Chapter Text
“There’s a bounty out for you, you know.”
Din looks up. It’s a throwaway comment Greef tosses at him over a bowl of soup. The kid, propped up in some ridiculous baby-modified chair Din had seen in the corner of the bar and dragged over, perks up. His ears tilt back, head angling slowly until he’s looking up at Din.
“Out for the kid,” Din says.
“Out for you.” Greef drops his spoon into the half-empty bowl, leaning back in his chair. “The job came down from up top a few cycles ago. ‘Mandalorian, full beskar, travels with a small green creature.’”
Din rolls his eyes. Greef doesn’t see this, but it feels good to do it anyway. “Who’d you give the job to?”
Greef has the gall to look offended. The kid glances his way at the indignant sputtering, then swivels his head towards Din again as if for explanation. Din tilts his head down at the kid’s bowl of soup. The kid gets the cue, ears darting back up like he’d forgotten he had food in front of him at all.
“No one,” Greef says, still looking put out. “I requested they pull it from the listings.”
“And they did?”
Greef shrugs. “I’m sure.”
Unlikely. The Guild isn’t prone to fully retracting any sort of bounty; they wouldn’t drop this one either, regardless of Din’s prior status. They might have pulled the job from Greef’s listing, but Din knows it’s not that simple.
“I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Good. A lot of people would line up for that job. Trust me.”
Din doesn’t, not really, but he knows Greef’s right. He’s done what he’s needed to do to survive, to provide for the Tribe, and that’s occasionally meant earning the sort of enemies that wear grudges like a second skin.
They drop the conversation there as the kid clutches his whole bowl with his two miniscule hands and attempts to dump the rest of the soup down his mouth. Greef tips further back in his chair, laughing loudly as Din takes the bowl a second too late. Most of what’s left of the soup pours onto the kid’s face. He makes a surprised gurgling sound, and Din ignores Greef’s increasingly obnoxious laughter, leaning over to dab the kid off with the end of his cape.
Round eyes watch him, the picture of innocence. “That’s not how we eat,” Din says simply. The kid hums, tilting his head to the side. Greef shoots a knowing look that Din doesn’t acknowledge; instead, Din spends the rest of the meal spooning the kid his food, deciding they’re all better off without another mini disaster.
“Going soft?” Greef says later as he follows them back to the Razor Crest. It’s not the sort of question Din deems worthy of answering. He lets Greef give the kid a last little hug, patting the space between his ears, and the kid hums happily. Din takes him back, tucking the kid in the space under his arm.
He pauses, considers, then pulls the distress beacon out of one of his pockets. “Give this to Cara.”
Greef eyes the device, turning it over in his hands. “So you are worried about the bounty?”
“No. It’s a precaution.”
Greef nods, but doesn’t seem convinced. “Alright. I’ll pass it over next time I see her.”
“Good.”
With that, he lets the kid wave a last farewell, tiny hands mimicking the motion he’s likely seen humans throw at each other enough times to understand. Greef smiles, big and genuine, and Din feels his stomach twist as the left-side gate lifts back into place, sealing them inside.
A moment passes. Din looks down at the kid, who looks up at him. He blinks, and gurgles, bright and familiar.
“We’re gonna teach you about spoons.”
The kid makes a rising noise of question, and Din tables it for another time.
.
He doesn’t think about the bounty thing again. He’s busy devoting his time to other tasks, such as a) trying to track down another Mandalorian and b) trying to track down a Jedi-person and c) trying to keep the kid from getting into the sort of trouble they can’t get back out of.
Between those three priorities, there’s not much time for anything else. Din keeps them on the move, laying low and moving fast to avoid any excess attention, and for the most part it works. They get in a couple scrapes, a few close calls, but it always ends the same way: the kid catches on quickly, familiar enough now with these things that he knows to close the hover cradle on his own, and then Din takes care of whatever the threat is and they move on to the next tip or planet or scrap of information pointing them to one of their goals.
After one such encounter - an overambitious mercenary who took one look at Din’s armor and apparently thought it was worth trying to kill him over - they return to the ship and Din plots a course up the Hydian Way. It’s not that he has a set destination in mind as much as he wants to give them a chance to breathe. It’s nice sometimes, to follow a path through established hyperspace; it allows him to drop navigation in favor of other things, like sleeping and checking their supply cache and cleaning his weapons.
He’s sorting through their food rations, plotting the next time they’ll have to land and gather more - it’s sooner than normal, accounting for the kid - when there’s a familiar shuffling sound behind him.
He looks over his shoulder. The kid is standing in the doorway, rocking back and forth.
This happens more and more often too; Din’s not the reassuring type, but he tries his best.
“It’s ok,” he says. “He has no way of tracking us. We’re safe.”
The kid makes a little sound, small, almost doubtful, scooting closer. Din watches, unmoving, as he wobbles over to his leg and taps on Din’s knee.
“I’m fine,” Din says. “It barely hurt.”
Which is only a partial lie. The guy had wielded a sort of club, dense and metallic, and while it wasn’t enough to pose a threat to the beskar, he’d landed a few lucky hits where the armor didn’t cover. Din had given himself the onceover afterwards, locking the door to storage so the kid wouldn’t see the bruises already blooming on his skin. It’s always been a part of the job; it doesn't phase Din, but he’s had to realize overtime that it might phase the kid.
The kid stares at him for a few long moments, eyes big and round, the downward tilt of his ears tugging something in Din’s chest that is still growing used to being tugged at all. He swallows the feeling down.
“Come on,” he says, pulling out one of the ration bars. Food is still the best way he knows to lift the kid’s mood; that, and taking him for a joy ride on the jetpack, which isn’t really an option right now. As expected, the kid’s ears angle up, a signal Din’s learned to interpret as happiness. “Early dinner?”
The kid shakes a bit in his excitement, pittering softly and outstretching his arms. Din grunts, lifting him up with one hand and pushing himself off the floor with the other. They eat in the cockpit, Din watching from the pilot’s seat as the kid munches on a bar and hums quietly to himself. His own ration bar is stale and dry, but it eases the gnawing hunger that he’s long grown familiar with. He eats less, now that the kid’s on board, just in case there’s some emergency and they have to survive off what they have in storage for a while. Besides, kids need nutrients. He’s positive of that one at the very least. He can go hungry, but growing aliens can’t afford to, at least not his.
Besides, the kid’s prone to trouble when he’s hungry. They’ve learned that the hard way, so Din makes sure to keep him well-fed when he can.
Dinner is followed by a lesson in ship controls; the kid’s showed a curiosity for them lately, and Din figures it doesn’t hurt for him to know his way around the cockpit. He’s never really sure how much the kid actually understands, but it’s worth a shot. If he lets the kid sneak off the accelerator bearing again, stashing the little metal ball in his robe, well, no one’s the wiser to it.
They sleep in the storage compartment Din’s converted into a cot, the kid’s satchel hung like a hammock above him. He watches it rock gently, shifting back and forth with the motion of the ship, until the kid starts snoring. Only then does he close his eyes and allow himself to sleep.
.
The Hydian Way takes them past the Mandalore sector. Not close enough that they’d be able to see the planet if they dropped out of hyperspace, but close enough that Din finds his thoughts wandering. To smoke, and death, and the coolness of beskar against his hands as he was jetted off of his home planet. Mandalore was never his home, but the memories still crop up any time he’s in this part of the galaxy.
He doesn’t dwell on it often. It’s part of the past, not worth revisiting. But it sits in the back of his mind as he watches the coordinates flash by, less than a lightyear away.
Sometimes, he thinks the kid can sense these things. Din is staring out the front of the cockpit when there’s a hand on his shin, nails against his armor. He looks down at round eyes and a tilted head, feels a rush of something unidentifiable in his chest, and picks the kid up, placing him in his lap. He doesn’t say anything, watching the stars shoot by, always just out of reach. The kid hums, shifting back against his armor, and so they watch together.
.
They drop out of hyperspace in the Gordian Reach, and dock on the planet Torque. It’s all industry, factories and rusting towers arching into a golden sky. Din decides it’s a satchel sort of planet, wrapping the strap of the bag over his shoulder and tucking it against his hip, lowering the kid inside.
“In and out,” he says. The kid hums in return.
He finds the nearest supply shop and uses a bit of what’s left of his units to buy more ration bars. The ship could use a few small repairs, but it’s nothing he can’t handle, so he pays for a few tools he’s short on before heading to the nearest food stop he can find.
The building is short and squat, built like a mistake, but the food is warm and the kid looks beyond excited as he swallows it down. Din picks up a spoon, holding it out pointedly. The kid looks up, unperturbed, and sticks to his method of slurping from the bowl's rim.
They’ll try again later.
Din spends his time surveying the bar, making sure no one’s looking too closely. The guests mostly mind their own business, so Din lets the kid stay until he’s done with the stew instead of packing it up and taking it on board like he’s usually tempted to. It’s good, he thinks, that the kid sees the world instead of being holed up on the ship for too long. Not that Din’s the child-rearing expert, far from it, but he thinks that one’s a bit on the common sense side of things.
The kid’s just finishing his stew when Din catches someone eyeing them from the corner of the room, a large Rodian with scales the color of pond scum. Din shifts his weight, leaning forward in his chair, hand sliding down towards his hip. He dips his helmet, an acknowledgement he hopes is read as a warning. The Rodian blinks and stands up.
The kid stops eating as the alien approaches their table, giving a few last gulps before pausing, watching the Rodian from the side of the bowl.
“A Mandalorian,” the Rodian says in Basic, its clicking tones tripping over some of the sounds less fit for the Rodian vocal structure. “It’s been long time since I see one of your kind.”
Din spares a glance for the kid, who slowly lowers the edge of his bowl back to the table and looks up at Din from his low seat.
“I’m just leaving,” Din says, standing up. The kid’s arms are already out, reaching for Din, and he feels a sharp pang of tension as he grabs the kid and puts him back in the satchel, shifting it further back so his cape covers the kid’s face.
“Not looking for work?” the Rodian says. They all smell the same; like vaguely rotting animals, left out in the sun.
“No.”
“That’s too bad. I got a job I need done, will pay hefty sum for it.”
Din hesitates; they’re running out of units, and fast. He doesn’t need beskar payments anymore, but if he’s going to support himself and the kid, it would be nice to have a certain level of financial comfort.
He remembers what he had said. In and out. Torque is known Hutt territory, and that’s a mess he’s not willing to get involved in, at least not with the kid. He takes a step back.
“Find another guy,” he says. The Rodian’s eyes glint, a reptilian shimmer to them, and Din is preparing for things to escalate when the alien settles for a nod.
“Fine.” Din nods, turning on his heel to head out, when the words follow him. “Better keep an eye on own back.”
Din pauses; he angles his body back at the alien. “What was that?” Years of training kick in, and he sees weak points, alternate exits from the building, places where the Rodian could be hiding a weapon.
The Rodian’s weight shifts, just a fraction. “Not wise, wandering with big bounty and little pet.”
Instinctively, Din’s left hand shifts towards the satchel, blocking access to it.
“You make a move, I’ll see that it’s your last.”
The Rodian laughs, an almost metallic noise. “Not my move to make.” The alien lifts his hands, the universal sign of surrender, and takes steps backwards until he’s at his table again, lowering himself into his chair. Din doesn’t waste the opportunity. He heads out of the bar and back to the ship, guard up as he pushes past people, one hand still on his holster.
To his surprise, they make it back to the Crest without incident. Only when the gate is closed and they’ve left the atmosphere does Din allow some of the tension to leave his shoulders. He lifts the satchel strap over his helmet, pulling it off and setting it and the kid on the chair.
The kid looks up at him, eyes huge with the question that always follows, the question Din’s begun to interpret as are we ok ?
“See? In and out,” Din says. The kid makes a high humming noise, and Din is the one to unscrew the accelerator bearing this time, tossing it into the kid’s seat.
“We’re good kid,” he says, and the kid just nods, trusting his word alone as he pops the ball into his mouth. Din has to look away with the way his chest swells; people don’t trust him, not unconditionally, not like this. The weight of it is a feeling, unnameable and more powerful than he particularly enjoys.
It doesn’t fade, and it keeps him awake, and he thinks choosing to hold onto it too terrifying a decision to look at straight on. It’s not one he can grapple with tonight; he locks it away and thinks later , always later.
.
In hindsight, he should have paid more attention. He should have put more weight in the Rodian’s words. He should have looked into the spoken implications instead of writing them off as another once-off they were lucky enough to pull out of. He should’ve done anything but assume things would be ok the way they were; he never assumes things are ok, grew up being taught to always do better, be more, exercise stricter discipline, push through hardships, keep his mask up, his helmet on, at all times.
He lets his guard down, a fraction , without even realizing it or meaning to. He allows himself to get comfortable; he allows himself to feel something eerily close to familiarity, or fondness, or attachment.
The universe isn’t known to let him have such things. He forgets this, and it’s his own fault.
.
They’re fine for a bit longer. Din follows a lead to some snowy giant of a thing called Hoth; finds nothing but the rubble of an old base and tipped over Imperial ATATs, their armor frozen into the ground.
The kid uses the head of one of them as a makeshift sort of slide. Din watches as he skitters up the edge of the thing and then slips down the icy front, squealing with delight. He picks the kid up and deposits him on the top again, staying close enough that if something goes wrong, he can grab the kid before he falls. But it’s fine; the kid makes happy noises the whole way down, and Din’s chest feels suspiciously warm for such a cold climate.
Inside the broken down base, he sees nothing of use. A few old holoboards, transmission desks, busted tech that wears the insignia of the Rebel army. It's obvious pretty quickly that they won't find anything here. They head back to the ship, Din letting the kid stretch his legs and follow behind, and a quick glance backwards shows a glum expression tilted at the ground.
“We can visit later,” Din says once they're back on board, surprising himself that he means it. The kid's head pops up and he makes a happy noise, angling the grabby motion in Din’s direction. Din huffs, leaning down and picking him up as he charts a course out of the atmosphere.
They stop at Felucia next. He’d gotten a tip that the Jedi used to conduct operations out of the planet, and while he’d rather get intel from one of his own kind, he’s not willing to pass up a potential opportunity.
Felucia is all greens and blues, lush forests with bright, flowering foliage. The kid likes this one too. He paws at the ferns, oohing at the soft light they emit. Din lets them stall a bit, keeping his eyes on the horizon as the kid wanders between leaves and trunks, sounding happier than Din can imagine being just hanging around some weird plants.
The Felucians turn out to be mostly farmers; most of them don’t speak Basic, but they take a liking to the kid, bending down to pet his head and giving them a sack of local produce before they head back to the ship. It’s weird, getting hospitable treatment from people who would normally shutter their windows at the sight of him. The kid just coos happily, perched in Din’s arms and basking in the attention.
“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Din says, thoughts straying to contact poisons and the faint possibility that one of these aliens somehow knows about the bounty on the kid’s head. “Thank you for the, uh, gifts.”
The Felucians must get the gist of it, because they nod and give these overexaggerated waves that look frankly ridiculous; maybe they're playing it up for the kid. Whatever the reason, the kid loves it, sending back the gesture with little hands dancing in the air.
By the time they’re back in the ship, Jedi-leads seeming nonexistent, the kid’s practically glowing. “You like Felucia kid?”
The kid chirps back, tapping excitedly on his vambraces. “Big surprise.”
They eat some of the fruit for dinner; it’s delicious, but tinted a deep magenta that stains the kid’s mouth and most of the lower half of his face. It’s enough to steal a laugh out of Din, who spends a considerable amount of time scrubbing the kid’s face until the red’s finally gone.
Back to the cot for the night, and Din falls asleep watching the gentle swinging of the kid’s bed again, the rhythm of the motion in tune with his pulse.
It becomes a pattern, warm and familiar and - dare he say it - domestic. If he thinks about it too hard, and he actively tries not to, he retreats back into himself, not comfortable with the dynamic they’re forging, fast and familial and distressingly easy. He wakes up to the kid, and spends the day looking after the kid, and shuttles the kid around anytime he goes planetside, and makes sure the kid’s always taken care of, and it’s become the founding element of his routine worryingly quickly.
So he doesn’t think about it. Surely that’s the smartest course of action.
Surely.
.
He decides the next day to head back to Nevarro; he’s asked the others to keep an ear to the ground, see if they get any news of Mandalorian activity. It’ll be worth it to check in with them. Felucia’s not far from the Ash Worlds either, where Nevarro sits, smoldering and dark. It’s on their way, an easy enough stop to restock and gather intel and let the kid see some familiar faces.
They’re close to halfway there when Din’s scanner beeps; he expects a maintenance reading - the cooling ducts have been acting up recently - but what he gets is a proximity warning, another ship in hyperspace close to his own.
It’s not altogether strange. This region of the galaxy gets more visitors than it used to, stray Imperials looking for work or New Republic officers trying to clean things up. Eventually, the reading disappears as the ship either passes him up or drops out of hyperspace.
The rest of the short trip is uneventful, and soon he's prepping to disengage the hyperspace thrusters. Din looks over his shoulder; the kid is staring out the cockpit window, little mouth open as he tracks the stars with wide eyes. Din turns back to the control panels, definitely not smiling, waiting until they approach the grid coordinates before dropping out of hyperspace.
Nevarro is as it always is: a dark, rocky marble. The kid has learned to recognize it at this point and lets out a happy gurgle behind him. “It won’t be a long visit,” Din says, but the kid just keeps on humming.
This is when the proximity warning flashes again. Din glances down and is surprised to see not one but two ships lighting up on the sensors. He leans forward, trying to catch a glimpse out of his cockpit. He only sees one, but it’s dark and large enough that he can tell it houses a crew, not just a single pilot. The shape of it is a strange, angular thing, like it was hastily built, pieced out of ship remains that don’t belong together. It doesn’t descend towards Nevarro. It sits, stationary, the front tip pointed at the Crest.
Din has a bad feeling.
“Kid,” he says, but before he can get any further, the Crest shudders violently. Din’s familiar with the specific rattle. He'd place his money on it being some sort of hook system, likely already fastened into the ship's hull. He knows what this means; he’s played the motion out before, reeling in catches in deep space.
Instinct tells him to gun the hyperspace, engage the primary engines, jet out of reach before it's too late. But he doesn’t know the exact caliber of the hooks, if a sudden thrust forward would rip the hull open, pressurizing the whole ship and killing them instantly. It’s not worth it to find out; if it was only his life he was chancing, maybe. But not the kid. Not the kid.
His comm crackles to life. “Mandalorian,” an unfamiliar voice says. It echoes in the cockpit. Behind him, he hears the kid let out the smallest of noises, soft and uncertain, and he feels his fists clench on the thrusters. “Your hull is breached. You have nowhere to run. Surrender yourself to us, or die.”
He’s spoken an iteration of the same words before. It’s a pick-up, clean and simple, a bounty job someone apparently hired two whole crews to execute. Most likely pirates. Possibly affiliated with the Hutts. It could be anyone paying; Imperials, the New Republic, an adversary he’s faced with deeper pockets than expected. But Din picks up on the one part that matters: that they’re asking for him, and not the kid.
Making up his mind is easy, in the end. He engages jammers. He diverts power to shields. He arms front deflectors. He stands up, and turns around, and grabs the kid in one quick motion.
“I need you to listen to me,” he says. The cockpit doors slide open, and the ship rocks violently, and Din clutches the kid to his chest and doesn’t stop moving.
“You are going to take this. You’re going to press it as soon as you eject. You won’t need to steer, so don’t touch anything.”
He doesn’t look down at the kid, can’t afford it. But he hears the gurgle, confused, scared, and even beskar isn’t enough to deflect the way it stabs into his chest. The storage doors slide open; still he doesn’t stop, reaching into his pocket for the distress signal, hoping Greef was true to his word and gave it to Cara. She’ll know what to do. He trusts her, even with the kid.
The ship tips forward, not with blaster fire, but with what he guesses is another hook. Or maybe a docking device. He doesn’t have time. The back of the storage room tapers off into to a separate compartment, the ship’s one escape pod. Din taps the control panel, and the door slides open with a hiss.
Only then does he look at the kid, as he lowers him into the seat of the escape pod. Big, brown eyes track his movements, ears tilted down, little hands already stretching out towards Din again as soon as he lets go. There is a cord around Din’s throat, squeezing tighter and tighter.
“I can’t go with you.”
The kid tries to squirm off the chair, but Din doesn’t let him. One hand to his small chest is all it takes to stop the movement, and Din uses the other to engage the safety harness, locking the kid in place. At this, the kid makes another noise, one Din does his best to ignore; his little hands reach with more desperation, clawing at the air between them.
“You’ll be ok,” Din says. He doesn’t trust the kid to activate the distress signal on his own, so he takes it, presses on the one red button at its center until it begins flashing, and slips it into the kid’s robe.
There is no time for anything else. Din wants to grab, to hold, to tuck the kid under his arm and pretend that it’ll be enough. But these hunters aren’t out for the kid. Din isn’t selfish enough to forget this. The kid won’t suffer, not because of him.
Din steps back. He reseals the doors from the outside. He selects emergency eject, engaging the pod’s thrusters to track to the nearest gravitational pull, the rocky exterior of Nevarro. He catches one last glimpse of raised hands, downcast ears, wide eyes bright with something like panic, and then the pod shoots off into space, hurtling towards Nevarro.
Din runs back to the cockpit. He primes blasters, and engages thrusters, and unjams the comms. “Come and get me,” he says, and hears a snarled “wrong choice” from the other end of the line. His chest is splintering; he holds it together with sheer will alone.
He doesn't slam the acceleration, not wanting to rip the hooking, but he pushes it enough that he feels the drag of the engine trying to comply. There's a warning creak, the whole ship groaning as opposing forces pull from either end. The pirates retaliate with blaster fire, a few shots sparking off metal and echoing in the cockpit. Din swipes hard at the steering device, throwing the Crest into a barrel roll despite its protests. He knows it’s not a fight he’ll win, not with the rigging. But the longer he can keep the ships occupied, the less likely they’ll be to chase a stray escape pod to a planet they have no business on.
A blast hits dangerously close to the cockpit, lighting it up red. Din tilts the steering upwards, propelling the Crest into an arch so he can see the ships targeting him. The second one looks much like the first, significantly larger but bolted together in the same sloppy yet effective fashion. He finally gets eyes on the hooks, trailing out from the front of the second ship. They’re long, barbed things, and they keep him from creating any sort of distance between himself and the other ships. He fires, the shots ricocheting pointlessly off of their armed shield system. Pirates with good tech. It really isn't his day.
He pulls the brakes on the Crest, jerking it to an abrupt stop. He has a better chance of fighting them off man to man than getting himself incinerated in space. They’ll have to board the ship anyway to get at him; the cables look strong, but not strong enough to tow his ship through space without eventually snapping.
“It’s not worth the fight,” the voice says over the comm. Din doesn’t answer, letting the ship stall while he heads down to the weapons storage. He arms his blasters and throws his rifle over his back, tucking two vibroblades into his belt just in case. Taking aim at the back hangar door, he charts the most likely course of events; that the bigger ship will pull him in, retracting the hooks and swallowing the Crest whole. They'll trap him in their hangar. They'll board the Crest. He'll do what he can to put up a good fight.
Sure enough, he feels the jerky tug as his ship is reeled backwards.
Distantly, he thinks that he should’ve thrown food rations in with the kid.
The Crest shutters to a stop. The lack of engaged landing gear leaves it scraping against the bottom of the other ship’s hangar. He listens to the awful whine of it, and waits. There are a few moments of anticipation; then, his back hangar door is ripped off its hinges and a flurry of bodies pour in, blasters at the ready.
He sucks in one short breath, holds it steady in his ribs.
He disintegrates the first row easily enough with his rifle. But there’s too many. He switches to his blaster, delivering quick shots to heads and chests and thighs. They flood the hull; he takes a few steps backward as blaster fire pings off his armor, jolting him and throwing off his aim.
They’re close enough to reach now. He slaps his vambraces, engaging his flamethrower and scorching the pirates to his left. Their screams are loud and present. With his other hand, he slams the butt of his blaster down on a temple, then swings out at a throat, then reaches for his vibroblade and plunges metal into the space between collarbones. It’s quick, and efficient, and bloody. But he’s only able to dodge blows for so long; he’s outnumbered. They all know it. There’s a lucky blaster shot to the unarmored length of his triceps, exposed under his right pauldron. He winces at the heat of it, fighting the instinct to drop his blade and curl his arm against his side. The moment of stall is enough that they overrun him. He’s tackled forcefully against the wall; he swings out with the vibroblade, slamming it into fleshy jugular, but is only forced back into the same spot again by another body, then another, then another. They find the weak spots between his armor, something sharp and hot piercing just above his hip, a blunt, bludgeoning blow swung out against the uncovered side of his torso. He feels the distinct cracking of ribs, pain flooding up his abdomen. He kicks out, heel against what feels like knee, and hears pained howling. The closest attacker backs off, and it’s enough that he has a moment to try to shake off the others.
Before he can, something clicks around his left wrist. He looks down and realizes what’s happening a second too late. He yanks his other wrist back, but there’s too many of them. Someone manages to snap a binder on his right wrist too, and the click of metal activates the electromagnet. The wrist cuffs immediately snap together, forcing his hands out in front of him. He tries to pull them apart, but the magnet is too strong.
This is when he knows it’s over; he doesn't care, throwing what he can at them anyway. He lashes out with his head, smashing his helmet against the nearest face he can find in the blur of motion. Bright green blood bursts against the outside of his helmet, partially blinding him. He’s shoved to the ground, face first. His ribs scream. He uses the momentum to roll himself over onto his back, kicking out with his feet and landing lucky blows on the nearest figures he can see.
He hears the whine of it first; the familiar hum of an electric weapon. He tilts his head, sees the long spear with a tipped, sparking edge. It’s an electric prod of some type, charged to the brim. There’s no chance to roll away. The tip presses against his neck, right under the bottom of his helmet, and his vision bursts into a million shades of white and red and yellow, his body thrashing as current floods his veins. The colors churn and mix into a dark, swelling black that pulls him under.
Stupidly, pointlessly, he thinks of the kid. Then, he thinks of nothing at all.
.
Somewhere across the galaxy, it’s like the other shoe finally drops.