tw: mild disassociation and derealization descriptions. please read with caution.

also, some words used here are pure speculation on mando'a forums due to the limited amount of mando'a used in canon material

╭━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━╮

(ni haat'miiti)
I promise
╰━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━━✶━━ ⋅𖥔⋅ ━╯

The red mandalorian felt like she was adrift in the void between stars. Everything was quiet, dull, slower than the gradual tug of blackholes.

What happened? Her brain moved slowly, each memory surfaced as if it were in a sea of sand. She blinked. She turned, the movement too slow for her liking. Everything seemed blue, her vision almost sunbleached— as if she shut her eyes again against the furious suns.

The mandalorians were dead. They always died in the end. She wanted to sit down, she wanted to go home.

Her home was gone.

The thought dug into her, a slow gradual pain. She was dying again. She must've died years ago, in the skeleton of a ship that loomed godlike. She must've died to that jetii'kad, the one that flowed like the burning, writhing river in front of her— the one that burned like binary suns, like the wreckage of her clan.

Her legs moved too easily as she followed her comrades down the hall, the air glowing with lava.
She was in the capital city again, as the sky glowed with a barrage.
She was dead. This wasn't real.

She stopped.
Mikata glanced back, stiffening when he saw her lagging behind. He darted to her, ignoring how Greef called after him.

"Ad, we need to go—"

"Please tell me I'm real." Her hands grasped his arm, her thumb digging into the part not fully covered by his vambrace and he flinched. He crouched cautiously, as if he didn't want to scare her. He looked up at her.

"Give me your hand." She obliged. She was shaking. He held her hand in both of his. "You're here, you're real." His grip tightened.

She jerked back, wincing. "Sorry," he said, immediately letting her hand go.
"You're real," he said again, standing up and pulling her into an almost-crushing embrace. She shook, her breath shuddering and splintering as she tried to speak. "Let's go."

The ground shuddered as the magma boat split from where it had melded with the bank.

She knows she's shaking. She doesn't need to see the quaver in her grip to know the telltale signs— the blurriness of her visions, the frigid sweat dripping down her back despite the engine-like heat suffocating her. It felt like her entire nervous system was quaking, itching inside her. She wanted to scratch her skin off.

The red mandalorian missed what the IG said, until his head turned to her with mechanical clicks.
He patted her on the head, the thunk startling her. He stepped out of the boat, sinking into the searing lava. The red mandalorian watched as he tromped to the end of the tunnel, standing there as his thermal detonator whined, increasing in pitch.

She closed her eyes and she could still see it— red licking at her brain, driving it into a frenzy of neons. Individual bright spots extinguished, leaving her in near darkness.

The only thing left was the wind. The same wind that swept over the white sands of Mandalore, the same desolate silence.

She opened her eyes.

Her grip on her sheathed beskadse loosened.

The only thing left was the wind.
She was in the rubble of Sundari again. She was in the village again, standing in the tragedy she and her comrades had made.

The only thing left was the wind and the engines roaring overhead, screaming some semblance of heavenly fury as it dives.

The group threw itself into chaos, throwing themselves to the side as blaster bolts carved into the ground where they were.

Mikata's arm wrapped around her, pulling her to the side. He got up a second later, rolling off from where he'd shielded her with his own body.
His visor was already fixed on the sky, watching the TIE fighter as it came around for a second pass.

Mikata let out a sound nearly lost beneath the modulator, something like a hiss and a swear.

The red mandalorian slammed her hands against her head, forgetting she was wearing a helmet. She squeezed her eyes shut and her breath stuttered as everything became too loud.

The TIE fighter screamed overhead and she shrunk into herself, receding like a storm breaking, like metal crumbling— like the metal panel in the TIE overhead.

Someone's hands were on her shoulder.
The red mandalorian flinched away, heart seizing and she lashed out.

"Hey, hey!" A tattoo— a bunch of little rectangles— Cara.

The red mandalorian couldn't bring herself to look Cara in the eyes. "We need to move." The ex-shocktrooper glanced at the sky.

A flash of metal caught the red mandalorian's attention. She was in motion before she could think, words tumbling out of her mouth before she could think. "Choy sa mird?" Mikata clung to the TIE, his grasp the only thing standing between him and a death even the ancestral metal couldn't protect him from.

Her head swirled with colors and storm winds, with tunnels and thread and depths. What is he thinking?

Mikata let go.

The TIE lit up a half-tick later. The smoke engulfed half the ship. The fighter streaked across the sky, flames trailing its fall.

Mikata landed a second later.

The red mandalorian was on her feet and racing across the sands. The two collided in a clang of metal.

"Ni r'mird uba ash'amur. Uba ne chuba. Jee can't be solus." Her words were a half thought-out jumble, barely even a specter of a whisper against Mikata's chestplate.

━━✶━━

His partner's words were jumbled and hushed. He could barely make out snatches of speech, some mando'a, and what sounded like an entirely different language. He could make out her next words clearly, though.

"Ne ba'slani, gedet'ye." Don't leave me, please. Din's mouth tasted like blood and metal— like a cellar. He inhaled abruptly.

"Hey, ad'ika. Slow down, okay? I can't understand you." He leaned down, pressing his visor against the dome of her helmet. "I'm safe. You're safe." Her trembling worsened. She was so small, dressed in red— and his heart ached and twisted itself into pieces.

"Nu draar ba'slani gar." I'm never leaving you.