the concept for this fic has been in my head for so stinking long, the doc is actually a year old, but the au bingo (@bobadinweek) helped give me the impetus to finish. hope you all enjoy!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
and with this fic, here is the state of my bingo card (below the cut) at this time! only a little bit longer to go but im gonna do my damnedest to get that bingo!
Every time I see "Tarre haunts the darksaber/Din", he always seems way too chill to someone whose weapon meant for peace and fighting Sith's and that now has a story of being used to hurt and oppress people and also was LITERALLY used by a Sith after being Stolen from it's resting place
Where's my bitter Tarre?????? where's my Tarre who Din has to gain the trust of????? who has to prove to not only Tarre but also every mando that has 0 relations to the Death Watch that even though he gained the title by combat, he still deserves to be Mand'alor???????? where's my Tarre who helps Din with their people, but still dislikes the way his Lightsaber was used?????
Seriously, the dude wouldn't be A-Okay with how his Lightsaber was used, let alone how it was stolen and used to kill people - especially Jedi who he considered family, but also civilians and simply innocent people
Like, at least a mention on Tarre being a lot more helpful to newer Mand'alore than he was to previous ones would be a step forward.
Haunted by the darksaber!Din is great for when I'm in the mood for spookiness but some alternatives to spooky possession haunting that I also like are "a bunch of ghosts annoying Din and trying to boss him around and only he can see them" and also "normally the ghosts WOULD try to possess him but they realize he's just a nice polite man so they kinda leave him alone"
@kate-komics (who’s artwork I ADORE and I am a huge fan, you need to check it out!!!) issued a “Draw it in your style” challenge over on the instagram, and Haunted!Din is my favorite trope of all time, so of course I had to have a go at it. And I know this is not my usual style. Let’s face it, my chibis are not the best for this. So instead, I used the style that I like to use at work.
Din returns to Mos Pelgo, without the Child, but with a new weapon.
Cobb can't admit to himself that Din has come back... wrong.
In October, when I was supposed to be working on my big bang fic, my brain said “haunted din!!!!” and I was helpless to follow my muse.
So, here’s haunted!Din, post season 2 with a hint of dincobb!
Haunted!Din, of course, originates from these lovely people. Title inspo from this tumblr post. Huge thanks to Izzy and Bat for betaing!
Link to AO3
-=-=-=-=-
Mando had changed since he first came to Mos Pelgo.
There were the obvious ways; his lack of a Child, the spear on his back, the hilt at his hip he refused to talk about. He was quiet before, but now he was silent. Cobb rolled with it; he understood what grief could do to a person, even if Mando hadn’t named it as such. They managed, sharing the small space of Cobb’s house, getting by on Din’s body language and Cobb being more than prepared to fill stretched silences.
And then there were the other ways, ways Cobb can’t be sure were real.
It started when he woke up to an empty house, to a cold side of the bed. They were both far past the point of being able to sleep on couches, especially Cobb’s ratty one, so neither had much issue sharing Cobb’s bed. Cobb just had to push aside those pesky feelings and deal with it.
Waking up to an empty bed wasn’t unnatural. Mando was restless, up before the sun, pacing the room, or sitting in the kitchen, staring at nothing in particular. Waking up to an empty bed at three in the morning, with no sign that the other man was in the house? That was odd.
The front door was locked, so he could assume Mando wasn’t kidnapped. He at least hoped he would have woken up for something like that. He knew Mando was his own man and could handle himself, but that didn’t stop him from pulling on his boots and belt and throwing his poncho over that.
Outside, the air was cool, with both of Tatooine’s moons peering down at him like eyes. He pulled the flashlight from his belt, and pointed it low, scanning the area. It was times like these he wished he had his old armor back, with the helmet’s HUD that functioned nicely in the dark, but this wasn’t the time for that. There was no obvious movement, but he walked slowly down the street just the same. He kept the beam of the flashlight low; there was no need to alert the whole town. He felt like the only soul awake. It didn’t take long to reach the end of the houses and look on at the endless stretch of desert.
There were stupider things he could do than walk out into the desert at 3am, but nothing came to mind as he stepped into the open plains.
The desert never settled, not even at night. The winds whipped around his poncho, animals called out to one another. The light from his flashlight skittered across the ground as he pointed it here and there, wherever there was movement.
The beam fell on twin dunes. His heart pounded in his chest as sand fell as something moved from behind. He reached down to grab the knife in his boot, but stopped as he recognized the glint of the familiar t-visor in the moonlight. His shoulders sagged in relief, something unnamed uncoiling from his stomach.
“Mando! You gave me the fright of my-” He stopped as Mando stepped into the beam of light.
His armor looked red with all the blood covering it, dripping onto his boots and into the sand. His movement was jerky, small spasms as he moved toward him.
Cobb was moving before he realized it. He had his hands over him immediately, breaking past unsaid boundaries to look for wounds. Up close, he saw the blood had seeped into the flight suit. There was so much blood, the fabric squished under his fingers.
“What in the hell happened to you?” he mumbled.
He checked Mando’s arms once, twice, but there wasn’t a scorch mark or tear on him. His eyes scanned the rest of his body and still, there is no sign of any cut on the man.
Mando gently bought his hands up to grasp onto Cobb’s wrists. He held them between their bodies, gently squeezing.
“Cobb,” he said, in a voice much deeper and rougher than the one Cobb first heard all those months ago. That pulled his gaze to his helmet and the infinite blackness in that t-visor. There wasn’t a drop of blood on his helmet, Cobb realized belatedly.
“Okay,” Mando said.
Cobb couldn’t tell if that was a question or a statement.
So, he squeezed Mando’s hands in turn and said, “C’mon, let’s get you inside.”
He helped Mando take off the armor, setting it on the make-shift armor stand he still had from his old armor. He took off all of the bloodstained clothing but the helmet. When Cobb hand reached for it, Mando had taken his wrists firmly, and brought them back down. He suspected as much, and turned to find some clothing that would fit Mando.
They fell into bed, back to back, like they had hours before. The domesticity of it all was almost enough to banish thoughts of Mando drenched in mystery blood as he fell back asleep.
-=-
He kept an eye on Mando after that. Started noticing how Mando would space out and stare at nothing before violently shuddering and turning back to the conversation like nothing happened. How the krayt dragon meat that was still in his conservator disappeared after a month of living with the guy. How Mando’s voice continued to sound deep and gravely, how that wasn't how deep his voice would sound even with disuse.
He tried explaining it away. Mando was thinking of the Child in those moments, Cobb wasn’t used to feeding two people, or he was out of practice talking to folks.
The image of the blood stayed in his head.
Cobb went on patrol that next morning, casting a wider circle than normal, but found no evidence of a mercenary camp or animal remains in the area where Mando had emerged.
Scavengers, he told himself, to rid himself of the chill that ran up his spine.
None of it was enough to kick the man out of his home, though. He could still feel Mando’s hurt like a physical thing, and he wasn’t about to force the man to spill what had happened.
“If you ever want to talk, in whatever form you want to, I’m here, alright?” he’d told him.
That had gotten him a nod, which he had taken as a success.
Mando still disappeared sometimes. It wasn’t always at night. Sometimes he’d be searching for the man and walk all the way around town, only to find him right at his doorstep, a splash of blood on his bodysuit. He never came home with as much blood as he had seen that first night.
-=-
And then… and then something happened in broad daylight.
With the krayt dragon gone, Mos Pelgo was finally able to install solar panels. It had been a group effort, digging the hole for the foundation, gathering the credits, carting the supplies all the way out here. Everyone helped make it happen, so everyone was there when they were put up.
Cobb leaned back against one of the houses as the last panel was put into place. They were large, made of black glass, tilted so they would catch most of the suns at this time of day. A cheer went up as the last one snapped into place. Cobb searched the crowd and found Mando on the other side, leaning much in the same way he was. He caught his eye, and Mando nodded.
It brought a smile to his face.
There was a small celebration after. Some of the parents had cooked, one bringing out a tent so they could celebrate outside and not worry over the suns. Kids had a longer break from school. They stood in front of the glass, looking at their reflections in it, pulling faces. One tried to drag Mando into the fun. From his body language, Cobb could tell he was considering it, but refused all the same. Cobb smiled at their antics.
Then Mando walked from one end of the party to the other and Cobb saw something that made his hair stand on end. He waited, frozen in place, hoping that it would pass, but it didn’t.
He elbowed his deputy. “Jo? Do you see that?”
She looked at where he was pointed at the panel and did a double take much the same as he did.
They locked eyes and Jo let out a nervous laugh.
“Trick of the light, Marshal. That’s all.”
No, no it wasn’t. No kind of angle or anything would make it look like Mando had no reflection. Cobb checked, making his way around the party, talking to folks, but keeping one eye out for Mando the whole time. He made it to the other side and still, he saw no reflection from the Mandalorian.
He spent the whole party rationalizing it, but there was nothing to rationalize.
Something was wrong with his Mandalorian.
-=-
A few days after the panels went up, Cobb heard the telltale signs of mercs outside Mos Pelgo, wild whoops and the sounds of speeders revving their engines.
He sighed, grabbing his carbine and slapping the helmet on his head before leaving his house. He hoped that when he set up Freetown in the middle of nowhere, that’d mean that people would leave them alone, but that hadn’t proven to be the case.
The suns were setting behind him, bathing the world in red-orange light. There were six of them, none of them kids, but still wild enough they might be trying to get into some gang but taking down Mos Pelgo. They had on mismatched clothing, with no identifiable mark or signet to be seen.
He waited until they were done driving circles around their small town.
“Now listen here, I’m the Marshal of Mos Pelgo and you boys should think before you make another move.”
One of them, a human, snorted and said, “Oh yeah, where’s your Mandalorian pet?”
Cobb grit his teeth. Mando had left in the middle of the day, without a word as to where he was going. As much as he’d appreciate the back-up, but Cobb didn’t need him.
“Don’t matter. All you gotta do is focus on me.”
A Rodian rolled their eyes, dismounting from their speeder. “Out of the way, old man.”
Quick as a blink, Cobb pulled up his carbine and shot the Rodian in the leg. The man swears before pulling out his own heavily modified blaster. He turns to go for cover, but then a blast aimed at his feet knocks him over.
Cobb hit the ground hard, hard enough his helmet went flying off his head. He scrambled back on his feet, heart pounding. He had to protect his town and the people. He wouldn’t be brought down by some mercs, he wouldn’t-
His thoughts and hands stopped when he heard a strange humming. He looked at the mercs and they had stopped too.
One of the mercs yelled out, “What the-!” before the world went dark.
The lights that had been on in people’s homes faded into nothing. The suns, previously just above the horizon, are gone – not replaced by moons, but gone.
It was then he saw the crackling sword. It looked like someone put a piece of the night sky into this endless void they were thrown into. And Mando was the one wielding it.
Mandomoved with inhuman speed, Cobb was only able to make out what he was doing by the glow of the blade and the screams of the mercs. The air filled with the smell of burning fresh, the sounds of hissing and growling. Cobb didn’t realize he was moving until his back hit the wall of the house behind him.
The screaming stopped. Mando’s helmet, lit by the white glow of the sword, turned to face him. All the blood drained out of Cobb’s face as he went light headed, hands fruitlessly gripping onto his blaster on the ground. Fear tore at his throat.
“Mando-”
He wasn’t sure what happened, but the world shifted. The blade of the sword retracted, disappearing into the hilt. With it, the world turned back on, the suns reappearing in the sky where they should be and the lights in people’s homes slowly turning back on.
Cobb’s knees finally gave out and he slid down the wall of the house. Mando faltered in his step, like he tripped on air, as he walked toward Cobb.
He knelt down and Cobb tensed as Mando held his hands out. He regretted it immediately, as Mando shrank away.
“No, no, Mando,” he said, his throat dry. He reached out, tentatively, not knowing if it would be accepted. “Mando, I- what happened?”
Mando reached for him, slowly pulling him close to his chest. He was still breathing hard as he pulled Cobb flush against his chest.
“Safe,” Mando said, his voice the normal timber Cobb remembered from his first visit. “You’re safe.”
He loosened his grip just enough to press his forehead to Cobb’s. On instinct, Cobb let his eyes slide shut. He held onto his cape, knuckles popping with how tight he held it.
“Oh, Mando,” he whispered, pulling him closer. “What happened to you?”
Cobb had never expected Mando to come back after their first initial meeting. He had daydreamed, in those months between, about picking back up where they left off. Seeing if that spark was still there, hoping Mando had felt the same. And now here he was, shivering in his arms.
Whatever was wrong with him, they would figure it out together.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“The voices began on the day his parents died.
Perhaps that wasn’t quite accurate. No, the voices had always been there - faint whispers of nothingness in the back of his mind. Nothing more than a fog, really. Something he, for the most part, learned to ignore.
But the day his parents died was the day they began speaking.”
