordinates—the Shipbreaking Yard would have parts for cheap. They'd hardly taken off, and Sorgan was already shrinking below them as they accelerated, until it was nothing but a jade bead sewn into the fabric of space.
He heard Omera's voice from the hold:
“All right, Winta. I think you can let go now.”
A bed. Omera had to sleep somewhere, and they had de facto agreed to give the berth to Winta, since the child had his cradle. A bed for Omera and—and. Din shook his head. He was getting ahead of himself. Just because Omera had decided to come with him didn't mean she wanted to share a bed with him yet, in any sense of the word. Did it?
“What does it look like out there?” Winta's voice, still brittle, but with an overtone of light that he hadn't heard in a long time.
“Maybe you should come up and look,” he called over his shoulder. Moments later, he heard Winta gingerly climbing up to the cockpit.
The first time Din saw space, he was six years old. About thirty years of traversing the galaxy had made him numb to it all—the way the darkness felt expansive but not all-consuming, the way the white stars winked, sometimes whirling together in arrays of color and light; space hadn't felt cold to six-year-old Din. No, it had surrounded him like a warm blanket, like the one his father had tucked around him as he sat buckled in a seat in the cockpit, still shaking with adrenaline. That blanket had worn thin with use, and the galaxy had lost its magic in the mundane of his work. But when he turned and watched as Winta got her first look at space, Din was taken right back to that day, when all the worst of his life was eased, even for a moment, by something both new and ancient, both enormous and brushing right up against the window.
Winta froze, balancing herself against the doorframe. Her mouth opened, as if she wanted to say something, but all that came out was a wordless sigh that almost sounded like “whoa.” Din smiled under his helmet, extending his arm and beckoning.
“Come on.”
She took a few tentative steps into the cockpit, her eyes wandering across the expanse outside the window. Din turned back to the controls, making sure that they were still on track.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Winta's gaze couldn't be turned from the stars.
“There's so many .”
“And this is just a tiny part of them. There are billions and billions of stars, hundreds of moons, hundreds of planets.”
“And we can go to all of them?”
Din almost said yes, until he remembered the uninhabited, the suspicious, the cursed corners of the galaxy. He shrugged.
“Well, there are a few places that are...not friendly.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Winta finally turn to face him.
“They're the ones who are after little brother.”
Din shifted in his seat, thumbs tapping at the steering.
“Yeah,” he replied, “some of them are. But there are more good places than bad, I think.” He was suddenly grateful for his ability to lie.
Winta lingered on him for a moment, then drifted to the controls.
“When are we going there?”
Din snapped his attention to her, balancing herself on the edge of the control panel, staring at the nav screen with the seriousness of a soldier.
“What do you mean?”
Winta looked back at him.
“We're gonna go fight them, right? So they stop following us. Are we going there now?” she asked, turning back to the nav screen.
“Winta, I think that's enough for now.” Din hadn't heard Omera climbing up, but he was glad to hear her voice. She always seemed to be able to fill in his blanks. “Why don't you go play with little brother?”
“But Mama, I just got up here!”
“And you'll have plenty more chances to see everything. Go on.”
Begrudgingly, Winta stepped back from the controls and turned back toward the door.
“I'll show you the controls in a little while,” Din said over his shoulder.
Winta looked back at him, nodded, and carefully descended back into the hold.
Omera, meanwhile, laid a hand on the shoulder of the pilot's chair, taking her own look at the screen.
“Bracca?” Omera's tone sounded somewhere between a question and a statement.
“I've got a past client in the Scrapper's Guild. Owes me some parts.”
“And after that?”
Din sighed. If he was being honest, he hadn't thought that far ahead.
“Well,” he answered after a few moments, “we've got to keep moving to get the Imps off of our backs. It'll probably be a few months before we can settle. Until then, we move randomly.”
Din kept his face forward, navigating with half of his attention. With the other half, he watched Omera's reflection in the window. She turned and set herself quietly on the passenger seat, cradling one hand with the other in her lap. Her back stood straight, not making contact with the back of the chair. The unfiltered light from the stars dusted her skin with silver, and her eyes traced every constellation. Winta had been discovering; Omera was remembering.
“It's been a long time since I've been out here.” Her voice wasn't subject to the ship's artificial gravity.
“Is it how you remember it?”
Omera leaned back, crossing one leg over the other.
“There've been a few changes.”
Din's mouth quirked up at one corner. It was nice to welcome flirtation for once.
“Good changes?” he asked.
“Well, I'm certainly enjoying the company.”
Omera's smile grew for a moment, then faded. She looked back out the window, face falling. Her hands became active, grasping each other, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. She bit her lower lip as if trying to keep her mouth closed until she figured out what should come out. Din decided to break the silence for her—he sensed that they were both concerned about the same thing.
“Listen. About Winta, I...I froze.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just...she just went through hell, and she's already talking about hunting Imperials.”
And normally, Din would have respected Winta for it. That level of determination in a foundling promised a fierce future warrior. That attitude had served him well when he started his own training in the fighting corps. But for some reason, when Winta was the one proposing a full assault, it felt different.
“She's not ready for that yet, not by a long shot,” he continued. “But at the same time, I don't think she's ready to start training.”
Omera looked up at him.
“When do Mandalorians usually start training?”
Din huffed.
“As soon as they can walk on their own. But with what she's just been through...my father put off my own training for a while after he found me. Gave me time to adjust. But I don't know how long we'll have before...”
“...Before she's ready.”
“Before she has to be.”
Their reflections made eye contact. It was a watered-down kind of contact, distanced by both its indirect medium and Din's visor. It wasn't enough. Din reached for the auto-pilot. As he made a half-turn in his pilot's chair, he removed his helmet, setting it beside him on the floor. He ran one hand through his hair, then leaned toward Omera, resting his forearms on his thighs. Omera unfolded her legs, slipped her slender hands into his.
“I just... I want to protect...” Winta. The kid. Our kids. You. You . Us.
Omera squeezed his hands in reassurance.
“You will. You always have.”
“Really? Was I there when your village was destroyed, when Winta was kidnapped? Was I there to protect you then?”
“You couldn't have known that they were going to trace you back to us. And that's beside the point anyway. That's all over now.”
“Is it? Winta is going to have all of that in her head for the rest of her life—trust me, I would know. She doesn't deserve that.”
“But it happened anyway. As much as I hate that it happened, it did. But it wasn't your fault, Din. If Winta's kidnapping was anyone's fault, it was mine for not paying enough attention.”
“Don't you dare blame yourself—”
“Then why are you doing the same?”
Din stopped short, finding no reply. Omera sighed, leaning closer to him.
“Din...we don't have time to play this blaming game. We have to worry about what's happening right now. And right now, you're here. We're here.”
“And that's something I can't understand.” Din stiffened, looked anywhere but Omera as words poured out of him.
“I was trained to prepare for anything. I've planned for everything that could go wrong in a fight, every survival scenario, every possibility. Every single one. Except for this. I don't...I never thought that I would...that anybody would want...me.” His shoulders sloped forward as his gaze finally landed on their hands, intertwined. He could feel the warmth of her grasp starting to seep through his gloves.
“Din.”
He looked up. Omera's eyes met his.
“I knew from the minute I saw you.”
The minute she saw him...Din took himself back to the barn on Sorgan, his first glance at Omera as she finished raising the window slats—how the early afternoon sunlight made her golden, how she hesitated before she told him to come in, and how immediately he felt his guard dropping as he got to know her and her daughter. In that moment, had he also known, deep down, that something was going to come from their connection?
“...Really?”
Omera leaned forward a little more, giving him a tender smile.
“Really.”
At a loss for anything else to do or say, Din closed what little gap was left between them.
Of all the things he needed to get used to, he was certain that this feeling, this coming-together, would be the last to become normal. But that was all right. He liked how the coolness of the nerves creeping up from his gut combined with the warmth and soft motions of her lips. He liked the breeze of her breath against his skin as they parted, and the certain kind of light that came alive behind her eyes when she looked at him. She saw him, and saw him, and saw him. When she looked at him, he felt that he was no longer Mando, some anonymous archetype from a bygone age. He was Din: nothing more, and nothing less.
To be wanted for himself—not for his skills or his reputation, but for his heart—that was a gift he hoped would never fade.