Din stays still when he comes to. He keeps his breaths slow as his head clears, then tries to get a sense of what he's dealing with.
He's in a dark room, strapped to a chair. It's the sort of chair that tilts disconcertingly and has the straps built-in. That's never good news. His head is still ringing; he can't hear out of his left ear. Sweat or perhaps blood trickles from under his helmet down the back of his neck.
Oh, he's still got the helmet on. That's good.
"Din Djarin."
Not so good.
"Yes, we know who you are. And I know you're awake."
Din raises his head. An Imperial's in front of him, wearing a stupid little grin under his stupid little hat.
Din realizes now he's wearing his flight suit only. The beskar, beside the helmet, is gone.
Din shivers despite himself. "My armor."
"Will help fund our research here."
Din tests the restraints. Maybe there's a tick in a strap, a too-deep crease in the leather. Without armor or weapons he's at a distinct disadvantage, if he can manage to free himself, but he thinks he can take one Imperial.
He finds nothing. The restraints are sound.
"You haven't asked why we left you your helmet."
Din gives it a long moment before taking the bait. "OK," he finally asks. "Why did you leave me my helmet?"
The man lays a hand amicably on Din's thigh and leans in. "Leverage."
Oh, this could go very badly.
The man pulls off a glove. "Enough talk, I think."
He slams a fist into Din's stomach. It's quick, practiced -- almost the perfect sucker-punch, but not quite, Even without armor, Din can take a punch. He tenses just in time, muscles protecting his gut.
"What do you want?" he grunts.
The Imperial frowns, fist poised for another strike. "The Child, Din. I should have thought that was obvious."
The Child. So they didn't have him. Not yet, anyway. Who did? His pulse jumped as he considered the options. Cara could take the heat, but she couldn't look after a kid. Peli? Better at childcare, not very good at fighting off Imperials. The guild, perhaps? A covert?
"Your silence is not encouraging."
Din tells him the truth. "I don't know where the kid is."
"Ah, that's too bad." He sucker punches the Mandalorian again and this time Din's not quite quick enough. He pulls against the restraints in a reflexive, futile attempt to protect himself while pain and nausea pour through his middle. The interrogator strikes him again, lower this time, chambering immediately for a fourth punch. Panic entwines with the pain and Din desperately tries to center himself, control himself, prepare himself -- whatever it takes to get through. Whatever reserves he has to call upon to come out of this in one piece and get back to the kid.
A metallic click breaks through his reverie. His captor is holding a knife as long as his hand. "I should have known, Djarin. You're a fighter. You're used to taking a beating."
The Imperial notches the front of Din's shirt, right by the collarbone, then tears. He gives the Mandalorian a beleaguered look. "I'd like you to tell me where the child is, Din."
Din Djarin breaks out in a cold sweat. "I can't do that." Can't, won't. Will it matter, when this is over?
"Too bad," says the Imperial. He lays the tip of the knife in the grove between two ribs, exerting just enough pressure to make Din's heartbeat spike.
"Well, if we can't have that: I'd like to see you bleed."
Sure, Din Djarin should have been paying more attention. It was dark and he was tired, his head pulsing with the familiar ache of dehydration. But you could hardly blame the man for being caught by surprise -- for one thing, the Corellian sand panther was perhaps the quietest hunter in the galaxy.
For another, this wasn't Corellia.
One moment he was putting one foot in front of the other, cursing the loss of the speeder bike he'd borrowed. Next moment, one thousand kilos of pure muscle were slamming him into the ground.
He didn't even have time to break his fall and so he hit the ground hard, shoulder first. Something popped in the front of his right shoulder -- clavicle, probably -- and his vision blazed red as the pain took over his consciousness. He activated the flame-throwing gauntlet on instinct, spreading a semicircle of fire around his body while collecting himself, pushing back against the pain.
The panther roared and stumbled back as the flames singed the fur on its face. Din reached for his vibrostaff, quickly changed tactics as his shoulder protested. He reached for the blaster just as the panther, now patchy with charred fur and spitting mad, tensed to leap.
Din put two bolts in its head and another in its underbelly but not before it was airborne. It yowled and twisted before landing on him sideways, limbs askew, claws screeching across the beskar and tearing at the flight suit underneath.
He wrenched the blaster from underneath the panther's heaving body and fired three more bolts right behind its ear. It twitched, then went limp.
As Din's right arm was more or less useless, pulling himself out from under the creature was a bit of a feat. He freed a leg first and then shoved as he leveraged himself with his good arm, fighting the flaring pain across his right shoulder.
He stood, swaying. A prickle spread across his skin, accompanied by white spots around his vision. Din knelt, forced a few more deep breaths. Something was wrong. He was tired, he was injured -- but not that tired or injured.
Din took inventory. Clavicle probably broken. Damn, that would make things difficult for a while. He was at least a week away from a bacta tank, and several hours from the nearest settlement.
His gloved hand came away sticky from his side. It smarted terribly and clearly he'd lost a bit of blood, but the wound was neither long or deep, no worse than a bad scrape. Nothing a bacta patch couldn't fix. So why were his fingers shaking? And why was the static clouding his head, covering his field of vision, prickling across his skin like ants under his flight suit?
It came to him in a flash -- "Corellian panther. Largest venomous mammal in the galaxy," he remembered a vendor telling him in a marketplace, pushing claws towards him. "Perhaps you would also care to weaken your prey before making the kill, eh?" When he'd turned away, the hawker persisted -- "There's also, ah, recreational applications, if you're so inclined."
Since this wasn't Corellia, someone had to have brought the creature here. Was this proxy-murder-by-panther? Or had it escaped from a private collection and he just happened to be supremely unlucky today?
Din fell to his knees, leaning against the cooling body of the panther as a wave of exhaustion threatened to pull him down into unconsciousness. The phrase recreational applications marched through his head unbidden, followed by before making the kill. It wouldn't kill him, then. Probably. He couldn't walk. He was out of range. He didn't have anything but his armor and his weapons. But if the desert didn't kill him, the venom would wear off. He thought foggily that perhaps if he stopped exerting himself, he could cling to enough consciousness to deploy the whistling birds if further provoked.
He let himself slide down to the ground, bad arm cradled against his body, curled against the panther's still form for warmth.
Rest, he commanded himself. Stay awake. A shiver rushed through him.
This was going to be a long night.
He had been on a job. No -- he is on a job. The job isn't over just because he's twisted on his side, rebar plunged into his chest, prying ribs apart and exiting, with irony he refuses to dignify, underneath the edge of his breastplate.
Every breath feels impossible. He keeps his breaths shallow, small, which does nothing to help calm him.
Din knows he's going to die here. A disappointing end for any Mandalorian, but he supposes even Mandalorians must fight their last at some point. It had been bad luck, nothing else -- he hadn't tripped, the bounty hadn't pushed him over. A week beam had simply given way at the wrong time, sending him tumbling twenty feet over the platform edge. Back luck again that the rebar had punched him in his side, missing his armor but cruelly failing to kill him outright.
The bounty, a terrified small-time embezzler, had fled, lacking either the forethought or the wherewithal to finish him off. Leaving him here, alone, dying slowly.
He must have passed out because consciousness is lapping against him like waves, pulling him back into the light as the pain pulls him back down into the timeless darkness.
He comes to himself fully in the misty dawn, distantly surprised to be alive at all. Although his situation hadn't improved -- if anything, it was deteriorating -- hope comes with the light.
Din tries to sequester the pain and organize his thoughts. He can't un-impale himself. As violating as the metal in his chest is, he knows it's all that's between him and bleeding out. He lacks both the strength and the leverage to haul himself up, anyway.
Under normal circumstances, Din isn't the sort of person to sit around, waiting. But waiting for help or death, whichever comes first, seems more and more like his only option.
He stares up at the decrepit ceiling above him and takes another wet, quaking breath. Well, no need to draw this out unnecessarily. Maybe he can shorten the wait.
Above him and to the right, about thirty feet away, there's a beam whose welds are nearly rusted through. It's got a groove in it that, even with the faint light and the bad angle, he's pretty sure he can hook. Din steels himself for the jolt and aims the whipcord thrower.
The cord tangles around the beam and catches in the groove. Good. He braces himself again and retracts the cord.
The force pulls him against the rebar and, in spite of himself, he screams with the pain. He feels sick, he can't breathe, his head is swimming in black-edged agony and he loses himself again. But when he comes to, there's light streaming in through the hole he's made in the ceiling. More importantly, he's sure he hears boots against metal.
"Who's in here?"
He knows yelling is futile so he tosses a handful of rubble against the ground. The scattering echos through the shipyard. The footsteps close in.
"Dad?" he hears someone shout. "I think there's someone over here. I think they're hurt."
He blinks, and a girl of maybe thirteen is standing over him. She looks from the rebar to his helmet to the hole in the overhead. "What happened?" She looks a little green.
"I'm -- bounty hunter," he chokes out.
"Oh." She looks like she's putting two and two together, like maybe news of his bounty's exploits had reached the spaceport's cantinas and dinner tables. "Oh!" She squats down and begins working his chest plate free. "Don't worry. I heard all about that. We're on your side." She pauses to put a hand tentatively on his arm, like she's afraid it might crumble. "We're not gonna let you die."
She removes the breastplate and reaches for his helmet. He has just enough strength to grab her wrist. "Helmet stays on," he says. "Promise me. I made a vow. You don't let them take it off for anything."
She frowns and pulls her hand away. "Promise, mister. If it's really that important to you."
"It is," he mumbles. He manages a "thank you," before unconsciousness claims him again.
"Hey."
Fennec's face swam above Din in the twilight. "You alright?"
He sorted through her words, her expression. "Do I look that bad?"
She squatted down to his level, where he was leaning heavily against a rock. "Any time you're not back on your feet after a fight, it's bad." Fennec reached for his head. "Can I take off the helmet?" He nodded, faintly wondering why she seemed so hazy.
Fennec guided the helmet off and set it down on the gravel next to him. He blinked at the rush of peripheral vision -- once overwhelming, it was now just a little startling. "Do you remember hitting your head?" she asked.
"I don't think I did." Fennec's hair, he noticed, was matted with sweat and drying blood. He reached to point it out. "You're bleeding, though."
Fennec's expression froze, her eyes fixed on the inside of Din's arm. "Not as bad as you are," she murmured.
He followed her eyes and squinted, holding his arm away from his body. It was hard to tell, in the low light, but the inside of his sleeve was warm and sticky. And now that he no longer had it clamped against his body, it hurt, too, pulsing with sharp pain.
The next few moments blurred in Din's mind -- Fennec's fingers scrabbling over him, pulling off armor, grabbing his hand and pressing it against the bleed. Nausea and fatigue rolled over him together and he felt his consciousness slipping.
Fennec clapped her own gloved hand against his bleeding arm as his arm drifted down, forcing him to lean back with the other. "Hey," she said, her voice low and urgent. "Stay with me."
He settled his head against the rock. "It's not stopping," he said, eyes closed. "It's not going to stop." He couldn't know for sure, but from Fennec's tone, the dampness all down his right side, the way he felt, he'd lost quite a bit of blood. He wasn't sure how much more he could afford to lose.
Fennec sighed. "We could use the darksaber," she said without meeting his eyes. She'd bundled up part of his flight suit, which she was pressing against his wound.
"Do it," Din said, fumbling the darksaber off his belt loop with his good hand. "Light touch. Don't cut my arm off."
Fennec took the weapon gingerly. "It seems a little crass. I know what it means to -- to Mandalorians."
Din wince-laughed. "You're starting to sound like Bo-Katan. It's a tool. Like any weapon."
She looked up from the weapon, serious now. "This is going to hurt like hell."
"Better than dying."
Fennec shrugged, her expression saying, Yeah, when you put it that way. "Lay down. It'll be easier." He winced as she helped him lay flat, splaying out the injured arm. She dug one knee in just below his elbow, pinning the arm against the ground.
Fennec looked thoughtful for a moment, then she tugged the glove off of Din's hand and offered it back to him. He took it, looking up at her quizzically.
"You bite it."
"Ah." He situated the glove in his mouth, then clamped his bare fingers around the cool beskar of his absent armor. Something to hold onto. Something that wouldn't break.
His pulse had picked up. Given the circumstances, that seemed counterproductive. Better get this over with.
"Ready?" Fennec asked.
Din squeezed his eyes shut, breathed deeply. He nodded. His only job now was to not hurt Fennec while she tried to keep him from bleeding out.
The darksaber hummed.
She touched it to his arm once, twice, three times. Each time the pain became his entire existence. Fennec finished her work in seconds but the electric pain kept burning in his mind, consuming all his will and attention. In his whole life, he'd never wished so hard for unconsciousness. It refused to come.
Din felt Fennec's hand on his shoulder. "It's over." Vaguely, he felt her hook the darksaber back to his belt and tug the glove out of his mouth. "I'm going to find something to dress your arm, now that we don't have to worry about you bleeding out on me."
"Fennec."
She paused in the middle of tugging off a blood-soaked glove. "What?"
"I owe you one."
Fennec laughed. "There's one debt I hope I never have to cash in on."
Din Djarin can take a hit. He's good at it. He counts on it. He's had years of practice in falling, for one thing -- which means just as many in getting back up. The beskar helps, of course, but even in his old armor, he took every hit he couldn't dodge and rolled it right back into the next attack.
So here he is, once again clambering up from a fall, head aching, chest heaving.
But this time, something's wrong.
He stands over the bodies of three masked hirelings, gasping for breath, hoping the searing pain in his stomach fades.
It hadn't even been a bad fall. They'd knocked him back against the stones and he'd fallen hard but with intention, redistributing the force and turning it into a roll so he could recover his balance quicker than expected.
He was in the middle of the roll when the pain ripped through his stomach. Din crumpled, an inelegant collection of flesh and armor. A grin flickered on his opponent's face -- he'd surprised the man, but not in the way he'd intended to.
Pain was a temporary distraction. He shoved it away, compartmentalized, then brought the man down with urgency. Again, that terrible ripping in his abdomen, as if he was literally coming apart at the seams, right along the sore line of the slow-healing stab wound he'd sustained the week before. At the time he'd slapped a bacta patch on it, took enough painkillers to get to sleep, and moved on with his work. It had been sore, sure, but that was to be expected. That was normal. He was fine.
That's what he'd told himself, anyway. Apparently, he'd been mistaken.
And now here he was, in a dark alley of a backwater village on a backwater planet, hauling air into his lungs and feeling the pain swell with every breath. The unconscious men at his feet were having a better day than he was, he thought darkly. Damp fabric clung to his stomach and he didn't think it was sweat soaking through his flight suit.
He stays off the main road, trying to keep his bearings while he stumbles back to the Razor Crest, leaning on walls as necessary for support.
This is worse than the initial fight. Then he'd been running on adrenaline, processing the new pain of a fresh wound, confident that sleep and bacta and powering through would put the injury out of his mind in a day, two at the most.
Now? Now he's pushing his gloved hand against his side, hoping that the sensation of holding his guts inside is merely the panic stirring his reason.
In the Razor Crest he fumbles off his helmet and sets it in his bunk. Peeling off the rest of the beskar hurts but he moves as quickly as he can, trying to uncover the wound. There's blood on his flight suit -- not as much as he'd imagined, but still too much.
Finally he's stripped to the waist. Yes, there it is. He's pulled the old wound open again. It's glimmering and irritated, pulling apart in the middle. The bleeding's slowed, just wet rivulets now. There's crusting blood running down over his hipbone and the sides of the wound are pink and puffy like an angry flower, but nothing that should be inside seems to be escaping.
Din tilts his head back and sighs.
He'll lay low for a few days this time instead of rushing off to another job, he decides as he cleans out the wound and pinches the sides together to lay down a fresh bacta patch. Lay low, leave the patch on as long as possible, sleep a lot. He could afford a few days of waiting, if that's what it took to prevent tearing himself open again.
Din pulls himself back into his bunk, hand protectively over the patch. It's fine, he tells himself as he settles down. He's playing it safe. It'll close up for real this time.
He removes his hand and lets it fall beside him. Carefully, he draws a deep breath.
He'll be fine, he tells himself again, and almost believes it.