Chapter Text
Chapter 1
You panted as you ran, lungs screaming in pain like needles stabbing their insides. The weight of the blaster in your hand added the tiniest bit of forward momentum that pushed you to run faster away from the smoldering wreck of a trade stop behind you. The sand beneath your feet sprayed like splashing water each step you took, slowly closing the gap between you and the hideous pre-Imperial ship in front of you.
You didn’t care who this ship belonged to, you were getting on it regardless. You’d fight your way on and take the pilot hostage if you needed to. You’d stow away in the cargo hold and could be on your way to Hoth for all you cared. Any option was better than turning around and facing the mess behind you.
You reach the back end of the ship, and as quick as you can remove the panel to start messing with the wires. Most ships were easy to hotwire, and not many people thought to block security bypasses by burying or disguising wires in the ship’s lock panel...but this one did. Shit.
After taking a half a second to assess what you were looking at, you found the bypass wire wrapped in with the thruster wires. Clever.
You quickly whip your head around, looking for one, the owner, and two, the empire-sympathizer trader and his goons you were running from. Your heart slammed in your chest thinking about what you were escaping. You were no angel, but regardless of what a person does, no one deserves the horrific life that you would have been imprisoned to at Ba’Aki Station 12.
The ramp’s hydraulic system released gas around you and opened just enough for you to jump and scramble into the ship and yank the sealing lever just as a blaster shot and hit the outside of the hull. You breathe a quick sigh of relief, being sheltered from the blasters and mob men outside, but you know you can’t rest until you’re lightyears away from this puny, Sarlacc-ridden sandtrap of a moon.
You jolt to your feet and scramble around to locate the ladder to the bridge; you had to get out of here quick. But as soon as you turned your body around, you came face to face with the ship’s owner, who had his own Mandalorian blaster dialed on your skull. You quickly cocked and aimed your blaster at him too.
The silence hung.
You could hear yourself panting and your heart slamming in your ears. The sweat pasted the wisps of your hair to your face and neck, the rest in a long, messy, sandy braid down your back. You hadn’t even noticed him when you jumped into the ship, his beskar metal armor practically camouflaging him inside the all-metal interior of this rust bucket of a ship. Your heart grew icy with fear. You were so close to getting out of here.
The stagnant silence was broken by the softest coo coming from the corner, behind the Mandalorian. A small, green creature with big brown eyes, disproportionally large ears, and wispy white hairs atop his head giggled and cooed as he held up his six, chubby little fingers towards you, reaching out to be held.
The sound seemed to snap the Mandalorian out of the silence as he whipped his head around to look at the child, and then back at you. Your reflection in his mirror-like beskar showed a worn, tired, and ultimately frightened person. You wouldn’t do anything to frighten this little child, especially harm his apparent caretaker. You had survived that pain, and you vowed long ago to never inflict that pain on another child ever again. So you held your hands up in surrender, praying to the stars that this Mandalorian would take pity on you, although doubting the thought as soon as it crossed your mind, given your limited knowledge of the creed.
You slowly got back down on your knees and lowered the blaster to the floor of the cargo hold, kicking it far away from you as a gesture of good-faith. “Please,” was all you could muster. Your heart pounded icy anticipation through your veins. You raised your hands high above your head, your sleeve falling down to your elbow as you did so, revealing the hideous livestock tattoo on the underside of your left forearm. “Please, I can’t go back out there. They’ll do worse than kill me if I do. Please,” you pleaded.
The Mandalorian’s helmet turned a fraction of an inch, looking at your tattoo and studying it for a curiously long time, though never moving his blaster. The guy was a statue. Aside from that small adjustment to see your tattoo, the rest of him was as still as stone. The tension hung tangibly thick. Your heart slammed as you mouthed please once more. The child made a ‘huh?’ sound and looked up at his caretaker. After an eternity, the Mandalorian lowered his blaster to his hip, keeping it cocked.
His modulated voice growled “Get up.” as he grabbed your arm and shoved you into a storage room filled with hanging figures encased in carbonite. You stumbled into the storage room as his iron-like hand shoved you into the small space. The hydraulic door slammed and beeped locked behind you.
You stumbled, but eventually stood up and listened quietly as the sounds of boots on ladder rungs quickly ascended into the cockpit. Moments later, the sounds of blasters outside the ship rang out, a few shots hitting the hull’s exterior. Indiscernible shouting in many languages and dialects rang from outside, making it clear that your oppressors were closing in on the ship. Just then, the sounds of the thrusters whirred and scraped to life and were punched a little too soon, before they had time to get warmed up.
You were thrown back, slamming into the unfortunate soul in carbonite, rattling him against his unfortunate friends behind him. You felt the gravity shifting as the ship rocketed towards the sky, making obvious evasive maneuvers, likely evading the blasters coming from the ground. Your body was tossed all over the storage room, bruising and bouncing off walls.
Finally, after several long minutes of unsuccessfully fighting G-forces, you felt as the rusty, creaking ship steadied in the upper atmosphere of the sandy moon below you. As the ship passed the final atmospheric bump as it entered outer space, the hyperjump engines whirred and punched, sending the ship rocketing through spacetime. Destination unknown.
You sank down in the storage room and folded your knees close to your chest, finally taking a breath after what seemed like an eternity. You were off of that hell hole of a moon, and now your oppressors would never be able to find you as you sped through the galaxy. You allowed yourself a rare single tear before you collected yourself. You weren’t one for emotions, as emotions were a sign of vulnerability where you came from. “Wasted water,” as your Uncle Taru would say.
Having lost your parents before you were a year old, you were raised by your Uncle Taru until you were 10. A hardened mineral miner during the Empire years, the man knew nothing about managing the emotions of an adolescent girl. In the tiny mining town of Kyyba, the people were coarser than the sand, and just about as dry. Water was scarce, sacred, and expensive, so preventing tears was a matter of survival.
Painful memories flashed like a kaleidoscope in front of your mind’s eye. Images of Sand People, burning bodies, destroyed buildings, Banthas, and collapsed mines arose. Then the images of her oppressors, forcing her hand to steal and loot from any unwitting potential trader passing through Ba’Aki Station 12. Iron cages with dozens of other children, of all species, locked in hot darkness, stored away until necessary. Then the most recent, the exchange of a large sum of credits for “one useful female”.
You shake your head of the memory, hugging your legs tight into your chest, feeling thankful to be free of that place.
The sounds of small, light footfalls on the ladder rungs drew your attention. With each ladder rung descended, a tiny grunt followed the effort. You smile, imagining that pint-sized creature climbing his way down ladder rungs as wide as he is tall. With the last rung descended, you hear the child fall to the floor of the cargo hold and make his way closer to the door of the storage room.
The hydraulic door whips open loudly, releasing hydraulic gas as it slams open. In the doorway, the child looks at you and smiles. “Bah!” he says, whatever that means. He reaches his six little sausage fingers for you, physically asking you to pick him up. You crawl over to the pipsqueak and oblige, sweeping his shockingly dense little figure up in your arms. He giggles in happiness as you do. His big brown eyeballs glisten as they look at you knowingly. The kid stares at you as if he can read exactly what you’ve been through, and knows you wouldn’t dare hurt him.
The sound of panicked shuffling comes from upstairs, metal banging on other metal, things being shoved aside. The hydraulic door to the bridge slams open loudly and a metallic figure appears at the top of the ladder, clearly the source of the panicked noises above.
The Mandalorian looks down on you as you hold his kid, who looks up at him and again says “Bah!” with a big, little smile. Mando descends the ladder in a quarter second and hovers his right hand above the blaster at his hip, his left reaching straight out in front of him at you, begging you to not harm his child. “Drop the kid.” He says through a modulated voice. “Now!” He growls.
You again hold up your free hand, showing your palm in innocence. “I’m not going to hurt him, you have my word.” You say, as you gingerly drop the cute little gremlin at your feet and gently usher him towards his dad.
“Your word means nothing to me.” Mando barks scooping up the kid and locking him in the tiny bedroom next to the storage room you had just emerged from. The Mandalorian turns to face you, clearly tense, but weighing something regardless.
“I realize that.” You respond, looking down at your dirty clothes. “Thank you for getting me out of that place, regardless.”
“Touch the kid again and I’ll rocket you right back.” He says curtly. He looks like he’s poised to pounce. Predator and prey.
“I don’t mean any harm. You took my blaster, and I have nothing else. I wouldn’t dream of hurting a kid. Trust me, I kn--” You drop your head again, exhausted emotionally and physically. You decide your next move carefully. “Listen, I don’t have anything to give you, and I can’t pay for your transport. But I can fly. I can fly anything in this galaxy, and fix it faster than any mechanic droid.” You turn to point behind you at the ramp door you had jumped through at Ba’Aki, “That loose panel out there is not going to like this flying through hyperspace. The radiation is enough to fry and damage the wires, let alone--.” You take a cautious step forward, raising both of your hands again. “I can fix this ship up for you and have her running as smooth as silk, if you drop me off at the next port.”
You drop your hands to your sides. The Mandalorian doesn’t move an inch; not his helmet, not his hands, not a muscle. He looks more machine than man encased in all of that metal and holding as still as he is. So when he does stand, and a little more relaxed at that, it makes you jump.
“Fix the ship. If it’s still running by the time we get to Mos Eisley, we can talk about a deal.” He directs. Though you cannot see through the small slits in this beskar helmet, you know his eyes are scanning you up and down. Your heart rate picks up at this, though you’re not sure if it is fear. “But I will be watching every move you make.” He says, tapping on his helmet. You weren’t sure what kind of capabilities that helmet had, but you knew that there was no slipping things by a Mandalorian, let alone a Bounty Hunter Mandalorian.
You nod your head softly.
_____
The Mandalorian shows you where all of the necessary tools were on the ship and gives you a long, but manageable list of things to fix on this ancient rust bucket. You got right to work as soon as you were able. He went back up into his cockpit, this time bringing the kid along in a small floating egg contraption, and leaving the door open so he could watch you work.
The first few tasks were easy. Some mis-wired electrical boxes, hyperfuses blown, and a tricky, misfiring lever. Nothing you hadn’t played around with before. The next was up in the bridge, though, and you felt the need to alert him before ascending the ladder.
“Hey Mando, you asked me to optimize the comms spectrum, so I’ll be climbing up there now.” You look at the back of his helmet from the cargo hold, up through the open door. Silence. That must be how he operates.
You climb the ladder and he still doesn’t move, though you can only assume that he somehow knows exactly where you are. The child smiles from his egg pod as he watches you come upstairs, holding onto a little silver ball. You smile at the kid and turn to your work. The Mandalorian slows the ship out of hyperspeed as we approach a fueling station about halfway to Tatooine.
You work in silence, making as little noise as necessary. You can feel the tension in the air, so much so that it feels like the pseudo-atmospheric pressure is off, but no one else seems to be reacting. It is as if the Mando is radiating unnamed tension from his body and filling the room with some kind of discomfort. You can’t blame him, though. You can understand how uncomfortable this must be to have a stranger break into your ship and be within feet of your kid. You sigh, making more noise than the mechanical panel you were working on. The last wire is soldered to the motherboard and the panel lights up. “There,” you state. “That should expand your comms range to pick up relays from outside your typical commuter channels.”
Just then, as if to exemplify your work, an unnerving, yet familiar voice is picked up by the comms.
“--tor 1V195 relaying message to Razor Crest.” The Imperial clone states. You all look at the comms speaker in shock. A trooper? Out here? You think, as the blood drains from your face. You look around at the surrounding stars, searching for any ship that might be sending the message.
The message repeats: “Interceptor 1V195 relaying to Razor Crest, state your business in this Sector.” the clone orders. Just then, out of thin air, a small Imperial transport ship pops into view out of hyperspace and inches closer to the ship.
The Mandalorian stares out the observation screen to his right as the Imperial transporter comes ever closer. He reaches to the comms panel and quickly relays. “This is Razor Crest to Interceptor 1V195. Transporting cargo to port station Mos Eisley.” He stops. The room hangs silently with bated breath, awaiting the next message from the Imperial transporter.
“Interceptor 1V195 to Razor Crest, prepare for docking and inspection.” the clone states. The hull of the ship shakes as it is pulled into the docking bay of the transporter. Though it is a small ship compared to the rest of the Imperial fleet, the docking bay itself dwarfs the Mando’s ship.
Without moving, the Mandalorian states quietly to you “Hide the child, now.”
You don’t blink. You take the child and scramble down the ladder to the cargo hold, scanning your eyes in every direction, assessing where to best hide the child. You decide that the troopers likely won’t look at the very back of the carbonite bounties hanging in the storage closet, and will likely only see one or two bounties to be satisfied.
You clamber around the half-dozen or so bounties and place the child on the ground in the back corner of the storage room. You bend down so that your eyes meet his, and touch your index finger to your lips “Shhh. You can’t make a sound, okay?” you whisper. The kid blinks, but you’re not convinced he understands.
You close and seal the hydraulic door and stand facing the ramp as the Mandalorian comes to stand at your right. You feel cold, heavy metal being pressed into your hand, and realize that he has given you your blaster back. Oh... He’s expecting a fight. You quickly stuff the blaster under your shirt in the small of your back, and wait.
...and wait.
And wait.
The sound of the ship finally touching down in the docking bay rattles through the hull. You hear the clop-clop-clop of several Stormtroopers jogging up to the Razor Crest’s ramp and stop. A long moment later, the hydraulic seal on the ramp breaks open and the ramp lowers, bathing the cargo hold in bright white light from the docking bay. Three troopers stand at the base of the ramp, blasters at the ready. We put our hands up. I’m getting sick of having blasters pointed at me. You think, as the Commander with his orange markings ascends the ramp and asks the Mando for his credentials. Mando hands him a black data block, which is plugged into the transport tablet in the Commander’s hands. The other two troopers walk up the ramp and begin inspecting the ship.
Storage lockers are opened and rifled through, doors are left ajar, shit is tossed everywhere. You stand as still as you can but your eyes never leave the Stormtrooper to your left. The bastard keeps inching his way towards the storage room where the kid is hidden and your heart rate increases with every step he takes. What if the kid moved? What if he starts making noise? Your breath hitches as the trooper stands in front of the door, obviously preparing to open it. You move your right elbow ever so slightly to touch Mando to alert him. The Commander doesn’t seem to notice. Mando nods his helmet a fraction of an inch, only discernible if you were looking for it.
The trooper opens the storage door and looks down in the doorway at a little green gremlin, who looks back up at him quizzically and says “Bah?”. “WHAT THE..!?” The trooper yells, you and Mando simultaneously reach for your blasters in a synchronized motion.
He grabs the Commander by the shoulder, bends him over, and shoots his blaster up through his center, piercing the tablet, thus erasing the Razor Crest’s data from the system.
You spin around and shoot the trooper at the storage room door and spin his falling body away from the child. Mando shoots the remaining trooper, looks back at you now holding the child and screams “GO!” motioning his head towards the bridge. He sprints to close the ramp and seal the atmosphere while you scramble up the ladder and place the kid in his egg. Your heart pounds as you fire up the thrusters, while smashing the intercom button “Are you in?!” you yell frantically.
“Yes! Go, now!” He yells back. You hear blasters over the intercom, so you realize that the ramp must still be down slightly. You pull the lever over your head to seal the door completely, and pull the lever to your right to engage shields. You hope to the stars that he is fastened in, or at least holding on, as you quickly slam the thrusters forward at full speed and burst out of the docking bay. The sound of metal clanking around reverberates off of the metal hull, and you wince at the thought of him being tossed around like salad down there.
Two TIE fighters burst from the transporter ship now growing smaller in the distance, accelerating with a bone chilling scream. Green blasters whiz by the observation shield and you take evasive maneuvers, serpentining your way through space as you try to remember the coordinates to punch for Mos Eisley. You yell over your shoulder down the open ladder “Mando get your ass up here, I need the coordinates!”. You jerk the ship left, narrowly avoiding another green blast, and you hear “Shit!” come from downstairs, along with more metal clanking. Again, you wince.
You steady her out for the split second you can to allow him to climb the ladder. He runs over and sits next to you in the copilot’s seat and starts punching in the coordinates necessary. You jerk the ship down and right, leading one TIE fighter in tow. The floating fueling station sits in front of you, thankfully empty of other ships. You gun it towards the fueling station, leaning your entire body weight into the lever. You close the distance in seconds, and you see in your periphery the Mandalorian brace hard on the navigation console, but seeming to trust you, regardless. The proximity alarm beeps rapidly, alerting you that you’re getting close to the station, but you wait just until it starts screaming to pull up rapidly, the G-forces pushing ten times your bodyweight into the chair.
The TIE fighter collides with the fueling station, creating a magnificent, massive fireball exploding outwards, engulfing his unfortunate comrade in flames, the explosion silent in the vacuum of space.
You mash the buttons to confirm the hyperspace coordinates Mando had entered, and send the Razor Crest hurdling into hyperspace.
_____
It was a long time before anyone said anything after that. The silence hung in the air of the ship, the three of you stunned and shellshocked. You could feel nothing but grateful to have gotten the three of you out of there safely.
You land the ship at the port quietly, no one having said a word since. Mando picks up his son and heads out, nodding for you to follow. You descend the ramp, blaster safely tucked again in the small of your back. You scan your environment as you walk around. This hot, desert planet felt unfortunately familiar, and yet so different at the same time. There were people and creatures everywhere, and the sounds were as varied as the populace.
Mando handed the kid off to a fiery, curly haired woman running the docks that he apparently trusted enough to care for his child. They had a quick conversation out of earshot, but you noticed that they both kept looking over at you every so often. You felt a little judged.
Mando strutted over to you straight on, his beskar reflecting every color light in the visible area, yet he walked with intent. “Come with me.” he ordered. You followed his lead, far enough behind to not crowd him, but close enough to keep in stride. You could tell that he was a person who liked his space and privacy. The crowds in the streets were bigger than you had seen in your entire life. Thousands of people and creatures were walking around, all of them looking just as coarse as back in Ba’Aki. The buildings were the same color as the sand, and many were domed to keep the heat out. The pair of you weaved through the crowds in formation, and although he never turned around, you knew he was exactly aware of where you were.
After a while, he dipped into a hole in the wall door that was emitting music and loud talking. It was almost deafening to a person who had never been off of that sandy moon of Tar-V1. He motioned to a booth next to a round window that was emitting the only natural light in the dark cantina, while he approached the round bar in the center of the room. You sit down, adjust your long braid, and wipe the dust off of your pants. Not that you look unnatural in a place like this, with every creature under the sun here covered in sand and dirt, but suddenly you felt vulnerable and anxious about how you were perceived. You had obediently followed the Mandalorian here, when you had expected to be kicked off of the ship the second she touched solid ground. It was because you couldn’t read the situation that you were getting anxious. Still, you scanned the room looking for any outstanding potential threats to you and your host.
Mando sauntered up to the table, shoulders square with you in the booth. He sat down across from you, surprisingly gracefully for a walking disco ball, and shoved two drinks your way. One was the largest glass of water you’ve ever seen, and the second was a shimmering blue drink in a strangely-shaped glass. You looked back up at him questioning if one was for him, and he gestured a thumb towards his helmet. You nodded, understanding that he probably can’t eat or drink in public and feeling somehow sad about that. So you grab the glass of water and drink it down as fast as your body will let you, allowing your insides to be bathed in water for the first time in a long time.
“I want to thank you for saving the kid.” He said, his voice gravelly and modulated. “I don’t know how I would have handled that situation if--” he let the sentence hang.
You look down at your hands, interlaced fingers on the table.
“You know, I hardly know the kid a whole day and somehow he’s got this grip on me. I can sense that he means a lot to you, too. I’m just glad to have helped.” You stare back at your reflection in his thin visor. He leans forward to match your position, interlacing his own fingers on the table.
“After what happened back there, I thought about it a lot.” He looked around the room, apparently also assessing it for threats. “I can’t stand when that kid is in danger, so having you there to protect him and pilot the ship like that out of there…” He shook his head. “I’d like to offer you a job.” He looked up at you directly this time, almost pleading.
Your mouth fell open.
“I can’t pay you much, maybe 200 credits a day” he continued, as your eyes bugged out of your skull. “But having you around to help keep the Crest in shape and keep an eye on the kid would really bring me some peace of mind.” He finished, sitting back in the booth.
When you remained silent, partly out of shock, he pushed the blue drink towards you further. You took a long swig and suddenly felt much better. So this is what booze tastes like.
You looked back up at the Mandalorian and somehow felt that you could trust him. Two hundred credits a day was a fortune where you came from. The miners in Kyyga made a tenth of that in a month, if they were lucky. The idea of your own personal ship came to mind, and the idea that you could travel and see the galaxy if you saved enough. You could see the snow on Hoth, which was currently beyond your wildest imagination. You sat there, dreaming, while the Mandalorian watched you. You looked back at his helmet, noticing all of the curves and angles in its structure, admiring the craftsmanship of it. You found yourself wondering what he looked like under that helmet. It was a strange sense of wonder, pity, and admiration at the same time. The poor guy would never be able to eat or drink in public, and yet you admired his dedication and conviction to his creed.
It was a beat before you remembered that you hadn’t given him an answer.
“Mando, it would be an honor. I realize that you haven’t known me for long, but I’m going to prove myself to you.” You finally reply.
“I know you will. For whatever reason, the kid seems to trust you, and that is almost good enough for me.”
You look down and chuckle. “So I’ve passed the little green litmus test.” Mando made the strangest sound. It wasn’t a laugh, but through his modulator, it sounded like he blew more air out of his nose than normal. You looked back up at him and smiled, extending your hand.
“You have a deal, Mando.” He grabbed your hand with his leather-clad iron grip and shook it. “Where to first?”