FALLBACK/R-6
He fell into a swamp.
Grogu did not.
The job was completed without incident.
So there was no problem.
Except—
After boarding the Razor Crest and lifting off for Nevarro—
a searing pain erupted from somewhere deep inside him, without warning.
He couldn't stand it. He tumbled to the floor.
Grogu was watching. The view was sideways.
—Ah. I'm down.
The ears drooping low; small teeth showing in a small, open mouth.
—Ah. He's frightened. Don't worry, kid.
Writhing, Din reached out a hand toward Grogu—
"It's... okay."
And then everything went dark.
----------
The night wind sang, low and restless.
He had already sensed the ship's approach.
Artoo came beeping to report an intruder.
"I know. Nothing to worry about—probably."
Leaving it at that, Luke Skywalker stepped outside, lightsaber in hand.
The ship had set down not far away.
—The Razor Crest.
He had no memory of the craft itself: vintage, yet oddly pristine.
In the darkness, the ship's ramp lowered, spilling light.
But no one came out.
Luke approached without much caution.
He might not know the ship, but he knew who was aboard.
Unease. Fear. Desperation. Exhaustion—all of them pure, close to primal.
And yet those were the only clear presences; beside them, the other's pain lay sunken, flickering in and out.
Uninvited, Luke walked up into the Razor Crest.
The cockpit held more or less what he had expected.
A Mandalorian sprawled on the floor—and beside him, Luke's onetime student, one small hand pressed to the man's abdomen, eyes shut, fat beads of sweat sliding down his brow, working to heal his father.
Luke didn't know why they had come here. But abandoning them was never an option.
One look at Grogu said the child should have passed his limit long ago.
If even he couldn't close the wound, with a gift for healing like his, the cause had to lie elsewhere.
Luke knelt beside them and held his hand over the beskar plate at the man's belly. As his focus deepened, something came into view.
"This is..."
Right around the stomach—something was squirming.
Luke drew his raised hand upward—chest to throat, throat to mouth.
The unconscious Mandalorian groaned and retched as the hand moved, fingers clenching hard at his own throat.
Grogu cried out.
Exhausted, but with those round brown eyes still glistening, he stared up at Luke.
"It's treatment. It's all right."
But Grogu flung himself over his father's helmet, covering it with his whole small body.
Don't take off the helmet, he was saying.
"I know."
The Mandalorian creed had already taken root, all the way through this child.
Brows drawing faintly together, smiling with only his mouth, Luke turned the Mandalorian face-down.
He raised his hand again. In time with its motion, the Mandalorian coughed harder, gurgling, limbs curling rigid—and spat out several dark clots.
In the dim glow of the console instruments, the worms writhed, glistening—swollen round, fat with their host's blood.
Green light flashed once through the cockpit. The foul smell of scorched protein struck the nose.
His expression unchanged, Luke rolled the Mandalorian onto his back. With the things that had been devouring his gut expelled, his breathing had steadied somewhat.
To Grogu, still clinging to his father, Luke spoke.
"These were doing the damage. Aquatic parasites, most likely. Did he fall into water recently?"
Grogu answered in a small voice.
"I see—so it hasn't been that many days. A fast-growing species, then, perhaps. Are you all right?"
"—"
"Good. I'm glad."
Even as he answered, Grogu's eyes were falling shut, though he stayed pressed bravely to his father's side.
"Grogu. You're past your limit. Your father is almost healed, thanks to your power. The cause is out of him. Just the finishing touches left. You can leave those to me."
Hearing that, Grogu swayed, toppled over onto his father where he lay, and with one cheek pressed to the beskar, began very softly to snore.
A sigh—and Luke bent over the Mandalorian.
His insides had taken real damage; blood he'd vomited had run down his neck from under the helmet's rim.
He could hardly be left lying on the floor. And the Razor Crest's bunk was too cramped for treatment.
"...No help for it, then."
Luke gathered Grogu up into one arm, and lifted the Mandalorian's body into the air.
The unconscious limbs hung slack, and their weight carried through the Force into him.
Too little response.
Luke quickened his pace, and brought father and son down out of the ship.
To Artoo, waiting outside the building, he said only, "We have a patient," and laid the Mandalorian down in one of the rooms that had never been used by anyone.
Grogu he put to bed in the room that had once been his, entrusting him to Artoo: "Watch over him."
The reply sounded a little too thrilled at the chance to look after Grogu again; "Quietly," Luke pressed, with a wry smile.
A short beep followed him out. Then Luke held his hand over the Mandalorian's abdomen, and let the power flow.
Night on Ossus is dark.
On a planet that simply sleeps when the sun goes down, a lantern's warm glow stretched the shadows of Luke and the Mandalorian long across the room.
That Grogu had already healed most of it was no lie.
It had simply been a losing game of catch-up.
Strong in the Force—but a mere child inside.
He knew wounds were things to be healed; it never occurred to him that the cause might have crawled in deep.
Unable to understand why the healing wouldn't take, he must have been terrified.
The child had grown remarkably in the time they'd been apart. He was coming along steadily, a Mandalorian's apprentice through and through.
But still—still a child. A child who would pour his whole soul into saving his father, tremble at the thought of losing him, and be allowed to fold himself into those arms.
Before long, the breathing beneath the helmet regained its calm.
Luke wet a cloth and wiped the trail of dried blood from the man's neck.
Grogu had said don't look—but the first time Luke met this man face to face, he had seen exactly that: his face.
That expression—a father holding down everything rising in him, for his child's sake—overlaid itself now on the helmet.
What is owed by those who look upon a Mandalorian's face?
Though perhaps, in that moment, nothing had existed in his vision but his son.
His work finished, Luke straightened from where he had bent.
—And then, without warning, a hand closed hard around his.
Was he conscious? Luke looked at his face; there was no way to tell.
"—Don't go... Dad... Mom..."
Luke's eyes went wide.
It was a small voice. A frail one.
And yet the sound, once inside him, grew louder with every echo, ringing through his whole body.
—Ah, of course. Mandalorians raise foundlings. Which meant he, too. At his age—they were almost certainly taken from him all at once.
The lantern's orange was the color of sunset. Red sinking away beyond the sand. The color of fire that devours—the color that takes everything with it when it goes.
Without quite deciding to, Luke turned his hand and took the other's in his own. Whether this hand, with no blood running warm in it, could be any comfort to an orphan, he didn't know.
—Then, suddenly, the hand closed over his. Hard fingers, unmistakable even through the glove. Strong—and yet gentle.
"—Don't... worry... kid..."
Where had it gone—the fear in that voice a moment ago, the dread? No trace of desperation. Even the exhaustion tucked away. A soft, soft voice, made entirely of tenderness.
Luke pressed his lips tight together.
—Ah. Phantom limb pain.
Because it hurts. It hurts this much.
Luke reached out his left hand, and turned the lantern down—one notch.
----------
Din Djarin woke to an unpleasant rasp lingering at the back of his throat.
A ceiling he'd never seen.
The instant he registered it, cold water hit his hazy consciousness—tension snapped through his whole body at once.
"Gro—Grogu!?"
The catch in his throat tasted of blood. But that searing pain was gone.
What happened after that?
Where is this?
He had to find the kid.
Din's boots hit the floor and he was making for the door when a shrill volley of beeps rang out.
"—R2-D2?"
The cylindrical droid slid into his path, blocking the way, rattling off something in binary.
Then was this Bo-Katan's—?
No. Wrong. That astromech—was never this loud.
And then it came to him.
A hushed space, almost no trace of people in it.
Not the inorganic stillness of machines—the stillness of stone and grass.
Far off, the sound of wind threading through leaves.
He knew this place.
"—Artoo. That's enough."
A voice—soft, and yet somehow just as remote.
Black clothes against all that white.
Dust-fair hair; blue eyes.
Beneath the quiet bearing, a power that could sweep enemies aside like nothing.
Too perfect a being, altogether. Almost like something not quite real.
"—You."
Luke Skywalker.
"I'm glad you're awake. Grogu stayed with you to his very limit."
As if to say make way for my master, R2-D2 herded Din back into the room. Skywalker followed the droid in.
"—What happened? I've got nothing after collapsing on the Crest."
He sat back down where he'd been lying.
Skywalker took the chair diagonal to him.
R2-D2 rolled out of the room in a whir of servos and beeps.
"A parasite was tearing up your stomach."
"You saved me?"
"I did nothing. The Razor Crest landed, and Grogu called me from inside. The healing was his. I only carried you here."
"I see—"
Only carried you, he said—yet he'd given a sudden intruder a room. Above all, he was looking after Grogu. A large debt.
"So—why here?"
Skywalker asked it as if turning the page.
Fair enough; for him, that was the question that mattered. A student he'd parted ways with, and the student's father, crashing in unannounced. A disruption, no doubt, to that training of his.
"—Wasn't me. It was the kid."
"Grogu?"
"Yeah. In case anything happens to me, I keep a list in the nav computer—coordinates of people Grogu can turn to. He must have picked you off it."
Not for my sake, went the part he didn't say.
"There are med centers everywhere. Once you know the cause, it's not a difficult fix."
"Sure. But Grogu doesn't know med centers exist."
"...What?"
Skywalker's eyes went round, and he stared at Din.
—Huh. So this man makes faces like that too.
"I patch my own injuries, mostly. Well—he's healed me a few times."
"...So that's why he came to me—" Skywalker murmured, as if a piece had clicked into place.
"Probably. You were the one who came to mind—someone better with the Force than he is."
"I hadn't imagined that was the reason."
—Wait. Is he exasperated?
"...I'll have to teach him that too."
The rule about not eating everything in arm's reach was shaky enough as it was... there was a lot left to teach.
"...Please do."
And saying it, Skywalker seemed—just faintly—to let his mouth soften.
Just then came the patter of small feet, and Grogu burst into the room. At the sight of his father sitting upright, color flushed his cheeks, and without a moment's hesitation he launched himself into his lap.
"Grogu!"
Kyah! Grogu answered, patting busily at Din's chest.
"Yeah. Thanks to you, I'm fine now."
Bbbbbbb! Grogu puffed out his cheeks and pursed his lips.
"All right, all right. No more falling into swamps. I'll be careful."
His son nodded—see that you are—and Din lifted him in both hands.
"But hey, you remembered the list I taught you. Good job, Grogu."
Grogu perked his ears up tall, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.
"Your call was the right one. You figured healing meant the Force, didn't you? That's what saved me. Well done."
"Jih—zah—weh!"
Grogu scrunched up his brow and nose, and shaped something very like words.
"Ha—that's right, buddy. This is the Way. So you were saying it."
The big eyes, helmet mirrored in them, curved into fat crescent moons.
"You're my pride, kid."
Nal Hutta all over again—a child grows faster than his parent knows.
—Let me see as much of it as I can. Up close.
Skywalker, who had watched the whole exchange in silence, rose smoothly to his feet.
"No more cause for worry, it seems. —Mandalorian. I expect you know this without being told, but you'll need to take care for a while. Rations?"
"On the ship."
Basic supplies were stocked, of course.
"Good. I'll return to my work. The two of you may leave whenever you like."
"No—we're heading back too. Right, Grogu?"
His son nodded along, then sprang to his usual post—his father's shoulder.
The Jedi left the room, and father and son followed him out. Grogu looked back and gave Artoo a small wave. Bye-bye.
----------
Since they happened to leave at the same time, Luke found himself, naturally enough, walking the Mandalorian father and son to their ship.
No conversation to speak of. Only Grogu made sounds, as if humming to himself.
Last time, it had been Luke and Grogu watching this man's ship depart from afar.
It felt like a memory from terribly long ago.
Before long, the gunship with its nose of yellow paint rose into view beyond the green of the leaves.
"—She's a fine ship."
"Yeah. Seized from an Imperial officer, a collector, apparently."
"That explains the condition. ...And the N-1?"
The question slipped out on its own.
"Now and then. She's a fine ship too. But she won't carry bounties."
The Mandalorian tilted his head, just slightly. This, presumably, was how the faceless ones talked—their kind of expression.
"Fair point."
Did he like ships? He seemed, fractionally, to have more words than usual.
"—You'd fly well, I think."
Thin praise with nothing behind it, slipping out on its own.
"So would you."
"I've the Force to lean on."
An exchange of empty words. Only a little of the path left to fill.
"Lean on it, do you? I don't know much about the Force."
Again, the Mandalorian tilted his head.
"...Then why say I'd fly well?"
He'd certainly never shown the man a dogfight. Nor the reverse, for that matter.
"You look like you could do anything."
The Mandalorian said it like a plain fact.
"Is that a hunch? Should you speak on things you don't know?"
"A hunch isn't a thing I don't know. Sometimes there's no intel on the quarry."
"—Spoken like a professional."
A hard man to read. He seemed largely indifferent to the categories people came in. Which was, no doubt, exactly how a bounty hunter survived this long.
And with that they came out into the clearing where the Razor Crest sat waiting.
A little short of the hull, their steps drifted to a stop, unprompted. Talking time was over.
"You did us a real service today. I'll repay this debt."
The man in beskar turned to Luke and gave his thanks, dutiful as ever.
"I don't ask for anything in return."
It hardly counted as a debt, and there was nothing he'd want from this man anyway.
"Always the one giving, huh."
A shrug of the shoulders this time. Looked at closely, he expressed more than one might think.
"—Meaning what?"
"Can't be many people who get to owe you one."
"..."
The ones who did simply got away clean—he began to say it, caught its hollowness, and swallowed the words.
"But—the old protect the young, and the young protect the old. Then a student can protect his master too. Even if I can't be the one to pay it back."
—She'd said nearly the same thing to me, once.
"...I am no longer Grogu's master."
"You were, though. That doesn't change."
"—So that's your 'Way.'"
Remembering how rigid the man had been when he came to see his son, this straight-line stubbornness was probably less Mandalorian than simply him.
"Right—I hadn't reported this to you yet."
As if just recalling it, he set Grogu down on the ground.
"Reported what?"
Luke had not one guess.
The man opened his right hand lightly toward his son, presenting him.
"Din Grogu. Formally received into Clan Mudhorn."
Grogu himself, as if announcing his own name, attempted something like a salute. On his chest gleamed a small beskar plate, stamped with the same signet as his father's.
"—Din Grogu. ...It's a good name."
His former student gave a giggle, as though the words tickled.
Din Djarin, who had been watching his son's proud little display, turned his face to Luke.
"—Skywalker."
"Yes?"
"Can I keep you in the kid's FALLBACK?"
—The lifeline for the worst day. The thing that had guided them here last night.
"—Yes. You can."
That was all Luke said.
"I owe you. If you get the chance, come to Nevarro. Grogu would be glad."
"—If I get the chance."
—Whether one would come, I didn't know.
Din gave a single nod, turned, and climbed the ramp.
Grogu waved a small hand, and followed.
And so the one-night guest from beyond flew away.
The leaves rustled softly in what the thrusters left behind.
Luke turned his back on their murmuring, and walked away. Alone.
----------
Ossus is a quiet planet.
Only one living soul upon it.
All the rest sleep here—in the mausoleum.
Tak. Tak. Footsteps alone echoed through the dim.
The shadow his lantern threw long before him dissolved into the dark.
Past the countless names carved into polished stone tablets, Luke walked, quietly, on.
Then—his own face, glimpsed for an instant in the stone, caught him. He stopped, breath held.
—That was Luke's face.
He stared at his own face, caged behind row upon row of names. And low, he murmured:
"—I know. You are Master Luke Skywalker. The last of the Jedi. The galaxy's last hope."
—It must not be opened. It must not be looked upon. The thing stirring within. Lock it—lock it down tight.
Luke pressed his mouth into a hard line. Then, with his right hand, he turned the lantern's light down—
One notch.