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honey-dewey · 3 years

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The Bounty Forged in Blood

Pairing: Din Djarin/GN! Reader

Word Count: 4,563

Warnings: Blood, guns, mostly canon-typical violence, some swearing

Permanent Taglist: @phoenixhalliwell @star-wars-hell

A/N: No Writer’s Wednesday prompt this week, but I wrote this in twenty four hours and love it to bITS. I hope the blogs running the Writer’s Wednesday prompts get the rest and relaxation they deserve, and I will see you next week!

Story takes place before the events of the original Star Wars trilogy.

It had been a long time since you’d killed a bounty hunter.

The rotations dragged by in your hideout, watching the suns creep across the walls while old friends and older enemies breathed harshly, their dying breaths dragging in their throats. Very few of you were left here, hiding away in a hut on the far side of Tatooine. A few old clones, the occasional rebel, one very confused astromech droid, and you.

“Dogma?” You asked softly, rousing the closest member of your little party. “Dogma!”

Dogma grumbled as he woke. He wasn’t the oldest clone in your company, but he definitely wasn’t getting any younger. “What.”

“The comm is beeping.”

“So answer it,” Dogma growled, rolling over and slipping back to sleep.

You snarled your face up at his attitude, but turned to the blinking comm anyway. Clicking the red button, you lifted the headphones up and settled them firmly around your ears.

Noise began to filter around you, static plugging your senses as you fiddled with the dial on the comm board, trying to find a clearer signal. Finally, one came through.

“State your business.” It was audio from an old hidden comm you’d stashed in one of the ship ports, just to keep an ear on things.

“Bounty hunting,” a growling voice replied, sending a shiver down your spine and out to your fingertips.

“Don’t mind the curiosity, but who’s your target?”

A click was heard, and you began to feel your heart beat fast as the portmaster chuckled.

“Good luck,” the portmaster said. “Ain’t no one seen them. Hunters go out to find ‘em. None of ‘em come back.”

You unplugged the headphones, leaving them dangling around your neck as you roused the others. Rex, the oldest and default leader of your company, was up in an instant, woken half by you and half by his clone instincts.

“Bounty hunters?” He asked, helping Dogma to his feet.

“Just one,” you said, nudging Mixika with your heel. “He’s alone.”

Rex nodded, unplugging the astromech and patting its head as it beeped and whirred. “R2’s working on identifying the ship,” he said, watching as Dogma woke Kix and Wolffe. Mixika was already gathering her bag, waking the twi’lek twins as she went. Gatz and Tic both uncurled from one another, their eyes bleary even as they stumbled upright. Wolffe woke Jetti’ika, the youngest member of your party barely even shifting from their meditation as they woke.

“We have a hunter in port 26 Peth Dorn,” you said to the ragtag half-awake group. “He’s alone, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a threat to us.”

Rex nodded, holstering his blaster. “We’ll execute plan Jenth Trill Cresh. Our mission operative is to keep Jetti’ika safe and hidden, along with Gatz and Tic. Mixika, you’re on navigation.” The Togruta woman nodded, already donning her goggles. “Take R2 and hide in the cave base. Dogma, Kix, Wolffe, you’re with me. We’ll be taking Gatz and Tic, and Mixika will be taking Jetti’ika.”

“What about me?” You asked.

“You’re to engage the bounty hunter,” Rex said. “Distract him, lead him away from our bases, do anything you must to keep him unaware of the rest of us.”

You nodded, shouldering your bag and slipping out of the base.

The suns of Tatooine shone bright as ever, blinding you until you adjusted your goggles to the sunlight setting. Instantly, the lenses darkened. You sighed out, pulling the hood up on your cloak and setting your T-21 against your bag. In a pinch, you had a DL-44 and a DC-17, the two different blasters comfortable in your hands despite their dissimilarity. But for most fights, you preferred your T-21.

Thankfully, you didn’t have to go far to see the bounty hunter. He was on a speeder headed towards you, and you didn’t have to look behind you to know Mixika was herding Jetti’ika and R2 into the hills, Rex and his group heading north, away from the sand hill and towards the Dune Sea. You pulled your T-21 from your shoulder, holding it loosely, relaxing the end down, towards the sand.

The hunter kept coming at you, turning his speeder sharply and sending a spray of sand everywhere. You waited, a still statue with your back to the suns. Light shone off the hunter’s helmet. A mandalorian. You hadn’t ever seen one up close before. His armor was beat up and painted with chipped paint, but the Amban sniper rifle across his back seemed to be perfectly new, or at least really well kept.

You didn’t even blink as the Mando dismounted his speeder, standing firm and unwavering in front of you. Your fingers twitched on your blaster’s trigger. You could fire at a second’s notice, but you needed to look unbothered. He seemed stiff as a statue and you were as easy as a blade of grass dancing in the wind. Two opposites, ready to fight.

Sweat rolled down the back of your neck, the suns burning hard on your skin. A gust of wind sent sand swirling across the ground, and in that moment, that infinitesimal second, you raised your blaster and fired.

The shot hit true, slamming directly into Mando’s unarmored knee. He went falling, tumbling to the ground, and you took your opportunity to run, racing across the rocky sand in the opposite direction of Mixika and Rex. He couldn’t find them. You would rather he kill you than find your friends.

A shot rang out, and you felt it hit your shoulder, the blinding hot pain barely stopping you as you kept running, boots sinking into the sand with every step. You wished you had Jetti’ika’s Force abilities. Deflecting shots would’ve been very helpful right about now.

Thankfully, it didn’t seem like you’d been shot with the Amban. If you had been, you would’ve likely been down for the count completely. But the circle of pulsing pain was no more than an annoyance as you ran, so it couldn’t have truly been that bad.

Time dragged on. You could hear Mando behind you every few steps, so you kept trudging. Neither of you were running, and he never made a move to shoot you, possibly because he was waiting for you to collapse. Any sane person would’ve after being shot in the shoulder. But you trained with clones. Nothing short of a kill shot could take you down now.

Finally, as the suns began to dip below the horizon, you found the caves. Not the ones Rex and the others were surely hiding in, waiting for your signal, but the ones often frequented by raiders or lost bounty hunters. Even now, three horned bantha skulls clacked in the wind, tied to a stick and set firmly in the sand. A warning and a blessing all at once. These were tuskan caves, but no one was occupying them right now.

You ducked into a cave, weaving through the cool stone, hearing Mando limping behind you.

“Y’know what,” you said, hearing your voice echo in the cave. “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.” As you spoke, you didn’t turn, only kept going, hoping you could wear him out. You’d hit his knee. Walking had to be excruciating for him.

Mando huffed, and you heard him hit the ground, a strangled noise escaping his modulator as his injured knee came down hard against the sand. You turned and crouched against the next tunnel, likely haloed by the sun streaming through and bouncing off Mando’s helmet. Mando was knelt against the ground, on all fours, his injured knee lifted ever so slightly. He noticed you staring and hefted his blaster up, shooting at you. You ducked away, feeling the shot whiz against your ear, the bolt clipping your skin. Instantly, you retaliated, pulling out your DL-44 and firing back. You hit Mando right in the neck, a second bolt smacking the dead center of his helmet, right above where you imagined the crease of his eyebrows would be if he was humanoid under that beskar. He went sprawling backwards, and you leapt on him, pinning him down and shoving the barrel of your DC-17 under the helmet, only stopping when you made contact with his chin.

“Truce?”

Mando grabbed your wrist, his shaking fingers digging harshly against the slip of nothing between the end of your glove and the start of your sleeve. The leather of his gloves scraped against your skin, undeniably wicked. You nudged his chin with the blaster, watching his head twitch. “Truce?” You asked again.

Still, you got nothing. His hand went limp against your wrist, and you noticed his breathing evened out. He had fallen unconscious.

You sighed, sitting back on your haunches and digging your comm out of your sleeve. “Rex?”

The comm crackled, static spitting at you for a minute before Rex’s voice filled the cave. “Did you make it to the safe point?”

“Yes and no,” you said. “I’m in the tusken caves. The hunter is here with me. He’s unconscious, but that’s because I shot him three times.”

“Stay where you are,” Rex said firmly. “Keep him where he is. I’m sending the twins to come get you.”

“Don’t bother,” you said. “I can ditch him in the morning.”

“Are you sure?”

You glanced at Mando’s blank helmet, at his steadily rising and falling chest. “Yes.”

You spent about ten minutes cleaning yourself up. Supplies were thrown across the sand, bloody swaths of gauze littering the ground around your feet as you tried desperately to clean your ear. Your shoulder was out of the question. A quick bandage and a compression shirt would have to do until Kix could dig around in your shoulder. But you were sure you could fix your own ear.

Tossing a bandage roll in frustration, you sighed, feeling blood ooze down your neck. This was bantha shit. The angle was too awkward for your busted shoulder. You’d have to go without a bandage until you saw Kix again.

You grabbed the bandage roll, pausing when you realized there were other things you could be doing.

Mando was still unconscious when you slowly peeled his pants away around the knee, revealing what was likely a shattered kneecap and a disgusting, sand filled wound.

He was still unconscious when you cut the fabric off of his neck, wincing when you saw how close you came to killing him outright.

He was still unconscious when you slowly removed his helmet, setting it softly against the sand and thumbing over the red mark on his face. The shot hadn’t broken skin, but it had left one hell of a burn.

You dug through your bag, finding the burn cream and smearing some across your fingers. Using gentle circular motions, just as Kix had taught you, you soothed the burn, taping the softest piece of gauze you had on the wound to keep it protected.

As you sat back, discarding the roll of medical tape, you examined Mando’s face. He was young, younger than you’d thought he would be. Maybe mid twenties, just like you. He had the beginnings of facial hair dusting his cheeks and chin, and you traced a finger over his cheekbones, absolutely enthralled that someone this attractive would hide his face from the entire galaxy.

Deep brown eyes snapped open, and you were sent tumbling back as Mando surged upwards, knocking you flat on your back, causing the breath to leave your lungs in one fast whoosh as you landed on your wounded shoulder. A vibroblade was at your neck in an instant, the sharp of the knife pressing against your skin. Mando’s eyes searched your face, darting this way and that, his furrowed brows wrinkling the gauze you’d taped to his forehead.

Silence, as thick and deafening as the night sky, spread between you. Mando breathed heavy, his hand shaking, causing the vibroblade to slip against your neck. It nicked you once or twice, but you didn’t dare shatter the silence.

Finally, you moved first. Reaching up, slow and deliberate, you pressed against the white tape holding Mando’s gauze patch on. His anger had caused it to come loose, the corner lifting up, and on instinct, you pushed it firm against his skin again.

Mando jolted as you touched him, blinking and curling away. You recoiled as fast as you could, not wanting to startle him too much. Both of you had weapons now. Him with his IB-94 and you with your T-21, both aiming at the other’s kill point. One shot, and someone would die. His face was as cold and harsh as his helmet, his fury undeniable as you kept your blaster aimed at his heart.

Whether it was from blood loss or exhaustion, Mando dropped his blaster, the weapon tumbling out of his loose fingers. You kept yours steady as he stumbled, sitting harshly on the ground and beginning to breathe heavy.

“Need help?” You asked, finally lowering your blaster. “That neck wound can’t feel great.”

Mando didn’t move, so you did. Grabbing your medical roll, you sat beside Mando on his injured side. He shifted, still staring ahead, but tipping his head ever so slightly to give you better access.

The cleanup was smooth, much smoother than expected. By the time you had a bandage on the wound, it had barely been ten minutes. Mando didn’t shift once, sitting statue still, and you were reminded oddly of Jetti’ika when they meditated. Rex had told you that when Jedi meditated, they went into a very trance-like state, almost as if they were halfway between sleep and awake.

“Can I fix your leg?” You asked gently, scooping your medical roll up and shifting back. The stark white of the bandage contrasted against Mando’s skin and clothes, his face still wound tight. “The kneecap is completely shattered, but I can do my best.”

Mando gave you no indication of what he wanted, so you sat by his leg, hoping he’d move if he didn’t want you down there. You carefully shifted his pants away from his leg, hissing as you saw the mess you’d made. “I’m sorry,” you said softly. “Even if you do soak it in a professional grade bacta tank, this’ll hurt forever.” That didn’t stop you from grabbing the glass jar of bacta you had and popping the stopper out. You soaked three layers of gauze, setting them aside to soak up whatever they could. In the meantime, you had other stuff to attend to.

You grabbed your water skin, taking the cork out with your teeth. Mando watched you, his eyes the only thing moving as you shifted around, tearing a piece of fabric off your tunic and folding it a few times to make a very fast towel.

“This’ll sting,” you warned, positioning the skin above Mando’s leg.

Even still, his jaw clenched as you soaked his wound, wiping the sand and debris out. You worked as fast as you could, finishing sooner than you would’ve liked, but for Mando, you sucked it up and began to plaster the squishy gauze strips down against the ruined skin. When his leg was properly attended to, wrapped and secured, you sat back, feeling exhaustion finally grip your body.

Hands against your skin broke you from your calm, and you almost attacked on instinct, but Mando’s steeled brown eyes stopped you from lashing out. His hands, now bare, were gently pushing your hair aside so he could examine your ear. You hissed as he brushed against the stinging wound. “Hurts,” you remarked, knowing Mando would stay silent. “Not as bad as my shoulder, but I’ve been shot in the shoulder before. Never the ear.”

Mando made a small noise at the back of his throat, reaching around for your medical roll. You slid it towards him, and he nodded his thanks before picking up a disinfectant.

As he worked, you found you enjoyed his now steady hands on your body. He was warm, and his hands were calloused in all the right places, tiny scars littering his palms and knuckles. You couldn’t help but smile as you saw his left hand when he reached down to grab a gauze patch. He had a tattoo, nestled in the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger. Three small aurebesh letters, all scrunched together so they fit on the delicate canvas. Dorn Isk Nern.

“Din,” you breathed aloud, reading his tattoo.

Mando jolted against your body. You instantly realized you messed up big time and winced. “Sorry,” you said. “Bad word?”

Mando nodded. You repeated the action, gentler and slower so you didn’t disrupt Mando’s work. He was pressing gauze to your ear, muffling all sound on your right side. As he wound the soft fabric bandage around your head, plastering the gauze in place, you thought about your friends, waiting for you in some small cave not unlike the one you were in now. Tomorrow, when the suns rose, you’d have to find a way out, a way back to them. But for now, you would stay with Mando, stay until your blood dried and your bodies didn’t ache so bad.

Once he gently tied the bandage off, Mando’s hand traced feather-light across your skin, trailing from your blocked up ear down the base of your skull, tickling the soft hair on your neck as he kept going, finding the haphazard patch of gauze against your shoulder, under your tight shirt.

“I’ll get my medic to take a look tomorrow,” you said slowly, before realizing you shouldn’t be talking about Kix. Not to Mando.

Mando huffed, almost sounding amused. As if he found what you said to be funny. He tapped your shoulder, and you instinctively began to wiggle out of your clothes so Mando could take a look. You didn’t know when you’d begun to trust him, but as you discarded both your tunics and robe, you found that you were oddly willing to show Mando your weakness. He wouldn’t hurt you. He wouldn’t kill you. That you were confident of.

Your black compression shirt came off last. You didn’t wear it often, only when the seasons changed and the pressure of the atmosphere messed with your circulation. It was a tight squeeze to get out of it, but you managed. Sending the shirt flying into the pile of other clothes, you turned your exposed back to Mando.

He peeled the gauze patch away, and you heard his breath hiss out. “Is it bad?” You asked. “Feels bad.”

Mando made a noise, a small one that told you yes, your shoulder was indeed thoroughly messed up.

“Just do what I did for your knee,” you said to the rocky wall of the cave. “Should be some more bacta in my bag. Gatz always makes me carry two just in case.”

“Tell me about them.”

You were shocked. The first words Mando said, and he was asking about your friends. “I’m sorry?”

“These people you’re with. Tell me about them.”

“Why?”

No response. It seemed Mando was back to silence as he picked up the ripped away section of your tunic and your water skin.

“Why should I tell you, the bounty hunter sent to kill us, about any of them?”

“You’re my only bounty.”

The words sent a shiver through you. “I am?”

Mando put a bounty puck in front of you. Sure enough, it was only your face on display, the fuzzy blue holo listing your name, last known location, and bounty.

“Last seen on Tatooine with a gang of potential rebels,” you read softly to yourself. “Twenty thousand credits if brought in alive, ten thousand if brought in dead.” You fell silent. That was almost five times what your bounty was last time you had checked. But nowhere did it mention the rest of your little family by name. Only as potential rebels, no mention of other bounties, no mention of a joint reward for all of you.

“Okay,” you breathed, finally getting hit with the pain of Mando cleaning your shoulder. “Uh, well. There’s me, and then Mixika, she’s a Togruta. It was us, just us, for a few months before we met the twins. Gatz and Tic, they’re Twi’lek twins. Young too. Then, when we came here, we met Rex and his squad. Four clones and a Jedi padawan.” You relaxed as Mando plastered the bacta soaked gauze to your shoulder. A gentle soothing cold raced through the burning wound, easing it and helping erase the pain.

“Clones?”

“Rex, Kix, Dogma, and Wolffe,” you said breathlessly, trying not to cry in relief. “And then Jetti’ika.”

Mando huffed. “Little Jedi,” he said, almost to himself.

“Yeah,” you said softly. “Our little Jedi.”

You spent the rest of the sunset in silence, you on one side of the cave and Mando on the other. You were both bundled up against the Tatooine night chill, you in your tunics and him in his thermal suit. It was only when your stomach began to protest against the late hour that you remembered it was time to eat.

“Hungry?” You asked, startling Mando out of his doze. “I’m going to make some soup.”

Mando shrugged, which was more of a response than he would’ve given you a few hours ago, so you assumed he was hungry too.

The soup ingredients were easy enough to find in your bag. Two servings of dried noodles, two chipped bowls, the three small pouches of seasoning, and some dried bantha meat. Rex had taught you to make the hearty soup a while back, and since then you’d been perfecting your recipe. Truthfully, you could add whatever you wanted, and often, when you found or purchased eggs, you’d add them. But right now you didn’t have any, so you made do with the meat and the seasoning.

“Damn,” you mumbled, trying to find your lighter. You knew you had it, it was just a matter of where. You turned, ready to be frustrated, when you saw Mando sitting before a small fire, the crackling flames quickly eating the dried grass and meager sticks you’d thrown into the makeshift ring of stones. “Oh.” You wasted no time setting your water cups up above the flame, preparing the bowls while you waited for the water to heat.

As you worked, you noticed Mando getting closer, watching over your shoulder as you carefully measured out the seasonings and the dried veggies. Each bowl got three strips of dried meat as well, and then you were slipping your gloves on and pouring the nearly boiling water into each bowl. You quickly covered the bowls, sitting back and smiling at your work.

Precisely three minutes later, you pulled the covers back and handed Mando his bowl, sticking the pair of utensil sticks into the bowl. “Eat,” you said. “It’ll fill your belly and warm you up.”

Mando ate slowly, fumbling his utensil sticks a few times. But he steadied out as he watched you eat, copying your movements and seeming to savor the soup. It was good, warm and filling as expected. By the time you were done, having drank all the broth and eaten all the slightly rubbery noodles, Mando was near the end of his bowl too. The suns had completely set, and were it not for the fire, you wouldn’t have been able to see Mando at all.

“Let’s get some sleep,” you decided, setting your bowl aside and watching Mando place his bowl atop yours. “I trust you won’t kill me in my sleep.”

Mando shook his head. “Can’t get far if I did,” he reminded you, gesturing loosely to his knee.

You chuckled. “True,” you agreed. “Sleep well Mando.”

“Sleep well.”

That night was a surprising one. You couldn’t sleep for the first hour, tossing and turning in pain, unable to rest on either side due to your injuries. You knew Mando wasn’t in much better shape, considering you could hear him awake on the other side of the cave. Finally, after a while of pain, you sat up with a huff, startling Mando. “Screw this!” You announced, probably louder than you should have, and began to dig through your bag. Mando watched as you found a syringe, gracelessly uncapped it with your teeth, and sunk the needle into your injured shoulder. You pressed down on the plunger, finally pulling the needle out and recapping it so you could toss the empty syringe back in your bag.

“Better?”

You nodded, already feeling dizzy from the injection. “Yeah,” you mumbled. “Mild sedative. There’s another one in my medical roll if you need it. Good night.” And just like that, you were out like a light.

You woke to sunshine warming your face, the smell of cheap caf and fire filling your nose. You looked up, rolling over and rubbing your eyes. Mando was by the fire, holding two cups in his hands. His helmet was still off, settled with the rest of his armor.

“Here,” he said, passing you the cup. “Some caf.”

You accepted the cup, drinking long and slow, feeling the warmth hit your stomach at the same time the caffeine sparked in your brain. “This tastes like shit,” you decided, taking yet another sip. “Thank you.”

Mando chuckled, and your breath left your chest. Maker above, he was fucking beautiful, haloed by the sunshine and shining like a star in the night. Cross-legged on the sand and smiling at you like you’d been friends since birth, he was absolutely stunning.

“My friends are going to worry about me soon,” you said softly into your cup. “I should head out.”

“Take care of that shoulder,” was all Mando said.

“You aren’t going to try and stop me so you can take me in?” You wondered. “My bounty is stupid high. That’ll set you up for months.”

Mando shrugged. “You fixed my knee,” he reminded you. “And my neck. I owe you.”

“You fixed my ear and shoulder,” you reminded him firmly. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Fine then,” Mando said decisively. “In return for not taking you in, I want that soup recipe.”

You rolled your eyes, reluctantly scratching the recipe onto a spare sheet of paper. Folding it up, you handed it to Mando, who nodded as he took it.

“Will I see you?” He asked as you stood, shouldering your bag and T-21. His helmet was on again, and you stared into the darkened T visor, wishing you were looking at his eyes.

“For both our sakes, I hope not,” you said, slipping your goggles on over your eyes. “Next time, I won’t be so merciful with my shots.”

Mando huffed, amusement in his breath. “I guess I won't be either,” he decided, holding out his hand.

You shook his hand, feeling the crack of dried blood flake over your fingertips as you disturbed the mess you’d made last night.

“I hope we meet again,” Mando said, pulling away and beginning to walk off. “I look forward to besting you.”

Smiling, you began to walk in the opposite direction, towards Rex and your family. You were going to have one hell of a story to tell them. “I hope we meet again,” you said to the wind and the sand, to the memories you made and the love kindling in your ribs. “Din.”

#the mandalorian #Mandalorian #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #Pedro Pascal #My writing

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