Chapter Text
Din steps out of his room and right into a hushed conversation.
He stops, one hand still on the doorframe, silently blinking behind his visor. The hallway is silent, now — he is very sure it wasn't, a couple seconds ago. The two Mandalorian guards stand outside, one on each side of the door, staring decidedly straight ahead and not at him.
After a pause, he steps out the rest of the way. The door shuts behind him. The guards don't talk. Din doesn't talk. All three of them stand rigid and in silence. Not talking. Not even looking at each other. Very helpfully.
"…thank you."
The one on his right — the one that he'd addressed — does a very fine job at hiding the way they jolt, surprised as he speaks. A fine job but, unfortunately, not fine enough when Din is standing so close, and also staring at them so very intently.
Din clears his throat.
Their visor moves just barely, just enough for Din to know they are looking at him. He moves his in turn, and they're once again staring at each other, entirely wordless.
"…you're welcome?" The guard responds. Their voice is low, not exactly small, but like a solitary thing, standing alone on some plane, wide and vast and unending. They shift on their feet. "I am…happy to have…helped?"
Din huffs a soft laugh, despite everything; finds that can't exactly help it. "Earlier today," he says, elaborating finally, "when the…attack, occurred- I couldn't have- Wouldn't have, reached him in time. Grogu."
Saying it out like that; that'd been a truth that Din had thus far tried very, very hard not to realise. He wouldn't have made it in time. Always, always, always, he never makes it in time — a second too slow, a second too late, and 30 years now to make up for. So long, he had spent searching, hunting, praying; all would've gone up in flames in one singular second, all over again, too late.
But instead-
"You were there." Din's voice is soft. "To save him. Thank you."
The guard is silent — as if Din's caught them by surprise.
"And you, as well," Din says, turning to the one on his left, who is even worse at hiding their surprise — or, perhaps, now they've just stopped trying. Din's voice is low, weighed by the sheer heft of how much he means it, how much he needs them to know- "Thank you. Vor entye, thank you." (Vor entye; thank you. I accept a debt)
He steps so that he can face them both, at once. The guard that was on his right speaks up; "There is no debt, Mand'alor."
(Mand'alor; leader)
"There really isn't," the other one supplies. They've turned to look away, picking at some nonexistent speck on their rifle. "Just our duty."
Din allows them that, for a second. Rather, in truth, he's allowing himself a second, to sit with it and gather his thoughts and his words. He feels they all move so sluggishly, burdened by the dread weighing off his head, and hanging from his belt. Thoughts of the Darksaber; thoughts of Grogu; thoughts of Kryze.
Thoughts of himself, too. This burden he's never asked for, but neither would refuse. It's nonsensical, really — if it's for Grogu. He is selfish for even his hesitation.
All he can think of to say is; "I'm not Mand'alor."
The first guard snorts a laugh. "Not yet."
"Maybe not ever," Din points out.
"I'd be a little surprised," muses the second guard. They lean marginally back, just far enough until they are leaning against the wall, pauldron propped up. They say, words still halted and hesitant, testing out the waters of familiarity, "You've been…looking for him a really long while, right? The…Asset?"
His fingers curl into a loose fist first, and his realisation of that comes second. "Grogu," Din says, his voice still soft, somehow. "His name is Grogu. And yes. A…very, very long time."
The two guards look to each other again. The second one continues, after a breath of silence like that, "We've heard. Bits and pieces, over the years. Mainly we hear about…Asset, and now-"
And, now.
"…I didn't know," Din admits; feels as if the words fall out of his own volition, an admission of a sin he shouldn't have said. Wouldn't, have said, otherwise — yet did, for some reason, a reason that he couldn't begin to explain. As soon as they are out there, he wishes fiercely he could pull them back in.
And so, he doesn't elaborate. And they don't ask for more.
"…if I may," says the first guard, speaking up at last. They readjust the grip on their weapon, holding it in a single hand and crossing both arms over their chest, blue vambraces with green accents glinting in the light. "If I may," they say, again, "I couldn't help but…think. Have been thinking, really, after Lady Kryze told us-"
"Told you?" Din interjects, without his meaning to.
"Just basic things. The gist. Asset is…Grogu and Grogu is…yours." They sound like they're trying to simplify on the fly. "And I couldn't help but be thinking…is what we were talking about earlier, y'see. Before you came out."
Ah. So now they were admitting it. Din appreciates that, their openness — if he is to be…the bearer of the Darksaber, as much as his instincts rage against it and his heart weighs heavy in his gut, then at the very least he hopes that he can at least find familiarity amongst Mandalorians. Them, if no one, nothing else.
"I thought-" The first guard starts, and then stops. Hesitates, for a second, and then two. Their words come slowly, haltingly. As if it ached to speak aloud at all. "I thought…I have this cousin, see."
Slowly, Din tilts his head. It begins to dawn on him, what they're trying to say.
"…how old are they?" he asks, gently.
"Young." The first guard shifts on their feet. "Haven't started training yet but- soon, I'd bet. They're real raring to go, but- Their buir. Doesn't really wanna let them grow up so fast.'
(Buir; parent)
Din can sympathise with the parent, he finds — it surprises him. Then he thinks to that ache in his chest every time he looks at Grogu, realising how much he's missed, how badly he wishes the kid was so small, still; how he rages at the ruthless injustice of time, passing, unwavering.
And then just like that, it's not all that surprising anymore.
"…Grogu was a baby," Din admits. It's as much a confession of sin as the one before, but this time, he elaborates. "Couldn't talk yet. He was…helpless. A child. It was my-"
"A baby?" The second guard blurts out. Their shoulders have drawn up. their body tensed and coiled like a spring or an angry snake. "The Empire kidnapped a- A what? Why?! How- How cruel could they be so as to-"
His palms hurt. His fingers hurt. Din realises this, and then doesn't still — cannot, still — get his fists to uncurl.
"I don't know why," Din grits out. It's difficult to breathe. He huffs one — sharp, shaky. "It might have something to do with making…him. Maybe they always wanted that. A weapon."
The Asset of the Empire, Din does not say. Cannot get his tongue to form the words, as much as he wants to — and, quite frankly, he doesn't. They were wrong. All of them were wrong. As far as he's concerned, Asset is dead, and never existed to begin with. There is only Grogu. There has only ever been Grogu.
The first guard has been very still for a while now. When Din turns his head to stare at them again, their shoulders tense, and then very slowly loosen with a very, very controlled exhale — that simple huff of breath speaking volumes to the thoughts raging behind their visor, in their head. Thoughts that Din suspects well enough to be shared.
"…I think I get it," is what that guard says, simple and succinct. They do not elaborate.
And, Din doesn't ask them to.
"…I don't expect you to," he tells them, softly once more. He heaves a sigh and continues to say, "I don't expect…everyone to understand. Grogu is…"
He trails off, for a moment. How does one even begin to say? How does Din put to words all that ache, all that emotion, the strength of which scare even him? And, if he manages it, wouldn't that be unfair? To shore up all of this, every bit of him, every drop of blood he'd bled and shed in equal measure, sweat and tears and the like- For him? For Grogu, and for him?
Compressed in words that will tumble out, shaky and clumsy and not good enough. To even pretend that it'll even come close to fully expressing, fully capturing, all the things that makes what he feels what they are- what thirty years spent had been like? Would Din dare to do it that dishonour?
And then, as he is thinking, that first guard supplies, one final time;
"He's yours."
And Din nods his head, because that was…exactly it. The wholeness of the situation could be boiled down to just…that. "Yes. He is."
Out beyond the windows, rain wails ruthless against the outside walls of Castle Kryze. Thunder rumbles, somewhere unseen.
"How many of you?" Din asks, and for some reason his voice comes as a rasp. He clears it. "How many of you, guarding us?"
The two guards glance between themselves. "…six," the second one supplies. "Lady Kryze handpicked us herself."
This time, the mention of Bo-Katan Kryze is like a block of ice in his gut. He has her to thank for what could've possibly been saving Grogu's life, too, by proxy. She is also, somehow simultaneously, the biggest threat to the kid's safety. All these twists and turns could drive Din to the ground. Specifically, exactly six feet underneath it.
"…it would be good to meet you all properly," Din continues, when he realises the two of them are staring at him still. Finally, he uncurls his fists and lets his hands hang limply from his sides. "We'll be working together, after all. I'd like to know you. Let you know me, and Grogu, too."
This way, Din figures, it'll be easier to tally all the debts he had to pay.
Something unreadable, uncatchable, passes between the two as they look at each other in silent, wordless communication. The first one says, after a pause, "I'll…let the others know."
And there is nothing more to be said, so Din nods his head, and turns around to make down the hallways.
Most of their forces stay outside of the castle. In tents, then in huts, using ships as shelter and reinforcing them against the weather. When it was, at first, only Kryze's lot, they could all fit in the rooms that Castle Kryze had to offer — then time passed, and only more and more learn of their gathering, and more and more come to seek the fabled Mand'alor. Or maybe not even that; maybe more of their people had been enough.
They drew in warriors, yes. Soldiers and hunters of their ilk. But families too; fleeing children, weakened elders, the sick and the starving. Hunting for survival and salvation and security.
A security that Din stands, now, to threaten and upheave.
Not for the first time, he…doesn't doubt. There is nothing to doubt. For Grogu, as of all things — it's nonsense. Of course he would.
But it does not come without a hefty price.
So, no, it's no the first time that Din has thought of the weight of what will happen, the rippling effects his actions will cause to not just his clan, but of all of Mandalorians as well. Perhaps what Din is doubting is, in fact, simply his capability. If he will survive, come the end of this. If there even is an end.
Being Mand'alor- It's never once crossed his mind.
Then again, once he could say that being a…father, was not something he considered for himself either.
As he walks, navigating mindlessly through the hallways, Din thinks to the warrior from the courtyard. The Mandalorian that had attacked them — vengeance seeker, collector of the blood debt that Grogu, Asset, and by proxy Din, had all owed them. If only to be so horribly vulnerable, in the safety of his own head, Din can admit it- They terrified him. So close, they'd gotten to ripping thirty years right out of his hands; so close, Din nearly lost his boy all over again.
And if it'd not been their son? If it'd been Grogu?
If it had been Grogu?
Din thinks of that warrior. He hopes they are alright.
His head aches. He wants to go to the Armourer again — resolves to, later tonight. It'd do good for him to inform her, personally, of the…challenge, anyway. Though she may hear it elsewhere first, or may simply know in that way of hers- It'd be good for him to tell her.
Now, though.
For right now, his son is hungry.
And though most of their forces stay outside the Castle, the same kitchen supplies them all with food. Din finds himself at its threshold, now, and even from turns away he could hear the sheer cacophony that was multiple cooks working in tandem to feed a small army's worth of Mandalorians, and maybe double that amount of Mandalorian refugees.
The cooks were, also, Mandalorian. For good measure.
The kitchen is a grand thing. Much grander than what Din is used to, at least — sporting counters along the walls and islands in between. Stove tops that somehow have managed to be used all at once, at the same time; pots bubbling, bursting, screeching, and steaming. There are ingredients in crates, crookedly labelled in written Mando'a and Basic, stacked up high in a corner and in every possible nook.
But, most notably, even more than the loudness and the visual chaos, is the smell. For a second, Din simply stands there and breathes it in. Flavors, spices; they are the bread and butter of any Mandalorian dish and even then, he was told there are many, many spices that once were. Once, now no longer, lost alongside their planet — it's a point of much grief, judging by their tones.
But Mandalorians are nothing if not resourceful, and if he closes his eyes he finds that this smells enough like a home planet that Din has never been.
Moving and weaving and ducking and shouting, are all the cooks with their feet tuned to a rhythm of some chaos controlled. One spots him quickly; shouting at him something in Mando'a — Din hears just enough to pick apart 'Slaat'takur', and nothing else. (Slaat'takur; mudhorn)
Din cocks his head at them. They heave a large, shoulders-dropping sigh, almost comically shaking their head — this one is not wearing a helmet, and so Din can see clearly the exapseration in their eyes — before they're tearing themselves away from their workspace and making their way over towards him in the rush.
"You are early, Mand'alor," they tell him, voice raised to be heard over the din. The cook crosses arms over their cuirass. "Dinner ain't gonna be ready for another hours, still!"
Din feels himself heave a sigh, feels the rumble of his own voice as he mutters, "I'm not…Mand'alor."
"What? Can't hear you!"
"I said it's fine," Din shakes his head, "Whatever you have left over is fine!"
The cook huffs at him, pushing away a strand of hair that'd fallen over their face, tucking it back into their tightly woven hairdo. "Suit yourself!" They yell over their shoulder, spinning on their heel and waving with a hand to gesture at him to fall in step; which, Din does, reluctantly. "Just don't come cryin' to me when nothin' suits your tastes!"
Din figures that bringing up the fact that he has never complained about food tasting any sort of way in his entire life wouldn't do him any good right now. Besides, he's too busy trying to block out the cacophony, focusing on himself and the Mandalorian ahead of him, finding sense in the insensible. Cooking is a skill every self-respecting adult should know, but on a scale like this? He isn't a fool enough to pretend that it's not overwhelming.
As they walk, other cooks are glancing back at them. At first he assumes it's simply to acknowledge his presence, keeping him at the back of their mind to avoid bumping into each other — then, he catches one elbowing the other. Lowly, they dip their head down to murmur something sharp through all the chaos.
A chill crawls up his spine, uneasiness settling between his two shoulder blades like some horrible gargoyle.
Din ignores it. Or, tries to.
"Surprised you're here all by yourself," the cook says to him, as they've led him now to a corner tucked away from the heaviest of the foot traffic. There, various smaller containers litter the countertop — they're up on their tiptoes to pick a tray from the cabinets above. Grunting, they continue, "Y'know, after everything that's happened."
Din blinks slowly at their back. "…why?"
Dropping back onto the soles of their feet, the cook glances over their shoulder at him, and huffs. "Uh-huh. Anyway, we've got a couple bets runnin' around- Between those who aren't hardasses about betting anyway. They call me crazy, y'know, for not goin' Kryze to the end- But I didn't care. I put my money on you."
Din blinks, again. He feels he's struck frozen still, watching the way the other Mandalorian picks and chooses bits of leftover dishes into one as if their very being was a puzzle far too complicated to solve. "…why?"
In a blur of motion, they turn around and push the tray of food into Din's hands. And then they shrug. "Asset's your boy, isn't he? I always figure you gotta be a lil' batshit to be Mand'alor, and you fit the bill to a 'T'."
With that, they pat him heavy on the pauldron, and walk away back into the chaos of the kitchen. And Din is left standing there, blinking at the tray of food in his hands as if it held all of the answers — or, at least, just one.
The guards are still there, standing outside the door to his room, when Din comes back with Grogu's meal. They dip their heads down at him and Din returns the gesture.
One of them reaches for the doorknob, ready to open it for him. Din pauses a couple steps away.
"…Heard anything?" he asks, trying his best to keep his voice low, but loud enough to be carried. "From inside?"
"Quiet as a mouse," they tell him. Very slightly, they cock their head at an angle. "Would you like one of us to come with you?"
Into the room? Din shakes his head. He would not treat Grogu as a threat — he meant it, what he'd thought earlier. Asset is dead, and never was to begin with.
There is only Grogu. His boy, Grogu. Din will not be afraid.
They open the door, and Din slips inside. For a second his eyes pass through the room and he doesn't immediately spot the kid — he isn't out in the open, and not in his little den of pillows either.
Din sets the tray down on the table, and then he sees him. Out on the balcony, standing in the rain.
At first, Din fears the worst — the absolute worst. Beyond that edge is nothing but sheer cliffs, jagged rock, and a frigid ocean — a death as certain as it can be. And so he is stepping forward quickly, a call on the edge of his teeth, panicked and afraid and sharpened like a blade.
Then he actually gets close enough to see the look on the kid's face.
Grogu turns around. He's drenched, from head to toe, rainwater dropping off the tips of his ears and his clothes sticking to his skin. Quickly, what look Din saw smoothens out of the kid's expression, curling and twisting into that of orchestrated calmness — emptiness deliberate.
"Din," says Grogu. "Didn't hear you for a second."
No, he wouldn't think so. Din blinks, saying nothing for a second or two, rearranging his thoughts in his head — mainly, filing away what he saw to look at on a later date.
And then he goes, "I didn't think you liked the rain."
Grogu pulls a face at him, that calmness shattered like glass. He's back to looking annoyed and Din, for some reason, finds a sense of…peace, in that. It's familiar, at least, if nothing else. Certainly more genuine, more real, than that empty serenity. Children get annoyed. They don't do…that.
"There's a difference in taking a shower and being dunked in the ocean, Mando. I'm not sure if you know that."
Din simply shrugs. He doesn't bother coming up with a retort. There's all sorts of wrongness in him, feeling in his gut and in his chest, but now — right now, right this moment — he is here, and so is Grogu.
And that means something, he thinks. It must.
Grogu seems to tire of waiting in his silence. He slips past Din and back into the room, dripping rainwater and going all the way to the centre before shaking himself like a massif dog.
Water spatters everywhere. Din sighs, and Grogu grins a smile full of teeth.
"So do you have food or did you disappear just to let me starve?" Grogu sneers, softly. When Din gestures to the table, the kid trots over and leaps up to inspect. "Poisoned?"
Din squints at him. "No. Why would it be?"
"You tell me." Grogu sits, right on the table, cross legged. Suddenly, rather obnoxiously even, the kid gasps. "Oh! You're fattening me up so you could eat me, that's what this is! Sly, Mando. Very sly. Didn't know you were smart enough for that."
He's doing this on purpose. Din knows he's doing it on purpose — even now, Grogu's grin is only growing wider the longer it takes for Din to compose himself enough to come up with answer.
Grogu is trying to annoy him. It is also working.
"Oh, don't be so dramatic," the kid says, cheerfully. He's pulled the tray of food closer towards him — an array of roasted vegetables and meats, browned beautifully in a bowl like a sort of salad. He picks the bowl up and pulls it to his lap. "You'll find I actually complimented you there. Called you a-smart, you clever cookie."
Din has to pull patience from places he didn't know patience could be pulled from. "…thanks."
"You're welcome." Grogu takes a spoonful of the salad into his mouth, arms twisting around the bands of the cuffs like it was second nature — he turns the spoon around and brandishes it in Din's direction. "S'hee all the thing'fs I do for ya?"
Din elects to ignore him. He pulls a chair out from underneath the table and takes a seat. As soon as he does, whatever power he had been holding onto to keep himself together crumples to dust beneath his touch — Din feels exhausted, feels his bones weighing down, limbs slow and sluggish. It feels like months since they returned to Kalevala.
"Wro-ong!" says Grogu, sing-songy. He doesn't even look up from scarfing down his meal — it's good, apparently. Rainwater trickles down his face, drips into his bowl. "Barely a full day since. Regrettin' keepin' me alive yet?"
Din glowers at him, through the pang of ache across his sternum. "No."
The kid simply clucks his tongue at him, shaking his head in exasperation, as if Din was a particularly stubborn, rambunctious child. "You'll only have yourself to blame, y'know." Grogu sighs, much too loudly to be genuine. "Anyway. What were you and your…friend talkin' about earlier? The green one."
Underneath the helm, Din's brows raise. "…Boba Fett? Why ask?"
"Can't a boy be a little curious 'bout his da?" Grogu retorts, lip curled.
Din has to keep himself from wincing; feels the way his jaw clenches, his teeth grind in compensation. He loathes the way the kid uses that, the way he only refers to himself as Din's 'boy' when he's sneering it out like an insult or a joke — Din hates it, and he suspects Grogu knows.
For a second, Din considers not saying anything.
"…Fett wishes to go to Tatooine." He crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat. "I asked him to wait for me."
Immediately, Grogu pulls a face; he looks as if Din just told him that he was going to eat rot for breakfast. "That sandy trash-heap?" When Din says nothing, the kid huffs and shrugs it off. "Well, fine. You guys have fun picking sand outta that armour of yours for the rest of your lives-"
"You will be coming with."
Grogu snaps his head up, and Din, oddly, has to resist the urge to laugh.
"Unless you'd rather stay here," Din continues; curling one hand off his chest to gesture with a slow turn of his wrist. "By yourself."
Grogu's look of outrage turns into a narrowed-eyed glare.
"…Sure, fine. Drag me across the galaxy, why don't you." The kid huffs, turning back to angrily pick at his meal. "And you were tryna tell me I wasn't a prisoner."
Din's lips purse into a thin line. "…Grogu-"
"Your battle," the kid interjects, sharply and without mercy. It's clear as day that he wants to leave that conversation behind, and the words were as sharp as teeth snapping against flesh — Din goes quiet, and allows it. "With Lady Kryze. Thoughts?"
Slowly, Din blinks. "…thoughts?"
"Yes, Mando." Grogu narrows his eyes at him, thinning them to slits. "Surely you've been thinking about it. You didn't hear it from me, but Lady Kryze isn't…awful, in a fight. What're you planning to do 'bout it?"
Din…wasn't planning anything, really. He didn't even plan to have the saber at all just a couple days ago.
He shrugs. Impossibly, Grogu's eyes narrow more.
"…okay. What about-" the kid spins the spoon in the air as he gestures, "when you win. Eh? Surely you've got some ideas for when-"
"If," Din corrects, for whatever reason.
Grogu scowls at him. "When," the kid insists, stubbornly. "As you're so fond of reminding me, your death is mine too. And unlike you, Din, I think I rather like being alive."
That gets Din to still. To flick his gaze away and stare, instead, solemn and silent at the floor.
"…what would you have me do?" he asks, after a moment. His voice is far, far too tired for even his own liking, and something in him cringes and curdles away from such an open display of…weakness.
Grogu, much to his surprise, doesn't leap onto it like that ravenous loth-wolf Din's acquainted the kid to be. Grogu's brows are furrowed, when Din looks back at him, and while the kid still stares with the look of someone thoroughly unimpressed, the sneer is oddly absent from his voice;
"Surely you have someone to help you. If you can't think of your own strategies-" The kid pauses, his voice a bit more thoughtful, "Maybe someone who can help you come up with them. Maybe a sparring partner? Someone?"
At Din's silence, the kid tries, a bit more desperately, "Anyone?"
Staring back at the ground, Din frowns. When it comes to strategy…it's an easy enough fix. He was already planning on meeting with the Armourer tonight. While she might not have much input on the actual battle, he doesn't doubt for a second that counsel with her would at least strengthen his will, or nudge him in vaguely the right direction.
But a sparring partner? He has really to think about it. His first thought is Boba — he would help, Din is sure. All Boba does has been help him, for the past 30 odd years or so. Maybe it's because of that fact that some strange curl of dread coil around his gut, cold and damning like seawater. He files Boba to the back of his head for later.
Somewhere further away, in the back of his head, flashes a memory of blue. Din feels his frown soften.
"I could spar with you," Grogu suggests, cutting through his thoughts. The kid is staring straight at him, eyes slightly narrowed and jaw set. He's sneering again, and when he shakes himself more water spatters all over the table. "Promise it'll be just like the real deal where your opponent is really trying to kill you. You'll learn so fast. Trust me. It'll be great! It'll be fun."
Din ignores him, again. He frowns at the kid from behind his helmet, and for the longest time, cannot pick through the whirl of his own thoughts, a thousand things ringing at once, a thousand sensations and sentiments, all incomprehensible in their enormity.
That is, until; "…we should get you a change of clothes."
Grogu blinks at him. "…what?"
What indeed. It's as if Din's just realised suddenly the kid is, well, soaked. Yesterday, wiping him off did the job fine, but it is also here that Din realises how much he…doesn't like the uniform. It's far too much imperial, far too much of a statement. It doesn't look nearly thick enough to keep the kid warm with Kalevala's storms. It's even got a tear it its sleeve from when Din had struck out with his spear.
The kid has been wearing it too long, and it's far too much Asset, and-
And Asset never was. He never was. It has always been Grogu.
"A change," Din repeats himself. "Of clothes."
Slowly, Grogu's expression shifts; brows furrowing, lip curled — the slow stretch of a warning from a threatened, uneasy animal. "I don't think you have time to play dress-up with me, Mando." The kid shakes himself, spattering more of the raindrops everywhere, and when he lifts his chin the motion is almost snake-like as a whole. "Thanks, but I'm quite fine like this."
"You're soaked," Din rebukes, arguably a little bit too testy than what was right. "You've been wearing this for days. Maybe changing will make you less miserable."
Grogu huffs at him, looking appalled. "I am not miserable."
Din ignores him. "You can't keeep wearing it forever."
For a second, him and the kid simply glare at each other.
"You're changing the subject again," Grogu hisses, at last. He looks more annoyed by this than other things that Din usually irritates the kid with. "You really have a problem with that."
Din feels his lip curl. It takes effort — painful, concious effort for him to bite down on his emotion, his annoyance, that prickly sensation underneath the skin of his hands that makes him itch to strike out at some enemy. It takes effort for him to not do that, to not even want it, because he doesn't want it. There is no enemy.
There is just Grogu.
"…if I promise to think about the duel," Din says, and feels every word like pulling teeth, "will you think about a change of clothes?"
Grogu harrumphs at him. "A promise from you has never meant anything to me," he sneers, but then, looks back down to his bowl and adds, "Do as you'd like."
Wisely, Din decides to count it as a win. He pushes away from the table, gets to his feet, and goes to find a towel for the kid.
Standing outside the Forge, Din pauses before he turns the corner.
He's not quite sure why. It's a nagging thing, a thought that isn't quite yet formed enough for him to turn it over and grasp it in his hands. Something of instinct, of his mind making connections of things it doesn't quite know, cannot quite justify. For a second, Din stays there, his mind churning and the skin along his spine chilled like ice.
When he does, finally, step around the corner and into the Forge, it all clicks into place and makes perfect sense. He knows instantly the root cause of his sudden uneasiness.
The Forge is quiet.
Not empty. Oh, no — truly then would be cause for the highest of alarms. She is still there, sitting by one of her workbenches, poring solemn and silent on what lay across it. But there is no strike of hammers, no resounding echo, and the central flame burns so low that Din could almost believe it entirely snuffed out.
He realises this might be a bad time.
Too late. The Armourer lifts her head and regards him. For a moment that is the only bit of motion that comes from her — she is as a statue, and Din feels caught in whatever spell had seized her, freezing him too. It should be worrying, how easily his training leaves him whenever he is faced by her — all the same, though, it makes perfect, utter sense. How easy it is, to be a child again in her eyes.
Din's eyes flick to what lay across her workstation. There, instead of armour, a large piece of fabric is draped across the surface, far sleeker than he has ever seen except on the most elegant of societies. It glints, in the light, in a way that reminds him of beskar.
The Armourer stands, and Din's attention snaps towards her.
"You are here for counsel," she says. It's not a question. Din tries to figure if her voice truly is quieter than it usually is, or if that was his mind playing tricks.
"Yes," he says, in a voice that sounds so far away from the little child he feels himself to be, curled up with knees tucked to his sternum, braced against his rib bones. "If…this isn't a good time-"
The Armourer waves him off. She steps away from her workstation, going to one of the seats that stood in the space before the Forge. "There is always time," she says.
Something bitter and rueful in him could almost scoff at that. There is never time, Din thinks, because he is thinking of Grogu — always, the kid is prowling the edges of his mind. And Din is thinking of Grogu, thinking of the way he curls his lip and bares his teeth and laughs, so humorlessly, so unlike that child Din met so long ago. Din thinks of Grogu, as always he does, and thinks that there is never enough time at all.
Nevertheless, he sits where she beckons him to. He doesn't wait.
"Kryze has challenged me to a duel."
It doesn't seem like it comes as a surprise, to her. Neither is it a surprise to Din, when she simply says, "I know."
There is something in their silence. Something vast and unameable, something incomprehensible but, simultaneously, devastatingly intimate. Something Din knows like the back of his hand, knows like the feel of air pushing into his lungs, knows like the way his heart beats every thunderous second, and the resounding gush of blood through his veins- Din knows, what this silence is. He just doesn't know how to name it.
"…I don't wish to fight her," he says, and his voice isn't shaking, and he is not pleading for her to understand — no matter how much he feels like he is.
The Armourer doesn't not move, does not flinch, does not sway or tilt her head. She says, simply put, like one would a fact of life; "You wish to protect your child. And so, you wish to fight her."
What had laid in that unameable silence lies, too, in her voice. Din feels his teeth on edge at it, and loathes ever more the fact that he cannot understand why.
"Grogu is mine," Din says, not as soft this time. "I am all he has."
At this, the Armourer tilts her head and concedes it. "As you have dedicated your life to him, so too has Lady Kryze dedicates hers to the reclamation of the Darksaber. She will not easily accept defeat. Not unless it presents itself under Death's graces."
"I don't want to kill her," Din says, and now, he is pleading.
The Armourer regards him, and in the way that she does, Din finally finds the name to that feeling in the silence, her voice — he knows it intimately, as it was, grief.
And as Din stares back, as he aches for himself and for the child, so too does he ache for her. What a horrible position to be placed in. To know that boy she once raised and her lover are to be pit against the other — to know she will lose one, no matter what. In that moment, though the Darksaber weighs heavy on his own belt, Din does not envy her in the slightest.
For some reason, he feels compelled to ask, "If I spare her-"
"That is a big 'if'," she says.
"-If I do," Din says, nevertheless. "Would that…is that…can I? May I?"
It's the strangest of things, to see the way the Armourer lifts her shoulders up in a shrug. "You would be Mand'alor," she says. "You will do as you please."
That doesn't do much to soothe his worry, strangely enough. Din looks away, stares at the ground to the side of them, stares as if there are the answers to all of his problems, every wound and every grief echoed a response, in the bumps and groves of the rock and casted light.
"Why," The Armourer asks him, cuts through his useless thinking and demands his attention in a way not too unlike how Grogu does it, "do you believe you must claim Mand'alor?"
Din stares at her, gapes in silence for a while. He flounders for the answers he knows he has, feels each syllable fall clumsy off his tongue, "I have to. Grogu-"
"No," she cuts him off. "Beyond him. Why?"
Beyond him? Beyond the kid?
"There is nothing beyond Grogu," Din says, and feels, truly, it to be fact.
The Armourer doesn't seem like she agrees. "He who believes himself entirely selfless," says she, "is either fool, or liar. You, ner slaat'takur, are neither." (Ner slaat'takur; my mudhorn)
It's somehow both a compliment and a rebuke wrapped in one. Din falls silent, turning the words over in his head, the gears in his mind churning as he tries to decipher what she means. She is right, as she so commonly is — Din is neither fool, nor liar.
So, he finds it eventually. And what a cold curl of damnation it was, the truth.
Alongside the grief, what gets the crown of his head to bow is decidedly, also, shame. "…I must," he says, like yet another confession of sin, this time a thousand times more damning, more devastating, "it's my debt to him."
Repairation of Din's horrible failure. It would damn his soul if he doesn't pay the due. If a monster, a demagolka, is he who abuses a child, than what is the name of a parent who stands idle by, and allows the pain to occur?
Thirty years, and the name had been his own. He has thirty years. There will never be enough time.
"Redemption," says the Armourer, and this time Din knows for certain that her voice is softer. Her shoulders lift and lower, as if she heaved the smallest of sighs. "It is the exact reason why Lady Kryze fights as well."
That comes as a shock to Din. He blinks, lifting his head back up to stare at her. "…what?"
The Armourer stares at him. She heaves another one of her minuscule sighs. Din wonders if she's allowed to talk about this — then he almost reels physically back at the absurdity, at the idea of her not being allowed anything at all.
"You know the sword belonged to her," The Armourer says. "She held Mand'alor, once. Then, it was taken from her."
Din frowns. "…so much was taken from us," he points out. "The Empire took more than just…the sword, didn't they?"
The Armourer allows him this, for a second. Then, she says, "The Lady views it not so simply. It's not done to entrust all of the blame to the Empire's hands. You will understand- As Mand'alor, you will carry us all."
At that, Din says nothing. There is nothing to say. He imagines what a horrible, awful burden it must be, and that itself isn't difficult — he has always seen the saber as what it is. But it's one thing, to view it as dread on the horizon, and it is something else entirely to view his hands in the scope of Kryze's.
To hold the entirety of her people in her hands, and feel them crumble to the winds.
Din has his own grief. But hers, he imagines, is something he cannot begin to grasp the sheer enormity of. Or at least not at first, for the longer he thinks about it, the more it starts to feel somewhat like standing on the top of some ruins, watching droids take his boy away.
So, he says nothing, for there is nothing to say. Nothing, at all, until, quiet and accusing;
"You think I'll win."
It's not a question. So there is nothing for the Armourer to answer.
She pushes herself to her feet, and for a moment Din feels that is her way of saying the conversation is over. But then, as she is making her way back to the workstation where he'd found her, she says, "Your cloak. It's in tatters."
Din blinks. He looks down at it, as if he's never seen it before. It does sport an overabundance of holes and frayed ends — his mind flashes to Grogu, and of talons tearing through fabric. "I hadn't realised," he says, and oddly feels like a sheepish child — like smudged cheeks and sticky palms. "I'll change it tonight."
"Yes," says the Armourer. "You will change. Come."
Curious, Din does as she asks. Approaching the workstation and that strange fabric only heightens his bafflement; he looks to her when he stands by her side, silently waiting for her to continue.
She picks up the fabric and folds it in her hands. "I made this, originally, for," she starts, and then, only more curiously, stops. She doesn't continue her sentence, doesn't pick up the words from where they hung, suspended in the air. She only continues folding the fabric, and then holds it out for him to take.
He does. Of course he does.
He wants to ask her what it is but, oddly, finds the words caught and stuck along the edge of his teeth. As if the question is a language Din knows only distantly, and in this moment, cannot bare the awkwardness of his own clumsy, useless tongue.
So he doesn't ask. He does, however, say, "Oh. I was meaning to get new clothes for the kid, too."
Of course, talking about Grogu is the easiest thing in the world.
The Armourer regards him, with a tilt of her helm, before she dips it down in a nod. "We will find some that fits," she says. "They will not be new. You will mend them with your own hand."
It's not a question, so there's nothing for Din to answer. He nods his assent.
Later, they are sat together in the Forge. Closely enough that if Din shifts his leg, his knee will bump against hers. She will be tinkering with the inner machinations of a vambrace. Din will be silently stitching up a hole in a shirt.
"It is not my place," says the Armourer, and her voice, shockingly, lies just barely above a murmur — a whisper, from a woman Din only knew to speak commandingly. Her words hum through the air like the low burning flames that stood in the centre of it all and Din, likewise, is just as captivated by it as he had with the fire.
He feels himself still, feels the air pause in his lungs, every molecule of his body tuned in to what she has to say next.
"So I will not say it," the Armourer continues. She has yet to look up from her work — Din thinks she never will. "You will not hear the tale from me, ner slaat'takur. But-"
The Armourer pauses. And this time, Din knows she is not allowed to say this.
"But," says she, regardless, "the Lady had a sister."
Even later than that, Din returns to his room with his haul tucked under an arm. The guards that stand out his door are the same ones as before — he wonders when they rotate their shifts.
He doesn't ask. Not yet, not now. His mind buzzes with all he's learnt, swirling around in his mind like a storm and he, caught in the centre of it all, gale force winds buffeting him from all sides.
Such that, when Grogu speaks up, it startles him — "You sound louder than usual," the kid says. He's sitting in his nest of pillows and cushions, half of his body on the floor while the other lays propped up. His head rests on his hands, and he tilts it in Din's direction, before continuing, "And that's really saying something."
Din can't come up with a rebuke that feels witty enough, and after a singular second of thinking about it, he simply gives up entirely. He stares at the kid as if simply…staring will do anything. He's not sure what, exactly, but something. Something to make sense of it all, something that will clue him into what exactly he has to do — a step-by-step plan on how to make it out of here with most pieces of his soul intact.
"Di-in," Grogu calls, sing-songy. Despite that, he's frowning. "You're being we-eird. Again."
Din blinks. He has to shake himself, physically, as if that'll help even remotely in shaking the thoughts from his head — it does not. "Sorry," he feels himself say, the words as if like rocks clattering down and dull. "You're still awake? It's late."
Grogu pricks an eyebrow up at him. "Oh? Sorry, wasn't aware I had a bedtime," he says, lips curled in a sneer softened by the dim light. "Besides, it's really your fault I'm still up."
Din squints at him. "What?"
"Yeah. I was waitin' for you."
Din squints even more. "…what?"
Grogu glowers at him. "Are you dumb on purpose or does it come naturally for you? Genuinely asking."
"You were waiting for me." Din can't cross his arms with the clothes he was carrying underarm. He can, however, prop his free hand on his hip — and he does. "Really?"
Grogu manages to deepen his glower impossibly more. "Oh don't get any bright ideas," he snaps. "I wasn't waiting for you to tell me a bedtime story. I just didn't want to wake up when you come barging back in here all loud, as always."
Din steps closer, crosses the distance until he can crouch down next to Grogu's pile of pillows — the kid is eyeing him, glaring at him the whole way. As Din picks out the fresh clothes he'd gotten and lays them out on the ground, he says, casually and without looking at the kid — "I could tell you a bedtime story if you'd want."
Din isn't aware of what hit him, until he's blinking at the pillow as it thumps on the ground beside them.
Grogu is seething. "You piss me off, Mandalorian."
He figured.
Now that the kid is sat up, knees curled to his chest and lip curled past his teeth, Din sees it fit to gesture invitingly at the pieces of clothing he's set out. "You can keep all of them if you want," he says, "they're all for you. If you don't like any of them, though, we'll just give them back."
"I don't like any of them."
"You haven't looked."
Grogu peers at the clothes over the top of his nose, and then goes; "There. I don't like any of them. Happy?"
Din sighs. He rises to his feet, only the Armourer's gift left cradled in his arms. "Think about it," he urges, and then adds, a bit more sheepishly, "They're not new, but I'm sure I mended every thing. If I missed one, you can just tell me."
For some reason, that gets Grogu to blink at him — eyes widened like that, the kid looks genuinely surprised. "Mend?"
"Yes." Din pauses. It's hard to keep the testiness and defensiveness out of his tone, "Yes, with needle and thread. Like the rest of the galaxy. We're not only capable of destruction."
"Oh, save it," Grogu snaps. "Don't be so over-sensitive. It's an ugly look on you, Mando. And it's not what I meant."
"No?" Din cocks his head, and props his hand up on his hip once more. "Cause if you were asking for me to show you how, you're going to have to ask nicely."
Grogu is quiet, for a second, and Din thinks — oh, osik (shit). Was that actually what he-?
"Whatever," Grogu sneers, his lip still curled past his teeth in a way that makes Din think it'll be a permanent fixture on his face. The kid is glowering at the empty space beside him. In the cuffs, his hands curl and uncurl into fists, as if the kid is resisting the urge to hit something.
Guilt settles low and frigid in his gut. Sometimes, despite his best efforts, Din forgets that the kid is…that, still. That behind the mocking and the posturing, smoke and mirrors, his boy is just…a boy. His boy.
And Din didn't think he'd forget something like that, of all things — he thinks about it all the time, doesn't he?
The air lies still and awkward, stilted with stiff tension. It chokes down his throat like smoke, acrid and punishing. Coupled with the chilling guilt, Din thinks, it feels somewhat what he imagines a death to be like.
He doesn't step closer, doesn't move physically to cross that distance. But he does offer, with those clumsy, clunky words of his, pushing past the way they weigh heavy on his tongue and in his throat as he pushes them past his teeth — "Ad'ika, I'm sorry." (Ad'ika; 'little one')
Grogu scoffs, and doesn't turn to look at him.
"No, I mean it. Grogu." Din shifts his feet, but still doesn't move to close the gap. He wants to, truly he does. He doesn't. Maybe he gets the sense that he doesn't deserve it. "I'm sorry."
"Leave it, Din," Grogu returns, his voice low. "I heard you the first time. It's a tiny thing to be so apologetic for."
"I don't mean just…this." Din moves the Armourer's gift between his arms, before clutching it close to his chest. It feels similarly to dragging thorns out of his windpipe — Din feels the pain and is gratified by his own flagellation. "For everything."
At that, Grogu does turn to look at him. He studies him, and across the distance and low light, Din wonders what it is that the kid can actually see. Most times, the scrutiny would make him uncomfortable — it does, still, in all honesty. But if scrutiny is what would lead the kid into believing him, then scrutiny is what Din will endure.
He'd endure all of it. He'd endure hell, as it were, if that's what it took.
Grogu cocks his head at him, just barely. His ears twitch and flick, and Din suddenly feels a little silly — of course. The kid doesn't need to see anything, to know exactly what Din is thinking.
The kid makes a soft sound. It takes Din a moment to piece it together, and even longer to turn it around in his head, for the idea of Grogu huffing such a genuine laugh strikes bafflement through his skull.
Grogu says, again, "I said I heard you the first time, Din." — His tone is just shy of a sneer. Din doesn't think he's forgiven, but when he draws in a breath the air feels less acrid, the cold curl of guilt less paralyzing.
He's not the biggest fan of leaving it here, and he doesn't think he will be, until he has paid it back for all thirty years of absence, yawning and damning and aching — so, so devastating, that ache. How he wishes to feel its absence, wants that freedom then and there and now.
But, there is no grace in compressing thirty years worth of repairations in a single night, a sole conversation. And Grogu deserves grace, amongst many other things.
Thinking about it like that, in the scope of doing what Grogu needs and deserves, makes it easier to soothe that wailing animal in his rib bones. Din breathes out, and leaves this here.
He looks down to the remaining piece of fabric in his arms — The Armourer's gift. Din has yet to look at it, to open it and turn it over in his hands. It's some replacement for his cloak, at least that much he is certain of.
Din's aware of the kid watching him, as he goes through the motions of taking off his tattered cape and setting it to the side on a table. A mirror stands thin and tall along a section of a wall and Din shifts, until he can see his reflection in it. The light casts dim shines along the beskar of his armour — when Din slowly unfolds the new cloak, he thinks the thread shines in similar ways.
And then Din fully unfolds it, and finds that 'cloak' isn't quite the right word to describe what it is. It's a mantle. The fabric itself falls to his lower shins. Along the top, for the first time, he sees the fur that lines the shoulders and feels it soft, so, even through the leather of his gloves.
Din pulls the mantle over his shoulders. It settles on nicely. Behind him, he hears Grogu whistle, low and appreciative. All this a juxtapose to the dread in Din's gut as he stares at the man in the mirror.
The man in the mirror stares back, silent and regal.
"Well," Grogu says, with a grin in his voice, "now you definitely look the part of king."