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oOo
9 years, 3 months ABY
What pitifully little Din Djarin knows of parenting is thrown further into dissonance when the ad’ika finally speaks.
“Tion'ad's ogir? See you, I can.”
The high-pitched warble is enough to galvanise Din out of the pilot’s chair to stumble in front of the child who is gnawing at the silver Mythosaur, its attention fully fixed on the inanimate object as though it hadn’t nearly floored him with its casually-spoken but cryptic words.
After all, he’s only a novice at figuring out the ad’ika’s garbled coos, squeaks and trills when the kid suddenly decides to speak.
His own voice, rough with sleep, comes out gravelly, low and bewildered as he’d ever heard. “What…what did you just say?”
The only response Din gets is the slight, disproportionate lift of its green years, a slobbery grin and two raised green arms.
He slumps back into his seat with the kid on his lap, his mind racing. More importantly, the kid’s first word isn’t Buir to his shamefaced relief, because he wouldn’t know how he’d react otherwise.
3 months after leaving Nevarro, the decree that they are now a clan of two still simultaneously terrifies and elates him. But it’s a bond—whether he wants to admit or not—that had been forged long before he’d traded the kid for beskar and hadn’t needed the Armourer’s affirmation or the emblematised mudhorn now welded onto the beskar he wore to give it a name.
The fault solely lies on Din’s shoulders which become weightier by the day.
Coming to terms with being something akin to the kid’s father requires more than an overhaul in the long-held mindset that he only worked alone and had only himself to look after. It is a change that he tries to welcome nonetheless, according to the creed all the Mandalorians live by—the kid that started out as an asset is now a foundling.
Gone are the days of taking coin in exchange for bounties—that course of destiny he’d irrevocably altered with the split-second decision to get the child back and out of the clutches of the Client.
Theirs is a strange relationship: he’d turned from reluctant captor to reluctant protector to somewhat reluctant dad to a foundling who in its own way takes care of him as much as he takes care of it. There hadn’t been anyone, not even his own adopted parents, nor his clanmates, who’d been as fully attuned to the sweep of his emotions and physical well-being as this child, and maybe it’s because of that sorcery-magic that the green creature wields at moments of its choosing.
The kid is an odd contradiction on its own: small and vulnerable, helpless…yet not, not with the immense sorcerer’s power that he wields at opportune moments when Din had thought all was lost.
This is something that he had yet to fully assimilate, despite the daily, round-the-clock reminders of the kid’s dependence on him.
Swivelling the chair around, he turns to regard the kid, who’s still happily playing with his pendant like he hadn’t just upended Din’s brooding. A quick mental calculation about the kid’s development leaves him overwhelmed.
The low-level of panic that accompanies the thought of taking responsibility for the ad’ika hasn’t fully ebbed since the day he’s single-handedly tanked his bounty-hunting career, but he’d be in denial to say he’s taking on this momentous task with the same gusto he’d used to take down bounties.
If the ad’ika is merely a gurgling, teething infant at fifty who has just learned to talk, what then, is its lifespan and what other powers will it develop in the years to come?
“Buir!”
It’s the second time that Din nearly falls out of his chair at that squeaky warble, accompanied by a toothy giggle.
The uncomfortable feeling in his gut grows, but it isn’t one he can put a name to.
oOo
9 years, 8 months ABY
The slight, sharp prod in his mind is the only thing that nudges him upwards and towards the light at the end of the tunnel—so sharp that it momentarily erases the lingering, recurring nightmare of dirt roads falling to ruin or of the sudden darkness that envelops him as his parents shove him into a basement storage or of the amplified sounds of broken screams and the whine of Imp blasters.
Amid the chaos and the flames, the intrusive presence twists itself into the well-worn scene, a supporting player in a familiar cast that always ends with him staring into the wrong end of a blaster.
Except that this has the exceptional warmth of someone he recognises by instinct, a warmth that suddenly takes on a rapidly-swelling tinge of green, red and yellow colouring the edge of his consciousness upon which only blackness had once encroached.
Wake up, Buir! Buir! Protect you, I will!
This is must be a hallucination, Din thinks, because the pain that colours his side has just blurred his vision fuzzy and dimmed all else around him.
With eyes that have crusted over with blood, he blinks with difficulty and sits up, the noise of the shootout still loud in his ears, except—
Clarity returns incrementally as time ticks by slowly, as though orchestrated by a three-clawed hand that is whipping shrapnel through the air into a miniature tornado that has them sitting in its calm eye.
With a flick of the ad’ika’s little arm, the funnel-shaped shrapnel loses its form and falls into a heap by his feet before arrowing upwards in a spectacular rush of speed and descending impossibly fast onto—and into—their would-be captors.
Only when the last Imp falls does the kid slump in exhaustion but not collapse, its slight wheezes and heaves of breath the only sounds echoing through his earpiece. Still, it’s instinct that has Din catching the kid and clutching it tightly to his chest as the baby babbles a mix of mando’a and Basic distractedly and pushes itself into him, before imprinting its claws into the edge of his armour.
The fumble back to the Razor Crest is a slow one, with the kid snoozing in his carrier bag after Din’s repeated assurances that they’re both fine and that yes—they are well clear of enemies.
The doors shut with finality on this godforsaken planet and it’s not a moment too soon as more Imps suddenly enter the arena.
Din busies himself with the take-off protocols before allowing himself the luxury to think in the silence of the cabin once he makes the jump into hyperspace.
“Bad men, they are.”
The soft squawk and the lifted green ears challenge him to deny otherwise.
He’s used to the kid’s random bursts of sentences by now. The kid’s intent is always understandable, even if his syntax (or his recent action) defies correction. But it isn’t a moral issue or the ambiguity there that Din’s going to engage in right now, especially not with a kid who’s just saved both their hides—whose intention is innocent despite its questionable means of execution.
So he nods, swivels around and touches a green ear in a way he knows the baby likes.
“You did good, kid. That was a hellhole we just got out of. And thanks to you, no less.”
As though pacified by the Mandalorian’s words, the kid returns to gnawing at the Mythosaur pendant that hadn’t left its neck since Nevarro.
Verd ori'shya beskar'gam.
The words uttered by the Armourer long ago flood his memory banks—words bestowed with restrained approval when he’d once used his smarts to outwit his trainer-captors and not with his weapons in the Fighting Corps.
A warrior is more than his armour.
The kid had proven that in spades.
Whatever the ad’ika had done earlier, this is the clearest and most overt displays of power he’d seen it wield over space and matter. If whatever the kid has done thus far—from moving pieces of toys for its own amusement or turning the flametrooper’s fire back on him—had baffled him or given him pause, it’s today’s show of power that is bringing a fuller understanding of why the Mandalorians had once found the Jetii a fearsome foe.
If the kid had once collapsed after the fight with the mudhorn and slept for days, the energy that it seems to have right now is a clear sign that it’s capable of much, much more than Din could ever have imagined. That it’s only coming into its own now given the exponential rate of its increasing powers is more than unsettling, making the search for its own kind suddenly made much more urgent.
He continues to marvel at the baby’s growth, if it’s still considered a baby at this point in time. He’s flying blind as always, more so with a species whose unknown past is still hidden within the confines of the kid’s mysterious memory banks.
But the kid had grown remarkably in the months he’d left Nevarro, astonishing Din with its mental dexterity and its ability to…do its thing when it wants to.
Din checks the navi comp, mentally cancelling out the planet they’d just taken off from.
One more down, too many more to go.
oOo
10 years, ABY
How the holovid had found its way into a flea market is beyond anyone’s comprehension, but he’d made his purchase on impulse after hurriedly gathering his rations for the next space run, eager to get back to the Razor Crest lest the ad’ika’s latest brand of mischief involving opening and slamming shut the Crest’s various doors damages something permanently and strands them in yet another godforsaken planet.
Labelled nothing more as a training vid for aspiring Force-users and shoved among renowned fake vids, it’s probably worth fewer credits than he’d paid for, but this is the only hot lead that Din had been tossed in a long, long time.
Only when the child’s tuckered out with a full belly does he play it.
The grainy footage, short as it is, is…mesmerising.
It’s merely a static-filled, shaky snippet of a jetii in training, her luminescent, long, blunt-edged sword moving with a hum to deflect blaster shots before they meet their mark, before cutting to a scene where she leaps across the forest floor and onto the branches of primeval trees, each one higher than the other.
But it’s the last scene that threatens the relative stability that both him and the ad’ika had found.
It’s one where the same jetii grimaces—and trembles—in concentration, the gleaming sword held straight in front of her glistening face as she strains forward but makes no progress, as though resisting an invisible mental and physical probe.
A voice from outside the three-dimensional vid insistently commands the jetii. “Steady, you will hold. Feel it, Padawan. Runs though all living beings, it does.”
But the jetii breaks, stumbling backward onto the grass as her chest heaves with exhaustion.
Finally, Din puts a face to the squeaky, raspy voice. A green creature with large, pointed ears and wispy white hair ambles into the side of the holovid, wielding a similar-looking, glowing, green blade in its claws—
Forgotten, you have.
The Force is with you, always.
It’s not so much the green creature speaking as it’s a…a reverberating hum in his own head just as the holovid crumbles into thin air at that moment.
Beneath his helmet, Din is sweaty and light-headed, his mind drawing a blank.
The Force. The jetii.
A creed, possibly, or an order, not unlike the Mandalorian Resol’nare that they live by.
More specifically, the older, jetii version of the ad’ika who is presently rushing around the Crest, babbling in its own curious mix of mando’a and Basic and finding new places to start a game of hide and seek.
A teacher of sorts.
As far as he’s concerned, this could be confirmation of more of the ad’ika’s kind out there, and in this short snippet, he’d learned much more about the mysterious, Force-sensitive jetii than anyone had been able to tell him apart from the stories of the Great Purge and the fragmented tales of ancient Mandalore.
It isn’t without a twinge in his gut when he realises that the answer he’s looking could be closer than he thinks.
oOo
11 years, 2 weeks ABY
They are uncomfortably close to a Mid-Rim planetary system that Din would have preferred to forego when the Razor Crest starts to act up.
It leaves him no choice but to guide the Crest into the icy, buffeting winds on Iridonia, a planet he’d judged too inhospitable for him and the kid to stay on, both for its terrain and its native predatory creatures.
The ship turns belly up, then rights itself, free-wheeling as it breaks Iridonia’s atmosphere even with his hands firmly on the landing controls. Swaying in the planet’s gravity pull, it heads straight for a massive, molten lava field south of its equator—
He’s swept left and right, barely hearing the alarmed screeches of the kid as they are nearly tossed off their seats. It’s the tail end of his cloak that the kid falls onto with a displeased, pained squeal, but he doesn’t even have the time to look at it for any injuries as he scrambles to flip several switches with one hand as a last resort while scooping up the ad’ika with the other.
A low whine indicates that the emergency landing gear has kicked in, but a short explosion a few seconds after that and pitch-darkness in the cockpit says that even that’s out of commission.
This is it, Din thinks.
He’s flat out of tricks of his trade.
The last year of his life with a kid that he probably hadn’t done any justice by is going to be snuffed out in a hot, painful burn. Along with a vulnerable, tiny creature that he still knows so little about. The regret that floods him is immense, along with the desperate panic that he could have still saved the child if he’d only—
Two shaking, green hands stretch past his peripheral vision as the kid strains forward with half-closed eyes.
The Razor Crest shudders to a halt in mid-air as the steaming vapours of the lava field obscure its viewport, then glides serenely past the wind storm and into a stable air flow before hovering unsteadily and landing bumpily on a patch of green near a massive body of water.
Whatever the kid does with the Force these days (and it’s getting more and more impressive by the day), it still stuns him speechless. How it’d gotten to a point where it wields this power over space and matter so instinctively and easily is not something he understands and probably can’t ever.
When Din speaks, he’s breathless with awe. “Once again, you’ve saved us, ad’ika.”
The child sags and fidgets drowsily on his lap. “Sleep…buir.”
The kid’s worn himself out this time around and even Din can understand the sheer amount of strength it’d taken to push a ship out of its path and into another.
He sighs and glances down at the snoozing kid.
The repairs that await him are extensive.
There’re some he can do on his own, but others are beyond him. Din only hopes that there’s a port that will stay peaceful long enough for the Crest to get fixed before they’re on their way again.
Luck barely stays on his side when he stumbles across an isolated workshop near a village, though the hostile stares of the humanoids Zabraks keep his hand permanently stayed on his blaster and the other holding the kid’s carrier bag more tightly.
A tall, grizzled native waits for him at tent flap, her pale orange skin oddly glowing in the light pushing the facial tattoos and horns into sharp relief.
“I have seen your ship.”
Din acknowledges her greeting with a curt admission of his own. “We nearly crashed.”
She merely smiles and gestures him in. “I saw this months ago. Come, your ship will be repaired. For now, rest, Mandalorian.”
It’s only after he’s had a meal and taken care of the kid’s needs that the Zabrak tells him of a jungle-covered moon that orbits a red gas giant.
She leans forward, the intensity of her stare somehow penetrating the toughness of his visor. “You are both ready.”
oOo
11 years, 1 month ABY
An ancient structure comes into view when the stars of deep space disintegrate into thick clouds and rain relentlessly pattering the viewport.
Yavin-4 is a cleverly-concealed habitable planet that has been the heart of the Rebellion for a long time and simply being in New Republic territory when he’s merely operated in the Outer Rim is justified cause for nervousness.
He gingerly puts the Razor Crest down on the landing site next to an X-wing but makes no move to lower the ramp. Behind him, the child fusses and fidgets, squawking when it’s unhappy (which is practically most of the time) and barely using the words Din knows it can speak.
Calming the kid down these days is a monumental task.
The ad’ika seems to have regressed in the last two weeks alone ever since they’d left Iridonia, restlessly chirping and babbling gibberish as though it’s trying to erase all the progress it has made since Nevarro.
The kid’s also clinging more than usual to his armour, refusing to sleep on its makeshift cot and insisting on being near him as much as it can. Even now, it toddles towards him, arms outstretched and eyes wide.
Something stirs on this planet despite its surface stillness: a particular sort of energy that rumbles through the mossy ground and saturates the humid air, the sort that lifts the hair on the back of his neck.
If Din has a slight inkling of it, the kid mostly likely feels it everywhere.
He’s got a bad feeling about this—this is the journey that will change the holding pattern that he’d found himself in for the last year or so.
Whatever happens from here onwards hasn’t yet been written.
The finality of the Zabrak’s words is deeply imprinted on to his psyche; months and months of searching is suddenly culminating in something that Din has no words for.
Maybe both him and the kid are not ready for it.
He gently settles the kid in its carrier bag and hits the ramp’s controls. “Ready to go?”
The ad’ika frowns in defiance. “No!”
The kid’s separation anxiety is rearing its head even before anything happens and he commiserates. The bond between them is a life bond—sacred words have been spoken about this and if anything, it’s his fault for not reassuring the child of it ever since they’ve become a clan of two.
Din sighs in empathy. “Neither am I, kid. But it has to be done.”
It does.
There are so many missing pieces here that he needs the answers to and the cloaked spectre—the jetii that he now knows by the name of Luke Skywalker—who awaits him at the structure’s massive entrance might provide them all.
But…
Din weighs the words he’d heard so long ago in his head and tests them on his lips, the feel of them strange on his tongue.
“Whatever it is, the Force will be with you, ad’ika.”
The kid stills suddenly, its ears lifting as he turns to glance at the waiting jetii and then back at his buir.
He tries again, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “Aliit ori'shya tal'din. And I will be with you. Always.”
-Fin
oOo
Tion'ad's ogir – Who’s there?
Buir – parent (either father or mother)
Jetii – Jedi
Verd ori'shya beskar'ga – A warrior is more than his armour
Aliit ori'shya tal'din – Family is more than bloodline
*Iridonia is a brutal and harsh mid-Rim planet in Star Wars mythology, and also the homeworld of the Zabrak species that were known to be inclined towards force-sensitivity. Liberties taken again, with that in this fic.