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amiedala · 3 months

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SOMETHING HOLY

CHAPTER 6: Pulse

WARNINGS: angst, explicit content

SUMMARY: “If you’re trying to get me to hurt you,” Din grits out, “you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that.”

Her heartbeat, her pulse—both skyrocket. “Why would I want you to hurt me?” But Nova does. She wants to be annihilated by her Mandalorian. She wants pain from him, pain that drowns out the ghosts inside of her, deep enough that she could rise from the depths anointed. Reborn. Renewed. She needs something holy to cling to, to carve her true self out of.

“You need to come back to me.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: HAPPY SOMETHING HOLY SATURDAY!!! me posting the next chapter within a two week span? WILD! i hope you love this one... it was equally fun and painful to write <3

If you're new here, Something More & Something Deeper are the first installments in this series, available on here & ao3!

It’s not morning. It’s never morning. Not out here, in the crush of space.

They are in a windowless room. They are in transit, in limbo.

Din’s going stir-crazy. He watches Novalise, steady, eternal. He doesn’t need the mask, not in here, not at all, really, not anymore—the woman sleeping by his side is something so much holier than his Creed. But his fingers are still clutched around it. He’s not sure if that still qualifies as religion. If he can pray to the helmet like he used to. If he can truly pray at all.

When Din does pray, it’s not to the Maker. It’s not a vow to the Mandalorian Creed. It’s to the stars around him, above him, the ones that surround him now, that Novalise’s head will be safely returned to her body. That she won’t slip away. Not into the ether. Not into the pinpricks of light she’s so devoted to. She shines in the dark, his Nova. His locus, his temple, his fixed luminous point.

He wants to believe in her the way she does in goodness—steadfastly. Without question. But right now, she’s… altered. Made darker. Flickering around the edges.

He doesn’t think anyone else has noticed. Wedge probably would’ve, at this point, if he were here. He knew Nova before she was Nova at all, and there’s an inextricable thread that loops them together, that is woven as tight as family. Bo-Katan probably knows, from thousands and thousands of miles away, that something is off. Her sharp eyes are always trained on Nova. Her bloodhound nose picks up signals almost immediately. And Grogu, sweet, eternal Grogu—with his father’s steadiness, with his mother’s heart—touches those little fingers to Nova’s collarbone and can feel it in words that none of them can name.

Din takes stock of all of this. The room is still pitch-dark. He can see Nova’s outline, shimmering. He’s not sure if he actually can, or if he’s just memorized her shape, but the semantics don’t matter. She’s sound asleep, a tiny whistling noise coming from her nose. And his heart, how it aches in his chest.

“Nova’s different,” he imagines himself saying. He can’t figure out who. He needs someone like her to take a look, inspect her, interrogate her in a way he can’t. He doesn’t know what the warning signs look like for a Jedi—when they’ve tipped over into another world entirely. But that’s the problem, and that’s why Din can’t ever picture who he’s saying those damning, strange words to—Nova’s always lived in a different world than he has. She’s made of more—of starlight and shine and magic, magic he has never touched, a kind of divinity he used to thrash for, fight for, kill for, and yet—

She’s haunted. But more than that, she’s taken something out of the dark and transfigured it, transfixed it. She’s made it her own.

And yet, there’s nothing in this galaxy or the next that could keep him from this kind of holiness. Din Djarin has spent this lifetime bringing people to their knees. Cutting off heads of hydras, slashing through blood and flesh and bone, and he’d beg for forgiveness over and over and over and over if it meant he could worship at the altar of Novalise Andromeda Maluev Djarin—savior of worlds, star in the sky, and the holiest thing he’s ever held in his filthy fucking hands.

There’s something off about her. Something different.

And yet.

Din presses his hand into his tired eyes. He’s weary. Beaten-down. He wants to shake something, to take it in his hands and make meaning out of it. To grab the thing haunting Nova by the throat and force it out of her. To cut it down to size, into piecemeal. But whatever it is inside of her, and he doesn’t know if this ghost that’s chasing her around is a Jedi thing, or a Nova thing, and he cannot hurt her or he will blame himself forever.

A tiny, terrible part of him whispers: Ezra would be able to fix it. The earlier version of that sentence is Luke would be able to fix it, but Din knows Luke, trusts him, knows what he lacks in subtlety he makes up for in flamboyance and kindness in equal measure. Luke Skywalker, according to Nova, according to everyone else in these circles—well, he’s kind of a big deal. Luke is to the galaxy publicly what Nova is to Din privately, and he knows enough about the man to trust him with his kid’s training and his wife’s heart.

But Ezra Bridger—Din doesn’t know him. Nothing past visions and reverence; mystery and intrigue. He is a man who exists but doesn’t, and he lives in Nova’s head. And as much as Din knows Ezra is the key to fixing so many things, that he’s good, selfishly, irretrievably, he is jealous. It festers inside of him like rusted steel. Like an open wound. He is not proud of it, this enormous, awful feeling, but he cannot tamp it down.

Din wants to be the only man who lives in Nova’s head. And he is certainly not good. Not pure. Not made out of the light. He is a bullet made of beskar, a steel-sharpened blade. It festers inside of him, an open wound. He wants to be good, to be worthy.

To be deserving of the prayers that leak out of his covered mouth.

And yet, this impossible quest is now close to home, to something Nova considers holy—the remainder of the Rebel Alliance, her legacy, her roots, and he cannot let this feeling rear its ugly head. Can’t let it out of the cell he keeps it in. He is both jailer and prisoner, and it haunts him.

Everyone on the Ghost is carrying their own ghosts. And he’s here again, at the intersection of ghosts and religion, of haunting and the Creed. And Novalise, in the middle of it all, in the middle of everything.

Circles. Din’s thinking in circles.

He needs to get off this fucking ship.

Nova inhales—sharply—once, twice, and then she jackknifes upwards, waking up like she’s fighting a war. One she’s losing.

Din is on her in a heartbeat.

“Did I wake you?”

In the dark, Din shakes his head. Nova can feel it. She could even without any part of their bodies overlapping, even though they are right now, entangled like roots. She moves in closer, trying to shake the dreams from her head. To come back down to earth. Pressing her hand to the metal above her head, reassuring herself she’s safe, she’s okay, she’s herself—

“What?”

That word—it’s so soft. Nova closes her eyes, pressing the heel of her hand to her heart like that can manually stop the racing. She wills it to quiet, for everything to sink back down to normal, but panic is still leaking from her like a sieve, running like adrenaline through her veins. “What?” she repeats back at Din, deflecting.

“What were you dreaming about?”

Nova shifts in the vantablack. “That’s always the question, isn’t it.”

A beat. “Novalise.” His voice is delicate, knowing.

It makes her want to kiss him on the mouth and shove him away in equal measure. It shocks her, the violence of that—the intensity. In the quiet secrecy of their hideaway, she digs her fingernails into her palm, enough to draw blood, to gore the rest of the darkness out. Nova takes a steadying, stuttered breath.

“Teeth,” she whispers. “So many teeth.”

Din is quiet. “Is that a metaphor?”

Nova manages a mirthless, tired smile, even though he can’t see her. “Most nights, I hope it is. This one? I don’t think so.”

“Nova,” he says, so quiet.

Nova sighs, squeezing her eyes shut tight. “It comes in flashes.”

“The teeth?”

The sickening thrash of all of it. That’s her answer. But Nova doesn’t know how to vocalize that—that she, child of the light, has been bathed in darkness, swaddled in it. It’s started to become familiar, and she hates it, but she is so tired of fighting an upward battle.

“Yeah,” she mumbles, unceremoniously, praying that’ll be the end of it. She shifts closer to him, burying her nose in Din’s neck. He smells like metal and cinnamon, like always, but there’s something else on his skin—mint, maybe? It smells foreign, like the interior of this ship, and decidedly not the Crest, and not Kicker, and that makes her heart ache even worse.

Din’s quiet. Pondering. Nova wrestles with wanting to tell him everything—Sparmau leaking back into her dreams like poison; Thrawn’s deep, unsettling voice. The ones where she’s fighting the unnamed villains that slice through her head. And the worst ones, the ones that feel so dangerous and raw that it makes her want to claw her eyes out—where she hurts Din. Where she hurts Grogu. Where Nova is not Novalise at all.

“I can’t… speak it aloud,” she whispers slowly, so quietly it’s just a breath. “I can’t even put words to it. It’s just… darkness.” It’s both the truth, and not, and obfuscating it makes Nova feel sick, but she puts a hand over her stomach and presses hard, forcing herself to swallow it down. “I don’t know what to do, Din.”

Seven small words; the weight of the world. They settle around Din and Nova’s entwined bodies, settling in like snow. Lethal and cold and dangerous, blanketing them in it.

Din’s quiet. Observant. Nova can sense it, the feeling of his brown eyes on the side of her face, tracing it from memory. She swallows, trying to keep the tears at bay. She feels—off-kilter. Sideways. Like the version of herself she used to be able to wear like a shield—unbreakable, indomitable Novalise, rebel girl and starchild—was left behind on Mandalore. Like she’s wearing the version of that Nova’s skin, but the second she embarked on this journey, she left her behind. Like she’s possessing herself.

And Nova can’t undo it. She feels wrong.

“You do what you’ve always done,” Din says, finally, and the words that she used to live and die by feel like a knife now. “You fight back.”

“I am,” Nova manages, heavily, angrily, “so tired of fighting.”

Din doesn’t speak, but she can feel his soft exhale in the dark. He moves closer, always closer. Something in Nova flares. She can’t tell if it’s want or anger, and the blurring of that line terrifies her.

“I need you,” Nova whispers, needing the words to be true. She reaches for Din, tracing down the line of his torso, reaching to cup him between his legs.

A hand shoots out to stop her. Lightning-quick. His grip is unyielding. It cuts so deep. Nova sucks in a wounded gasp. “No,” Din says, and there’s no warmth to it at all. “You don’t.”

Nova recoils, blinking back sudden tears. “Din—?”

“You are using this,” he whispers, stroking a thumb over her cheekbone, “me, as a bandage for what you’re feeling. I want you in every way but this, cyar’ika. Something is wrong, and you cannot use me to drown out that feeling. It won’t make it go away.”

Nova feels a knife somewhere through her heart. It surges into her, white-hot panic. “Please—”

“Novalise.” Her name feels distant, like it’s echoing from faraway, a place that isn’t this ship, a place that maybe isn’t even out in space at all. “Stop.”

She sucks in a breath, shattered. “Din,” Nova breathes, ragged, heartbeat thumping off something wild. “Please touch me—”

“No.”

She pulls away from him. Violently. Nova digs her nails back into her bloodied palm, shaking when she realizes this is real, very much not a nightmare, and the glitter and snap of the jaws of darkness begin crooning at her. She is wrong. Something is definitely, decidedly wrong, and she is teetering on the edge of losing it, and she is exhausted, bone-weary, and there’s flames licking down her throat, between her legs, and she wants to be voracious, to feed, to drown everything else out with the thrush of Din inside of her—

Something snaps. From deep inside of her. A low, keening noise, the one she was making—it dissipates, suddenly. Nova feels—strange. She stands up, stick-straight, sweaty, freezing.

“Novalise.”

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t even breathe. There’s a low scratching sound, coming from inside of her, gnawing.

“Nova, you need to tell me what was in your dream.”

She doesn’t move. She feels feverish, but this is a different kind of fever than the one she felt when she was slick with need, wanton, heavy. Nova feels—unhinged.

“Me.”

But her tongue—her tongue is not her own. The snarl that rips out of it is something else. Nova can feel it, the taste of it, and it’s wrong and bloodied and so awful that she puts her palm to her hand and screams into it.

Din is on her in a second. “Baby—?”

That word—it is not theirs. Not without danger preceding it. Nova thrashes, once, twice—she is undone and desecrated. Her body is not her own, it is a channel, a conduit, and the Not-Nova, the ones from all of her darkest dreams—she is slithering around inside of her, whispering, crooning, seductive, and Nova cannot grab herself, hold the evil at bay. Bring herself back into the light.

Din surges forward, catching her body, holding her, cradling her.

“Novalise.”

She surges back into her body like a crescendo. A wave. An electric thrum exploding. Nova shudders, and Din flips the lights on, and she looks at him in confusion, because they were not on this ship, her soul was on a different plane, like she was caught between worlds, and Din’s holding her in his arms, his bare hands. He is not a Mandalorian, not protected from her in beskar and bullets, not behind a shield. He is a man, and, Nova realizes, sweat-slick and freezing, he is breakable.

He’s looking at her like she’s—a ghost.

Nova can feel the tears welling up in her eyes. She’s thankful for them, this proof that she is herself. She is emotional and undone, yes, but she’s not unhinged. She does not belong to the darkness. Din wipes the pad of his thumb across her mouth and it comes back bloody.

“What,” he repeats slowly, softly, so gently it aches, “happened in your nightmare?”

“I wasn’t myself,” Nova whispers, “and when I woke up, it stayed.”

Din blinks. Fear is so foreign in his eyes. She looks up at him, half-lidded, through wet lashes.

“I don’t know what to do,” she repeats.

This time, he doesn’t tell her to fight. He doesn’t tell her anything. He just stares, and Nova can tell how scared he is. Unshakable, unbreakable Din Djarin—she’s terrified that she will become his undoing.

“Nova,” he whispers.

Something else snaps. Thunders. Strikes like lightning. She stands up, stick-straight—like she’s just been blinked back into reality. “What just happened?”

His eyes, barely recognizable in the dark, widen at her. “You woke up screaming. I asked what you dreamed about. Then you… Leaped out of bed. Onto the floor.”

Nova stares. “What happened in between?”

He goes to reach for her, and Nova flinches. Flinches. Not because she doesn’t trust Din’s hands on her—because it’s the only thing she trusts right now, the only thing that’ll keep her anchored. “I didn’t—I didn’t touch you?” Something flares low in her stomach. She thinks, this time, that it’s danger beckoning.

Din rears back like he’s been slapped. Nova can’t tell if it’s from her flinch—so loud, so bright, even in the darkness—or if it’s from her words.

“You woke up,” he whispers, “and got out of the bed like it was made of fire.”

Nova swallows. She can’t get a grip on reality. It’s seismic, kaleidoscopic—she can’t make out what’s real and what isn’t, and she clenches her fingers harder down on her hand. “What happened in between?” She’s repeating herself. She’s not making sense.

“You told me you dreamed of teeth. That you were scared of yourself. And then you leapt out of bed, away from me.” His voice is low, strained with something. Anger, Nova realizes, anger, and probably confusion, but he’s schooling his tone to be as neutral as possible.

“Away,” she repeats, “from you.”

Din nods. She can’t see much, but if she could, Nova would be watching his jaw clench, the muscle jumping as Din grits his teeth together.

“And you’re mad at me for that?” She can feel the sick swell of anger taking over her own body, and Nova tries to fight it, shut it out, but it feels—good. Alive. More alive than she’s felt in weeks. Since defeating Sparmau. No—since Din chased her down like prey on Naator. “You’re mad?” Her voice is breathy, low.

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.” Nova’s hand reaches out, flicking on the dim light. Din is silhouetted by the bulb behind him, and his face is contorted—with anger, maybe, but also fear. She can smell it on him. She wants to slam herself into him, to have it burn her down, to drown out all of the noise. But she doesn’t move. She just watches him. “I don’t think,” Nova whispers, even-keeled, all ice, “this counts as running from you.”

It’s not fair. That word carries such a weight. She wants to take it back the second she says it. Nova swallows, blinking, that anger de-crescendoing out of her faster than it spreads. She feels sick.

“Din—”

“You want to play it like that?”

“No.” Nova takes a step backward, clenching her nails back into her palm, feeling fresh blood whisper across the new cuts. “No, I don’t want to play at all. I’m sorry—”

“I followed you into the darkness,” Din says, and there’s nothing there, no emotion, and somehow that sluices through her even deeper. The blade of his words is so sharp. “You cannot go anywhere I couldn’t find you. That place doesn’t exist.”

But it does, that monstrous, traitor inside of her whispers, because I belong to something more, and there are places I go that Din cannot follow.

“Din—”

“If you’re trying to get me to hurt you,” Din grits out, “you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that.”

“You need to come back to me.”

She blinks. That cuts, but not with sweet silver blades. With something serrated. Dulled. She steps back as Din steps forward.

“I haven’t gone anywhere—”

“We both know,” Din whispers, “that’s not the truth.”

“Something,” Nova says, “is wrong with me.”

It’s like those words wake him right up—startled out of a dream. Not the one of her sick reflection in the mirror—something that’s held Din equally as captive.

“Nova—”

But her name and haunted look in Din’s eyes is interrupted by three sharp knocks at their door.

The door unlatches with a cold hiss. Hera stares at both of them. Din can feel her gaze hanging heavy on Nova, her sweat-slicked skin, her bloodied lips, her hair raging like a wildfire around her face. She is barely clothed and he is helmeted, half-armored, and he knows what this looks like, and it makes him feel sick.

But Hera just blinks once, twice, then rights herself. She carries herself like both a mother and a soldier. It reminds Din so much of Nova. “I’m sorry,” she says, both crisp and genuine. “I didn’t want to wake you, but we have a problem.”

Din squares his shoulder. Nova wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. She snaps back into herself—Mand’alor, Jedi, Rebel, all in equal measure. Now that it’s back, written into the code of her DNA, it makes it even more obvious that the Nova he was just interacting with was… wrong.

“What?”

Hera swallows, digging her hands into the pockets of her bomber jacket. “You need to come to the cockpit.” They file after her, Din feeling naked and undone without the rest of his armor. He watches Nova as she follows Hera up to the front of the Ghost. She plucks Grogu—asleep—off the copilot’s chair and settles down into it, eyebrows knitted down the middle.

“Before I play this,” Hera says, “I need you to know that I trust Wedge Antilles with my life at this point.”

Nova recoils. Din can feel his heart sink.

“Me too,” she offers up. Din nods once. Sharply, in assent.

“Great,” Hera says, “but I am also not listening to the warning he explicitly gave me. So.” A pause. She’s watching Nova closely. “And if you want to heed it, you are allowed to. I will walk into this fire alone. I would prefer not to, but I will.”

Din’s frustrated. But Nova—Nova offers Hera a tiny smile, a spark of something he hasn’t seen in days, and he cocks his head to the side, ready to follow her into the flames. All over again. “I,” Nova says, gently, evenly, “have explicitly ignored many warnings Wedge Antilles has given me for the sake of doing something stupid yet necessary. And the last thing I am going to let you do,” she continues, leaning forward to clutch Hera’s hand, which Din just now clocks as trembling, “is jump into that stupid yet necessary thing alone.” She pauses, squeezing down. “What happened, Hera?”

Hera inhales, exhales. It’s shaky. Din watches her, carefully, through the silent safety of the visor. She leans forward, pressing a button on the screen. Din hears what Bo-Katan and Wedge are saying. He understands the situation—Thrawn’s massive Star Destroyer hanging over Bespin and Hoth like a bad omen—but he doesn’t register how dark it is, how deep. All he can think about is that Bo-Katan—Bo-Katan—is shaking in the blue light, Hera’s hand is cinched so tightly over his wife’s that it’s about to snap, Wedge is telling them it’s a lost cause, and Nova—

Nova’s face is not what he expected. Tears, Din would have predicted—lots of them, silently streaming down her beautiful cheeks. An expression of well-earned grief. For the destruction of a planet she’s considered like home, for the last true active Alliance base, for the people that she’s protected her entire life. But Nova’s face has hardened into resolve—true, unadulterated determination.

It’s the one she wore when she fought Sparmau. It’s the one she’s worn in every act of Rebellion, every time she’s been a savior. She is a warrior at her core, and the face she is wearing is nothing but fight and glory. She looks like that version of Novalise—her true self—is slowly waking up.

There she is. Then, quieter: Thank the Maker.

“I know Wedge said—”

“We’re going to Hoth.” Nova lifts her chin. “We’re going to fight.”

Hera looks at her with fear and relief. Din can’t tell which one is winning. “We need fuel.”

Nova nods. “Then let’s get it quickly.”

“I should mention,” Hera says, slamming her finger down on the hyperdrive button, letting the Ghost thud out of warp, “we’re refueling on Corellia.” All of them lurch in the sudden drop, but they’re braced for impact, fortified with the muscle memory of living out in open space.

Quietly, Din speaks through the modulator: “That’s convenient.”

A smile glitters across Nova’s face. A true one.

“I hope you’re prepared to fight Wedge on his warning,” Hera says, lowering the thrusters as they slowly start to sink onto the cesspit named Corellia. “Because when we land, you’re both going to find him and Bo-Katan.”

Din shifts, refusing to display any of what he’s feeling. He is strong and stoic, a bullet made of beskar. He’s a Mandalorian warrior, and he is not afraid. Except the first time he and Nova were on Corellia, he killed a rogue bounty who would have made shrapnel out of her. And the last time he and Nova were on Corellia, he almost lost her to visions of Sparmau and herself. Death, Din has concluded, is in the air on this stars-forsaken planet.

Corellia and Din Djarin are, decidedly, not friends.

He sighs. Nova gleams. She looks over at him—full of knowing, that look, and something else he can’t entirely place—and extricates herself from the chair with the giddy grace only she has ever possessed, slipping back into their room to don more clothes than secondhand baggy trousers and a barely-there tank top. When he turns back around, Hera’s eyes are on his, dead-on, through the visor and all. She doesn’t miss much, Hera Syndulla. Against his permission, Din shrinks and shifts under her gaze.

“Convenient,” he echoes, finally. “That fuel and the Mon Cala vessel are both down on Corellia.”

She blinks slowly. “I wanted this reunion to be in less dire circumstances. But, for better or for worse, these are the lives that we’ve chosen to lead.” She sighs.

Din observes her. Hera carries herself with the same precision, the same rigidity, that he does. What they lack in magic is made up for in skill. “Do you think this is a good idea?” He can’t tell if he means Corellia, or Hoth, or fighting at all, but the sentiment is the same regardless. Wary, murky.

Hera lifts her chin. “I think this is war, and we can’t play it safe.”

Din nods. “I agree.” Hera holds his gaze, uncanny, those blue, discerning eyes, and he turns away, to go after Nova, to right the wrongness that they both held earlier—but Hera’s soft hand lands on his unarmored arm. He jerks away, like he’s been burned, instantaneously, and she rescinds her touch. Nearly as immediately. Din’s respected Hera from the second she rescued them, but even more so now.

But her eyes—they burn with grief and loss and it hurts him to look at her head-on. He knows his own eyes burn with the same demons. It’s part of the reason he keeps his helmet on for the most part now. Din doesn’t know how to school his expression in the way non-Mandalorians do. But, he realizes, it doesn’t matter, because everyone in his life seems to see right through the visor anyway.

“Din,” Hera says softly, “I loved a Jedi, too. It’s…difficult. I know what their world is like, and it’s full of horror and wonder that we cannot understand.”

He stiffens. “Ezra?”

A small, sad smile dances across Hera’s mouth. “Yeah. Ezra, too.”

He pauses, turning back around to fully face her. “What happened?” His question is low, urgent. Probing. He feels like he’s betraying Nova, but he needs to know. “To your…other Jedi?”

Hera swallows. Her face is written with sadness. That’s not something Din normally notices, but it’s like a beacon, like—like the way Nova feels. Full to the brim of emotion, so big that it overflows. “He fancied himself a martyr, too.” A flash of her eyes on his. “Don’t,” she whispers, “let Nova give into that sentiment. The rebellion will live on without her, but it will never be the same.”

“Hera—”

“You love her?” With the weight of this galaxy and the next, he loves her. But Din can’t speak that aloud. He just manages one terse, fervent nod, and knows she understands. “Good,” Hera says, “then you keep that light alive.”

And with that, she releases him, and the spores of terror that have been festering in Din’s stomach spread and spread.

Nova doesn’t have armor. Doesn’t have anything, really, anything other than her own tank top and the pants Hera lent her, which must not have been Hera’s at all, because Hera’s got curves, but not like Nova’s hips and thighs, and these are belted tight around her waist. Her hair is hanging down her back, braided halfway, the rest of her rogue curls hanging loose out of the elastic. Her skin looks sallow, typical from spending so much time in the vantablack of space. Her lips are puffy, her eyelashes long and tangled, her torso wrapped in a shawl and one of the extra jackets hanging on the back of the Ghost. She smooths her hands over the front of the ill-fitting jacket—cropped above her waist, the sleeves too long—and wishes, for one of the only times in her life, that she did have armor. That she was just a Mandalorian, just the Mand’alor. That her biggest responsibility was uniting a people that had been razed and divided, not given to them in fragments—not this leader that was equal part Jedi and Rebel, with Mandalorian sprinkled in.

Her reflection—it looks like her. Nova hitches in a breath, afraid to peer too close, afraid to see the Not-Nova looking back. In her dream, she had teeth that snapped and glittered, a gaping maw of horror and half-ness. But the only thing reflected is her face, her body, her eyes. Nova smiles, and it’s soft—echoing glories and morning, sunlight filtering through the cracks. No razors. No darkness. She feels relief spark up in her heart like an old friend, and she touches her fingers up to her reflection, willing it to stay.

“Good enough,” Nova murmurs, and then she’s out the door. She presses her lips to Grogu’s wrinkled forehead on her way by, squeezes Hera’s hand with a silent promise, and looks up at Din—obscured, always, but she knows his eyes are locked tight on her like a tractor beam, like a place of worship, like… he’s watching her. Carefully. Steadily. Two things she doesn’t feel. “Ready?” For a minute, before he nods, she’s caught in it, suspended, the way he’s holding her hostage, captive. Safe.

“This goes without saying,” Hera murmurs, and Nova’s reverie is broken, “but please don’t take any risks down there. Get out, find the rest of the crew, and get back here.” She swallows. “We don’t have time to waste.”

Nova nods. “Be safe. Getting the fuel. Corellia is…”

“This place,” Hera says heavily, slamming her fist to disengage the hiss of the ramp, “is the least of my fears.” And the gangplank lowers, revealing the gray slush of Corellia’s crime-ridden, grimy surface. Nova inhales, exhales, grabs onto Din’s gloved hand, and walks down the ramp.

Din has the tracking chip in his hand. Nova walks behind him, out into the abyss. His body is tensed, a steel bullet, a weapon of mass destruction. She keeps her face low, obscured from the light, but she can feel the seedy, dangerous gaze of the people that pass by her. She’s got nothing of worth, no pockets to pick, but her sabers are loud and vibrant on her belt. One light, one dark. There’s a metaphor in that, somewhere, but Nova is too busy watching Din as he dances through the low light of Corellia, powerful and precise as a lothcat.

Once upon a time, she tried to barter with him. Back when he was just the Mandalorian and she was still Andromeda, lifetimes ago, ages back, what feels like years and years. To leave her here. On Corellia. Because she felt guilty—guilty that she wasn’t able to fend for herself, that he picked her up in the Crest, that they were strangers. It feels impossible now. To look at the man in front of her and see anything other than the love of her life, her locus, her true star.

“What?” His voice is low, throaty. It filters through the modulator, slipping off into somewhere deeper, and Nova shivers. They step through an alley, a slice through two walls, puddles and brick littering the ground around them. “I can hear you.”

Her eyebrows furrow. Nova takes one step, two, and then Din’s whirled back around, hooking a gloved hand under her chin. It’s bold and determined and vital, and Nova sinks into the black hole of his grasp. Slowly, Din cocks his head to the right and Nova thrills.

“Hear what?” It’s barely a whisper.

Din sighs, an exhalation, coming out low through the vocoder. Nova bites down on her lower lip, blinking up at him through half-lidded eyes. “Your thoughts,” he grits out, “are so damn loud.”

Nova licks out a line over her split lip, and Din sags. Just for a second. Then his arms snap out, bracketing her on either side. She sinks back against the wall, body slamming into the wall with a sick, satisfying thud. “What am I thinking, then?”

Din doesn’t move. “No.”

Nova blinks. “No, what?”

Din blows out a breath, again, low and languid like a smoker. Nova’s heart clenches, then something lower, wetter. “You’re being,” he grits out, low, almost angry, “a fucking distraction.” His words cut through, like a knife. Nova loves the way it sings through her. “We have a job to do, Novalise. And we need to talk about what happened earlier. We have other things to finish first.”

Nova knows. She knows. But frustration and want are pouring free from her, sluicing through her body, desperate and wanton. Din is the only thing that has ever silenced that panic—that’s ever made her quiet. “I know.”

“People to save.”

Reality floods back in. Just a little. Nova doesn’t put words to it, because it’s awful, it’s horrible, it’s venomous, the thought. That she’s so tired, tired of always being the savior, tired of chasing an impossible reality. That she wants to be selfish, to feel Din’s hands on her like a salve, like a resurrection. Like she could open her mouth and let him whistle in, dirty, filthy things exhaled, sweat dripping down to the steel floor. Like it could make the visions disappear, like it could flood out all of the weight hanging over her head.

“I know,” she repeats, dully, but Din’s gaze is still on her, locked-in, seizing her closer and closer.

“I’m not touching you.”

Nova’s gaze flickers over him, to the arms that are clenched hard against the wall. “Not even a little?”

“A little,” Din hisses, “with you, is everything. I can’t stop once I’ve started. And we have a mission to do. I’ll ask you again, Novalise. What do you want?”

Nova bites down on her swollen bottom lip. Reality is running currents through her. She needs to get her head on straight. To remember what she’s here for—there is a planet at stake, there are people to save, and she is being selfish, so selfish, but the monster inside of her head is purring, and Din’s body is like an oil slick, and she is undone and starving.

She knows—in the back of her mind, where rationality still lives, she is whispering to herself—Din will not touch her. Din will not drown her like she’s begging to be drowned. Novalise is starving. Emaciated—deprived of touch, touch she had hours ago, because Din’s body is both her heaven and her hell, and she is addicted to it. Addicted to the fix that is her husband, her Mandalorian, her weapon, the love of her life—she has a mission to do, she has the fate of the galaxy on her shoulders, and she’s hungry like an addict, and all she wants to do is feel Din sinking inside of her, rhythmic, seismic, pushing her down, deep enough where the only pain that exists is him, the only salvation is his hands, his mouth, his letting her breathe—

“Novalise.”

She blinks. “What I want and what I need,” Nova whispers, shaking and undone, “are two very different things.”

She hears the way Din’s breath catches in the modulator. “Nova—”

“You know what I mean. We’ve been through this already.” She leans in closer. Her breath fogs up his visor. With the strength of a thousand stars, she wrenches herself free, ducking under Din’s arm and moving out into the maw of Corellia, needing to put distance between their bodies before she does something rash, before she gets on her knees, before she loses sight of her mission—

“Nova,” Din calls behind her, his voice sharp and heady—needy—and Nova keeps moving, clutching the tracker in one hand, silently blinking out the correct path to Bo and Wedge, away from that dangerous, razor-sharp desire, because she will slit her throat with it if she stays here. She will give into it, into the plunge, and she will not be able to extricate herself. “Hey—”

His hand closes around her wrist. It’s sweet, sweet relief. She snaps back around, so fast that they almost crash into each other, yanked back into the alleyway. “Don’t hide. Don’t run from me.”

“I am not running,” she whispers, everything faint against the feeling of his touch against her skin, “I am losing.”

Losing time, she means. But losing—grip. On herself. On reality. Like she’s been—drugged. Or like she’s living across different timelines, almost identical, but not close enough to match. She blinks, once, twice, and then Din’s surrounding her again, even as she tries to move forward.

“What is going on?”

Nova stops—almost letting Din collide with her, beskar and all—but she looks at him over her shoulder, sirenlike, dangerous—and catches exactly where she knows his brown, deep eyes are locked on her, laser-sharp. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, and it terrifies her, because she is muddied and violet, pitch-dark with desire and shame, and Nova has never felt indecision like this before, this terrible seam ripped open inside of her stomach. She doesn’t know.

She doesn’t know anything except the basics. She doesn’t want to fight—not anymore. She wants to win. She wants a quiet life with the man she loves, and she wants this galaxy out of turmoil, but the dark thing leaching inside of her stomach wants to be selfish, and it’s terrifying, and she has no idea how to put this into words—to be Novalise, just Novalise, the girl the Mandalorian picked up on Nevarro. Everything flashes before her eyes, lightning-quick, the beats of her life—from sacred touches to low breaths, to commlink calls to tender kisses, to sweat-slick sex to awful rainstorms of tears, to death, to life, to this moment. Can we start over? Nova thinks, reality cold and crisp in Corellia’s mangled air, and then— I feel…wrong—

“I can’t tell what’s real—”

“Wait.” Din steps closer, but the visor is pointed down at the blinking tracker in Nova’s hand, suddenly gone silent. “They’ve dropped off.” He puts his hand to his helmet, and Nova watches him, dazed, shaking, like she’s woken up from a dream, guilt running like ice through her veins. “Bo-Katan? Can you hear me?”

No answer. Static. Silence. Then—Nova hears it, faintly, the incredulous, frigid voice of Bo-Katan Kryze. It’s one of the best sounds in the universe. “Din?”

Din’s body sags, just a little, and Nova feels the same sweet relief coursing through her, overriding the sick sense of awfulness she feels—at letting want overtake need, at wanting something selfish rather than something more—and she swallows it down. This is not the place for want. This is the place for fighting.

Din projects the frequency outward, grabbing Nova and dragging her in close, close enough that the two of them can hear it, but the quickening dark of the heart of Corellia around them doesn’t. “We’re in the middle of the city,” Bo-Katan says, “hiding the best we can. Din, this place is crawling with—”

“I know.” His voice, low through the modulator, vibrates against Nova’s ribcage with her body pressed almost flush against his. “Don’t move, okay? Stay where you are.”

“Not an option,” Wedge cuts in, “there’s troopers and bounty hunters everywhere, and the Mon Cala we were with sold us out.” A blaster fires. “Look, we’ll hotwire a ship and come meet you. Where are you located? Still in hyperspace?”

“No,” Nova says, and there’s yelling and fire through the comm, and panic replaces relief and guilt in equal measure, “we’re on Corellia, we’ll come to you. What’s your coordinates?”

Silence.

“Wedge?”

“You,” he says, sourly, “are a terrible listener.” Someone shouts, and Wedge curses under his breath. “We’re in the middle of Coronet Center. Do not come here—”

It’s too late. Din clicks the radio off, stifling Wedge’s voice, and then he’s grabbing Nova’s hand in his. She looks over at him, silently resolving to figure it all out later, to pull herself together. His hand clenches in hers, and he nods, and then they’re running, entwined, into the heart of the storm.

Din’s thoughts on Corellia hold fast. This place is crawling with unfriendlies—from the stormtroopers armed up to the nines with blasters and weapons to the bounty hunters with blades of steel to the men who keep looking at Nova sideways. The deeper and deeper they crawl, sinking into the pit of Coronet Center, Corellia’s capital city—it becomes clearer and clearer that no one here has good intentions.

His eyes slide over to her. Too much. Enough to take his eyes off the prize. Navigating this city is a hellscape on a normal day, but with their friends trapped in the belly of the beast and his wife unsure, unsteady—Din doesn’t feel in control.

He’s felt like that a lot lately. Out of control. He can’t figure out why. He wants, and that want pulses low inside of him. The desire to get the hell out of here whispers to him, wheedles, croons. It lives under his skin like a parasite. Back on Mandalore, before they left to go find Ezra, before they left for the Unknown Regions, Din told Nova he wanted to just go back to Naator. But that wasn’t possible. That’s not in her nature. She doesn’t abandon things. She doesn’t give into the same selfish haunts. She’s stronger than that. Than anything, really, even while she’s seeping through the cracks. If a woman could be forged from beskar, it would be Novalise.

She’s walking like she’s injured something. Din watches her out of the corner of his eyes as Nova steps—gingerly, carefully—across the grayscale streets, littered with scrap metal and trash and terrible things. Needles. Bones. Corellia is a grifter’s paradise, and she does not belong here. Her hip, he thinks, something’s wrong with her hip. Probably still injured from the starfighter crash, and him sinking to the hilt inside of her hours ago probably didn’t help.

“Stop looking at me with those eyes,” Nova whispers, but it’s playful. Lighter.

Din shoots her a sideways look. “I’m not—”

She lifts her chin, swinging her head around to check the alleys behind her. It’s getting darker, and on Corellia, that means more dangerous. Nova’s hand finds her belt, where her yellow lightsaber and the Darksaber hang. She palms her own, then the Darksaber. Din watches this too. “I know where your eyes are at all times, Mandalorian.” Nova smiles, and, Maker, Din’s stomach lights up with butterflies. “Even under that helmet.”

“You’re hurt.”

Her face shutters. Just a little, but Din’s an expert in Nova’s micro-expressions. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

He tilts his head to the side. “Can you please tell me what your dream was about?”

Her face contorts. “It’s not related.”

“Novalise,” Din sighs, “you are the worst liar I have ever met.”

She narrows her eyes. “Me. Okay? Like I told you. I was myself, and then I wasn’t, and I keep hallucinating things, and the reason I need you to keep touching me is because it’s the only real thing I can hold onto.” Nova licks over her lip, tongue lingering over where it split back in the crash. Din wants out. He wants to gather Nova in his arms, jet out of here with the pack strapped to his back, shoot his way to Bo and Wedge from the air. He can feel eyes on them from the shadows, though, and anger flares in his chest.

No. Not anger. Something worse.

Fear.

“Nova—”

“No,” she whispers, but she grabs his hand for a second, squeezing down, “not here. We’ll talk about it all later, I promise—”

He hears it before he sees it. A blaster, drawn out of his holster. Din ducks and yanks Nova down to the ground alongside him, razor-sharp and quicker than breathing. She doesn’t yell—in fact, she goes quieter, and when the shot ricochets off his armor, Din’s already got his own blaster out to return the fire. He doesn’t have his vibroblade, but he wishes for it; to sink between the notches of armor and sear into the trooper’s skin.

They weren’t shooting at him. They were going for Nova.

Her hand is already at her waist, but Din moves faster. He cuts forward, steel toes light against the Corellian ground, and he’s on the trooper before another shot can even hit the barrel of the enemy’s gun. He fires, once, twice, then kicks the dead trooper to the ground. Nova’s watching him, wide-eyed.

“There’s more.”

He whips back around, ready to fire. He doesn’t need to, though.

Nova’s hand pulses over the sabers hanging on her wrist, and without a second’s hesitation, she’s ignited the blade.

Corellia doesn’t glow yellow.

No. It flickers with the angry, pulsing energy of the Darksaber.

The Darksaber used to be heavy. Like it was resisting her. Not anymore, Nova realizes, as stormtroopers pour out of alleyways like ants, storming across the ground around them. Din’s quicker, a soldier—but she has a weapon in her hands that’s meant to be wielded. Once upon a time, killing was a haunting, awful thing. She still aims to stun, to disarm—not to cut down. But she could. With this blade in her hands, Novalise could bring an entire city to its knees. She moves like a Jedi and fights like a Rebel, and she cuts forward like Mandalorian. Simply. Like it’s written into her DNA.

Din, in her periphery, is dropping trooper after trooper. But there’s… there’s more, coming out of the cracks, incessant. Nova knows that something is amiss. She can taste it in the air, heavy and metallic, the tang like blood. Corellia is crime-ridden, yes, but this is different. And then there’s other people, not troopers.

Bounty hunters.

“Din,” she calls, and he turns to look at her, and Nova can feel the panic flash, white-hot through her veins. They’re surrounded. Completely. She feels like she lost time—she was just cutting them down, cleaving through the air like it was nothing, leaving the troopers’ forces scattered. But she blinks, just once, and she’s surrounded, but white masks and evil eyes alike, and Nova feels adrenaline and fear slice her clean through.

“Nova!”

But he’s choked out by the thrush of troopers, hundreds of them. Nova loses sight of him. She tries to cut through, and then a bounty hunter flashes his teeth at her, and she stumbles, the blade of the Darksaber snarling as Nova falters.

“I thought you looked familiar.”

Nova clenches her jaw. “I don’t think we’ve met.” But he looks familiar. His expression does, at least—darkness gathering there.

He laughs, an evil smile curling across his face. She can feel the ranks closing in behind her. Nova lifts her chin, holding the weapon higher in her hand. “Oh, we’ve met,” he says, cocking his head to the side, a sick glint emanating from his eyes. “You’ve done a good job transforming yourself—Novalise, is it now? Come a long way since you were tied up like a prize on that ship.”

Nova’s stomach clenches. “You—”

“Shame Jacterr didn’t like his things to be touched.” He surges forward, hand outstretched to caress her body. “But he’s not here now, is he?” And Novalise explodes.

Fury swings forward, flooding everything else out. Nova screams out, cutting, cleaving, using the Darksaber as it was intended. A weapon fit for a king—in the hands of something more than that. Something stronger. Nova slices and knifes with the blade until there is blood on the ground and pink mist of a man in front of her, and she feels nothing. Just anger, red-hot, pulsating like lava, and she cuts through stormtrooper after stormtrooper, until she can see Din again, surrounded by bounty hunters.

“Hey!” Nova screams, loud enough to echo across the surrounding buildings, “Mandalorian!”

Din’s head doesn’t fully turn—he’s blasting with one hand and choking out another trooper with the other—but the side of the helmet flashes her way.

She holds up the Darksaber, blade still ignited, transfiguring everything into greyscale, and shouts again. “Catch.” She tosses it through the air, high above everyone’s heads. Din’s gloved hand snaps out to catch it. Perfectly. Like it has been his all along, like it belongs to him. Like it’s craved his touch, like it’s breathing a sigh of relief to be reunited with his hand. Nova offers him one radiant, glowing smile, and then she’s ignited her own lightsaber, turning everything to yellow, then to ash.

Together, slowly, Din and Nova clear a path through the thrush of troopers and hunters, cutting fast and hard and away, and then—

Something happens.

She can’t see it. But she can feel it. Nova stutters—like her body stops working. She can’t describe it—this feeling. A shuddering. It rips through her like fire and shutters her defenses, and even with the saber in her hand, she feels—depleted, suddenly. Hair’s standing up on the back of her neck.

And a second later, she knows why. Din cries out, a noise that she’s only ever heard him make when he’s wounded, a soldier cut down in battle. There’s a bounty hunter trying to pull his helmet off, another one gripping his neck, exposed, now, his tan skin a beacon in the dark. And even though Din is allowed to be Din now, Nova’s anger roars through her, the weight of an exploding star. She surges toward him, troopers crawling over her like vermin, like bugs, but she will not let anyone in this world take Din’s autonomy away from him, not again, not ever—

“Novalise.”

It’s her own voice.

She turns. “Not now,” Nova whispers, cutting through white armor with her golden blade, trying to let everything drip out of her, trying to tap into that sense of magic that runs like a current through her bloodstream.

“Novalise.”

She turns. It’s not the version of herself from the nightmares. It’s the version of herself from the future, the one gilded and saintlike, untouchable—holy.

“Help me,” she whispers. Bring me back, she means to say, and this version of herself smiles, reaching out to touch her face. “Get me closer, help me—”

“Novalise.”

Exasperated, exhausted: “What?”

“You have all the weapons you need.” A beat. “Call it by name.”

Nova closes her eyes, and when she reopens them, it’s like lightning has surged through her veins. Back when she was fighting Sparmau, all the Jedi had told her don’t throw it away. This was an echo chamber of that, a repeated cycle, an endless paradigm—call it by name.

It’s one word. Her name. “Novay’lain.” It’s a whisper with the force of a scream. And all the light floods back into Nova’s body. Everything that was dimmed, covered in gasoline, or nightmared into reality—it stands no chance. To radiate. To shine.

She tears through the rest of the troopers and hunters like an asteroid. She is singular, Rebel girl with the Force aerating through her bloodstream. She’s on Din faster than any of the rest of them can, and she’s swinging and cutting her blade through the air, white-hot and gilded. All of the darkness settles into her bones, the light shooting to the surface. She could wield the weight of the sun if she needed to, to get to him. The hunter prying Din’s helmet off is cut through the middle. Sawed off. Torso in two pieces. Nova doesn’t even blink.

“Come on,” she whispers, dropping to her knees beside him. “Let’s get out of here.”

Din spits something out onto the ground, splattering over the armor of the dead trooper at his feet. Blood. It looks like blood. He yanks his helmet back down, the illusion of the untouchable snapped back into place, and then he shakes his head at Nova, sighing. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Electric, white-hot—that’s how she feels. Illuminated, yes. But on fire. Nova is moving with adrenaline that doesn’t feel borrowed. Not anymore. She is supercharged, a yellow blade, surrounded by silver and nettle, divinity and blood.

They’re firing like bullets down alleyways. Din doesn’t have the tracker out anymore. She doesn’t have a hard and fast map of where Bo-Katan and Wedge are, but Nova doesn’t need it. She feels them, can hear their heartbeats, can sense their wounds. She turns, frantic, down another alleyway, and then Din’s hand slips out of hers.

She stumbles, catching herself on either side of the alley’s walls. “Come on,” she whispers, gently, turning around to face him. “We have a mission to complete, remember?”

“Nova—”

“They’re right on our tail, Din,” she says, blinking rapidly, heart hammering a brutal rhythm out against her ribs. “Come on.”

“Wait, no—”

“Din,” Nova says, out of breath—why is she suddenly out of breath? She sags back against the wall, the light inside of her chest rapidly dwindling. Her vision is flickering. “Din—?”

“Cyar’ika,” he whispers, “stop.”

Nova does. She looks down.

Impaled in her stomach is a blade. “Oh,” she whispers. Her vision blurs further, and then her knees are buckling, collapsing—

“Novalise—” Panic flashes through Din’s voice. “No, don’t you dare—”

And then, like a dying star, everything goes pitch-black.

AHHHH I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!! this was such a headrush to write. i am SO excited to share this one, and i hope you're ready for the next chapter. i've already started writing it and man… i cannot wait to share it!!

thank you, as always and eternally, for reading, for being here, and for sticking with me <3

CHAPTER 7 COMING SOON!!! for day-to-day updates, follow me on tiktok @ padmeamydala :)

xoxo, amelie

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amiedala · 2 months

Text

SOMETHING HOLY

CHAPTER 7: No Mercy

WARNINGS: angst, explicit content, LOTS of blood

SUMMARY: No mercy, Nova had said.

He takes the helmet off. A grin spreads across Din’s face, sickened and bloody, as he rips limb from limb.

At the end, there’s just silence. He stands, covered in crimson and guts, with the blade of the Darksaber flickering in the same pulse as his heartbeat. It is monstrous and wonderful and he feels nothing but adrenaline, coursing through his veins. The helmet hisses back into place like a rattlesnake striking its prey.

Din turns around, wipes the blood marring his visor, and runs back to Nova.

He sheathes the Darksaber. He tries to sink back into his skin, to put the monster back into its cage.

It goes, angrily, snarling, all the way back to her.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: HAPPY SOMETHING HOLY SATURDAY!!! i had such a wicked and exciting time writing this one ;) ENJOY! leave me a comment at the end if you did <3

If you're new here, Something More & Something Deeper are the first installments in this series, available on here & ao3!

Everything is hollowed. Fucked out. The rest of the world filters away, vanishing.

Nova drops to her knees, then crashes against the ground. Din’s not quick enough. Maker, it’s like he’s been trapped in amber. He’s fast, but he’s not fast enough. He cries out, the sound high and panicked through the modulator. Din sounds wounded, but he’s not the one that’s been stabbed. Nova’s white-faced, all the color leached out. She is held together with whispers and prayers, with nothing but him.

She keeps fucking bleeding. His hands are doing nothing to staunch it all, leaving out of her like an oil spill. Something terrible is flashing in the back of his mind. Something that feels an awful lot like deja vu.

This is how it must have felt, he realizes, horrified, frozen, when he got knifed with Sparmau’s poison dagger, and Nova had to keep him alive and pilot the shattered Mand’alor vessel away from enemy territory. The weight of the world, she holds it up. It slams into him like a Star Destroyer.

Din feels—bowled over. Scraped raw.

“Novalise,” he hisses. Her eyes flutter, rolling back in her skull. “Nova. Wake up.” It’s senseless. She is out entirely, on a different plane of existence, on a different reality. She’s so cold. Her blood pools around his gloved hands. She got hit deep. Somewhere critical. Fear leapfrogs up his throat. It tastes like bile.

This is a fucking disaster. They should have never come here—to Corellia. To the Unknown Regions at all. Everything that’s happened since that damn distress call.They should have stayed in the stars, out there in the darkness, before any of this was real. If he could go back—he would pin her down back on Mandalore, before Nova decided to do this, to run headfirst into a rescue mission where she is within the line of fire.

But that’s not who she is, his Nova. She cannot be caged. So he will be a monster for her. But this time… this time, he wasn’t fast enough.

Din swallows, tries again. “Can you hear me?”

It’s senseless. It doesn’t work. She’s passed out, which is likely a terrible sign, Din’s only passed out—clean, full out—a few times, and each instance, it was when he almost died. He keeps reliving Novalise falling to her knees, on repeat. He shakes his head, trying to clear it, trying to dislodge the memory. He hooks his fingers under the rim of his helmet, exposing his face. He doesn’t care who’s watching. He’s going to burn this entire planet to the ground. “Nova,” he whispers again.

A miracle happens. Her eyes open. Blearily, pained, but they’re open.

There’s something in his eyes. Din wipes the back of his bloodied glove across his face, realizing what it is when it comes back wet and clear. Tears. “Hey. Can you hear me?”

“Ouch,” she whispers, voice croaking. Din almost laughs—laughs—in sheer relief.

“Hold on for me,” he whispers, compounding the wound with his gloves. Maker, they’re dirty. Filthy. But he can’t worry about infection. Not now. Keeping Nova alive is mission number one. Hera will have bacta, needles, compounds—all of it, back on the ship. He’s seen her use up her dwindling supply on Nova already. He just needs to get her okay enough to get her back to the Ghost, then he can go save Bo-Katan and Wedge. He can do that. He can carry that weight. He won’t collapse. “Stay awake, baby.”

Her eyebrows furrow. Nova coughs up blood spatter. Her pink lips are a ghastly shade of white, stained on the insides. “‘M trying,” she slurs. “What—what happened?”

“That lowlife hunter,” Din snarls. His voice is a blade. He increases the pressure of his hands against her wound, and Nova whimpers. He has to steel himself, gritting his teeth down to refuse to rip his hands away. “Stabbed you. Deep. I’m gonna kill him.”

“No,” Nova manages. Her hair is haloed out around her on the ground. Din bites down on his lower lip, fetid wind blowing over the both of them. It’s cold. Corellia’s temperate until it isn’t, but right now, it’s freezing. They’re not far from the makeshift battlefield—they’ve run a couple of klicks into the center of Coronet City, but the remaining forces of their enemy could very easily be on their six. “No need. Already did.”

Love floods him. Din bites out a quick laugh. “Of course.” He shudders in a shaky breath. “Course you did, sweet girl.”

Nova blinks up at him. “It hurts,” she manages, and her voice cracks down the middle. She’s putting on a brave face, his Novalise, but she’s in bad shape. “How much blood have I lost?”

Din leans down, presses a quick kiss to her clammy forehead. He’s deflecting, and he knows it’s apparent. He knows that Nova could see it written across his untrained face, but it doesn’t matter. Not more than evacuating her, now. He’s not answering that question. “I’m getting you out of here,” he promises, putting his helmet back on. “We’re jetting back to the ship. Gonna compress your wound, okay—”

“No.” It cuts clean through. The airlocks hiss as he snaps his helmet back into place. Din stops, blinking at her through the visor. It’s been running her metrics in the absence of when it was last on his head. She’s lost so much blood. That fact keeps cycling through, entirely unhelpful, bringing him back to reality. This is—unfair. Royally so. She was saving him, chasing him, fighting his battles for him. Anger is aerating through his bloodstream, and Din swallows a growl in the back of his throat. Losing it won’t help anything. Won’t keep Nova safe from slaughter.

Maker, he really, really wishes it would. He wants to feel blood pouring out on his own hands. He wants to unleash vengeance. He wants to call revenge by name.

“Nova. I need to bring you back to the ship.”

“Not happening.” Her eyes flutter again, pupils unfocused. “‘M coming with you.”

Din stares. “You can’t—”

“They’re coming.”

It’s so quiet. He doesn’t realize what she’s said at first—and then he hears it. The sound of footsteps. They’re not concealed. Not under the helmet. He could hear the bloodstream of a rodent with the combination of the Mandalorian mask and his fine-tuned senses. And that’s exactly what’s coming towards them right now—fucking vermin. He stands. A blade. His body becomes a blade.

“Here.” Nova’s hand clenches at her side. “Take this—”

“I am not,” Din enunciates, cold and flat through the modulator, “leaving you.”

Nova holds his concealed eyes, just for a second, before she shutters hers in pain. “Take it, Din.” Her hand wraps around the shaft of it, and then she’s unclipping the Darksaber from her belt.

He stares. “It’s not mine anymore—”

“Not the time,” Nova manages, breath uneven, “for saber-wielding semantics.” She wheezes, spitting out more blood, and Din’s panic flares again, a heat-spike, red-hot. “Do it.”

He blinks at her. “I can’t.”

“You can. Cut them down,” Nova whispers. Then she shoves at him—with so much more strength than he would have been able to muster—and it propels him to his feet. “No mercy.” She cracks a wan, exhausted smile. It curves up, half-scarlet, and fuck if it isn’t the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “Then you come back to me.”

Din Djarin disappears. The Mandalorian takes over. It whistles through his bloodstream, the strength of it. He is a weapon, a blade, the thing that lives in the darkness. He hasn’t been this—the beskar bullet, the metallic monstrosity—for years long past. Before Nova. He can still don the mask and pretend, but this is different. Troopers and hunters alike surge around the corner, and he flexes, breathes, unloads.

No living thing stands a chance.

Pain.

That’s the only word that registers, the only feeling Nova knows. It comes on like a lava surge, white-hot and deafening. She looks down, blurry-eyed, at the gash in her stomach, a knife wedged tight into the muscle of her pre-existing scar. It’s almost laughable, the irony of it all.

“Okay,” she whispers. The world shifts around the edges, elastic. The knife squelches in her abdomen, and Nova winces. “You,” she chastises herself, “can do the hard thing.”

She can. Novalise is very good at doing the hard thing. The problem is—she knows the blade is plunged into something bad. Her liver, maybe. Her spleen. In a divine comedy, this knife sliced through her sinew in the same place Sparmau’s poison dagger did to Din, back on Hinari, back what feels like a lifetime ago and is only a handful of months. Nova felt stronger then, but in all reality, she’s stronger now.

It’s facing death for what seems like the umpteenth time, stuck with a relentless blade. She’s here again. She’s always here, it seems.

Novalise has seen so much hurt. This same scar has been carved into her skin like an awful melody, muscle memory. She’s suddenly transported—back to when she was still a teenager, back when she ran right into the hornet’s nest, a viper’s den, danger that didn’t give way to goodness. She’s nineteen and haunted again, chained down in iron to a ship that was a sucking pit of despair, with a man whose kisses were venom and whose hands were made of terror.

She is not there. She is not Andromeda. Not anymore.

And the last time Novalise got stabbed in the stomach, she pulled light from the sky itself. She doesn’t need to do that this time, but she will.

Because she can.

Distantly, very distantly, Nova can hear Din cutting through the rat’s nest of troopers and hunters. Flaying them alive. She knows he will be a pit of a man for her, an interlude of darkness and terror, and he will come back on his knees. He will pray for forgiveness.

He doesn’t need to, though. He’s already gotten hers.

She’s the holy thing granting it.

“You,” Nova levels with herself, “can do this.” There’s no room left but to face it. Nova has spent enough time anthropomorphizing the past, pulling it in layers over her skin. There is nothing another timeline can do for her now. There is nothing that can save her back in her memory.

Nova has spent months fighting against her intuition to do things alone. But this time, she isn’t running away. She’s ripping the blade out of her skin, and she is facing the light, and she is going to save her friends—her family. No more running. Just fighting back.

She does the hard thing. She pulls the dagger out, inch by sickening inch.

Biting into the heel of her hand to staunch the screaming, Nova props herself half-up against the wall. She utters a string of curse words under her breath—ones in Basic, Mando’a , Huttese, and a few more that she picked up along the way. She’s the daughter of a collector of linguistics, and Nova knows how to cuss her way through at least twenty languages. “Okay,” she says, wiping the sheen of sweat from her face, “okay.” She utters the word over and over again, until she’s convinced herself that she is.

The Darksaber is being wielded by her Mandalorian, so Nova unclips her own lightsaber from her belt. It’s covered in crusted blood, the silver handle tinged crimson. She bites down on her swollen lip as she ignites it, feeling power spark to life in her exhausted bloodstream. The blade flickers and trips, but it doesn’t falter. Nova stares into the golden abyss. Her lightsaber gazes back.

“You can do this,” she whispers, calling on the strength of all her past and future selves. They flick through her shuttered eyes like a hologram, like fortification. She sees her parents’ faces. That’s likely not a good sign—stars, she’s really bleeding—but Nova takes that as a good omen. That’s what she does. Takes a black hole and pulls a supernova out of it. She is her own exploding star.

She cauterizes this wound with her lightsaber. Maybe it’s a metaphor for something, but Nova can’t think of anything else but stardust right now. She is not forged by the darkness. It cannot call her by name.

Only Nova can do that.

It’s not the first time Novalise has forged her own scar into her skin, but this one is different. The last time, she was on the brink of death out in the crush of space. This time, she’s planted on the ground. There’s still something cosmic in that, though. Something holy.

Novalise is the only star on Corellia. She detracts her lightsaber’s blade, and the world still glows yellow.

Din Djarin isn’t here. He is hiding, far underneath the mask that he wears and the Creed that he once swore by. He is not bleeding crimson rivers, but if he did, there would be no wound that could cut him down. At this moment, he has ceased to be a man. He is all Mandalorian—all fighter. No, that’s not correct. Even soldier is too small of a word. The definition is closer to warrior, but even that is far below what he is.

He is an oil spill, vantablack in movement, silver in makeup. He is tungsten and steel, a weapon forged from beskar. The Darksaber—decidedly not his—flickers in his hand, pulsing the people he cuts down into grayscale. It’s heavy. So heavy. It is the weapon of something stronger than he is, but that something is laying on the ground behind him. And Din wants them all to pay for it.

He does not know the Empire. Not intimately like the people that surround them. Not personally like Novalise. He does not care. It doesn’t matter who they are. If the troopers are being called upon by the mysterious First Order. If the bounty hunters are reporting to a shadowy figure. Those are not questions he is equipped to know the answers to. The truth is that it doesn’t matter. None of it matters except wielding the weapon in his hands.

No mercy. That’s what Novalise said back there, blood staining his gloves scarlet, pooling over her perfect mouth. She gave him permission. No mercy.

Din Djarin is not answering to his name. He is not taking prisoners. He does not care about life. Every single person in front of him is responsible for the attack on Novalise, crumpled and bloody on the ground. He will stomp the light out of their eyes. He will massacre the evil from the ground around them.

He cuts through the army surrounding him like paper. Not humans. Not anything, not anymore. Nova would mourn their half-lives—because she is good, because she has not become a sucking wound, even in the face of so much horror.

But Novalise is not the Djarin in front of this swarm of evil. They have Din to answer to. And he’s not listening.

He does not stop. He is relentless. He is a warrior, a weapon, the darkest version of himself, and for the first time in years, Din can switch his humanity off. He doesn’t care. He cannot care. Every single one of these people—stormtroopers and bounty hunters alike—were responsible for his heart laying half-dead in the back of a filthy alleyway, stuck with a knife so big it could have cleaved her in half.

No mercy, Nova had said.

He takes the helmet off. A grin spreads across Din’s face, sickened and bloody, as he rips limb from limb.

He sheathes the Darksaber. He tries to sink back into his skin, to put the monster back into its cage.

It goes, angrily, snarling, all the way back to her.

When Din returns, Nova isn’t where he left her. She did that on purpose. She’s propped against the steel of the building behind her, but she’s standing. Her top hangs in shreds around her midriff. She spits a mouthful of blood onto the filthy ground, disappearing into the dust. Her hands are braced on either side of the wall, slung low like an assassin, face grimed with sweat and blood alike.

“What the hell,” Din asks, low and angry, “did you do?”

Nova musters a smile, wincing as another round of pain rips through her. “You were busy.”

There’s silence. Then a low, quiet hiss as he removes the helmet. Her heart catches in her throat when she realizes that Din ran off into battle with it removed, at least partially. That signifies no survivors. He is bloody, crimson splashed across his beautiful, tortured face. Heat runs through her, even amidst all that pain, and Nova inhales, staggering, staring into the silhouette of the man she loves. He is not the darkness he just swallowed and spat back out. He is in front of her in armor, but the face her Mandalorian is wearing is not the Mandalorian’s at all.

“Nova—” His voice is low, flagellating. Another thrill runs through her. “You—”

“Had a problem,” she says, gesturing at her now-exposed midriff, the curve of her belly sucked in and carved with a new scar. “And I fixed it.”

He steps forward. Those footsteps could shake the ground beneath them. They have. They will again. Nova sighs as he catches her swaying, exhausted body and pins it between him and the wall. Safety. She hums, endorphins overriding all the hurt still coursing through her bloodstream. “Fuck,” Din says. No—he snarls it, right into her open mouth, and Nova maps his brown, deep eyes on her own. “You—cauterized your o-own wound?”

Nova offers him a grin, cocking her head to the side, curls blowing in the acrid wind. His hand curls up around her cheek. She knows it comes off bloody. “Not the first time I’ve had to,” she whispers, and then the reality of the situation sets in. She swallows, blinking back sudden, desperate tears. “I’m fine,” she says, damage control. Maker, Din’s eyes are almost black. “I’m okay, Din. I promise. I—well, I’m holding it together.” Then, the real version of the truth: “I’m safe.” She looks up at him. “Now.”

He’s staring into her soul. It feels like a heart attack. Nova’s stuttered breath catches in her throat. “I am doing a very dangerous thing,” he grits out, “letting you stay out here. Do you understand me?” His hand grips her chin, lifting it to meet his. He’s only inches away, and Nova’s newly cauterized stomach flips over—in hunger. Want. Need.

“Yes,” she breathes.

“Should’ve you slung over my shoulder.” He’s muttering. Nova leans closer. “Should take you b-back to the ship. Shouldn’t let you stay out here.” This rambling, forged together of half-sentences and clipped words, sounds like the Din she knew before she knew he was Din at all—when he was just the Mandalorian and she was barely Novalise yet.

“I slaughtered them,” Din whispers into the hollow of her open mouth. “I slaughtered them.” It sounds like a vow. No—a prayer.

“It’s okay,” Nova manages. “You were—”

“Protecting you,” Din growls. “No—avenging you. You said no mercy.”

Nova doesn’t break eye contact, doesn’t look away. “And I meant it.”

His head is slung so, so low. His forehead—rife with gore—is pressed up against hers. “I killed them all, cyar’ika.”

Past-Nova would have been heavy with grief—thankful, but uncomfortable. Not now. She is not a murderer, but there are some forces in this galaxy that cannot be saved. That need to be cut down, cut away from the festering, invading wound of unfixable evil. She saw it back with the cloning tanks. She saw it in Sparmau’s teeth. She saw it in Gideon’s stare. She felt it in the blue, even face of Thrawn. Even just in nightmares, she’s known the evil coming out of them—leaching, bleeding, like an oil spill. She doesn’t need to be her own avenging angel.

She has her Mandalorian for that.

“They would have killed me,” she whispers. “They tried to. They would have gotten to Bo and Wedge, too.” Nova swallows. Two words—what a weight they hold: “I’m glad.”

His mouth slots against hers—timid at first, then coaxing, then a fucking wildfire. He kisses like he’s starving, like he’s been whetting himself on danger and adrenaline while her lips were away from hers. Nova sighs as Din holds her face flush against hers, tongue licking into her mouth like a viper. She wants to get drunk on his particular brand of venom. She needs him inside her like a demon. She wants to be possessed by Din Djarin. Getting fucked isn’t enough.

A moan unfurls from behind her teeth, spilling over into his, and Din freezes. With the strength of something holy, he wrenches himself free. “I am doing a very dangerous thing,” he murmurs again, “letting you stay out here. With me. Rather than bringing you back to safety.”

“Din,” Nova whispers, and a small whimper leaves his lips at the sound of his name, “if you tried to put me back on the Ghost, now, when we still have our friends to save, I would fight you.”

A wicked smile curls across his mouth. “You would, hm?”

She nods, looking up into his eyes like a siren. She reaches forward, for his belt, and his knees sag when she finds it—and then Nova yanks the Darksaber off of it, igniting the slick, spitting blade. Both of them shutter into black and white, and Nova sees Din’s pupils flare so large his whole iris is almost black. “This,” she breathes, “belongs to me.”

He groans. “That’s not the only thing that does,” he murmurs, and then, with a Herculean effort, he pulls away. Nova sheathes the blade, flaring back to the blue-grey dampness of Corellia’s atmosphere. “You tell me,” he warns, “if you feel worse, if you feel anything—”

“I will.”

Holding her gaze for what feels like an eternity, Din nods. When he turns to put the helmet back on, Nova winces, falters, then forces her way through. She is fortified by her Mandalorian and from her own light. Both forged by stardust.

They soldier on.

“Anything?”

Bo-Katan throws Wedge a glare over her shoulder. “If I had the signal back by now,” she says, sourly, “I would have told you.”

Wedge sighs, dragging a hand over his face. His stubble is longer than she’s ever seen it. Wedge’s age doesn’t often show—the four of them are scattered across their late forties and early thirties, now—but it does now. “Okay.”

Bo-Katan softens. A little. “I’m working on it,” she whispers, a shade lighter than the voice she usually uses. “They must have crossed over into the inner rung of the city by now, though.”

Wedge’s eyes are fixed on a hollow point behind her. They’re in what looks like an old shipping container. Bo-Katan didn’t happen to look before she threw both of their bodies inside and locked the door. The troopers were close—too close. Internally, she muses over this as she fiddles with their damaged radio, held together with little more than hope. These troopers—they were far from incompetent, slung onto the field with blunt force and a desire to shoot blaster rounds. They seemed…organized. With older armor. Of the Empire, not of its scattered remains. She swallows, flipping from station to station, trying to root out the static.

“This is bad,” Wedge admits, his head hung heavy. And then, quieter, “I’m scared.”

Bo-Katan catches his eye. He looks exhausted. Neither of them have slept much over the last few days, especially since the cheap, thieving Mon Cala they hitched a ride with sold them out to the troopers. “I know.” She doesn’t try to push the feeling away.

Hell, she’s scared too. Thrawn, back in this galaxy. Thrawn, in his massive Star Destroyer, heading towards Hoth. Bo-Katan hates Hoth. Thinks an ice planet is a waste of space. But she knows how much it means to Wedge. And Nova. They’ve both been displaced out of a home—since the Alliance moved to Hoth, it’s the home Wedge has lived in when not out in the stars. And Nova… it’s one of the last untouched places where her parents once lived.

“How bad?” Wedge’s voice snaps her back to the present. Bo-Katan fiddles with the radio again for something to do with her hands. If she doesn’t, they’ll be curled into fists.

“How bad, what?” She’s deflecting.

“Thrawn.”

Bo-Katan sighs, pinching the bridge of her swollen nose. One of the troopers broke it with the butt of his blaster. Consequently, she ripped off his chestplate and fired the remaining rounds straight into his heart. “Bad.”

Wedge swallows. “I was afraid,” he muses, crossing his arms over his chest, “of that.”

Bo-Katan inhales, exhales. “Wedge,” she manages, “...I’m sorry.”

He holds her eyes, a small smile captured on his lips. He knows what she means—sorry for being this way, sorry for getting him in this situation, sorry that they’re stuck together again, sorry that she wasn’t strong enough to get them out of this mess, sorry that Din and Nova are rushing here and putting their lives on the line for the two of them again, sorry that his home is about to be pulverized. She’s sorry for it all. Even the stuff she doesn’t have control over.

“I know.” A beat. “I’m sorry, too.”

The radio flares to life. “Bo-Katan?”

It’s a female voice. Not Nova’s, though. Bo-Katan blinks, sitting up a little straighter. “Hera?”

“I told Din and Nova to be back here with you both an hour ago,” she says, voice staccato from the static. “I’m assuming something has gone horribly wrong, right?”

Bo-Katan exhales through her sore nostrils, wincing. “It’s likely.”

Hera’s quiet. “Should I wait?”

Her eyes flick to Wedge. He nods. Imperceptibly, but Bo-Katan can read his expressions by now. “Yes.”

“We’re running—”

“Out of time,” Wedge cuts in, moving closer to the radio. “But—”

Hera’s voice comes through again. “I’ll wait.”

Bo-Katan smiles up at the rusty ceiling of the shipping container. Something nasty is dripping off in the corner, and the smell in here is rank, musty, but she can see a tiny glimpse of the night sky, and there’s a star. Bo-Katan Kryze doesn’t usually do signs, but she does do stars.

“What are the odds,” Hera continues, “that the four of you will end up back on the Ghost alive?”

At this, Bo-Katan cracks a wide, true smile. Nova would be thrilled. “General Syndulla,” she says, proudly, “I sure as hell wouldn’t bet against us.”

Hera sighs. “I have their location,” she says. “Maybe, if they couldn’t get to you—”

“We’ll get to them,” Wedge says firmly.

“We don’t have time,” Hera reminds them. Bo-Katan can sense the fear in her voice. It’s the same fear she’s kept close to her own chest. “Be safe. But—”

“We’ll be quick,” Bo-Katan promises. She looks over at Wedge, mustering up all the energy she can. “Ready?”

He gets to his feet—gingerly, carefully, but when he stands all the way up, he’s locked in. Hardcore. All Rebel. “As I’ll ever be.”

Bo-Katan musters up one more true smile. One for her friend Wedge. After all they’ve been through, he deserves it. “Run.”

And they unleash hell on the center of Coronet City.

Nova winces. She recovers, quick enough to hope against hope that Din didn’t catch it—but he is nothing if not observant, especially in that helmet, and he whips around. “Stop.”

She fixes him with a sour look. “I,” Nova proclaims, “am fine.”

Din sighs. “You were stabbed and cauterized your own wound, Novalise,” he says, “you are certainly not fine.”

She exhales and then relents, sagging back against the wall. They’re in another alleyway, now, and this one is considerably cleaner than the last. Less bloody. She hisses out a breath between her clenched teeth, dragging the shredded remains of her tank top up over her bellybutton. She can hear Din’s breath through the helmet, and it fogs her clarity.

“Let me see.”

She does.

They’ve been here before. They’ve been here before multiple times. Blood dripping, the other person silencing it, stifling it. Din rips one glove off with the other—his hands, topographic and so much softer than anything else on his body—are unbloodied. The only thing on his entire suit of armor that isn’t dripping scarlet. That makes love flare up in her chest, suddenly, completely. Nova watches him, carefully, lovingly, as he lifts her shirt higher, breath catching somewhere between his throat and the modulator. “Looks okay.”

Nova looks at him through half-lidded eyes. “Only okay?”

He tilts his head to the side, affixing her with a tired look. She can tell, even through the visor. It’s the only part of his helmet that isn’t sticky, gored with dead stormtroopers. The blood, for once, does not bother her. Want sings low in her injured stomach, and Nova bites down on her bottom lip.

“Novalise.”

“What?”

He sighs again, and then Din bends lower, sinking down on his haunches until he’s level with her on the ground. Nova grabs onto his clean, ungloved hand, needing to feel his warmth. It coils around her with comfort, and she relaxes. Just a little. “You,” he says, irritably, “are distracting me.”

She laughs—the sound is melodic as bells in such a hellish atmosphere. Din’s bare hand finds her cheek, stroking over her cheekbone, her bottom lip. They both melt, a little, into each other. Entwining like roots of the same gnarled tree. Nova feels uncalled tears stinging at the bridge of her nose, flooding in at the corners of her eyes. The air is heavy, thick. Tensioned. She’s suspended here by her Mandalorian. “What?”

“C’mere.”

Nova feels air leave her lungs, air she didn’t have the capacity to give. “I’m here,” she whispers, the sound barely a sound at all.

“This is going to hurt,” Din says gruffly, and fear drops in Nova’s chest like an anvil.

“Nope.”

“Novalise—”

“No needles.”

He looks at her head-on. In the low light of the quickening dark around them, Nova can almost see the outline of his eyes. Maybe she’s just memorized them—the depth of them, where they sit on his face. “You pulled a blade out of the muscle of your stomach,” Din says, shortly, “and the cauterized it.”

“Yes.”

“But a bacta needle is where you draw the line?”

Nova hisses in a breath between her teeth. She can see her reflection in the silver of his helmet. “Yes,” she repeats.

Din sighs. This time, it is wearily. “It’ll be a pinch.”

“I don’t want it—”

“You take everything else, my good girl,” he murmurs, “why not this?”

Nova points a finger in his face, stabbing the nail against the visor. “Hey. You’re not playing fair—”

“Novalise,” he interrupts, holding her cheek in one gloved hand, “just—do this for me, okay?”

She swallows. Relents. Din lifts her chin with one hand and sinks the needle into the lip of her exposed belly with the other. She yelps, a little one, and then the antibiotic seeps in, and Nova relaxes. The needle hurts—but the rush of the medicine helps soothe the sting. And Din’s touch—well, that soothes it, too. She wipes a single pearl of blood away from where the point went in. Din brushes one gloved finger over it, feather-light, and it disappears into the leather.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Din murmurs, “was it, cyar’ika?”

“You distracted me,” she says, haughtily, expecting Din to laugh again. But his grip tightens, his knees sag, and both of them sink back against the wall. Nova blinks up again, grimey forehead almost pressed flush against his metal one. “Din—?”

“You scared me,” Din says quietly. “Terrified me. If I had gotten back there and you were—” he chokes, and the tears spill to the forefront of her eyes. “Fuck, Novalise. I don’t—I don’t know what I would have done.”

She swallows. She wants to touch his face, to ground him against her. To push the fear away. “I’m alive,” Nova breathes. “I’m here.”

Something changes in his body language, although she can’t quite put a finger on what. Tightens. Shifts. Like silver mercury, becoming rigid. “What if—”

“No what ifs,” Nova says, much more decisive than she feels. “I am right here.” And it’s true, she realizes. For the first time since they left Mandalore on this gods-damned failed mission, she feels like herself. Whatever was inhabiting her—the darkness—has quieted. Put on mute. Not gone. She can feel it, still. But for right now—now, the fight has flooded back into her veins—she is starlight, golden, herself. Nova tightens her grip on Din’s hand, still silhouetting her face. “You pulled me back,” she whispers. “Every time, you pull me back.”

It conjures a memory. Not one that’s passed—one that’s waiting for her. Nova feels herself stutter over timelines, lost between what’s happened and what’s to come, and then it’s all drowned out as her husband moves closer. Din’s helmet rests against her forehead, anchoring her in place. Nova can feel the steel of the wall through the protective curtain of her hair—and it isn’t even half as strong as the man on his knees in front of her. She breathes, the cloud of air fogging up the bloodied visor, and then Din’s hand is leaving her, and Nova makes a disappointed noise, low in her throat like an animal.

He chuckles. His laugh could launch a thousand birds out of the sky. “Need to give you something.”

Nova rears back. “Nope.”

Din laughs again. Her heart clenches against the sweet, sweet sound. “It’s not another bacta shot.”

Nova’s eyes narrow. “Don’t know if I believe you,” she says.

Din sighs. Din’s always sighing. But this time, it’s not out of exasperation. “Will you just—”

“No needles,” Nova says. She’s trying to sound brave. She really is. But bravery left with the golden light of her lightsaber, and she has to really muster up the conviction. “Mean it.”

“Novalise.”

“Mm.” It’s noncommittal, that noise, her hands held up, braced against his pauldrons. “If you’re lying to me—”

“Relax,” Din hisses, and for some reason, some untold signal in his voice, she does.

His hand isn’t in the pocket on his belt that was hiding the bacta. No, he’s reaching into a hidden one, tucked in the inner workings of his beskar, and the protest dies in her throat. Nova’s breath evaporates into the air around them. In his one, ungloved hand, Din is holding a ring. It’s silver, but lighter than the beskar he shines in, lighter than the beskar of his ring she’s worn proudly on her left hand since he first dropped to his knees in Nevarro. But in the middle, mercurial, shifting, is a marbled, swirling grey stone. It looks—alive. Almost like the Kyber that ignites her lightsaber, but not really. Almost like her mother’s pearls that hung around her neck, but not quite. It’s unlike anything Nova has ever seen before, and yet, it calls to her. It sings. Like calls to like.

“Found this,” Din says gruffly, like he’s trying to keep emotion out of his voice, and Nova’s heart swells. “It’s for you.”

She shakes her head imperceptibly, blinking up at him. “Where?”

“I’ve almost lost you so many times.” It’s not an answer to her question. Nova doesn’t care. “I know we’ve been…” he swallows. “Fighting. Arguing. Like we haven’t… been on the same…wavelength.” It’s her word, coming out of Din’s mouth, and Nova’s never loved it more. “I’m sorry.” He clears his throat, and then, huskily: “I’m trying. I love you.”

“I love you,” she echoes, reaching out to touch him, to take the ring. Din moves, stacking it on top of her engagement ring, and it hisses into place. It swirls in front of her eyes, the metal cool to the touch, the stone a pool for her to fall into—swallowing. Consuming. It slots onto Nova’s finger like it was made for her. Like it’s been missing this whole time. It pulses. It glows. It’s obsidian and ivory. It’s silver and not. It is hers. It sings out to her. Nova responds.

“Do you like it?” Din cuts back in, slices through her reverie. His voice is so low, slung deep. Hungry.

Fuck, Nova’s hungry, too. “Yes.” So much weight is thrown behind that one word. She swallows. Need is coursing through her veins, holding her heart hostage. “Come here.”

“Nova—”

“I know, and I don’t care,” she breathes, grabbing the back of his neck, anchoring him lower, closer. “Kiss me.”

He is fighting an unspoken battle, her Mandalorian. Nova can hear his breath deepen, intensify, can feel the heat radiating off him like magma. “You—”

“Kiss me,” she breathes, emboldened, brazen. Desire slams into her, an entire ocean. “Please.” She’ll beg. She’s not above begging. But it doesn’t matter, because Din curls his fingers underneath the rim of his helmet, pulling it clean off, and he blinks at her, brown eyes almost black.

“Fuck it,” he snarls, and then his mouth, hot and wanting, is on hers.

This is selfish. His touch, molded against her skin—that’s selfish. Devouring hers in a dirty back alley, that’s selfish. Spending time, sweet precious time, with their bodies melded together like metal, when their friends are out there fighting—that’s selfish. Nova feels the darkness flood in, take over her body like a superbloom. She sighs out against the lock of Din’s mouth against her.

“Din,” she whispers.

He stiffens like it takes all of his control, all that silver now rigid and unyielding. “What?”

Nova looks up at him, wetting her lips with her tongue. He groans out, the sound choked in the low light of the alley, and want pulses again between her legs. Hungrily. Snarling. “Don’t take it easy on me.”

His eyes are so dark. Maker, she could drown in them. Nova shudders, wanting to, needing to. “That’s not how this works.” He swallows, the sound thick. “Especially now.”

She pushes at him, clawing her fingers into the untouched skin at the back of his neck. Din whimpers—full on, loudly—and a thrill runs through Nova’s entire body. Fire, sparked to life. “It is today.”

He looks at her. “Nova—”

“Fuck it away,” she breathes into the hollow of his open mouth. “Please. Please. You want me to beg? Fine, I’m begging. You want me on my knees? You’ll have to make me.” Din’s mouth falls open wider. Nova wants to shove her tongue into it, make his lips take away all of the pain. “Yeah, it hurts. It hurts.” And it does. But what’s a little charred flesh worth in battle against her Mandalorian? Nothing. “Make me ache. Fuck the pain away.”

Din grips the back of her head, a halo of hair in his ungloved, unbloodied hand. There’s a metaphor in it, in the way he’s clutching at her like his unbecoming. Nova sighs into the space between them—just armor and skin, nothing more.

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

Nova does not flinch. “Yes. I do.”

She’s calling Din on his bluff. He’s holding himself back. Right now, it’s not Din she’s speaking to. She wants the monster underneath his skin, licking and pulsing like flames. It’s barely contained. It is snarling at her, screaming. He is a tar pit. He is blackened steel. He is all beskar, all blade. Nova knows what she’s asking.

She loves Din. But right now, she needs the Mandalorian.

When he breaks, when he crashes his mouth against hers, it’s not reassuring. It doesn’t taste like empathy, like sweetness. He’s not trying to take away the pain. Din’s doing exactly what she asked for. He’s going to fuck it all away.

Din’s tongue, leaden, is heavy inside Nova’s mouth. It pulses, rolling over her own, desperate. Cloying. Needy. He is all teeth and bone. He growls—really, truly growls—and it’s not a mockery. It’s not anything but desire, coiled so deep it needs to strike. Like a pit viper. Like a rattlesnake. Like venom and honey. She wants to drink it down.

“Novalise—”

“Tear me apart,” she enunciates, the words barely a whisper, already off on Corellia’s fetid wind. “I give you permission.” Then, louder, emboldened, for only him to hear: “No mercy.”

Din’s mouth returns and leaves like a furious tide, biting down on her lips, cascading down her neck, licking tides to her collarbone, over and over. He is rhythmic in his domination. Unyielding. This is not the man she married. This is the Mandalorian she loved first. He takes instruction well, the weapon of a man in front of her. And then he takes control.

Din’s hands—cloying, desperate—rip at the seam of her pants. It burns so bright, his fingers wrenching her clothes away. Nova’s eyes are blackening at the edges, sweet, sweet sensation. “Don’t rip them,” she mewls, and his hand stills. Shame and need war inside of her, and Nova reels back against the metal wall. Her knees—all that’s left standing, at this point, the rest of her body slumped against Din’s metal one��shake on the cold ground.

“So bold,” he croons, and the hair on the back of Nova’s neck stands straight up. His hands dip lower, lower than her belt, low enough to hook around the waistband of her panties, and flame licks at the very core of her. “You’re not in charge,” he whispers, and every word is electric, a live wire, a lightning bolt. Nova isn’t cold, but she shivers. “You gave that up, sweet girl. You don’t get to make demands. But fuck, you sounds so good when you try.”

“Still have—” she pants, “a mission to f-finish—”

“Then shut your pretty mouth,” Din snarls, “and let me finish you first.”

That does it. Nova hums out as he digs low. His fingers are filthy. Not with blood or grime—no, not from the men he felled back on the impromptu Corellian battlefield. No, he kept his gloves on for that. But with her—slick, wet, wanting. Nova’s eyes roll back in her head as Din sinks two fingers inside of her, to the hilt, and curls. He presses, and she feels it building, the crushing crescendo of an orgasm, already, yes, already—but then there’s an absence of where his fingers once were, and her eyes open fully, eyebrows furrowed in frustration—

He’s sinking the same two fingers into his mouth. The moan he emits could fell a nation. An army. Nova’s not sure. She would die on the battlefield if this were her enemy, silver-clad and dangerous. Electric. She blinks at him, eyes half-lidded. “Oh,” she says, distantly, distantly because there’s something buzzing in her ears. “Oh—”

“Taste so fucking good,” he grits out, and Nova shudders, going limp. And then his fingers are back inside of her. “Clench around me. Good girl.” He takes a fistful of her hair in the other bare hand and yanks back. Hard. Nova’s ears are still ringing. “Harder.” It’s rhapsodic, that voice. An echo chamber of filth shudders back at her.

“Tell me,” she whispers. To cum is the rest of that sentence, but stars above, Nova can’t finish it. She’s limp. Undone. And all he’s done is touch her—and then Din’s fingers, that ecstasy, is gone again. “Fuck—” she cries, frustrated, and Din chuckles. The sound is so bright, so perfect, that it dulls the ache of his absence. A little. And then it floods back in and Nova grabs at his wrist. But it doesn’t budge. It trails up from the sucking seam of her pussy, wet with her own slick.

“Stop leaving me,” she whines.

Din chuckles again. Lower this time. It feels like a vibration. Nova hums, and then he’s gripping her face. Hard. Her lips pucker out as he clenches down on her cheeks. It hurts, pain singing out in the best way. “Open.”

Nova tries to comply, she really does, but her mouth is being held captive by the massive plain of Din’s flexed fist. He shoves his fingers inside, wet and dripping. “This is how you taste,” he hisses, licking a line of it off the cleft of her split bottom lip. “Before you’ve even cum for me.” He clicks his tongue. Nova’s thighs clench together. It’s involuntary, truly. “Wanna taste how sweet you are when you have?”

She stutters out a breath, lips puckered in a perfect O, and the way Din grins at her is sinful. Criminal. Dark and lecherous, if it were any other mouth wearing that smile, but he looks at her like he worships her, even now, and Nova’s heart flips.

“Need you,” she manages, through the painful part of her mouth, “please—”

“Who am I to deny my sweet girl,” Din breathes, “when she begs for me?”

Nova can barely keep her eyes open. Din’s grip lessens, just a little. The other hand, previously anchoring her hip in place—which is likely going to be sporting purpled bruises tomorrow, but Nova doesn’t care—leaves the curve of her waist to shove something at her. It’s her shawl. Nova blinks at it. “What—?”

“Cover your stomach,” Din says, brushing the mess of ringlets out of her face. “Don’t get it dirty.”

“It’s—” Nova’s breath catches as he pushes her back against the wall, dragging her body up against the durasteel of the abandoned building they’re up against—fuck, she can’t think straight. “Not a wound anymore—”

“Don’t care,” Din grits out, shoving it against her skin. Nova feels the pain of the contact, just a little. Faintly. Maker. She’s losing it. “No cover, no cock.” Hearing him say it so crudely sparks something bright and devastating in the pit of her stomach. “Don’t argue with me. You won’t win.”

Nova nods. Din’s hand finds her chin again—still slick—and she sighs out into the air around them.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he rasps out.

Nova looks down—he is still, so regrettably, clothed. She pouts. “Wanna see you.”

Din grins again. Devilish. Dark. Her stomach curls. That softness, there just a minute ago, is gone. He is a blade, the pit of a man called into battle. “Then look down,” he simpers, and then his hand slips down to her throat, pushing just hard enough to make her beloved stars explode.

Nova cries out into the open air, stifled by the warrior’s hand clenching around her airway. Just how she likes it. She tries to look down. To see his cock, thick and wanting, pierce her, cleave her in two. She wants to watch—really watch—to see how the Mandalorian moves inside of her—but Nova can’t. She’s trapped in the staccato rhythm of pleasure and pain, equally enticing.

“Look at me.”

Nova hears it, dully. She’s too far gone, already almost on the edge again. Din’s grunting, animalistic, and it’s the sweetest, sickest sound she’s ever heard. She is undone. This is sacrosanct. This is divine. She was standing on holy ground, and her Mandalorian is desecrating it.

“Novalise.” Her name cuts through, and Nova abandons sweet disconnect to look him in the eye. Din’s not here right now. He is the version of himself that kills, that slaughters. She wants him. She needs him. “Look at me.”

“Maker,” she manages, strangled, and Din hoists her higher against the wall to fuck into her harder, deeper, so much deeper, sheathing himself inside her like he would a blade into safety, except nothing about this feels safe. She’s craved danger before. But Nova has never craved danger more.

“No,” Din snarls. “No Maker is here right now. No, cyar’ika. You pray to me.”

Her orgasm rips through her—bluntly. Unyielding. Unfettered, like the pulse of her Mandalorian. He cries out, grunting, fingers curling in her hair.

“Who do you belong to?” Din asks, and the sound is ringing from somewhere far, far away. Nova is a universe of exploding stars. She is slick and sweaty, dangling from the wall like an animal while the man in front of her rips her to shreds in the sweetest, holiest way.

“Mmm,” Nova manages. She is gone. She is over in another galaxy, her body hanging limp in Din’s hands. “You.”

He fists a hand in her hair, dragging her gaze up to his. “I’m not finished with you yet.” And—fuck—he’s not. He snaps his hips into hers. An unending rhythm. Time stops. There is nothing here—nothing on this plane of existence. There’s Din, and there’s Nova, and there’s the want, the heavy thrum of sex, desire pumping amorphous, silty blood through their veins. This is a darkened star, this is the only thing in the world. The divine feeling of her Mandalorian, fucking with abandon, bisecting her. Din tips Nova over the edge, once, twice, three more times. She is a mewling, destroyed mess.

“Mine,” Din is whispering. Chanting. Then, in Mando’a: “ibac’ner.”

It’s a prayer. Or something close to it. Nova’s eyes open, watching her Mandalorian’s face as he comes undone.

“Yours,” she whispers, into the open hollow of his mouth, and then everything contracts. He slams into her, once, twice, three times—and then he’s undone, spurting into her, hot and wet and warm, and Nova feels something settle and crack inside of her all at once. She can hear his heartbeat. Through the armor. Through everything, They stay there, panting, foreheads locked together, and when Din pulls out of her, Nova mourns. He licks his lips as he tucks his cock back in his pants. He wipes the cum leaking out of her away with his bare hands. Nova watches, half-lidded, as he lifts his fingers to her mouth. Nova takes it like communion. She feels wrecked. A ship hurled against rock. Undone. And fortified. That sweet, sweet darkness licks at her edges.

“What do you taste?” His voice is low. Guttural. Whatever Din let out of its cage is not fully back in.

Nova hums, licking it off her lips. “You.”

He smiles, wicked and low, before pulling his helmet back over his head. “Not quite.” Then, modulated, voice duo-toned, flickering like the Darksaber, double-sided like the vessel of his armor and the stature of the man within it, with one finger hooked under her chin: “Us.”

Nova doesn’t have time to contemplate what that means. Two things happen.

One: She just feels the vantablack obsidian curling low in her stomach—seeping back in.

Two: The hologram in Din’s hands flares to life.

I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!! the filth was FILTHY this time around lmao, but it was such an exciting chapter to write! please let me know what you think <3

CHAPTER 8 WILL BE UP AT 7:30 PM EST ON MARCH 9TH!

xoxo, amelie