Chapter Text
In all her time, which was admittedly not much, Mubi did not think she would ever have the chance to work alongside a mandalorian, and certainly not one of those mandalorians. She had first met him before even the fall of the Empire, although not by long. They passed sparingly and worked together when they found it opportune, though only in a "right place, right time" situation.
This time was different. He sought her out for a job that seemed to be all his own. He was tight lipped about it, even as he took her to the planet unfamiliar to her. A stronghold. It seemed to once be Imperial, but the halls they wandered through were long empty. Cells lined many walls, and when looking in many still had mostly decomposed bodies, or skeletons had the creature been smaller.
"What are we looking for, exactly?" She asked, breaking the long silence.
He paused his gait. She had never seen beneath the layers besides from wounds they sustained together, but she gathered quite early on from his demeanor and way of moving that he was a battle torn, scarred man. His walk was not straight, and occasionally Mubi would catch his fingers shaking as he pulled a trigger or steadied a comrade's hand. Regardless, he was no less deadly than the stories would tell her.
"Proof." He said finally.
"Of what?"
Mando - after the few years she'd still never learned his name - stepped into what appeared to be a kind of office, crouching to thumb through the scattered papers. "I've had an idea about this place. What they've done to my people."
She scrunched her nose. "This is Imperial."
"I know." Evidently he didn't find what he was looking for and brought himself back to his feet. "I want records." He offered after a moment. "Of them and- and a man I knew. I'm not sure they'll have his."
"And you're sure they'll have them of your people?" She asked.
"No."
Silence followed. She knew that he was a man of few words, of course he was. Their conversations were brief and, to an outsider, perhaps stale. She talked more in only a few conversations than she thought she had ever heard him speak.
But sometimes… she got curious.
"Tell me about them."
He snorted. "My people? No."
Mubi rolled her eyes. Sometimes his secrecy felt more than necessary. "The man, then." He froze, and she feared she had overstepped. "Never mind, we'll just-"
"No, I'd like to." He said. "I haven't spoken of him in many years."
He motioned for her to follow as he left the room and continued on. If Mando didn't know the layout, he hid it well. He walked through the corridors and peered through rooms as if he had done so time and time again. In most, he saw nothing of interest.
"I was once affiliated with a group of mercenaries." He peered through yet another cell. This one seemed to be for deprivation.
She couldn't help a playful smirk. "Is that not what all mandalorians are?"
He wasn't amused. "I doubted his intentions from the moment he found us."
"Mando, meet your new buddy." Ranzar Malk's hand came roughly to his shoulder as he passed behind him. Din didn't flinch, but he felt his hand from the same arm twitch. He stepped to face him, a confident yet still hesitant man a few years younger than himself following to stand beside Ran. "This is Cassian. Cassian, this is Mando."
Cassian blinked. "That's- that's your name?" He gave an awkward chuckle when no one answered. "A mandalorian named 'Mando', huh? That's a first."
He'd take it that this was also his first time meeting a mandalorian at all. Few had since their planet became occupied.
"It's what they call me."
"I want you two to become acquainted." Ran said. "I have a job planned for you two soon, want you to show him the ropes, Mando." He said nothing. "I'll leave you to it, then."
A silence fell when he walked away. Cassian fidgeted for a moment before opening his mouth to speak. "So, ah, Mando, then? How long have you, ah…"
"I'm not interested in this game." Din murmured, turning to walk slowly. "If you must, follow, and I will show you what you need. If you want proper company, find someone else." He paused to look back. "I wouldn't count on finding it."
He didn't like the man already. He was too young to be interested in mercenary work. Too pretty, in a rugged, weathered way. He wasn't here out of a thirst for blood. Granted, he supposed he wasn't either, but this was a man who wanted to be something. Any smart one would know that he would not find it in this line of work.
"I've heard few mandalorians get out of Mandalore these days." He noted, walking closer than a distance he felt was respectable. "Since the occupation, the borders have been tricky."
"They have." His people had been sending out the younger men and women since occupation began. They feared that it would lead to their extinction, and wished for their culture to live on. Din was among the first of these groups, though they were instructed to stay dispersed from one another. He hadn't seen another since they left.
"What got you out, then, hm?" He attempted a playful push, but he was steady enough for it to have little effect. "Too tough for you?"
His jaw clenched. He had been all but forced to leave. "Mess hall." He said, gesturing to his right. "Two meals a day. You're late, you don't eat."
"Strict, then." Cassian muttered under his breath.
"Got a bar, if you drink."
He nudged him. "Do you?"
"Sometimes." He made a displeased noise in the back of his throat. "Wouldn't recommend it."
"Why, too strong?" He snorted.
"Bad."
Perhaps he only thought so because he knew what tihaar tasted like.
"What do you do to pass the time, then?"
"Jobs."
He rolled his eyes. "When you're not on a job."
"I wait for the next one."
"Ooh, who's your new friend, Mando?" The voice was familiar, syllables drawn out and dangerously playful.
"Xi'an." He stopped to look at her, Cassian crashing into his back hard enough to jostle him forwards. "New recruit, apparently."
"Cassian. Andor." He stuck out his hand to shake, which she didn't take.
Xi'an pulled one of her knives to her mouth, resting the flat end against her lips as she stepped close. "Quite the handsome one, eh?" Her fingers danced up the upper part of his chest to his shoulder, the way she so often did with Din when they were alone. "Wouldn't think of you as the type."
"All have our reasons." He breathed.
The way men fell at her feet was humiliating. At least he hadn't been that easy. They seemed to think if a woman was capable she was desirable. Perhaps it was only the way he had grown up, with men and women alike being the greatest warriors he had ever seen, but the idea that capability was the only aspect of desire was baffling.
"Well," she smiled, fangs flashing in Din's direction for just a moment, "I'll see you around, Cassian."
"I wouldn't recommend her, either." He said once she was far enough not to hear.
Cassian scoffed. "Why's that?"
Drin, a large, green Nikto laughed from the table he sat at nearby. "That's 'cause she's 'is."
He snorted. "Hardly."
He raised his eyebrows. "What, she some kind of-"
"Watch your mouth." He turned to face him, helmet inches from his face. "I am not above making an enemy of a new recruit."
He raised his hands, taking a step backwards. Good. "No trouble, my friend."
"Good."
"Feelin' protective today, are we Mando?" Drin laughed more heartily than before, turning to Cassian as if he were telling a secret. "'E's not always so quick to defend her."
Din waved dismissively. "I'd defend any one of you over a newbie."
"Aw, would ya now?" He snorted. "Still defend 'er over most of us on a good day. Then defend most of us over 'er on a bad one."
He didn't respond, only continuing on his path. Cassian followed.
"We have a few spare rooms. They're small. Bed's fine. You go in anyone else's, you're good as dead." He knocked harshly on one, to be sure it was empty. There was no response, and when he opened the door the room had nothing aside from a thin mattress on a wiry frame.
"So what- what am I supposed to do? If I'm not on a job."
"Whatever you want." He noticed for the first time that he had no bag. No belongings. "Not any of our business. They'll find you if they need you."
He started talking again, asking another question it seemed, but the door closed before the words had fully left his mouth.
Xi'an cornered him later, pushing him just roughly enough to tell him it was a threat. She was one of the few people he would allow that from, and even then only sparingly. Any others were either still on Mandalore or long from his memory.
"New friend, then, huh?"
"If you want to call him that." He moved to cross his arms, but she took a wrist before he could. A whisper of a laugh passed his lips. "What, jealous?"
Her knife traced the fabric around his neck. "If anyone is I'd think it's you." He pulled his arm back, and she only squeezed tighter. "I could kill you, you know."
"You wouldn't."
"Maybe I would."
"Maybe that's what I like about you."
She snickered, releasing his wrist and placing the knife back in her belt. Her knee snaked between his legs, and for a moment he allowed it, but he soon readjusted to stand beside her instead of in front. Xi'an rolled her eyes.
"Prude." She muttered.
He didn't stop her because he knew she wouldn't. He wouldn't dare think she wouldn't try, but he knew she would not succeed. He didn't like that she could kill him, because she couldn't. He did like that she would try despite knowing this. He hated it just the same.
He found himself at the bar in the evening. As did many. He didn't talk to them. He hated their drinks and he had for as long as he'd been there, but there was little to do and he had to find ways of breaking up the monotony of waiting. It was interesting, occasionally, but not often. Eased the mind of his never-ceasing thoughts of Mandalore, at least.
He thought now of all the things he had never been taught. The elders spoke of educating more rapidly before he left, to preserve their culture as much as possible, but being among the first meant he didn't have that luxury. They instilled as much as they could in the weeks before their departure, but spent even more of that time to be sure that they would not be found on the way out. Truthfully, he wasn't aware if the departures continued after his own. Perhaps their escape was discovered and the forty or so that had left before and during his were all that was left of his people. Perhaps all of the knowledge of their culture was what little remained in the minds of those who still lived after.
He thought also of the recruit. Cassian. He had the face of a man who'd worked under duress the majority of his life and the eyes of one who knew far too much for how young he was. But that was the case of many since the Empire. Eyes like that didn't want to spill blood for a few hundred credits. Eyes like that wanted to make a change. A change that wouldn't be found with a mercenary unless he was already on a job. A change that would bring trouble to his current way of life and the men and women he had called his home since soon after he was forced to flee.
"Drinking alone?" Speak of the devil. "Didn't catch you there for a meal, Mando."
He hummed disinterestedly. "I eat alone."
He made a face, tapping for the attention of the bartender droid. "What have you got?"
"Only one."
"I'll take that, then." He faced him once more. "Why?"
He laughed bitterly. He really hadn't met a mandalorian before. "I don't remove my helmet for any living thing."
"And yet you're at a bar." Din held up the hollow tube of metal he used to drink in public. Cassian snorted. "That thing sticks out the bottom? Must look ridiculous."
"I manage."
"You really don't give much." He didn't reply. He lowered his voice. "I don't want to be difficult. I just- if we're expected to work together we should at least be friendly, right? I need to know I can trust you." He was still silent. Cassian groaned. "Fine, I'll say something, then. My name is Cassian Andor, I'm twenty-two years old, I'm here because I didn't have anywhere else left to turn for shelter and no people left to return to. I've been trained well, and I have a good instinct for getting out of trouble." It was false, perhaps all of it. It was too fast, too rehearsed. He wanted to be believed so badly it made him look stupid. He slammed his now empty glass on the rusted metal at his elbows and leaned close to him. "You said you don't want an enemy."
"I said I'm not above making one."
He sighed, leaning back in the stool a moment. "Look, I'm not- I wasn't trying to steal your woman, okay? It's like you think it's my fault she did that."
"She's not my woman."
"Then what is there to be so angry about?"
Din tapped the bar, and his glass was refilled. Before the droid walked away, Cassian tapped as well. "I'm not angry."
"Then why-" He cut himself off with his own disgruntled noise. "Fine. Fine, something real. I wanted to- I left to make something of myself. But first I need money. So I'm here. But I am skilled. I've climbed my way out of more than you can imagine."
"And who among us has not."
"I didn't mean-" He swore under his breath. "I know your people have suffered, I have no doubt that includes you."
"I don't need your pity."
"Nor I, yours." His reply came quick. "What I do need is your respect."
Din stood, tossing a few credits on the counter and strapping his Amban rifle to his back. "Then earn it."