Thanks so much to everyone who has been reading this!

I've been mulling over an idea for a sequel featuring Din, Winta, Fennec Shand, and possibly a canon bad guy... I haven't started writing it yet, but if there's interest, it may inspire me to work on it faster! :-)

Din's intention was to review his flight plan to the rendezvous point, but he was in fact thinking hard about something else. About whether he actually would take the kid to the Alliance. Whether he should try to talk her out of it, convince her that maybe it wasn't a good idea. Or not talk to her about it at all, but just take her somewhere else. Where else? He probably should say something to her, wasn't the whole point of this that she should have a say in what happened to her-

"You have to take me to the Alliance."

She answered his thoughts, as though he'd been speaking them out loud. Din swiveled to face her, fixing her with a hard look. He hadn't even heard her come up from below, which in itself was disconcerting.

"I told you to stay out of my head."

Her cheeks pinked, but she didn't look away. "I couldn't help it! You were thinking really loud."

Din considered that. He might just need to learn how to guard his thoughts more closely. But there were more pressing issues at hand. Firstly: "Are you alright?" He asked her.

Winta nodded. "Yeah." And she did look fine, rested after a couple of hours' nap.

Din tipped his head towards the available seat. "Sit down."

For a moment, she looked like she might object, but then she sat.

He looked towards the console, checking status and considering what to say, before turning back to the girl. "You don't have to go."

She squared her shoulders, clearly anticipating a fight. "I want to."

"Do you?"

"Yes," she insisted.

"They want you to fight for them," he pointed out.

Winta nodded. "I know."

"With a power you can't control, that literally knocks you out when you use it."

Her eyes narrowed. "That only happens sometimes," she protested. "It's getting better. And I'm learning to control it. Maz helped me a lot, and she said there's someone with the Alliance who can help me, too."

"There are probably people who can help you who aren't in the middle of a war," he countered.

"Do you know any?" She challenged back. "Do you know any Jedi?"

Well, no, he didn't. Din honestly still wasn't exactly sure what a Jedi was. "Or you can wait until the war is over." He also wasn't sure why he cared, why this suddenly felt important to him. "You've waited this long."

"Who knows when that will be?" Winta pushed. "And I won't be safe, not until I know how to use it." She was probably right about that. "And it's not like I have anywhere else to go."

"You can stay on the Crest," Din told her, surprising himself with how right that sounded. Practically speaking, he wasn't exactly sure how he'd balance bounty hunting with looking after a kid. "Until we figure it out."

Winta blinked. It was clear she hadn't expected that. "You'd let me stay with you?"

"Foundlings are the future," he murmured. At her bewildered look, he clarified: "Amongst Mandalorians, foundlings - orphaned children - are extremely important. By creed, we are to raise them as our own or reunite them with their own kind."

"Own kind?"

"Their own…people," he explained. "Whoever it is they belong with. For you, I guess that'd be the Jedi."

"But you're saying you don't want to take me to them."

"I'm saying," Din stressed. "That I don't want to drop you in the middle of a war-zone." The entire galaxy felt like a war-zone, but that was beside the point. "I'll see you to your Jedi when it's safe to do so."

It was really more of an if than a when. Din had no idea when the war would end or what the galaxy would look like when it did. Kanata's offer for him to join the fight flickered through his mind. He pushed the thought away. Would there even be any Jedi left when the war ended, few as there apparently were to begin with? He didn't want to worry the kid, though. No point in speculating.

Her expression said her thoughts were following a similar pattern. "Maz said that I'm meant to do this." Din huffed in irritation. That sounded ridiculous. "And that my abilities could help the Alliance win. I can't just… do nothing!"

"It's not your fight, kid." And it wasn't his either, as he'd told Kanata.

She shook her head. "If there's something I can do to help, then I want to do it. I've come all this way, I'm not turning back now." Din scrutinized her for a long moment, assessing the determination behind her statement. She stared back at him, a clear challenge. "You have to take me to the Alliance," she repeated. "I appreciate that'd you let me stay here, I really do, but I have to do this."

Din inclined his head. It wasn't for him to tell her to stay. He'd been tasked with bringing her to the Alliance, so that's what he'd do. "If that's what you want."

Winta nodded. "It is."

Din turned back to the console, checking the route he'd laid out, and they lapsed into silence.

"Back on Takodana, when you used your powers in the fight-"

Winta looked up, waiting for him to continue. They were seated on opposing crates in the Crest's lower level, the ship itself shooting through hyperspace. She had a ration bar in one hand, a cup of tea in the other. Din himself was empty-handed, waiting as usual to eat once he had the privacy to remove his helmet.

"You affected me, too," he went on. "In addition to the Stormtroopers."

Her eyes widened. "You could tell?"

"Yes." He inclined his head.

"What did it feel like?" She pressed, when he said nothing further.

Din felt the uncharacteristic urge to chuckle at her enthusiasm. "Like an adrenaline boost. Like I had more energy and my reflexes were even sharper."

"I wasn't sure I could do it," Winta admitted. "I've never tried before. I'm glad it worked!"

Din was glad it had worked, too. He could only imagine the disaster if it had backfired and hindered his fighting ability and nearly said as much, but one look at the kid's proud expression had him holding his tongue.

"You talked about orphaned kids before," she said, after finishing her ration bar and taking another sip of tea. She set the mug at her feet. "Foundlings?"

He just looked at her, waiting for her to get around to the question he assumed was coming.

"Do Mandalorians really adopt any stray kids they find?"

"They're supposed to," he answered. "If they can't return them to their own. In my experience, many do."

"Even if the kid isn't Mandalorian?" She wondered. "Or like, a different species?"

"It doesn't matter," Din replied. "Mandalorian isn't a race. It's a creed. Anyone can be raised in the Mandalorian way. A foundling, whatever their background, is treated as one of our own."

"That's cool." Winta scuffed the toe of one boot against the floor. "Most people I've met just think stray kids are a nuisance."

"You've been on your own a long time," he observed.

Her eyes lifted to meet his. "Yeah." She sighed.

"Since you left Corellia?"

Winta's eyes widened. "How'd you know?"

He chuckled. "Lucky guess."

Her gaze drifted down again, settling on a spot on the floor. "I lived with my mom on Corellia. She was trying to get us off-world, but the Empire controlled the ports. We had to be smuggled." Winta swallowed hard. "She put me on the ship. She was supposed to be right back, to go with me, but… she didn't make it. The smugglers told me they'd caught her. The Imperials."

Din wondered, again, what had motivated their flight from Corellia. The conditions were bad enough to warrant it, surely, but was that enough reason to take such a risk? Any why would her mother have been arrested? Did it have to do with Winta's powers, or did that only come later?

"They said she'd been killed," Winta continued, in little more than a whisper. "And so they took me without her."

"To Kijimi."

She nodded. "They didn't know what to do with me when we got there, so they dropped me at a workhouse."

"How many years ago was that?" He wondered.

She shrugged. "I dunno, exactly. Seven or eight?"

Kriff, the kid had been all on her own since, what, age five or six? Din felt for her.

"I was a foundling, myself," he found himself saying, without quite planning to.

Her head snapped up. "Really?"

He nodded. "I wasn't born on Mandalore. My parents were killed in an attack on our home world, and the Mandalorians rescued me. They raised me in the fighting corps."

"I'm sorry about your parents," she said softly.

Din gave his head a slight shake. "It was a long time ago." Memories of that day were burned into his brain. He imagined it was the same for Winta. "How did you find that woman on Kijimi?" he asked. "Orla?"

Winta nodded. "She found me. I'm not sure how, exactly. I guess she sensed me? She said that she had the Force, too, but she wasn't really trained in it. But she knew Maz. I met her once, and then she came back to find me and said she could get me off Kijimi, to somewhere I'd be safe."

"And you trusted her, just like that?" Maybe he ought to be teaching her something about gauging people's motives before they parted ways. In Din's experience, it was far safer to assume that everyone you met was planning to cross you.

Winta gave him a look. "I could tell she was genuine." Din was skeptical of that. Force or not, it wasn't as though she'd known how to use it. "And besides, I didn't have anything to lose. I wasn't safe where I was, that was for sure."

So it had been worth the risk. Like fleeing Corellia, worth the risk to trust the unfamiliar woman telling her she had a mysterious power, the Mandalorian bounty hunter hired to fly her across the galaxy, and the pirate queen set on sending her to the Alliance.

Din just hoped it wouldn't turn out to be a mistake.

The coordinates for the rendezvous with the Alliance took them to the planet D'Qar. Din had never been there before, didn't think there was much there at all. There was apparently a small Rebel outpost of some kind, or had been, but it was now being vacated. Where the troops were moving to, and for what purpose, Din had no idea. And that was precisely why D'Qar had been chosen for the rendezvous. They didn't trust him, and should he ever decide to relay these events to the Imperials, all he could lead them to would be a remnant of where the Alliance had once been.

Din had no intention of relaying anything to the Imperials. He was dropping Winta planet-side and heading straight for the Outer Rim, where he hoped to avoid both the Alliance and the Empire for the foreseeable future.

He set the Crest down in a clearing, a smattering of structures visible in the distance. There was a small Alliance cruiser and two X-Wings also on the ground, a handful of people waiting just outside them. Waiting for Winta.

Winta herself was ready when he descended to the lower level, having donned what limited layers she possessed. Din paused, not for the first time considering whether this was a good idea. But then, it wasn't really up to him, was it?

"It's better that you go meet them on your own," he said. He wasn't sure if the Alliance knew that a Mandalorian was delivering their charge, but he did have some idea about how that, or he, might be received. Better not to complicate things.

Winta nodded, seeming to accept that.

"Good luck, kid," he said.

She smiled then. "Thanks. For everything, I mean," she tacked on. "For bringing me here, and for not ejecting me into space when I didn't tell you about my powers and accidentally got you shot."

Despite himself, Din huffed a laugh. Much to his own surprise, he found he was actually going to miss her company. "No harm done."

"I guess I should be going," she said then, chewing her lip and turning towards the still-closed ramp with a trace of hesitation. He was struck again by how young she was.

"You can still change your mind," he found himself saying.

Winta turned back to him, but shook her head. "They're expecting me."

"I can handle them," he countered.

She raised an eyebrow. "That sounds ominous."

He tilted his head to the side and shrugged, and she laughed.

"No," she said then, holding his gaze and seeming to steel herself. "This is what I have to do. I know it." Din wasn't going to argue with that, as much as he might like to. "But thank you, Mando."

"Din."

Her brow furrowed. "What?"

"That's my name. Din Djarin." He honestly didn't know what possessed him to share it, but it felt somehow important.

Her eyes widened in surprise. "Thank you, Din Djarin."

"Don't go sharing that around," he cautioned, stepping forwards towards the ramp control. "My name."

"I promise," she said solemnly.

"You're very special, kid." He was surprised to realize how much he meant it. Winta offered him a little smile. "Take care of yourself."

"I will."

"Go on." He hit the button to lower the ramp, nodding towards it.

She turned to leave and was halfway down the ramp before he called after her.

"And kid?"

She glanced back.

"May the Force be with you." It felt a little ridiculous coming out of his mouth, but also like exactly the right thing to say. From the expression on Winta's face, it meant a lot.

"You too," she said, smiling again. And then she turned back, and she was gone.

Din closed the ramp and climbed up the ladder to the cockpit. Running through the startup sequence, his gaze drifted to the cluster of small figures near the Alliance ships. Winta had just reached them, and there seemed to be a conversation taking place. After a moment, they turned to board the cruiser, with the exception of two who separated from the group to head for their X-Wings. Winta turned back to look at the Crest for one long moment, before she followed her new companions up the ramp and into their ship.

Din watched until she'd again disappeared from sight, a strange heaviness in his chest, and then took the Crest into the air.

Just the epilogue to go...