v. wrought from starlight.

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A billion golden grains of sand blur together into a rippling sheet of glowing stars as the speeder barrels across the dunes. Zoya keeps a tight grip on the throttle, wrists aching from the force of pushing it forward for so long. She's trying her hardest not to focus on the feel of Din's fingers laced together across her stomach, but the more she attempts to avoid the thoughts, the more magnetic they seem to grow, and the more unhinged her brain seems to become.

            She leans to the side slightly as they speed through a pair of rocky outcroppings, not quite tall enough to be considered true mountains, but large enough obstacles all the same. Din, nearly flush against her back, tilts with her, and she spares a quick glance backwards; the child is safely tucked in his pouch on the end of the speeder, widened eyes reflecting the glittering sand. Plumes of swirling dust float behind them, breadcrumbs from their trail that will soon dissipate into twilight's darkening air. Zoya smiles, though the black mask covering the lower half of her face conceals it.

            The sands ricochet off the clear goggles she's put on; they're a purchase she'd made in Mos Eisley the last time she'd come to Tatooine after remembering how hellish riding on the speeder was without them.

            As one of the suns begins to graze the edge of the horizon, mounded and curved with piles of far-off dunes, Din shifts on the back of the speeder, and leans over her shoulder. "We might want to stop soon," he says, raising his voice to be heard over the rattling roar of the speeder's engine. "Once those suns disappear, it's going to get dark fast."

            Zoya eases back on the handlebars, allowing the bike to slow. "Really?" she replies. "I'd expect you to want to go all night."

            There's a slight pause at that, and, as the seconds drain away beneath them, as fleeting as the clouds of sand marking their path, Zoya flushes beneath her mask. The noise of the speeder bike conceals the awkwardness enveloping the silence—if there is any. She's starting to wonder whether Din truly managed to read that much innuendo into her words when one of his gloved hands leaves her waist, index finger outstretched to indicate something ahead.

            "There," he says.

            "What?"

            Din's hand lowers again, brushing against her stomach. Her insides become the roiling waves of a sea spread beneath a hurricane. "Tusken Raiders. If we're polite, they may let us share their campsite."

            "Why would we want to—"

            "It's dangerous out here," Din interrupts. "I don't know how in hell you got all the way to Mos Pelgo on your own without running into trouble, but anything can hide in the dark." His tone sounds suspiciously reproachful, and Zoya's brows knit. "Stop a short distance away, I can go talk to them."

            As soon as she eases the speeder to a halt, Din's already off the back and striding across the sand, cloak snapping in the new wind that hounds the suns, chasing them from the sky. "Pretty sure he was trying to scold me without really scolding me," Zoya says to the child, turning around on the seat to watch him thoughtfully. "I know you can tell; he's probably used the same tone with you hundreds of times."

            Green ears twitching, the child babbles softly in response, a quizzical look in his eyes.

            "Yeah, I agree." She twists slightly to look over her shoulder, checking on Din. He's communicating fluently with the Tuskens, and it seems to be going well enough. She turns back. "So, bud. What have you been up to? Eatin' lots of frogs, growing up and stuff?" Zoya boops him gently on the top of his head. "Honestly, I think you've gotten a little bigger already! Time flies, huh?"

            The child's only response is to coo softly and reach out towards her with his little fingers. His request is clear enough that it's practically spelled in the air above his head, and Zoya immediately scoots close enough that she can free him from the pouch, tucking him close to her chest. He sighs in contentment, curling his small fists into the fabric of her shirt. Reclining back against the handlebars of the speeder, Zoya finds her eyes fluttering shut, something squeezing at her heart.

            "Gods," she whispers, holding him close enough that something itches at the back of her mind, saying she might be squeezing too tight, "I missed you so much."

            The child gurgles, and tilts his head to the side in a way that can only be seen as inquisitive.

            Her voice is soft, and, with gentle curls of warmth swirling summer-sweet in her cheeks, Zoya glances towards Din. "Maybe him too."

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An hour later, a flickering fire licks at the sky, emblazoned with all the lingering, slowly dulling pigments of a brilliant sunset, finishing off the food that the Tuskens had collected and generously offered. Din communicates with them easily, but Zoya finds herself struggling to keep up with the conversation, despite the few phrases she'd learned from a couple Raiders the last time she'd passed through the desert. In lieu of attempting to understand their hand movements, she focuses up on the sky with the child in her lap, wishing that there was a copse of trees somewhere to camp underneath instead of having to sleep bared beneath the vast, endless stretch of eternity above.

            For a long moment, Zoya observes the first stars appearing across the azure canvas in random, swirling patterns. They're clearer out here, away from the city, and she feels the ivory glow of them in her chest, the sketches of the constellations written into her bones, and wonders at her own insignificance.

            "Hey," Din says, and nudges her arm.

            Zoya's eyes clear, and she glances back down from the heavens, a bit of its ethereal matter still swirling within her irises. Din catches a glimpse of the colors there, and his breath hitches. "Yeah?" she asks, and finds that the Tuskens have retreated from the perishing fire, which has begun to wither into nothing but coal and softly glowing embers crackling in the stillness.

            "They're going to shift between themselves for watches," he tells her. "I offered, but they said they'd normally be doing it themselves, anyway, and told me we both looked like we could use some sleep." He pauses for a moment and looks down at his gloved hands, fidgeting with something she can't make out in the thickening darkness. "They saw you just staring at the sky and thought you seemed a little . . . off."

            "Oh." Zoya had been about to comment on their kindness, but finds the words at an invisible impasse. She adjusts the folds of the child's clothes, pretending to be nonchalant. "Off? What is that supposed that mean?"

            Din shrugs. "Must not be too bad, because their leader's letting us use his tent." He hesitates again. "For tonight. To sleep. I . . . he—"

            "Nice of him," Zoya says, putting the Mandalorian out of his misery, and the child catches on to one of her hands, squeezing tight. She spares a special smile for the little creature, and wiggles her fingers above his nose.

            "Yes," Din replies, "I thought so."

            Another long pause, in which she wonders if it will always be like this, flatly professional and yet tense as a taut wire. Keeping her head angled down, Zoya looks at him up through the dark curtain of her hair, observing the dying firelight as it glimmers against his helmet. Quietly, she remembers how she used to be able to read his body language as clearly as if it were written out in the stars, and an aching melancholy washes over her, the ebbing and swelling of a cool tide.

            Finally, Din stands, and reaches down to offer Zoya a hand. She accepts, moving the child from her lap to the crook of her arm. "It's set up over there. It doesn't seem like much, but it'll be nice to be shielded from the sands if the wind starts blowing again tonight."

            Zoya follows his gaze. It is, indeed, not much to speak of, merely a thin, worn tent of faded azure fabric, scuffed and tortured by blowing sands. It's completely enclosed, though, and the thought of sleeping out of potential midnight sandstorms and waking without having to scrub layers of dust from her skin and scalp is mountains above appealing.

            "Very nice of him," she amends.

            Din murmurs his agreement quietly. They move towards the tent as one, a singular unit cohesive in instinctive tandem; each step matches as if by unconscious motivation, and Zoya is unnerved when she notices this at the same time that they release loud exhales in complete unison. Din doesn't seem to pick up on their rhythm, or if he does, he does not decide to comment.

            He catches one flap of the tent and pulls it back, gesturing towards the inside. "You can go ahead."

            "Thank you," she says, rather stiffly. Zoya ducks inside, lowering herself to the ground and folding her legs beneath her. Releasing a breath, she sets the child down to explore the small space. He toddles off immediately, searching out the darkest corner. Din lingers outside, a shadow against the midnight sapphire of the darkening sky, the stars like glittering diamonds framing his silhouette. She leans forward to look up at him through the opening. "Are you coming in?"

            He shifts on his feet. "Is it okay if I do?"

            Zoya's lips tighten, and she just watches him for a moment. "After all this time, you still ask." She doesn't really mean to say it aloud, but it's too late to take it back, hanging in the air as loud and crimson as a snapping flag. You still prioritize me, even after everything.

            He lowers himself into a slow crouch and rests his forearms upon his knees; his head tilts to the side ever so slightly. Zoya gets an undercurrent of a feeling that beneath the helmet, his brow might be scrunched, though the beskar remains impassable, wrought from starlight. "What do you mean?"

            Zoya shrugs, nonchalant, but her cheeks prickle with heat, and she's suddenly hyperaware of every inch of her skin. "You always make sure I'm comfortable before you do anything. I just . . ." She trails off, unsure where she's leading the conversation, unsure why she even turned it into a conversation to have in the first place.

            "You expect me to change how I treat you just because we aren't . . . close anymore?" The term isn't enough for what they were, and his uncertainty trips the word as it comes from his mouth.

            Her fingers twist together. "No. I don't know. I don't treat you the same."

            "No, you don't," he says, but it isn't accusatory, just soft agreement.

            A roughened silence passes between them, a noiseless parade of questions with sharpened teeth like Will it always be this way? and Why do you look at me like that? and How long will this last?

            But neither of them voices these questions, and Din continues to look at Zoya like she's the only star in a skyscape painted black; she shines, light glowing in her eyes though it is obvious she tries to subdue it, the first heavenly light of the sun emerging over the horizon after a long night of cold aching. (Beneath the helmet, the Mandalorian allows his brows to knit, knowing that his expression and the knife of longing that slices his bones to dust can go unseen.)

            Of course, as if the gods look down upon them and decide to laugh, Din and Zoya lay at opposite sides of the tent when they fall asleep, but end up wrapped around each other anyway; when Zoya wakes briefly in the middle of the night, a short, staticky blip in the endless, faceless dreams that plague her unconsciousness, she finds herself curled close into Din's side, his arm tucked around her and her head nestled into his shoulder—as comfortable as his beskar allows her to be. It takes Zoya a good minute (that she'd never admit to) to decide to extricate herself before falling back asleep: waking in the morning like this will only create more tension, more uncomfortable, cumbersome silences that she has no interest in entertaining.

            (What she doesn't know is that Din wakes too: he lies there, mournfully awake, a thorn in his side, blood bruises beneath the skin stretched over his heart, and feels her curl into him, a surge of protectiveness awakening in his chest. It's torture, almost, but he cannot force himself to release her, to ease his shoulder from beneath her cheek. When she awakens, gradually at first, tension winds itself through her body, a coiling asp rearing back to strike. He does not move as she slowly and carefully draws away; with the helmet, she is unable to tell that he is not asleep, his breaths come slow and regular, falsified relaxation slipping through his body, a cool, rippling brook. She inches away, lays herself down on the opposite side of the tent. He does not move.)

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The morning's sunrise blossoms like an explosion on the horizon: sunbursts of color, iridescent rays forming glittering gold linings around the fluffy, dove-gray clouds that billow in the soft breeze. The speeder bike is already zipping across Tatooine's sand, the grains beginning to warm in the early morning heat. Skeletons from long dead beasts blister and bake beneath the twin suns, rotting as they begin to return to ash. Zoya navigates them past a particularly large corpse as they approach Mos Pelgo at a slower pace, eyeing the familiar buildings.

            The people are quiet, observing: they do not speak a word to one another or Din and Zoya as they slip through on the speeder bike, his hands loosely framing her hips, body so close that she can sense the tension radiating through every limb.

            Zoya eases them to a stop in front of what she vaguely remembers to be the town's cantina. Din dismounts the bike first, eliciting a coo from the child, which he brushes off with a murmured, "Shh, ad'ika."

            The term is unfamiliar to Zoya. She swings her leg over the speeder and lifts the child from the pouch, holding him close as she follows Din towards the entrance to the tavern.

            "Ad'ika," she whispers to herself, trying out the foreign word on her tongue. It's clumsy, and trips across her teeth as she says it, and luckily, Din doesn't seem to pick up on it as he surveys the nearly abandoned cantina. The child's ears perk, and he looks up at her. "You know that word, huh?"

            He gurgles.

            Moving slightly behind Din, Zoya tails him to the bar, where a Weequay bartender stands, face a mask of stone. "Can I help you?" he says gruffly, turning the question into more of a statement that says get out.

            Zoya considers him for a beat. He's a little familiar, and Din's hesitation says that he'll let her be the one to speak, if she wants. She takes the opening, and tells the bartender, "I don't know if you remember me, but—"

            "Don't."

            She clears her throat. "Okay. Um, anyway, my companion and I are looking for a Mandalorian."

            The Weequay's eyes go to Din, and something ticks at the corner of his mouth, as if he wants to make the obvious joke. Zoya begs him silently not to. "Well," he says instead, "we don't get many visitors in these parts."

            Which is why I thought you'd remember me.

            "Can you describe him?"

            Din replies flatly, "Someone who looks like me."

            Zoya can't help but snort. The answer should've been obvious, even to the (clearly thick-skulled) Weequay. The simple fact that Mandalorians all wear recognizable beskar armor styled like Din's should have been a dead giveaway.

            Something seems to click. "You mean the Marshal?"

            "Are you fucking k—"

            "Your Marshal wears Mandalorian armor?" Din interrupts, smoothly anticipating the course her words will take and avoiding the collision.

            "Well." He shrugs lazily; only one of his shoulders lifts and immediately droops. "See for yourself." Pointedly, he jerks his head towards the door.

            Frowning, Zoya turns. The figure silhouetted in the entranceway casts a long shadow that stretches dark fingers across the floor towards her scuffed boots. And indeed, he wears Mandalorian armor, but he does so almost carelessly. The chest plate, arm gauntlets, and helmet stand out in irregular contrast with the clothes he wears beneath. Almost immediately, Zoya can sense that he is not a Mandalorian, at least not in the same way that Din is. He lacks the decorum, the nobility.

            Slowly, he approaches, moving with a leisurely arrogance. He gives Zoya a brief glance as he passes. "What brings you here, stranger?" he says, facing Din. Something about his voice strikes a familiar chord.

            Din's own voice is low, and there's a beat of uncertainty to the pause he takes before speaking. Zoya does not know if the other Mandalorian can read this like she can, but her muscles wind, uncomfortable with the show of weakness, however brief. "I've been searching for you for many parsecs."

            "Well, now you found me." She definitely knows that voice. "Weequay," says the stranger-that's-not-really-a-stranger, "three snorts of spotchka." He approaches the bar, slipping easily into the space separating Din and Zoya while the Weequay retrieves the bottle and cups to pour it in. The man then collects the glasses with one hand and grabs the spotchka with the other, still moving with a lazy pride that is eerily familiar. "Why don't you two join me for a drink?"

            He's already at the table before Zoya steps away from the bar, eyes narrowing. "I know you," she says.

            He eases into a chair, leaning back easily. "Is that so?"

            "I'm not playing this game."

            "Neither am I." Then the Marshal reaches up and pulls the helmet off. The resounding clang it makes as he sets it upon the table feels louder than it should be, and Zoya is hyperaware of the way Din stiffens, flesh and bone and muscle solidifying into unmovable stone.

            "Cobb Vanth." Her head tilts. "You didn't have that armor last time."

            "Zoya Vitaan. I remember you," he says without addressing her comment, voice low in a way that makes a prickle crawl across her skin. "You're not an easy woman to forget, but must say that I am embarrassed. if I knew you had a boyfriend, I wouldn't have flirted so outrageously." Vanth takes a slow, almost taunting drink from the spotchka in front of him.

            "He's not my boyfriend," Zoya says. Her skin feels like it's too tight for the thumping heart it conceals.

            The corner of his mouth twitches, and his eyes glitter, almost laughing. "Interesting." With slow confidence, he trails his gaze from her to Din. "I've never met a real Mandalorian. Heard stories. I know you're good at killing . . . and probably none too happy to see me wearing this hardware. So, my mind works, and I figure only one of us is walking out of here. But then I see the little guy, along with a familiar face"—he nods towards Zoya—"and I think maybe I pegged you wrong."

            "Who are you?" Din's voice is cold.

            Cobb Vanth smiles. "Didn't you hear Miss Vitaan?" Din gives no indication that he's heard. Relenting, Vanth takes another swig of the spotchka and replies, "I'm Cobb Vanth, Marshal of Mos Pelgo."

            "I met him the last time I was here," Zoya says, attempting to diffuse the tension that swells, suddenly ocean-deep, suffocating the room.

            "Where did you get the armor?" Merciless steel, authoritarian fealty given human form. He does not acknowledge Zoya, as if she has wronged him in some similar way. She feels the twinge of a dying flame pinch at her chest.

            "Bought it off some Jawas."

            Din's reply is twice as quick and a thousand degrees icier. "Hand it over."

            "Look pal," Cobb Vanth replies, looking like he thinks of Din as anything but his pal, "I'm sure you call the shots where you come from, but around here, I'm the one who tells folks what to do."

            "Take it off," Din says, lethally quiet. "Or I will."

            Cobb's smile is a thousand miles away now. "We gonna do this in front of the kid and the lady?"

            Din doesn't even look their way. "He's seen worse. And she's done worse."

            "I don't doubt it," Vanth says.

            Zoya smiles then, and it's predatory: definitely not in a way that Cobb likes. He flicks his eyes away from her almost immediately, almost fearing the old hunger that he sees resurface in her eyes.

            "Right here, then?"

            There's gravel in Din's voice when he answers; it scrapes across her skin. "Right here."

            Zoya almost wants to make a joke about alpha males, but restrains herself. It isn't about that, or petty dominance. This is about Din's creed, what he believes in, body and soul; how he chooses to uphold it is none of her concern. And so, Zoya remains silent, even as every bone in her body thrums, words clawing at her tongue. This is not her business, it is his.

            Slowly, Cobb Vanth stands. Zoya dissolves into the shadows that cling to the wall of the cantina, the child clutched close to her chests. She barely blinks, focused on the two of them with increasing intensity. Vanth fingers the air above the handle of his gun, but Din does not move, standing so still that he could be a statue, carved from stone that reaps life from perishing worlds.

            But before either of them can draw their blasters, the entire world begins to tremble and shake, violently enough that the cantina trembles and dust billows from the walls' seams.

            Zoya holds the child even tighter, and meets Din's gaze as he throws it towards them. Yes, we're okay. With a dip of his head that would be barely perceptible to anyone else, Din moves towards the entrance of the cantina behind Cobb Vanth, withholding his quiet fury until this new threat is dealt with.

            "Hells," Zoya mutters, tension fluttering from her bunched muscles, swift and abrupt as the sweep of a falcon's wings. "Does it ever end?"

            The child, clutching at the harness strapped across Zoya's chest, only coos in response.

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a/n: merry christmas to you if you celebrate and happy holidays if you do not ! hopefully everyone is doing well and staying safe, i hope u enjoyed this little holiday gift <3

[ beautiful signoff by ashton ]