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Din Djarin did not believe he was a good person.

He'd lost track of his age a long time ago, his job count even sooner. Now, as his way of life carried him into the Mid Rim, he sighed into the stars streaming past. Leaden shoulders beneath beskar armor failed to relax. An iron heart beat steady as he guided his ship out of hyperspace, the destination a small desert moon orbiting a nigh inhabitable planet. He knew of it only through name, through reputation.

Jedha was under the strictest Imperial control the Mandalorian had seen in a long time. TIE fighters carved cruel lines in the frigid stratosphere. Squadrons of trade and import ships followed behind, chauffeured by the tyranny of the Emperor himself. An Imperial Starfighter hovered above the walled city, a fortified warning to those who dared visit the former holy city. Nothing was sacred to the Empire. Nothing remained where the Emperor placed his hand.

The Mandalorian guided his ship down to the desert wasteland, placing it just out of sight amidst the cliff faces. He thought of the statue he'd seen face down in the sand, wondered what it was a statue of.

Inside the city, Jurah looked out from the temple window. The never-ending stream of trade ships never ceased to ignite the acid in his stomach. How dare they collect kyber that was never theirs. He touched the crystal hanging from his neck, a spoil of the ambush that killed his father.

Behind him, there was a heavy hiss, the solid clank of a pronged metal foot against the tightly packed temple floor. Jurah knew very well who stood behind him.

"Each day we wait the Empire spreads its filth through our streets. I cannot stand to watch any longer." He turned and met Saw Gerrera eye to eye. "We rebel today or not at all." He set his jaw firm, the way he'd watched his father do it.

Saw Gerrera had never seen a young man so willing to throw himself into the firefight. In the midst of a world collapsing, he'd found a warrior in Jurah Stuet. His impatience, however, would prove to someday be his downfall. You see, Saw Gerrera could not make the trip into the city himself anymore. He could not be the rebel he'd always strived to be. So instead, he looked to Jurah.

"You cannot rush rebellion, Jurah. The time will come."

Jurah clenched his fists as his sides. He felt the pull of the planet on his very existence, tugging his heart in every direction. He thought of Nyara back home, old enough now that there was grey in her hair and he had to make her grocery trips in the market. He thought of Rowan alone walking, blind but not defenseless. They were his family and he would spend every moment until his last fighting for them and them alone.

"The time is now!" He cried, the flames of ambition spilling from his lips. "We cannot afford to wait anymore. We wait longer and they grow more powerful." He did not wait for Saw to answer. "We attack tonight on the docks when the kyber shipments arrive." Around him, the band of rebels cried out in agreement, weapons raised in the air and brows nailed hard. Saw Gerrera knew then that he was watching something unfold, watching history lay at his feet for him to step upon. He knew then that Jurah was not a warrior, not in the sense of glorious victory. Jurah was a warrior with his life laid upon a tripwire and when the wire snapped and took Jurah with it, he would become a martyr for the cause.

Saw Gerrera knew he should have fought Jurah's plan more but as the cries rallied around him, he found his voice trampled under the name of progress. History took no prisoners but the cowardly and he had been far from cowardly in his life. Perhaps, this time, the fight would take. This time, they would not come out the losers. The spark of rebellion needed but to be ignited and one by one the dominos would fall into place.

"Alright," Saw agreed. His hand snagged rough upon the mask at his breast to bring it to his lips. Pure oxygen, bacta particles filtered through, he inhaled deep then let it fall. "We attack under the cover of night. Gather your resources. Gather your wits. Tonight, we will win."

Underneath the ship-laden sky, Jurah Stuet bloomed for the very first time. As the night stretched over the alleys, Jurah grew ever confident in the strength of his will. Within him lied the spirit of the Mythosaur. In his hands, the helmet of his father. He lifted up the beskar helm to press against his painted forehead. He wished Sammen was there. He wished he could feel the weight of his father's proud gaze upon him one last time. But he couldn't and such was life. He sighed and let his breath fog the deep hue of the glass laid in his helm. In his reflection, he saw his father. He sighed once more.

"Go see your sister, Jurah."

It hadn't been in his plan to do as such, but the rebel found himself missing her embrace. She gave the best hugs. Of everyone Jurah had ever met, he believed that Rowan was the best of them. He just wished the universe was kinder to her. But despite the vendetta it had against her, he'd never seen a group of unsightly rebellions fighters warm up to someone quite so quickly. He was led to believe she'd met them all before, but then again it must have been her obvious rougher disposition that brought her so close into their orbit. Whatever Saw said went and if he said that Rowan was of no danger to them, they believed it. She had just as much a reason to hate the empire as everyone else in that temple.

Jurah chuckled and brought his helmet to his chest. "I don't think she'll be the happiest to see me like this. The last time she saw this armor our father died."

Beside him, Saw shuffled his feet to rest his aching bones. "See you?" He joked, the way a father would to his own son. Jurah did laugh, but not for very long.

"She's always been able to see me, even now. I'm not sure how she does it. Maybe one day I'll learn."

Saw breathed and coughed, the weight of the universe and his past settling and flattening his lungs. On a table in the corner, a hologram of a Twi-lek woman spun circles in her servant's dress. In the other, a motley crew finished their final round of dejarik. "Sisters teach us much more than we will ever know." He paused, clambered to face Jurah with his bum leg and failing body. "Go see her."

And so Jurah did.

In the last light of each day, Rowan liked to meditate. On her own and left to her own devices, she found it was the only time in which she could place her hands upon the sky, knock, and listen for an answer. She rarely got one, as she expected, but she figured each attempt with more than worth the try. Chirrut and Baze had returned to their home for the night, patting her along the shoulder as she went.

Upon the rooftop of her home, Rowan sat with her legs crossed, hands splayed to the watercolor sunset. She could hear Nyara below her tucked into the corner of their threadbare couch, hands busy with the latest work of cloth she had to sell in the market. She could hear the stalls closing, mothers tucking their children into their homes as Imperial officers began to patrol the streets, their iron gazes cutting like knives along glass panes. Rowan hated the sound of their plastoid armor, cheap and bulk manufactured, Imperial quality at its finest. She heard their armor the night her father died, squadrons running by the dozens to kill one man.

She frowned. This wasn't why she came out here. She didn't come to remember her father the way the Empire did. She remembered him as silvery light, a spindling of beskar thread dancing in the shape of a man. She liked to believe the force showed her what she could not see sometimes. She'd get light, bursts of starfire here or a carefully placed faculae there. She thanked the universe for what she was given and what she had learned.

And the most important thing she had learned was that her brother was awful at sneaking up on people. Even now, as he tried to carefully ease himself up the ladder to her position, she could hear him breathing, his excited exhales through the dopey smile he no doubt had struggled to contain as he pranced down the alley from the temple. His steps sounded heavier.

"You didn't gain weight did you? You never did grow into those big ears of yours." She opened her closed eyes and turned her head over her shoulder and Jurah knew then that he'd do anything to protect his little sister. "You never could sneak up on me."

"It's just you and that freaky hearing of yours." He thumped the side of her head with his helmet, the one he'd tucked closed under his arm when he'd spotted Stormtroopers down the alley by the old school. Rowan smiled and invited him to sit with her with a nod of her head. He settled down in front of her facing her, knees creaking like the oldest rooms of the temple did. It made Rowan flinch and she covered her ears to tease him. "How have you been vod'ika?"

"Well for the most part. Chirrut extends his well wishes to you. Baze does as well even if he doesn't say it." To himself, Jurah smiled.

Rowan's hands wandered, finding Jurah in front of her. She traced the seams of his boots and up his calf, which she was surprised to discover was protected with a layer of metal. She frowned and withdrew her hand, extending it straight out and colliding with another plate of metal. It couldn't be.

"Jurah, what is this?" With both hands against his chest, she guided her fingers along the ridges she knew by memory. He didn't have to answer her. She already knew. "Where did you get this?"

Jurah reached for her hands and took them in his, squeezing them tight in his lap. "I found it in the back of mom's closet. I've been wearing it for a couple years now."

Rowan felt her heart tense painfully in her chest. A couple years? How did she never know? "Jurah," she warned, hurt bleeding into the edges of her voice. It sent splinters into his lungs, shrapnel in his blood. He never wanted to hurt her, and yet, it seemed that was all he did. "Why are you wearing papa's armor?"

"It isn't enough to play dress up every once in a while?" Jurah could barely speak through the knot in his throat. Why couldn't he get the words out? The foreboding clouds that hung over the siblings muted out the dim light of the stars. Jurah felt as if he'd been trapped in the airlock of the Imperial cruiser above the city. His ears popped and his jaw clenched.

"You're planning something aren't you?" Rowan was the smartest person Jurah knew and she never ceased to remind him as such. He sighed and brough her hand up to his lips to kiss the knuckle. He wished with everything in him they would remain unscarred that night.

"Yes." He couldn't lie to her, not when she was sitting right in front of him. "Tonight at the loading docks. We're attacking the kyber shipments. If we can take the docks, we can undermine the entire operation. Saw approved of it himself."

"Jurah this isn't a good idea." Rowan pulled her hands from his to cup his cheeks and force him to look her way. "I will not lose you too. I can't." It was desperation that bled into her voice, an emotion unchecked.

"And you won't." With the finality in his, Jurah hoped Rowan believed him, even if he didn't believe himself. Whatever he did, no matter if his life proved nothing more than forfeit, this ambush had to be successful. If nothing else, this had to work. The Empire could not win. Not again.

"Stay here with Nyara. Lock the doors and don't come out until morning." Jurah pushed his gloved fingers through Rowan's hair. And she felt the melancholy sting of tears brimming in her eyes. It was something about the way he was telling her goodbye that pushed durasteel heartbreak into her bones. Jurah's determination, the ambition within him roared with all the power of the mythosaurs of late.

"Stay alive, Jurah." Rowan finished her plead to him, to the universe, with a firm hand on his chest, over his heart. Jurah nodded, gripped her hand and squeezed it. He would do it for her, for her and Nyara. For Sammen who looked down to him from the shooting stars above.

"I'll make you proud, Ro."

By morning, Jurah Stuet would be dead.

With his back to the concrete, he spotted the kyber shipment as it landed, breaking through the frosted glass sky and raining sugar glass down upon the hidden rebellion. The sunset that night had been beautiful, opalescent clouds dotting a scarlet-streaked sky. Now, Jurah looked upon the moon and made a wish. In his ears, the sounds of a someday in the future rang clear. A galaxy free of tyranny. A galaxy where music played in the streets and children danced until their feet grew tired. Jurah dreamed of such a place and now, he fought to make it real. Beside him, a soldier charged his blaster. Jurah raised his hand to him, offered it for him to hold. He was shaking. He tried not to show it.

"For the future," the man stated, gripping Jurah's hand firm. Jurah set his brow above his eyes, shaded them in determination.

"For the rebellion."

One last moment spent in silence. One last moment before the canon fired. Jurah thought of his family until his heart bled in his chest. He let go of the man's hand and stood, blaster aimed with deadly accuracy to the stormtrooper with his hand upon the kyber. Sammen spoke in his ear, reminded him of who he was, and Jurah pulled the trigger.

Rowan, in her time of unsureity, often sought her mentors out. It didn't matter that she spent near every day with them. In moments like this, she needed a guiding light. As she found herself trekking through the empty alleys, the dead markets, she found herself focusing on the set of footsteps behind her.

Someone was following her, someone unafraid of being heard. It sunk her stomach through her toes, curled a festering hand of fright around her abdomen. So she did what she did best. She listened.

They were wearing armor. And they were but a few buildings away from her.

Rowan reached for her staff strapped across her back, the one that Chirrut and Baze had pressed into her hands for her sixteenth birthday. She stopped near one of the doorways and busied herself with the clasp of her staff, making herself look like nothing more than a bystander to them. The steps neared her, closer and closer. Rowan felt her heart jump.

Closer and closer until they were right upon her. She could feel the hand nearing her arm and in reply, she wrapped both her hands around her staff. The thrum of the kyber within it raised the hair on her arms. The static within the atmosphere, the electricity built until it finally cracked. The person touched her arm and in a flurry of smooth movement, she had her staff at their throat. Or at least, she thought she did.

The repurposed blaster gasket her staff was made of clanged hard againsta... helmet? In her confusion, Rowan lost all control of the situation and it was only seconds before she was on her back, hands clasped tight at her chest and pressed into her sternum.

"I'm looking for Jurah Stuet. The bartender in the cantina told me you know where he is." Jurah? Why did he want Jurah? She at least thought the person was a he, judging by the voice speaking to her. But with the weight of him atop her chest, she found the words lodged in her throat. She could hardly breathe, disoriented and spinning like a planet upon its axis. But the man atop her had grown impatient and huffed beneath his breath.

"Jurah Stuet," he demanded. "Where is he?"

The ringing in her ears heightened and then, as they popped, the fog cleared. The armor. It was beskar. A Mandalorian? "Why do you want to know?" Her own voice felt foreign to her, echoing wrong in her head. Who was this man? She fought his hold, trying to free herself from his unknown grasp. "Who are you?"

He considered telling her, not his name of course. He would never tell anyone his name, if he even remembered it himself. "I am looking for Jurah Stuet. He has an Imperial issued bounty upon his head through the Guild." He tightened his grip on her wrists, enough to pull a pained choke from her lips. He stared down into her cloudy eyes and saw the fear in them. Was that fear? He couldn't really tell.

Jurah had a bounty on his head. Rowan's heart felt like lead refusing to beat. She tasted the iron of blood on her tongue. When Jurah survived his ambush, he would walk right into the hands of a bounty hunter. She couldn't let that happen. In her head, she saw herself flinging him away with the force, a completely unrealistic and wishful scenario. In reality, she saw herself failing.

"I am one with the force and the force is with me." A mantra mumbled under her breath. The bounty hunter shifted, his helmet picking up her quiet words loud and clear. His confusion was palpable, enough so that Rowan grabbed ahold and used it against him. She twisted and his own weight slid him off of her. He moved quickly, she would give him that compliment. But she had to move quicker. She brought her staff around to brace his neck, a chokehold from above. She pulled. Then she felt it.

The ground rattled the way an explosion did. In the distance, light illuminated the night sky. She could see it blur above the skyline. The docks.

The Mandalorian couldn't believe that a blind merchant got the best of him. It was annoying and he quickly shoved her off, whirling around to slap his cuffs around her wrists to hold her for good. But he stopped. She was crying and he didn't think she knew she was crying. Her eyes, though cloudy, were guided up to the smoke rising in the sky. He didn't have time for this.

"This is the last time I am going to ask. Where is Jurah Stuet?" He had half a mind to train his blaster on her to get her to speak.

Rowan clenched her fists in the sand, the granules wedging beneath her nails. "He's at the docks! He's fighting and he shouldn't and I can't let him die!" Sobs weaved into her words. She thought the worst, thought of Jurah dying alone, his soul doomed to wander the skies looking for her until the end of time. "I can't let him die." And then she was moving. She was running and she could hear the Mandalorian behind her. But that didn't matter. He didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting to Jurah and finding him alive.

Please don't take him from me, she pleaded with the Universe.

You lost him on the rooftop, the Universe answered.

The docks were ablaze with the flames of rebellion and burning with the endeavor of the Empire. It was a firefight leaving nothing alive but the hatred of man. Bodies littered the scorching metal ground, burnt Rowan's hands as she tripped over debris.

"Jurah!" She screamed until her voice went hoarse. Where was he? Why couldn't she find him? Behind her, the Mandalorian grunted as he rounded a body, a boy too young to be a soldier. This was Saw Gerrera's troop. He would pay the price of their deaths and the Empire would wash their hands clean of his blood.

Across the platform, beside the broken debris of a repeater canon, Jurah lay. His chest heaved with each breath he took. He heard Rowan. He must have been dying, hearing his angels call for him. "Vod'ika," he hummed with a smile. When he blinked, she was above him. Rimmed in blistering inferno, she looked like an angel. She held his face with cool hands and smeared ash upon her own cheeks. She was crying. Why was she crying?

"Jurah! Can you hear me? Why aren't you answering? Answer me!" The Mandalorian had lost her in the smoke, searching and turning with his blaster in his hand.

"Ro," Jurah's lips formed half of her name before failing, but it was more than riches to her. Her quivering hands touched at this abdomen, sticky with blood and reeking of smoke and iron. "You found me."

"I'm so sorry Jurah. I should have gone with you. I shouldn't have let you leave, I should have just done something!" In her heart, in the deepest part of her shattering soul, Rowan knew the outcome of this. It wasn't the heroic tales Sammen used to tell her over dinner, with memorable last words and heartful goodbyes. Rowan felt as if the sky were crumbling around her, the ground cracking and spilling mantle to burn her skin from her bones. Jurah had no last words, just a smile and a gentle touch to her face.

Rowan felt a piece of herself crumble, tears washing it away and out of reach. Jurah felt without life, a hollow shell of her brother and a poor mockery of the man he was.

The Mandalorian found Rowan at Jurah's body and when his boot crushed a stone and alerted her of his presence, she snapped around with Jurah's blaster in her hands, pointing it at the bounty hunter that stood before her. He froze the way anyone would wit a gun aimed at them, but he was not afraid. He had better things to worry about than grieving girls with blasters.

"He's dead. Jurah's dead. You can't take him in so leave." She prayed he didn't hear the crack in her voice, the shake in her hands that betrayed her pain. She was splitting in half, the dead ripping her soul from the living. She wanted to bounty hunter gone. "The Empire got what they wanted. He's dead and I never want to see you again."

The Mandalorian looked between her and the body behind her. She was right. Jurah Stuet was dead. The only thing he couldn't figure out was why she cared so much. Reporting back to Karga with just a report of a dead body meant a serious blow to his reputation but there was a fat chance he was going to get Jurah's body from the weeping woman. So he listened to her.

"Alright." He said nothing more than that. He lowered his blaster and the moment he did, Rowan crumbled. Her arm, weakened by her torment, fell to her side. She turned back to Jurah's body and draped herself over his chest, the surface still. The Mandalorian stepped back and away, beskar helmet never once looking back. Not a good person. But he didn't have to be told that.

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mando'a translation
vod'ika- little sister

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wow okay so i got on a roll with this one. and if you read the first draft of this fic, you'll know that this first meeting between our two lovers is drastically different. din is going to be so much more gruff and tough and stuff you know. there's going to be so much more a build up too instead of just jumping right in. but i am so excited for the full rewrite. :)))))

i also want to thank everyone for being so supportive with my decision to rewrite this fic. i only ever want to put my best work forward and to establish rowan and din the way that they really deserve to be established. din is going to be much more canon accurate and rowan is going to have a true backstory with true motivation and inspiration. thank you so much for your patience and until the next chapter <3

ps i will also be deleting any and all c*vid jokes from the season one divider because they're just not funny