Tatooine had seen some Imperial presence over the course of the war, but it was light in comparison to many places. Things only got heated when the Empire was after something in particular from the planet or its inhabitants. It made it a reasonable choice for a resupply stop, although not entirely without risk. Granted, almost nowhere was without risk, these days. As Din directed the Razor Crest down towards docking bay 3-5, he cast an eye over the settlement of Mos Eisley, scanning for any outward signs of a total Imperial takeover.

So far, so good.

"That's a lot of sand." Winta was sitting in the seat behind him. Or kneeling on it, more accurately, in an effort to get a better look at the planet.

Din didn't have to look away from the rapidly approaching docking bay to know what she was seeing. He'd been here many times before. "They call it the Dune Sea."

He set the Crest down gently in the berth. There was a slight shudder that hadn't been there before; definitely best to get those repairs looked at. He stood up, brushing by Winta on his way out of the cockpit.

"Stay on the ship."

"What?" There was a scramble as she hurried to pursue him. "Why?"

Din bit back a sigh, starting down the ladder. "You're safer here."

"No one's looking for me," she demanded, peering down at him as he descended to the lower level. "I won't be in any danger."

"Exactly," Din asserted, reaching the bottom. She'd started down the ladder after him. "Because you're not leaving the ship."

"I want to see the planet!" She jumped down from four rungs up, landing impossibly lightly on her feet.

"We're not tourists," he retorted sharply. "I'm going out to get supplies, and that's it." It would take a little bit of time for the repairs and refueling anyway, he might as well stock up while they could.

"But-"

"It's not up for discussion," he interrupted firmly.

Winta huffed. "That's stupid," she complained, sounding exactly her age. Din felt the uncharacteristic urge to roll his eyes. He'd never really given any thought to parenting - foundlings were an important part of Mandalorian culture, to be sure, but made a lot less sense when their people were scattered across the galaxy and in hiding. In any case, he was supremely glad in that moment that his responsibilities towards the kid would last only a week.

"Stay here," he repeated and then headed to lower the ramp without a backwards glance. He felt a measure of relief when the kid didn't follow him. He'd no sooner made it to the bottom of the ramp than three pit droids popped up and scuttled towards the ship. Din drew his blaster and fired towards the nearest one, which immediately dropped back down into itself with an alarmed squawk.

"HEY!" A petite woman in a mechanic's uniform charged out of a low building to the side of the hangar. "You damage one of my droids, you pay for it."

She reached Din and glared up at him. He tilted his head forward to look down at her.

"Just keep them away from my ship."

"Yeah? You think that's a good idea, do ya?" She retorted. She stepped past him to circle the Crest, looking up at it with a critical eye. Din turned to follow her with his own, listening to her grumble as she took in the damage from his recent Imperial encounter. "Jeez, look at that. Unbelievable." She turned back to face him. "What have you been doing to this ship?"

"Can you fix it?" Din pressed. He could get to Takodana as is, but maybe not if he got into too many more firefights.

"Yeah, yeah," the mechanic waved a hand. "You got credits?"

"500 Imperial."

She looked at him for a moment, lips pursed. Din supposed she had been hoping for more, but no one had much to spare these days.

"Alright, fine," she agreed.

"Just remember-" He began, already heading for the exit.

"Yeah, no droids." She interrupted, addressing his retreating back. "I heard ya. You don't have to say it twice."

There were Stormtroopers in Mos Eisley, but they weren't out and about in any substantial number. Din knew the city well and kept to the back streets on his way to and from a shop near the hangar. He knew he had nothing to fear from the locals, Beskar armor or not. On Tatooine, sticking your nose into other people's business was almost guaranteed to get you killed, or at least unpleasantly wounded.

The sound of conversation reached Din as he came through the door to the docking bay, supplies in hand, putting him immediately on alert. There hadn't been anyone other than the mechanic and the droids when he'd left the hangar, but now there were definitely two voices. He'd been gone maybe an hour, but knew well enough that it only took moments for things to go south. Maybe he should've taken Winta with him. He was relieved to see upon getting closer that it was, in fact, Winta who was speaking to the mechanic from her cross-legged perch at the top of the Crest's ramp. Relieved and annoyed.

"I told you to stay on the ship," he said sharply to the girl as soon as he was in earshot.

Winta gave him a look. "I am on the ship," she pointed out.

Stars, were all teenagers this challenging? "You know that's not what I meant," he countered. The mechanic was chuckling as she observed their exchange, and it didn't improve Din's mood.

"I've been on the ship for nearly three days," she protested. "At least let me get some air."

It wasn't an entirely unreasonable request, he supposed. And he certainly didn't think the mechanic was any threat to the kid.

"How much longer?" He asked her.

"Another hour or so," the mechanic answered. "Ship's in better shape than it looks."

With a nod, Din walked up the ramp into the Crest. Winta looked up at him as he went past, but didn't get to her feet. He stashed the additional supplies he'd picked up in the storage area, before heading back out of the ship.

"Come on," Din beckoned to Winta before walking down the ramp, feeling rather like he was going soft. "We'll get something to eat that isn't a ration bar."

"Really?" Winta bolted to her feet so fast it was almost comical. The mechanic was still chuckling as the kid hurried to catch up with Din, who was already halfway to the hangar exit. "How're you going to manage that?" She wondered. "Eating?"

"I meant for you," he corrected. He paused just before the door out to the street, looking down at his charge. "Stay close to me," he ordered. "And don't talk to anyone."

Winta peered up at him, a little wide-eyed, and nodded.

He took her to a cantina he'd noted on his earlier errand, out of the way and not very crowded. He scanned the room on instinct as they entered; for Imperials, or anyone who looked like they might be itching for a fight. He made the briefest of eye contact with a woman sitting alone on the far side of the room before shepherding the kid towards an empty table.

Winta noticed. She was perceptive in a way he hadn't expected.

"Who's that?"

"No one," Din murmured, taking a seat with his back to the wall, from which he had full view of the bar and the door. Winta sank into the chair beside him, looking around with no small amount of curiosity.

He hadn't exactly told her the truth. The woman across the room was not no one; she was someone Din knew, in fact, by reputation if not in person. He had no idea what she was doing here, but it certainly wasn't his business, and he had no reason to expect she'd be interested in his.

A barmaid approached, and Din ordered Winta a cup of broth. He didn't bother asking her what she wanted, and she didn't object. He got the feeling she wasn't accustomed to having a choice in what she had to eat.

She did look at him quizzically when the barmaid had departed. "You're really not eating?"

He turned his head, leveling her with a look in return.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," she conceded. "The helmet thing."

The helmet thing? Honestly. The kid had no idea.

"Have you really never taken it off in front of anyone?"

"Never." He affirmed. "Not since I swore the creed, when I was younger than you."

Winta's eyes widened as she processed that. "The creed?"

"A set of…" Din sought the appropriate word. "Beliefs, or principles. That Mandalorians live by."

"Oh." Winta's broth arrived, and she looked down at it for a moment before looking back to Din. "You had to agree to that when you were just a kid?"

Din wasn't sure that agreeing really had anything to do with it. Not that he'd do it differently, given the opportunity. It was simply what he'd been trained for, for almost as long as he could remember. But he wasn't about to explain all of that. "This is the way."

Winta's brow furrowed at the phrase. "What would happen if you took it off?"

He suppressed a sigh. The kid certainly asked a lot of questions. "I could never put it back on again." He nodded towards her broth. They shouldn't linger too long, and maybe the food would keep her busy for a few minutes. "Eat."

"Drink, really," Winta snickered into her broth, before taking a sip. Din shook his head in what was meant to be exasperation, but might have been a little bit amusement.

There was a swallow of broth remaining when it happened.

The door to the cantina slid open with a hiss, a smoke grenade sailing into the room. It gave off a loud pop as it connected with the sandy floor, sending up a cloud of dust and immediately filling the room with smoke and an acrid smell.

Din was on his feet before it had even landed, flipping the table on its side with one hand and yanking Winta out of her seat by her collar with the other. Her mostly empty bowl clattered to the ground as he pushed her safely down behind the toppled furniture, ducking down after her and drawing his blaster.

"Cover your nose and mouth," he told her, raising his voice a bit to be heard over the blaster fire, as the newcomers cleared their way inside. The smoke wasn't toxic, but nonetheless unpleasant, and she didn't have the benefit of a helmet to block out the worst of it. She immediately pulled her tunic up over her nose, and Din peered around the edge of the table, assessing the situation.

Dank farrik. He should've left the kid on the kriffing ship.

He'd expected Stormtroopers, but he could see just enough through the smoke to dispel that notion. They looked like bounty hunters; four of them, by the heat signatures. They instantly zeroed in on the woman on the far side of the cantina, who'd taken shelter behind her own table, but that didn't stop them from leveling their blasters at anyone else in their path, like the barmaid reaching for her weapon behind the counter. She dropped before she'd even fired a shot, and then one of the intruders spotted Din.

Din aimed his blaster as the incoming shot clanged against his beskar. His returning fire caught the bounty hunter square in the chest, felling him with a pained cry. A near-simultaneous shot came from the woman taking cover on the far side of the room, and a second bounty hunter went down.

The two remaining intruders took cover behind the bar. They evidently had known enough about their apparent target to know that no one of them could take her alone, but not enough to realize until now that even four wouldn't tip the odds in their favor. Even pinned down, a sniper of her reputation would have no trouble handling the situation. She didn't need Din's help, almost certainly, but he'd continue to give it, if only because it was the most expedient way to get Winta out of there.

The bounty hunters laid down a spray of fire that battered against the wooden table. Din could no longer get a clear shot from his position, he was going to have to get closer. He spared a split-second to assess the kid before turning back to the fight. She was unharmed, but obviously frightened, her eyes squeezed shut.

"Stay put," he ordered and then left the shelter of the table. The blaster fire was coming at him now, but the beskar would protect him until he could reach the bar and decimate these last two idiots. He was almost there when something peculiar happened: the incoming shots began missing him entirely. It was a strange thing for their aim to worsen the nearer he got, but Din wasn't about to question it. Reaching the bar, he hauled the nearest bounty hunter out from behind it and put a close-range blaster bolt through his chest. Dropping the dead weight to the floor, he glanced up to find that his temporary partner-in-arms had also closed in on the bar, the final bounty hunter in a heap at her feet.

She looked up, catching his gaze.

"Thanks for the help," she said.

The smoke was beginning to dissipate, and Din could now see her more clearly. She was dressed all in black, her dark hair pulled back from her face in a long braid. Her blaster was still in her hands, but it was pointed down, unthreatening. Relatively.

Din inclined his head. He didn't holster his own weapon, or entirely turn his back, as he retraced his steps to the table and Winta. "You didn't need it," he acknowledged.

The woman offered a slight smirk. "Still appreciated."

He exhaled a breath and turned to Winta. "Ok, kid?"

Her eyes were open again, and she peered up at him. She looked a shade paler than normal, but he supposed that was probably the fright. He offered her a hand, hauling her up with hardly any effort. She was a tad unsteady on her didn't miss that their companion's eyes had shifted from him to Winta, curious.

"Let's go." With another nod to the woman, Din nudged the kid towards the back door. The commotion in the cantina might well have drawn some attention, and he didn't want to risk being spotted by any approaching Stormtroopers if they went out the front.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

Din paused. The tone was inquisitive, not accusatory, but it raised his suspicions. Even stranger that the the woman's eyes weren't on him. They were still on Winta.

"It was you," Fennec Shand repeated. "You affected the bounty hunters. Altered their minds."

Din had no idea what he was expecting her to say, but that certainly wasn't it. "No, she didn't." The very idea was absurd.

"She did," Shand said, with absolute conviction. "I've heard of this before, but I've never seen it."

"I don't know what you think you saw-"

"Their aim abruptly worsened," Shand reminded him. "They couldn't hit you when you were right in front of them."

"Because they weren't very competent-" Din was losing patience with this conversation.

The assassin gave him an unimpressed look. "No, that's not it. It was her."

"That's not possible," Din asserted. "There is no-" No way, he was going to say, but then he turned to Winta and got a look at her face. She was staring at him, eyes wide, face pale, wearing an undisguised and unmistakable expression of guilt.

"Oh," Shand exhaled, sounding suddenly amused. "He doesn't know."

Din had the peculiar feeling of being entirely out of his depth, and he didn't like it. Time to go. As he reached for Winta, ready to haul her out of the cantina before there were any further revelations, Shand tipped her head in consideration.

"How much do you want for her?"

Beside him, Winta's entire body went rigid. Din met Shand's eyes, staring her down. He needed to get Winta out of there, and fast, but he was increasingly aware that the situation had the potential to deteriorate. Violently. "She's not for sale."

The assassin smirked. "Abilities like that are worth a lot to the right people. I can pay you well."

"Not interested."

"Come on, Mando," she pressed, taking a step forward. Din pulled Winta behind him, backing them towards the door.

"We're leaving."

In a blur of movement, Shand raised her blaster and fired. Din fired back, but she had been quicker on the draw. The shot caught him in the right arm just above his vambrace, hitting just as he pulled the trigger and sending his shot wide. He fumbled his blaster as a bolt of white hot pain pulsed through his arm, and Shand took the opportunity to charge forward. To further incapacitate him or to seize Winta, Din wasn't sure.

And then he felt, rather than saw, as Winta pushed outward, and something Din couldn't see stopped Shand in her tracks, sending her stumbling backwards. He didn't stop to think about it, instead regaining his grip on his blaster and firing again, the shot catching Shand in the shoulder. In her armor, almost certainly, but the impact of his shot and whatever exactly it was that Winta had done was enough to tumble her to the floor. He fired off another shot, more for cover than anything else, especially since his aim was decidedly worse than usual due to the pain radiating up and down his arm.

He seized Winta by the back of her shirt and got them both out the door, hurrying them into a side street with an eye on the cantina, just in case Shand might emerge in pursuit.

She didn't.

A/N: Din's going to have a few questions.