Chapter Text
It was rare for the Mandalorian to find himself speechless. He was naturally a man of few words, and he was used to not speaking for extended periods (after all, he frequently spent weeks on his ship alone with the kid, who didn’t provide much meaningful conversation). But, to be at a loss for words? Wanting to speak and not knowing how? That was unusual.
Then again, he’d never found himself standing in the hull of his ship looking into the eyes of a beautiful woman.
If it hadn’t been for Peli cashing in a favor, Mando would probably never have met this newcomer. He’d been finishing a job on Tatooine when it happened - as Mando picked the kid up on his way to the Crest for departure, Peli had asked him to do her a favor and give a friend of hers a lift. Mando, as was his nature, was skeptical. And somewhat annoyed.
“Who is this ‘friend’ of yours?” he asked, already feeling impatient.
“No one sketchy, just a friend,” Peli said casually, shrugging. “Nice gal. She’s a researcher for some conservation group or something.”
“Sounds like you don’t know this woman that well,” Mando said. He wasn’t keen on having a stranger in his ship in the first place, let alone now that he had something to hide.
“I’m telling you, she’s good as gold. She’ll have a few things to bring with her, but it’ll be fine. Besides, I’m sure you could use an extra pair of hands for a few days.”
“We’re doing fine, thanks,” Mando responded.
He subconsciously held the child closer to his side when he caught sight of someone slowly stepping out from Peli’s workshop. A woman – late 20s, maybe early 30s, Mando presumed – now stood just out of earshot while she began rummaging through a heavy bag that had been thrown over her shoulder.
Mando turned his attention back to Peli.
“That her?” He gestured in the woman’s direction.
“Yep! She’s been staying at my place for a few days until she could find a ride”
“Scarif isn’t exactly a short trip, why can’t she catch a transport ship?”
“Next pickup isn’t for another week, that’ll be too late. Said she’s got to get there by the equinox or else the thingamajig she’s looking for will stop flowering,” Peli said, waving her hand as if the details weren’t particularly relevant.
Mando sighed.
“Fine. As long as she won’t cause any trouble.”
Peli smiled and turned to look at the woman, who by now had found the data pad she’d been looking for and was now scrolling for something on its screen.
“Okay, you’re good to go! Get your stuff ready!” she called over. The woman looked up briefly before swiftly vanishing into the office again.
“Hold on, how much stuff are we talking about?” Mando asked quickly, already dreading the answer.
Peli just smiled and shrugged.
Mando soon found out what “stuff” meant, much to his dismay. Peli managed to fin d an excuse not to do any heavy lifting and disappeared into her workshop while the unnamed woman carried two crates into the hull of the Crest. As she began moving a third up the ramp, he couldn’t take it anymore and protested, stepping in front of her to stop her in her tracks.
“Stop! She didn’t tell me there would be this much cargo involved,” he objected, waving over at the crates and large duffel bag that had just been brought in. “I don’t have that much space, this isn’t a freighter!”
The woman froze in place at his sudden outburst.
“I’m sorry, I thought Peli told you – I’m in the middle of my field research cycle, and I have to collect samples from each stop.” Her blue eyes raising to meet his visor with apprehension. “This is the last of it – just my equipment. I’m still classifying some of my specimens, so they’re still boxed up. I’ll be assembling everything onboard.”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, aggravation still brewing in his chest.
The botanist absentmindedly bit her lower lip before responding.
“Let me show you.”
She lowered the heavy crate where she stood, and walked up the ramp, bringing him to her newly occupied corner of the hull. Mando noted that, somehow, she had managed to find the one empty alcove on the ship, situated by the fresher where her other crates were tucked beside her duffel bag.
She doesn't waste any time, he thought irritably.
She opened the lid of the largest of the two crates and carefully lifted out a large BioSphere housing rows and rows of glass vials. The vials contained what looked like small cuttings of plants and fungi of different colors and sizes. On the lid was a keypad-activated security system with a small, latched circular handle. The orb glowed a deep purple and hummed softly as the botanist held it in her hands.
“It keeps them alive while I’m traveling,” she explained, her eyes flashed excitedly as she looked over her specimens. She very carefully set the orb down on the lid of the grate, typed a passcode into the keypad, and pressed “enter.” The latch of the orb hissed as it depressurized, and she botanist opened the orb and began looking through the vials. Mando wasn’t sure what she was doing, but then she found the sample she was looking for – a tiny, thin, rooted plant with delicate perforated leaves.
Mando wasn’t familiar with plants. He’d only been formally trained in survival skills when it came to flora, like how to identify edible plants for foraging. That skill had proven profoundly useful during some of his more difficult hunts. But to his untrained eye, this plant suspended in a glowing gel looked like some kind of fern.
She lifted the vial from his casing and handed it to Mando and watched him expectantly. He waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t he looked up at her.
“What is it?”
She gave him a small, almost sad smile.
“It’s a division from one of our rarer specimens at the institute,” she said, her voice soft and reverent. “An Amber fern from Mandalore.”
He examined the label more closely and saw that beneath the strange-looking botanical classification symbol, small print identified the source planet and its habitat category:
Source: Mandalore
Habitat: Woodland/Forest (Galek)
Growth habit: semi-terrestrial
Collection date: M10/29 BBY
“I’m still categorizing the samples I collected during my stop on Tatooine. That other box has the last of my plants, and the rest I’ll be putting into this.” She adjusted one of the dials on the side of the orb. Mando was still looking at the vial in his hand.
“How did you find it?” he asked eventually, his voice suddenly hoarse. Her gaze lowered to his hand, watching how his thumb slowly traced over the laminated label on the face of the glass.
“Well… The institute has collected samples from many planets. Most of our studies have been within the mid-rim and expanded region, but one or two researchers have collected samples from outer rim planets – like this one. That was a long time before I was born, but we’ve kept them alive and cultivated in our labs. So, that's where the mother plant was from. Mandalore.”
He looked at her and saw that she was shifting her feet in discomfort, her hands clasped together absentmindedly while she stumbled through her explanation. She clearly wasn’t used to talking to a Mandalorian. Most people weren’t.
“Why are you showing me this?” he asked, more gruffly than he’d intended. The botanist’s brow twitched slightly, and Mando suspected his tone hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“I just-… I thought you might like to see what these things are. Why they’re special. And, I thought, if... anybody would appreciate this one it would be a Mandalorian.”
Special was an understatement in this case, Mando thought. A living specimen of any nature from Mandalore – even one taken from a sample cultivated over generations – was priceless. He didn't have to understand botany to know that.
They were silent for a moment. The botanist seemed to be thinking over her next words.
“As far as the crates are concerned–” she continued quickly, “once I assemble everything I brought, it’ll all be portable, so I’ll take everything with me. Though, there may be and empty box or two… I’m afraid I didn’t really think that part through.”
She looked up at him now, and he was momentarily flustered by her apologetic expression.
“I didn’t… mean to be presumptuous in all of this. As soon as we reach Scarif, it’ll be as if I wasn’t here. I promise.”
He thought for a moment but couldn’t think of a response. She clearly didn’t want to be a burden (he knew when someone was lying to him. She wasn’t). He also didn’t like feeling like a transport flyer to be rented out to every sad sack who’d missed their flight. But then… something in her eyes gave him pause. They were direct, yet gentle. Halting. Typically, when people looked at him, they would avoid gazing too long into his visor – usually out of fear or discomfort. But she seemed to be making an effort to look at him. And that made him… curious.
His instincts pushed against this latter assessment, telling him not to be swayed by a pair of pretty eyes. Sure, maybe she was an honest person, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. She was just a temporary passenger, and the sooner she was off his ship the soon he could get back to work.
Still, one question needled at him subconsciously: why couldn’t he look away?
It didn’t help that at that precise moment, the kid decided to waddle over to them and place his little claws on his leg and stare up at him. The womp rat’s expression looked borderline pitiful, as though he was asking Mando to let the passenger stay.
After a brief moment of consideration, he huffed and handed her the vial to replace in her storage orb. As she did so, Mando silently walked back to the ramp and carried the last of her equipment over to her little dwelling in the hull.
This was going to be a long trip.
Mando spent a solid two hours in the cockpit after undocking and plotting course for Scarif. The kid was sleeping in his lap, his favorite tiny metal ball clutched in his claws. But Din couldn’t think of a reason to stay out of the hull any longer once his stomach began protesting in hunger. As was often the case, he hadn’t remembered to eat until he was starving, and the frustration of having to change his (albeit loose) travel plans didn’t help.
Mando rose from his seat (trying not to wake the kid) and descended the ladder. He spotted the botanist sitting on a small blanket on the floor by her duffel bag. She’d evidently tried to make herself comfortable in her now cramped corner of the hull, and was already sorting through one of her crates, the contents of which was strewn about in front of her. Her datapad from earlier was now perched on her knee as she sorted through a collection of slim capped vials, bundles of tightly-wrapped plant matter (most of which Mando couldn’t identify), a large bottle of clear fluid, forceps, cables, and seemingly countless blank labels.
She didn’t pay heed to his arrival in the hull, and so he allowed himself a moment to look at her for a moment. She was a small woman (just slightly more than 5’ tall, he estimated) with light hair pulled back in a low bun. She typed with nimble fingers, and her brow knitted sternly as she revised a label before applying it carefully to one of the vials. Her small feet were tucked under her, as if she was trying to take up as little space as possible.
He gently placed Grogu in his little sleeping pod before walking past the botanist on his way to the kitchenette. There, he quickly heated a ration of soup before drinking it under the brim of his helmet. Normally he’d take more time to eat, but having a stranger onboard made him slightly uncomfortable – particularly now that he wasn’t watching the kid. The fact that this passenger was a friend of Peli’s gave him some reassurance, but until he got a feel for her character, he wasn’t going to take and chances.
To his dismay, however, when he returned only two minutes later with a small cup of squid for the kid, Mando saw he had somehow escaped his pod and was now standing beside the botanist, his hands grabbing at something in the woman’s grate.
“No-no-no. Get out of there!” he barked, rushing over to stop Grogu from finding trouble. But the botanist lifted her hand calmly hand in his direction, stopping his advance before he could interrupt the child's rummaging.
“It’s perfectly fine,” she said, smiling softly at him before looking back at the child. Grogu had found a mechanical torch and was cooing curiously as he turned it on and off repeatedly. The kid then waddled up to Mando, squealing up at him as he lifted the torch to show him.
“Did you ask if you could take that?” he asked the kid hypothetically, but the child’s only response was to tilt his head and wiggle his ears enthusiastically.
“Your child’s very sweet,” the botanist said suddenly, and Mando looked up to see her watching the kid attentively. Her gaze was wistful – almost melancholy.
“When he’s not getting into trouble,” Mando said, picking the kid up. Grogu returned to flashing the torch.
“And he’s not my–…” (what was he exactly?) “He’s a foundling” he said finally, walking over to one of the shipping boxes the kid used as a table and setting him down to eat his dinner.
The botanist nodded silently, turning her gaze to the floor thoughtfully. She barely noticed when the kid loudly slurped a wriggling tentacle from his bowl.
Mando was quiet for a moment. For some reason he felt rather awkward in this silence. Awkwardness was never much of an issue for him before. He was perfectly used to silence – often he preferred it. So why was this any different? He didn’t know why, but something compelled him to break her reverie.
“Are you… hungry?” he asked, gesturing in the direction of the kitchenette. Her attention returned to the present, and she looked up at him and smiled.
“I brought some fruit and bread with me,” she said, pulling out a small paper bag from her duffel bag. “I didn’t want you to give up your rations on my account.”
Judging from the size of the bag in her hands, Mando could tell there wasn’t enough for their three-day journey. If she could go one day on so little he would have been surprised. He was glad she couldn’t see his expression – he could feel the indignation simmering on his brow.
“Don’t worry about it, we have enough. Take whatever you need.”
He was going to return to the cockpit, but when the botanist stood and walked up to him, he found he couldn’t look away. He wasn't sure how she did it but her eyes met his through his visor, and in an instant Mando’s attention was captured in her dark blue gaze. Her eyes were kind, wide, and honest in a way that gave Mando the unnerving sensation that somehow (though logic told him it was impossible) she was seeing him through his helmet.
Though her gaze was steady, her words were halting and quiet.
“I… want to apologize,” she said gently. In his peripherals, Mando saw that she was clenching her hands together absentmindedly.
“For what?” he asked, his voice a bit breathier than he’d intended.
“For inconveniencing you like this. I wanted to catch a transport ship, but none of them could get me to Scarif before the equinox. I was supposed to have a piloted ship originally, but things… didn’t work out.”
Her words faltered and then her eyes released him to nervously look down at her hands. From his makeshift table, the kid belched and disregarded his now empty cup to teeter back over to his guardian. Mando lifted the child in his arms and turned back to face the botanist.
“I’ve been doing a lot of favors lately” he said. “It's no big deal.”
“It is to me,” she said softly. Her eyes lifted to his once again, and once more, he got that uneasy feeling. “So, thank you.”
The warmth of a new, beautiful smile rose from her lips to her eyes, and in that moment Mando had to admit they were stunning. Indeed, that could be the only word to describe them, for they stunned him into silence.
“Not… Not a problem,” he said, his mind devoid of anything else to say.
She gave a small chuckle at his apprehension before turning her attention to the child in his arms. The kid cooed at her. She looked at the kid with such charm and adoration it took Mando by surprise. It was as if she'd known the child forever – already cared for him. She reached out her other hand to stroke his small green head, and he gave a cheerful chirp in response. The sound elicited a soft laugh from the botanist, her eyes lighting up, released from their former melancholy.
In that moment, Mando knew he was in trouble, for the botanist’s hand lightly rested on his arm while she gazed down into the child’s large eyes. Her touch made his breath involuntarily freeze in his lungs, and he couldn't look away, watching her hold one of the kid's little clawed hands in her own.
At this rate, he would fall for her if he didn't keep his distance. She had captured his attention through a simple glance and the slightest touch. He didn’t know what was going on within him, but he knew that no matter much he wanted to resist her, something would invariably come undone inside him if he allowed her to touch him again. If he didn’t make some attempt to keep himself in check, that is.
He would have to stay on guard for the rest of this voyage – only this time, from himself. Then, once they reached Scarif, everything would sort itself out. She’d be gone and they could go on their way. Just a brief detour…
… Hopefully.