Chapter Text
You have already forgotten the name of the planet you are on. It’s a backwater, nothing planet; that was the whole point. Force, there isn’t even anyone living in this town. Its citizens had left years ago, by the looks of it. Squeezed out by the Empire or the New Republic or whatever conglomerate or syndicate had laid claim to the resources this planet had to offer. It’s all the same story. You’ve heard it time and again. Another tragedy, another ghost town.
Din and Greef had landed their ships on the outskirts of the deserted town, the Crest towering over the smaller ship Karga and Cara met you in. There were hugs and smiles as you greeted your friends, but there was tension beneath your reunion. All four of you knew you were likely walking into danger. After a quick discussion you agreed to split up to canvas the town, your friends heading down one of the side streets to do a sweep while you and Din headed up the main drag towards the town center, such as it is, where the contact had instructed you to meet.
Now, the child gurgles happily along from its spot in the bag Din has slung over his shoulder. To his left, you pick your way through the flotsam and jetsam of the deserted town in silence. The Mandalorian has been hunting with you long enough now that he doesn’t need to speak as you approach the broken statue at the center of town. He knows the way you step lightly and silently in the soft leather boots you love so much, the way you tilt your head as you listen for footsteps other than yours and your partner’s, the way you grip and regrip the trigger of your blaster when something in your bones tells you that something isn’t right. Din nods as you motion towards one side of the statue, which seems to depict some sort of local scaly deity with a few of its arms looking especially worse for wear. You step away from him, heading towards the left as he begins circling to the right, scanning the rooftops and doorways as he goes. All remains still.
Din meets you on the other side of the statue. You share a look, a shake of your head. Nothing.
The ground is littered with debris, some seemingly from a fight, broken pieces of metal and stone telling of a less than peaceful end to this town’s story. Other bits and bobs seem to be the natural remanence of a population leaving a place in a hurry. There is a pile of crates stacked against one of the nearby houses, a broken speeder left rusting at the side of the street, a pile of discarded clothing and fabric laying in the path up ahead. It isn’t until the two of you get closer that you are able to realize that the pile of clothing also contained a body.
Blaster at the ready, you approach the body laying in the street. Din watches you closely, ready to spring if the limp form on the ground so much as twitches.
“I don’t like this.” Din’s words are flat through the voice modulator in his helmet.
You give him a look, perplexed and exasperated but with the humor in your eyes and the quirk of your smile that makes his own mouth turn up under the helmet, even if you will never see it.
“What’s to like?” you quip. The kid makes a noise, seemingly of assent. Din just sighs.
You turn back to the body before you and give it a light nudge with your boot. No movement. Din steps closer. With another kick you flip the body over, revealing the face as you do so. The two of you stare down at the form together.
“That’s her, right?” Din asks, looking to you to confirm what he is already sure of. “The contact?”
You just nod. You recognize her vaguely, a low level contact of yours from Coruscant. What she’s doing here, on the outskirts of nowhere, claiming to have information about a Jedi you can’t imagine.
You had been a member of the Alliance since before the Battle of Yavin, a young recruit, but not the youngest on base by any means. Your contributions to the Alliance had come mostly in the form of whispers - a tip here, an exchange of credits there. Your war had been fought in back alleys and dirty cantinas and when blaster fire had been exchanged there had been precious few people who had fought by your side, especially after your mentor, the man who had recruited and trained you, had died on Scarif.
It had been a lonely, dangerous fight for freedom, one that had taught you much more than just how to hold a blaster and one you had left behind after the establishment of the New Republic. But your life had continued to be a lonely one, right up to the day the Mandalorian walked into it. Not to say you had been completely cut off from the rest of the Alliance. You had been on base, first on Yavin, then on Hoth, on occasion and you and Cara had even crossed paths, enough to have been quite surprised to run into her on Sorgan.
You had heard whispers during your time with the Alliance about the Jedi. The Empire had fought hard to rebrand the old Knights as crazy wizards of legend at best and dangerous instigators of violence at worst. But you had heard rumors of them on occasion during your time criss-crossing the Galaxy. You could even remember a particularly drunken night on Hoth, while Corellian rum had been the only thing keeping back to cold, when a pilot Antilles had tried to convince you with a straight face that the Skywalker kid, the hero of the Battle of Yavin, had actually used the Force to blow up the Death Star. You were no expert, and you’d never met Skywalker, but it seemed more likely to you that he had actually used proton torpedoes and a hell of a lot of luck.
But when you and Din had learned about your small green ward’s abilities and had started trying to track down a Jedi you had reached out to the fragmented remains of your intelligence network, sending the word out that you were looking for any rumors of the old order. To your surprise, you had received a message back - a message from an unknown sender, with nothing but a set of coordinates.
You and Din had sat up long into the night on the Crest, after Din had cooked dinner and you had gotten the kid to sleep in his hammock while Din washed up, discussing the possibility of information. In the end you both agreed it was most likely a trap, but you also both agreed you were going to have to check it out anyway.
Sitting there with Din you had fought to push away the voice in the back of your head, the one telling you that you hoped you never found the Jedi, that if you found them they would take the kid - the kid you had come to think of as yours and Din’s - away from you.
Din had lingered with you in the cockpit, his presence warming as you fought to keep down your fear, silent, as he so often was, yet lending you strength and comfort. He had pretended not to see the tears that escaped onto your cheeks, not to feel the same fear, the same heartache that he knew was in your mind. And though he had wished to reach across the small space, to draw you into his arms, to promise you that he would hold your little family together, through sheer force of will if he had to, he had held himself still instead, fearing that the love he knew you had for the child - your child - and for your strange little shared family might not extend to him on his own.
What you and Din did not know, could not know, in that moment was the tenor of your thoughts and fears - the grief that your child would be taken from you, your longing for the armored man sitting so close and yet beyond reach, the paralyzing fear that Din cared for you as a partner and a co-parent, nothing more - were mirror image of Din’s own, refracted back at you.
When Din had finally said goodnight, allowing his gloved hand to brush, feather-light, along your shoulder before retreating to his bunk in your small shared berth, he had lain awake in the darkness while you remain curled into your seat in the cockpit, both of you hurting for the actions you were taking and not taking, both of you telling yourselves they were right, no matter how much they hurt.
In the end, no matter your heartache for the kid or the unsaid feelings for each other, you and Din both knew you needed to do what was best for the child. And if that meant flying across the Galaxy into a trap all but certain to end in disaster, then so be it. At least you’d had the good sense to ask Greef and Cara to join you. And in the end it wasn’t a trap. It was so much worse.
“Dank farrik,” you mutter, stepping away from the clearly dead body and scanning your surroundings again with new found urgency. “If that’s our contact then who killed her?”
Din doesn’t have time to answer your question before the blaster fire starts.
The shots seem to come from every and any direction. You hardly have time to take stock of the figures on the roofs, with more emerging from doorways into the square, before the two of you are running for cover. Blaster bolts ping off Din’s armor and he does his best to shield the kid from the shots with his body. He fires back, watching just long enough to see his bolt hit its mark and the man he hit topple off the roof. Ahead of him, you have your blaster in hand and are picking off the men with the cold accuracy of a Hunter. You have just managed to make it to the pile of boxes and crates left leaning up against one of the as-yet unoccupied buildings when a rush of noise and confusion makes both of you turn towards the mouth of one of the side streets.
Suddenly, Cara and Greef burst into the square, followed closely by six additional figures of differing shapes and sizes. The distraction draws blaster fire and gives you and Din the chance to duck behind the relative safety of the shipping crates. From there you are both able to lay down a line of blaster cover as your friends race towards you.
A larger explosion rattles the crates around you and you and Din take shelter once again as the shooters unleash their heavier artillery. Din had shrugged off the kid’s bag as soon as he made it behind the crates and now the kid stands watching as his surrogate parents do what they do best.
Greef reaches you first, sliding behind a box next to Din. Cara is a moment behind, laying down fire even as she kneels next to you.
“Who the hell are these guys?” she shouts over the continued hail of blasts.
“Kriff if we know,” you yell back. “They were waiting for us. Don’t know if they tracked our ships or if they followed the contact.”
“Or if they’re working with the contact?” Karga offers.
Din shakes his head, although he isn’t sure any of his companions see it. “Contact’s dead. Safe bet is they killed her.”
Cara swears. You had all known it was a long shot, but each of you cares about the kid in your own way. You had all been hoping for information that could help.
Then Greef adds another sobering thought. “Could they have a lock on the kid again?”
Din shares a look with you. You haven’t seen any more bounty hunters or trackers since Moff Gideon was killed on Nevarro, but if the bounty had been reupped on the kid then something is seriously wrong. A blaster bolt hits just above Din’s head, reminding you both of the situation.
“We can figure that out later,” Din admonishes as you adjust your position behind your cover to take down the figure who had shot at him. “Right now we need to figure out how to get out of here.”
A feat easier said than done.
No sooner do you hear the last word out of Din’s mouth than movement catches your eye and stops your heart. A man has suddenly emerged from another alley, a strange looking blaster in his hands. If you didn’t know better you would have said it was an old fashioned slug thrower, the kind of blaster that shoots actual metal slugs. But in the split second it takes your mind to register this sight, to wonder what this man could be doing with such an outdated style of weapon, you are already moving, because in the split second it takes your mind to register this, the man has pointed his weapon at Din.
If the first moment seems to stretch for ages, the next moment is a sped up blur. You hear yourself cry out a warning just as you hear a bang very different to the sound of a blaster bolt but you are already moving, already throwing your weight into and in front of Din. You know he is one of the best bounty hunters in the Outer Rim, you know he wears beskar, you know that the slug being fired stands no chance of penetrating his armor, but in that moment none of that matters. Because above all else you know that Din is in danger and there is nothing you won’t do to save him.
Binding pain bursts into your stomach and you cry out, the force of the shot sending you collapsing back into the Din, blaster dropped and forgotten, clutching at the side of your stomach.
Din catches you even as you fall against the cold beskar of his chest and he sinks with you to the dusty ground, steading hands on your arms, calling your name. He is shooting again, even supporting half your weight in his arms, and you are dimly aware of the man who shot you falling to Din’s blaster fire. You blink up at him, trying to focus and clenching your teeth against the pain. The child is there too, at his dad’s side, calling out in a small, panicked cry.
“Alright, I’ve got you,” even through the modulator you can hear the worry in Din’s voice. Your breath comes in short, heavy gasps as you lay on the ground, half supported against Din’s chest. Greef and Cara are still firing, shooting blasts at your attackers and worried looks at you. Din’s gloved hands are on your wrists. “I’ve got to check the wound.”
Even before he lifts your hands you can tell something is wrong. You have been hit by blaster fire before. A scar across your left shoulder and another on your thigh tell the stories of firefights ending in pain and close calls and a limp that took two weeks to heal even with the help of bacta. But this feels different. It burns, yes, but there is another pain, a deeper, sharper, more invasive pain. A blinding, cutting, shrieking pain that tears at your insides and brings the first of many screams bubbling to your lips. And as Din lifts your hands, already stained a deep red with your blood, you feel that pain move.
Din doesn’t usually give much thought to his helmet when it’s not being directly pointed out to him. It is so much an extension of who he is that often he forgets he is wearing it at all. But in this moment he is glad you can’t see his face. For all his quiet stoicism he is not used to training his facial expressions. He knows that, could you see his face as he looks down at your wound, you would be able to read the fear in his brown eyes.
This isn’t a blaster injury. He’s seen enough of those to know what they look like and there is altogether too much blood spilling out of your stomach for that. Blaster bolts are so hot they usually all but cauterize the wound on contact. But there is no burning flesh, no blisters. Just blood and a hole ripped into your abdomen. And, for a brief second, so brief he would have thought it a trick of the light shining off his beskar if not for the screams that erupt from your mouth a moment later, the glint of metal shining through the blood before disappearing deeper into your body.
Quickly, Din replaces your hands over your wound, squeezing your wrists and pressing your hands into your stomach a little harder, despite the pained cry it elects from you, in an effort to slow some of the blood leaking so quickly into the dirt.
“Greef, grab the kid,” Din shouts over the cacophony of battle before sliding his hand beneath your legs and lifting you into his arms. The pain seems to triple as he does so and you scream and kick, trying to escape the feeling of your insides being ripped apart, blind to everything else. Din fights to keep a hold of you, his gloves already slick with your blood. “Cara, cover us.”
With blaster fire raining down around you Din runs, protecting you with his armored body, down the nearest side street not yet infested with mysterious men with blasters. He can hear Greef behind him, Cara still shooting as she brings up the rear.
He slams his fist into the release mechanism on the first closed door he came across. Thankfully whoever had left this building did not bother to lock it before abandoning the town and the door slides open on squealing tracks. He is through the door before it is fully open, Greef and the kid following. Cara bursts in last and Greef hits the interior lock.
“That’s not going to hold them long,” he shouts even as the sound of your attackers pounding on the door begins.
Din has already carried you into the main room of what he can now see was clearly once a home. Your screams fill the small space as Cara hurries past the two of you to swipe the few remaining abandoned items off the table in the center of the room, clearing room for Din to lay you down as gently as he can. You still clutch your abdomen with one hand, but the other grasps the edge of his beskar chestplate and you continue to cling to him even as you’re laid on the table.
“What is it?” Cara demands. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s a Burrower,” Din shoots back as he strips what remains of your blood-soaked tunic away from the wound, exposing your stomach.
Cara falters. She has seen a few people hit with Burrowers during her time with the Resistance. They are rare, most people don't use slugthrowers anymore. Sure, the Tusken Raiders still use Cycler rifles, but most people prefer relatively clean blaster bolts to an old-fashioned slugthrower shooting physical metal. The exception is the Burrower, which blends the old tech of a slugthrower, with more modern droid tech. Once a Burrower slug enters the body, it burrows, ripping further and further, hitting as many vital organs and arteries as it can and causing excruciating pain along the way. If a person is hit with a Burrower and the slug isn’t gotten out quickly enough that person will die, no matter how direct the initial hit.
They have been outlawed by the New Republic for their brutality. No one that Cara ever saw hit with one lived.
Your pained shrieks break into sobs as you writhe on the table, begging almost incoherently, “Make it stop! It hurts! Din, it hurts, make it stop!” Din grips your wrists to stop you from clawing at your own wound, his usually even voice breaking even through the modulator.
“I know, cyar'ika, I know. It’s going to be ok, but I have to get it out.”
On the other side of the room, the child squirms frantically in Greef’s arms, letting out panicked cries as he watches his mother scream. Random items begin to wiz and fly across the room as the child’s fear is made manifest through the Force. A thermapad hits the wall behind the table, shattering.
“Get him out of here,” Din instructs Karga quickly, sparing a glance for his son. “He doesn’t need to see this.” Clearly in agreement, Greef carries the squirming child through another door into the house’s second room.
Din turns his attention back to you. “Med kit?” he asks Cara over the sounds of your pain, knowing the answer. She shakes her head. Din nods, gathering himself for what he knows he has to do. “Ok, hold her down,” he orders Cara as he takes off his gloves. His gloves, like most everything else, are covered in your blood, which is beginning to pool on the table, and Cara does her best not to stare at his exposed hands. You are too caught up in your agony to notice.
Cara stations herself at your legs, preparing to hold your hips down and stop you from kicking out in pain. Din rests a heavy hand on your chest, which heaves with your cries and gasping breaths.
“Ok, cyar'ika, it’s going to be ok, but I’m sorry, this is going to hurt.”
He doesn’t give you time to react before he plunges his fingers into your wound. The scream you let out echoes around the small room, reverberating the sounds of your pain back at you as you writhe and kick, even with Cara doing her best to keep you still.
Time seems to slow for Din. He can feel you bucking beneath him, can hear your ear splitting shreeks, can smell the copper tang of your blood in the air. But his attention is focused on the feeling of his hand in your stomach - of the warmth of your body as he searches for the cold touch of metal, of the wet feeling of your blood pulsing past his fingers with each frantic beat of your heart, of the soft, jelly texture inside the messy, open wound.
Din grits his teeth against the sound of your pain - the pain he is causing you. He can deal with blood - no bounty hunter worth his credits is unused to blood - but this is different. This is your blood, your pained cries filling his helmet, and he is causing that pain.
While the rational part of his mind is screaming at you to hold on, to stay awake, to keep your eyes on him, he still finds himself wishing you would pass out, just to spare you the pain. Of course he knows that, with how quickly you are losing blood, if you were to pass out now you may never wake up again.
For a moment he feels metal beneath his fingertips, but it skips away again in a heartbeat, diving deeper into your body, drawing forth a new round of screaming cries.
“Stop, stop, please make it stop!” you beg the Mandalorian, clawing desperately at his arm, his shoulder, anything you can reach, and Din breaks. He pulls his fingers away from your wound, gasping. His visor finds Cara.
“I can’t.” Even through the voice modulator Din can hear how broken his voice sounds. He doesn’t care.
Cara looks back at him, her eyes horrified but determined. “If we don’t get it out, she’s dead.”
Din nods, hating himself as he turns back to where you lay, sobbing breathlessly, tears streaking down your face.
“Cyar'ika, I need you to hold on just a little longer,” he tells you, stripping off his bandolier as he speaks. Your eyes meet his and he could sob at the agony and fear he sees in them. He curses himself for what he is about to do. If he could do anything else he would. “Bite down on this,” he tells you, placing the leather bandolier in your mouth as gently as he can. You whimper, whether in fear or pain he doesn’t know, but you obey.
Doing his best not to think about what he is doing, Din grabs his vibroblade from its sheath. You sob as he uses the tip of the blade to widen the wound in your stomach, making sure to cut into your skin as little as necessary in order to give him better access. He quickly mops away the fresh gush of blood with the hem of your ruined tunic as you shudder and moan beneath him.
When Din’s fingers return to your wound, the belt does little to muffle your screams.
In the next room, the child listens to his mother cry.
Random household objects, the remembrances of life left behind amongst the dust of their abandoned refuge, careen madly around the small room as Greef struggles to restrain the kid, whose panicked wails harmonize with his mother’s pain as he kicks, claws, and bites in his attempts to escape the hands holding him. Pain bursts through Greef’s palm as the child manages to sink his sharp teeth into Karga’s skin and the former bounty hunter half lowers, half drops the child. But as soon as his little green feet touch the ground there is an invisible hand at Greef’s neck. He has only enough time to gag, clutching his throat, his mind just beginning to process the invisible restriction of his airways, when he is sent hurtling backwards, crashing through the door of the room and slamming against the opposite wall.
The crash behind them has Cara and Din whipping their heads around, Cara grabbing her blaster, assuming that their attackers have managed to break down the door. Instead they find Greef pinned to the wall, feet kicking frantically as an unseen force holds him by his neck. In front of him, the child steps through the shattered door, clear fury etched in his green, wrinkled face.
It takes Din half a heartbeat to comprehend what he is seeing, so steeped in blood and horror is his mind. “No, Kid, stop!” he cries as soon as he realizes what his son is doing and why. The child turns towards his voice. “He’s not hurting her!”
His son considers him for another moment, another moment they don’t have while Greef struggles for air and while your blood pulses past Din’s fingers, your eyes screwed shut and your whimpering gasps muffled only by the leather in your mouth. Then the kid lowers his hand and Greef is released. He slides, coughing, to the floor, but Din is already turning back to you, to the bloody mess that will haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.
Gently, shaking fingers smearing blood across your tearstained cheeks, Din removes the belt from your mouth. You’re panting, small, pained cries catching in the back of your throat and the sweat on your brow stands out against your frighteningly pale skin. “Din,” you sob, dimly aware through the haze of blood and pain how broken your voice sounds, even in your own ears. When your tearfilled eyes manage to focus on the Mandalorian helmet hovering above you, you know, without ever having seen his face, what is in Din’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Din chokes out. He can feel the tears slipping down his own cheeks. “I’m so sorry Cyar'ika, I know it’s hurting you, but I can’t-”
Your sudden scream cuts him off, piercing, sobbing, as your back arches off the table. Looking down quickly, Din sees fresh blood gushing from your wound before he catches sight of the child. Standing in the center of the room the kid is reaching out, eyes closed, each of his three green fingers straining towards you, towards the mess of the wound in your stomach.
Cara struggles to grab hold of your thighs as you kick and shake, desperate to escape this newest wave of pain as you feel as though your insides would be ripped out of you. You are blind, uncomprehending, reduced to only noise and the fire in your stomach, burning you; killing you.
Turning back to you, Din grabs your shoulders, doing his best to pin you down as you thrash and convulse on the table, your hips bucking, your head slamming back onto the table so hard Din would worry you could give yourself a head injury if he had the capacity left to worry about anything besides your blood still gushing from your wound, dripping off the table onto the floor, and the Burrower he knows is making mince of your insides. Your arms strain as you grip the sides of the table so tightly Din is surprised he can’t see the mettle warping under your fingers.
Suddenly, with a final scream, you feel the bite of metal release from inside you. Din catches sight of the small metal slug as it is pulled through the air by the invisible force from the child’s hand before it stops, suspended in the center of the room. The kid is shaking, all of his fury and fear made manifest, his only want, his only need, is to stop his mother from hurting. With a small cry from the kid the Burrower explodes in midair. Small shards of mettle burst around the room, pinging off Din’s mettle armor as he quickly leans over you, shielding you with his body.
For a moment afterwards there is stillness, a shocked, frozen stillness as Din meets your wide eyes through his helmet. You are too shocked to scream, your mind too numb to register what has happened. Moving as though swimming through water, Din looks at your child, who stands still for another moment before sitting down suddenly and tipping sideways, asleep before his ears even reach the ground. In the following beat of silence the only sounds are four sets of ragged breaths and the pounding as your attackers continue to attempt to beat down the door.
Beneath Din’s hands you collapse back onto the table, half conscious and eyes unseeing, whimpering incoherently.
Din’s world seems to be moving too slowly. His mind is foggy and he can see with a detached horror his hands, his bare skin slick and red with your blood, shaking uncontrollably. There are noises, words maybe, then Cara’s hand grabs his wrist, careful to avoid his exposed skin, and his world snaps back into focus.
“Din! She’s going to bleed out, we have to stop the bleeding.”
Quickly Din pulls off his cloak, ripping the fabric into usable pieces as Greef scoops up the sleeping kid and begins putting him back into his bag and Cara steps towards the door, readying her blaster. When Din presses the cloth to your stomach he can tell from your weak moan that although you are half conscious your body is already going into shock. Beneath the blood and tears your skin is deathly pale. Din checks the wound again before quickly replacing the pressure as the blood continues to well frighteningly fast.
Din lets out a curse. “Greef, help me,” he calls, shifting his grip on your stomach so that he is able to slip an arm under your shoulders. You let out a sob as he lifts your torso but your body remains limp, your head lolling. The shock has clearly set in and you don’t even have the strength to fight against the pain any more. With practiced movements Greef slips another length of cloth under you so that he can tie off the makeshift bandage at your stomach. You cry out again as he tightens the knot.
“I need to get her out of here. I can’t see how deep the damage goes. I don’t know if it hit an artery, an organ…” Din could hear the panic rising in his voice.
Quickly Karga passes the bag with the sleeping child to him. “Can you get them to your ship?”
Din slings the bag over his shoulder with a nod. The cloth at your stomach is already dyed red and he struggles to maintain pressure on the wound. “What about you?”
Cara answers, “If we go out there blasting and catch them by surprise with the rest of our detonators we can take most of them out, then you can get her out and Greef and I can pick off any stragglers.”
With a nod, Din turns back to you. His fingers come to your cheek as he tries to get your glazed eyes to focus on you. “Cyar'ika?” he begs, and through the waves of pain and blood loss your eyes struggle to find his visor. “Hey, Cyar'ika. I’m going to get you out of here, ok? I just need you to hold on for me a little while longer. I need you to be strong for me. My hands are going to be full, ok? So I need you to keep pressure on the wound.”
Din brings your hands to the make-shift bandage and presses them firmly into your side. You moan and try to pull away, grimmicing.
“Hurts.”
“I know, Cyar'ika, I’m sorry, I know it hurts. I’m going to take the pain away, I promise. Just a little while longer-”
An explosion blasts through the door, shaking the small building you are in and sending debris from the wall and the door standing between you and your attachers splintering through the air above you. Din shields you with his body, the bag containing a still sleeping child pressed between your chest and his.
Over his shoulder you are able to see the hole where the door had been and the men who are beginning to fight their way through. Cara is on her feet, firing back, but Greef has been knocked to the ground by the blast. In a moment of clarity you catch sight of the glint of a blaster, aimed at Din’s back. Your body’s instinct takes over and without a thought your hand has dropped to Din’s holster and you have drawn his blaster, two bolts taking down the man before Din can so much as turn.
Just as quickly as the spike of adrenaline animates your limbs it leaves you. You collapse back, shaking and numb, and would have dropped the blaster hand Din not already grasped it from your hand.
There is shouting and blaster fire but your field of vision has narrowed, darkness, which you struggle to keep at bay, pushing at the edges of your sight so that when Din leaves your side you are unable to follow his movements. Sounds become muddy in your ears as you sob through the continued pain in your abdomen, no longer ripping and expanding under the Burrower’s destruction, but still all consuming.
You can hear the sounds of a blaster fight - Din and Cara calling out to each other, the shouts of the men, the sounds growing more distant as your friends push the threat back, away from the door. Away from you.
Then you are alone with only your pain and the ragged sounds of your breathing. You’re panting, gasping, each breath sending another blade of agony through your stomach. A sudden cough overtakes you, making your body convulse and your stomach muscles contract. Your mouth fills with a coppery sweetness and you groan in pain. Your hands shake and your heels kick as you desperately cling to the bandage, doing what you can to keep pressure on the wound as Din had asked you.
Even through everything your body has been put through you know you don’t want to disappoint Din.
But it hurts.
It hurt so much.
And you’re cold.
Even the warmth of your blood leaving your body can’t warm your frozen skin.
The room is spinning, your vision darkening, and you realize you just want to sleep. You’re so tired, your body heavy and lethargic. A voice in your head says that Din wouldn’t want you to sleep, but Din isn’t here.
Where is he?
He left you alone with nothing but pain in your gut and blood slick beneath your fingers.
Blood.
Why is there blood?
Your grip on your bandage slips, fingers loosening as your eyes begin to flutter close, the pain and blood loss pulling you down into the darkness. Suddenly Din is at your side, his hands pressing yours back into the bandage, pulling you back with a weak cry of pain from the edge of unconsciousness.
“Stay with me, Cyar'ika.”
Din slides his arms under your back and knees, lifting you into his arms. Although you cry out at the movement, bolts of fear strike through him at how weak your voice sounds and at the sight of blood at the corner of your mouth. He knows you don’t have much time left.
You struggle weakly in his arms, trying to escape the pain he knows he is causing you as you fight to remain conscious, doing your best to keep hold of the bandage at your side. Din murmurs encouragements to you as Cara and Greef shoot from just outside the doorway, clearing the path for Din to carry you out into the street.
“Go,” Cara shouts to Din as she picks off another shooter on an opposite roof. “We’ve got this. Take care of them, get them somewhere safe. Stay off the radar, they tracked us here, who knows where else they can find us. We’ll sort it out and contact you when the coast is clear.”
Din gives her a nod of thanks before activating his jetpack and jumping into the sky with you still in his arms.
Blastershots follow them as they rise above the town, a few shots managing to ping off Din’s armor before he is able to dodge them, doing his best to keep his body between you, the kid in his bag, and the bolts. Putting on a burst of speed, Din does his best to get the three of you out of range of the blaster bolts as quickly as he can. He can see the blood dripping slowly off the makeshift bandage around your stomach into the air below them. He forces his mind away from how cold you feel in his arms, glancing down at you instead. Your head rests against his arm weakly, a smear of red at the corner of your lips, and your eyes are distant and unfocused. You’re clinging to consciousness - to life - and if Din had thought he couldn’t be more frightened than he already was he realizes he was wrong.
“Cyar'ika, hey, stay with me. Just hang on a little longer,” he begs, but finally the pain and blood loss claim you. You are unconscious by the time Din reaches the Crest.