And we're back. Enjoy!

Third Person POV, same rules as the first chapter:

The Mandalorian walked up the steep dune, with the pod just right behind him. The green bean creature kept on cooing, and blowing bubbles with it's tiny creature saliva. It's kind of cute......shit. 

Mando made it over the dune, and he couldn't believe what he saw laying in the midst of the impact zone. 

There was a person....to be exact a human, 

and he was just, lying there. 

I should go help him, the Mandalorian thought.

No you shouldn't, he's probably just dead or....

"Fuck," he muttered as he shuffled down the steep sandy dune. 

...

Mando reached the man that was lying in the center of the sand and rocks, and he gasped. 

Not like, a little, dramatic gasp, that you do when something isn't actually funny or isn't actually cool or isn't actually interesting, but a gasp that you do when you have literally nothing else to say. 

And if it weren't for the helmet, Mando's jaw would have dropped to the floor and never been able to be put back again. 

This man, this angelic man, had curly, brown hair that looked almost like a dark chocolate that Mando had only seen Karga possess once. 

His skin was a white alabaster, with light freckles across his face and neck and shoulders, which were revealed by the white linen top that he wore. His arms were long and lean, showing muscle, even as he laid limp in the dirt. 

Mando stared at the man for a while, minutes, maybe years, but the cooing of the green bean next to him broke him out of his trance. The warrior broke his gaze away from the man lying in the sand, and looked over to the sand, clearing his throat and internally scolding himself.

What the hell....you pervert what's wrong with you?? the Mandalorian scolded himself. 

Mando bent down to the gorgeous-shit-man and pressed his pointer and middle finger against his neck, right where his pulse point is, and felt a steady, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump against my finger tips. He breathed out a sigh of relief, glad that there wouldn't just be a dead body in the middle of the desert. 

Wait, but what do I do now?

The warrior stood back and listed off his options in his head.

One, you could leave him here alone and let him wake up and have to deal with predators, bounty hunters, and the cold. 

OR

Two, you can take him with you and make sure he's fine...and figure out everything else from there?

But what the hell are you going to do with a random gorgeous man that just fell out of the sky?

Mando stood there, and looked down at the man in the sand. He turned around, and put his hands up to his temples, through the helmet. The small green bean creature cooed beside him, which drew his attention, and Mando glanced over. The creature's big, brown and black eyes captivated him, and twisted that same something from the base of his armored heart. 

This little creature was playing with his heart. 

Little fucker. 

Looking back at the man on the dirt, Mando sighed, a deep, slow, aggravated sigh, and leaned down to pick him up. The Mandalorian raised the man up, into his arms, cradled with one arm under the man's legs and one behind his back and arms. 

He started walking towards the flatter land, towards the direction of his ship, and he could've sworn that the man nestled farther into his chest. 

...

The Mandalorian grunted, and the green bean thing sat higher up in it's pod, it's big black and brown doe eyes reflecting the light of the cauterizer in the warrior's hand. 

The rock that had been on top of Mando's arm after the explosion had cut through Mando's shirt sleeve and through to his skin, leaving a nasty cut. It wasn't deep enough to need stitches, but it was wide enough to need to be cauterized, even though it would hurt more to put him back together than it was to get the cut in the first place. 

The mystery man was laying on the ground, a few feet from the Mandalorian, breathing in deeply, an arm laid across his chest. Though, every time that the Mandalorian grunted, the man twitched, a look of pain flashed across his delicate face. 

Mando didn't notice though, he was too busy trying not to crack a tooth as he clenched his jaw as the cauterizer came back down onto his skin. Suddenly, the green bean was next to the warrior, with it's arm outstretched, it's three fingered hand reaching towards the cut. Mando jumped, and gently placed the creature back into the pod. 

When the green bean did it again, and the Mandalorian put him back in the pod, he didn't close it, thinking that the creature would understand. 

Little did he know that the sleeping man was no longer sleeping, awake. And staring at him. 

"You should let him help you." 

"HOLY SHIT!" The Mandalorian yelled, throwing the cauterizer at the man, who caught it right before it was to hit him in the face. He gently set it aside on the dirt and sand beside him. 

"You can't do that!" Mando swallowed, willing his heart rate to slow down. Now the beautiful man was sitting up, with his legs crossed beneath him and his hands folding delicately in his lap. His toned arms flickered in the light that the small heat lamp gave off, and his eyes shone back at him through his visor. 

"I am sorry," the man said, his voice quiet and low, a sweet tenor song. "I did not mean to alarm you." 

The Mandalorian feigned interest in the mysterious man, and just grunted and grabbed the cauterizer from beside him. Mando sat back down on the opposite side of the pod, and across from the man. 

"He was only trying to help." the man offered again. 

"I don't need help." the warrior replied, ending the conversation on the topic without actually saying it. 

There was silence for a while. 

"Why did you help me?" The man asked.

"I just did." 

"That's not an answer."

"Yes it is." 

"I disagree. Why did you really save me?" The man asked again, leaning forward and furrowing his eyebrows slightly. 

The Mandalorian sighed and set the cauterizer down. "I don't know."

The man sat back and nodded, lowering his head.

"How did you survive that fall?" Mando asked. 

The man looked confused, and his dark eyebrows furrowed again. "What do you mean?" 

"How did you not explode? Or at least break all of your bones in the crash?" Mando elaborated. 

There was visible confusion on the other man's face. 

The Mandalorian sighed and held gestured with his hands. "You know? You fell down from the sky and you just landed on the hard, rocky, surface of this despicable planet and everything exploded, and you just, didn't?" Mando finished off with a gesture of an explosion with his hands, ballooning them upwards and out to create an mushroom shape. 

The man sat there for a moment, and smiled at Mando's amusing attempts to explain his question. 

The smile twisted something inside of Mando, just like what happened when the child held his finger and looked at him with those big, black and brown, doe eyes. 

Shit, I'm losing it. 

"No, I didn't." The man said with a playful grin. "I would not have been able to. It's complicated, you could say." 

The Mandalorian did not understand anything that the man had just said, and even though his face was hidden, the man seemed to understand his confusion. 

"Complicated as in..??"

"Complicated as in I'm an angel."

...

"You are hilarious." Mando said, shaking his head in disbelief.  

"It's true." The man insisted. "How else could I have survived the fall?" 

I don't know. You're a fucking rock or something.

"I don't know, maybe you just did, or something, anything! It's just that....you can't be an angel." The Mandalorian said, as if he were trying to convince himself.

The man seemed to notice this, because he responded quickly and calmly. "And why's that?" 

"Because angels aren't real...obviously." 

"And yet here I am." 

"And yet there you are."

...

"That doesn't make any sense." Mando said, shaking his head, for the fifteen billionth time in the past five minutes. 

"Yes it does." The man replied. 

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"No." 

"Yes."

"Yes. No! Dammit." Mando groaned. 

"I can prove it." The man said, gesturing towards himself. 

"Yeah, sure, go ahead." The Mandalorian rolled his eyes and grabbed the cauterizer again. 

The man stood up and walked over to the Mandalorian, crouching beside him where the green bean creature was just minutes ago. Mando looked up and jumped a bit to see the man so close so fast. 

"Uh, what are you-?" 

"I'm proving to you that I'm an angel." The man said, matter-of-factly. He reached out to hold to touch the warrior's arm, and Mando pulled away quickly, scooting back. 

"No." Mando grunted. "I can do it."

"I told you that I'm proving to you that I'm an angel. Come back here." The man said again, a hint of a growl in his voice, but not enough to sound too threatening. It was almost as if a Loth cat hissed at a Loth wolf. Trying to show dominance but clearly the smaller being in the situation. 

The Mandalorian's eyes softened behind the helmet, but his body stayed tense as the man moved closer to him. The other man touched the skin below the cut with his finger tips, and his other hand moved the arm into his lap, which was almost straddling Mando's side now that he had sit down. Mando's hand was awkwardly splayed against the man's light brown linen pants. 

Mando's face heated up and he tilted his eyes in the opposite direction, even though the other man couldn't see his face. The warrior cleared his throat as the other man touched the area of skin around the cut with his finger tips, sending jolts of discomfort through the Mandalorian. "What's your name?" Mando forced out as he suddenly clenched his jaw as the man poked harder at the cut. 

"My name is Meklar." The man said, still focused on the cut. 

"Hmmm. Meklar, huh?"

"That would be correct." 

That's a very beautiful name, Mando wanted to say. 

As if the man-Meklar, read his thoughts, he replied with a smile, "Thank you."

"You're welc-wait, I didn't say anything.." Mando turned his helmeted head to face the so-called-angel. 

Meklar flushed, and focused in on the wound that he was 'fixing'. "Uh, I'm terribly sorry. I didn't tell you--some angels can, sort of read minds.." 

He looked up at the Mandalorian with a bashful expression, and turned his attention back to the cut when he didn't get a response. 

"Huh, okay." The Mandalorian grunted, but inside his head he was running in circles, screaming his head off. One, because the cut on his arm really hurt by now, and two, because this 'angel' had a really beautiful name, and three, because now he realized that this 'angel' with a pretty name could read minds and holy shit he was not prepared for that. 

"You are an amusing man," Meklar smiled at Mando. 

"Thank y-AH!" Mando gritted his teeth threw his head back as something, something bright coursed through his arm and through his body, sending tingles of pain and comfort through him. 

He looked down at his arm just in time to see thin white-blue lines weaving his flesh back together and then soaking into his skin, like they belonged there the whole time. He also noticed that his hand had clamped onto the "angel's" thigh, and Mando was mortified for what he had done, quickly letting go and pushing his hand into his own lap. 

Meklar sat back on his heels and wrapped an arm around his knee, tucking on under him and one to his chest. 

Mando panted, out of embarrassment and out of pain, that was somehow no longer there. "What, what was that?"

"It was my grace." Meklar replied, seemingly unfazed by the ordeal. 

Mando raised a sweaty eyebrow under the helmet. 

Yeah, what the hell does that mean?

The 'angel' smiled. "It means that I healed you, using part of myself." 

"Care to elaborate?" Mando prodded.

"An angel's grace, is, in theory, an angel's soul. Without it they are weaker, and cannot heal, read minds, fly, or survive, basically. They are essentially mortal." 

"Hmm. So I have part of your soul, just, you know...milling around inside me now?" Mando asked, confused and feeling slightly intruded, but also calmer. 

"Pretty much." Meklar confirmed. 

"Alrighty then...."

"You can sleep now. If you would like that, that is." the angel offered. 

Suddenly there was a calming wave of exhaustion that washed over the Mandalorian, and he saw Meklar send him a sweet smile as his eyes closed, and his breathing evened out. 

And he slept. 

I really hope that you liked this chapter. I worked very hard on it, but if you have any questions or comments, feel free to share. 

comment, vote, and share!

Word count: 2229 

10/23/20   

(revised 12/22/20)

Have a beautiful apocalypse!

love, kermit