022. A STITCH IN TIME SAVES NINE

( —If you fix a small problem right away, it will not become a bigger problem later. )

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They said luck was the debris of design. But when the design itself had been lacking the foolproof status, luck had been as lost as the wind. When chances and fate came into play, Din surmised that it wasn't too hard to revel in the outcome. 

Just like the news on Kuiil's termination, the differed blast had come out of nowhere. Moff Gideon had stood in front of him, the man behind all the trouble he went through, the man who was ready to risk everything for the child, aiming a blaster smaller than the cannon he bore in his hands. Four stormtroopers, his ass.

Chances were unavoidable, that a single bolt could trigger a detonation.

Din saw the lancelike rays of amber and a huge ball of varicoloured flames belched upwards and the gust knocking into him with the force of a thousand burning stars. He couldn't see for a good minute, unable to move, paralyzed from neck and down. The helmet weighed his neck down and he knew—this was how it was going to end. With the last sight of engorging smoke-rings; twisting, writhing and seeing gold.

Cara Dune, he acknowledged. He felt himself being lifted and dragged from the back, seeing flashes of moments with dragging eyelids and he saw the moving lights on the IG droid's eyes. Hung askew its chest was the child in a blanketed carrier, watching him and Din searched the outlay. Never seeing what he wanted to see. 

Between the dull ringing and the jarring bursts that sung a song of death before they left the blasters, he saw a flash of golden—a flaxen phoenix casting him a glance as she appeared out of nowhere. Her gold dress had smears of copper and cerise as if she had returned from a battle, emerging victorious. Her hands had end written all over it, seeing the vigorous shaking and the wet grease of blood that ran up her hands. Death tarried at her fingertips, licking onward her elbows and playing it where it belonged. 

Myra. 

"Stay with me," he heard Cara say in a blur of words. 

The pain took away a portion of his brain, containing a nuisance and as if someone had pressed a branding iron into his skull. Another thought wandered without completion, and adding to the insanity was seeing a shaken Myra staring down at him. Confused, terrified and in the midst of horror.

"I'm not gonna make it," he fought the words out through trembling lips. "Go."

"Shut up," replied Cara, vehement on never leaving a soldier behind. Her face had crushed with ferocity as she glimpsed at the witch for a second and then, back at the Mandalorian. "You just got your bell rung. You'll be fine."

"Leave me," he beseeched again, his voice now barely a whisper. His eyes strained back on Myra who had collapsed without a balance onto her side and continuing stare at him; intense and obstinate. 

The hand that had been supporting his neck all this while left, Cara looking at her blood-spattered fingertips in shrouded mortification. Her throat bobs with effort, looking back to rest her hands over his helmet as if to lift it off.

"I'm gonna need to take this thing off," she whispered but the Mandalorian in him forbade it. His hands crashed over hers swiftly to halt her actions.

"No," he refused, a painful gasp leaving him. "You leave me. Make sure the child is safe."

Shakily, he reached for a clasp around his shoulder to release a pin. He placed the medallion onto Cara's palm with a firm nod, his breaths quivering with the ongoing discomfort.  

"You tell them it's from Din Djarin. You tell them the foundling was in my protection, and they'll help you." 

"We can make it," Cara resisted his acquittals to leave. Her head was resolute was set on everyone making it out alive and how much ever the Mandalorian had come to admire that, it was not going to work. "Come on! Let's go!" 

"I'm not gonna make it and you know it." 

Cara shook her head, once again protesting.

"You protect the child," he stated adamantly. "I can hold them back long enough for you to escape. Let me have a warrior's death."

"I won't leave you," Cara opposed. 

"This is the Way."

Between the burning embers and crests of flames that jetted out the cantina's barred window, Myra continued to stare at him emotionlessly. It was getting harder to guess—disbelief? Guilt? Despair. 

For a moment, Din thought he saw tears in the witch's eyes. Only he wasn't hallucinating, it was real. 

A glimmering motley of ochroid and straw-coloured droplets had gathered underneath her eyes, mellowing down under the crevasses of her sockets and forming a lush, succinct pattern. He had never seen anything like it; the mottles of sleet liquid standing out amidst the infiltrating smoke from the outside and her aureate eyes gliding between the surreal tears. Have mercy on my soul, he thought.

He found himself laughing breathlessly. "I can't believe it. You're beautiful even when you cry."

Myra found herself blinking herself out her trance, reaching to touch the space under her eyes and seeing it with confusion. Pushing her wrist against the wetness, she cleansed it away and partook with him in a shoal laugh.

"So dramatic, Mandalorian," she whispered, her voice cracking under pressure.

"Says the girl crying gold tears," he teased, lilted to a parting mutter. "And here I thought witches never wept."

"We don't."

Before she could open her mouth with crinkled brows and an explanation, they heard the awakening of a flamethrower and a scarlet-painted stormtrooper, in the shades of death itself, standing before them. Myra had leapt for the Mandalorian, finally moving closer to him, strewing herself in front of the culmination of embers that approached them until nothing ever occurred.

The child stood between the flares and the duo, it's hands raised forward in concentration. Myra felt something curl around her chest, elevating through her unto she was out of breath. It was coarse, unrefined and blaring—like an untamed storm. While the Ichor was soft, mottling and dabbling overflow, this energy was like endless power yet, secure. Resolute on an intention.

 Another furl of the baby's bony wrist, a tendril of flame licked forward to plunge into the stormtrooper. The soldier knocked down on his back with a scream, ending his commission in a pile of charred bones. 

"Take the baby and stay safe," Myra slowly said to the others, panting and gulping down fear. "Go."

"Myra," Cara whispered, seeing that it was really dead in the water. "Come on. We need you."

"Go now," she said sternly. "If the Sights are true, we will join you."

Cara was hesitant, rising and sauntering away with trouble sitting heavy in her impatient gait. She grabbed the baby carefully into her chest, casting the couple one last glimpse. The sewer lines that held their escape at the cantina's back entrance had been sizzled down, thanks to the IG droid. They had cast him forlorn glances before they exit the station of chaos, the Mandalorian ushering them to go onward quickly. 

Amidst the bleeding madness and stillness, Myra fit her slender palm between his in a never-letting-go proposal, looking at him with a gentle glance. His hands instinctually tightened between hers and saw the soot and grease sink down into her skin, vanishing like it never existed. Concealing her secret within her hide.

"If you think I'm leaving, you have got me in the wrong shades," she told him with a smile lingering on her lips. 

He didn't answer. Slowly, she reached out to lift the helmet off his head which he paused with a set of groaning mumbles about the droid.

"No living thing has seen me without my helmet since I swore to the Creed, Myra," he tried to explain through clenched teeth. "I can't. Not while that thing's still there."

"I am not a living thing," the IG droid answered in a monotone. 

Casting him a look of assurance, she tipped the helmet over his head with a sharp breath. Myra had always been in awe of seeing his face, the dishevelled appearance of a vision that laid within the veil of crafted beskar. The sun-kissed angel had disparate blood matted on the sides of his face, leaking from his lip and nose. His forest-brown eyes reminded her of the trees on Sorgan, woodsy and almost close enough to smell the perfume of fresh bark. 

Myra tore a portion of her dress, shaking on it quickly and pressing down on the slashing wound at the back of his head. Her fingers sunk into the flesh, flinching when he did.

"I'm sorry, it'll be quick," she whispered, biting her lip with the guilt of his discomfort. A shot to the head would be mercy but, her warming presence was the best he could hope for.

His grimace broke out into a soft smile of faith, watching her dark lips went aflutter like that of a butterfly's with an incantation, her breaths soft enough to caress his face. Din watched in awe, how pastel brown never looked beautiful on anyone else. His pain diminished as the fiery halo around her grew brighter, her soft fingertips traversing down to the fringes of his jaw. He found himself leaning into her touch, thinking back to a simpler time when her touch was all he needed. 

"Ssh, my love," she whispered when he hissed all of sudden, a prick shooting up to the crown of his head. "It's just the skin mending."

Her lips had gifted him with a soft kiss, lasting lesser than seconds, as if to channel a little faith into his system. Her hair had curtained her kiss from the droid, her bottom drawn into her teeth to conceal a grin.

"Thank you," he murmured to her, meaning every word. 

"Get his side, IG-11," he heard her order quietly. "He'll be concussed for a few minutes."

"My bacta-spray would have been more efficient."

"My fist would be more efficient," she angrily muttered. 

"Agree to disagree," the droid retorted. 

Supporting his side like a crutch and lifting him off the ground, IG-11 firmly proceeded with the request. Din swayed on his feet all of a sudden, Myra's body fitting into his side and sustaining his balance. He inclined into her, letting go of the droid and she effortlessly carried his weight with his arm draped around her. She amassed a strength as such, taking his breath away.

"Remind me again to never anger you," he told her with a cocked brow. 

She tucked his helmet under her arm, holding him tighter. "Duly noted."

"Myra," he touched the side of her face blithely, "I'm sorry about Kuiil."

Her eyes fell to the ground, shaking her head. It was then that he was frustrated; he couldn't see her eyes to tell her emotion. 

"Like you said. Mortality is a fickle thing."

"Myra," he whispered softly. It was a caress, it was a treat, it was a need for her to keep her head in the game. Little did he know of what the future held for them. 

"A man who lives fully is not afraid of passing," she replied, only the least of the wisest words she said and once again, hauling him into consternation. "Death is not the last path for him, my love. A soul like that is Fated to keep on walking."

With those eloquent words that seemed to wary for her age, was just enough for Din to fall in love with her all over again.

X X X

{ I feel like people are going to hate me for the next chapter. I'm sure I'm going to break a lot of hearts but hey, that's love, right? }