Star Wars characters after watching KPop Demon Hunters (across the timeline):
Ashoka and Anakin are BOPPIN along. Obi Wan has to pretend he doesn't care but knows every word to Golden.
Omega made all the Bad Batch watch it. She obviously loves it. So does Wrecker.
Force Ghost Qui-Gon goes on about how the Honmoon and the Force are connected (and I don't think he'd be wrong?)
Luke and Leia talk about how they are Zoey and Rumi (respectively) and how Han could be their Mira if he could let in just a little whimsy.
Din is indifferent to the music but loves their spirit weapons.
Poe sneaks lyrics into his pre-battle speeches. He starts subtly but after a couple of missions, everyone knows he's going to call them all his "little soda pops" over the comms.
He also eventually asks Rey and Finn if they would be willing to do What It Sounds Like at the next base karaoke night.
Boba also fucks with it heavy. Fennec rolls her eyes when he starts to use Your Idol as his walk in music when he's holding court, knowing he thinks it makes him look tough. It works for him.
Palpatine HATES it. He has to connect with his people, though, so he wiggles his shoulders and smiles when needed and then grumbles alone about it. He's annoyed to no end that Anakin loves it so much because he always catches the young Jedi humming various songs.
Greef also very much enjoys it and unironically uses it as ice breakers with other movers and shakers. He judges how much he'll trust someone based on their answer.
C-3PO is delighted to translate the Korean lyrics for anyone who asks. Chopper and R2 add cuss words when someone asks them.
Padme and all her handmaidens have regular discussions about what strategies they would've used to seal the Honmoon. They also debate heavily on the hottest Saja Boy.
Their separation anxiety is probably through the roof now, not even uncle Boba and aunt Fennec can do some something about it lmao. And yes helmet less Din just cuz I wanted to draw his pretty face.
Idk if I’ll be able to draw more Dincember prompts but I’ll try my best! Miss them ;;
Head empty, just thinking of how Din would probably force you to ride the beskar on his thighs after he came inside you so he could watch you get off on him again and beg him to cum while also marking him with your mixed juices.
@sery-sk asked for a whump meme fill (I hope you enjoy!), and I, as usual, went a little overboard! This is a direct sequel to a fill I wrote last week, which you can find on AO3 here. Essentially, what you need to know is that Din was captured and forced to fight in gladiator-like combat to survive, and Luke rescued him. I’ve posted this fic on AO3 as well, as part of a new series with the one mentioned above. You can find it here.
Prompt #12: “Have you not slept this entire time?”
Din, by all accounts, had been doing phenomenally well ever since he and Luke had returned home to Yavin IV. He had borne Leia, Han, and Chewie’s concerned hovering with grace and no small amount of bemusement — which both amused and saddened Luke, since it seemed like Din hadn’t quite realized that the three of them had adopted him into their family and cared for him as much as they did for Luke. They seemed to understand as much, since for the next week that they stayed, none of them had left Din alone for a moment. If Luke couldn’t be with him, then it was Leia sitting at the kitchen table, talking with him about politics (Bo-Katan had been insistently comming Din about restoring Mandalore, and he seemed to very much appreciate Leia’s advice on the subject), or Han would join him in sitting outside and observing Luke and Leia training with Grogu, or Chewie would challenge him to a game of dejarik, and they would spend hours trying to outwit the other.
They did, however, have to return to Corellia eventually, and it was with many hugs and assurances of love that the Millenium Falcon finally departed Yavin IV and left Din, Luke, and Grogu on their own once more.
Din had been eating well and healing rapidly, much to his satisfaction, and the boot on his broken ankle had come off almost two weeks ago. Luke had been pleasantly surprised by Din’s willingness to wait and not push himself. But he seemed, now, to have decided he was fully healed— enough for him to stand in front of Luke, spear in hand, and request a sparring session.
Luke watched him for a moment. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, so Luke could see his expression, and he seemed calm and sure of himself.
“Are you sure, Din? I don’t know if it’s a great idea.”
Din nodded, eyes clear and easy. “I’m sure. I feel fine, just like I used to.” His Force energy, as well, felt calm and untroubled, not tainted with anxiety as Luke expected it might be if Din were pushing himself too soon.
Luke pursed his lips as he thought. He knew it was a risk… but if Din insisted…
“Alright, a short one, okay?”
Din grinned. “Fine by me.”
They gathered in the clearing behind the house that night after dinner, setting Grogu in the grass against the house so he could watch. He, too, hadn’t liked to have Din out of his sight, and he seemed excited to see them spar again, as they had so often before.
Luke, with his saber’s intensity powered down so that he couldn’t accidentally hurt Din if he got in a hit somewhere not covered by beskar, settled into an opening stance and watched as Din did the same, the T-visor of his helmet flashing in the light of the setting sun. His shoulders were still relaxed, his movements still easy. He made the first move, perhaps sensing that Luke was unwilling-- he darted forward and swung his spear around towards Luke’s head, which he parried easily; the fight had begun.
It was fine, for the first few moves-- they were a little rusty, having gone so long without sparring together, but soon they were slipping back into their old routine, the dance they had both become accustomed to. They were an even match, a formidable pair, and they had learned each other well in their time before Din’s capture. But it was in the middle of a swing towards Din’s midsection that Luke saw a change come over him. Din stumbled back, the slightest movement, and his block of Luke’s swing stuttered for just a moment.
When Din returned the strike, it was much more aggressive, much more violent, than any move he had made thus far-- and he pulled back and struck again, and again, advancing towards Luke with deadly intent. Luke blocked each strike, but it was a close thing, and he found himself stumbling back, trying to put distance between them, each swing of the spear wilder, each parry sending vibrations up his arm as the spear screeched against his lightsaber’s energy. Then, he slipped; his heel came down on a rock, a small thing, but it was enough to send him tumbling down to the ground, and Din was on top of him in an instant, spear held high, the point poised to bury itself in his gut.
“Din, stop!” Luke shouted, and flung out a hand, seized the Force energy around Din-- it roiled and stung with terror and desperation that stabbed at Luke’s heart-- and stopped him mid-swing. Din struggled, but Luke held him fast as he shifted to his knees in front of him. He reached out his other hand, telegraphing the movement as slowly and carefully as he could, and rested it on the side of Din’s helmet. Din was trembling now, his breaths starting to come in quicker and quicker gasps.
“Din. You’re alright. I’m going to let you go now, okay? You’re okay, sweetheart, I promise you.”
He waited for a moment and then slowly, carefully, released his hold on the Force. Din wavered for a moment, slumped on his knees, and then he gasped, flung the spear away from him, and reached up and yanked his helmet off with shaking, fumbling hands. His eyes were wide, panicked, and Luke reached out and grasped him by the shoulders.
“Din. You’re okay. Breathe with me.”
Din dropped his helmet in the grass and reached up to grasp Luke’s wrists, closing his eyes. Slowly but surely, his breathing started to even out, and the tension in his shoulders started to ease.
“There you go,” Luke murmured, and managed a smile when Din opened his eyes again. Din didn’t smile back— he seemed unable to look Luke in the eye, merely glanced at his face and back down again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice brittle as glass, “I… I didn’t mean…” he swallowed, and breathed in deep, squeezing Luke’s wrists where he still hung on. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Din,” Luke said again, gently. “You didn’t hurt me. You’re fine, you’re home, and you’re safe.”
Din nodded. They stayed like that for a moment longer, before Din jumped as a tiny green hand patted him on the thigh, and Grogu burbled concernedly at the two of them.
“I’m okay, ad’ika,” Din said as he looked down at him, but Luke noted that his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Din reached down and gathered Grogu into his arms, pressing his forehead to Grogu’s for a moment before rising to his feet. He didn’t look at Luke as he said, “I’m going to get him ready for bed,” and walked back around the house without another word.
Luke watched Din as they moved through the motions of readying themselves for sleep that night— he was withdrawn, yes, but he didn’t seem to be lost in his head as he had been, merely contemplative, and his hands were steady as he removed each piece of his armor and placed them in their designated place on the side table in their room. His Force signature was tinged with anxiety, but that was understandable, given the scare they had had. Luke decided it would be best not to push and merely be there for Din if he needed him, and so they settled quietly into bed together. Luke wrapped his arms around Din and pulled him close, so that Din’s head rested just above his heart, and pressed his cheek to his hair. Din held himself stiffly for just a moment before he sighed and relaxed into Luke’s hold. They drifted off to sleep like that, holding each other, each of them reassuring himself that he wasn’t alone.
_______
He held his spear in both hands, feeling the twinge of pain that shot up his wrist from his left index finger-- when had he broken it? It must have been two fights ago, when he had his whipcord, and the near-human he’d been fighting had slammed their staff down on his hand to try to get him to drop it. He ignored the pain and turned to face his challenger, eyes burning in the bright light they used to illuminate the ring, ears filled with the jeers of the crowd around them.
His challenger, hooded and silent, stepped forward and raised their allowed weapon, a glowing green blade, and Din pounced, even as a voice in the back of his mind screamed at him to stop, to wait, but he couldn’t afford to slip up, not when slipping up could mean they would win, they would take him from Luke and Grogu forever. He screamed as he hurled the spear forward, and as it made contact with his opponent’s body, as it struck them and they stumbled, dropping their sword, their hood fell back, and it was Luke, he had killed him, he had, Luke was dying because of Din, and----
“-- sweetheart, you’re okay, Din, wake up!”
Din gasped and jerked away from the hands pressed against the sides of his face, scrambling back on his elbows until he felt the surface he was on-- a mattress?-- give in a way that told him he was inches from falling. He was shaking terribly, breathing as if he’d just run for miles, his heart thundering in his chest. It took a few moments for him to be able to open his eyes. Luke was kneeling on the other side of the bed, hands still outstretched towards him, caution and concern clear on his face.
Din panted and ran a hand down his face. He glanced up at Luke-- he was whole, thank the gods, not injured, not bleeding out-- and closed his eyes again.
“Sorry,” he murmured, and felt a gentle hand -- smooth and slightly cool, which meant it was Luke’s cybernetic hand-- brush over his own. He turned his hand over, palm side up, and clasped it.
“You’re okay,” Luke said again, “It was just a nightmare. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real, Din. You’re at home on Yavin IV with me and Grogu. You’re safe.”
Din could cry at the softness in his voice, at the blanket of comfort the words seemed to extend over him. He could only nod, but Luke seemed to understand. He squeezed Din’s hand, and Din felt the bed beneath them dip as he shuffled closer.
“Are you up for trying to go back to sleep?”
Din shook his head. His heart rate was settling back into its normal rhythm, but he felt shaky and disoriented. He opened his eyes again and tried for a smile, though judging from the look on Luke’s face, he didn’t quite succeed.
“I think I’ll get ready for the day. You can keep sleeping, Cyare. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
He leaned forward, and before Luke could say a word against it, kissed him on the cheek and slipped from the bed.
He took longer than he normally would have in the fresher, standing under the water shower with the heat as high as he could stand. He scrubbed at the dirt he could still feel, at the dried blood he knew still coated him, not all of it his-- he scrubbed until his skin was red and tender, but it felt more like his own than it had in a long time.
He was in the kitchen, watching the pot of caf slowly fill, when two arms slipped around his waist from behind, and Luke pressed his face into the space between his shoulder blades. He sighed, holding Luke there for a moment, unable to let himself let him go.
Their day with Grogu was a little more subdued than usual, though both Din and Luke did their best to act normal around him and not let him feel their anxiety. They were just settling down to lunch when Luke’s comm rang, with the special series of tones that meant it was an urgent call from Leia. He frowned down at it for a moment before he excused himself to their bedroom so he could answer it. Grogu looked at Din, a question in his eyes, but Din just shrugged. “I dunno, kid.”
It turned out Leia (or rather, the New Republic Senate) needed Luke to go after a suspected Sith artifact on Stygeon Prime, and they needed him to leave as soon as possible.
“I don’t know,” Luke said, as Din helped him pack up the small bag he took on trips like this with him— little more than a change of clothes, some ration bars and a few canteens of water, and plenty of bacta, just in case. “I don’t like leaving you alone, not after the night you had.”
Din paused, looking down at the undershirt he had just picked up to place in the pack. His gut roiled as he remembered flashes of his nightmare, of Luke, bleeding out from a stab from his spear… and he shook his head roughly, dispelling the images, and shoved the undershirt into Luke’s bag.
“I’ll be fine, Cyare. Don’t worry about me. You just keep yourself safe.”
Luke’s parting kiss out in the clearing where his X-Wing sat was a little more desperate, a little more pleading, than it usually was, and Din was seized with a sudden desire to climb up Red Five’s ladder and pull him down, back to their house. But he merely clutched Grogu tighter to his chest and watched as the hatch closed and Luke rose up and vanished into Yavin IV’s atmosphere.
Din turned to Grogu, who was staring after Luke’s ship with huge eyes.
“Well, kid, guess it’s just you and me again,” he murmured. And they turned and headed back into the house, the little structure suddenly feeling far too empty without one third of their little family there with them.
That night, as he lay in his and Luke’s bed and tried desperately to get his mind to calm enough to let him go back to sleep— he had woken gasping and heaving once again, images of Luke bleeding and broken by his hand seared into his eyelids— Din felt like maybe this was a mistake, after all.
The substantial amount of caf he had already drunk sat heavy and sour in his stomach, but Din ignored it as he poured himself yet another cup. He knew, in the back of his mind where logic screamed, that this was not a good way of handling his nightmares, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. All that mattered was staying awake. So he drank his caf, sat at the kitchen table, and waited for the sun to rise.
His body felt too tight, sharp and brittle as glass, with shards of it ground off and floating in his bloodstream, cutting him open from the inside. It was hard to piece together any other words to describe it; he ached, but in a different way than he had while healing, and a different way again from what he’d felt when he’d been tossed back in that stars-damned cell, cut up and bleeding and despairing... left to drown in the blackness, in the utter misery of being defenceless and entirely beholden to his captors’ whims, watching replays of innocent beings, of Luke falling under his hands, or his whipcord, or his blaster or his spear or---
Din jerked upright in his seat, a scream lodged in his throat. He could feel the imprint of his vambrace on his cheek-- he had fallen asleep at the kitchen table, head pillowed in his arms.
“Kriffing hells,” he muttered, glancing at the chrono above the stove that glowed green in the dusky light. It was barely past midnight, and Luke wasn’t due back for another two days. He bit back a yawn, and moved to make another pot of caf.
Din’s head spun. He watched Grogu play with his toys on the living room floor, his happy squeals drilling into his brain with horrific force. Grogu whirled a toy X-Wing, painted to look just like Red Five — a gift from…. Leia? Din couldn’t quite recall— around in the air, and Din tried to track it, but it felt as though his eyes were stuck in their sockets, dry and rattling and useless. He blinked, and Grogu was across the room, now, holding a stuffed Tauntaun— that one had made Luke and Han laugh, for some reason, perhaps Din knew before but he couldn’t remember it now. He blinked again, and now the sun was lower in the windows, and Grogu was sitting on the table in front of Din, patting at his face with tiny, insistent claws.
“What? Sorry, ad-- ad’ika…” he closed his eyes as he stifled a yawn, and when he opened them again Grogu was inches away from his face, his big dark eyes staring straight into Din’s, and he looked… worried? That wasn’t right, Grogu shouldn’t have to be worried about him, not ever, it was Din’s responsibility to take care of him. Grogu patted his face again, and pointed out the window, where the sun was almost fully gone.
Din frowned and turned just as the door to the house opened, and a figure in a dark cloak entered, a pack slung over his shoulder.
Din watched him, watched the swirl of his cloak through the smoke from Gideon’s droids, tinged with green from… somewhere. No, wait, there was no green, no smoke, just Luke, it was Luke, of course it was. He was no specter, come to snatch his son and squirrel him away where Din could never find him. He was his husband, and despite barely being able to feel his face, Din felt the smile he gave him as Luke approached the table and dropped to a knee in front of Din. He looked concerned, but Din could hardly understand why.
His lips were moving. Was he speaking? Din’s ears didn’t seem to be working anymore. He watched Luke’s face, watched his eyebrows furrow and saw his hand come up, felt the barely there press of fingertips to his temple. He leaned into the contact, and the room tilted around him alarmingly.
“…in. Din. Sweetheart. Look at me, darling. Have you not slept this entire time?”
Din blinked at him, surprised his ears were suddenly working. The question filtered through his brain sluggishly, like brackish water through a sand filter. Then he shook his head, and mumbled, “Couldn’t. Kept… kept seeing you. Hurt. Couldn’t… couldn’t bear it.”
Luke made a noise, one Din couldn’t interpret, and the fingertips at his temple pressed a little harder. He felt some of the aching pain that had blanketed his brain ease, just a touch, and he couldn’t stop himself from letting out a soft moan of appreciation. His eyes had closed again, he realized— they must have, since he couldn’t see Luke anymore— but he couldn’t find it in him to open them again.
“Okay, we’re going to bed right now,” Luke said, and before Din could get out a word of protest, he had slipped a shoulder under Din’s arm and stood. Din’s eyes shot open and the room spun around him. He clutched at Luke’s back with fumbling fingers, and let him guide him step by agonizing step to their bedroom. Grogu gurgled in his ear, and Din rolled his head around— his forehead was somehow pressed to Luke’s neck— to see him clutched in Luke’s other arm.
Luke helped him sit down on the bed, setting Grogu down next to him, and started removing his pauldron. Din watched him blearily for a moment before he realized he should probably help. His fingers didn’t seem to want to respond to his commands-- they kept slipping off of the clasps. But eventually, between the two of them, he found himself wearing only his flight suit, slumped back onto the pillows with Grogu nestled against him on one side. Luke slipped into the bed on his other side, and reached out a hand towards Din’s forehead. Din rolled his head on the pillow to look at him -- gods, he was so beautiful, Din felt tears spring to his eyes, stinging them in their dryness.
“Din, I want to try to help you sleep. Is that okay? I promise, all I’ll do is suggest it. But it should help you sleep with no dreams.”
Din stared at him for a moment before realizing Luke was waiting for an answer, and nodded, his head so heavy on his neck. Luke smiled at him, a small, gentle thing, and then pressed his palm over Din’s forehead and closed his eyes.
A wash of calm spread through his mind, a sweet suffusion of warmth, sucking away the pain that rattled through his brain and leaving behind only the faint imprint of Luke, painted on the backs of his eyelids and in his very soul.
“Sleep,” Luke whispered, as if from far away. “I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.”
The next morning dawned clear and bright, and the rays of the sun streaming through the window found their little clan of three curled around each other on the bed, all three sleeping deep and nightmare-free.
I’ve been working on this drawing for over a year [started in august 2020 when this episode aired]. I thought it was so cool seeing Mando chill with the Tusken Raiders because the only time you ever see them is when they’re acting up, shooting at fools or all that business with Anakin in AOTC.
You never really give them a second thought. Why would you? They’re the sand people; hostile animal riders in the wild desert that don’t speak English. But then you see their desert pit bulls get pats from Mando and then they all chill by a fire. They’re just a bunch of dudes. And of course Mando hangs out with them, he’s chill with everyone. People that don’t like Din aren’t homies. In conclusion the Tuskens are homies.
And how cool that they sign too. Like of course they sign. One of the actors created a dialect just for the Tuskens. TSL he called it. I just thought it was rad seeing them be explored a little. Like that episode was about them as much as it was about Boba Fett’s beskar.
This drawing took me way too long and stressed me out more than any art I’ve ever done. But I finished it. I’m proud to have finally finished it and I think I’ll look back on it and be happy to see proof that I was so inspired in the first place.
