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millersdjarin · 1 year

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I Only See Daylight

Chapter One

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Series: Ongoing, set after The Mandalorian season two

Warnings/Tags (Overall): eventual smut, post-canon, trauma, past emotional/physical abuse, scars, self-doubting/negative self-image, din working out his shit, reader working out her shit, found family, injury, religious trauma, cults

~series masterlist & info~

chapter tags/warnings: mentions of past trauma/emotional abuse

chapter length: 6.8k

notes: this planet and its creatures are entirely made up by me, it does not exist, hope u like it anyway :) the fic title is from "daylight" by taylor swift, aka the soundtrack for this fic ❤️

my love was as cruel as the cities i lived in; everyone looked worse in the light

Ah, the smells and sounds of a backwater planet in the morning.

Dewy grass underfoot and damp moss lining the bases of trees. Birds chirping on the tall branches, bright green leaves shaking gently in the wind, the sound rustling through the air. The scent of the nearby flowers, the running of the river beside your hut, the hissing of an engine and the smell of burning metal…

Wait.

That’s…not the smell of this backwater planet in the morning.

You’ve just had a small breakfast, fruit picked from the meiloorun trees a few miles West, when the strange sounds and smells suddenly hit you.

It’s concerning, to say the least. No one is around for hundreds of klicks; not a hint of civilisation, not a whiff of a trade route until you reach the other side of the planet.

You chose this place for a kriffing reason. No one’s here. No one’s even near. Despite the sparse covering of meiloorun trees in an overgrown meadow, there’s no reason for anyone to be here. No reason for a ship to land nearby, that’s for sure.

Unless…

No time to think.

There are footsteps approaching.

Shit.

Your sniper rifle is by the door to your hut, blaster by your pillow. One for hunting food, one for self defence.

One that you’ve never had to use before now. Not since arriving here, anyway.

Well, first time for everything.

You grab it, and press yourself against the wall by your door, slowing your breathing so you can listen closely. The footsteps get closer; they’re muffled on the grassy ground, but getting louder, and it’s definitely a two-legged being of some kind. Just one.

You’d have thought that if They had found you, They would bring the whole damn lot along to take you back. An army, a garrison, outnumbering and overpowering you in every way.

But maybe not. They’re cunning, manipulative. Maybe sending just one of them, sending him, is a tactic. Maybe They think it would break you down; make you vulnerable again.

Well, whoever it is is walking carefully, slowly. Like every step could be putting a foot wrong.

There is, of course, the possibility that they’re not here for you at all, and are just going to bypass your hut without a second thought. A very minute possibility; you are the only sentient being here, your hut the only sign of someone’s life. It’s the best place to hide, somewhere where no one ever goes, because no one needs or wants to. The flora and fauna isn’t ideal, there are no useful resources for trading, and only just enough for one careful person to survive on.

But that chance of someone being here not for you is squashed when you peer out of the window on the door and realise that, yes, there is a figure emerging from the woods in front of your hut, and, yes, that is the shine of the barrel of a blaster.

Kriff.

They’ve found you.

You could run. There’s a back door you built specifically for this.

But if there’s only one out front, then it’s definitely some kind of manipulation tactic. There will be more nearby. They’ll be waiting in the back, having taught you themselves to always have a back route to escape, and they’ll grab you before you can even think twice.

The only option is to try and reason with him. To try and use his own tricks against him. To manipulate him into thinking you’re doing what he wants, and then use his weakness to get away.

It’s never worked before.

But it’s the only option you’ve got.

Creaking open your front door, you point your blaster around the frame, followed closely by your left eye. You expect to see a human face, bearded, white skin and bright blue eyes. Familiar. So familiar you can never fucking forget it.

But, instead, all you see is blinding silver.

No, not silver. Not even durasteel. You don’t know what it’s made of, but it’s armour, a lot of it, shining brightly in the morning sunlight. It’s complete with a helmet, also that strange type of silver metal, with a black T-shaped Visor across the eyes and cutting down the front. A gloved hand is holding up a blaster not dissimilar to your own, though the person looks hesitant, only holding it as a caution, as they approach your hut in the same way.

“Get back!” You shout.

The armour stops.

People don’t normally actually stop when you tell them to. So, you’re not sure what to do next.

(You were expecting to shoot, but honestly, you’re not sure what good it could possibly do past that armour. What is that stuff, anyways?)

“Leave now,” you demand, “this is your warning. I will shoot you.”

The hand holding the blaster lifts, very pointedly bringing their finger off the trigger. They hold up both of their hands, in surrender. “I’m not here to harm you,” a voice comes through the helmet, modulated and most likely male. He’s speaking quietly, so measured and calm that you wonder if the helmet does that for him.

“You need to leave!” You say again, gaining enough confidence now that his blaster is not pointed at you to put your whole head around the door. Now both of your eyes are on him, you see the entirety of his armour. He is absolutely armed to the fucking teeth, probably not even needing a blaster to kill you in a breath. There’s a rifle on his back. A satchel is slung over his shoulder, but you can’t see the bag itself as it sits over his back.

The shape and design of his helmet is familiar to you, distantly, something in your brain ringing when you see it. But you can’t quite put your finger on it, and it’s not important right now.

“I can’t do that,” he says, measuredly calm again.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

A pause. He still has his hands in the air, but after seeing the amount of weapons he has strapped to him, it’s not all that comforting. “My ship crashed,” he says after an uncomfortably long time, like he wishes he didn’t have to say it. “I was hoping to find somewhere to buy parts.”

You huff out a laugh. “Good luck with that,” you say. Subtly, and with your blaster still aimed at him, you get another look at him. With his hands up, his satchel is starting to slip around his body. You get a glimpse at the very edge of the bag. Whatever is in there is heavy, and you’re not about to take the risk that it’s something dangerous. “You need to leave. You can’t be here.”

“Is there a town nearby that you can direct me to?” He asks. “I tried looking at the map, but it must have been corrupted…”

You laugh again, rolling your eyes. “It’s not corrupted. There’s nothing on this side of the planet.”

Another pause. “But you’re here.”

Alright. Either They have sent some random, terrifying guy to lure you into a false sense of security, or he is just genuinely lost.

You’re just about to lower your blaster, to give him the bad news that he’s going to have to travel half way around the planet if he ever wants to get off it, when two things happen at once.

First, the satchel slips all the way around. You jump at first, but soon, the bag itself is moving, and something pops out from the top of it. Something…alive. Something green, wrinkled, with ears as big as its head and deep, dark eyes almost as large too.

You frown. A kid?

Not enough time to process the fact that this seems to be a father who has got himself stranded, because suddenly you see something else in the satchel, sticking out from one of the front pockets with a blinking light and a beeping that you can hear from here.

A tracking fob.

Your heart rate shoots up, blood suddenly rushing through your ears so you can’t hear anything but that. You flick the safety off your blaster, aim it stronger at him, look through the scope with one eye. “Get out of here, bounty hunter, or I swear I’ll shoot you where that armour can’t protect you.”

The child—why the fuck does a bounty hunter have a child?—coos, seeming concerned, and looks up at the armoured man like he’ll have an answer.

The man himself has his blaster aimed at you again, and you didn’t even see him move to point it. Kriff. He’s fucking good.

They put a bounty on you. Fuck, They wanted you back that badly.

“I said leave!” You cry, feeling tears of both fear and betrayal sting at the backs of your eyes. You try desperately to swallow them down. “Take that tracking fob, and leave, or I swear to the Maker—”

Your words seem to startle him, and he drops his blaster once more, the helmet tilting down towards where the fob is sticking out of his bag. “No, no, it’s not—this isn’t for you!” He says, sounding more hurried now than he had when his hands were up and you were about to shoot him. He fishes the fob out. “This isn’t yours. See, it’s not telling me I’m close to my target. Look.” He holds it out towards you.

A quick glance tells you that he’s not lying about that. The lights aren’t blinking right.

You hesitate. Your heart is still beating wildly in your chest, so hard that it feels like it might jump out and run away from this entire situation. Which, you couldn’t blame it.

You wish you could do the same.

“You really just crashed here?” You ask, your blaster-wielding arm twitching.

“Yes,” he answers.

You look at the child. “The kid yours?”

“I…yes. Yes, he’s mine.”

A frown creases at your forehead, both concerned and curious. “No one’s surrounding us? No one going to jump out and take me?”

“…No,” he says. Something in the tilt of his helmet comes across as amusement.

It’s not funny.

But he has a kid. Someone sent here to kill you wouldn’t have brought a kid.

Well, probably not. Though knowing Them, you wouldn’t necessarily put anything past them.

Not without hesitation, you lower your arm. Flick the safety back on, but keep your finger on it, ready to flick it back at a moment’s notice. “You crashed onto the wrong planet,” you say, stepping further into the doorway. You can’t see his eyes, but it feels like they’re on you, taking you in now he can see you. “I meant it when I said there’s nothing until you get to the other side.”

He observes you. “Can you help me?”

You sigh. It’s been a long time since you had any kind of human contact—well, you assume he’s human—and it’s already becoming too much. A tiny, corrupt part of you says, No, you can’t help him. Send him on his way. A part of you that is either there for self preservation, or a part that They put in you from a young, young age.

It’s a part that you have never listened to. Not once.

And you’re not about to start now.

“I can give you food and water,” you say, eyeing the kid curiously, wondering if it even eats or drinks, “and I can tell you more about this place. Maybe even help with the ship. But I haven’t got a way for you to get to the city.”

He seems to relax a little. Tentatively, and still holding his hands halfway up, he steps closer. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you very much.”

He sounds so sincere, so genuine, that it takes you by surprise. Because, really, he’s quite terrifying. Just this big, looming wall of steel-silver armour, covered head-to-toe in weapons, as well as ones that are no doubt hidden, too. You can’t see his face or read him at all. He walks so casually, like he’s meant to be here. Like this is normal.

And there’s a fucking green child strapped to him, the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

“Please, sit,” you say, gesturing to the table and chairs you have set up under the awning that stretches from your hut’s roof. “Are you hungry?”

“The kid is. We have supplies on our ship, but it’s a few miles away…”

You raise an eyebrow. He doesn’t sit down, just stands there under the shade, staring at you. “When did you crash?”

“We didn’t crash, necessarily. Just…an interesting landing.”

“Right, right, of course. But it was such an interesting landing that you can’t take off again?”

“…That’s right.”

Before replying, you head inside and to the little kitchenette along the left wall. There’s some fruit there and a little of the bread you made last week. You gather it, along with a knife and some plates, and take them out to the man.

“Well, I don’t know much about mechanical stuff,” you shrug, putting it all down on the table, “but I’ll do what I can to help.”

He still doesn’t move to sit down, or even towards the table. The child careens towards the food, though, reaching out little clawed, three-fingered hands.

The man just stares at you. You wonder why. What he’s staring so much for. Is there something particularly puzzling about you? Something he doesn’t understand?

“Thank you,” he says eventually. “For your generosity.”

Yeah, well. Again, you gesture to the table, and finally he follows. He sits down and puts the kid on the bench beside him, giving his nose an affectionate little rub before he turns to the table and breaks a bit off the bread. The kid is reaching for it as he hands it over, and the way his little green mouth starts biting at it is adorable.

“So,” you say, “who are you?”

The helmet looks back at you again. Even out of the sunlight, it’s still a piercing, shining silver. “People call me Mando,” he says after a beat.

You frown. “Mando,” you repeat, mostly to yourself. “As in, Mandalorian?”

He seems to startle a little, pausing as he cuts the fruit into kid-sized squares. “You know about the Mandalorians?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

A noise comes through the helmet. You could swear it sounds like a breathy laugh. He shakes his head and looks back to the fruit in front of him. “Depends what you know.”

“Uh, let’s see,” you sit down on the chair opposite him, across the table. “A race of warriors, proud of their heritage, destroyed by the Empire…”

He tenses. Stops again, and looks up.

Kriff.

“Sorry,” you say quickly, “sorry. It’s…been a while since I talked to another person. That was insensitive.”

After yet another long, indiscernible stare, he gets back to work. Silence passes for a minute, long and uncomfortable as anxiety roils in your stomach. You always say the wrong fucking thing, don’t you? Always making things worse, always fucking things up…

“Well, you’re right,” his modulated voice breaks through your quickly spiralling thoughts. “The Empire destroyed most of us.” Grief laces his voice, heavy like you imagine the armour on him must be.

It twigs, then. His armour. Mandalorian. The shape of his helmet.

That’s where you recognise it from.

You want to ask, want to hear more about his people, about what happened. Before coming here, you knew a lot about the different cultures in the Galaxy; last you heard, the Empire was gone, and the New Republic was being built. But you don’t know anything about the Mandalorians except that they were all wiped out—or, so you thought.

He starts handing little cubes of yellow fruit to the kid, who coos and accepts them happily.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” You ask him, curious.

“No, thank you.”

A frown tugs at your forehead. Maybe he’s not human. “Do you…do you eat?”

“What?”

“I mean…do you need to eat?”

“I—yes, I need to eat. I’m human,” he adds on, like he’s realised my unasked question.

Okay, good. Not that it would have been bad if he’d not been human. But the way his broad shoulders look under the armour, the solidity of his thighs, the way his gloved fingers are flexing around the fruit, shiny with juice, working deftly…

You shake yourself from your thoughts. You literally just met this man, and you know that he’s a bounty hunter. You need to stop.

Speaking of, “So did you come here for a bounty?”

He looks up again, and something about the way he startles comes across as surprise. Pleasant or unpleasant surprise, you’re not sure, but either way, he looks surprised that you asked that.

“No,” he says.

“How badly damaged is your ship?” Recalling the smell of burning engine oil, you prop your foot up on one of the table’s legs, the soles of your boot gripping to the wood. Sunlight is streaming through the coarse fabric of the awning above you, casting tiny slivers of golden beams across all three of you. It shimmers in his armour, and he looks just a little magical. The kid is gazing up at the twinkling lights above him. It looks like the canvas is covered in golden stars, flitting as trees rustle between the fabric and the sunlight.

“I can probably fix it myself. At least enough to get me somewhere that has parts.”

“Hyperdrive blown?”

“Yes,” he says. “How’d you know?”

“I could smell it,” you say. It’s been a long time since you smelled that, but it’s ingrained in your memory, all sour and oily.

“The hyperdrive blew, and it damaged the engine. I only just got us down safely.”

“So probably a little body damage too, then.” I ponder, wondering if there’s any way we can find parts that he might need. There’s a scrap heap a little way off—definitely not as far as the other side of the kriffing planet—left there by, presumably, the last people unfortunate enough to crash here.

“I thought you didn’t know about mechanics?” He asks, something in his voice quirking, the same tilt of his helmet that you thought was amusement earlier.

“I have a little knowledge. Are you sure you’re not hungry?”

He shakes his head.

“Alright.”

And it’s not a good idea to offer him the kind of help you’re thinking of offering. It’s not. He’s a bounty hunter, very clearly dangerous, and he’s also the first person you’ve seen since you left Them.

You don’t trust people easily. You used to. But you don’t anymore.

But he has a kid. And if you don’t help him, he’s going to be stuck here forever, unless he’s happy to take the year-long journey of going to the other side of the planet. You came here for solitude, for safety. To not have to trust people.

That won’t work if he’s going to have to stay here.

And, who knows? Maybe he’ll try and kill you for food in the end. By the looks of him, he could.

You sigh to yourself.

Because even despite all that, despite the fact that the only remotely good reason to help him out is to try and stop yourself getting eaten, you’d still help him anyway.

That’s who you are. You didn’t let Them make you anything else. Swore you would never.

“Well,” you say, having made up your mind, “there’s a scrap heap a fifty klicks West of here. It’ll take a couple days of travelling on foot to get there, but it might have what you need.”

He nods. “I could probably get there. Can you mark it on a map?”

You haven’t seen a map in years. In fact, you only know this place by its terrain. By its land under your feet, the trees above you. “No,” you say. “But I can come with you.”

He stares. “You don’t have to do that.”

“If you ever want to get off this planet, yes, I do,” you say with a smirk. What you don’t say is, And I want you to leave. Despite the fact that you’ve got really lovely shoulders and a cute baby. “Assuming you actually need parts. Can you fix what you need to fix with what you’ve got?”

He sighs. “Probably not,” he says. “It’s a new ship. I don’t…know it as well as my others.”

I quirk an eyebrow. “You have others?”

“Had,” he corrects. “I have had others.”

“Hm. Alright, well, I’ll help you, if you’ll accept my help. Just don’t point a blaster at me again.”

There’s that sound again, a little huff, like a laugh. “I’ll ask the same of you,” he says, “if you would.”

“Mm…I’m already doing you a pretty big favour,” you tease, smirking and patting the blaster that sits at your hip, “I’ll think about it.”

You’re not really big on babies. They’re messy, sticky, demanding, and loud.

But this one is really very cute.

He’s got hold of your finger, and is squeezing it gently between his little fingers. Mando tells you that his name is Grogu, and the first time you call him it, his big green ears twitch along with a tilt of his head.

It probably wasn’t all that wise to let Mando stay the night. Even though he and the kid slept outside in your hiking tent, and you kept the front door locked, you know that he could have without a doubt gotten inside to kill you. Or worse.

But he didn’t.

All that happens is that, when you wake up, he and the kid are already sitting at the table, and the little box of food that you’d left with them after sunset in case they got hungry was empty.

You’d talked with Mando a little yesterday, but mostly went about your daily routine like he wasn’t there. He seems good at that; just being still, blending in, the opposite of obtrusive. Which, you suppose, is what makes a good bounty hunter. At least the type that likes to do it with minimal mess.

Still, you’re curious about him. He sat outside all day with the kid, even took him for a walk to the nearby creek in the late afternoon. It’s so strange to see such contrast in him: the cold, hard exterior of his armour, something so impenetrable and immovable; and then the soft way he handles the kid, the way he bounces him on his hip, shows him magic tricks, picks him up when his little hands reach out for him.

There are a lot of questions on your tongue. Why and how he has the kid, where he came from, where the rest of his people are, how the kriff are you such a gentle person when you’re also the scariest pillar of metal I’ve ever seen?

You keep them to yourself.

You wouldn’t want anyone asking questions about you. (Hence why you’re here in the first place, but.) So you don’t ask the same of him.

The morning after he arrived here, the three of you set off for the scrap heap. Your backpack slung over your back, filled with blankets, rations, flasks, and sleeping mats. Mando carries a bag that you gave him, though most of the bulk is your hiking tent.

It’s only when you’re a half hour into the forest that you realise you’ve only got one tent.

Three sleeping mats for the floor, yes. Three sets of blankets, yes.

But one kriffing tent.

Well, you think, we can take sleep watch shifts anyway.

The sun is warm this morning, but not too hot; just a comfortable heat on your skin as you walk through the thick forest, climbing over fallen trees and winding, gnarled roots that stick up from the ground. It’s mostly dry earth underfoot, some moss glistening on rocks, a few tufts of grass sprouting beneath pillars of light that shine through the treetops.

Mando isn’t much of a talker, you’re realising. And you can’t decide if you like that or not.

The kid is always babbling, though. He’s got his head sticking out of Mando’s satchel again, and he’s looking around slowly, his mouth slightly open and big eyes wide as he takes in his surroundings. You wonder if he’s ever seen anywhere like this; where the two of them may have been together. You don’t even know what species he is—he could be from somewhere like this. A planet with a warm, mildly humid climate during the spring.

You’re coming up on one of the large valleys that splits the earth, stretching down into a deep cavern filled with rushing water coming from the tall waterfall beside it. You can hear the water before you see any sign of it.

“We’re coming to the waterfall valley,” you explain, “there’s a fallen tree over the chasm that we can use as a bridge.”

Wordless, Mando nods in acknowledgement.

The fallen tree that bridges the gap between sides of the river is giant, both in length and width, with more than enough room to comfortably walk across it in a single-file line. It was probably thousands of years old before it fell. The roots snapped at its base, leaving gnarled and sharp splints of wood curling up into the air and surrounding foliage. On the other side, its branches are bare, the leaves having died and fallen off long ago, and the branches are anchored into the ground after years of being covered by it.

“It looks mossy,” Mando says as you step up onto it first. “Watch your step.”

He’s right; the spray of water constantly shooting up into the air from the waterfall has made for a nice home for moss, glistening in dark green florets along the top, with longer water weeds hanging from the underside.

It could be slippy, but you’ve walked across it many times, and you’re used to it. It’s the only way to the fruit trees in the overgrown meadow. There’s almost a path worn across it, though not quite; the moss grows back far too enthusiastically to stay away.

Grogu is cooing as you cross. You don’t look back at him lest you lose your footing, but you can imagine that he’s gazing around with that same wonder on his face.

It is pretty. This whole area is pretty. Serene, if you don’t count the various wildlife that can often be just a little hostile. There are birds of prey that swoop down from the impossibly small treetops sometimes; yellow and red lizards that skitter along the forest floor, their tails, complete with stinger, thrashing threateningly into the air as they run past. As long as you keep an ear out, though, it’s alright.

“I don’t know your name,” Mando’s voice, calm through his helmet, cuts into your thoughts once you’ve crossed. He’s fallen into step beside you, one of his hands absently pressed against the kid’s back.

You glance at him, uncertain. Technically, you don’t know his name. So, really, it’s only fair that your answer is, “No, you don’t.”

His helmet tilts as he huffs out a laugh. “Alright. Guess I’m not going to?”

“Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine,” you challenge, raising a teasing eyebrow at him.

He laughs again. You wonder how often he does that. He seems to live a pretty serious life, with what little information you have on him. But the kid is adorable, and there’s bound to be several times a day where he laughs at his cuteness, surely. “Alright. Fair enough.”

“There’s a river up ahead. I’m going to fill my flask.” You gesture to the approaching clearing where a river cuts through the forest floor, a few metres wide, deeper than it looks.

“Can we cross it?”

“We’ll have to get our feet wet, but yes. And watch out for the water snails.”

“The what?”

“They live in the riverbed. If your foot lingers too long, they’ll crawl on you and suck you down into the sand. Oh, and then there’s the stinging lizards that live in the brush on each side.”

The helmet tilts to look at you, and something about his body language comes across as incredulity. “Safe planet you got here,” he says, dry.

The surprise of hearing him make a sarcastic comment catches in a laugh in your throat, bubbling out without permission. “It is safe,” you counter, smiling at him even though he’s not looking at you anymore, “no one else around kind of has that effect.”

“If there’s nothing on this side of the planet,” he says, “why are you here?”

A cold stab of dread shoots through your stomach. Quickly, you push it away, forcing the thoughts out of your mind that want to come in and race around until you feel dizzy. To cover up your slight falter, you clear your throat as you step out into the river’s clearing. “How about I don’t ask you about you, and you don’t ask me about me?”

He stops beside you when you lean down to fill your flask from the rapidly running river water. For a moment, he just observes you, quiet. It’s strange to be able to feel someone’s gaze so strongly when you can’t even see their face, their eyes. “Deal,” he says.

Satisfied, you stand up straight again, and gesture to the shallower part of the river a few feet to the right. He follows as you step into the water. You keep your steps light and quick, scanning the riverbed for any sign of those metallic-brown molluscs that masquerade as innocent rocks.

The thing with the snails is that they don’t actually want anything with you. They don’t eat you. They just pull you down into the sand because it’s their instinct. You get stuck, and sink until you drown in the water or the riverbed itself. When one sticks to your foot, the entire swarm of them joins in, and it’s nearly impossible to escape if you don’t catch it quickly enough. Your only hope in that situation is that the blue shindl birds will come and eat the snails before their numbers are too many.

You make it to the other side quickly enough, and turn to watch Mando copying the lightness of your steps. It’s quite amusing, actually, to see this heavily armoured, heavy-booted man taking light footsteps like he’s standing on ground too hot for his feet. The kid laughs from his place in the satchel, and you watch in amusement.

That is, until, there’s a loud swoop coming from the sky above you, accompanied by a Squalk!

A shindl bird, bigger than your own body, swoops just metres above you, dipping so low down towards the river that you can feel the downdraft from its giant, pale white and blue feathered wings.

On instinct, Mando freezes in his tracks, covering the kid with one hand and reaching for his blaster with the other.

“Don’t shoot it!” You shout hastily, watching as he tracks the bird flying down the length of the river with his blaster’s scope. The bird turns around, heading back to you. “They’re just looking for the snails to eat!”

Mando ignores you, too busy clutching the kid to his side.

“Mando, you need to move! The snails!”

This time, he doesn’t ignore you; but he does only have a second to look back at you before he’s trying to move, to bring his feet out from the riverbed, but one of them is stuck.

Kriff, he’s stuck.

His visor turns down to his feet. He tugs his left leg, trying to walk forward on it.

“Oh, for kriff’s sake,” you curse, reaching for your own blaster. He’s not sinking yet, but you can already see the large snail on his foot through the water, and more are coming to life beneath the surface, slowly making their way to him.

The shindl swoops overhead again, lower this time, clearly having spotted the snails too.

“Stay still!” You shout to Mando over the deafening sound of the bird’s wings flapping in the air.

He looks up at you and sees the blaster pointed towards his foot. “What are you doing?”

“Just hold still!” You aim through the sight, just an inch away from the edge of Mando’s foot, getting the snail’s eyes right in your crosshair.

Mando protests, saying, “Wait, no, don’t—” But he’s too late, your finger already squeezing the trigger.

The snail on his foot wilts immediately, like leafy vegetables thrown into a hot pan. Mando wastes no time in pulling on his leg again, and he only just gets himself to move in time before the rest of the snail’s colony is gaining on him and discovering the body of the early bird who got the worm—well, the foot.

He splashes out of the river towards you, still gripping the child to his side, with both hands now. Once he’s free and clear on to the riverbank, he sighs out in relief at the same time you do.

Lowering your blaster, you watch as the shindl bird swoops right down to the water and ducks its large beak down below the surface, grabbing the dead snail first. Its wings are so wide and so close that you feel the very edge of one of its feathers brush against your face.

It turns to look at the two of you before it flies up completely vertically into the sky and gives a triumphant cry.

“You might want to back up,” you tell Mando with a smirk at how he’s trying to scrape off the snail’s goo from the top of his boot. “The rest are coming.”

“The snails?”

“No. The birds.” As you reach a hand out in front of him, you back up, automatically taking him with you. He follows willingly, though he could just as easily push you away and defy your advice.

You step back into the tree line again, under the cover of the rustling branches.

Before you can even blink, suddenly an entire flock of the shindl birds is descending upon the river where Mando was once stuck, all diving in with their beaks open to pick up as many snails as they can at once.

Really, Mando did them a favour by getting stuck. The only time the snail colony comes out is when they think they’ve caught something. Otherwise, the shindl have to spend hours looking down into the water, standing still or hovering low, waiting for one to appear before them.

The flaps and squalks of the birds fills the air, and beneath it, you can hear a trill of glee coming from the kid’s satchel. Looking down, you find his hands outstretched towards the whole ordeal, flapping a little in excitement.

You chuckle. From under the cover of the trees, it’s a pretty amazing thing to see. The birds’ feathers are metallic and pearly, fading from glistening white to pale blue as the sunlight shifts over their curves and edges. They fly so gracefully despite the frantic fight to find the best snail.

The first time you got caught in one of their food grabs wasn’t as fun, though. But you learned your lesson.

“What are those things?” Mando asks. He lifts the kid from the satchel and clutches him to his breastplate, tapping comfortingly at the kid’s tummy. It’s sweet, like he’s reassuring him that everything is alright after what happened.

When you don’t answer right away, the helmet turns to look at you, waiting for an answer.

You got distracted by him, to be honest. By him and the kid. “They’re shindl birds,” you say.

He looks back to them. The flock is clearing a little now; you imagine there are only a few snails left for them to devour.

“They’re native to this planet. They really love those snails.”

“Hm.” Mando hums, and you’re not sure if it’s an acknowledgement or a laugh.

“Come on,” you say, gesturing to continue on your path, “we should move.”

“Are there more creatures out to get us?”

“Probably. But don’t worry. I’ll save you again, should you need it.”

Walking alongside you, his helmet tilts. “I can handle myself.”

“Clearly. You’re welcome, by the way.”

His sigh is not impatient or unimpressed; in fact, it sounds amused, warm. “Thank you. You did save me back there.”

“No problem. I’ve dealt with those things before.”

“I would have appreciated a warning, though.”

“I gave you a warning; I told you not to stop in the river!”

“You didn’t tell me about the birds.”

The kid laughs, lifting up one of his hands to press it against the side of Mando’s helmet.

“Well, I’m just glad you didn’t shoot them,” you say. Out of the corner of your eye as you walk side-by-side, you observe Mando, watch the kid touch the plate of metal that covers his cheekbone. You realise, then, that you don’t actually know what he looks like. He’s never taken his helmet off in front of you; not even his gloves. You don’t think you’ve even seen him have a drink.

Maybe it’s for the best, though. Because you’re finding yourself wanting to walk just a little ways behind him so you can admire the casual, commanding way that he walks, the slight swing of his hips as his hands flex at his sides. The breadth of his shoulders, emphasised by his heavy armour. His hips, the way his torso gets only a little narrower towards them, his entire frame straight and wide and beautiful.

You need to stop.

You don’t even know what he looks like.

Speaking of, “Do you want a drink?”

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Do you drink?”

“I told you, I’m human.”

You nod, hoping it comes across as unassuming. But there are so many questions swirling around in your head; so much that you suddenly want to know about him. He’s mysterious, you’ll give him that. Does he do it on purpose? Is it something he does to try and get people to follow him, or is he just genuinely a private person?

You’re so used to people using tactics, games to mess with you and the way you form relationships, that you never know what to believe. They used to string you along, make you chase them, make you beg for them to just see you, hear you, understand you…and then, just when you felt like you’d finally done enough for them, they’d turn it all around and shut you out again.

It was a never ending cycle.

It’s hard not to project that onto Mando. He’s the first person you’ve seen since you escaped Them. For all you know, he could be just as manipulative.

Except, unprompted, he says, “I don’t take my helmet off.”

Oh.

Okay, racing thoughts on pause: “What?”

“It’s part of my Creed. As a Mandalorian.”

“Oh,” you say as the pieces fit into place. It makes sense now, but you’re still surprised; you didn’t know that about Mandalorians. In fact, you distinctly remember meeting some when you were a child who definitely did not wear their helmet all the time. “So…you’ve never taken it off?”

He pauses, hesitating. His moment of unprompted honesty falters. “It’s complicated.”

Oh, great. It’s hard not to put bad intentions on to him when he says stuff like that. It’s complicated.

You wouldn’t understand.

You don’t get to know the secrets.

You’ve earned my trust, well done.

I never want to see you again.

You have to force yourself to stop spiralling. For a long moment there, you were no longer walking through the forest with a strange Mandalorian and his little green child. You were walking through the forest with Them. With your family. And the weight of everything they ever did.

You clear your throat, demanding yourself back into the moment. “Is it not uncomfortable?”

It must be. Especially in humid climates like this. Or maybe it’s temperature-controlled under there. The entire set of armour looks pretty swish; maybe it’s got some cool technology.

“I’m used to it,” he says, and his tone suggests that that’s the last he wants to talk about it.

So, you’re quiet again.

You focus on the ground crunching underfoot, the tiny birds whistling in the trees.

You’re not back there. Mando isn’t Them.

You’re safe.

You’re okay.

notes: i'm REALLY excited to finally be posting this fic! i hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. all interactions are appreciated, but comments and reblogs especially make my day ❤️ updates will be regular!

i'm going to make a taglist for this fic so if you wanna be on it, drop me an ask or reply to this post!

take care of yourself ❤️

#din djarin #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian imagine #din djarin imagine #star wars fanfiction #din djarin fanfiction #my post #my fic: mando #my fic #i only see daylight

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