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English
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Part 3 of When Our Boots Wear Thin & Our Hearts Grow Heavy
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Published:
2022-03-19
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2022-11-27
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8/8
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When Twilight Checks In, The Collars Pull Tight

Chapter 8: Chapter Seven

Chapter Text

[20:51] DD: Haven’t heard from you in a while.

[20:51] DD: How are things?

 

[23:03] DD: Vanth.

 

[07:34] DD: If you don’t respond within two days, I’m coming down there to make sure you’re not dead.

 


 

Heat rolls up from the sand in waves that obscure the horizon, chasing away what little moisture lingers in the air and baking the residents of the land almost in the same way that the inside of a hypersonic oven would a scurrier. The suns are nearly directly overhead, their harsh light mercilessly beating down on a ragged lone figure as he stumbles toward a cluster of structures in the distance. A half-day’s march behind him, a modified podracing speeder bike. It had run out of fuel the night before, and now the man- one Cobb Vanth of Freetown- is making his way back on foot.

Crusted blood is smeared across his face, arms, and bare chest. His shoulder is open, gleaming beneath the light. The same arm shudders, starting at that very spot- a movement that just about makes the deep wound further down start oozing again. But the twitching is nothing he has any control of, and it’s been plaguing him since the battle that had given him his other wounds.

Cobb Vanth is a tired old man, hanging on by the skin of his teeth as he’s been, each passing moment more painful than the last. Exhaustion is slowly shutting his body down as he walks, his feet dragging along beneath him. His heartbeat hasn’t evened out since the EMP hit him, and none of the rest of him is quite in sync with anything else either.

But Freetown is in his sights at last, after half a day’s walk, and his work for the day is nigh halfway over. Because he still has to go back for his speeder, too. With the fuel that he’s come for weighing him down. And maybe his blaster- leaving without it the first time around had been a dangerous gamble, and that’s a slim thing to be lucky with twice. Especially on Tatooine. The desert is as touch-and-go as the city on this planet; anyone with half a mind knows it. Anyone whose skin bears the Syndicate Star knows it.

He begins to plan it out the closer he gets, what he’ll do when he gets there: Head in from the back, grab a fuel canister from the few he’s got lined up along the backside of his home, slip around to the front to grab a couple of things from inside. In and out, because he doesn’t plan on letting things sit for too long. He’ll work on cleaning things up once he’s got his speeder parked back out front, safe from the Jawas who might happen upon it; he’s spent years working on it, improving it- he can’t afford to lose the thing.

It never fails to surprise him how empty Freetown looks from afar, brimming with life as the street sometimes is. From this distance, it looks like a ghost town. And that makes Cobb wonder how many potential visitors- friendly or otherwise- have been deterred from approaching it over the past couple decades, how many times it may have saved lives or led runaways to their untimely deaths.

He never thinks about it for long, knows better than to. On a cursed world such as this one, looking out for more than oneself and one’s people is just asking for trouble to find its way to you. Such is the way of things in the Outer Rim.

Cobb’s seen it all out here, some things more than once.

Time stretches on into what feels an eternity, but he’s still upon the town sooner than he’d been expecting in this condition. It looks quiet, empty. The people are in various states of shock and mourning, recovering from the betrayal of someone they’d thought their own. Of someone who was their own, stuck in a nightmare they’d not realized he hadn’t escaped as they had. And the air, it still smells of his blood- of both their blood.

His nostrils flare just thinking about it as he circles around the outside of the settlement and begins following the backs of the buildings down toward where his own home is.

He can see the dwelling from the end of the street, lined with several fuel canisters of various volumes and old speeder parts that he’s saved just in case. If one looked at the place from behind as he is, they’d never know that there’d been a tussle in it just the night before. But he does know; the whole damn town does.

And while he knows that they’ll be quite worried about him by now, he’d rather be left alone; his speeder’s out of fuel, sure, but he’s barely running on fumes himself. Cobb doesn’t know what he’ll do if someone says the wrong thing to him, and he’s not inclined to find out. The last thing he needs is more friendly blood on his hands. He’s got enough of it on him right now to last many lifetimes of internal warfare.

A shiver runs up his spine- or perhaps it’s another tremor- and he forces his attention away from that particularly violent train of thought. In and out, Cobb. Don’t make it harder than it’s got to be.

If only it were that easy, he says to himself. And he must look a madman, the rueful smirk twitching at his lips beneath all of the blood.

His house is right beside him, suddenly, and he jerks back before he can pass by it. His eyes roam over the suns-beaten fuel canisters, and he really wishes he could remember which ones have how much fuel in them. He doesn’t need much. One with just enough fuel for his speeder to get back. But hell if he knows which one that might be. The blasted things all look the same, scarring aside. Looking at them then, he decides that he’ll be more organized with it in the future. Whether he’ll actually do so, he doesn’t know. But it’s a nice thought.

Cobb heaves a hefty sigh, lets his shoulders fall slack before he braces them for what might just be a lot of weight. He really hopes that his body can take it; dragging the canister would be rather slow-going in comparison to carrying it. He’d hate to be exposed out there any longer than necessary.

“Alright.” He murmurs, and reaches out for one. His fingers close around the handle, he lifts, and- ah, fierfek.

He lurches forward as the full canister pulls his arm down, the rest of him with it. A startled noise escapes him just before his head slams against the tank, his legs folding unnaturally between him and the ground. He doesn’t hear the telltale pop of the lid coming off, and his lower half is drenched in speeder fuel before he’s got a clue what’s going on.

It takes him a moment to right the thing, the grease-slick outside of the canister sliding against his fingers. He’s left sitting in quite the puddle, gas fumes stinging his eyes and burning his throat. His head falls gently against the canister, and Cobb wonders if it’d be more appropriate to laugh or to cry. He could probably do with another scream, really, though he’d probably worn himself out from it after his speeder had quit on him.

He hears footsteps in the sand, coming down from around the front of the house. He doesn’t have it in him to glance up and see who it is. The intended casuality of the tone catches him as off-guard as whose voice it is. “Whatcha doing, Marshal?”

He does look up, then, because that voice belongs to one out-of-town Jo. Welcome back, he wants to say. But no sound slips past the dry lump in his throat, and he swallows. He blinks and takes his hat when she holds it out to him. He tries to thank her, but his words take a sardonic turn, and he finds himself gesturing to his fuel-plastered legs. “Speeder ran out of fuel, an’ now I’m covered in it.”

It’s her turn to look surprised- though horrified and concerned probably suit her expression better. “You walked all the way back here?”

“Sure did.” He hums, gingerly placing his hat atop his head with a dim hope that his hair’s cleaner than his face is. His muscles protest as he begins to pull his legs beneath him in a manner that’ll make it easier to get up. “And I’m goin’ to walk all the way back out there to get it.”

Jo clicks her tongue the very same way that her sister does, and her mouth opens to say what he expects will be No, you’re not. But he shakes his head at her, and her words change just the slightest before the first has even passed her lips.

“Not alone, you’re not.” She says, and helps him up before his exhausted mind can realize what it is that she’s doing.

It takes a moment to click, that she just volunteered herself to come along with him- that she feels the need to look after him. His lips curl at the notion, and Cobb hardly notices how he wavers on his feet with the step he takes toward her, indignance rising as thick as smoke. “I can handle it, Jo. I don’t need any help.”

“The same way you handled grabbing that fuel canister?” He’s never heard someone sound so snide and genuine at the same time.

And the part of him that’s always wanted her as his deputy is right proud. She would’ve fit right in alongside him and Scott. The three of them, they’d have made quite the team. Freetown would’ve been completely safe for years. But that’s a dream long since shattered by blue skin and crimson eyes.

Now, he’s nothing but frustrated by the way she’s just as strong-willed as he is. Because it’s difficult to argue with someone so similar to oneself, as has always been the case between the pair of them. If he can’t shut her down, he won’t win.

His teeth grind together, because asking the galaxy to be left alone for even a moment is apparently a bit too much to ask.

“Don’t start.” He warns, jerking a finger at her in emphasis before he bends over to try his luck carrying the offending object once more. The fuel canister is lighter when he lifts it, and he tries not to think about the fact that it’s only because half its contents have soaked into his clothes and the sand. Distantly, he wonders if the blood on her clothing is from touching him or from cleaning his house in his absence.

“Marshal.” She eases up, and her frown is again more of concern than annoyance; she’s not trying to push his limits. But it’s evident that she’s at a loss as to how to settle him. “You can barely stand.”

“I’m fine.” He tells her, and lets the truth sink through in his tone. He’s exhausted, and he doesn’t want to argue with her. Cobb doesn’t want to argue with anyone. And he doesn’t want to leave his speeder waiting for him for too long, either. The Jawas have no restraint when it comes to finding abandoned belongings out in the wastes, and he’d hate for the podracer to become one of them again.

So, he caves. But not without a weighty sigh. “Tell ya what: You grab Taanti’s speeder, an’ I’ll meet you in front of the cantina. How does that sound?”

Her lips twitch upwards into a smile, and she nods. “Alright. But you’d better get cleaned up first, or we’ll never hear the end of it.”

Cobb huffs and meets her eyes. “You’re not wrong.”

 


 

Once his speeder is back where it belongs and Jo is on her merry way, Cobb hops back into the shower. His skin is itchy. There’s nothing there, and it’s just so itchy. Invisible blood is crusting the hairs of his arms down, and he’ll get it off if it’s the last thing he does.

He’s in a daze, scrubbing it from his skin, clawing at it with chipped nails. Sometimes the blood is visible, sometimes it’s not, and then- kriff, it’s running. Red-tinted foam swirls down the drain, and he simply watches it as his arm screams for him to do something sensible. He pours the rest of his shampoo onto his head and scrapes phantom sand from his hair, but the soapy water is no less pink than before.

Then the stream stops, and he stares up at the shower head far longer than it should take him to realize he’s used up all of the water he’s got for the week. Cobb curses, and wraps his arm tight when he realizes it’s still dripping onto the sandstone-tile floor. He looks in his old mirror, and his skin has just a bit too much color to it, his sizzling shoulder is just too warm.

Well, at least he doesn’t smell like sweat anymore.

But he can still smell the blood- nothing can mask the scent of it- and he suddenly wishes that he could reverse time and take the damn shower again. He will never be clean enough; the sonic just isn’t the same.

Cobb dresses himself and sets upon removing what’s left of the blood that stains the entryway of his home. Jo had almost finished before he wandered back into town, and it doesn’t take long for him to get the rest done. His communicator chirps while he picks the remaining flecks of it from beneath his fingernails, and he doesn’t bother responding before he dons his hat and heads out onto the street. Even now, he just wants to be left alone.

After burning the body and carving the gravestone himself, he lays Bray Ealdel to rest alongside Scott. His greatest failures, together…It hurts so much that he can’t even feel it. It almost doesn’t feel real. Why must every conflict end with Cobb standing over the grave of someone he cares for?

It wasn’t supposed to be you, he sighs, staring at the patch of sand between the graves. A marshal is supposed to die for his people, not have them dying for him. Since when did the protector need protecting? No, it should be his ashes down in the soil, mingling with that of those who’ve passed before him.

But what’s happened has happened, and Tatooine’s never given a womp rat’s ass what any of its people think. He’s alive, and they’re not, and-

“I coulda used you on this one, kid.” He tells Scott, and stays there all night.

 

Cobb only leaves when hunger drives him home, and he doesn’t sleep before he returns. Even as his body begins to shut down and the spasms grow worse, he doesn’t think he could. He’ll let himself pass out, and he’ll figure it out from there.

He won’t let himself spiral, not like he did last time; he’s better than that.

 


 

The darkness comes quickly once the suns have fallen below the horizon, the moons rising to chase the light away and cast the ghost of it with their own. The town is sleeping, everyone but the Marshal tucked up in their homes. Safe, as always, sheltered from the elements. It’s one less stone in his stomach. All the same, it’s not enough to ease the pain that he feels, not enough to settle his nerves and let him rest. The night is as cold as his chest is heavy.

The stars are dimmer than normal, but they're still bright enough to make him feel small, insignificant. It's a strange contrast to how he feels knowing that two brave men died for him, defied orders given to them and stepped into the way to save his life. It’s almost like he's the most important insignificant man in the galaxy, while he knows he's far from it.

He knows people like him who are much more influential than he is. So, why? Why did they do what they did? Why is he so important? What did he do to deserve to live?

The question keeps rotating in his mind, has been since it first occurred the afternoon before, and he’s no closer to an answer now than he was then. He may have led a slave revolution and started a town two decades ago, but that’s not notable enough for Scott to leap at the chance to die for him; the kid never respected him that much.

He’s just a man who stood up when no one else had the courage to, who decided that things needed to change, to end. Maybe he has decided to keep doing so the older he’s been getting, but does that really make him any more indispensable than anyone else? Does his title- does his bravery make him more essential than the youngest child? More important than the young man he’d taken under his wing, the man he’d been training as a possible replacement for himself?

It doesn’t; he’s no more significant than Scott was, than Bray was, than Taanti is. Than Ann, her sister, and her son are.

Cobb doesn’t understand it. He can’t.

But he can’t let himself spiral, can’t let the darkness drag him down into the sands and bury him like it’s buried so many others. He has to fight it, fight the breeze that’s reaching right into his core and wrapping around every morsel of flesh that clings to his bones. Can’t let the darkness push through his barriers and tug at his fraying threads of sanity, make him further question himself and every decision he has made.

These people need him still, Cobb knows, and they need him at his strongest; the rumbling of an approaching speeder in the distance only reaffirms this. He has to keep treading water for them. Because that’s what he does.

The two stupid men who died for him? He’s doing this for them, especially. They gave him more time, so he could give the town more time.

He can’t let them down.

So, he listens to the speeder and lets his weary heart beat a little faster, lets the adrenaline spike his nerves, lets the heat of the moment flood through him and warm frozen muscles. Lets his ears strain to keep track of the engine’s whine. He’s got his blaster at his side, and he’s still got breath in his chest- he can do this. He’s not the Marshal for nothing.

Cobb checks his ammo, makes sure his blaster is primed and ready. He considers heading out to meet the newcomer, but realizes how pointless it is. No one would show up in the middle of the kriffing night without reason, and he’s the only one around that a man might seek out. He’s not one to argue with saving a bit of energy for the fight- and especially not now, of all times. It gives him more time to collect himself, anyway, to formulate a plan.

The engine is louder, coming down the road, but he keeps his eyes forward. Uses his boot to smooth the sand in front of the headstones, to pack it down. There’s the wisp of a familiar presence behind him, backing him up, and it’s a little easier to breathe for a moment.

Scott frowns at him as he prepares to leave. “You got this one, boss?”

“I got it handled, Deputy. You take care of our other guest, now.” Cobb smiles. He knows it doesn’t reach his eyes, but he does try. “He’s goin’ to be around for a while yet.”

And then he’s alone again, and he can hear a speeder bike pulling up back at the edge of the road. The engine goes dead, and silence falls back upon the town. But in that silence, he thinks he can hear their footsteps coming up behind him. The bittersweet feeling in his chest fades, and his fingers itch, the air going thin.

The urge to draw is painful, and it takes his all to hold still. He can’t move too soon, needs to time the shot right. Because he only gets one shot. He can’t afford to mess it up, not with how his body’s still all off-kilter. He needs to be quick and precise, and stars , he hopes he can be in this condition. He sucks in his breath, holds it, counts the seconds as they pass. Why the hell is the guy walking so slow? Not yet, not yet- wait ‘til he’s in range-

CRUNCH.

He whips around, fumbles and almost drops his blaster before he manages to get the barrel up, fires- and the sound of the bolt hitting the armor echoes into the night, like a note in a song. His ear rings where the shot had rebounded over his shoulder. But he doesn’t move, struck dumb by the sight before him.

Beskar armor reflects the moons’ light back into his eyes, and Cobb blinks in surprise. He stares at Din Djarin.

Din Djarin stares back.

The Mandalorian’s hand is stuck halfway to his holster, uncertain, his body having locked up mid-action. He’s nearly poised to fire back, but he doesn’t move so much as a muscle as Cobb takes in the sight of him. The shot had hit a couple inches down from the top of his chestplate, but the man is as still as a dead body anyway. Almost like a statue. A statue with a gun pointed at his chest. He’s a man caught in a speeder’s headlights, so to speak.

There’s not a sound in the desert, as if it hadn’t expected this any more than they had. And then Din’s speaking, hesitantly, his open hands raising in front of him to show their emptiness. He’s shaking, just a little. “Marshal. I don’t mean you any harm.”

I know that, Cobb wants to say. But the guilt comes fast and raw, and he turns away before it shows on his face. Armored bootsteps hesitantly come up to stand at his side as he shoves his blaster away, and he forces himself to respond. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Din vouches, and then it’s quiet again, the two of them standing there amongst the dead.

He can see the Mandalorian’s helmet turn to read the names on the stones in front of him. The man's shoulders visibly begin to slump as the threat of danger fades, and Cobb can feel his own adrenaline tank. It leaves him vulnerable to the chill in the breeze, and he shivers. Spasms. No words rise up from his companion, but he doesn't step forward to beat him to it- because after what he’d nearly just done, Cobb sure as hell isn’t going to speak first.

There’s invisible blood on his skin, again, and he thinks he would die if it meant being able to rinse it off; he could never wash himself thoroughly or often enough for it to be satisfactory. An exhausted sound drags from his throat, and he tries to get his muscles to relax.

Din seems to sense the effort, and while he still sounds subdued, he also seems the slightest more understanding when he speaks next. More empathetic. And he doesn’t ask what happened, but instead: “Which one was he?”

“...Bray Ealdel.” Cobb tells him, soft voice rough from lack of use. He clears his throat. “Scott was the deputy.”

Neither of them say anything for several long moments, Mando's cowl flapping in the light desert winds. There's not much to be said between the two of them, anyway- the words are in the air already, speaking for themselves. And the Mandalorian seems to feel it, too. The seal of his helmet breaks with a low hiss, and Cobb watches him remove it from the corner of his eye. A gesture of respect, no doubt. Of comfort. Of friendship.

But Cobb doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he swallows and casts his eyes forward, rereads names he doesn’t want to reread. He wonders why the man cares so much, why he bothered coming out here- really, they hardly know one another. It doesn’t take him long to find the stomach to ask.

“What are you doin’ out here, Mando?”

“You weren’t responding to my messages. I was worried.” Din says, and his bare voice is the most honest thing Cobb’s ever heard. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“You live on Tatooine, there ain’t no happy endin’s.” He shrugs, and pivots on his feet to head back up the road. He doesn’t mean to make eye contact. “‘Bout time I remember that womp rats don’t have wings.”

Notes:

I introduced way too many OCs in the prologue, so here’s a little guide as to who they are (as per my personal notes). Most will not reappear again.

Brarkesh Zerem [Bray’s master, once Cobb Vanth’s & Lera Ealdel’s]
Bray Ealdel [Best friend to Cobb Vanth, six years older]
Cliff Ealdel [Bray’s father]
Lera Ealdel [Bray’s mother]
Jezhref Vanth [Cobb’s father]
Idith Vanth [Cobb’s mother]
Jeree [Ann & Jo’s father?]
Miyo [No familial relations, the old restaurant lady from prequel]

 

Other OCs, some only with brief appearances (this will update as I go):

Ann [Jo’s older sister, widowed when Mining Guild came through, mother of one]
Tenn [Ann’s son, approx. six years old in main plot]
Teb [No familial relations, toolsmith, fifteen years older than Cobb (though I have no idea why this last part is relevant)]