Aug 8
Grogu is happy because he shares the same mudhorn sigil as his dad
Using a translator, please excuse any mistakes.
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Hungary
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
Grogu is happy because he shares the same mudhorn sigil as his dad
Using a translator, please excuse any mistakes.
Love Like You
Words: 6555 | Rating: T | Characters: Din Djarin, Grogu, Cara Dune, Greef Karga, IG-11, The Armorer
Read on AO3 or below
<<< Part 2
3 — Foundling
The child is watching him.
He feels it more than he feels anything.
More than the pain. More than the blood. More than the black.
He’s dying.
He knows.
He knows because he’s getting less and less with every breath he draws.
He knows because his heart is falling out of rhythm, going frantic then sluggish then stumbling.
He knows because even that perpetually, indomitably stubborn thing inside him has gone quiet, aware that no amount of defiance now will win anything, that the last of his energy will be wasted if spent fighting for his own life. There aren’t enough threads left to grasp nor dregs to scrape so he doesn’t even bother reaching.
When the last pull comes, he’ll let go.
It’s a warrior’s death—really, the epitome of one. He took his fatal blow in the heat of battle. He was on his feet until he couldn’t stand any longer. He had allies beside him, worthy warriors in their own right, and he was protecting something precious, something innocent, something worth dying for.
The Mandalorian is at peace with this death.
Din Djarin is not.
The name is in his ears, blaring, ringing, echoing. It’s in his mouth, too, stuck in the blood that shouldn’t be there. The name belongs to a boy who died in a hole in the ground, his parents’ kisses still drying on his crown and his cheek; now it’s back, resurrected only to fall to a dying man.
A man who has only just now realized the one he has killed for and the one he will die for is the same one he wants to live for.
He wants to live.
Only alive can he take care of the child. Only alive can he protect him. Only alive can he ensure he’s fed and warm and safe. Only alive can he enjoy his company, his strange manner of conversation, his humour, his endearing stubbornness, his bottomless compassion… his love.
Selfish, yes.
He deserves none of it.
What kind of broken was he that it took so long to recognize the child as a person? Why did he struggle so to comprehend the child’s affection for and, dare he say, attachment to him? Why did he have to take every hard road there ever was? Why did he have to make a hopeless tangle of everything to come to his senses? Why does it take impending death to make him realize just how much he has to live for?
He thinks all of this distantly and instantly.
There’s so much happening.
Outside, smoke clouds and chokes everything. It was a bright, sunny day on Nevarro before all the shooting began. All that haze hangs in the still, trapped air of the cantina, subduing the light, overriding the senses.
He doesn’t know if it’s the marching, running, scrambling of dozens of soldiers or the building warning of its impending collapse he feels through the ground. Could be both. Could be just what a body goes through as its life ebbs. He’s not sure but it’s acutely discomforting.
Cara’s talking. She’s frantic. He’s never seen her frantic before. Her hand keeps coming and going, doing something then snapping back to hold his arm, just beneath the pauldron. Her other hand slides under his head, her fingers slip up under the lip of the helmet and he should feel that but he doesn’t, not properly.
Through everything that’s happening, the one thing he feels above all else is the child’s gaze on him.
He’s on the ground, somewhere by his boots. He’s just barely there in a sliver of his peripheral vision, but it’s enough to see his enormous, worried eyes.
It crushes Din’s heart.
He wants to sit up (properly, fully, not like he is now, lying like he’s been splattered against this duracrete slab that once was a table… likely the very table across which he took the course that led him to the child). He wants to reach over and gather the child to him, to reassure him and soothe away those little furrows of concern like he would the shadows of a bad nightmare.
But he can’t.
The child’s mouth opens but Din doesn’t hear him.
The battle’s still going and Cara won’t stop telling him he’s gonna be fine. On top of all that, the helmet’s taken some of the worst damage it’s ever seen. He can’t hear anything at all in one ear and he doesn’t know whether to blame that on the equipment or himself.
Cara’s still talking. And trying to help. She cares about him. She doesn’t want him to die. The way her arms wrapped around him, the way she carried him off the battlefield, the way her hand grabs his arm… she’s hoping if she holds on hard enough, he’ll stay, he won’t slip away. He wants to tell her that’s not how this works but that’s not really necessary.
She’s from Alderaan.
She’s a rebel.
She knows.
He spares what strength he can to tell her he won’t make it, that she needs to go. It’s just a fact. If he had more to work with, he’d tell her he’s sorry for dying on her because he is, truly.
She pauses her avid denial to look at her hand. He can’t see it but the horror eclipsing her attempts to smile and convince him all’s well tells him it must be bad.
“I’m gonna need to take this thing off.”
“No!” Panic lances through his heart and it likely shoots him a few yards closer to death but he cannot allow this.
He’s on the cusp.
There’s nothing she can do, no aid she can administer that will reverse, pause or stop this. He knows. The last of their medical supplies was spent on Karga. And there isn’t time.
He can’t survive this.
But he’s kept his vow this far and he wants to die with it unbroken.
“You leave me.”
Din Djarin is already long dead.
The Mandalorian gets to choose how his song ends.
But before then…
“You make sure the child is safe,” he instructs, forcing it to come out clear and loud enough, just in case his modulator is as busted as the sound amplification and clarification tech.
She’s been here before.
He sees something subtle shift in her face. Her jaw sets with the duty and fortitude of the soldier already carrying the dying wishes of others, their last words inked in the black of her eyes.
She’ll take his, too. She’ll see them through.
He knows.
But before then…
“Here.”
It will make her mission easier to accomplish but that’s not his foremost thought when he reaches up and closes rigid, barely responsive fingers around the piece of beskar he’s carried with him the longest. A sharp tug snaps the cord, untethering him from one of his oldest anchors.
His kyr’bes.
A Mythosaur skull, a symbol bestowed on all Mandalorian children—born or found.
His buir received it when he was born.
He carried it his whole life until he found him.
He slipped it over his head, settled it over his heart, and called him his.
“When you get to the Mandalorian covert, you show them that.”
Outsiders, scavengers, vultures, whatever unsavoury sort should stumble across the husk of a Mandalorian would think the helmet, the armour, and the weapons the most valuable. They would strip and pilfer the shell, for collections or currency. The little skull—of which you would need multiple to create just one ingot—is so often ignored, discarded, taken for a trinket or a curiosity.
Mandalorians the galaxy over know it is more valuable than the sum of their parts.
To carry it is to be claimed and to claim in return.
Once forged, it is never reshaped. Once donned, it must always be worn. Once given, it cannot be retracted.
Any Mandalorians left in the enclave will know at just a glance what it means—for him and for the child.
“You tell them it’s from Din Djarin.”
He forces the instruction out, focussing more on speaking than what he is saying, to the point it surprises him when he realizes what he’s just said.
The name—his name—tastes foreign.
He hasn’t uttered it in so long. He was afraid he had forgotten how to even pronounce it, the tongue it was born from long lost to him. No Mandalorian has ever pronounced it correctly upon seeing it written: they always elongate the vowels and harden the consonants, saying them like the pounds of a hammer on beskar when they’re supposed to be said like notes played calmly on a wind instrument.
The Moff got it right.
The first person to say it in years, the last time he will ever hear it from another, it’s said correctly but by an enemy.
He is incensed by that but he can’t hold the anger.
Din Djarin is dead, after all.
The Mandalorian is just using his name to get something.
Not for himself.
No.
“You tell them the foundling was in my protection, and they’ll help you.”
Above the pain, beside the regret, through the flooded tunnel of noise and silence, there is the child.
He wants to live.
He has never wanted to live more than he does right now, if for no other reason than to quell the little one’s worry.
But he can’t.
He can’t survive this.
He has fought with everything he is and everything he has. His will is strong but it can’t quench the inevitable. So he digs up the name of a dead man and bends it into a key—even though he doesn’t use it or share it, the tribe knows it. Even if they’re all gone, they will have left a marker to indicate where in the chain they’ve fled to, and the droid should be able to detect it. Once Cara finds them, once they see the foundling…
Foundling.
He…
He never called him that before.
But…
But that’s what he is.
Cara’s back to frantic and fighting. She’s still insisting he can beat this, he can live, he can escape, he can stay with them. She tries to grab him to carry him out and just that slight shift inflames the pain, making his back arch and his heart and lungs seize so he can’t even make a sound though inside he screams.
There’s a sickening shift of broken bones and a nauseating rush of blood in his head and chest. His stomach doesn’t know if it wants to heave or collapse. He’s lost feeling and command in his legs and his hands are growing distant.
Vaguely he’s aware of a Flame Trooper entering. Heat and light erupt in the shrinking world of the cantina. Time is slow then time is fast. It’s all around him, then it’s in him, then it’s nowhere.
He insists.
He all but demands she leave now and take the child—the foundling—with her to safety.
Flames race toward them. A beam disintegrates from the heat alone and falls, sending sparks and embers bursting up like fireworks. The trooper readies his thrower for another blast.
And she still doesn’t leave.
It’s too late.
The trooper takes aim. The thrower’s charge builds to an absurd level.
Fire roars—so loud, he feels its anger in his bones.
And that’s it.
He knows.
Greef, Cara, the droid, the child are all about to be as dead as him, their fates all bound up and cut off here together.
It’s not poetic; it’s just brutal.
A complete, unequivocal end.
The flames race towards them, billowing out into a cloud… and then change their mind and rush to the ceiling.
He sees the child.
Cara’s desperate attempt to move him distracted him; he didn’t notice the child move away and take a protective stance.
He stands sure and proud—not even a foot tall but his shoulders square and his chin lifts with courage greater than that of a giant. He faces the flames. His hands hold the air, his head bows.
Not even the heat touches them.
The power he used to halt and lift the mudhorn before it could kill Din, the power he used to cut off Cara’s breath, the power he used to heal Karga—that strange, inexplicable, reality-defying power he now uses to save them all.
Like the mudhorn, like the breath, like the poison, the fire obeys him and halts. With a controlled flick of his tiny wrist, the child banishes it, sending it back with all the force with which it came at them. The entire wall explodes outward and the trooper… Din doesn’t see but he knows he won’t be a problem for them any longer.
Entranced by the display, he had lifted his head. Now that it’s done, whatever drop of strength he had scraped up evaporates and he sags. He blacks out but then Cara’s hand fists around his arm again and the pain wakes him just long enough that he sees the child collapse.
He wants to rise and gather him, hold him close, make sure he’s unharmed.
He can’t move. He can’t stand. He can barely breathe.
He tells her once more to go.
This time, she listens.
What follows, his memory doesn’t quite record.
Not clearly, not sequentially.
He’s only barely conscious as the droid tends to him.
It applies bacta to only the wound it determined would kill him if left untreated. It may have nurse-droid programming and protocols now but the battlefield-style medicine and the military-grade bacta suggest the hunter programs lurk somewhere closer to the surface than Kuiil estimated.
He can’t keep a grasp on everything that happened in that moment.
Did the droid remove his helmet? He thinks it did but it could have applied the bacta without doing so… probably. Well. He could have, if he had any control on his coordination and strength right then. Anyway. If it did see his face, does it count? It’s not really alive; what would be the difference between that and bearing his face in front of a caf machine?
He doesn’t want to think about it.
He doesn’t think he needs to.
When the droid decides he’s out of the danger-zone and can move without incurring death or irreparable damage, it helps him up and gets him through the narrow entrance to the sewer system.
He still can’t hear on one side. He also can’t tell if it’s his left or his right—even up and down aren’t staying in their designated spots. But the sound of the droid’s gears and metallic stomps makes it through. It tells him it’s picked up the others’ trail and is following them.
(It’s tracking.)
(Nurse-droids don’t track.)
(That hunter programming must be embedded deep.)
They go a stretch.
Every step is simultaneously numb and excruciating. The droid only treated the head-wound; it must have scanned and found other things but it’s choosing not to tell him. Which is immaterial: just because the droid hasn’t told him about the cracked ribs and bruised spine doesn’t mean they don’t exist—he feels it, he knows it, but he is also ignoring it.
They have to get to the others.
He has to get to the child.
He’s not going to die.
He’s going to live.
He knows.
But the child doesn’t.
He collapsed after halting and redirecting the fire. The last he saw of him, the last he heard was him telling them, begging them to go, leave him, he’s not gonna make it, so here, take this, go to his people, they’ll help.
They saved me.
They’ll save my foundling.
He’s still grappling with what uttering that single word spells for him and the child when a new sound slips like a fine blade through the haze.
Crying.
A baby crying.
Even with a damaged helmet and a damaged brain, even through the distortion of tunnel twists and turns, even across such a distance, he recognizes that particular pitch and rhythm.
It’s his kid crying.
He jolts up. He launches. He means to run to him, to get to him. What’s wrong? Is he hurt? Are there troopers down here already?
He wrenches himself out of the droid’s grasp and suddenly reunites with the ground. He doesn’t register or feel it as it happens, he’s just… down.
(He’s not feeling much sensory input at this stage, he realizes, belatedly, absently, and with more than a little self-reprimand. His nervous system’s so clogged up with pain signals, it’s giving up listening to new entries.)
“I do not recommend you attempt such rigorous activity at this stage in your healing,” the droid tells him (for once more nurse than hunter). It bends down, hooks its claws under his armpits and scoops him back up to standing. “I will take your weight; you will focus on walking straight.”
The rhyme comes off condescending and patronizing and he tries to growl at the droid for it but all he makes is a pitiful, choked off whine.
“We will rejoin the others shortly,” the droid assures him, both stern and earnest.
No sooner does it say that then they come around a corner and there they are.
Cara’s smiling. She all but races up to him, tilting her head as if to find his gaze. His helmet’s torch-light highlights the tears both in her eyes and still wet on her cheeks. He smiles to her, forgetting for a moment that she won’t see it.
In her arms, she holds the child, bundled up in the satchel. He also smiles but it’s a difficult thing: he looks pale and exhausted.
(But happy.)
(He looks happy now.)
Din wants to hold him. More than anything. But he can’t. He can’t even stand on his own. He sways dangerously in just the split second he hangs in space as Cara hands the child to IG-11 and takes over as his crutch, his arm such a dead thing, she has to hoist it up and latch it around her shoulders.
He’s never been one for physical contact but some hazy, cobwebbed part of his brain goes quiet and calm as she threads an arm around him and shoulders his weight.
The tunnels are a labyrinth.
Cara calls them a maze. Greef is confused that Din doesn’t know the way and he confesses he’s never been this way before. He only knew one could access the underground from all over town but he, personally, had only ever entered through the bazaar—it was the entrance reserved for the beroya.
They push on.
It feels like hours.
It might very well be.
The droid’s hydraulics, gears and pistons pound away the silence. Greef and Cara’s steps barely make a sound but they sprout little pieces of commentary now and then to make up for it, to remind him they’re still here, still going. He can’t hear much beyond his own stilted, strained breathing.
(Definitely cracked ribs.)
(At least three.)
(Or seven.)
The child emits the tiniest of chirps. Two chirps, the second elevating in tone. It’s how he asks questions, Din knows.
“Not long now,” he tells him, automatically, and then pants a bit to recoup the air just those three words cost.
The child snuffs, sharply. When he turns his head, he catches a flutter of his ears as he shakes his head.
Not what I asked.
His little body shimmies in the bag and he extracts one of his arms. His face is scrunched in seriousness as he points to Din and repeats his question-chirps, slowing them down for emphasis.
“Me?”
“Eh.” (Yes. A sharp “eh” usually means “yes”… with a distinct undercurrent of “if I have to repeat myself one more time, I will bite you.”)
Din exhales, his spine bowing as his tired lungs empty too much, too fast.
He knew the child was worried but to see it so directly, so closely… it shouldn’t make him feel like the world is falling away beneath him. But it does.
This little, strange creature that seeks him for comfort, that chooses and wants to be as close to him as possible, worries and cares about him. It’s not contingent on his own well-being; Greef, Cara and IG-11 have all proven themselves capable and even willing to look after him, ensure his safety. He doesn’t need Din now; not like he did before today.
But he wants to know.
“I’m okay,” he tells him.
The child stares at him a long moment. The droid has twisted its torso so the child in the satchel can face him. His little head tips down, his eyes never leaving the visor, and his brow twists upward.
He doesn’t believe him.
“Hey. I’ll live,” Din tells him, a bit like a joke because he wants to lighten the little one’s mood.
There isn’t time to expound on it but as they continue on, those words ring in his ears (even the one that’s not picking anything else up).
I’ll live.
I want to live.
I have something to live for.
The sun sets on Nevarro as they leave, rising into the descending night.
So much has changed.
They came with three passengers and all three remain on Nevarro—one by choice, two without a say, without alternative. A once ally turned enemy became a friend. An enemy believed dead rose up only to return violently to the grave. Things have been revealed and a new path lays ahead, unknown and untrodden.
It’s just the two of them again.
The Mandalorian and the child.
Except… they’re both a little changed, too.
It can be traced in the beskar. Two skulls tell the story: a mudhorn and a mythosaur.
The Mandalorian has a signet; the thing he has run from and refused for more years than he wanted it was at last bestowed on him without conference, no room for argument allotted. It’s more than a symbol memorializing a victory, it’s more than a distinctive clan crest; it’s a permanent, physical seal on his bond with the child.
Likewise, the mythosaur pendent is a seal on the child’s bond with him. He gave it as a means to secure his tribe’s good grace, to tell a story which has miraculously changed its ending and opened a sequel rather, but none of that has changed what it is. Once given, it cannot be taken back.
They are forevermore a part of one another.
In the silence washing in like the tide, the profoundness of it all sinks heavy and low, like an anchor or a lead chest.
They reach the stars and set off for a world not so far away but it takes a jump through hyperspace. The Moff went down but the whole ordeal has set Din’s teeth on edge; maybe it’s that old, ingrained paranoia flaring up, but it doesn’t hurt to move fast and put a buffer of distance between them.
Well, metaphorically.
It does, in fact, hurt very much to move.
The bacta pulled him back from death’s slippery edge and sealed up what was fatally broken in his head but the rest of him still feels like that mudhorn came back, tracked him down, and trampled him a second time.
It’s gruelling work, getting on his feet again.
His spine doesn’t want to straighten, nor do his ribs agree with his intent to uncurl. One leg is still more numb than the other, dragging and threatening to trip him. His head pounds, his blood pressure a confusing, capricious mess. His stomach, his heart, and his lungs feel like they’ve been taken out, tied up together, shaken vigorously, and shoved back in without a thought to their correct placement.
The armour has never felt so heavy.
Even his helmet is too much now.
But he gets himself standing.
After they land, he sets the ship to rest and locks it down. It’s the dead of night, there’s nothing to see, nothing to excite; it’s like this world knows they need a pause.
Once the ship is still and winding down to its own rest, he stands and scoops up the kid (who is also pale and shaky, big eyes droopy and blinks long and slow). He gets them down the ladder, taking every movement tenderly, tentatively. When he makes it down to the cabin without blacking out, he shuffles to the sleeping nook and sets the child down.
He’s still clutching the mythosaur skull.
Din’s heart stutters again at the sight.
It’s the quiet, it’s the stillness.
It invites grief to land like a heavy, sharp-taloned vulture on his shoulders. It provokes uncertainty, causes it to churn in his gut and lure his mind into the vortex it creates. Emotion rises and he can’t name half of it. So much has happened today, so much has been lost, and what lies ahead is uncharted and unseen, massive and looming.
Kuiil is dead. IG-11 is gone.
His brothers and sisters from the tribe are either dead or unaccounted for.
He hoped perhaps a little too hard that Cara might come with them but she chose to stay behind and finally rebuild her life on Nevarro.
Things with the Guild have been set straight, he can take straight work again, yet, when Greef offered him his pick of the pucks, he declined like a reflex.
He’s hasn’t been so untethered in years.
And yet…
Just the sight of one tiny green claw on the little carved skull he’s worn over his heart for the better part of his life hushes the storm within and without.
For everything he’s lost, he’s gained more than he ever imagined he deserved.
He clears his throat.
The kid lifts his head, gaze sluggishly rising to meet his.
“I’m just gonna go…” losing the words, he gestures to the refresher. He huffs, airily. “I gotta clean up.”
As if to check why he would choose such a course of action, the child looks him up and down. He’s tired and he himself is hurting but he manages still to raise his brows and pull a face.
“Yeah,” Din agrees with a chuckle. “I’m a mess.”
Understanding the routine, the child shuffles backwards and waits for him to close up the nook.
His hand rises but hesitates on the button. It’s just a moment, though; he presses it, shutting the nook off from the rest of the cabin.
He disassembles himself, taking special care with the pauldron now bearing his signet, and takes stock.
“A mess” he finds is an understatement.
The med-scanner, if it could be so crass, would call him karked up, and even that would barely paint the first layer of this picture.
An E-Web cannon exploded right next to him. He walked a few kilometres in the underground tunnels with torn muscles and bruised or fractured bones. He lost a pint or so of blood, some of which he left on Nevarro, the rest he’ll have to wash out his flightsuit. He went for a jetpack flight when he could hardly stand and fought a TIE Fighter with his bare hands.
Nothing the med-scanner lists surprises him.
Begrudgingly, it admits he won’t die from any of it… if he takes care.
He reads and rereads its recommendations before packing it away with none of his usual lightly restrained disdain. He cleans himself, so much blood and dirt swirling down the drain, it’s sure to clog the recyc. He then applies bacta with more generosity than he typically would endorse. He bandages and binds his broken flesh like it’s something precious. He dresses and takes the meds the scanner suggested—things that will stave off infection, help his pressure stabilize, help the nausea settle, and he even goes so far as to take a pain-reliever. He takes in water and food. It’s not easy, he has no appetite to speak of, but the meds he took require food and his body needs something to work with if it’s going to restore all that blood he lost.
When he’s done, he automatically grabs his helmet to put back on.
But he hesitates.
In part, it’s because the inside of his helmet is filthy with his blood—most of it has caked and dried but some trails are so thick, they still glisten under the oily light of the refresher closet.
But cleaning it would be a quick thing and it’s not really why he stalls.
His eyes flick up to the mirror above the sink. Dark eyes with noticeably uneven pupils waver and dart across his face before the thoughts behind them clarify.
The child is his foundling. He is as his father. They together are a clan.
It’s set in beskar.
The mudhorn and the mythosaur.
They are family now and families know each other’s faces—he knew his buir’s face; he saw it for the first time the night he gave him the kyr’bes and said the vow.
He doesn’t have to put the helmet back on. He can go, open the door, just walk out and greet the child with an unveiled, unhindered smile, see him without the filter of a visor.
How will he react? Will he recognize him? Surely he will; he’s so clever, that kid. How will it feel to be seen—truly seen—by another for the first time in decades? How will it feel to be on this side of the vow?
Just as the excitement swells, reality clouds over.
This is not a fairytale.
This is not even a regular story, the likes of which he has spent years hearing other Mandalorians in the tribe recount, of families begun, bonds created, clans grown.
The child is a foundling, yes.
But only temporarily.
He shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing about them is conventional; how could he expect this to go the way it does with others? The child is too small, too young, too frail for the physical training the Mandalorian way requires. His powers, though Din believed they more than made up for what he seemed to lack, didn’t impress or sway the Armorer. What is more, though she noted he himself is not to be viewed as such, he is still born from an enemy, and while her instructions might not have harboured prejudice, they concealed an urge for distinction and separation.
Her words, artful in their form and delivery, sounded like counsel, like guidance, but they were really repudiation.
You cannot train him.
You cannot keep him.
He does not belong—with us or with you.
He is a foundling. He holds the mythosaur. But he is not his.
The only thing stronger than beskar is a Mandalorian’s word.
The mythosaur could be lost but the vow would hold them together.
Except… he cannot make that vow.
As high and as deep as his regard for his adopted people is, Din knows—better than anyone—it is not an easy path. He embraced this life, this way, but he cannot commit the child to it. Ultimately, it would be his choice, but he has already, in just this short time, grown attached. He will feel obligated to continue and then what?
If he becomes too Mandalorian, his people, the Jedi, will reject him.
He has already been ripped from them once; Din cannot, in all good conscience, claim him and sever him from where he rightly belongs.
So he cleans the helmet, never before finding it such a chore.
When he’s done, he puts it on.
He procrastinates returning to the child, taking time to dig in their stores until he finds a meal pack the kid will enjoy the most. He heats it up—a mushroom soup that he actually can’t stand the smell of—and dishes it into a tin bowl rather than leaving it in the plastoid dish it came packaged in.
This is still an occasion for celebration.
He steals a moment to shore up something in him (courage, resolve, he can’t name it), then opens the sleeping nook.
The kid is still awake, still holding the mythosaur skull, still studying it intensely. His little fingers trace the eye sockets and the tusks, and his little mouth moves as he coos in a quiet, low, self-soothing manner.
Then his nose twitches and his ears perk up like flags. He whips around, his sweet little face brightens and Din forgets why his heart sits so heavy in his chest.
He holds up the tin bowl. “Made your favourite.”
The kid tries to rise and come to him but he holds up a finger and it’s enough to stay him. With great care, he climbs onto the bed and scoops the child up into his lap. Moving isn’t so excruciating anymore (score one for the med-scanner. He hates to admit it but the blasted device was right: that pain-reliever was a good call).
The little one wiggles with delight as he is handed the soup. He tips his head back, resting against his guardian’s stomach as he fills his own. Din keeps a hand around his belly, softly holding him in place, keeping him warm.
He’s finally stopped long enough for the exhaustion to catch him and sink its teeth in. He micro-naps as the kid slurps his soup. Mercifully, he doesn’t take long to down the whole bowl. Too tired to take it to the sink, Din shoves it to a corner of the sleeping nook and promptly forgets about it.
He checks the child’s injuries.
While navigating the tunnels, IG-11 recounted how he found the child. He rescued him from two scout-troopers but not before they beat him. The same bacta he used later to save Din he used first on the child: it’s still there, a sticky residue smeared across his little chest and back.
It’s strong stuff.
The bruises have lost their dark purple and blue hues and progressed to yellow and a strange shade of teal he can only attribute to the fact the child’s blood isn’t red like his.
The important thing is he’s healing well and he doesn’t seem to be in pain anymore.
In his heart, Din thanks the droid once more.
The soup is already working its wonders, too, restoring the little one’s strength and colour. But it can’t replace his need for a good sleep.
As has become routine, Din tucks him in his blanket nest. It’s arranged up by his pillow where it’s proven a convenient spot to combat nightmares. When the little one’s settled, he begins the arduous task of laying his own battered body down, struggling for quite some time to find a position that presses on the fewest hurts. Every grunt or gasp that slips between gritted teeth carves another furrow in the child’s brow as he watches him.
“I’m okay,” he reminds him, offhandedly.
The kid snorts, rocking his head in a suspiciously mocking manner.
“Fine. But I’ll live. Happy?”
The way the kid looks at him makes him feel rotten.
No.
I’m not happy.
I can’t be happy if you’re hurt.
Din sighs, hangs his head.
He takes his time, lowering himself down on his side. Once down, he takes another moment to let the world stop seesawing. When his heart goes from thudding sickly to just a bit too fast, he breathes out.
“We’re gonna be alright, you and me,” he says, rescinding his gruff, flat tone and embroidering his voice with things he heard from another deep voice, a lifetime ago. He chuffs—it still costs too much air but he makes it sound light. “We’re hardy. You know what that means?”
The kid tilts his head, waiting.
“Means we can take a hit and the other guy goes down.”
The kid wrinkles his nose. That’s not what it means.
“We’re still here, aren’t we?”
He can’t argue with that.
He doesn’t seem inclined to concede the point either.
“Sweet dreams, kid,” he bids and switches off the light.
He wonders, a moment, how much the child can see in the dark. If he’s as blind now as he is, then the helmet is a moot point. His eyes are enormous, though; they likely let in more light than his can; he probably could see still, like a feline.
In the dark—of the nook and his helmet—he frowns to himself.
He’s never before sought a loophole or a grey area.
Besides, he thinks (and ignores how much it feels like a desperate grapple for consolation), he wouldn’t want the first time the kid sees or feels his face to be now when it’s all broken and bruised. He doesn’t think much of his looks or the general concept of what ratio of features are more pleasing than others, but if ever the child were to see his face, he’d like to look… healthy.
He tries to sleep.
It’s not easy.
Now in the dark, in the silence, lying still without distraction, the day replays behind his eyes, vivid and violent.
It’s difficult, crowning the worst moment.
He saw the Butcher of Mandalore in the flesh. He heard his name on that demagolka’s tongue and nearly lost his life to him.
He found what was left of his tribe, their hollow helmets piled like a mass grave.
He could only watch as IG-11 sacrificed himself.
He buried Kuiil.
Voice cracking, he whispers their names.
He can only remember them now; he must remember them.
For the first time in years, he whispers the two oldest names on his list.
Mama and Baba.
Not their given names—try as he might, he can’t recall those. He holds only the faintest images of their faces. But he still feels his father’s hands cupping his face and his mother’s arms wrapping around his body when it was small and fragile and unscarred.
He alone holds their memory.
He alone carries their name.
It was said three times today.
First by an enemy, used as a tool to disconcert.
Second by him, given as a token, a key.
Third by the Armorer, as a restoration.
It takes a while to coalesce, but, fragment by fragment, he realizes he has been referring to himself by that name all day.
Din Djarin, as it turns out, is not so dead anymore.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“Meh-whap?” the child chirps, quizzically.
With a shaking, stiff arm, he reaches up and gathers the child, drawing him to his chest. Naturally, his body curls in around him, like some primal instinct to warm and protect something precious.
The little one thinks it’s a fantastic arrangement.
Eagerly, he burrows into his unshielded chest. Little claws fist up in handfuls of his worn, grey thermal shirt. He presses into his sternum, fitting in over his heart like a missing piece restored at last. And he manages to poke his head into the small space under his chin, his little crown nuzzling into his uncovered neck.
He feels him sigh and relax, the epitome of content.
Thank you, he says in his heart where he can always find and form the right words.
You saved me.
You brought me back to life.
You make me want to keep living.
Author’s Notes
Just before IG and Din join the others in the tunnels, there’s like a crashing, clattering sound. I could never figure out what it was exactly (they’re too far from the entrance at that point) but in writing this I thought, you know, Din experiencing another slip and fall would explain it.
In other news, while scrolling through movies to watch for movie night, my dad came across The Mandalorian and Grogu. I reminded him we saw it at the theatre some months ago and he goes “oh yes. The one with the blobs” (he meant the Hutts 😆 but now that’s my new favourite term for them. “Jabba the Blob” has a nice ring to it…)
. . . . .
Part 4 >>>
As long as I can save Grogu...
朋友啊后来慢慢想不起你了
Back to when that photoshoot came out and we all drawed Grogu and Pedro like this ahah! <3 + some fanarts / sketches
Instagram Bluesky ( In progress )
One Way or Another
Characters: Din Djarin, Grogu
Rating: General
Words: 2510
Summary: Early on in their travels together, the Mandalorian and the Child discover they’re more alike than they thought
Written for @locitawritings-blog1 Star Wars May Prompts, Day 1: “I guess we’re not so different after all.”
They hid for three months on Sorgan and, in that time, Din had very little to do with the child.
It sounded cold, even he could admit that, but it wasn’t a thing born from malice or disgust or revulsion; while he couldn’t deny there was intention in it, he facilitated and encouraged his distance and lack of involvement as a buffer, a protection.
The plan was always to get the kid somewhere safe and, right from its conception, he knew such a goal couldn’t include him—in fact, the entire equation hinged on his eventual exit. He wouldn’t say he knew all that much about kids but he did know they had a tendency to form attachments to their caregivers. He had already won the child’s admiration as his rescuer (his role in putting him in the cruel hands of the Imps quickly forgiven, it seemed); best he crop it before it grew any further.
Initially, he had his doubts about Sorgan, what with the raiders and the fact the villagers possessed no weapons, no defences, not even a decent warning system and the fact that, overall, they seemed more inclined toward pacifism. But he and Cara had trained them well and they applied themselves diligently, so much so that they proved instrumental in defeating the raiders. All the way out here with nothing more valuable than vibrantly coloured crustaceans and a horde of recipes featuring the former, raiders should be the only threats they ever face; now they were prepared, they would never again be taken advantage of, so Din was certain the child would be safe in their midst for… well, for however long he may live.
It was all falling into place, he had his foot halfway out the door… and then it all fell through with a bang.
Literally.
He had heard countless blaster-shots in his life. If ever he cared to keep a tally of how many days he went without being in the vicinity of blaster-fire, he had a strong suspicion it wouldn’t reach double digits (before the sojourn on Sorgan, anyway). It didn’t affect him, didn’t make him flinch or recoil or panic. Though it always warranted alertness and often action, it was as mundane a sound as the Razor Crest’s engines or the constant, low ringing in his ears.
But this one… this one rattled him to his core.
It was only a handful of seconds before he learned who had shot who but, in that interval, he assumed and believed the worst, that the child had been—
He wasn’t. Of course. But still now, days later, Din couldn’t untangle the knot in his gut, couldn’t silence the buzz in the back of his head, couldn’t quite catch a deep breath or loosen his shoulders.
He could take a blaster bolt.
The child couldn’t.
What more proof did the galaxy need to see that a bounty hunter was the last person who should be taking care of a child?
Din didn’t need proof; he knew it from the moment he turned back and rescued the kid: he couldn’t stay with him.
But he would make sure he got somewhere safe, somewhere kind and comfortable, somewhere he wouldn’t have to need or want or settle for less.
Sorgan was that place.
There was an abundance of capable, experienced, willing caregivers in the village; there was always someone available and happy to look after the child. Din never had to ask twice to employ someone in watching the little one while he went on patrol or led a training exercise. The kid had a whole routine running parallel but separate from his own, like speeders passing each other along separate, adjacent lanes.
Only as they left Sorgan’s atmosphere did Din realize the disadvantage he was at thanks to his lack of involvement.
He never fed or ate with the kid. He didn’t even know how much or how often he was supposed to eat, and besides frogs, he didn’t know what the kid ate.
He never bathed him or washed his clothes—Omera and her daughter Winta always took care of that. Was there a specific temperature the water had to be? And soap—should he use any?
He never really engaged with him. That wasn’t extraordinary—he didn’t engage with anyone outside of the purely necessary. Children sought and required attention, he knew, but how much did this kid need?
The one thing he had been involved in was bedtime (and, even then, only every other night when he wasn’t slated for patrol duty). So there was at least one thing in the routine he had a modicum of confidence in, but did the kid nap during the day? He couldn’t recall.
All of this plagued his mind as Sorgan—their shattered sanctuary—let them go.
The first thing Din did upon returning to the Razor Crest was scour it for tracking devices. He didn’t think he’d find any and, after a thorough search, he proved himself right.
Considering the fact that tracking fobs only worked once on the same planet as the quarry, that hunter had to have tracked them the old-fashioned way: word of mouth. Which meant someone in the town saw the Mandalorian and the Child and they spread the word. In all likelihood, it began as innocent gossip, but it propagated and broke out like a virus, reaching far off-world.
So backwater planets weren’t as safe as Din had believed. People still talked, people still came and went, maybe it took a little longer and he supposed he should be grateful for that at least, but word still got out. And who was to say they’d have the same time-frame on the next world?
No. Better to go somewhere without people. Period.
He put the parameters in the nav, set it to pick one at random and chose the third option presented: an unnamed dwarf planet resting on the border of Wild Space.
It took a day and two hyperspace jumps to reach—all the better for covering their trail.
There was no need to address his concerns regarding routine during the trip, not when he and the kid slept through the majority of it. When he woke, he considered putting together a meal but before he could even open his stores, the nav chimed, announcing their imminent exit from hyperspace.
He made his way to the cockpit, the child following along in the little padded crate currently serving as his crib and pram. He spared a moment to strap the crate to one of the passenger jump-seats before taking the pilot’s seat and tending to the landing cycle.
The planet was uninhabited but it had been visited before, hence the comprehensive notes on atmosphere and local wildlife (nothing that could eat him in one gulp, thankfully). In choosing it, he focussed on purely practical things, paying no mind to the traveller’s notes about the scenery.
Now, however, as they came to land, he couldn’t ignore how vivid the world was.
It was a forest world, like Sorgan, but instead of green, vibrant red and orange dressed the trees.
The leaves—small, circular, soft like petals—fluttered madly as the Razor Crest settled down in a clearing near a lilac-tinted river.
From behind, Din heard a soft, awed coo.
He couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah, it’s—it’s pretty,” he agreed, the helmet’s modulator flattening his tone.
He set the ship to rest, the engines wound down and quieted… and he stayed in his seat a moment. Leaning back, he tipped his head to the rest, and just… took in the sight.
When last did he do this? Just sit and gaze at a new world?
It was the middle of the morning, and while that aligned nicely with their current circadian rhythms, Din hardly held onto the practical thought longer than a heartbeat before his mind turned back to the colours.
Red.
He used to love red.
He cleared his throat, turned his seat around, and stood. The kid’s head tilted, giant eyes latching on him and blinking, like he was waiting for something.
Right. Kids liked to know what was going on and Din hadn’t spoken much on their goal beyond “we need to leave.”
“We should, uh… we should make camp,” he said now. “Get some food, some water, get a fire going.” Vaguely, he gestured but soon gave it up. What was the point in talking this out? It wasn’t like the kid could understand him…
The little one’s head settled and he chirped in a way like he was agreeing.
Din went to unfasten the crate from the seat but, before he could, the kid squirmed out of his blanket nest and dropped to the floor. He stood there, staring up at the Mandalorian. “Let me guess, you want to walk by yourself again?”
The kid blinked at him, then turned and toddled off.
Din sighed. “Figures…”
They could stay here for months, but to be safe, Din decided they’d just stay a single month then move on.
He hadn’t had a chance to stock up on ration bars before hightailing it out of Nevarro, but the good people of Sorgan had sent him and the kid away with a few baskets of preserved foodstuffs. It was generous and he appreciated it, but it was mostly krill in origin and, frankly, he was sick of the little blue crustacean.
So, after scouting the area and checking that the water source was clean and viable, he set out to hunt down something for dinner that didn’t have a shell.
It took most of the day.
Not because he couldn’t find anything, not because he couldn’t catch anything, but because he had the kid with him.
He insisted on walking by himself.
A distance Din could cover in a few meagre strides required eight times as many steps for the little one to traverse. When he got tired, he plonked down on the ground. Din could have carried him, but he squawked and refused to be lifted up, wanting to continue walking by himself. So all Din could do was stand around and wait for him.
The kid followed him initially but, as the day wore on, he grew bored of pursuing prey, finding the native flora far more interesting. Randomly, he would just stop and play with a dandelion or a pile of dead leaves. If he found a bug, Din couldn’t convince him to move on for at least twenty minutes (or until the kid ate the unfortunate critter).
It was well into the afternoon by the time Din managed to track down a fowl. For as much work as he put in, he would have preferred a buck—something he could’ve gotten meat from for a few days—but it was getting late and it would be much easier to carry the child and a fowl back to their camp rather than a buck.
At last, the kid let him carry him. He curled up in the crook of his arm and nodded off to blissful sleep as Din traced his way back to the ship.
Thankfully, he remained asleep when they returned. Din deposited him in his crate, tucking him in and keeping him close as he built a fire, cleaned the fowl and set up a spit.
Twilight dressed the world in soft, milky hues by the time the fire reduced to hot, burning but no longer smoking coals. He began cooking the meat, turning the spit at regular, almost lazy intervals. As the smell of roasting meat rose, the little one woke, his nose shivering, his ears perking.
“Dinner time,” Din told him.
The kid gazed at the meat, the low light from the cooking fire painting little golden glitters in his wide eyes.
He climbed out of the crate and Din braced for badgering or barring attempts to dive at the still-too-hot meat, but the boy simply came and sat beside him on the fallen log serving as his bench tonight. The picture of politeness, he tucked his hands in his sleeves and waited, ever watching the spit.
“What do you want? A leg or a wing?” Din asked, mostly jokingly—he intended to give the kid just a chunk of the boneless white meat.
The little one looked at him, seemed to consider the question, then stuck his own leg out, pointing to it then to the fowl.
“A leg then,” Din said, nodding. He rose up off the log, grabbed the smaller of the two plates, unsheathed his vibroblade and cut off the part the kid indicated.
The child received the plate with glee.
“Good choice; that’s the part I like, too,” Din remarked as he went to pick up the bigger plate. It wouldn’t be easy to eat with the helmet on, but he could manage; he’d done it before.
The child looked to his plate, looked to the Mandalorian, then grabbed the fowl leg by the bone and held it up in offer.
“No, it’s okay. You eat it; there’s still another leg.”
The child didn’t look satisfied. He huffed his annoyance and pointed to Din’s food then back to the leg he still held up.
Going out on a limb, Din brought the fowl leg to the other and tapped them like toasting glasses. That seemed to appease the kid; he cooed, wiggled with delight, and tucked right in.
It had been quite a while since Din ate in the company of someone else. Not with—he hadn’t properly eaten with someone else since his buir died. But he had let his walls down incrementally for a few since, considering it no violation of his vow to sneak a straw or morsels of food up under the lip of his helmet.
But he couldn’t remember the last time he actually enjoyed the company.
The child either couldn’t or just didn’t talk. Din was still puzzling out how much he understood—he was sentient, but he was also clearly a child despite his many years already lived. A conversationalist, he was not… but neither was Din.
Funny. They were so different, it felt contrived to even state so.
Different species, different age, different abilities, different size, different lives.
But they both liked roasted fowl legs and sitting in the quiet night.
By the time the food was eaten, the stars began blinking awake by the thousands. Din was watching them, his mind wandering, when he felt something press up against his side.
He lifted his arm on automatic as his head whipped to look down. All he found was the child, trying to snuggle in close.
“You don’t like the cold?” Din asked, swinging his cloak around and bundling it around the child before scooping him up into his arms. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “I don’t like the cold much either. Never have.” He chuffed and the little one looked up at him, sleep-heavy eyes blinking slow. “I guess we’re not so different after all.”
We set the world in motion
By reaching out for each other’s hand
Maybe we’ll discover
What we should’ve known all along
That one way or another
Together’s where we both belong
🎶 I 2 I — Tevin Campbell & Rosie Gaines