Dive into your creative stream
rating: g (word count 762)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/40832574
When the Mandalorian shows up in front of Cara's glossy new officer's desk, asking her to help him spring one Migs Mayfeld, traitor to democracy and accessory to murder, the first thing she thinks is: this man is not the same person who fought by my side on Sorgan. There’s something wrong with the rigid way he moves, with the tightness in his voice when he speaks.
“These stripes mean something,” she says, indicating the badge on her chest.
It’s a no, but not a hard one. More of a please don’t ask me that. She doesn’t want to choose between Mando and her last chance of going straight. (She doesn’t know if she has the strength to choose going straight.)
“They have the kid.”
Cara’s eyes narrow. Oh no, they don’t.
The whole way to Morak, Cara watches the Mandalorian out of the corner of her eye.
There used to be a tenderness to him, an awkward softness that poked out between the cracks of his armor. She saw it first on Sorgan, in the way he watched his son play with the children in the krill ponds. Heard it in the thank you's he clumsily handed the young widow like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.
It's gone now.
There’s an aura of deadliness concentrated around him that wasn’t there before. It’s like he’s a blaster aimed to kill and he’s only waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger. His voice is a gaping void. Sure, Mando has always been quiet, but now… it’s like he’s catatonic. Like he only exists when he needs to for the mission.
Cara has never feared him. Not even on that fateful day on Sorgan when she looked up from her spotchka, saw a real live Mandalorian hunter, and thought for the first time in her life, I might be meeting my match. She tends to be more practical than terrified in those kinds of situations, but—
Not gonna lie, the rigid figure sitting across from her makes her a little uneasy. It’s a good thing they’re on the same side.
The old Mando called a truce and offered her soup. She’s not so sure this one would do the same.
Cara can’t believe he agreed to replace his beskar with stormtrooper armor. She can’t believe he suggested replacing his beskar with stormtrooper armor.
It’s kind of dumb, but all she can think is where did your face go? She knows, rationally, that the black T-visor and beskar zygomatic curves aren’t his real face, that helmets are removable and there’s got to be a head somewhere in there. But still. Where is his face.
“I’d say it looks good on you, but I’d be lying,” she says.
The Mandalorian looks at her.
Cara’s always been able to read the crease of a brow and the twitching of lips through a helmet’s tilt. She knows this man as well as she knows her own blaster. Knows the way he fights and the way he stands still, knows what he’s saying when he doesn’t say anything at all. They’ve had entire conversations without speaking a single word. But now—
Now, for the the first time since the day they met, she locks eyes with the Mandalorian and has no idea what’s going on inside his head.
(It’s the lack of doubt. It’s the way he faces her, head-on, like a challenge.)
It shouldn’t feel so jarring. It’s not like he’s done anything yet that Cara wouldn’t do if their places were swapped; the kid is everything to him, so there’s no justification for the strange, premonitory loneliness she feels welling up in her bones. It’s just a helmet.
(It has never been just a helmet.)
Cara will go to the other end of the galaxy and farther if her Mandalorian needs her to. It’s a silent promise she made a long time ago, sometime after a bag of credits and a second chance plunked onto the dirt by her feet. She owes everything she is now to this man, who met an outlaw and saw a former Rebel shocktrooper, who without saying a single word reminded her what it was to have a heart and a code and a people to protect. She’ll hold herself to her vow as long as she’s able, but something tells her the Mandalorian is headed somewhere she can’t follow.
These stripes on my chest mean something, she thinks. That beskar meant something. You were the one who taught me that.
I wonder if you remember.