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They’ve just taken their latest bounty in, their pockets heavy and their moods light.
The kid’s scurrying around the ship, chattering on and on about something or other, jumping from polishing and relocating weapons to polishing his beskar helmet, adorned with holes for his (admittedly) adorable ears.
Din allows himself to reminiscence for a moment, the time gone by in an astounding blur. It’s been a handful of years since he’d given up finding the kid’s family, or at least someone of the same species as him, or even (at one point) a species that at least sort-of resembled him. It’s also been a handful of years since the kid first called him dad, the single syllable weird on his tongue, warbled and somewhat pitchy.
He’s vainly attempted to convince himself that calling off the search had nothing to do with the kid acknowledging him as a parent, but he’s done rather poorly at it, given how he always feels a swell of something whenever the kid calls him dad and the unwelcome spike of jealousy he gets whenever there are mentions of the kid’s ‘real’ family.
A familiar clattering sound knocks him from his brooding, and he lets out a short sigh. He spins around in the Captain’s chair, about to call out to the kid to stop kicking around his fitted helmet, that’s beskar weren’t you just polishing that? please stop disgracing our culture-
That’s when he gets the broadcast.
Thinking nothing of it, Din spins back around and accepts it, seeing as they’ve got nothing better to do as he lazily navigates through space, reminisces about the past, and forces his kid to become subject to his sloppy, impromptu parenting skills.
“This is the Resistance,” crackles over the com system, and the kid perks up at Din’s distorted choke. “We’re asking the assistance of those who seek freedom from the Empire, the coordinates to our final fight for freedom attached to this dispatch-“
The kid shuffles over to his spot next to Din’s chair, his wide, dark eyes staring up at him, an impish yet curious smile twisting at the corners of his lips. The radio chatter fades into the background as Din’s attention becomes focused solely on the child.
“Resistance, that is?” The kid brokenly asks in his warbly, pre-pubescent voice. Din’s tried on numerous occasions to help the kid with his strange phrasing, but he’s long since given up. The kid gets his point across, and that’s all that matters. Even if he’s hard to understand at times, Din’s become rather adept at ascertaining the kid’s meaning.
The kid tilts his head to listen in on the broadcast, his expression brightening as the seconds tick by, until his expression is wiped clean and replaced with grim determination. He turns to Din. “Help, we can?”
Din almost falls out of his chair. They’re just a couple of bounty hunters, a (somewhat) lousy clan of two, not Resistance pilots he mentally stresses, almost going as far to verbalize it, when he catches sight of the kid’s face, his ears drawn back and his lower lip sticking out, his wide eyes somehow wider, and- shit.
Din Djarin somehow gets suckered into fighting alongside the Resistance, all by the three-fingered hand of his little womp-rat.
(Despite the fact that they nearly die after their ship gets hit by some weird lightning and everything short-circuits, Din still manages an exasperated smile at the sight of absolute elation on the kid’s face as the systems come back on and they blow a TIE-fighter to kingdom-come.)
