A.N. Thank you so much for your reviews!

Also sorry for that cliffie... but also not sorry ;)

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When silence fell in the ship after she and Garen stopped pulling on the blanket, and Din's head rocked gently side to side as he came to rest a short distance from the mess beneath the ladder, Cara knew something was wrong. But what… what is it? Her every nerve ending was ablaze and goose bumps slithered up and down her arms, but for the life of her, she couldn't pin down what it was that set heart racing in fear.

She knew Din wasn't safe yet, that his recovery was still far from certain, but it was so much better now than it had been when she flew across the galaxy, following his signal, stomach sinking with every passing moment that she couldn't get to him.

At that time, she'd known with almost complete certainty that she would not make it in time. Because the signal he'd sent wasn't just reserved for absolute emergencies… It was for an 'in case of death' situation; Din had asked to set it up because he didn't want to risk the kid being left alone if something happened to him when Cara was not there.

Which meant she had expected to find him lifeless within the Razor Crest, the kid by his side staring at her with sad, confused eyes, unable to share the story behind the wounds that had claimed her friend's life.

She'd never been so happy to be wrong, all because some gentle souled stranger had decided to help someone he didn't even know.

She shook her head, tearing herself from memories that still made her stomach turn, because it was something in the present, not the past, that was screaming at her. "Wait…" she murmured, sorting through what her body clearly already knew, but could not get her brain to see. "Do you hear that?" she asked aloud, half to Garen and half to herself, realizing it was her ringing ears that were setting off all of the warning bells in her head.

Warning bells about what? she demanded. They hadn't been going off an hour ago, when she'd been certain her friend was dead. So why were they so loud now? Why did she feel worse now? When Din lay before her, alive and breathing—

She sucked in a sharp breath. No.

Din's pained breathing no longer echoed through the ship.

She felt rather than saw Garen come to the same realization; sensed his horror rise along with her own, a sweeping, brackish wave towering above them and crashing down. She felt him shift forward, preparing to spring into action, but she was faster. Between one moment and the next, her hands were in the middle of Din's chest performing compressions, pumping what little blood he had left in his body, doing what his heart could not.

Garen shifted to Din's head and pressed his hand against his neck, searching for the pulse Cara knew wasn't there. She didn't stop her actions, pressing down on Din's chest again and again, and her suspicions were confirmed when Garen shook his head.

Dammit. Breathe!

She was so focused on trying to keep Din alive that she almost didn't notice what Garen was doing, and as a consequence, she nearly let something happen that Din would never forgive her for—if he, in fact, lived.

"No!" she shouted at Garen. "Stop!"

The man froze in startled surprise, hand still clasping Din's helmet.

"Leave it!" she ordered.

"Cara, he's not breathing. He needs air," Garen explained, confusion furrowing his brow.

"I said leave it!" she hissed.

She locked eyes with the man who was only trying to help, who didn't understand that his actions to save Din's life would cause a different kind of irreparable harm. He hesitated, as if he were going to remove Din's helmet anyway, and she could seem him assess whether she would actually try to stop him, and sacrifice providing Din a heartbeat just to prevent him from removing a helmet. She didn't particularly want to tackle him to the ground and lose precious seconds, but if he thought she wouldn't, he would be wrong. She stared him down, until he finally removed his hands from the helmet, then she turned all of her focus back on Din.

She performed a full round of compressions, then stopped and Garen immediately felt for a pulse and crouched down, holding his ear close to Din's head, listening for his breathing.

"Nothing," he shook his head.

"Dammit, Mando, you are not doing this to me!" she growled, resuming compressions. "You can't leave the kid all on his own! I know we had an agreement but you know I am not cut out for raising that gremlin!"

She counted up to thirty, then did it again, and stopped once more, waiting for Garen's signal.

Still nothing.

Sweat flowing down her face, she began again. One, two, three, four, five, six—her concentration broke when she heard a crack and felt extra give beneath her hands as one of Din's ribs snapped. She winced, praying that she wasn't doing irreparable damage or undoing all of the hard work they had just put in to heal him, but he needed to breathe.

Seven, eight, nine, ten. Please, whoever, whatever is listening, please don't let me fail.

"Cara," Garen broke through her mantra, "Cara, I need to take his helmet off."

"No!" she roared. "People breathe just from compressions all the time!"

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—

"Cara, you know that's not true!"

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—

"Cara! In a few more minutes he's going to start getting brain damage if we don't get any air in to him!"

Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two—

"Cara!"

"I know!" she screamed back.

Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, please, Din, breathe —

"Then why the hell won't you let me take it off?!"

Twenty-seven—

"Because I know he'd rather die!"

Twenty-eight—

"What?!"

Twenty-nine—

"And I won't betray him like that!"

Thirty—

"So, you're ready to let him die for it? For what, vanity? A senseless promise? You'd rather he dies than 'betray' him and save his life?"

No. No. Please no. Cara was not ready for Din to die, she wasn't ready for him to leave her world after he'd marched into it so spectacularly. She wasn't ready to lose him, to never see the stupid, sappy way he interacted with the kid when he thought no one was looking, when he didn't quite know what to do with the little one but would die for him.

She began again. One, two, three…

No, she was not ready to let him die, but it was not for reasons of vanity or a senseless promise, it was for reasons that she knew Garen would not understand. Because she had not understood them herself, until she and Din were far down a path of friendship and she hadn't even realized it. Until she'd been in the position to maybe save his life, and he'd stopped her… and she'd let him. She could have done it anyway; his hand had seized her forearm tightly, but it had trembled, grip loosening as he weakened. It was not the strength of his grasp that had stayed her, but the strength of his conviction.

She might not fully understand the why behind Din's conviction, but she didn't need to in order to understand and respect that Din did, that it meant something to him, that it was a part of him. And therefore it meant everything to her.

She might not even fully understand what exactly he believed in, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that she believed in him. To rob him of his choice, to ignore and disrespect his conviction, to save him by betraying him would mean she could no longer call herself his friend. And she would not, could not, do that.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

She sat back and held her breath as Garen went to check Din's breathing and pulse again. To Garen's credit, he didn't hesitate, nor did he continue to press the issue. He stared at her, though, face full of incredulity and confusion, and a touch of condemnation. That didn't matter, though. It didn't matter what he thought of her, only Din mattered.

Garen's shaking head sent her stomach sinking, ragged breaths rattling her frame as she poised her trembling hands over Din's motionless chest once more.

"Come on, Mando," she begged, desperation curdling her voice. "When I said 'you can let go,' this is not what I meant!" she yelled, full of fear and anger—anger at herself for not getting there fast enough, anger at whoever had done this to her friend, and anger at Din for putting her in this position. Of making her care and then threatening to leave her. And fear… Fear at the fact that this wasn't working, and it started to dawn on her that she might fail. That she might actually lose him.

Full blown panic began to overtake her, a sensation she hadn't felt in almost a decade, had thought she never would again. She'd thought that after losing everyone dear to her, that she'd never be faced with this again. She'd been wrong. Because despite her efforts to keep everyone away so she would never feel that heartache, someone else had effortlessly slipped into her life, filled a void that had been gnawing away at her for years, and made her care, made her want to care. And now, he might just as easily slip away.

"Don't you dare do this!" she half pleaded, half threatened. Please, Din.

She saw Garen sit back on his heels. Giving up.

Never.

She finished another round of compressions and stopped, paused, waited and listened.

Nothing.

She hovered her hands over his chest once more, just inches away, preparing to begin again in what she feared would be another unsuccessful round, but she waited just a moment longer, waited for his chest to start rising and falling on its own, waited to hear him breathe.

Her hands trembled. From exertion, from fear.

But she waited, one second, then another.

And he drew in a breath. One. And then another.

And kept breathing.

She lowered her shaking hands to her side and just watched his chest rise and fall, an irrational part of her concerned that if she looked away, he would stop.

"No way," Garen murmured, voice full of awe. "You brought him back."

She could hardly believe it herself. "Now he just needs to stay. You hear that?" she called down to her friend, raising her voice to infuse it with authority, though she knew it felt on deaf ears.

Which is why her heart stuttered in shock and joy when a rough, broken voice replied, "C-copy."

"Di—" she caught herself and quickly shifted, "Mando?!" She grabbed his hand and squeezed.

And he squeezed back. "He-here."

"For all the love of…" she leaned forward and rested her forehead on the front of his visor, eyes closed, taking in deep breaths and relishing that she could hear him doing the same. "Don't do that again. Or I'll…" she tried to think of a suitable threat, but came up blank, unable to get away from the fact that she was just happy he was alive. She left her sentence unfinished.

He squeezed her hand again. "Understood. P-pretty sure, though, I'm about to pass out…"

She smiled. "That's okay, that's allowed. Get some rest, but stay with me, okay?"

His grip tightened fractionally in confirmation that he'd heard, then slackened and would have slipped from her hand if she had not been holding on so tightly.

She didn't let go. Didn't want to ever let go.

Because she'd been within moments of losing him. Moments of losing her family.

She'd almost lost him on Nevarro, but it had been different then. Then, when she'd taken her hand from his neck and it had come back wet with blood, she'd only had an inkling that he might be more to her than just a fellow warrior. Then, she'd heard his defeated words but denied the truth they rang with, and clung to the hope that when she left him, she would see him again. And she had. She hadn't lost him then. It had been close, but not this close.

Because this time, she had lost him. Only for a few moments, but in those moments she had realized that what had been an inkling on Nevarro, was now a welcome certainty; she'd found a friend, a family she would do anything for. But that had made the prospect of losing him that much more terrifying and impossible to accept. Because it meant the faint promise of peace, of belonging, that had flared when the certainty had settled around her, would never come to pass. That she was not enough, that it didn't matter if she would do anything for him, because she could not save him.

But she had. She'd fought tooth and nail to bring him back, and she had succeeded. She held within her grasp the proof of a family, one she'd never intended to form, but which had formed all the same. It had dragged her—had dragged all three of them—in without a word of warning, and encircled them in all of its protective, at times awkward, humor filled, and wonderful embrace. And they were better for it.

And though their family might be small and broken at times, it was hers. They were hers. And she was not going to let go.

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A.N.2. I love them so much...

Hopefully Cara came across okay! She's amazing, and I hope she doesn't seem OOC :)

Also, hey, it's not a cliffie! Which is very uncharacteristic of me :D

One more chapter left to go!