Work Text:
Find me.
A little voice whispers in Din’s head, small, child-like.
Save me.
It is him. Undoubtedly.
“Din!” The sound of you calls out through the ship, bouncing against the hard surfaces, echoing far too loudly in his mind.
He solely remembers old carnage, old remains of something once so familiar to him distinctly broken, just mere miles from where the ship is parked.
Your footsteps are light—soft, yet not weak—so fitting of you. “Din.” Your words are softer now, just inches from him, where he sits hunched over, still attempting to stifle his breathing, still attempting to clear the visions behind his eyes.
It’s a vision from the point of view of a smaller him, wearing red, clutching on to someone in identical clothing, someone who was among the first to embody safety in his life. Running through a place that will soon cease to be home, that will soon become a source of nightmares.
“Take it off,” you whisper.
His helmet remains on, stubbornly acting as a wedge driven between him and the outside world. He knows that if he lifts it, you’ll see his tears, see the panic etched on his face. He knows that he himself will see it.
Weakness.
He sees bodies behind his lids—neighbor, mother, father—the decimation of his settlement as a child. Vivid in his remembrance, made all the more clear by his stroll through the place just minutes ago. It’s been untouched.
He doesn’t think he responds to your command, only wallows in a feeling of inadequacy that he feels compromises the unwavering exterior he’d crafted over the years.
It’d just been a quarry he was after that had brought him to this very moment. One that happened to be on the planet of his old settlement. He’d wanted to see it. He’d thought he could handle it.
Your smaller hands settle on either side of his helmet, perhaps desperate to bring him back down to the ground. To be with you, to feel alright once more. But as you tug, his hand snaps up, gripping your wrist, initially a little too hard for even his own comfort.
Yet you remain steadfast, methodically peeling his digits off your wrist. In another situation with another face before him, a small part of him suspects he would end up injuring such a perpetrator. But you continue even in his destabilized state. Fearless is his first thought. Trust is his second.
He trembles as the last of his fingers leave you. They no longer seem to respond to him.
He doesn’t want you to see the tears streaked down his face, maybe a quiver in his lip. But you deserve this.
The helmet comes off—a now familiar action, repeated in comfort over the last few months. It’s still laced with something new as his eyes now see the world in its natural state. There’s no visible response on your features, no sign of what you think of him breaking down at an event that had occurred decades ago.
Perhaps it’s not objectively good or bad, yet it still is what it is—weakness.
You merely sit on the crate across from him, reaching a hand out to wipe some tears. There’re no embraces, no kisses—you’re correct in your assumption that that contact is not what he’d be most comfortable with now.
You simply remain sitting across from him, hand in his. He glances at you every once in a while, a simple thought of you in the back of his mind: ner kot.
My strength.