Author's Note: It's 4:30 am. Sorry if this chapter is rough, but I really just wanted to hammer it out so we can move on.

This chapter is in Nenana's POV.

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Chapter Seven:

The Escape

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Noa Enti was dead.

Finally.

Redin Deedi might be dead. Might not. To tell the truth, she didn't care much either way, so long as her bridge to him was as charred as the corpse she'd left in place of her own.

She didn't like killing off her characters; she'd lost five of them in the past six months. Her pool of identity options was dwindling, and she hated being without a cover.

Soon, she would have to come up with some new ones.

It wouldn't be as easy as it once had been.

For the moment, though, she was fine with being no one. Noa Enti was dead. Nenana Orze had never set foot on Dafin III.

No One stalked through the darkened hall, guided by the blinking security lights. Her clever planning and well placed credits had seen the power cut, and the explosives she'd smuggled in under the guise of an engineer had done their job perfectly. The extra security uniform and helmet had been easy to steal, and the others were far too busy doing damage control to notice that their ranks had grown by one. Everything had gone exactly to plan.

There was one problem, though.

She was hurt.

Human variables - something that couldn't always be planned against. There had been precious few seconds between Deedi learning about the fake explosives strapped to her chest and the detonation of the real ones embedded in the drink trolley. In the chaos of those few seconds - where everyone was scrambling to get out of the room - one of the guards had panicked.

The blaster bolt had clipped her side - just below the ribs. Mercifully, it hadn't hit anything important, but it still hurt like hell and would pose a real issue if she didn't get the bleeding stopped soon.

Also, it was slowing her way down.

But other than that, everything was fine. She was struggling to keep moving, but good at faking it. The cover wasn't elaborate enough for her liking, but the black tinted visor covering the upper half of her face and requisition blaster she carried were working well enough.

Well… almost well enough.

She'd actually made it out of the building and was moving through the alleyways created by the auxiliary buildings surrounding the main tower - Deedi's own little self-sufficient town within the city; the wealthy businesses and housing that the rest of the planet couldn't afford.

Smoke choked the air, reducing the usually well-lit streets into a greasy haze. The place was abandoned, the people all having fled the shadow of the burning building or hiding away in safe rooms built into the basements for situations like this. A droid or two bumbled by, locking up the businesses and generally doing the things their owners weren't willing to stay out to do, but they didn't pay her any mind.

Slowed by her injury, she was about a minute and a half behind schedule; Deedi's men would be reorganizing by now. Her window for a clean exit was closing fast.

Sure enough, Nenana cursed herself when three guards - real guards - came jogging around the corner of a soot-caked Colo Claw Fish dinery and a jeweler's.

It was too late to hide. Even in the subpar conditions, they'd already seen her.

"Hey, you! Stop right there!"

And they knew that there was something off about her. Great.

In her condition, she needed to avoid a shoot out if she could.

Only one thing for it.

She lifted her head, squared her shoulders, and marched straight up to them.

"Report!" She barked impatiently in her best Huttese accent, knowing that it was the first language of many of the soldiers hired from Dafin III. She turned her helmeted face from one to another, fixing them each with an imposing glare.

The trio wavered. She jumped on their confusion.

"What's the status of Sector Three? Has that section been secured yet?"

The one in the middle - the highest ranking, according to the button on his lapel - squared his shoulders. "No, ma'am. Squadrons Two and Four are converging on Sector Seven. Looters have broken through the outer barriers."

Ah, excellent. She'd hoped something like that would happen. Although Deedi controlled the major crime gangs, his shift to higher caliber goods had left the lower niches up for grabs. The smaller underground gangs would be moving in to see what they could get.

A great cover for her, should the resolution to her current problem require the corpses of the three guards.

She heaved a frustrated sigh. "Get on the comm and divert Squad Four to Sector Three. Those cargo entrances are wide open."

He immediately moved to do as she said, but hesitated when one of his companions, a green twi'lek man, spoke up. "With all due respect, ma'am, why not call in the order yourself?"

Shit.

"You don't get to fucking talk to me that way!" She snarled, hoping a threat from a supposed-superior would blot out any doubts he had running through his head. "Do as you're told, or I'll have you strung up and shot."

"Ma'am, you're bleeding," the third guard, a human female, pointed out. "There hasn't been any shooting in this Sector yet."

Fuck.

"That's right," the first man who she'd almost fooled finally caught on. He stepped forward menacingly, his hand going to the blaster at his hip. She held her ground. "Unless you've been through Sector Seven already, eh?"

This was exactly why she hated not having an elaborate cover. She would have created one in advance, but she'd already made one for when she'd had to pose as an engineer, and she hated creating more than one new person per mission. A single anomaly in a database would be overlooked, but two?

"I was patrolling Sector Seven when the first looters pushed through," she growled. "I was hit and fell back. I was on my way to the medical wing, but got fucking distracted when I saw that those exits are wide open. The main building should be on lockdown! Do you know how much the droids in the cargo bay are worth? A lot more than you'll ever see, you can believe that. When the Commander finds out that…"

A flash of silver flickered around the corner of the jeweler's, dim in the smoky light. Nenana was cut off by the flash and whine of three blaster bolts.

The guards slumped to the ground. Dead. The Mandalorian loomed behind them, silent as a ghost with a rucksack bag slung over his shoulder, blaster still half-raised.

Unexpected, sure, but she couldn't say she was disappointed to see him.

Nenana let her posture slump, tearing off her black helmet and clamping her hand to the wound on her side. Blood oozed between her fingers from where they pressed into the soaked fabric.

"Just can't get enough of me, eh?"

The Mandalorian lifted one of his shoulders in a half-shrug. "I thought you might need help."

"I had it under control," she defended lightly, sliding back into her native accent now that she had no reason to do otherwise. And anyway, it felt like the right one to use with him.

His head tipped forward slightly. "Looked like it."

A smile twitched on her lips at his dry humor. "It would've all been fine, but this…" She lifted her hand to show him her bloody palm. "...was slowing me down."

"That looks bad." He holstered his blaster and moved to her side, indicating her injury with his head. "You okay?"

Nenana shrugged. "I've had worse."

"Here." Mando dug into the bag he carried, coming away with a thick gauze patch and peeling off the plastic covering the adhesive side. "This is bacta-infused, but it'll still need to be cleaned and bandaged properly."

"Oh, bacta-infused," she quipped goodnaturedly as she picked the sopping fabric away from the wound. "What did I do to earn such quality care?"

He shrugged. "You overpaid."

Nenana huffed a laugh and pulled up the hem of her uniform, exposing just enough of her blood-slicked hip for the Mandalorian to press the bandage firmly in place over the weeping gash.

She gritted through the pain. "Thanks, Mando."

Mando dipped his head in acknowledgement, smoothing down the edges of the bandage before tugging her shirt back down to cover it.

Nenana sighed and straightened up. "We need to move. They'll be focused on Sector Seven, but they won't leave this section undefended for long."

"Agreed." Mando adjusted the bag on his shoulder, visor glinting in the half-light as he cast a quick glance about the empty street before fixing back on her. "My ship, or somewhere else?"

Nenana chuckled breathlessly, leading the way around the corner while Mando followed, blaster drawn and on guard. "I know I promised you a date, Mando, but let's not get ahead of ourselves."

He stiffened, having caught the suggestive undertone behind her words.

"That... that's not what I..." he stuttered, making her grin. His helmet jerked to her, but when he saw her smirk he looked away sheepishly, shoulders rolling loose with acceptance. "Yeah, okay."

She barked out a soft laugh. "Yours."

Nenana wasn't sure what to make of the Mandalorian. When he'd first appeared on her homestead, she'd been impressed with his steadfast composure in the face of the olfdo, and then again with his quiet good manners and helpfulness as he worked in her kitchen.

She hadn't been lying before when she said that she liked him; it was something that she'd readily admit. But now that he'd made it clear that he was interested in something more than a business arrangement and thoroughly charmed her with his gruff awkwardness… she wasn't sure what to think.

And that uncertainty had nothing to do with him. It had been a long time since Nenana had even considered what he had insinuated… something more. For her entire adult life, she'd thought of relationships as an end to a means; getting close enough to the right person to overhear the right sentence or to plant the right suggestion in the right ear.

That, she knew how to do. But doing it for real - because she meant it; because she wanted to…

Nenana wasn't sure she could leave her old mentality behind enough to manage it.

But that was why she'd been doing all this, right? Putting her life on the line again even after she'd gotten out of the service. Tying up all her loose ends so she could leave her past behind; so that she could have an After.

In the hull of the Mandalorian's ship, deep in hyperspace, she watched as the warrior, clad in dirty, battered armor cleaned and dressed her wound. His hands were large and strong, worn by blasters and combat, and yet his touch was careful and feather-light.

Yes, she liked him.

She knew he liked her.

But what came next? She couldn't even imagine what the next step could possibly be. Sure, she'd gone through the motions before, but was struggling to work out how to apply them to the man before her.

They couldn't exactly go out to dinner.

How did you go on a date with a Mandalorian? Hell, how did someone go on a date with her?

She was at a complete loss.

He probably didn't have a clue, either.

Maybe it didn't matter that they didn't know.

As Nenana watched him work, his helmet bowed close to her shoulder as he focused on getting the bandage just right, she couldn't help but wonder if maybe this is what the start of the After she'd been wanting looked like.

Whether it was or wasn't, it was worth the effort of finding out.

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Author's Note: I'm also taking Mando/Nen date ideas, if you guys have any suggestions.