It was a dream. No, a nightmare.

None of it was real. Not the way it smelled – so sterile, it made her almost nauseous. Not the way it felt – like there was static in the air and all it would take was a spark for the entire place to erupt in flames. Not the way it looked – all grey and metallic, all edges whose sharpness wasn't softened by the occasional curves. No windows, just oblong shafts of blackness here and there. And the way it felt – like fear and danger and helplessness. None of it was real.

On some level of her consciousness, she knew the man covered in beskar, moving towards her slowly, ominously, hunting her – he wasn't real. It wasn't really him. They weren't really on the destroyer and he wasn't really going to kill her with that saber.

But even while a part of her knew it, and struggled to wake up, a larger part of her felt the panic blooming, growing, consuming her. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out.

He came closer, raised the saber over his head, preparing to strike her down and she was frozen, unable to run, to yell, to do anything but watch as that saber swung down on a collision course with her uncooperative body.

Hala awoke with a gasp, sitting up inside her bunk.

It had been a while since she'd had a nightmare like that.

She'd hoped they were gone for good.

She looked down at the mess of sweat-soaked sheets twisted around her body. She might have been paralysed in her dream, but clearly, she'd been tossing and turning in real life.

Extricating herself from her bed, Hala stood for a moment, wondering what she should do. Splash some water on her face? Try to go back to sleep?

But then it hit her. She knew exactly what she needed. She grabbed what she needed from the tiny ledge next to her bunk and padded out of the room, into the corridor of the ship. She took a moment to prepare herself, then knocked on the door next to hers, shifting her weight from one foot to the other in nervous anticipation.

The door opened with a gentle whoosh and Hala stepped forward timidly, her hands outstretched to guide her.

"What's wrong?"

It always gave her a thrill to hear Din's voice without the modulation of the vocoder. Made stumbling around in the blindfold worth it.

"I…had a nightmare," she offered meekly, her own voice rough with sleep. When Din didn't respond, she continued. "I was wondering if I could…"

"Of course."

She heard movement and then his hand was at her elbow, guiding her to the bed, moving the kid's pram out of the way so she could lie down without issue. Moments later, he was beside her, his body warm against hers and Hala knew she'd made the right choice. This – the man wrapping his arm around her waist, nuzzling his nose into the crook of her neck – this was Din. Not that imposter in her nightmare.

The child stirred in his bassinet and Hala reached out, feeling along the smooth durasteel of the egg-shaped device till she found the opening with her fingers and left them there for the child to grab in his own tiny hand.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Din whispered into her hair as he shifted so that his front was pressed against her back, spooning her gently, both of them relishing the contact.

"No."

He sighed but didn't press her and perhaps it was his silence that forced the words out of Hala.

"It was the same nightmare. It's always the same."

His grip tightened around her waist as he pressed kisses against the back of her shoulder.

"I know it's not you. I'm here because you're the one I want to comfort me when something goes wrong," Hala murmured into the darkness, desperate to keep Din from feeling guilty for something he'd had no control over.

"Cyar'ika," he murmured against the shell of her ear. Din was good about avoiding promises he couldn't keep so he didn't whisper platitudes about never hurting her again. Just held her in his arms and with her free hand, Hala found the hand at her waist and interlaced her fingers with his.

The nightmare had sucked but this? Being together with the two beings she cared about most? It washed away the angst and fear, replacing them with comfort and love.

"What's going on?"

Din had been locked up in the cockpit for the past hour or so and when Hala heard the door open, she made her way to him, the kid on her hip.

"Got a new job."

Hala wrinkled her brow.

"I thought you weren't taking any quarries for now."

"Not a quarry."

Hala sighed and sat down in the co-pilot's seat as she watched Din make the necessary preparations for a jump to hyperdrive. She was accustomed to his way of withholding all but the most essential bits of information – but being used to it wasn't the same as liking it. She let him finish his tasks and when he sat once more, she broached the topic again.

"So, if it's not a quarry, what are we doing?"

He turned his seat to face her, cocking his helmet to the side while Hala held his gaze, determination radiating off of her. He lowered his shoulders slightly and Hala did the same.

"Karga says a client requested me. Wouldn't specify why, except to state there's no bounty involved."

At that, Hala's eyebrows shot up.

"What do we know about the client?"

"Not a lot," Din sighed and she could hear it in his voice – the wariness. Neither of them was excited about this. "She's some kind of pirate – runs a haven for smugglers on Takodana."

"Are you sure this is safe?" Hala couldn't help looking down at the kid for emphasis. As if sensing her unease, the child squirmed and made grabby hands at Din, who scooped him up from her arms.

"I'm not sure about anything but Karga assured me she's no fan of Imps."

"What if Imps aren't all we need to worry about?"

Hala wasn't asking anything Din hadn't already considered and his silence did nothing to squelch the nervousness starting to fester in her gut.

"She's over a thousand years old," Din finally said softly, "What if…what if she can help us?"

"It's a big risk."

"If you don't want to do it, tell me now. I'll tell Karga we're out."

Hala knew Din was serious. If she said the word, he'd cancel the job, no questions or recriminations. But what if he was right? What if this client could help them with the child's origins? Help them find someone who could guide the child in the ways of the force? They owed that to the green bean.

She finally nodded at Din.

"Let's go."

He nodded. "I have a plan."

Hala raised an eyebrow at him.

"We need to com the covert on Quora."

Din's plan wasn't bad and Hala certainly wasn't going to say no to the back-up from Paz and several of the other Mandalorians from Quora. But as Din circled her, sizing up how she looked covered in the cuirass he had made her and other pieces they had acquired during their stay in the covert, she realized that, once again, she felt like the weak link.

"Well?" she asked nervously as he stopped in front of her.

"The armour looks good on you."

She pursed her lips under the helmet.

"That's not the point."

"I know. You need to stand a bit straighter."

Hala did as he instructed, squaring her shoulders as she stood taller.

"That's better. Let's see you walk."

She felt foolish, attempting to copy the way Din moved when he entered a room as she walked across the cargo hold but she hoped it would be convincing.

"Not bad."

"You think it'll work? People will believe I'm a Mandalorian?"

"Not if you intend to talk this much while we're there."

Hala scowled and realized that Din couldn't see her reaction.

"You're making a face at me, aren't you?"

Damn him. Of course he knew what she was doing.

"Is this what you do to me under your helmet? Make faces I can't see?"

"What do you think?"

She snorted and based on the way he cocked his head at her, she was pretty sure the vocoder in her helmet had caught the sound.

"All you need to do is stand up straight and keep quiet during the meeting. You can do that, right?"

This time, Hala removed her helmet so Din wouldn't miss the look she was giving him.

"You take that off while we're there and you'll have to find your own way off-planet."

He had crowded her space as he was speaking and Hala hated how intimidated she was – how good he was at eliciting responses from her with nothing more than the way he moved and spoke. Meekly, she put the helmet back on.

"Okay," she added when it was back in place.

He gave her a curt nod and disappeared up the ladder. Left alone, Hala allowed her shoulders to sag before removing the helmet once more and rummaging around for her comlink. She looked up to where Din had just departed and, satisfied that he was out of ear shot, she started a com.

"I was starting to think you'd forgotten about me," a familiar voice said over the connection.

"Hi Cara."

"Kriff, I know that tone. I told you I didn't want to get pulled into any more shenanigans for a while."

"Well, technically, you said you didn't want Din to get you involved in anything. You didn't really say anything about me reaching out."

There was a pause and then Hala heard Cara's laugh, loud and brassy, over the comlink.

"Oh hell, what've the two of you gotten into now?"

Over time, Hala had stopped sleeping in her own bunk. The kid was still anxious and continued to sleep in the same room with them, limiting how intimate they could be. But there was an intimacy of sorts to sharing a bed with someone else, even if sex was removed from the equation. Not that it wasn't difficult at times. Feeling Din's erection against her backside as the child fussed and played in his bassinet just centimeters away was some kind of insidious torture and Hala was starting to regret ever bargaining with the little green man to stop trying to get her and Din together because now the bean seemed to have taken the opposite stance – as long as he was awake, privacy was non-existent and even if he was asleep, he had an uncanny knack for reviving just as things took a turn towards sexy. Hala loved the child more than life itself but she couldn't lie – if she and Din didn't get a moment to themselves soon, spontaneous combustion via sexual frustration would be inevitable. There were only so many chaste kisses and soft touches a woman could endure, night after night, before she needed a release and Hala was fast reaching her breaking point. Din was too, if the fact that he kept grinding on her in his sleep was any sign.

They would be arriving at Takodana in the morning and Hala had found it hard to sleep, nervous about the upcoming meeting and playing her part convincingly. Din had fallen asleep quickly as she'd tried to keep herself from tossing and turning too much, wanting both the man next to her to sleep as well as the child in his bassinet. She'd finally drifted off only to be awakened by the insistent and rhythmic press of Din's erection against her backside. Hala had been confused initially – disoriented by the transition from being asleep to waking up, the blindfold she wore every night not doing anything to help her. But now, as she got her wits about her, she realized Din was asleep, unaware of how he was rubbing himself against her.

She tried to move, to turn around and face him, to attempt to still his movements.

"Din," she whispered in his ear, desperately wanting to avoid waking the baby.

"Smgkd," was the only reply she got, as his grip around her waist tightened and he pressed harder against her.

It felt good. Face to face like this, his thrusts were enough to hit her in the right spot and, at least for a moment, she forgot the child, who, if his silence could be trusted, was fast asleep. So, when Din thrust again, she arched into it. The next time, she reached down to palm his length as he pressed it against her. The moan he made in return caused her to freeze as she listened for any sign of movement from the child's bassinet.

"Hala," Din mouthed against her skin, alerting her to the fact that he was somewhat conscious. Satisfied the kid was still sleeping, she turned her attention back to Din, who was now lazily trailing messy kisses down her neck.

His hands tugged at her sleep pants and Hala arched up for him, allowing him to pull the pants down as she skimmed her own hands down his chest to his pants. She'd learned how to feel her way around in the darkness that came with wearing a blindfold on an already dimly-lit ship.

The harder part for her was staying silent when Din was touching her the way he did. Unsurprisingly, he was greedy about touch – both giving and receiving it. Years of having little to no skin on skin contact had turned him into the kind of lover who got as much of a thrill out of the simple act of a hand gripping a hip or skimming a breast as actual intercourse. And he wasn't one to skip the details, even if they had maybe only seconds to themselves before the child woke up. Din's touch was as erotic for Hala as it was for himself. She bit her lip to keep from moaning as he rubbed his hands against her skin, touching her so that it felt like he was everywhere at once.

Wordlessly, they had communicated what they wanted to one another. Finally, after weeks of sharing the same bed, they would have sex…quiet sex, but Hala wasn't going to quibble over the particulars after having tested the limits of her patience for this long. All she wanted was to feel Din inside her once more. They had come so far since the incident on the destroyer but this final intimacy – she didn't just want it – she needed it. And she knew Din did as well.

Hala hissed as quietly as she could when Din entered her. The pleasure and pain of his length filling her was exquisite and she held her breath as he pushed until his hips were flush with hers. He caught her lips in his and sucked on her bottom lip as he began to pull out and then thrust into her once more. Whatever sounds Hala was fighting to keep from making were effectively smothered by his tongue in her mouth, his lips fused to her own. Din set a gentle pace, as though he had all night to bring her to climax, and perhaps, in his mind, he did have all night.

But Hala froze when she heard a stirring in the pram next to their bed. Din continued to pump in and out of her, oblivious to the child awakening just centimeters away from them.

"Stop," Hala finally murmured and he did, looking down at her panicked face.

"What is it?"

"The kid – he's waking up."

Din sighed, and even without the amplification of the vocoder, Hala could feel the frustration blow across her face.

"I can't do this with him watching," she explained and as Din withdrew from her and flopped onto his back next to her, he sighed once more.

"I know." He brushed the pads of his fingers across her face, bringing his hand to a rest so he could cup her cheek. "I can't do it either with those kriffing bug eyes staring at me."

Hala laughed in spite of herself. She knew Din loved the child with a depth that couldn't be matched but she also knew how genuinely exasperated the man next to her was because she felt the same vexation herself.

"Go to bed, you lil womp rat," Din commanded and even if Hala hadn't known the child was awake, his tone left no question regarding to whom he was speaking. A quiet coo, almost a giggle, was the only response.

Takodana was not what Hala had been expecting. In truth, she wasn't sure what, exactly, she'd thought the planet would be like but this lush, sunny paradise? This was a pleasant surprise. She was a little sad to be seeing it through the filter of a helmet; they'd visited so many ugly places – it was just her luck that the one time they visited someplace truly lovely and scenic was the one time she was pretending to be a Mandalorian. Hala looked wistfully to the lake just beside the fortress in front of them. For a split second, she wanted nothing more than to run into the water. It had been a while since they'd had fun just for the sake of having fun. But she glanced down at herself and realized she'd sink like a stone in all that durasteel. Fun would have to wait for another time.

The kid, who was bundled up and strapped to Hala's back, hidden under the cloak she'd borrowed from Din, became calm as they got closer to the client's meeting point. Normally, the little one had a penchant for hijinks, especially when they visited new planets, but some sort of almost reverence seemed to take hold of the tiny guy as they approached the stone structure with its colorful, if slightly worn, pod racing flags. He stopped making his usual noises and, if not for the faint rise and fall of his chest against her back, she would worry that he'd disappeared altogether.

"What is this place?" Hala couldn't help but whisper as she stared up at the worn stone battlements and the statue of a humanoid alien of some sort with its arms extended. Din didn't answer but he did nudge her arm and point to the sensor grids and communication gear intermingled throughout the ramparts of the ancient building. Whoever they were meeting had a state-of-the-art security system and Hala wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

Paz and his buddies were supposed to be inside the building already but, as part of the plan, they hadn't commed Din or Hala, not wanting their cover to be blown. Neither of them knew what to expect walking towards the gargantuan doors of the edifice.

And they certainly weren't prepared for the commotion that hit them as soon as they entered the building. In hindsight, perhaps all the flags should have been a hint at the jovial atmosphere inside but it took both her and Din by surprise.

In all the cantinas they had visited, conversations stopped when Mandalorians walked in. But here? They were the least interesting things in the place. Live music blared, and beings Hala had never seen before cavorted around them. After Hala got over the change in noise levels from outside to inside, she managed to get her bearings and scan the place, seeing Paz hovering towards the back of the bar. Another two Mandalorians were seated in the room.

Hala looked over to Din and he gave her a slight nod before moving away from her.

It was everything Hala could do to keep from grabbing the blaster holstered to her thigh but she tried to remember – she was a Mandalorian. Mandalorians didn't panic and grab their blasters just because the music was loud and the room was full of strangers. She moved slowly, in the opposite direction from Din, but with what she hoped was the same fluidity – the same ease and confidence with which he moved. No one needed to know she was biting her lip under the helmet. All they could see was a Mandalorian, surveying the crowd.

But, unbeknownst to Hala, someone was watching her. Someone small. Someone who walked right up to her undetected.

"You are the one with the child, yes?" came a smooth female voice and Hala looked down, startled to see a tiny, orange humanoid with odd glasses staring up at her expectantly.

It wasn't all of Din's admonitions to her to keep quiet which left Hala silent – it was the fact that she was shocked by the big voice coming from the little being in front of her.

"Well? Do you have the child or not?"

Finally, Hala regained the ability to speak.

"You're the client?"

"The client? I suppose you could call me that. I'm Maz. I own this place. And I don't know what kind of a stunt this is, with all the Mandalorians showing up on the same day but I want to know. Do you have the child or not?"

Maz's voice carried over the noise of the cantina and Hala watched as the Mandalorians in the bar got up, came closer, drew weapons. Suddenly, the music died down and conversations hushed.

"We don't want any trouble," Paz boomed.

"Neither do we," came a voice from the bar and a black man in a cape turned, his blaster trained on one of the Mandalorians. From behind Paz, a Wookie appeared and swatted Paz's gun out of his hands as he made a guttural cry. Paz was a hulk of a man but he was dwarfed by the Wookie and he was a smart enough fighter to know not to make any sudden movements.

"And yet, you're the ones drawing your weapons," Maz snapped. "I asked for the Mandalorian with the child to come visit me, not for a fight."

"But if we have to fight, we're ready," called another female voice and Hala watched as a woman with thick brown hair wrapped into intricate braids arose from one of the tables, her weapon aimed at another one of the Mandalorians.

"Why do you care about the child?" Din asked, his voice cold.

"The same reason you do. I want to keep him safe. I want to keep him away from the Imps."

Another man came up to Din with his blaster aimed at the gap in Din's armour.

"What's it matter to you why we care about the kid?"

"It matters to us because we don't want him falling into the wrong hands," a familiar voice called out and Hala sighed in relief as Cara stepped forward, blasters in both hands, aiming for the man who was threatening Din. He raised his hands in surrender as she advanced on him while Din looked over to Hala.

"Really?"

"I thought she could help us," Hala admitted, abashed.

"Good to see you too, Shiny," muttered Cara.

"Look," Hala said to the being in front of her, "We don't want trouble. We just want to keep the child safe. We thought…you might be able to help us."

"And you decided to come in here with blasters to ask for assistance?" asked the man who still had his blaster pointed between Din's ribs. He would have been a handsome man – a rogue of sorts – if not for the fact that he was threatening the one person Hala loved as much as she loved the child. The child, who was thankfully, keeping still and quiet on her back.

"Can you blame us?" Din asked, "Looks like you had your own little army assembled too."

"It's not an army," called out a male voice from a dark corner of the room. "Maz was just being careful. Like yourselves."

They all turned to look at the man who rose from his seat and approached the center of the room. He was hooded, his cloak covering every part of him, skimming the ground as he walked.

"But we can help you," he said as he stepped into the ray of sunshine that shown down from a skylight above.

"And who are you?" Din asked, his voice full of skepticism.

The man reached up with both hands to the edge of his hood and, slowly, pulled it down to reveal his face.

"I'm Luke Skywalker. And I heard you've been looking for me. Why don't we all put down our weapons and talk?"