pre ANH au where Din and Luke meet on Tatooine, have their summer romance and all that, and when Din inevitably has to leave Luke gives him a japor snippet (“It’s a good luck charm,” Luke says with a smile. “I’ve seen how reckless you get on your bounties.”) and Din thinks it’s a little silly, but he lets Luke put it around his neck anyway.
It is only a few days later that Din hears about the Lars family, about the fire, about how they never found a third body.
And then Din just…never takes that japor snippet off.
For years he wears it, the sound of the japor clinking against the beskar of his mythosaur pendant becoming so familiar to him that he panics when it falls silent. He reaches for his neck when he cannot hear that ringing sound, reaches for the japor, desperate to make sure it’s still there, that he did not lose what he has left of the man he would never really stop loving. Even when Din is dying, when he takes off his mythosaur pendant to give to Cara, when he begs her to take it, to bring this child he knows nothing of to safety, he keeps the japor close to his slowing heart.
And somehow, Din lives.
(“It’s a good luck charm,” Luke says with a smile.)
Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry
