All his thoughts came to a screeching halt. He was a man of few words at the best of times. In the aftermath of the edict, he was completely speechless. The dumbfounded state rendered him briefly frozen. Surprise, however, had always spurred him inevitably to action. In what seemed like an unending stretch of time, two seconds passed. "There's no guarantee it will awaken in my lifetime," he refuted.
"It will. The new age is upon us." No amount of uncertainty undercut her tone. As was customary of all her statements, it carried an air of finality.
'I have spoken,' echoed Kuiil's words in Din's mind. 'Your ancestors rode the great Mythosaur. Surely you can ride this young foal.'
His experience with the blurrg had ended favorably. His attempts to ride the rancor had not. In hindsight, initial interactions had made all the difference. Even the rancor, with Boba's continued encouragement, had warmed to Din's presence. The sibling raptors easily took direction from him. Given time, he could establish a rapport with most animals, big or small. When they weren't attempting to eat or kill him.
"Shouldn't the new Mand'alor be the first to attempt such a feat?"
She sagely tilted her helmet in agreement. "This is the way."
Words: 5389 | Rating: General | Characters: Din Djarin, Grogu, Peli Motto, Toro Calican, Migs Mayfeld
Read on Ao3 or below the cut
<<<Part 1
2 — Pet
The child is a puzzle.
His plan to leave the kid in the care of the secluded krill-farming village falls apart like a slip of flimsi dropped in water so he must remain under his protection a bit longer. This arrangement, he recognizes, will require him to know things about the child.
That, and his curiosity may or may not have been growing like an ignored weed.
He can’t determine the efficacy of the intel the client provided but given that the client was once an Imperial officer, it’s safe to assume nothing he said can be trusted. So he scraps what little he was told as easily as he should’ve forgotten the job once completed.
After settling them on a long, long trip through hyperspace, he sequesters away in his sleeping nook and tries to look up the child’s species on the HoloNet, inputting the few facts he’s sure of: small, green, big ears, tri-digit claws, carnivorous, has the ability to hold mudhorns aloft via thought (the latter he types out until his mind catches and presents to him the word “telekinesis” and he slots that in instead).
To absolutely no surprise, nothing turns up.
Nothing that isn’t folklore, anyway.
He tries to add more details, then he tries less. Only when he takes out the child’s predominant feature—the mind powers—does he get results.
Turns out, there are plenty of small, green, carnivorous species in the galaxy.
The child belongs to none of them.
Eventually, even the HoloNet seems exasperated. It begins to suggest concepts like hybrid and mutant. When he insists on the mind powers, it takes him to fairytales. When he veers to places people gather and whisper into the ether under the flimsy protection of anonymity, he gleans such terms as “genetic experiment,” “clone,” and “strand-cast.”
He scoffs.
Then he realizes he cannot deny any of those as possibilities.
They had a scientist on their payroll. One dressed in a uniform bearing insignia he has never seen before or elsewhere (and no search he can concoct yields any viable answers). For all he knows, the kid could be their product and they merely want him returned.
In the end, he can’t decide whether the search—which cost four hours of his life he won’t get reimbursed for—was fruitful or not, if knowing what the child isn’t is in any capacity useful or helpful.
He goes to sleep and wakes to the conclusion that it doesn’t actually matter what the child is.
Whether he’s a full-blooded member of an ancient species or the consequence of some demagolka’s nature-defying project makes no difference to his current predicament nor does it have any tangible bearing on his needs.
Still.
He wonders.
So, in lieu of any credible, academic source of information regarding his charge, he is reduced to deduction.
The child’s alleged age is the first thing he dismisses.
Most likely, the client landed on fifty years of age because it’s undeniably over the threshold of adulthood for the vast majority of species throughout the galaxy—it wouldn’t raise suspicion among the more honourable members of the Guild, wouldn’t turn them off, and then when (if) they saw the quarry, unable to determine his species, they’d assume he was whatever they were told he was and ponder no further.
But he is an infant.
How could anything remain an infant for five decades? A species like that wouldn’t thrive, wouldn’t survive, and strand-casts, so saith the HoloNet, tend to have abysmally short life-expectancies. He has seen, heard and read of species with aging processes different to his own, but this defies logic too blatantly.
He doesn’t pick an alternate number for the child’s age. He simply concludes that it isn’t, that it can’t be in the double digits.
Regarding the child’s intelligence, he finds more solid evidence, and, at the same time, a grey area so vast, it requires a hyperspace lane of its own to get across.
He comprehends. He intuits. He discerns.
But how far, how deep any of it goes, his protector can’t decide.
His eyes are uncannily steady and perceptive. He watches him, gauges and reads signs he doesn’t realize he wrote or displayed. He responds, tuning himself to rhythms he doesn’t notice he set. He respects boundaries and rules though they exist unspoken.
It takes him too long to recognize that the child is treading carefully around him.
The gear-shift knob is never touched but it is admired from afar. The buttons are never flicked or jabbed but they are watched with longing. Sleep is never protested. Bath-time is never fought—against or to be extended. Food is eaten—exactly what is given, when it is given; he doesn’t request more, he doesn’t try to steal or bargain for more. Every instruction is heeded, every command obeyed, every direction followed.
He wasn’t like this before.
When told to spit out a frog, he swallowed it whole and looked him in the visor as he belched. He decided the gear-shift knob was a toy and so he endeavoured to obtain it. His answer to “stop touching things” was a wordless but clear-as-crystal “I’ll do what I want.”
On Sorgan, he reclaimed and exercised his agency.
Curiosity and a penchant for mischief bloomed. A stubborn streak showed itself. Preferences and aversions were communicated and the heeding thereof was celebrated and appreciated.
Now the child is pliant and, despite the confines of the ship, taking almost no space.
It takes his protector too long to register, takes him even longer to grasp the state of things and parse the reasons behind.
There is only one conclusion.
The child is scared.
Of him.
Then Tatooine happens.
He didn’t tell the child to stay in the ship because he was asleep.
He had been in the process of putting the kid to bed when Riot Mar’s fighter blinked into sensor range. He had seconds to tuck the kid in his crate, strap him to the copilot seat, and react to the attack.
Sleeping right after that was a battle.
Too much adrenaline.
Too much fear.
The kid refused to be put down, as if bodily separating them now would incur another surprise attack.
So, apparently, the child is scared of him but more scared of being unheld after all that.
Okay.
Fine.
Whatever.
Resigned to his fate (and secretly grateful the child’s stubborn streak was reappearing), his protector shucked a pauldron and let him nestle against his shoulder.
It took the entire limping trip to Mos Eisley to lull the little one to sleep but once he dropped off, he went deep. He didn’t rouse as he swaddled him and he remained soft and snoring as he tucked him away in his sleeping nook—a dangerous precedent, though he didn’t register it at the time.
The child was fast asleep and he had reason to expect he would stay asleep for some time—certainly long enough for him to source work from somewhere in this sand-clogged skughole.
He was wrong.
His heart stops when he glimpses the sleeping nook open and empty.
He hadn’t told the child to stay because he was asleep and he couldn’t follow him if he didn’t see him leave, right? And he was scared of him, right? So he wouldn’t seek to follow him anyway. He hadn’t locked the ship because the mechanic required access if she were to repair it.
Either the child woke alone and wandered off… or the mechanic found him and, well, he doesn’t look too unlike something they’d snatch out the sand and roast for a quick dinner around these parts…
He’s wired up for violence and venegence, but then he sees him. Nestled in the mechanic’s arms. Content. Safe. Crying only because of him, because he shouted and shocked the mechanic awake and the suddenness of everything gave him a terrible fright.
The child doesn’t reach for him.
That shouldn’t surprise him, shouldn’t bother him.
But it’s all he can think about as he accompanies the young bounty-hunter-wannabe on this hopefully-not-a-suicide-mission.
What did he do to make the child fear him so deeply? He never hurts him, never shouts at him, never threatens him. Why be afraid only now? He exhibited no fear of him before. His size, his facelessness, his flatness didn’t seem to intimidate the child before.
Perhaps it isn’t such a simple, direct fear of bodily harm.
Perhaps the child fears what the Mandalorian can do.
His life, his situation, his circumstances all lie in the Mandalorian’s control. It wasn’t his choice to leave or stay anywhere, it was the Mandalorian’s. It wasn’t his choice to come to Tatooine and he had had no say in being left in the ship; the mechanic had turned out to be benevolent enough… but that was a stroke of pure, dumb luck.
What will the Mandalorian’s next choice spell for him?
Toro Calican goes down.
He’ll never be a bounty hunter now.
He’ll never even be 25.
It’s the consequence of bad decisions, of bloated greed, of dishonourable and unnecessary betrayal; he miscalculated, misstepped, and so he paid; he threatened a child right in front of a Mandalorian.
It’s how the galaxy works.
It’s nothing new.
It’s not the first career the Mandalorian has put to an end to; it’s far from the first life he has taken.
It’s not even the first he doesn’t immediately forget.
No time to dwell on it, on any of it.
The gunslinger goes down and the Mandalorian and the mechanic begin a frantic search for the child in the haze of conflicting lights and shadows muddying the sandy bay floor.
The kid—the one who made all the wrong choices and lies still now—isn’t holding him anymore. Neither had he fallen atop him. There are tracks in the sand but the child’s robes dragged through them, distorting the direction.
He’s fast, his protector notes. Fast and clever to bolt to a hiding spot the second he’s free.
He peeks out when the commotion has settled enough. He squeaks to flag their attention, let them know where he is. He smiles, reaches up, makes the mechanic melt to her knees and almost sob in relief.
(She’s good people. If Tatooine wasn’t the worst place in the galaxy to hide, he might have considered leaving him with her.)
The child coos and babbles to her as she checks him over, swiftly. Only his robes are ruffled and she rights them, dutifully fluffing up his collar and smoothing out the wrinkles across his shoulders like they’re wounds she needs to soothe. The child, he knows, doesn’t give a womp rat’s tail about the state of his clothes, but he lets the mechanic fuss, somehow even conveys gratitude via a little tick of his ears when everything’s set right.
The Mandalorian lets them be and turns to business.
Toro Calican is dead.
He killed a quarry designated for live delivery, a quarry in his custody, a quarry already cuffed and deprived of her weapons. More than that, Shand was an active Guild member; she may have been on the outs with her employers and the New Republic but not the Guild. She didn’t deserve an execution, and she certainly didn’t deserve to be just left like that. All that, according to the Guild code and according to the natural moral code, warranted this course of action.
But Mando didn’t think of that.
Of any of that.
When his finger pulled the trigger, all that was on his mind, all he saw was the child.
All he could think about all day was the child.
He didn’t bury Shand or take any proof of her death either. He saw her, pieced together what must’ve occurred, realized the child was in danger, and immediately set off to return, knowing full well the dew-back had no chance of overtaking the speeder.
While the beast lumbered across the Dune Sea, he steadied his anxiety with the facts.
Toro was short-sighted and egotistical.
He wasn’t poor or desperate, wasn’t out for revenge or thrills; he was in this purely for the reputation. He must’ve figured snatching a baby—even one as highly prized as this unique child was—wouldn’t earn him any significant notice; in a few days, he would sour into a bad joke.
No.
He needed to collect the child and take down something big.
With Shand dead, the silver Mandalorian, the Guild traitor, the renegade bounty hunter was now the biggest game around.
He would know that. He would wait for him.
If not, if he had already left, then the Mandalorian would give chase.
And if he had hurt the child…
Well.
It’s all over now.
Toro Calican is dead.
His credits are automatically forfeit. Mando scoops them up, lays claim. They’re his now and he may do what he wishes with them.
He takes the child and pays the mechanic.
What he owes and extra. All of it. The dataries—some Imperial, mostly New Republic, Core-stamped—pour into her petite, rough hands.
The credits are his, by right, by code.
But he can’t stomach the thought of keeping even one.
He pays her, the child in the crook of his arm watching passively.
Their business concluded, he decides he’s worn out his welcome and he turns to leave immediately. Better to go now before any other hunters show up—he can’t be sure Toro didn’t call this in before his arrival.
“Take care of him!” the mechanic admonishes in parting.
He doesn’t reply.
But he holds the child a little tighter
The child is scared.
But not of him.
This revelation peels open to him a few days later, after they’ve made two jumps through hyperspace to lose any potential trackers from the Tatooine sector and now drift in empty, nowhere space so they can rest and he can think and plan.
He saw how the child was with Toro. He was scared of him. It was clear as day in his eyes.
But with him…
Something about the whole thing shifts something between them, repairs something.
The child seeks proximity to him. He fusses and complains but instantly quiets and calms when held. He consciously scoots and sits close during mealtime. He follows him like a shadow again. He feels brave enough again to resist going to bed when told, to pretend not to hear when bath time is declared over, to not-so-covertly purloin the gear shift knob.
So his protector makes a revision.
The child is scared.
But not of him.
He is scared of being separated from him.
The instant the notion materializes in his thoughts, he works to dismiss it.
The child wasn’t present when he discussed leaving him on Sorgan—with Cara or with Omera. He certainly never mentioned it to the child—why would he? It wasn’t a decision that required his input. What is more, separation shouldn’t bother the child given the fact there’s no bond between them—nothing that will hurt once severed, in any case.
But there was a very clear intention in his earlier behaviour that once his protector detects the pattern to it, he can’t unsee it.
It’s not fear of him.
It’s not fear of what he can do.
It’s fear of being somewhere without him.
If I’m good, you won’t leave me.
Right?
Something about the ordeal on Tatooine has reassured the child—either that his behaviour was never the problem or that the Mandalorian will always come back for him.
He thinks maybe they should sit down and discuss it.
He should explain that, while he appreciates the good behaviour, however the child acts or conducts himself is immaterial to the matter of where he will ultimately end up.
He should make sure the child understands that they aren’t bound to one another.
He should make it clear this arrangement is temporary.
Then he watches the child roll the gear-shift knob across the floor of the hold, entertaining himself with this simple, mindless, repetitive activity for nigh on an hour.
And he thinks no.
There’s no need to waste his breath.
The child won’t understand.
He can’t possibly.
“What’s he like a pet or something?”
His teeth grind.
Hard. Sharp. Restrained.
It’s so grossly wrong he feels bile rise, tastes his mouth turn hot, bitter and dry at just the suggestion.
It’s been four months. He still doesn’t know what the child is.
But the one thing he is not is a pet.
Something in possession of just the fringe of sentience. Something with no significant autonomy. Something beholden to instinct, actions dictated by needs, loyalty trainable.
A pet.
In his head, in his heart, in the blood connecting the two, he rebuts that. Refutes. Rebukes. Straight up denies and defies it.
Out loud, he says: “Yeah. Something like that.”
Flat.
Detached.
Noncommittal.
He can’t afford to be anything else—not here, not as they break into the prison transport, not as the mission splinters and falls apart and he gathers the shards, binds them, uses them as makeshift weapons and turns the tide on his traitors.
They were always going to turn on him.
Ran all but told him. “I hear things… like maybe things between you and the Guild aren’t working out.”
Xi’an all but told him. “I’m all business now.”
It’s Mayfeld who actually tells him.
“Ran’s been itching to go after you since he heard about Nevarro. Just dumb luck you reached out first,” he explains as Mando marches him to his cell.
“Does he know about the kid?”
“The what?”
His grip on his blaster tightens, audibly; it sends a vile jolt of pain through his shoulder. “The creature,” he corrects.
“Your pet?”
“Sure.”
The sharpshooter scoffs. “What does that have to do with anything?”
It’s sufficient.
He shoots Zero. He closes the sleeping nook again, ensures Qin never even glimpses the child. Xi’an, Burg and Mayfeld all think he’s just an animal and Ran never sees him.
Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter.
Not once the X-Wings show up.
They ask no questions. They heed no hails. They give no warning.
Mando hears the alarm, the high-pitched, fast-paced beeping warning of live fire in his vicinity. Another alert half a heartbeat later informs him of the proximity of debris.
It’s one plus one.
Two is that the Roost is gone, blown to bits behind him.
He as well as condemned Ran, Qin, and every other person on that station to a perpetually unmarked, unexhumable grave.
The New Republic pulled the trigger.
He painted the target.
He could say he didn’t know the New Republic would behave so. He could say he believed their slogans about second chances and new hope. He could say he thought they’d investigate or warn at the very least.
He can’t, though.
It’s against the creed to lie.
He wastes a second, silencing the alarms before jabbing a command in the nav to just pick something, anything that’s not a black-hole or the middle of a planet. He makes the jump, he gets lightyears away, and he still hears them.
He sighs.
His back hurts. His stomach hurts. His shoulder hurts. He’s bleeding. He’s still running on adrenaline.
He sags.
He closes his eyes, sees the red strobe lights of the prison corridors and immediately opens them, washes the blood out fast as he can with the clean blue of the star lane.
And then he remembers.
He’s not alone.
After dropping Qin off, after taking payment, after throwing Ran’s “good ol’ days” right back in his lying face, he retrieved the kid from the sleeping nook and carried him up to the cockpit. He needed to be in his blanket-cushioned crate, strapped down to the copilot seat, lest his timing be off and a dogfight broke out—between him and Ran or him and the X-Wings.
He’s been quiet the whole time but Mando can feel him watching, waiting.
The silence is awful loud between them.
He unscrews the gear-shift knob, turns his seat around and holds it out to the kid.
Leaf-like ears perk and a little head tilts, big dark eyes reflecting hyperspace stare and a tiny wrinkled brow wrinkles and twists down further.
I didn’t ask for it, he all but says.
“See?” Mando says, ignoring that, ignoring everything, pretending they’re having a different conversation entirely. “Told you that was a bad idea.”
A blink.
He retracts the claw clutching the knob, continues staring but tilts his head and brow back to flat.
It wasn’t my idea.
There’s no way the kid will sleep immediately after all that.
It would be helpful if he did but he won’t and Mando knows it so he doesn’t even try.
He leaves him in the cockpit, goes down, heats a meal tray, climbs back up, gives it to the kid, says “Eat. I’ll be back up in an hour,” then turns to leave again.
He pauses.
Thinks.
Coming back, he kneels down, biting down on the inside of his cheek to hold back an animal-like vocalization at the multiple pain signals the action elicits, pries open a panel under the console, and disengages the controls.
The kid can dance on the buttons and it won’t send them plunging out of hyperspace or hurtling into a maelstrom.
Wisely, he doesn’t tell the kid that.
Just resets the panel, hefts himself up and drags himself back to the ladder.
Once down in the hold, he shuts and seals the hatch between the levels. He waits a moment before removing his helmet.
He then sheds the armour.
He moves slow, not because he means to, but because his body has been battered and bruised and broken things don’t tend to move fast or smooth. His gut and Burg’s fists had too many meetings today, not one of them remotely friendly.
His fingers slip on the cuirass. The orange tips of his gloves come away smeared red.
Really red.
A little more unravelling and he finds the wound in his shoulder—the wound he knowingly sustained in order to catch one of Xi’an’s blades to use against her—is deeper than he first thought.
She had aimed for his jugular. He used the strobing lights and his knowledge of her patterns to his advantage, twisting at just the right moment to nullify the blade’s fatal intent.
He won’t die from this… so long as he stops the bleeding and avoids an infection.
With that thought to cheer him up, he cleans it then closes it.
He uses med-glue. He doesn’t have much but he’s too tired to sit and stitch it and cauterizing, while generally his preferred method, comes with downsides and risks he doesn’t want to take with his dominant arm.
Anyway, he just had a payday.
First in months.
He can afford to use a few drops of glue.
The med-scanner gets bold, suggests he use some bacta, too.
I’ll do what I want, he thinks at it with worthless defiance as he switches it off and shoves it back in the cabinet in the refresher.
He showers. Redresses. Makes himself swallow a ration bar and half a litre of water. Puts the helmet back on. Leans against the ladder for a full two minutes before taking a deep breath, scraping together what he can catch of his resolve, and climbing up.
(One-handedly, he climbs. The glue’s set but he doesn’t want to risk tearing it.)
(Also: his everything kriffing hurts.)
The kid isn’t in his crate nest.
No surprise there.
The tray is there, balanced on the edge, half the food eaten, the other half mushed together to form a kind of moulding clay he’s used to construct a number of small, lumpy mounds, lined up rather neatly, almost like an army in formation. The reconstituted greens have been stuck in like flags or swords or just arms, he isn’t sure. He spots drying, crusting traces of the food littered across the console, smeared on only a few buttons (an endeavour initiated then promptly abandoned, no doubt, once he received no response, no reaction, no rebuke).
The child he finds sitting on the floor in a corner. His hands have been wiped clean (on the chair and on his robe), and he has returned, as the Mandalorian expected, to the gear-shift knob. He turns it over and over in his claws, watching the swirling light of hyperspace play on the silver surface.
He’s quiet.
No cooing. No chittering. No babbling.
There’s a pinch to his brow, infusing concentration in his expression.
The Mandalorian feels something in his chest clench up.
“Hey,” he says, carefully, softly, and because of the helmet, flatly.
The child looks up. He’s not startled; the cockpit is small and he is not so engrossed that he doesn’t hear his travelling companion return. Still, his glancing up is not immediate.
The Mandalorian tilts his head. “You okay?”
The child blinks, levels him with a flat look.
A beat passes and he can’t confirm anything but it feels like the child thinks a cascade of things in the silence. Whatever crosses his mind, however, he doesn’t communicate.
The Mandalorian wipes the food off the console with his sleeve. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to play with your food?” he mutters and half-chuffs, half-smiles to himself under the helmet because it’s funny, for some reason, that, after everything they’ve been through, they’re here, having this (one-sided) conversation and there’s food on the button for the gravity-control and…
Dank farrick.
He must be more tired than he realized if he’s seeing any trace of comedy in a crusty glob of veg-paste.
He reconnects what he has to to bring the console back to life. He checks their course, doing so without sitting down because he plans to make the next place he plants his backside the last for at least eight hours. Maybe fourteen.
He ignores the meal-tray and the other errant globs of food. There are so many things he has to clean and reorganize throughout the ship—he hasn’t even set right the things that droid’s jerky manoeuvring dislodged. He parks it on a mental to-do list and focusses the last dregs of his energy on scooping up the kid and going back down the ladder once more.
He refuses to go to his crate bed when they’re down in the hold.
“C’mon, kid. You need to sleep,” he pleads (it’s a plea, an unmitigated plea, and he couldn’t care less).
The child points to the sleeping nook.
“That’s where I sleep, yes.”
The child points to himself then to the sleeping nook again.
The Mandalorian groans. “No. No, no, no, no, no. My bed,” he points to the nook, “your bed,” he points to the crate.
Ears flattening, the child pats his chest with both claws then pats the Mandalorian then points to the sleeping nook. Insistent squeaks accompany his miming.
“You want to sleep by me?”
He doesn’t get a nod, but the patting and squeaking ceases like a snuffed candle flame and the kid stares at him and he gets it.
“You want to sleep by me.” It’s a statement this time. The kid, misunderstanding him, goes to repeat the gestures. Gently, he catches his tiny hands. “It’s okay. I heard you the first time. I just… why?”
It wouldn’t be the first time.
On Sorgan, one night, he took the child in his arms to quell a nightmare. After that, the kid often snuck out his crib to curl up on his bed—by his feet at first then, when there were no repercussions, no commands to stop, he crept closer until he laid claim to the spot at his side. But, since leaving, he hasn’t once protested sleeping in his crate.
He seemed to understand the nook was not his.
And, really, he should dislike it given the fact the Mandalorian has only ever squirrelled him away in there to hide him and it has failed to protect him twice now.
“It won’t be comfier than the crate,” he tells him.
The kid continues his staring.
“It won’t be warmer either. I know I’m in there but I—I don’t generate a lot of heat. I’m an ice-block.”
The kid blinks.
“If I roll over, I’ll squish you. Flat. Or I could kick you clean across the cabin.”
The kid lets out a snort-huff as if to call him out on that one. He doesn’t move in his sleep and the kid already knows it.
“I snore.”
The kid exhales, slowly, deliberately, but doesn’t stop staring.
The Mandalorian has never seen such a blend of patience and stubbornness, honed and wielded like a weapon… except in the mirror.
Like when they arrived on Sorgan, he relents with a sigh, a mutter, and a veiled roll of his eyes.
He relents partly because he’s tired, partly because he’s impressed by the child’s tenacity, and partly because, well… he’s not bad company.
He knew bad company.
He used to work with Ran and Xi’an and Qin and others like Burg and Mayfeld and Zero.
He thought it was a chapter he had closed years ago. He cut ties with the crew after the nightmare on Alzoc-3 and Qin’s capture. He went to work for the Guild and made it a point not to cross or retread the same old parsecs. The Outer Rim was big enough that they could all continue their work and never have to rub shoulders again.
Reaching out to Ran was a bad idea. He knew it when he first thought it, when he dismissed it, and when he reconsidered it. But it had been so long and he was getting desperate—unable to take Guild work, unable to set foot in most of the Outer Rim, he hoped he could rekindle enough of their old trust to just get enough to keep the ship fuelled and the kid fed.
But bygones weren’t bygones.
Little it mattered now.
The chapter wasn’t just finished; he had burned the whole book.
The New Republic lit and tossed the matches in.
He doused it all in gasoline.
A pouch of credits for dozens of lives either ruined or ended.
He doesn’t want to think about it. He thinks he shouldn’t think about it, lest the child’s mind powers extend to mind reading and, really, these aren’t the kinds of things a child should have to deal with.
He hopes the child doesn’t know.
When Xi’an brought up Alzoc-3, one of his fears was that she would go on to recount the ordeal. Even in synopsis form, it’s… brutal. He was brutal. And the child was right there, in the sleeping nook; it wasn’t sound-proof, he would hear.
He would hear and he would recoil the next time the Mandalorian came anywhere near him. He didn’t fear him before but once he knew about that, he would. He would forever be tainted and twisted in the child’s view and the prospect alone made him sick.
If he needed anymore proof the child was not a pet, that should suffice.
He had never once worried about what an animal might think of him.
“I’m sorry they called you that,” he tells the child as he transfers his blanket nest from the crate to a corner of the sleeping nook—such a small, cramped space as is, there isn’t really any way to divide it comfortably but… it’s the least he can do. He won’t deny the kid’s relatively polite petition for proximity, not when he thinks of how precious and precarious this trust is.
The child looks at him. Waits.
He shakes his helmet-clad head. “You’re not a pet.”
A pet wouldn’t hold an entire conversation with meaningful looks and snort-huffs.
A pet wouldn’t censor his behaviour so minutely to try and earn his favour.
A pet wouldn’t mould little soldiers out of veg-paste.
“You’re a person.”
One who loves frogs and will chase them and eat them as he pleases.
One who will touch buttons he knows full-well he shouldn’t.
One who is stubborn, curious, and vastly, unfathomably intuitive.
“Just… you know.” The Mandalorian pats the blanket nest down, sighs, shrugs his uninjured shoulder. “So we understand each other.”
. . . . .
Author’s Note
I’m approaching this particular fic like I would a series of drawing sketches. I’m going in loose and fast, not bogging myself down in details. I’m having a blast especially, as I mentioned, because I’m forcing myself to write in a different tense than I do typically
I am attacking the writer’s block with heavy artillery and it’s working!!!
din djarin got his one big chance to be like “yes i will help you if you do this sidequest!!!” and he was like. it’s on the house, don’t even pay me, i’ll be right there, i will convince other people to also do this as a personal favour to me, i will literally die here beside you and it will be an honour. i have to go to my kid’s parent teacher meeting first though hope that’s okay
The solution was apparent. The uncertainty and sorrowfulness that had imbedded itself in his father's being hung heavily in Grogu's heart. Lightening this weight, revealing what was hidden, setting his buir back on his path was within his ability. With an outstretched arm, he pointed to the living waters, the same surface Din had stood watch over for an extended period of time.
"I don't know what you're trying to tell me, kiddo."
Grogu reached beneath his collar and pulled from the confines of his robe the pendent he wore at all times. He lifted it up for Din to inspect. His father took it in a gloved hand, careful not to pull on Grogu's neck.
"You see a mythosaur?"
The doleful miasma thinned, shock and healthy disbelieve sweeping in. Grogu reached out a second time, his posture stiffening, his eyes sliding shut in concentration. With the life that entwined all things, he sought out the gentle creature. Like ba'voda's baby rancor and the massiffs his father liked to pet, this beast too was friendly.
"Grogu, no."
He let go of the connection before the animal's slumber was disturbed and opened his eyes in confusion. Didn't buir want to see for himself? Didn't he want to know? Wasn't this why he had waited? "Eh?"
Considering how many times that covert on the dinosaur planet kept having creatures trying to eat Mando kids, I think most branches of working class and fighting corps Mandos probably had a specialized training course focused on “What to Do If You’re Eaten Alive.” It stays in line with Mando’s tendency to just dive face first into Krayt dragons and sea monsters and such so I imagine it’s one of those “ugh Taungsdays, amirite?” moments when he realizes he’s going to have to do it again. Bunch of Mandalorians hear about Boba Fett getting knocked into a Sarlacc? Yeah that tracks. If he’s a good enough Mandalorian he’ll find his way out eventually
Ravanak on the landing gear? ugh come on I just waxed that. Rancor destroying the town? Well if he grabs me he’s one hand down and I have a flamethrower and he doesn’t. Tusken lizard dog eyeing my kid like a hamsteak? Grogu you must be vigilant, sometimes these things happen
I’ve been reading fanfics since 2013 and in this past few years I have never seen so many post abt there “being too much smut” “not enough fluff” “not enough angst”
I understand that some people write about things I don’t like or mischaracterize, but you know what I can do? 1)ignore it. 2)use the handy dandy filter.
Remember that there are actual people behind the screens with their own life and experiences, so just be respectful
Like do yall not realize we get this FOR FREE!
Write it yourself (WITHOUT AI) if yall want more of a certain type of content
Writers are doing this for fun. Be grateful. Seriously yall are embarrassing
To writers: please know that many of us are happy every time you post. And I see this a lot, but please don’t ever feel bad for discontinuing/putting ur works on hold, we readers don’t want you to stress yourself over something that’s supposed to be fun 💕losing interest happens and that’s ok. We appreciate you creating content, no matter if it’s a 40+ series or a tiny blurb.
And on a side note: REBLOG! COMMENT! Please I’m begging 🙏 it is extremely discouraging to writers/artist when they have little to no interactions on their work. If you don’t want to comment, add a silly little picture or even 🫶. That’s all it takes.
*On mobile you can hold down on the reblog button and swipe up for quick reblogs!
Constantly obsessed with the concept of a man forced to be a myth. What do you do when every step you take is embedded into the text. Every word you say prose to read. You're part of something bigger than yourself. The narrative tugs you along like water currents. There is no time to rest, to be human. You must be great, you must be legend
Summary: After rescuing a child, Jai brings him to a healer
Ao3 Link
Healers never bothered Jai.
He never suffered “white armour syndrome” as many termed the anxiety that sprung from mere proximity to a baar’ur. Granted, he rarely engaged or sought their services, well-versed in and inclined to tending to his own ailments as he was, but he didn’t harbour any fear or dread of them.
But he found he couldn’t relax as the covert healer tended to the child.
It wasn’t something he realized at first.
He stood out the way, near the curtain sectioning off this alcove from the rest of the covert, and just watched as the healer saw to little Din.
She was an older woman with a hunched spine (whether that be a condition from age, disability, or a natural aspect of whatever be her species, he didn’t know, didn’t think it polite to ask) and a small frame encased in contrasting dark clothes and white battle-worn armour. Without a word, her appearance sufficed to say she was experienced and trustworthy.
At first, he leaned against the duracrete wall with arms crossed. But as the visit wore on, he found his shoulders squaring and his hands failing to find rest: they hitched on his belt, they fisted at his sides, they just couldn’t lie still.
Was this supposed to take so long? The child hadn’t been injured physically as far as he could see, so why was she still examining him? Surely he was alright—tired, undoubtedly, and understandably despondent after all that had transpired, likely growing hungry by now, but he was alright… right?
“He’s your first, isn’t he?” the healer noted, a knowing smile in her raspy voice.
“He’s n—” Jai cut himself off quickly. Shifting uncomfortably, he tried to cover his misstep with a cough.
He’s not mine, he had nearly said.
It was the truth but it felt wrong to say it.
A team had stayed back on Lota while the rest of the tribe fled to the next covert in the chain, cloistered in an underground enclave on Garel. As a young, fit, capable warrior, Jai should have been with them, making sure the whole tribe got out safe and offering what help he could to the people who had paid severely for sheltering them so generously.
But, by creed, he had an obligation to the child he had rescued and he took precedence.
Before he got them on the transport, he commed his brother (and commander) Aram. He relayed the boy’s name and description, requesting he ask around for any surviving family or neighbours willing to take him in.
It had been a few hours now and no response.
He hadn’t gotten any response from little Din, either.
Even now, under the scrutiny of a stranger, he didn’t react overtly to anything. His large, dark eyes followed her but he didn’t recoil from her poking and prodding. He sat there, not entirely in himself.
She spoke to him all the while, her rough voice gentle as she explained what she was doing, why she was doing it. She always repeated her instructions, Jai noted, deepening her voice and slowing her words as she asked the boy to hold out his arms or turn his head. He never obeyed unless she mimed the requested action first.
“Alright,” she declared at last after testing the boy’s reflexes. “I’m done.”
“Is he okay?” Jai asked immediately, his throat traitorously closing and choking out the last syllable.
“He needs rest,” she said, nodding to the boy like this was something they had discussed and concluded at length; Din, for his part, stared through her blankly. “Rest and soup, yes. Jineen’s probably made enough to feed three tribes by now; she started as soon as we heard you were all coming.”
Jai didn’t know who Jineen was but he could smell a diversion from a mile off.
The healer put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze, tilting her head to convey a smile neither of them could see. Din tilted his head, too—most likely, he simply misinterpreted the healer’s gesture as another request, but there was something in his eyes that highlighted intent in the mirrored action.
“Is he okay?” Jai asked again.
A soft sigh slipped through the healer’s vocoder.
She moved away from the child, just a half step and a twist of her body, allowing her to keep her hand on his shoulder like an anchor point. From a busted and dinged crate, she drew out a bottle and a cloth, pinching both in one hand and bringing them around. Wetting but not saturating the cloth, she began dabbing at the boy’s hands, washing away the dirt and dust—all his homeworld could give him in parting.
“Both eardrums are ruptured,” she said, quietly, continuing to work.
Jai felt his stomach twist and drop.
Passively, ignorantly, Din watched the healer wash his hands, pliantly turning them over so she could get his palms clean. Thin cuts appeared as the dirt hiding them vanished; they would be stinging as she cleansed them but he didn’t flinch, gasp, or even blink.
Suddenly, the smell of the disinfectant sharpened, intensifying a hundred-fold. It crept up through his helmet and Jai felt it sear his lungs as he stared at the boy, his mind trailing back to the rescue, not so many hours ago.
It made sense.
It made horrible, horrible sense now.
The boy hadn’t seemed to hear him until they were out of the city and Jai raised his voice. He thought it was the shock. He thought the boy couldn’t comprehend what had transpired. He had a suspicion, something that niggled at the back of his mind, something that nudged and poked him when he glimpsed a trickle of blood escaping from the boy’s ear, mingling with dirt and ash and getting lost too quickly. But he thought… he hoped it wasn’t anything more than the product of a cosmetic cut or scrape, something they wouldn’t even need bacta to repair.
He hadn’t thought…
“He’s deaf?”
“He has a chance at recovering some hearing,” the healer assured him, still keeping her voice whisper-soft to keep this conversation between just them. “If you take care of the wounds and watch for infection, you’ll give him the best chance.”
The best chance.
It was almost laughable.
Jai was no one’s “best chance.”
In twenty-six years, he had proven nothing but that he was a fool at best and a curse at worst.
“You mean you’ll take care of the wounds and watch for infection,” he corrected.
The healer shook her head for Jai while for Din she gestured for him to turn his hands over and back over again so she could inspect them. When done and satisfied, she nodded. “I said you; I mean’t you. He’s not my foundling.”
“He’s not mine, either.”
“Who found him?”
“I did, but—they’re looking for his family,” he told her, and it tasted strange, like something weak, sour… cowardly.
The healer sighed again, this turn wearied, her patience intact but thinning. She turned her head, the uncoloured light from the lamp fixed overhead swerving smoothly along her visor as she looked at him and shook her head. “Never once in all my years have I seen or heard of a foundling returning home,” she said, like she was warning him. “You found him. You are responsible for the life you saved. This is the way.”
Jai bit his tongue.
It wasn’t that one couldn’t continue an argument after those words, but it was difficult to try. The other side of any argument never stood a chance against the side their core beliefs chose.
He looked past the healer, at the little boy in the dirty red robes, sitting on the edge of a thin bed, his eyes like glass—glazed, distant, yet clear and sharp at the same time. If he had heard anything they said, if he understood any of it, then he had the makings of an impenetrable sabaac face.
His hands were clean.
The baar’ur gave him a cloth with soap and warm water to wash his face.
But the dried blood trailing from his ears remained until that night, until Jai wiped it away before dripping a bacta and herb solution into the child’s ears, silently hoping it would be his parents doing this come the next day.
. . . . .
They arranged a place for him and the child.
A loft, small and cramped, but fit for two, like they were a package deal and not a temporary arrangement.
There were two sleeping pallets laid on a narrow deck suspended above an area kitted for cooking and eating.
Two bowls.
Two spoons.
Two pillows.
Two blankets.
Jai sat on his bed, the child curled into a ball on the other.
They didn’t eat or sleep that first night.
The child was silent and still but not asleep.
Jai kept vigil.
Some hours into the night, he noticed the boy shivering. He surrendered the second blanket without a thought. It was thin, he barely felt it when he had draped it over his own legs, but it was enough to keep the subterranean cold from claiming the child.
When morning came, he was finally, blessedly unconscious, drawn into sleep by sheer, absolute exhaustion.
Jai didn’t dare leave.
. . . . .
Three days later, the scouts and volunteers returned.
The covert took a census to update the registers of Mandalore.
In the fight, in protecting the settlement, in escaping their enemies, they had lost nine. Their marching on was recorded in the registers, their deaths marked as honourable.
On the same day, a new name was added.
Din Djarin.
The foundling from Aq Vetina.
Author’s Note
I believe it has been what the youth call “a hot minute” 😎
some of my favourite tidbits from the Visual Guide (so far)…
The Armorer’s species is unknown
Toro is from Coruscant and he’s 24 years old (so far, he’s the only character with a stated age… besides Grogu, of course)
Peli nicknamed Dr Mandible (because the actual pronunciation of his name requires pheromones that not every species can produce on demand). She has a weekly sabaac game with him.
Koska got her armour from her mother 🥹
One of the covert Mandos is a double leg amputee and he wears heavy beskar cuisses to protect his “mechno-legs”
Right in the foreword, they’re referred to as “Din and Grogu”
Cara’s hair is dyed
Morak is actually in Wild Space (I don’t know why but I just love the fact that the planet where Din shows his face for the first time in over twenty years is really isolated and in the middle of nowhere)
Paz was born on Concordia
Glavis (the artificial ring world) is in the Core (actually I hate this one. I’m keeping it in the Outer Rim)
You ever think Cara sees someone wearing an all white outfit and does a double take?
You ever think Cara sees someone wearing their hair in an elaborate braid and she immediately, reflexively, thinks of the Alderaanian meaning for it? Only to have her heart sink when she realizes it’s just a hairdo to them?
You ever think Cara chose Sorgan as her hideout because the forests remind her of the home she can never return to?
