Din slept a dreamless sleep, and he when he finally woke, he woke softly.

He honestly couldn't remember the last time that had happened, and he relished the feeling as he remained still in his seat. Granted, he was a little stiff from the awkward position he had locked himself into for the however-many hours he had slept, but it was nothing a little stretching or fighting might cure.

His pulse did spike a little when he realized the kid wasn't on his lap anymore, but a glance at Cara in the pilot's seat quickly reminded him that she wouldn't have let anything happen to the him.

Din relaxed again and cleared his throat.

"How long was I out?"

Cara unfolded her hands, which had been propping her chin up as she had gazed into the intermittent darkness of space, and turned to his voice. She offered him an easy smirk, though there was a tension behind it Din couldn't quite place.

"Good morning to you, too, buckethead."

Din grinned and stood slowly, giving his back time to pop, rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness of sleep.

"We're approximately twelve hours in, give or take a few," Cara said after she checked the console. She eyed him again. "That's long enough to give anyone a bedhead…or are you actually bald under there?"

Din laughed before he even had time to fully process his reaction, and he didn't miss the pleasantly surprised expression that crossed Cara's face when she heard the sound. He wasn't sure how that made him feel, so he forged on.

"Not quite. Where's the kid?"

Again, something unreadable crossed Cara's face, effectively erasing any positive emotion he might have seen there before. She dipped her head toward the ladder at one end of the cockpit.

"With—" Cara hesitated. "Lyrian. I told her she could use your bunkspace to play with the little one."

Now it was Din's turn to be somewhat surprised.

"She came up and…talked to you?"

Cara's strained smirk returned.

"Yeah."

Din waited, but Cara didn't seem too keen on offering any further information.

"And what did you discuss?" he prompted.

Cara turned back to the console rested her hands on its edge with an uncertainty that was disturbingly uncharacteristic of her. Her voice was quiet.

"Not very much."

If that wasn't the most blatant lie Din had ever seen, then he was a kriffing Gamorrean. He might have called the woman out on it, too, if she hadn't have spoken first.

"We're close to Thule, Mando. We just passed Gand."

Din felt like ice had been dumped down the back of his neck. That's why Cara was acting so strangely when it came to Lyrian—the ex-shocktrooper was flying them to Lyrian's parents. To the people who didn't care if their daughter lived or died—who maybe even wanted her dead. And Cara had known that Din would have been hesitant, at the very least, to do that without thinking or discussing it further. Maybe she was even having doubts about the course of action herself. Had that not been the very feeling she had expressed to him before he passed out?

He could sense that Cara was watching him closely, and while a part of him felt a familiar heat mixed in with the sudden heaviness that had settled over his thoughts, the more logical side of him knew she was only doing what she thought best for him and the child. What would keep them safe, free of the risks Lyrian presented.

He forced himself to move forward and lean down next to her, willed his fingers to manipulate the ship controls there until a holomap sprouted from its respective pad. He worked and thought in silence for a few moments, Cara still and silent so close beside him, and then he pulled away.

"Okay. We'll stop on Toong'l first to refuel. We're low on supplies for the child, too."

What he didn't say, of course, was that stopping there would buy him some time to think. Cara nodded when he finished speaking, and Din pulled out of such close proximity to her, a warm feeling creeping over his face even as he tried to fight it.

He really needed to stop spending so much time alone. If being around other, non-bounty adults like Cara was really making him lose himself this much—

"Di—Mando," Cara said suddenly, and Din couldn't help the hitch in his breath when she almost said his name. He knew she'd heard it from the Moff back on Nevarro, and there was no doubt that at least some part of her couldn't resist associating it with him. But hearing such an intimate word from the lips of an enemy was much, much different than hearing it from the lips of a comrade. Of a friend, maybe.

And yet he couldn't bring himself to tell her that she could call him by that name, even now.

It no longer represented who he was, not really.

It was the name of a child who had died on a planet very far from here.

Din swallowed and looked into Cara's dark eyes. He focused on what she seemed to be struggling to put into words.

"I—I found something good in you and that little green baby down there," she said hesitantly, eyes flickering away from his visor. "And I want to hang onto it as long as I can, even if it means making hard choices. I don't want to risk losing it like…"

Cara's lips parted, the words she wanted to say on the tip of her tongue. But the words never fully materialized, and she looked down again.

Din could tell she was bordering on shedding tears, and he felt his stomach twist. This wasn't right. Cara shouldn't have been taking this decision upon herself on his or the child's behalf. She shouldn't have to sacrifice her pride to apologize for something that was his fault—he had gone back for Lyrian even though his gut instinct had been pulling him away, after all.

Lyrian was his responsibility, and that wasn't on Cara in the least.

Now, Din fought another gut instinct—the one that told him to walk away now, before things got any messier—by reaching out and gently placing a hand on Cara's arm. The woman stiffened and looked up at him, eyes liquid and damp.

"You made the call when I couldn't do it myself. The kid is still my top priority, and I'm not going to lose him."

That was one thing he was certain about. He was effectively the kid's buir now. He didn't take that lightly, even if he hadn't—and probably never would—take the vow that would make him a buir in officiality as well as effect.

Cara shook her head, glanced at her feet and then back up again, and then moved her hand unexpectedly to cover his own. Din could feel the warmth and strength of her grip—which despite its strength seemed more fragile now than it had ever seemed when he had arm-wrestled her—and it distracted him in a way so sharp that it almost hurt. He pulled his hand out from under hers, yielding to the instinct before he could think any harder about it, disrupting the words Cara had been about to say.

Something that seemed almost sad flashed across her expression at the action, but she regained her composure quickly and sucked in a deep breath.

"I know. I don't know why I said that. It's just that…she's still a kid, isn't she? And while I don't want you or the child hurt, I don't want Lyrian to suffer either."

Grateful that whatever had just happened was over, Din blew out a breath of his own and nodded. She had perfectly summarized how he thought about the situation, and now—after he had a bite to eat and something to drink, perhaps—was the time to figure out what came next. It helped in morale, at least, that he wasn't so sleep deprived he could barely stand.

And deep inside of him, in places he seldom dared to venture, he understood that there way no way he would be able to do it when the time came. He would not be able to return Lyrian to her parents—to the object of the fear that gripped her with such dramatic intensity.

He had gone through this gauntlet before when he had delivered the kids to the Imps.

And he wasn't going to allow anyone but himself to ever pay such a high cost for his mistakes again.

"Set the course for Toong'l. I'm going to check on the kid," Din said finally, turning toward the ladder.

He could hear Cara shift behind him and move to program the coordinates into the Crest, but she didn't say another word. He wasn't sure if he had wanted her to or not.

The Mandalorian froze as soon as his feet touched the ground and he turned around.

Cara hadn't been kidding when she said she had given Lyrian permission to his bunkspace as an area to play. He could see her sitting inside, back turned towards him. She had every blanket, cloak, and cloth Din hadn't known he possessed strewn around her and the kid, who was hidden just outside of Din's vision by the wall of the bunk's entrance. Scattered throughout those, he could see choice pieces of the junk he had dumped in the floor not long before.

But that wasn't what made him pause.

What made him pause was Lyrian's voice, lifted in a high, lilting tone that was more childlike than he had ever heard it before. She was, it seemed, telling the child a story.

"—and then, tisan, something materialized from the gloom…"

Lyrian leaned forward here with her fist held into the air, a portion of Din's old, deactivated vambrace wrapped around her small wrist.

"It was," Lyrian paused dramatically, wide-eyed gaze trained on the kid—who was no doubt enraptured—sitting in front of her.

"A warrior!" she burst out, and Din heard the child squeal in pained excitement, which promptly dissolved into a round of giggles unlike any Din had ever been able to elicit. The kid sounded so happy.

It made Din feel weird. Again.

"The warrior rushed in and picked up the infant," Lyrian continued, a giggle of her own creeping into the narrative. "Sweeping the slavemasters off their feet with a single blow. And then he flew away, baby in one arm. Do you know what infant he rescued that day, tisan?"

Din found that he was holding his breath, as if he, too were captivated by the story—which sounded like it featured suspiciously familiar characters—the Chiss youngling was crafting.

The child cooed something to fill the quiet space Lyrian created with her pause, and she giggled again, sounding so much like a child no older in mind than the kid she entertained.

"You!"

Lyrian leaned forward as she shouted the single word, and Din assumed she was tickling the child because suddenly the green baby was laughing again, squeaky, unsteady noises that brought an irrepressible grin to Din's face. Lyrian, he realized, was laughing, too, her breath coming in uneven gasps between giggles, hindering the unintelligible words she tried to form every now and then.

He stood there, hearing without truly listening as Lyrian spoke some more, strange feelings washing over him, memories rising from the back of his mind.

Lyrian and the baby's interaction sounded like the ones that used to take place in the Covert, when he was still a child and there were more foundlings than there were helmets to go around. The foundlings used to tell stories all the time, fighting sleep or simply defying their elders because they wanted to stay up long into the night—because they wanted to feel as free and powerful as the Mandalorians who relayed tales of glory and honor before they retired each night.

There had been nights when Din had laughed like that himself—both before, he remembered, and after the Mandalorians had taken him in.

Once, he had invented stories about his own buir to tell across the flickering crown of the fire, to the foundlings who were younger than him and whose faces would be streaked with tear-tracks more often than they were alight with the innocence of youth. Just like Lyrian—

A metallic clang erupted without warning from in front of him, and Din ripped away from his thoughts in a flash.

The metal ball that tipped the control-stick in the cockpit had been flung—no doubt in the throes of the child's excitement—out of the bunkspace and had hit the adjacent wall. Din wasn't even sure when the kid had managed to get the thing, unless Cara had surrendered it to him. Another grin ghosted across Din's face, but it dissipated almost immediately at Lyrian's next words.

"Tisan! I told you—we have to be quiet for your…your Mandalorian. Here, stay still. I'll retrieve it."

Din didn't even have time to pretend he hadn't been standing there listening with one arm leaned comfortably against the wall when Lyrian turned, hopped out from the bunkspace, and landed gracefully bare-footed upon the metal.

Now, it was her turn to freeze at the sight of him.

Din knew what the feeling that uncoiled inside of him then was—the feeling that was tight and sharp at the sight of her suddenly defensive posture, the way her bare toe suddenly became infinitely more interesting than meeting his gaze. It was guilt.

"I apologize, Mandalorian," she said quietly. "I did not mean to wake you or invade your privacy. I was playing with the baby, and your companion said I could use this space. Forgive me if I have not pleased you…"

Din's hands curled into fists, heat flushing across his skin. If there had been a way to show her that he was not angry at her, a way to strip his Beskar of the fear it caused, to ease the intimidation from his posture in her eyes—there would have been very few things Din would not have done to do so. But as it were, he had no idea what to say, how he could make her see that she was not his slave and never would be remotely close to being his slave.

So, he didn't try to think on what he could never hope to find the words for.

Instead, he hardened his resolve to formulate a plan for keeping her alive and free, to get her to the better part of her family in Csilla, as she had told him she was looking for. But he did know of one thing he wanted to know first, before he left her to herself once more.

"What were you calling the kid just now?"

Lyrian looked surprised at his complete bypassing of her earlier statements, and her eyebrows dipped down as she glanced at the kid and then back to him. She seemed almost shy as she replied.

"Tisan, short for the Cheunh word en'tisan'sasi'at."

Din had absolutely no clue how she wrapped her tongue around that last word. He might have expressed as much if it hadn't been before Lyrian added, hastily, "But it's not a name. I wouldn't name him since you haven't yet. It just means 'baby.'"

Again, Din felt himself tighten at her apologetic tone and borderline groveling humility. He felt sick—and he needed some food.

"I see. You can continue playing with—with the tisan on the bunk. We will be stopping for supplies and fuel soon. Make sure you're ready."

Din wasn't sure how to interpret the light that kindled in Lyrian's eyes when he used her Cheunh word, but he tried not to dwell on it too much as he pushed down the hot, uncomfortable pressure swelling inside of him and moved toward the entrance to the 'fresher.

"Thank you, Mandalorian," he heard her say behind him, in a small but open voice.

Din didn't trust himself to respond, and he knew that she honestly had nothing to thank him for yet.

But perhaps she would soon.

A/N: Hiya!

Another chapter for you, m'dears. I will admit that this was fun to write. Din's head is a little clearer-hence the deeper reflections and awareness of EmOtIoNs and his resolve-and Cara got in a bit o' fun character development. And also: kids. Having fun. Mostly. I hope you enjoyed the new update, and I would love to hear what you thought of things!

Also, the Cara/Din thing just kind of happened. Oops. We'll see if it goes anywhere. O_O

The next couple of chapters are leading up to the climax of this fic (and I have some important things to tell you about how I've decided to structure this thing moving forward...but later), so expect lots of action and a Raising of the Stakes. Things are about to get heated up in here! :D

I hope you're all doing well, as usual. Stay safe, healthy, and well out there, please. There's only one you. :)

~Roanoke

(Psalm 146:9)