Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He hadn’t wanted to get involved, but then an explosion makes the choice for him. 

Surrounding civilians scream and scatter as debris goes flying through the air, but Galaar upends his table and takes cover behind it. He shoves his helmet on as a spray of transparisteel shards embeds itself in his barrier; then he draws his blaster and cautiously peers out at the source of the bang. There’s a smoking crater in the side of the maintenance tunnel’s access deck. A handful of security guards are swarming around the area, shouting evacuation orders, while a pair of what looks to be officers from the local government are shouting into the fire.

“Stop! Stop! You can't!” the one on the left, a female humanoid, cries. “Stay there! The collars are off, but you've been chipped! Don't move!”

Oh, fierfek, Galaar thinks. Is that why the local council had been so bent on trying to hire him? This far into the Outer Rim, slavers could be anyone from the Hutts to the Guild to the Cooperative; small wonder they would want Mandalorian steel on their side. It’s almost enough to make him think twice though he’s already said no. In any other circumstance he wouldn’t have hesitated to take on the job, but—

“Please!” a childish voice wails. “I want to go home! Help me!”

The male of the officer pair holds up his hands restrainingly. “Don't worry, we’re right here,” he assures. “We’ll get you as soon as we can. But first we have to deactivate the transmitters—”

“Who’s tracking down the detonators?” Galaar asks, and then irately shoves the port cop trying to pull him towards the emergency exit. “And why in the hells didn't you do that first?”

The officers blink. “You're… the mercenary who refused the job. Why are you—?”

“You exploded a chipped slave child and you're seriously asking me that?”

“We didn't explode anyone,” the female Togruta protests fiercely. “The kid ran to us when he saw us.”

“That's the same damn thing.”

“The chips were disabled, but apparently the command code we got for the remote detonators wasn't the administrator’s,” the male officer interjects before the confrontation can escalate. “The deactivation order was overridden by someone with higher access. We have a team raiding the ringleader's office in the neighboring concourse, but they're pinned down in a firefight with the bodyguards and can't get through.”

“Give me their location,” Galaar orders as he reholsters his sidearm in favor of his blaster rifle. “And give me the comms. I'll get a sitrep on the way over.”

“Here,” the male officer says before his partner can protest. He holds out his comlink to share the group sequence. “And here’s their current position. Person in charge is named Mayes. I’ll let them know you're coming—” the man stops short.

“Ivryc,” Galaar says curtly.

“Ivryc the mercenary is heading your way, Captain. He’ll be there in—” he glances at Galaar, who holds up a hand. “In five. He’ll help you get through to the big guy.”

Going on foot would take too long, and the jetpack has been out of fuel since the shitshow that separated him from his partner, so Galaar has no choice but to commandeer a patrol cart from one of the spaceport security officers. It’s both run-down and incredibly tacky-looking—the chassis is ancient and possibly as old as Galaar himself—but what more could be expected of some podunk spaceport in the middle of nowhere? Regardless, he doesn’t feel the need to drive too carefully, and in short order arrives to reinforce the hapless group of glorified militiamen getting their beards blasted off by the slavers’ hired men. 

Galaar takes a moment to evaluate the landscape. Then, after taking a good look at the narrow corridor in which the bodyguards have crammed themselves, he attaches a vibrobayonet to the barrel of his rifle, warns his allies of the incoming flashbang, and charges. He drops three of the guards before he even makes it to the corridor, and two of the remaining four are too disoriented to defend themselves when he tears through them with his blade; but the remaining pair keep their wits about them, and a brief shootout ensues. Galaar spends several seconds exchanging blasterfire with the enemy before eventually tsking and reaching into his belt pouch. Then, after tossing a reflector disk at the opposite wall, he takes aim. Compared to Yana his skill with trick shots is rather crude, but it’s still enough to take out his adversaries, and before long Mayes and his men are breaking down the door to the office. 

Galaar chucks a throwing knife at the slaver’s wrist before she can activate the remote in her hand, after which Mayes’ lieutenant tackles her to the ground and apprehends her. There’s a chaotic scramble as the unit ransacks the office, turning out desk drawers and tearing through bookcases. After several minutes someone cries, “Here! I’ve got it!” 

At once the new command code is transmitted over the comms. Though a great deal of the detonators appear to be accessible by a single master controller, from the sounds of it there’s also a team manually disabling individual chips and collars, as some seem to have been programmed not to accept commands from multiple devices. 

Probably the site of a transitional facility, Galaar surmises. He’s encountered such places before: locations outfitted with medical equipment where captured sentients, after being bought and transported by various traffickers across the sector, would be gathered in one place so their control devices could be “upgraded.” Replacing collars with tracking chips is, apparently, a crucial step in making slaves ready for individual sale rather than bulk purchase—at least amongst the more organized crime syndicates, since supposedly chips are the mark of “superior products.” Definitely Hutts, he thinks. Also definitely not a fight he’d predicted getting into today, not with supplies low, long-range comlinks busted, and no partner to watch his back. Hopefully this will be the extent of his involvement.

Just as he thinks this, of course, another explosion rocks the building. “Osik, what now?” he curses and turns to look at Mayes. Mayes speaks into his comm and the response comes out:

“Several of the slavers’ transport ships have been destroyed,” a staticky voice says. “We’re not sure, but it looks like an inside job. Best guess is that someone higher up caught wind that this site was compromised and made arrangements in case the ringleader was taken out. Take care that she doesn’t kill herself. We still need to gather info—”

The transmission is cut off by a large bang. Then another—then another. The men all exchange glances; then Mayes, after leaving a trio to guard the office and the head slaver, gathers the remainder of his men to regroup with the rest of the operation. Galaar goes along with a long-suffering air and wonders just how he came to be in this situation, being dragged back and forth on a job he hadn’t wanted in the first place.

These thoughts immediately fly from his mind, however, when they return to the main terminal. The hall is aflame. Sentients of all species, some adults but mostly the trafficked children, are running and crying as peace officers race to pull them from the wreckage and out to safety. The slavers seem to have been keeping most all of their juveniles in this concourse, separate from the other prisoners. 

Mayes’ men hurriedly jump from the transport to help with rescue efforts. Galaar moves to join them at once, but is halted when not one, not two, but three pairs of hands grab onto his cloak. 

“What the—” He turns and finds a trio of human boys clinging onto his back. Galaar lifts an arm to wave one of the officers over to escort them to safety, but the tallest one cries, “Wait! Please, help!”

“Our youngest brother’s trapped over there,” the second sibling explains urgently while the third points past a nearby inferno. “Please, hurry! The walls are falling in—he’s too little, he can’t—”

Galaar runs. The boys direct him to what looks like the remains of a corner room. Through the half-collapsed doorway Galaar catches sight of a little boy—barely capable of walking, practically still a baby—stumbling and rubbing smoke out of his eyes—

Before Galaar can raise his voice there’s a shout. Another child appears from farther within—older, perhaps ten or eleven—and shoves the younger one out of the way as a giant slab of the synthstone wall above them begins to crack and shudder. The boy cries as he flails and trips forward, but the forceful push saves his life: a falling chunk of the ceiling barely misses him when he stumbles out of the way. Heedless, the toddler curls up and begins to wail.

Then the rest of the wall begins to tip. Perceiving at once the little boy will be crushed, but unable to reach him due to the flaming detritus between them, the girl whirls around and scrambles up onto the remains of a fallen duracrete pillar. Then she braces her back against it and puts her feet up against the wall; the falling debris does not stop as she wedges herself lengthwise beneath it, but it does slow. She yells again at the little boy. Galaar can’t understand what she’s saying, but the message is clear: she’s telling him to run.

Galaar tears away from the trio of brothers and races forward. He dives once he’s in range, sliding on his knees to pass beneath the low clearance of the fallen support beams, and seizes the youngest sibling around the waist. Once he has the boy he shoots back out, hands his charge to the eldest brother, and then turns back for the girl. 

As if to taunt him in his urgency, the slanted doorway chooses that very moment to collapse. Galaar swears and looks for another point of entry. Eventually he finds one: a little portal held open by the remains of a durasteel window frame, just big enough for him to squeeze into on his hands and knees. Galaar forces himself through, bangs his helmet against several surfaces in the process, and emerges on the other side of the rubble. He begins looking at once for the girl.

He finds her being pressed to death by the wall. The rock has bent her shaking knees back to the point that she’s locked her arms against it as well; fire has begun to lick at her left side. Galaar immediately begins shimmying and ducking his way through the ruins.

“Hang on,” he roars as the girl lets out a desperate yell. All four of her limbs are engaged in the hopeless struggle, straining with effort too great to sustain. But even as her figure begins to disappear behind the slowly encroaching mass of destruction, she lets out a yell of desperate exertion. It’s a raw noise, full of anguish and ferocity in equal measure, and in it he can hear a desperate will to keep death at bay for even just a moment longer. Live, Galaar can hear in the sound of her breathless screaming. Live, live, live!

Galaar slams himself into the falling wall. Levering himself into place beside her with his lower body, he pulls power up from his legs and pushes with all his being. There’s no hope of flipping the slab over, but the force is enough to take the pressure off the child, whose arms and legs immediately flatten in the absence of their load. He reaches up, snags a fistful of her shirt before she can fall into the flames, and yanks her towards himself. Then, grunting with the strain, he turns his body and begins painstakingly inching his way back out, bearing the whole weight of the broken wall on his back as he goes.

“Hurry, go,” he growls as he drops the child and pushes her towards the exit. As soon as she’s clear he throws himself to the side, barely avoids having his legs crushed, and launches himself back out to the other side before something else can crumble atop him and kill him.

“Farking hells!” Galaar gasps once he’s made it. The four siblings are nowhere to be seen, which hopefully means that they’ve all fled to safety, but the girl he’s just rescued is flat on the ground and writhing with air-starved coughs. Galaar quickly scoops her up once he catches his own breath and makes a break for the outside.

“Osi'kyr, what a karking mess. Draar tug'yc,” Galaar groans some time later. He pries his helmet off; his hair is plastered with sweat against his forehead, and his armor is covered in an assortment of new dings and scorch marks. He scrubs his face with his sleeve before turning to look at the child beside him. “How are you holding up, kid?”

The girl, quite singed and sooty herself, seems to be mostly intact, if a little smokey. She is staring into the darkening evening sky with a gaze of utter blankness. Then she seems to realize she’s been spoken to and looks up at him with great delay. Galaar quirks an eyebrow at her; she just stares. 

“Not one for small talk, are you?” he asks after a long moment. Well, he supposes that’s fair, too. Now that the adrenaline has begun to pass he can see a familiar darkness coloring her eyes. This is a sight he’s seen before, too—survivor’s eyes. He’s seen it even in some of his fellow Mando’ade. The tired spirit, full of weary astonishment at the end of a great battle, dazedly having discovered that the will to survive yet lingers… They're old eyes for a child.  

Several minutes pass in silence. Galaar does not attempt to make further conversation, but he does snag a blanket from a passing medic and drop it on the kid’s head. For her part, she takes it by the corners and wraps herself in it like a cocoon. Then she looks at him again. After a moment Galaar tilts his head. Her gaze has more focus now. She’s staring at his armor.

“Never seen beskar’gam before, I guess,” he says after a pause, and then on a whim passes her his bucket. She takes it and, after just a brief moment of inspection, puts it on. It’s the natural response of any youngling presented with a helmet, but at once the girl’s very being seems to grow more animated. Galaar grins a bit at the sight.

“Uwoaa,” she exclaims in the cadence of an unfamiliar language, voice modulated, before she turns to Galaar. Holding the oversized green bucket in place with one hand, she points at herself.

“Good look for you,” he tells her, amused, and then watches while she looks left and right with the HUD sensors. After a moment she even figures out how to use the rangefinder, putting it up and down and zooming in and out. She’s a sharp kid.

“Got guts, too,” he contemplates as he recalls the sight of her sandwiched between life and death, half on fire the whole while. He sweeps his gaze across the courtyard until it falls upon the quartet of brothers; they’re sitting far off under the supervision of one of the local law enforcement officers, huddling together with their baby brother. 

“You got family, girl?” Galaar asks after a beat. 

The girl turns to look at him again, but she still doesn’t reply. Galaar furrows his brow at her. Then he takes his helmet back. The look in her eyes is alert, but uncomprehending.

“You don't speak Basic,” Galaar concludes after several seconds. Her blank face is answer enough for him, and he takes several moments to ponder his next course of action. Then puts his hand in his belt pouch and begins rifling through it until his fingers close around a printed flimsi photo, torn at the edges but more or less still intact. It's a picture from when his parents were still alive, posed together with him and Yana on the day of their wedding.

“Family,” he says as he shows her the photo. “This is me—” he points at himself— “and that's my family.” He motions to his mother, his father, and his spouse.

“Family,” the girl repeats. 

“Yes, I have a family.” Galaar waves the photo at her. Then he points. “Do you have a family?”

She understands his meaning at once and shakes her head, lifting her arms in the shape of an X.

“That's a no, huh?”

Perhaps thinking he’s asked for further clarification, the girl drags a finger across her throat and flops her head to the side in the universal pantomime for death. Well, no ambiguity there. 

Galaar regards her with a look of deep consideration. It’s a big galaxy out there, and there’s no telling what could happen to a kid this young. Even if she manages to find a peaceful road from here—and there is no guarantee that she will, because those who escape slavery often do not—it will be a hard one. With eyes like hers, that is inevitable. Who around her will understand? Perhaps there is a chance she will find someone… but there would be no need to rely on chance among the Mando’ade, who make their trade in war and know for themselves what others can only guess at. It seems almost like a cruelty to leave her behind.

“You want to be my family?” he eventually asks. He points at her and then himself. “You, me, family. Yes?”

“Yes?” the girl asks in a startled tone. 

“You say ‘yes’ if you agree—” Galaar nods his head up and down— “and no if you don't.” He shakes his head side to side. 

There’s a long pause. Then the girl regards him as if he were a youngling who still believed in Sant Claas, tauntauns and hoversled and all. Her look of doubt is so deep and so convicted that it almost cuts him to see it. Do you think I’m an idiot? her eyes seem to ask. Where do you think I come from?

Wherever it is, Galaar cannot help but think in reply, you've brought the worst of it with you. But he knows it’s hard out there. If someone picks up a bit of cynicism as a souvenir, it never came cheap. It is always well-earned—he knows it is. Still…

“You've got nowhere to go and no one to go with, kid. You have nothing to lose.” Galaar gestures at her. “But you know what you do have? Mandokar, the right stuff. You’d do well with the Mando’ade. What do you say?” He points at her and himself again, repeating the word family.

The girl spends a long time staring at him. Then, slowly, her eyes turn to the side. They begin sweeping up and down the courtyard, taking in the sight of all the people. The freed slaves aren't the only ones out amongst the crowd—other civilians are there, too. Shouting for one another, finding one another, calling one another on their comlinks… Galaar follows her gaze and sees it land on a crying Pantoran boy as he runs up to a blue-skinned couple. The father bends down and sweeps his son up in his arms.

“Family,” she repeats, and for a long moment is very still and very silent. Her gaze unfocuses. Galaar can see her mind’s eye cast itself backwards, far into the past—farther than he thinks a person her age ought to be able to go—and several seconds pass before eventually she returns to the present. Then she puts her gaze upon him again, still profoundly unbelieving. Galaar waits for her answer as if trying to cut through her skepticism with sheer force of will.

You believe in families? she asks with her eyes.

You come and see, he replies with his own.

“Okay,” she says after a lengthy pause, quite as if against her better judgment. “Family… okay. Yes family.”

Immensely pleased, Galaar stands at once. “I, Galaar of Clan Ivryc, head of Clan Ivryc, swear upon my name and soul,” he declares in Mando’a. Before he can proceed with the adoption vow, however, he stops short; he doesn't know the girl’s name. The child blinks up at him, shifting at once from skeptical to bewildered.

“Kid, your name—” he begins to ask, and then pauses. Then he thinks, What the hells, she’s mine now. I’ll name her.

“Juri,” he decides after several moments. The sight of her holding up the wall with her whole being is fresh in his mind. “From jurir. You can carry a load… you know how to bear weight. Your name is Juri.”

Juri seems to sense a certain gravity about him as he says this, because even though she very clearly has no idea what is going on, she inclines her head and looks at him intently. Galaar begins to grin again. He drops to his knee in front of her.

“Juri, child of no one, of no clan,” he recites, “ ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad.” I now know your name as my child. Galaar puts his hands on her shoulders. “From this moment on, you are Juri of Clan Ivryc, and no one may take your name from you.”

Chapter Text

Galaar is happy when he finds his ship where he left it, more or less undamaged by the general chaos of the day. He had worried the hangar would have been caught up in the explosions, but aside from some wall failure on the eastern end, the area appears mostly untouched.

After confirming the integrity of the craft, Galaar disables the security and brings Juri inside. Bypassing the main corridor, he goes straight to the cockpit to check the comm station. It’s useless—the thing is still broken and he certainly hadn't made any repairs today—so there is no contact from anyone. Unsurprised but still disappointed, he takes his new charge to the common area and sets her down on the sofa.

“Stay there. I’ll find you something to wear,” he declares. “I’ll show you where the fresher is in a tic, too. Sonics only right now, though, sorry—something in the shower mechanism got karked up during the big fight and I still haven’t figured it out.”

Juri just gives him a contemplative look, which Galaar has quickly begun to recognize as the face she makes when she has no idea what he’s saying and is trying to use context clues to figure it out. Language lessons, he thinks, before he climbs the ladder up to the bunks and begins digging through Yana’s clothes. 

“Here.” After coming back down to the common room, he hands Juri a bundle of fabric before nudging her to her feet and leading her aftward to the refresher. Galaar is about halfway through showing her how to control the sonics when he glances back at her face and realizes the kid’s never seen a sonic shower before in her life.

“Are you serious? What kind of backwater planet do you come from?” he asks her incredulously. Not understanding, Juri makes a troubled face before she mimes pouring water on her head and scrubbing herself with soap. 

“Can’t, kid, it’s broken.” Galaar opens up the mirror, points at the red light on the control panel behind it, and shakes his head. Then he toggles the sonics again. Juri looks utterly flummoxed; Galaar eventually just unbuckles his vambrace, rolls up his sleeve, and sticks his arm in to show her how it works. 

“Uwoaa, she says again in that strange language of hers, eyes lighting up with fascination. She puts her own arm in next to his and watches in fascination as soot and grime lifts off her skin. “Niit.”

Niit, Galaar repeats to himself under his breath curiously, and then abruptly finds himself choking back a laugh: Juri, having cautiously grabbed a piece of her snarled hair, is now carefully bringing it forward as if to feed some sort of rabid beast.

“Honestly, kiddo, you’re probably going to need help with that…” After a moment Galaar shifts his gaze towards the matting on the back of her head and frowns. Not unexpected, given the treatment of slaves, but it might be one of the worst cases he’s ever seen. “...Actually, we might have to cut it off.”

Apparently Juri understands these words quite well because she whirls around, covers her head, and regards him with horror. “No,” she says with alarm, “no cut it off.”

Galaar is surprised, but only for a moment. Of all the phrases for a non-Basic speaking slave to know, “cut it off” probably would be one of them. “All right,” he agrees easily, knowing that there’s a better time and place for that argument. “You good, then? Go ahead and get cleaned up so I can take a turn.”

Some minutes later, after Galaar has shucked off all his beskar’gam, examined it, and is contemplating the growing need to repaint it, Juri reemerges from the fresher in Yana’s oversized shirt and approaches the armor curiously.

“You can look at it, but do not touch the vambraces,” Galaar prohibits as he stands from his seat on the sofa. Then he realizes the futility of this warning and decides not to take any chances. “Actually, let me just—” he picks up his gauntlets and throws them up the opening to the bunks before sealing access with a passcode lock. The last thing he needs is his foundling shooting herself in the face with a whipcord launcher—or activating a flamethrower and setting herself on fire for the second time that day. “Just… hang out for now. I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

Fortunately, Juri’s sense of self-preservation seems to be perfectly intact: when he finishes and returns to the common room, he finds that all she’s done is put his bucket back on and begin walking about with it. Galaar finds himself put into mind of the baby relatives he’d seen as a teenager; several of them had done the same with their family members’ helmets. By now all of them will have gone through the verd’goten, though, and obtained armor of their own.

“All right there, verd’ika,” he says with amusement as he comes forward to pluck the bucket from her head once more. Juri blinks and looks up at him. Galaar tucks his helmet under his arm and drops to a crouch before her. “It’ll be some time yet until you get your own armor. You need training first.” Galaar pauses. “Come to think of it, are you even old enough to start training? How old are you?”

Juri just squints confusedly at this query, so another round of charades ensues. After some effort Galaar determines that they seem to use the same basic gestures for numbers, and so ends up pointing to himself and saying, “Twenty-eight. Two-eight.” He holds up his fingers. “Get it? I’m twenty-eight. How old are you?” He points at her.

Juri tilts her head and Galaar wonders if she still doesn’t understand, but before he can try another method she holds up her hands and shakes them. Galaar regards this quizzically before he realizes she’s trying to say that she doesn’t know.

“Fark, kid, you’ve been on your own that long?” he asks with pity. “You don’t even know when you were born? You have had a rough ride of it.”

Juri seems to understand the gist of what he’s saying because she gives him a bit of a wry look. Then she clenches a fist and makes the motion of hitting herself on the head with it, jarring all of her limbs to convey a hard impact. Galaar scratches his neck.

“You got hit on the head… and you can’t remember?” he deduces. Juri responds by parting her wild mop of auburn hair at the temple and shuffling forward to show him her scalp; there’s a long pinkish-white scar there, fully healed but hypertrophic. 

“Oh, osik, that’s gnarly.” Galaar spends several moments inspecting it before concluding that this kid is as lucky as the stars—with a head wound like that, she probably had been close enough to becoming one herself. He probes it lengthwise with his thumb, examining its raised edges, before he shakes his head. “Kriff, kid. Was someone trying to kill you or what?”

The expression that flits across Juri’s face makes Galaar think she might have understood these words, but she does not answer. He regards her for a long moment. Then he runs his hands through his hair and lets out a troubled sigh.

“Well, you're clearly alive and well, so that's a good sign,” he says after a moment. “And by the look of it I’m guessing a decent chunk of time has passed since you were injured. Might ask if we can get you a scan when we get your chip removed tomorrow, though. Head wounds are the sort of nasty business that can cause problems even ages down the line…” 

Is that why she likes his helmet so much? If so, he can't blame her. If he ever takes a blow like that and manages to walk away from it, Galaar thinks he would probably sleep with his bucket on for at least a year afterwards.

After that he digs rations out of the galley pantry—there’s nothing else aboard, he’s been rushing to get to the rendezvous and hasn’t stopped for anything but the bare minimum to get the ship working again—so their dinner consists of jerky and dry bread reconstituted in water; Juri, who looks like she hasn't eaten a crumb in the past week, seems utterly delighted. Then, once they’ve eaten, they more or less fall directly asleep, though Galaar hangs on to consciousness long enough to heft the child up the ladder and deposit her in Yana’s bunk. Then he passes out face-first on his own bed, exhausted. 

Juri awakes in a cold sweat. From head to toe her skin is crawling with horror. Desperate disbelief is clawing at her insides—her throat is choked with furious denial—and when she inhales her lungs seem to fill not with breath, but with terrible, sanity-shredding fear. Her mind reels with the dread of it: with the sight of a woman’s gloved hand slipping from a durasteel ledge, with the the staticky blare of comlink audio peaking in her ear, with that same lady’s voice screaming go, just go—

“Just go, Galaar! Leave atmo! You'll make it if you jump!”

She spends several seconds staring blankly at the ceiling, breath heavy. Her heart is so racing that she thinks it may beat itself straight out of her chest. Then, shaking, she sits up. She turns her head to the right and sees the slumped-over figure of the man on the bed beside hers. His arm is hanging off the side of the bunk; his cheek, smashed against the hard mattress, is pale. Sweat is beading on his forehead.

So he’s called Galaar, Juri thinks as she slips from the bed and steps up to stand beside the new parent whose name she hadn't known. Even as he sleeps his hands are clenched into fists, vicelike.

“Wh—” He jerks awake when she touches his shoulder, throwing one arm up over his face and flipping a knife out from nowhere with his other. The disorientation of abruptly-shed sleep seems to scramble him, and in her mind Juri can almost hear him ask who the hells is on my ship—

Juri has taken more than one hard knock from a fellow captive too badly startled, so she reflexively drops and covers her head; her chest pounds with the awareness that, unlike in the past, she faces someone with a weapon. Galaar, however, comes to his senses at once and immediately lowers his arms.

“Fierfek, it's you,” he breathes. Then he pulls a hand across his face. “Stars, ad, I could've cut you. Be careful.”

Juri peers up from her crouch as he sheathes the knife and sits up. He spends several seconds staring at Yana’s bunk. Then he heaves a large sigh. “No, that's not your fault. Sorry, I'm wound up. Been like this for weeks. Shouldn't take it out on you.”

A sense of tangible regret, shot through with a wide streak of mercilessly muzzled anxiety, seems to radiate off of him in waves. He takes a long moment to sit with a hand pressed against his forehead, gaze distant. But after another moment he slaps his palms on his knees and stands.

“Right,” he declares as he reaches out to pull Juri up from her crouch. “Let’s go. We'd better be about our business quickly today, Jur’ika—there isn't a lot of time.” 

But if Galaar had hoped a brisk awakening would lead to a brisk day, his hopes are disappointed. They begin to meet roadblocks at once. When they arrive at the medical center it’s filled to bursting with other emancipated slaves; together they generate queues so long and labyrinthine it’s nearly meridian by the time Galaar and Juri even speak with someone. Then he finds out he should have taken Juri to the scanners first, and they’re almost turned away; but luckily his stubborn Mandalorian disposition buys enough time for Juri to work out what he and the staff are arguing so fiercely about, so she is able to convey the chip’s location before they lose their spot in the line—though she has to kick Galaar in the leg first to make herself heard. Unluckily, however, it turns out that her chip is located atop the upper left side of her ribcage—near enough to several vital organs that she’s disqualified from easy surgery and is shunted off to the side with the higher-risk operations.

By late afternoon, tempers are hot and fuses are short. Not just Galaar’s; the locals have been caught up in all the aftershocks of the slave ring bust, and enough of them in the medical center are unhappy about it to set a tic in Galaar’s jaw. Though the vast majority of their encounters are civil, in every universe there’s always one idiot who can’t help but pitch a fit; as it is, Juri thinks she could be credited with saving both his life and her guardian’s continued freedom from the law. She thinks Galaar would have headbutted that man straight into the afterlife if she hadn’t been there.

Things don’t go quite as they’d hoped when they finally meet their medic, either. The fellow’s specialty, according to the placard on his door, is in near-human anatomy—that is to say, not human anatomy. Galaar’s request for an evaluation of Juri’s old head injury only adds fuel to the fire. Combined with the problem of the surgery itself, it seems to be more pressure than the overworked and overwhelmed healer seems able to bear, and more arguing ensues. Eventually—after a seemingly endless amount of hemming and hawing—Juri does get a scan, but other than a mumbled observation that there’s no active bleeding, the doctor has no valuable input whatsoever. He just loads the images onto a datachip and tells Galaar to seek a second opinion later on. As for the operation itself, it takes about forty-five minutes.

All this to say, by the time Galaar stumbles out of the facility with his foundling on his hip, slave chip-free and hopped up on pain meds, the planet’s twin moons are already high in the starry heavens. “Farking hells,” he whispers as he stares up into the night sky. “Everything is closed by now.”

Chapter Text

On the morrow Galaar’s mood is foul. For one, he’s utterly unable to make Juri rise from bed, and he spends a precious hour on holocall with the medcenter trying to determine whether or not she needs to be taken back and examined for complications. Once that ends, it takes more time still to force feed her nutrients, antibiotics, and painkillers, and half an eternity after that before she understands how to comm him if she needs help. 

Eventually he does get to the market and begins his search for parts, which he bargains savagely for once found. By the mercy of the stars he obtains what he needs in the condition and quantity he needs it, but by the end his pockets have lightened to the point that he knows he needs to take another job soon. But taking another job would mean taking more time, and if he takes any more time than this—

He works on repairs through the night. In this, blessedly, progress is more or less smooth; by the time he emerges on the other side of daylight, dry-eyed and sore-shouldered, his exhaustion has mellowed his rancor a bit. It helps that Juri is up and about when he exits the cockpit. He finds her standing on her tiptoes on an upturned plasti-crate in the galley, straining to see into the upper reaches of a cabinet, and he lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“You’re looking better today, ad, ” he remarks with some cheer as he comes forward to stand behind her. Juri must have known he was there because she hardly even blinks. She just points upwards—with her right arm, not her left, she must still be sore from the surgery—at her objective. “Sure thing, kiddo. What were you going for? The jerky again? Can’t be the caff, you’re way too young…”

He has apparently divined her desire correctly: she jumps up with open hands when he retrieves the container, pulls out a strip when he hands it to her, and happily begins gnawing on it before even coming down from the crate. Galaar laughs and begins heating water for the other rations.

“I got the comms up,” he tells her after they sit down to drink broth and noodles together out of cups. “No messages yet, but I think maybe when we get in-system to the meetup point she might finally send something. Just need to get the rest of the life support sorted out now… then we’ll finally be able to leave.”

Juri clearly hasn’t the faintest clue what he’s just said, but she seems happy that he’s happy, so she returns his smile. Galaar laughs again and ruffles her hair. Or, well, he tries to; his fingers get stuck in the tangles, which are just as bad now as they’d been two days ago. Juri winces. “Whoops. Sorry, kid.”

“Okay,” she tells him with a dismissive wave. She is clearly unbothered. She is more focused on taking the opportunity to seize more jerky and shove it in her mouth.

“You like that stuff now, but just wait until you’ve been living off it for a month,” Galaar mutters with amusement. “Well, I doubt you’ve been eating well before this, and we’ve got stock. Have at it, I guess.”

Galaar allows himself a short nap after eating, if only to keep from lasering a finger off when he resumes work on the ship, but before long he is up again and pulling panels off the walls. Eventually Juri wanders in to watch him, which reminds Galaar so much of his own childhood—how often had he looked on in the exact same way as his father had made repairs?—that he begins to grin again. Yana had told him from the start that she was sterile, so he had always known he would never have children of his own making, but now he is a father, too.

“Bet Yana’ll be chuffed to meet you,” Galaar tells Juri happily. “She never said much about it even to me, but she was always looking after the foundlings whenever we were with the others. I can’t wait to see what she’ll say when she finds out we finally get to keep one this time.” He pauses. “Actually, now that I think about it, you even kind of look like her. Your hair’s the same color.”

Galaar talks long enough about his spouse that eventually Juri even picks up her name. “Yana?” she asks curiously. Galaar stops his work and pulls out the photo from his belt again. “Oh, family?” she asks. “Yana?”

“Yup.” He points. “That’s her.”

It’s only several hours later, once he’s finally recalibrated everything and set the diagnostics onto a full system scan, that Galaar glances over at Juri and catches a proper glimpse of the look on her face. She’s picked up the photo again and is staring at it with a distant expression. She has them again: old eyes in a young face, just like their first encounter. Galaar reaches out and claps a hand on her back.

“Just wait, kid,” he tells her. “You’ll see what it’s like when we find her. You’ll see.”

They don’t find Yana. Galaar checks their usual cantina, asks every contact he has in the city, and scours each inch of the underworld he possibly can in the first forty-eight standard hours after their arrival, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Juri watches as the man grows progressively more agitated—inputting one comlink sequence after another, broadcasting some sort of Morse-code signal, checking the ship console again and again for any word from her—until at last, at the end of the second day, she sees a crack form in his face. Gradually it widens until he is sitting hunched over the display with his head in his hands. He doesn’t speak, but she can hear his voice regardless. There’s nothing in his mind but a single, anguished thought: It’s my fault. I left her behind. 

Juri is silent for several minutes. Then her brow creases. She stands and pulls on his sleeve. Galaar slowly lifts his head and looks at her; his eyes are swimming in despair.

“Go,” Juri says. She points at the city through the viewport. “We go. Yes?”

“...Kid , I—I already was there. It’s… no good. She’s not…” Galaar swallows, unable to finish his sentence.

“Go,” Juri insists. “Or—I go?” Her gaze becomes contemplative. Galaar’s anguish immediately shifts into alarm.

“On your own? Hells no!”

“Okay,” Juri says with a look of satisfaction. “We go.”

And just like that he finds himself being dragged back towards the heart of the city. With such a blatantly vulnerable youngling in the lead—the kid can’t even run, not in boots twice her size—he has little time to brood; instead he spends most of his attention scowling ferociously at anyone who so much glances at her with more than a passing interest. No one can see it, of course, helmeted as he is, but his aura of hostility seems to suffice as a deterrent. 

Juri, meanwhile, seems to be taking turns entirely at whim. They go on like that for nearly half an hour, making their way down progressively seedier and seedier streets, before a bright flash of color in the periphery of Galaar’s vision halts him in his tracks. Juri, who had been making to walk on, stops and regards him curiously.

He is looking at a wall: the image of a hawk’s head is there, thrown up on a corner covered in graffiti. The paint is blindingly orange— shereshoy orange—and Galaar shoots forward at the sight of it. There’s a tag beneath the bird’s head. No, not a tag—a message written in Mando’a:

CAN’T STAY NOT SAFE NEXT MEETUP 2 MONTHS

- Y

“Oh, fark.” Galaar, reaches up without thinking to take a holopic with his viewer. A beat passes. Then he puts both hands on his helmet and stares up at the wall, robbed of all other speech. Juri looks on, puzzled, before she has a thought and pulls out Galaar’s flimsi photo from her pocket. His parents’ armors are matching shades of bronze and maroon, and his own is the same vivid green it is now, but Yana—Yana’s armor is a warm, earthy orange.

“She was here, Juri,” Galaar breathes when she runs up beside him. “She was here. She went on to the next rendezvous point. She’ll be waiting there in two months.”

A grin begins to spread across his face as Juri tilts her head to the side. Then he reaches down and hoists her up into the air with an overjoyed shout. “Jur’ika, you're stars-blessed,” he whoops at her in his native tongue. “Karking moons! There’s no way I would have ever found this on my own! Osik, kid, you're a lucky charm!”

“Lucky,” Juri exclaims back, familiar with the word. It had often been repeated to her by the other slaves she’d been trafficked with. In fact, for lack of knowing her real name, they’d called her that: ”luckmaker.” Or, well, they'd called her chuklav, but that word belongs to a language whose origin Juri still has no clue of. Several of the slaves had spoken it, even those from disparate planets, but she hadn't had enough exposure to obtain anything more than a patchy understanding of it. She’d understood it more than Basic, she supposes… but not much more.

Galaar does not quite go back skipping to the ship, but it is a near thing. He hefts Juri up into his arms as he goes, too impatient to match her plodding pace, and begins spinning out plans at once. “Two months, that's enough time to find some work—maybe if we get an escort job in the right direction we could even do more—or no, should we head to the Mandalore system first and look for work there? I need to check the fuel reserves—”

Upon returning to the cockpit and prying off his helmet, Galaar jumps right on the comms. Juri looks at his face and can't help but be taken aback by how hard the man is smiling; his entire demeanor has transformed in an instant. She doesn’t know the last time she’s seen such an animated person. 

For a moment out of time Juri finds herself in a dim memory, flat on her back on the cold, grimy floor of a barred cell. She’d spent hours like that, lying there. Her cellmate had been the same, as had been their neighbors, and their neighbors’ neighbors. Still and unspeaking—trying not to breathe, let alone think or have feelings—and surviving in silence. Dissociated, endlessly anticipating, so locked in the posture of endurance as to have become made of stone…

What a different sight this man is. This man, fit to weep one moment and bursting with joy the next—face open, gaze mobile, eyes absorbing light… he’s not just alive, she thinks as he laughs into a holocall and begins waving his hands excitedly. No, he’s not just alive. He’s living. 

Several moments pass as Juri stares at Galaar’s back. Then she has a vision of an armored teenager beside the console. Leaning on the wall with her helmet under her arm, she interjects loudly with a sly grin on her lips, and then lets out a guffaw. It fades almost instantly, but the sound of phantom-laughter doubles over Galaar’s until she steps forward and stands in the place of that ghostly girl. The moment she turns and assumes the same posture, leaning on the wall and looking up at Galaar from the side, the sound goes silent. Juri thinks she won’t hear it again until she makes it herself.

Chapter Text

“You know, Juri,” Galaar remarks, “Yans will definitely give me shit if you’re still walking around like that when we meet her. We’d better sort out your hair.”

“Huh?” Juri, sitting placidly on the sofa, squints at him. She’s only understood about a third of his speech. “I no walking around.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean that,” he says, and points at her head. Lately she’s taken to tying her hair up with a scarf to hide the matting, but right now she’s let it down and the rat’s nest is on full display. “We need to deal with that.”

Juri’s face immediately becomes wary. “No cut it off,” she tells him.

“I guess we can try brushing it out first,” Galaar replies doubtfully. “Well, there’s still a while until our jump ends, I suppose… Let’s give it a shot.”

In short order he has Juri seated on the floor in the common area. Comb in hand, he sets about untangling the massive ball of hair at the back of her head. 

“Dank farrik, Juri, this is a kriffing waste of time,” Galaar curses about half an hour later. Juri, to her credit, is not truly in tears over the pain in her scalp, but at this point has moved across the room to clutch her head and stare at him with eyes of utter malcontent. “Juri, ad’ika, there's nothing we can do. We have to cut it off.”

“No,” says Juri, but Galaar stands to grab his razor from the fresher cabinet anyway. When he returns her eyes are full of defiance; it’s clear she’s not going to cooperate. Sighing, Galaar crouches and grabs her by the wrist.

It only takes half a second for him to realize he’s made a mistake. His foundling, usually so sweet-tempered and agreeable, explodes with violence. Galaar actually drops the razor to defend himself. 

When she doesn't succeed in wrenching her arm away, Juri throws her weight to the side to pull him off balance instead. Then she brings up her knee and slams it into his chest. Though this catches him by surprise, it’s not forceful enough to cause any real damage. He has no difficulty in blocking the clumsy elbow strike that follows, nor the attempted follow-up kick to the groin. But Juri is furious enough that her failure does not dissuade her: she lunges for his face. It’s not clear whether she’s attempting to grasp his ear so she can lever his head to the side—or, it occurs to him with sudden alarm, attempt an eye gouge—but he realizes at once that this child absolutely intends to do him real harm if she can manage it. He releases her wrist and leaps back at once, putting significant distance between them.

“Juri—”

Juri flings the clippers at his head. Galaar catches them before they hit. Heedless, the girl begins spitting out the most invective string of sentences he's ever heard from the mouth of a child, intelligible or not.

“Fuck off, asshole! I already told you no! You can’t just shave me bald, you prick, you—” Juri throws up her arms before turning to slam an open palm against the wall repeatedly in anger. “ Don't you think I know it's a disaster? I know! I know I have to cut it off! But you don't get to fucking shear me like some kind of animal! I'm a person, not a cat with fleas you picked up off the street! People have already done whatever the hell they've wanted with me and I’m fucking tired of it. Do not touch me. Do not!”

Galaar is no stranger to tempers that flare fierce and fiery, and the look of pure wrath on Juri's face as she smacks her hand against her body, over her midsection where the surgeons had removed the chip, makes him understand at once. Galaar drops the razor on the table.

“I will not cut your hair.” He holds up his hands and swears. “Ori'haat, by my name and soul, I will not.”

Silence descends over the ship, punctured only by the hum of the hyperdrive and the sound of Juri’s heavy breathing. Then, silently, tears begin to stream down her cheeks. Her skin is still flushed red with anger, but the snarl on her face gradually fades. Eventually the girl turns, grabs the headscarf from the sofa, and ties up her hair. Then, still unspeaking, she walks towards the bunks, climbs the ladder, and shuts the access hatch behind her.

She is lying on her back in the bunk when they revert from hyperspace. At once the cold silence of her mind fills with distant color and light, and she lets out a little sigh of relief before she can help it. Even now she finds that she does not much like hyperspace. Just on its own she finds it eerie enough, silent and empty and dark as it is. But the fact that it makes her remember the slavers’ frigate is what really makes it uncomfortable. The months she had spent there, rotting away in her tiny holding cell as her captors toured the Outer Rim, collecting more and more “merchandise” in each system they passed through… They'd gone on like that for ages until finally they’d arrived at that spaceport and been dumped like cattle into a pen. Cattle to be selected, sedated, chipped…

But then Galaar had rescued her. Juri rolls over and stares at the wall. She remembers his straining figure, covered in dust and soot, crawling through burning wreckage... He’d thrown himself with abandon against that wall. It had been crushing her to death; she'd already folded in half under the weight of that debris. Stuck to that pillar, roasting like a pig on a spit, she knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been there. She would have died in that fire.

Juri makes an angry noise. She rolls onto her side and glowers at the wall. There’s a pit in her stomach, and it pisses her off. It’s true that Galaar saved her life. He’s treated her well and provided for her needs at the cost of his own time and resources. Since she first arrived in this galaxy far, far away, no one has done more for her than him. But does she have to let him do anything he wants because of it? Since she owes him her life, is he justified to treat her however he wishes? 

Her eyes begin to sting again. Family, it really is a crock of horseshit. How is it any different from before? All she’s done is jumped from one seat of bondage to another. The only thing that’s different now is that it’s not illegal.

She doesn’t know how long she stays like that, scowling in tears in the bunk. They land on the planet Phindar and she feels Galaar’s presence leave the ship, but she stays where she is. She is prepared to spend the whole day like that. Perhaps she would have, too, if the access hatch didn’t hiss open an indeterminate amount of time later.

Juri is absolutely ready to roll over and chuck the nearest hard object at Galaar’s head, but the face that appears is not Galaar’s; it’s Yana’s. Juri recognizes her at once. She’s even prettier in real life than she was in the photo, with long eyelashes and doe eyes that seem slightly out of place on a person in dinged and dented beskar. 

“Hello, Juri,” the woman greets warmly. “Galaar’s told me about you. I’m Yana. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

“...Hey Yana,” replies Juri. She has a feeling “hey” is not an equivalent greeting to the one just offered to her, but it’s the only one Galaar ever seems to use, so it’s all she knows. Yana doesn’t seem to mind.

“Do you mind if I come up? I have a bunch of stuff I want to put away.”

Juri is a little bemused, but she more or less understands that Yana has just asked permission to enter a space that is actually hers to begin with. She quickly jumps down from the bunk, scrubs her face with her sleeve, and shuffles towards the corner. Yana smiles a lovely smile, climbs up, and begins chattering leisurely.

She's… not what Juri had expected the partner of a spitfire like Galaar to be. But somehow, despite her dainty looks, Juri gets the sense that Yana is just as Mandalorian as he is. Her movements are practiced and efficient as she begins unequipping the various pieces of her armor. She doesn't fumble with any buckles or clasps, and she divests herself of a variety of hidden weapons with easygoing routine. Then, with no embarrassment at all, she starts peeling off her bodysuit. Juri might have expected someone with such princessly looks to be more bashful about stripping down to her underwear in the company of another, but Yana isn't in the slightest bit bothered.

“Ah, thank the Three,” the woman sighs in relief after pulling on a tunic and a pair of flowing, cropped trousers. “Even washing as much as I dared, there's only so much you can do before a single undersuit starts to stink.”

Juri tilts her head. Yana giggles. She points at her discarded clothes, makes an exaggerated face, and waves her hand in front of her nose.

“Ah,” Juri says. She knows the word for this one. “Dawoor.” 

“Yes, just so,” Yana agrees. “Daworir.”

After this she takes up a comb and begins working out a snarl of knots in her hair. As she does she starts chattering about—Juri thinks—how she's just been on the second-worst bodyguarding job of her life. Though Juri’s understanding is piecemeal, she gets the sense that Yana has spent the past however-much-time crammed between crates on a cargo vessel, hiding from—someone—to keep—someone else?—from beating her client to death. Or something like that.

“Either way, I'm glad to be done with it,” Yana declares. She brandishes her comb in the air once she finishes untangling. Then she waves her hand invitingly at Juri. “Here, let me do your hair, too.”

Juri is instantly suspicious. Did Galaar say something to her? Is it a trap? If Juri lets her touch her hair, is she going to whip out a razor after half an hour of trying and shave her bald? Her knuckles turn white as she clenches her fists, watching warily.

Yana’s eyes soften. “Your hair… it looks just like my sister’s. Would you let me brush it?”

The most fleeting impression of a little girl, draped in lace and embroidered finery, flickers through Juri’s mind. She sees a gap-toothed smile and pretty auburn ringlets. Lured in by a sudden sense of affection, Juri finds herself drifting forward. In no time at all Yana’s fingers are prodding gently at her scalp.

“I always envied her for it,” Yana remarks wistfully. She reaches over to a cabinet and pulls out some kind of spray. “Mine can't hold a curl to save a life. It’s pin-straight no matter what I do. Yours seems to be much more textured.”

Then she picks out a section of hair and begins. Her movements are gentle and methodical, with minimal amounts of tugging, and are accompanied by none of Galaar’s impatient muttering. Fifteen minutes pass; then thirty. After an hour and a half she puts down the comb and stretches her arms over her head.

“Hm, it’s some progress,” she remarks after examining her work. Juri turns and looks up at her. “Let’s take a break. I’m hungry, and I’m sure your bum hurts after sitting on the floor all this time. Want to eat?”

Juri looks doubtful as she follows Yana down from the bunks, but the confrontation she’s anticipating with Galaar does not follow. Though she can hear him murmur his thanks when Yana brings him lunch—some kind of spicy-smelling wrap, the first fresh food Juri’s seen in ages—he does not join them in the common area. Instead a repetitive scraping sound drifts out from the armory nook. He seems to be carrying out some manner of weapon maintenance.

The spicy-smelling wrap is deliciously tangy. It’s the first time in ages since she’s tasted any seasoning besides salt, and after scarfing down the first one she immediately turns to Yana and requests, “Again please.”

“‘More, please’?” Yana suggests as she hands over another. Juri tears through the covering and digs in.

“More please,” she agrees. Yana giggles.

They stay in the common room after lunch rather than returning to the bunk. Yana drops a cushion onto the floor for Juri to sit on before resuming the task of detangling her hair. In contrast to the morning, which Juri had spent mostly listening to Yana talk, Yana spends the afternoon asking Juri questions instead. When Juri answers with her usual charades, miming numbers or making gestures, Yana provides the relevant vocabulary. Then she has the girl repeat her.

By the dinner hour Juri is tender-headed and mentally exhausted, but oddly satisfied with the learning she’s done in such a short period of time. Yana, too, seems quite pleased with the progress they've made. They aren't finished, but she simply re-wraps Juri’s head in the scarf and leaves it. They set to it again after breakfast the next day. And then, by midmorning, it’s done.

When they go to the fresher and stand in front of the mirror, Juri stares and stares. Then tears begin to drip down her face. Her hair hasn’t looked like this since she was kidnapped. Red-brown waves of it are falling over her shoulders, flowing all the way down to her elbows. This hair is the one thing she'd most appreciated about her new appearance after waking up in a space opera.

“I was right,” Yana declares cheerfully. She puts her hands on Juri's shoulders and smiles at her in the mirror. “Every bit as pretty as Awa’s. We’d better train you well—when you grow up, your suitors will be falling all over themselves to get to you.”

“Thank you,” Juri cries. She whirls around and throws her arms about the woman’s midsection. “Thank you! Yana, thank you!”

“You are very welcome, Juri,” Yana answers with glowing warmth. Laughing excitedly, Juri releases her and goes running into the common area, where she begins jumping about in unrestrained celebration. Yana follows with a smile. 

Then Galaar appears. Juri freezes at the sight of him. She stares at him for a long moment, uncertain. Then she looks at Yana.

“It’s all right. Look, he has something for you.”

Wary, Juri turns back to look at him. Galaar clears his throat. Then he holds out a sheathed vibroblade, handle first.

“You did good, ad,” he tells her gruffly. “You did exactly what you're supposed to do. When someone tries to get you, you fight like hells, just like that. Sorry I tried to cut your hair—next time some di’kun is up in your business, use this.”

Dumbfounded, Juri stares at him. There’s a palpable air of remorse about him, and his expression is painfully earnest; it's clear he’s apologizing for what he did. But why is he handing her a knife at the same time?

Galaar begins to shift uncomfortably as the silence goes on. “I've got others if you don't want this one,” he tells her. “I cleaned up a bunch of my old stuff. You can pick.”

Juri abruptly understands why he’d been cooped up in the armory all of yesterday. He’d been sharpening knives… to use as peace offerings. Huh.

“Galaar, my love, I don't think she can tell the difference yet,” Yana remarks amusedly. “This is fine. Right, Juri?”

“Um,” says Juri, and then hesitantly reaches out to accept the weapon. It’s definitely not what she had expected. Is he saying that he wants her to attack him if they fight again? Has he just equipped her for armed resistance? “Right. Er… Thank you, Galaar?”

Galaar’s face lights up, clearly untroubled by the prospect of his child pulling a dagger on him. “You got it, Jur’ika. Knife-fighting's my speciality. I’ll teach you a bunch of stuff you can use later.”

Yana giggles again. Galaar looks at her fondly. Now that his apology has been accepted, relief is plain on his face.

“It’s been a hell of a time while you were gone, Yans,” he tells her feelingly. “But look at this. The second you're back, you put things to rights again. I really am no good without you.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that.” Yana smiles at him. “Clearly you've done some good in the meantime.”

Juri blinks as Yana puts a hand on her shoulder. Galaar grins widely and wraps an arm around his partner’s waist. Then he reaches out and ruffles Juri’s hair. This time, his fingers don't snag.

“Guess so,” he says cheerfully. “You look great, kid. I’m glad you stopped me.”