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"DIN?!" TESS DID not hesitate. Though an ache was careening against her temples and the putrid stench of blood coated her lips, Tess leapt up and wrapped both arms around the Mandalorian's hard shoulders. Din stumbled back from the force, still in a perpetual state of shock.
His breaths grew ragged under his helmet, exertion from the fight to get to this hall weighing down on him. It didn't feel quite real. His heart still told him that he had lost, that his kids were still prisoners, that the mission had been a colossal failure. That this was all a dream.
But it wasn't, because her arms were around him, her sweat-stained hair fell against his neck, and when she pulled back, those storm-ridden eyes burrowed deep into his own.
This was real. She was here. He had gotten her back.
Din hugged her, a little too tight, because she winced when he squeezed her shoulder. Din pulled away to get a good look. Tess grimaced at what he was surely seeing. Dark shadows passed across her skeletal face, hair sticking together in clumps, a festering cut sliced across her forehead, and crimson coated her lips. Her collar was ripped from where Cyr Vanth had grabbed it, but her leg was cleaner, newer.
Din noticed all of this, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he pulled her up as gently as he could, and cupped her cheek into the palm of his hand. Tess froze, only for a moment, and Din nearly pulled back, imagining all of the things the Empire could have done to illicit such a reaction. But then Tess relaxed, and pushed into his hand.
"I knew you would come back," her words were sluggish, uneven pants rattling through her.
There were a million things Din wanted to tell her in that moment, a million apologies, a million excuses. He wanted to tell her how the moment he had lost her and Grogu, it was like a vital organ had been ripped out of his chest with no anesthesia.
Tess, who was always so careful with her words, felt the weight of a hundred different things slipping off her tongue.
And yet, for several achingly long minutes, neither of them spoke.
Alarms blared around them, the ground shaking with the stormtroopers heavy footed boots, but all Tess Oprin and Din Djarin could do was hold onto each other, bask in the warmth of being together again. It was in that moment, Din realized how hard it would be to eventually say goodbye.
Tess was trying not to think about that at all.
At last, Din found his voice. "What happened? Did they hurt you?" It was strained, more frantic than he would have liked. In a situation like this, Din felt it was his duty to be the one going about this calmly. But right now, all he could hear was the staccato thump of his heartbeat against his ribcage, all he could see was the blood on Tess' forehead.
