WHO: Cara Dune, The Mandalorian (with cameo by The Child, of course) WHEN: During the party! WHERE: Just a Phase Deli WHAT: They get food while everyone else is doing things. It's nice to have a big place mostly to yourself. TRIGGERS: A little talk of losing planets/people
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Cara Dune hadn't done parties in a long time, and she didn't really plan to start now. Especially not ones that required you to dress up and were called the Festival of Recreation. What kind of recreation? She knew some Ewoks who thought playing drums on stormtrooper helmets was a recreation and celebration.
(Cara thought it was too. They had it coming.)
This galaxy's history was lost to her though, and to be honest, she had more than enough history in her head. She didn't need another one.
What she needed was food and company. Both of which she was planning to have at Just a Phase with Mando and the kid. They'd gotten their food, and were just sitting down when she felt her shoulder pop. It did that these days. Nothing new, but the noise always gave her a little pause. One day, she should have it looked at, but being on the run back in their galaxy didn't exactly leave her with the time or credits for it.
"What'd you end up getting?" Cara nodded toward his to-go container. It was small talk, but sometimes that was all you needed. She'd gotten a giant sandwich, stuffed with meat and cheese of some sort with whatever dressing looked good. "Doesn't look like much."
Mando had eased into the seat opposite Cara, which he somehow did with a certain grace despite the armor. Years of wearing it, it felt like a second skin. He knew how to account for it. A less examined thought on the opposite end of that was that he probably wouldn’t know how to move without it anymore. Beside him, the Kid was reaching for a breadstick that was provided with a small cup of soup. He picked it up and held it to the reaching green fingers.
“Same thing the Kid got,” Mando’s voice crackled over his helmet comm. “I’ll grab something again later if I need. He was hungrier than me.” There was a quiet reflection. “Usually is. I don’t know how he eats so much, being that small.”
"Still don't know his species. Could be something in his genetics." Cara realized that her sandwich was just a smidge too big for her mouth. She was going to have to press it down a little to get it to fit, and she wasn't exactly trying to impress anyone. She made a noise of happiness with that first bite. "I don't care what this cruise throws at us, it's better than bone broth and krill."
“Yeah? Watch next port be a place where that’s all they serve.” There was a faint twist of humor to the words. Mando folded his arms on the table and watched the Kid tentatively dunk part of the breadstick into his soup. It sloshed over the side, but he managed to navigate it to his mouth for a bite.
“I know him using his… Force powers takes it out of him.” It was with a little unease that the word was spoken, but Mando was trying to trust Ahsoka. She hadn’t given him any reason to not. His life before this Kid was a life filled with ignorance to Jedi, to the Force -- Ahsoka had also spoken on Mandalorians she’d met and offered no kind words about people he considered his saviors. It was a cloudy, confusing thing trying to play catch-up when you really only had one other person’s account. He supposed he could talk to others, but…
Talking wasn’t largely his strongest suit. Case in point.
"I heard rumors about that Luke Skywalker in the Rebellion, but I thought that was just — propaganda. Something to make the other side check themselves. If there was a real Jedi in our midst, then they were wrong. An Empire that was wrong…" She didn't think she needed to fill in the rest. Cara wasn't a politician, but if you proved one fallible, then the cracks would show. More and more people would join the Rebellion. And they had.
Cara glanced down at the kid who was gnawing on the bit of breadstick as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. "How's he doing? With the training?"
At Cara’s first point, Mando offered a small nod. He followed the logic. Start poking holes and doubt filled the spaces. He felt that on a level he wasn’t sure he would be smart to share right now.
“Ahsoka’s patient with him. I know he knows enough of what people tell him, but he’s…” Mando looked over as well. The Kid looked up, those big eyes searching his visor with some curiosity. “Just a kid. I’m sure he’s glad to spend time with someone who has something in common with him. He copies her.”
The Kid wedged another soup-dunked bit of the breadstick into his mouth. He gave a small coo.
“You’re doing fine,” Mando told him, trusting that the words would be understood.
"No doubt. He's got some of the best instincts I've seen. That whole thing with the Incinerator stormtrooper? I thought we were done for." Cara frowned slightly. Everything turned out alright in the end, at least from where they both left off, but she doubted it would be for long. She also remembered agreeing to leave Din behind from what was apparently not an incurable wound.
She'd never tell him, but now that she knew the droid could fix it with some bacta? She would have called him an idiot for wanting to die from something that could be reversed.
But she also understood codes, creeds, cultures. It was the reason she still wore braids at all. Alderaan had so much tied up in the culture of their braids. Undoing an Alderaanian's braid was an intimate thing, and most were almost never seen without them. The monarchy especially.
“Yeah.” Mando leaned a little more into his elbows on the table. “One of the first things he did was save me from a mudhorn. I’d say he’s got good instinct about things, but I don’t know if trusting me was a good move at first.”
There was a small head tilt as Mando considered the notion in a more generalized way. “Maybe still isn’t, but that was before.” ‘Before’ likely spoke for itself. Before they were a clan of two.
“You sure you don’t want in on that party?” Mando asked her.
As far as Cara was concerned, they were a Clan of Two when she'd met them on Sorgan. Maybe he hadn't seen it that way, but what bounty hunter breaks bounty hunter laws, saves a kid from Imperial Forces, and brings a storm down on himself? Somehow that little kid had gotten under a Mandalorian's armor and skin without doing much really.
"You trusted me. On the way to that village. You leaned back and just went to sleep. I could have killed you in your sleep, but you didn't even think twice." She glanced down at the kid. "Maybe it was the same for him."
“I’m a light sleeper,” Mando replied. She wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t let her break down his facade without offering his best retort. “And you didn’t try, so I guess I was right to trust you.”
A small slurp broke the conversation as the Kid had polished off the breadstick and went for the bowl itself.
“You didn’t answer about the party.” There was a small nod in Cara’s direction. “Not even to stand in the back and watch people?”
Despite the initial fight — which was one of the best fights she'd had in a while — they really had gotten along. As soon as they realized that neither was after the other, it was mutual respect. Then it was just compounded by being in that tiny krill farming village for a few weeks.
"Didn't answer cause I'm not much into parties. Besides nothing's ever gonna top anything on Alderaan." Maybe it was because memory put those rose tinted goggles on everything, but every party was a sour reminder in a lot of ways.
“Or top a sandwich the size of a loth-cat?” He knew she was leaning into a bittersweet memory of some kind. Seemed kindest to offer the out, considering he’d provoked an answer.
"You should try it," Cara mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich. She definitely wasn't a delicate flower type, and she was behaving even worse now to keep herself from diving into maudlin territory. Ever since Gideon mentioned that she was from Alderaan, she'd been thinking more about it. It was easy to run when no one mentioned a thing.
She held out the other half of the sandwich. "Come ooon, take a bite."
There was a chuckle from under the helmet. “How many times are you going to try this?” He hadn’t moved from his lean on the table, clearly a mark of not seeing any threat in her playful taunt. “Not happening. Not for a sandwich.”
Cara was obviously just kidding around. She respected his code enough to leave the idiot behind, but that didn't mean she couldn't shove a really delicious sandwich under his nose and hope the helmet let him smell it. Maybe she'd find him down here at midnight getting one of his own.
"You always sleep with that thing on?"
It wouldn’t be the first time someone asked that. “Not if it’s just me,” Mando replied.
He glanced to the side, at the Kid. “But it’s no problem sleeping with it on if I’m sharing the room, if that’s what you’re asking.”
If she was the emotional type, she might have thanked him for steering the conversation somewhere else. Instead, she'd settle for pushing in the direction they were going. Naboo wasn't quite Alderaan, but it was close enough to sting.
"Bet his entire body would fit in that helmet. Just a tiny, waddling Mando helmet on the ground." Cara chuckled.
“Either means you think he’s that small, or my head’s that big.”
It was then that the Kid let the bowl clatter down on the table, nearly empty. He may have been aware that he was the topic of conversation the way he looked between them both, his ears wriggling.
“Her implication, not mine, kid,” Mando told the attentive green creature.
"I'll let you decide which one I meant," she teased with a smile, reaching for the tea she'd gotten to go with her sandwich. Once that was near her, she tugged a piece of meat off her sandwich and leaned over the table to hold it out for the kid. When she'd caught the kid's eye, she gave him a little wink.
He stared at her as if he had no idea what she was doing.
“You’re too kind,” Mando volleyed back, watching the proffered bit of sandwich bemuse the Kid. Odds were that the Kid hadn’t ever seen a wink, Mando thought. Or maybe one of the kids on Sorgan had tried to teach him, but it was tricky when the Kid didn’t even seem to grasp what humor was. He was a simple being at this point with a few key motivators, hunger chief among them.
“Ahsoka said that other Mandalorians she met never followed the same code. Wren didn’t follow much, either.” Guess it was time for a little sharing. He didn’t map the conversation out in a way where he intended to end up here, but it had been a stewing thought for some time. Maybe Cara would listen and it would be out of his head after.
Cara's experience with Mandalorians was mostly of the rumored kind: all talk and legend and full of oohs and ahhs. They were on the books, and certain incidents were too. Sometimes they were talked about like a tragic mythological character. See what happens when you believe you're invincible? Or a case of standing up to the big bad monster and how good doesn't always triumph.
"Wren's helmet is way more colorful than yours for starters." It didn't take a Jedi with Force powers to know when someone wanted to talk about something. "Until you, I didn't know there was a code like that. Maybe it was how the Mandalorians coped after — everything. Return to their roots."
Mando was quiet following that. There was an unspoken reply about how maybe that was something that should’ve been explained. He’d been taken in. He trusted everything he was told. He knew not everyone understood the Mandalorian Creed, but it always felt like the result of their small number.
“Maybe I never asked enough questions,” was the response, finally. He wasn’t going to blame anyone. His Tribe had seen after him, made sure he could fend for himself. “Seems pointless to wonder about it now.”
"You said they were hiding their numbers, right?"
Mando tilted his head. “I think I know where you’re going with this.” He exhaled slightly, the comm picking up on the sound and giving it a slightly electronic edge.
“Everything done was to keep the location of the enclave secret. Keep people from tracking one of us down and finding the rest.” He waved a hand, loosely. The Kid perked up and started to mimic. “All that and Gideon found it anyway.”
And now Cara knew where this was going. She wasn't a particularly warm and fuzzy kind of person, but she'd seen him when he'd witnessed all those helmets down where the enclave had been. Her fingers latched onto his wrist. "Hey, that wasn't your fault, Din."
If she could’ve seen through the beskar of his helmet, Cara would’ve noticed the crease between Mando’s brows. He didn’t draw his focus down to her hand around his wrist, a steady and reassuring pressure, because that wasn’t the singular thing that had gotten to him. It was the first time anyone had spoken his real name in ages, and not in the way that Moff Gideon had -- a weaponized bit of information that wasn’t his right to know.
“Outcome is the same, whether or not I think it’s my fault. I’m…” He paused. “Only thinking on things I’ve been told.”
"Gideon knew where to hurt your people. Imps always do. If you hadn't saved the kid, there's no telling what they would have done to him and with him. For all we know, they could have been trying to steal his abilities. Trying to figure out how to replicate them." Cara never blamed herself for Alderaan, but she couldn't help feeling the survivors guilt. She couldn't imagine how Organa must feel; she could imagine how Din felt one of the few survivors of a people being wiped out. There were so few Alderaanians left that it was hard not to think about it.
She released his wrist, presuming she got her point across. The kid was staring at her, tiny little teeth poking out from under his green lips. Wide eyes. She suspected he was sensing their emotions, but likely didn't understand them. "You did what was right. The cost for that is always steep."
Her words had all taken their purchase in the swirl of Mando’s thoughts, helping him to see the sense through a muddle of personal doubt. She was right. The Imps were likely trying to pry those powers out of the Kid to mass produce as a weapon. It was just that he hadn’t gone back because he’d seen the bigger picture for what it was. Possibly preventing the Imps from gaining an upperhand was a side effect that had come along with refusal to let a kid be left in enemy hands.
The Armorer had been right to invoke the Creed to name him as father of the Kid. He might have protested, but there was probably no one more willing to do a thousand risky, borderline stupid things in the name of keeping a foundling safe.
Mando turned to the Kid. “Hear that? She thinks you’re worth all of the trouble, too.”
Cara chuckled. Whatever maudlin conversation was done with for now. She could roll with it. That was what she'd been doing with her life since Alderaan was destroyed. "I am not your official babysitter."