You had never felt this heavy. Your heart was iron in its shattered state, dragging you down into the depths of the sea you were imprisoned in. Where there was no light, where the sun couldn't reach you. There was no place to put your hope in. You couldn't dream of fleeing into the sun because it was out of your reality.

Heaviness. An amount like this was something you'd never experienced before.

"___."

And his voice. It was soft spoken, gentle in a way you didn't deserve and couldn't understand. Your hands were pressed against your face. You just wanted to hide forever.

"Look at me," he was saying, but you were ignoring him. "___, please."

"I-I can't look at you. I broke your Creed."

"You did exactly as I told you," he said. "Now will you look at me?"

"I'm so sorry, Din," you whispered.

"My heart," he said patiently. "Will you look at me so that I can finally see you with my own two eyes?"

Your arms hugged your body. You struggled to hold yourself together as you looked up at him. It was strange to see his face. You wondered what he was thinking about you right now. No doubt you were bruised and bloodied. No doubt your eyes were puffy and red. You probably looked as broken as you felt.

"Can you stand?" he asked you.

"Yes," you said. "I think that I can."

"Good," he said. He looked up at his shackles above his head and wriggled his wrists, testing to see if they gave way. They didn't budge. He kicked the wall with his heel and glanced around.

When you could finally process the fact that he was hanging painfully by his wrists and he was trying to get you to help him down, you stood up quickly. Your head spun and you nearly fell over. "Oh, Din. I have to get you down from there."

"Yes," he said, "that would be ideal. Be careful. Do not hurt yourself."

In front of him, you worked on pulling at the cuffs that held the shackles to his wrists. You shook your head; your fingers couldn't even fit in the space between his skin and the metal that was warm with blood. He hissed in pain as you pulled and you yanked your hands back, stepping back in fear of hurting him.

"You're alright," he said softly. "Keep trying."

"I don't have anything to get you out of these!" you said, shaking your head. "I don't know what to do, Din."

"Do you have any jewelry on you?" he asked.

You automatically shook your head. You never wore jewelry, but you were aware of your mother's necklace hanging down your chest. You reached into your dress and grabbed it. You quickly pulled it over your head and looked down at the hanging piece on the end: the twisted piece of silver, looped around a single crystal.

"My mother's necklace," you whispered.

"It's okay," he said quickly. "We can figure something else out."

"What do you mean?" You gave him a strange look. "This is our way out of here."

"I'm not asking you to destroy the last thing from your mother for me," he said.

"Why not? I broke your Creed, Din." You shook your head and automatically tore the chain off of the silver. "This is the least I can do for you."

"You act as if I blame you," he said, "but I don't."

And you just kept shaking your head, because you couldn't fathom how he wouldn't be mad at you or hold some sort of resentment towards you. You turned the pendant in your hand and started to pull at the end piece of silver. With a lot of strength from your fingers, you managed to straighten it into somewhat of a straight rod. The crystal fell off of the silver and you tucked it into the pocket of your dress, unable to part with it. You reached up with the rod and shoved it into the lock right at the center of his wrist. After a few minutes of maneuvering it, something clicked and the right side of his body dropped from the wall. His foot hit the ground with a loud echoing sound and he nearly swung out to knock into you. You caught him and steadied him on his shaking legs before you worked on the other wrist.

He was grunting in pain. You were aware of the blood dripping down his arm. He must've been hanging up there for hours. "Hang on, Din. Just a minute longer."

You nearly sighed in relief when you heard the click. He fell forward, his feet giving out underneath him. You were almost too late to catch him, but you threw your arms around his middle and slowly eased him down to the cold, blood-stained floor of the cell.

"Thank you," he breathed, but his face was twisted in pain as he looked down at his wrists.

You took his hands into your lap. The cuts were deep and his skin was raw. You pulled the ruined leather gloves off of his hands and discarded them. For the first time, you saw and felt the skin of his hands. It was bittersweet because if you looked at him, you were reminded of your shame, and if you touched him, you felt the guilt of what you had done.

"Hold on," you said, and you reached up to rip one of the sleeves of your dress clean off. You used your teeth to rip the sleeve into two smaller shreds and then you worked on tying it tightly against his wrist. "This is going to hurt."

"I can bear it," he promised.

"I know you can, I just didn't want it to catch you off guard." You pulled the ends of the fabric tightly until the knot was sturdy. You did the same to the other side, and then you wiped the blood off of you and onto the skirt of your dress. You couldn't see it; your dress matched it perfectly.

"Thank you, my heart," he said. When you didn't say anything, he reached out to touch your face. You paused when you felt the rough skin of his palm on your cheek, but you couldn't look at him. You couldn't. His voice was a whisper of pain. "Are you ashamed of me?"

"No," you said quickly. "No, I couldn't be."

"Am I not what you expected?"

"No," you said, because truthfully, you weren't sure what to expect out of him. You never thought that you would see his face. It wasn't even something you had dreamed about. You knew that you were capable of falling in love with him without seeing him, and you had. You loved him from the moment he had promised to keep you safe. It was that easy.

"Then why do you avoid looking at me?"

"Because it was me, Din. I broke your Creed. I broke your trust."

"No."

"I did." And finally, you looked at him. And you began to cry. "I should have sent you away when I thought about the danger you were in to be near me. I should have sent you far away from me, but when I knew your heart, I decided to keep you near me always, and it was so selfish of me. And now look at what has become of you. Because of me."

He shook his head. "I would never have left you, even if you ordered me away."

"You would have, if you had known this was your future."

"No," he said, and he put his other hand on your other cheek. He tilted your face up and smiled genuinely. "I would take every pain of this future because you are a part of it."

He was telling the truth and you knew it, but you couldn't understand how. Love did not make sense to you. Selflessness did not make sense to you. You thought of what little you had known of your mother, but you couldn't picture anything like this. You supposed you just hadn't known her long enough to know the lengths someone would go for someone that they love.

"Will you ever forgive me?" you cried softly.

"There is nothing to forgive," he said. "If anyone were to ever remove my helmet, I would have wanted it to be you."

You shut your eyes and smiled through your tears. He brought your face close and pressed his lips to your forehead. After pressing a gentle kiss there, he let you bury your face into his chest, where you cried into his armor and wrapped your arms around him, locking your hands together at the center of his back.

For the next several hours, in the very cold cell of the very dark prison, he held you against him. At one point the two of you moved to the far corner, where you could gather up warmth from the little bit of sunlight coming in through a crack in the wall. You let your hand dance in the gold stream of light, the dust particles circling your wrist. You tried to let them distract you from the sound of torture down the corridor, but it didn't work as well as you would've liked, and you were afraid that they would pick you and Din for torment next.

Din's hand reached up for yours. He let your fingers slide into the spaces between his and he pulled your hand away from the light and against his chest. Your icy fingers found warmth right against the side of his neck. He pressed his lips to the backside of your hand very gently and you lovingly reached up with your other hand to cup the side of his face. You were aware that you were the first person to touch his face in many years, and the thought made your heart beat faster as you let your fingers move up his temples, across his forehead, and trail down the sides of his nose until they stopped at his lips, which had touched your forehead, hand, and fingertips before they had touched your lips. He seemed to be thinking the same thing that you were, because only a second passed before he was holding your face in his hands and bringing you closer to him until his lips finally touched yours.

The kiss was slow and gentle, and you let your hands move to the back of his head at the same pace, where your fingers moved to his messy curls. You broke away from his lips and his forehead pressed gently against yours, the same way it had several times before already. You kept your eyes closed and smiled, the tip of his nose brushing across the length of yours as he kissed your head again.

The door opened, and Din froze with his lips on the skin of your forehead. Your eyes shot open and you clutched him a little tighter. In the moment, you'd forgotten where you were, and now reality was forcing you back. Your body tensed up as if every part of your body he had lashed out on lit up.

"How sweet," Vinor Thriff said. He approached very slowly and Din held you a little closer to him. "I know you didn't let yourself out of those shackles, Mandalorian."

He said nothing. He glared up at Vinor with the most hate you'd even seen in a person's eyes.

Vinor ignored it and looked at you. "Princess, Princess, Princess. No matter how many times I punish you, you always act out like this." He held out a hand. "Come on. Don't make this difficult for yourself."

You shook your head, panicked, and Din finally spoke. "You promised you'd leave us alone if I considered your ultimatum. Well, I agreed to it. The helmet's off. Can't you leave us now?"

"I did not promise you would be left alone if you took your helmet off. I promised you that she would not die. Which she won't, but like any other prisoner here, she will be punished like one."

"No," Din said firmly. He let go of you and stood up. "She will not."

"Din," you started, using the wall to get back onto your feet. You leaned against it and watched as the two started to fight with just their fists.

Your heart was in your throat as Din was slammed around the wall, punched in the face, and shoved over. He was so weak from everything, and the blood on his arms was flowing again, soaking the sleeves of his shirt. He ended up on the ground, and the door opened again. A group of stormtroopers poured in and started to beat Din with the ends of their weapons, kick him wherever they could, and drag him out of the cell.

"No! Din!" you screamed, rushing after him. "Get away from him---"

Vinor threw his arm out and hooked it around your waist as you tried to go after him. He dragged you back into the darkness of the cell and you reached for Din, your throat hoarse as you screamed for him and he shouted for you. Vinor let go of you and turned you to face him, only to throw a punch that was so hard that when it caught you on the side of your face, you blacked out before you even hit the floor.