Author's Note
Well. So much for posting this in a day or two. Sorry about that, but life came at me sideways a little bit. Things have settled again and I really hope it stays that way for longer than a week this time.
Alright, so this is a direct continuation from the previous chapter. Please keep in mind that I am not a mechanic and know almost nothing about engineering or avionics. I try to at least make it sound believable, though.
Go onward and enjoy!
Partner Pt. 2
Peli taps a finger against the table with a frustrated huff. The datapad in front of her projects a hologram of the Razor Crest's specs into the air. The hologram turns with a flick of her hand to look at it from a different angle. "What if we make it like a ladder? With the rungs just sticking out of the hull?"
"No," Mahin growls with her own frustration, taking it out on the old speeder bike of Peli's. She said it stopped working months ago. They've gone through half a dozen different potential designs for the ladder and have tossed out each one. Needing a distraction, Mahin takes the speeder apart to get at the accelerator. Something she knows how to fix. Sometimes her mind works best when splintered, working on two problems at the same time. "Rungs sticking out of the hull like that will mess up the airflow over the ship."
Mahin hates this. When a puzzle refuses to be solved. She knows she can figure this out. The answer feels right on the edge of her mind, just out of reach, the idea refusing to fully form.
She bangs a wrench against the accelerator like she can bang her thoughts into order.
"Right, right," Peli mutters thoughtfully. "Anything recessed into the metal would likely do the same thing, so we can't put divots in it for handholds."
"Nope." Mahin tosses the wrench aside, looking over the tools scattered around her for the next one she needs. She twists herself around from her place sitting on the ground but doesn't spot the pliers anywhere. Then something tugs at her sleeve.
Mahin turns to see the child next to her with the pliers she needs held out in his little hands. He lets out a happy coo, sounding so proud of himself as she takes the tool from him.
"Thanks, buddy," she tells him, smiling as she runs her hand along the top of his head. His sparce little hairs tickle against her palm. He coos again, giving her his own toothy smile before toddling off to play with his blocks Mahin set out for him.
Mahin looks down at the pliers in her hand, squeezing them open and closed. Open and closed. A sudden thought comes to her. "Hey, what if we rig something retractable? Something that can fold back into the sides of the ship when it isn't needed, making the hull seamless again?"
"Huh." Peli's brow furrows low over her eyes as she stares at the ship's blueprints. "That might work. We'll need to do a lot of rewiring though. And we'd have to be careful not to compromise hull integrity."
"Yeah, but that can't be that hard, can it?"
They get to work stripping sections of hull away where they want to install the retractable ladder and practically gutting the wall to rework the electrical to power the whole thing. They strip wire and grind metal for hours, idly talking as they work.
"So how'd a nice girl like you end up working with a Mandalorian bounty hunter?" Peli asks at one point, leaning against the worktable with a canteen of water hanging from her hand. She takes a long drink of water before passing the canteen to Mahin. The twin suns of Tatooine hang high in the air to scorch the earth, the open hanger offering little protection from the blaze at this time of day.
Sweat drips down Mahin's face. It trails along her neck to disappear into the collar of her coveralls until she feels soaked. She takes a slow sip of water. The coolness of it quenches the heat, if only slightly. She drinks again, using it as time to collect her thoughts as she thinks about that day.
She knew a Mandalorian flying into port would shake things up in her town. Just not like that. Her entire life got uprooted. Still, she can't find it in her to regret anything that happened. One thing sticks out in her mind. "He saved my life. When he didn't have to."
He didn't have to let her stay aboard his ship. He didn't have to hire her as his crew. He could have dumped her at the next planet he stopped at and been done with her. But he gave her a place. A safe place. On his ship. In his life; the child's life.
A nice girl like her couldn't ask for anything better.
Well, "nice" is relative.
"Yeah, he saved my hide when we first met, too," Peli says, curls bouncing around her face as she shakes her head. "Seems to do that a lot. Surprising, you know, for a bounty hunter. They ain't usually the saving type. Not unless it helps them out somehow."
Mahin smirks. "Something tells me there's nothing 'usual' about this particular bounty hunter."
"Don't have to convince me of that," Peli replies with a snort, picking up the welding torch to get back to work. "He's gotta be the strangest bounty hunter I've ever met, and we get a lot of those out here."
One of the suns begins its approach to the horizon before they finish, the second close on its heels. The ladder works perfectly. Peli and Mahin stand shoulder to shoulder in proud admiration. They worked little cubbies into the side of the ship enclosed by retractable doors. The cubbies make the perfect little handholds for Mahin to climb up.
"Whelp, let's do this thing," Mahin says, plopping the child in Peli's arm before pressing the newly reprogrammed button on the ship's outer control panel to open up her new ladder. She grabs onto a rung to start pulling herself up.
"Uh, what are you doing?" Peli asks before Mahin's feet can leave the ground. She sounds a tad nervous for a mechanic so sure in her abilities.
"Testing it out, of course," Mahin replies with a light shrug, foot propped on the bottom rung and hand hanging from the one above her head ready to hoist herself up.
Peli bounces the kid on her hip with a worried furrow to her brow. "Shouldn't we, I don't know, wait for Mando or something? What if something goes wrong and breaks?"
"What, so he can catch me if I fall? No, thank you. Landing on that beskar would be worse than landing on the dirt. Besides, nothing's going to break."
Ignoring Peli's protests, Mahin pulls herself up, testing each handhold before allowing it to take her full weight. They did good. The newly-reformed metal remains sturdy, giving no groans of weakness or signs of buckling. In just a few seconds Mahin finds herself on top of the Razor Crest's hull, splayed out on her back with arms and legs outstretched and staring up at the deepening reds of the sky.
A giddy laugh escapes her, bouncing off the hanger walls. The true test will be when they try to leave the planet but…they did good. Real good.
She smiles up at the sky in satisfaction. Puzzle solved.
Mahin swiftly climbs back down the ship, closes up the ladder, and declares they need a celebration. Peli whoops in commiseration, sauntering off to her office to grab a bottle of spotchka while Mahin dives into their stores of fresh food to cook up a meal. She got a good deal on a pork tenderloin in this little market on Gorriem. The old Gran couple running it took one look at the kid and absolutely melted.
The little guy's cuteness works as a very effective haggling tool.
But this piece of meat is a bit too big for that dinky pull-out stove, so Mahin gets a bonfire going. Peli doesn't look very amused when she comes back out of the office to see the fire crackling in the middle of her hanger but Mahin reassures her that she's done this many times before and that it's perfectly safe.
She's had to camp out in unpopulated portions of planets and moons before. Sometimes the best way to lose a tail is to lose civilization as well.
Mahin gets the meat roasting on a makeshift spicket over the fire, gradually rotating it so it cooks evenly. When no wayward sparks or flames spontaneously jump out of the little fire pit, Peli starts to relax. She drags over a couple of chairs with an overturned crate sat between them to act as a table. She then pours two shot glasses of spotchka, holding one out to Mahin.
"Oh, no, thank you," Mahin says, an uncomfortable feeling slithering down her spine as she sits in the other chair. "I, uh, I don't really drink. Especially not the strong stuff."
Peli gives her an incredulous look, like Mahin grew two heads. Mahin grimaces. People always get weird when she admits that. Like drinking is a requirement of being an adult or something. Making her some kind of freak for not wanting to. But Mahin just…doesn't like alcohol. She doesn't like what it so easily does to people.
For someone who's been on the run most of her life, needing to stay focused, uninhibited and aware of everything around her at all times—she doesn't need anything clouding her senses. She occasionally indulges in lighter drinks made up of more fruity flavors than alcohol, but that's all she really allows herself.
"Seriously?" Peli asks, a sense of confusion and judgement in her tone. "You don't drink? Your parents monks or something?"
Mahin sighs deeply. "Just drop it, Peli." Something tugs at her pant leg and Mahin looks down to see the child, big brown eyes staring up at her with a pouty bottom lip like he senses her distress. He probably does, the smart little Force user. She bends over to pluck him up and nestle him in her lap, the closeness putting them both at ease. "I don't want to drink. Let's just leave it at that."
She needs to stay ready at all times. Especially with Mando gone at the moment. It may feel safe here in Peli's spaceport but Peli probably thought that, too, before Toro showed up.
Luckily, Peli simply downs both shots and lets it go while Mahin focuses on cooking.
A delicious aroma starts to waft up into the air to mix with the smoke, the spices Mahin rubbed into the meat making her mouth water. She started a small collection of spices on the Crest, loving how the right combination can make just about any food taste a million times better.
Wonder if it'll work on ration packets, she thinks absently as she sets the child down to crouch in front of the fire. She cuts into the pork with a knife to check if it's ready. Satisfied, she pulls one of the plates Peli scrounged up into her lap and starts carving up a helping, the juicy tenderness of the meat making it easy.
"What in all the stars is that wonderful smell?" Mando's modulated voice groans from behind them. Mahin looks over her shoulder to see him entering the hanger with an unconscious Weequay tossed over his shoulder. He moves up the ship's ramp to quickly shove the bounty in carbonite before joining them at the fire. "When did we get pork?"
Mahin chuckles, grabbing the second plate to dish out food while Peli pulls up a third seat for Mando. "You do remember that you give me credits for fresh food, right?"
Mando plops down in his seat next to her with an exhausted grunt.
The sure confidence of his steps never wavers, as sturdy as the beskar he wears. He walks into the room and people see fear. A living weapon. But a man, just a man, exists under all that metal. A tired man who just had a long day out in the desert. And he lets them see that, a little bit, in this safe place among people he trusts.
The kid instantly scrambles over excitedly with arms outstretched. Uncaring of whatever happened during this long day, just that his adoptive father is back. Mando chuckles, laying his amban rifle down on the ground next to him and lifting the kid up to cradle in his arms.
"I thought you were buying fresh fruit or something," he admits, stroking a finger along the kid's long ears until the child sighs in contentment.
Mahin hands him a plate laden with pork, enough for the child and for Mando, whenever he decides to eat in solitude. She shakes her head at him like an exasperated parent when she realizes, "Holy stars, Mando, you've been eating ration packets all this time haven't you."
He holds a piece of meat out to the kid, who accepts it with gusto. "Well, yeah."
She huffs out a laugh as she plates up some food for herself. "Mando, I haven't just been buying fruit. I've been buying ingredients to make meals for all of us."
Surprise stills him for a moment, so still it hardly looks like he breathes. Slowly, his head cocks to the side, fingers moving again to continue handfeeding the child. "Since when?"
"Since I first boarded the Crest. I've been making meals while you're away and storing them in the freezing crate. They're easy to reheat and can keep for months. And a lot better than that processed slag you've been living off of." She settles back in her chair with her own food, tearing at the meat with her fingers with a dry chuckle. "Kriff, I know you take meals by yourself but I really thought you knew I've been making stuff."
Mando stares down at the kid in his lap, the child letting out an adorable little squeak as he yawns with tired eyes and a full belly. "I didn't know I had a freezing crate," he mutters, so softly Mahin's pretty sure she wasn't supposed to hear.
Mahin bites her lip hard to hold in her laugh. Quietly, she sets her plate aside and takes the child from his lap. "Go eat, Mando," she tells him, jerking her head towards the Razor Crest, "and then tell me what you think."
"Kriffin' 'mazing s'what it is," Peli says around a mouthful of food before chasing it down with another shot of spotchka. Her words sound slurred already, Peli's body slightly swaying side to side. How much did she drink? Did she slip shots in while Mahin wasn't looking?
Well…Mahin was rather distracted. The orange glow of the fire is the only remaining light with the suns fully set now. The flickering petals of heat reflect off Mando's beskar in such a mesmerizing way, like he's a dancing fire all on his own.
She takes in a deep breath, keeping her eyes focused on the real fire in front of her as Mando heads back to the ship to eat.
Stars, why does he turn her stomach into knots like this?
Mahin and Peli talk quietly for a while, whispering so they don't wake the kid curled up on Mahin's lap. He mumbles slightly, lips smacking together as he buries his face in Mahin's thigh. She rubs his back in soothing circles until he quiets again.
She never really considered it before. Children. Motherhood. She thought that wasn't in the cards for her. Not with the life she leads. On the run is no place to raise a child. Mahin knows that from experience. Her mother was already pregnant with her when her parents started running.
Not that she doesn't love her parents and isn't grateful for all that they could give her but...growing up definitely wasn't easy.
And now here's this little green womp rat. Placed in her path and under her care against all odds. Unfairly on the run himself with no signs of stopping with the Empire still out there. But he has Mando. And Mahin.
She plays with him. Feeds him. Sings him to sleep. She holds him when he's scared and gives him all she can, so he can have as much of a childhood as possible. A better childhood than Mahin had. One filled with smiles, not fear.
Falling in love with this kid was easy. So, so easy. He wraps everyone he meets around his little clawed fingers, but...
She loves him like he's her own.
"Sweet dreams, ner ad'ika," she whispers softly, gently lifting him in her arms so she can press a kiss to his wrinkled forehead.
"Tha's 'n excellent idea," Peli mumbles tiredly, the alcohol in her system starting to drag her down hard. She stumbles to her feet with a dangerous sway. Mahin holds out a hand to help steady her but Peli flaps her hand wildly around to wave her off. "No, no, 'm good. Tell Tin Can he can pay me t'morrow."
Mahin shakes her head with a quiet chuckle, watching her fellow mechanic wobble around on shaky legs towards the office. And hopefully a bed. "Goodnight, Peli."
Alone with the crackling fire and the sleeping baby in her arms, Mahin just sits in the firelight for a while, mind going blessedly blank as she watches the red and orange flames lick the air. She doesn't get many moments like this anymore. Not on a cramped ship with an armored man and his little green child. She misses the solitude of her apartment sometimes. But only sometimes.
That much solitude—emptiness—it carries a surprising weight that suffocates. Makes it hard to breathe with the force of such loneliness, opening up a gaping maw in her chest. She used to go down to the bar to sit in a booth with a frilly drink she hardly touched. Surrounding herself with people. Not with any real interaction, no matter how many guys tried. Just watching everyone. Just to…be around people. To push that emptiness back, if only a little bit.
The covert helped. Having them helped a lot, having real, true interaction with people who actually cared about her. But visiting too often was too dangerous, so Mahin still found herself alone more often than not.
The slivery gleam of beskar catches out of the corner of her eye as Mando retakes his seat next to her, placing his empty plate on the ground at his feet to deal with later. He leans close to her, elbows on his thighs, so he can look down at the precious ad'ika cradled in her arms.
That maw doesn't gape nearly as often anymore.
"I see someone had a full day," Mando whispers, so low it almost sounds like the modulator doesn't pick it up, that it's his real voice she hears, but she can't really tell.
"A full day of playing and handing me tools," she replies just as softly, hoping the heat of the fire covers her blush. He feels so close, their shoulders just inches apart, making her skin tingle by the proximity alone. At the promise of touch if he just comes a little bit closer. "He's pretty good, you know. Always seemed to know just what tool I needed, when I needed it."
"He has a knack for that."
"Might make a decent mechanic someday."
They fall into a sudden, heavy silence. Maybe the kid will grow up to be a mechanic. Maybe he'll choose something else. Either way, they both know they'll never see it. They'll never get to see him grow up much. The child's still physically a toddler at fifty. How much longer will he have to wait to be an adult, or even just a teenager?
Doesn't matter if they get the kid to his own kind or not. Mahin and Mando will never live long enough to see any of it.
Mando suddenly stands, gently taking the kid from her lap. "I, uh, better get him to bed," he mumbles, turning towards the ship with the little one cradled against his shoulder.
Yeah, Mahin would rather not think about that, either.
Mahin heaves a deep sigh as she gets to her feet to clean up their little bonfire, letting the tedious motions drag her away from the depressing thoughts. She stacks the plates on the table. Disassembles the spicket. Divides the leftover food into portions and packs it away into containers. She moves towards the ship to stash them in the freezing crate just as Mando exits the ship once more.
Hands just barely brush as they pass each other. Fingers reaching.
Water and heat hisses behind Mahin as Mando douses the fire, darkness descending until only the interior lights of the Razor Crest and the stars above illuminate the enclosed hanger. It's oddly domestic. Putting the child to sleep, cleaning up after dinner, the two of them moving almost in sync. Mahin closes up the freezing crate with all their food, looking towards her room as she straightens. The next thing to naturally follow would be to go to bed.
But Mahin doesn't feel very tired herself. Not yet.
"So," Mahin leans against the wall in the ship's doorway, arms crossed in front of her chest as Mando stops in front of her at the bottom of the ramp, "did you like the food?"
"I did," he says, a warmth to his voice she hasn't heard before. His usually tense muscles almost seem loose beneath the rigid beskar as well, something about him relaxing more than he usually allows himself. "Could do with a few more spices though."
Mahih tilts her head, lips curling at the corners. "You like spicy food? Really?"
His shoulders shrug. "It's a Mandalorian thing. We like to make things with a good kick to it."
"Let me guess, your people make food so hot and spicy that only the hardened tongue of a real warrior can withstand the flame."
He laughs—an honest-to-stars laugh—deep from his belly to echo in her ears like tumbling rocks in a cave. Mahin almost falls out of her lean in surprise, her own giddy laughter joining his. Not because of anything funny, but in delight.
A true laugh. Months of traveling together and she finally hears a true laugh.
"No, no," he chuckles, a smile to his voice she would bet anything is stretched to a grin. "We aren't that bad."
"Sure, you aren't," she jokes. Well, half-jokes. Mando has only told her snippets about the covert he grew up with and they sound like an intense bunch. "But I'll keep the spices thing in mind next time I do the supply run."
"You'll have to wait until we're somewhere else, then. Tatooine won't have what you'll need." His helmet tips upward to look over the ship. "How much work do you have left, anyway? I'd like to get moving sometime tomorrow."
"Oh, we're done already," she says, boots clunking down the ramp as she rounds to the side of the ship. She shows him the ladder's controls, opening and closing the rungs while explaining the modifications they made to the ship. She starts to climb up the ladder, motioning over her shoulder for him to follow so he can test them himself
But instead of hearing the clank of beskar against durasteel, the crackling roar of his jetpack starts up. A sudden wind sweeps behind her back that propels up faster than Mahin's feet can climb. Her head pokes over the top of the ship long after his feet touch down, a cocky tilt to his helmet.
"Cheater," she grumbles, hoisting herself up to stand next to him on the roof of the ship.
"You know," he drawls, tapping at the buttons of his vambrace to power the jetpack down again, "if you really needed to get on top of the Crest, you could have just asked me to fly you instead of modifying the ship."
Mahin rolls her eyes. "Sure, but the point was for me to be able to get up here by myself. You're not always here. And maybe one day you'll be too hurt to use that thing for a while. Or it'll even break. I didn't want to have to rely on you. You know, just in case."
His shoulders sink, just a bit, almost imperceptible in the shadows. Up top, away from the Crest's lights, they're almost completely covered in darkness. But Mahin's gotten the hang of reading this Mandalorian. And he seems low as he murmurs, "Do you always have such a hard time asking for help?"
"I've only had myself for the longest time," she says softly, staring up at the speckled sky that changes almost daily to her now. Like it used to change almost daily while growing up. She never really got used to a place until Ulta-7. Didn't get used to people, either. Except for once. On Wisteria. And it almost ruined her. "I've learned the hard way that relying on others too much can have deadly consequences."
"You…don't feel that you can rely on me?" he asks carefully—somewhat dejectedly, even—his voice coming as a sad rumble from his throat that not even the modulator can hide.
"No," she replies quickly, words stumbling over each other as she tries to reassure him as fast as possible, "no, I-I do, I know that. I know I can rely on you. Now. I do trust you, I just…." She sighs deeply, taking a few steps closer to him as she forces herself to slow down and actually think through her words. "I'm not...good at this. This whole...partner thing. Even with the covert on Ulta-7, I never really," her fingers tangle together, searching for the right word, "opened up? I don't know."
She kept them at arm's length, really. Never telling them much about herself. Almost nothing about her past. Kriff, she never even told them her real age. They watched her back and she cared about them so much, but she gave them almost nothing of herself.
"This is hard, for me," she says, eyes darting away nervously to stare out over the hanger instead of the t-visor of his helmet. Her chest aches with how vulnerable the words come out, like an open wound, but she feels that she owes it to him to say them, to lay herself out for him, for this thing growing between them. And for herself, if she wants to have any hope of ever being more than just a lonely soul drifting through space just existing until the day she finally snuffs out. "But I...I want to get better at it. With you."
He shuffles closer, her head instinctively drawing back to him. He stands close, so close, that forest and gun oil smell of him filling her lungs and her gaze landing eye-level on his breastplate. But then he curls a gloved finger under her chin, gently tilting her head up to stare at his face again. She swears she can feel his eyes boring right into hers through the tinted transperisteel, a tenderness to it, to his touch, to the tilt of his head, that she prays to the Force itself she isn't just making up in her head.
"I want that, too," he whispers softly like a confession, his thumb brushing along her jaw with a faint tremble. "And I'm not good at this either. But maybe we can figure it out together. Partner."
Mahin can just make out the reflection of herself in his shining beskar. A smile pulls at her lips, a smile she hasn't seen herself wear in a long, long time. Since before her parents died.
It looks a lot like hope.
"I'd like that. Partner."
Author's Note
Ah, the fluff.
And the idea of Mando being oblivious of the food and the freezing crate just popped into my head one day and my brain ran with it so fast. XD
Next chapter is pure fluff that started as pretty much a drabble as I tried to just get some words out and I rather fell in love with it. It contains one of my favorite little tropes. I'm currently four chapters ahead in writing so hopefully I'll get it up by next weekend.
Hope you enjoyed, PLEASE REVIEW, and see you all next time!
Translations
Ner ad'ika - My little one
