Three Days' Grace

by FemaleOfTheSpecies

Summary:

Lyra has made a living out of not being caught.

She takes bets from drunk cantina patrons who think a few days in the wilderness is all it takes to bring her in. They never do.

Until the Mandalorian.

Three days of rain-soaked pursuit and close calls end in a capture she can’t quite call a loss. And when the wager is over, Din Djarin should be walking away with his credits. Instead, he keeps showing up -asking questions, pressing closer, closing the distance in ways that have nothing to do with the hunt.

What starts as a game of evasion turns into something neither of them is ready to call by name… but neither one is letting go.

Chapter 1: Head Start

The air smelled like rust and old spicefruit, the kind that went overripe fast and left a sharp sting in the nose. Sunlight poured over the tops of canvas awnings, casting fractured shapes across the packed dirt below. Somewhere nearby, a child cried. A generator buzzed through half a stall’s worth of power. And Lyra, elbow-deep in a box of scrap batteries, was trying to find one that wasn’t completely fried.

She’d meant to be in and out in five minutes. Ten, if she stopped for meat on a stick. But the heat made people slow and sticky, and the market today had the mood of a sunburn - short-tempered and waiting to blister.

She held one cell up to the light. Still a little juice. It would do.

“-There you are.”

She didn’t even turn. Just sighed through her teeth.

“No.”

A shadow fell across the table.

“You haven’t even heard-”

“No.”

“Okay, but-”

She turned, finally. Slowly. Like a storm building behind her eyes.

Ren stood a step too close, grinning like he hadn’t just put a detonator in her lap. He was sweating. Always a bad sign.

“I may have… made a wager.”

Lyra stared at him. “You promised.”

“I know .”

“You promised me , Ren.”

“I know. But this one… look, this one’s different.”

“They’re always different.”

“But this one actually is,” he said, gesturing wildly with one hand while the other subtly slipped a spare power cell off the table and into his pocket. “He’s not some planetary sheriff or twitchy courier. He’s clean. Controlled. The way he stood when I approached him-”

“I don’t care how he stood.”

Ren beamed. “You’d love how he stood.”

Lyra gave him a look that could’ve cracked glass.

He winced. “Okay. Okay. Maybe not love . But admire. Respect.”

“Ren-”

“Just come see.”

“No.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

She glared.

“I’m serious.” Ren almost pouted at her. “This is good money. Real money.”

“How much?”

His smile turned slippery. “Let’s just say… enough to make your rent for the next two cycles. Mine too.”

Lyra swore softly. “You put us all-in again?”

“I mean technically it’s his all-in. If you win.”

She dropped her head back and stared at the sky like it had answers.

“Fine,” she muttered after a moment. “I’ll look. That’s all.”

Ren’s grin returned full-force. “Knew you’d see sense.”

“I will gut you if he’s another pervert with a tracker gun.”

He turned on his heel, already weaving back through the crowd, calling over his shoulder. “You can’t stab me . I make us money!”

She followed.

Grudgingly.

---

The cantina wasn’t much - some squat prefab tucked between rusting bulkhead panels and hand-painted signs for fuel, parts, and “pleasure droids.” The interior was dim, sour with sweat and oil, and full of the kind of people who were used to talking with their hands on their blasters.

She followed Ren through the crowd. Her coat brushed past a gambler’s stool; a Rodian hissed something in her direction and she didn’t even flinch.

“See?” Ren whispered, gesturing with his chin toward the bar. “There. Quiet one. With the helmet.”

Lyra looked and stopped breathing. Felt the universe narrow in. 

Metal. Matte and clean. The Beskar caught the low lights and fractured them like water. He didn’t move, didn’t turn his head, but she knew he’d clocked her. Her boots had barely made a sound, but he shifted as if he’d been tracking her approach from the street.

The Mandalorian.

“Ren.”

“Mmm?”

“You stupid bastard.”

“What?”

“Have you already shaken on it?” 

“What’s wrong? 

Lyra turned, grabbed the man by the scruff of his shirt and pulled his face towards hers.

“Yes! Get off, Lyra! ” Ren pulled himself free from her grip, hands smoothing down his clothing. “Yes, I’ve shaken on it, you mad woman!” 

Her mouth went dry.

Ren was still grinning. “Doesn’t look like much, does he?” he whispered conspiratorially but Lyra was already moving. 

She backed away two steps. Three. Ren turned to look at her over his shoulder.

“Wait, where are you going-?”

She turned and bolted o ut of the cantina. Past the doors. Into the dusty blue dusk.

She didn’t hear Ren calling after her. Didn’t look back.

She was out the door before her coat even caught the light. Down the front steps, across the packed dirt, weaving fast between fruit stalls and wandering droids. She didn’t sprint - not yet - but her pace was urgent, directional, drilled into her bones.

Don’t run. Not until you’re out of sight. Don’t panic. Don’t bleed heat.

At the edge of the market, she cut left, ducked behind the old silo, and dropped into a dry trench that ran north-east out of town.

Dust hit her teeth but she grinned anyway, bitter and breathless.

Ren had really done it this time. Cut a wager with a walking myth himself.

The job was supposed to start after the wager, after introductions had been made, and terms agreed. But she’d seen the tilt of that visor, felt the weight of his attention, and she knew he was already hunting her.

She was trained to survive the wilderness. How to evade, resist, and escape. Had it drilled into her from a young age. It's why the stupid wagers placed by Ren always worked in their favour, because nobody heard about a girl and thought they'd lose. They always did, though.

But Lyra knew about this Mandalorian and s he knew - deep in her bones, in the pit of her gut - that she was going to need every single second of advantage she could get if she wanted to stay ahead of that man.

---

Din didn’t drink in places like this unless he had to.

Too loud, too obvious, too many hands drifting near weapons. Too many eyes trying not to look at him, and failing. 

But the payout was usually worth it. Some job always emerged from someone in the crowd that provided enough to cover supplies and fuel, and then some. He just hadn’t expected it to come in the form of a wager…

He stayed seated near the end of the bar, facing the door. One gloved hand rested on the rim of a full glass he didn’t intend to drink. He let the noise wash over him - scanning tone, movement, posture. Every breath of the cantina filtering through the helmet’s rangefinder like a second sense.

A man had approached him with the offer. Talked fast. Too confident. Eyes twitching like he was hiding something - or trying not to look at what he’d set in motion. A quiet bet. Catch and return. Three days, one target.

Simple.

“She’s good,” the man had said. “Bet she can outlast you three days in the wild.”

Din didn’t blink. “And if I catch her?”

“All yours. Her, and the credits.”

He hadn’t asked what all yours was supposed to mean.

He didn’t need to.

They'd shaken on it and the stranger had left to fetch the target, but Din had felt her before he saw her.

Footsteps that didn’t match the rest. No hesitation. No drunken swagger. Someone walking like they knew how to vanish.

He shifted slightly in his seat. Just enough to track the movement.

A woman. Long coat. Tall. Tension coiled in every line of her body like a spring waiting to snap. Her face turned toward him-

-and her expression changed.

Recognition crossed her face. Then alarm. She hissed something scathing to her companion and then she was gone. He watched as she turned and slipped through the cantina doors so fast it barely caused a ripple in the crowd.

Din stood.

The stool creaked. A heavy silence bloomed around it, the kind that happened when something dangerous started moving.

He didn’t run after her. Not yet. Instead he walked outside where the glare of afternoon sun hit the Beskar like fire. He stood in silence and scanned the street. 

There was no sign of her, not at first. But the dust still hung in the air - kicked up in a trail that veered off between two buildings. He followed it, still not running. 

The thing that struck him was that she knew how to disappear. 

Most people, when they ran, made noise. Clumsy boots on metal, panicked glances, elbows knocking into crates or passerby. But not this woman. No. She moved like someone who’d done this before.

A dozen times. Maybe more.

Din passed between the buildings and caught the tail end of her trail: a dent in the side of a stack of empty containers, dust still unsettled in the crevices. A set of faint boot prints that turned sharply down an alley.

He followed but not in a hurry. There was no need.

If she was as good as her partner claimed, she’d already be several steps ahead. Running wouldn’t close the gap, it would only make him miss something. So he kept his pace steady, eyes sweeping the alley as he went.

A loose vent panel on a wall. A handprint in the grime. A flash of fabric caught on jagged metal. A potential trail. 

She wanted him to follow, but she also wanted to disappear, and that told him plenty. She wasn’t trying to lure him into a trap, she was just trying to win.

Good.

That meant it was uncomplicated. 

Din stepped out of the alley onto another side street and spotted her for a second - just a flicker - halfway up a scaffold beside an old processing plant. Climbing like a feral thing, fast and lean, coat streaming behind her. Then gone again.

He tilted his head slightly. She wasn’t heading for a ship, she was heading out of town.

The job was supposed to start after the bet was made. But she’d seen him, and she hadn’t waited which meant that she took him seriously. This was clearly a little con they played on unsuspecting travelers passing through, he guessed her friend just didn't know who he'd selected as their target today.

But she did.

Din wondered what else had been kept from her, wondered if she knew that she was technically part of the prize on offer. 

This could be interesting… 

He tapped the side of his helmet, switching through visor filters. Thermal was useless in daylight, but motion tracking lit up the places where bodies had passed recently. She was like a heat trail over water. Never still. Never predictable.

By the time he reached the edge of the town, her signal had already faded out into the trees and rock valleys beyond. 

He paused, just for a moment and looked out into the wide-open terrain.

Three days.

She had a head start, had local knowledge, and clearly had tricks up her sleeve. 

But he had time, and he never lost a bounty.

Chapter 2: Run Rabbit

The town was gone behind her now - swallowed by heat shimmer and the pale blur of distance. Lyra kept her pace steady. Fast enough to build ground. Slow enough to keep her breathing even. 

Every wasted breath, every unnecessary muscle twitch, burned energy she couldn’t afford to lose. 

She scanned the terrain as she moved. Low scrub scattered between slabs of pale rock. Valleys where the sun pooled and made the air boil. Sparse trees, their shadows narrow and mean. 

It wasn’t good country for disappearing. Not at first glance. But she’d learned a long time ago that it wasn’t about the landscape you got, it was about how you used it. 

She skirted the base of a ridge, keeping the jagged lip between her and the open flat. No silhouette against the skyline. No long shadows for a visor to catch. Her boots found the quietest route automatically - the firmer ground beside loose scree, the flatter rock over gravel. She didn’t need to think about it. The training was in her bones by now.

Water. Shelter. Distance. 

That was the priority order. Always.

The canteen at her hip was half full. She’d refill before nightfall - she knew two good spots on this side of the ridge that stayed wet, even in dry season. Shelter was trickier. Most of the caves were shallow and obvious. But there was one - a narrow cut halfway down the ravine wall, invisible unless you stood right on top of it. She’d aim for that.

Distance… well.

She didn’t need to look back to know he’d be following.

The Mandalorian.

The name had weight in her head, the way certain things did - storms on the horizon, predators in the brush. She’d read the set of his shoulders in the cantina, the way he didn’t fidget, didn’t scan the room like most people did. He didn’t need to. He’d already seen everything worth seeing.

Which meant she couldn’t just be fast. She had to be clever.

It wasn’t long before a wide stretch of dry creek bed cut across her path. She crouched at the edge, eyes on the disturbed stones and old watermarks. Creek beds were double-edged - they hid tracks well, but they also told a tracker exactly where you’d gone if you weren’t careful.

She stepped into the bed anyway. Moved along it for twenty meters, then doubled back in her own prints before climbing out onto the trunk of a fallen tree. She carefully walked its length, dropped down on the far side of the creek, and kept moving.

A few hundred paces later, she left a heat tag under a pile of brush - it would ping like a weak campfire to thermal scans. Let him chase that. Let him think he’d foiled her attempts at misdirection. 

By the time she reached the low pass between two bluffs, the sun had shifted, drawing longer shadows over the plain. She adjusted her route north-east. A longer path, but it would let her skirt the open flats completely.

She took one last glance at the horizon.

Still empty.

But she could feel the hunt in the air now - a change in the silence. One that she had learned to trust. 

She tightened the straps on her pack and pressed on.

---

Din’s visor painted the world in layers. Heat. Motion. Density. He flicked between filters as he moved, letting the terrain decide which was worth using. The town had fallen away behind him in stages -  the last tin roofs giving way to scrub and rock, the noise fading into the low rasp of wind. 

At first, the signs were easy. Not sloppy - just fresh. A shift in gravel, the faint press of a boot edge into softer soil. She’d picked her route for cover, hugging the base of the ridge to break line-of-sight. Smart.

He slowed to check a scuff mark where stone had scraped underfoot. She wasn’t running - not full out. She was pacing herself, just like someone who’d done this before. 

He soon came upon a dry creek bed that cut through the trail. He stood still and took his time scanning it, his helmet picking out faint depressions among the stones. She’d doubled back once before breaking off in a new direction - deliberate.

He dropped into the bed, following the prints until they vanished on a flat slab of rock. There was nothing beyond it but wind and scattered leaves. He paused, looked up, and his eyes found a fallen tree stretched across the bank, bark worn smooth on one side.

He climbed up and walked its length, dropping down where she had.

Twenty meters further on, his visor pinged faint heat under a pile of brush. He crouched, turning the tag over in his gloved hand.

A decoy.

It was a neat one - not rushed. The kind meant to fool someone relying too much on tech.

He turned it off and let it drop into the dirt.

She wasn’t just moving fast. She was thinking two, three steps ahead.

Most people didn’t understand that hunting wasn’t about closing the distance as fast as possible. It was about reading patterns. Learning a quarry’s rhythm.

And hers was starting to take shape.

By the time he reached the pass between the bluffs, the sun had shifted. Long shadows cut across the ground. She’d used the change to adjust her route - not east, where he’d expected, but north-east, skirting the open flats entirely.

It would take him longer to close the gap this way, but that was fine.

He had time. 

And the quarry was starting to prove to be worth the effort.

---

The pass spat her out into a shallow basin littered with broken stone and thorn scrub. The air here felt different - flatter, heavier. No wind. Every sound carried too far.

She slowed her pace to a careful, measured walk. Breath in through the nose, out through the mouth. Every few steps, she stopped and listened. Nothing but the dry tick of insects in the brush.

A low ridge marked the basin’s far side. She angled toward it, zig-zagging to avoid leaving a clean line of prints. The ground here was a tracker’s dream. Fine, pale dust that kept every mark… too risky to go straight across.

Halfway over, she spotted a game trail; narrow, twisting, used by small hooved animals. Perfect.

She followed it for a hundred meters before cutting left, stepping on exposed stone whenever she could. When she found a scatter of larger rocks, she crouched and dug into her pack for a compact length of camo netting. Unfurled, it was the colour of the basin floor. She shook it out, then draped it over a low bush in a way that looked accidental.

From above, the folds would shadow like an uneven patch of rock - good enough to hide the small stash she pushed beneath it: the long coat she’d worn in town, a pouch of heavier gear she didn’t need yet, and an empty water flask.

Bait, if he was impatient.

By the time she crested the ridge, the basin looked empty behind her. Nothing moved. No glint of metal, no sound of pursuit. 

But she didn’t relax. She’d been in enough hunts - literal and otherwise - to know that stillness wasn’t safety. It was just the space between moves.

Ahead, the land dropped away into a tangle of scrub and narrow gullies. A good place to vanish, but also a good place for someone else to close the gap. Still, she slipped down into them, keeping her boots on the firmer ledges to muffle sound, and let the shadows swallow her whole.

---

The basin was quiet. Too quiet for her to have crossed it unmarked.

His visor caught the faint outline of the game trail, curling like a seam across the dust. He followed it, scanning both sides, until the trail bent left and something irregular broke the pattern of rock ahead.

A bush. Perfectly unremarkable.

Except… the shadows beneath it weren’t quite right.

He crouched, gloved fingers brushing over the camo netting. The coat she had worn in the town was tucked underneath, along with a small pouch and an empty flask. A decoy.

He huffed once through the modulator. Not bad…

But she was travelling light now - which meant she was faster. He wasted no time and pushed ahead. He was soon upon a series of gullies which started a short distance beyond where he’d found the decoy. 

He followed a thin ridge that tracked above the winding cuts, each one deep and narrow, carved by ancient water. Down below, the light shifted constantly - fractured by overhangs and the occasional snarl of dry branches.

He moved without sound, letting the armour work with him instead of against him. The gravel didn’t crunch beneath his boots. The plates didn’t clink. He'd learned a long time ago that the difference between noise and silence was timing - knowing when to move and when to let the world go quiet around you.

A sudden flicker below caught his attention. Not movement. Not exactly. Just… absence.

And then there - a crease in the shadow, pressed flat against the rock.

Still, tense and waiting. She had her back to the wall, shoulders lowered, one hand resting near the base of her pack - ready to run or fight, if it came to that.

He didn’t breathe. Just stood and observed her. She didn’t know he was there. Not yet. He watched as her chin lifted slightly, like she was listening for footsteps, but he didn’t give her any. 

Instead, he marked the spot on his HUD, watched her hold her breath a moment longer, then ease out from the wall and slip into a side channel.

He waited until she was gone then he turned, and moved to circle ahead.

---

Lyra ducked beneath a ledge crusted in salt dust, her boots scuffing the stone slightly. She paused just long enough to listen, and to observe how the gully opened into a narrow ravine, low and dry, with walls that caught the light in broken slats of gold. 

There was still no sound of pursuit, distant footfalls or tell-tale noises of wildlife being disturbed. All she could hear was the soft tick of settling heat and the occasional shuffle of dry leaves above her head.

Her muscles ached from holding tension all day - not the pain of exertion, but the deeper kind, the kind that came from constant vigilance. From always listening. Always guessing.

She pressed her back to the rock wall and let her pack drop to the ground beside her. Let the silence hold a little longer. Then, slowly, she crouched and began to take stock.

One canteen, half full. One ration bar, unopened. A small tear in the cuff of her shirt - caught on something in the creek bed earlier. Nothing serious. Her boots were in good shape. Her thighs burned from the downhill scramble, but that would pass.

She leaned forward, stretching out a cramp in her calf, and let her eyes close just long enough to slow her breathing. Not to rest. Not really.

Just to stop .

By the time she looked up again, the sun had dipped behind the ridge, and the ravine had grown darker - shadows deepening into cool blues and greys. Night would come fast out here. She’d have to move before then. 

She couldn’t afford to sleep in the open. 

Not with him out there. 

She hadn’t seen or heard him once since she left the cantina. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t close. It only meant he was good .

However, she’d made good distance. Set traps, misdirected, taken the long way around when it mattered. He hadn’t caught up yet.

That was something.

She took a sip from her canteen and wiped the sweat from her brow with the inside of her sleeve. Gravel shifted under her heel as she stood, slinging her pack over one shoulder.

Half an hour north, there was an overhang she knew - deep enough to crawl under, hard to spot unless you were on top of it. If she reached it before dark, she could shelter there for the night. Conserve her strength and reset her rhythm for day two.

She paused one last time at the edge of the ravine, eyes scanning the ridge behind her. There was still no movement, no silhouette cut against the sky, no sound but her own breath.

And yet a cold prickle moved up the back of her neck.

She exhaled. “Don’t get in your own head...”

Then she turned and climbed out of the ravine, vanishing into the scrub before the stars came out.

Chapter 3: Meet Cute

The first drop hit the back of her neck like a coin. Cold, heavy, and out of place. Lyra paused mid-step - one foot braced against a sloped patch of ground - and she tilted her head to listen.

Another drop followed, then two more. Slow and scattered, darkening the pale stone at her feet like spilled oil. 

Rain.

Not much, but enough to complicate everything.

Lyra exhaled through her nose and adjusted her grip on the strap across her chest. The ridge ahead was steeper than the last, littered with shale and bone-dry scrub that turned slick the second it got wet. Climbing it was going to be loud and risky. She knew this kind of terrain - brittle, narrow, full of blind turns and exposed ledges. No cover and complete unforgiving. 

Still. She went up. 

Her boots moved with practiced rhythm - angle, brace, push - keeping her weight low and even. The wind had picked up with the rain, soft but restless, tugging at the hem of her shirt and the loose strands of hair sticking to her jaw. She wished that she hadn’t stashed her coat now, but rain was not typical at this time of the year. 

The sky above was heavy now, the light thick and colourless - the kind that came before something broke open.

Lyra continued to move in silence for a while, winding her way through the ridgeline with care. The rain came in fits and starts, treating her to a few minutes of quiet mist, then another drop-heavy burst that soaked through her sleeves. The world gradually grew smaller. Less sky, more stone. She could feel her heartbeat in her boots, in the base of her spine, in the ache starting to build across her shoulders.

And then it happened.

One misstep. One slip.

She caught the edge of her sole on a loose patch of shale and went down hard - a sharp skid, a twist, and a jolt up her leg as her ankle folded under her. She grunted, teeth snapping shut on a curse as her knee slammed into the rock.

The pain was immediate. Not sharp like a break but something deeper. Stretching across muscle and tendon like a bad promise. She carefully rolled onto her side, panting, and lay there for a moment with rain ticking softly against her skin.

She breathed in deeply, held it, and then exhaled slow and precise. Once. Twice.

Then she pushed herself upright, bit back a hiss, and tested her weight.

Bad.

She could move, but not without favouring it. Not without telegraphing the injury in every step, and she didn’t have time to do either of those.

She had no choice. She sucked in another deep breath and kept going at a steady pace, her jaw tight as the pain lanced through her leg with every step. She wasn’t limping yet, but she knew she would be soon. 

Ideally, she’d find shelter and hunker down and get creative, but the surrounding landscape offered no such cover. Instead, the path narrowed up ahead through a ridge cutting into a choke point of jagged stone and sloped earth. 

She remembered this stretch from her map. A bottleneck with two ways out: forward or down. No high ground. No side routes. If she moved fast enough, she could clear it before the rain turned it into a trap.

She didn’t think about him. Couldn’t afford to let herself imagine the weight of his steps behind her. The way silence might be more dangerous than sound.

But she did glance back, just once. Nothing but rain and empty stone lay behind her - for now.

The ridge pressed in tighter the farther she went. Stone reared up on either side - rough, vertical, not quite cliffs but steep enough that turning back would mean exposing her whole body to open view. This was the kind of place you never wanted to be followed into.

She moved faster now, pain spiking with every uneven step. Her boot slipped once on a patch of wet stone and she caught herself with a palm flat to the wall, breath coming short. The chill of rain had sunk through her shirt completely, finding the spaces between her layers. Her ribs ached from breathing too shallow for too long.

It wasn’t a trap, but it could be. It was exactly the sort of place she would set up an ambush if the tables were turned, but she was confident he hadn’t caught up yet. Let alone get ahead of her. 

The path narrowed again ahead - just wide enough for a body, maybe two. The ground was uneven and broken, forcing her to pick her footing more carefully. She gritted her teeth and kept her weight forward, balancing momentum with caution.

Her ankle was beginning to scream. Not constant, but there - a building pulse of heat beneath her skin, but still she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Not here. 

The rain had turned heavier now. Not a downpour, but steadier. It pattered off the stone with a sound like distant static. Everything smelled like wet dust and dirt. Her hair was soaked through, plastered to her cheek, but she didn’t reach to push it back because she needed to keep her hands ready. 

She reached a bend in the ridge - a shallow dogleg in the rock - and slowed without meaning to. Her body wanted rest. Just for a second. Her thoughts were slipping loose at the edges, too focused on the next step, the next ledge, the next breath . She let herself ease her pace just a fraction. Just enough to breathe.

And in that moment the world changed.  She rounded the bend and stopped dead.

He was there.

Standing still. 

Dead centre of the path, framed by rock and sky and rain. Water streamed off the curve of his helmet, down his shoulders, darkening the Beskar to something shadow-black. He didn’t speak or move.

Just watched her.

Stood there with his hands loose at his sides, like he had all the time in the world. Like he’d been waiting for her to catch up. Rain slid off his armour in rivulets, pooling where his boots met the mud. The curve of his helmet caught the weak grey light and threw none of it back.

Lyra didn’t breathe as the silence between them stretched out, sharp as wire. 

She felt the thud of her pulse in her throat, behind her eyes, in the meat of her injured ankle. She didn’t dare shift her weight. Didn’t dare blink.

He had to know she was hurting. Had to see it. The favour in her stance, the fine tremor in her fingertips. She couldn’t hide that, not from someone like him.

But still - he didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. Just watched as if daring her to make the first move. 

Her jaw tightened.

“You going to make this easy?” she asked, voice hoarse from breathlessness and cold.

The Mandalorian tilted his helmet - a tiny, unreadable shift.

A no, maybe. Or a dare.

Her lip curled, more snarl than smile.

And then-

She ran.

On a good day she’d be able to evade pursuit. The lessons drilled into her as a kid would keep her moving, keep her ahead, but she was working in the worst terrain possible for a chase, on an injury, while cold, wet, and tired - and, worst of all, she was being pursued by him.  

Still, she wasn’t a quitter so she ran like it meant something. 

Boots hammering slick stone, breath raw in her throat, rain stinging her face. No time to think. No time to plan. Just forward - forward and don’t fall .

Behind her, she heard the scuff of pursuit. Not rushed or frantic but precise . 

She didn’t look back. Couldn’t. The ground was too treacherous, the path too narrow. One misstep and she’d be on her face - or over the edge, into a cutbank of jagged shale and broken bone.

She used what little the hostile terrain gave her. Dropped low beneath a ledge, vaulted a fallen boulder, and skidded down a wet incline too fast, arms windmilling for balance.

Her ankle screamed but she didn’t stop.

There was a sharp bend ahead - rock slick with lichen, glistening under the rain. She hit it too hard and slipped. Her shoulder slammed the wall and bounced, nearly knocking her sideways, but she caught herself and managed to keep going. 

Mud soaked her boots, her thighs, and splattered up her ribs.

The sound behind her grew louder.

He was closing in.

Lyra veered off the main path, ducking into thicker brush, brambles clawing at her arms. No good - the ground was a swamp underfoot, soft and sinking, but it was cover.

Maybe enough.

She wrenched herself through a tangle of roots, limbs burning. A branch snapped across her chest and she pushed past it, rain smearing grit into her teeth.

Then her boot caught on something. A root. A rock. It didn’t matter.

She fell hard, shoulder first into the mud.  She scrambled, slipping, kicking out to push herself upright but it was too little, too late. 

A weight slammed into her from behind.

Not a blow - a collision ; Shoulder to spine. Arm to ribcage. They hit the ground in a tangle, bodies half-submerged in cold, sucking earth.

She fought. 

Elbows. Nails. Every instinct lit up like fire. She twisted hard, nearly got free, but a gloved hand caught her wrist and pinned it above her head. She spat a curse, bucked beneath him, and nearly rolled them both-

But he was stronger.

His weight bore her down again, a knee braced across her hips, another arm anchoring hers against the dirt. Her other hand reached, clawing for a hold, a weapon, anything -

He caught that too.

Pinned it above her head with the other one.

Her chest was heaving, breath tearing out of her like smoke as the rain poured around them, steady and relentless, turning the ground to blackened sludge.

Then his helmet lowered. Just slightly. Close enough to feel his breath where the modulator split the sound.

“Got you.”

Chapter 4: Give and Take

Rain hammered the ground so hard it bounced.

Lyra felt each drop as a cold sting against skin that already felt numb. Mud sucked at her body where he had her pinned and the visor filled her vision; the modulator made his breath sound closer than it could possibly be.

“Got you,” he’d said.

Then he shifted, weight easing just enough to haul her up. Her wrists were gathered in one gloved hand and the other grabbed a fistful of her shirt and lifted - the movement clean and efficient. She staggered to her feet with a hiss through her teeth and would’ve gone down again if he hadn’t tightened his hold and steadied her with a quick brace of his other hand at her waist.

“Move,” he said.

She spat mud to the side. “You’re really something when you sweet-talk.”

He turned her toward the ridge line and kept her in front of him, guiding, not dragging. The rain did the dragging. It sheeted off the rock in shining veils, slid beneath her collar, crawled down her spine. Every step he set for her matched terrain and pain - he was close enough to feel when she faltered, close enough to adjust without comment. When she stumbled outright on a hidden root, his palm came to her hip, firm as a command. 

She found her feet and kept going.

They crested a low rise, cut across a shelf of slick stone, and angled toward a dark shape ahead; a derelict hunting shack sunk into the lee of a boulder. One door. One narrow window, shutter askew. Under the rocky overhang, the rain became a hiss instead of a roar.

He pushed the door with his shoulder; it groaned but gave easily enough. Inside they found dry floorboards, a half-collapsed bench, and a rusted stove black with old fire. There was a cabinet that sat as a recess in the wall itself, the door loosened from its hinges by time, revealing glass jars on the lower shelf, and a tin, ball of twine, and folded sheets on the upper shelf inside. 

The space smelled like dust and oil, and the air was a few degrees warmer by comparison. He turned her, backed her against the wall, and tied her wrists, palms together, with cord from his belt. Quick, practiced movements, with a second loop that fixed the knot in a way that she couldn’t reach with her teeth.

She flexed anyway and felt the bite of the cord. 

“So was it worth it?” she asked, breath still ragged. “All that running. For a handful of credits.”

His hands paused at his belt. “It wasn’t just the credits.”

Something shifted behind her ribs at that, but she kept her face flat. “Then what?”

A beat of silence followed, filled only with the sound of rain against the tin roof, steady as a heartbeat.

“Ask your friend,” he said.

Heat crawled up the back of her neck that had nothing to do with the shack. “Ren’s not-”

He turned away before she could finish, peeled the cape from his shoulders and shook rain from it in one clean motion. The Beskar shed water in dark streaks. He set the cape on a hook in the wall, then crouched at the old stove, and coaxed a flame from dry shavings he found on the floor. The first crack of fire felt obscene in the hush, but soon light licked up the inside of the stove, painting the room in amber pulses.

He sat opposite her on the bench, one forearm resting on his thigh, helmet squarely facing her. Openly watching.

Lyra shifted her shoulders and let her head tip back against the wall. Damp hair stuck to skin and the ache in her ankle had settled into a dull throb that pulsed with her heartbeat. She tucked one heel beneath the other calf to take the pressure off and tried not to wince.

His helmet tipped, just a fraction. “How bad.”

“I’ll walk it off,” she said.

He stood and crossed the space in three steps and crouched in front of her. His hand slid to her calf and lifted, guiding her boot to his thigh. Heat punched through damp fabric where his palm secured her leg and she pulled away as a reflex.

“Don’t,” he said.

She ground her teeth and held still.

He slid her boot from her foot then ran his thumb along the outside of the joint, pressed the pad of it into the tendons while his other hand braced beneath her heel. The pressure was clinical until it wasn’t - until it became the only thing she could feel, separate from rain and cord and the hard slam of her pulse. 

He tested range gently, then not so gently. Pain sang up her shin; she hissed and jerked, and his hold tightened just enough to keep her from rearing forward into him.

“Sprain,” he said, as if she hadn’t already learned that with every step. “Wrap it and rest.”

“While you what? Count your winnings?” She curled her lip, made the word rotten. “Or do you cash in on the other part first?”

Silence followed. Only the sound of the stove ticking accompanied by the rain on the roof broke it.  

“You really don’t know,” he said.

The floor seemed to tip, she felt it in her belly. 

“Know what?”

He set her foot down slowly but didn’t move away; his knee bracketed her thigh, his hand still around her calf like a shackle that didn’t hurt. 

“What he offered,” he said. “What he thought he could sell.”

She laughed but it came out wrong - too sharp. “Try me.”

He didn’t. He lifted her foot again, slid his hand higher this time, fingers pressing into the tender muscle just below her knee. The touch should not have felt like relief, but it did. Her breath stuttered; she wanted to bite it into something that sounded like a threat and it came out as heat instead.

“Don’t do that,” she said quietly.

“Do what.”

“Touch me like you know me.”

His hand stilled. The modulator made the smallest shift of breath sound like distant thunder.

“Do you want me to stop?”

The words were flat. A question, not a tactic. It would be so easy to lie.

“No,” she said, shockingly honest, and felt the admission gooseflesh her arms.

He nodded once then shifted closer, crowding her space, one hand braced on the wall beside her head, the other sliding up from her calf to the back of her thigh. Heat met heat. She tipped her chin up, stared into her own small reflection in the visor’s black slit, and tilted her face to meet the rasp of Beskar where it skimmed her cheek.

“Look at me,” he said.

“I am.”

He caught her bound wrists in one palm and pinned them above her head against the boards, his other hand mapping the cold-wet cling of her shirt to the heat beneath. He found the bare strip of skin at her waist and pressed his thumb there until she made a sound she didn’t expect to make - small, hungry, and not afraid. He followed the sound to her ribs, her side, the line beneath her breast; the glide of his glove made everything hypersensitive.

“Too many clothes,” she said, breathless.

He dragged her shirt up and over her head, the fabric sticking to rain-slick skin; she arched to help and gasped when the cold air hit, followed by the heat of his palm cupping her breast. The leather rasped lightly against her nipple - then firmer, a slow circle, a pinch. Her hips moved without permission. He anchored them with his knee and made her take it, made her feel each deliberate pass.

“Say stop,” he said, low. “If you want it.”

His gloved fingers moved to her throat, pressed along the tendon, dragged down over the hollow at the base where her breath stuttered again. His other hand let go of her bound wrists, which slid down and rested where her skull met the wall. His free hand moved beneath the waistband of her pants, over mud-slick fabric and warmer heat. He paused at the seam, the question there again without words.

“Yes,” she said, quietly.

Two fingers, slow and certain, moved through fabric first, dragging heat up from the ache he’d helped make. The wet was rain and her and the mess of the night; he worked his hand in beneath, found skin, and the first slick pass made her whole body climb the wall behind her. He set a rhythm, not cruel but not gentle; just precise, like he’d read her tells and chosen the ones that unmade her. She bit down on a sound and he changed angle, relentless. The room narrowed to the sounds of glove, breath, stove-tick and rain.

“Look at me.”

She dragged her eyes open and worked her bottom lip between her teeth. Gave him what he wanted. He moved a hand from her throat and held her wrists harder, the pressure there made the heat lower in her body flare almost unbearably. Her hips chased his hand; she didn’t care how it looked. Couldn’t. It had been days of running and years of rules and right now there was only this: the slow, escalating ruin he drew out of her with patience more brutal than force.

“Say when,” he murmured.

“Don’t you dare stop,” she said, and then, “Din-”

The name flashed between them like lightning. He made a sound that could have been a growl, and she broke around his hand - sharp, breathless and sudden. The cord bit her wrists; her thighs shook; the sound she made might have embarrassed her if she had any breath left to feel it.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d come without calculating the next move. Without looking for the exit.

He eased her down through her climax, not stopping until the aftershocks turned oversensitive and she pushed weakly at his wrist, bending her knees inwards. He stilled, then withdrew, slow and careful.

He didn’t back away. Instead, his hand bracketed her hip; his thumb stroked once, absent or intentional she couldn’t tell. The visor was close enough to reflect her, flushed and wrecked, hair in wet tangles around her face.

She let her head tip forward until beskarglass touched her brow and she stayed there, panting.

“This,” she said, after a moment, voice rough. “This wasn’t part of the wager.”

“No,” he said.

“Good.” She lifted her chin, wrists flexing against his hold, mouth curving into something reckless. “Then you can’t collect twice.”

The modulator did strange things to his quiet laughter. “You going to try to run again?”

She smiled at him, slow and sure despite the tremor in her thighs. “You already know the answer.”

He released her wrists by degrees, like he didn’t trust the space that would come back into the room when he let go. She set her hands in her lap as he reached for her ankle again. This time she let him, breathed through the tender throb while he wrapped it with a strip torn clean from a ragged towel he’d found in the closet. His fingers were gentler now. It made something in her chest ache worse than the sprain.

When he finished, he sat back on his heels. She tucked her foot beneath her and watched him through half-closed eyes.

“Sleep,” he said.

“You going to watch me?”

“Yes.”

She snorted, soft. “Figured.”

He rose and crossed to the bench, and sat with the helmet turned to her. The fire ticked down. Outside, the rain slackened to a steady whisper.

She let her eyes fall shut. The trouble Ren had bought with his mouth sat like a live coal in her pocket. She could deal with that in the morning. For now - the hurt was quiet, the heat was not, and the man across from her could have taken everything and hadn’t.