Tumgik
#the circles system was BOMB and communities slapped for making friends
beelzeballing · 10 months
Text
i CALL myself a native twitter user, but that's actually a lie. truthfully, i am one of the last surviving members of the native google+ user. i hope you all can forgive me.
25 notes · View notes
comeandreadawhile · 3 years
Text
HCs for Adopted Boba au
• Either on Geonosis or after attempting to kill Mace that one time
• Boba sticks to Obi-Wan like a leech. Obi-Wan brings him to council meetings because it’s just easier for both of them (Boba gets stressed when he’s away from Obi-Wan for too long and council meetings can take most of the day, and Obi-Wan worries about Boba being anxious and so on in a viscious circle). Boba will get his schoolwork done on the floor next to or behind Obi-Wan’s chair, sometimes Plo will give the boy treats or puzzles. He’s clearly plotting a new murder for Mace every day but also clearly doesn’t care what they’re talking about enough to interrupt or remember the next day so they’re chill with him being there.
• If it’s Geonosis, Anakin’s big brother vibes are all directed at Boba, who is grateful to Ahsoka for being there after Christophsis to take Anakin’s unwanted “advice” as his new padawan. If it’s after that one murder attempt, a) Anakin will totally get the attempting to murder Mace thing cuz....been there done that, but that’s not okay stop it (hypocrit), and b) be tired from dadding Ahsoka, but happy to have a new addition to their chaos squad.
• I subscribe to @elfpen’s idea about the Jedi getting little apartments instead of dorms. unless they’re not assigned to a master yet. Boba gets Anakin’s old room when/as Anakin’s moved out to be Ahsoka’s master.
• Obi-Wan goes to Kamino to get EVERYTHING from the Fett apartment because one day Boba might want his father’s armory, or books, and if all of Jango’s shirts end up in Boba’s bed as soon as the boy has them then Obi-Wan makes no mention of it.
• Navigating what to call each other is takes some time, as Obi-Wan starts out being called by his first name, and ‘dad’ and ‘buir’ were both for Jango, but as Boba starts getting attached and comfortable, “O’buir” sometimes makes an appearance.
• Boba and Cody are in an odd space. Boba doesn’t like Cody telling him what to do, in any capacity. Not that Cody often does, if only for Boba’s safety or comfort. But even things like “bundle up if you’re cold” really get under Boba’s skin.
• In that same vein, Cody wants to help and comfort but he doesn’t want to be overbearing; Boba both does and doesn’t want the comfort. Cody isn’t, and can’t be, Jango. He can’t be exactly the father Jango was, and doesn’t have the same memories with Boba that Jango had; but they can make new memories, and Cody can be there for him in whatever way Boba needs to the best of his ability. Cody doesn’t hug like Jango, but it’s still good. He can’t have his dad’s hugs, and Boba doesn’t want to be unfair to Cody by expecting them. He doesn’t want a standin, nor does he want Cody to feel like one. He wants his dad, but Cody is there and trying his best to be what Boba needs in his dad’s absence.
• Cody doesn’t make mention of it when Boba crawls in bed with him and Obi-Wan. He merely shifts the blankets over them while Obi-Wan frets over the boy.
• Cody doesn’t make mention of it when Boba is sick with a fever and keeps calling him “dad”, just holds him tight when he wants held and brings him soup when he wants to eat, constantly making sure the wet rags are cold enough to be useful.
• Boba starts calling Cody “Kote” when he’s comfortable and relaxed
•Cody might’ve cried the first time Boba called him “papa”. Because “papa” wasn’t for Jango, or Obi-Wan. “Papa” was all him.
• Obi-Wan makes sure to use Mando’a in the apartment so Boba doesn’t forget it; it broadens Cody’s use of it beyond battlefield necessities as an added bonus. Cody teaches the 212th, and Rex, what he learns.
• Obi-Wan gets a list of foods Boba got growing up and works to recreate them, with taste tests at most every step to try to get them as close to what Jango made as possible. Even the ones Boba didn’t particularly like in case his tastes change when he’s older
• Boba gets away with a lot by being cute
Mace: He absolutely did! He shouldn’t behave like this!
Obi-Wan *knowing full well Boba did whatever Mace is yelling about*: My precious little—look at him Master Windu, he could never, my sweet child, how dare
Plo *also knowing what’s up*: poor sweet lad, here have a candy
Yoda *a troll*: Calm yourself, you should, Master Windu.
Mace *covered in whatever evil Boba was up to that day to get revenge for his father*: D:<
• Boba can and will perch on Obi-Wan’s leg and glare at Mace during a council meeting
• Plo is Boba’s go-to babysitter; Rex can only counteract so much of Anakin and Ahsoka’s energy and has enough to deal with in that household already. Plo is really good at keeping Boba calm while he’s separated from Obi-Wan, and Boba and Wolffe get along surprisingly well.
• Obi-Wan tries and fails to keep Boba out of the war but his new murder child would probably be more anxious sitting around the temple waiting for him than on the battlefield. Boba holds his own, is comfortable doing missions with both the 212th and 501st if he’s with his Jedi siblings, proving to be an asset with how well Jango trained him in stealth and recon.
• Boba now has a large support system, beginning with Obi-Wan. Boba gets a brother-uncle in Anakin, as Obi-Wan’s son-brother thing, and as Anakin’s daughter-sister thing, Ahsoka is now Boba’s big sister-aunt. Cody and the 212th are pretty protective when other groups of clones give Boba a cold shoulder (they get it, but still). Rex gets best uncle status, and also cool big brother; depends on whether he’s there with Cody or Anakin.
•Boba can and will sleep on Obi-Wan during a council meeting if his finishes his schoolwork and doesn’t feel like leaving or doing anything else.
• That business with Barriss in season 5 wouldn’t have happened because Jango taught this boy well enough to know when a) somethings fishy and b) someone’s being set up. Who was communicating with workers in that temple from anywhere on Coruscant? How convenient and coincidental and baseless is any evidence being turned up? Boba would’ve been like “sounds like nano bombs, who’s got that tech? Time to go into the underworld, dad had contacts leggo”
• Boba, who’s listened to every worry Anakin has to come Obi-Wan with about Padme: bro maybe you need to stop talking to her. Doesn’t sound like either of you are happy in this “friendship” you’ve got going on, so either sit down and talk it out or maybe it’s time to make new “friends”
• Boba would destroy Lux. Telling Anakin everything and getting him and Rex in on the party makes it much more fun. Ahsoka might be content to move on after angry words and a slap but they’re throwing hands
• Boba might know about the chips
•Dooku probably checks in over holocall like a grandpa. Like “*taunt**taunt* CIS will win *taunt* anyway how is young Master Fett? I’m sure my grandpadawan is a fine father but how are things? Surely the bright young man knows who to join when the time comes—and to get enough sleep, so he’ll grow tall, and—“
289 notes · View notes
gaiuswrites · 3 years
Text
King of Cups || Chapter 2
Tumblr media
Chapter 2: Five of Pentacles
Archive: ao3 | masterlist | one
Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader
Summary: Still reeling from the attack on Jortho, you begin your journey to scower the systems for galactic aid. The Mandalorian takes you aboard his ship temporarily, agreeing to shuttle you to your next destination. You both figure your tenure on the Razor Crest will be short lived... But you've been wrong before.
Word count: 3.8k~
Rating: Mature
Warnings: blood/gore, minor character death (mentioning), mature themes/language, vomiting
Notes: Hi friends. Here we go. Chapter 2... The last paragraph is marked with ///|||///, denoting a change to Mando's POV— his pov will be cropping up now and again, and I have a tendency to play with the timeline/tenses when it does. Enjoy x
You have to think about it. Genuinely.
It takes longer than you’d like to admit, with the Mandalorian looking down at you expectantly, a gloved hand slotted against his belt—postured and waiting.
‘Do you have a way off this skug hole?’
You open your mouth, but no words come out. It snaps closed. You swallow, but the action provides no relief. Your tongue feels too big for the small space it’s trapped in; too swollen, too dust logged— like you could choke on it, if you really tried. Finally, a single syllable frees itself, the weight of it plummeting through your ribs, ricocheting off the bones until it lands in your stomach with a dull, sinking splash.
“No.”
He doesn’t move.
“Do you need to get anything?”
You shake your head, small at first, phantom movements, before stringing together a sentence. “N-No. It’s all gone. Everything I had- it all went up on the shuttle-“
Oh gods, the shuttles.
Your heart seizes, a cold hand like a vice, gripping the bloody organ. You feel green; sickly chartreuse slithering it’s way up your esophagus, poisoning your soft palate. There were pilots on board when the ships blew. Two on each one. That’s four— four people. You knew their names. Knew their home planets. Knew about their families. One had a kid. Fuck. That’s four dead, and you didn’t even think of them— Maker, how could you not have thought about them?— No, fuck, fuck fuck-
It didn’t before but it’s hitting you now, stabbing you right between the eyes, the image of their bodies disintegrating in the blast wave, charring up like coal and carbon. You breathed them in, you realize. Their corpses coat your lungs.
The thought is all it takes.
Your feet move on instinct, scrambling to the side of his gunship where you vomit, bracing yourself against the riveted siding as you hack and sputter, wretching bile and what little broth you’d had for supper to splatter onto the cracked earth. Mercifully you’re hidden enough around the corner that you don’t think the bounty hunter sees, and if he does, he has the curtesy not to say anything.
What a gentleman, you think dryly, wiping your mouth with your sleeve.
You pant, body beyond spent, chest heaving as you press your scratched palm into the durasteel, the cool metal soothing it’s sting. Moments stretch like this— you doubled over, catching your breath— before you stumble back into view, graceless and encumbered, as if you didn’t just casually throw up down the front of yourself. You stand below him at the bottom of the ramp. He’s still there, a fixed point. Steel boots welded into the steel ramp.
“Uhm, are you-“
You cough, and it’s an ugly, hoarse sound; your throat burns, roughened and raw around the edges, and your nerves are too strung out for polite colloquialisms. You don’t have the energy to play coy and tip toe around the question. You’re fucking tired.
You try again.
“Are you offering me a ride?”
And now it’s his turn to hesitate, almost like he didn’t fully think the proposition through— as if it’s all just dawning on him now.
The Mandalorian didn’t strike you as someone who familiarized himself with answering to anyone— or picking up hitchhikers, for that matter— even if the offer was his to begin with... That was what he was doing, wasn’t it? Those words in that order? He meant to give you transport off planet? He wasn’t just… making conversation? Did Mandalorians even do that? Maker, if you’ve read this whole situation wrong, no small thanks to a laser-brain full of mush, you reckon you’d die from embarrassment on the spot where you stood, splotched with soot and puke and blood.
You think he’s going to tell you to shove off— you see his hand balling into a fist at his side— and close the ramp right then and there. Be rid of you. Sluffed, like a flea from a dog.
But he doesn’t. He surprises you both.
“Yes.”
Oh. Oh. Kriff, okay. Think think think-
Your mind reels and you’re rambling now, words ending and beginning in the same breath— steamrolling over yourself.
“Okay, I-I need to go back in to town, just for a—I cant let them think I’m just leaving them like this... Is that okay? I’m sorry, I won’t take long, I promise, I just— they need to know I’m getting help. Is that- uhm, can you wait? Can you wait for me?”
There’s another unreadable pause that makes you want to bury your head in the cold, fallow soil.
The man is looking at you like you’ve grown another kriffing leg, but eventually he grumbles out a noise that sounds like an affirmative, turning on his heel, and disappears into the belly of the ship— leaving you there alone.
Alone.
Pin pricks needle at the nape of your neck and the hair down your arm stands on end.
Alone.
You’re alone for the first time since the attack and suddenly you feel half your size and shrinking smaller still, like atoms collapsing and folding in on themselves until they dematerialize completely—and you along with them. You tell yourself to breath. To fight the bubbles of panic as they burst and pop, dimpling you from the inside out. Breath. Focus, he said. Focus.
You shift your weight from foot to foot, gnawing at the inside of your cheek.
The Mandalorian never reemerges.
Well… you guess that was your cue.
///
Staggering back into Jortho is like sleepwalking through a nightmare.
The smoke from the bombing has completely engulfed the lower atmosphere, doming the town in a thick canopy; the sky is blackened, starless, and the moons hover noncommittally like mere suggestions in the dark canvas.
Half the town had been decimated to rubble, and the other half was covered in the shockwave of it’s explosion— caked in grime, windows knocked out, doors splintered open. You almost expected the pieces to have reversed themselves back up, like you’ve seen in holovid special effects—homes rebuilding, fires dousing themselves, air purifying itself from the smog… but they don’t. They remain in shambles.
Time has granted you the unforgiving gift of clarity, and it’s one you’d rather not have been given. You don’t want to see the aftermath without the saccharine filter of shock to cushion you. The town is just as you left it, but somehow worse— worse because you can hear the crying, now. The wailing. You didn’t before with the blood pumping in your ears, deafening you, but you do now. The woeful noises that reverberate over the crackling embers still smoldering, the muffled sobs being choked down behind fractured walls.
Tripping over stray debris, you find Hareem close to where you’d left her, her fuse short hair grey with ash. The blood you smeared from her cheek still clouds her skin there, staining it as it does your fingers that wiped it. She wobbles to her feet and meets you in the middle of the road.
Neither of you speak, not at first. You hold onto her shoulders, and like a pillar of salt, you quake.
You try explaining to her that the communication’s system on your transport freighter had been blown up alongside the town, that you’ve accepted a ride from the bounty hunter and that you’re getting off world to contact the RRM headquarters, that you’d stay if you could but you can’t and you need to call for assistance, for help. You try to tell her that you’d do anything— travel through dimensions, if you could, to undo all of this chaos— if the laws of time allowed it.
You want to go back and pretend today never happened. To unlearn the tremor in your hands as they grip her frame. To unlearn all of this. To unknow. But,
you can’t.
All you can do is move forward. Do the next right thing. Take the next right step.
You’ve explained yourself in circles but it still doesn’t feel like enough. The words feel shallow, like slapping some bacta on a severed limb, and guilt rips through you— your voice torn with it.
“But how can I leave now?” you ask helplessly, eyes skittering around you. “After all- all of this?”
Hareem finds your hands, her spindled fingers encasing your own. A crease engraves her forehead, little lines clustering around her eyes. “You’ve done enough, hm? You go now. Go with that Mandalorian. You can’t shoulder this alone.”
“Har-“
She doesn’t let you say it. The older woman soothes a thumb into the web between your knuckles.
“Make contact. Comm for aid. It will come, but it won’t if you stay here.”
Your shoulders release with a defeated sigh. You know the Balosar’s right— you’re the one who’s told her as much. That’s RRM protocol. In case of emergency, you were to comm in and reconvene with the closest branch to your system to send additional supplies and volunteers to the camp. You know this better than anyone here, and yet this woman, this refugee, was the one aping your mission back to you.
She’s firm. Kind. “You’re just one person.”
Briefly, you wonder if she’s a parent. You think her child would be lucky to have her as their mother-- all of her somber strength. You think you would have been lucky, too.
Maybe things would be different—maybe you’d be different.
You gather yourself, piece by piece, and give her knobby hand a squeeze. You bore into her, determined and unwavering. You need her to understand. “I’m not abandoning you—any of you. I need you to know that, okay? I’m not leaving you alone in this.”
She smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I know, my friend,” Hareem says plainly, a sad sort of resolve quieting her tone. She has no fight left, nothing left to give— as empty as her pockets, lint lined and turned out. Barren. “I know.”
///
You weave your way back to the ship, feet padding across the arid landscape. You don’t blink, not even once, eyes crusted open and gaping. You barely remember the trek but somehow you’ve managed it, treading up the ramp, the thuds sounding hollow and foreign to your ear.
“I’m not a taxi service.”
You nearly jump out of your skin.
“Maker almighty,” you gasp, hand coming up to clutch your canary heart, beating fast and frantic. He’s just standing there, waiting, the dimmed lights of the hull glinting off his beskar. It’d only been a few hours, but you had already somehow forgotten how kriffing imposing he was, how ominous. A vacuum in space.
“O-Okay,” you stutter, a twitch in your brow.
“I’ll get you as far as you need to go, but on my terms. I’m not making a special trip— can’t promise you when.”
You nod. You’re not sure what to say. Lamed, all you can do is repeat yourself.
“… Okay.”
“What sector?”
“Bajic,” you start, fiddling with a loose thread poking from your sleeve. “We- uhm, the RRM, we have a branch there, but then—” your throat bobs as you swallow your words, and he gives you an exacting look, tilting his helm subtly. There was no getting around it.
You’re pinned.
“Coruscant. I’ll need to get to Coruscant,” you finish quietly.
Did you just hear him ‘tsk’ under that metal bucket?
“It’ll take a while to get to the Core. Longer than you’d like.”
And here you go, babbling again before you can stop yourself, throwing up defenses, excuses— back pedaling. You’re earnest, and it’s dripping from you. “Listen, if this is too much, I get it. You don’t owe me anything. Really— you don’t have to take me anywhere you don’t want. I-I, honestly, I’m just grateful you even considered it.”
Silence. An endless sea of silence.
No current, no breeze. It feels like you’re stranded in dead water, drowning in it. Again, you hang there on bated breath, just waiting for the man to chuck you from his ship. Not worth the effort. Not worth the fuel.
And again, he surprises you.
He tips his chin, gesturing to the side. “Fresher’s that way. We’ll be up in five.”
You exhale, visibly relieved, and mumble a thank you before shuffling off in the direction he motioned towards. You get one foot through the door before you hear him.
“Dala,”
Your attention snaps to the Mandalorian. There’s that word again—you think he’s called you that before—but there’s something different in his voice now, a lilt you’d not yet heard from him. What is that? Nerves?
“There is… one more thing.”
You cock your head just as a gargled coo comes from somewhere behind him.
///
You look like bantha shit.
Which, considering the events of your evening, should probably go without saying— and yet, the woman staring back at you in the small refresher mirror still manages to startle you.
You’re covered in dirt and cinders and contusions you hadn’t had the luxury to notice before. With the adrenaline retreated from your veins, you finally feel the full scope of your injuries and Maker do they hurt. Your tunic is torn at the collar and the fabric is discolored, pants and boots scuffed and ashen. Your bottom lip is swollen, a split running down the side of it, the seam of which is cracked with dry blood. Your palms are scratched— knuckles, too. There are narrow licks from shrapnel bites nicking your forearm. Twisting your body, you discover a dark bruise already blooming on your shoulder from the initial impact of the blast. You’re stiff and achy all over, and you can practically hear your bones creak and groan with each strained movement.
You turn on the faucet and begin to bend forward before you wince, a sharp pain gripping your skull. Ginger fingers come up to touch the back of your head, patting around tentatively until you find a raised bump and something viscous wetting the strands of your hair. You pull your hand back, inspecting it— more blood, glistening black under the low light.
Your eyes flit back up to your reflection.
You should be scared at this point, you guess. Worried, at the very least, by all of this—by the gore of it, the cuts and marks. But it’s your eyes that frighten you most— they’re hard. Devoid. You don’t recognize them. You’re a stranger.
You blink. She blinks back.
Rust red water eddies in the basin of the sink as you scrub yourself clean. You let out a hiss as the cold stream hits your skin. You count your breaths.
///
Being anywhere on board his ship without the Mandalorian feels wrong. Unnatural. Like you’re a tourist, out of place.
Unsure of where else to go, you find yourself in the cockpit with the bounty hunter, sitting in the seat beside him. Glancing over the knobs and dials and pulsing displays, your focus drifts in and out, posture slumping, lids growing heavy, darkening around the edges of your vision, blurring—
“Try to stay awake.”
With a sharp inhale, your eyes snap open, blinking wildly, and you scoot your hips up higher into the seat. You shoot the back of his helmet an inquisitive look you’re not sure he sees, but he responds to it all the same.
“Could have a concussion.”
“Didn’t know you were a doctor,” you reply, tone low and rolling. Maker above, apparently the final stage of shock was sarcasm. The fact that you thought it wise to damn near sass a Mandalorian on his own ship after he saved your kriffing life...
Stars, maybe it really was a concussion. Brain damage. Had to be.
He doesn’t acknowledge the quip, which you can’t readily blame him for. A quiet beat, red buttons flickering against the dark of the cockpit, and then—
“There’s bacta in the medpack. Might not be much left.”
You’re wide awake now.
Your rebuttal is immediate, bristled even, words escaping before you have a chance to even consider his suggestion. “No— no, thank you, but I’m not taking the last of your supplies. I’ll be fine, you’re- you’re doing enough for me already.” He graces you with another of his grunts, a hush following closely behind it.
Your gaze wanders—it wanders onto him, and you watch him.
Watch as the stars dance across his armor, incandescent and shimmering. Hypnotic, even. Something you hadn’t noticed before catches your eye, and you have to crane your neck to get a good look at it. It’s hard to make out, but you think there’s a symbol on the pauldron adorning his shoulder. You can’t imagine it’s completely cosmetic, seeing as the hem of his cape is frayed and worn (and the fact that being a lethal hunter didn’t really scream ‘needless decoration’), but maybe, if you work up the courage somewhere between here and Coruscant, you’ll ask him about it.
His posture is carved out of stone and he sits like a statue, spine rigid under all that beskar. Fleetingly, you wonder if it’s heavy, if it’s uncomfortable—to carry it with him wherever he goes. But you suppose he’s grown accustom to the weight, wearing it like a second skin.
He’s broad too, you note. Of course he is, you recognized that straight off, but inside the confines of the ship, without the towering Lothal sky as his backdrop, it truly strikes you just how large the Mandalorian is. He engulfs the space around him. Devours it.
You stay like this, entranced, studying the man properly for the first time, allowing the muscles behind your tired eyes to relax on him— until his visor notches up quickly and meets your line of sight in the mirrored pane of the window, catching you in the act.
Kriff.
You avert your eyes, an embarrassed warmth crawling up your neck, suddenly finding a particular panel soldered to the wall incredibly interesting— looking anywhere else but at the faceless stranger you’re saddled with.
The kid gurgles, interrupting the awkwardness, and you’ve never been more grateful for a three pronged toddler in your life.
He’s sitting in the copilot’s seat opposite you, as if the tiny thing is navigating for the Mandalorian, and he’s completely dwarfed by the massive chair. Everything about him juxtaposes the other man. He’s all brown robes and wispy peach fuzz, and he looks almost comically out of place against the interior of the gunship. He’s playing with a shiny metal ball in his lap, and with one small arm, he extends it to you like a gift.
Out of the two of them, the child was a one man welcoming party.
“Is this for me?”
He gives a soft patuu, and your heart nearly bursts. You take it from him gently, and the little guy coos through a babbling grin, cheeks round and impish. “Thank you,” you tell him, all serious-like, and you have to actively suppress the squeal that threatens to break free from you. He glances to the Mandalorian with such a look in those big eyes; its hard to make out, but you think its something close to pride or satisfaction, maybe: Look dad, I shared my toy.
Kriff, this kid is cute. Like, dangerously cute.
You both take each other in like this; your micro expressions, his pruned little forehead, your fleshy form, all soft lines and angles. You’re sure you look just as strange to him and he does to you, especially given the only other lifeform on board he has as reference is coated from head to toe in metal. The child’s gaze snags on a lock of your hair, little teeth peeking through his mouth, eyes glued to it like a metronome as it dangles. You give your head a little shake, strands waving, and he giggles. You skip the ball over the hills of your knuckles, dazzling him momentarily.
“Does he have a name?” You ask, his eyes like black saucers peering curiously at you, and you give him back his toy— an offer he eagerly accepts.
“No.”
“So what do you call him then?”
“Just ‘kid’.”
A beat. “... Do you have a name?”
“Mando.”
“Just ‘Mando’?”
“This is the Way.”
You nod, worrying your cheek absentmindedly as you stare out the transparisteel. This is the Way. You’re not entirely sure what the phrase meant, but you know respect when you hear it— how reverent it sits on his vocal chords— and by the manner of which the man, this Mando, spoke, you can tell there’s more to those words than you know.
And you can appreciate his desire for anonymity; it doesn’t bother you much—you figure you won't be around long enough for it to matter anyways. You don’t know a lot about the Mandalorian people, but you have heard rumors. Everyone had. That’s all they were anymore: rumors and stories. Legends. Just seeing one was rare, and talking to one even rarer. But flying with one and his adorable, green baby? It was… definitely unique, to say the least.
You share more dulled quiet. And although the silence isn’t entirely uncomfortable now—you’re settling in to it— it’s not exactly desirable either, but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t last.
Mando clears his throat, breaking the white noise that’s blanketed the three of them. He doesn’t turn his helmet. He keeps his focus straight ahead. You watch his reflection in the ship’s window and you can’t know for certain, but you think you feel your eyes brush against his, if only for a moment. A unintelligible noise filters through his modulator.
“Do you?”
You grin, a slow smile tugging at your lips.
“Last I checked.”
It’s the first smile he draws from you. The first of many.
///
Despite Mando’s warnings and better judgement, sleeping is exactly what you end up doing. You pass out, hard, stirring only once when an errant beep sounds through the cockpit. You’d fallen asleep right there in the chair, chin tucked into your chest, hair fanned across your cheek, arms wrapped around your waist in a measly attempt to trap your body heat to you. You’ve woken to find the cockpit empty— the ship must be on autopilot, you think— and by the illuminating glow of hyperspace, you spot his medkit, sitting open on the seat across from you and in it, nestled among old wrappings and gauze, a single patch of bacta.
///|||///
That smile.
Din remembers this moment, much later, holding it like a photo in a locket. Private. Secret. He keeps you there, gold plated on a chain, to loop around his memory.
Encircling him. Strangling him.
159 notes · View notes