NOW

Cara signs on with ease despite the bad blood between her and Vala. The chance to fight against the Empire isn't something she would miss. Nor, much to Din's annoyance, the chance to plant a seed of mistrust in his mind.

"This could have all been a trap," Cara said stepping onto Boba's ship. "She worked for them for years, a sergeant Din. How do you know she wasn't playing you?"

Din settled into his chair and strapped himself in. "She wouldn't." It's a concern he's heard from Cara a thousand times since their stand against Moff Gideon. All their pasts had been revealed then. Cara had seen Vala as nothing more than an imp spy since despite all evidence to the contrary.

"But she could," Cara stresses, "If she wanted to get back on their good side the kid would be the easiest way to do that. She could trade him for whatever she wants."

"Vala's fought against them for years, she's saved Grogu countless times. When Nevarro was under siege she came, when you all needed help with the base she came. " Din reminded her not unkindly.

Fennec glances back, her dark eyes sharp on him. "It isn't easy to get the Empire to forgive." She interjected lazily. "I think it would take more than the kid to get back in their good graces if she's done as much damage as you say. Besides, I don't think she would have broken her own arm to get away from those droids if it was all a hoax."

A chill set inside his stomach. "What?"

Fennec nodded. "She was trying to get to the kid, droid wouldn't let her. Snapped her arm in two."

His throat tightens. He hadn't noticed, not while fighting off the imps. The idea of her injured, broken, unable to defend herself digs a new wound into his heart. Guilt anew washes over him. Cara says something, he can see her lips moving, but the words don't reach him over the pounding in his ears.

Clenching his eyes shut, Din forced himself to refocus. Grogu was alive. Vala was alive. Moff Gideon took them for a reason, he had plans for them, he wouldn't kill them.

'Not right away.' His brain reminded unhelpfully.

Cara huffed, "Spies have done odder things."

"Vala didn't set the trap," Din says not hiding the irritation in his voice. "She defected before the war was over, fought against them at the end. I don't need you to trust her for this but trust me. She's got enough reasons to hate them."

"I am trusting you, Din. I've already committed. Just…keep an open mind. When we find them, well, who knows what we'll face." Cara remarks gently.

Din tries to stop the words from setting in. Fighting against Vala to save Grogu isn't something he'd considered in a long time. Thinking of it now, a betrayal, makes the wound on his heart grow larger.

THEN

The ship that ends up shooting them isn't slavers. It's a bounty hunter after the Child. Din curses his luck as the ship blasts the hunter's message. He manages to take him down right before the thruster sputters out. The Razor Crest limped the rest of the way to Tatooine.

Vala stayed eerily silent the whole time but Din felt her mind sliding things into place. While he hadn't been able to place what she was before her reign of terror against the slavers one thing has been brazenly clear to him. Vala is smart. In the tightness of the Razor Crest—where he can see her every move, see the careful considerations she puts behind every interaction, every choice—he begins to feel how her mind works. And it worked quickly. With the new information gained from the bounty hunter, Din knew she was putting the puzzle that was he and the Child together. It made his skin itch.

He couldn't say he fully trusted her, not yet. He knew she wouldn't harm the Child, wouldn't give him to the Empire, but he held another, odder fear. Fear she might find him unfit. Find he was playing at a role he didn't understand and take the Child from him. Din doesn't let himself question why the fear is there in the first place.

When they land on Tatooine, the mechanic, Peli, points him in the direction of work. He expects Vala to disappear into the crowd as soon as they leave the hanger but, to his surprise, she offers her help again.

"Credits don't come easy. You helped me escape the slavers," she said tying back her long hair, "it's the least I can do."

Din toys with refusal. Instead, he asks a question that has been on his mind since they met.

"Were you a soldier?"

Her dark eyes go wide for just a moment, pinning him in place, before turning razor sharp. There are calculations being done behind her eyes. Din imagines she is weighing the worth of him, of the situation, maybe of the galaxy. Pulling him open to find what she needs to formulate a decision. He finds himself holding his breath in anticipation of her response.

"Something like that."

He doesn't get a better response.

At the cantina Din found work with a young bounty hunter, Toro Calican, to hunt Fennec Shand. A hard job but the pay was worth it which he reminds himself of when he thinks of the Child back on the ship hidden away.

Vala finds a job in town performing cybernetic repairs. It made little sense to him as she explained it. Din wondered how cybernetic repairs played into her "something like a soldier" background.

"Small but promising," she said quickly, "could be more lucrative than they realize. I can take the kid with me. It's nothing dangerous."

Din shook his head. "No, he's safer on the ship. Plus, he's sleeping."

She watches him for a long moment, but, to his great relief, Vala doesn't argue.

"Okay." She digs into her pocket and pulls out a commlink. "For when you're back," she explained, "or if you change your mind."

They link channels, go their separate ways, and Din pushes down the unease she elicited. Back at the hangar, he finds the kid in the mechanic's care. When Peli berates him, eyes full of fire, she doesn't give him any assessing looks, doesn't measure his worth. He doesn't feel anything more than mild irritation. Peli isn't a threat. A look from the Child melts her to putty, pliable and safe.

Vala doesn't melt like that. She watches the Child back like she can read his every thought. He caught them staring at one another in the cock pit on the long drift over. The Child's ears flicked up and down, his big eyes inquisitive. Vala watched him in kind, her eyes shining in the low light.

He wonders if she pulls the Child open too. What she sees? Whether or not she can tell if he is happy or not? The idea of her knowing makes a knot in Din's chest. He wants to know, to know he is doing this right, keeping the Child safe and happy.

'Would he be happier with her?' He knew Vala had experience he lacked. She'd saved children before, knew how to talk with them, interact with them. The Child barely gave her any trouble on Pzob or during the trip over.

As he and Toro straddled their speeder bikes and race across the dunes, he tosses it out of his mind. 'It doesn't matter.' He reminded himself. Vala would be gone from the ship soon. The favor repaid.

A heaviness sets over him at the thought. Din doesn't let himself question it, tossing it too to the warm sands.

"You don't know what you're doing, do you?" Vala asked. Din knows it isn't really a question. Bloodied hand in his, Vala watched as the Child played around the Crest's hold.

Din sprays her wounds with bacta, holding her wrist gingerly. He tries to keep space between them, the heat from Pzob, the tension, still gnawing in the back of his mind. It does little to stave off the warmth she radiates. Even less in keeping him from glancing at the hollow at her throat.

"I've taken care of enough wounds," he said simply, "you're lucky the cut isn't deeper." Vala, he realizes, seems to be very lucky. Lucky he showed up in the cave when he did. Lucky the slavers were inept. Lucky Toro didn't see her sneak in. That luck had saved the child though.

The commlink, in the end, had been a smart decision. Vala had climbed up the hangar walls and dropped in behind Toro while Din kept him distracted. When she pressed her blaster to the back of Toro's head, he dropped the kid but managed to duck under her gun and slash at her with his vibroblade. She'd caught it against her knuckles. Din shot him dead before he could get any further.

Vala raised an eyebrow. Brown eyes locked on him, her dark curls a halo around her. "The kid, Mando." He knows. She knows, he knows.

"I'm doing my best."

That earned him another calculating look. It cut to his core. Like she was splitting him open despite the armor, the layers. She takes his heart with a careful hand, weighs it, measures it, drops it back in place. Din wonders if she does this to everyone and part of him, a part buried deep in the back of his mind, hopes she doesn't.

He wrapped her hand delicately, set her wrist down, and moved to the opposite wall. "I'm keeping him safe."

"Who's after him?" She whispered.

"Empire remnants."

Vala sat up straight. "What do they want with him?"

"I don't know but I can't let them get ahold of him."

Vala bit her lip. Her eyes, hard and unreadable, flicked back to the Child. Low in his core something pulsed and birthed a twisting need he hasn't felt in years. A need he thought he had mastered, packaged, and stored away. His heart thundered in its wake.

"Stay," Din says before he can catch himself. "I can pay you, to help me, so you can save for your ship." As quick as it came the twisting need that had forced the words from his mouth died away now that they were spoken.

"That's not a bad idea," Vala mused nibbling on her lower lip. "You would have help with the kid. What would the split be?"

"Finding jobs outside the Guild isn't easy, but I can give you forty percent of whatever is left after fuel and food," Din explained. "It's not much, but…better than what you'd make if you stayed here."

"I can imagine," Vala said sliding from the crate she was perched atop. She crosses her arms and taps a finger against her forearm. One. Two. Three. Hope and despair flare in him with each beat. "The split is fair. You've got a deal."

Safe behind his helmet, Din let himself smile.

As payment for destroying her ship, he let her keep his bunk. He tries too at least. Vala settles herself into the generator room behind the cockpit. Din tried more than once to talk her out of it. The air there was still and often sweltering. Vala didn't mind and after a few jumps, Din gives up on putting her in his bunk. It drew to many other thoughts to his mind.

Days, turned to weeks, turned to months and he soon forgot what it was like when it was just him. The idea of the Razor Crest without the Child and Vala's sounds, their warmth, grows odd. It takes Din the same amount of time to let himself grow closer to her, to really understand her. Not the simple stuff either. He's already learned she doesn't eat anything remotely intelligent.

"They know what's going to happen to them." She told him after refusing a perfectly good meal. He doesn't bother to ask how she knows.

He also learned she loves to read or, more accurately, to learn. On every planet he found her downloading new bits of information, new books and studies. Din never asks about them. But while they clean their weapons or tidy the Crest's hold, she talks to him about what she's learned. He never asks her to stop. Light and smooth, her voice ingrains into Din's memory, a comfort he looks forward to each quiet night.

When she began to question him about the Creed, about his past, he answers. He revels in sharing his world with her. Helping her to understand what shapes and makes him. When he allows himself to learn more about her, he manages only one question.

"Where are you from?"

Across the pile of rations they were organizing, Vala fidgeted in her seat. Din felt a small prick of guilt. He knew whatever her past entailed it had been painful. She still wore the scars in her interactions with him. The day on Pzob had been the worst. He had moved without considering how she might react, how she might feel. It was his luck that her hand didn't slip from his and land on his knife. He moved around her more carefully now to keep her at ease.

Clearing her throat she said, "I'm not sure. I just have the bracelet." Vala gave a long sigh and tucked her leg under her. "When I was young, too young to remember, I was taken into a program. Something less a family and more an…experiment. I had a friend who tried to help me figure out where I was from but it didn't get far."

He starts to formulate a solution, "We could find your friend, get a lead-"

"They're dead," She blurted cutting him off. "I've tried to find other methods but it seems any answers are buried with them. Plus, it's not your concern. You have to worry about the kid."

The hurt behind her eyes is apparent. It's an old wound stinging from hard wind as its bandages are pulled back for peering eyes.

"I'm sorry." He told her. The words felt hollow, inadequate to explain how sorry for her he actually was. Din knew the pain of loss, but he still remembered his parents, his first home. Becoming a Mandalorian hadn't taken that from him. It had given him more.

Vala only nodded. She tossed the last of the ration packs into their cubby and marked amounts on her data pad. "We should be good for a while on rations but we'll need fresh food for the kid. Surviving off of rations alone isn't healthy for him."

She brushed a curl behind her ear with her right hand and the scar from Toro, bright and pale across the back of it, catches his eye. As she sets it down Din takes it in his carefully.

"It's healed well." He said running a thumb over the jagged cut. Turning her hand this way and that, he admired her long fingers, her smooth skin. Vala let him. Her eyes watched his motions intently.

The buried part of him wondered if she felt what he felt. The growing heat from the rare touch, the twisting, pulling need the close proximity had begun to foster. Vala lays her other hand atop his and Din watches as she takes a deep, careful breath. It's enough to cause a throb deep in his stomach.

"You took good care of it." She whispers with a soft, dazzling smile that knocks the wind out of him.

He doesn't go further. Doesn't ask any other questions just lets her go and retreats to the cockpit with his muddled thoughts and the throb low in his core. It isn't until later, alone in his bunk, when the kid is cuddled up with Vala, that Din lets his hand wander. Lets himself imagine for a brief moment it's her hand wrapping around him.

His brain is more than happy to assist. It conjured images and memories of her he's held onto despite all the silent promises to keep the thought of her professional. Images of her, hair undone and shirt tight against her chest, come to him. His grip on himself tightens.

What undoes him is the thought of her atop him, her hands digging into his shoulders and chest. A mistake. A mistake he relished.

They had just finished hunting a bounty when it happened; a nobody worth just enough credits. After tossing the bounty into carbonite, Vala had gone to the refresher while he set their course. He only went back down in the hold to check on the Child. The Razor Crest decided that was the perfect time to malfunction.

The ship lurched tossing everything not secured to the side. Din managed to grab the Child and secure him in his cradle before heading to the ladder, just as Vala opened the refresher door, soaking wet with nothing but a towel wrapped around her.

"Mando, what the hell-" She was cut short by another violent lurch sending them shooting backward. Din caught her in his arms as they tumbled and slid the length of the hold. He pulled her tight to his chest as crates he had neglected to tie down tumbled around them. They came to a stop at the other end of the hold. Vala trembled in his arms, nails digging into his flight suit.

It took a beat before he realized his hands were splayed across her back and hip. He didn't move them, too distracted by the sight above him. Lips parting in a curse, Vala lifted her head up, one hand clutching her towel shut with white knuckles, the other still dug into his shoulder. Her black hair was a curtain around them. The desire to stay there under her, to let his hands roam was overwhelming. His grip tightened on her for the briefest moment before a blaring alarm pulled him back to reality.

Din hoisted them both up, sat her on an upturned crate, and raced to the cockpit. It was a simple problem to fix. A malfunctioning thruster because of the pull the carbonite had taken on the system. Far easier to fix than the problem that had bloomed in the hold. Their shared solution was to not speak of it.

It never left his mind though.

The shape of her then burned in his mind. He feels himself coming undone, the tension building in his balls. Pumping fast and hard, he cums with a strangled grunt spiling his spend along his bare hand. With a sigh, Din cleaned himself up, then let shame drown him.