I circle you
Author: Patricia_Sage
Fandom: The Mandalorian
Summary:
Din meant to keep things professional. His duty was to return the child to his people. And that meant keeping him fed, keeping him safe, keeping him happy, then saying goodbye. That's all.
Grogu was just so easy to love.
((alternate title: "buir is a state of mind"))
read it here or under the cut
Paz was always good with foundlings. He knew when to comfort them, when to tease them; who needed to spar their energy out and who needed time alone. Din was awkward, always better at following instructions than feeling things out. His instincts served him well in a fight or on a job. So, he provided for the foundlings by bringing home credits, supplies, materials for their amour to keep them safe.
Din was meant to be beroya. He was never meant to be somebody's buir.
Grogu started off as a bounty. To be fair, Din was told he was fifty years old. Din was a bounty hunter, but he wasn't heartless. As soon as that pram opened, everything shifted. Those big, black eyes were windows into parts of the galaxy Din had never seen.
Grogu was a child, and that's what Din called him in his mind for months - The Child, Kid, Little Guy. He wasn't going to name him like a stray hound. The kid had a name - probably the one thing that remained from his parents, just like Din - he just couldn't communicate it in a language the Mandalorian knew.
Din had never felt more inadequate than when they met Ahsoka Tano. She could understand Grogu through some sort of Jedi connection. Grogu told her his name right away. How much was the child trying to tell Din every day that he couldn't understand? But there was also joy, bright like a blaster bolt, whenever Din called the kid's name and he looked up with twitching ears and an expectant little grumble. Maybe they could figure it out.
Grogu didn't need to speak for Din to understand him. He became attuned to the angle of his big, green ears, the set of his little mouth, the posture of his body. And Grogu understood Din - he just didn't listen very well when he had something (usually jumping or skittering) in his sights.
Din meant to keep things professional. His duty was to return the child to his people. And that meant keeping him fed, keeping him safe, keeping him happy, then saying goodbye. That's all.
Grogu was just so easy to love. He was adventurous. He was stubborn. He was sweet. Din liked having him around. He made even the most mundane tasks enjoyable or at least entertaining (if sometimes a little more stressful). Din found himself valuing quiet moments between adventures.
Mandalorians always woke up early, ready to face the challenges of the day. Din used to feed himself through muscle memory and necessity alone with the cheapest and longest-lasting rations he could find. Grogu also woke up early, but only for the few moments it took for him to clamber out of his hammock and tuck himself into the crook of Din's elbow before immediately falling back asleep. Listening to his gurgling snores, feeling the twitch of soft ears against the bottom of his helmet, Din couldn't make himself move to start the day quite yet. Breakfast, once they were both up, was much more of an event with a hungry toddler on the ship. More often than not, Grogu was able to convince Din to go into a market and find something hot and wriggling. If they did have to eat on the Razor Crest, Din found himself getting much more use of his small stove than ever before, chopping vegetables and heating up meat.
He kept sweets hidden in ammo boxes and toys stores in weapons lockers.
Din didn't realize how alone he had felt before he had Grogu.
When the time came, the words fell out of his mouth, as heavy and as certain as gravity.
"Then I will adopt him as my own."
And Din Grogu - holding a mysterious past, a loving present, and a powerful future in both his names - looked up at his father with the galaxy in his big, black eyes, and smiled.
