Charting the Stars - Dinluke AU

Chapter Ten: A Hand

Notes:
I feel the need to justify characterization in this chapter, particularly of Hera. At this point in her life, she has lost her entire family. Her mother and father both have died due to the Empire, the love of her life and father of her child is also dead, Ezra has disappeared to who knows where (People who watched the Ahsoka show that's who), Sabine is still on Lothal doing what she can there, and Zeb is off helping his own people in the migration to Lira San. Except for her son, she is entirely alone, so she is a little more bitter than in canon.

This chapter is definitely darker than the ones before it since I decided to flex my horror writing muscles a bit, but I tried to keep it mostly tame. That being said:

Warnings:
Dismembered body parts (not overly gory), surprisingly there is no violence in this chapter, there is a cliffhanger though

The spooky stuff (including stray limbs) starts after Luke's POV, so if you need to skip that I understand and I'll give a summary in the end notes so that you can be caught up for the next chapter or decide for yourself that it isn't that bad and decide to read it.

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The Rebellion required a lot more manual labor than Din had expected. He spent most of the eight days they had been on Tund running repairs on ships and equipment as well as hauling stuff from one end of camp to the other. Tracinya adapted quickly, breaking her vow to stop operating on people by falling in with the medics after regaling them the story of how Din got the cracked gap in his visor.

On day nine, Syndulla approached him again, "You've been working pretty hard at this," she said, gesturing up at the Spire. It was an old-fashioned HWK-290 Lightfreighter that had been modified with stronger shields and a couple of heavy laser cannons. He'd been working on it since they arrived after one of the mechanics told him that they were intending to scrap it. Finding something pre-Empire these days was a rarity, so Din was determined to keep the Spire from being torn apart.

"Yeah," he agreed, leaning against the ship to observe the woman in front of him. He was exhausted, sweaty, and sore, especially in his back after leaning over and under the Spire all day long while he worked on it. "Did you need something?" he asked when she just continued to look back at him.

"I'm going on a run to an old base of ours to see what can be recovered. Empire presence has been pretty strong there in case we came back, but intelligence says they've almost entirely cleared out," she explained. "I need a crew."

"Tracinya comes too," he demanded.

"She said the same thing about you, otherwise I wouldn't be here," Syndulla told him bluntly, "This mission will be a long one, so pack your stuff, we leave at 0600 tomorrow."

Before she could walk away he called out, "Why don't you like me?"

She stopped and turned back slowly to look him up and down, "You remind me a bit of somebody, adopting every stray child you see, but I think he'd take offense to me comparing him with a 'stubborn Mandalorian.'"

"You didn't get along with him?" he asked, taking off his work gloves and replacing them with his normal ones. He had learned his lesson the first day when his leather gloves ended up coated in oil that had leaked from the old ship.

"I got along with him quite well actually," she corrected. "We were doing missions for the Rebellion together before we even knew there was a rebellion."

"I'm sorry for your loss," he offered. It didn't matter if the person she was talking about was dead or alive, he could tell by her bitterness that he was gone.

"Thank you," she replied before turning around again to walk away. "0600, if you're late I'll leave you behind."

"Understood." He went back to working on the Spire for a few more hours until Tracinya popped up over his shoulder with a bowl of rice with little bits of vegetables in it. The sun was starting to set behind her when he looked up. "That for me?"