The Cassandra Complex : Chapter XI : Lethe
Series Masterlist : Moodboard
(Din Djarin x F!Reader)
Content Warnings: Brief reference to sexual assault (none has or will occur); Hurt/Comfort; Extremely soft Din Djarin
A/N: I kinda just winged all of this, if there are any inaccuracies or any canon divergence, a great and many apologies!
Rating: Explicit 18+
Word Count: 7.7K
Read on AO3
CHAPTER XI : LETHE
At what point does one say of a man that he has become unreal?
Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
Between bouts of wakefulness, you tell him of the things they did to you in the dark. A blooming flower in the dead of winter, stunted and slow, and as if you’re pulling your own teeth in some moments, when other words come like vomit, rushed and hot and putrid but necessary, something not to be held back. And you don’t tell him the whole of it, he knows this, he can see, but you tell him the parts you can bear, and for now, it’s enough.
You sit in that bed of comfort he’s so meticulously arranged for you in the dim light of the Razor Crest, overheads shut off, only a single warm snake of glowing light falling over you from the cracked open fresher door, navcom set for the desert planet of Tatooine and the spaceport of Mos Eisley, and the thrum of hyperspace buzzes around the two of you. He sits on the opposite side of the hull, wrapped in his armor and his silence and his wanting, and he watches you ebb and flow out of sleep; soft, slow drooping of your eyes into wakefulness and then back into the depths of rest. You need so much of it, he can tell.
At first, you don’t let him near. No touching, please, you beg in whispers, and although it feels as though his bones are thrashing within the confines of his skin or like his teeth will fall out of his skull from the saccharine sweet flavor of want for you that sits sticky on his tongue, he obeys. So at a distance, with certainly no touching at all, the two of you talk. For hours, and then for days, and although his bones continue to shake, and his teeth continue to ache, he holds himself in temperance and restraint because he knows that to just look upon you is enough, he knows it’s everything.
The trip to Tatooine takes days, the Crest a little worse for wear than what she’d been when you’d previously been aboard. The hits she’d taken over the years, over his and Grogu’s journey had taken their toll, and her hyperdrive was no longer what it had once been. But she ramained faithful and sturdy, like any good mistress, and she’d get the two of you where you needed to be, to Tatooine and to Peli for some much needed maintenance after the long trip to the Core. And Din knew it wouldn’t only be the ship’s routine upkeep the two of you would find there, but some much needed rest in the sand port, as well, and most importantly, time. Buying himself time during the slow going trip, and then there, to figure out how it was he was going to get you to stay with him, force you if necessary.
He’d been telling the truth when he’d said you weren’t going anywhere. He would not be left again.
Din had been a stupid man before. He would not be making the same sorts of mistakes again.
Two days since he’d brought you aboard now, and you’re still not entirely well. Tired and sluggish, but he tells himself you just need rest and the closely monitored interval feedings he’s been coaxing on you. You’re sleeping again now after he’d gently cooed and shushed you into accepting some broth, and he watches the methodical up and down sway of the wing of your shoulder, hypnotizing, listening to the whistle of your open mouthed breathing that sings a song assuring him you’re alive and well. He’s been sitting at the opposite end of the hull from you, as far as he can get while still remaining in your direct vicinity, attempting to give you whatever measure of peace he can bear, silent and still, enshrouded in the dark for hours now. Counting the minutes between the sporadic opening of your eyes, the brief moments when you come to and grant him access to your gaze.
Those eyes of yours, they’d haunted him for two years. When he was trying to forget you, when he was trying to move on, stupid and horrible, insisting he could only take Omera from behind because he couldn’t bear the sight of a face that wasn’t yours. He had been wrong. He had done wrong. He had been bad. And he didn’t want to admit it, or acknowledge it, or look it directly in the face, but it was regret which lived in him. He couldn’t deny it.
He’s been scanning your heat signatures every thirty minutes, your core temperature holding normal, your vitals stable, and he’s full of sick paranoia, ravenous want, singing joy. Too many things churning within him to properly digest, and in a way, he’s grateful for this time you’re affording him to gather himself while you sleep and recover. He needs to be well collected, ready and strong and level headed to give you whatever it is you might need when you’re finally ready to leave your restful unconsciousness and come back to him.
You start to shift as he’s scanning your temperature once again. First the hitching of a knee and the nudge of your hips, and then your leg stretching long and lithe, and he watches the arch of your small foot peek out from beneath your blanket, tiny toes splaying wide, spasming and shivering with the stretch of your muscles. He swallows hard, forces the heat in his body that would like to swell to an inferno to remain cool and serene. All this, just from the sight of one small foot. He’s pathetic and ridiculous, and he doesn’t care because he loves you, and you finally know and really, what could matter after that? Nothing.
His eyes swing back up to your face, and he watches the scrunch of your spikey, dark lashes before you nuzzle your face into the cove of your shoulder, coming awake slowly, slowly, as if you’d not had any real, true and peaceful rest since the last time you’d been on his ship. He watches you with bated breath, the subtle inclination of his body towards you as if he were trying to absorb your presence, and when you finally turn back, eyes blinking open he feels his heart lurch in his chest at the first sight of them. Nothing in the galaxy compares, and he must surely know, he’s seen so much of it.
He says your name, voice low and graveled with disuse. “How do you feel?”
You stretch your arms out in front of you, wriggling beneath the covers and making the most delicious of little noises he forces himself not to fixate on. Oh, you sigh, eyes opening wide, long lashes fanning across high cheekbones, before you finally find him in the shadows he’s sitting in. Nothing but the still gleam of beskar in the dim light to give him away.
“You’re so extra shiny now,” little voice and even tinier nose scrunch, so adorable that something soft inside of him aches and snaps its teeth.
“Yes, well…” he sighs, “new armor.”
You sit up slowly, jaw shifting from side to side as you move with what looks like frightened care, like you’re expecting something to hurt, and then, yes, there it is, tiny and subtle, but a flinch. Infinitesimal scrunch of your brows, your left eye winking shut, the droop of your mouth, all of it happening so fast, but he’s watching so intently, learning forward as if he’d shoot across the space that separates the two of you to take you in hand, fix whatever it is that’s aching, that he catches it all before you can school your features into blankness.
“Your hair’s longer,” he whispers, and you freeze, arms bracing yourself up on locked elbows, they don’t tremble anymore like before, and he takes this as a good sign. You let your head fall forward to hang between your shoulders, long hair, a curtain concealing your face from him, and he wants to snap at you, for one unhinged moment, that you’re not allowed to keep your eyes from him anymore. He’s already gone too long without them, he can’t bear anymore of it. But he swallows his insanity, keeps his mouth shut.
You shake your head down at the blankets, before finally looking back up, sitting up all the way and turning to face him. Silent while you settle with your back against the wall so that now the two of you are face to face, separated by dust motes and memories and desire that snaps like lightning between the two of you. There is frision here, pressurized and boiling, and he has to behave. He won’t push you or ask anything of you you’re not ready to give or tell. You’d already shared bits and pieces with him, over your stunted bouts of consciousness over the past two days. A dark hole in the ground, a thieving Twi’lek, breaking of a kind he can’t bear to think of directly, and I hurt like I’m newly made, Din. And now, the first time you’ve been fully awake and lucid, he isn’t going to ruin this with his desperation.
“Fancy. Looks expensive,” you press about the armor.
“I did a big job.”
He doesn’t know how to handle the subject of him. He’d told you the most important fact you needed to know, that he isn’t his biological son, that he hadn’t betrayed you in that way. But the rest? The whole of it? There was so much to say, so many things, great and small to tell. Din couldn’t fathom where to start.
“Oh? What was it?” You’ve wrapped the blanket up high beneath your chin, hiding yourself away from him swathed as you are. Everything and anything you can do to keep yourself apart and protected.
“Are you hungry? You should eat,” he says instead.
You shake your head no. “What was it? Tell me.”
A sigh, and, “Stole the kid for some Imperial remnants.”
“You did what? Your kid?” You screech, surging forward all tangled up in the blankets as you are.
“Yes. Unknowingly,” he huffs. “I collected payment, and then I– I… I don’t know, changed my mind. I went back for him.” His words come to a stuttered halt, unsure and suddenly, unbearably shy, fucking with a small loose seam coming apart at the knee of his pants he’d been meaning to mend for days. There’s a part of him, irrational or untried or overprotective that doesn’t want to tell you about him, his ad’ika, and he can’t understand why when it’s you. The girl he loves, the girl he’s waited for. But it had been so difficult, so precarious, his journey with Grogu, always on the defensive, always looking over his shoulder, waitting for the worst. He’s unused to sharing him without fear or trepidation. And then his loss… for that’s what it feels like, and he’d never admit it aloud, knows he’s where he’s supposed to be, needs to be, now, but there still lives a small, sour seed within Din that whispers that that it’s wrong, that Grogu’s place had always been, and always will be, with him. And when he looks back up at your face, open and patient and lovely, it all spills out anyways. “He was a foundling, as I was. And he’s– he’s special. And after I went back for him, he was… put in my charge of sorts. We struggled so much, trying to evade the Empire, seeking out his people–”
“You found the Jedi?” You gasp.
Murky waters. “We did. He’s with them now. We traveled to Calodan on the forest planet of Corvus, we met a Jedi there by the name of Ahsoka Tano. I thought she’d take him then, help him. He needed to be with his people, and I knew that, I was prepared for that, but along the way… along the way he became– he became–” he clears his throat, for his voice has gone rough, almost choked. He shakes his head, unable to continue but you nod encouragingly, understanding without words all Grogu means to him. You’re sitting at the edge of the nest of blankets now, as if gravitating towards him, holding yourself back, marooned on an island of your own making.
“I’ve heard of her. A great legend, tragedy…”
“Yes, well… She sensed it in us, in Grogu.”
“That’s his name?” You ask softly. “Grogu?” And Din’s heart, it aches, at the sound of it coming from your mouth, all the gentleness and tenderness his ad’ika needs to be afforded. And unbidden, like flash fire, something he has to look away from immediately for his own self preservation, yours too probably, he thinks: oh, but you’d make the most wonderful mother, cyare.
“Yes,” he breathes, “Grogu.”
“And he– he’s a boy? Where does he come from? How old is he?”
“Not human. No one knows what species he is, but he was born on Coruscant, raised at the Jedi temple before the Great Purge, and then smuggled to safety and hidden away for years before I came to find him. He’s supposed to be about fifty years old.”
“But he’s–” your brow folds in confusion, “He’s a child? You called him–”
“Yes. He’s still young, still a baby. I don’t– I don’t know. He’s special. Green and– and wrinkled, with big eyes and even bigger ears.”
“He sounds… he sounds like someone my– my master spoke to me of, once. Of an unknown species, a great Jedi master. Perhaps the strongest in the galaxy, the strongest that's ever lived. Luke Skywalker was his apprentice.”
“That’s where the kid is now– with Skywalker.”
“You gave him to Luke Skywalker?” And your eyes shutter, your mask slipping briefly, showing your frayed edges.
“Yes.” He says carefully. “Ahsoka, she said she couldn’t take him, that we were too– too connected, that he needed someone more.”
“You seem to have a way with Force users,” you say suddenly, a little bashfully, a small smile spreading across your face in a half moon of laughter. “But it makes sense,” you continue, “That his connection, whatever loyalty to you he may have had,” and the use of the past tense feels like a gut punch, “would be difficult to work around when training someone so young and untried. But if he’s anything like his predecessor, then he has great potential in the Force. He’ll probably grow to unprecedented strength eventually. And from what I’ve heard, the species is very long lived, hundreds and hundreds of years.” Another sucker punch, this one even worse. Grogu would live to be old beyond Din’s years.
He clears his throat, yanks harder on the loose seam so that it splits at the side, revealing a patch of hairy knee. “We found those he belongs to, he’s with his people now. I lost him– or I– I returned him to where he should’ve always been. It’s better like this.”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper from your perch at the edge of your self imposed island. “I’m sorry you lost him.”
“Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s all the way it’s supposed to be.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Only a few weeks. Like I said, he was taken by Imperial remnants led by a Moff Gideon. Skywalker saved us and took him. He has a temple where he plans to train young Jedi. He’ll be with other children like him now. It’s good for him. I know it is.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of it, he promises he’s not, or doesn’t mean for it to come out like that.
“I’ve heard of Gideon,” you muse, shifting to lean back, movements still slow, not as smooth as they usually are. The thick mantle of your hair shifts over your shoulder, and Din’s mouth goes dry, desperate to bury his face in all that lush splendor and take in the scent of it, feel the drag of it across his naked chest, over his cock and thighs.
“What do you know of him?”
“Only his name, and the great ambition tied to it. He took part in the siege on Mandalore… didn’t he?”
“He did. He’s in the custody of the New Republic now. Awaiting trial and judgment.”
“Tell me about the saber,” you say then.
“I won it from Gideon in battle.”
“It’s the Darksaber, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“It’s legend.” And you look at him strangely at that, mercurial look passing through your eyes, memories or something worse. “Many great and terrible hands have wielded that blade. Clan Vizsla, who forged it, the Sith lord Darth Maul, Sabine Wren.”
He’s shocked by the seemingly great well of knowledge you possess on the figures he’s spent the last two years dealing with. “I’m familiar with the Clan. Paz Vizsla. How do you know all this?” He asks.
“He–” You turn away, brows hitching high, and he watches a swallow pass through the delicate column of your throat. “My master, he was a lover of knowledge, information gathered everywhere, always. He made it his business to know things, and my purpose to collect it for him.”
He wishes you’d let him go to you at the mention of that scum. He wishes he could resurrect him from the dead just to send him back to the deepest pit existing, at the look on your face, small and frightened and childlike. Din’s stomach turns, and he changes the subject. “Wren– she… I think I’ve heard of her from my friend Bo, as well.
“Who?” That brings you back to attention, and he’s grateful for the concealment of the helmet for the small smile he can’t help at the look that comes across your face.
“She’s a Mandalorian. Bo-Katan Kryze.”
“Your friend…?”
“She helped me with the kid. When Moff Gideon captured him, her and her followers aided me in his rescue. It got complicated–”
“Between the two of you?” You cut him off with a little huffing scowl.
“Before Skywalker showed up to help us, little one.”
“Oh,” you huff again, turning your nose up at him haughtily. He can’t help the breath of air he lets out at that. Silly, gorgeous thing. He wants to kiss you so badly.
“The saber’s rightfully hers.”
“Oh,” again, and he laughs, again. “Oh, yes. Yes. The–” you frown, “The legend is that whoever wields it can rule all of Mandalore. I’ve heard that.”
“And that sure as fuck isn’t me. Her family ruled before the siege, it’s hers.” The entire business of it still scathes and prickles at him.
And you laugh at that, “No?” Head tipping back, that mantle of hair sliding again, provoking him again. “Why not? It could be–”
“No. Definitely not. Never. That isn’t something I’d ever be interested in. I would never suit such a role. And this– this thing…” he motions to the crate where the Darksaber sits discarded. He’d found he hated wearing it on himself for too long. “It doesn't suit me well. It’s difficult to wield, something– something leaden and sucking about it.”
“You wielded it just fine from what I saw.”
“You were doing something.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I could feel you, when you attacked me–”
“I didn’t attack you,” you scoff, affronted. Haughty nose back up in the air, and the soft thing inside Din snaps its teeth together once more.
“Don’t start,” he admonishes, voice deep and rumbling and speaking of all the things he’d like to do to you that he cannot even give thought to right now. You roll your eyes, and he can’t help but smile. Sass is good, sass means you’re feeling better, more yourself.
“I could feel you, almost as if you were feeding your energy into me.”
You turn to look at him sharply at that. Tiny frown marring the space between your fine brows he’d like to smooth away with a kiss. “What? I– I didn’t mean to, or– or I didn’t know I was doing that…” You look away again, pressing fingertips to your mouth in concentration. Everything about you, every movement, gesture, frown and sigh and inflection, mesmerizes him. Din didn’t think it possible he could have been worse off than he was before, but he comes to the sudden, startling realization, that he’d had absolutely no idea how much deeper he could fall. The admission that you love him in return, the sound of it, had done something to him, set something off or opened something within him. Some sort of yawning, hungry maw that would only be satisfied once it’d swallowed you whole.
He needs to bide his time and temper his actions. He won’t scare you off.
“I was out of control…” you continue in a small whisper. “I didn’t know. I didn’t–” And you look nervous, frightened suddenly. Din leans forward, immediately on alert, ready to rush over to you if you need him, just from the look on your face. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” You’re all wide eyed fright and concern and an innocence about you, about the question, your worry that you’d hurt him. His heart thumps and thumps and thumps, the rush of blood through the mass of organ so hot it burns.
“Never, cyar’ika. You could never hurt me. I just feel you.” And it’s the truth, it had merely been an extension of yourself feeding him, strengthening him, emboldening him like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Something euphoric about the feeling he was not keen to experience again for the mere fact of how it’d left you, weak and fragile and exhausted, almost at a breaking point.
The two of you need to be careful, he realizes. There was a connection between the two of you, stronger and more easily traversed than either of you had previously realized, be it fate or love or the Force, but there was something that lived between the two of you and connected you and Din needs to be absolutely sure that whatever it is never becomes a detriment to you in any way.
You tilt your head sideways, some truth he knows he should fear churning behind your eyes. You bring your knees up to fold tightly against your chest, wrapping your arms around your shins, and lay your cheek against the small cap, hiding away from him again. “I want–” you say in a very small voice, “I want to tell you things, but I’m afraid of–” a swallow of breath.
“Afraid of what, cyare?”
At the tremble of your spine as you hitch with nerves, Din wants to go to you so badly. This is the most difficult thing he’s ever endured in his life. “Afraid you won’t see me the same again after I tell them.”
“Didn’t I already tell you there isn’t anything you could ever do that I wouldn’t forgive you for?” He presses forward just a millimeter.
You peer up at him at that, and there are no tears in your eyes which soothes him, in part, but worse, still splintered with so much sadness or hurt or the terror of time, and it’s like he’s bellyful of grief. There is something acutely unfair about the distance sitting between the two of you right now when you’re holding that look in your eyes.
“But what about respect?”
“You could never lose that from me either.” You shake your head, propping your chin on your bent knees and wrapping your hands around your feet to pull them up and rock back and then forward, thinking of what it is you're trying to say.
“Don’t you think there are certain things that a person shouldn’t be forgiven for?”
“Perhaps. But there are certain people the rules don’t apply to. That’s you for me.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“To who?”
“To you!” You say incredulously.
“Why not?”
“You–” And there are tears now, swimming in your eyes, his heart thump, thumping in agitation at the sight of them. He gives a growl of frustration that ends on a choke as you squeeze your eyes shut, a single tear sliding over the slope of your cheekbone. “Maker, Din. This is all wrong.” You sound as full of frustration as he feels, and he wants to say that he’s sure if you’d just let him come to you, you’d find the right way forward within each other. “You want to touch me.” He bites down on his tongue hard enough to taste blood.
“Are you looking in my head?”
You give a soft laugh. “Don’t need to.” He huffs, well, he isn’t going to deny it.
You turn away again, laying your cheek back atop your knee, and he can see the tension in your arms as you squeeze yourself tight, tighter. “I– I can’t– I can’t have sex with you,” you say in a smaller voice than he could’ve imagined possible.
He’s silent for a moment, trying to measure his breathing, and there’s violence thrumming within him at what he’s about to ask, but his voice is nothing but gentleness. “Did they– did they hurt you like that?”
You heave a long sigh, “No, but the feel of skin, I cant– I– I hurt everywhere, Din. Everywhere. Inside and– and–”
“It’s alright. It’s alright, cyar’ika.” He tries to push his voice out in gentle, measured notes. Something that’ll soothe you from afar. And the sight of you, all twisted and squeezed up into a tight little ball like you are– Maker– Din feels afraid, for a moment, of what might become of him, of the sort of violence he feels capable of in your name. “If it hurts, you don’t have to tell me anything now or at all.”
“I want to. Is it–” You look up, brow folding, squinty eyed as if you’re rifling through your head for the words. “How do I– how do I tell you that you deserve to know the full of it, but don’t deserve to carry the burden of it? That I wish I didn’t have to, but that I also want to tell you.”
“Just like that.” He presses another half a millimeter forward, feels like he’s hallucinating the scent of you from over here. “Tell me anything you need just like that. But don’t say it’d be a burden, you could never be anything even close to that to me.”
And still, with your eyes not on him, you say that which he’d already been expecting: “I let them keep me.”
He’d known.
He’d known.
“Are they dead?”
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“You didn't leave even one for me?” Your cheek rolls against the hill of your knee, eyes swinging up to spark at him, and Maker, as long as he’s still able to pull that look from you there’s hope. He can fix anything if only you continue to look at him like that.
The trip to Tatooine takes about ten days. Bouts of sleeping and eating and his gentle but insistent caring for you. He won’t let you pull away or into yourself; kept at a distance, but not pulling away, and the distinction might not be obvious, but he sees it. That’s enough.
Days later, when you wake again, a little stronger, but still sleepy and soft and beautiful, your hair is even longer. Seeming to grow a yard a day, incredibly. “It’s the Force; healing me, reconnecting with me. It works in strange ways,” you tell him as it pools around your waist. He says nothing, catalogs everything, and later, you come, moving slowly up the ladder into the cockpit to join him in the co-pilot's chair, bundled in a blanket. He’d left some of his socks for you warming on a pipe, just like before, and he sees the thick weave of them droopy over your toes, the part where his heel is supposed to go coming up to your ankle. He swallows and looks away and breathes and breathes and reminds himself he is strong and patient and entirely at your service in any way you might need. Din reminds himself that he must be good.
Your wounds heal slowly over the days, and he gripes and groans that all your energy is funneling into that damn hair and not the more important bits of you. He perches you on a crate, after having urged you into the fresher, pacing outside anxiously, hands on his hips, a huff and a sigh a minute while he listens for any bump or movement from within, making sure you don’t need him. He sticks a bowl of soup in your hands after, kneeling before you, gloves fitted over his hands so that you won’t have to feel his skin and shows you the bacta patches slowly, movements intentional and measured so that you’re not taken by surprise or touched in any way that you might not like. You eye him suspiciously, brow hitched, nose scrunched when you sniff delicately at the broth and then promptly discarding the bowl beside his medical kit, watching for what he plans to do with you next.
“That bit on your elbow isn’t healing.”
You give him a tiny frown, tucking the sore little wing tight into your side protectively. He presents his palms towards you, moves slowly. “It’s fine,” you pout.
“You know it’s not, little one. I’m going to put a single bacta patch over it. That’s it. No fuss, I promise.” Still moving slowly, watching the look in your eyes, opening the packet gently, he reaches for your arm, index finger and thumb taking hold of you first, a barely there cuff of his fingers just above your joint. He gives one slow stroke of his thumb, feeling you lock up, makes a low noise deep in his chest, something to soothe and coax you as he pulls your arm gently forward, untucking it from your side. “It’s alright, cyar’ika. Just a little bacta, nothing scary.” Your eyes go a little glazed, head tilting sideways to look down at him, mass of your hair shifting around you. That hair and those eyes and that face, Maker, but this is where he belongs, this is where he should always be, at his knees before you.
You give a soft sigh verging on a breathy little moan, your eyes fluttering shut as he smooths his thumb against the inner slope of your elbow, just there at the vulnerable dip, but when he slowly starts to lift your arm to get at the back side where the wound is, raw and red, a burned and angry looking thing, you wince, a little screech warbling in your throat, before jerking back trying to get away from him, quick and violent in your incoordination. That damned shoulder you haven’t let him look at yet, he knows it’s bad. You flail, little foot coming up to stub your toes against his stomach plate, bum scooting precariously over the edge of the stool. He reaches for you on instinct, his hand cupping the curve of your bottom to keep you seated, shit, hold on, stop, he grunts, but when you shove him away, loud slap of your palm against the curve of his helmet, he loses his balance, momentum taking the both of you toppling, unintentionally taking you with him. He falls splayed on his back, helmet dinging hollowly where his head knocks against the steel floor with a tangled mass of soft limbs and too long hair and lush tits sprawling over him. You wriggle and flail, an indignant squeak of his name, and then you go tense realizing all the places the two of you are suddenly pressed together. He feels a shudder of painful terror lock your limbs into shivers, the trembling hitch of your chest, and he holds frozen still, waiting for you to make the first move. But Maker, the feel of your weight on top of him. He widens the stance of his legs, slowly brings a knee up, trying to keep the heft of you away from his cock. He dips his chin to watch your face, eyes wide, frantically swinging across his chest, to his hands held up in surrender at your shoulders level, up to the face of his helmet.
You’re full of unsure fear and desire, yes, he can see it just there in the farthest glimmer of your eyes, the one like a scream, bright and hungry. Your brows fold together, confused, a frustrated noise slipping off your tongue before you give one more tense, strained jerk, and then seem to suddenly lose the fight and entirely melt into him. Your temple landing with a soft thump on his chest plate, arms wilting from their tensely held position over the outsides of his arms. Just a melted little thing of a girl, finally letting go of all that anxious strain you’ve held yourself in for two long years.
Din dares not move, not even breathe. He holds so still for so long he’s able to watch the change in the cadence of your breathing, the rickety little patter of nerves into slow and deep sighs, all relaxation and trust. And the bright light-like realization dawns on him while he lays beneath you, feels your chest press into his, the fire of your heart seeming to melt through beskar, the two of you know each other too well, too intimately. The two of you love each other, and he wants to live in it and experience it so badly. He wants to rush madly through the whole thing of it, live the rest of your lives together fast and in the blink of an eye first, and then be able to go back and do it all again slow and precise, taking each lived detail in his hand and learning the shape of it entirely before he’s able to move on to the next moment. He wants it all, the whole of a life with you.
So he doesn’t touch you, but the two of you lay like that, pressed against each other for hours, and the moment is enough.
Days later, he asks because he cannot help himself, because if you have to bear the truth of it all, he will too: “Why did you do it all?” And he doesn’t know precisely what the root of the question is.
Why did you leave me?
Why did you stay gone so long?
Why did you hurt yourself as you did?
You don’t answer immediately, and he wonders if he’s stepped where he shouldn’t have, pushed too far too soon, but then your face goes smooth and serene. Honest. “I didn’t think it would happen as it did. I thought I’d see you again, I thought it would all be sooner. I didn't think I’d be gone,” gone, “for so long. I thought I’d get a chance to make up for my mistakes with you.”
You sit in the co-pilot's chair, slightly behind him, and he doesn’t turn to look back at you, but he can see your reflection in the gleaming curve of the front of the cockpit, the rush of hyperspace zinging around the two of you, it’s quiet and thrumming and he can hear the soft cadence of your breathing. Your tunic is high necked, sitting just below the soft point of your little chin, every square inch of you wrapped away and sealed tightly in dark fabric, little pearlescent buttons that gleam blue crawl up to your throat and seem to strangle you. It’s as if you’d donned your own suit of armor, and he can’t understand how you still look so fucking good after everything. But as if he could peel away the stitching of you to peer beneath, he sees all that is wrong, all that is missing and all that is still echoing hollow. He thinks if he could only fill you with himself, all of everything would be set to rights.
You rest your head on the seat back, rolling it side to side slowly, thinking on what is is you’ll tell him next. “Because in ways, it felt good, better, than the alternative.”
“To be free?”
“Yes.” And the truth of that sits heavy and cloying between the two of you. An animal, hurt, will return to what it knows, no matter how badly it’s treated. It’s in its nature to seek out its familiar habitat. “Because I saw no other recourse, nothing better for me to do. Because I was stupid. Because I wanted to see how long I could last.”
He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, thick and metallic rolling over his tongue. “I don’t want to be selfish. I’ve been trying to– to not be that, to not make this about me.”
“It is about you.” Maker.
And he still doesn’t turn, says through his honest shame: “But I have to tell you that I don’t know how I can live with this, knowing this. I feel like– like I… I don’t know. I feel like if I go to sleep tonight knowing this, I won’t wake up tomorrow. Like it’ll crawl up my throat and strangle me in my sleep. And it shouldn’t– it shouldn’t be about me.”
“It’s not selfish, Din. It is about you,” you say again, and he wonders if your intention is to hurt him or yourself. More of that painful honesty like a blade through a lung.
He finally turns in his seat. “The way you live is the way I live. Do you understand me? The way you live is the way I live and your breath is mine and your hurt is mine.”
Your eyes are heavy lidded, watching him through the thick screen of your dark lashes, one eye seems to glow, the other to swallow him. “That’s why I know it’s about you too now. It started with nothing, with stupidity, and a wanton desire for– I don’t know, for destruction or something. But it ended with the realization that I’d have to tell you of all this one day. That it would be yours too eventually. And I regret it bitterly for that.”
“How am I supposed to move past this? What– what am I supposed to do with it?” He worries he sounds very like a child asking, but he has to anyway.
You shut your eyes, going so still, made of adamant and glass and smoke. He knows a thing like you could do nothing but survive, but at the same time, it seems a miracle you did. That you let yourself. He tracks the slope of your nose, the lush of your mouth, dry, you won’t drink enough water and it pisses him off, little chin and delicate throat, all that hair, the round of your breasts and the dip of your waist. Those little blue glowing pearl-for-buttons. He wants to steal them and swallow them away.
“Do you think,” you start, eyes still closed, face still calm. He leans forward, elbow braced against wide spread knees, and watches closely at the way your mouth forms the shapes of your words. “Do you think that– I don’t know how to say it, I think… but do you think it’s wrong to ask someone you love to just let a thing go? As much as it might’ve hurt them or bothered them or– or I don’t know… ruined everything. But to just ask them, for your sake, to let it go? Forget. Do you think that’s wrong?” Your eyes open. “Or selfish?”
“Is that what you want from me, cyar’ika?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t want to be selfish with you.”
“Neither do I. You said before that you don’t want me to forgive you. You don’t want forgiveness, you want forget.”
“Yes.”
He nods once. “And I have nothing to forgive you for, and asking me for the things you need is never selfish.”
And you say again, once more like before with your face still calm, “You want to touch me.”
If he were a beast made only of flesh and bone and not a man he would snap his teeth. “Yes.”
You stand slowly, hair a cloak around your shoulders, and step to him, between his wide spread thighs. He should beg, but he only stays frozen, and you bring your hand up to the face of his helmet, palm splaying along the side, he wishes you’d rip the thing off of him. He wishes he had never taken a Creed at all. Your palm on his face would fix everything, like him filling the hollow place within you. It would all be well if only the two of you could come together. Din knows it.
You lower yourself to perch primly on one thigh, slow like thaw, bringing your knees up to curl into his chest, little socked toes braced against beskar. One hand smoothing up his stomach and chest plate, other curled over the pauldron of his shoulder, you reach the lip of the helmet, close your eyes, and start to lift the weight of it from his face.
“I’m not going to open my eyes. I’m not going to look.”
The rush of hyperspace reflects off your skin in silvers and blues, makes you more dream than girl, and then his face is uncovered, and he listens to the symbol of who he is supposed to be, who he has been all his life, roll from your fingers discarded on the ground, the loud clang of history ringing in his ears, but all he cares about is, “You kept them.” He brushes a thumb, careful of your skin, against the glowing gem of your earring. The way it twinkles and sparks and exists as a monument to your shared history.
“Something shiny to remind me of my shiny.” A tear slides slow and clear down the slope of your cheek, coming to rest at the corner of your mouth, and he watches it quiver and shake there in anticipation, much like his heart does within his chest. You take his face between your hands, animal sound from his tongue, one hand at the curve of his jaw, cradling him like he’d be something precious and fragile if only the two of you let it be so. Not animal, not man, only loved.Your other hand spreads, glides and cups and soothes, his forehead, his brow, little fingertips pressed to the outside dip of his eye socket, running along the rim of bone beneath hot skin. He watches your face, the tear at the corner of your mouth, and you come towards him very slowly, the fold of your hips, stomach, breasts, and then your mouth on his.
And then your mouth on his.
He takes the tear into his mouth, holds it on the surface of his tongue. He could swallow it like he would the pearls. This is enough.
It’s soft as a whisper and then hard. Your nails digging suddenly, scratching and searching for a crack in his surface where you’d find purchase to pull him closer, burrow your way inside. You press your closed mouth hard against his, shoulders hitched high, and he grips the arms of his chair so hard his fingers ache. A sob in your throat that turns into a broken sort of moan, giving him permission to break too.
He circles your waist in his hands, takes hold of the shape of you, and it’s just like in his memories and dreams and nightmares. Hands sliding up the slope of your back through all of that glorious hair, still growing, right to the edge of your tunic covered nape.
“Din.” He swallows the tear. He touches your skin.
You moan for him, mouth shaky and wet, vibrating into him, the tip of your tongue tasting the edge of his lip, and then he’s swallowing you whole. Shifting you further onto himself, the soft round of your bottom over the thick of his lap, tits pressed against his chest, he needs to taste it all, your nails digging so hard into the skin of his face you’ll surely draw blood, and he will surely thank you for it. “Yes.” He says in return, finally, he draws onto your tongue. Full upper lip slotted between his, and it’s wet tongue and sharp teeth and a very dark place you should have never been, too much time wasted, a promise to forget because that’s what you need of him.
He hitches you higher, tighter, forces himself not to take it further, press you too hard. Groans rough and ragged when you whine soft and small. Sucking on your tongue, tugging at your lip. And your hands move to his hair, little fingers wrapped in his curls, dragging down the front of his face, over his eyes and nose, finding the seam of a scar there. “What’s this?” You follow the faultline of old hurt, and he grips your wrist, directs your hand to the other, thicker weave of scar tissue along the back curve of his skull, wanting to show you all the places he was broken that you were not there to mend. “Din,” on a frightened little gasp he soothes away with his tongue along the back of your teeth and the drag of his palm down the slope of your spine, stopping just shy of the curve of your ass.
“Explosion.”
Din, again, Din. You press your fingers along the rough knit flesh, and he feels your tears slide along his own cheek and perch at the corner of his own mouth now.
“It’s okay, little love. I’m here with you.” Tugs you back close and safe and tightly pressed, seam of him woven into the seam of you, mouth to mouth.
“And I understand.” He cups the back of your head, pulls you back, opens you and tastes and tastes and tastes. “I’ll promise to let it go. But you have to promise too.” Changes the angle, the flavor of you still the same, the sound of you still the same, the feel. “That you’ll never do it again.”
“I promise, Din.” It’s enough.
Chapter XII
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