The muse is musing, so fingers crossed it keeps up for while!
Okay this is where things really start to deviate. I'm actually really excited to be doing Din's pov earlier in the story than it was originally, it's going to go along with my plans really well!
As always I'd love to hear your thoughts if you've got them and if you want to be added to the taglist just let me know! 💛
Losing Grogu was the worst experience of Din's life.
He'd heard people talk about what it felt like to lose a child, the all encompassing grief that accompanied it, the hole in your soul that'd be ripped open only to never be filled again.
He thought he understood what that might feel like.
Then he held Grogu in his arms as he died and nothing—absolutely nothing—could have prepared him for it. He wanted to cry—scream until his lungs gave out and he was no longer breathing. He wanted to tear the galaxy apart, burn it to the ground, and leave nothing but ashes in his wake. The mental agony was far worse than any physical wound he'd ever experienced. He'd rather take a vibroblade to the heart than to watch as Grogu's bright eyes turned dull and empty.
He didn't think he'd ever find peace.
He'd never find something in his life worth living for again.
There was a span of time where Din had considered giving up completely. One day he'd sat in the cargo bay of the Razor Crest with his blaster in his lap trying to come up with any reason he could to not press it to his head and pull the trigger. He wanted to end his suffering. He wanted to stop waking up with an ache in his chest and a hole where his heart should be. The ship was haunted by the ghost of Grogu. Everywhere he looked, he saw empty spaces that shouldn't be. He could barely look at the controls in the cockpit cause every time he saw the ball on that damn lever, he would think about how it'd looked in small green hands.
The blaster had made its way to his skull, the cold tip of it pressed against his temple, his hands shaking with every sobbing breath.
The worst part of all?
He was too much of a coward to do it.
No matter how much he wanted to stop this never ending pain inside of him, he couldn't.
And then, somehow, life continued on.
He kept up with bounties, though after a certain point more of his targets were brought in cold than warm. If anything, the violence kept him grounded. At least that's what he told himself. In reality he was inflicting his pain on others, as if he could get rid of it by forcing it upon someone else.
Din knew he'd had a life before Grogu, but he'd been changed so much he'd never be able to return to the man he was before. But after his death? Din became so much worse than he ever was before.
Din quickly became able to wield the weapon he'd taken from Gideon—the Darksaber—with ease. Sometimes it felt like he was no longer in control, as if the very blade itself was the thing leading all his movements. He cut down people with ease, their lives even less of an after thought than they'd ever been before. The saber seemed to sing with every fresh drop of blood spilt. It felt good, something in it helped to distract from his anguish.
There were times he thought he could hear it whispering to him, saying things in the empty silence of his ship. The longer he had the weapon—the more he used it—the louder and more frequent the voices got.
Then, he found you.
All that time spent traveling planet to planet alone left him feeling isolated. It never bothered him in the past but the silence felt too heavy—some cycles it bordered on unbearable. Din had never seen the draw of the HoloNet before, but in his days of desperation, he found himself turning to it—not even entirely knowing what he was looking for. Though he knew the variety of content on it—of how easy it could be to partake in certain indulgences.
When he came across you doing one of your live shows, he was immediately enamored. Something about your beauty catching his eye in a way no one else had. He hadn't engaged in physical indulgences in so long but watching the way you touched yourself, the soft sounds you made—he was spilling into his fist far faster than ever before.
He became hooked on watching you. A good amount of his time in hyperspace was spent watching your shows.
And when the whispers became easier to hear, when they'd follow him into sleep, his thoughts around you grew more and more obsessive. Then he thought about what you could give him, what you could help him replace.
He was starting to think there might be something that could actually fix this pain. The voices told him he should, they told him how much better it would feel if he finally had someone here. They told him how good it would feel to have somewhere to put his feelings when he didn't know what to do with them. You could fix him.
You could fix it all.
He knew you were his. It was just a matter of time until you knew it too.
With the set of skills he had, finding you was easy. In fact he was so confident he would get you, he began to toy with you. He wanted to be able to taste your fear once he found you. He wanted you to be expecting him.
It truly did make it better when he finally came for you. And now having you here is even better than he could have imagined. He was so eager he couldn't stop himself from taking you as soon as he'd got the ship into hyperspace. When he first pressed inside you, he couldn't help but think about how incredible you felt.
The voices murmured in satisfaction.
He finally had you. Now he had everything he could need to manage the pain—to make his grief stop. You were stuck with him, and whether you wanted it or not, you would give him what he wanted.
The really unfortunate thing about mental health progress is that sometimes you realize you've made it in the form of "wow, I haven't felt this bad in a fucking while"
On the one hand it's a bit of a pick me up in a dark place to know that this will pass because it has passed before on the other hand sometimes it isn't entirely a pleasant thought to go "wow, I used to feel like this all the time. That was pretty fucking bad. It's pretty bad right now too also."
Hanahaki disease is a psychosomatic illness. It's a thing that your body does in response to stress over constantly repressing/concealing your feelings in settings with high background magic. It's like you've been ignoring pain for a long time and suddenly your vision starts going dark, because your affected body is just YANKING on random alerts trying to get you to PAY ATTENTION there is a PROBLEM. Yes the flowers do really exist. So do non-magical psychosomatic symptoms. The flowers aren't special.
This does of course open up the trope to options for non-romantic concealed feelings. Which I think is great. There is something viscerally satisfying about the person who seems so outwardly chipper coughing and hacking and spitting up Depression Flowers so now everyone has to know they're hurting. Isn't there?
Hanahaki but it’s your body desperately needing you to love and care for it while your mind is trapped in the body that doesn’t fit, that’s wrong as it destroys you from the inside out the longer you aren’t able to get help to make your body feel like you
In Another Life - FunnyBunny Ver.
Credits to the authors of all this beautiful aus!
Sweet Cream Cold Brew by @princesspeepo
The Amazing Traveling Circus by @kicsterash
thswdb by me! :D
The Aftershow by @chubs-deuce and @munchiemooz
Anime and Alternative Final by @gooseworx
CaineWorld by @daialune
Good Ending by @moondolldreeams
Semi Abstract Jax inspired by @x_birdy.artz_x
A little project I came up with. I wanted to show that maybe they won't be happy together in the canon, but we have our imaginations, guys, and that's enough for me. I also love the angst, haha.
Besides wanting to pay tribute to all those wonderful authors and their brilliant minds (lol), thank you for brightening my days. (I hope they see it, although it's more of a wish of mine than anything else, lol.)
