The Quarry

The Quarry - Part 3

"Vers, what are you doing? It's late. I don't...my helmet's not on. Wait."

"It's fine. Listen, I've only got a few minutes."

"Hang on, let me find it."

"Din, I'm leaving."

He stared at her in the dark, her eyes piercing him as he turned her words over in his mind. Surely she was joking.

"I've got to find him, Din. If he's out there and alive, I've got to find him."

"Versa, we don't even know if he made it off world that day."

"Come with me."

"I can't, Versa. This is our home. This is our family now. Why would you leave?"

"Because I might have real family still out there. I can't just let that go, Din. Don't you get that?"

"Real family?" The words burned him like a hot blade.

"Din...I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah you did."

She reached out for him, but he pulled away. "Just go. I won't rat you out." He rolled over so that his back was facing her. She stood there in silence for a few more moments before he heard her footsteps whisper out of his room. She never saw the tears rolling down his cheeks and he never made a sound.

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Din awoke with a start. I was asleep. That's odd. I never sleep in here anymore. He'd been able to nap when he had the kid, but now, sleep was the most elusive quarry he chased. He couldn't remember the last time he'd just dozed off accidentally like that. Anymore, he had to be on the brink of collapsing to get a few uninterrupted hours before he awoke from dreams of the kid in danger or just with an empty, lonely ache he'd never experienced before. Suddenly, he remembered he wasn't alone. He whirled to look at Versa, but she was tipped sideways in her seat and appeared to be unconscious. Watching her chest rise and fall peacefully, Din remembered how they'd napped together under the trees in the gardens of Aq Vetina or the sound of her snoring the first few nights they were with the Mandalorians. She'd sobbed uncontrollably the first few nights and he'd hugged her tightly until she'd wear herself out and fall asleep in his arms.

The flash of memories almost made him miss the loose wiring Versa was trying to cover with her hands. She's faking it. His anger bubbled as he stood quickly, shoving her chair away from the console roughly. She yelped in surprise as she was knocked out of it, but he ignored her as he climbed under the console to inspect the damage. She'd managed to rip one of the panels off and had gotten at the wiring underneath. It looked like she was trying to mess with the hyperdrive power.

"DANK FARRIK, VERS. You just won't stop, will you? What are you even trying to do, throw us out of hyperspace?"

Versa had raised herself to a sitting position, her back against the hull as she watched him scramble around, trying to find the screws she'd undone with her fingers to remove the panel. Finally, she sighed, reaching into her pocket and tapping him on the shoulder to hand the four screws back to him. He stared at her for a moment, she assumed in disbelief, before taking them back out of her hand and shuffling under the console to re-attach the panel.

"I was trying to at least knock us out of hyperspace, but your ship is such a piece of garbage, I can't even figure out which wires go where. What the kriff happened to the Razor Crest? I thought it was supposed to be nicer than this, at least from what I'd heard."

"This isn't the Crest," he muttered from underneath the console, his legs bumping hers as he shuffled around on his back. "It was blown up. This is the best replacement I could afford. Same make, just a little less maintained. It gets the job done." He suddenly noticed the clamp marks in a few of the wires. She'd managed to cut through the casing, but hadn't gotten all the way to the conducting material underneath. Sighing in annoyance, he crawled back out and crouched over her, patting up and down her legs. "Where are they, Vers?"