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astheforcewillsit · 7 months ago

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(anyway wrote my post-war codywan fic where gets to find himself and be debrainwashed while coming to terms with the role Obi-Wan/Jedi-Order played in the enslavement of his brothers with a happy ending)

Working Pains Summary: It has been two years since the Clone Wars ended. Two years since Cody has had a proper conversation with his General. But in between extensive therapy, deconditioning, and learning to be an actual person, Cody doesn't know where Obi-Wan Kenobi fits in that.

(Un)fortunately, when a Jedi led peace treaty with former Separatist territories fails spectacularly, Cody gets the opportunity to close up loose ends.

Obi-Wan almost dies, and predictably Cody finds himself by his side.

----

Fox is waiting for him when he gets to the hospital. And Force is the place a mess.

To put it mildly, the hospital waiting room is a complete shit show. To put it accurately, Cody hasn’t seen chaos like this since he was in a medical wing during the clone wars. Behind the reception, doctors run like fire licks their feet through the halls, rubber soles squeaking against polished floors. Nurses call out orders like commanders on the battlefield, shouts slicing through the disorder in the waiting room. Droids console families who sit helplessly to hear the news of their loved ones.

(Cody fights the innate urge to help. But he’s not that man anymore.)

The Clone Wars may be over, but Cody hasn't moved on enough to let droids hold his hand while he cries. Not just any droid, after least.

Instead Fox sits beside him, briefing–telling him what news he's heard.

A surprise attack in hyperspace. Over a thousand dead, more injured. A Jedi led peace attempt in former Separatist territory that turned bad real quick. Tale as Old as fucking Time, and if Cody’s heart wasn't beating in his throat, he would have chuckled.

And the icing on the cake–the failure was led by none other than Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

(He remembers where he was and who was with when Fox had commed him just that name three hours ago. Laying in bed against Rex as they watched a holo about loth cats, Boil asleep on the opposite chair. Jesse the most awake of them all, texting back and forth with someone on his datapad.

He remembers how the mention of his former General had been enough to take him from the Company of his brothers, brothers who had held his hand through hours of therapy, through the realization that he had been brainwashed and used.

That he had fought for a Republic who used him and abused him, and that the Jedi had led them still. That Obi-Wan had done little to save him. They had been there as he came to that ugly, painful revelation. They had been there with him as he put space between himself and the Master.

And yet, the last he saw of them was the disappointment when he threw caution to the wind to come to said Jedi’s side. Force, he hoped they didn’t hate him after this.)

Who is supposedly amongst the injured.

This is supposedly one of the better hospitals, though. In a higher, more affluent level of Coruscant. Fox has assured him of this. Still it begs the question-

“Why not the temple? Wouldn’t they know how to help him?” It’s been an hour and Cody is tired of sitting.

He stands, arms crossed as he begins to pace. Across the room a woman screams, her shrills erupting into inconsolable sobs. Both Fox and Cody wince. It hurts them all particularly more than a human woman would. Kel Dor have a knack for doing that.

Clearly the medical droid is not doing its job.

“Overwhelmed,” Fox supplies, chipped, “Kenobi was awake enough to request that the more injured be taken to the Temple–Jedi and non-Jedi alike. The Temple obliged”.

Cody wants to scream. It was clearly a ruse. The man was certainly the most injured of them all. How could they not see it? Two years apart from Obi-Wan and Cody could pick out his General’s tricks blindfolded. Did they know how many times he insisted his men be treated before him? How many times he’d lie to the 212th medics about his injuries just so the clones were being treated first?

Obi-Wan would give his blood to an orphanage if he was bleeding out.

“He'll be okay, Cody.” Fox is meticulously calm, as if sensing Cody’s distress. It's been practiced. Fox two years ago would have lost his absolute shit. Quinlan Vos was on the mission too.

“If I were with him, he'd…” he breathes in deeply and pinches the bridge of his nose. Old habits die hard. Conditioning even harder.

He is not the Jedi’s or the Republic. He made that clear when he left GAR. When he distanced himself Obi-Wan.

That chapter has been long closed. And therapy made him realize just how fucked up his head was. Marshall Commander Cody, the most fucked up of them all. The most loyal.

Finding himself after that involved time with his brothers. And consequently, his relationship with Obi-Wan had suffered.

And Obi-Wan had been very sparse in reaching out to his men after. At least Cody. He'd put up his walls, fallen into the mold of the perfect “Jedi Master”, lack of attachments and all.

(If the clones felt the Jedi used them, maybe the Jedi felt the clones tainted them. Weapons that drew them to the Dark Side. Maybe the feelings was mutual. Or maybe that’s how Kenobi was before the war).

“The desk is clear,” Fox indicates to the clerk, who runs a hand through her tight curls, “Let’s go.”

Cody wastes no time in crossing the distance between the vast space of the desk and the clerk.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he manages before she can even collect herself, “we’re here for him. He’s the General–The Master–”

“The Jedi? Yes, he's recently gotten out of surgery. No visitors yet, name?”

At a time, he had been on Obi-Wan’s list of emergency contacts. Especially as the war waned. He hopes their time apart hasn't ruined that. If so, he has Fox. And all his ties to the government.

“Cody, CC-2224” he provides, urgently, “I'm–was his Commander–during the–” The underpaid clerk raises her hand, and directs them behind the rooms.

“You're on the list. I think we called you like five times, but you didn't answer." He swallows thickly. He had seen the number on his comm. He had an inkling about who it was for. But he just didn't pick up. He couldn't bring himself to. And then Fox called.

"Here's the room number.” She gives a breakdown of the directions and the maps that makeup the hospital. Visiting hours are defined, but Cody thinks that with the chaos, they’ll be extended. She ushers another family to the desk as she finishes with him.

Fox is able to walk him through the hospital layout sans the map. His time in the Corries saw him through these walls one too many times, as both an escort and patient.

Cody doesn’t think he could focus on the map if he tries. His hands are shaking, his breathing is uncharacteristically unsteady. Shaking like he’s stepping back onto the battlefield for the first time.

–

There’s less chaos on Obi-Wan’s floor. But still, it has been touched by the disarray from the waiting room. His room isn’t even private, most likely due to the lack of beds. And as far as Cody can tell, there’s at least one other patient in there, separated by a curtain.

Within the first few seconds of finding the room, Cody looks everywhere but where he should. He takes note of the window. The curtains are open, and the vibrant lights of Coruscant’s nightlife infiltrate the hospital room. He pays attention to the ambiance, the cycling of the machines, the steady rise and fall of his chest, a forced atmosphere of peace clashing against this war that still drags the Jedi into it.

Against whatever the hell is going on in Cody’s heart.

Fox says something behind him, gently coaxing him into the room. Automatically the soft lights illuminate the space. Cody had hoped they wouldn’t do that. It was easy to make out the outline of Obi-Wan’s body in the dark, helped by the lights from the window.

Now he has to look at him.

He remembers the last conversions had with Obi-Wan. Bits and pieces, his mind clinging onto them like oxygen. Stretching them out until this very moment.

“I’m sorry, Gen—Obi-Wan I haven’t been in touch, things have just been happening.”

How does one explain that ‘things’ are extensive therapy, working through years of brainwashing and mind control? Realizing that the man you loved the most and his entire Order sat near the pinnacle of that.

“I understand. These things take time. Please Cody, let me know if you need anything.”

Though despite the anxiety, despite the confusion. He still loves this man, he still wants him safe. And he knows danger follows Obi-Wan Kenobi wherever he goes.

“Be safe, General.”“It’s just Obi-Wan, Cody. I am not, and never should your General. And if that’s too familiar, Master Kenobi will suffice for me.”

How long was that? 6 months ago? 12 months ago? Two years ago? What had he lost in the time he tried to reclaim himself? Tried to find himself.

Who had he cut loose when he shed the skin of Commander Cody of the 212?

Obi-wan had answered then with some sort of sad resignation that Cody couldn’t pinpoint. Like they wouldn’t see each other again. He wonders now if Obi-Wan had sensed his inner turmoil. Kriff, of course he did. He was a Jedi.

That’s why he never reached out. Why he stopped when Cody stopped.

Suddenly he’s crying like a child when this starts to hit him.

The confusion of it all. The suddenness. He could have lost Obi-Wan, and he doesn’t know if that would make him feel better. It might make him feel worse.

Sobs and sobs rock his body. He didn't feel sad when he came in. He was anxious, yes. But sad? No, not at all. He hoped they could talk.

He acknowledges that this is a lot from him too. He hasn’t been on a battlefield for two years. He hasn’t seen an injured man like this since the clone wars ended.

Fox leads him to a comfortable chair, and places a gentle hand on his back. He’s glad he doesn’t ask questions. Fox isn’t like the others who lose their mind at the sound of Cody crying. He’s the eldest, supposed to keep them together. But Fox lets him be the baby.

As he revels in Fox’s comfort, he’s shocked to realize the absence of company.

It occurs to him then that Obi-Wan doesn’t really have many people to visit him. His relationship with Anakin Skywalker was infamously laughable. Ahsoka Tano had remained a distance from the Temple even after everything. The Council was spread across the galaxy, keeping peace without an army.

The Order was busy. Fighting wars the Jedi should have left ages ago. Cody thinks sadly to himself that they should have taken their Jedi with them. They could have sorted out the logistics later on.

Oh Force, he thinks, did I…did I leave him alone? Mustering all the strength in the world, he forces himself to look at Obi-Wan.

He doesn’t like what he sees.

Obi-wan looks pale. Almost as pale as a Kaminoan. According to the briefing from Fox, it wasn’t the burns that landed him on a stretcher. Though his body is covered in enough bacta to challenge that. It was the smoke inhalation and the blunt force trauma to his head apparently.

Cody remembers their many conversations with Obi-Wan about complex relationship with armor, and his fear when his General had stopped using it. The boys of the 212 had made bets about when Obi-Wan would end up in a body cast.

And while he’s in no body cast now, It looks like life has finally collected that toll.

Cody is almost terrified by how well he’s able to fall into the role of a vigilant commander. After the tears have dried, and the fog has cleared, he pulls the chair closer to the bed and breathes.

—

Fox disappears when the sun rises, excuses himself behind the curtain. He tells Cody that despite the curtain being closed, there's no one behind it and that he needs some space to work. Cody assumes he's left to do some Senate work on his datapad, or whatever Fox does to keep himself busy nowadays. He leaves with a gentle press against Cody's forehead, promising him he'll return.

At some point the doctor comes in to check Obi-Wan's vitals, and explains to Cody what procedures were done. He lets him know the Jedi will be there to collect their councilmen within the next few hours where he will likely undergo extensive Force healing for the mental strain he apparently suffered.

He shoots a quick message to Rex, who he left alone when Fox came to collect him. He thinks Rex may understand what he’s going through, though he’ll never say it aloud. They all know that Rex spends enough time loitering around the secured cells in the upper levels Coruscant to visit his old General.

(Rex doesn’t know Cody knows this though. That just like everyone who’s had the displeasure of meeting Anakin Skywalker, they still see some good in him.)

He groans after Rex shoots back a thousand question marks, even tries to comm him. He rushes to silence his comm, not wanting to wake the patient whose eyes have already started fluttering behind closed lids.

Its a futile attempt, because before he knows it, the bed’s occupant is stirring faster than he would have liked him to.

“Cody?”

It’s been two years, and yet a million years would not have prepared him for their eventual meeting.

What does one say?

“Sorry Sir–Obi-Wan, I didn’t mean to wake you.” He settles for an apology. Force, they could have been in their tents again. Commander and General. It’s so natural to fall back into old habits. Comforting and terrifying all at once.

For his part, Obi-Wan pushes himself up with his elbows, rising slightly so he can look Cody in the eyes. His blue eyes are wide, confusion radiating throughout his expression. And then, his gaze softens, and his brows furrow in guilt.

“Oh you’re not supposed to be here.” He says the first part gently, more to himself than to Cody, “ I apologize, I meant to remove you from my emergency contacts.” For some reason, that hurts. Cody swallows, feeling a familiar thickness in his throat.

“Life must be getting difficult for you, Master Kenobi, if you’re starting to fall behind on administrative tasks. You used to be on-top of that during the war.” He returns the comment with a formality of his own, though he means for it to soften the blow as well. If this is hard for him, it must be hard for Obi-Wan too.

In response the Jedi chuckles, coughing as he does so. Cody fights the urge to lean over and caress him. You are not his Commander, anymore. You are not his. He is not yours.

“Well, the adjustment from General to Jedi Master has had its ups and downs. Sometimes the details get lost in the translation,” he offers with a smile, his blue eyes scanning the clone. Cody can feel the full extent of the Force upon him, probing him unprompted. He’d learned early on in his service that this was normal for the Jedi. Just as easily as they used their eyes to see, and their voices to speak, they used the Force to scan everything and everyone.

It is their way of communication.

Cody may have put up some boundaries when he left the army, but this is not one of them. He lets Obi-wan in easily. The Jedi feels him out, his Force touch light and airy. Ticklish almost. “You really don’t have to be here Cody.” Obi-Wan says, more seriously now, letting his body fall back onto the bed, “ You can go, I will be alright. I’ll have your contact information removed after this.”

The warmth of his touch is gone. It sends Cody into a momentary spiral. He didn’t expect this coldness, this lack of familiarity. The sudden end to their very impromptu beginning. There is so much he still wants to do. To say.

He can’t stop the words that escape his lips next.

“That no-attachment clause sure has come in handy now, hasn’t it.”

It’s a vile kick in the gut, to throw something as sacred as the Code in the Jedi’s face. Obi-Wan jerks himself up, eyes wide. His machine beeps loudly. He looks dumbstruck, as if Cody has just slapped him across the face. Hard.

Cody knows in that moment his General recalls the late evenings they sat alone together, talking for hours about the Force, about the Order. About what it meant to Obi-Wan, about how the galaxy wide bastardization of his Order, his family, had hurt him more than he let off.

How the Force--The Order--had been there for Obi-Wan at his lowest. That this "emotionless order of monks" had saved him from himself time and time again.

How many times had Obi-Wan dragged a broken, shell shocked Cody into his quarters, forcing him onto his bed to meditate. How many times had Cody spoken the words 'I am one with the Force and the Force is with me' as Obi-wan calmed him after a gruesome battle, shielded him from the sharp pain of immeasurable loss. How many times had the Force been there for Cody, orchestrated through Obi-Wan?

Cody knows Obi-Wan recalls these moments because the clone does as well. And now, his guilt strengthens.

“Excuse me?” He grits out, wincing, “You’re the one who wanted nothing to do with us.”

Cody recoils.

“Its…not that simple.” He manages, barely above a whisper.

In these past few months, he’s found himself saying this a lot. To his brothers, when they ask if he still cares about Obi-Wan. To his therapist, asking what he needs to move forward from what happened to him. To himself, when he looks at his reflection and wonders how he got to where he is now.

The Force is back, cautiously ebbing around Cody’s field. Hesitant as the former commander lets him in.

Gently, Obi-Wan speaks, “You were resistant to me in the Force, and cold whenever I was around you. I know what The Republic–what we did to you–I’m not an idiot Cody. I knew you wanted your space away from me.”

Cody cannot meet his eyes. He feels ashamed. And confused. As if the consequences of his actions are now coming to tear him into pieces. But he shouldn’t feel this way, right? He wanted this, right?

“I don’t…” Cody deflates and throws his head into his hands. This is what he was dreading. His mind is still a mess of commands, of order, of questions, of anxiety. This is like exposure therapy, his trigger and his love all bound in one.

Through the gaps in his fingers, he looks at Obi-Wan lying in a hospital bed, bandages on his arms and head.

Made to protect a galaxy that would have had his kind murdered if it hadn’t been for the discovery of the chips (and even that happened too late. Both have the saber and blaster scars to prove it). He thinks of Obi-Wan who threw himself into battle to save his men, who placed himself between Cody and a bullet to make sure his Commander made it out alive.

Who approached him after Order 66 to make sure he was okay.

Cody is flooded with thundering guilt. Was all this worth then? If he feels this way about Obi-Wan? What will he tell Rex? What will he tell Boil? He’s supposed to set an example. He’s supposed to be the one who breaks free. What will he be telling his brothers if he goes back? “Cody–Cody, breath!” How Obi-Wan found the time to leave his bed and pull up a chair that had been on the other side of the room in the span of two seconds, Cody does not know. All he knows is that he’s enveloped in Obi-Wan’s physical and not so physical embrace, breathing deeply as tears cascaded down his face.

“I thought I wanted that, Sir. And part of me is still finding out what all I want, but I know that I haven’t felt the way I just did when you touched me with the Force in a very long time. And I think that no matter how I feel about you, if you died today, I would have lost my kriffing mind.” He admits through tears, “so that counts for something, I guess. But I don’t know what that means for me.”

“Healing is not linear, Cody. I,” Obi-Wan falters, “I still have not spoken to Anakin. I still have not forgiven Qui-Gon, but I would never regret my time with them. And when I am ready, I hope to embrace my padawan again. I say this to let you know that should you never want to see me after this, I will accept that. But I will always be here, waiting for you to return Cody. Be it in this life, or when we are both one with the Force.”

Cody balls, sobbing loudly as he clings onto Obi-Wan. He nods, the coil in his stomach unfurling. He wonders if it is Obi-Wan’s doing.

“I’m sorry for what I said about the Code. I'm sorry for everything,” he breathes, pulling himself together, “I am usually not like this.” “None of that Cody, you have nothing to apologize for. The fault is ours. The Order should have done more for you and your siblings,” he states, fingers running through Cody’s hair, “I had hoped that by staying away we were doing that, but I suppose we should let you choose how we interfere.”

(He wants to tell him that this isn’t the case for all Jedi. Plo Koon tried the silent treatment, and Wolffe, Boost and Sinker apparently cornered him outside of his suite in the Jedi temple.)

“Clones getting a choice,” Cody chuckles through his tears, “what an amazing concept.”

Obi-Wan hums, fingers still twisting in Cody’s curls. Cody is more comfortable than he thought he’d be. He welcomes Obi-Wan’s touch just as he did the Force. “Obi-wan, I want to be with you. It won’t be easy, but neither was the war. And we both survived, somewhat.” The tears have stopped now, and he finds both his footing and his voice. Gently, he untangles himself from Obi-Wan’s arms and adjust himself so that he captures those blue eyes with his own.

“I think we can win this too. If you’ll be patient with me. I am still…healing, as you put it. They did a lot to us in Kamino, and to put it frankly my brain is fucked. And a lot of that was before the war. I will not be easy to be with.” “My padawan is Anakin Skywalker who nearly turned Sith during the war, I don’t think the Force wants me to be with easy people. And I don’t want to either. Besides, I was willing to not speak to you for two years. I will be as patient as you need me to be, Cody.”

“If you’re comparing me to the two second Sith, then we’re off to a bad start.” Obi-Wan erupts into laughter. Genuine laughter. Laughter so hard, he begins to tear up. Though Cody is somewhat hesitant to credit the humor alone for the tears. Maybe Obi-Wan needs an excuse of his own.

“Who’s idea was that nickname?” “It was Jesse’s, but now most of the 501st has adopted it. While half of the galaxy calls him Vader, the 501st calls him the two second Sith. I think it’s how they cope.” Cody joins in, reveling in the ridiculousness of it.

Leave it to the 501st and their General to be the much needed comic relief.

In between their laughter, and their tears, they lean forward, foreheads brushing against the other.

------------------

(Sometime later, when Obi-Wan has fallen back to sleep, and the Jedi have come to collect their council member, Cody stands to collect Fox from behind the screen. It’s time they both go home.

He nearly screams when he pulls back the fabric and sees Fox sheepishly bury his head into the mass of hair that is Jedi Master Quinlan Vos.

He doesn’t even want to ask how much the latter heard. )

#codywan #commander cody #obi wan kenobi #the clone wars #the prequel trilogy #quinlan x fox

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netherfeildren · 2 years ago

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The Cassandra Complex : Chapter VI : Sisyphus

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Din Djarin x F!Reader)

Content Warnings: Canon typical violence; Blood and Gore; Explicit description of injury; Use of misogynistic language; Threat of SA but none occurs; Ass play; Anal sex

A/N: It's all downhill from here, baby!!!

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 10K

Read on AO3

CHAPTER VI : SISYPHUS

DEATH: Why the bow, if you’re breaking no laws?

Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

You’re in the dark again, warm and sated, together. He’s propped up on one elbow, practically half on top of you while you lay on your belly, pressed into the soft blankets and the blistering heat of his body; your cheek, smooshed into the ball of his shoulder while you let him explore your skin at will. He’s been biting and licking and kissing all over for what seems like hours after having fucked you halfway to delirium, and you can do nothing more than hum and whimper when his teeth get too hungry, his bite too sharp, listening to the sounds he makes. Low rumbles of appreciation deep in his chest that you feel vibrate into the bones of your back, breathy huffs where he takes in your scent, mingled with the flavor of his own sweat and come. You’re damp and sweaty and a little sticky in the soft crevices between your limbs, and maybe it should be disgusting, but he tastes you everywhere anyways.The tip of his nose dragging down the line of your spine, a soft nip to your waist, a sharper one to the inside of your bicep, that vulnerable and ticklish swell. He rolls you slightly further towards him to expose your breasts to his explorations, and you feel the tickle of his armpit hair on your cheek where your face is tucked into his side. He sniffs below the damp line of your hair at the nape of your neck, mouths wetly at the satiny skin, and you drag your fingertips up his arm, barely there, pulling a shiver from him and a soft moan. “What’s your favorite place in the galaxy?” Your voice barely a break in the silence, the soft song of your breathing.

A wet suck to your nipple, “Balls deep inside of you,” entirely serious in that monotone way of his.

“Disgusting.”

“Nuh uh, delicious,” a long swipe to the other nipple, pad of his thumb brushing over the dip of your navel. A whine of his name, and he gives you a laugh, the sort of laugh that changes the trajectory of a person’s life, the sort of laugh that is so real it could almost be confused as imaginary. He moves up, lets you savor the sound of it, and there is no better taste than this: someone else’s laughter in your mouth. You twist your fingers in his curls, run your tongue behind his teeth, belly pressed to belly. “I’m being serious,” you remind him.

He buries his face in your neck, a soft hum, “Here, on the ship.” With me? You want to ask. “What about yours?”

“I like water.” You always had, had always been a swimmer when the moment allowed.

“Then we shall have to find some water for you, won’t we?” His fingers have snuck down to your bottom, and he kneads your soft flesh, the line of his once again swollen erection trapped between your bodies. Yes, you’d like that, you think, to be in water with him. You dig your fingers into the rock hard muscles of his shoulders as his mouth resumes its explorations.

“I want a loth cat,” you tell him next.

Mhmm.

“Din?” His mouth is once again latched at your breast, and his cock has begun to thrust and grind against your belly, sticky tip drooling against your skin.

“Please, be quiet,” he says with your breast still in his mouth. “I’m very busy.”

You ignore him, twist your fingers tighter in his curls, arching your chest further into his mouth. “Will you get me a loth cat?” Voice all soft and breathy and breaking as you lift your thigh around his naked hip.

Distracted: “A what?”

The man really, really does not listen. “A loth cat. Will you get me one?”

Finally, he pulls his head back. “No. What is that?”

“You’re saying no, and you don’t even know what they are!”

“You’re not bringing any animals on my ship,” and even though he can’t see it, you roll your eyes at him.

“It’s a pet. Not an animal.”

“Explain the difference to me.” He bends his head to your breast again, all teeth now.

“A pet is fluffy, and I will love it.” But he brings his cock back into the mix then, and there are no more allowances for ridiculous requests for quite some time after that.

“Now you’re going to be good and stay here like I’m asking you to this time, right? Where you’re safe.” He’d landed the Razor Crest a conservative distance away from Niima Outpost; didn’t want you too far isolated in the sand dunes while he left you to go out and fetch his bounty, but not so close you’d be easily noticed.

“Oh, you are soooo stern,” you pout up at him from where you’re curled up in your bed.

His only response: a long suffering sigh, hands on his hips. You roll your eyes at him, nuzzling into the pillow that smells just like his hair. “Yes. I promise I’ll stay on the ship this time. Where it’s safe.” He comes to one knee beside your shared bed, he’d never crawled back into that tomb of a bunk again after that last time together, this was your shared place now. He brushes a gentle thumb over the pout of your bottom lip, tipping your chin up to the dark tee of his visor, “What a good girl you can be… when you set your mind to it, little one.” You scoff, rolling your eyes at him again, but feel your cheeks heat and your lower belly go tight and fluttery. Your pussy clenches with a slight twinge, and you feel the slow thick drool of his come seep out of you. He’d taken you hard earlier, savage and rough and without restraint – like he was angry at having to leave you and taking it out on your cunt.

“Only when I try very, very hard,” you tell him. He dips his chin once, and then unfolds to his great height above you, another nod, another paused moment to take one last, long look at you, and you want to beg, so badly, for him not to go. It feels like the first time he’d left, all those weeks ago. Your first experience staying on the Crest without him while he went out to hunt his bounty, and at the same time, all the worse. You know him so much better now, you need him, you… You what? No, you can’t think of it now. It’s a non possibility, something you aren’t capable of. But a pesky, perilous corner of your mind whispers, like the Force healing? A non possibility of that sort? You want to ask him to take his helmet off and kiss you before he goes, you want to beg him to stay, you want to ask him why he’s not called you that sweet name again since that last time, the only time, in the heat and damp darkness of the fresher when he’d whispered it into your skin, cyar’ika, and you want to cry, just a little bit, if you think on it too much. On the fact that he’d not repeated it, at the possibility of it having been a mistake or a slip in the heat of the moment. But you say none of those things, and ask for no kiss, and look after him with regret and an inkling of unsettled trepidation as the broad expanse of his back lumbers down the lowered plank and then disappears with the closing of the hatch into the scorched badlands and marching dunes of Jakku.

The hull is left dark and serene with his departure, quiet, and yet it sends a small shiver up your naked spine, bare and wet beneath the warm covers like he’d left you. He keeps the space meticulously clean, but now it’s littered with small signs of your presence in his life, of your life together. Your tunic thrown over the lone stool where he forces you to sit when you take your meals with him crouched at your feet, obsessively watching to make sure you have your fill, strange and lovely man that he is. He has a complex about the food you consume, as if it’s imperative to him that you eat as much as you can, that you’re always satisfied in the ways he cannot, or will not allow himself to be. He doesn’t eat enough, never as much as you know he’d probably secretly like to, and for a man of his size and brawn, surely not enough as he needs to, and it’s slowly fostered an angry kernel of resentment within you. He should always have all the things that he needs and wants, as much food as he desires, always, and anything that would keep those things from him you’re bitterly coming to detest. It even, in a strangely convoluted way, makes you angry at yourself, that your presence here with him prevents him from freely and comfortably discarding his helmet to take his meals. If you weren’t here with him he could eat as much as he wants whenever he wants without worry of being seen, and sometimes, try as you might, you can’t let go of the thought.

He’d left the pair of his thick socks you’d appropriated for yourself draped over one of the steam pipes that are warm to the touch, so that when you’d put them on they’re nice and toasty for you. The sight of them makes your heart kick and flip and burn in your chest, and you turn over to face the other way, towards the wall so that you’ll not be forced to look upon the empty hull and the warm socks and the Din-less space and remind yourself how much you hate when he goes away. He’d said he’d be back quickly, only a few hours he estimated, and you comfort yourself with this as you tuck your hands beneath your cheek and slowly drift off into a restless sleep.

“Hello, beastie.”

You’re thrashed into wakefulness by an agonizing grip twisting in your hair trying to rip the very strands from your scalp. You screech, disoriented trying to kick out, get your bearings, but the hull is still darkened from the way Din had left you. You feel another pair of hands trying to grasp at your ankles, and you kick out savagely, bracing yourself against the cold floor, and then the sickening crunch of the bones in your hand as a heavy boot slams down on your fingers, agony, agony, what is happening? An alien dialect in a language you can’t discern, rough and grating is spit back and forth between several voices, and then the first voice comes again and an old, hunched female steps into the dim light from the shadows. You recognize her reptilian Thalassian aspect immediately, and your heart drops into your stomach. Slavers. You double your efforts, kicking and screaming and trying to claw at the hands in your hair, to rip yourself away while your crushed hand screams in agony. The old female comes closer, beastie, beastie, we’ve caught ourselves a beastie, she sing-songs in a hollow voice. Another boot to your belly, kicking the air out of your lungs, sending fire through your ribs and bile up your throat, but when you turn your head, you make eye contact with one of the old crones henchmen, another Thalassian, and with a single thought you send him slumping to the ground, brains oozing out of his ears in a melted, bloody mess.

“Murderous little beast!” the female screeches, and she’s unraveling a whip from around her forearm, and before you can even brace yourself, snapping it at you so that it’s splitting open the meat of your cheek. Searing agony spreads across your face, your vision goes in and out, and you try and shake it away, but then more of that guttural unknown language and an order from the crone, and your arms are being jerked forward so harshly it feels as though your bones will be wrenched from their sockets, and they’re clamping something around your wrists. Something cold and sucking and terrible. You slump forward, tangled in the soft blankets of yours and Din’s shared bed, still naked beneath, and you try to reach for the Force, for your strength, for Din’s mind out there in the desert, but there’s nothing. Acute silence, unbearable nothingness. All your strength zapped and stolen away in the blink of an unguarded moment, like an amputated limb.

The female is hunched over the body of the one you’d killed, leaning heavily on a thick walking stick, spitting hissing sobs, and when she turns back to look at you, you can see there are tears marring her ugly, wrinkled face. “You killed him! Creature! Dark creature!” She spits. “Pull her back, let me look at the little whore’s face.” Unforgiving claws in your hair again, and your head is ripped back and angled towards the weak light of the fresher, the blanket covering your modesty slipping to reveal your nakedness beneath. Fear and shame and fury curdle and burn within you like acid. If he comes back and finds you gone, or worse dead, he’ll be devastated, so hurt, so angry, he’ll blame himself. They can’t – they cannot put him through that. You have to think, calm yourself, get out of these binders they’ve put you in, some sort of Force suppression technology at work. The things glow a sickly purple color, nothing like the lovely warm violet of your saber. But before you can even get a firm grasp on your thoughts, collect yourself, the woman slides the walking stick in her grip, and pulling it back behind her shoulder, swings it forward with all her might to hit you in the face with the heavy, bulbous end of it, right over the split from the whip. You feel the very mass of your brain jostle within your skull, a sickening crunch, the vision in that eye going completely dark. Maker, they’re going to kill you if they’re not careful. A terrible sound rips from your throat, something worse than a mere cry, going slack jawed, whacked further into the pit of unconsciousness. One of the others says something to the old Thalassian and turning away from you, she hisses something back. She goes still for a few moments, leaning on her stick heavily once again, the sound of her wet panting breath, and when she seems to have finally collected herself she turns back to you again. In basic she says, “I know what you are. I’ve heard what they’ve been trying to do to your ilk. How they mine you for that sweet little nectar that runs through your veins, through all of us – the Force. There are rumors of you circulating the Outer Rim, did you know? We heard of you and came searching. Received word from our Huttese friends, whispers of a Mandalorian mercenary and his dark pet roaming about the dunes of Jakku, an old gunship spotted lurking where it should not be. We’ve been searching for you, beastie,” she whispers, coming closer to inspect you, voice maniacal with cruel glee. The pain in your face, your head is a numb throb sharpening to acute fire, vision fading and then glowing bright white and burning. Your head, Maker, they’ve knocked it clean off your neck. “There are many clamoring to get their hands on you. Tell me, what does it feel to be whittled down to nothing more than the worth of an invisible and illusory thing? The Force,” voice contemplative and disgusted, all the same. “To be worth nothing more but that unseen ether flowing through your veins. How does it feel to be nothing? Look at you – playing the whore to some Mandalorian brute. Pretty thing…” She pushes back at your shoulder with the butt end of her stick, “Before you went and made me angry. Hmm… perhaps, I shall sell you with that same offering, as well? Would you like that? I wonder what will fetch a higher price, your blood or your cunt.” She laughs and her thugs join around her. You can feel the wide split in your face drooling blood, throbbing in agony, the sound of their raucous and cruel laughter creating a painful symphony above the pounding of your blood in your ears. “A magical whore!” She cackles, flashing her rotting grimace. “Yes, I quite like that idea. Stealing you away from that murderer – mercenaries, the lot of them, those Mandalorians. They hide behind the conflated righteousness of their Creed and their failed history, but they are nothing but another murderous cog in the wheel that would subjugate those of us they deem lesser.” The laughter leaves her suddenly, going serious, and you feel such fear in that single pause of silence. He’s going to

be so angry when he finds you gone, and you– you cannot be enslaved again, you can’t, you won’t. You’ll kill yourself before you allow it. “Monster,” she hisses, “This is nothing worse than what a thing like you deserves after the sort of evil your ilk spread. Imperial slut,” she spits at you, and her saliva lands like a glob of acid on your bare chest, burning. “Grab her. We’re going before her Mandalorian brute returns and kills us for taking his pet.” Her underlings say something in that unknown language, gathering to grip you under the arms and around your ankles, and a frenzy ignites in your heart. Through your broken and torn face you begin to howl, writhing and kicking your legs with as much strength as you can muster despite the broken ribs. “No, no! I will not go!” You screech, getting one in the face. He jerks away and lets your bottom half hit the hard floor with a harsh thud. “Let me go! I will not– I will not go!” You won’t be taken from him, you won’t, you won’t. The one holding your upper half shoves you painfully to the ground, your poor, battered head slamming once again, and another brutal kick lands to your ribs. Maker, you’d not missed beatings like this. The crone begins to scream at them, garbled sounds you can’t make out, and you lay your head on the cold floor. You just need a second to breathe, that’s it. You can endure much, much more than this, it’s only the binders stealing your strength, you just need a moment, and then you’ll fight again or break out of these terrible things and kill them all, but your head, Maker, your head feels as if it’s been split open down the middle. Their yelling reaches a crescendo, an added shrillness to it that was not there before, and then one of the henchmen is toppling painfully over your prone form, a heavy knee to your spine as he lands diagonally over your body, but his weight is instantly ripped away from you. More screaming and oh, the sound of blaster fire, the piercing screams of the old Thalassian, you turn your head slowly, slowly to the side and there, through the bloody and matted strands of your loose hair, that bright and familiar gleam, a flash of burnt red. You bring your manacled wrists slowly up to your chest, hunching into as small a ball as you can make yourself, cradling your broken hand to yourself.

He’s here.

He’s here, it’ll all be okay now.

You let your eyes flutter shut and listen to the Thalassian’s screaming reach a crescendo, and it sounds a little like that long ago familiar sound of flesh tearing from flesh. You don’t want to see. You don’t want to see him commit atrocities in your name. It’s a funny thing, you think, the nature of his violence. He is a Mandalorian, and like the Thalassian had said, yes, perhaps, mercenary, and so it would stand that he is a man who commits violence, but you’d found – Maker, you hurt – you’ve found… that a thing that commits violence is not always also, or at once, a violent thing by nature. The moment makes of us what it needs us to be, but that does not always indicate our true selves. Violence committed in an instant of necessity, the peril of threat, does not always mean that we are bad or violent in our hearts, and Din… your Mandalorian does not have a violent heart. Beneath all of that uncompromising beskar is a soft heart, a good heart. It’s why you–

The scream stops.

No, no, no, no, no– “Look at me, look at me, cyar’ika. It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here now. They’re gone, it’s okay.” You’re a crumpled, bloody, broken heap on the ground. He’d left you. He had left you here alone for this to be done to you. There is something hot and terrifying crawling its way up the inside of Din’s chest, searing his throat, turning it to char. He turns you over with all the gentleness he can muster, his shaking hands slippery with blood, the broken, dead bodies littered around the two of you as he pushes your bloody hair from your face and takes in the way they’d savaged you.

And Din– Din feels a fury the likes of which he’s never felt before in his entire life. And in the wake of a sort of fear he’d never experienced previously either, not even at the sight of his child self watching his mother and father murdered, the image of their crumpled and broken bodies becoming smaller and smaller as he was taken away into the unknown by the Mandalorians who’d saved him, it leaves him unbalanced and of tremulous control as he pulls you into his arms. You’re cupping one of your hands strangely in the other, and when he takes your manacled wrists you let out a painful, garbled sound. Your hand is mangled, fingers darkening already and bent sickeningly in incongruous angles, and he wants, very badly, to look away from the sight of your pain. It causes a physical ache inside of him, nausea and fire and thunder, like a blaster bolt to the belly, a knife to the lung. “Look at me, cyare,” and your eye blinks open, the darker of the two, the one that whispers silently at him when he looks at it too long, the other, the bright one like a scream, is too swollen to open, but you, miracle of miracles, for you are a miracle wrapped in the shape of a girl, give him the tiniest of attempted smirks; something like the creation of myth unfolding before him. The side of your face not broken and bleeding, lifting into a crooked little half moon, and bloody smile full of sharp, menacing teeth you croak, “I knew you’d come.”

Din knows in this instant that he is going to love you for the rest of his life. It is not a question, or an uncertainty. It is simply fact. Truth like his Creed, like The Way.

“I’m here. I’ll always come for you,” he tells you in lieu of saying that which sits heavy on his tongue now, which is that he’d let you eat his very heart out of his chest if you so desired it, that he belongs to you intrinsically. “I’m so sorry. I’m here now.” The hand not mangled grips the fabric around his throat and Din feels a sob in the shape of your name build in his chest. The Mandalorian, on the verge of tears. He gently presses you closer, tries to breathe, tries to swallow his howls. They were slavers, he’d marked them from the moment he’d spotted them through the open hatch of the Crest, dropping the long dead bounty he’d found half buried in the sand to sprint towards you. He’d worried about the possibility of this for some time now, the threat of someone coming for you, recognizing what you were, thought he’d prepared for it. Rumors were difficult to avoid or quell and despite his attempts to keep anyone from getting too close to sniff you out, you attracted attention. It was inevitable. Too beautiful, too alive, too alluring. He’d been afraid of something like this happening, and he’d thought the best way to keep you safe was to keep you here, hidden away on his ship, security system set and impenetrable. He’d been a damned fool.

He takes in the sight of your bare limbs, the beginnings of nasty bruising over your naked abdomen. The idea of someone taking you from him, severing his claim, keeping you away from him… and like this, when you were supposed to be safe here in this place the two of you’d made a home of together, while you were bare and waiting for him as he’d left you, when you were still full of his semen, potentially full of his–

He swallows the thought. There are certain things you believe about yourself that Din is doubtful to agree with just yet…

“Take them off,” you whisper up at him, “I’ll–” a pained swallow, “I’ll heal. It’s okay, Din. Don’t be afraid,” you say with such earnestness, a tiny life of an eyebrow, but he is anyway. You shouldn’t be the one telling him not to be afraid right now, split open as you are, but you do anyway, and Din is deathly afraid – of this, of you, of everything, of not being fast enough, strong enough, good enough to protect you, to keep you. Din feels more afraid now than he has ever felt in his entire life.

“It’s okay. I’ll be okay. It’s not that bad,” and at the same time, your words make him so angry. At what life had made you believe, at what the galaxy had made you believe was okay. This is not fucking okay. Seeing you hurt like this is not okay. He moves to gently, as gently as he can possibly be, disengage the binders from around your wrists, careful to not jostle your broken hand too much.

“It’s not okay.” He looks at your mangled face, the blood running into your hairline, your swollen eye, that lovely and luminous eye that makes his heart feel split into a million different pieces, all engraved with the etching of your name, “This is not okay.” And then his gaze lands on the blood splattered gem of your earring. This sight he must close his eyes to, he cannot bear it. That tiny sparkle, the significance of your relationship made material, covered in your own blood and his failure to protect you.

He opens his eyes again to take in your wet gaze, unseeingly staring up at him, dark and fathomless. It shutters closed, long lashes clumped together in the sticky mess of your blood and tears. “It will be. I’ll heal soon. This is not the worst that’s been done to me,” voice thin and reedy, as if you’re embarrassed, ashamed to say the words out loud. As if you recognize them for the travesty they pose. He has to look away, swallow another sob. Din can’t remember the last time he cried, the last time he felt like crying, but he feels it now. Eyes hot and pinched and uncomfortable.

He should have never left you. He will never leave you again.

Wrapping you in the blanket, he makes sure your modesty is covered, and with as much care as he can, takes you in the cradle of his arms and moves you back into your bed.

“Where’s your bounty?” You croak.

“That doesn’t matter now. Rest. I’m going to–”

“Of course, it matters. It’s–” a pained swallow.

“Don’t talk, cyare. It’s okay. We can–”

But you press on, cut him off. “That's the whole reason we came here. We’re not going to let this be a waste.” This being your savaging, split open, almost stolen. Din feels his heart drop down into his stomach. He nods once, swallows, tries to cough up the knot of agony lodged in his throat.

“I dropped it when I saw them. They did something – fucked with the system and deviated the signal so I wasn’t alerted when they broke in. The bounty was already dead. Beacon signal still going. I found him and came straight back – saw the open hatch and knew something was wrong–” You give a soft, pained moan, brow folding into an agonized frown. Maker, he’s not going to survive this. He feels like a fucking coward. Terrified, sick to his stomach, angrier, weaker than he’s ever been in his entire life.

“Slavers. Thalassians,” you whisper, resting your head against his chest plate, broken hand clutched against your chest. “I need you to reset my fingers before they heal wrong.” Fuck, he’s never had a panic attack before, but he worries he might be having one now. He tries to swallow the scream for you, thinks he whispers something like, alright. Shifting you in his lap, he pulls his blood soaked gloves from his hands, and when he reaches for your hand he takes in the tremor of his own fingers, feels a humiliating wash of shame curdle inside of him. He’s a Mandalorian for Maker’s sake, a warrior, and yet the sight of your pain, your hurt, leaves him unraveled, as frightened and green as a child. He has never experienced the dilemma of having someone he– someone that matters, hurt. Carefully propping your back up against his bent knee he pulls you in close so that your hip is tucked up against him, he grasps your wrist tenderly between his fingers, soothes the pad of his thumb against the soft inner slope of your wrist, the webbing of blue beneath the thin skin is comforting somehow, you’re alive. He made it in time, he’s going to fix this, take care of you. “It’s okay, Din,” you whisper again.

A sharp jerk of his chin, “I know. I’m going to make this right.”

He smooths his thumb up the base of your palm, trying to settle, comfort you, the both of you, he rubs a gentle circle into the center, feels you tremble and jerk against him, and he hums low in his throat, a deep sound to remind you that he’s here, he’s got you. “It’s alright, little one. It’s alright, it’s alright,” keeps murmuring low reassurances in your ear, unsure whether they’re more for you or for himself, as his fingers slide up slow and light and grip your ring finger first, grasping it at the base to hold it securely and pulling on the tip to straighten it out, quick and efficient movements, a muted snap. There’s one. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”. Moves to your pinky next, so tiny gripped between his own large, rough fingers. He has to grind his molars together, bite the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. He holds the base of that vulnerable little finger, the fine bone almost nothing beneath his touch and straightens that one too, listens to the hollow pop of the joint righting itself back into place. That one pulls a swallowed screech from your throat, you turn your face sharply away, and he sees your legs shuffle and kick in his periphery, your breathing fast and shallow.

“Hurt– That one hurt,” you choke, and he watches a single tear squeeze out of your swollen eye and make a slow, devastating track down the slope of your mangled cheek, losing itself to the shredded gash.

“What did that to your cheek?” He grits at the same time that he rights your index finger into place, tenses his knee to keep you steady and upright as you jerk. Panting wet breath hiccupping, trying to swallow back your cries for a moment, he cradles your bruised hand in his, wishes he wasn’t wearing this fucking helmet so that he could kiss the back of it, lick your wounds. He feels like screaming.

“A w– a whip.” You don’t turn back to look at him, and Din feels his blood turn to frost. Something so painful moving through his chest he struggles for breath.

“They whipped you in the face?” He looks at the pieces of Thalassian surrounding the two of you and curses himself for killing them so quickly. He should’ve been smarter, more patient, drawn it out. Made them suffer.

“It’s okay–” voice short, tense. “I’ll heal.” Face still turned towards the open hatch and the hot Jakkuian night, he watches another tear fall.

“It doesn’t matter–”

“I’ll heal. I’ll–”

“That doesn't matter–they hurt you. You can be hurt. Just because you can heal, just because you don’t care about what happens to you doesn’t mean that I don’t.” He cups the back of your head, begs you to turn back towards him with his touch. “You being hurt hurts me, do you understand me?” Voice soft as he can make it go, trying to make you see what he’s saying in the only way he thinks will penetrate the fog of your painful history.

And you do turn back at that, finally, thank you, thank you, he can see the edges of the wound start to knit themselves back together. A girl and a miracle and a myth all woven into one. “Do you understand me?” He asks again, cupping your chin, gathering the wet of your freely falling tears now, pressing the pad of his thumb to the corner of your eye.

“No, no, I don’t understand,” face crumpling, you press your forehead beneath the edge of his helmet. They hurt me, they hurt me, you cry over and over, and Din knows that you don’t only mean the Thalassians. He wishes he possessed the hand of the Maker. That he could reach across to the far corners of the galaxy, the most shadowed depths, the blackest pits, and wipe away any speck of darkness that’s ever touched you, anything or anyone that had ever done you harm. He wishes he could give you his very heart as an offering, anything that would settle the sound of your anguish. But then he thinks that an impossible sort of thing, for his very heart is held right here, sobbing in his arms, living on the outside of his chest.

After he insists on you allowing him to spread bacta along your cheek and hand, despite your protestations that it’ll close on its own, that you’re fine, you remind him that his bounty is still lying dead and forgotten out in the sand sea beyond the ship. He goes out to retrieve the pitiful thing, felled by the wrath of Jakku, most likely, and you make an agonized attempt to stand and dress yourself. Your ribs and back ache, the line of your spine feels on the verge of fracture from the last blow you’d taken, and you shuffle about slowly, trying to force yourself to hurry and get yourself covered before he returns, not wanting him to see the extent of the damage done to your ribs and back. You manage to get on a pair of underwear and one of his shirts before he’s stomping back up the gangway, dead bounty slung over his shoulder. He bends to shuck the thing off, the limp body hitting the durasteel with a harsh thud that snaps your mind into focus for a millisecond so that you’re taking in the carnage surrounding you. The release of gas from the carbon freezer sounds around you as you find the old Thalassian – her head seems to have been ripped clean from her neck somehow, you cock your head slowly, taking the sight in. He’s moving about, dragging the pieces of the bodies and chucking them out the hatch, and your mind feels like a piece of elastic snapping far out and away from you, and then shooting back in a painful reverberation, vision going hyper focused, too bright to bear, and then murky, as if viewed through a broken pane of glass. You hear the whirring, metallic shifting of the closing gangway, and your head swoops, belly twisting with nausea. There are pools of blood coagulating thick and disgustingly viscous on the floor, and you reach out for the wall to steady yourself as your blood rushes in your ears, but he’s immediately there, gentle hand to the curve of your waist and the bend of your elbow to pull you to himself. “It’s okay,” he says again. And he keeps saying so, but seeing this, what he’s done for you, something feels distinctly not okay.

You think of the Corellians who’d attacked you all those weeks ago, the Corellians you'd slaughtered for him. And the memory somehow makes the sight in front of you worse, some sort of horror. You’d turned him into you. You’d forced him into repeating your own horrible actions. In a moment of startling, sickening clarity, you’re confronted with the reality that he is only encased in beskar, he is not made of it. And one day they will go through him to get to you. Because there will surely be more, there will surely be another day, another time, another planet; more slavers or dark siders or someone of equally low measure will come for you again, and he can’t protect you forever, nor you him.

This time, please, let it end differently.

It’s all you ever do, you think, beg and plead for a different sort of fate. The duel of the fates, over and over again, but it is only ever you, alone, at odds with destiny itself. Fighting against what must be, what already is, what always has been. Your own sick ouroboros; eternally destroying and recreating yourself and the things around you.

He leads you back to bed, grabs his socks from where they’d lain draped over the warm steam pipe, and you return his own past words to him while he kneels before you, pulls them over your cold feet, looking over his shoulder the world seems inverted, mirrorlike, the black puddles of blood filled with dark mercury. They would have taken you from him. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.” Your voice sounds hollow and cold, unlike yourself.

He pauses his care of you, helmet tipped down, and you wish you could see his eyes right now, you feel, strangely, like you need them, like it would make everything better, more clear and stable. Taking one small foot in hand, he wraps his fingers around the entire thing. “You’re right,” he tells you, and your stomach flips with bile and fear again. “I shouldn’t have had to do it because I never should have let it happen. This is on me. I shouldn’t have left you alone for this to happen.”

You reach for his wrist, wrapping your fingers around the thick of it to feel his pulse beat against your fingertips. Something furious in the fluttering thrum of it; something of a monolith about him, steadfast, unmovable, the strongest thing in the entire galaxy. There’s a tinge of crimson rage swallowing him, and you can tell he’s doing everything in his considerable strength to keep it under reign for your sake; the proof is in the strew of bodies he’d littered the floor of the ship with. “They’ll always come for me, Din. As long as I’m alive, as long as the dark exists, as long as The Force exists they’ll come for me. They’ll never stop.”

The helmet snaps up, the yawning tee of dark transparisteel whispers its rage at you. “Then I’ll make them,” he grits. “I’ll find a way. I’ll protect you. We’re going to fix this. I’m going to fix this.” And you feel so–so strange. So sad. Devastated. The wave of fate swallows you whole, and that dark red thread crumbles to dust. You feel so unbearably sad for the both of you that your tears are renewed. Sad and old and at the end of your line.

And again: A person without a soul cannot cry. And so this must only be proof of the fact that you still possess yours, as shriveled or weak as it’s been made, you must still have one. You must. You must.

It’s his now. Undoubtedly. Whatever of your soul has bloomed back into life belongs to him now. You bring your trembling fingers up to the face of his shining beskar helmet, warring wishes wrapped into a strange tangle for what you know will not be the last time: that it wasn’t there, that you could have all of him, and, at the same time, that you too had something of such strength and conviction to protect you as his Creed protects him. What a comfort it must be. “I know you will.” Lie.

He goes to initiate takeoff and get the ship into hyperspace after that, and you can hear the uncharacteristic frenzy of his movement echoing in his rushed steps as he flits about the cockpit. Settling into your nest of blankets, you face the wall so you’re not made to look at the mess that’s been left, and when he returns, you listen to the sound of him divesting himself of his armor, the rustle of falling clothes, you can feel his panic now up closer, pressing against the confines of your skin like some living thing, trying to sneak its way into whatever break in you it might find. He was frightened, he is frightened. For you. If you weren’t struck stone cold you’d perhaps laugh at the idea of it, but strange memories flash in your mind, highlighted by painful bursts of bright light behind your closed lids, memories of darkness and pain and being so alone another person, a real person, existing in the entire galaxy seemed too far fetched a thing to be true. The sort of loneliness that forces you to forget that other living things exist. You curl in on yourself, still tucking your now halfway mended hand close to your chest, cupping your other palm over your eyes to hide yourself away. Shocked into a subdued, humming terror. A peripheral thing, the reality that you should be afraid or shaken, and you are, kind of, but interrupted by that memory of similar or much worse things that make this small mishap seem inconsequential in the shadow of all the rest, all the past.

You listen to him move towards the fresher to throw the two of you into darkness, and you panic, “Don’t turn the light off, please,” you murmur, still hidden behind your palm. If you cannot see the world, perhaps the world cannot see you either. “I’m sorry to ask – I won’t look, I promise.”

He pauses, silent for a moment. “Don’t apologize. Don’t. It’s okay. Anything you want.” What you really wish he’d say is that he doesn’t care if you look or not, a selfish and rotten and horrible feeling rolling in after the thought.

He crawls in behind you, sliding up against you bare and burning hot; an entire sun held inside the heart of a single man. He keeps his hands to himself at first, and you enjoy the brush of his chest up against your back on every one of his inhalations, the symphony of his breathing, but eventually he braves the salted earth and passes a gentle hand down the line of your spine.

“What do you need?” His voice is the deepest thing in the entire galaxy, you think. Space has nothing on it.

You press your hand tighter over your eyes. “Nothing.”

“You are strong and capable,” he says after a moment, and you worry you might vomit. “But you don’t always have to be. I don’t want you to have to fight when you’re with me. I only want you to be comfortable and cared for and well. Let me help you.”

“Okay,” barely a sound breathed through the part of your lips. And it takes several hours, but eventually that thing they’d come for, the very thing they’d attacked and tried to take you for, heals you. The Force. What is it to hate the very thing that makes you up, the very marrow of you, the sustenance of your life? Agony, madness, bitter, bitter resentment. Loneliness. To be alone within yourself. Terrible pain. Every bad thing that’s ever come to you throughout your entire life has been done in its name. And you’re angry at the fact, you think. For years and years things were done to you to honor that invisible giant, and it built an anger within you that is incoherent, unidentifiable, inconsolable.

You ache like you’re recently made.

But he holds you so gently while you knit yourself back together, seam by seam, so that the possibility of pain is removed entirely from the equation. He holds you like he loves you, and you want to ask him if he does, if he thinks he could ever love a thing like you, even if you do not deserve it. Even if he does not deserve it.

You fold it away instead.

Tell me, what does it feel to be whittled down to nothing more than the worth of an invisible and illusory thing? To be worth nothing?

Like spitting salt through an open wound, the agonized phantasma of an amputated limb.

You’re nothing.

And Din? He’s everything.

From behind your hiding spot you tell the quiet: “Sometimes it feels like I haven’t been happy my whole life. But I know I feel it with you. I want you to know that.”

“Do you?” His hand slides up the line of your vertebrae to cup the back of your neck, and you tremble beneath his heat, as if he were anointing you with the power of a sun.

“Yes.” You wish you had the courage to say more, to say everything. A real confession, the cutting sort: I was made to be nothing more than a weapon, but now I am a human, now I am alive. Now I am only myself. And I hurt, and I wish I were a girl again: only half savage, unmarred and free. But despite all of this, I am still only yours.

“I know already.”

Cyar’ika. Cyar’ika.

And so what does it matter if you hurt when he calls to you so sweetly? And yet, a quiet and unused part of you whispers back that it should not be so, that the thought is not quite right. Focus, focus, call them growing pains if you must. Focus only on him. And you realize that there is something about him that makes you fragile in the face of his strength, for some reason and most importantly, in a way that you like, in a way that is appealing to you like nothing else you’ve ever experienced before. Something that tells you that you need him to be strong in ways you’ve never had or needed to be strong before, a strength that is soft, something that is unyielding for the vulnerability you allow yourself with him. You can’t understand it.

“And I will let you take care of me.”

“I’m going to. This means something,” he says very quietly, the words bouncing off the back of your neck, and you know it is true. “This means something.”

It does. Everything. The two of you mean something together.

You finally turn to face him again, eyes closed, seams more securely knitted together and press your forehead to the notch of his throat, cracking your eyes open to look down at the expanse of his abdomen. You run a flat palm down his belly, feel the strength of him. If there is nothing else, perhaps, there can be Din.

“Close your eyes,” he threads his fingers through the back of your hair, “Let me kiss you,” and you feel your heart break and melt into desperation all at once. You press your eyes shut tightly and tip your face up towards him, parted mouth and bated breath, ready to receive the taste of him. He licks into you, pulling a moan from your belly and onto his waiting tongue, and you wish there was something more you could give him, something deeper, more significant that could translate all you feel for him. “I need you to forgive me,” he licks the words into your skin. “I need you to tell me you forgive me for letting this happen.”

“Don’t say that. There’s nothing to forgive. There’s nothing–”

“I should’ve been more careful. Smarter, more prepared. We shouldn’t have wasted time in that fucking desert for so long.” But you’d distracted him, kept him from going out, seeing to his responsibilities.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” you say again, tipping your head back to bear your throat for him.

He licks a line up the slope, tasting your pulse, the proof you’re still alive. Plants a kiss at the hinge of your jaw and then presses his forehead there. “I’ve failed you,” he whispers.

“Din, listen to me, listen to me. You could never do that. Never. Do you understand me?” If he only knew all you’ve not told him, all the ways in which you’ve failed him. You’re sure he’d see you in a very different light.

“It’s not going to happen again,” he promises, and you’ve not the heart to tell him again that they’ll never stop. That the life of a hunted creature is the only sort of existence you could ever live. You pull his mouth back to yours, kiss him with a renewed fervency. If you cannot give him anything more you’ll put everything you have into this.

“Just kiss me, please,” you beg, twining your arms around his neck and opening to him. He drags his mouth along the inner slope of your bicep, ending at the dip of your elbow and laving his tongue at the sensitive dip. Gripping the bend of your knee he hitches it against his hip and rolls the two of you over. Settling between the cradle of your thighs, he levers himself up off you, careful not to demand you bear his full weight, and finally, you feel ready for the dark again. With a single thought you submerge the two of you into the almost dark again, a weak stream of light coming from the fresher, rattle of the Crest moving through hyperspace sounding around you. He prepares you to take him softly, slowly, with intention. The gentle pad of his thumb to the slick seam of your cunt, parting your folds to get to the wellspring of your desire for him. A single finger and then another hooked against that place inside of you that seems now branded with his ownership over you. Nothing like this has ever existed, and you press the thought into his mind as he tastes your tongue, brings you to orgasm for him with slow and exploring fingers, the slick slide of his thumb over your swollen clit, and the whisper of your name to the shell of your ear. When he feeds his cock into you, slowly, so that you’re made to feel every curve and ridge and then meeting the end of you, so deep you can’t tell where he ends and you begin, it brings tears to your eyes and all sorts of confessions to your tongue that your more rational mind knows should be kept in the shadows. But very like the sun, he shines a light on all the dark and derelict parts of you better left unseen.

When you come for a second time, thick cock splitting you in half, there’s a screaming desperation for more urging you on. “Remind me–” you beg him.

“Of what? What do you need?”

“That I’m yours. That I belong to you. That I’m alive.”

“Do you need reminding of that?” He squeezes your bottom, presses you tighter to himself, his wet mouth sliding against the slope of your shoulder. “Don’t you know always? No matter what?”

“Yes.” Soft, soft, soft, but you don’t need it like this – you need it more– “Remind me anyways.”

You’re as close as can be, but he tells you anyway: “Come here, come here. I’m going to take care of you.” He pulls out, a wet and sucking sound, and turns you in his arms so you’re back to belly, and pulls you open again, thigh thrown over his hip. He runs his hands over the hills and contours of you, cups and squeezes your breasts, rough fingertips softly at your nipples, and you feel your cunt clench and gape, hungry for filling. He cups you over that soaked, ravenous place, slides his hand back and forth over the wet, swollen mess, and then further back, his fingers pressing and prodding gently at your ass. “I’ll have you here now, little one. Yes?” All you can do is nod back against his shoulder where your head is propped, a tightening so intense it’s almost painful strangling your throat, your heart, your cunt. Nothing more than a knot of abandoned want. A thing that doesn’t know how to take without devouring, and you do, you want to devour him. You think he might even let you. He presses a slow finger into the knuckle, and you go tight, bearing down around the invasion, spitting his name out in the shape of a wail into the quiet hull.

“It’s alright,” he gently thrusts that probing finger, hooking and wriggling it. Making space within to fuck you open on his cock. “You’re so tiny here, little thing. But you’re going to take me so well. I know you are.” He pulls his finger out entirely, and then there are two pressing back in as slow as possible, petting first, stretching second. “How’s that? How does that feel, my sweet girl?”

“I don’t– I don’t know,” moaning and shifting, trying to plead for more with little hitched arcs of your hips. “More, please.”

“You want my cock?”

“Yes–”

“How badly do you want it? Tell me–” He twists his wrist, stretching, claiming, all while the hill of his palm rubs against your cunt, so wet you can hear the slick sound of its desperation echo in the quiet.

“So badly,” you moan and sob, “More than anything.” He pulls his fingers from you and grips the root of his cock, fat head at your ass and starts to press in slowly, slowly, stretching you open around the incredible girth of him. Your breath comes in puffs and gasps, an unbearable heat flushing through your body, pulsing in your face and swirling in your belly, tightening the tips of your breasts into painful knots. You moan out his name, please for more, for harder, for faster until he’s buried to the root and you’re strangled into a hiccuping silence. Overwhelmed and overwrought by the feel of him buried in your ass so deeply. There’s no space for anything else inside of you, stretched to the brim and so full you can barely breathe. He’s everywhere. Gripping your hip you feel his breath against your cheek, the sweating, curling hair around your ear ruffled as he pants and groans, gritting his teeth and rumbling deep in his chest as he starts to thrust slowly into you.

“How’s that?” Voice strangled. His other hand comes around to thrum gently at your clit, the swollen mass of bundles pulsing with each punch of his hips. Your cunt leaks down to where the two of you are joined, and he picks up his pace, fucking up into you harder, faster, that strumming thumb flicking more quickly. He flattens his fingers against you, rubs at the length of your leaking sex, and you’re beyond words. Impaled and cock drunk. All you can give in return is an approximation of his moaned name, and he gives a quick, sharp slap to the top of your mound. “I want you to tell me how it feels,” voice ragged, almost broken. You tighten almost impossibly at his roughness, clenching down around him so he’s gasping, shocked ah, ah, ah’s, ending on a ragged groan. He brings his forehead to your shoulder, and you listen to his overwhelmed sounds. The first time you think you’ve heard him so close to the precipice of losing control. “Most perfect fucking ass in the entire galaxy,” he grits. All mine, mine, fucking mine.

“Feels–” His fingers resume their exploration of your cunt, “Feels so– so good,” your voice is nothing but agony made pleasure.

“Yeah? Feels good?” The sound of his hips slamming against your ass, wet and lewd, the press of his heavy balls to the round of your bottom. “What about this?” He begins to slowly press two fingers into your gaping, grasping cunt, and oh, it’s too much, your orgasm hits like an exploding star, singing all coherent thought along the way. You feel your pussy gush, go tight as a knot, and he snarls at the curve of your ear, bites down on the line of your shoulder, not halting the thrusting of his fingers inside of you. “Fuck, yes–fucking come for me. Come for me while I fuck your ass–”

“No–no, I can’t anymore, please, I can’t,” you cry.

“You can–you can. I know you can. My fierce little cyar’ika, soft only for me. Aren’t you?”

And how can you deny a man such as this anything. One that holds you so, one that fucks you like he loves you. You’ll lie to yourself, like so many other lies you tell, and pretend that this is the touch of love, that it’s something you deserve. His fingers, his cock are ruthless within you and they force another soaked orgasm out of you, shaky and weak, before he’s following suit, fucking the searing heat of his spend deep inside of you. He rolls you over onto your belly, levers himself up over you and slows his thrusts until you feel the last spurt of his cock kick inside of you, the low reverberations of his pleasure sounding from his chest. When he pulls out he spreads you apart, thumbs at your swollen skin. “It gapes so pretty for me,” he murmurs as he plays with the milky white drool, smears it into your slick, stretched skin. “This is how you should always be, covered in my come, beautiful thing.” All you can do is bury your burning hot face in the blankets.

When the two of you have finally settled later, cleaned yourselves up, and he’s made sure you’ve had enough water and a snack, when your panic has gone dormant, you remember your earlier request. A sniffle, and then voice broken and wet, just for added insurance: “You’ll get me my loth cat now, won’t you?”

A long suffering sigh, but he squeezes you tighter to his chest, presses a kiss to the crown of your head you feel sizzle all the way down to the tips of your toes. “I’ll get you anything you want, anything.” You smile into his skin, a miracle all of its own, that after everything he still provides you the ability to smile.

But later, right before he falls off the precipice of consciousness into the ebony deep and serene lake of sleep, you whisper into the thrum of his life force right at his neck: “We will take care of each other, won’t we?” Again – the both of you, together.

“Always,” he says, and it rings with such promise, in a way you know only someone such as he could swear, and you’ve always been a liar, but you do not want this to be a lie.

This time, please, let it end differently.

Chapter VII

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